Abstract
The effort to understand Peter D. Klein’s work on (so-called) Cartesian skepticism is simply not optional to anyone wishing to become familiar with state-of-the-art scholarship on the problem. Nearly four decades ago, Klein developed the invariantist pro-closure response to Fred Dretske’s counterexamples to epistemic closure principles, thus stealing some of the thunder from the nascent, Dretske-inspired contextualist views in epistemology. Since then, he’s added important theoretical elements to his analysis of the central problem of our debate about skepticism and closure: the problem of how a closure defender might refute the Cartesian skeptic without turning into a purveyor of ‘easy knowledge.’ According to Klein, “a proper understanding of closure shows that the [Cartesian] skeptic cannot provide a good argument for her view and helps to show that there is no genuine problem of easy knowledge” (see “Closure Matters: Academic Skepticism and Easy Knowledge” 2004). Indeed, inattention to Klein’s work accounts for some of the most important fallacies perpetrated in the recent literature on epistemic principles that may be of use to the skeptic. Still, on close inspection, Klein’s case against Cartesian skepticism proves optimistic. The chapter briefly reviews the main features of 34 years of Klein’s work on the problem in 15 publications, from his 1981 book on Certainty to his 2015 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry “Skepticism”. It finds that his case against the skeptic is a distinctive mixture of Mooreanism and Russellianism and concludes that none of his main objections to Cartesian skepticism is tenable.
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Notes
- 1.
Incidentally, I am not confident that there is good history of Pyrrhonism underwriting Klein’s decision to label his brand of infinitism a ‘new Pyrrhonism’.
- 2.
While I admit that I find Klein’s case for infinitism very attractive, I also see room for disagreement as regards some of the interesting details, such as Klein’s distinction between belief and assent (Klein 2000b), but this distinction is not a core element of the view.
- 3.
- 4.
I discuss the issue at length in de Almeida (forthcoming b).
- 5.
But I am not persuaded that it is accurate. In any case, Klein (1995, 566) is certainly right when he suggests that fundamental aspects of the Cartesian problem of the first Meditation are prefigured in ancient writings. “In the Academica (2:26),” Klein notes, “Cicero points out that some people do have identical twins who cannot be distinguished on the basis of perception alone. In addition, he claims that the ‘single case of resemblance’ will ‘have made everything doubtful’.” That’s a powerful reminder that something fundamental in Cartesian skepticism was, after all, prefigured in ancient sources. See also Klein (1987).
- 6.
Speaking of the strongest influence on our understanding of Academic skepticism prompts us to acknowledge the third member of a triumvirate, Barry Stroud. I have discussed an aspect of his work on skepticism (in de Almeida 2016) that is also relevant to the Klein reader in a way that I will specify below.
- 7.
See Klein (2003a) and Brueckner (1985), where the argument appears in similar terms. In order to simplify matters a bit and express the argument as a modus tollens, I ignore the quantifiers and the claim that the relevant instance of p logically implies—or ‘entails’ (taking these as synonyms)— ~sk, as is so often done in the relevant literature.
- 8.
Klein does not accept JC in full generality, but the disagreement over his proposed restrictions would be irrelevant to present purposes. I discuss some of the sticky points regarding closure principles in de Almeida (forthcoming b).
- 9.
When Klein uses the term ‘justification’ while discussing closure principles, he is undoubtedly concerned with ultima facie justification.
- 10.
But bear in mind that nomic entailment (or ‘nomic implication’) is also represented in examples, since the policy here is simply one of avoiding unnecessary circumlocution. For instance, we’ll let ‘I’m now in Brazil (i.e., where Brazil is in the actual world)’ entail the negation of ‘I’m now in Singapore (i.e., where Singapore is in the actual world)’, since it is contextually understood that we might properly add ‘but not in Brazil’ to the latter sentence.
- 11.
To be more precise, I have suggested that the skeptic can do her damage with principles that are weaker than JC. But I do think JC is false. See de Almeida (2011), Sect. 10.6 below, and de Almeida (forthcoming b).
- 12.
In correspondence just before he passed away, Brueckner told me it was his former Ph.D. supervisee Jonathan Vogel who put the label ‘underdetermination principle’ into circulation.
- 13.
While retaining the essence of Brueckner’s formulation, I mean to improve on it. I regret not having the space to compare the formulations here. Thanks are due to Cherie Braden for interesting objections to my formulation of the principle in correspondence.
- 14.
The following four paragraphs are closely based on a passage in de Almeida (2016).
- 15.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t note that I’m one of those for whom UP is the only unassailable principle of the two.
- 16.
