Refurbishing Epistemology: A Meta-Epistemological Framework 9783110525458, 9783110519419, 9783110524659

Citation preview

Dominique Kuenzle Refurbishing Epistemology

Epistemic Studies

Philosophy of Science, Cognition and Mind Edited by Michael Esfeld, Stephan Hartmann, Albert Newen

Volume 35

Dominique Kuenzle

Refurbishing Epistemology A Meta-Epistemological Framework

ISBN 978-3-11-051941-9 e-ISBN (PDF) 978-3-11-052545-8 e-ISBN (EPUB) 978-3-11-052465-9 ISSN 2512-5168 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A CIP catalog record for this book has been applied for at the Library of Congress. Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the Internet at http://dnb.dnb.de. © 2017 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston Printing and binding: Hubert und Co. Gmbh & Co. KG, Göttingen ♾ Printed on acid-free paper Printed in Germany www.degruyter.com

Acknowledgements This book is a version of my Habilitationsschrift (Philosophische Fakultät, University of Zürich). I am grateful for the financial support of the University of Zü rich’s Privatdozenten-Stiftung. For their friendship and their help with my ideas, concepts, arguments and the manuscript, many thanks to Georg Brun, Alastair Donlon, Javier Kalhat, Deborah Mühlebach, Peter Schulthess and Nicolas Wüthrich. Stephanie, Frieda and Mathilda: Thank you ever so much for your love, time and perspective. Yes, Frieda, lionfish do get scurvy if they stay on Pluto for too long. And no, dear reader, this isn’t implied by my meta-epistemological framework.

DOI 10.1515/9783110525458-202

Contents Acknowledgements

V

Introduction: Retooling the Epistemic Workshop

1

 Towards a New Meta-Epistemology 7 . First Development: From Conceptual Analysis to Reflective Equilibrium 8 . Second Development: Naturalising Epistemology 15 . Third Development: Kuhn and the Sociology of Scientific 23 Knowledge . Fourth Development: Pragmatist Epistemology 36 56 . Fifth Development: Feminist Epistemology  What Is “Meta-Epistemology”? 68 68 . From Meta-Ethics to Meta-Epistemology . Conceptions of Meta-Epistemology 77 . A Meta-Epistemological Framework 88  Epistemic States and Performances 97 . Epistemological Functionalism 97 . Systems With a Design and Teleological ESPs 107 116 . Social Practice and Social-Normative ESPs . Intentional and Conceptual Epistemic Practice 127 142  Varieties of Norm-Talk . Descriptive and Normative Purport 142 . Norm-Talk: Basic Conditional Normative Statements 153 . Normative Statements With Descriptive Purport 160 . Normative Statements With Normative Purport 171 . Epistemic Norms and Evaluations 176 191  Epistemic Evaluations and Concepts . Content-Specification and Evaluation of ESPs . Epistemic Concepts 205 . Assertion, Belief and Knowledge 213 . Consequences of the Framework 222

192

VIII

Contents

Conclusion

237

Bibliography

239

Author Index

251

Subject Index

253

Introduction: Retooling the Epistemic Workshop According to a widely shared take on the history of philosophy, epistemology enjoyed its heyday in early modern times, beginning with Descartes and culminating in Immanuel Kant’s critical and transcendental philosophy. The great Enlightenment philosophers looked back at a long history of attempts to discover the most general principles at work in reality and decided that enough was enough: how can we even hope to determine the general structure of whatever exists if we are unclear about how we represent the world? If Aristotle, when labelling metaphysics the “first philosophy”, thought of it as having explanatory and logical priority, then he got that wrong. Before we can ask any questions about the nature of what we see, think and talk about, we need to inquire into our own cognitive faculties. Hence the great “epistemological turn” (Sellars 1967) of the Western Enlightenment. When the second half of the twentieth century got under way, things did not look good for epistemology. Another revolution had taken place. The baton of systematic primacy had been passed on to the philosophy of language. Philosophy was now predominantly “linguistic”, attempting to solve or dissolve problems by analysing or reforming the language in which they arise. The epistemological turn gave way to a “linguistic turn”, to quote the title of an influential anthology edited by Richard Rorty (1992 [1967]). With a flair for hyperbolic pronouncements, Rorty himself (1979), following Quine (1969), went as far as interpreting the linguistic turn as not only demoting, but actually killing epistemology altogether. Today epistemology is flourishing once again. Plenty of fruitful research has gone into the analysis or explication of knowledge; sceptical arguments are being re-evaluated; the nature of epistemic justification is being discussed. Virtue epistemologists and theorists of epistemic values exploit parallels between epistemology and normative ethics, social epistemologists reject the individualist presuppositions of traditional epistemology, and feminist epistemology diagnoses and removes gendered ideals built into supposedly neutral and objective epistemic standards. It certainly looks as if the linguistic turn was not quite as deadly to epistemology as it had been made out to be. Despite the lively discussions and productive research activities in contemporary epistemology, however, the questions raised by the linguistic turn have never been fully answered. As a worst case scenario, philosophical epistemology could now be in the position of the proverbial cartoon cat who keeps walking over the precipice into the air, to pay gravity its due only once it looks down and notices that it ought to fall. In the best case, the epistemological age has DOI 10.1515/9783110525458-001

2

Introduction: Retooling the Epistemic Workshop

never ended and the so-called “linguistic turn” was nothing more than a misinterpreted and overblown change in the epistemologist’s methods and conceptual tools. Realistically, though, things are too complex to boil down to either a best or a worst case scenario: contemporary epistemologists are surely well advised to pursue their research, especially with the tools provided by, the standards of clarity demanded by, and in close proximity to, analytically minded philosophy of language and other neighbouring disciplines. The trouble is that we cannot situate contemporary epistemology within philosophy, and especially in relation to the philosophy of language, if our take on its defining traits (viz. its topic, aims, conceptual tools and methodology) is insufficiently explicit. And, judging from contemporary debates, and especially from what tends to be absent from those debates, our take on epistemology’s aims and methodology is indeed insufficiently explicit. What is needed is a conceptually concise and methodologically self-aware meta-epistemological framework, which is what this book aims to provide. No account of epistemology can be adequate unless those discussions that are generally seen as typical instances of epistemological theorising actually count as epistemological. Accordingly, I shall take the inclusion of traditional epistemological problems as a criterion of adequacy for any account of epistemology. My own account will be informed by important twentieth-century challenges, including reflective equilibrium, naturalism, the sociology of knowledge, pragmatism, and feminism, without being knocked over by them. The hope is that meta-epistemological clarity helps to hold on to, and to spell out, a thought I have always found convincing: if epistemology is the descriptive and normative study of epistemic norms and standards, and if every kind of theorising and research ought to be governed by epistemic norms and standards, then it is hard to see how the label “linguistic turn” could ever have labelled more than a change in methodological fashion and explanatory vocabulary. The question of systematic primacy in philosophy never was a contest between epistemology and the philosophy of language; it could always only have been a contest between epistemology and meta-epistemology. Either the linguistic turn never happened, or it is time for the epistemological U-turn, or, if we are wedded to ideals of progress, the meta-epistemological turn. What are the meta-epistemological deficits to be remedied in this book? Socrates, in Plato’s Theaetetus, wants to know what knowledge (“episteme”) is. In the seventeenth century, the meditating “I” in Descartes’ Meditations gets down to lay the foundations and methods for secure and indubitable knowledge. Before these foundations are laid, it emerges that perhaps we had better deal with the puzzling fact that there are good reasons for thinking that we don’t know anything at all. David Hume wonders just how we can trust our inductive

Introduction: Retooling the Epistemic Workshop

3

practices, and throughout the twentieth century philosophers have been busy analysing the concepts of knowledge and (epistemic) justification. This, it seems to me, is an uncontroversial, generally accepted list of projects in epistemology or the theory of knowledge. The design of epistemology modules at many universities at least in Europe and the United States would reflect this list and add a few more topics, questions and projects. But what is epistemology all about? As Socrates insists, mere lists of instances of X do not generally make for good answers to the question about the nature of X. A mere list of problems that are widely recognised as epistemological doesn’t necessarily constitute a good answer to the question of what epistemology is, or should be, about. The available dictionary definitions do not help either. The Oxford English Dictionary (1989) defines epistemology as “the theory or science of the method or grounds of knowledge”. This is mirrored by the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, according to which epistemology is “concerned with the nature, sources and limits of knowledge” (Klein [1998] 2005). Such definitions fail to do much more than simply capture the idea that epistemology is somehow concerned with knowledge. As I will stress throughout this book, such definitions are both vague and misleadingly narrow. What if an epistemologist decides, as they sometimes do, that the concept of knowledge is not the best or most fruitful concept to place at the heart of epistemological research? Would he or she thereby exit the epistemological realm? In what follows I will sketch a framework for answering the question of what epistemology as a philosophical discipline is about – or rather, what it ought to be about. Instead of articulating the content of existing epistemic notions such as “knowledge” or “justification”, I will develop a functional account of all things epistemic, which will then allow to conceptually retool the epistemic workshop or, to put it succinctly: to refurbish epistemology. The idea I shall develop and defend is that philosophical epistemology aims at a general descriptive and normative account of epistemic states, (normative) statuses and performances in terms of their practical function and significance. It looks at how such states and performances are and ought to be attributed and/or identified within communities, and how they are and ought to be evaluated. This makes for a much wider remit than what is implied by the traditional epistemological focus on knowledge: knowledge is not the only relevant epistemic state; individual human beings are not presupposed as the primary target of epistemological attention; not all epistemic states and performances are conceptually articulated; transcendental philosophy or conceptual analysis are not methodologies that are in any way built into or required by epistemology’s goals. These and similar methods, which aim to do justice to the normative character of epistemology’s ambitions and subject matter, are certainly available. But

4

Introduction: Retooling the Epistemic Workshop

there are other methods too. In particular, there are methods that grant an important role to the kind of empirical work provided by biology and psychology, which ensures the continuity between epistemology and the natural sciences, as well as to sociological work on the practice and history of scientific knowledge, which takes seriously the contribution of empirical work on our (often flawed) actual epistemic practices. I shall proceed by firstly looking at selected problems in contemporary epistemology, diagnosing the need for meta-epistemological debate. Responding to the surprising lack of anything like a generally shared conception of meta-epistemology in the philosophical literature, I will then develop a meta-epistemological framework on the basis of recent developments within, and challenges to, traditional epistemology. This framework allows for presenting and defending a conception of epistemology that functionally identifies its subject matter (epistemic states, performances, concepts) within practices. While there is still a role for the analysis of our epistemic concepts, this and other projects commonly seen as constitutive of contemporary epistemology are subsumed under the more general task of explaining how communities, including our own, respond to the challenge of living together and interacting with an environment. Chapter 1 presents five important and deep twentieth-century challenges to conventional analytic epistemology: firstly, the move, initiated by Carnap, to replace the method of conceptual analysis by explication, potentially combined with the idea of reflective equilibrium; secondly, Quine’s proposal to naturalise epistemology; thirdly, the challenge from Thomas Kuhn, social constructivism and the sociology of scientific knowledge research programmes; fourthly, pragmatist developments; and fifthly, feminist criticism. Each of these challenges is subjected to critical scrutiny, resulting in a set of criteria of adequacy that the account of meta-epistemology to be subsequently developed in chapters 2 to 5 must meet. Chapter 2 develops a suitable notion of meta-epistemology. Existing accounts of meta-epistemology are critically discussed, assessed and, where appropriate, incorporated. Exploiting parallels to methodologies within the philosophy of language, I will suggest that epistemology is well advised to incorporate lessons from pragmatism by deriving the criteria of adequacy for both its descriptive and normative work from agency and practice. The result is a meta-epistemological framework that situates epistemology as a systematic study, with normative ambitions, of functionally conceived epistemic states and performances. Because both attributors and attributees within epistemic practices can (but need not) be human beings, the contributions of psychology are vital. Because such attributions are part of a practice and situated within history and a larger context of values and ideals, the results of the sociology and history

Introduction: Retooling the Epistemic Workshop

5

of science, as well as feminist criticism, are crucial. Finally, because in our case the attribution and evaluation of epistemic states tend to be made by conceptual means, we cannot do without the help of the philosophy of language. Chapter 3 offers definitions of the various elements that make up the subject matter of epistemology, viz. epistemic states, epistemic normative statuses and epistemic. These definitions exploit Daniel Dennett’s idea that for some system to have beliefs and desires is for their behaviour to be successfully explained and predicted in terms of beliefs and desires. I distinguish teleological epistemic states and performances, epistemic normative statuses instituted within communities, and intentional epistemic states. Some, but not all, intentional epistemic states are conceptually articulated. Some, but not necessarily all, potential attributees of intentional epistemic states themselves attribute epistemic states to others, and such attributors evaluate epistemic states, statuses and performances, too. Methodological and conceptual issues relating to epistemic normativity are the topic of chapter 4. These issues are raised by the fact that epistemology as a discipline has normative ambitions (it is not only in the business of describing and explaining epistemic practices, but also aims at criticising and improving them), as well as by the fact that evaluations and norms are important parts of epistemic practices. Consequently, epistemology theorises descriptively and normatively about a practice that involves both descriptive and normative attitudes. I will suggest that conceptual confusion can be avoided once we distinguish various uses of normative and evaluative statements. The lessons from the challenges to conventional analytic epistemology identified in chapter 1, together with the conception of meta-epistemology developed in chapter 2, the definition of epistemology’s subject matter given in chapter 3 and the methodological considerations from chapter 4 then result in a pragmatic, partly naturalised, historically informed, social meta-epistemological framework. Chapter 5 applies that framework to epistemic concepts and explores the consequences of this application. Some remarks on terminology. Whoever is at the receiving end of an attribution of knowledge or belief will be called “epistemic agent” throughout this book. In later stages of the inquiry, there will be cases where agency is not required for something to qualify as being in an epistemic state. I will then prefer talk of “systems”, and specifically “epistemic systems”, to “epistemic agent”. Whoever attributes knowledge or other epistemic states to an epistemic agent or system thereby counts as an attributor; the recipient of the attribution is an “attributee”. Where there is no danger of the choice of the term “person” prematurely ruling out potential epistemic agents such as thermometers, I will use “person” with alternating male and female anaphoric pronouns. However, this is not meant to imply

6

Introduction: Retooling the Epistemic Workshop

that persons are presupposed to be the only candidates for epistemic agency. Animals and robots may qualify too. What is expressed by verbs relating epistemic agents to propositions (via “that”-clauses) I will call “propositional attitudes”. Some, but perhaps not all, propositional attitudes are mental states; knowledge, for example, is often argued not to be a mental state because its (allegedly) built-in truth condition makes it a function of two variables, one mental (roughly, the belief in the proposition), one external (the truth of the proposition) (Williamson 2000: 55 – 6). Not all mental states are propositional attitudes; being in love with somebody or feeling pain are obviously not propositional attitudes. Unless otherwise stated, the term “knowledge” will be used in this book as an abbreviation for propositional knowledge as opposed to knowledge by acquaintance (with particulars, e. g. persons, as in “I know Sheila’s cousin”) and knowledge how (as in “I know how to use Excel”). “Knowledge” therefore labels a propositional attitude (by convention and definition), and perhaps a mental state.

1 Towards a New Meta-Epistemology There are easy and appealing ways to get introduced to topics within epistemology. For example, the movie The Matrix (1999) makes vivid the possibility that our bodies lie cultivated in nutrient solution, or that we are brains in vats; Christopher Nolan’s Inception (2010) refers directly to Descartes’ idea that we can never be entirely sure that we are not dreaming. These scenarios can then be exploited by sceptical arguments: “Well, if it is possible that you are a brain in a vat, then you do not know that you are walking through the park now. Consequently you do not know that you’re walking through the park now.” If all goes well, the resulting puzzlement will trigger interest for the philosophy to come. Alternatively, we start by asking what it is for somebody to know something, suggesting that what we are looking for is an analysis or definition of the concept of knowledge. Following the steps of Plato’s Theaetetus, we hope to bring out the requirements that what we know must be true, that we take it to be true, and that we do not just correctly guess it to be true. We may even put forward the idea that to know that p is to have a justified true belief that p – which can then be shown to run into Gettier problems. Again, the ensuing puzzlement can motivate reflection on the definition of “knowledge”, along the lines of contemporary attempts to define or analyse key epistemic concepts. A third option for engaging people with epistemology is provided by the epistemic regress problem: one may think that we only really know what we have theoretical reasons for. Do we need to know these reasons, and if so, do we have to be able to give reasons for these reasons? Are there any basic, “foundational” reasons that do not themselves stand in need of further reasons? All three problems just discussed provide pre-theoretically, intuitively graspable, attractive puzzles that, if all goes well, lead to a kind of reflecting and theorising that tidily fits under the label of “contemporary epistemology”. Moreover, much of the research conducted within contemporary epistemology can be presented as dealing with just these initial problems: do we really know what we think we know? How to deal with sceptical arguments? How to analyse knowledge, and what is the structure of our body of knowledge? Start wondering about The Matrix and you’ll find yourself doing epistemology! These are undoubtedly fruitful ways of engaging with epistemology, and they have led to a wealth of important research. But it seems that the sheer force with which the sceptical argument, the persisting problems arising from the analysis of knowledge, and questions about the structure of knowledge strike us as problematic has not helped giving urgency to the question of what, exactly, DOI 10.1515/9783110525458-002

8

1 Towards a New Meta-Epistemology

is the epistemological nature of these problems. Epistemology, after all, is an important philosophical research discipline; we would expect it to be equipped with its own explicit aims, methods, standards and criteria of adequacy. We would expect a rich, diverse meta-epistemological dialogue about proposals regarding the aims, methods and standards of epistemology. This, however, is not really happening, and to say that epistemology is the philosophical discipline that deals with sceptical arguments, the analysis of knowledge and the structure of our body of knowledge is not more than a start. The common dictionary references to the “scope, origin and nature” of knowledge capture much of what is actually happening under the heading of “epistemology”, but they do so only in virtue of their excessive generality on the one hand, and thanks to the tendency to ride the definition backwards, treating as (related to) knowledge just everything epistemologists care about. In order to develop a suitable conception of epistemology’s nature, goals, methods and criteria of adequacy, this opening chapter presents five developments from the second half of the twentieth century that have shaken epistemology’s foundations and continue to demand major meta-epistemological adjustments. In each case, I attempt to do two things: firstly, I will sketch the full, radical impact of these developments. This will, in each case, yield a context for an investigation of one or two key arguments. Secondly, the results of these investigations will be incorporated into the new conception of epistemology – a new “meta-epistemological framework”, as it will be called – to be developed in the following chapters.

1.1 First Development: From Conceptual Analysis to Reflective Equilibrium One common reaction to the vast literature on Gettier cases and the deep disagreement between internalist and externalist views of epistemic justification has been the diagnosis and criticism of the underlying method of conceptual analysis. This local scepticism with regards to the suitability of the method of conceptual analysis to certain epistemic problems is boosted by more general concerns relating to conceptual analysis as a philosophical methodology. At the heart of many attacks on conceptual analysis lies Quine’s (1952) rejection of the concepts of analyticity and a priority. The epistemologist engaged in the project of illuminating the concept of knowledge (or epistemic concepts, or indeed concepts in general) has two ways to react to Quine: either by defending conceptual analysis against criticism, or by adjusting their methodology accordingly. One way to illuminate the concept of knowledge whilst avoiding the meth-

1.1 First Development: From Conceptual Analysis to Reflective Equilibrium

9

od of conceptual analysis is Carnapian explication, a methodology often combined with reflective equilibrium as a source for criteria of adequacy.

Conceptual Analysis Conceptual analysis is a reflective activity whereby the content of some concept is clarified or expressed in some vocabulary, typically seen as conceptually more basic, or at least philosophically less problematic, than the target concept. Just how this is meant to happen depends on one’s take on the nature of concepts, as well as on the kind of clarification one is interested in. In epistemological contexts, conceptual analysis is often reductive, attempting to give necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge and justified belief. Target concepts are typically approached by examining our use of the natural language expressions that express them. Thus, we analyse the concept of knowledge by scrutinising our use of the noun “knowledge”, the verb “to know”, etc. Relevant for what is generally seen as the content, as opposed to the non-semantic or pragmatic features, of the concept are (a) the inferential relations between the target and other concepts (e. g. between “S knows that p” and “S believes that p”), and (b) the applicability of the target concept to the world. The commitment to analyse concepts by analysing language has long been seen as a defining trait of contemporary analytic philosophy. Epistemological applications of conceptual analysis seek to illuminate knowledge by determining its content, perhaps jointly with the content of other epistemic terms. “I put forward my account of perceptual knowledge”, Alvin Goldman writes, “as a more accurate rendering of what the term ‘know’ actually means” (1976: 790 – 1). Such “analytic” epistemologists in a narrow sense analyse the concept of knowledge by reflecting on our use of linguistic expressions like “knowledge” or “knowing that…” in English.¹ Corresponding to the  Substantial assumptions need to be made in order to describe epistemology as analysing the concept of knowledge by means of analysis of language. As stated in the Introduction, it is often assumed that ascriptions of propositional knowledge can be distinguished from knowledge by acquaintance, or knowledge how. Further, we need to decide whether such an analysis is restricted to suitable uses of the verb “to know that”, or whether it is meant to apply to the noun “knowledge”, and perhaps even to adjectives like “knowledgeable” and the adverb “knowingly”, etc. One traditional and appealing way of ensuring this is to allow for logical analysis to perspicuously represent the logical form of utterances containing knowledge-vocabulary. In the most straightforward cases of conceptual analysis, such logical analysis represents relevant uses of the concept by first-order predicates or relations. This is hardly to be expected in the case of propositional knowledge, which seems better represented by intensional operators. But whatev-

10

1 Towards a New Meta-Epistemology

two kinds of content-relevant relations mentioned above, this is done by (a) exploring the inferential relations between sentences containing the expression, and/or (b) by determining to what kinds of states of affairs (and, if we are epistemological contextualists, in what kinds of contexts of use) we would be prepared to apply the expression. Inferential relations (a) are exploited when we ask whether the propositions expressed by sentences of the form “S knows that p” entail the propositions expressed by sentences of the form “It is epistemically rational for S to believe that p”. Applicability (b) is examined when we design thought experiments like Gettier’s, testing whether in these scenarios we are prepared to assert sentences of the form “S knows that p”. In the standard versions of conceptual analysis we attempt to clarify some target concept as expressed by a linguistic expression by providing a (possibly complex) alternative expression, utterances of which express conceptual content that bears some kind of semantic equivalence relation to the target concept. In order for this to count as an analysis of the target concept, the so-called “analysans” must in some way be clearer, simpler, more basic, better embedded in some accepted theory, etc. The main criteria to decide whether such an analysis is successful are our intuitions regarding the applicability of both the target and the base linguistic expressions in all sorts of inferential contexts and scenarios. As applied to epistemology, this means that our intuitions regarding the applicability of locutions of the form “S knows that p” and “S has the justified true belief that p” in specific circumstances co-determine the adequacy of the justified-true-belief-analysis of propositional knowledge. Consider the importance given to possible circumstances of application as criteria of adequacy of conceptual analysis in the following passage from Frank Jackson’s defence of conceptual analysis: When Roderick Chisholm and A. J. Ayer analysed knowledge as true justified belief, they were offering an account of what makes an account of how things are told using the word “knowledge” true in terms of an account using the terms “true”, “justified”, and “belief”. It counted as a piece of conceptual analysis because it was intended to survive the method of possible cases. (Jackson 1998: 28)

Conceptual analysis has been the subject of widespread criticism, resulting in it being “currently out of favour”, as Jackson concedes in the preface to his From Metaphysics to Ethics (Jackson 1998: vii). Perhaps the most important line of er logical analysis we choose, we need to keep in mind that the surface grammar of knowledge ascriptions (as well as other propositional-attitude ascriptions) need not mirror their logical form, and that such differences may affect the project of analysing the concept of propositional knowledge by means of analysis of relevant knowledge ascriptions.

1.1 First Development: From Conceptual Analysis to Reflective Equilibrium

11

criticism is that conceptual analysis aims at a priori results, a project that has been discredited by Quine’s (1952) rejection of the distinction between analytic and synthetic judgements. The value of this kind of criticism, as well as Jackson’s defence against it, partly depends on one’s take on the nature of concepts, a discussion of which is outside the scope of the present investigation. Chapters 4 and 5 of this book will, however, develop an account of the epistemologist’s task and methods, as well as of some structural properties of epistemic concepts (as well as other normative and evaluative concepts) that casts doubt on the prospects of conceptual analysis as an epistemological tool.

Explication Facing the potential methodological consequences of Quine’s influential criticism of analyticity, theorists committed to the programme of illuminating philosophically important concepts had two options. They could either defend, or subscribe to an existing defence of, conceptual analysis as a method, as the one mentioned by Jackson (1998). Alternatively, conceptual analysis can be dropped in favour of methodologies that illuminate or explain concepts in ways other than analysing them (by saying in other words what we say when we use the analysandum). Starting with the work of Rudolf Carnap, the notion of explication has been put forward as one important alternative to “analysis” or “definition” (Carnap 1962 [1950]). Just like conceptual analysis, explication aims at illuminating one concept or vocabulary – the “explicandum”, or more generally “target vocabulary or concept” – by means of another – the “explicatum” (Carnap’s choice), “explicans” (by analogy to “analysans” and “explanans”), or more generally “base vocabulary or concept”. Unlike conceptual analysis, however, explication explicitly allows for regulated departures from our intuitions regarding possible cases – i. e. to give up on the idea that competent speakers’ intuitions about possible cases are sacrosanct criteria of adequacy for conceptual analysis as they stand. We should, as Frank Jackson puts it, “be prepared to make sensible adjustments to folk concepts, and this may involve a certain, limited massaging of folk intuitions” (1998: 47). But what counts as “sensible” adjustments? Where Jackson vaguely speaks of allowing for “sensible adjustments” to the target concept, Carnap attempts to specify what kinds of considerations allow for what kinds of departures from speakers’ intuitions regarding the applicability of the explicandum. Furthermore, he explicitly states that the explicandum is “replaced” by a “new, exact concept” (Carnap 1962 [1950]: 3). Intuitions about possible cases are anything but sacrosanct criteria of adequacy for “satisfying” ex-

12

1 Towards a New Meta-Epistemology

plication. They help determine whether the explicans is similar in content to the explicandum, which is only one of four criteria. The other three are exactness, fruitfulness and simplicity (Carnap 1962 [1950]: 5). Working with the naturalkind term “fish” as an example, Carnap illustrates how fruitfulness as requiring that a concept can be used for the formulation of general laws justifies replacing the pre-scientifically used term (applying to whales) by its scientific counterpart (“piscis”, excluding whales) (Carnap 1950: 6). Explication as a method for transforming or replacing concepts according to (theoretical or practical) goals and criteria provides a valuable alternative to conceptual analysis. Carnap himself, however, ties the criteria that determine the success of explication to scientific or formal (logical) theories. So, for anybody who does not readily see the theory of knowledge as one scientific theory among others, or even opposes such assimilation, crucial questions remain with regards to the aims and criteria behind the explication of epistemic terms. Nothing Carnap says prevents epistemic or moral concepts from being legitimate targets of explication. But since properties of the theories in which the explicans is to be fitted provide explication’s criteria of adequacy, and since ethics and epistemology (as “target theories”) potentially differ significantly from physics, biology, probability theory and logic, it is advisable to proceed with two notions of explication. On the one hand, there is Carnap’s narrow notion, as defined by his specific, scientific and/or formal criteria of adequacy (exactness, fruitfulness, simplicity). On the other hand, there is a wider, more generous notion, characterised as a methodology of relating a target concept (= explicandum) to a base concept (= explicans). In the latter case, similarity in content matters, but important criteria of adequacy are taken from properties of the “theories” in which the explicans is to fit.

Reflective Equilibrium Within the philosophy of language there are two ways of approaching the problem of linguistic meaning. On the one hand, we can tackle our use of the expression “meaning”, for example by analysing the concept, or by explaining its use. This strategy is often seen as stated in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, where he says that for a “large class” of uses of “meaning”, the meaning of a word is its use (Wittgenstein 1953: §43). Alternatively, we can treat meaning as a phenomenon about language use; something that would need explaining even when dealing with languages that lack any semantic vocabulary. This second strategy tends to present itself as engaged in an explanatory enterprise, with successful linguistic communication as its explanandum (“How does the speaker

1.1 First Development: From Conceptual Analysis to Reflective Equilibrium

13

manage to convey information about the city of Bangalore, sitting in a Zürich café using the German language?”) Because of their explanatory ambitions, theories that pursue the second strategy are often called “theories of meaning”, where the use of the term “theory” is meant to exclude conceptual analysis and explication of semantic concepts (such as the concept of meaning). One influential way to pursue this kind of explanatory project lies in an attempt to determine a so-called “meaning theory”, knowledge of which would be sufficient for an interpreter to understand what is said by a speaker. According to this nomenclature, formulating a meaning theory (as in Davidson, for example) constitutes one prominent way of devising a theory of meaning (more will be said about this strategy in section 2.4; for outlines of, and dependencies between, the two strategies within philosophical semantics, see Kuenzle 2011). Similar considerations apply to epistemological theorising. Conceptual analysis as a method exploits our intuitions with respect to the application and inferential involvement of epistemic concepts, thereby relying on our pre-theoretic semantic judgements (if “Jones believes that p” really does follow from “Jones knows that p”, then this entailment is a semantic fact about the content of “belief” and “knowledge”). The nature of the data for a theory that engages in conceptual analysis is semantic; we are teasing out the semantic content expressed by standard uses of epistemic expressions. We may categorise projects of conceptual analysis under the heading “vocabulary approaches”, with “semantic vocabulary approaches” within the philosophy of language and “epistemic vocabulary approaches” within epistemology as two notable varieties. Such analysis of epistemic concepts by examining our intuitive semantic judgements regarding the inferential involvements and application conditions of epistemic terms is not the only game in our epistemological town. Epistemic norms and values are effective when epistemic agents form opinions, change beliefs and acquire knowledge, even in the absence of any use of epistemic vocabulary. Smith need not say that he believes or knows that Jones will get the job in order to count as having acquired the belief; his judgement or assertion, and perhaps even his non-linguistic behaviour as based on this assumption, can count as evidence for, or expression of, his judgement with respect to the epistemic credentials of the proposition. There need not be any epistemic vocabulary within a practice for there to be epistemic phenomena. Even though the two kinds of judgement that provide the material for philosophical theorising in such cases are related, they need to be kept distinct. Conceptual analysis and Carnap’s explication relate to semantic judgements, as implicit when we decide upon concept application or inferential relations; explication in this second sense invokes some sort of pre-theoretic judgement

14

1 Towards a New Meta-Epistemology

as its starting point, datum, and criterion of adequacy. Exploiting the parallel with the “theory of meaning” label from the philosophy of language, we could say that one shape the method of explication can take when applied to the epistemic realm is that of a theory of epistemically evaluated judgements, i. e. normative statements about, and evaluations of, what ought to be believed, when something counts as knowledge, what is good evidence. The data of such a theory are epistemically significant statements or judgements, as meaningful statements are for theories of meaning. Just like the project of explication is not aimed at telling us what we actually mean by certain expressions, such philosophical theories are not only empirical (psychological, anthropological, sociological) descriptions of how epistemic agents actually evaluate their own and others’ beliefs, but have genuinely normative import: using our actual epistemic evaluations as starting point, data and criteria of adequacy, they develop theories that tell us what judgements we should make. More will be said about theories of evaluated judgements in chapter 3. Once the general structure of such theories is acknowledged, they can be identified and applied not only to semantic and epistemic norms and judgements, but also to formal logical inferences, rational decisions and moral action. In order to count the pre-theoretic judgements as evidence for the relevant theory, and for the theory to justify these pre-theoretic judgements, while allowing for local departures of what the theory prescribes from these pre-theoretic judgements, theoreticians of evaluated judgements invoke an ideal state called “reflective equilibrium”. Theoretical activity with respect to a practice of pre-theoretic (implicit or explicit) judgements governed by reflective equilibrium is engaged in a process of using the judgements as data, formulating principles yielding the correctness of at least part of these judgements, and then embarking on a process of mutual and iterated modifications of both judgements and principles. Nelson Goodman (1983) describes a reflective equilibrium between inductive judgements and a theory of induction; the “rationality wars” of the 1980s were caused by irrational decisions and concerned the relations between our actual decision-making processes and decision theory; John Rawls (1999) sees his theory of justice as being in reflective equilibrium with our pre-theoretic moral intuitions. The method of reflective equilibrium has been amended and generalised (e. g. Elgin 1996) and criticised (notably in Stich 1990). What is important for present purposes is that the method constitutes a departure from conceptual analysis. Not any theory or set of principles in reflective equilibrium with a range of judgements is admissible; additional standards and/or values are needed (e. g. parsimony, simplicity, precision).

