Abstract
Closure principles loom large in recent internalist critiques of epistemic externalism. Cohen (Philos Phenomenol Res 65:309–329, 2002, Philos Phenomenol Res 70:417–430, 2005), Vogel (J Philos 97:602–623, 2000), and Fumerton (Meta-Epistemology and skepticism. Rowman and Littlefield, Lanham, 1995) argue that, given closure, epistemic externalism is committed to the possibility of implausibly easy knowledge. By contrast, Zalabardo (Philos Rev 114:33–61, 2005) proposes that epistemic closure actually precludes the possibility of easy knowledge, and appeals to closure principles to solve the problem of easy knowledge. In my view, disagreement over closure’s bearing on externalism and the problem of easy knowledge is rooted in a failure to bear in mind the familiar distinction between ex ante and ex post forms of epistemic justification and warrant. When this distinction is kept in focus, the result is clear: epistemic closure provides no relief from the problem of easy knowledge.
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Notes
Rejecting (KR) isn’t confined to externalism. See Pryor (2000) for a prominent version of internalism that rejects (KR).
Zalabardo’s conception of epistemic warrant seems to be equivalent to the one suggested by Plantinga (1993). It differs substantially from other common notions of warrant, such as those employed by Burge (2003) and Wright (2004). Greene and Balmert (1997) provide a helpful taxonomy of some different conceptions of warrant.
An anonymous referee suggested that perhaps Zalabardo could reconcile transmission and closure by claiming that one learns that p entails q by inferring q from p. So suppose S knows that p but doesn’t have warrant for q. Such a situation wouldn’t violate (ClosureW), assuming that S, having yet to infer q from p, doesn’t know that p entails q. Zalabardo could then say that warrant transmits to q when S infers it from p.
I am happy that this proposal is consonant with my view that closure principles alone don’t provide relief from the problem of easy knowledge. But for various reasons beyond the scope of this paper, I find the suggestion unappealing. Briefly: if inferring q from p requires believing q on the basis of p, then clearly the idea that one can only know that p entails q by inferring q from p is false. One might not believe p to begin with. Even where one knows that p, one can discover that p entails q without coming to believe q. One might learn of the entailment in the course of discovering overwhelmingly convincing, but misleading, evidence that not-q, for example. A rational person would not infer that q, but would instead relinquish belief in p, under such circumstances.
It is perhaps worth noting that there are transmission principles for knowledge and justification analogous to (TransmissionW). For knowledge, we can take the relevant principle to be
- (TransmissionK):
-
If S knows that p and knows that p entails q, then S can come to know that q by inferring it from p,
while in the case of justification, we can formulate the relevant transmission principle as
- (TransmissionJ):
-
If S is justified in believing that p and knows that p entails q, then S can come to be justified in believing that q by inferring it from p.
The logic of Zalabardo’s argument concerning (ClosureW) and (TransmissionW) applies with equal force to analogous questions concerning relationships between (ClosureK) and (TransmissionK), and (ClosureJ) and (TransmissionJ), respectively.
I assume that in at least some circumstances one can have warrant for believing that p without actually believing that p. But “warrant” is a term of art in philosophy, more so even than “justification.” My assumption that the ex ante/ex post distinction carries over from justification to warrant might be easier to accept on some conceptions of warrant than on others. According to Burge (2003), for example, justification just is a type of warrant, so the distinction necessarily carries over on his conception of warrant.
I suppose there might be types or sources of warrant such that one cannot be warranted in the relevant way without actually holding a belief on the basis of that warrant. Suppose, for example, that your belief that p is warranted because it was formed by a truth-tracking method, such that that method cannot fail to produce a belief. (Here, I would say that the truth-tracking method was the “basis” for the belief, in a somewhat extended sense of basis. Roughly, for the purposes of this paper, I count the “basis” of a belief as whatever both causes and epistemically sanctions it.) Such possibilities don’t threaten the basic distinction between ex ante and ex post warrant, any more than the distinction would be threatened for justification if there were forms of justification that required belief. So if turns out that there are truth-tracking methods of belief formation that necessarily produce ex post warranted belief whenever they operate, we should not deny an in-principle distinction between ex ante and ex post warrant. Instead we should say simply that those methods are incapable of generating ex ante warrant. (Thanks to three anonymous referees for pressing me to elaborate on this point.).
Two points: First, here and throughout this paper, I assume that the warrant and justification under consideration is pro tanto, absent any defeaters. Second, why say that S’s belief that p must be ex post warranted in order for her belief that q to be ex ante warranted? The thought here is that if S had ex ante warrant for p but actually believed p without warrant, then if she were to infer q from p, she wouldn’t be ex post warranted in believing that q. (Naturally, things are more complicated than this, but hopefully the principle as stated will suffice for present purposes.).
References
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Acknowledgments
Thanks to Eric Barnes, Justin Fisher, Robert Howell, Brad Thompson, and three anonymous referees for helpful comments on earlier versions of this paper.
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Lockard, M. Closure Provides No Relief from the Problem of Easy Knowledge. Erkenn 79, 461–469 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-013-9492-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-013-9492-x