I elaborate on the parenthetical point in what follows.
- 17.
Apparently, one would have to go as far as to deny that humans experience misleading evidence—maybe as far as to hold that the very notion of misleading evidence is philosophical fabrication—in order to stop the skeptical sub-argument.
- 18.
Elsewhere, he represents the second horn of the dilemma as the one according to which “the first premise must be unmotivated” (Klein 2010, 160), rather than false. For present purposes, we can safely ignore the discrepancy.
- 19.
I don’t at all mean to suggest that there is intentional sleight of hand in what certainly is just an unfortunate, but very significant, slip on Klein’s part. I simply mean to suggest that the move looks like a verbal trick.
- 20.
Notice that the claim is trivialized if the agent already is fully justified in believing the proposition, or fully justified in disbelieving it. What matters here is one’s having some evidence favoring belief, as opposed to disbelief, but not yet justifying belief.
- 21.
I eschew the contextually irrelevant details that a more precise, or more neutral, description of the phenomenon would involve, such as countenancing graded doxastic attitudes, where I speak of a justified tendency to believe a given proposition that falls short of one’s being justified in believing it. The philosophical point would remain unaltered by such details. I thank Cherie Braden for helpful discussion here.
- 22.
For more on the Russellian strategy against Academic skepticism, see de Almeida (forthcoming a).
- 23.
But Klein seems to ignore that Russell is a major source for the view. To my knowledge, he does not anywhere describe his view as Russellian.
- 24.
Klein’s Russellianism is very clearly on display in Klein (2002, 352; 2010, 161; 2015, § 6).The Russellian character of his view is sometimes (as in his SEP entry) obscured by references to Wittgenstein, whose anti-skeptical views differ from Russell’s. This is not the venue for a discussion of the contrast.
- 25.
If we could equate the ‘silliness’ of the skeptical zoo hypotheses, as Klein sees them, with Dretske’s charge of ‘irrelevance’, Dretske and Klein would agree in the ways they characterize the data of our ordinary practices. But, as we shall shortly see, for Klein, the ‘silliness’ of those skeptical hypotheses should be equated with their obvious falsehood. Dretske (1970, 2014) thought that we need an explanation of why the non-skeptical zoo visitor should resist the opportunity to perform modus tollens and admit ignorance with regard to the animals’ being zebras. The Dretskean response to the data does not warrant describing those skeptical hypotheses as ‘pretty silly’ or ‘pretty unmotivated’. (In what follows, I address the tension between a Russellian stance and the view that skeptical hypotheses are silly because obviously false.)
- 26.
For more on conservatism, see Hamid Vahid (2004).
- 27.
Notice that the Russellian may still consistently balk at the prospect of claiming to know the negation of a skeptical hypothesis.
- 28.
In de Almeida (forthcoming a) you’ll find a brief discussion of Mooreanism that highlights an aspect of the view that has confounded some influential Mooreans.
- 29.
Elsewhere in his reply to Cohen, Klein does correctly frame the problem, and, consistently for a Moorean, fails to give any weight to the anti-Moorean intuition. But, surprisingly, after presenting Cohen’s red table case, Klein goes on to say: “I agree. The son [the skeptical challenger in Cohen’s scenario] should not be satisfied with this response [i.e., his father’s Moorean response in the case] because what the son is challenging is not the move from the table is red to the table is not white being illuminated by a red light, but rather the son is challenging the move from the table looks red to the table is red” (Klein 2004c, 178–179). That’s a surprising way of agreeing with Cohen! Compare to Cohen (2004, 19): “The problem of easy knowledge arises in two ways. The first exploits the deductive closure principle. [...] [I]f one has no prior knowledge that there are no red lights shining on the table, it seems counterintuitive that one could acquire it subsequently in this way.” The problem from the Moorean use of closure was precisely what Cohen (2002) had in mind when the red table case was put forward. (Cohen’s other route to ‘easy knowledge’ is irrelevant to present concerns.)
- 30.
You’ll find a defense of Klein’s reply to Cohen in the work of fellow Moorean Steven Luper (2016, § 4.1).
- 31.
Here’s an earlier version of the mirage: “[T]he [Cartesian] sceptical puzzle is just this: What more needs to be added to true, justified belief to make it knowledge? The answer suggested by the sceptic is ‘certainty’” (Klein 1990, 105). Epistemic—as opposed to psychological—certainty is what Klein’s no-defeaters condition prescribes as an anti-Gettier condition. See Klein (1981).
- 32.
