Abstract
The paper critically examines recent work on justifications and excuses in epistemology. I start with a discussion of Gerken’s (Synthese 178: 529–547, 2011) claim that the “excuse maneuver” is ad hoc. Recent work from Timothy Williamson (in: Dorsch and Dutant, The new evil demon, OUP, Oxford, forthcoming) and Clayton Littlejohn (in: Dorsch and Dutant, The new evil demon, OUP, Oxford, forthcoming) provides resources to advance the debate. Focusing in particular on a key insight in Williamson’s view, I then consider an additional worry for the so-called excuse maneuver. I call it the “excuses are not enough” objection. Dealing with this objection generates pressure in two directions: one is to show that excuses are a positive enough normative standing to help certain externalists with important cases; the other is to do so in a way that does not lead back to Gerken’s objection. I show how a Williamson-inspired framework is flexible enough to deal with both sources of pressure. Perhaps surprisingly, I draw on recent virtue epistemology.
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Notes
Of course, problems for externalists in this area are not restricted to intuitions about cases. There are also theoretical considerations that augment such intuitions. It is also worth noting that the tendency to treat blamelessness as central to justification is found predominantly in epistemological internalists who understand justified belief in deontological terms, such as believing in accordance with epistemic duties, permissions, or obligations.
Strong externalism has a variety of prominent proponents, such as Adler (2002), Huemer (2007), Littlejohn (2012), Sutton (2007), and Williamson (2000, (2013). It is also worth noting that everyone needs to make at least some kind of distinction when it comes to cases like GETTIER and BIV and ordinary or “good” cases of well-formed belief. For example, consider Goldman’s distinction between “strong” and “weak” justification (Goldman 1988). This paper examines and ultimately defends the strong externalist approach of drawing such a distinction in terms of justifications and excuses. Although I won’t argue as much, the view I develop in this paper may provide resources for any theory of justification that struggles with cases like GETTIER and BIV. For instance, rather than resorting to actual worlds reliabilism, normal worlds reliabilism, distinctions between strong and weak justification, and so on, proponents of various theories may simply want to apply the justification-excuse distinction in such cases, in support of their theory of justification. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer and Chris Kelp for suggestions along these lines.
DeRose (2002) does not explicitly link secondary propriety to excuse. He simply talks about secondary propriety (and for an interestingly short period of time, given that he is heavily cited for it). Lackey (2007), who challenges secondary propriety, does not seem to think of it as being explicitly connected to excuse either. Indeed, she appeals to excuses as part of her argument against DeRose’s distinction. Meanwhile, Gerken (2011) and Littlejohn (forthcoming) both see tight connections between secondary propriety and excuse.
One reason to think that there is some structural symmetry here is assertion is an act (a speech act). See Gerken (2012). To be sure, the relationship between norms of action and norm of assertion is debated.
Gerken appeals to the so-called “false belief test”. He claims that a good explanation of the fact that small children fail the false belief test is that they lack the concept of belief. Interesting questions aside as to whether children may acquire the concept of knowledge before that of belief, he takes this as evidence in support of the claim that such children lack the higher-order ability to take themselves to enjoy other epistemic states, like knowledge, with respect to a proposition p.
There may of course be other responses to Gerken’s objection. In what follows, I am interested in Williamson’s view because it appears to avoid the objection altogether.
Note that whatever kind of norm this derivative norm is, it is certainly not a legal norm. Perhaps this is Williamson’s point. But one might also ask the following question. Does the fact that this so-called “derivative norm” fails even to belong to the same normative domain as the primary norm undermine the idea that it derives from the primary norm? I am not entirely sure. But here is one way of understanding “derivative” which seems to avoid the worry. The idea is to understand “derivative” in terms of an explanatory connection. That is, a given norm derives from a norm N in the sense that the positive status associated with compliance with it is to be explained in terms of the positive status associated with compliance with N. On this approach, the fact that it is good to be a law-abiding person—though not necessary for compliance with the law itself—is nonetheless explained in terms of the fact that it is good not to break the law. I’ll set further discussion of this question to one side here.
