Abstract
Epistemological disjunctivists (such as Duncan Pritchard and John McDowell) make appeal to Moorean-style anti-skeptical arguments. It is often held that one problem with using Moorean-style arguments in the context of a response to skepticism is that such arguments are subject to a kind of epistemic circularity. The specific kind of epistemic failure involved has come to be known as a failure of warrant transmission. It would likely pose a problem for the anti-skeptical ambitions of the epistemological disjunctivist if his version of the Moorean-style argument failed to transmit warrant; but no epistemological disjunctivist has offered an argument to show that this is not so. In this paper, I fill the gap by arguing that warrant transmits across epistemological disjunctivist Moorean-style arguments.
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Notes
‘Likely’ indicates that I am hedging here. The two epistemological disjunctivists with whom I am concerned—Duncan Pritchard and John McDowell—certainly invoke Moorean-style arguments (Pritchard 2012; McDowell 2009). But neither Pritchard nor McDowell straightforwardly think that a deployment of a Moorean-style argument can amount to a response to the skeptic. My concern in this paper is with the specific question of whether warrant can transmit over a Moorean-style argument for an epistemological disjunctivist. I argue that it does. But I take no stand on whether this result is a necessary or even useful component of the anti-skeptical ambitions of the epistemological disjunctivist. For an exchange on the connections between epistemological disjunctivism, anti-skepticism, and neo-Mooreanism, see Schönbaumsfeld (2013) and Pritchard (2009, (2008, (2012).
See especially Pritchard (2012). Note also that according to his most recent view (defended in his 2015a), Pritchard thinks that it is undesirable to respond to skepticism by claiming to know the denials of skeptical hypotheses, and he instead offers an account according to which the epistemological disjunctivist need not claim such knowledge.
As we will see in Sect. 3.1, the closest Pritchard comes to a discussion of warrant transmission is an argument which deploys a version of the closure principle. But closure is a different phenomenon from warrant transmission (Wright 2002, p. 332).
For his part, McDowell claims at (2009, p. 236) that warrant will not transmit across the Moorean-style argument in the dialectical context of mounting a response to the skeptic. Nowhere does he consider the distinct question of whether the argument has the epistemic property of transmitting warrant [on the distinctness of the two questions see Moretti and Piazza (2013a, Sect. 4)]. It is this latter question I investigate in this paper.
It is entirely possible that neither McDowell not Pritchard think that this gap needs to be filled. But neither has offered an argument that this is so, and absent an argument to the contrary, the fact that the epistemological disjunctivist Moorean-style argument appears to be non-transmissive of warrant represents a significant challenge to the position of the epistemological disjunctivist. It is the task of this paper to argue that the epistemological disjunctivist can meet the challenge head-on.
For the idea that the perceptual capacity is fallible, see McDowell (2011, Sect. 8); see also McDowell (2009, (2010). For the idea that the capacity is self-conscious, see McDowell (2011, Sect. 7 and p. 41). It would take me too far afield to defend the claim that MED simply is what McDowell means by disjunctivism. The more minimal claim, that McDowell subscribes to MED, will have to suffice here.
Although if my argument in Sect. 8 is correct, it will follow that the two formulations are not equivalent.
As we will see in Sect. 8, accepting MED is sufficient to defend the claim that warrant transmits across the Moorean-style arguments, but PED alone is not quite sufficient—an epistemological disjunctivist committed to using Pritchard’s formulations will have to borrow some McDowellian ideas in order to defend the claim that warrant transmits.
Although I label this argument ‘Standard Mooreanism’, I make no claims to exegetical fidelity.
I’m taking ‘There is an external world’ to be incompatible with skepticism about the external world, and, in particular, I take the negation of SM-Q to be incompatible with SM-P. I’ll typically represent the arguments I am considering using triads labelled ‘E’, ‘P’, and ‘Q’. In each case, the proposition labelled ‘E’ is supposed to give evidence for the proposition labelled ‘P’ in such a way that, given suitable background assumptions (if any be needed), E warrants P. Furthermore, P is supposed to entail Q but in a way that is allowed to be slightly looser than strict logical entailment—it might be that P entails Q only given certain background assumptions.
Of course, we’ll also need it to be the case—as mentioned in footnote 10 above—that P entails Q.
For example, Pryor (2004) argues that warrant does transmit across the Moorean inference.
Given that Pritchard calls the Evidential Transmission Principle a “version of the so-called ‘transmission principle’ ” Pritchard (2012, p. 75), I suspect that he took himself (in 2012) to be offering part of an argument that epistemological disjunctivist warrant transmits across Moorean-style arguments. But he is now perfectly clear that there is a difference between closure and transmission: see, for example, Pritchard (2015a, p. 193, fn 20).
