Quinean Naturalized Epistemology
Conceptual
Project
Doctrinal
Project
Response to the Failure of the Cartesian Project and the Failure of
Attempts at Rational Reconstruction.
Purely
Descriptive Project: Epistemology
becomes a chapter of empirical psychology.
Need not assume that psychology is limited by Quine's
behaviorist tendencies.
Confirmational Holism and the Two-Fold Role of Observation Sentences
Two
Potential Problems:
(1)
The Circularity Problem
(2)
The Normativity Problem
Three
Epistemological Projects:
(1)
Account of knowledge and justification.
(2)
Show the extent of our knowledge.
(3)
Provide epistemic advice (how to get more true beliefs and fewer false ones).
Cartesian
Foundationalism is a "Good argument"
Account. It is a fruitless research
project.
Essential
components:
(1)
Rejection of a priori knowledge.
(2)
Realization that skeptical questions arise within science.
At
least much of epistemology becomes an empirical discipline.
(Why "at least much"?)
Kornblith’s rejection of universality (compare Zagzebski): The topic is human knowledge, not an analysis
of the concept of knowledge.
Human
knowledge is produced by belief producing mechanisms that are well-adapted to
this world
Examples: (1) Visual illusions
(2) Generalizing from small samples.
Kornblith thinks it is a mistake to search for principles of reasoning which
would work in any possible world.
The
reliability of our cognitive processes is deeply contingent.
What
about the reasoning that leads to the discovery of visual illusions, cognitive
biases, and other mistake-correcting reasoning?
Two Objections
I. What is Kornblith's
Answer to the Normativitity Problem?
II. BonJour’s
Intellectual Suicide Objection: Is
naturalized epistemology self-referentially inconsistent?
Kornblith’s response is developed by Nozick.
To
evaluate the Kornblith/Nozick response, we need to
distinguish universality from a prioricity:
(1)
Universality. Are there universal
concepts of knowledge and justification?
Are
there universal principles of good reasoning?
(2)
A Prioricity.
If so, how are they knowable?
Could they be discovered, rather than known a priori?
NOZICK’S REVERSAL OF THE
KANT’S COPERNICAN REVOLUTION
Nozick’s Question About Reasons: What is the nature of the connection between
a reason (r) and what it is a reason for (h)?
Two
ways of answering the question:
(1)
On the a priori approach, there is an objective logical relation of support
between r and h that we directly apprehend.
(2)
On the factual approach, there is an objective factual relation between r and h
such that when r is true, h is likely to be true, and evolution has selected
for beings to whom it seems self-evident that when r
is true h is likely to be true. (Evolution
selects for seeming self-evidence.)
“Reason
tells us about reality because reality shapes reason.”(112)
Example of Euclidean geometry.
Selection for
approximate truth.
Serviceability rather
than truth.
“To
explain why such principles seem self-evident to us, one need not invoke their
necessity.”(111)
Necessary
truths are not necessary to explain why we believe in them!
Kant's Copernican Revolution and Nozick's
reversal of it.
What
is the source of Reason’s Function? What
is Reason’s Function?
What
is Nozick's response to the Problem of Induction?
The possibility of self-correcting reason relations.
NOZICK'S SUBJUNCTIVE ARGUMENT AGAINST NECESSARY TRUTH
"The strength and depth
of our intuitions about certain statements cannot be used as powerful evidence
for their necessity if those statements are of a kind that, were they
contingent facts, would have led to selection favoring strong intuitions of
their self-evidence."(111)
Brandom’s Linguistic Rationalism
A Parochial Communitarian Internalist (Pragmatic) Epistemology
Semantics as use in a rule-governed game (What is the game?)
Declarative
sentences are normatively evaluated in two ways:
(1) (subjective/deontological appraisal):
Whether the speaker followed the rules of the game so as not to be blameworthy
for producing the assertion. Involves inferential consequences and inferential antecedents.
(2) (objective
appraisal): Whether the assertion is
correct in that things really are as it says they are. (Truth = objective representational
correctness)
The
game of giving and asking for reasons has two kinds of rules:
(1) rules of
consequential commitment (the committive dimension)
(2) rules of
entitlement (the critical dimension)
The
normative fine structure of rationality:
(a) Committive. Commitment-preserving inference generalizes
deductive inference;
(b) Permissive. Entitlement-preserving inference generalizes
inductive inference;
(c) Incompatibility Entailments. Generalizes modal
(counter-factual supporting) inference.
On Brandom’s pragmatic
approach, how can normative assessments be rich enough to transcend the
attitudes of practitioners? How can two
sentences have the same assertibility conditions but
different truth conditions?
Key idea:
Use the distinction between commitments and entitlements to distinguish subjective
appraisal (justified) from objective appraisal (true).
Example:
1. “The swatch is red.”
2.
“The claim that the swatch is red is properly assertible
by me now.”
3.
“I do not exist.”
4.
“Rational beings never evolved.”
2’. “I am now committed to the claim that the swatch
is red.”
2’’. “I am now entitled to the claim that the
swatch is red.”
Brandom’s Semantics and Epistemology are Parochial, Based on Community Norms
What is the result?
