Abstract
Proper functionalism claims that a belief has epistemic warrant only if it’s formed according to the subject’s truth-aimed cognitive design plan. The most popular putative counter-examples to proper functionalism all involve agents who form beliefs in seemingly warrant-enabling ways that don’t appear to proceed according to any sort of design. The Swampman case is arguably the most famous scenario of this sort. However, some proper functionalists accept that subjects like Swampman have warrant, opting instead to adopt a non-standard account of design. But critics of proper functionalism hold that this strategy comes at a high cost: the design-plan condition now seems explanatorily superfluous. James Taylor construes cases like Swampman as posing a dilemma for the proper functionalist: either deny warrant in these cases and concede that proper functionalism doesn’t capture our intuitions, or affirm warrant and undermine the explanatory power of the design-plan condition. Proper functionalists have replied to both horns of this dilemma. Recently, Kenny Boyce and Andrew Moon have argued that warrant-affirming intuitions on cases like Swampman are motivated by a principle that has a clear counter-example. Also, Alvin Plantinga presents a set of cases that supposedly cause problems for any analysis of warrant that lacks a design-plan condition. In this essay, I present a counter-argument to Boyce and Moon’s argument, and show that a more robust reliability condition can accommodate Plantinga’s problem cases. I conclude that we’re left with no good reason to doubt that cases like Swampman raise a troubling dilemma for the proper functionalist.
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Notes
In other words, warrant is the entity that “takes” true belief to knowledge. This functional sense of “warrant” was popularized by Plantinga (1993b, p. v). Various philosophers have also presented proper functionalist accounts of epistemic justification [Bergmann (2006, pp. 130–133), Graham (2012, 2014)]. In this paper, I am only engaging an argument against proper functionalism about warrant in the above sense. I’ll remain neutral regarding the implications that my arguments have for proper functionalist accounts of justification.
See Plantinga (1993b, pp. 19, 46–47) for the classic formulation of Alvin Plantinga’s version of proper functionalism. Of course, there are other possible formulations of theories that would plausibly fit under the broad designation proper functionalist theory of warrant. Indeed, any account that includes DP or any sufficiently similar condition would fit under this designation.
Plantinga notes that, “Human beings are constructed according to a certain design plan. This terminology does not commit us to supposing that human beings have been literally designed—by God, for example” (1993b, p. 13). He grants that those conceiving of design plans as conferred by evolutionary forces are not incompetent users of the concept design plan (13). However, in a later chapter of that same book, he argues that design is best understood in terms of agential design (194–215).
See Bergmann (2006, pp. 147–149). There, he argues that it’s a live option for the proper functionalist to see Swampman as having a normal human design plan, thus avoiding the counter example to DP. Also, Plantinga (1991, pp. 208–209) suggests that entities might be able to adopt design plans in ways that don’t involve designers or evolutionary processes.
While not exactly the same, this formulation closely mirrors Taylor’s presentation of this dilemma (1991, p. 185).
See Graham (2014).
Boyce and Moon write,
Billy forms his beliefs “in the same way” ...that Zork does...[W]e can add that there is no intrinsic difference between the internal physical processes relevant to the formation of Billy and Zork’s beliefs, including those occurring in their brains and other parts of their nervous systems. (2998)
Boyce and Moon’s justification for this psychological thesis is anecdotal: they see it reflected in the comments of those who present the DP problem cases as reasons to reject DP (2016, p. 2990).
I agree with this insofar as the “in the same way” and “in a relevantly similar environment” qualifications in CI jointly entail that S and S* have the same dispositional (counterfactual) profiles before and throughout their belief-forming processes. I would imagine that Boyce and Moon would be friendly to this reading of CI.
See fn. 15 on p. 2998.
See Conee and Feldman (1998, p. 3) and Wallis (1994, p. 251). Wallis uses the phrase “relevance class” to refer to the reference class. In the context of belief-forming process reliability, reliability measurements are ultimately ratios of true-belief to false-belief, taken across some class of possible belief-forming events. This class is called the reference class.
Importantly, CBR just states one form of reliability that’s necessary for warrant. A token might need to exemplify other forms of reliability in order to confer warrant.
Here, the notion of modal nearness/distance is taken from Lewis and Stalnaker’s semantics for counterfactuals. On their model, sentences of the form If event X had occurred, then event Y would have occurred, are true iff the nearest possible worlds in which X occurs are also worlds in which Y occurs. Stalnaker (1968), Lewis (1973) of course, the notion of modal distance is figurative, corresponding to some measure of modal similarity or difference between possible situations/worlds.
CBR is similar to Juan Comesaña’s (2006) solution to the generality problem. Comesaña claims that,
Given that there will always be some evidence that the belief is based on, the process that generates the belief will always instantiate a case of the type-schema producing a belief that p based on evidence E. (2006, p. 37)
Comesaña’s solution, as stated, seems to type processes too narrowly. Given that “p” in his relevant type schema is filled in by the specific proposition believed in the token case, Comesaña’s solution to the generality problem entails that any belief in any necessary truth will automatically have a maximal degree of reliability. This is because necessary truths are true in every possible situation. Hence, a process type’s truth ratio, taken across any reference class of possibilities, will necessarily be 100% according to Comesaña’s solution. But it’s rather implausible that any correct judgment on a necessary truth (automatically) has maximal epistemic reliability for humans like us. CBR avoids this problem by typing processes more broadly. According to CBR, relevant type descriptions only hold fixed that the subject forms a belief regarding content that is “sufficiently similar” to the target propositions p from the token case.