The two more vocal opponents are Dretske (2014) and Brueckner (2000, 2010a). Brueckner calls the move “mysterious”. Dretske went as far as to call it “verbal hocus pocus”. The critics were wrong. Klein’s move is a definitive development to any reasonable reaction to Dretske-style attack on JC. As Klein (1995) acknowledges, the move was initiated by Irving Thalberg (1974). But it was Klein who made it crystal-clear and compelling. I discuss its limitations in both de Almeida (2011) and de Almeida (forthcoming b).
- 33.
Assume that Napoleon’s birthdate is not disputed by the troublemaker.
- 34.
Notice, you would naturally be thinking of the problematic conditional in subjunctive terms—if Napolean were Italian..., or if Napoleon had been Italian... But you obviously can’t refuse to engage with one who puts that hypothesis in weaker terms—if Napoleon was Italian... —in order to challenge your claim that Napoleon was ruthless. Cf. Michael Woods (1997, 53–54): “Even in a context in which it is a presupposition accepted by speaker and hearer that I have not been misinformed, I can hardly decline to accept ‘If Mary has left-wing views, I have been totally misinformed.’” And he adds: “Note that in such a case I should not say, ‘If Mary had had left-wing views, I would have been totally misinformed.”’
- 35.
Here, I take a cue from David Sanford (2003, 227), who appropriated Adams’s example to make a point about indicative conditionals.
- 36.
In various writings, Klein introduces restrictions to JC that should not concern us here, restrictions specifically aimed at ex falso quodlibet and verum ex quodlibet—that is, aimed at delivering the results that contradictions don’t justify anything and that not every belief justifies belief in a given necessary truth. So, the marriage of classical logic and JC is not entirely trouble-free according to him. But no theory of epistemically degenerate cases is put forward while JC is defended.
- 37.
I discuss the options for classicist JC-advocates in de Almeida (forthcoming b).
- 38.
The defect in question is more evident in some of the other six sources referenced in the text. The excerpt from Klein’s SEP entry is chosen here for the clear and elegant expression of its main point. In the paragraph that follows the quoted passage in his SEP entry, Klein clearly invites his reader to think of the ‘elimination’ of contraries as something that would be performed by the reasoner, not as something that the believer’s evidence should be expected to do on its own, as required by UP.
- 39.
In de Almeida (2016), I discuss level confusions in Stroud’s work on skepticism that are relevant to the problem we see here. In Klein’s case, the corresponding confusion can also be seen in his discrepant expressions of the master argument. Sometimes, he frames the argument in the first-person: ‘If I’m justified in believing that p...’. Sometimes, he correctly frames it in the third-person: ‘If S is justified in believing that p...’. He has failed to see that level confusions are engendered by the first-person formulation—confusions that severely affect our understanding of Academic skepticism—as have many of those who write on skepticism, such as Keith DeRose (1995), for instance. This kind of level confusion is discussed at length in de Almeida (2016).
- 40.
Frankly, the fact that Klein never explicitly addressed UP, in spite of its prominence in the literature on Academic skepticism, is a disappointing aspect of his published work on the issue. But, if you look just under the surface, the challenge to UP is clearly there. It is certainly more charitable to think that he thought he was, in his own language, addressing UP than to think that he simply ignored the literature on UP. I submit that his opposition to an ‘Eliminate All Contraries First Principle’ should be understood as applying to UP. Otherwise, we’ll be looking at a gaping hole in his work on Academic skepticism.
- 41.
Beware of confusing this consequence of UP with the objectionable consequence of EC. The latter requires that justifying evidence for p be justifying evidence for any of p’s logical consequences. UP is weaker than EC.
- 42.
As Brueckner (1985, 288) suggests, you can go ahead and think of any extravagant contrary of p you may care to bring up. Good evidence for believing that p must be good evidence to believe the negation of each extravagant contrary of p.
- 43.
Interestingly, Klein’s defeasibilism is infallibilistic. I discuss the problem and offer a fallibilistic alternative for defeasibilists , in de Almeida (2017).
- 44.
I’m grateful to J. R. Fett, Gregory Gaboardi, and John N. Williams for helpful comments on drafts of this chapter. A very special thank-you goes out to Cherie Braden, who supplied me with a large number of insightful comments on the penultimate draft of this chapter. I must also thank the editors, Branden Fitelson, Cherie Braden, and Rodrigo Borges, for honoring an author to whom all of us who love epistemology are deeply indebted, Peter Klein.
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de Almeida, C. (2019). Klein, Skepticism, Epistemic Closure, and Evidential Underdetermination. In: Fitelson, B., Borges, R., Braden, C. (eds) Themes from Klein. Synthese Library, vol 404. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04522-7_10
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