Epistemic Entitlement 0198713525, 9780198713524

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Epistemic Entitlement

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Epistemic Entitlement  

Peter J. Graham and Nikolaj J. L. L. Pedersen

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Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries © the several contributors 2020 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted First Edition published in 2020 Impression: 1 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, by licence or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press 198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016, United States of America British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Control Number: 2019941428 ISBN 978–0–19–871352–4 Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A. Links to third party websites are provided by Oxford in good faith and for information only. Oxford disclaims any responsibility for the materials contained in any third party website referenced in this work.

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Contents Acknowledgements Contributors 1. Introduction and Overview: Two Entitlement Projects Peter J. Graham, Nikolaj J. L. L. Pedersen, Zachary Bachman, and Luis Rosa

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Part I. Engaging Burge’s Project 2. Entitlement: The Basis for Empirical EpistemicWarrant Tyler Burge

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3. Perceptual Entitlement and Skepticism Anthony Brueckner and Jon Altschul

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4. Epistemic Entitlement—Its Scope and Limits Mikkel Gerken

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5. Why Should Warrant Persist in Demon Worlds? Peter J. Graham

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Part II. Extending the Externalist Project 6. Knowledge, Default, and Skepticism Ernest Sosa

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7. Extended Entitlement J. Adam Carter and Duncan Pritchard

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8. Moorean Pragmatics, Social Comparisons, and Common Knowledge Allan Hazlett

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9. Internalism and Entitlement to Rules and Methods Joshua Schechter

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Part III. Engaging Wright’s Project 10. Full Blooded Entitlement Martin Smith

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11. Pluralist Consequentialist Anti-Scepticism Nikolaj J. L. L. Pedersen

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12. Against (Neo-Wittgensteinian) Entitlements Annalisa Coliva

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13. The Truth Fairy and the Indirect Epistemic Consequentialist Daniel Y. Elstein and C. S. I. Jenkins

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14. Knowledge for Nothing Patrick Greenough

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Index

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Acknowledgements This edited collection is the result of the editors’ shared interest in different brands of epistemic entitlement. Peter first heard Tyler Burge use the phrase ‘entitlement’ as an undergraduate at UCLA. Peter then regularly attended Burge’s seminars at UCLA for nine years after returning to Southern California to start his appointment at UC Riverside. After completing a dissertation under the supervision of Crispin Wright at St. Andrews, Nikolaj moved to UCLA with a postdoc fellowship from the Carlsberg Foundation. Nikolaj also attended Burge’s seminars and started organizing regular one-day workshops to get epistemologists in Southern California together on a semiregular basis. The meetings were sponsored by Nikolaj’s Carlsberg funding and were usually held in Dodd 399 at UCLA. The workshops were run under the heading the “Southern California Epistemology Workshop” and later renamed the “Southern California Epistemology Network” (which is now run by Sven Bernecker, Karl Schafer, and their students at UCI and has also been established as an APA-affiliated group). The meetings brought together epistemologists from Southern California and occasionally from farther afield, including Yuval Avnur, Jason Baehr, Heather Battalay, Sven Bernecker, Tim Black, Paul Boghossian, Mikkel Gerken, Sandy Goldberg, Peter Kung, Luca Moretti, Michael Pace, Masahiro Yamada, Elia Zardini, and Aaron Zimmerman. At some point Nikolaj asked Peter if he would like to co-edit a volume on epistemic entitlement, loosely organized around themes from Tyler Burge’s use of the phrase on the one hand, and Crispin Wright’s on the other. What you see in this volume is the result. Tony Brueckner was another regular participant in Burge’s seminar. That’s when we first got to know Tony. We were blessed to get to know him much better over the years. Tony unfortunately died in April 2014. We got to know Jon Altschul largely through his participation in the Network. We both remember talks on Burge, entitlement, and brains-in-vats. Jon died suddenly in February 2016. We are moved by the opportunity to publish here a paper they wrote together soon after we invited them to contribute. We have chosen to dedicate this volume to their memory. We are deeply grateful to all of our contributors for all the time and effort they put into their outstanding essays, and for their generous patience. Peter is grateful for opportunities to spend time thinking about epistemic entitlement at the Northern Institute of Philosophy, Oxford University, the Cologne Center for Contemporary Epistemology in the Kantian Tradition, and sunny Southern California, at UCLA, UC Irvine, and UC Riverside. He is especially grateful for research support from the UC Riverside Academic Senate and from the three Deans he has had the pleasure to serve over the past seven years. Peter would also like to thank his partner James Jhun for his unbounded encouragement and continuous support.

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Nikolaj is grateful to the Carlsberg Foundation for the funding that made it possible to start the Southern California Epistemology Workshop and Network. He is also grateful to both Crispin Wright and Tyler Burge for discussion of topics touched on in this volume. We are very grateful to Martin Noble who copy-edited the volume. And of course we couldn’t have pulled any of this off without the expert guidance and unwavering support of our editor, Peter Momtchiloff. Peter J. Graham Riverside, California Nikolaj J. L. L. Pedersen Seoul, South Korea

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Contributors J A, Loyola University New Orleans Z B, Sam Houston State University A B, University of California, Santa Barbara T B, University of California, Los Angeles J. A C, University of Glasgow A C, University of California, Irvine D Y. E, University of Leeds M G, University of Southern Denmark P J. G, University of California, Riverside P G, University of St. Andrews A H, Washington University in St. Louis C S. I. J, University of British Columbia N J. L. L. P, Yonsei University D P, University of California, Irvine/University of Edinburgh L R, University of Cologne J S, Brown University M S, University of Edinburgh E S, Rutgers University, New Brunswick

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1 Introduction and Overview Two Entitlement Projects Peter J. Graham, Nikolaj J. L. L. Pedersen, Zachary Bachman, and Luis Rosa

