Abstract
I will argue that internalism about justification entails the apparently absurd conclusion that it is possible to know specific facts about the external world—for example, that there is a tree in the quad—on the basis of introspection and a priori reflection. After a brief characterization of internalism (§1), I will set out the problem (§2). I will then discuss three replies: one that denies the form of doxastic voluntarism involved in the problem (§3), one that denies that knowledge of higher-order facts about justification can justify corresponding first-order beliefs (§4), and, finally, one that involves biting the bullet (§5). I will argue that each reply fails.
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Notes
See Feldman and Conee (2001) for a defense of mentalism. Huemer (2001, pp. 178, 194fn3) also endorses the view. Mentalism is even more minimal than what Pryor (2001, p. 104) calls “Simple Internalism,” according to which “whether one is justified in believing p supervenes on facts which one is in a position to know about by reflection alone.” Pryor says he takes Simple Internalism to be the “most minimal internalist position”.
The notion of justification here is propositional, not doxastic. One can be propositionally justified in believing p whether or not one actually believes p, whereas doxastic justification applies only when the relevant proposition is justifiably believed.
Of course, as above, they could point out that the relevant coherence relation will often not be accessible for human subjects who are unsophisticated, inattentive, or whose relevant mental states are unconscious or dispositional. But (I) requires only a possible subject, such as our super-epistemologist, for whom these concerns do not arise.
They characterize evidentialism in slightly different ways in different places, but the arguments for the view, however formulated, are always of an a priori character. See for example the essays in their (2004) collection.
Fumerton (1995) suggests that internalism cannot be captured by means of a “possibility of access requirement” of the sort I have proposed. His complaint about such an approach is that reliabilists should recognize a (nomological) possibility in which “evolution found a need for humans to have reliable second-level beliefs and so ‘programmed’ us to believe that a process is reliable only when it is” (p. 112). I agree with Fumerton that such “programming” is nomologically possible. But I deny that the resulting access would amount to reflective access to the sorts of facts that externalists see as conferring justification. To suggest otherwise is to claim—absurdly in my view—that reflective access to the external world is possible after all.
Perhaps I cannot be the subject due to necessary limits on human psychology. If so, we could run the argument on Marvin, an otherworldly, non-human, super-epistemologist who lacks human limitations, has all the requisite concepts, and is maximally reflective.
I am assuming that in such a case one would be justified in believing that there is a tree in the quad. Some internalists, such as Fumerton (1995), may stop the argument here by embracing skepticism. Skeptics are free to regard my overall conclusion as conditional on the rejection of skepticism.
It is important that in this example I entertain no doubts about the reliability of perception, since entertaining such doubts might introduce what Bergmann (2004, p. 718) calls a “questioned source context” in which “the subject has doubt or is uncertain about” the trustworthiness of a relevant source of belief. Introduction of such a context might cause trouble for some things I say below, so I am stipulating that the case is not like this. Instead, we may suppose that the subject is motivated not by doubt, but by curiosity about whether he can provide a reflective justification for believing that there is a tree in the quad.
I borrow ‘all goes well’ from Bengson (2015, p. 735); I use it with a slightly different meaning.
As Gibbons (2013, p. 283) puts it, “Everyone should think that’s kind of weird.” Gibbons considers an argument that is similar to the one that I am giving, and he would reject (I) in favor of the view that the relevant higher-order belief can be justified only by the same perceptual experience that justifies the first-order belief. In rejecting (I), Gibbons would be agreeing with my point; he has other fish to fry in his discussion. Similar remarks apply to his discussion in Gibbons (2019, §1.5).
Readers familiar with McKinsey (1991) may notice similarities between the problem I am raising and McKinsey’s problem for anti-individualism about the nature of mental states. According to McKinsey, the conjunction of anti-individualism and privileged access entails the possibility of reflective knowledge of the proposition that water exists (or of some similar contingent proposition about water). I am persuaded by Brueckner’s (2007) reply to McKinsey, according to which no problematic proposition about water is reflectively deducible from anti-individualism. The relevant entailments in McKinsey’s argument are simply not reflectively knowable, but epistemically depend on empirical background assumptions about how, in fact, we gained the concept of water: assumptions like the claim that many people in our community have interacted causally with water, or the claim that water is H2O. No analogous point holds concerning the argument I am giving.
Alston (1988b)—one of the classic champions of involuntarism—says that he “cannot see any sufficient reason for” the claim that this sort of voluntary belief suspension is logically impossible. Instead, he says that direct control of this sort is a “capacity we in fact lack though one we conceivably could have had” (p. 263). Plausibly, then, he does not mean to take issue with the claim that the capacity is metaphysically possible, and his arguments for involuntarism therefore do not bear on the problem I am raising.
For example, Neta and Pritchard (2007) deny the claim. They say that in cases such as the one at hand, “since the agent’s belief that p arises out of her recognition of the support the factive empirical reason gives for the target proposition p, her belief that p will be based on this factive empirical reason” (p. 393). This section is meant to show that they are wrong: if the agent has reflective knowledge of the justification for p—and remember that the possibility of such reflective knowledge is guaranteed by (I)—then, if my arguments in this section are correct, this reflective knowledge can form a basis for belief in p itself without ever basing any belief on the relevant perceptual experience. Neta and Pritchard could adopt the view of Gibbons (2013, 2019), on which knowledge of the justification itself must be based on the relevant perceptual experience. But that would be to deny (I), conceding my point.
This example is similar to those offered as part of the problem of forgotten evidence for internalism. For example, see Goldman (1999, pp. 280–282). It might therefore raise red flags for internalists who are troubled by that problem. However, various internalist responses to the problem of forgotten evidence—e.g., the responses considered in Conee and Feldman (2001, pp. 8–10)—leave the point I am making unchallenged.
Throughout, talk of rational requirements (rational permissibility, etc.) is meant to be understood as referring to the requirements of epistemic rationality, as opposed to practical rationality.
Those who accept views that are similar to this include Scanlon (1998, p. 25; 2007, p. 99), Smithies (2012, p. 11), Broome (2013, §§9.5, 16.2), Gibbons (2013, p. 261), Littlejohn (2018, p. 258), and Greco (2014, p. 211). Horowitz (2014) is somewhat less committal, but includes a persuasive criticism of several specific “level-splitting views” according to which first-order doxastic states and higher-order beliefs about justification can fail to cohere.
The authors cited in note 19 are also sympathetic to this claim.
For additional support, see Raleigh (2021). Raleigh argues that for S to suspend belief about whether p is just for S to believe that S is unable to tell whether p. This supports my view. For suppose that Raleigh’s account is right. It is plausible that, if p is true, and if you are justified in believing p, then you can tell whether p. In the case at hand, you are justified in believing that there is a tree in the quad, and indeed there is a tree in the quad. So, on Raleigh’s account, to suspend belief in this case is to believe that you cannot tell whether there is a tree in the quad, when in fact you can tell this. I expect that internalists will see this as rationally impermissible.
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Acknowledgements
Thanks to David James Barnett, John Bengson, Dan Korman, John Tilley, and several anonymous referees.
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Work on this paper was made possible by a generous sabbatical leave at my home institution, IUPUI.
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Carmichael, C. A new problem for internalism. Synthese 199, 13187–13199 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03372-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-021-03372-5