What's Going On...

First, I owe a word of thanks to Duncan Pritchard for encouraging visitors to his blog to check out mine. And let me just say for the record that at the time he posted his referral, I did not have his book, Epistemic Luck, among my recommended reading, so he was not being self-serving in his recommendation :-).

One upshot of Duncan’s promo is the high quality feedback I’ve gotten on my post, Un-discriminating Reliablism (Part 1). I'm particularly grateful to Geoff for getting the ball rolling in this regard. More recently, Ang Tong, from Angasm, has initiated a discussion so engaging that it bridges two blogs! You can find an extended version of the discussion on this blog, with a summarised version over at the Web of Belief. If the quality of feedback I’ve gotten so far is representative of things to come, then I’m certainly in for much more than I originally bargained...at least one can only hope so. Thanks again for your thoughful comments guys!

Third, I'll like to alert you to the most recent Philosopher’s Carnival, which is being hosted by Westminister Wisdom. As always, there are a number of great links on a wide variety of subject matter.

Fourth, there are a number of interesting epistemology related reading material available online. One of my "real-life" philosophical heroes, Carrie Jenkins, has a new paper entitled Boghossian and Epistemic Analyticity. I haven’t had a chance to read it yet, but Carrie is as sharp as they come, so I’m sure she serves up lots to sink your philosophical incisors into. Equally exciting is Tim Williamson's forthcoming book, Philosophy of Philosophy, which you can now get a sneak peak of here. You can also find notes from his Hempel lectures by the same title here.

Finally, if you need to take a break from the intellectually serious and find yourself in the mood for some off-beat (and somewhat cranky) philosophical humour, you may want to check out The Space of Reason's evil twin: Freewill Tastes Like Chicken!

Well, that’s all for now…but don't worry, the next jaunt into the Space of Reasons begins soon!

The University of St Andrews, Scotland, UK

The South-east Entrance

Walkway Leading to the Philosophy Department

The St Andrews Philosophy Department

Another Pic of the Philosophy Department

View Form the Department Steps

View From Department Library

The St Andrews Quad

The Quad (Viewed from an Angle)

The Quad (Viewed from the Right)

The Quad (Viewed From the Left)

The Scores (St Andrews Coastal Street)

The St Andrews Castle Ruins

The West Scores

Another Pic of the West Scores

Un-discriminating Reliabilism (Part 2)

In [Goldman 1976], Goldman rejects the idea that knowledge requires evidence or justification, and instead conceives of knowledge as true belief that satisfies a reliability condition. On this view, reliability is what you add to true beliefs, instead of evidence or justification, in order to get knowledge. However, in [Goldman 1979], Goldman came to hold the view that instead of replacing the notion of justification in an account of knowledge, reliability is what makes a belief justified. This shift in Goldman’s thought is indeed significant, since it represents his move towards a full-fledged J-externalism. But there is an equally important (earlier) shift that takes place in [Goldman 1976]; namely, Goldman’s rejection of the causal account advocated in [Goldman 1967] and his embracing of the idea that knowledge requires certain discriminative abilities, a view he motivates with his now famous barn case (pp. 772-773). An analysis of the barn case leads Goldman to conclude:

A person knows that p, I suggest, only if the actual state of affairs in which p is true is distinguishable or discriminable by him from a relevant possible state of affairs in which p is false. If there is a relevant possible state of affairs in which p is false and which is indistinguishable by him from the actual state of affairs, then he fails to know that p. (Ibid, 774)

Notice that the above discrimination requirement avoids the unfavourable consequences of the Gettier case described in my previous post in at least two ways. First, it omits all talk of justification and so (in at least one sense) traditional Gettier problems never arise. Second, since according to the aforementioned Gettier case S is unable to discriminate between the actual red cube and the hologram, her true belief does not constitute knowledge (thereby preserving our common-sense intuitions regarding such cases). But, and this is crucial to the point I’m getting at, what is doing the actual work in [Goldman 1976]’s reply to Gettier is the discrimination requirement, and not the notion of reliability a la (J-Rel). Admittedly, in [Goldman 1976], Goldman defines reliability in terms of a subject being able to discriminate between relevant alternatives and thus the former is taken to entail the latter. However, in later formulations of the reliability requirement, explicit appeals to discriminative abilities are increasingly omitted, and Goldman eventually comes to define a reliable process as more or less one that tends to produce true beliefs. Moreover, I do not believe this shift in Goldman’s definition of reliability is by accident. Presumably, talk of discriminative abilities falls out of Goldman’s analysis (now taken to be unnecessary) once he shifts to an explicit J-externalism, where what makes a belief justified need not be internally available to the subject.

The objection may be raised that even with the J-externalist turn in Goldman’s thinking, the discrimination requirement remains an implicit part of his account. I will not deny that this may be the case. Even so, it has long been recognised that the discrimination requirement can stand on its own, independent of any appeals to reliability (see for example [McGinn 1984]). Thus, if my claim that what is doing the work vis-a-vis Gettier is actually the discrimination requirement, rather than reliability qua reliability, then this is at least sufficient to establish that when it comes to the aforementioned Gettier case, reliability a la (J-Rel) is at best explanatorily redundant and at worst explanatorily inert. (The second more unpropitious option holds if you consider my arguments in (Part 1) persuasive.) Moreover, even if one were to reject the account of the evolution of Goldman’s thought outlined above, my more general conclusions still stand: (1) that though reliability and discrimination are classically taken to go together this need not be the case and (2) if (DR) is doing the heavy lifting in classic reliabilist replies to Gettier then the widely held assumption that (J-Rel) constitutes a successful reply to Gettier may be unwarranted.