Justification and truth are a kind of social status!
Parochial
norms of justification and truth:
Consider an analogy to the rules of baseball. They could have been different. Could the rules of propriety for “justified”
and “true” have been different?
Talbott’s Universalist
Epistemology
Implicit vs. Explicit
Sensitivity
1. Universal concepts of Knowledge,
Justification, and Truth
Explicit Sensitivity/Explicit A Priori
Insight Model: Logical analyses of these
concepts are the product of a priori insight into necessary truth
Implicit Sensitivity Model: Logical analyses of these concepts are the
product of the imagination’s ability to conceive of possibilities. Tentatively proposed necessary truths are
those to which no one has been able to imagine a counterexample. Logical analyses require us to be able to
imagine a wide variety of cases and to make reliable judgments about particular
actual and hypothetical cases.
(a) Knowledge ŕ True Belief?
(b) Knowledge ŕ Truth?
2. Universal principles of reasoning (e.g.,
mistake-correcting reasoning).
Explicit Sensitivity/Explicit A Priori
Insight Model: Reasoning involves direct
a priori insight into the principles of rational belief change, or at least,
direct a priori insight into logical relations between premises and
conclusion.
Implicit Sensitivity
Model: We do not have a priori insight
into such principles, we must discover them.
How could we discover them? If
there are universal principles of reasoning that our good reasoning is
implicitly sensitive to, then we might discover those principles by attempting
to find principles that would explain the difference between our good reasoning
and our bad reasoning. This requires us
to be able to imagine a wide variety of cases of good and bad reasoning, to
make reliable judgments about particular actual and hypothetical cases of good
and bad reasoning, and to be able to formulate principles that would can explain the difference. If our judgments about good and bad reasoning
are reliable enough, the principles that explain the difference between our
good and bad reasoning will approximate the true principles of good reasoning.
(Implicit Sensitivity) Agent
A's coming to believe that p as a result of a transition from B1 and E to B2 is
rational « There is a principle of
rational belief change P which is such that agent A's coming to believe that p
is appropriately implicitly sensitive to the application of principle P
to the rational beliefs in B1 and A's experience E.
(Test for Appropriate Implicit Sensitivity) Test for whether an
agent A's acquisition of belief that p as a result of a transition from B1 to
B2 given experience E is appropriately sensitive to the application of
principle P to A's rational beliefs in B and to A’s experience E: (a) If Principle P had not licensed A's
believing that p on the basis of the rational beliefs in B1 and experience E, A
would not have believed that p; (b) If
Principle P had licensed A's believing that p on the basis of the rational
beliefs in B1 and experience E, A would have believed that p.
THE NATURALIST’S CHALLENGE TO TALBOTT’S UNIVERSALISM
How could evolution have made human beings sensitive to universal principles of rational belief change?
The early Nozick’s
surprising reply (before his “Copernican Revolution”):
Let
R be the rational relation between the set of propositions B1 and the set of
propositions B2. Evolution could have
selected for belief transitions that mirror rational relations. Let b1 be the initial neurophysiolgical
state of subject S and b2 be the final neurophysiological state of subject S. Perhaps part of the explanation of subject
S’s being caused to believe b2 on the basis of b1 is that b1 corresponds to B1
and B2 corresponds to b2 and B1 stands in R to B2.
Nozick’s Test: If B2 did not stand in relation R to B1, then
it would not have been the case that b1 causes b2 in S.
Talbott’s Generalization of Nozick’s Idea:
Consider certain circumstances in which neurophysiological
state b2 is the causal result of neurophysiological
state b1 and neurological input i1.
Where b1 corresponds to set of beliefs B1, i1 corresponds to a
specification of experiential input I1, b2 corresponds to set of beliefs B2, and the Principle of Rational Belief Change P licenses
the transition from B1 and I1 to B2:
(Generalized TIS) If P had not licensed the
transition from B1 and I1 to B2, then it would not have been the case that b1
and i1 cause b2 in S (in these circumstances); and if P had licensed the
transition from B1 and I1 to B2, then it would have been the case that b1 and
i1 cause b2 in S (in these circumstances).
The
surprising possibility: Evolution
selected for rational relations among beliefs and experiential input.
The Metaphysics and Epistemology of Epistemology
|
Universal A
Priori Explicit
Sensitivity |
Universal No
A Priori Implicit
Sensitivity |
Parochial A
Posteriori Or
Other Non- A
Priori |
|
1. Universal concepts of knowledge,
justification, and truth. A priori
insight into necessary and sufficient conditions. |
1. Universal concepts of knowledge,
justification, and truth. Bottom-Up
reasoning to necessary and sufficient conditions. |
1. Parochial concepts (e.g., human
knowledge). Non-apriori
knowledge of truths about our parochial concepts. |
|
2. Universal principles of good
reasoning. A priori insight into the
universal rules or into the appropriate relation between premises and
conclusion. |
2. Universal principles of good reasoning (e.g.,
mistake-correcting reasoning). Our
implicit sensitivity to them may enable us to discover them. |
2. Parochial rules of good reasoning (for our
situation). Non-a priori knowledge of
such rules (e.g., of which rules are reliable in our actual environment). |