1.2 Second Development: Naturalising Epistemology

15

Important lessons have been learnt by attempts to analyse or define the concepts of knowledge and epistemic justification – most notably, perhaps, about the functional role of epistemic justification and the possibility of externalist accounts. These developments, however, stretch our intuitions with respect to epistemic locutions to the point where they fail to work as criteria of adequacy for conceptual analysis. Switching to explication and the method of reflective equilibrium eases the pressure on intuitions by bringing in additional theoretical criteria. However, it is by no means clear – let alone agreed on by participants of projects of explicating knowledge – what these criteria are and how they ought to be justified.

1.2 Second Development: Naturalising Epistemology The second important development within twentieth-century epistemology I wish to discuss is Quine’s proposal to “naturalise” epistemology. Quine can be understood as suggesting clarification and precision on the level of epistemology as a discipline, analogously to Carnap’s view that explication replaces inexact concepts with exact (formal, scientific) ones. To put it simply, I will present Quine as holding that we have reason to replace traditional philosophical epistemology by psychology, which is preferable not least because we are reasonably clear and explicit about its goals, subjects and methodologies. This view will serve as an important predecessor to the view of epistemology that I shall then go on to develop.

Quine’s “Epistemology Naturalised” Quine’s 1969 “Epistemology Naturalised” is the classic formulation of the proposal to replace traditional, philosophical, “old” epistemology by psychology and linguistics. Although much of the paper’s specific ideas and arguments have subsequently been abandoned, replaced or transformed, the general idea of giving up on traditional epistemology in favour of natural sciences has been hugely influential and is currently very much alive. Quine diagnoses traditional epistemology as aiming to reveal the ground of empirical knowledge and at showing how certainty is possible (Quine 1985 [1969]: 16). It does so, at least when carried out by Carnap, whom Quine considers as paradigmatic for traditional epistemology, by way of “rational reconstruction” (Quine 1985 [1969]: 19). This reconstruction has two aspects: on the “doctrinal” side, traditional epistemologists try to justify our knowledge of the external

16

1 Towards a New Meta-Epistemology

world by deducing it from directly known truths about sense impressions (Quine 1985 [1969]: 17). On the “conceptual” side, the goal is reductive translation of all our concepts into observational concepts (Quine 1985 [1969]: 16). According to Quine, both projects have failed. On the doctrinal side, failure is largely due to Humean reasons: it is not possible to deduce general empirical statements, or singular empirical statements about the future, from observational statements (Quine 1985 [1969]: 17). On the conceptual side, concept-by-concept and sentence-by-sentence translations fail because of the verification theory of meaning, meaning holism and the resulting indeterminacy of translation (Quine 1985 [1969]: 21– 2). Having attributed two general strategies to traditional epistemology (the “doctrinal” and the “conceptual”), and having diagnosed both of them as having failed, Quine concludes that epistemology should switch from rationally reconstructing our empirical knowledge out of sense impressions, to empirically describing and explaining how we actually get from sense impressions to empirical knowledge: “Why not just see how this construction really proceeds? Why not settle for psychology?” (Quine 1985 [1969]: 19). Epistemology should proceed “in a new setting and a clarified status”, namely as a part of psychology, which Quine sees as a part of natural science: [The new epistemology] studies a natural phenomenon, viz., a physical human subject. This human subject is accorded a certain experimentally controlled input – certain patterns of irradiation in assorted frequencies, for instance – and in the fullness of time the subject delivers as output a description of the three-dimensional world and its history. The relation between the meagre input and the torrential output is a relation that we are prompted to study for somewhat the same reasons that always prompted epistemology, namely, in order to see how evidence relates to theory, and in what way one’s theory of nature transcends any available evidence. (Quine 1985 [1969]: 23 – 4)

Quine’s Reasons for Naturalising Epistemology Quine’s ambitions in “Epistemology Naturalised” are the subject of exegetical debate. One important bone of contention concerns the proper stance towards the changed status of epistemology’s normative ambitions. To put it bluntly, epistemology is typically seen as telling us when we ought to accept theories and in what circumstances we are epistemically entitled to believe something or make assertions. Because neither psychology nor linguistics seem to be in this kind of normative business, it will be exegetically vital to understand Quine’s attitude towards this question.

1.2 Second Development: Naturalising Epistemology

17

Once we assess Quine’s proposal to naturalise epistemology outside the narrow framework it was originally presented in, his reasons for naturalisation turn out to be rather idiosyncratic. First of all, he fails to consider any other account of the general aim of epistemology than that of showing how sense impressions relate to empirical knowledge. Even if this were epistemology’s only aim, Quine’s reasons for replacing this project with psychological research remain unclear. Is he telling us that we ought to replace epistemology by psychology because, first, philosophical epistemology has run into serious difficulties and, second, because we study it for reasons not unlike those for which we study (methodologically self-conscious, predictively successful) psychology anyway? Secondly, Quine only looks at two methods for reaching this goal, namely deducing empirical knowledge from observation sentences (the “doctrinal” aspect) and reductive translation of non-sensory concepts to sensory concepts (the “conceptual” side).² Thirdly, his negative diagnosis of the two strategies relies on Humean scepticism for the doctrinal side of the project, as well as on strong assumptions from the philosophy of language, namely a verification theory of meaning, and meaning holism (for the “conceptual” side). Fourthly, he simply assumes that the best alternative to rational reconstruction along the doctrinal and conceptual dimensions consists of (a) sticking to the exclusive goal of illuminating the relation between sense impressions and empirical knowledge, (b) using description and explanation as methods, and (c) identifying psychology and linguistics as the disciplines to take over epistemology’s work. To say that Quine’s call for naturalising epistemology depends on very specific and substantial assumptions is not to imply that there are no good reasons for such a project. There are plenty of reasons for opening up, or even assimilating, epistemology to empirical science. One benefit of such an assimilation is particularly relevant in the present context: because there is no general agreement on epistemology’s aims, methods and criteria of adequacy, we would undoubtedly gain meta-epistemological clarity if epistemology were to become a chapter of psychology. Quine’s version of this call can be analysed into a series of aspects or commitments, including the following six: (C1) Epistemology ought to restrict itself to empirical evidence. A priori considerations (e. g. conceptual analysis) must not enter epistemological research.

 The fact that Quine’s arguments rely on an extremely narrow view of epistemology that essentially restricts it to “Carnapian rational reconstruction” or perhaps “Cartesian foundationalism” has been noted, and criticised, by Sober (1978) and Kim (1988: 388).

18

1 Towards a New Meta-Epistemology

(C2) Epistemology ought to take into account the findings of natural sciences, in particular psychology. (C3) Although social considerations may play a part, the subject of epistemology ought to be the individual agent, especially her cognitive architecture and mental processes. (C4) Methodologically, epistemology ought to engage only in description and explanation. (C5) The descriptive and explanatory vocabulary ought to be non-normative and, in Quine’s version, non-modal. (C6) Epistemology can, and should, operate from a third-person perspective; in Quine’s version, this may include a commitment to a behaviourist methodology. The labels commonly attached to the family of projects kicked off by Quine’s “Epistemology Naturalised” – “epistemology naturalised”, “naturalised epistemology”, etc. – typically relate to the nature of the explanatory vocabulary, as determined by (C5) above. The most influential critical reactions to Quine’s paper primarily react to (C4) (Jaegwon Kim) and (C6) (Barry Stroud). By drawing the right lessons from these critiques, I hope to pave the way for a conception of epistemology that is methodologically self-conscious by exploiting parallels with natural and social sciences, while escaping the crippling objections mounted against Quine’s idiosyncratic view of epistemology naturalised.

Kim’s Objection Perhaps the most influential and widely shared objection to Quine’s proposal is formulated in Jaegwon Kim’s “What is ‘Naturalised Epistemology’?” (1988). Kim’s objection hinges on the thought that (traditional) epistemology is an inherently normative discipline. Quine’s naturalised epistemology, by restricting itself to description and explanation, cannot answer the questions and/or reach the aims of traditional epistemology. Kim states that epistemology can be defined by the twin task of (a) identifying criteria for when we are entitled to accept or believe some proposition, and (b) coming to terms with sceptical challenges (Kim 1988: 381). For the time being we can set aside sceptical considerations. Criteria for epistemic entitlement have traditionally been conceived as criteria of justification (Kim 1988: 381). Justification in turn has often been accounted for by means of foundationalist strategies,

1.2 Second Development: Naturalising Epistemology

19

e. g. in terms of indubitable foundations generated by sense impressions and deduction (Kim 1988: 384). Now, Kim claims, while Quine is quite right in rejecting the foundationalist epistemological programme so conceived, this rejection does by no means motivate his call for replacing the questions and goals of traditional epistemology by questions and goals suitably pursued by empirical psychology (Kim 1988: 387). According to Kim it is not just that Quine’s specific replacement proposal is poorly motivated. It is also that empirical sciences simply cannot answer the questions at the heart of traditional epistemology because they cannot account for the normativity of justification and knowledge (Kim 1988: 389 – 91). It is all right for cognitive psychology to investigate causal relations leading from an organism’s sensory input to whatever amounts to the organism’s beliefs. Traditional epistemology, however, is interested not in these causal relations per se, but in evidential or justificatory relations between the same relata: But it is difficult to see how an ‘epistemology’ that has been purged of normativity, one that lacks an appropriate normative concept of justification or evidence, can have anything to do with the concerns of traditional epistemology. And unless naturalized epistemology and classical epistemology share some of their central concerns, it’s difficult to see how one could replace the other, or be a way (a better way) of doing the other.³ (Kim 1988: 391)

But what exactly does Kim mean when he insists that traditional epistemology, unlike psychology and linguistics, is normative? Consider again what Kim sees as the traditional epistemological project. Apart from dealing with sceptical challenges, epistemology attempts to identify criteria for the appropriateness of beliefs; it answers the question of what (sensory inputs) makes it epistemically appropriate to believe something; it tries to formulate the conditions under which we are entitled to form or accept a belief (in which it is appropriate to believe something), so that these conditions serve as criteria (as Kim demands; 1988: 382). Hence traditional epistemology, according to Kim, is in the business of telling us (perhaps among other things) what we ought to believe in given conditions. I will have much more to say about these normative ambitions in chapters 2 and 4, but for the moment it suffices to note that empirical psychology by itself does not aim at formulating such norms or evaluations.⁴

 The agreement on epistemology’s inherent normativity is very widespread indeed; here is just one particularly succinct statement from Catherine Elgin: “Epistemology is normative. It concerns what people ought to think and why” (Elgin 1996: 5).  Recall that Kim identified dealing with sceptical challenges (b) as traditional epistemology’s second main task. This can now be fitted into his model by being construed as the requirement that we formulate appropriateness or entitlement conditions in such a way that we end up

20

1 Towards a New Meta-Epistemology

Because the appropriateness conditions for beliefs must function as criteria (not only determining whether beliefs are appropriate, but serving as a basis for deciding whether beliefs are appropriate), Kim thinks that they must not contain normative vocabulary (Kim 1988: 382). They must be stated in a purely descriptive vocabulary. But even if this much is granted to naturalism, it does not follow that we should give up on trying to formulate such norms, nor that they are thereby stripped of their normative character, nor that the business of developing such norms is, or could be, the business of purely descriptive scientific disciplines (linguistics, psychology, etc.). Psychology’s methodological restriction to description and explanation, as invoked by Quine’s commitment (C4), makes it unfit in principle to take over the evaluative and normative ambitions of traditional “Cartesian” epistemology. Descartes’ meditating “I”, after all, genuinely wants to find out “[what] propositions are worthy of belief” (Kim 1988: 381). If we are interested in a contemporary framework for philosophical epistemology, we have to learn lessons from Quine’s proposal to let epistemology collapse into psychology. Commitment (C4), however, is not one of these lessons.

Stroud’s Objection Barry Stroud highlights as a second problem for Quinean naturalised epistemology its inability to deal with sceptical challenges: (i) [Given] Quine’s conception of knowledge, his program of naturalized epistemology cannot answer what appears to be the most general question of how any knowledge at all of the world is possible. […] (ii) [There] is in Quine no demonstration of the incoherence or illegitimacy of that question. (Stroud 1985 [1981]: 77)

Quine’s conception of knowledge as invoked in (i) is a “traditional two-part conception of knowledge as a combination of a subjective and an objective factor” (Stroud 1985 [1981]: 83). The attempt to describe and explain, from a third-person perspective, beliefs, true beliefs, knowledge and actions must fail, according to Stroud, if the world – the “surroundings” of the epistemic agent – is not acces-

roughly with the epistemic entitlements that we actually take ourselves to possess (Kim 1988: 382). Thus, epistemological theorising should not end up identifying conditions for epistemic entitlement (appropriateness) that prevent my belief that I am currently sitting at my desk typing away from being epistemically entitled.

1.2 Second Development: Naturalising Epistemology

21

sible to the theorist, as it is in our attempt to describe and explain our own beliefs, true beliefs, knowledge and action: [We] could not explain how someone’s knowledge, or even true belief, is possible unless we could observe that person’s assertions on the one hand, and observe or otherwise know about the world they are about on the other, and thereby ascertain, independently of his asserting them, whether those assertions about the world are true. (Stroud 1985 [1981]: 80)

In order to evaluate Stroud’s criticism, we need to distinguish two possible senses of what one could do when explaining how something is possible (in Stroud’s case: how knowledge of the external world is possible as epistemology’s “most general question”). Compare the following two scenarios. When I was a child, one of my friends reported to me that his physics teacher had told the class that from the viewpoint of aerodynamics and gravitation, bumblebees cannot fly. Although I was not (and I am still not) sure about the physics and zoology behind the teacher’s assertion, I had no difficulty grasping the status of the claim: we all know perfectly well that bumblebees can fly, because we see them flying around. However, given what we know about their weight and the physics of flying, we cannot explain how they pull it off. What the teacher meant to convey was that bumblebees should not be able to fly, given our physical and zoological knowledge. Hence we need to explain something we know to be a fact, namely that bumblebees can fly. In the second scenario, assume that my friend asked me whether, and how, electromagnetically powered UFOs are possible. Unlike bumblebees, electromagnetically powered UFOs do not fly past us on a daily basis, and we do not in fact know whether such things are possible. We might genuinely wonder whether this piece of technology is possible. So, instead of explaining, or making explicit the conditions of, something that is undoubtedly true (or that undoubtedly exists), we embark on examining the conditions of something that may not be true (or may not exist). When applied to knowledge, the difference between the two types of use of “how/whether possible” questions should give rise to different research. If we assimilate the question of whether and how knowledge is possible to the bumblebee question, we motivate a project that is broadly explanatory. It is taken for granted that we do have knowledge of the external world, and we want to know how it is possible that we have knowledge of this kind (in the light of some apparent obstacle). If we genuinely doubt whether we have some specific kind of knowledge, we embark on a justificatory project. There is a sceptical challenge to some kind of knowledge, and we aim at establishing the knowledge in question by meeting the challenge.

22

1 Towards a New Meta-Epistemology

According to this construal, Stroud’s objection to naturalised epistemology, unlike Kim’s, is not based on the claim that the methods of describing and explaining cannot answer the main concern of traditional epistemology, for we are not looking for norms in just explanatory uses. On the contrary, Stroud accepts describing and explaining as fit to answer what is “perhaps the most general question” in epistemology. The problem is that the required descriptions and explanations cannot succeed when carried out from the first-person perspective, because the kind of “how possible” explanation Stroud sees at the heart of philosophical epistemology is of the UFO-type. We want to find out what is appropriate for us to believe. This does not, of course, imply that describing and explaining the behaviour of epistemic agents and activities from a third-person perspective is not an important part of such an endeavour. It is an important and, I take it, correct lesson from Quinean naturalised epistemology that scientific, empirical, third-person description and explanation of epistemic agents more or less like us (as in psychology and linguistics) contributes to our self-understanding, which in turn should have an impact on epistemology. Ultimately, however, we are looking for criteria for our own epistemic entitlement. In the last few years, the main battleground for the question of how to keep epistemology natural has been the meta-epistemological question whether philosophical epistemology investigates knowledge as a concept or a state. Intimately related to this question is the methodological discussion of recent work on socalled “experimental philosophy” or “X-Phi” relying on thought experiments, thus relating age groups, gender, cultural background, etc., as independent variables to the subjects’ intuitions as resulting data (e. g. May et al. 2010). The “Quinean” reaction to these experiments and their data lies, of course, in rejecting the epistemological significance of intuitions. This has been Hilary Kornblith’s position for a long time, elaborated in his (2002) Knowledge and Its Place in Nature. Yes, Kornblith says, we can use intuitions shared by a majority of competent language users as evidence, but it will always only be evidence for shared concepts – never for the phenomena we aim at understanding. Knowledge is a “robust phenomenon” (Kornblith 2002: 10), a natural kind, and it needs to be examined by the kind of research familiar from the natural sciences. Concepts are “historically conditioned” (Kornblith 2002: 17), they are products of their culture and time.⁵  Although Kornblith does not emphasise this point, his diagnosis fits the feminist criticism of “immanent” epistemology (Haslanger) to be discussed later in this chapter. For if our epistemic concepts are socially constructed products of our history and culture, and if this history and culture are ideologically formed in a way not necessarily transparent to competent language users,

1.3 Third Development: Kuhn and the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge

23

Lessons from Quine and Kornblith While Quine’s proposal to equip epistemology with clear and explicit aims, methods and criteria of adequacy is entirely in the spirit of the present investigation, we are by no means forced to accept his whole package as previously dissected into six specific commitments. Quine’s suggestion that philosophical epistemology be informed by the natural sciences and empirical evidence in general (C1, C2) is worth retaining, as is his insistence on description and explanation as important epistemological methods (C4). Depending on the epistemologist’s background commitments and theoretical goals, it is possible to argue for constraints on epistemology’s basic vocabulary (C5), e. g. banning epistemic terms, or normative terms in general, from playing substantive roles in explanations or analyses, or in stating the criteria for epistemic entitlement. However, if Kim’s and Stroud’s criticisms are valid, then Quine is ill advised to restrict epistemology’s methods to description and explanation, because this would imply giving up on the kind of normative ambitions characteristic of the vast majority of work carried out under the umbrella of epistemology (C4, C1). The same is true for Kornblith’s rejection of the epistemological significance of intuitions; it is possible to accept his general naturalistic outlook and his diagnosis of conceptual analysis as failing to address the relevant phenomena without thereby accepting the view that knowledge is a natural kind. As a final result of this chapter, naturalised epistemology is mistaken in restricting itself to a third-person perspective. If it is to be recognised as epistemology, it should engage in the business of finding criteria for when it is appropriate for us to accept or maintain beliefs. We ought to acknowledge that epistemology is in an important sense carried out from the first-person perspective, thereby rejecting (C6). Because nothing so far has been said about the individualist assumption (C3), this is what we now turn to.

1.3 Third Development: Kuhn and the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge The third major development I would like to consider has led to controversies that became sufficiently heated and personal to become known as “wars”: the so-called “science wars” of the 1990s. Culminating in physicist Alan Sokal’s fa-

we are well advised not to base important epistemological insights on the established use of our actual concepts (Haslanger 1999; Stanley 2015).

24

1 Towards a New Meta-Epistemology

mous hoax paper “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity” (Sokal 1996), traditionally minded philosophers felt under pressure to defend what they perceived as their own epistemic values and standards of rationality. Accordingly, “relativist” and “(social‐) constructivist” doubts with regards to the universal validity of epistemic and moral standards, as well as norms of rationality, were not just seen as questioning a set of dearly held beliefs, but as undermining philosophy’s methodology as a whole – including, of course, the methods, aims and standards of traditional epistemology and the philosophy of science. This perceived existential threat to philosophy soon gained institutional and political significance, with philosophy increasingly unsure about its place (and concerned about jobs and funding) in relation to the humanities on the one hand, the natural sciences and maths on the other. It is safe to assume that despite worthwhile attempts to reconcile the opposing sides of the “science wars” (e. g. Longino 2002), Paul Boghossian’s (2006) attempt to end the war by winning it for philosophy will not be the final word on the matter.

The Structure of Scientific Revolutions In a list first published in 1995, the Times Literary Supplement ranks Thomas Kuhn’s 1962 book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions as one of the hundred most important books since the Second World War. Since this list is not restricted to philosophy books, there can be little doubt as to the general impact of Kuhn’s re-conceptualisation of the history and philosophy of science. Here is a brief summary of what the book is trying to achieve. Kuhn begins his book by pointing out that the history of human scientific activity tends to be described as one of “incremental process” (1996 [1962]: 2), i. e. of the accumulation of knowledge. We tend to conceive of ourselves as sitting on an “ever growing stockpile” of scientific knowledge (Kuhn 1996 [1962]: 2). One important reason for this is the didactic purpose that the history of science typically serves: the point and purpose of identifying and conceptualising past scientific developments lies in illuminating and teaching the content and status of our presently held views (Kuhn 1996 [1962]: 1, 107). As a consequence, we easily (and often inadvertently) apply a cumulative model, establishing our present views, methods and standards as improvements on past theories and methods (Kuhn 1996 [1962]: 3).⁶

 Kuhn’s rejection of large strands of the history of science as shaped by didactic purposes is

1.3 Third Development: Kuhn and the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge

25

Instead of giving up on general, widely applicable schemata for the history of scientific activity, Kuhn proposes to replace the cumulative model by a new “schematic description of scientific development” (Kuhn 1996 [1962]: 160). This is where an important batch of the terminology made famous by Kuhn is introduced. After a phase called the “prehistory” of a scientific discipline, a solution to a problem is found that is sufficiently new, fruitful and exemplary for things yet to come to function as a scientific “paradigm” (Kuhn 1996 [1962]: 21). The scientific work based on this paradigm is called the phase of “normal science” by Kuhn. Normal science is a process characterised by attempts to solve clearly defined problems with established and shared methods, and thus depends on the respective scientific community’s general agreement on the fundamental problems, background assumptions, standards and methods (Kuhn 1996 [1962]: 25). At some point, anomalies can spark “crises”, challenging the shared assumptions, goals and methods, and sometimes leading to the “scientific revolutions” of the title of Kuhn’s famous books, and to new paradigms. The philosophical implications of this new schematic description of the history of science have been subject to endless disputes since the publication of The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Kuhn himself makes it clear that there are such ramifications within epistemology and the philosophy of science. Right at the beginning of the book, Kuhn tells us that he does not merely intend to re-write the history of science: History, if viewed as a repository for more than anecdote or chronology, could produce a decisive transformation in the image of science by which we are now possessed. (Kuhn 1996 [1962]: 1)

To see how historiography can have the kinds of systematic, transformative impact Kuhn intends it to have, consider how Kuhn conceives of developments within the history of science by metaphorically applying the notion of a political revolution. Highlighting the degree to which scientific changes fail to be governed by established laws, norms, standards, methodologies, such scientific “revolutions” are, just as their political counterparts, illegitimate according to the pre-revolutionary standards. Just like political revolutions aim at implementing new constitutions (and not just changes within the established legal frame-

only one version of the critique of established historiography as present-oriented. Generally, such critique targets what is known as “Whig history”, referring back to the British Whigs, a progressive political party (compared to the Tories) in favour of parliamentary representation. Historiography counts as whiggish if it orders historical events and processes teleologically, as progressing towards greater liberty and equality.

26

1 Towards a New Meta-Epistemology

work), so different scientific paradigms contain different epistemic commitments and views. New scientific paradigms are not arrived at just by applying the established methods of the pre-revolutionary state of the discipline; nor are they argued for by reasons that count as good reasons according to the pre-revolutionary epistemic standards. There are no trans-paradigmatic epistemic or methodological frameworks. This model of scientific change has often been seen as having radical “relativist” and “(social) constructivist” implications. Here is one example of such a construal, by the physics Nobel prize winner Steven Weinberg in the New York Review of Books: Kuhn made the shift from one paradigm to another seem more like a religious conversion than an exercise of reason. He argued that our theories change so much in a paradigm shift that it is nearly impossible for scientists after a scientific revolution to see things as they had been seen under the previous paradigm. […] If the transition from one paradigm to another cannot be judged by any external standard, then perhaps it is culture rather than nature that dictates the content of scientific theories. (Weinberg 1998)

In what follows I would like to focus on just two epistemological consequences of Kuhn’s model. Firstly, Kuhn questions and undermines a series of distinctions that have traditionally served to define philosophical epistemology, especially in opposition to empirical disciplines such as history, sociology, but also psychology as emphasised by Quine (see section 1.2). These distinctions have traditionally served to separate normative questions from empirical ones, as well as epistemic norms and standards from non-epistemic ones. Secondly, a brief discussion of the so-called “Sociology of Scientific Knowledge” sparked by Kuhn’s work will serve to identify Kuhn’s point that scientific communities, not individual agents, are the principal agents in science, and that their actions and processes of belief formation are better explained in terms of shared (epistemic and non-epistemic) values, instead of methods or rules governing the actions of individual scientists.

Context of Discovery vs. Context of Justification One common and initially plausible objection against the kind of relativist and constructivist construal of Kuhn exemplified by the quote from Steven Weinberg above is related to Jaegwon Kim’s criticism of Quine’s naturalisation proposals. Kim, as we have seen, insists on the essentially normative ambitions of epistemology. One cannot, according to Kim, lack all normative ambitions while still qualify as engaged in epistemology (Kim 1988; see section 1.2).