References:

Goldman, A. (1967), 'A Causal Theory of Knowing', Journal of Philosophy 64: 355-372.

Goldman, A. (1976), 'Discrimination and Perceptual Knowledge', Journal of Philosophy 73: 771-791.

Goldman, A. (1979), 'What is Justified Belief?' Justification and Knowledge, Dordrecht: Reidel.

Dennett's "Breaking the Spell"Team

The "Breaking the Spell" Teaching and Research Support

From left to right: Avery, Rick, Sarah, Adam and Felipe

Boating with Dennett
Felipe, Avery, Dan

Avery at the Helm (Think: We're All Going to Die!)
From right to left: Avery, Sarah, Dan, Felipe



The Finished Product!

A Celebration Dinner (Maine, NH)

Un-discriminating Reliabilism (Part 1)

J-reliabilism is perhaps the most well-known, if not most widely held, response to Gettier’s criticism of the JTB account of knowledge. However, in this post (as well as in the one to follow), I argue that J-reliabilism is insufficient for responding to Gettier. Furthermore, I argue that what is really doing the work in classical formulations of reliabilism, such as that found in [Goldman 1976], is the discrimination requirement, or (DR):

(DR) For any subject S, if S knows that p then S can distinguish the actual situation in which p from all relevant or nearby alternative situations in which ~p.

Recall, J-reliabilism amounts to following claim:

(J-Rel) For any subject S, S’s belief that p is justified IFF it was formed via a reliable process (i.e., a process that tends to produce true beliefs).

According to (J-Rel), reliability is what makes a belief justified. (see [Goldman 1979]). By defining justification in terms of reliability, J-reliabilists hope to eliminate that element of luck that allows our beliefs, under the traditional JTB account, to be Gettiered. However, it is not clear that (J-Rel) is sufficient for resisting Gettier type cases. For example, consider the following perceptual Gettier case:

Suppose S has strong perceptual evidence for, and comes to believe, the proposition:

(a) There is a red cube in the box on the table.

Now, it so happens that there is in fact a red cube in the box on the table, though the cube is being obscured from S’s visual field by some sort of barrier. Furthermore, the box is rigged up to a computer which projects a visual hologram of a red cube in the box. However, the computer is programmed to only project the hologram of the red cube in the box when there is a real red cube in the box. Moreover, S lacks any of this background information, and forms her belief that (a) purely on the basis of the hologram of the red cube. All of the following seem true in the above case:

(i) (a) is true
(ii) S believes (a) is true
(iii) S’s belief that (a) is formed via a reliable process

Ex hypothesi, (iii) is true since the computer is programmed to only project the hologram of a red cube when there is an actual red cube present (one may build in whatever stipulations one likes, such as that the computer is eternal and infallible in its operation etc.). Thus, S’s belief that there is a red cube in the box is reliable since the process by which the belief was formed would, given the computer’s programming, tend to produce true beliefs. However, I believe this represents a bona fide Gettier case since, though S has a justified (i.e., reliably formed) true belief, we wouldn’t say that she has knowledge.

I take the above Gettier case to show that mere reliability is insufficient for eliminating the element of luck from S’s belief that (a). To wit, (J-Rel) fails to eliminate the element of luck associated with S’s belief that (a) since the fact that her belief is reliable is (from the subject’s perspective) itself merely a matter of luck. Thus, we may say that it is lucky that S’s belief was formed via a reliable process. Significantly, the particular species of epistemic luck here described is easily eliminated by making the reliability of the belief forming process internally available to S. Thus, if S knew that what she was seeing was merely a hologram, but that the hologram was itself reliably linked to the presence of an actual red cube in the box, then our intuitions would grant that S does in fact know that there is a red cube in the box. Thus, I see the above Gettier case as corroborating the internalist intuition that that which justifies S’s beliefs should be internally available to her.

Notice that I haven’t made any references to S being able to discriminate between actual red cubes and holograms of red cubes, nor to definitions of reliability that appeal to relevant alternatives (See [Goldman 1986]). This failure to invoke (DR) is in keeping with my ultimate goal of showing that what is doing the real work in classic reliabilist accounts is not reliability qua reliability, but rather an implicit commitment to (DR). Above, I have argued that reliability alone [i.e., (J-Rel)] is insufficient for responding to Gettier. In my next post, I argue that the mistaken assumption that (J-Rel) and (DR) must go together has misled reliability advocates to impute to J-reliabilism an explanatory power that it actually lacks.

References:

Goldman, A. (1967), 'A Causal Theory of Knowing', Journal of Philosophy 64: 355-372.

Goldman, A. (1976), 'Discrimination and Perceptual Knowledge', Journal of Philosophy 73: 771-791.

Goldman, A. (1979), 'What is Justified Belief?' Justification and Knowledge, Dordrecht: Reidel.