1.1 Putting Entitlement(s) in Context 1.1.1 Internalism, externalism, and the skeptical challenge For most of the twentieth century, in a tradition stretching back at least to Descartes, epistemology was dominated by internalist, typically hyper-intellectualist, antiskeptical approaches to knowledge and justification. The point of epistemology, as many practitioners saw it, was to rebut the skeptic in a non-question-begging manner by discovering justifications within our perspectives or point of view that established the existence and general features of the external world. Justifications would then be arguments, accessible on reflection to the justified individual, that cited other elements of the individual’s perspective (her sensations, perceptions, and beliefs, and patterns among these inner, psychological states—what “evidentialist” epistemologists call the individual’s evidence), that in turn combined with self-evident principles of reason to form persuasive rationalizing non-question-begging arguments for the conclusion that our beliefs about the external world, largely caused and sustained by sensory perception, are for the most part correct. Knowledge and justification were then entirely a function of the introspectively accessible elements of the knowing individual’s perspective, combined with consciously thought bridge premises. Hilary Kornblith helpfully called this the “arguments on paper” thesis. An individual’s knowledge and justification in effect turned on the arguments that the individual could write down on a piece of paper from non-question-begging premises— premises that did not presume knowledge of external reality—to substantive conclusions about the nature of external reality. An individual believer would then not only know that there’s a bottle there on the table, but also be in a position to know that she knows that there’s a bottle there on the table. The job of the epistemologist was then to discover and make explicit the form and content of these arguments. The epistemologist would reveal the structure and extent of our propositional justification for justified beliefs and knowledge about the external world and our knowledge of our knowledge. Descartes started this project in the modern period, and it dominated epistemology through most of the twentieth century. Burge’s chapter helpfully Peter J. Graham, Nikolaj J. L. L. Pedersen, Zachary Bachman, and Luis Rosa, Introduction and Overview In: Epistemic Entitlement. Edited by: Peter J. Graham and Nikolaj J. L. L. Pedersen, Oxford University Press (2020). © the several contributors. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198713524.003.0001

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reviews some of this history. Some epistemologists today still largely see this task as the task for epistemology. By the turn of the twenty-first century, these epistemologists fell into a distinct minority. Two considerations stand out in our minds. The first is that this conception of knowledge objectionably hyper-intellectualizes ordinary empirical knowledge. If empirical knowledge requires non-question-begging justifications formulated, however poorly and sketchily, in the mind of the knowing individual, then very few individuals will know anything at all about the external world. For very few individuals can cite the relevant evidence, think and understand the bridge principles, and put two and two together. They frequently lack the required concepts, metarepresentational abilities, and argumentative skills. Surely non-philosophers know a great deal. Surely young children and animals capable of propositional thought know about their surroundings. Surely empirical knowledge is not the sole position of a sophisticated intellectual elite. Scientia is one thing; knowledge is another. A chorus of authors have made this point, starting in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Second, if empirical knowledge and justification really did require anti-skeptical, non-question-begging assurances drawn entirely from accessible elements in the individual’s perspective, then empirical knowledge is doomed, even for the sophisticated elite. There is just no rebutting the skeptic on his own terms. The elements of our perspective—our “internal” evidence, as it were—just isn’t enough on its own to provide non-question-begging assurances. This doesn’t mean we have to rebut the skeptic for empirical knowledge. Far from it. We can know a great deal—and so the skeptic’s denial of empirical knowledge is mistaken—even if we cannot prove, in a non-question-begging manner, that we have empirical knowledge. Though taking the skeptic on in his own terms is still a venerable pursuit among a handful of epistemologists, few believe it will ever succeed. It’s like the philosopher’s stone of epistemology. Thus, if we are forced to choose between skepticism about our knowledge of the external world on the one hand and a non-traditional, non-internalist theory of knowledge and justification on the other, we should choose the latter. Since the fall of traditional epistemology’s emphasis on refuting the skeptic, two traditions have emerged in analytic epistemology: externalism and (moderate) internalism. Both largely drop engaging with the skeptic as a pre-requisite. Both tend to drop hyper-intellectualist requirements as well, the externalist more so than the (moderate) internalist. The core externalist idea is that justification is not solely a function of what’s within the individual’s accessible perspective or point of view. Justification in the broad sense (in the sense required for all forms of knowledge), externalists argue, involves more than the internal, accessible, psychological elements in the individual’s point of view. Justification in the broad sense involves supplementation from elements “outside” of the individual’s perspective. What’s “in” the mind (what’s in the individual’s perspective) isn’t enough. That’s the truth, as it were, in skepticism: focusing exclusively on what’s in your mind, you won’t find a route back to truth and knowledge about the external world. Empirical warrant does not supervene only on the individual’s internal perspective or point of view, but requires supplementation from elements external to the individual’s point of view. The job of epistemology

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from the externalist point of view is to identify the “external” supplements. What are they? Why do they underwrite empirical warrant? To what extent do they supplement internal elements that traditional internalists emphasize, and to what extent do they supplant those elements? The core (moderate) internalist idea is that justification (in the broad sense) is solely a function of what’s within or “internal” to the individual’s perspective or point of view. That’s the truth, as it were, in the traditional epistemological project: to find justification for beliefs about what is outside of the mind, look to what is inside the mind. But the contemporary internalist is much more relaxed or liberal (hence “moderate”) about empirical justification than the traditional internalist epistemologist. The contemporary internalist largely drops the requirement that empirical justification requires dialectical defeat of the skeptic, and largely drops the requirement that the individual be able to formulate arguments from premises about the individual’s perspective to conclusions about the external world. The contemporary internalist agrees with the traditional epistemologist in not seeking supplementation from factors outside of the individual’s perspective or point of view to understand empirical justification. Empirical justification, the contemporary moderate internalist asserts, supervenes on factors only within the individual’s perspective or point of view. Wittgenstein and Quine played important roles in setting the stage for the arrival of externalist thinking in epistemology. Early and influential externalists include David Armstrong, Fred Dretske, Alvin Goldman, Robert Nozick, Alvin Plantinga, and Ernest Sosa, among many others. Goldman and Sosa have independently carried the torch for over forty years. Externalism is now a powerful, mainstream approach throughout epistemology. A fundamental tenet is that justification requires our belief-forming competencies and processes to produce and sustain reliably true beliefs. Reliability supplements perspective. Internalist epistemologists who straddle the two centuries include Robert Audi, Laurence Bonjour, Earl Conee, Richard Feldman, Richard Fumerton, Susan Haack, Keith Lehrer, and John Pollock. Among these, Bonjour, Fumerton, and Lehrer stand out as holding on, where they can, to the traditional idea that empirical justification must survive an encounter with the skeptic.