1.3 Third Development: Kuhn and the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge

27

These same normative ambitions are frequently invoked to declare Kuhn’s results as epistemologically irrelevant. Yes, it might be conceded, actual decisions throughout the history of science undoubtedly have been co-determined by nonepistemic factors such as religion, social pressure, ideology, perhaps even desires and dreams. Not even scientists are immune to such influences. Such factors doubtlessly contribute to the processes of belief and theory acquisition and revision (co-determining what beliefs and theories we arrive at and how much confidence we have in them). However, they fail to play any role when it comes to epistemically assessing beliefs or theories, to determining when something counts as knowledge, and to identifying the normative properties of belief acquisition. Even if Kuhn is right about what really happens when scientific beliefs, theories, standards and methods change over time (and even if this turns out to be a messy business largely driven by non-epistemic reasons), this does not affect the question of what counts as an epistemic norm or standard. No amount of empirical evidence for widespread foul-play in football would ever affect the validity of the game’s rules – and it is rules, norms, standards, evaluations and methods, not actual processes of belief formation and other behaviour, that constitute epistemology’s subject matter. Modern epistemology and philosophy of science have provided a range of conceptual tools to clarify and strengthen the point just sketched. In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant repeatedly insists on the normative ambitions of his transcendental project (establishing the validity of claims), and the resulting differences in goals and methodology to psychology. In the context of Kantianism, this difference is commonly put in terms of genesis and validity (German: “Genese und Geltung”), or the difference between questions “quid facti” and “quid iuris”. The logical empiricists’ project of rational reconstruction (as in Carnap’s Aufbau), too, is characterised in explicit contrast to psychological description. And many of Frege’s remarks on the status of logic bear obvious marks of the Kantian distinction between genesis and validity (e. g. Grundlagen). In English-speaking analytic philosophy, the point is usually made in terms of Hans Reichenbach’s distinction between the scientific contexts of discovery and justification (Reichenbach 1935, 1938). Reichenbach claims that epistemology, even when it is “descriptively” engaged in the rational reconstruction of our knowledge, is concerned only with the latter, and offers as a first approximation the contrast between the way a thinker finds a theorem and the way she presents it to the public (Reichenbach 1938: 5 – 6). The latter, but not necessarily the former, should be rationally structured and transparent with respect to logical form. The “fictive construction” of such an ideally logical and rational presentation, measured primarily against logical criteria of adequacy such as consistency, is

28

1 Towards a New Meta-Epistemology

the context of justification, and hence the topic of epistemology (Reichenbach 1938: 4– 6). It seems plausible that if this conception of the distinction is accepted, then Kuhn’s narratives of actual historic belief-forming and theory-building processes would not count as philosophically relevant. They would fall within the context of discovery, because the fact that the ring structure of benzene first occurred to Kekulé in a dream has no bearing whatsoever on the logical structure of the relevant theory. So how does Kuhn justify his claim that his book has important epistemological implications? Here is what he says in the introduction to Structure of Scientific Revolutions: For many years, I took [the discovery/justification distinction and others] to be about the nature of knowledge […]. Yet my attempts to apply them […] to the actual situations in which knowledge is gained, accepted, and assimilated have made them seem extraordinarily problematic. Rather than being elementary logical or methodological distinctions, which would thus be prior to the analysis of scientific knowledge, they now seem integral parts of a traditional set of substantial answers to the very questions upon which they have been deployed. That circularity does not at all invalidate them. But it does make them parts of a theory and, by doing so, subjects them to the same scrutiny regularly applied to theories in other fields. (Kuhn 1996 [1962]: 9)

Although Kuhn does not explicitly say so, he seems to diagnose the distinction between the contexts of discovery and justification as part of a logical-empiricist and broadly Kantian “theory”, rather than being theoretically neutral and transparadigmatic. If the ambitions of the philosophy of science are limited to the identification of the logical structure of scientific theories and the logical relations between theories and evidence, as they typically were for logical empiricism, then it is not surprising that historical observations about Kekulé’s dreams and Copernicus’ religious beliefs turn out to be epistemologically irrelevant. However, the fact that there are intra-theoretic versions of the distinction with self-legitimising functions within specific research programmes does not imply that the distinction is beyond repair. For a start, it has to be acknowledged that the distinction is, or has become, ambiguous (Nickles 1980; HoyningenHuene 1987, 2006). Firstly, it separates different types of (often temporally different) processes (first discovery, then justification); secondly, it demarcates types of investigations and/or theoretical ambitions (empirical description vs. logical analysis, or critical testing, of justification). It can be used to group research disciplines (psychology, history, sociology, on the one hand; epistemology and the philosophy of science, on the other), or to characterise kinds of research questions (Hoyningen-Huene 1987: 504 – 6). This final aspect is approximately captured by Robert Brandom’s slogan that it is not the question of how we do the

1.3 Third Development: Kuhn and the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge

29

trick that generally interests philosophers, but what counts as doing the trick (Brandom 1994: 365). Partly as a result of Kuhn’s work, it emerges that the distinction cannot be generalised without dropping some of these versions or aspects. The distinction should not, for example, be understood as applying to different kinds of process. On the one hand, it would be difficult to even empirically separate the two kinds of process in actual scientific practice (“Were you still discovering at this stage, or had you moved on to the justification phase? Just after your cup of tea?”). On the other hand, we have long become used to the idea that belief-forming processes (or processes of “discovery”, for that matter) are the primary target of epistemic evaluation. This is the key idea behind reliabilist analyses of knowledge, according to which a belief counts as knowledge iff it is true, and it is the product of a reliable process. Add to this the existing research in the logic of scientific discovery, for example in the form of computer models of scientific reasoning (e. g. Schaffner 1980), and we get good reasons for not construing the distinction as applying to different kinds of process. However, not every aspect of the distinction is so easily dismissed. Hoyningen-Huene points out that while there are problems with most of the aspects of the distinction, there is “a core” to them that has “never been attacked”; not by Kuhn, and not even by Feyerabend (Hoyningen-Huene 1987: 511; 2006: 128 – 9). What I have in mind is an abstract distinction between the factual on the one hand, and the normative or evaluative on the other hand. This is a distinction of two perspectives that can both be taken regarding scientific knowledge, especially epistemic claims (but also about claims of differing characteristics such as legal, moral or aesthetic claims). From the descriptive perspective, I am interested in facts that have happened, and their description. Among these facts may be, among other things, epistemic claims that were put forward in the history of science, that I may wish to describe. From the normative or evaluative perspective, I am interested in an evaluation of particular claims. (Hoyningen-Huene 2006: 128)

If construed as a distinction between a descriptive and a normative/evaluative perspective, or between “quid facti” and “quid iuris” type questions, Hoyningen-Huene claims, most controversies surrounding the contexts of discovery and justification can be resolved, and much of what Kuhn says falls into place (2006: 129). The lesson I would like to draw from the discussion of Structure of Scientific Revolutions is minimal and does not depend on any controversial exegetical claim. In the present context, it suffices to acknowledge that Kuhn’s study decidedly shifts the burden of proof with respect to applications of the discovery/justification distinction. Kuhn is certainly right when diagnosing the distinction as it

30

1 Towards a New Meta-Epistemology

stands – i. e. as introduced and used by Reichenbach, Popper, and others – as making assumptions that are uncontroversial only in a logical empiricist research programme of rational reconstruction. After Kuhn, the discovery/justification distinction is not available anymore as a ready-made, self-evident conceptual tool to stake out the field of epistemology. However, this is by no means to say that the distinction cannot be reintroduced, generalised and otherwise updated in order to demarcate the realm of epistemology and the philosophy of science in general; but this generalising work needs to be done, and will indeed be done in chapter 4.

The Sociology of Scientific Knowledge The 1970s and 1980s saw the emergence of the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) as a new and fruitful research field (or even discipline). Researchers such as Barry Barnes, Steven Shapin and David Bloor, all of whose work is widely seen as paradigmatic for SSK, exploited Kuhn’s transformation of the history of science (Barnes 1974, 1977; Bloor 1976; Shapin and Schaffer 1985; Rudwick 1985; Collins 1985). Instead of subscribing to Kuhn’s model, however, they offered some fascinating empirical studies of scientific processes, motivated and shaped by the explicitly formulated attempt to offer psychological and sociological explanations within the history of science not only of what we today see as irrational or “epistemically rotten”, but also of what we tend to see as progress, insight, discovery, and knowledge.⁷ This is not the place to evaluate the empirical adequacy of any of these studies, so we shall focus on their epistemological claims, as staked by, among others, the “Strong Program” of the so-called “Edinburgh School” (Barnes and Bloor were based at Edinburgh University). SSK sees itself as cashing in on Kuhn’s diagnosis of traditional historiography and sociology of science as didactically motivated, whiggish, and told from a winner’s perspective. The target of their criticism, diagnosed and rejected already by Kuhn, is the following, ethnocentric and present-oriented take on the history of science: our present theories may not be true (we admit that we are fallible),

 Here is just a pick of the results of the research within the tradition: Barnes, Barry (1974) Scientific Knowledge and Sociological Theory, London (Routledge); Barnes, Barry (1977) Interests and the Growth of Knowledge, London (Routledge); Bloor, David (1976) Knowledge and Social Imagery, London (Routledge); Shapin, Steven and Schaffer, Simon (1985) Leviathan and the AirPump, Princeton (Princeton University Press); Rudwick, Martin (1985) The Great Devonian Controversy, Chicago (The University of Chicago Press); Collins, Harry (1985) Changing Order: Replication and Induction in Scientific Practice, London (Sage).

1.3 Third Development: Kuhn and the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge

31

but they are the best there are, and ever have been. The history of science tells us how we got here: what our predecessors – the giants on whose shoulders we stand – got right, and why their opponents – often conservative, scholastic, ideologically driven metaphysicians – failed to understand them. Kuhn, of course, had replaced the cumulative model shaping such stories with another generally applicable developmental scheme for the history of science. While researchers within SSK tend to adopt his critical stance towards philosophical epistemology and traditional history of science, they do not typically subscribe to any such scheme. Instead, their work – mostly in the form of case studies – focuses on detailed descriptions and local explanations of scientists’ behaviour. Because SSK explicitly acknowledges the social nature of scientific practice, these descriptions and explanations are sociological more often than psychological in nature. What renders these descriptions and explanations epistemologically significant (and highly controversial) is SSK’s claim to explain not just the politics of scientific research and the psychological mechanisms and ideological factors influencing the behaviour and belief systems of epistemic agents and communities, but also the content of scientific theories: Can the sociology of knowledge investigate and explain the very content and nature of scientific knowledge? Many sociologists believe that it cannot. They say that knowledge as such, as distinct from the circumstances surrounding its production, is beyond their grasp. They voluntarily limit the scope of their own enquiries. I shall argue that this is a betrayal of their disciplinary standpoint. (Bloor 1976: 3)

One reason why “many sociologists” betray their disciplinary standpoint is surely their acceptance of some version of the discovery/justification distinction. However, whether, and how, the distinction shapes sociologists’ stances towards such explanatory ambitions depends on what Bloor means by “explaining the content of scientific knowledge”. In order to avoid ethnocentric, cumulative, whiggish, and winner’s perspective historiography, Barnes and Bloor commit themselves to four key tenets: (a) causality, (b) impartiality, (c) symmetry and (d) reflexivity. Firstly (a), the envisaged sociological account must be “causal”, meaning that it must not make explanatory appeal to anything else but the “conditions which bring about beliefs or states of knowledge”. Secondly (b), it “would be impartial with respect to truth and falsity, rationality or irrationality, success or failure. Both sides of these dichotomies will require explanation.” Thirdly (c), the account must abide by the “symmetry principle”, according to which beliefs have to be explained by “the same kind of causes”, no matter whether they are true or false, or rational or irrational; and finally (d) SSK’s patterns of explanations

32

1 Towards a New Meta-Epistemology

ought to apply to its own research results (Bloor 1991 [1976]: 7, 175; Barnes and Bloor 1982: 23). These four commitments are meant to ban distorting asymmetries resulting from, on the one hand, explaining (what we perceive as) scientific success in terms of epistemic norms (theoretic reasons; evidence), and, on the other hand, preferring “causal” explanations for (what we see as) epistemic failures. This is evidently the use to which the four tenets were put by SSK. To illustrate their impact, consider Shapin and Schaffer’s Leviathan and the Air Pump, one of SSK’s classic case studies (Shapin and Schaffer 1985). We must not, according to Shapin and Schaffer, explain Boyle’s experiments on the vacuum with the air pump in terms of “real evidence”, “discovery”, “what Boyle saw” or “realised” or “found out”, etc., while explaining Hobbes’ scepticism with respect to the epistemic value of these experiments in terms of his stubbornness, inability to understand, metaphysical beliefs, etc. Instead we need to see both views, Boyle’s and Hobbes’, as “equally problematic” and inquire into the “local causes” of their credibility (Barnes and Bloor 1982: 23). Such case studies, but perhaps even more so their epistemological implications as explicitly spelt out by adherents to the Strong Program, caused many of the controversies commonly grouped together under the umbrella of “science wars”. Here are just two examples of the kind of consequences as spelt out by the sociologists of scientific knowledge, the first one constructivist, the second relativist in character: As we come to recognize the conventional and artifactual status of our forms of knowing, we put ourselves in a position to realize that it is ourselves and not reality that is responsible for what we know. (Shapin and Schaffer 1985: 344) For the relativist there is no sense attached to the idea that some standards or beliefs are really rational as distinct from merely locally accepted as such. Because he thinks that there are no context-free or super-cultural norms of rationality he does not see rationally and irrationally held beliefs as making up two distinct and qualitatively different classes of thing. (Barnes and Bloor 1982: 27– 28)

Knowledge, Causal Explanation and Symmetry Before reassessing the social constructivism and relativism often (self‐) attributed to the sociologists of scientific knowledge in chapter 5, I would like to argue that SSK’s methodological principles do not imply social constructivist views, although they clearly aren’t incompatible with such views either. What does it mean to “explain the content” of scientific theories (or “scientific knowledge”;

1.3 Third Development: Kuhn and the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge

33

Bloor 1991 [1976]: 3), and how is this explanatory project shaped by SSK’s four postulates? Granting and accepting (b) impartiality and (d) reflexivity, the most relevant questions are firstly, which concept of knowledge Bloor has in mind, secondly, what the term “causal” of the first tenet (a) means, and thirdly how the symmetry principles (c) are to be understood. With regards to the first question, Bloor himself goes on to say that his use of “knowledge” does not correspond to the philosophers’, which involves epistemic evaluations (e. g. justification and truth), but simply “those beliefs which people confidently hold and live by”, i. e. “what people take to be knowledge”. If we take these characterisations at face value, there is an obvious danger that SSK and the more traditionally minded philosophers that respond to its constructivist and relativist consequences simply talk past one another. According to Helen Longino’s diagnosis, such “ambiguities” and “equivocations” led to a dichotomy between the “rational” and the “social” that has hampered progress within epistemology and the philosophy of science for decades (2002: 76). Equivocal uses of “knowledge” may have been a problem. I shall return to Longino’s diagnosis at the end of my investigation (chapter 5). Note, though, that SSK’s social account of knowledge allows for saying that, as well as explaining how, individuals or minority groups can wrongly take themselves to know (because it does not fit with the community’s overall knowledge), while it deprives them of the conceptual tools to say that what counted as knowledge within a community at a time has since turned out not really to be knowledge. This, however, is not surprising or indeed damaging to a research programme that presents itself as a purely descriptive and explanatory enterprise. Bloor should not have categorically stated what he takes knowledge to be. But his point is that if sociology decides to make explanatory use of the concept of knowledge, then its applicability ought not to be determined by the sociologist’s own epistemic standards. The second question concerns the appeal to “causal” explanations in postulate (a). The distinction between reasons and causes cannot be part of the Strong Program’s use of “causal”, because Barnes and Bloor’s “causal” obviously includes (non-epistemic) reasons, motives, aims, goals and interests. Hence it would seem that such “causal” explanations are characterised by contrast to explanatory uses of norms, standards and values. According to this reading, the causality principle (a) bans us from explaining somebody’s belief that p solely by appeal to norms, standards and values that render p correct. According to a weaker interpretation, norms, standards and values are eligible as causes, but only if there is a sense in which the epistemic agent (the explanatory target) can be seen as guided by these norms, standards and values.

34

1 Towards a New Meta-Epistemology

The third concern is symmetry (c). We, as sociologists and epistemologists, must explain both (what we see as) the epistemically correct and incorrect by means of the same kind of cause. If SSK’s talk of causes rules out norms, standards and values altogether (the stronger reading above), then symmetry is a point about different kinds of non-normative and non-normative influences on epistemic agents (perhaps about their ambitions and goals, as opposed to ideological influences). According to the weaker reading, the symmetry principle can be interpreted as claiming that we must avoid bias towards explaining what we see as epistemically correct in terms of epistemic norms and values. Given this weaker reading, the symmetry principle (c), like causality (a) and Bloor’s remarks on knowledge, states constraints on explanatory uses of epistemic concepts. Because explanatory use, trivially, constitutes one kind of use of a concept, and because the application conditions of a concept are generally seen as constitutive of its content, it is not surprising that Barnes, Bloor and others insists, like Kuhn, that their empirical work has systematic epistemological implications.

Conclusion: Lessons from Kuhn and SSK Barnes and Bloor on the one hand, and their “rationalist” or “philosophically minded” opponents on the other, agree that SSK aims at explaining not only actual acts of adopting or changing beliefs and psychological states of maintaining beliefs, but the very content of beliefs, knowledge and theory. They also agree that this ambition, jointly with the four principles governing such explanations, entail constructivist and relativist views, although they obviously strongly disagree on the correctness of these views. It is not easy to assess this disagreement, because Barnes and Bloor offer an ambiguous and unclear formulation of their four postulates, forcing the reader to fall back on substantial interpretive hypotheses. Taking them up on their offer, their critics interpret the postulates as entailing strong constructivism about rational explanation, i. e. the view that epistemic reasons (e. g. the evidence available) never makes any contribution to the explanation of somebody’s belief. In the work of Barnes and Bloor there are passages that can be seen as supporting such a reading (especially, perhaps, in Barnes and Bloor 1982), but there are also places where Bloor explicitly disavows the notion that epistemic factors play no part in SSK’s causal explanations (Bloor 1992). In the final chapter of this book, I will examine more closely Paul Boghossian’s (2006) criticism of SSK. I will argue that once it is conceded that the textual evidence only partially supports Boghossian’s reading of the postulates, and once the postulates are stripped of their ideological and political dimension, it is difficult to take them to hold that epis-

1.3 Third Development: Kuhn and the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge

35

temic considerations never play any role in sociological-causal explanations of belief. When discussing Quine’s proposal to assimilate epistemology to empirical natural science, I identified six Quinean commitments (C1–C6). With the help of Kim’s and Stroud’s criticisms of Quine, I rejected two of these commitments: epistemology’s theoretical ambitions should not be purely descriptive (C4), and it should not be restricted to operating from a third-person point of view (C6). The first lesson from Kuhn and SSK consists in the rejection of an additional Quinean commitment, namely the idea that the subject of epistemology is the individual agent (C3). Even if we accept (C2) and thereby acknowledge that the subject of epistemology is not some transcendent, disembodied agent, but ultimately an organism with a cognitive architecture, this does not imply that all the epistemologically relevant facts are to be found within this organism’s psychology. Researchers co-operate, epistemic agents tell each other things, they challenge each others’ views, argue with each other and reach shared opinions by dialogue. Unless we are committed to some version of the distinction between contexts of discovery and justification, there is no reason why epistemically relevant processes should not be social; there is no reason to assume that such social phenomena can be reduced to properties, states and actions of individual agents. Accordingly, any contemporary conception of epistemology ought to have room for social phenomena. Quine’s point that epistemology and the philosophy of science should take into consideration empirical evidence and in particular the results of psychology (C2) can accordingly be supplemented by the requirement that sociological research ought to be taken into account. In so far as epistemology aims at accurate descriptions and good explanations of actual epistemic practices and processes, it must widen its scope from the individual epistemic agent to communities of interacting agents. This is not yet to say that epistemology’s normative work must consist in setting up and evaluating rules, methods, norms or standards for communal epistemic activities. Nothing that has been said so far determines how epistemology’s normative ambitions relate to its descriptive work. However, with the burden of proof in relation to the distinction between contexts of discovery and justification shifted (a lesson from Kuhn), such a distinction can no longer be appealed to in order to block causal, and especially social, factors from being epistemologically relevant. The meta-epistemological claim to be defended is that neither appropriately “naturalised” epistemology, nor epistemology in general, should be prevented from being social theories in relevant senses. The general point behind Bloor’s rejection of the “philosophical” concept of knowledge with its built-in epistemic evaluation as unsuitable for explanatory work will be elaborated more generally in chapter 4.

36

1 Towards a New Meta-Epistemology

1.4 Fourth Development: Pragmatist Epistemology The previous developments can be summarised as resulting in the claims that philosophical epistemology should be seen as telling us what we ought to believe and how we ought to think; that epistemology must be informed by empirical evidence (psychological, sociological) with regards to who we are and how we function (Quine); that epistemology has genuinely normative ambitions (Kim); that it addresses the first-person perspective (Stroud); and that it allows for social relations and processes to be relevant (Kuhn). In this section we turn to the specifically practical point of such theorising, firstly by considering Richard Rorty’s radical claims to abandon epistemology altogether, and then by addressing pragmatist conceptions of epistemology’s goals and criteria of success.

Rorty’s Anti-Epistemology The label “neo-pragmatism”, and sometimes “pragmatism”, too (as opposed to “classical pragmatism”) typically denotes a tradition within twentieth- and twenty-first-century philosophy of language linking the classical pragmatists (James, Peirce, Dewey) to the later Wittgenstein, Quine, Sellars, Rorty, McDowell, Brandom and others. This (neo‐) pragmatist tradition is partly characterised by its opposition to the logical empiricism of the early twentieth century, specifically by focusing on language use and agency in general. The tradition has an anti-systematic streak in general, and an anti-epistemological one in particular. Richard Rorty, in particular, is downright hostile to any philosophical project that is epistemological in nature. Epistemology, according to Rorty, is, or deserves to be, dead. Rorty’s sceptical take on epistemology shares the motivation of Quine’s: both react to the ambitions and methods of the logical empiricists, who rejected what they perceived as purely “metaphysical” beliefs not merely because they were not adequately justified, but because they were in fact meaningless. Empiricist criteria, it was thought, could help distinguishing the linguistically meaningful and/or cognitively significant from the meaningless. Meaningful statements or concepts must, according to this conception, either owe their content directly to experience, or stand in appropriate logical relations to observation reports. When in his classic Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (1979), Rorty attacks this view on pragmatist grounds, he generously generalises and takes not only logical empiricism to have taken a blow, and not only empiricism in general, but epistemology as a philosophical project (or even philosophy as a whole;

1.4 Fourth Development: Pragmatist Epistemology

37

Rorty 1979: 169). Rorty sees modern philosophy as originating in Descartes’ and Spinoza’s attempts to provide epistemological foundations for the sciences (Rorty 1979: 132). This project’s master concept was “representation”. Our mind relates to the world in the way algebraic equations represent geometrical figures, or symbols on a map represent geographical landmarks (forests, houses, rivers). There need not be any resemblance between the representing symbol and what it represents. The representation relation holds in virtue of a global isomorphism between the two systems. Rorty says that from Kant onwards the key strategy for providing secure foundations for science (and to determine the boundaries between science and metaphysics) consisted in sorting out the given from subjective additions (Rorty 1979: 133 – 4). Roughly speaking, we classify (“synthesise”) the particular, “material” intuitions by means of general, “formal” concepts (Rorty 1979: 132, 153). This very distinction – between “given” intuitions and “subjective” concepts – is diagnosed by Rorty as a necessary condition for any epistemological theorising in twentieth-century analytic philosophy (Rorty 1979: 168). The quest for secure foundations for science – for accurate representation – then necessarily takes the form of identifying “epistemically privileged representations”, i. e. “ones which are automatically and intrinsically accurate” (Rorty 1979: 170). Because the existence of such privileged representations, and the distinction between what is given and what is conceptually added, has been undermined by Sellars’ deconstruction of the “myth of the given” (Sellars 1997 [1956]) and Quine’s rejection of the analytic–synthetic distinction (Quine 1952), epistemology as a philosophical discipline cannot possibly succeed anymore. In what he describes as the “central chapter of the book” (Rorty 1979: 10), Rorty writes: I have been claiming that the Kantian picture of concepts and intuitions getting together to produce knowledge is needed to give sense to the idea of “theory of knowledge” as a specifically philosophical discipline, distinct from psychology. This is equivalent to saying that if we do not have the distinction between what is “given” and what is “added by the mind,” or that between the “contingent” (because influenced by what is given) and the necessary (because entirely “within” the mind and under its control), then we will not know what would count as a “rational reconstruction” of our knowledge. We will not know what epistemology’s goal or method could be. (Rorty 1979: 168 – 9)

38

1 Towards a New Meta-Epistemology

Content-Explanatory Representationalism and Semantic-Talk Representationalism Rorty’s arguments, if sound, would undermine the present project, which is to develop a conception that allows for systematic, rigorous and methodologically self-conscious epistemology. There would be no need for such a framework if epistemology was the kind of misguided enterprise that Rorty proclaims it to be. At the same time, however, it is vital to acknowledge that Rorty’s pragmatist critique of all epistemological theorising bearing traces of Cartesianism has ramifications for contemporary meta-epistemological conceptions. In order for his attack to succeed, Rorty needs to assume that the attempt to globally legitimise our knowledge in the face of sceptical threats is not just one epistemological project among others, but one that constitutes epistemology’s defining, ultimate, and ultimately only task.⁸ The key to understanding how it is possible to accept as valid Sellars’, Quine’s and Davidson’s arguments against logical empiricism while continuing to engage in epistemological theorising lies in diagnosing Rorty’s label “representationalism” as ambiguous, covering three distinct commitments: content-explanatory representationalism, semantic-talk representationalism and epistemological representationalism. When logical empiricism took to playing epistemology in a semantic key, this involved a commitment to accounting for empirical conceptual content (the content of our thinking and/or speaking about the world) in terms of world-content relations. Empirical thought purports to represent the world, and the representation involved in accurate empirical thought or talk can be seen as explanatorily indispensable. Call this aspect of representationalism, “content-explanatory representationalism”. Content-explanatory representationalism does not necessarily involve the notion of representation itself; truth or reference can do representationalist work as envisaged here. Truth-conditional accounts of semantic content, for example, are typically representationalist in this sense (with Donald Davidson’s account of meaning remaining difficult to place in that respect). Also, the concepts involved in representationalist philosophical semantics need not themselves be

 Rorty’s assumption with regards to the tasks and methods of epistemology is not widely shared. As mentioned in the Introduction, explicit definitions or characterisations of epistemology tend to take its subject matter to be knowledge and/or justified belief. Such definitions are sometimes implicitly or explicitly narrowed, widened or changed with the help of a list of paradigmatic problems and projects, as presented at the beginning of this chapter. It is the goal of this book to provide a more systematic account of the nature, ambitions and scope of philosophical epistemology. This conception will be much more encompassing than Rorty’s.

1.4 Fourth Development: Pragmatist Epistemology

39

treated as irreducible; Jerry Fodor (1987), for example, offers a reductive causal account of representation. Content-explanatory representationalism can treat either propositions associated with sentential expressions or concepts expressed by sub-sentential expressions as explanatorily basic. When the term “representationalism” is used in debates about global vs. local expressivism and the impact of semantic deflationism on philosophical semantics, it usually refers to such content-explanatory representationalism (Price 2004, 2009; Price and Macarthur 2007; Blackburn 2010). In “Naturalism Without Representationalism” (2004), Huw Price states: Roughly, [the representationalist assumption] is the assumption that the linguistic items in question “stand for” or “represent” something non-linguistic […]. (Price 2004: 77; emphases in the original)

Why has the “representationalist assumption” come under fire? Firstly, as we have seen, it is an ingredient of fully-fledged epistemological representationalism, and Rorty’s relentless attacks have left their marks. Furthermore, Sellars’ sketch of an inferential role semantics in “Some Reflections on Language Games” (1951), and Brandom’s detailed execution of the “inferentialist” programme in Making It Explicit (1994; see also 2000), have established that, and how, a non-representationalist theory of semantic content is possible. Thirdly, there is the non-representationalist (local) expressivist tradition of accounting for the content expressed by moral or normative judgement in terms of the attitudes expressed (e. g. Ayer 1936; Blackburn 1984; Gibbard 1990). By endorsing content-explanatory representationalism one is not committed to the view that any of our actual semantic locutions (“__ is true iff …”, “__ refers to …”) denote world-language relations. This is important in the context of deflationism about truth and reference. It is possible to invoke some technical notion of representation in order to explain what it is for a statement or thought to have its semantic content, while resisting the temptation to account for truth- and reference-talk in terms of this relation (paradigmatically by endorsing a minimalist theory of truth and reference). We may label this view “semantic-talk representationalism”. If the notions of truth and/or reference themselves are seen as being indispensable in an explanation of what we do when we express semantic content by making an assertion, and if they are construed as world-language relations, then content-explanatory representationalism and semantic-talk representationalism are tied up as a (familiar) package.

40

1 Towards a New Meta-Epistemology

Epistemological Representationalism The epistemological version of representationalism holds that the world constrains, or even determines, what we are epistemically justified to believe or do. According to epistemological representationalism, to know something about the world is inter alia to represent it correctly.⁹ Accordingly, epistemic subjects are essentially representers, just as content-explanatory representationalism takes conceptual creatures to be. Their beliefs relate to their environment like algebraic equations relate to geometric figures, and maps relate to the geographic areas they are maps of. If epistemological representationalism is combined with a semantic-talk representationalism, then the truth of beliefs can be explicated in terms of correct representations, just as suitably placed and shaped symbols on a map can. Accordingly, the notions of truth and perhaps reference (if sub-sentential expressions are chosen as the explanatorily primary semantic units) can (and often do) play a basic explanatory role for the epistemological representationalist. This has ramifications for the epistemological representationalist’s take on epistemic entitlement or justification, because the point of such evaluations, according to the representationalist, lies in increasing, maximising or guaranteeing accurate representation. There are various ways, of course, to spell out epistemic justification, along both internalist and externalist lines, but the crucial property of the agent’s ability to justify her beliefs, or for the beliefs to have been reliably produced, is that these properties are truth-conducive. Truth itself, the representationalist might concede, cannot function as a criterion for epistemic entitlement, simply because we are fallible, even as a community. Each and every member of today’s world’s population may agree that some statement is true, yet it may still turn out that we were all wrong. Nonetheless, any criterion for epistemic entitlement must account for the fact that epistemic entitlement should position us well with regards to forming and having true beliefs – because we are, from an epistemic point of view, representers. So, even though epistemic entitlement cannot be directly modelled on correct representation, truth can. Because epistemic entitlement is closely related to truth, the representationalist answers what it is for somebody to be epistemically entitled to p in terms of correct representation. One way of doing so consists in saying that for somebody to be epistemically entitled to assert or believe that p

 The representationalist need not hold that correct representation is sufficient for knowledge. Typically, correct representation will be used to explicate true belief, while it will be conceded that not every true belief counts as knowledge.

1.4 Fourth Development: Pragmatist Epistemology

41

is for him or her to be blameless if p should turn out to be an incorrect representation. Another way lies in claiming that a reliably produced belief is likely to correctly represent the world and/or to be true. The distinction between content-explanatory, semantic-talk and epistemological representationalism helps to analyse and reject a dichotomy that does substantial work for Rorty, namely the distinction between “representational” and “social” accounts of epistemic justification. Rorty, as we have seen, rejects epistemological foundationalist attempts to globally legitimise empirical knowledge, as motivated by global scepticism, especially when coupled with versions of representationalism. What distinguishes pragmatists from epistemological representationalists is that the former understand that justification is a social matter: In order to defend Sellars and Quine, I shall be arguing that their holism is a product of their commitment to the thesis that justification is not a matter of a special relation between ideas (or words) and objects, but of conversation, of social practice. […] The crucial premise of this argument is that we understand knowledge when we understand the social justification of belief, and thus have no need to view it as accuracy of representation. (Rorty 1979: 170)

It emerges that it is not the demand for epistemic justification as such that Rorty objects to, but a specific, global kind of demand for justification that can only be met within representationalism. Adopting a social account of epistemic justification precludes meeting this demand, which is a good thing, according to Rorty. But the choice he seems to suggest – accounting for knowledge either in terms of accuracy of representation, or by understanding the social justification of belief – turns out to be a false dilemma once we make explicit the representationalism involved. To treat something as epistemically justified is to evaluate it. When Rorty says that in explaining epistemic justification we should look at social practices rather than representation, he cannot mean that these explanatory ingredients are incompatible. After all, why shouldn’t social interaction contribute to representational success? We can highlight the social factors behind the production of a documentary film as long as we want; we can even hold that social factors (teamwork, for example) is necessary for there to be documentary films, and that no account of documentaries can be complete without emphasising the social factors involved in their making. Additionally we can evaluate a documentary as the result of great teamwork, or of fantastic collaboration, and it is clear that these evaluations must be analysed in social terms. But even if we grant all this, it does not change the fact that to call a documentary “accurate” is to evaluate it with respect to whatever it purports to be a documentary about.

