Abstract
In recent work, Sosa proposes a comprehensive account of epistemic value based on an axiology for attempts. According to this axiology, an attempt is better if it succeeds, better still if it is apt (i.e., succeeds through competence), and best if it is fully apt, (i.e., guided to aptness by apt beliefs that it would be apt). Beliefs are understood as attempts aiming at the truth. Thus, a belief is better if true, better still if apt, and best if fully apt. I raise a Kantian obstacle for Sosa’s account, arguing that the quality or worth of an attempt is independent of whether it succeeds. In particular, an attempt can be fully worthy despite being a failure. I then consider whether Sosa’s competence-theoretic framework provides the resources for an axiology of attempts that does not place so much weight on success. I discuss the most promising candidate, an axiology grounded in the competence of attempts, or what Sosa calls adroitness. An adroit attempt may fail. I raise doubts about whether an adroitness-based axiology can provide a plausible explanation of the worthiness of subjects’ beliefs in epistemically unfortunate situations, such as the beliefs of the brain in a vat. I conclude by speculating that the notion of a belief’s fit with what the subject has to go on, a notion missing from Sosa’s competence-theoretic framework, is crucial to explaining epistemic worth.
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Notes
Sosa (2015, p. 85) writes: “The fully desirable status for performances in general is full aptness.”
Qualifications are required to accommodate the distinct sorts of assessments we would like to make, for instance, of the basketball player who aims to miss the basket during a game. Here it is useful to introduce perspectives. From the perspective of the player’s own desires, a miss might be better than the attempt is better if it is a miss. However, from the perspective of basketball, the attempt is worse if the player misses. An agent’s attempts, when engaging in a practice, are evaluable with respect to the aims of the practice. The same goes for activity-irrelevant goals, such as impressing your romantic interest with a flashy but risky shot (cf. Sosa 2015, p. 169).
See Sylvan (2016, in press) for further discussion.
Sosa’s account of epistemic value, of course, requires that beliefs be attempts. But could beliefs really be intentional carry-throughs on choices? This seems to imply that beliefs reside in the will, a surprising implication. Sosa claims that some beliefs are dispositions to judge, where judging is an intentional action. Beliefs, he thinks, inherit the agential status of their manifestations. They do reside in the will (2015, p. 210). Even functional beliefs, he argues, are rightly seen as aimed at ends, and so as action-like. These are provocative, controversial claims, but here I will not challenge them. For critical discussion of these claims, see McGrath (2017).
What about the shot itself? There may be dispute about whether it’s true to say that it was a great shot. I do find this intuitive. Other cases make it clearer. We’re playing golf. Your son, aged 6, is with us. You putt the ball 25 feet. Just as it is about to fall into the hole, your son kicks it away. It seems to me that the shot is no worse for the child’s interference. It doesn’t succeed, but it is as admirable as a shot from that distance could be. (This is not to deny that some features of a shot do matter to its quality. If we vary the James case and suppose that as LeBron James begins to shoot a sudden muscle twitch alters his movement, launching the ball to an unwanted height, then whether the shot happens to go in or not, it is not a shot of high quality.)
See Sosa (2010, p. 63).
Kant himself presumably would not join us in generalizing his claims about moral worth beyond the realm of morality. But, as our examples show, this restriction is implausible. More carefully, although there no doubt are differences in the normative standing of morally worthy actions versus epistemic worthiness, let alone basketball worthiness, there is a common thread here. Thanks to Robert Johnson for discussion.
I thank a referee for raising this objection.
Sosa (2015, p. 85) writes: “The fully desirable status for performances in general is full aptness.”
Again, qualifications are in order for attempts that run contrary to those of the practices in which the attempt is made. See note 2.
Consider the opening of ch. 3 (Sosa 2010):
“In what way is knowledge better than merely true belief? That is a problem posed in Plato’s Meno. A belief that falls short of knowledge seems thereby inferior. It is better to know than to get it wrong, of course, and also better than to get it right by luck rather than competence.”
In this passage, I think Sosa assumes a connection between the value of an attempt (a belief) and the value of states of affairs concerning what that attempt achieves it and how.
By contrast, there is no need to relativize aptness to competences. If a performance is apt with respect to any of the competences in the nested set of competences it is apt with respect to all of them. To be apt with respect to any one of the nested competences is to be apt with respect to the complete competence.
There is good reason for this assumption: in the example I am not likely to get the truth by asking my interlocutor questions whereas you are. If I try to reach the truth by accepting the testimony given, I am not likely to succeed.
Adroitness for an incomplete competence is understood in terms of the likelihood of success in conditions in which the missing elements of shape and/or situation are in place. Thus, in the Chicago visitor example, my belief is adroit with respect to the nested competence because, although my interlocutor is not in fact honest, there is a high likelihood of success in conditions that include the honesty of my interlocutor.
Thanks to a referee for this example.
At least two problems arise for (2). First, one might wonder whether we should we replace ‘adroit’ in (2) with ‘apt’. This depends on what we think of cases in which an adroit belief is guided by a Gettiered but adroit belief about its adroitness. Second, if I know that I’m in an unusual situation, I might know that an adroit attempt won’t succeed. In such a case, an attempt would not be worthy, even if it is adroit, and even if it is based on an adroit belief that it would be adroit. (2) likely needs supplementation by a defeat condition. I will not pursue the necessary revisions here.
This is an axiology of attempts only, and so does not tell us about the comparative value of attempts having properties (e.g., a belief’s being true versus false, knowledge versus mere true belief). One might combine a Sosa-style axiology for the latter with the alternative adroitness-based axiology for attempts themselves.
The same points can be raised about wishful thinking in the actual world. A wishful belief may be adroit with respect to a seat of a wishful thinking competence, one requiring situational factors absent in our world. Thanks to Chris Kelp for this observation.
If the odd BIV’s beliefs are worthless relative to any group, then this is fatal to the adroitness-based axiology more broadly. It might still be argued that reliability can enhance a belief’s quality under certain conditions, e.g., when there is a relation of fit between the belief and what the BIV has to go.
Suppose the odd human/BIV doesn’t simply believe that things only seem to be certain ways but comes to have seemings that things are not those ways and believes accordingly. Wouldn’t this reinstate fit while the resulting beliefs remain epistemically worthless? (Thanks to Chris Kelp here.) If the odd human/BIV enjoys the same perceptual experiences as we do, it is difficult to see how such a seeming could fit with the content of the experience as a whole. Moreover, if the seeming were due to cognitive penetration, then we might not wish to count it as part of what one fundamentally has to go on. See McGrath (2013) for an account of how an evidentialist—or more generally someone who understands justification in terms of fit with what one has to go on—can cope with the epistemic problems of cognitive penetration.
I am grateful for comments from referees for Synthese, from Robert Johnson, Keith Harris, as well as Peter Graham, Ben McCraw, Brent Madison, Mona Simion, Kurt Sylvan, Ralph Wedwood and other members of an audience at the Bled Conference in Epistemology 2017. Special thanks go to Chris Kelp for a trenchant set of comments that led me to make major changes, hopefully for the better.
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McGrath, M. Sosa on epistemic value: a Kantian obstacle. Synthese 197, 5287–5300 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-1717-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-018-1717-8