1.1.2 Two uses for ‘entitlement’: Crispin Wright and Tyler Burge The present volume was conceived as a venue to contribute to two major trends in epistemology, both associated with the phrase “epistemic entitlement.” The first is the externalist project, in particular Tyler Burge’s externalist project in epistemology, best known from his papers “Content Preservation” (1993) and “Perceptual Entitlement” (2003). Burge introduced ‘entitlement’ to name a kind of truth-conducive, knowledge supporting epistemic warrant, distinct from justification, the other kind of truth-conducive, knowledge supporting epistemic warrant.¹ The second is Crispin Wright’s engagement with different forms of skepticism, best known from his paper “On Epistemic Entitlement: Warrant for Nothing (and ¹ Pace Plantinga and his followers, for Burge (and many of our other authors) warrant does not guarantee truth. Though warrant contributes to and conduces knowledge, warrant is not “that, whatever it is, which makes the difference between knowledge and true belief.”

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  

Foundations for Free)” (2004) and elaborated more recently in “On Epistemic Entitlement (II): Welfare State Epistemology” (2014). According to Wright, though we might not be able to refute the skeptic on his or her own terms, we might still have plenty to say. Wright introduced ‘entitlement’ to name a kind of non-evidential right to accept (to trust, presuppose, or take for granted) Wittgensteinian cornerstone propositions, a kind of right that makes it rational to claim knowledge, where this right is distinct from evidential, truth-supporting justifications. Even though the engagement with the skeptic no longer occupies center stage, engaging the skeptic is still a mainstay of contemporary epistemology, and Wright advances one of the more prominent positions in the contemporary discussion. This volume then discusses issues raised by, and surrounding, the work of two influential contemporary philosophers who think that epistemology should encompass two species of warrant, justification, and entitlement. For this reason, Burge and Wright share a commitment to a sort of epistemic pluralism. They both think that epistemology cannot be done adequately with one type of warrant, and hence introduce and draw a distinction between two species: justification and entitlement. Besides Burge’s chapter, the other chapters that directly engage Burge are from Gerken, Graham, and Brueckner and Altschul. Other chapters in the volume that take up and extend the broadly externalist project in epistemology are from Sosa, Carter and Pritchard, Hazlett, and Schechter. The chapters engaging Wright and Wright’s project are from Smith, Pedersen, Coliva, Elstein and Jenkins, and Greenough. In the rest of this section we sketch the differing approaches between Burge and Wright. We will then go on in the sections following to sketch and discuss the individual chapters that make up the volume. Because we’ll say a good deal about Burge’s approach when discussing his chapter in Section 1.2 of the introduction, we won’t go into the details just yet for Burge’s approach. ...  ’  :       To orient readers to Wright’s project, we’ll provide an overview. We’ll then provide a brief comparison with Burge’s project. We shall review Burge’s account in detail in Section 1.2. We hope you will go away with a good sense of the different senses Wright and Burge put to ‘warrant,’ ‘justification,’ and ‘entitlement.’ Wright is first and foremost engaging with the skeptic. Wright agrees with the skeptic that we possess no non-question-begging way of showing that we are not dreaming, that there is an external world, that our eyes are functioning normally and that we are in normal conditions, that the past conforms to our memories and evidence, that other minds really do exist, and that nature is largely uniform. What matters for Wright—and for understanding his project—is seeing what he thinks this shows. He doubts this shows we actually lack knowledge or justification to believe external world propositions (that’s a bottle on the table, for example), propositions about the past (I just walked back to the office), propositions about other minds (Jones is angry), or propositions about the future or the unobserved (your car is still in your garage). He grants that, perhaps, an externalist theory of knowledge and justification might be correct so that, in fact, if the right conditions obtain, we do know and justifiably believe these ordinary, everyday propositions (Wright 2004: 209–10).

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Rather, Wright thinks the skeptic’s challenge shows we do not know that we know these things. Wright’s concern is then the possibility that this inability to know (in a non-question begging way) that we know these everyday propositions threatens something important to us, namely our rational right to claim knowledge for these everyday propositions. Wright is out to show this isn’t so. Wright is out to show—through a priori reflection and self-knowledge (Wright 2004: 204, 209; Wright 2014: 220, 240–1)—that it can still be rational to claim that we know (many of) these everyday propositions, even if we do not (and possibly cannot) know through a priori and self-knowledge that we know these things. “What is put in doubt by skeptical argument is not our possession of any knowledge or justified belief . . . [but] rather our right to claim knowledge and justified belief ” (Wright 2004: 210). Wright’s project of “making out entitlements” is designed to address this doubt, to show that, in fact, despite what the skeptic has shown, we still enjoy a rational right to claim knowledge and justified belief. Wright’s “entitlement” project then sets out to show why it is rational for us to claim that we know these things. It is rational, he argues, provided we have an entitlement to accept (the relevant) cornerstone propositions for the everyday propositions. What is cornerstone proposition? What is it to accept such a proposition? And what is it to have an entitlement to accept such a proposition? “Call a proposition a cornerstone for a given region of thought just in case it would follow from a lack for warrant for it that one could not rationally claim warrant for any belief in that region” (Wright 2004: 168).

Here are some examples (Wright 2014: 216–17): • Nature is pretty uniform; there is a lot of natural law out there. • Others have mental states which are broadly manifest in what they say and do, and their circumstances. • There is an external material world, broadly manifest in normal sensory experience. • The world did not just come into being five minutes ago, replete with apparent traces of more ancient history, but genuinely has such a history, disclosed, in the round, in presently available data. If you didn’t have a rational right to claim that there is an external material world that we learn about through sense perception, then you could not rationally claim to know or justifiably believe that you have hands on the basis of your sensory experiences as of hands. So to have a right to claim we know everyday propositions, we need a right to claim cornerstone propositions. What is it to accept a cornerstone proposition? It is not to believe the proposition, but to trust that it is true, to act on the assumption that it is true, to presuppose it, to take it for granted (Wright 2004: 175–7, 194). What is an entitlement to accept a cornerstone proposition? Since the skeptic has shown that we lack an a priori, evidential right to claim that these propositions are true, our right to accept a cornerstone proposition must be non-evidential. Call