42

1 Towards a New Meta-Epistemology

Analogously, it seems that epistemological representationalism is perfectly compatible with a commitment to a social account of epistemic practices. Assume, to keep the analogy precise, that the goal of scientific communities is the production of true or empirically adequate theories. The members of this community may then negotiate the criteria for epistemic justification so as to promote the communal goal. Clearly, then, scientific practice is a social phenomenon. We must account for epistemic justification in social terms. Just as ever so much emphasis on the teamwork involved in the making of a documentary doesn’t change the fact that a successful documentary shows some aspect of reality, emphasis on social aspects of justification per se is perfectly compatible with representationalism. Rorty would probably object to all versions of representationalism, and hence to the validity of the above analogy. What he has in mind is that the evaluative predicate “… is epistemically justified” functions just like “… is (the product of) great teamwork”: the predicate’s application conditions contain only social factors. However, this is a very strong and controversial position, and it is by no means forced by Quine’s and Sellars’ arguments against representationalism. Once we break disambiguate “representationalism”, positions like Helen Longino’s, which combine a social account of justification with a representationalist condition for knowledge (1994, 2002), become available. I shall discuss Longino’s position in section 1.5.

Lessons from Rorty Rorty’s take on epistemology is in part a consequence of the general pragmatist insight that agency and practice provide philosophy with an important, perhaps even exclusive, explanatory target and source for criteria of adequacy. This point is in play when Rorty suggests that sceptical doubts without any practical significance are idle (see the discussion of Hookway below). This focus on agency and practice yields the attitude characteristic of late-twentieth-century pragmatism when coupled with late-Wittgensteinian views of language and linguistic meaning. Explaining linguistic meaning, according to a famous passage in Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations (1953), is a matter of explaining uses of the word “meaning”. Most uses of the word “meaning” are best explained by citing uses of the expressions whose meaning is being talked about. The first general pragmatist lesson to be taken on board for what follows can be labelled the “primacy of the practice”. Commitment to the primacy of the practice does not entail anything like a pragmatist definition of truth (e. g. in terms of convergence or ideal agreement), or Rortyan anti-representationalism. In fact it

1.4 Fourth Development: Pragmatist Epistemology

43

need not even be construed as a specific commitment, but can rather be understood as a point about shifting the burden of proof. Epistemological theorising ought to make some practical difference, somewhere down the road. If such an impact is not obvious, then the onus is on the theory or on reflection to either establish such significance, or to explain why there is no such significance. The second general pragmatist lesson concerns language. Inspired by logical empiricism, twentieth-century analytic philosophy plays epistemology in a largely linguistic key. Consequently, pragmatist, Wittgensteinian takes on linguistic meaning are directly relevant to epistemology. “Knowledge”, after all, is a word, expressing the concept of knowledge. We do certain things by means of such concepts; we act on our knowledge and take ourselves and others to be entitled to do things in virtue of what we (they) know. Analytic pragmatist epistemology committed to the primacy of the practice will thus treat our implicit and explicit use of epistemic concepts as a methodologically privileged part of such practice. Explicit use of epistemic concepts – our use of epistemic language – will in turn provide the basis for such pragmatist theorising, both descriptively (trying to understand what it is that we do when we use epistemic language) and normatively (trying to work out how we best use epistemic language, given some standards, goals and restrictions). Finally, Rorty suggests that the whole project of traditional epistemology is in the grip of misleading assumptions and metaphors (a charge that will be revisited shortly in the context of feminist critique). If epistemological representationalism were built into the assumptions and ambitions of epistemology, then our conception of epistemology would be too narrow. However, there are plenty of questions, problems and research projects that are of a recognisably epistemological nature and do not presuppose epistemological representationalism. Hence there is room for pragmatist epistemology that accepts the primacy of practice, that treats the use of epistemic language as methodologically privileged, and that is Rortyan in its rejection of epistemological representationalism. Content-explanatory representationalism, however, need not at all be epistemologically motivated. If such a programme is methodologically self-conscious and carefully carried out, it can be methodologically on a par with inferential role semantics, or indeed expressivism. Content-explanatory representationalism can be an epistemologically neutral, descriptive, even naturalised theory, devised for explaining linguistic communication. Not every theory that tries to explain what it means for sounds or inscriptions to express content – to refer to things or people, to ascribe properties to them – is part of an epistemological agenda. Why should the pragmatist stop doing epistemology, while within the philosophy of language she can do constructive work, typically by shifting her focus from language as a system of sentences to practices of language use (as

44

1 Towards a New Meta-Epistemology

exemplified by Robert Brandom’s pragmatist inferentialism and analytic pragmatism; Brandom 1994, 2000, 2008)? Why shouldn’t she just shift the focus in epistemology from proprieties of abstract sentence types to everyday and scientific practices?

Mark Kaplan’s Extension of the Project of Analysis Not only is there plenty of epistemology for pragmatists to do, but pragmatism itself has a lot to offer to epistemologists. In Plato’s Meno, Socrates asks a question about knowledge that was, somewhat unfortunately, neglected by a significant number of twentieth-century analytic epistemologists. Instead of playing along with the idea that conceptual analysis is the right method in epistemology (e. g. by asking what is missing for true belief to count as knowledge), Socrates asks why we should be interested in this missing feature – what this missing feature is for? His own answer invoked (predictably, perhaps) logos as giving our true beliefs stability, which is of additional epistemic value. Socrates thereby shifts the epistemological focus from the correct analysis of epistemic concepts to questions of their purpose and use. Over the last twenty years, there has been a steadily rising tide of epistemologists who call for a more pragmatist outlook. Some of them, just like Socrates, start by implicitly or explicitly questioning the point of the conceptual analysis of epistemic concepts. According to Mark Kaplan, the philosophical significance of the debate prompted by Gettier’s paper “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” (1963) depends on the significance of the project of analysing or defining knowledge in the first place (Kaplan 1985: 350). This project, Kaplan holds, is misconceived. We should not put so much effort in trying to define or analyse the concept of knowledge, because, in the words of his paper’s title, “it’s not what you know that counts” (Kaplan 1985: 350). In order to appreciate Kaplan’s main thesis, compare the analysis or definition of knowledge with positivist attempts to define expressions such as “cognitive significance” or “lawlikeness”. Both projects, Kaplan argues, owe their urgency to the role the definienda were thought to play in “proper inquiry”, i. e., in epistemic practices (Kaplan 1985: 353 – 4). Thus, wondering how epistemic practices ought to be organised, and how participants ought to act and understand themselves, epistemologists decide that a certain range of epistemic concepts C1… Cn is useful for these purposes. Then an attempt is made to define C1… Cn. The importance of these definitions is dependent on the importance of the wider epistemological concerns of “advancing or clarifying the state of the art

1.4 Fourth Development: Pragmatist Epistemology

45

of inquiry” (Kaplan 1985: 354). However, once these concerns are taken seriously, we ought to deal with the definitions of the relevant epistemic concepts.¹⁰ The problem with Gettier’s counterexamples to the justified-true-belief-family of proposed definitions of “S knows that p” is, according to Kaplan, that it is not appropriately linked to questions about the proper organisation of, and conduct within, epistemic practices (Kaplan 1985: 354). Take scientist Sheila, who comes to believe that p on the basis of what she takes to be conclusive evidence. Once Sheila has decided that she is epistemically justified in believing that p, there is no point in her asking herself whether she knows that p. From Sheila’s perspective, “I know that…”-locutions fail to do any work over and above providing stylistic variation for “I am epistemically justified to believe that…” (Kaplan 1985: 355). This practical idleness of self-attributing knowledge over and above justified belief applies to all conceptions of knowledge that meet the following conditions: (a) knowledge is understood to be justified belief that meets additional conditions (e. g. truth) and (b) the attributee need not be able to tell whether these additional conditions are met (Kaplan 1985: 361). Hence, definitions of knowledge in terms of justified true belief are affected by this criticism (the attributee need not be able to tell whether her belief is true), as are most post-Gettier modifications, because they tend to accept the truth requirement. Kaplan highlights one important objection to this diagnosis. Yes, one may reply, there may be no difference between knowledge and justified belief when both are attributed to oneself, but these differences matter when it comes to second- or third-person attributions (Kaplan 1985: 356). Kaplan disagrees. Differences between justified belief and true justified belief have nothing to do with the performance of the attributee – everything that is part of the evaluation of the attributee’s performance is captured by being evaluated as epistemically justified (Kaplan 1985: 357). Neither can the difference directly determine how some attributor ought to critically deal with some attributee (and the results of the research she produces, e. g. her assertions), because many other factors (among them sociological and psychological facts) co-determine the appropriateness of personal criticism (Kaplan 1985: 357). Furthermore, the difference between knowledge and justified belief does not relate to the vulnerability of knowledge-producing processes (e. g. arguments) to criticism (Kaplan 1985: 358), because neither Gettier’s counterexamples nor any proposed fixes teach us any Similarly, various people may attach varying importance to suitable rules for cautioning football players. The formulations of such rules may be of great significance in the context of the game, and hence to people who care about the game. Yet they are utterly unimportant for people uninterested in football.

46

1 Towards a New Meta-Epistemology

thing about arguments and other epistemic performances. Gettier’s counterexamples present “no difficulty of any import to the understanding or improvement of rational inquiry” (Kaplan 1985: 359). There is no need, at this point, to assess Kaplan’s diagnosis in detail. What matters for present purposes are the considerations behind his critical stance. Work in epistemology, according to the presuppositions of Kaplan’s criticism, aims primarily at “advancing or clarifying” inquiry, at the “understanding and improvement of rational inquiry” (Kaplan 1985: 354, 359). One method that is thought to contribute to these goals is the analysis, definition or explication of key epistemic concepts. Such analyses or definitions are, therefore, not enterprises worthy in themselves. They owe their significance to the contribution they make (if successful) to the improvement and clarification of inquiry. Once this contribution is accepted as a criterion, it turns out (according to Kaplan) that the assumption of the truth-requirement for knowledge renders the concept unsuitable for such endeavours, because its definition or analysis does not make any such contribution. While we can remain agnostic with respect to this specific thesis about knowledge, I suggest we accept as a pragmatist move Kaplan’s insistence that analyses and definitions of epistemic concepts owe their point to the concepts’ purpose.

Edward Craig and Bernard Williams on Conceptual Synthesis and Genealogy Echoing Kaplan’s worries, Edward Craig thinks that we should not treat definitions of our key epistemic concepts – attempts to express their content in different, ideally non-epistemic terms – as the only, or even the main, goal of epistemology. Firstly, as Craig states at the beginning of Knowledge and the State of Nature (1990), we now have unsuccessfully tried to capture the intuitive intensions and extensions of our utterances of “S knows that p” for several decades. Secondly, it is doubtful that a successful definition of knowledge and, perhaps, other epistemic concepts would count as a solution to all our epistemological problems. Such a correct definition would have to be complemented by inquiries into the reasons for the widespread, trans-linguistic, trans-cultural use of the concept demarcated by the conditions making up the definiens. Even after having agreed on a definition of “knowledge”, we would still have to establish the human needs the concept answers to. We would still have to identify the concept’s point or purpose. So, Craig suggests, why do we not engage on this sort of question first? If the chances for a successful, generally accepted, definition of knowledge look bleak, and if we have to explain the concept’s use anyway (i. e. even in the unlikely case

1.4 Fourth Development: Pragmatist Epistemology

47

of a successful definition), are we not well advised to prioritise the identification of the concept’s point and purpose? Craig’s diagnosis is similar to Kaplan’s: the “purpose” or “point” of key epistemic concepts should be regarded as at least as important as their definitions (Craig 1990: 2– 3). This diagnosis has ramifications for Craig’s epistemological project as a whole, not least on the methodological level. As the subtitle of his book announces, we are dealing with “An Essay in Conceptual Synthesis” (even though, fascinatingly, the book cover of the 2001 digital reprint mistakenly reinstates “Analysis” for the original “Synthesis”). Craig also links up with Carnap by labelling his project a “practical explication” of knowledge that aims at identifying its function with respect to important human needs. The explication is “practical”, not because it has normative ambitions (i. e. not because it is meant to affect our practice), but because it aims at preserving the explicandum’s practical function rather than its content (Craig 1990: 8). Craig’s “conceptual synthesis” or “practical explication” is an investigation into the purposes of epistemic concepts that runs methodologically parallel to early modern contractarianism about the sovereign’s legitimacy, although his own “state of nature” models are mainly explanatory rather than justificatory (Craig 1990: 84). The methodological idea is to postulate a simple social practice with a small number of agents with few needs, mental and physical capabilities and other relevant properties. We then ask what these agents, given their capabilities, could and would do, within their environment, in order to meet their needs. If the behaviours, social structures and institutions that can be understood to result from such developments resemble our own, then such “state of nature” genealogies can be explanatorily useful in relation to our own practice, thought and actions. Craig’s state-of-nature scenario is deployed in order to show how epistemic concepts, and particularly the concept of knowledge, answer the needs of the state-of-nature scenario. In order to see what it can mean for a concept to meet a human need, consider the notions of food or danger. Surely it is plausible to think that postulating a small group of hungry and vulnerable human beings with the capacity to produce, and differentially respond to, sounds such as “food” and “danger” provides a promising angle on the use and (proto-conceptual) content of these words. Epistemic concepts, and in particular knowledge ascriptions, can be investigated in just the same way. Thus, Craig postulates a set of generally co-operative agents within an environment at least partly unknown to them. Because of the great benefits of shared information, there is a need for a concept to evaluate and flag fellow agents as sources of information (Craig 1990: 11– 12). The concept of knowledge can be shown to answer this need (Craig 1990: 8).

48

1 Towards a New Meta-Epistemology

The resulting functional approach to the concept of knowledge (its “conceptual synthesis” or “practical explication”) does not yield new and unforeseeable aspects of the concept; instead, it allows for reinterpretations of the traditional ingredients. The belief condition, for example, is no longer secured through the discovery of intuitively necessary conditions for knowledge ascriptions. Instead, Craig thinks that in order for us to accept information with the confidence necessary for it to guide our actions, we rely on confidence on the part of the informant. It is not sufficient if the informant merely entertains the proposition we are interested in – she ought to believe it herself, in so far as belief, for Craig, is simply the state of entertaining a proposition with confidence (Craig 1990: 13). The traditional truth condition reappears in Craig’s model as the requirement that the information be correct, while the justification condition’s job is to ensure that the informant’s beliefs track the truth. “Indicator properties” (e. g. being a taxi-driver (for directions), being an expert) should ensure law-like, counterfactual-supporting relations between the informant’s belief and the facts (Craig 1990: 25). Bernard Williams, whose book Truth and Truthfulness (2002) adopts a similar approach, combines the familiar idea of state-of-nature methodology (reverse engineering) with a Nietzschean conception of genealogy. Like Craig, Williams calls his base scenario a “state of nature”. Both the “state of nature” and its developments are explicitly fictional (Williams 2002: 30). Like Craig, Williams works under the assumption that fictional but plausible stories of how aspects of our own epistemic practice could have developed illuminate, and perhaps even justify, their (epistemic) function and value. Williams starts with basically the same “state of nature”, i. e. a small community of agents. Some of these agents have a “positional advantage” over others, which basically means that they see things that their differently positioned fellows cannot see. Hence it is useful for the community to divide their epistemic labour (Williams 2002: 48), to pool information. In contrast to Craig, who develops the concept of belief out of his state of nature, Williams presupposes that agents have beliefs. He describes the process of “imparting information” (Williams 2002: 48) in terms of expressing these beliefs. Because it is “useful” or even “essential” for the community to maximise correct information (Williams 2002: 58), it makes sense to implement “two basic virtues of truth”, namely accuracy (roughly, virtues concerning processes of finding the truth) and sincerity (virtues related to acts of telling the truth).

1.4 Fourth Development: Pragmatist Epistemology

49

Alston’s Epistemic Desiderata The attitude of William Alston’s “Epistemic Desiderata” (1993), whose themes are picked up and elaborated in his book Beyond “Justification”: Dimensions of Epistemic Evaluation (2005), closely resembles Kaplan’s and Craig’s. Thus, according to Alston there has been a long and frustrating debate about the proper analysis of important epistemic concepts (Alston’s focus is on epistemic justification), culminating in a stand-off between internalist and externalist analyses. It is high time to treat this situation as (historical) evidence for there being something wrong with the very ambition to find out even necessary conditions for epistemic justification, let alone definitions. So Alston’s “iconoclastic and revolutionary” conclusion constitutes a “bold departure from the well trodden pathways of the discipline”, saving epistemology from “quixotic tilting at windmills” (Alston 1993: 541). While Alston shares Kaplan and Craig’s revolutionary attitude and their view of (misguided) traditional epistemology, his alternative conception is less obviously rooted in pragmatist considerations of practical relevance. Here is his argument. Twentieth-century work on epistemic justification tends to be centred around attempts to identify necessary conditions for some agent’s belief that p to count as epistemically justifying the same agent’s belief that q. Typically, what theorists present or defend as a necessary condition for epistemic justification is uncontroversially an epistemically good thing. Alston identifies six such epistemic desiderata (Alston 1993: 528 – 39): (1) ideally q is based on p for the agent; (2) ideally p makes it objectively likely that q is true; (3) ideally the agent has cognitive access to p; (4) ideally the agent has higher-order knowledge or justified beliefs about his grounds or reasons; (5) ideally, q coheres with the agent’s (coherent) belief system; and (6) ideally there were no violations of intellectual obligations involved in the acquisition of q. Epistemologists are likely to agree that all six features are epistemically good to have, while disagreeing about which of them are necessary conditions for the agent’s reasons or grounds to count as epistemically justifying her belief. The situation according to Alston’s diagnosis – and this analogy is not Alston’s – resembles that of a group of friends arguing about what constitutes a great holiday, with somebody suddenly making a semantic and conceptual point by claiming that “if it isn’t relaxing, it’s not even a holiday, let alone a great one! Honestly, to me, this doesn’t even count as a holiday!”. If others pick up the question of what counts as a holiday, the argument could well continue in this semantic or conceptual key. This is, roughly, what happened in post-Gettier analytic epistemology, which according to Alston was largely based on the mistaken assumption that there is

50

1 Towards a New Meta-Epistemology

one “pre-theoretical”, single concept of epistemic justification that is patiently awaiting correct analysis. Alston’s revolutionary contention is that there is not: If we take the full range of parties to the disputes we have been considering, some of whom have had their thinking about ‘epistemic justification’ nourished primarily by some of the roots just mentioned and others by others, there does not seem to be enough commonality in their pre-theoretical understanding of the nature of epistemic justification to warrant us in supposing that there is some uniquely identifiable item about which they hold different views. (Alston 1993: 534)

We should drop the assumption that there is such a pre-theoretical concept of epistemic justification (a concept specifiable in a “theoretically neutral way”; Alston 1993: 534). Instead we better try to understand, relate and weigh a variety of epistemic desiderata, which Alston sees as giving rise to four new epistemological strategies with respect to epistemic justification: (1) “elucidation” or clarification of the epistemic desiderata; (2) checking if the desiderata are viable; (3) their relative importance; and (4) their interrelations (1993: 542– 3). Once we stop conceiving of ourselves as trying to identify necessary conditions for epistemic justification, and start thinking of ourselves as engaging in these four kinds of project, much work done within traditional epistemology remains valid – not as the contribution to the analysis of a pre-theoretically available concept it was originally intended to, but as work towards the clarification and weighing of epistemic desiderata.

Weinberg’s Pragmatist Conception of Epistemology Like Kaplan, Craig and Alston, Weinberg’s turn to an alternative, explicitly pragmatist meta-epistemology is driven by the “crisis” of traditional epistemology. His sketch of the methodology he blames for the crisis is essentially the same as Craig’s. Twentieth-century epistemology, according to Weinberg, relied almost exclusively on our intuitions with respect to the conceptual contents of epistemic terms. Once there were doubts with respect to these “intuition-centered methods” (Weinberg 2006: 27), epistemology had no alternative methodology to fall back on. However, while the crisis of intuition-driven epistemology is the trigger for the development of a new meta-epistemology, such a change in framework can also be argued for. In order to do so, Weinberg – like Alston before him – provides a list of “desiderata”. While Alston’s desiderata are epistemic ideals for agents and (supposedly) justified beliefs, Weinberg’s allow for the evaluation of epistemological methods: (1) Ideally, our epistemological method yields only,

1.4 Fourth Development: Pragmatist Epistemology

51

and lots of, true claims, and no false ones. This desideratum, Weinberg holds, does not allow for weighing naturalism against pragmatism, but it does rule out “astrological meta-epistemology” (2006: 27– 8). (2) We want epistemology to produce (among other things) normative claims. It should be (3) dialectically robust and allow for (4) progress without ignoring common sense and (5) interdisciplinary exchanges. Finally (and Weinberg doesn’t think these final two ideals are very important), the method should be (6) at least minimally naturalist and (7) it should allow for a reasonable take on relativism (Weinberg 2006: 27– 8). This list of desiderata is now brought to bear on what Weinberg sees as the two major current meta-epistemologies, namely “intuition driven romanticism” and “metaepistemic naturalism” (Weinberg 2006: 28 – 31). After showing that neither of the two scores highly on his chart of desiderata, he presents his own meta-epistemological pragmatism, which performs much better. Concepts, Weinberg tells us, do not only help us to carve up the world (as biological species may plausibly do), but also contribute to organise our lives (Weinberg 2006: 32). Epistemic concepts, similarly to the concept of being a person or to the characterisation of an action as “voluntary”, help determining what ought, or may, or must not be done (2006: 32). Thus, my neopragmatism’s method is to ask: for what purposes might we reasonably prefer to have beliefs formed in accord with a given epistemic term?” (Weinberg 2006: 32; his emphasis)

Although Weinberg mentions only Edward Craig (1990) and Simon Blackburn’s Spreading the Word (1984) as positions close to this own, his proposal has obvious similarities to Williams’ and Kaplan’s too (and to some extent, although not primarily in its pragmatist shades, to Alston’s). Weinberg, however, is much more explicit than his predecessors about epistemology’s normative ambitions: We are not seeking simply an explanation for our happening to have such preferences: there are probably many such explanations, of a psychological or evolutionary or cultural sort. We want to know why we should on reflection endorse these preferences (and not, say, decide to try to give them up as some distracting cognitive habit, a tic of the mind). Our question is: why ought we include such dimensions in our epistemic appraisals? To ask such questions is an attempt (in James’s terms) to ‘pump free air’ around a given concept, and try to get a sense of how it fits into our epistemic lives on the whole. (Weinberg 2006: 32)

The methodology Weinberg goes on to sketch – “reconstructive neo-pragmatism” or “analysis-by-imagined-reconstruction” – is explicitly inspired by Craig. Weinberg essentially subscribes to Craig’s methodology, with the caveat that he finds Craig’s state of nature metaphor prone to historical interpretations. The term “re-

52

1 Towards a New Meta-Epistemology

constructive neo-pragmatism” ought to make it clear that the mental act of engineering a well-functioning multi-agent epistemic practice out of simpler components traces explanatory, not historical, dependencies. Although Weinberg’s paper does not offer more than a sketch of this epistemological methodology, he puts it to use by discussing the choice between internalism and externalism about epistemic justification. The main consequence of his “neo-pragmatist” commitments consists in replacing the epistemic justification (as approached by means of intuitions concerning the use of the term) by questions relating to its purpose: “Why should we care about our beliefs’ having justification, instead of only caring about whether a belief is simply true or false?” (Weinberg 2006: 36) The answer to this question is derived from practical decision-making, processes of updating our beliefs over time, and harmonious exchange of information with others: we are well advised to base our decisions on justified beliefs; the justification requirement ensures orderly and rational changes of belief systems over time, and it allows for resolving conflicting testimonies (Weinberg 2006: 36 – 7). In the light of these epistemic desiderata (and Weinberg explicitly says that the list is open to discussion), we should proceed by coupling a general internalism about epistemic justification with an externalist account of beliefs that are justified a priori (Weinberg 2006: 37– 45). As before, there is no need to assess this application of reconstructive neopragmatism to the problems of internalism vs. externalism and a priori epistemic justification. What matters for present purposes is that Weinberg proposes a pragmatist methodology for epistemology, deriving his epistemic desiderata from such practical concerns as decision making and intentional action, rational changes in our belief systems in view of changing facts, and social exchanges of information.

Brandom’s Analytic Pragmatism In his 2006 John Locke lectures, Robert Brandom offers “analytic pragmatism” as a methodology that aims at illuminating one vocabulary or set of concepts by relating it to some base vocabulary (published in 2008 as Between Saying and Doing: Towards an Analytic Pragmatism). The proposal shares the pragmatists’ general scepticism with regards to the viability of conceptual analysis as a philosophical methodology, but unlike explication, the method of equilibrium, Craig’s “conceptual synthesis” and Weinberg’s “reconstructive neo-pragmatism”, its ambitions remain descriptive and explanatory; there is no attempt to improve our practice.

1.4 Fourth Development: Pragmatist Epistemology

53

The main difference between conceptual analysis and analytic pragmatism is that Brandom does not try to say in other words (by means of the analysans) what we say when we use the target concept (the analysandum). Instead, he describes what we must be able to do in order to count as expressing the target concept. There is no attempt to express by alternative linguistic means what we express when we use the analysandum; nothing like analyticity or synonymy is required for the method to work. Instead we choose a target vocabulary (e. g. our logical terms “and”, “if… then”, “not”) and a base vocabulary that is expressively poorer than the target vocabulary (e. g. lacks logical terms). Then we attempt to describe a practice or an ability (so that the base vocabulary is “vocabulary-practice sufficient” to specify the practice or ability) that is sufficient to deploy the target vocabulary: What we could call semantic pragmatism is the view that the only explanation there could be for how a given meaning gets associated with a vocabulary is to be found in the use of that vocabulary: the practices by which that meaning is conferred or the abilities whose exercise constitutes deploying a vocabulary with that meaning. To broaden the classical project of analysis in the light of the pragmatists’ insistence on the centrality of pragmatics, we can focus on this fundamental relation between use and meaning, between practices or practical abilities and vocabularies. We must look at what it is to use locutions as expressing meanings – that is, at what one must do in order to count as saying what the vocabulary lets practitioners express. (Brandom 2008: 9)

Brandom does not apply his analytic pragmatism to epistemic concepts, but his detailed account of the methodology makes it clear what kinds of research such an application could involve. For a start, we could inquire whether there is a vocabulary void of any epistemic locutions that is sufficient to specify a practice that comprises speech acts that count as expressing epistemic content (e. g. as containing the concept of knowledge, as evaluating something as epistemically justified). In Brandom’s words, we can seek a “pragmatic metavocabulary” for epistemic locutions, and if we find one that is expressively weaker than the target vocabulary, we achieve an explanatory feat called “pragmatic expressive bootstrapping” (Brandom 2008: 11). Alternatively, we can inquire into whether a practice or ability that counts as expressing epistemic content stands in “pragmatic dependence” relations to other practices or abilities, so that one practice or ability serves as a necessary condition for the other (Brandom 2008: 12). Other potential concerns other relations between practices or abilities on the one hand, and vocabularies on the other. From a methodological point of view, Brandom essentially adds a new way of illuminating one vocabulary by means of another. As he sees it, this is not only what happens in the case of conceptual analysis and explication consid-

54

1 Towards a New Meta-Epistemology

ered, but also in “definition, paraphrase, translation, reduction of different sorts, truth-making, and various kinds of supervenience” (Brandom 2008: 2). An analytic pragmatist epistemological theory would apply pragmatist views of language and linguistic meaning to the general project of illuminating and explaining epistemic concepts, and thereby add a valuable option to epistemology’s descriptive branch.

Hookway’s Pragmatism about Sceptical Challenges The aims and interests of epistemology as a philosophical discipline are given and shaped, among other things, by sceptical threats. Scepticism, according to this view, is one important source for criteria of epistemological adequacy – directly so in the case of work on scepticism, but also for related work on epistemic concepts. We could, for example, maintain that the correctness of a definition of knowledge depends, among other things, on where the definition leaves us with respect to sceptical threats. If a proposed definition results in us not knowing anything, this outcome may potentially be held against the accuracy of the definition. Having considered a range of sceptical arguments and positions throughout the history of epistemology, Hookway develops his own account of what Stroud called “the significance of philosophical scepticism” (Stroud 1984) on the basis of a pragmatist rejection of a pragmatist defence of sceptical challenges (Hookway 1990: chs 7– 8). The pragmatist rejection denies sceptical threats any psychological efficiency and practical significance, assimilating them to “pointless philosophical games” (Hookway 1990: 130). Anybody who has taught sceptical arguments to students will be familiar with this “pragmatist” sentiment. It is neatly summed up by the rather rhetorical “so what?” reaction to such threats. Accepting the pragmatist spirit behind such rejection, but not the rejection itself, Hookway makes a move similar to the one by Kaplan’s considered earlier. If sceptical threats are to be taken seriously, they must make some practical difference – they must have some bearing on our epistemic activities (Hookway prefers talk of “inquiries”). Consider certainty, for example, and assume that Unger’s (1971) argument for the conclusion that we are never absolutely certain of anything is sound. Such a sceptical attack on certainty only has practical significance if we take certainty to play a relevant role in our practice of forming, assessing and communicating beliefs. The same manoeuvre is available if it were to be shown that knowledge requires certainty: the attack on certainty would now undermine our knowledge, but one could further retreat by claiming

1.4 Fourth Development: Pragmatist Epistemology

55

that the concept of knowledge plays no relevant role in our inquiries, because justified belief is sufficient (Hookway 1990: 132– 6). Given the possibility of such manoeuvres, the sceptic has to show that, and how, his challenges affect epistemic agency. Hookway sees two ways for this to happen. Firstly, sceptical threats may undermine agency in general. Our actions depend on beliefs; I run to the bus station because I believe, among other things, that the bus leaves at 4:02 pm. Free, autonomous agency, according to Hookway, depends on “our ability to look upon our beliefs as formed in the right way” (Hookway 1990: 138). Accordingly, sceptical challenges may undermine our ability to see ourselves as rational, autonomous agents. Secondly, scepticism may directly undermine epistemic agency: We participate in inquiries, both scientific and everyday. The deepest scepticism may show that we are unable to do that. Sceptical challenges to certainty, knowledge and justified belief threaten our cognitive self-assurance in so far as those concepts are employed by us in ordering and evaluating our inquiries. (Hookway 1990: 136) Sceptical challenges question our ability to participate in inquiries while retaining the sense that we are autonomous, responsible agents. (Hookway 1990: 215)

To sum up: the kind of pragmatist considerations that have motivated the dismissal of sceptical arguments as practically idle can also be used to reconsider such arguments. Once it is acknowledged that epistemic states and evaluations get their point from their role in inquiries and, more generally, agency, sceptical challenges can be re-evaluated as threatening the possibility of such agency. Hookway thinks that they do so by threatening free agency, rationality and autonomy (Hookway 1990: 138). Generalising Hookway’s point, we can conclude that although the strategy of dismissing sceptical challenges on pragmatist grounds is available in principle, we ought to ensure that such challenges do not point at inconsistencies in the set-up of our epistemic practices (including our uses of epistemic concepts) and/or our conception of ourselves as epistemic agents. In order to check if they do, we need to examine these practices, and potentially to improve them. All considerations presented in this section will play some part in what follows. Rorty’s lesson is that while philosophical epistemology needs to be informed by philosophical semantics, it must not be conceived as the attempt to globally justify our beliefs within the “representationalist” paradigm. Like Kaplan, I will propose to place less weight on the intuitions serving as criteria of adequacy for analysing the content of epistemic terms, focusing instead on functional properties of their use. Reverse engineering, as proposed by Craig, Williams and Weinberg will prove a suitable methodology for the functional analysis of epistemic terms, and such functional analysis will allow for a broader list

56

1 Towards a New Meta-Epistemology

of desiderata (Alston). The resulting pragmatist meta-epistemological perspective on epistemic concepts will allow for the kind of reassessment of the practical role of epistemic concepts that Hookway has in mind.

