Abstract
Among the epistemological ideas commonly associated with the Descartes of the Meditations, at any rate, is a knowledge-infallibilism. Such an idea was seemingly a vital element in Descartes’s search for truth within that investigative setting: only a true belief gained infallibly (as we would now describe it) could be knowledge, as the Meditations conceived of this. Contemporary epistemologists are less likely than Descartes was to advocate our ever seeking knowledge-infallibility, if only because most are doubtful as to its ever being available. Still, they would agree—in a seemingly Cartesian spirit—that if infallible knowledge was available then it would be a stronger link to truth than fallible knowledge ever manages to be. But this paper argues that infallible knowledge lacks that supposed advantage over fallible knowledge. Indeed, we will see why we should move even further away from the epistemological model at the heart of the Meditations: we should adopt knowledge-minimalism, by conceiving of a belief’s being true as always sufficient for its being knowledge—this, for any belief.
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Notes
Perhaps Descartes in other guises did not constrain himself in this way. I take the Meditations to have been portraying a quest for metaphysical truth in particular. On whether Descartes was content to settle for satisfying a probabilistic standard when seeking truth in general, especially within empirical science, see Clarke (2012).
Non-modalized versions of these two theses are also available. They would say only that there is, or there is not, some fallible knowledge. But I take the modalized versions to fit better with the metaphysical, rather than empirical, road to be followed in this paper. (I call that road metaphysical, not conceptual, because the paper’s project is not the traditional one of seeking necessary and sufficient conditions for the satisfaction of a concept. The emphasis will instead be on what is involved, essentially versus accidentally, or inherently versus extrinsically, in a given belief’s being an instance of knowledge).
Incidentally, these ideas are general enough to accommodate either internalist or externalist accounts of justification. For a formulation of this epistemologically significant distinction, see Hetherington (1996, Chaps. 14, 15). On an internalist account, the question is one of whether the person’s evidence—where, contrary to Williamson (2000), I do not presume this to be knowledge—has a content that entails the truth of the belief. On an externalist account, the question is one of whether the obtaining of some further circumstance—such as the belief’s having been formed in a truth-conditionally reliable way—is compatible with the belief’s nonetheless being false.
In using the term ‘epistemically possible’, I am not presuming any specific full conception of epistemic possibility. For example, suppose that we use the term as Hintikka (1962) did, to mean ‘compatible with what one knows’. A world W would thus be epistemically possible, relative to one’s knowledge within this world, if and only if whatever obtains in W is compatible with whatever one knows within this world. But that conception will not tell us about fallible knowledge’s difference from infallible knowledge. It implies that if in this world one knows either fallibly or infallibly that p, then no epistemically possible world for one is a world where not-p obtains. Yet—on the core commitment (mentioned above) behind the traditional idea of fallible knowledge that p—somewhere there is at least one somehow relevantly possible world where, when one’s knowledge that p is fallible but not when it is infallible, not-p obtains. This remains so if we think of epistemic possibility in other ways. Suppose that not-p is said to be epistemically possible for one even when one knows that p, in case one does not know that not-p is not compatible with what one knows. This still allows not-p to obtain in at least one world that would help to model such a possibility; for not-p is being said to be compatible with one’s bi-level epistemic stance on p at that time. (Hintikka [ibid., Chap. 5] argues that knowing entails knowing that one knows, and so would not allow this possibility.) Or suppose that, like Chalmers (2002), we say that not-p is epistemically possible, even when one knows that p, if it is not ruled out a priori: it is not known a priori that p. Explicating this, too, will call upon the existence of at least some relevant not-p world(s). For more on how to conceive of fallible knowledge in terms of possible worlds, see Hetherington (forthcoming a).
Doing so does not preclude the possibility that the disparity between those respective justificatory strengths would be better articulated without mentioning possible worlds at all. But in this respect the explicative onus, I suggest, is upon those who would seek to evade this approach. The difference in justificatory strength has been explicated above in modal terms, by talking of the presence of a possibility—a compatibility—that accompanies fallible but not infallible justification. Accordingly, until I am aware of a better way of modelling possibilities, I will continue speaking of possible worlds in this setting. (In this respect, too, I take heart from Pritchard’s (forthcoming) argument that we should conceive in modal terms of the related aspects of knowledge.)
In Sect. 8, however, we will extend this section’s argument, by investigating how the redundancy may be generalised so as to pose a challenge also to knowledge-fallibilism.
See Engel (1992, 2011) for the initial such use of the term ‘veritic luck’, and Pritchard (2005, 2007, 2009, 2013) for refinements of the concept. Pritchard (forthcoming) now argues that we should focus epistemologically on veritic (epistemic) risk rather than veritic (epistemic) luck. Even so, I will present this section’s discussion in terms of veritic (epistemic) luck, since at this stage it has become such an epistemologically familiar topic. But in any case I believe that the section’s discussion will also apply, mutatis mutandis, to the concept of veritic risk.
Perhaps more generally, here is an alternative version of that condition:
A belief is not knowledge if it is false within too many of the closest possible worlds where the belief is formed in the same way and within the same circumstances as it is within this world.
The argument I am about to present will not rely upon any specific version of the general idea behind this condition.