Interestingly enough, Pritchard’s formulation of the safety condition on knowledge is quite similar to CBR:
If a believer knows that p, then in nearly all, if not all, nearby possible worlds in which the believer forms the belief that p in the same way as she does in the actual world, that belief is true (2005, p. 163).
Given that reliability measurements are taken across reference classes of possible situations, we can interpret Pritchard’s safety condition as a particular kind of reliability condition. Sosa (1999, p. 142) also defends a safety condition on knowledge. Also, see Goldman (1988, p. 63) for his presentation of a counterfactual based account of epistemic reliability.
There are good reasons to believe that modal distance, rather than other forms of distance, e.g., spatial distance, determine whether a given belief-forming possibility comprises a token’s reference class. Consider two agents standing in a county filled with only real barns, forming beliefs ascribing the presence of barns. Suppose on the other side of the planet, there’s a nearly indistinguishable county that contains only barn facades. Neither agent knows about this other county. In agent 1’s case, she has no means of leaving the current county, let alone making it to the other side of the world. On the other hand, agent 2 has a tele-transporter that sends her around the world multiple times a day to make observations of barns. She has no idea that the fake-barn county is her next destination! Interestingly, the possibility of finding oneself in fake barn county and making false barn-ascriptions seems completely irrelevant to the warrant of agent 1’s barn-ascribing beliefs in the normal county. But intuitively, this possibility does undermine the (or reduce the degree of) warrant of agent 2’s beliefs in the normal county. It seems too likely that agent 2 forms an incorrect visual barn ascription, and we can infer that these belief-forming possibilities from the other side of the planet are members of the reference classes of agent 2’s process tokens from the normal county—but this is not the case for the reference classes of agent 1’s tokens! This odd phenomenon obtains even though, spatially, these possibilities are just as far away for either agent as they stand in normal county. But clearly, these possibilities are modally much closer to agent 2—very little has to change about the world in order to agent 2 to find herself making a barn-ascriptions on the other side of the planet. Not so with agent 1. Principles like CBR nicely capture this result.
Taylor also mentions that we can build in that Clarence has verified the outputs of his clairvoyant processes independently (1991, pp. 192–193). This would serve to satisfy those who think there are internalist conditions on knowing, requiring that we have higher order awareness of the reliability of our belief-forming processes.
See Plantinga (1991, p. 208).
Throughout, Graham uses the phrase “normal functioning” rather than proper functioning, but it’s plausible that he doesn’t intend to communicate anything substantially different than proper functioning.
Of course, all that follows from my criticisms is that justification, in Graham’s sense, is unnecessary for warrant.
Insofar as one is inclined to think that some post-transformation time-lag is required before the new capacity can yield knowledge, there is a purely reliabilist way of accommodating this idea. While it’s certainly contentious, some reliabilists could require, in addition to CBR, a belief-forming process type to have a sufficiently good track record in the subject’s actual experience in order to confer warrant. See Goldman (1986, p. 45) for a discussion of this suggestion. The requirement of a strong track record would entail that Liz, upon first using her new capacity, couldn’t gain warrant for the resultant beliefs. All this to say, this is an approach to explaining a time-lag requirement in a way that doesn’t invoke the notions of design, design plan acquisition, or function.
One might argue that forming a preponderance of true beliefs is in itself a substantial contribution to the overall flourishing of an organism. But if this is the case, the acquisition of a reliable belief-forming mechanism entails the acquisition of a capacity that thereby confers a “benefit” on the creature. This latter condition on warrant would simply collapse into the reliability condition—a pattern that I’ll discuss in more detail in Sect. 3.
For example, see Bergmann (2006, pp. 147–149).
Much thanks to an anonymous referee for pushing me to focus on Taylor’s reduction thesis and present it as the central move in Taylor’s defense of the warrant-affirming horn of his dilemma.
William Alston, Richard Feldman, and Ernest Sosa all make a similar claim. Alston surveys an assortment of Plantinga’s putative counterexamples to reliabilism, where Plantinga takes these cases to suggest a proper function condition on warrant. Alston concludes that the best explanation for the no-warrant verdicts on these cases more has to do with the reliability condition being unsatisfied (1995, pp. 397–400). While these cases exemplified some sense of reliability, it wasn’t the epistemically relevant kind of reliability that can confer warrant (401). Feldman concurs. After considering DP problem cases and Plantinga’s approach to handling them, Feldman suspects that “it is the reliability requirement as Plantinga construes it that gives his theory whatever merit it has. The proper function requirement is not really doing any work in the theory” (Plantinga 1993a, b, p. 44). In addition, Sosa contends that a similar account with just as much explanatory power as proper functionalism can be formulated (without mentioning design) by simply invoking reliable faculties. Sosa says “[this account] reduces to a form of ‘reliabilism’ in the broad sense” (1993, p. 58).