1.5 Fifth Development: Feminist Epistemology All the (meta‐) epistemological developments discussed so far have been appropriated by feminist philosophers. Politically oriented feminist philosophers embrace the revisionary potential of explication and reflective equilibrium, emphasising that our existing epistemic concepts may be ideologically charged and politically deficient (Anderson 1995; Haslanger 1999, 2000). Naturalist feminist epistemologists insist on the significance of empirical work for epistemological concerns, and especially psychological research into gender bias and socio-historical studies of sexist and androcentric epistemic practices. Social feminist epistemologies highlight the cooperative nature of epistemic processes, rejecting the supposedly neutral ideal of a transcendent, disinterested, individualist epistemic subject as an abstraction that is potentially ideologically motivated. Pragmatist feminist philosophy stresses the potential to reform and improve our actual epistemic practice in the light of gender-neutral goals and values. This section discusses only a handful of feminist epistemologists, presenting each as theorising in close proximity to one of the four epistemological developments considered so far. Thus, we shall see that Elizabeth Anderson and Sally Haslanger endorse revisionary, “ameliorative” epistemological theorising (first development); Louise Antony and Elizabeth Anderson are committed to a naturalist methodology (second development); Helen Longino is a social epistemologist (third development), situated between what she conceives of as “sociological” relativists and “rationalist” analytic philosophers; and Sally Haslanger’s stance is informed by pragmatist elements (fourth development).

Feminist Version of First Development: Improving Epistemic Concepts Feminist epistemologists have long objected to traditional epistemology’s focus on our actual concepts of knowledge and epistemic justification. From a feminist perspective, or indeed from any point of view that is concerned about the social and political presuppositions and ramifications of research, contemporary epistemology’s continued focus on our own epistemic concepts is surprising, given the possibility, or even likelihood, that these concepts are just as susceptible to ideological contamination as their social and political counterparts. For com-

1.5 Fifth Development: Feminist Epistemology

57

parison, consider the concepts of (a) sin, (b) human dignity, and (c) democracy. For a start, take the notion of sin. Surely this concept contributes to the moral content and social function of the Christian religion. In the course of the previous two millennia, there must have been plenty of Christians who resisted the temptation to steal, murder or use contraceptive methods because they regarded these acts as sinful. During the Enlightenment transition to more secular moral theories, thinkers must have been under the impression that the concept of sin had no place in such theories. Twentieth-century moral philosophy tends to avoid the concept altogether. This does not mean that it could not have survived the transition; it was, and still is, possible to discuss the development of versions of the concept that are not restricted to the framework of Christian religion. But even though such a secularising explication of the concept would perhaps have been conceptually possible (co-depending on how far we are willing to stretch the term “explication”), it must have seemed appropriate to simply drop the notion. Compare this to the fate of (b) human dignity. This concept, too, emerged from the middle ages profoundly shaped by Christian thought (although its roots arguably lie in ancient Greece). According to the Christian conception, human beings owe their dignity to having being created in the likeness of God. Later, however, the concept got secularised and re-appropriated by Enlightenment thinkers. Pascal attributed our dignity to our ability to think rationally (Pensées, fragment 146), and Kant based his moral philosophy on a notion of dignity that roughly amounts to autonomy. Today the concept of human dignity appears prominently in documents such as the German constitution (Grundgesetz, first article) and the UN’s Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Furthermore, it plays a substantial role in current bioethical debates. Unlike the concept of sin, there are good reasons for “human dignity” doing important work in contemporary secular moral theorising. However, it is anything but easy to define the term in such a way as to avoid religious and, more generally, Western connotations, while avoiding its collapse into the concept of human rights, or (following the Kantian tradition) autonomy. Participants in discussions of discussion of these worries include David Velleman (1999), who argues for a secular version of the concept to do work in moral theorising, and Ruth Macklin (2003), who proposes to get rid of the concept because it is substitutable, in moral and legal contexts, by other, more suitable and obviously secular terminology. Finally (c), contrast the concepts of sin and human dignity with the concept of democracy. Unlike the former two, “democracy” does not have religious content or connotations. It does, however, have a history, and its content, like that of “dignity”, has undergone considerable change since its inception. The notion of

58

1 Towards a New Meta-Epistemology

democracy, on its way from Pericles’ Athens to today’s liberal democracies (with universal suffrage and at least some institutionalised protection of minority rights) underwent substantial transformations, whilst continuously performing important political and philosophical functions. To sum up, then, talk of “sin” was dropped because it never looked like meeting the requirements of Enlightenment moral theorising; the use of “dignity” is still debated, not least for the very reasons “sin” has been dropped; and “democracy”, while unquestionably useful and suitable, has been transformed. We need not decide at this point whether epistemic concepts such as knowledge or (epistemic) justification are relevantly similar to any of these three notions. But before we uncritically accept the analysis of these concepts as fruitful and methodologically sound epistemology, we should at least allow for the possibility that the concept of knowledge may behave, in some respects, like other concepts with a history. The actual practices in which epistemic concepts play important roles most certainly leave room for improvement. There cannot be any doubt that our epistemic practice, and in particular people’s willingness to (self‐) attribute knowledge (in both everyday and scientific contexts), has been androcentric and sexist in the past. There is evidence for on-going sexism in universities and other scientific research institutions, not least when it comes to employment (Steinpreis et al. 1999). An important paper by MIT professor of philosophy Sally Haslanger begins with the sentence “There is a deep well of rage inside of me” (Haslanger 2008: 210) and goes on to diagnose academic philosophy as an environment that is “actively hostile to women and minorities” (Haslanger 2008: 212). There are contexts in which women are less likely to be acknowledged as knowing something or being experts on something, in which they were refused admission to institutions that count as producing knowledge, and in which the kinds of knowledge attributed to them (or the expertise granted) were hierarchically subordinated to other, predominantly male-produced types of knowledge (Anderson 1995). In her influential book Epistemic Injustice (2007), Miranda Fricker develops a framework and the conceptual tools to identify and condemn important kinds of prejudice-based reluctance to attribute credibility to women and minorities. However, even though it is unfortunately true that actual epistemic practice is sexist, androcentric and in other ways epistemically unjust, this does not imply that epistemic norms, values and concepts themselves are. It is possible that good tools have been, and are being, put to bad use. Accordingly, there are at least two plausible explanations for sexist epistemic practices: first, that epistemic concepts have sexist semantic content, secondly, that they have gender-neutral semantic content, but that implicit or explicit prejudice makes attrib-

1.5 Fifth Development: Feminist Epistemology

59

utors believe that men are more likely to satisfy the concept’s application conditions or truth conditions than women (Haslanger 1999: 464; Fricker 2007). It is obviously of huge importance to criticise and abolish sexist and otherwise unjust epistemic practices. In order to get the required detailed diagnoses, however, epistemology needs to illuminate what it means for an epistemic concept to be embedded within a practice, how the semantic content of epistemic concepts relates to their application conditions, and how ideological, historical and social-psychological factors co-determine these application conditions or even the conceptual contents itself.

Feminist Version of Second Development: Louise Antony and Elizabeth Anderson In her “Quine as a Feminist” (1993), Louise Antony presents Quine, and David Hume before him, as reacting against an epistemological mainstream tradition aiming at “providing a rational justification of the processes by which human beings arrive at theories of the world” (Antony 1993: 199). Antony’s particular angle on naturalised epistemology is motivated by what she calls the “bias paradox” (1993: 188). From a feminist perspective, the paradox results from (a) the ambition to make explicit, and reject, androcentric bias in scientific research, and (b) to expose the epistemic value of objectivity, construed as impartiality or neutrality, as an ideological tool, mainly by acknowledging the “situatedness” of knowledge – the fact that any research starts with presuppositions, expectations (e. g. concerning saliency), and interests (Antony 1993: 188 – 9, 217). How can we scrutinise and potentially reject one set of epistemic values as androcentric, without having to conceive of ourselves as simply preferring our own, feminist values and interests? In Antony’s words: “If we don’t think it’s good to be impartial, then how can we object to men’s being partial?” (1993: 189; Antony’s emphasis) The solution to the bias paradox uses the attribution to Quine of the thought that epistemology itself is an empirical theory. Theories of knowledge describe and explain epistemic practices, and if they fail to do so accurately, they are wrong (Antony 1993: 210). Empirical research (e. g. Chomsky’s work on language acquisition) points at “inborn conceptual structures” and a modular, partly taskspecific structure of the mind. Such discoveries, according to Antony, falsify an “empiricist view of the mind”, because these structures amount to a kind of bias (Antony 1993: 211). Moreover (and this is where epistemology comes in), such bias (as well as interests) facilitates the acquisition of knowledge (and perhaps other cognitive processes). Accordingly, Antony concludes, partiality has episte-

60

1 Towards a New Meta-Epistemology

mic value; the epistemic value of objectivity, at least when construed as impartiality, can be rejected on empirical grounds. What all this means is that a naturalized approach to knowledge provides us with empirical grounds for rejecting pure neutrality as an epistemic ideal, and for valuing those kinds of ‘biases’ that serve to trim our epistemic jobs to manageable proportions. (Antony 1993: 213)

Accordingly, the “bias paradox” can be solved. Feminists should not criticise androcentric scientific (and other epistemic) practice for being biased, since feminist theorising is also biased. Rather, feminists should acknowledge that all epistemic activities are biased, and focus on distinguishing “good” from “bad” bias (Antony 1993: 214– 15). This we do empirically; by examining which theories are true; which worldviews actually constitute knowledge (Antony 1993: 215). Thus, Antony embraces naturalised epistemology not so much for its naturalism, but primarily for its empirical ambitions and criteria of adequacy, and she is firmly committed to the availability of a “minimally realist” conception of truth as the standard for judging the adequacy of epistemic norms and the quality of bias (Antony 1993: 190). If we accept both the empirical character of epistemology and a realist notion of truth as its normative standard, we are well placed to appreciate the importance (for epistemology and the philosophy of science) of the results of the (empirical) history and sociology of science. We simply check, in hindsight, what kinds of bias, using what sorts of epistemic norms, have produced true or false theories. We then drop “bad” bias (what has been proven to be bad bias in the past), embrace “good” bias, reject inappropriate epistemic norms and values, and accept those that have led to true theories and worldviews in the past. Elizabeth Anderson, too, thinks that feminist epistemologists are well advised to subscribe to naturalised epistemology (Anderson 1995). According to her, “a naturalized empiricist epistemology offers excellent prospects for advancing a feminist epistemology of theoretical knowledge” (Anderson 1995: 50). Even though her empiricist orientation differs from Antony’s “rationalism”, both have similar reasons for embracing naturalised epistemology. Anderson, too, thinks that feminist epistemology should be able to draw normative and evaluative conclusions from the history and sociology of science. Where Antony appeals to truth as the standard that allows for such evaluations, Anderson invokes epistemic adequacy (Anderson 1995: 52). Epistemology’s normative ambitions are then legitimised via reflection on the merits of our past, present and potential attitudes, intentions, and practices (Anderson 1995: 52 calls this “reflective endorsement”).

1.5 Fifth Development: Feminist Epistemology

61

Despite substantial differences in their epistemological outlook, Antony and Anderson both emphasise that epistemological theorising can be naturalised in relevant ways without giving up on its normative and evaluative ambitions. They thereby cash in on Quine’s commitments (C1) to empirical evidence and (C4) to descriptive and explanatory theorising (section 1.2), turn their attention to epistemic (and more specifically scientific) practices and processes, and focus on the kind of malfunction, injustice, irrationality, epistemic distortion and poor institutional design that is the product of androcentrism and sexism.

Feminist Version of Third Development: Helen Longino Not only Quine’s naturalised epistemology, but also the assumptions and methodology of the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) were quickly incorporated into feminist epistemological strategies. What makes both Quine’s and SSK’s basic assumptions attractive for feminist concerns is the thought that traditional epistemology’s refusal to acknowledge the fact that epistemic agents are sociallysituated, gendered human beings is part of a broader, androcentric strategy. In a nutshell, this strategy consists in marketing as universal and neutral norms and values that are suitable to white, heterosexual Western men. This can be done, for example, by defining the standards “objective” and “scientific” in such ways that these definitions yield “merely subjective” and “unscientific” as convenient charges for dismissing certain kinds of research. Starting with her book Science As Social Knowledge (1990), Helen Longino has developed an account of scientific practice and epistemic values that accepts the embodied and social character of epistemic agency (and hence the non-epistemic interests that SSK highlights) while rejecting relativist and constructivist consequences that often follow from such views. Ironically, it is the social character of knowledge-producing processes that helps to avoid relativism by keeping in check individual assumptions and prejudices: Values are not incompatible with objectivity, but objectivity is analyzed as a function of community practices rather than as an attitude of individual researchers towards their material or a relation between representation and represented. (Longino 1990: 216)

Not only what counts as objective is a result of intersubjective negotiation. Contrary to the individualist and foundationalist assumptions of the logical empiricists, Longino thinks that what counts as an observation is in many contexts determined by norms and standards (Longino 1990: 220; 1994: 139). In order for observations to have value as data, they must meet further requirements that

62

1 Towards a New Meta-Epistemology

are open to critical discussion (Longino 1994: 140). In scientific research contexts, processes of reasoning, too, do not typically take the form of inner monologues; reasoning “gets its point in a social context – a context of interaction among individuals” (Longino 1994: 141). Diagnosing the “science wars” as based, in part, on a misguided dichotomy between the “rational” and the “social”, Longino attempts to reconcile SSK’s emphasis on the social character of knowledge production (e. g. in research communities, labs, university departments) and the inevitable influences of nonepistemic interests and values with the opposition of “rationalists” or “philosophers” to strong versions of constructivism and relativism (Longino 1994; 2002). Motivated in part by Philip Kitcher’s (1991) proposal to present her (1990) views of epistemic practice and values as an account of knowledge, Longino develops the following “analysis” or “definition” of knowledge: If S1…Sn are members of an epistemic community [C], W is some real-world system or portion of real-world system, and M is a model (of that system), then S1…Sn know W as M if and only if (i) S1…Sn represent W as M, and act with respect to W as if it were M (ii) a subset of elements of M is sufficiently isomorphic to a subset of elements of W to enable S1…Sn to satisfy their goals with respect to W; and (iii) S1…Sn’s representing W as M is the result of warranting practices adopted by C in circumstances characterized by a. public forums for critical interaction, b. uptake of criticism, c. public standards, and d. equality of intellectual authority among diverse perspectives. (Longino 1994: 153)

What happens here is that Longino packs the challenging ideas adopted from Kuhn and SSK into the arch-analytical meta-epistemological project of analysing or defining the concept of knowledge. Moreover, she remains faithful to the justified-true-belief (JTB)-schema at the heart of what the present book attempts to portray (and challenge) as “traditional” analytic epistemology. Thus, the representation of the first condition replaces the individualist belief-condition, the isomorphism in (ii) plays the part of the truth-condition, while the restrictions on the production of the representation ensure what the justification-condition achieves in JTB. We shall return to Longino’s social theory of knowledge in due course (chapter 5). For the development of the new meta-epistemological framework that starts in the next chapter, we ought to take on board the following points from Longino’s work. Firstly, epistemology ought to take into account interpersonal communication and other forms of social interaction. Secondly, although such interaction is not governed by epistemic norms and standards only (but by cul-

1.5 Fifth Development: Feminist Epistemology

63

tural and other non-epistemic values and goals too), the social character of epistemic processes does not by itself entail relativism and/or constructivism. On the contrary, social interactions can be seen as constituting epistemic standards. Thirdly, the resulting epistemic standards, although performing familiar evaluative functions within the epistemic practice, may differ in content from traditional epistemic values. The notion of objectivity as accounted for in terms of social interaction, for example, is not identical to the familiar notion tied up with the idea of a view from nowhere or “God’s eye perspective”.

Feminist Version of Fourth Development: Sally Haslanger Just as Antony and Anderson with naturalised epistemology and Longino with Kuhn and SSK, Sally Haslanger’s “What Knowledge is and What it Ought to Be” (1999) gives a feminist spin to the pragmatist developments within contemporary epistemology. Recall that Kaplan (1985; see section 2.4) diagnoses the controversy about Gettier’s counterexamples to JTB-definitions of knowledge as practically idle, because what is at stake in these discussions is not relevant for the purpose of advancing and clarifying rational inquiry. Craig motivates his genealogical explanation of our epistemic practice by claiming that the point or purpose of epistemic concepts is at least as important as their definition. Related points were made by William Alston and Jonathan Weinberg. Hookway (1990) reevaluates sceptical challenges as potentially undermining our ability to participate in inquiries (and to act freely and intentionally in general) while consistently seeing ourselves as autonomous and rational agents. Attempts to define or analyse knowledge are part of a family of epistemological research Haslanger calls “immanent” (1999: 461). For some epistemological theory to be immanent is for it to analyse, define, or otherwise account for the content of, our actual epistemic concepts; to examine the natural kinds our actual epistemic terms denote (if they are taken to be natural kind terms); to explicate our actual epistemic concepts, or to justify them by means of a (narrow) reflective equilibrium. In short, epistemological work counts as immanent iff it relies on our actual practice of (self‐) attributing knowledge,¹¹ on our actual epis-

 We need not say that S knows that p in order attribute to S the knowledge that p, in the sense that we treat S as knowing that p – perhaps by starting to rely on it. Chapters 4 and 5 will address both implicit and explicit attributions of epistemic states.

64

1 Towards a New Meta-Epistemology

temic evaluations, on the epistemic norm we happen to endorse) more strongly than in the sense of merely “being informed” by it (Haslanger 1999: 466 – 7).¹² Attempts to analyse or define our concept of knowledge certainly qualify as immanent, but so do, according to Haslanger, some naturalistic projects (see section 2.2 above). It is true, she says, that naturalised epistemology examines phenomena – the extension of concepts, rather than the concepts themselves – and yes, they do so by means of “empirical or quasi-empirical generalizations about the domain in question” (Haslanger 1999: 460). But although this is an empirical, a posteriori, and possibly scientific enterprise, it is still an “investigation of what we normally take to be paradigm instances” of our epistemic concepts (Haslanger 1999: 460). It is still an exercise in immanent epistemology.¹³ Haslanger expresses some doubts with regards to the chances for immanent epistemology to identify anything like “our actual concept of knowledge” via examinations of implicit and explicit applications of the concepts (similar to Stephen Stich’s (1990) worry with regards to reflective equilibrium). More importantly and radically, however, she questions the general viability of important strands of immanent epistemology: If we allow (which, given both the depth of our capacity for cognitive error, and the depth of our sexism, seems reasonable) that our practices might be systematically misguided; and if we take the primary task of epistemology to be a normative investigation into knowledge – one investigating how we ought to reason, on what basis we ought to form beliefs, and more generally what is epistemically valuable – then there is something peculiar about pursuing an ‘immanent’ strategy in epistemology that undertakes simply to describe ‘our’ concept, or to discover the (natural?) kind we ordinarily refer to. Normative epistemology certainly has much to learn from close attention to the ways we proceed epistemically, but to suppose

 Haslanger concedes that “being informed” by our actual epistemic practice is sufficient, according to standard use of “immanent”, for epistemology to be immanent (1999, 466 – 7). She therefore does not suggest to move away from immanent epistemology, but to embrace “critical or normative immanent epistemology” (1999: 467). This is an unfortunate terminological manoeuvre, I think, because both explication and the method of equilibrium are often understood as having the potential for criticism and normative adjustment. Hence I will reserve the label “immanent epistemology” for what Haslanger criticises, building into the concept a reliance on our actual epistemic practice that is stronger than merely being informed by it. The extent to which epistemological theorising can be informed by our actual practice without collapsing into the kind of immanent epistemology Haslanger rejects will become clear throughout the meta-epistemological work in chapters 3 to 5.  Haslanger offers a diagnosis of the reasons for contemporary epistemology’s predominantly immanent orientation: much epistemological theorising is motivated by sceptical arguments. These, however, threaten our knowledge. Consequently, anti-sceptical moves aim to show that our actual epistemic practices, involving our actual concept of knowledge, provide definitive cases of knowledge (Haslanger 1999: 461).

1.5 Fifth Development: Feminist Epistemology

65

that what we value epistemically is what we ought to value epistemically is to leave the normative part of normative epistemology undone. (Haslanger 1999: 466; her emphases)

Like Kaplan and Alston before her (and Weinberg after her), Haslanger sees the point or purpose of having and using epistemic concepts as the key for epistemology’s normative ambitions (Haslanger 1999: 467). Instead of analysing, defining, reducing or explicating our actual concepts, we ought to examine the work they do for us; then we ask whether they do this work well, and, perhaps, whether a different concept could do it better. Because we examine the point or purpose of our actual epistemic concepts, there is still an immanent element to such research. However, the scope for revising our actual concepts and practices is considerable, because the content of the concepts as we express them, or as they are implicitly operative in our epistemic practices, does not function as a criterion of adequacy for normative epistemology. This is motivated by concerns that are aptly illustrated by the fate of the three concepts described in the introduction to this section. Enlightenment moral philosophers simply dropped the notion of sin, because its content is too steeped in Christian doctrine for it to be valuable within the secular moral practice they envisaged. Human dignity may or may not be a good conceptual choice for contemporary theorising about, say, bioethical issues, while “democracy” has successfully been transformed to fit modern purposes. There is no reason why dropping or replacing concepts should not be an option on the epistemological table, too. And there is no reason to stop at the notions of knowledge and epistemic justification: even the epistemic credentials of the concept of belief, Haslanger claims, ought to be critically discussed (Haslanger 1999: 470). Is it not at least conceivable that some if not all of our epistemic purposes would be better served if we attributed “acceptings” to ourselves and each other? This leaves Haslanger with the task of specifying, or at least indicating the direction towards specifying, the point or purpose of epistemic concepts. Here she differs from Craig and Williams, who both try to identify such purpose by means of state-of-nature scenarios, and agrees with Hookway’s proposal to see epistemic concepts as making essential contributions to “a kind of agency that is intrinsically valuable” (Haslanger 1999: 471). Epistemic concepts typically have an evaluative component; the epistemic values they express have their place in (are co-constitutive of) an overall, intrinsically valued ideal of moral, autonomous human agency (Haslanger 1999: 471). Accordingly, epistemic concepts owe their point and purpose to such an overriding moral ideal. One reason why empirical psychological and socio-historical work on epistemic agency and practices (institutions; inquiries; belief-forming practices; expertise) is not merely interesting but urgent is the fact that they have been,

66

1 Towards a New Meta-Epistemology

and potentially still are, unjust and faulty. Obviously what has been said about women throughout this section applies to other marginalised groups, too. Just as naturalised epistemology’s emphasis on descriptive and explanatory work gains plausibility and urgency when coupled with feminism’s political and moral concerns, so does the pragmatist proposal to ground our epistemic desiderata in agency and practice. If there is evidence that our use of epistemic concepts was governed in the past by sexist and/or androcentric assumptions, should we not concede the possibility that such assumptions are also operative in our current epistemic values, standards and concepts? And if this much is conceded, should we not at least explore the possibility of dropping all immanent epistemology in favour of a wide-ranging conceptual refurbishment of the epistemic realm? Within each development sketched in this chapter we identified a range of lessons to be carried forward into the following chapters. From Carnap-style explication we adopted the requirement that epistemology must allow for revisionary, ameliorative re-engineering of its key concepts; one, but not the only, important candidate for the source of the relevant criteria of success for this kind of conceptual re-engineering is reflective equilibrium. From Quine’s proposals to “naturalise” epistemology, we accepted that the results of natural sciences, and in particular psychology, are epistemologically relevant. Additionally, epistemology itself is concerned, among other things, with the description and explanation of epistemic states and processes. Restrictions on the vocabulary permitted for doing so can be discussed; they may result from considerations about what counts as a good explanation that is not specific to epistemology or even philosophy. The work of Thomas Kuhn and the “Sociology of Scientific Knowledge” movement complemented Quine by highlighting the social character of epistemic processes and the role of non-epistemic values, goals and interests. Without accepting any relativist or constructivist implications, we took this work to shift the burden of proof with respect to the distinction between what is, and what is not, normatively and epistemically relevant (the distinction between the contexts of discovery and justification). Similarly we took the pragmatists’ priority of the practice to imply that philosophical theorising ought to have practical significance unless motivated and specified otherwise. Subscribing to pragmatist approaches to conceptual content, the use of epistemic language is treated as a methodologically privileged aspect of epistemic practice, and Rorty’s diagnosis that representationalism is builtinto our conception of epistemology is accepted in so far as epistemologists ought to take into account that misleading assumptions, values and metaphors can indeed be built into conceptions of epistemology, and that representational-

1.5 Fifth Development: Feminist Epistemology

67

ism, if built into the conception of epistemology, can unduly narrow its scope and generate pseudo-problems. Pragmatist shifts within epistemology suggest complementing or even replacing traditional content-oriented and intuition-driven conceptual analysis and explication by functional concerns. This amounts to a shift to what I will call in chapter 3, “epistemological functionalism”. Instead of inquiring into what we mean when we use epistemic expressions, we now ask what they are for. Such functional questions ought to help us explain and understand our epistemic practice (Craig, Williams), but it should also enable genuinely normative epistemological inquiries (Weinberg). The pragmatist epistemologist should now be in a position from which she can ask how we ought to organise epistemic practices, and which norms, values and concepts are suitable given certain goals, values or standards.

2 What Is “Meta-Epistemology”? The five developments in twentieth-century epistemology described in chapter 1 point in the direction of a new conception of epistemology – one that is broader, more pragmatist, more politically aware, and methodologically more self-conscious than the conception that has been implicit in the so-called “analytic” epistemology embedded in the analytic philosophy triggered by logical empiricism. Both conceptions of epistemology are meta-epistemological in nature; they embody views of what epistemology is, what its aims and methods are, and under what conditions an epistemological question counts as answered, an epistemological problem as solved. The aim of this chapter is to define the term “meta-epistemology” and to lay the groundwork for a new meta-epistemology. I shall do so by firstly considering an analogy: can meta-epistemology be seen as relating to epistemology in the way meta-ethics relates to normative, or perhaps applied ethics?

2.1 From Meta-Ethics to Meta-Epistemology Here is an example to get things started: scientist Sheila works on the hypothesis that some substance XYZ causes cancer. Call this hypothesis “H”. Sheila’s evidence for H is fairly solid. Some of her colleagues regard it as conclusive; others disagree. Sheila, or Sheila’s research group, must now decide if additional evidence is needed, which is a tough call, given that the only way to produce further evidence involves a series of five experiments E1… E5 that cause harm to animals. Pondering the considerations she takes to be relevant for the decision, Sheila comes to the conclusion that the grounds for or against her decision ought to boil down to epistemic considerations on the one hand, and moral norms or values on the other. She is confident that time, money and any other inconvenience the experiments would cause her are negligible. Accordingly Sheila must make her decision on the basis of answers to questions such as these: (1)

Is it epistemically obligatory to conduct E1… E5?

(2) Is it morally permissible to conduct E1… E5? There are, of course, interesting and hotly contested questions about how the epistemic and the moral angles or viewpoints relate, and if and how they feed into some overall, overarching faculty of practical thinking that eventually yields action-determining decision or intention. We need not be concerned with any such questions at the moment; just assume that there are at least two viewpoints DOI 10.1515/9783110525458-003

2.1 From Meta-Ethics to Meta-Epistemology

69

relevant to Sheila’s decision, one epistemic, the other moral, each providing means to think or say what one ought, may or must not do, and what is or isn’t correct or right to do.¹ If Sheila is serious about her decision, she may, after singling out the two questions above as most (or exclusively) relevant to her decision (money and time may, for a change, not be an issue), write them down on two sheets of paper. The first piece of paper – call it the “ethics sheet” – may start with the question itself and is then filled with Sheila’s reflections on why the tests may or may not be morally defensible. The “epistemology sheet” will look very different; it will probably deal mainly with the question of whether the evidence Sheila has already available is sufficient for H to count as well supported or even proven. What Sheila does on her ethics sheet is an exercise in moral reflection. If she reflects on the considerations that are potentially relevant to the moral quality of her action in a vaguely systematic form, there is no harm to count it as an engagement with normative moral theory or ethics. If Sheila’s considerations are limited to the case of animal testing, and if she has at her disposal arguments and considerations that are regularly relevant in this field, she may perhaps be seen as engaging in applied normative ethics, or more specifically in (applied) animal ethics. We need not be concerned with demarcation issues (if indeed there are any) between normative ethics and applied ethics. What we find on Sheila’s sheet could include questions such as “Is it OK to cause harm to animals?”, “Do we ever have the right to kill animals?”, “Is there a difference between insects and mammals when it comes to our right to kill?”, or even “Do we ever have the right to use, own, buy animals?”. If Sheila gets entangled in her normative ethics, she may start wondering why it is wrong to own, use, harm, or even kill animals and hit on some version of consequentialism or Kantianism. She may start comparing these two justificatory strategies for the specific moral evaluation she is interested in, wondering if looking at the consequences of her action is the right way to judge them morally. Perhaps she emails her friend, the moral philosopher Frank, who should be able to help her see through the forest of considerations and potentially relevant moral principles.

