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Epistemic instrumentalism and the reason to believe in accord with the evidence

  • S.I.: Epistemic Justification
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Abstract

Epistemic instrumentalists face a puzzle. In brief, the puzzle is that if the reason there is to believe in accord with the evidence depends, as the instrumentalist says it does, on agents’ idiosyncratic interests, then there is no reason to expect that this reason is universal. Here, I identify and explain two strategies instrumentalists have used to try and solve this puzzle. I then argue that we should find these strategies wanting. Faced with the failure of these strategies, I articulate a heretofore neglected solution on behalf of instrumentalism.

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Notes

  1. For a nice articulation of this question in the practical domain, see Dreier (2015).

  2. Kornblith (1993, 2002), Stitch (1990), Papineau (1999, 2009), Steglich-Petersen (2006, 2008), Grimm (2008, 2009) and Street (2009, 2008).

  3. Kelly (2003, 2007), Wedgwood (2007) and Parfit (2011).

  4. Cowie (2014) divides the field in much the same way. I follow Cowie in ignoring, for present purposes, a version of epistemic error theory according to which, contrary appearances, there are no reasons for belief and so, a fortiori, no reason for believing in accord with the evidence. For a defense of such a view, see Olson (2011) and Streumer (2013). For criticism, see Cuneo (2007).

  5. This is also how Schroeder (2007) characterizes universality in reasons.

  6. C.f. Kelly (2003).

  7. Here I draw on and extend an argument I make in my Sharadin (2015b).

  8. Foley (1987, p. 8).

  9. BonJour (1985, p. 7).

  10. Alston (2005, p. 29). It may be that Foley, BonJour, and Alston would each reject a characterization of their views as instrumentalist and instead view their account of the special epistemic interests agents have simply as an a la carte addition to their intrinsicalism. That is not important at present. What is important is the suggestion, made by Foley, BonJour, Alston, and others, that there are these special epistemic interests: that is the hinge on which the Special Interests Strategy on behalf of instrumentalism tries to turn. Whether or not Foley, et. al would themselves count as instrumentalists isn’t relevant. If they are right that agents have these special epistemic interests, then the instrumentalist is free to make use of those interests in responding to the Universality Challenge.

  11. See for instance Kvanvig (2003, 2005), Brogaard (2009) and Grimm (2008).

  12. Kelly (2003, p. 624). See also Lynch (2009).

  13. Kelly (2003, p. 625).

  14. C.f. David (2001, p. 155), who points out that this idea, that agents have a standing desire for true rather than false beliefs, is a “somewhat daring empirical claim about human psychology.”

  15. There is a familiar rejoinder to this worry with the Special Interests Strategy in both the epistemic and the moral case: the Constitutivist Gambit. According to the Constitutivist Gambit, contra appearance, it is impossible for there to be epistemic or moral agents of the sort described by Kelly, Hume, and Shakespeare, and this is because part of what it is to be an agent of the relevant sort involves having the relevant special interest. For examples of the Constitutivist Gambit, see Korsgaard (2009, 1999), Velleman (1989, 2000), Rosati (2003) and Smith (2013). The Gambit is subject to its own set of problems: for criticism, see Schroeder (2007), Katsafanas (2011), Tiffany (2011, Chap. 6) and Enoch (2006, 2011), and for replies, see Ferrero (2009) and Silverstein (2015). For my part, I find these criticisms convincing: I worry, with David Enoch, that the Constitutivist Gambit deprives instrumentalism of one of its most attractive features, viz., the ability to answer questions about the authority of some domain of normativity with ease. But in any case, exploring this line of argument would take me too far afield here. So I’ll leave it at that. If you’re more optimistic than I am about the prospects for constitutivism, the remainder of the paper can be read conditionally, as an exploration of what the instrumentalist should say, given that the Constitutivist Gambit can’t be made to work. This exploration is worthwhile, since a range of people on both sides of the issue—that is, intrinsicalists and instrumentalists are, like me, pessimistic about the Gambit.

  16. Here I draw on and extend an argument I make in my Sharadin (2015b).

  17. Thanks to an anonymous referee for recommending more clarity on this point.

  18. Nozick (1993, p. 68).

  19. Kornblith (1993, 2002).

  20. Kornblith (1993, pp. 370–371).

  21. Kornblith (1993, p. 373).

  22. He does come close to endorsing this strategy in the case of moral instrumentalism, though even there he is careful to hedge. See Schroeder (2007, p. 113, fn. 16).

  23. Schroeder (2007, p. 114).

  24. Schroeder (2007, pp. 113–114). Kate Nolfi pursues a modified version of this strategy in her Nolfi (2015).

  25. Schroeder (2007, p. 114).

  26. This is not meant to be a commitment to analyzing interests in terms of direction of fit, only a useful way of illustrating the point. For criticism of the direction of fit metaphor as a device for analyzing interests (and indeed beliefs), see Frost (2014).

  27. For a detailed discussion of these issues, see Achinstein (2003).

  28. What it means to ‘promote’ a desire or interest, and in particular whether promotion is always a matter of probability increasing, is a matter of some controversy. See, for example, my Sharadin (2015a, 2016), Dellsén and Sharadin (unpublished), Snedegar (2014), DiPaolo and Behrends (2015), Lin (2016), Coates (2014) and Behrends and DiPaolo (2011). But in order to have some account to be getting on with, I assume a roughly probabilistic account of promotion.

  29. A related issue, but one I can’t address here for reasons of space, is the apparent need for the instrumentalist to then go on to provide (or co-opt) some conception of evidence that is non-normative, i.e., according to which it can be the case that E is evidence that P and simultaneously the case that E is not a reason to believe P. This is an issue raised in Kelly (2007). Here, I note only that part of such a non-normative account of evidence would, if the instrumentalist takes the tack I am here recommending she take, include a non-vindicating explanation of our commitment to the normative conception of evidence. In other words, an explanation of why we are discinclined to go around denying that the fact that if something is evidence then it is also a reason to believe. Thanks to an anonymous referee for urging clarity on this point.

  30. Compare Kelly (2003, p. 624).

  31. Kelly (2003) takes this to be a point against instrumentalism.

  32. Dogramaci (2012, p. 15). In Dogramaci (2013) he goes further: according to the argument there, epistemic communism—the view that the function of our epistemic evaluative practice is to coordinative—supports a kind of epistemic conventionalism. Here I lack the space to address these arguments, and note only that the instrumentalist will disagree with this deflationary account of the requirements of epistemic rationality.

  33. Sobel (2017).

  34. Kelly (2007, 2003).

  35. Of course, intrinsicalists and instrumentalists are free to disagree on other grounds. And here, in this paper, I haven’t offered any positive argument in favor of instrumentalist against its intrinsicalist competitor.

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Acknowledgments

I thank students in my Spring 2016 graduate seminar on epistemic normativity, audiences at the University of Chicago, Virginia Tech, and the CNY Ethics Reading Group, as well as two anonymous referees for their feedback on this paper. I also thank Ben Bradley, Nykki Dular, Nikki Fortier, Ram Neta, Hille Paakkunainen, and David Sobel for fruitful discussions on the topic.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, Syracuse University, 541 Hall of Languages, Syracuse, NY, 13244-1170, USA

    Nathaniel Sharadin

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Sharadin, N. Epistemic instrumentalism and the reason to believe in accord with the evidence. Synthese 195, 3791–3809 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1245-3

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