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non-evidential rational rights to accept something (to act on the assumption that it is true or to take it for granted)—rights that do not show or establish that something is true through evidence of truth—entitlements. Entitlements are then rational rights (warrants) to accept (to trust) cornerstone propositions, and so rational rights (warrants) to claim to know cornerstone and everyday propositions. As Wright puts it, “an essential feature of the notion of entitlement [is] that it is a matter of rational trust” (Wright 2004: 205). Entitlement, for Wright, is not a matter of evidential warrant for belief. In other words, entitlements for Wright really are non-evidential in the sense that they are “warrants” to “accept” a proposition that “consist neither in the possession of evidence for [the proposition’s] truth, nor in the occurrence of any kind of cognitive achievement—for example, being in a perceptual state that represents it to one that P, or seeming to recollect that P—which would normally be regarded as apt to ground knowledge or justified belief that P” (Wright 2014: 214). Entitlements are rational warrants to accept cornerstone propositions, rights that form the basis of our rights to claim knowledge of such propositions. Beliefs importantly differ from acceptances. Beliefs are warranted evidentially (Wright 2004: 192–4). Acceptances are not beliefs; they are warranted nonevidentially. “ ‘Warrant for nothing’ [non-evidential warrant] is entitlement to trust. It is in the nature of trust that it gets by with little or no evidence. That is exactly how it contrasts with belief proper, and it is not per se irrational on account of the contrast. Entitlement is rational trust” (Wright 2004: 194). An entitlement to a cornerstone proposition shows why it is rational to “repose confidence” in a cornerstone proposition even when “one has no evidence or other form of cognitive warrant” for the proposition (Wright 2014: 221). Wright’s entitlement strategy is then a “skeptical solution” to the skeptical challenge in the following sense. Wright grants to the skeptic that we have no evidential right (no evidential warrant) to claim that we know everyday propositions and cornerstone propositions (we do not know that we know these things—the skeptic is right about that), but for all that we have a non-evidential right (an entitlement) to claim that we know these propositions (we have a right to accept these propositions). Though the skeptic is right (in one sense), there “is nevertheless no irrationality or capriciousness, in our proceeding in the ways we do—that we are warranted in so proceeding but warranted in a different way” (Wright 2004: 206). We are warranted (we have a rational right) non-evidentially to accept these propositions; we thereby have an entitlement to claim knowledge, rationally so. That’s Wright’s idea. Explaining what entitlement is, and what role it plays in the debate with the skeptic, however, is just the beginning of the battle. To succeed (on his own terms), Wright has to show through a priori reflection and self-knowledge that we have such entitlements. And trying to show that we do comprises the bulk of his two papers on the topic. He pursues four strategies for establishing entitlement (or four kinds or models of entitlement): strategic entitlement (modeled on Reichenbach’s pragmatic defense of induction), entitlement of cognitive project (modeled on the idea that some projects are so basic we cannot justify them by any other project), entitlement of rational deliberation (modeled on the idea that as agents we must deliberate on how to act, and in so doing we must rely on empirical subjunctive conditionals in our reasoning), and entitlements of substance (modeled on the

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Kantian–Strawsonian idea that to have a concept of experience we must have a conception of bodies located objectively in space and time). A good deal of the subsequent literature, and the chapters in Part III, take up these attempts. We hope we’ve said enough to pique your interest in the chapters challenging Wright. It is an ambitious project. Can it be carried through? ...    ’   If that’s Wright’s project and his particular use of ‘entitlement,’ how does Wright’s project compare with Burge’s, and how does Burge’s use of ‘entitlement’ compare with Wright’s? Burge and Wright both distinguish between “entitlement” and “justification” and both say they are species of “warrant.” Even so, they mean very different things by these words, for they embed these terms in very different projects. We’re about to review Burge’s view on some of these issues in some detail, so here we will be brief. Once you’ve read through Section 1.2 on Burge, you may wish to return to the next few paragraphs again. If the differences are not clear on a first pass, they should be a second time through. Wright is engaging with the skeptic. Burge, for the most part, is not (though in his chapter he discusses a number of issues surrounding skepticism, including Moore’s argument, warrant transfer, closure, and so on). Burge’s project is very different from Wright’s. Burge is largely an externalist reliabilist, focusing on first-order knowledge and warrant, especially perceptual knowledge and warrant. For Burge, warrant (of any kind) is a constitutive contribution to knowledge, and so attaches in the first instance to belief. Wright grants the existence of such “externalist” knowledge, but notes its irrelevance to the skeptical challenge (as he sees it) and his skeptical solution. Wright’s target is the second-order claim to know. Here again is Wright: If knowledge, and justification, are essentially environmental—are constituted by (perhaps reflectively inscrutable) contingencies of our cognitive powers and the way that they enable us to interact with the external world—then no mere skeptical paradox, developed in the armchair, can show that we have no knowledgeable or justified beliefs. So why bother trying to make out entitlements? . . . what is put in doubt by skeptical argument is—of course—not our possession of any knowledge or justified belief—not if knowledgeability, or justification, are conceived as constituted in aspects of the external situation in which we come to a belief. (How indeed could armchair ruminations show anything about that?) What is put in doubt is rather our right to claim knowledge and justified belief. It is this which the project of making out entitlements tries to address and which, on which seems to me to be a correct assumption, externalism is impotent to address. (Wright 2004: 210, emphasis added)

Wright and Burge are then largely engaged in different projects, at different levels. Wright explicitly notes this difference (Wright 2014: 223). That’s two very different projects, with very different uses of the word ‘entitlement.’ Wright introduced the term ‘entitlement’ for his engagement with the skeptic, for a non-evidential right to accept cornerstone propositions, a right knowable a priori, that establishes a right to claim to know things, a right that may exist even if, as it turns out, the proposition is false. Wright contrasts entitlement (a nonevidential, non-truth-conducive right to accept) with justification and knowledge

