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Epistemology versus non-causal realism

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Abstract

This paper formulates a general epistemological argument against what I call non-causal realism, generalizing domain specific arguments by Benacerraf, Field, and others. First I lay out the background to the argument, making a number of distinctions that are sometimes missed in discussions of epistemological arguments against realism. Then I define the target of the argument—non-causal realism—and argue that any non-causal realist theory, no matter the subject matter, cannot be given a reasonable epistemology and so should be rejected. Finally I discuss and respond to several possible responses to the argument. In addition to clearing up and avoiding numerous misunderstandings of arguments of this kind that are quite common in the literature, this paper aims to present and endorse a rigorous and fully general epistemological argument against realism.

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Notes

  1. Benacerraf (1973) presents his original challenge, which is actually a dilemma for any theory of mathematics rather than an argument against platonism; pages 25–30 of the introduction to Field (1989) provides an influential reformulation of Benacerraf’s challenge. For further relevant work see Balaguer (1995, 1998), Clarke-Doane (2012, forthcoming), Enoch (2010), Field (2005), Linnebo (2006), and Schechter (2010, 2013).

  2. The role of experts and social coordination in content and belief-formation has been widely recognized since Putnam (1975) and Burge (1979).

  3. See, e.g., the discussion in Priest (2006); Ripley 2011) provides an overview of theories on rejection and its relationship to negation.

  4. From the first page of Benacerraf (1973).

  5. See Nozick (1981), Sosa (1999) and Pritchard (2005) and Williamson (2000).

  6. Both of these conditions could have a clause added to rule out systematically interfering factors, but I’ll ignore this below.

  7. See Lewis (1973, 1979) and Fine (1975) for relevant and influential discussions.

  8. Some sensitivity, safety, and anti-luck conditions in epistemology are much stricter, e.g., Nozick (1981, pp. 172–196), and Heller (1999)’s account of epistemic luck.

  9. Quoted from Clarke-Doane (forthcoming). Clarke-Doane then argues that our mathematical beliefs are both sensitive and safe, so they are not undermined (this seems to represent a change of mind from Clarke-Doane (2012). On a general reading this isn’t strictly relevant though, for proponents of anti-realist arguments aren’t arguing that our mathematical beliefs are not both sensitive and safe, but rather that if mathematical realism is true, then our mathematical beliefs are not both sensitive and safe. Clarke-Doane’s strategy for securing sensitivity and safety, even on a realist picture, will be discussed in Sect. 7. Generally, that epistemological arguments try to undermine certain philosophical theories rather than certain subjects is missed over and over again in the literature, e.g., see Burgess and Rosen (1997) and White (2010).

  10. Cf. Linnebo (2006)’s “Lucky fool”. For simplicity I here assume that the strategy for securing sensitivity discussed below in Sect. 6, works (though note the “perhaps”).

  11. I am sympathetic to both sensitivity and safety as conditions on both knowledge and explanation, but it is simpler to work with the conditions directly.

  12. Section 8 below contains further relevant discussion of the strength of this principle.

  13. Setiya (2012)’s discussion of epistemological arguments apparently misses this crucial point on pages 68-69.

  14. For overviews see Pritchard (2005) and Engel Jr. (2014).

  15. An early explicit recognition of non-undermining forms of luck is in Unger (1968).

  16. For error theory about ethics, see Mackie (1977); for error theory about mathematics, see Field (1989).

  17. Quasi-realists in ethics are fond of using this strategy to argue that their ostensibly mind dependent views of morality are not mind dependent or otherwise subjective.

  18. See Fine (2001) and Jenkins (2005).

  19. I take the term “counterpart” from its use in counterpart theory; see Lewis (1968).

  20. More detail about semantic counterparts can be found in Sect. 4 of my (2015a) and Sect. 4 of my (2015b).

  21. See Ayer (1946), Carnap (1934), and Giannoni (1971) for versions of conventionalism about logic and mathematics.

  22. See Davidson (1984), Hirsch (2011), Lewis (1974), and Quine (1970) for more on charity principles of this kind.

  23. I think it is plausible that we may be able to let easy pluralism do the work of mind independence in the definition of realism, though I won’t explore this possibility any further here.

  24. See Goldman (1967) for the introduction of a causal theory of knowledge; and Carrier (1993) for a more recent endorsement and development of a causal theory. For realist theories that endorse some form of causal inertness, see, for example, the references in footnotes 26 and 27 below. There are also, of course, theories of X that endorse causal inertness but don’t count as “realist” because some other component of realism is rejected, for instance, mathematical conventionalists like Carnap (1934) typically endorse the causal inertness of logic and mathematics.

  25. It’s perhaps worth noting that I’m not taking sides in the dispute between Humeans and non-Humeans here: I’m simply building causal structure into the notion of physical truths. It may well be that the physical truths will include truths concerning natural laws in addition to the truths that make up the Humean mosaic.

