Abstract
The New Evil Demon problem has been hotly debated since the case was introduced in the early 1980’s (e.g. Lehrer and Cohen in Synthese 55:191–207, 1983; Cohen in Philos Stud 46:279–295, 1984), and there seems to be recent increased interest in the topic. In a forthcoming collection of papers on the New Evil Demon problem (Dutant and Dorsch in The New Evil Demon, Oxford University Press, forthcoming), at least two of the papers, both by prominent epistemologists, attempt to resist the problem by appealing to the distinction between justification and excuses. My primary aim here is to critically evaluate this new excuse maneuver as a response to the New Evil Demon problem. Their response attempts to give us reason to reject the idea that victims of the New Evil Demon have justification for believing as they do. I shall argue that this approach is ultimately unsuccessful, however much of value can be learned from these attempts. In particular, progress in the debate can be made by following those who advance the excuse maneuver and make explicit the connection between epistemic justification and epistemic norms. By doing so, the questions being debated are clarified, as is the methodology being used to attempt to answer them.
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Notes
Thanks to an anonymous referee for emphasizing that the excuse manoeuvre is not new to the Dutant and Dorsch volume. For example, Littlejohn (2009), section III.4 provides an in-depth examination of ways in which a subject’s beliefs and actions may be blameless, justified, be exempt from responsibility, or excusable. Littlejohn’s (2009) work in epistemology, in turn, appeals to similar distinctions drawn by others in epistemology, ethics, and law. My aim here, however, is to discuss the most recent presentations of the excuse manoeuvre as a response to the New Evil Demon problem, and the arguments given for it.
Thanks to an anonymous referee who rightly pointed out that in analyzing New Evil Demon cases, people often conflate two evaluations, which must be kept distinct: the justification a person might have in holding a belief, and the justification a belief itself might enjoy. That is, a distinction is drawn between personal and doxastic justification. Relying on this distinction as a response to the New Evil Demon argument, some have argued that while the subjects may be justified in the New Evil Demon case, their beliefs are not. Advocates of this approach include Bach (1985), Engel (1992) and Littlejohn (2009). The distinction itself between personal and doxastic justification can be traced back to at least Lowy (1978). As I am presenting the crucial intuition here, it is about both the subjects and their beliefs in New Evil Demon scenarios: both the subjects and their beliefs are as equally well justified as their normal world counterparts.
Intuitive considerations aside, the plausibility of a response based on distinguishing personal from doxastic justification will turn on the coherence of a person being justified in believing that P while her belief that P is itself unjustified. According to Kvanvig and Menzel (1990), for example, a person’s being justified in believing that P, entails that his belief that P is justified—one cannot have the former without the latter.
Thank you to an anonymous referee for impressing upon me the need to be explicit about this point.
An anonymous referee suggested looking beyond the discussion of excuses for arguments that the primary epistemic norm is not met. Williamson (2000) and Littlejohn (2012) do offer independent arguments for the knowledge norm and the truth norm of belief, respectively. But rather than evaluating those arguments directly here, I shall be making a general methodological proposal about the basis upon we should identify epistemic norms, as well as make judgements about whether the norms have been met. My suggestion will be that doing so makes the appeal to excuses in New Evil Demon cases unmotivated.
An anonymous referee questioned whether the turn to Lackey is particularly helpful here. They suggested that, arguably, she is guilty of conflating two kinds of assessment: roughly, the assessment of the person, vs. the assessment of her beliefs / assertions. See note 2 above on the distinction between personal and doxastic justification.
Regardless of whether or not Lackey herself runs these assessments together in the work cited, we can keep them apart. While it might ultimately prove to be a mistake that the criticism of assertions reveals anything about norms and their violation, the assumption is ubiquitous in the norms of assertion debate. For example, in discussing norms of assertion in an encyclopedia overview, Pagin (2016) notes: “A large part of the intuitions that serve to support one or the other norm theory relies on raw intuitions about what one should or shouldn’t assert in some situation, or what is proper or improper to assert there.” So too here, the suggestion is to apply that methodology, commonplace in the norms of assertion debate, to this seemingly parallel debate about the norms governing belief.
While there might be other arguments for norm violation in such cases, other than from premises involving the badness of false belief, this style of argument is extremely common, and Williamson endorses it in the discussion in question. Accordingly, it is worth noting that this particular argument is invalid (granting that it might not be the only argument available). I thank an anonymous referee for raising this issue.
Thanks to an anonymous referee for suggesting these direct lines of argument.
Thanks to audiences at the Australasian Association of Philosophy Annual Conference in Melbourne, and the Normativity & Rationality Seminar at King’s College London. Thanks also to two anonymous referees for Synthese, Kegan Shaw, Clayton Littlejohn, Stephen Hetherington, and especially Rhiannon James for helpful discussion and written comments on earlier drafts of this paper.
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Madison, B.J.C. On justifications and excuses. Synthese 195, 4551–4562 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1418-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-017-1418-8