 In chapter 4, the term “viewpoint” will be stipulatively introduced as denoting the genus of which “epistemic”, “moral”, “prudential”, etc., label species.

70

2 What Is “Meta-Epistemology”?

Normative Ethics and Meta-Ethics If Sheila is unlucky, though, Frank will reply that he may not be quite the expert on these questions she took him to be. “Yes”, Frank’s email may concede, “it is true that I am a kind of moral philosopher, but as it happens I work on meta-ethics. You may want to ask somebody with an expertise in normative ethics, or even in applied animal ethics.” What is Frank’s research about? Frank is not so much interested in what Sheila, or indeed anybody, ought or ought not to do. He works, as it were, one floor higher, asking questions of a higher order. Instead of aiming directly at good or correct or justifiable moral assessments of our actions, the meta-ethicist wonders what we do when we evaluate actions from a moral viewpoint. Moral judgements are, after all, quite a puzzling activity – we assess people and their actions with the help of standards that we do not appear to understand all that well. Where do they come from? What is their nature? Are they objective? Do they exist independently of us, to be discovered by us like the laws of nature? Or do we essentially make them up? Why should they be binding? What kinds of justification are they (and the judgements based on them) susceptible to? These are not the questions of normative ethics. They are not the kind of question Sheila deals with on her ethics sheet. In fact, some meta-ethicists maintain that views in normative ethics should be completely independent from, and compatible with, different meta-ethical positions. Normative ethics essentially aims at the justification of moral evaluations, norms and standards, and the evaluation of actions by means of such standards. Typically it does so by subsuming actions under general action types (e. g. counting some action as a case of promising; treating an animal as a sentient creature, etc.), which then fall under maxims or norms (e. g. “one must not break one’s promises”), which are deduced from general principles. Here is an introductory survey’s wording of the task of normative ethics: Normative ethics thus seeks to discover the general principles underlying moral practice, and in this way potentially impacts upon practical moral problems: different general principles may yield different verdicts in particular cases. (Miller 2003: 2)

Meta-ethics, by contrast, looks at issues that contribute to our overall understanding of the nature of moral evaluation. These issues are, as the list of question above indicates, often at least partly linguistic, epistemological or metaphysical in character. We wonder what kind of a speech act we perform by calling something “morally permissible”, what kind of semantic content we thereby express, how to gain moral knowledge, and whether there are moral

2.1 From Meta-Ethics to Meta-Epistemology

71

facts and properties. Philosophers of language, for example, may inquire into the pragmatics and semantics of moral judgements not because they are interested in moral questions, but because evaluative judgements cause problems for semantic theories developed for the language of the natural sciences (e. g. truthconditional semantics). From a metaphysical point of view, normative statements easily cause “location problems” or “placement problems”. How are we to “place” moral facts into, say, some naturalist picture, according to which “all there is is the world of science” (Jackson 1998: chapter 1; Price 2004)?² But it is not just semantic worries and metaphysical placement problems that drive meta-ethical research. Sheila herself, starting her moral deliberation process with the practical question of whether it is morally permissible to perform experiments that cause harm to animals, could potentially reach a point at which she feels the need for some basic clarification. “I keep getting stuck here”, she could say to herself, “eventually doubting every single preliminary conclusion I reach. What is the status of moral evaluations? Do they have legitimate claim to objectivity? How can they have such claim, if they are not backed up by the kind of evidence I am used to from scientific research?” These are the kinds of concern that drove G.E. Moore, whose Principia Ethica (1993 [1903]) is commonly seen as the origin of meta-ethics as a philosophical discipline, to work towards a scientific status for ethics: I have endeavoured to write Prolegomena to any future Ethics that can possibly pretend to be scientific. In other words, I have endeavoured to discover what are the fundamental principles of ethical reasoning; and the establishment of these principles, rather than of any conclusions which may be attained by their use, may be regarded as my main object. (Moore 1993 [1903]: 4)

Cognitivism vs. Non-Cognitivism It is probably not too much of a simplification to say that the main task for “Prolegomena to any future Ethics that can possibly pretend to be scientific”, as Moore calls his project, is to establish the semantic (including inferential), epistemic and pragmatic status of moral judgements and statements, where the reference to semantics is meant to include metaphysical questions. This is Sheila’s likely route from applied ethics into meta-ethical territory, too. As it has turned

 Simon Blackburn thinks that such placement problems, which arise if we try to fit in certain phenomena into given metaphysical pictures of the world, are the “best philosophical problems” (1986: 39, 163).

72

2 What Is “Meta-Epistemology”?

out – and as it was obvious to Moore – one of the main obstacles for a “scientific ethics” is the normative and evaluative character of moral judgements. When we say that experimenting on animals is morally bad, we do not seem to describe these experiments, in the sense that we describe a laboratory rat by stating that it is unwell. Instead we evaluate such experiments. We express our disapproval, perhaps by suggesting that this kind of thing should not be done, that we would not do it, or that we would not allow it to happen if we had a say. The question of whether moral judgements describe moral properties or express moral attitudes is at the heart of meta-ethics. Cognitivists hold that just like ordinary descriptive statements (“Laboratory rats are mammals”), moral judgements (“Experimenting on animals is bad”) ascribe a property (moral badness) to an action (action type, person, disposition, …). Because epistemic judgements and statements, too, are typically evaluative or normative, we need to take a closer look at the problems they cause. After this section, we will examine the possibility of meta-epistemology, relating it to epistemology in the way meta-ethics relates to normative ethics. In order to see how one might get to worry about normative and evaluative statements – they seem to do a perfectly good job in everyday life after all – recall that early twentieth-century epistemology tended to restrict semantic meaningfulness to sentences that are verifiable or falsifiable with recourse to sense experience. The relevant criteria of meaningfulness promised to rule out socalled “metaphysical” statements not merely on epistemic, but also on semantic grounds: it is not just that we lack evidence for metaphysical statements; because they cannot be empirically verified or confuted, they in fact do not make sense. This then settles the question of their epistemic status, because nonsensical noises cannot be justified. However, the semantic and epistemological assumptions allowing for boundaries between scientific and so-called “metaphysical”, i. e. nonsensical statements, threatened to undermine normative and evaluative language. If linguistic meaning is accounted for by means of truth conditions, verifiability, falsifiability, or any other representationalist concepts, and if we do not want to flatly deny the fact that normative and evaluative statements have linguistic meaning and, when appropriately uttered, make perfect sense, then we either have to extend our explanatory semantic apparatus to normative and evaluative statements, or we have to deal with the latter by other explanatory means. The choice between these two options sets non-cognitivist theories of normative and evaluative judgements apart from cognitivist views. Here are some assumptions motivating non-cognitivism about normative and evaluative judgements:

2.1 From Meta-Ethics to Meta-Epistemology

73

(a) We have a fairly good grasp of the semantics and pragmatics of assertions about the world that count as paradigm cases of description. An example is an assertion of “This is a mammal”, made in standard everyday circumstances. Call such assertions “descriptive”. Descriptive assertions are true or false; the content expressed by them is a function of the semantic value of its parts, and a good model for the meaning of such sentences is to see it as a function from possible worlds to truth values. (b) Some fairly compelling considerations from the philosophy of science and philosophical semantics (e. g. truth-conditional semantics, verificationism, semantic and epistemological empiricism), perhaps jointly with powerful intuitions and metaphysical worries, indicate that normative and evaluative judgements are not just one kind of descriptive assertion among others. An example may be “Sheila must not perform experiments on any animals”. (c) Moral judgements or statements do not purport to describe anything; such statements are not meant to fit the world, as descriptive assertions are. This is why their content cannot be explained in terms of truth conditions, or indeed by any representationalist means. We had better construe such statements as expressing our views of how people should act: by means of them we endorse or reject behaviour; we approve or disapprove of things. So non-cognitivism, broadly conceived, holds that there are fundamental semantic differences between assertions of the type “This is a mammal” and assertions of the type “It is morally wrong to experiment on animals”; in particular, they hold that the former are descriptive in a sense the latter are not. According to a caricature of the simplest non-cognitivist account imaginable, we do something akin to shouting “hooray” when judging something to be morally good, and “boo” when judging something to be morally bad. The precise sense in which a sentence, statement, judgement or even concept can be more or less “descriptive” can be spelt out in various ways. Because one important family of theories account for the semantic content of descriptive assertions in terms of their truth conditions, it is not surprising that some statement’s or assertion’s susceptibility to truth values has helped to draw one major line between meta-ethicists. According to this thought, (meta-ethical) cognitivists believe that moral statements are truth-apt (i. e. evaluable as true or false), while non-cognitivists deny this. However, with deflationary theories of truth having somewhat dampened the appeal of truth-aptness as a dividing feature (enabling non-cognitivists to allow for moral statements to be assessed as harmlessly true or false; see Horwich 1998; Blackburn 1998), there are other means to maintain the distinction. Noncognitivists can maintain that descriptive, but not moral judgements and asser-

74

2 What Is “Meta-Epistemology”?

tions express beliefs (moral judgements express other propositional attitudes); that descriptive, but not moral judgements purport to state facts, and that there are physical, but no moral properties. There is a huge amount of literature devoted to the discussion of cognitivism and non-cognitivism, starting from early emotivists (Barnes 1933; Ayer 1936: ch. 6; Stevenson 1937, 1946), ranging over sophisticated and widely discussed expressivist theories of moral judgement (Blackburn 1986; Gibbard 1990), all the way to more recent discussions of the compatibility of non-cognitivism and deflationary theories of truth (e. g. Dreier 1996, 2004; Sinclair 2007). We will revisit the controversy at the beginning of chapter 4, when we deal with normativity issues relating to epistemic evaluation. For the time being, it suffices to keep in mind that the debate between cognitivists and non-cognitivists is a meta-ethical dispute that is at least partly motivated by worries concerning the epistemic, semantic and inferential status of moral judgements and statements. What causes puzzlement with regards to these statuses is the normative and evaluative quality that moral judgements share with other normative and evaluative speech acts, mental acts and mental states – i. e. the fact that they do not purport to represent the world. The representationalist tools that have traditionally served well to determine the epistemic, semantic and inferential status of contentful acts and states lead to a range of problems when applied to normative or evaluative judgements or statements – not just in ethics, but in other areas of theorising with normative ambitions too. However, while there is an established division of labour in practical philosophy between normative (including applied) ethics and meta-ethics, nothing of the sort has happened in epistemology.

Normative Epistemology and Meta-Epistemology? As we have seen, Sheila remains in well-charted territory as long as she keeps worrying about the moral correctness of her decision, even if she moves on to reflect on her own moral decision-making process. She tackles her question with the means of normative ethics until she starts worrying about the semantic, epistemic and inferential status of moral judgements and concepts. These worries would take her into meta-ethics, where she would find a range of promising positions spelling out whether moral judgements can be true or false, what could count as evidence for a moral judgement, what sorts of consideration can become relevant for the moral quality of an action, and how moral judgements can function as premises and conclusions in arguments.

2.1 From Meta-Ethics to Meta-Epistemology

75

Recall, however, that Sheila’s decision-making process involves not only moral deliberation. She confronts two questions: (1)

Is it epistemically obligatory to conduct E1… E5?

(2) Is it morally permissible to conduct E1… E5? What if Sheila gets stuck on her epistemology sheet, devoted to the first of these questions, and sends a second email, this time to her epistemologist friend Jane? Interestingly, there won’t be any danger of Jane replying in the same way as Frank. Jane may, of course, reply that she is sorry because she doesn’t know much about epistemic standards in scientific research, because she has spent her academic life defending a fancy definition of knowledge against Gettierstyle attacks. However, Jane is highly unlikely to claim that she doesn’t know about normative epistemology because she works in meta-epistemology. Why not? The two questions at the heart of Sheila’s decision-making process look strikingly similar, after all. Epistemology as a research discipline seems to address problems that are similar, in important respects, to the problems of ethics. In both cases we assess or evaluate, or advise for or against, or prescribe or prohibit, human actions and states. In both cases we are interested in good, right, or the best evaluations. We try to justify the evaluations we have, or to revise some of them (“No, actually, think about it. It’s morally/epistemically wrong to do this”). In both cases we are subsuming specific actions or states under suitably individuated action or state types (e. g. beliefs individuated by their propositional content), and in both cases we try to determine the correctness of these actions or states by looking for general principles. Not only can we, as we have seen in the case of Sheila’s experiment, assess actions both morally and epistemically, we also routinely assess mental states and even emotions from both viewpoints. Scientist Sheila’s belief that her research assistant has faked data may be both epistemically unjustified and morally out of order – the belief may be immoral because it is epistemically unfounded and indeed the result of jealousy or anger. Such jealousy and anger in turn can be morally and epistemically assessed (see Kuenzle and Brun 2008). We can speak of both moral and epistemic vices and virtues. Why, then, is there a well-established distinction between two kinds of research in the case of ethics, while there isn’t in epistemology? Why is it that, if Jane were to turn down Sheila’s request for epistemological advice on the grounds that she works in meta-epistemology, we would then have very little idea of the sort of research she engages in? Is the lack of meta-epistemology as an established research field not a surprising and puzzling fact, given the structural similarities between questions of moral and epistemic evaluation on

76

2 What Is “Meta-Epistemology”?

the one hand, and moral philosophy and epistemology as disciplines on the other? In what follows, I will work under the assumption that this is, indeed, a surprising and puzzling state of affairs, and one that can be remedied. I will present the few threads of explicit meta-epistemological theorising twentieth-century epistemology has produced in order to weave them into a new meta-epistemological framework, which will be developed on the basis of the five challenges to traditional analytic epistemology presented in chapter 1. The question why there hasn’t been a meta-epistemological tradition so far will be left to the history of philosophy, but here is a speculative sketch of what might have happened. The early logical empiricists transposed epistemic relations (e. g. the relation denoted by statements of the form “x epistemically confirms T”) into a semantic key (truth conditions; verifiability), and consequently epistemological questions were thought to be best tackled on the level of relations between sentences and sense impressions on the one hand, and inferential relations between sentences on the other. The relevant statements dealing with these relations were thought to be descriptive, not normative. Epistemology was simply not thought of as being in the business of telling us what we ought, may, and must not believe, accept, or do. Within this framework, parallels to moral philosophy would have been hard to detect. The kind of representationalist semantics and truth-functional logic that allows for explaining what we do when we describe the world, what it means to reason, how factual disagreement is possible and how it can be resolved, does not straightforwardly apply to normative and evaluative discourse. If we strive, within normative and evaluative discourse, for the kind of conceptual clarity, methodological self-consciousness and reliance on evidence and the force of the better reason that we all know from the natural sciences, we need to either adapt the semantic and logical tools familiar from descriptive theorising, or develop new tools for research within disciplines with normative ambitions. Chapter 4 will have much more to say about the distinction between descriptive and normative theorising, and about the positions of cognitivism and noncognitivism with respect to such activities. Note, for now, that a view of epistemic evaluation that does not exploit parallels between moral and epistemic judgements, and that does not draw epistemological lessons from the long-established division of labour between ethics and meta-ethics, is a fairly idiosyncratic view of epistemic evaluation.

2.2 Conceptions of Meta-Epistemology

77

2.2 Conceptions of Meta-Epistemology Very little of the research presented in chapter 1 explicitly uses the term “metaepistemological” as applied to its own status and ambitions. Instead, researchers in this area typically present their work as being of an epistemological character: “naturalised epistemology”, “feminist epistemology”, “pragmatist epistemology”, or indeed “no more epistemology”, as is Rorty’s case. Given the nature of some of these proposals, this is a surprising terminological choice. After all, Quine, for example, suggests changes to epistemology’s goals, methods and criteria of adequacy. If there is any room at all for a distinction between epistemology and meta-epistemology, then Quine’s reasoning ought to count as meta-epistemological. The same goes for Anderson’s (1995) feminist take on naturalised epistemology and Haslanger’s (1999) proposal that epistemology ought to conceptually refurbish the epistemic realm as a whole. Jonathan Weinberg explicitly proposes a new meta-epistemology; his use of the term will be discussed below. Unlike the term “meta-ethics”, the term “meta-epistemology” is by no means established within contemporary philosophy. Because the notion of meta-epistemology will carry great weight in what follows, conceptual clarification is required. As a first step, this section examines the short history of the concept of meta-epistemology within contemporary philosophical discourse (Alston 1978; Moser 1993; Fumerton 1995; Weinberg 2006). All conceptions are discussed and compared, so that at the end of the section we will be well positioned to provide an explication of the notion that does justice to established usage, while taking the liberty to clarify. There are some, albeit not many, uses of the terms “meta-epistemology” or “meta-epistemological” in twentieth- and twenty-first-century philosophy. The motivations for introducing the term are common to all authors: debates in normative epistemology reach stalemates (often after fascinating and productive periods of progress), issues remain or become blurred, it is or becomes difficult to weigh the strengths and weaknesses of one position against those of others. Authors then decide to “take a step back”, or “move a level higher”, to “clarify what is at stake”, to “reflect on the whole enterprise”, or “make explicit the criteria”. In some of these cases, they then proceed to explicitly present themselves as engaging in meta-epistemology. The terms “meta-epistemology” and “meta-epistemological” were first used, as far as I have been able to trace them, in a 1959 article by Roderick Firth on Roderick Chisholm’s theory of perception. “Meta-epistemological problems”, Firth writes, concern the “meaning of epistemic terms and problems concerning the purpose and methodology of a philosophy of perception” (Firth 1959: 493).

78

2 What Is “Meta-Epistemology”?

Firth does not make much of the term, but because he attributes to Chisholm the view that evaluations involving epistemic terms are essentially ethical, the paper is an illustrative instance of the term “meta-epistemology” entering philosophical discourse per proximity to meta-ethics. About twenty years later, William Alston is moved – largely because of the nature and impact of Chisholm’s work, too – to insist on the need to keep meta-epistemological questions separate from normative or “substantive” (as he calls it) epistemology (Alston 1978, 1980, 1989, 2005).

Alston on Meta-Ethics and Meta-Epistemology William Alston’s “Meta-Ethics and Meta-Epistemology” (1978) is the first paper to explicitly aim to establish a distinction between normative or “substantive” (Alston’s term) epistemology and meta-epistemology. As we shall see when we consider alternative versions of this distinction, the general purpose or function Alston assigns to meta-epistemology is more or less shared by all its proponents: However meta-epistemology has not yet attained the pitch of self-consciousness displayed by recent meta-ethics. Writers on epistemology, unlike their ethical brethren, rarely signal the shifting of gears between meta and substantive. Nor do most of them seem to be aware of the range of alternatives in meta-epistemology and their interrelations or of the ways in which decisions in meta-epistemology do and do not narrow one’s options in substantive epistemology. The time is ripe for an advance to a new level of self-consciousness in this regard. We need to take a hard look at the problems of meta-epistemology, their possible solutions, and their relations to the problems of substantive epistemology. (Alston 1978: 275)

However, while subsequent theorists share the general sentiment expressed in this passage, not everybody agrees with the specific way the distinction is drawn. As his paper’s title indicates, Alston models the division of labour between epistemology and meta-epistemology on the relation between normative ethics and meta-ethics. He starts his paper with the standard meta-ethical setup presented in section 2.1: intuitionism and naturalism are cognitivist positions, because they treat ethical judgements as truth-apt; non-cognitivist views such as expressivism do not (Alston 1978: 276). Apart from J. L. Austin’s focus on the illocutionary force of knowledge claims (Austin 1946), there are not many analyses of knowledge attributions or claims that count as non-cognitivist. Epistemologists tend to agree that judgements of the form “S knows that p” or “S’s belief that p is justified” are, and should be, assessed by means of objective truth values. Proposals to apply the kind of ex-

2.2 Conceptions of Meta-Epistemology

79

pressivism familiar from meta-ethics to knowledge attributions are not widely discussed (see Chrisman (2007) for an expressivist attempt to account for the context-dependence of knowledge attributions). Alston, in any case, does not elaborate on Austin’s, or indeed on any other, version of meta-epistemological non-cognitivism. Instead he exploits the epistemological parallels to what he sees as the two main kinds of cognitivism in metaethics, pitching “intuitionist” views of knowledge and justification as irreducibly evaluative or normative (e. g. Chisholm) against “naturalist” reliabilist accounts (Goldman, Armstrong, Dretske) (Alston 1978: 277– 8). Accordingly, he categorises attempts to find out what is needed for true belief to count as knowledge – surely work as paradigmatically epistemological in character as anybody could wish for – as work in meta-epistemology (Alston 1978: 277). In line with this assessment, he does not shirk back from calling Plato’s work in the Theaetetus and John Locke’s in the Essay as exercises in meta-epistemology (Alston 1978: 275). The point of Alston’s paper lies in drawing and applying a distinction between the “Autonomy” and the “Heteronomy” positions in meta-epistemology (Alston 1978: 279). One is committed to the Autonomy view in meta-ethics and/or meta-epistemology iff one takes ethical and/or epistemic judgements to be “sui generis”, i. e. “not composable out of pieces that are found elsewhere” (Alston 1978: 278). Intuitionists in meta-ethics combine the Autonomy view with the claim that ethical judgements are irreducibly normative or evaluative. Because it is quite common within meta-epistemology to hold that knowledge is sui generis (“ultimate and not further analysable”), but not essentially normative or evaluative (because it is “simply the situation in which some entity or some fact is directly present to consciousness”; Alston 1978: 278, with reference to Locke, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, IV, i, 1), Alston applies the term “intuitionism” in meta-epistemology to all Autonomy positions. This distinction between Autonomy and Heteronomy, or intuitionism and naturalism, is then put to work with regards to prominent puzzles and positions in contemporary (meta‐) epistemology. We need not be concerned with Alston’s results and the ensuing debate (see Dancy 1982). The important point for our purposes is that Alston’s original distinction between normative epistemology and meta-epistemology serves the purpose of importing, from meta-ethics, the intuitionism/naturalism distinction (adapted as Autonomy/Heteronomy), which opens a new, “methodological” angle on epistemological problems. The price Alston pays is that a lot of work and positions previously seen as epistemological (even paradigmatically so) would now have to be labelled “meta-epistemological”.

80

2 What Is “Meta-Epistemology”?

Moser’s Epistemology of Epistemology Moser attributes to meta-epistemology the task of determining the “correctness of epistemic standards” (1993: 151). This version of the distinction between normative epistemology and meta-epistemology emerges in the context of an argument for the priority, within epistemology, of conceptual or definitional (as opposed to explanatory and evaluative) work (Moser 1993: ch. 2). The argument’s overall structure is simple. Epistemology, at its heart, attempts to do three things with respect to epistemic justification: (a) definition or analysis, (b) explanation (preferably in non-epistemic terms) and (c) evaluation (Moser 1993: 60). The second (b) and the third (c) project, according to Moser, face serious circularity worries (unless we are happy with simply asserting or presupposing these criteria; a move that amounts to meta-epistemological naïveté (1993: 74)). Epistemic evaluations presuppose conditions of correctness, but the identification of such correctness conditions (c) is itself subject to correctness conditions. Similarly, any explanation (b) must itself meet criteria of explanatory adequacy. Moser thinks that the project of defining “epistemic justification” does not face the same worries (1993: 72– 3), and concludes his argument by saying that (b) explanation and (c) evaluation can avoid circularity by relying on definitions. In short, determine what “epistemic justification” means before you explain and evaluate it. What exactly is the distinction between meta-epistemology and normative epistemology involved in this argument? Moser sees meta-epistemology as the “epistemology of epistemology” (Moser 1993: 60); the branch of philosophical reflection that deals with the criteria of adequacy for epistemological thinking, roughly in the way that epistemology provides the criteria of adequacy for thinking in general (e. g. scientific reasoning). Moser’s rather narrow and clear-cut view of the projects at the heart of epistemology (definition, explanation, and evaluation of epistemic justification) yields a similarly clear-cut account of the criteria of epistemological adequacy. There are three kinds of criterion: (a) allowing to distinguish successful or correct definitions of epistemic concepts, (b) allowing to identify good or correct explanations of our use of epistemic concepts, and (c) allowing to tell when an evaluation of something as epistemically justified is correct. Moser makes theses points by formulating the three questions at the heart of meta-epistemology: [a]

What, if anything, constitutes the correctness (at least for myself) of my semantic standards for ’epistemic justification’ as an answer to the semantic project regarding what it means to say that something is epistemically justified? (Moser 1993, 72) [b] What, if anything, constitutes the adequacy, or correctness (at least for myself), of my evaluative epistemic standards as an answer to the evaluative project regarding the discerning of justified beliefs?

2.2 Conceptions of Meta-Epistemology

[c]

81

What, if anything, constitutes the adequacy, or correctness (at least for myself), of my explanatory epistemic standards as an answer to the explanation-seeking question of what constitutes justification? (Moser 1993, 70)As indicated by the phrase “epistemology of epistemology” (1993: 60), Moser’s meta-epistemology relates to epistemology not like meta-ethics relates to ethics (there is no sense in which current meta-ethics could be seen as the “ethics of ethics”), but like the philosophy of science relates to scientific research, or epistemology relates to epistemic practice. Transpose Moser’s epistemological task (a) into an ethical key, and you’ll find that the corresponding project of finding out “what it means to say that something is [morally acceptable]” is paradigmatically meta-ethical in nature.

Fumerton, Meta-Epistemology and Scepticism Richard Fumerton’s book Metaepistemology and Skepticism (1995), the only occasion (as it appears) on which the term “meta-epistemology” has made it into the title of a monograph, invokes “meta-epistemological” considerations in order to win, as it were, epistemological arguments. Specifically, Fumerton is concerned with sceptical challenges and “how-possible” questions (see section 1.2 above). In order to decide whether certain kinds of knowledge or justified belief (about the external world, about the past) are possible, we need to determine the content of the epistemic concepts involved (most importantly, obviously, the notion of epistemic justification). Fumerton first claims that the only plausible view of the nature of these epistemic concepts is an internalist foundationalism about epistemic justification. He then argues that this conception leads to sceptical conclusions. How does Fumerton draw the line between normative epistemology and meta-epistemology? Well, sceptical challenges threaten our practice of normative epistemology. When scientist Sheila ponders whether she is already epistemically justified in believing or asserting H, or whether she needs additional evidence for it, she engages in normative epistemology. Now, if her friend Jane is a raging sceptic, perhaps she advises Sheila not to bother: neither now, nor after further tests, will she be justified in believing H, because there are good arguments showing that we are never epistemically justified in believing the kind of things H is an instance of. Sceptical conclusions of the form “Nobody is ever justified in believing (nobody ever knows) things of kind K” are thus on the same level with “Sheila, in circumstances C, is justified in believing H”. They are evaluations of the sort that normative epistemology is all about. However, if we proceed to analyse epistemic concepts – if we try to find out, or to determine, the content of epistemic justification or knowledge – we cross the threshold to meta-epistemology. Accordingly, Fumerton’s internalist foundationalism about epistemic justification is part of what he describes as a meta-

82

2 What Is “Meta-Epistemology”?

epistemological view. Consequently, the “principle of inferential justification” that plays an important role in Fumerton’s argument is a meta-epistemological principle, because it is the product of the analysis of epistemic concepts: [T]o be justified in believing one proposition p on the basis of another proposition e, one must be (a) justified in believing e; and (b) justifying in believing that e makes p probable. (Fumerton 1995: 36)

Unlike Moser, but similarly to Alston, Fumerton primarily uses the relational analogy between meta-epistemology and epistemology on the one hand, and meta-ethics and ethics on the other. While there is some agreement between the two at a high level of generality – meta-epistemology is invoked in order to clarify epistemological issues – the remits they set out for their versions of meta-epistemology do not have much in common.

