Abstract
The standard view in epistemology is that propositional knowledge entails belief. Positive arguments are seldom given for this entailment thesis, however; instead, its truth is typically assumed. Against the entailment thesis, Myers-Schulz and Schwitzgebel (Noûs, forthcoming) report that a non-trivial percentage of people think that there can be propositional knowledge without belief. In this paper, we add further fuel to the fire, presenting the results of four new studies. Based on our results, we argue that the entailment thesis does not deserve the default status that it is typically granted. We conclude by considering the alternative account of knowledge that Myers-Schulz and Schwitzgebel propose to explain their results, arguing that it does not explain ours. In its place we offer a different explanation of both sets of findings—the conviction account, according to which belief, but not knowledge, requires mental assent.
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Notes
To our knowledge, Lehrer (1968) was the first to introduce the moniker of the “entailment thesis.”
Those who share Radford’s intuition include, e.g., Black (1971, p. 154), Margolis (1973, p. 7), Mannison (1976, p. 139), Lewis (1996, p. 556), and Schope (2002, pp. 53–55). In addition to Lehrer (1968) and Steup (2006), Jones (1971) and Sorensen (1982) maintain that Jean neither knows nor believes that Queen Elizabeth died in 1603. Cohen (1966, p. 11) sides with Armstrong (1969) in holding that Radford’s is an example of both knowledge and belief. See also note 2.
The reference is to proto-experimental philosopher Arne Naess, one of the first to use questionnaires in studying non-philosophers’ intuitions about philosophical issues. See, e.g., Naess (1938).
Rose and Schaffer (ms) have, however, replicated Myers-Schulz and Schwitzgebel’s results for the Unconfident Examinee and Freaked-Out Movie-Watcher using a within-subjects design.
See, e.g., Johnston’s (1992) example involving a glass encased in packaging. The glass has the disposition of being fragile, but it would not break if struck because the packaging would mask this disposition from being manifested.
In all studies, participants were native English speakers, 18 years of age or older, with at most minimal training in philosophy (excluding philosophy majors and those who have taken graduate-level courses in philosophy). All participants were recruited through the Philosophical Personality website (http://www.philosophicalpersonality.com).
Two-sample test for equality of proportions with continuity correction, χ2 = 10.48, df = 1, p = 0.0012.
Two-sample test for equality of proportions with continuity correction, χ2 = 9.89, df = 1, p = 0.0017.
One-sample test of proportion with continuity correction, χ2 = 64.56, df = 1, p < 0.001; 95 % CI (0.42–0.62).
One-sample test of proportion with continuity correction, χ2 = 46.25, df = 1, p < 0.001; 95 % CI (0.36–0.55).
One-sample test of proportion with continuity correction, χ2 = 22.89, df = 1, p < 0.001; 95 % CI (0.28–0.43).
One-sample test of proportion with continuity correction, χ2 = 168.76, df = 1, p < 0.001; 95 % CI (0.70–0.89).
Restricting to the 92 participants who said they understood both questions literally, 32.4 % answered that the cash register knew but did not believe (χ2 = 6.39, df = 1, p = 0.006, one-tailed) and 63.2 % answered that the cash register did not believe but nonetheless knew (χ2 = 41.58, df = 1, p < 0.001, one-tailed), both of which are significantly greater proportions than 0.2.
One-sample test of proportion with continuity correction, χ2 = 135.52, df = 1, p < 0.001; 95 % CI (0.72–0.93).
One-sample test of proportion with continuity correction. χ2 = 63.46, df = 1, p < 0.001; 95 % CI (0.45–0.67).
With 166 participants, we had power of 0.8 to detect a medium-sized effect (h = 0.44), and power of 0.97 to detect an effect as large as that seen in the God case (h = 0.6). Two-sample test for equality of proportions with continuity correction, χ2 = 1.38, df = 1, p = 0.24.
The revised second paragraph reads: “Prior to starting at the university, however, Karen was home-schooled by her parents. Karen’s parents taught her that the earth is at the center of the universe. Since starting at the university, though, Karen has quickly come to reject many of the things that her parents taught her. In particular, despite what her parents taught her, she now holds that the earth revolves around the sun.”