Thanks to a reviewer for this journal for drawing my attention to Moretti’s argument.
To use Pritchard’s terminology. In McDowell’s terminology: Desdemona has successfully exercised her fallible capacity for perception and has thereby got herself into a perceptual state that provides an indefeasible warrant for a perceptual belief.
Pritchard observes (2012, Sect. 1.5) that if seeing a hand is to be Desdemona’s warrant for believing EDM-P, the epistemological disjunctivist will have to reject the view according to which seeing that p is simply a way of knowing that p: for if seeing that p is just a way of knowing that p, then “it is hard to understand how seeing that p could constitute one’s epistemic basis for knowing that p” (Pritchard 2012, p. 21). To enforce a separation between seeing that p and knowing that p, Pritchard argues that Desdemona can see that p without knowing that p. For example, suppose Desdemona happens to be in an area of the country which she knows to be well-supplied with barn façades. And suppose she is currently looking at a real barn, but cannot tell whether it is a real barn or a façade. Plausibly, Desdemona sees that there is a barn over there, but does not know that there is a barn over there.
Pritchard presents his version of this argument at Pritchard (2012, pp. 122–130).
Similarly, BIV-Q must be true in order for Desdemona to exercise the capacity which generates her warrant for EDM-E.
As I indicated above, I’ll conduct my discussion with respect to the specific example of ED-Mooreanism. But my argument applies generally to Moorean-style arguments whose premises are warranted in the epistemological disjunctivist style.
Coliva (2012, pp. 239–240) considers a case like this in the context of discussing an exchange between Davies (2008) and Pryor (2012). She concludes, using a similar argument, that there is no failure of warrant transmission in cases where the evidence becomes ‘rationally unavailable’ to the subject. If the argument of the next few paragraphs is right, Coliva is wrong about this.
In this section, I tend to employ McDowellian terminology. The argument can be translated into Pritchard’s terminology without much difficulty.
Wright (2012) officially changes the name to ‘authenticity conditions’. The earlier name—‘presupposition’—seems slightly more natural to me.
The argument of this section might remind the reader of the position of Pryor’s dogmatist (Pryor 2000, 2004), but the arguments are not the same. The dogmatist argues that one need not have an antecedent warrant for SM-Q in order for SM-E to give prima facie warrant for SM-P; merely the absence of doubt in SM-Q will suffice. The epistemological disjunctivist, by contrast, argues that in order to be able to obtain the warrant she reports in EDM-E, Desdemona will not need an antecedent warrant for EDM-Q, but she will need to lack doubt about EDM-Q. Thus the epistemological disjunctivist position here does not depend on resolving the debate between liberals and conservatives [for which see, for example, Pryor (2012), Wright (2012)].
I am grateful to a reviewer for this journal for urging me to address this objection.
Here is how McDowell puts the point:
When an exercise of a rational perceptual capacity puts a subject in a perceptual state that is her seeing something to be so, the perceptual state that is her seeing it to be so comes within the scope of her self-consciousness, so the warrant it provides, as the perceptual state it is ... is accessible to the warranted individual. (McDowell 2011, p. 33)
Recall that for the epistemological disjunctivist, Desdemona can see that p without knowing that p (footnote 19, above). Thus she can see that p without knowing that she sees that p. When she successfully exercises her capacity for perception, she sees that p and she knows that she sees that p.
We saw in Sect. 5 that the epistemological disjunctivist concedes that Desdemona will not be able to determine, in the Vat Scenario, that she is in the Vat Scenario rather than the Ideal Scenario.
My use of these examples is inspired by Neta (2008). Although Neta is officially discussing McDowellian epistemological disjunctivism, he does so using the language that Pritchard has since adopted, and not the language of MED. I think his discussion is thus best understood as an exploration of some of the options available to Pritchard.
Neta (2008, p. 324) argues that the epistemological disjunctivist can consistently concede that the truth of DK in Scenario 2 is not reflectively accessible to Desdemona. I take the idea to be something like this: In order to be a Pritchardian epistemological disjunctivist, it is sufficient to maintain that in a paradigmatic perceptual experience (Scenario 2, we have granted, is a paradigmatic perceptual experience) Desdemona believes p on the basis of the factive, reflectively accessible, perceptual experience of seeing that p. The fact that Desdemona cannot know DK through reflection alone in Scenario 2 does not (at least immediately) show that the fundamental claim of Pritchardian epistemological disjunctivist is false, for DK itself remains true, and PED does not require that Desdemona know the truth of DK in order to claim to know B. Whether or not Neta is correct about this, the barn scenarios do cause trouble if the epistemological disjunctivist wishes to go further and claim, as I do, that warrant transmits across Moorean-style arguments.
