Abstract
One of the guiding ideas of virtue epistemology is to look at epistemological issue through the lens of practical philosophy. The Gettier Problem is a case in point. Virtue epistemologists, like Sosa and Greco, see the shortcoming in a Gettier scenario as a shortcoming from which performances in general can suffer. In this paper I raise some doubts about the success of this project. Looking more closely at practical philosophy, will, I argue, show that virtue epistemology misconceives the significance of Gettier structures in the practical domain.
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Notes
It will be important to explain the kind of inferiority we are dealing with. This will be the topic of Sect. 3.3.
For a survey of discussions of the Gettier Problem which includes references to all the examples mentioned here, see Hetherington (2005).
G2 can go either way, depending on whether we understand ‘there is a sheep’ as pointing in a specific direction, in which case G2 is like G3 and G4, or whether we understand it along the lines of disjunctive expansion as leading to the belief that somewhere in this field there is a sheep. G2 will not be important in what follows. I will mention a relevant difference between G3 and G4 later on.
The difference between these two kinds of prevention mirrors the epistemological distinction between outweighing and undermining.
Is there yet a further concept of a shot with little skill that misses where the miss is not (sufficiently) explained by the lack of ability? A person clumsily releases an arrow which is way too heavy to make it to the target. In other words, can not only successes but also failures be gettierized? If you believe something very unlikely, e.g. Obama’s elected successor will be a Taliban, on the basis of me telling you (obviously, I was joking), is the lack of success of your epistemic effort sufficiently explained by your lack of critical ability? If we want to say ‘yes’, lack of ability will always explain failure, whereas presence of ability, if Sosa is right, does not always explain success. An engagement with Sosa’s view more detailed than I can provide here would look for an explanation of this asymmetry.
I say that the criticism presented might be shrugged off. I can also see a case for why it might not be, namely if one has a general doubt about the presence of a skill in environments that exhibit unpredictable double interference.
Chisholm (1964) has objected along these lines to Davidson’s (1963) causal theory of intentional action. Davidson (1980, essay 4) does not think that a satisfactory analysis of non-deviance is possible. The parallel between deviant-causal-chain examples and Gettier’s examples is emphasized in Danto (1973, Chap. 1).
It will often be true that we do one thing, hitting the target, by doing something else, by releasing the arrow. Following Danto (1973, Chap. 1), the parallel in the belief-case is to believe one thing on the basis of believing another. Granting this parallel, we can still observe the following disanalogy between the practical and the theoretical case. Considering the theoretical case, we find that Smith believes the disjunction that Jones owns a Ford or that Brown is in Barcelona. He believes this on the basis of believing that Jones owns a Ford. The disjunctive belief is gettierized because the belief on which it has been based was well support but false. Thus the more basic belief—Jones owns a Ford—fails on the accuracy dimension. The basic action in practical double interference cases, in contrast, need not fail on any dimension.
The result that actions cannot be gettierized should not come as a surprise. Deviant causal chain cases, the practical analogue to Gettier cases, were put forward as examples in which something, that, according to the causal account, was supposed to be an action, is not an action. For Danto (1973), the Gettier Problem is a problem for how to understand knowledge and deviant causal chain cases are a problem for what it is to understand action. He, like Williamson (2000), sees knowledge and action as parallel concepts. My point is in line with this view.
The explanation why, on Sosa’s view, this is the only relevant kind of evaluation follows in the next section.
My point here is related to Aristotle’s view (Nicomachean Ethics 3.1) that ignorance, which renders actions involuntary, changes our normative and evaluative assessment from what it would have been had the agent known. Aristotle says that lack of knowledge leads to a lack of creditability. ‘A man may be ignorant, then, of who he is, what he is doing, what or whom he is acting on, and sometimes also what (e.g. what instrument) he is doing it with, and to what end (e.g. he may think his act will conduce to some one's safety), and how he is doing it (e.g. whether gently or violently).’ For example, if you did not know that harm would result, you are not as much to blame as you would be had you known. I say that full knowledge leads to full creditability.
I discuss Greco and Pritchard in more detail in my (2012).
For the logical notion (as opposed to the grammatical notion) of attributive goodness see Geach (1956) who famously argued that all goodness is attributive goodness.
Modal properties of actions may still be relevant for other moral evaluations, in particular when a modal modification of an action describes a superior alternative. For example, you should have made the point by providing an example; without example no one will be able to understand it.
My argument is directed against Sosa’s view as it had been formulated in the works cited. There he sees the relation between an action (of a kind) and a good action (of that kind) as instantiating the same relation that holds between believing that p and knowing that p (or believing that p fully well). In yet unpublished writing ‘The Unity of Action, Perception, and Knowledge’ Sosa’s view has shifted. Trying to fi and fi-ing are said to stand in the same relation as believing and knowing. I have discussed the new view as an alternative interpretation. The argument summarized above applies to both of Sosa’s views.
In reaction to adopting Frankfurt’s perspective, we might want to argue for a separation of G3, the stopped-watch case, and G4, the fake-barn case. In G4 we are, by the luck of looking at the real barn, shielded from a potential interferer. In contrast, the fact that the watch has actually stopped is, arguably, the presence of a (probabilistic) interferer. Relying on a stopped watch makes it very unlikely that one will form accurate beliefs about what time it is. One needs a lot of luck to check the time at the one time the watch provides accurate information. There’s is, however, also an opposing view that keeps G3 and G4 parallel. The fact that the watch has stopped renders consulting it unreliable except in one case, i.e. the case when one consults the watch 12 h (and any multiple thereof) after which it has stopped. Accordingly, no interference, none that needed to be prevented, takes place in G3. This way of understanding G3 would make it parallel to G4.
Disjunctive expansion is, intuitively, not always well motivated. Nothing depends on the credentials of disjunctive expansion however, as we could tell a Gettier story that relies on a different rule like modus ponens instead.
This case has the same structure as Zagzebski’s (1996, p. 294f.) case of the judge who, on the basis of misleading evidence, takes the wrong man to be guilty but sentences the right man who, unbeknownst to the judge, has replaced the wrong man, when it comes to sentencing.
According to Sosa’s formula, the agent’s competence does not sufficiently explain the agent’s success. Sosa and I agree that a false belief about where to watch football is the salient feature of the case. I claim that this explains directly the inferiority of what I was doing. Sosa, in contrast, needs to say that it affects the agent’s competence or its exercise. Zagzebski (1996, p. 298) view of this case, the success is not explained by an act done out of virtue, seems indistinguishable from Sosa’s. If competence, or acting out of virtue, requires knowing what one is doing, the lines coincide and my point of criticism against the project of virtue epistemology stands.
The same is true of what Brand (1984) has called ‘antecedential’ deviant causal chains, as when nervousness leads to a result that the agent aimed to bring about by his or her agency.
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Acknowledgments
I have presented earlier versions of this paper at Hull and Padova in 2010 and 3 years later at Edinburgh. I learnt from all the comments I got at those occasions. Many thanks to Alan Hazlett and to an anonymous referee for their critical comments. Addressing these criticisms has, in my view, led to substantial improvements.
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Piller, C. Practical philosophy and the Gettier Problem: is virtue epistemology on the right track?. Philos Stud 172, 73–91 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-014-0346-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-014-0346-4