One-sample test of proportion with continuity correction, χ2 = 17.65, df = 1, p < 0.001. In fact, using our 20 % noise threshold, the proportion who deny that Karen believes (among those who say that Karen knows) is not statistically different from noise (χ2 = 0, df = 1, p = 1). The results of Study 6 also speak to the false implicature objection. If that objection held for Study 4, then the gap between “yes” answers to the knows and believes questions was due to participants’ worry that the former would imply a negative answer to the latter (even though they were also explicitly asked the latter). If that were the case, then since the relevant pragmatic factors are the same, we should see a similar gap between “yes” answers to the knows and believes questions in Study 6. In fact, though, the proportion of participants in Study 6 who said that Karen believes (out of those who said that Karen knows) was significantly greater than the proportion of analogous participants in Study 4, and the effect size for this comparison is considerable (h = 1.43). One-sample test of proportion with continuity correction, χ2 = 41.89, df = 1, p < 0.001.
Wielding the know-how objection against our other studies also seems somewhat unsafe for other reasons. After all, any purported display of propositional knowledge could instead be construed as a display of know-how—e.g., of knowing how to answer a corresponding question. For the advocate of the entailment thesis to generalize on the know-how objection in this way, however, would be to cut off her nose to spite her face: It would undermine any analysis of propositional knowledge by raising doubts about its very existence, not just an analysis of it according to which it entails belief. As such, for the know-how objection to be wielded safely, specific reasons are needed for thinking that it applies to any given case. But it is unclear, at best, what those reason(s) would be with respect to the more sophisticated agents in Study 1 (God) and Study 4 (Karen).
It is worth noting that Rose and Schaffer’s objection to Myers-Schulz and Schwitzgebel might be challenged even on the amendment above. One might think that the entailment thesis naturally concerns both dispositional and occurrent belief. For instance, one might maintain that the entailment thesis should hold both that (i) occurrent knowledge entails occurrent belief and (ii) dispositional knowledge entails dispositional belief. Suppose, then, that Rose and Schaffer are right that participants in Myers-Schulz and Schwitzgebel’s studies did read the “believes” questions in terms of occurrent belief, but that participants in Rose and Schaffer’s studies read them in terms of dispositional belief. In that case, if participants read the “knows” and “believes” questions in the same sense (i.e., if they read both in either the dispositional sense or both in the occurrent sense), then while Rose and Schaffer’s results would show that the Unconfident Examinee and Freaked-Out Movie-Watcher do not present counterexamples to (ii), they would fail to show that Myers-Schulz and Schwitzgebel’s results do not present counterexamples to (i). Of course, Rose and Schaffer argue that the entailment thesis only involves (ii). And, even if it were granted that the thesis also involves (i), their results would still show that Myers-Schulz and Schwitzgebel’s studies do nothing to challenge (ii). As discussed in the text, our studies do.
While God does not exhibit the tendency to provide the correct answer to the question at issue in our first study, it nonetheless seems plausible that God has the capacity to do so and would exhibit the tendency to do so if the situation arose.
The conviction account is also similar to recent dispositional theories of belief that stress a wide range of causal roles and the importance of phenomenology, though some of these theories (e.g., Schwitzgebel 2002) retain the functionalist thesis that there is no specific phenomenal character that is necessary for belief (in contrast to at the least the phenomenological elaboration of the conviction account).
It might be argued that Karen does not display “all or most” of the behaviors that we would associate with belief in the vignette as written. Such details could be added without significant alteration, however.
Alternatively, Victoria may still be disposed to assent during this period until she is explicitly asked about the proposition because such a prompt changes her disposition by leading her to reflect. This is consistent with the conviction account, and would render condition (ii) superfluous. Nonetheless, for purposes of the objection we will assume that this example is a case of belief without the disposition to assent. We thank an anonymous referee for Philosophical Studies for bringing this point to our attention.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Blake Myers-Schulz, Eric Schwitzgebel, Jacob Beck, Hayden Thornburg, and an anonymous referee for Philosophical Studies for their comments on previous versions of this article. We would also like to thank our audiences at the meetings of the Southern Society for Philosophy and Psychology, 2012, and the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association, 2012, where we presented previous versions of this paper.
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Murray, D., Sytsma, J. & Livengood, J. God knows (but does God believe?). Philos Stud 166, 83–107 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-012-0022-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-012-0022-5