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  

(evidential, truth-conducive rights to believe). Wright introduced ‘entitlement’ for a very different purpose than Burge. As we’ll see below, Burge introduced ‘entitlement’ to draw a distinction between two kinds of (evidential, truth-supporting) warrant—entitlement and justification—where warrant is a constitutive contribution to knowledge (warrants are reliable routes to truth; warrants (in Burge’s sense) are ipso facto “evidential” (in Wright’s sense)). For Burge, justifications are warrants through reasons. Entitlements are warrants without reasons. We’ll say below what Burge means by reasons, but for now the idea that reasons are always propositional contributions to warrant shall suffice. Where Wright draws a distinction between justification (truth-conducive warrants—“Wright” justifications) and entitlements (non-evidential warrants—“Wright” entitlements), Burge draws a distinction between two kinds of truth-conducive warrants: warrants through reasons (“Burge” justifications) and warrants without reasons (“Burge” entitlements). Burge’s project (and so his distinction between “entitlement” and “justification”) is not about entitlements in Wright’s sense at all. Wright also notices this difference in terminology and finds nothing objectionable in granting Burge’s distinction between two kinds of evidential, truth-conducive warrants. In Wright-speak, evidential justifications can divide into propositional evidential warrants (reasons, in Burge’s sense) and non-propositional evidential warrants (entitlements, in Burge’s sense). Wright sees “no objection in constraining the notion of justification” so that justifications always involve propositional warrants (2014: 223). The different projects entail an interesting contrast that Wright also notes. Entitlements in Wright’s sense contrast with broadly externalist [warrants], [for Wright-entitlements] are essentially recognizable by means of traditionally internalist resources—a priori reflection and self-knowledge—and are generally independent of the character of our actual cognitisve situation in the wider world—indeed, are designed to be so. (Wright 2004: 209–10)

Wright-entitlements (if knowable) are knowable a priori. They are non-evidential rights to claim to know cornerstone propositions. Externalist warrants, on the other hand, are not in general knowable through a priori reflection and self-knowledge, but are generally only known empirically to obtain, contingently so. In sum, Burge and Wright are engaged in very different projects, and so give different meanings to the words ‘entitlement,’ ‘justification,’ and ‘warrant.’ In the rest of this introduction we provide our own interpretive summaries of the chapters.

1.2 Burge: “Entitlement: The Basis of Empirical Warrant” The 1970s and 1980s saw not only the emergence of externalist thinking in epistemology as we just saw, but also externalist thinking in the philosophy of language and mind. Influenced by Wittgenstein and Rogers Albritton, Hilary Putnam argued that what is in one’s descriptive perspective or point of view is not enough to determine the reference of natural kind terms. Saul Kripke and Keith Donnellan argued that what is in one’s descriptive perspective or point of view is not enough to determine the reference of proper names. David Kaplan and Howard Wettstein similarly made the

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case for demonstratives and indexicals. Reference, these philosophers argued, requires supplementation from factors external to the individual’s descriptive point of view. Burge argued an even deeper point, viz. that an individual’s perspective or point of view—the individual’s representational states, percepts, concepts, and thoughts— themselves depend on factors outside of the individual’s brain and bodily history, construed narrowly. Burge’s point was not just that one’s descriptive thoughts were not enough to single out the references of one’s thoughts, but that thought itself—and representational mind in general, including perception—depends on relations outside of the individual’s neurophysiology and bodily behavior, narrowly individuated. To think about and perceptually represent bodies, colors, shapes, textures, substances, stuffs, and natural kinds, one needs to stand in causal-historical and explanatory patterns of interactions with instances of bodies, colors, shapes, natural kinds, and so on. Representation—perception and thought—requires supplementation from factors external to our bodies, narrowly construed. Along with more reductively inclined philosophers like Fred Dretske and Ruth Millikan, Tyler Burge ushered in the externalist (anti-individualist) revolution in the philosophy of mind. In the late 1980s and early 1990s Burge began to publish in epistemology, most importantly “Content Preservation” (1993) and “Perceptual Entitlement” (2003), among others. In these papers he advances a sophisticated reliabilist externalist account of epistemic warrant that incorporates his anti-individualist account of representational mind, while acknowledging the importance of the individual’s perspective or point of view.² Burge’s project in epistemology intertwines with his project in the philosophy of mind, for he sees epistemic norms as standards for the wellfunctioning of cognitive competencies. To understand epistemology, you must also know your psychology. And just as psychology requires supplementation from external relations, epistemology requires supplementation from external relations as well. Burge’s chapter “Entitlement: The Basis of Empirical Warrant” lays out his account of epistemic warrant within a normative framework. The framework connects functions, norms and goods: epistemic warrant is a good that consists in meeting norms a priori associated with belief ’s representational and epistemic functions. The functions include truth and being epistemically supported. The norms involve standards for reliably producing true beliefs through normal functioning. Applied to perception, Burge’s view of warrant is then a broadly reliabilist, teleological account where perceptual beliefs are prima facie warranted when formed and sustained through a well-functioning, reliable belief-forming competence. This view is moderate foundationalist: perceptual beliefs do not depend on inferential background support from other warranted beliefs for their prima facie warrant. Burge’s paper has six sections. The first lays out his positive account of warrant. The second illuminatingly covers some of the history of epistemology and argues

² So far, Burge has collected many of his papers in three volumes (Burge 2005, 2007, 2013). The first was on Frege, and includes papers on a priori warrant in particular. The second collects many of his papers in the philosophy of mind, and touches on epistemological issues. The third is epistemological through and through, collecting papers on the nature and epistemology of memory, self-knowledge, reason, understanding, reflection, and testimony. We believe another volume is in preparation, collecting papers on the nature and epistemology of perception.