Sosa has also argued (2011, pp. 84–85) against conceiving of knowledge in terms of safety, in favour perhaps of letting aptness—‘manifestation of competence’—be the pertinent explicative phenomenon. He also allows that ‘[a]ptness comes in degrees’ (ibid., p. 10) and hence that a belief could manifest a less-than-wholly reliable competence, thereby being formed aptly yet fallibly. This apt formation of the belief could be fully apt, too, by manifesting meta-aptness (such as a competence in choosing to exercise the competence that has been manifested aptly in the belief’s formation). Nonetheless, I am not sure that this recourse to talk of competence-manifestation will accomplish that explanatory goal in a way that allows knowledge still to be fallible. For detailed discussion of this point, see Hetherington (2016, Sect. 5.4).
See Gettier (1963) for the original instances of this phenomenon—the first two Gettier cases (as they speedily became known). A belief is Gettiered when it is the central belief within a situation saliently similar to the ones described by Gettier. Any such belief is true and justified fallibly; yet it is also, according to most epistemologists, not knowledge. For overviews of the history of epistemological engagement with the challenges for understanding knowledge that were spawned by Gettier, see Shope (1983) and Hetherington (2011). For extended critical discussion of that history, see Hetherington (2016).
This is the conceptually primary range of applicability for G. Secondary applications of it are as follows. A person is Gettiered insofar as she has a Gettiered belief. A situation is a Gettier case insofar as it is centred upon a Gettiered belief (and thereby upon a thereby Gettiered person).
FJTB would routinely be assumed to include more besides, if only as details within those individual components F, J, T, and B. Many of those possible details attract continuing epistemological debate. (For example, this is where a requirement of the belief’s being formed safely—the condition described in Sect. 6 above—would be held by some epistemologists to enter the story in an explicative role.) Epistemologists also standardly claim that instantiating G precludes being knowledge, so that G cannot be even partly coextensive with the property K.
Perhaps this can help us to understand an epistemologically disjunctivist line of thought that has recently been advocated, in particular by McDowell (2011). For example, he says that one can gain ‘indefeasible warrant for perceptual beliefs’ (ibid, p. 38). Suppose that you seem to be confronted by something green. In that event, your ‘perceptual state leaves no possibility that [the thing] is not green’ (ibid.), given that your perceptual state has resulted from ‘a non-defective exercise’ (ibid, p. 39) of your ‘capacity to tell whether things in [your] field of vision are green’ (ibid, p. 38). In other words, once there has been an exercise of the relevant perceptual capacity, what amounts to a kind of infallibility is present—a kind that fits with the picture I am drawing here. In that respect, it is significant that McDowell regards himself as having provided a fallibilist picture; for, he says, although capacities can misfire, his focus is on those times when they do not. Notice how this account is like the way in which, just now, I have described Gettier cases: even while there is fallible justification within them—in the sense of a fallible active justificatory link having been used by the person who forms the Gettiered belief—the resulting state, of the belief’s now being in the state of being Gettiered, is itself a watertight static link to the truth in question. (But I will not develop this comparison any further in this paper).
Strictly, this verdict is gained by a limiting case of the relevant form of thinking, since TB’s link to T is not justificatory at all. Nonetheless, modally speaking, it is still the same form of (static) link to T as was the (static) justificatory link from FJTB and from InFJTB. In order to avoid confusion, I will now talk more simply of a (static) link to truth—without still using the term ‘justificatory’.
These grades of potential improvement in one’s knowledge that p are purely epistemic, in accord with any justificatory improvement within the knowledge. That sort of improvement must be distinguished from mere psychological strengthening in believing that p, such as when one is hypnotised into holding a true belief that p more doggedly. After all, that psychological strengthening need not be accompanied by any epistemic strengthening; and so a belief that is held with more conviction is not thereby improved as knowledge that p, on that account of mine. Note, though, that my earlier approach was general enough to accommodate different conceptions of purely epistemic improvement. Congruently, for instance, Pritchard (forthcoming) argues that our assessments of the sort of luck or risk that—he also argues—most of us think is incompatible with knowing should be understood in modal rather than probabilistic terms, and that such terms are gradational, allowing a knowledge-precluding false belief, say, to be more or less modally close to our actual world.
Lycan (1994) and Kvanvig (2003) argue against the cogency of Sartwell’s position; and I would expect them to apply their arguments likewise against these further forms of knowledge-minimalism. For criticism of their arguments, however, along with some experimental support for at least part of Sartwell’s position, see Sackris and Beebe (2014).
The justification’s being possessed could also be causally constitutive of mere attempts—including unsuccessful ones—to bring into existence some instance of knowing. And of course the causal constitutiveness of which I am talking need not be the only causal contributor to the existence of the attempt or the knowing. In that respect, then, I am simplifying the story. My immediate aim is to note simply the broad categorial point—namely, that we may wish to regard justification as a part of our epistemic lives (including our coming to know) that is never literally a part of the knowledge produced at least partly via the justification. (Some justification might itself include knowledge. That is a distinct point.) Theory-of-knowledge would thus be conceptually distinct from theory-of-justification—a distinction long embraced by Foley (1987).
Many epistemologists have remarked on the need for evidence to be used aptly, not merely to be present (even if thereby able to be used aptly). For example, Kornblith (1980) noted as much on behalf of a (reliabilist) grounding condition. I have described in detail (2013) the importance of an ‘activist’ conception of evidence within sceptical arguments.
This conception of the distinction between epistemic internalism and epistemic externalism was introduced above, in note 4.
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Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Dick Foley, Brent Madison, and two anonymous referees for comments on some earlier drafts of this paper.
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Hetherington, S. The redundancy problem: From knowledge-infallibilism to knowledge-minimalism. Synthese 195, 4683–4702 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1091-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1091-3