Abstract
It’s widely accepted that higher-order defeaters, i.e., evidence that one’s belief is formed in an epistemically defective way, can defeat doxastic justification. However, it’s yet unclear how exactly such kind of defeat happens. Given that many theories of doxastic justification can be understood as fitting the schema of proper basing on propositional justifiers, we might attempt to explain the defeat either by arguing that a higher-order defeater defeats propositional justification or by arguing that it defeats proper basing. It has been argued that the first attempt is unpromising because a variety of prominent theories of propositional justification don’t imply that we lose propositional justification when gaining higher-order defeaters. This leads some scholars to take the second attempt. In this paper, I criticize this second attempt, and I defend the first attempt by arguing that a theory of propositional justification that requires intellectual responsibility can nicely account for higher-order defeat. My proposal is that we lose doxastic justification when we gain higher-order defeaters because there is no intellectually responsible way for us to maintain our original beliefs due to the defeaters.
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Notes
Prominent proponents of the reality of higher-order defeat include: Christensen (2007a, 2007b, 2010), Elga (2013), Feldman (2005), Foley (2001), Huemer (2011) and Kelly (2010). However, although the phenomenon of higher-order defeat is widely noted, its reality is not uncontroversial. Deniers include: Coates (2012), Lasonon-Aarnio (2010, 2014) and Williamson (2011).
All defenders of higher-order defeat listed in fn. 1 also accept level-bridging. Besides, Broome (2013), Greco (2014), Horowitz (2014), Ichikawa and Jarvis (2013), Smithies (2012), Titelbaum (2015) and Ye (2015) have defended level-bridging. And the deniers listed in fn. 1 also reject level-bridging.
For example, the principle is crucial in: Foley’s (1990) argument that it’s impossible to give a sufficient condition of rationality, Christensen’s argument (2007a, 2010) for epistemic dilemmas, Littlejohn’s (2015) argument against evidentialism, and Worsnip’s (2018) argument that epistemic rationality is not about believing what’s supported by evidence but about maintaining coherence.
One might doubt whether this is possible by reasoning this way: If one correctly judges that one’s evidence E supports one’s belief p, then evidence that one is unable to notice potential disconfirming evidence is not a defeater, because if E supports p, it would also support that the potential disconfirming evidence is unlikely to obtain (that is, if P(p/E) is high and yet P(p/E&e) is low, then P(e/E) must be low). Therefore, evidence of deficient ability in collecting evidence is not a defeater, because one could be confident that a piece of disconfirming evidence would be unlikely to obtain even if one looks for it with good evidence-collecting ability.
In reply, I think the above reasoning is correct in general, but not in those cases where P(p/E) is just a little higher than the threshold for rational belief and P(p/E&e) is just a little lower than that threshold. In such cases, P(e/E) needs not be below the threshold. That said, I should note that the possibility of such cases rests on the controversial assumption that there is a sharp threshold on how probable a proposition must be in order for one to rationally believe it. Thanks to a reviewer for raising the above objection and for pressing me to think about this issue.
In explaining how HOD differs from undercutting evidence, Christensen (2010, pp. 194–195) argues that the former often leaves the evidential support intact. It seems that this is not a good way to characterize the difference. For if one’s original evidence E supports p, undercutting evidence that E doesn’t support p also doesn’t need to make it the case that E no longer supports p (Worsnip 2018, pp. 21–30).
The reverse might not be true: that you are quite capable in assessing the evidential connection can tell us something about the connection when we learn what your judgment about the connection is.
Note that this schema is neutral on which kind of justification is more fundamental. For instance, a reliabilist might think that doxastic justification is more fundamental because propositional justification can be defined in terms of availability of belief-forming process that would produce doxastically justified beliefs if operated. (Goldman (1979) defines ‘ex ante justification’ this way, which is a notion close to ‘propositional justification.’) This definition would still imply that doxastic justification is propositional justification plus proper basing, with the basing condition understood in this way: one’s belief is based on a process if it’s produced by the process.
van Wietmarschen (2013, pp. 401–409) has argued that the HOD provided by peer disagreement doesn’t undermine evidential support when one’s original reasoning is close to ideal reasoning.
For example, Christensen (2010) argues that one should suspend judgment in those paradigm examples of HOD. Besides, both defenders and deniers of the level-bridging principle (as is listed in fn. 2) think that, if higher-order evidence has defeating power, it requires giving up the belief and not just rebasing it. See, for example, Lasonen-Aarnio (2014).