It is not hard to imagine someone taking issue with these sweeping claims about the existence of norms such as DN and ODN. But this is one reason why it is important to keep in mind that they are relatively weak norms. Moreover, I think it is fair to approach these claims in a somewhat loose or deflationary way, and I can do so without compromising the overall argument of this paper. I regard what Williamson is doing here less as making robust theoretical claims than as offering a codified way of articulating the sorts of evaluations ordinary people find natural to make, and then drawing some fruitful conclusions.
To be clear, Williamson does not himself address Gerken’s objection to DeRose. I am simply taking Williamson’s view and applying it to Gerken’s objection.
Williamson points out in a footnote: “I am not suggesting that all excuses are of the kind described. That one was distraught with grief is an excuse of a quite different kind. Excuses are inexhaustibly various; one should not expect a neat taxonomy” (fn. 6). Littlejohn (forthcoming) is also sensitive to the idea that excuses are a “motley bunch”.
An anonymous referee points out another potential advantage of this shift. It arises in the context of a question about the specific kind of criticism excuses address. When we hold agents responsible for wrongdoing, a prominent view is that we hold them responsible for not showing de re concern for what is of normative significance. That is, we hold them responsible for not showing the right concern for what is in fact normatively significant, as opposed to what they take to be normatively significant, as such. A prominent source of motivation for this view is the fetishism charge directed against externalist accounts of moral motivation (Arpaly 2002). The plausibility of this position may further support the shift away from DeRose’s approach. That is, it seems to speak against understanding excuses in terms of what agents reasonably believe, since doing so seems to go hand in hand with a de dicto reading of what makes an agent responsible for \(\Phi \)-ing in the first place (since it seems to understand excuse from wrongdoing in terms of what the agent takes to be normatively significant). Meanwhile, on the approach I’ll be advocating, we excuse agents for doing what the person normally disposed to comply with N does. The thought is that this fits better with a de re reading of what makes an agent responsible for \(\Phi \)-ing in the first place. After all, we are talking directly in terms of a primary norm N, and spelling out excuses in terms of compliance with norms that derive from it. Thanks to an anonymous referee for this suggestion.
What the BIV does right is not limited to meeting internalist conditions. The BIV also meets various more traditional externalist conditions, such as forming beliefs in a way that would have been objectively truth-conducive in the BIV’s normal environment. As such, the issue need not merely be about epistemic responsibility. Those sympathetic to a normal worlds reliabilist way of spelling out objective truth-conducive belief formation will have further things to say about the “excuses are not enough” objection.
The appeal to Baron here is not intended to suggest that she would agree with the approach to excuses advocated in this paper. Baron endorses the Kantian idea that all genuinely normative appraisal focuses on the quality of the agent’s will, and the way it is exercised. As such she would take issue with the appeal to excuses as a way of promoting strong externalism in epistemology. Thanks to an anonymous referee for pressing this point.
Littlejohn continues: “It is a sign of excuse because an excuse would often be out of order if the agent’s actions and attitudes weren’t rational responses to the apparent reasons, responses that showed the subject to be an excellent processor of reasons, albeit an imperfect detector of them” (Littlejohn forthcoming, p. 21).
This is an adaption of an example Williamson uses in a different context.
The point is similar to Gerken’s critique of appealing to mere propositional justification in a weakened version of the requirements of secondary propriety (see Sect. 2).
Of course, we can also do what Littlejohn does and draw a further distinction between excuses and exemptions in order to classify some of these cases in a principled way. I return to this feature of Littlejohn’s approach below (fn. 25). However, even with that distinction on the table, it is not clear where to fit the reforming promise breaker or the case of small children. This is because it is not clear that these are cases of exemption.
Perhaps one way of dealing with both sources of pressure is simply to find some normative standing other than justification or excuse. But I find it difficult to think of what such a status might be. Indeed, one significant advantage of the appeal to excuses is that this is already a very familiar normative notion. Still, identifying another normative standing altogether may be a strategy worth considering on another occasion. Thanks to an anonymous referee for this suggestion.