Initially, Plantinga suggested interpreting Taylor’s reduction thesis in terms of theoretical equivalence:
Of course it might be that an analysis of warrant contained several conjuncts, only one of which involved the notion of proper function; then, barring a logical nicety or two, it might be that if that conjunct is equivalent to one that makes no reference to proper function, then the proposed analysis is equivalent to one that makes no reference to proper function. (Plantinga 1991, p. 213)
Plantinga then points out that, strictly speaking, Taylor framed his initial argument (which I won’t reconstruct here) in terms of material equivalence, but what he needed to establish was a relation of broadly logical (i.e., metaphysical) equivalence (213). In their next exchange, Taylor confirmed that he was suggesting a relation of metaphysical equivalence between a correct (reliabilist) theory of warrant that doesn’t invoke design and one that does invoke design (Taylor 1995, pp. 424–425).
Of course, we currently lack a robust and fully detailed formulation of these conditions. But this doesn’t mean that we lack any sort of grasp of how, generally, these formulations might go or what sorts of things these conditions could explain. Philosophers like Taylor would most likely contend that we only need this sort of grasp of these non-design conditions in order to competently judge whether a further design condition is explanatorily superfluous. Furthermore, now that design is no longer understood in terms of a designing process or the intentions or a designing agent, it does not seem as if the envisaged proper functionalist has any firmer grasp of the notions design plan and proper function.
For Plantinga’s other classic cases that appear to feature cognitive malfunction of some sort, see (1993a, pp. 190–208).
In an illustrative case, Chris Tucker asks us to consider a subject S who is reliably disposed to form a belief that p, Gödel’s first incompleteness theorem is true, solely on the basis of the belief that q, People hate Keystone Light beer (2014, p. 3349). Plausibly, no matter what S’s other dispositions are, basing p on q can never yield a warranted belief that p. This holds even though q reliably indicates p in the trivial sense that all nearby worlds in which q is true, p is true as well—because p is true in all possible worlds. We can multiply cases like this. Consider someone with a reliable disposition to form the belief \(1+1=2\) solely on the basis of a visual experience representing the color orange. This is not the sort of basis that could confer warrant on that sort of belief. Tucker suggests that these cases illustrate that the right-basing condition cannot be analyzed in terms of reliability (3327).
ECP is a rather controversial thesis amongst theists, which explains why Plantinga himself does not commit to it, but rather considers it for the sake of argument. While he states that it isn’t clear to him that a randomized un-designed state of affairs is possible on a theistic picture of the world, he is quick to note, “But it also isn’t clear that it isn’t [possible]” (1991, p. 208).
Interestingly enough, as Conee and Feldman present and explain what the generality problem is, they frame it as the task of finding “a specification of the relevant type” (1998, p. 3 emphasis mine). In other parts of the essay, they criticize various theories of type relevance for not identifying one type as relevant for epistemic evaluation (e.g., p. 10). This way of setting-up the generality problem presupposes that epistemic reliability is simply a matter of having a high reliability measurement with respect to one type description. Conee and Feldman don’t present any argument for this presupposition. Given that the problem was framed in this way, it’s not surprising that almost every subsequent theory of type relevance aimed at solving the generality problem presupposes that just one type determines epistemic reliability. However, there are some exceptions. Most notably, Wunderlich (2003) defends a multi-type theory of reliability called vector-reliability. Also, Goldman (1986) suggests that warrant requires both “local” and “global” reliability. According to Goldman, the difference between these two kinds of reliability is “the range of uses for which the process is reliable” (44–45 emphasis mine). Here, one might interpret Goldman as proposing a relevance theory according to which multiple reference classes determine whether a token confers warrant.
Duncan Pritchard also seems to think that a correct theory of warrant must take into account the varying degrees of modal distance (from the token) at which possible error can occur (2012, pp. 179–180).
A similar dialectic ensues between Plantinga and Ernest Sosa over subsequent discussions pertaining to the Swampman case. Sosa (1996, pp. 275–278) presents a truth-tracking reductive account of proper function in terms of counterfactual conditions like the safety condition. Plantinga (1996, pp. 368–370) responds by noting that these truth-tracking conditions are nowhere near sufficient for warrant, for similar reasons that narrow-type reliability theories cannot deliver the correct warrant verdict in the lesion case. I do, however, think that Sosa’s broader epistemological framework has the resources to furnish a reply very similar to the one I make here. One can view Sosa’s truth tracking conditions as securing the narrowest sort of epistemically relevant reliability that’s necessary for warrant. Then, Sosa could invoke his account of intellectual virtue, which is analyzed in terms of [content, circumstance] pairs to capture the broader sort of reliability that’s necessary for warrant (1991, p. 138).
See Plantinga (1996, p. 312).
Much thanks to Andrew Moon for many helpful conversations pertaining to the arguments in this article, and to an anonymous referee for numerous insightful comments on each part of this article.
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Tolly, J. Swampman: a dilemma for proper functionalism. Synthese 198 (Suppl 7), 1725–1750 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-1684-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-1684-0