  26. See Enoch (2011), Nagel (1986), Parfit (2011a, b), Gödel (1964), and Woodin (2004).

  27. See Fine (2001), Lewis (1984), and, especially, Sider (2011). My (forthcoming) develops epistemological challenges for Sider’s metaphysics, in particular, but I think similar challenges can be posed for other versions of metaphysical realism.

  28. Though see the closing section of Boghossian (2012).

  29. The possibility of working with just the safety condition is mooted below, in Sect. 6, and I am sympathetic, but will officially stick with the stronger double condition.

  30. There is a way to understand “mental facts” that arguably makes cognitive naturalism inessential, though I won’t explore this here. The argument can also be seen as arguing from physical identity and cognitive naturalism, via a weak notion of mind independence, to mental identity.

  31. More evidence that the challenge is not skeptical is provided by pointing out that causal epistemologies can be given for ordinary material objects.

  32. One general response to my argument that I won’t discuss in detail is the claim that the argument keeps bad company. The idea being that if it worked for logic, math, and ethics, it would work for ordinary objects like tables and chairs as well, and that is unacceptable. This line of thought is pushed most forcefully in Clarke-Doane (forthcoming); Korman (2014) discusses epistemological arguments concerning ordinary objects while tacitly assuming some version of non-causal realism about said objects. I agree that a version of my argument refutes non-causal realism about ordinary objects, but non-causal realism about ordinary objects is implausible and is, as far as I know, only accepted by metaphysicians. We should instead be causal realists about ordinary objects. On the assumption of causal realism, even our beliefs about distal features of the physical world, such as the state of the universe a million years ago, can be given a reasonable epistemology. Any feeling to the contrary is generated by a failure to understand and correctly apply the relevant notions of safety and sensitivity. For example, if the notion of “nearness” is misapplied. Also relevant to assessing bad company claims is the brief discussion of non-undermining epistemic luck in Sect. 3 above, since many informal claims of bad company rely on taking some form of enabling luck to be undermining.

  33. See Lewis (1986, pp. 108–115).

  34. I’m extrapolating a bit from Lewis here—it sometimes sounds like he’s saying that sensitivity isn’t needed in domains of necessary truth, while at others it seems like he’s saying that sensitivity is trivial in such domains. The differences between these readings aren’t important here.

  35. The standard semantics are based on one or both of the slightly different accounts of Stalnaker (1968) and Lewis (1973).

  36. Perhaps the most popular response is that pace standard formal accounts of counterfactuals, some natural language counterfactuals with necessarily false antecedents aren’t trivially true or incoherent. See Field (1989, pp. 233–242).

  37. The necessity response can be supplemented by a plenitude theory about X, i.e., by the claim that roughly any X-theory that we had chosen to accept would have been correct because the X-facts are so abundant and meta-semantics so charity heavy. The only example of this in the literature that I am aware of is Mark Balaguer’s Plenitudinous or Full-Blooded Platonism in the philosophy of mathematics; see Balaguer (1995, 1998). Even though I think it succeeds in showing that our mathematical beliefs are safe, Balaguer’s view isn’t relevant here, since it endorses easy mathematical pluralism and thus isn’t a version of non-causal realism by definition. One reader of this paper objected to this claim, saying that Balaguer’s views “intuitively” should be a version of non-causal realism. I am totally puzzled by this, since Balaguer’s view is explicitly a version of pluralism and thus not a version of non-causal realism. I think that the reader’s objection was just that Balaguer’s view seems like it should be a version of “realism”. Of course, call it whatever you like, and it is a version of ontological realism about mathematics, the point is only that Balaguer’s view is a version of pluralism and so doesn’t fall into my target area. There is a real though somewhat hazy distinction between pluralist views like Balaguer’s and non-pluralist views (see also Field (2005) and Schechter (2010) for agreement with this point).

  38. See Schechter (2013) and Enoch (2010); by contrast, Street (2006) uses evolutionary considerations to argue against normative realism.

  39. Field (2005, pp. 80–81); Field is discussing the case of logic, I have generalized.

  40. Cf. the argument against “tracking” theories of selection in Street (2006).

  41. In Clarke-Doane (forthcoming) as noted briefly above, this seems to represent a change of mind from Clarke-Doane (2012).

  42. Not all of those who defend argument analogous to mine will follow me here, for instance Street (2006) might be read as accepting a strong form of (1).

  43. Enoch (2010) suggests a different evolutionary response to the argument as specifically directed against ethical realism: according to Enoch, survival is good, and this is supposed to make the alignment of our ethical beliefs and the ethical facts less mysterious while not completely dispelling the mystery. I won’t discuss this response directly, but I don’t think it can help the non-causal realist, for reasons related to those discussed in this section.

  44. The most plausible strategy would be to accept an error theory about God-discourse.

  45. This paper was written in 2010 and though revised several times since that time, the basic structure and the central argument have remained consistent. At different stages, thanks to Justin Clarke-Doane, Yu Guo, Sharon Street, and Daniel Waxman for comments and discussion. Thanks also to several anonymous referees.

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    Jared Warren

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Warren, J. Epistemology versus non-causal realism. Synthese 194, 1643–1662 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-015-1010-z

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