An anonymous referee asks why—since I shift to virtue epistemology—I do not simply drop Williamson’s terminology (“ODN”) and focus on the virtues in what follows. There are three reasons. (i) When I say “compliance with ODN” I simply mean, “doing what a person who is normally disposed to comply with N would do” (though I do develop a somewhat technical way of understanding this notion), but I also thereby emphasize the idea that this has some kind of positive normative status which is derivative from a primary norm determining justification. (ii) Talking about excuses in terms of “compliance with ODN” fits nicely with my preferred picture on which justification is a matter of compliance with the norm of belief. This in turn helps me remain within a framework that can easily be applied to the epistemic norms debate, where the justification-excuse distinction is prominently debated in epistemology. I also think it jibes well with the way people think about justified \(\Phi \)-ing in real life, or at least when it comes to the law. That is to say, justified \(\Phi \)-ing in the eyes of the law is primarily a matter of complying with the law itself, not, for example, what one reasonably believes about the law (or one’s actions), or the kinds of dispositional matters discussed in the present framework; these are claims I won’t defend here. (iii) The phrase “compliance with ODN” remains stylistically helpful.
A question remains about the degree to which a generally non-open-minded person is capable of satisfying the motivational component of the intellectual virtues on a specific occasion.
Greco (1992): “Examples of human intellectual virtues are sight, hearing, introspection, memory, deduction and induction” (p. 520).
Recently, a number of epistemologists have developed “knowledge-first” forms of virtue epistemology. According to knowledge-first epistemologists, the goal or aim of a cognitive ability is knowledge rather than true belief (Kelp forthcoming; Mirracchi 2014).
To be sure, Gerken uses his cases in a discussion of the knowledge norm of action. But I take translation into a discussion of the knowledge norm of belief to be straightforward in the present context.
Littlejohn contrasts excuse with exemption in terms that are relevantly similar here (Littlejohn forthcoming, p. 10). To roughly summarize, his main claim in motivating the distinction between exemptions and excuses is that excuses are normative standings that require agents to be reasons-responsive in such a way that they can be held accountable for what they do in general (Littlejohn forthcoming, p. 11). When an agent is excused with respect to the violation of some norm, this is in part because they have the relevant capacities needed for being held accountable—it is just that certain other circumstances mitigate blame (for example, non-culpable ignorance, or lack of control). Meanwhile, this is not the case when we exempt someone. Agents exempt with respect to some norm are not reasons-responsive such that they can be held accountable for what they do in general. To put it metaphorically, they are not in the market for accountability, in a global sort of way.
Zagzebski (1996) discusses this point in detail. For example, picking on Greco, but referring to a feature of his view shared by Sosa and other reliabilist virtue epistemologists, she says: “The sense in which Greco’s examples can be considered virtues [...] is misapplied if it is intended to reflect the way the concept of virtue has been used in ethics. In fact, it has little connection with the history of the concept of intellectual virtue, although that history is quite sparse [...]. Aristotle’s examples of intellectual virtues include theoretical wisdom (sophia), practical wisdom (phronesis), and understanding or insight (nous). Hobbes’s list includes good wit and discretion; Spinoza’s primary intellectual virtue is understanding. [...]. None of these qualities are faculties like sight or hearing” (Zagzebski 1996, p. 11). I do not think the matter is so simple. I will have more to say about this below.
Consider again, and to quote Williamson: “This essay steps back from the epistemological issues to make some of those general normative distinctions, then returns with them to epistemology” (p. 3).
Thanks to an anonymous referee for pressing the ad hocery worry.
Note, too, that there is room to challenge the position—mentioned briefly above—that reliabilist virtue theory is a virtue theory in name only. For example, by appealing to lesser known but no less historically important usages of “virtue” (for example in Plato and Aquinas), Greco (2000) argues that one cannot settle the question of the correct or fundamental usage of “virtue” simply by deferring to Aristotle (he claims Zagzebski’s objection to the reliabilist usage of “virtue” hinges on this): “If we do not make Aristotle’s account of moral virtue definitional of the concept of virtue in general, then we can see that Sosa, Goldman and Zagzebski are members of an important camp; one appropriately labeled ‘virtue epistemology”’ (Greco 2000, p. 181).
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Acknowledgments
Thanks to Fernando Broncano-Berrocal, Mikkel Gerken, Harmen Ghijsen, Nick Hughes, Chris Kelp, Sebastian Köhler, Clayton Littlejohn, Mona Simion, audience members at the JustGroningen Workshop, University of Groningen, and the Leuven-Bristol Workshop, KU Leuven, as well as three anonymous referees for helpful feedback on earlier drafts of this paper.
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Boult, C. Epistemic normativity and the justification-excuse distinction. Synthese 194, 4065–4081 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1127-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-016-1127-8