Abstract
According to modal empiricism, our justification for believing possibility and necessity claims is a posteriori. One serious objection to modal empiricism is the problem of empirical conservativeness: it doesn’t seem that experience can distinguish between modal claims. If experience can’t manage that, it’s hard to see how it can provide evidence for one claim over the other. So, if modal empiricism is true, we ought to be modal skeptics. On the assumption that we shouldn’t be modal skeptics, we should reject modal empiricism. I have two aims here: first, to reply to this objection to modal empiricism; second, to sketch a modal epistemology that fits with the reply I offer.
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Notes
- 1.
Can empiricists make Moorean arguments? Absolutely. Any plausible form of empiricism is a fallibilist view that starts with our ordinary perceptual judgments about how the world is. And, of course, we’re often much more confident of our ordinary perceptual judgments than we are of the premises of philosophical arguments—such as, e.g., the crucial premises in arguments for Cartesian skepticism.
- 2.
If you doubt that the demon lacks understanding, we can get a conclusion that’s just as good for present purposes via a slightly different argument. Suppose, again, that the demon can perfectly predict the evolution of a system, and that the demon is kind enough to report his predictions on demand. (He’s always truthful: if the demon says that an object will be at a location at t, the object is at the location at t.) With the demon available to you, you too can predict and retrodict every state of the world at every other time. But clearly you aren’t a model of epistemic success in this scenario: you don’t need to understand anything at all to have this power. Explanation is a good that goes beyond mere predictive (and retrodictive) accuracy. For further problems with the view that explanation is prediction and retrodiction, see Salmon (1989).
- 3.
It’s more complicated when all else isn’t equal. But since this isn’t a paper on IBE, I’ll ignore this issue here.
- 4.
I don’t mind the implication that we have no incorrigible beliefs, but if you do, then just suppose that those beliefs are being bracketed—the difference won’t matter here, since none of the beliefs in question has any claim to being incorrigible.
- 5.
Additionally, it is very implausible that a vanishingly small chance of correction makes it more reasonable to believe that the dwarf planets are unpopulated than that I am not being deceived on a global scale. If anything, I would think that it’s the other way around. Reasonability does not necessarily track the degree of epistemic risk.
- 6.
It’s important to note that if the access problem is a problem, it’s as bad for the rationalist as it is for the empiricist, at least if the rationalist is a realist. That is, unless you’re a conventionalist about modality, it would be remarkable if our minds produce reliable information about a domain to which it bears no causal relation—and this whatever the source its evidence. For more on the access problem, see Hart (1979) and Field (1989).
- 7.
What, exactly, does the object of the belief need to explain? The belief’s truth? I could be convinced that truthmakers cause propositions to be true, and if this is so, then possibilia can figure appropriately in the relevant causal explanations. Perhaps it’s not the belief’s truth that the object should explain, but its genesis. Recall, though, that even if the evil demon is deceiving me, I can have justified beliefs about trees and train stations. The objects of these beliefs are, ex hypothesi, non-existent objects (the demon is fabricating only their appearances). Since non-existent objects cannot cause anything, they cannot figure appropriately in causal explanations of my beliefs. So, the object of your belief need not figure appropriately in a causal explanation of that belief in order for it to be justified. One way out of this objection is to make a de re/de dicto distinction: if we are in a skeptical scenario, then we justifiably believe that certain propositions are true—i.e., we have justified de dicto beliefs—but we have no (or very few) justified beliefs about objects—i.e., we have no justified de re beliefs. But there are normal, non-skeptical cases in which it looks as if we have justified beliefs about non-existent objects: e.g., when we justifiably believe that Sherlock Holmes smokes a pipe. So, if this reply is based on the assumption that we never need to appeal to non-existent objects, and so they’re an aberration in the present case, then it won’t pass muster.
- 8.
- 9.
- 10.
It’s important that p-models not vacuously satisfy the theoretical definition, since that will let in too many models: it will reduce to the suggestion that a theory specifies a model just in case that model is consistent with the theoretical hypothesis, which will include countless models that are completely irrelevant to the subject at hand. Unfortunately, I don’t have a suitably strict account of satisfaction to offer. You might be able to get the right result by allowing the irrelevant models, but then saying that the theoretical hypothesis directs us not to take a stand on those models that vacuously satisfy the theoretical definition (i.e., we should neither affirm nor deny that they represent possibilities).
- 11.
Many other relationships might be posited: identity, isomorphism, partial isomorphism, etc. Van Fraassen breaks with Giere in preferring isomorphism over similarity. Isomorphism creates some complications that can safely be ignored in the present context; so, for simplicity’s sake, I will preserve Giere’s formulation.
- 12.
His suggestion is that constructive empiricists should use the semantic view to offer a reductive account of modal locutions (recall: “[t]he locus of possibility is the model, not a reality behind the phenomena”). By his lights, there are contexts in which it is perfectly appropriate to talk as if the models of our theories represent genuine possibilities— e.g., when we are presupposing that our conversation partners accept a well-confirmed theory and we are discussing the merits of a new hypothesis (“…this hypothesis seems to suggest that p, which is impossible…”). This amounts to (or is a gesture toward) an account of the assertability conditions for modal claims.
- 13.
This paper is, essentially, what I should have said in response to an email that Stephen Biggs sent me some years ago. For helpful feedback on earlier drafts, I thank Stephen Biggs, Felipe Leon, Anand Vaidya, Timothy Williamson, an anonymous reviewer, and the great audience at the Directions in the Epistemology of Modality Workshop at the University of Stirling.
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Fischer, B. (2017). Modal Empiricism: Objection, Reply, Proposal. In: Fischer, B., Leon, F. (eds) Modal Epistemology After Rationalism. Synthese Library, vol 378. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44309-6_14
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