Abstract
Separately, and in quite different ways, Mikkel Gerken and Jennifer Nagel have attempted to defend moderate classical invariantism (MCI) by appealing to recent work in cognitive psychology. They claim that by understanding the psychological processing that underlies our knowledge judgements, we can reconcile their apparent shiftiness with traditional non-shifty epistemology. The aim of this paper is to show how and why these attempts to exploit work in cognitive psychology to defend MCI run aground.
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Notes
Some experimental philosophers question whether ordinary folk have the alleged shifty intuitions (e.g., Rose et al. 2017; Turri 2017). Others report contrary evidence (e.g., Sripada and Stanley 2012; Pinillos and Simpson 2014). Moreover, there are questions about whether the surveys used in these studies are appropriate means for probing folk’s intuitions and also about whether folk intuitions are as reliable as those of philosophers who have thought more carefully about the issues (DeRose 2011; Boyd and Nagel 2014; Mortensen and Nagel 2016). For present purposes, I set aside these concerns about the intuitions and focus on whether Gerken’s and Nagel’s attempts to defend MCI in light of the intuitions succeed.
The version described here is closer to Stanley’s (2005).
Gerken and Nagel, whose responses to these kinds of intuitions are to be considered, both prefer to treat stakes and salient error possibilities separately. My arguments below target their appeals to psychology, however, and won’t trade on this feature of DeRose’s bank cases.
See Evans (2006) for details.
The disjunctive insight problem is an illustrative example (Gerken 2012, pp. 164–5).
Note, however, that mastery of the distinction still would not necessarily lead somebody to judge in-line with MCI. Somebody who masters and deploys the distinction in thinking about HIGH STAKES might still judge that Hannah doesn’t know if she is persuaded that the salient alternative is epistemically relevant.
Oppenheimer (2004).
Gerken (2012, p. 141) points out that we tend to dismiss far-fetched salient alternatives as epistemically irrelevant. E.g., the possibility that the matter making up my car has spontaneously rearranged in the form of a giant lizard is judged intuitively not to undermine my knowledge that my car is parked outside (MacFarlane 2005). But this doesn’t show that we are disposed to apply a consistently moderate standard (and Gerken doesn’t claim otherwise). For one thing, a skilled sceptic might succeed in changing our verdict even in this case. But, more importantly, we are still left with the enormous range of examples in which, by Gerken’s lights, we have a fairly robust disposition to apply high standards.
In addition to his strategy of appealing to cognitive psychology, Gerken also appeals to pragmatics, especially in relation to high stakes cases (2017, ch. 12). Does this second strategy provide any help here? There isn’t space to explore Gerken’s pragmatic strategy. But I would claim that it does not help for the simple reason that it leaves untouched the problematic result of his psychological strategy: that we are not disposed to apply a consistently moderate standard.
Nagel builds on ideas of Bach (2005) here.
Their version features different protagonists.
More accurately, the belief is based on the same memory, background assumptions, and inferences etc. and none of these factors differ between the cases.
The point could be expressed in terms of justification rather than reliability (as some might prefer). By ignoring my current experiences, my justification for believing the door is green goes down, weakening my epistemic position.
Again, the point could be made in terms of justification rather than reliability (she is less justified in believing the bank will be open since she ignores her epistemic anxiety on that matter).
Fantl and McGrath also contend that if Hannah’s tendency not to change methods (read: reappraise her beliefs appropriately) in this example means she doesn’t know the bank will be open, we’d have to say she doesn’t know in LOW STAKES too since she would have the same disposition (albeit unmanifested). But this doesn’t follow. LOW STAKES leaves open whether Hannah has a disposition not to reappraise her beliefs when feeling epistemic anxiety. Provided she does not, the way is clear for her to know. Plus, if she did have such a disposition, it would be less obvious that she would know in LOW STAKES.
Could this be the point Fantl and McGrath were aiming for? Their variation on HIGH STAKES had Hannah (Keith in their version) continue believing the bank will be open “without a second thought” rather than after reasoning through the circumstances. Perhaps they could be read as supposing that Hannah can dismiss her epistemic anxiety automatically if she already appreciates that high stakes make no difference to the likelihood that the bank will be open. That idea would raise the same kind of problem for Nagel. But it doesn’t seem to be present in their text.
Nagel’s epistemic anxiety idea may actually play into the hands of shifty epistemologies. On her view, the role of epistemic anxiety is to cause one to increase cognitive effort when one’s epistemic position may not be strong enough for knowledge. But, given MCI, we’d have to conclude that epistemic anxiety often misfires, causing one to increase cognitive effort in response factors like high stakes which, according to MCI, have no bearing on whether one’s epistemic position suffices for knowledge. Shifty epistemologies can explain why high stakes trigger epistemic anxiety in these cases more comfortably. On such theories, high stakes push the standard for knowledge upwards. Consequently, when the stakes go up, one may have to strengthen one’s epistemic position by gathering more evidence to meet the new standard for knowledge. The epistemic anxiety isn’t misfiring; it’s still playing an important role. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pressing this point.
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to audiences at the Science and Philosophy Reading Circle at the Petroleum Institute in Abu Dhabi, PHILO-SOFIA: 125 years of philosophy in Bulgaria at Sofia University, and the Korean Association for Logic meeting at Ehwa University who attended presentations of drafts of this paper. Special thanks to Phillip Meadows, Nikolaj Pedersen, and anonymous referees for very helpful comments.
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Langford, S. Knowledge judgements and cognitive psychology. Synthese 197, 3245–3259 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-1880-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-1880-y