Abstract
The etiology of a perceptual belief can seemingly affect its epistemic status. There are cases in which perceptual beliefs seem to be unjustified because the perceptual experiences on which they are based are caused, in part, by wishful thinking, or irrational prior beliefs. It has been argued that this is problematic for many internalist views in the epistemology of perception, especially those which postulate immediate perceptual justification. Such views are unable to account for the impact of an experience’s etiology on its justificational status (see Markie (2005, 2006, 2013), McGrath (2013), Siegel (2012, 2013a, b), and Vahid (2014)). Our understanding of what we have been told can also be affected by, for example, wishful thinking or irrational background beliefs. I argue that testimonial beliefs based on such states of understanding can thus be rendered unjustified. This is problematic not only for internalist immediate justification views of testimony, but also for some externalist views, such as the form of proper functionalism endorsed by Burge (1993), and Graham (2010). The testimonial version of the argument from etiology, unlike the perceptual variant, does not rest on the controversial hypothesis that perception is cognitively penetrable. Furthermore, there is a stronger case for the claim that testimonial justification can be undermined by etiological effects since, I argue, testimonial beliefs can be based on the background mental states which affect our understanding of what is said, and our states of understanding are rationally assessable.
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Notes
Whether or not beliefs based on misunderstandings of testimony should really be counted as testimonial beliefs is unclear. This terminological issue will not be relevant to the argument of this paper so I will put the issue to one side.
Not everyone shares this intuition. As we will soon see, Siegel provides further argument that Jill’s belief is unjustified. So her verdict does not rest purely on intuitions about cases like ANGRY-LOOKING JACK.
It is ultimately an empirical question whether our experiences really are cognitively penetrable in this way. This will not matter much here, as I will be arguing that a parallel problem arises in the case of linguistic understanding as part of normal interpretation.
The precise definition of cognitive penetration is controversial, but this rough characterisation will suffice for the sake of discussion.
Importantly, cognitive penetration will not always damage an experience’s ability to justify beliefs. For example, one’s experience might influenced by one’s wealth of expert knowledge. This might have epistemically beneficial effects. For example, a doctor may accurately perceive a grayish blob on an X-ray as a tumour.
This is not to say that such states are genuinely perceptual. Rather, they are phenomenologically similar to states of perception.
I use this term primarily because ‘linguistic understanding’ can be used in different ways. For example, it could be used for the sate one is in when one knows a language, but doesn’t have enough contextual knowledge to interpret a particular utterance. For example, if one finds a note saying ‘I will be back in five minutes’, but does not know who wrote the note, then there is a sense in which one understands the note without knowing what proposition is expressed (one is differently situated with respect to the note than someone who does not know English). This type of linguistic understanding plays a part in the determination of our quasi-perceptions, but it is not what I mean by ‘linguistic understanding’.
Since weak reductionism still posits a distinctive irreducible epistemic right (the right to trust one’s own understanding) it is not clear the extent to which it is really reductionist. It may be best thought of as a form of hybrid view.
This point parallels the points made by Ghijsen (forthcoming) about internalist theories of perception.
Graham claims that the level of justification provided is not necessarily enough, by itself, to justify belief. In order to justify belief background beliefs may be required to supplement the justification provided by a state of apparent comprehension. This will not affect the argument of this paper since we can simply hold that audiences in the cases discussed possess the same background beliefs they possess in normal cases of justified testimonial belief.
I use the term ‘components’ loosely here. I do not mean to take a stand on the question of whether quasi-perceptions are composite states, or whether such a notion even makes sense.
This case is based on a one I give in Peet (forthcoming), where I discuss the influence of prejudicial stereotypes on our understanding in the context of epistemic injustice.
It has been pointed out by an anonymous referee that there may be circumstances in which one can be criticised for seeming to hear something a particular way. For example, if you fail to pay proper attention and mishear as a result then one might be criticised for being careless.
This line of response is pursued by Huemer (2013) in response to Siegel.
Similar examples using the word ‘safe’ are given in Fauconnier and Turner (2002) and Recanati (forthcoming).
As an anonymous referee points out, ‘vulnerable’ could be construed as context sensitive. It may be that bare ‘vulnerable’ needs saturation by some contextually supplied respect in which the object in question is vulnerable. If this is the case then background beliefs will always guide us in our assignment of a type of vulnerability. Likewise, if semantic meaning more generally is radically underdetermined then we will draw on our background representations in all cases of linguistic interpretation, leaving a great deal of scope for pernicious effects on understanding. According to radical contextualists such as Bezuidenhout (1997) and Carston (2002) linguistic communication is usually merely approximate, with what might be described as minor misunderstandings being commonplace. Moreover, many who reject widespread semantic context sensitivity embrace widespread context sensitivity with respect to the determination of speaker meaning. For example, semantic minimalists (such as Cappelen and Lepore (2004) and Borg (2004)) draw a strict distinction between semantic content, which they take to admit of very little context sensitivity, and speech act content, which they take to admit of a great deal of context sensitivity. On all such views there will be a great deal of scope for checkered testimonial belief.
It is important to note that these two readings are genuinely distinct. There are people who may fall in the extension of \(\hbox {vulnerable}_{1}\) but not \(\hbox {vulnerable}_{2}\). For example, a poor old lady trained in krav maga.