This understanding can accommodate the proper basing of the evil-demon victims’ non-inferential beliefs, if we accept some reliabilist explanation of how these victims’ beliefs are in fact reliable. For example, we can follow Goldman by claiming that the victims’ beliefs are properly based because they are actually or normally reliable.
Moreover, even if you have doubts about any such explanation and thus have doubts about whether reliability is necessary for proper-basing of non-inferential beliefs, presumably you can still accept that reliability is sufficient. This acceptance is enough for my purpose. For my criticism of PB in Sect. 3.2 is that one’s non-inferential belief can still be properly based when gaining HOD because it can still be produced by a reliable process.
Note that here I am interpreting ‘taking E to support p’ as a belief that E supports p, in order to be most charitable to the PB theorist. If the taking is a belief, at least it initially sounds plausible to say that the belief is problematic because it is rendered unjustified by the drug evidence. But if the taking is not a belief but some state like a disposition to believe p given E, then it’s unclear how it could be rendered problematic by the drug evidence—the most natural way to problematize a disposition is to render it unreliable and the drug evidence won’t make the disposition unreliable.
I am grateful to an anonymous referee for bringing up this possible answer: Perhaps the PB theorist could say that even if my reasoning doesn’t involve the belief that I am not drugged, it still presupposes this belief in the sense that the reasoning is incompatible with believing that I am drugged. My response is that it’s hard to see how the drug belief is incompatible with the reasoning. It seems that for a piece of reasoning to be good reasoning, it’s sufficient that all of its premises are justified (which I argue is possible in the latter discussion) and one infers the conclusion by following a good rule. Perhaps the belief that one is drugged can induce some higher-order doubt on whether one’s reasoning is good. But it seems that one could carry out a perfect reasoning while doubting whether the reasoning is good.
To further support this point, consider a prominent theory about what these basic evidential beliefs are based on. According to Boghossian (2014), my basic belief that ‘P’ and ‘if P then Q’ supports ‘Q’ is based on my grasp of the meaning of the term ‘if.’ Since evidence that I am drugged so that I am not able to solve the logical puzzle needs not be evidence that I don’t grasp the meaning of the term ‘if,’ the drug evidence needs not be evidence that the above basic belief of mine couldn’t be properly based.
On whether this deontological talk of justification is appropriate in the context of attacking evidentialism, see Baehr 2009, ft. 13.
I should mention that Conee and Feldman (2004, p. 233) reject the idea that justification requires responsibility in their response to cases like Defective Inquiry. They distinguish ‘current-state justification’ from ‘methodological justification.’ The former is about what to believe given one’s current evidence; the latter is about what method to adopt given one’s goals (which might include one’s cognitive goals). So, George’s belief is justified in the former sense, although it’s unjustified in the latter sense since he has used a bad method in the past. Moreover, in an earlier paper (Feldman and Conee 1985, pp. 21–23), they distinguish between epistemic justification from prudential justification to handle cases like Defective Inquiry, and they claim that George’s belief has the former although it lacks the latter.
My response is that, even if their distinctions can handle cases like Defective Inquiry, it cannot explain higher-order defeat. Gaining HOD doesn’t imply that one has used a bad method in the past. (In some cases, HOD can be evidence that one has used bad method in the past, but this evidence can be misleading.) Besides, intuitively, HOD does make one’s belief epistemically unjustified.
Note that the requirement of responsibility is separate from requirement of proper basing. That one’s belief is irresponsibly formed doesn’t mean it’s improperly based. In Defective Inquiry, George’s belief is irresponsibly formed since he is lazy in collecting evidence. However, his belief is still a result of good reasoning from his evidence, so it’s still properly based on his evidence.
I am grateful to an anonymous referee for the discussion here.
One reason to think so is that we can easily explain where the fundamental obligation of believing the truths comes from—it comes from the constitutive truth aim of belief. But if we claim that believers also have fundamental obligation to make sure that their beliefs are rational or are knowledge, it’s hard to give a similar story: a belief doesn’t have a constitutive aim to be rational or to be knowledge. See Wedgwood (2002) for more discussion on the truth aim of belief.
Titelbaum’s (2015) position is subtler: he denies higher-order defeat but still maintains the level-bridging principle.
For comments and discussion, I am grateful to Sophie Horowitz, David Christensen, Nico Silins, Jin Zeng, Lu Teng, Matt Lutz, and three anonymous referees.
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Ye, R. Higher-order defeat and intellectual responsibility. Synthese 197, 5435–5455 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-01972-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-01972-2