Weinberg, Neo-Pragmatist Meta-Epistemology The last conception of meta-epistemology I would like to mention is sketched in a paper we already discussed in the context of pragmatist challenges to traditional analytic epistemology (section 1.4). Jonathan Weinberg’s transparently titled (2006) “What’s Epistemology For? The Case for Neopragmatism in Normative Metaepistemology” is motivated with the help of the familiar story of how epistemology needs to be rescued after having run into a “crisis”. Weinberg’s story is straightforward enough. Analytic epistemology in the second half of the twentieth century has relied almost exclusively on intuitions determining the content of epistemic concepts. This sort of reliance on intuitions has come under attack. These attacks have been devastating, mainly because epistemologists have no other methodology available. Weinberg’s goal is to save epistemology, as it were, by championing a new framework and methodology. Weinberg presupposes that the core business of normative epistemology lies in determining the content (and perhaps form) of epistemic concepts. The basic idea seems to be that when normative epistemology has finished its job, it should allow for assessing epistemic evaluations as true or false. He thinks that there are three major views of how these conceptual contents ought to be determined. (a) The “romantic intuitionism” dominating twentieth-century analytic epistemology takes it that in some implicit manner, we already have the correct epistemic concepts, and only need to make them explicit. The criteria deter-

2.2 Conceptions of Meta-Epistemology

83

mining the content of epistemic concepts are our intuitions governing the use of the terms; the method is conceptual analysis. (b) Naturalism about epistemic concepts treats them (or at least an important subclass of them) as natural kind terms. It is our job, then, to find out “what knowledge really is”, analogously to scientists discovering that water is H2O. Weinberg attributes this view to Hilary Kornblith; the corresponding method is empirical and scientific. (c) Weinberg calls his own view of the matter “reconstructive neo-pragmatism”. We are free to massage, or even determine, the content of epistemic concepts, in order to reach practical goals (e. g. organising our lives). Weinberg identifies Edward Craig’s multi-agent model (mirroring the justificatory strategies of early contractarians; see Craig 1990 and section 1.4 above) as the best method for doing so and calls his own variant of the method “analysis-by-imagined-reconstruction”: if we were to re-design our epistemic norms (practices), how would we go about doing so, given some goals? Weinberg evaluates these three methodologies with respect to seven “meta-epistemological desiderata”. They include “truth-conduciveness” as the requirement that epistemology’s methods tend to produce true results; the second desideratum, “normativity”, demands that the methods are fit to produce “results that are themselves normative in nature” (Weinberg 2006: 29). The remaining five desiderata roughly favour methodologies that allow for intersubjective, reasoned discussion, progress from common sense, are at least minimally naturalist, and allow for the possibility of learning from other disciplines such as psychology and history. These desiderata are not argued for. Weinberg simply sells them as empirical generalisations of “what we really would want from a philosophical method” (Weinberg 2006: 28), while he fails even to specify who “we” are (epistemologists? analytic philosophers? philosophers in general? pragmatists?). Luckily, for our purposes the specific entries on the list are not important, and Weinberg himself concedes that the list is not “sacrosanct” but is rather open for negotiation. In any case, given the list as it stands, Weinberg’s meta-epistemological neo-pragmatism (c) performs best. Weinberg’s explicit statement of the division of labour between normative epistemology and meta-epistemology mirrors Moser’s “epistemology of epistemology” phrase, as well as Larry Laudan’s 1990 characterisation of his own “normative naturalism” as a meta-epistemological position, because of its being “a view about the status of epistemology and philosophy of science; it is a metaepistemology” (Laudan 1990: 44). Here is Weinberg’s phrasing:

84

2 What Is “Meta-Epistemology”?

How ought we to go about forming and revising our beliefs, arguing and debating our reasons, and investigating our world? If those questions constitute normative epistemology, then I am interested here in normative metaepistemology: the investigation into how we ought to go about forming and revising our beliefs about how we ought to go about forming and revising our beliefs – how we ought to argue about how we ought to argue. (Weinberg 2006: 26; his emphasis)

Distilling Three Conceptions of Meta-Epistemology The above survey of the use of the term “meta-epistemology” within contemporary (meta‐) epistemology suggests that there is no notion of meta-epistemology that is both substantive (contentful) and shared by all, or at least most users of the term. The agreement between meta-epistemology’s main proponents does not stretch much further than the (lowest common denominator of an) idea that some epistemological questions can only be properly addressed once we reflect on epistemology’s goals, methods and conceptual raw materials, and that such reflection is usefully assigned to “meta-epistemology” instead of “epistemology”. This agreement is so minimal that it is perhaps best seen as one of attitude (instead of a shared set of principles); meta-epistemologists are willing to take a step back (to check the forest that was formerly reduced to a collection of trees), move a floor higher (to survey things from a bird’s eye view), or inspect the foundations (to use three of the most common and appealing spatial metaphors). However, there is disagreement on the specifics of the resulting division of labour, which is perhaps not surprising, given the differences between epistemologists’ self-understanding, methodologies, background commitments and goals. In other words, given that there is no shared meta-epistemological conception of epistemology, it is not surprising that epistemologists use the term “meta-epistemology” differently. Still, I would like to categorise the above sketches into three kinds of conception. A. Epistemology of Epistemology. One camp of thinkers focuses on the idea of a meta-epistemology being an epistemology of epistemology, attending to the attending to the epistemic quality of epistemological work itself. the epistemic quality, of epistemological work itself. In so far as epistemologists and philosophers of science keep an eye on theories’ ontological commitments (ontological parsimony may be seen as an epistemic quality), the “epistemology of epistemology” take on meta-epistemology may include questions relating to the ontology of epistemology and the philosophy of science. The resulting relation between meta-epistemology and epistemology is analogous to that between specific sciences and the philosophy of science as applied

2.2 Conceptions of Meta-Epistemology

85

to those sciences (including epistemology and scientific methodology). Philosophers of science wonder, for example, in which conditions an event confirms a scientific theory, or what constitutes a good explanation in evolutionary biology. Analogously, meta-epistemology, according to this conception, could ask just what constitutes an epistemological problem, and what would count as its solution. B. Goals, Methods and Criteria. The second key idea is that meta-epistemology ought to deal with epistemology’s goals, methodology and criteria of adequacy. This conception is sometimes thought to be part of the “epistemology of epistemology” view (A), but the two conceptions can differ. The epistemology of some research discipline captures its goals and criteria of success only if the discipline’s goals are assumed to be of epistemic nature (finding things out, maximising true beliefs, explaining phenomena, etc.). This is arguably the case for natural and social sciences. However, practically and normatively oriented disciplines, such as the arts of shoemaking and legislating, do not fit this bill. Although there is room for an epistemology of both – nobody can ever hope to be a decent shoemaker or legislator without acquiring a great deal of specialised theoretical knowledge – neither their goals nor their criteria of success can be subsumed under it. The art of shoemaking will presumably be oriented towards the production or trade of nice, lasting shoes, while legislation aims at fair and just laws. Neither the goals, nor the criteria of success or adequacy in shoemaking and legislature are ultimately epistemic, and nobody would call research into these goals and criteria an “epistemology” of shoemaking and legislature. The distinction between an “epistemology of epistemology” account of metaepistemology (A) and the more general view (B) according to which meta-epistemology deals with epistemology’s aims (as its axiology, as it were), subject matter, methods and criteria of adequacy, whatever they are (whether they are themselves epistemic or not) is vital, because our aim is to construct a metaepistemology that incorporates the lessons from the five challenges to traditional analytic epistemology (chapter 1). We learnt from the critical reactions to Quine’s naturalism that epistemology has normative ambitions, and from Haslanger that it is at least conceivable that its prescriptions (how we ought to organise our epistemic practice) do not need to mirror actual epistemic practice. If we now assume that there are reasons for attributing pragmatic or moral goals to epistemology (instead of epistemic ones), then it is feasible that an ethics of epistemology looks into, and/or determines, goals and criteria of epistemological adequacy (instead of an epistemology of epistemology). C. Epistemic Judgements. A third strategy stresses the analogies between meta-epistemology and meta-ethics as entailing more than only the abstract thought that sometimes we need to reflect on the practice of moral deliberation.

86

2 What Is “Meta-Epistemology”?

Meta-ethics is not the epistemology or methodology of ethics, although it is, of course, strongly related to assumptions in these fields. Instead, meta-ethics, as it was attributed to G. E. Moore above, examines the semantic, epistemic and pragmatic status of moral judgements and statements. As a result of this version of meta-epistemology, internalism and externalism about epistemic justification are meta-epistemological positions, just as expressivism and cognitivism are meta-ethical views. They are not so, however, on the “epistemology of epistemology” conception of meta-epistemology (A), and not necessarily so on the “goals, methods and criteria” conception (B), so that we got the unsatisfactory situation that internalism/externalism about epistemic justification are explicitly epistemological positions for some defendants of the distinction between epistemology and meta-epistemology (Moser, Weinberg), while meta-epistemological for others (Fumerton).

Meta-Epistemology: A Proposal Although the common denominator of the views just discussed is too vague to be of much help, there is still enough of a shared attitude to serve as the basis for an attempt to put forward a characterisation that should be acceptable to most. Firstly, however, we ought to dispose of the “epistemology of epistemology” view (A). As it stands, it is too narrow, and hence potentially incompatible with some of the challenges depicted in chapter 1. It is not that meta-epistemology cannot be, among other things, an epistemology of epistemology; but such a role is not mandatory for a conception to count as meta-epistemological. The remaining tension between the (B) “goals, methods and criteria” and (C) “epistemic judgements” positions is to some extent shared by meta-ethics. On the one hand, meta-epistemology is seen as the attempt to reflect, make explicit, critically discuss, and potentially reject, clarify or improve epistemology’s goals and ambitions, methods, restrictions on its base vocabulary, topics, and criteria of adequacy (B). On the other hand, meta-epistemology is the inquiry into the semantic, epistemic and pragmatic status of moral judgements and statements (C). I propose to ease the tension between the two conceptions by subscribing to (B), whilst accepting that it is not advisable (or even possible) to argue for or against any of epistemology’s goals, methods and criteria of success unless we understand what we do when we make epistemic judgements – this latter requirement corresponding, of course, to the “epistemic judgements” conception of epistemology (C). Accordingly, this latter conception owes its meta-epistemological character to its function (i. e. to its contribution to inquiries into episte-

2.2 Conceptions of Meta-Epistemology

87

mology’s aims, methods and criteria of success), which accords with the observation that research into the “semantic”, “pragmatic”, “ontological” and perhaps “epistemic” properties of epistemic judgements looks to be, at least on some level, linguistic, semantic, metaphysical or perhaps epistemological in nature. The line taken with respect to meta-epistemology is similar to what Stephen Darwall (2006) says about meta-ethics. Meta-ethics is not independent of normative ethical theorising (in the way the philosophy of science is from, say, physics) because of the normativity of moral judgements (Darwall 2006: 24). This is what necessitates inquiries into what I have labelled the “semantic (inferential), pragmatic and epistemic properties” of such judgements. Such research is of a metaethical nature, and cannot be sealed off from normative ethics: [A]lthough metaethics and normative ethics focus on different issues, systematic ethical philosophy thrives when these areas are brought into dynamic relation and pursued in an integrated way we might call ‘philosophical ethics’ – framing normative ideals we can accept in light of both the best normative reasons as we see them and an adequate philosophical understanding of their subjects and of the possibilities for knowledge or justified acceptance in this area. (Darwall 2006: 25)

Epistemic judgements are normative, too, and although the clarification of the semantics and pragmatics of such normative and evaluative epistemic judgements is a meta-epistemological task, this does not by itself imply that internalism and externalism about epistemic justification are meta-epistemological positions. The question whether the disagreement between internalist and externalist theories of epistemic justification is epistemological or meta-epistemological in nature is misleading. There is no such thing as “the” disagreement between internalist and externalist theories, because different sets of problems, suitable methods and potential solutions (different meta-epistemological conceptions) can result in different versions of the distinction. Externalism can be a species of analyses of the concept of knowledge and/or epistemic justification (in the context of conceptual analysis), but it is also, as Ernest Sosa says, a foundationalist theory of the structure of our body of knowledge (Sosa 1988; 163), and it has the potential to counter sceptical challenges. The methodological context of conceptual analysis suggests that the concept of epistemic justification is being illuminated (analysed) in so far as it is a tool within an epistemic target practice that needs to be explained and potentially improved by epistemology. Yet epistemology itself is a conceptual enterprise, too, relying for its descriptions, explanations and evaluations on epistemic concepts. The notion of epistemic justification can be seen as contributing to epistemological theorising, and questions relating to this latter kind of use could

88

2 What Is “Meta-Epistemology”?

be seen as meta-epistemological in character. Hence the question of whether internalism or externalism about epistemic justification are suitably addressed as meta-epistemological questions cannot be settled unless more is said about the kind of question these positions are seen as providing answers to, and about epistemology’s goals, methods and criteria of adequacy in general.

2.3 A Meta-Epistemological Framework Our next task is to take the “goals, methods, criteria” account of meta-epistemology from above and to specify the formulation of a “meta-epistemological framework” as the target of the present work. The demands on such a framework should by now be familiar. Firstly, it ought to invite, or at least to allow for, conceptions of epistemology that accommodate the paradigmatic problems of epistemology as paradigmatically epistemological in nature (conceptual analysis of epistemic concepts, theories of the structure of our body of knowledge, and scepticism). Secondly, the framework must provide room for epistemological theorising to be informed by the lessons learnt from the five challenges to conventional analytic epistemology outlined in chapter 1. After the introduction of the notion of a meta-epistemological framework, and after brief summaries of the concerns that should inform the construction of such a framework, this section will conclude the present chapter by presenting the outlines of a meta-epistemological framework and a provisional conception of epistemology as a philosophical research discipline.

A Meta-Epistemological Framework A meta-epistemology according to the “goals, methods, criteria” conception (B) identified in section 2.2 ought to specify (a) epistemology’s subject matter (what it is about), (b) its goals, (c) its methods, and (d) a range of restrictions, requirements, standards and criteria of adequacy (e. g. restrictions on the base vocabulary). As we saw when discussing Quine’s attempted assimilation of epistemology to the natural sciences (section 1.2), and when examining the parallels between (meta‐) epistemology and (meta‐) ethics earlier in this chapter (section 2.2), normativity has proven to be a crucial obstacle to the smooth establishment of such a meta-epistemology. It is now tempting to describe the position we have reached as a suitable ground for putting up a new meta-epistemology, but one terminological issue

2.3 A Meta-Epistemological Framework

89

needs be attended to before we do so. The trouble with saying that our aim is “a meta-epistemology” is that if “a meta-epistemology” is construed in analogy to “a theory” – i. e. as a proper, fully-fledged meta-epistemological position – this would require taking a specific stand on aspects (a)–(d), as well as being committed to some account of what we do when we make epistemic judgements (clarifying their semantic, pragmatic, epistemic properties). This sets the bar high for anybody who wishes to defend “a meta-epistemology”, just as it would do in meta-ethics. Not surprisingly we tend to speak of meta-ethical research, problems, theories and views, but rarely of anybody putting forward a (fully-fledged, spelt out) meta-ethics. These worries have an impact on the description of this book’s aims. On the one hand, this book does not primarily deal with local meta-epistemological issues; it aims at a more encompassing, wider conceptual and methodological change. On the other hand, it does not aim at a specific, explicit, complete meta-epistemology, because it does not attempt to determine the discipline’s goals, methods, or criteria of adequacy. Consequently, I will from now on describe the target of the constructive part of this work as a “meta-epistemological framework”. Such a framework differs from specific meta-epistemologies in that it leaves open one or more of the aspects listed in the “goals, methods, criteria” conception. It leaves room for specific meta-epistemological choices. It does not itself determine the goals, methods, criteria of adequacy, nor even the key concepts epistemology ought to be seen as dealing with. This is all quite abstract and will get much clearer once the construction gets under way. Essentially the envisaged meta-epistemological framework will provide epistemology with a formal and functional characterisation of (a) its subject matter, thereby defining the epistemic realm. It will refrain from designating any goals (b) as constitutive for epistemology, leaving room for debate. In what follows, the lessons from the five challenges to conventional analytic epistemology outlined in chapter 1 will help to deploy categories and conceptual tools to clarify (c) epistemological methodology and (d) restrictions and standards resulting from epistemology’s normative aims.

Revisiting Three Paradigmatic Problems and Five Challenging Developments One widely accepted criterion of adequacy for conceptual analysis and explication is the requirement that paradigmatic or typical instances of the concept in question ought to count as instantiations of the analysans or explicans too. I accepted an analogous requirement for conceptions of epistemology. Accordingly, as set up at the beginning of chapter one, this work is committed to developing a

90

2 What Is “Meta-Epistemology”?

meta-epistemology according to which the following projects count as epistemological: (a) the definition, analysis and explication of the concepts of knowledge, (epistemic) evaluation, epistemic entitlement, evidence; (b) questions relating to the structure, and the basis, of our body of knowledge (hinging on our take on epistemic justification or entitlement, with foundationalism and coherentism as most familiar views); (c) the formulation of, and reasoning behind, sceptical challenges; potentially resulting positions of global or local scepticism; argumentative defences against sceptical challenges and/or scepticism. The inspiration for the new conception of epistemology envisaged here does not stem, however, from these issues and projects, but is a response to five developments that simultaneously threaten conventional analytic epistemology, while promising to take it a step further (see chapter 1). The pragmatist insistence on the primacy of agency and practice is the key to a meta-epistemological framework that accounts for the epistemological character of puzzles such as the nature of knowledge, the epistemic regress problem and sceptical threats, whilst being informed by these five developments. The primacy of agency and practice is not meant to imply that epistemic concepts ought to be construed as directly governing and evaluating actions, of course; or that we ought to move the epistemological tradition’s focus on beliefs and knowledge to epistemic actions. The practical significance of the attribution and evaluation of epistemic states can be remote. Ultimately, however, epistemic standards and evaluations ought to have some impact on what we do, what we ought to do, what we pass on as information and how well we are placed to reach our goals. In what follows, I attempt to illustrate the primacy of agency and practice I have in mind for epistemology by exploiting analogies with pragmatist developments within contemporary philosophy of language.

The Primacy of Practice: Illuminating Linguistic Meaning Pragmatist positions in philosophy are typically characterised by the relative privilege they bestow to practical considerations. The discussion of Rorty’s pragmatist anti-epistemology in chapter 1 highlighted two ways in which such primacy of the practical, of agency, or of practice, can impinge on epistemology. Firstly, epistemological theorising ought to make some practical difference. It must not be practically idle. It must ultimately make a contribution to how we should evaluate beliefs, in what circumstances we ought to (self‐) attribute knowledge,

2.3 A Meta-Epistemological Framework

91

whether a drug should be considered safe and whether the available intelligence on some country’s arms program is sufficient to justify military intervention. Secondly, epistemic terms express concepts, and according to pragmatist doctrine, conceptual content is best explained in terms of language use. In so far as epistemology aims at illuminating epistemic concepts – where “illumination” is used as a generic term, covering methods as diverse as conceptual analysis, explication, the means-use analysis of Brandom’s (2008) analytic pragmatism, and empirical naturalist strategies – it must proceed by looking at the use of the words that express them. In chapter 1, the method of reflective equilibrium was introduced by means of a parallel between epistemology and the philosophy of language. Epistemology, like the philosophy of language, can opt to work with two kinds of data; it can either examine the application conditions and inferential involvement of epistemic concepts, or it can identify epistemic phenomena (e. g. Sheila changing some of her beliefs). Both approaches can qualify as pragmatist in a loose sense if they accept features of language use as the basis for their account of semantic content. Wittgenstein’s famous statement that for a large class of uses of the word “meaning”, one can explain the word in terms of its use (Wittgenstein 1953: §43) stands in, or perhaps initiates, the first tradition. Because this approach aims at illuminating semantic talk, we may call it the “semantic vocabulary approach”. Conceptual analysis, explication and Brandom’s (2008) meaning-use analysis are all available as methods. Semantic vocabulary approaches can yield use accounts in two ways. Firstly, the basic vocabulary (constituting the analysans or explicans) can be characterised by its close ties to language use (or indeed more basic behaviour or types of action). Secondly, the method and/or relation between the two vocabularies can be pragmatic and use-related (as in Brandom 2008). A second strategy to illuminate linguistic meaning attempts to specify necessary and/or sufficient for some symbol, sentence or performance to have meaning. Uses of semantic terms (e. g. “meaning”) neither count as evidence, nor as explanatory targets. Instead “theory of meaning approaches” or “semantic phenomena approaches”, as they may be called, try to account for linguistic meaningfulness by identifying relevant differences between strings of letters such as “wownl.chll dohel” and “I’m going home”, or between acts of eating an apple and acts of uttering “I’m going home”. What is needed for a theory of meaning to count as a use theory? For a start, a pragmatist will typically treat speech acts (illocutionary acts; other suitably individuated units of language use) as her primary explanatory target. This choice contrasts with attempts to treat abstract sentences as primary meaning-carriers

92

2 What Is “Meta-Epistemology”?

on the one hand, and sub-sentential expressions such as proper names or predicates on the other. It is sentences, after all, that are used to make moves in language games (not names or predicates), and it’s these moves that are practically significant. Additionally to being aimed at illuminating the production and consumption of speech acts, use theories of meaning tend to place restrictions on their explanatory vocabulary, banning semantic terminology (refraining, for example, from explaining the use of “not” by means of the concept of negation) and preferring use-related concepts (intentions, norms or conventions of use, information content, etc.). When combined with pragmatist commitments, both the semantic vocabulary approach and the semantic phenomena approach can yield use theories of linguistic meaning. They both treat aspects of our language use as their data (analysing the use of semantic terms or explaining semantic phenomena), and they can both restrict their base vocabulary (as used in the analysans or explanans) to use-related concepts. In short, both strategies can be employed in order to account for linguistic meaning in terms of language use. I am now going to show that both strategies can be generalised beyond philosophical semantics and that both are available to the epistemologist too.

The Primacy of Agency and Practice: Illuminating Epistemic Phenomena While conceptual analysis of epistemic concepts relies on semantic judgements (application of the concept to possible cases; tracking inferential relations), the method of equilibrium draws from epistemic judgements as its data. The two are closely related, of course, but the strategies differ nonetheless, with one amounting to an “epistemic vocabulary approach”, the other to a theory of “epistemic phenomena”. These approaches can be distinguished by a thought experiment. Imagine a community of English speakers who tell each other things, ask questions, participate in inquiries, rely on things they have seen or heard, but lack all epistemic terms. They treat themselves and each other as believing things, they treat such beliefs as correct or incorrect, yet they cannot ascribe beliefs, nor can they explicitly evaluate them by saying that they are (in‐) correct. While the epistemic vocabulary approach would not be eligible for anthropologists dealing with this community (because there is no epistemic vocabulary to examine), there are still epistemic aspects to the community’s behaviour. People would still act on each other’s assertions (“You better run, the train is leaving now!”) and perhaps practically sanction each other’s epistemically deficient actions (“You cried ‘wolf’ three times, from now on we shall ignore you”). There would still be epistemic phenomena to be explained in such a practice, just

2.3 A Meta-Epistemological Framework

93

like there would still be semantic phenomena in a linguistic community deprived of semantic terms (e. g. locutions of the form “x means y”). Just as with use theories of meaning, it is primarily the choice of the primary explanatory target that singles out use theories of epistemic phenomena among other such theories. Leaving aside epistemology’s normative ambitions (on which more later) and concentrating on its descriptive, illuminating role, the pragmatist commitment boils down to the explanatory target being directly related to what we believe and do (including our use of epistemic locutions). Agency and practice – the things we believe and do, and the things we ought to believe and do from an epistemic viewpoint – is the final court of appeal for epistemologists, not only because they see themselves as engaged in an inherently normative enterprise (trying to figure out what we should believe and do), but also because their analytic and explanatory work must be measured against actual behaviour. Epistemology should explain to us what we do when we attribute knowledge or epistemic entitlement to ourselves and to others; it should justify or improve our epistemic standards; and it ought to tell us how we best go about organising our epistemic practice. Among other things, epistemology ought to tell us whether the concepts of knowledge and epistemic justification are suitable, given our epistemic needs and aims, and how much evidence we ought to require in order for a hypothesis to count as confirmed. Taking seriously the sociological, pragmatist and feminist concerns from chapter 1 implies at least that our intuitions regarding the use of our actual epistemic concepts are not sacrosanct; more radical positions such as Haslanger’s general scepticism with respect to our actual epistemic practices (as constituting the topic of the “immanent epistemology” she rejects) cast doubt on any significant role, within epistemology, for our existing epistemic standards. Taking seriously those concerns could mean (and indeed will be proposed in what follows) that neither the epistemic vocabulary approach nor the epistemic phenomena approach function as epistemological master-strategies. But even if neither the analysis or explication of existing epistemic concepts on the one hand, nor the explanation of epistemic phenomena on the other, constitute epistemology’s overall strategy, they are still important parts of a largely pragmatist enterprise. The “primacy of agency and practice” doctrine is a meta-epistemological, not an epistemological commitment. It does not mandate, or even recommend, the analysis or explication of epistemic concepts in practical terms, it does not invite a consent- or usefulness-oriented definition of truth, it does not assimilate epistemic justification to practical justification, and neither does it equate the justification of some belief or proposition with the justification to express the belief or even with the agent’s ability to produce such a justification. The primacy of

94

2 What Is “Meta-Epistemology”?

practice is not intended to exclude any traditional concern about knowledge, epistemic entitlement, or the epistemic status of beliefs, abstract sentence types, or theories as structures. There may be good reasons to see abstract entities such as sentence types, theories, or propositions as the primary targets of epistemic evaluations and thus at the heart of epistemological interest (instead of actions, speech acts or mental states). This is compatible with the view that the point of epistemically evaluating abstract entities is pragmatic. Pragmatist views in epistemology may well be correct (each case ought to be discussed, of course), but they do not follow from the developments sketched in the previous chapter and the characterisation of a meta-epistemological framework in the present one. What best captures these developments is a pragmatist meta-epistemology committed to the primacy of agency and practice – a pragmatist view about what epistemology is or should be about, and what standards should determine whether epistemological work is correct and/or successful. It could, but need not turn out that an epistemological theory that is recognisably pragmatist is best positioned to meet the criteria of the pragmatist meta-epistemological framework. On the other hand, it could turn out that we are well advised to embrace a reasonably traditional epistemological theory, because subjective certainty as an epistemic standard, or confirmation as a relation between abstract sentence types are best suited to meet our epistemic goals.

Resulting Conception of Epistemology What we are after is a meta-epistemological framework according to the “goals, methods, criteria” conception of meta-epistemology that is pragmatist in so far as it has normative ambitions, and in so far as its descriptive, “illuminating” work (analysis/explication of epistemic concepts; explanation of epistemic phenomena) accepts aspects of our epistemic practice as the ultimate source for its criteria of adequacy. Before we move on (the next two chapters provide epistemology with its subject matter and clarify methodological issues), a provisional proposal for a conception of epistemology that fits such a framework would be useful. Here is a one-sentence version: (E) Epistemology is the systematic study, with normative ambitions, of epistemic states and performances. Although this characterisation is ostensibly not meant to pave the way for a revolution concerning all things epistemological, it does differ from standard dictionary definitions such as those offered in the Introduction, which define epistemology as the “theory or science of the method or grounds of knowledge”

2.3 A Meta-Epistemological Framework

95

(Oxford English Dictionary) or as “concerned with the nature, sources and limits of knowledge” (Klein [1998] 2005). Most obviously, my provisional definition replaces knowledge as epistemology’s subject matter with the technical term “epistemic states and performances”. Chapter 3 will properly introduce the corresponding concept by means of a functional identification of states, normative statuses and performances that count as epistemic. Such a stipulative introduction allows for taking seriously the pragmatist and feminist criticism of an epistemology that is concerned exclusively, or predominantly, with our actual epistemic concepts or with our actual epistemic judgements and evaluations. This shift responds to work on epistemic concepts other than the concepts of knowledge and epistemic justification, which is sometimes combined with the view that there is no need to see the clarification (analysis, explication) of knowledge as the ultimate goal of epistemology. The choice of the adjective “epistemic” is the terminological result of my attempt to identify – or give recipes for identifying – a family of phenomena (states, processes, actions) that is wider than it is traditionally thought, and need not be organised around knowledge. While the explicit inclusion of epistemic performances is one result of the pragmatist commitments identified in chapter 1, it will not be possible to see the full pragmatist character of the account until epistemic states and performances are defined. The “normative ambitions” explicitly mentioned in the characterisation, too, will be carefully motivated and introduced. The gist of it, however, should be clear, as it is a result of our discussion of the resistance to Quine’s proposal to naturalise epistemology, and as it features prominently in the pragmatist and feminist challenges to conventional analytic epistemology. In some way, by some means, with respect to some standards and/or goals, epistemology ought to tell us in what conditions to accept something as true, what to do (in certain respects), how to evaluate our own and each others’ beliefs or other epistemic states. Epistemology is more than a descriptive and explanatory endeavour, and its criteria of adequacy are not exhausted by standards of correct description and valid explanation. Because epistemological research is loosely described as a “systematic study”, the new meta-epistemological framework leaves specific epistemological theories a maximal amount of freedom for their choice of methods. The discussion of such methods, particularly in relation to the discipline’s normative ambitions, is, of course, of a meta-epistemological nature and requires at least some minimal accounts of what we do when we make epistemic judgements, and indeed normative and evaluative judgements in general. This issue will remain dominant throughout the following chapters.

96

2 What Is “Meta-Epistemology”?

Scientist Sheila, with whom the chapter started, bases her decision on whether to perform a series of experiments involving animals on moral and epistemic considerations. It was observed that if she engages in sufficiently reflective or even systematic thought processes, trying to figure out whether such experiments would be morally and epistemically appropriate, she can be said to engage in moral philosophy and epistemology. If for some reason Sheila then pushes further, wondering (for example) what we do when we make moral and epistemic judgements, her cogitation is recognisably meta-ethical as long as properties of moral judgements are at stake. Meta-epistemology, by contrast, is anything but a well-established field of research. There are historical reasons for this asymmetry, of course, but as I suggested in this chapter, we would do well to get rid of it. Both meta-ethical and metaepistemological discourse deals with their respective target discipline’s subject matter, goals, methods, criteria of adequacy, restrictions on conceptual raw materials, etc. – just like one would expect from a discipline with the “meta-” prefix. Both are prevented from modelling their target discipline on the natural sciences by their normativity: epistemology and moral philosophy do not only want to describe, analyse and explain, but also to recommend, legislate, prescribe. Hence both, meta-ethics and meta-epistemology, prioritise explanatory work on the semantic, pragmatic, epistemic properties of normative and evaluative judgements and statements. Even though the structural similarities between ethics and epistemology should inform both disciplines, the pragmatist “primacy of agency and practice” doctrine constitutes a challenge mainly to epistemology. Most of the pragmatist traits isolated in this chapter come for free in the case of moral philosophy, because it tries to spell out how we ought to act and what we do when we treat or describe an action as morally good. In the case of epistemology, the primacy of agency and practice implies that its descriptive (analytic, explanatory) work, as organised around the epistemic vocabulary approach and the epistemic phenomena approach, examines our use of epistemic concepts and the role of epistemic standards within communities and practices.

3 Epistemic States and Performances The five developments described in the chapter 1 not only undermine the notion that epistemology can be adequately characterised as a theory of knowledge; they also put pressure on the assumption that epistemology is a theory of epistemic concepts in general. According to the characterisation offered in chapter 2, epistemology is the systematic study, with normative purport, of epistemic states and performances. “Epistemic states and performances” is used here as a technical term, whose meaning shall be explicitly stipulated below. In this chapter I lay the foundations for a new approach to epistemology I call “epistemological functionalism”. This approach does not characterise epistemology in terms of a set of preferred epistemic concepts (knowledge, evidence, epistemic entitlement) or paradigm cases of epistemic evaluations or values, but in terms of a special sort of role or function played by all things epistemic. Accordingly, what makes something an epistemic state, status or performance is not its internal constitution, but its role or function within a system. Much of the chapter will be devoted to spelling out the kind of function invoked and the systems that can be in epistemic states.