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    against the widely held (internalist) view that epistemic warrant hinges entirely on psychological states and events in the individual’s psychology, and their relations to one another. It also addresses the “clairvoyance” and “demon-world” cases against reliability theories of warrant. The third discusses Moore’s anti-skeptical argument, closure, and warrant transmission. The fourth discusses bootstrapping and “easyknowledge” objections as applied to his account of epistemic warrant. The fifth raises an objection from Bayesian confirmation theory to moderate foundationalism. Burge addresses the objection by examining in detail how Bayesian subjective probability theory fits into empirical visual psychology and his account of perceptual entitlement. The sixth concludes. If that is not enough, the footnotes address understanding, warrant for statistical inference, empirical versus a priori warrant, “consequentialism” in epistemology, de re belief, the generality problem, Sosa’s virtue epistemology, Goldman’s reliabilism(s), phenomenology and warrant, unconscious perception, modular reasons, the individual versus sub-individual distinction (the personal versus sub-personal distintion), blightsight, disjunctivism, epistemic dogmatism, contextualism about knowledge claims, closure, and more. Burge’s chapter contains something for nearly everyone in contemporary epistemology. Though it addresses warrant and cognition in general, Burge’s chapter focuses on perception. Alongside his other papers on the nature and epistemology of perception (especially “Perceptual Entitlement” (2003) and his book Origins of Objectivity (2010)), “Entitlement: The Basis for Empirical Warrant” constitutes a tour de force in the metaphysics and epistemology of perceptual belief. Burge’s chapter can be read as an extended defense of his teleological, reliabilist, moderate foundationalist view of perceptual warrant, developing the framework and responding to a host of standard and more recent objections to reliabilist and moderate foundationalist views of warrant, especially objections to the possibility of empirical entitlement. In the remainder of our introduction to his chapter, we will sketch our understanding of his account of warrant and his distinction between justification and entitlement. We realize we may make more than one mistake when interpreting Burge’s ideas, but we hope you find our interpretation useful. We would like to cover more, as there is so much of interest in Burge’s chapter worth introducing, especially his lengthy discussion of Bayesian conformation theory as applied to perceptual psychology and perceptual warrant. Because of the length of Burge’s chapter, we won’t provide a summary of these topics. On the other hand, because of their importance to the contemporary debate and to understanding Burge’s project, we will go into detail on two main topics—the nature of warrant and the distinction between entitlement and justification. This should also be especially helpful to those new to his work.

1.2.1 Epistemic warrant: a good, reliable route to truth Burge thinks knowledge results from the manifestation of a cognitive competence. A competence is a competence to do something, such as hit a home run, speak a language, or accurately represent objects and their properties in the physical environment. In general, we explain success that manifests competence through the normal functioning of the competence in normal conditions. To manifest a

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competence is to succeed through its exercise non-luckily, non-accidentally so; manifestation entails the non-lucky, non-accidental successful exercise of the competence. Prima facie warrant takes a belief very close (and commonly all the way) to knowledge. Warrant makes the connection to truth “especially secure” by being a reliable route to truth. For Burge, roughly and approximately, knowledge results from the manifestation of a competence to form and sustain true beliefs, reliably so. Warrant is a constitutive contribution to knowledge, a constitutive contribution to manifesting a competence. Warrant is then the exercise of the competence, that in normal conditions manifests the competence, absent counter-warrants, internal incoherence, and Gettier failures. Warrant certifies or marks a belief as knowledge, absent counter-warrants, internal incoherence, and Gettier failures. Warrant puts belief on a good, reliable route to truth and knowledge. Put this abstractly, Burge’s view of warrant lies near “virtue reliabilist,” “competence,” and “proper functionalist” views.³ If knowledge entails success through normal functioning in normal conditions, what fixes normal functioning and normal conditions? Burge gives an etiological, explanatory answer: look to the explanatory connections between the subject matter of the competence (on the one hand) and the formation and nature of the competence (on the other) and you will find formative patterns between the subject-matter and the competence that fix normal functioning and normal conditions. This applies generally for epistemic competences. We will explain how it applies to perception (Burge 2003). Perception is a competence to accurately represent objects and attributes in the physical environment. The competence was formed and individuated through past patterns of interaction between the system and its subject-matter. This is the basis of Burge’s perceptual anti-individualism; perceptual states are what they are (they have their contents, and so their natures) because of past patterns of interaction between the system and the broader physical environment. The patterns begin with objects and their attributes in the environment; continue through a medium such as light; impact sensory receptors that in turn trigger processing within the perceptual system and then eventuate in perceptual representations that in turn guide behavior in the organism’s environment. These past patterns of interaction partly explain the formation and nature of the perceptual system, its perceptual state types, and so its ability to accurately represent objects and their attributes in the physical environment. Higher animals, especially humans, then form true perceptual beliefs though conceptualizations of accurate perceptual representations (reformatting perceptual representations into propositional form). The formative patterns of interaction specify what counts as normal functioning and normal conditions. Normal functioning is working or operating the way the system worked or operated when it was formed, when it came to be what it is; formative functioning (functioning along formative pathways forged by formative patterns within ³ “Virtue Reliabilists” include John Greco, Chris Kelp, Lisa Miracci, Duncan Pritchard, Ernest Sosa, and John Turri, among others. “Proper Functionalists” include Michael Bergmann, Kenneth Boyce, Peter Graham, Ruth Millikan, Andrew Moon, and Alvin Plantinga, among others. Burge notes some similarities and differences with Sosa and Plantinga in “Perceptual Entitlement” and in the present chapter.

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    the psychology) determines normal functioning. Normal conditions are then those kinds of conditions where the system, in working or operating normally, came to be what it is, where it acquired the capacity to represent environmental objects and attributes; formative environments determine normal environments.⁴ The formative patterns ground a non-accidental explanatory path to success. Normal functioning in normal conditions leads to truth. When a perceptual belief is occasioned along this path, the belief is formed on a good route to truth. This path is non-accidentally and explanatorily associated with the nature of the competence; it’s the non-lucky, non-deviant route. That’s what makes it a good route. When perception manifests competence, it runs along this path. In general, warrant runs on such paths, on good routes to truth. Different competence, different formative patterns; different formative patterns, different pathways; different pathways, different good routes to truth. Hence Burge’s slogan: warrant is a good route to truth. Malfunction—failure to function normally or to operate well—then undermines warrant, for then the belief does not derive from the competence but the malfunction; the belief is then not on a good route to truth; it has strayed from the path, even if deviantly or luckily true. Other paths to truth are non-explanatory, accidental paths, at best. Success on any other route does not manifest competence. Only success on good routes manifests competence. Warrant, however, is more than a good route to truth. Warrant is also a reliable route to truth. Being a good route is not enough for being a reliable route; not all good routes are automatically reliable. A normally functioning exercise of a competence in normal conditions does not necessarily succeed. Competences are not necessarily reliable, let alone infallible. World-class major league batters strike out more often than they get a hit, let alone hit a home run. A cognitive competence may be unreliable even in normal conditions when functioning normally, like the professional baseball player at bat. Even perceptual competencies, Burge insists (see especially section II of Burge’s chapter and the appendix to Peter Graham’s chapter), need not reliably represent in normal conditions when functioning normally. The rabbit’s danger representation is inaccurate more often than right. Warrant is a good, reliable route to truth. The competence must also be reliably successful in normal conditions when functioning normally; exercise must manifest competence more often than not. The pathways must then be reliable routes to truth. Hence the patterns of interaction between the competence and its subject matter must not only explain the formation and nature of the competence, they must also underwrite and explain the reliability of the competence; they must ground general explanations of the reliability of the competence in normal conditions when functioning normally; the patterns must lay down pathways that comprise a reliable route to truth. Then, and only then, are beliefs appropriately derived from the competence certified or marked as knowledge, absent counter-warrants, internal incoherence, or Gettier failures. As we noted already, Burge places epistemic warrant within a normative framework. Warrant for Burge consists in fulfilling epistemic norms. These norms are