The reason we have to switch to the second-order level for the warranting the warrant objection to have teeth is because PED insists that Desdemona’s warrant for her perceptual belief is reflectively accessible. That DK is true, when Desdemona is enjoying a paradigmatic perceptual experience, is simply built into PED. But it is not part of PED that Desdemona has a reflectively accessible warrant for DK, and it is this lacuna which the second-order version of the warranting the warrant objection exploits.
Two clarifications are in order here. First: if the argument based on the barn scenarios shows that Desdemona needs an antecedent propositional warrant for something in order to be warranted in believing WW, it will not be sufficient for her to have an antecedent propositional warrant for EDM-Q. For (in the barn scenarios) knowing EDM-Q would not help Desdemona determine whether she is in Scenario 1 or Scenario 2 (EDM-Q is true in both). If Desdemona needs an antecedent warrant for anything, in Scenario 2, to determine that she is in Scenario 2, it would have to be for something such as:
- EDM-Q \('\) :
-
There is an external world which I can, in my current circumstances, come to know about on the basis of my perceptual experience.
EDM-Q\(^\prime \) is a presupposition of the project of coming to know WW (if Desdemona doubted EDM-Q\('\), she ought to doubt any project which claimed to deliver a warrant for WW). It is for this reason that the second-order warranting the warrant objection is worded in terms of presuppositions. Second: Why does Desdemona need a warrant for something as complex as WW? She does not obviously need such a warrant if her goal is simply to claim to know EDM-P on the basis of her perceptual experience. But the (second-order) warranting the warrant objection is an objection to my claim that warrant transmits across Moorean-style arguments. In order to defend this claim, I must argue that Desdemona can be warranted in believing EDM-P in the absence of an antecedent warrant for EDM-Q. That will mean she cannot have an antecedent warrant for EDM-Q\('\) either (for if she has an antecedent warrant for EDM-Q\('\), she will thereby have a warrant for EDM-Q). But, according to the second-order version of the warranting the warrant objection, Desdemona must have a warrant for EDM-Q\('\) in order to be in a position to claim that her perceptual experience does indeed secure her a warrant for her perceptual belief. The onus is thus squarely on me to explain how Desdemona can have such knowledge in the absence of an antecedent warrant for EDM-Q\('\).
These are McDowell’s words from the previous quotation, with my own addition in italics.
Of course, in Scenario 1, Desdemona will take herself to have successfully exercised the capacity, and take herself to know that DK is true. But she will not have successfully exercised the capacity, and DK will not be true. But this is exactly what we should expect, given the fallibility of the capacity for perception, and it should not cast doubt on Desdemona’s claims to knowledge in Scenario 2.
Notice also that my argument that Moorean-style arguments meet the Moretti-Piazza Transmission Conditions does not exploit the loophole that is created by observing that Moretti and Piazza claim that their test applies to cases where E defeasibly warrants P, whereas EDM-E indefeasibly warrants EDM-P. Nothing about those conditions, as I have interpreted and applied them, depends on Moretti and Piazza’s claim that E must defeasibly warrant P.
Wright takes pains to insist that this is a template for the failure of ‘second-order warrant transmission’. The issue is not whether the argument of ED-Mooreanism might warrant Desdemona in believing EDM-Q (that would be first-order warrant), but whether Desdemona may reflectively ‘lay claim’ to be warranted in EDM-Q on the basis of the warrant EDM-E and the inference from EDM-P to EDM-Q (Wright 2011, p. 87). This makes no difference to my argument: I have, as I hope is clear, been assuming all along that the issue is one of what warrant Desdemona may herself lay claim to.
The fact that Wright is so insistent that the kind of warrant in question is second-order warrant (see footnote 40) suggests that the question of what warrant Desdemona may, upon reflection, lay claim to is not, in any way, out of bounds with respect to the Revised Template.
As I indicated in footnote 2, it is not straightforwardly clear that the epistemological disjunctivist needs warrant to transmit across the Moorean inference.
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Acknowledgments
Thanks to two anonymous referees for helpful comments on this paper. Thanks also to Jennifer Lockhart for endless invaluable conversations on this material.
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Lockhart, T. Why warrant transmits across epistemological disjunctivist Moorean-style arguments. Synthese 195, 287–319 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1218-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1218-6