Indeed, as noted in footnote 19, if meaning is radically underdetemined then we will draw on background representations in this way as part of normal interpretation. As an example of how this would work, consider the relevance theoretic view of comprehension: When a speaker utters a sentence containing a term a we form an initial ranking of meanings for the term, determined by strength of association between salient concepts and candidates for the meaning of a. We then check each candidate until we find one which meets our expectation of relevance (a measure of cognitive effects weighed against cognitive effort). In JUROR JACK Jack’s initial ordering of meanings for ‘vulnerable’ will be affected by the fact that concepts such as “scheming” and “predatory” are highly salient to him, due to his association between Tom and the villain from his favourite TV show. Thus \(\hbox {vulnerable}_{2}\) will be higher in his initial ranking than \(\hbox {vulnerable}_{1}\). Since it will meet his expectation of relevance he will assign \(\hbox {vulnerable}_{2}\) rather than \(\hbox {vlunerable}_{1}\) to Tom’s use of ‘vulnerable’. For more on relevance theory see Sperber and Wilson (1986) and Carston (2002).
Notably, it is not clear that all who endorse proper function views of justification are committed to this claim. It is specifically those who hold that we are entitled to the outputs of particular systems who are committed to this view. Others, for example Bergmann (2004) who maintain that a malfunction in any process which contributes to the production of the belief will be able to avoid this prediction. This is because the belief upon which Jack bases his interpretation resulted from a defective belief formation procedure.
Markie (2013) claims that perceptual seemings themselves can be rationally assessable. He maintains that in cases of problematic cognitive penetrability of perception the perceptual seeming itself is epistemically inappropriate. If Markie is correct then perceptual seemings would parallel quasi-perceptions in this respect.
This claim does not extend to those who are generally incapable of recognising contextual cues, for example high functioning people with autism.
Thanks to an anonymous referee for pushing me to consider the notion that it is the agent but not the belief or quasi-perception that is criticisable in cases such as this. A similar criticism might be raised not about quasi-perceptions themselves but rather the beliefs based on them: perhaps these beliefs are not unjustified, but the believers are criticisable because of their improper evidence acquisition practice. This response is unpromising. It might help explain the no justification intuition about cases such as JUROR JACK and ANGRY LOOKING JACK, but it does not address Siegel’s explicit arguments for the claim that the beliefs in such cases are unjustified. For example, if a belief is based on circular reasoning, then the belief itself is unjustified. This is not simply a case of the agent but not the belief being criticisable. Thus, if the circularity diagnosis is plausible (as I shall argue in Sect. 5) then we should conclude that the no-justification intuition is explained by the fact that the belief itself is unjustified, not the fact that the agent is criticisable in some other way.
This claim does not sit well with all views of perception. For example, according to Glüer (2013), and Byrne (2013) perceptual states are doxastic states. If all doxastic states can be based, then so can perceptual states. Moreover, Markie (2013) specifically claims that perceptual seemings can be based.
Although, it is not obvious that this is true even in the case of perception.
It might also be thought that quasi-perceptions cannot be based as they are not beliefs. ’Basing’ is a theoretical term, and it can certainly be used in such a way that it only applies to beliefs. However, circularity is a problem of improper evidence responsiveness, and irrationality. And it certainly seems states other than belief can be improperly evidence responsive and irrational (fears, for example). Thus, the view that circularity is a problem of basing, and the view that only beliefs can be based, should not be held together without independent argument.
This is assuming the truth of content essentialsim—the hypothesis that beliefs have their contents essentially. If content essentialism is false then, in theory, one and the same belief token could have different (incompatible) contents. Content essentialism appears to be presupposed by mental state externalism, thus at the very least Tyler Burge (one of the primary targets of this paper) is committed to it. See David (2002) for more on content essentialism and its connection to externalism.
McGrath (Forthcoming) advances a similar point with respect to perceptual seemings. He argues that when one sees an avocado and forms the belief that ‘that is an avocado’ one’s belief is partially dependent on one’s prior knowledge of what avocados look like. Despite the phenomenology, he argues, such knowledge is mediate. The same seems to be true of beliefs based on quasi-perceptions.
Considerations along these lines have been taken to show that linguistic understanding consists in inferential propositional knowledge (for example, Stanley (2005)). Stanley argues that linguistic understanding is always based on contextual knowledge because such knowledge is required in order for us to tell whether or not an assertion violates the Gricean maxim of manner, and thus whether or not it should be interpreted literally. However, even if we do not accept such an extreme conclusion, these considerations still seem strongly suggestive of the hypothesis that states of quasi-perception, despite their phenomenology, can be based.
Monitoring for signs of untrustworthiness has been shown to be unreliable (see Michaelian (2010) for an overview), and Keysar and Henly (2002) argue that interlocutors are not as reliable at spotting misinterpretations as they usually assume. Nonetheless it is worth considering the monitoring response, since monitoring requirements are still commonly postulated by epistemologists.
It is debatable whether monitoring is compatible with anti-reductionism. It has been argued that monitoring is compatible with anti-reductionism as long as the monitoring is subpersonal (and thus not part of the audience’s agent level reasoning) See Goldberg and Henderson (2006) for a view along these lines, see Fricker (2006) for a response).
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Acknowledgements
For helpful comments and discussion I would like to thank Sebastian Becker, Jessica Brown, Herman Cappelen, Josh Habgood-Coote, Elizabeth Fricker, Patrick Greenough, Matthew Mcgrath, Wes Skolitis, Justin Snedegar, Brian Weatherson, and two anonymous referees for this journal.
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Peet, A. Etiology, understanding, and testimonial belief. Synthese 195, 1547–1567 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1281-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1281-z