⁴ Compare Millikan 1984; Graham 2012, 2014.

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standards a priori associated with belief ’s representational function. The representational function of belief is to be true. This representational function does not reduce to practical, biological functions. For every function, there are four norms a priori associated with the function: (i) function fulfillment, (ii) to operate well in serving the function on the occasion, (iii) to reliably fulfill the function, and (iv) to operate well on the occasion and to reliably fulfill the function. These norms are natural norms, in that they are not guiding norms. The individual need not be aware of, or even be able to be aware of, the norms. Fulfilling these norms are goods for the functional item. It is good for a belief to be true, for the belief-forming competence to operate well, and so on. These are goods for the functional item, not necessarily goods for the individual or goods all-things-considered. Epistemic warrant consists in fulfilling the fourth norm. Warrant then entails the normal functioning of the belief-forming competence, and the reliability of the competence in normal conditions. Meeting these norms is then a normative achievement, a good for the belief qua belief (Burge 2003, 2010, present chapter). Warrant is a standing in the space of natural norms, norms associated a priori with representational functions.

1.2.2 Two kinds of warrant: justification vs. entitlement In ‘Content Preservation’ and ‘Perceptual Entitlement’ Burge distinguished entitlement and justification in terms of access: justifications arose from reasons that were accessible to the subject; entitlements are contributions to warrant that need not be accessible to the subject. Burge has since abandoned this formulation (Burge 2013: 26–8). What then is Burge’s current basis for the distinction between entitlement and justification, two kinds of warrant? As we just saw, warrants in general are good, reliable routes to truth; they are exercises of cognitive competencies that reliably lead to truth and knowledge in normal conditions when functioning normally. The distinction between justification and entitlement would then be a distinction between two kinds of routes, two kinds of competencies. What’s the difference?⁵ Burge says justifications are warrants from, or involving, reasons. Justifications are routes to truth (exercises of cognitive competences) that involve reasons. When a theoretical reason is a good, reliable route to truth on which a belief is formed or sustained, the reason is a justification for the belief. Entitlements are then warrants without reasons. Entitlements are reliable routes to truth (exercises of cognitive competences) that do not involve reasons. When a belief is on a good route to truth that is not a reason, the route to truth is not a justification but an entitlement. What then does Burge mean by a reason?⁶ For Burge, reasons are actual and potential answers to ‘why’ questions, steps in explanations. As such they are necessarily propositional. Hence non-propositional perceptual representations, sensations ⁵ Burge now holds that justifications may be operative reasons in sub-personal, modular aspects of an individual’s psychology, not (fully) accessible to the whole individual (Burge 2013: 28, 489). Justifications are propositional structures within the individual’s psychology that provide rationalizing explanations for the belief-worthiness of the target belief for the individual, accessible or not. Justifications are elements of the individual’s perspective or point of view, not necessarily the individual’s accessible perceptive or point of view. For extensive discussion of Burge’s distinction and common mischaracterizations, see Graham forthcoming. ⁶ For Burge’s discussions of reasons, see Burge 2013: 192–3, 391–7, 490–5.

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    and worldly states cannot be reasons. Instead reasons are propositional contents, combined with a mode (belief, judgment, intention). Having a reason involves thinking the reason, having a propositional attitude. Theoretical reasons are potential steps in explanation that show why the individual should believe something. They provide a rationalizing explanation for the individual for the credibility of the warranted belief. The argument or explanation need not be second-order or metarepresentational. “It is fundamentally at the same level as the belief: p because r, where p is the content of the belief and r is the reason” (Burge 2013: 490, n. 3). The argument or explanation can be in the individual’s psychology, even if the individual cannot give the explanation. Paradigmatically theoretical reasons are self-evident propositional attitudes (e.g. cogito thoughts or basic logical or mathematical thoughts), and warranted premises in deductive and inductive arguments. With this sketch of Burge’s view of reasons in place, let’s return to the distinction between justification and entitlement. What is justification? Warrant through deductive reasoning is the paradigm case. In deductive reasoning, the individual believes a conclusion on the basis of premises and competence with an inference rule. The premises are then operative reasons contributing to the overall warrant for the conclusion. For example, the warranted belief that the streets are wet inferred from the warranted beliefs that it is raining and that if it is raining then the streets are wet is warranted partly by the warranted premises. These premises are reasons—steps in the explanation of the beliefworthiness of the conclusion for the individual. The warrant for the conclusion is a justification. However, the justification versus entitlement distinction does not align with the distinction between inferential and non-inferential warrant. Some justifications are non-inferential in nature. Burge says cogito (and other self-verifying) thoughts, and our knowledge of basic logical and mathematical truths, are also warranted by reasons. Their warrants are justifications. Why does he say that? He sees these beliefs as warranted through (appropriate) understanding of the self-evident content of these propositions. Believed through understanding, these beliefs contain their own explanation for their belief-worthiness. These propositions contain reasons for themselves (Burge 2013: 18). Warranted by reasons, the warrants are justifications. Justifications are then inferential or non-inferential. Warrants from arguments are inferential justifications, and warrants from understanding self-evidence are noninferential. The justification versus entitlement distinction is not the inferential vs. non-inferential warrant distinction. What is entitlement? Perceptual warrant is the paradigm case. Warrant for a perceptual belief derives from the normal functioning of the reliable perceptual competence and the normal transition from a perceptual representation to a perceptual belief. Perceptual representations are not propositional and so are not reasons. Perceptual beliefs are not self-evident. The transition from perceptual representation to perceptual belief is not an instance of reasoning. Perceptual warrant arises from the perceptual competence. It does not require supplement from other warranted beliefs. Perceptual warrant does not involve or require reasons. Perceptual warrant is an entitlement. Entitlement is warrant without reasons.

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To understand Burge’s distinction, we find it helpful to distinguish between elements in a warrant and the total, overall warrant for a belief. Elements can be operative reasons or elements that are not operative reasons, and the total or overall warrant for a belief can be justification or entitlement. Burge calls operative reasons justifications. Elements that are not operative reasons are contributions to an entitlement. An element of a warrant is a justification when the element is an operative reason in the individual’s psychology. An element is not a justification when it is not a reason. The total warrant for a belief is justification when there is an element in the warrant that is a justification (an operative reason). The total warrant is an entitlement when no element in the warrant is a justification (an operative reason). Many overall warrants often involve operative reasons among the exercises of cognitive capacities responsible for warrant. Hence they are justifications (Burge 2013: 42, 196, 492). Deductive reasoning provides a good example of the mix. Deductive reasoning is a route to truth, provided the premise beliefs are warranted and the individual exercises a reliable competence with deductive reasoning, involving sensitivity to the inference rules. The inference rules, on pain of regress, are not themselves premises. They need not even be represented or representable within the individual’s psychology. The warrant to rely on inference rules is then an entitlement to rely on the rule, not a reason. When the individual infers that the streets are wet, the individual relies on the two warranted premises and her competence with modus ponens. Her warrant to rely on the inference rule is an entitlement, not a reason. The two premise beliefs are reasons. The overall warrant is then a mix of reasons (justifications) and an entitlement to rely on the rule, and so the overall warrant is justification. Furthermore, the warrants for the premise beliefs are often entitlements, not further reasons. Except in cases of self-evidence, warrants for premise beliefs are eventually entitlements, not reasons. Empirical warrants always derive, inevitably, from entitlements, not reasons. Hence Burge’s title: “Entitlement: The Basis of Empirical Warrant.” In a related paper, Burge imagines the possibility of an individual transitioning from a warranted belief to a conclusion, but the starting point does not function as a reason (Burge 2011/2013). He imagines a creature that moves from the belief that is movement in the bushes to the conclusion belief that danger is present, but with no learned evidence of the connection. He imagines the connection was forged entirely through evolution, an innate connection in the individual’s mind. In such a case, though the individual begins with a warranted perceptual belief, that belief does not function as a reason in the individual’s psychology. Nothing in the individual’s perspective rationalizes the transition or explains why the conclusion is beliefworthy. The conclusion belief is then warranted by entitlement, not justification. This means there are inferential entitlements, inferentially warranted beliefs where the warranted premises fail to combine with a competence with a deductive or inductive inferential rule so as to serve as a reason for the conclusion—warranted inference without reasons (Burge 2013). Why does Burge use ‘justification’ for warrants involving reasons? As Burge notes, the ordinary word ‘justification’ is connected to the activity of justifying. When

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    justifying, we argue for the conclusion. We thereby also explain the belief-worthiness of the conclusion. When justifying, we offer a justification. A justification would then be an argument or explanation in the individual’s psychology that explains or shows why the belief is credible for the individual, a rationalizing explanation for the beliefworthiness of the belief for the individual. Having a justification, however, does not require that the individual be able to provide the justification, conceive of the justification as a justification, or even access the justification. Burge does not require that the individual who possesses the justification be able to access the explanation, to evaluate the reasons as reasons, or to give the justification. For Burge, justifications are operative warranting reasons, accessible or not.⁷ Burge’s distinction reminds us of the broad scope of warrant, and the correlative error of focusing too narrowly on reasons, especially critical reasons, in one’s epistemology. Though reasons play an important role in epistemology, reasons are not the only route to truth. Entitlements are equally profound and extensive. Entitlements are involved in perception, memory, interlocution (testimony), self-knowledge, associative beliefformation, and deductive and inductive reasoning. Entitlement is a broad category. Philosophers who insist that warrant is a standing in the “space of reasons” tend to assimilate all warrant to justifications, ignoring or denying entitlements. The normal and reliable functioning of perception and competent transition to perceptual belief falls outside of the “space of reasons” in the “space of causes” and so cannot warrant perceptual beliefs. On these views, the warrant for a perceptual belief comes from other beliefs like “I saw that such and such” or “my visual system is working properly, and it appears to me as if such and such, so probably such and such is the case” or even “the best explanation of the overall patterns of experience and cognition in my mind involves the real-world hypothesis.” These views, Burge repeatedly remarks, hyper-intellectualize perceptual warrant, denying perceptual warrant and knowledge to higher non-human animals, human children, and even ordinary adults. They ignore or deny entitlement. But won’t theories that involve reliability, defenders of the “space of reasons” metaphor retort, end up assimilating knowledge—a normative achievement—to the reliable indications of thermometers and other “non-rational” devices? No. Warrant is not merely reliable correlation. Warrant involves reliable success through the normal functioning of a competence that fulfills norms associated with belief ’s representational function. Warrant, hence entitlement, is a normative achievement. We are not forced to choose between thermometers on the one hand and sophisticated critical reasoners on the other. The space of critical, reflective reasons is a subset of the space of critical reasons, itself a subset of the space of reasons. The space of reasons in turn is a subset of the space of norms. Justification is a standing in the space of reasons; warrant (justification and entitlement) is a standing in the space of norms. Burge’s chapter is an extended defense of this point of view with epistemology. As we noted already, he develops his normative framework in detail, provides historical

⁷ Burge once said justifications were necessarily accessible to the individual. He abandoned that view.

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, , ,  

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context, argues against internalism, and replies to a score of objections, old and new, to reliabilist, moderate foundationalism, including the generality problem, the clairvoyance objection, the new evil demon problem, bootstrapping, easy knowledge, Moore’s anti-skeptical argument, and an objection from Bayesian confirmation theory. It