3.1 Epistemological Functionalism Our actual epistemic concepts and expressions are not the only materials with which the epistemologist works. Recall the analogy with philosophical semantics in section 2.4. Although the semantic vocabulary approach, i. e. the analysis and explication of concepts in the vicinity of the concept of (linguistic) meaning, is a promising strategy to illuminate meaning and semantic content, philosophers of language can alternatively opt for the theory of meaning approach, which aims instead to describe and explain semantic phenomena. Speakers emit sounds; audiences react in ways systematically dependent on the noises emitted. A speaker in Bangalore manages to convey information to his Bangalore audience about the city of Buenos Aires. We may wonder how things like these are possible, perhaps by asking what kind of a theory the audience must implicitly have – what is commonly called a “meaning theory” – in order to identify the semantic content of what has been said. The semantic phenomena approach, when transplanted to epistemology, yields the “epistemic phenomena approach”. Instead of being concerned about our epistemic concepts, we identify aspects of our lives that are epistemic or cognitive in character (requiring, of course, an account of what counts as an episteDOI 10.1515/9783110525458-004

98

3 Epistemic States and Performances

mic phenomenon or aspect). It is important for us to find things out, to gather information, to doubt and change our own views, to reflect on how we change our views, to tell each other things. These activities deserve systematic attention, no matter how they are talked about by the communities in which they take place. Neither in the case of philosophical semantics nor in the case of epistemology does the shift of focus from concepts to phenomena imply that the two are not intimately related, or that we can or should do without careful reflective attention to our epistemic concepts. These are, after all, embedded in our daily lives, and any progress in the philosophy of language or epistemology will likely manifest itself in a better understanding and fine-tuning of the relevant extant concepts than in their wholesale overhaul. Pragmatist strands of twentieth-century thinking suggest, however, that the best, or perhaps only, way of getting in a position from which such work is possible, is to take a step back and ask questions about the role, point and purpose of epistemic (and, to ride the analogy in the opposite direction, semantic) concepts.

Epistemological Functionalism Functionalism in the philosophy of mind is the thesis that mental states should be identified by what they do – by appeal to their function – rather than by what they are made of. The concepts applying to mental states, according to functionalism, are relevantly similar to those expressed by “valve” or “hydraulic liquid”, and relevantly dissimilar to natural kind concepts such as “tiger” or “gold”. Something is a valve if and only if it does a certain thing, or is designed to do a certain thing, or would do a certain thing if in working order. If it is appropriately related to its function – viz. restricting the flow of a liquid – then it is a valve, no matter what material it is made from (mutatis mutandis for hydraulic liquids). In twentieth-century philosophy of mind, functionalism emerged as an attractive alternative to dualist and identity theories of the mind. Mental concepts such as “pain” or “belief” apply to (physical) brain states, similarly to the concept of valve applying to physical objects. However, what different valves, states of pain and belief have in common are not physical properties, but the roles they play (in virtue of their physical properties) within a system. Functionalism of the so-called “Turing Machine” or “machine state” variety holds that the relevant system in the case of mental states are Turing Machines. According to this model, thinking consists in the manipulation of symbols according to definite rules.

3.1 Epistemological Functionalism

99

I would like to introduce epistemological functionalism by analogy to functionalism in the philosophy of mind.¹ According to this analogy, epistemological functionalism is the view that epistemic states, processes and performances should be conceived of functionally – that epistemic states, processes and performances are functional states, processes and performances, where the term “functional” is applied generically and will be specified later. Four qualifications to this approach need to be made straightaway. First, epistemological functionalism is not committed to a specific model of the mind (e. g. computational theory); it allows instead for various ways of specifying the systems within which epistemic states can be functionally identified. Second, epistemological functionalism is intended as a theory of epistemic states and concepts in the sense that Turing machine functionalism may be seen as providing a theory of beliefs, or pain. Third, the individuals than can be described as being in epistemic states need not be persons or agents; thermostats and automatic supermarket doors qualify, too. Fourth, epistemological functionalism does not restrict the relevant systems to individuals. Adhering to the lesson identified in our discussion of Thomas Kuhn and the sociology of scientific knowledge (section 1.3), there is emphatically no individualist commitment involved in epistemological functionalism. On the contrary, as we shall see later in section 3.4, some epistemic states or performances owe their status to their function within social practices involving multiple interacting autonomous agents. Epistemological functionalism is committed to seeing the identity of epistemic states and performances (of certain kinds, with certain content) as determined by their (causal and normative) relations to other parts (states, performances) within a system, as well as by the external conditions they are meant to be responsive to. While “Turing Machine” functionalism is a theory of a kind of state (i. e. mental states) that falls under folk-psychological concepts (e. g. belief, desire, pain), epistemological functionalism as envisaged here is not intrinsically or necessarily a theory of knowledge or beliefs, or any other available epistemic concepts. Rather, it is a theory of epistemic states, statuses and performances (ESPs) (see the “Introduction” above for the provisional introduction of the term “ESP”; see below, sections 3.2– 3.4, for its definition). Knowledge and beliefs should turn out to be ESPs, but this verdict, if reached, would have to be the result of a descriptive epistemological investigation into the relation between our use of, and the content expressed by, such epistemic terminol The term “epistemological functionalism” has been used before by Laurence Lafleur, who chose the expression as the title of a 1941 paper, using mathematical functions to illuminate the notion of truth by means of a function mapping mental ideas onto the world (Lafleur 1941: 476). This use of the expression has nothing to do with the present proposal.

100

3 Epistemic States and Performances

ogy on the one hand, and independently and functionally identified ESPs on the other. That investigation may be combined with normative considerations to the effect that we do well to trade in knowledge-and-belief currency, or that we could do better if we replaced or explicated these notions, and so on.

Jacob’s Proto-Thermometer ESPs are functionally identified parts of systems or practices; some state, event or action is an ESP only relative to some system or practice. If we speak of ESPs in absolute terms (and we will do so), it is intended as shorthand for some characterisation that is, when made fully explicit, relative. Here is a first approximation to the kind of relativity I have in mind: (1)

Jacob, who lives early in the eighteenth century, likes the look of mercury. One day his neighbour Gabriel, who experiments with mercury (he is a physicist), brings over a slim, neat looking-glass container containing mercury. Jacob accepts the gift and puts it on his shelf. He takes great pleasure in observing the changing height of his new mercury sample, without having any idea of what is going on.

(2) One day Gabriel mentions the correlation between the height of the mercury column within the container and the temperature of the air surrounding the mercury. From now on, Jacob checks his mercury sample whenever he is unsure about how to dress for the day. Here is the relativity involved. The contraction and expansion of Jacob’s mercury sample is a causal effect of the temperature of the air surrounding it. All physical facts remain the same throughout the two episodes. What changes is only Jacob’s knowledge and attitude. He starts using the mercury sample to indicate the temperature – as a proto-thermometer, as it were. Perhaps one day he will paint a scale on the glass tube. Within the system or practice consisting of Jacob and his mercury sample, the height of the mercury column begins to function as, and hence to be, an epistemic state when Jacob starts using it as an indicator of air temperature. The fact that the story involves an artefact does not matter. Here is an additional story, this time from contemporary rural India:

3.1 Epistemological Functionalism

101

(3) Farmers in Junagadh grow one crop of peanuts or castor per year. Because peanuts favour wet weather, while castor yields higher returns in dry years, it is important to anticipate whether it is going to be a wet or dry summer. Farmers make their decision in spring, based among other things on folk wisdom involving the blooming of the Cassia fistula tree. Neither the blooming of the Cassia tree in India, nor the swallows’ flight patterns (allegedly signalling rain in Switzerland) are epistemic events, states or processes without observers treating them as such. Epistemic states need not be mental states of human beings or functional states of artefacts. Nor must the correlations that are epistemically exploited actually hold. Perhaps not surprisingly, folk-wisdom weather rules (at least the Swiss ones I am familiar with) tend not to be supported by evidence. Still, their antecedents – e. g. the Cassia fistula tree blooming at a certain time – count as epistemic states in the sense I am interested here. According to the functional identification I have in mind, dysfunctional epistemic states still qualify as epistemic states.

Solar-Powered Toys and Automatic Doors The previous examples were meant to illustrate that any state of nature can be an ESP in virtue of being attributed a certain function. However, the human beings that are part of the relevant systems or practices ensure that the systems or practices are complex (it is Jacob and the farmers from Junagadh that assign an epistemic function to the mercury sample and the blossoming of the Cassia tree, after all). The natural events’ and states’ epistemic status are derivative from the epistemic states and interests of the human beings involved. The blooming of the Cassia tree counts as an ESP because the farmers need to know whether to plant peanuts or castor. There are two ways to simplify the scenarios above. Firstly, we can replace the human beings with non-human creatures or artefacts. Animals certainly use correlations for their decision-making, and we can easily program robots to do the same. A robotic lawn mower, for example, may use light sensors to decide when it is time to move back to its docking station to spend the night in silence (light levels serving as an epistemic state, indicating when it is time to stop making noise). These cases do not really help to clarify the notion of epistemic systems, because if the status conferred onto natural correlations is derivative from the agent involved, then we simply shift the question to the agent. We will have to

102

3 Epistemic States and Performances

ask whether animals, computers and robots enter epistemic states. In order to approach this question, consider systems simpler even than robotic lawn mowers. Compare the following two cases: (4) Gadget stores sell solar-powered toy cars that do nothing but to move as soon as there is enough sunshine. These toy cars can be fun to have around, but they have only entertainment value. (5) Many automatic slide doors (in supermarkets, trains, etc.) are attached to a sensor (e. g. an infrared beam or microwave radar). Whenever somebody approaches the door, he or she triggers the sensor, and the door opens. The performances of both the toy car (4) and the automatic door (5) can count as ESPs if treated as such by a human being (or another epistemic agent, perhaps). If Phil the photographer sits in the dark room developing his films, then the sound of his toy car suddenly moving about may inform him that it’s a good time for taking a break and going for a walk. Hence the solar-powered toy car can be used as a sun-detector. In case of the automatic door, however, it is not merely that it can be used to indicate that somebody is approaching; the door is designed to do so. It is meant to be shut when nobody is approaching, and to open when somebody approaches. This is the door’s point and purpose, and in order to achieve this goal, the door ought to react to people approaching. The difference between the toy car and the automatic door lies in the function of the relevant sub-unit, as identified in relation to the capacities of the system as a whole. The car’s solar cells are designed to provide the power for the car to do what it is meant to do – to move every now and again for entertainment value. The door’s sensor, by contrast, is designed to determine the appropriate times for the door to open (i. e. when somebody approaches). According to the account to be developed, the on/off states of the car’s solar cells do not count as ESPs, while the states of the automatic door’s sensor do. The idea behind this distinction is that a functional analysis of the door’s capacity yields a specific kind of function, namely the function to differentially respond to features of the environment. The door’s capacity to open and close at the right times is best explained as differentially responding to states or performances that are themselves counterfactually dependent on the environment. Accordingly, and this is the general idea behind what follows, ESPs are the result of functional analysis of systems with (more or less) complex capacities, so that ESPs differentially respond to the environment, while the system’s overall capacities depend on these differential responses being reliable.

3.1 Epistemological Functionalism

103

Bee Dances, Animal & Human Perception, Intentional Epistemic States Because the functional analysis of ESPs is ultimately intended to illuminate our own epistemic states and statuses – most importantly our beliefs, opinions, judgements, assertions, and knowledge – it may be helpful to look ahead to the more complex kinds of ESP that will be discussed in the remainder of this chapter before we return to automatic supermarket doors. The following scenarios exemplify what can be thought of as states, statuses and performances that share the genus, but not necessarily the species, of the states of the sensors attached to automatic doors, i. e. functional ESPs of two different kinds: (6) Fido the dog sits in front of his owner’s farm when Jim the jogger approaches. Fido hears Jim’s footsteps, turns his head, looks at Jim, gets up and starts chasing Jim while barking madly. As soon as Jim notices Fido approaching, he slows down and starts to walk. (7) Some worker bee returns from a rich source of nectar. When the bee is close to the beehive, it performs a waggle dance, thereby indicating the direction and distance of the nectar. (8) Sam the medieval sentry is ordered by the town council to climb up the town wall and blow the signal horn as soon as he sees the enemy troops approaching. When Sam sees the enemy approach, he dutifully discharges his obligation and blows his horn to alert the town. Fido, Jim, the worker bee and Sam, as well as the automatic door discussed earlier, exemplify ESPs as envisaged here. Given the generic notion of ESPs aimed at, the fact that ESPs help to account for Fido’s and Jim’s behaviour in (6) should not be surprising. In fact, the notions of belief and knowledge in ascriptions such as “The dog believed that the jogger encroached its territory”, and “Jim knew that slowing down would calm the dog” are our own folk-psychological means of attributing ESPs. We need not determine whether, or in which contexts, such intentional vocabulary is descriptively and explanatorily appropriate for the dog’s behaviour. Research in the physiology of animal perception may yield alternative, functional ESPs, helping to explain the behaviour of animals by means of functional contributions of sensory sub-systems. Whatever the relevant ESPs turn out to be (I will have to say more about functional and intentional descriptions and explanations below), the dog and the human being in (6) offer paradigm cases of behaviour that ought to be described, explained and predicted by means of ESPs. Organisms of a certain complexity, and certainly mammals,

104

3 Epistemic States and Performances

perceive aspects of their environment (visual, auditory, olfactory, somatosensory perception). The bee’s waggle dance (7) is an ESP of a different kind, because independently of the bee’s sensory apparatus (which undoubtedly involves ESPs of the kind discussed already), the dance itself can be described as an epistemic performance. If there is some uptake by other bees observing the dance (e. g. watching the waggle dancer, and/or flying out in the direction indicated by the dance), and if the dance contributes to the beehive’s overall capacity to survive and reproduce, then its function within the beehive as its reference system is analogous to the function of the automatic door’s sensor within the overall system that is the automatic door. The same goes for the sentry (8). On the one hand, we explain his actions in terms of intentional epistemic vocabulary such as “believes” and “knows that”, just as we did with Jim the jogger. On the other hand, we can describe his obligation to blow the signal horn as having an epistemic function too. Independently of what he believes or knows, Sam is bound by the order of the town council (provided they have the authority to put him under this obligation). Because it is this very obligation that performs an epistemic function, and because our meta-epistemological framework should be maximally inclusive, it is best to aim for a concept of ESPs that includes not only epistemic states (such as those of the door’s sensor or the dog) and performances (such as the bee’s waggle dance), but also (normative) statuses, like the sentry’s obligation.

Methodology: Dennett’s Stance-Strategy The states of the automatic door’s sensor are epistemic states; animal perception leads to epistemic states; intentional human action depends on epistemic states. Bees’ waggle dances are epistemic performances, and so are sentries’ acts of blowing signal horns. The obligation to blow a signal horn is an epistemic normative status. These states, performances and normative statuses count as epistemic in virtue of having a certain kind of function. The kind of function to be labelled “epistemic” is the result of a functional analysis of different kinds of system. For something to be an epistemic state, status or performance is for it to perform a specific kind of function within a specific kind of system. Different kinds of system yield different kinds of ESP. The individuation of these kinds is open to negotiation, but I propose teleological systems, social-normative systems and intentional systems. Accordingly, epistemic functions are the result of functional analysis of teleological, social-normative, or intentional systems.

3.1 Epistemological Functionalism

105

This set-up raises two questions. Firstly, what it is for something to count as a system of the kind that allows for the identification of ESPs? And secondly, what exactly are epistemic functions? Because my answer to the second question will render different kinds of epistemic function relative to different kind of systems, we first need an account of the relevant systems. Such an account we can borrow from Daniel Dennett’s influential work on the “stance” strategy in the philosophy of mind, first formulated in his “Intentional Systems” (1971). Dennett proposes to answer questions of whether some agent or “system” – e. g. an animal, robot or human infant – has beliefs and goals (or at least states relevantly similar to beliefs) not by looking for physical features of the system (e. g. brain states), but by examining under what circumstances we successfully predict and explain the system’s behaviour by attributing beliefs and goals. By doing this, Dennett reverses a familiar and intuitive direction of explanation. Instead of explaining the appropriateness of us treating something as being of a kind K by examining whether it is, in fact, of kind K, we explain its being of kind K in terms of our attitude towards it. An example of the former strategy is provided by jogger Jim’s application of the concept “dog”, whose correctness depends on the thing to which he applies it being a dog. The second strategy may be appropriate for concepts like “being amusing”, in which case we could plausibly invoke people’s reactions or attitudes to determine just when something is amusing (e. g. people laughing, or finding it, or treating it as, amusing in some other way). Isn’t it plausible, Dennett asks, that concepts like “belief” and “desire” are relevantly similar to “being amusing”, and relevantly dissimilar to the concepts expressed by natural kind terms such as “dog” and “gold”, in that explanations of what it is for Fido to believe that somebody is encroaching his territory best look at acts or attitudes of taking or treating Fido as believing that somebody is encroaching (instead of scanning Fido’s brain, looking for an activation of an encroachment-representation)? More generally, Dennett thinks that for an important class of systems, for something to be a system of kind K is for it to be appropriately treated as such. To treat some human being, dog, computer software or alien life form as having a specific belief is to treat it, more generally, as a kind of system that has beliefs. And to do so, Dennett maintains, is to adopt a certain explanatory or predictive “stance” towards it; it is to choose a certain strategy and vocabulary in order to explain and predict its overall behaviour. What it is for such a stance to be appropriately adopted is specified with respect to explanatory and predictive interests, and success in relation to these interests. Accordingly, for something to be a system of kind K is for its behaviour to be successfully explained and predicted as the behaviour of a system of kind K.

106

3 Epistemic States and Performances

Different such stances will provide us with the teleological systems, the social-normative systems and the intentional systems we will use to identify different kinds of ESP. The attribution of beliefs, as exemplified by Fido’s belief that he is witnessing encroaching behaviour, is part of the so-called “intentional stance”, which tends to be involved when human beings describe and explain their own and each others’ behaviour. The intentional stance involves a theory with explanatory and predictive powers that roughly corresponds to what is sometimes called “folk psychology” or “belief/desire-psychology”. An additional component of the intentional stance is the assumption that the system is at least partly rational (the degree of rationality required for the intentional stance to work was the subject of intense discussion during the 1980s). According to this conception, beliefs and desires – or more precisely: beliefand desire-like “intentional whatnots” (Dennett 1971: 91) – are part of intentional systems; nothing except an intentional system can have beliefs and desires. For something to be an intentional system is for it to be appropriately treated as one. To treat something as an intentional system is to explain and predict its behaviour by means of rationality assumptions and an intentional theory (involving belief- and desire-like intentional states, and/or other intentional states). The appropriateness of adopting the intentional stance towards some system is determined by the predictive and explanatory success of its application (Dennett 1971; 1981). Here is an example of how the intentional stance works. During her lunch break, scientist Sheila goes for a walk and witnesses a visibly agitated dog approaching jogger Jim. She tries to predict what Jim will do next. With Jim appearing to be a grown-up, conscious human being, Sheila chooses the intentional stance for her prediction, attributing to Jim the desire to avoid being bitten and some beliefs concerning interactions between dogs and other animals. Perhaps, knowing the situation from first-hand experience (being a runner herself), she attributes to Jim the belief that slowing down is the best way to decrease the likelihood of being bitten. Sheila can then infer that from a rational point of view, Jim ought to slow down. If she also assumes that Jim will act rationally (Dennett’s rationality assumption), then she infers from the fact that Jim ought to slow down that he will slow down. We will return to the intentional stance in section 3.4, when dealing with epistemic states of intentional, concept-using agents such as human beings. Before we do so, however, we need to look at another stance. We obviously do not explain and predict all phenomena by means of the intentional stance. It would be highly metaphorical (at best) or foolish (at worst) to base our weather forecasts on the intentional stance (“Which path is that cold front going to take, given that it is rational and wants to travel West?”). And indeed, even though

3.2 Systems With a Design and Teleological ESPs

107

he is primarily interested in the intentional stance, Dennett presents it as just one explanatory strategy among others. Additionally, he describes a physical stance (suitable for weather forecasts) as well as the design stance. Predictions and explanations that are part of the physical stance combine knowledge of the relevant laws of nature with the explanandum’s antecedent conditions, whereas the design stance’s explanations depend on assumptions of functional design (artefacts, biological functions). Here are examples of explanations based on (9) the design, (10) the physical and (11) the intentional stance: (9) The automatic supermarket door opened because Victor approached it. (10) Victor reflected doppler-shifted microwaves because he moved towards the sensor. (11) Victor entered the shop because he wanted some apple juice (and knew they’d stock it). Being interested in the nature of the human mind, and seeing the intentionality of content as one key feature of it, Dennett is primarily concerned with the mechanics of the intentional stance. He does not say very much about the mechanics and the appropriateness conditions of the design stance. However, because I aim at a generous specification of what counts as an epistemic phenomenon (allowing for non-intentional states and events to count as epistemic), I shall start my characterisation of ESPs with the design stance.

3.2 Systems With a Design and Teleological ESPs When Alvin Goldman, in his classic paper “Discrimination and Perceptual Knowledge” (1976), suggests a reliabilist account of perceptual knowledge in terms of our ability to discriminate what is the case from relevant alternatives, he notes that this definition has the advantage of capturing and explaining “extended and figurative uses” of “to know”. “With this in mind”, he goes on to say, “consider how tempting it is to say of an electric-eye door that it ‘knows’ you are coming” (Goldman 1976: 791). Because unlike Goldman we are not analysing the concept of knowledge, such similarities, as well as the extended use of “knows” to which they give rise, are not treated here as evidence for any theory of knowledge. The reason why states of artefacts are treated as epistemic phenomena lies in our envisaged meta-epistemological inclusiveness; given the reliabilist treatment of such states as states of knowledge, it is advisable to allow for the view that they are episte-

108

3 Epistemic States and Performances

mic. “Teleological ESPs”, as I propose to call them, are one kind of ESPs, exemplified by the sensor of an automatic door. If we want to account for ESPs in terms of the kind of system of which automatic doors are an example, we need to know what these systems are. We need not, however, assume that there is only one kind of system that allows for ESPs; a disjunction of different kinds of systems provides the necessary condition needed (functional and intentional systems, for example). Additionally, these systems need not involve ESPs; they serve as merely necessary conditions for the identification of ESPs. Nonetheless, we can label the kinds of system that do involve ESPs “epistemic systems”. Automatic doors are teleological systems or epistemic systems with a design; the solar-powered toy car is a non-epistemic system with a design. Plants and animals, under non-intentional descriptions, count as epistemic systems with a design. As mentioned above, Daniel Dennett’s strategy to identify intentional systems is to look at the explanatory and predictive success of treating something as an intentional system (Dennett 1971, 1981). The same strategy, Dennett claims, works for what we he calls systems with a “design”: something is a system with a design iff it is appropriately treated as such. To treat something as a system with a design is to adopt an explanatory and predictive “design stance” towards it. Whether the stance is appropriately adopted is determined by considering its explanatory and predictive success. Dennett’s favourite example of a system with a design is a computer. One can make predictions of a computer’s behaviour (its output) on the basis of knowledge of how it is designed and programmed (Dennett 1971: 87– 8). Thanks to the functional design of the computer (which, as we have seen, also inspired Turing Machine functionalism in the philosophy of mind), no knowledge of the computer’s physical make-up is required. What is required, however – in analogy with the rationality assumption of the intentional stance – is the assumption that the computer does not malfunction. Other examples of successful design stance predictions include typewriters, matches and alarm clocks, as well as biological objects – “plants and animals, kidneys and hearts, stamens and pistils” (Dennett 1981: 88, 17). Accordingly, for something to be a system with a design, it is not required that it be designed by a human being (or by anything else); its design can be an adaptation. The design stance allows for explanations and predictions on the basis of some system’s functional make-up on different levels of abstraction. In the limiting case, it may be appropriately adopted even if no functional structure is known – we know an alarm clock when we see one, as it were. We are quite good at predicting its behaviour, even if we do not know much about its functional design (Dennett 1981: 17). So, sometimes the recognition of some artefact’s

3.2 Systems With a Design and Teleological ESPs

109

purpose, jointly with the knowledge or assumption that it is in full working order, will be sufficient for successful design-stance predictions. The corresponding explanations of the system’s behaviour, however, are not always satisfactory. Most “why” and “how” questions with regards to artefacts’ behaviour are not fully answered by recourse to the artefact’s purpose (i. e. to what it has been designed for), partly because the range of counterfactual situations in which such predictions are reliable is limited. The more we know about some artefact’s functional design, the more likely we are to predict its performance under varying conditions, and the better we are placed to diagnose (identify) mistakes in case it malfunctions. Generally, we adopt the design stance towards some system iff we explain and/or predict its behaviour on the basis of the assumption that it has a functional design, and that it is well designed and in functioning order. Accordingly, we adopt the design stance towards the solar-powered toy car by claiming that it will move as soon as the clouds disperse. We do so implicitly by not slowing down when approaching an automatic slide door (expecting it to open in time to avoid a crash), and when we expect our laptop screen, running a Word-processing programme, to display the letters indicated on the keys of the keyboard, in the order in which we push these keys.

Teleological Functionalism and Proper Functions To adopt the design stance towards some system involves the assumption that the system can be analysed into functional units. If we know these units, and further assume that the system is well built and in functioning order, we can use this knowledge to explain and predict the system’s behaviour (Dennett 1971: 88). Working on the assumption that ESPs are functional states of a specific kind, we can turn Dennett’s apparatus on its head. If the behaviour of some system S is appropriately explained and predicted by means of the design stance, then the behaviour of S’s functional units can be explained by means of the functional analysis of the system. The functions that result from such functional analysis are closer to our pre-theoretic conception of what it means for something to have a function than the notion involved in Turing Machine functionalism in the philosophy of mind. The functions resulting from the functional analysis of systems that merit the design stance are, roughly, what the items or states having these functions are for. Something can, perhaps, be described as functioning in a certain way, while we would not concede that it has the corresponding function.

110

3 Epistemic States and Performances

In what follows, functions that are the result of functional analysis of systems that merit the design stance will be called “teleological” or “proper” functions (e. g. Griffiths 1993; Sober 1985). To say that something has the teleological function F is roughly equivalent to our everyday descriptions of something “having the function F” (Griffiths 1993: 411). Accordingly, the labels “teleological” and “proper” are typically used to make it clear that the concept of function invoked is not the weak one familiar from Turing Machine functionalism.² The label “teleological” does not imply that there is an (intelligent) designer, or indeed anything with any kinds of “telos”, goals or intentions to which the function owes its being “for” something. As Philip Kitcher put it, “one of Darwin’s important discoveries is that we can think of design without a designer” (Kitcher 1993a: 380). For some physical state to be a Turing Machine state, it suffices for it to stand in specific causal relations (typically to other Turing Machine states). For two physical states to count as the same Turing Machine state, they ought to occupy the same place within the same abstract structure, as realised in two different ways. Neither these states nor the structures (systems) need to have a “function” in the pre-theoretic sense of the word. They need not serve a purpose, they need not be supposed to do, meant to do, designed to do, or selected for doing anything at all. It is, for example, no requirement of Turing Machine functionalism that the machine states serve to compute informational inputs provided by sense perception, and that they are related in any way to action within the perceived environment. These considerations motivated Elliott Sober’s (1985) proposal to replace Turing Machine functionalism with teleological functionalism, as modelled on biological functions. The mind as a whole, Sober says, ought to be seen as a functional system, analogously to our digestive system. It is a functional device and can be subjected to the kind of functional analysis that guides biological investigation of other organismic systems (Sober 1985: 166). Its function, roughly to “extract information from the environment, and from the organism itself”, is what the mind has been selected for (Sober 1985: 165). Because Sober’s teleological functions are modelled on biological adaptations, his teleological functionalism is firmly compatible with a naturalist view of the mind. Any teleology in his teleological functions needs to be accounted for in terms of evolutionary theory.

 In some contexts, however, the labels mark more specific uses of “function”; see Millikan’s definition of “proper function” in Millikan (1984).

3.2 Systems With a Design and Teleological ESPs

111

Consider again the epistemic states of an automatic sliding door. Given that we are operating on a level of inclusiveness that allows for human-made artefacts to be in epistemic states, being an adaptation must not be part of the notion of function involved in defining ESPs. Other aspects of teleological functionalism are suitable for our purposes, though. ESPs such as those of the automatic door are to be identified in virtue of their purpose, in virtue of what they are supposed to do, in virtue of what they contribute to systems of which they are part. In short, they are teleological in just the sense that organismic adaptations are; they qualify as teleological functions. Sometimes ESPs are adaptations (e. g. animal perception as an organismic adaptation, bees’ waggle dances as a behaviouristic one), but they need not be. We need a version of functionalism that (a) is teleological in that it takes into account the fact that functional states contribute to the organism or system that they are states of, and (b) does not do so exclusively by treating functional states as adaptations.

Teleological Functions as the Results of Functional Analysis One respect in which teleological functionalism is thought to be an improvement on Turing Machine functionalism is that it offers seemingly straightforward solutions to the so-called “disjunction problem” for causal and informational accounts of representational (and hence semantic) content (e. g. Fodor 1987). The problem, in a nutshell, is how to make room for, and explain, misrepresentation if representation is reductively explained in terms of causal co-variation. Teleological functionalism’s solution, in essence, is that misrepresentation is one kind of malfunction, where the function involved is teleological, i. e. an organismic adaptation. There are a number of much-discussed problems for such “teleofunctional” approaches to semantic content, e.g. how to explain not only concepts, but also propositional content (the kind of content expressed by declarative sentences) in terms of representation. The present account does not face these difficulties, because it aims at a different, more modest goal. Instead of trying to explain what it is for some performance or state to express semantic content, we are merely trying to determine what it is for some state or performance to be epistemic. Nonetheless, we learn from teleofunctional accounts of semantic content that there are two promising families of teleofunctional theories. Etiological theories originate in Larry Wright’s classic paper “Functions” (1973). Wright’s idea is that an item I (e. g. an organ) has a (teleological) function F iff (a) F is a result of I’s being there, and (b) I exists because it does F. So, pumping blood is a (teleological) function of the heart because (a) the heart

112

3 Epistemic States and Performances

does indeed pump blood, and (b) we have got a heart because it pumps blood. According to Wright, this ought to work for (teleological) functions both in artefacts and organisms; in the latter case, the explanation proceeds by appeal to what I has been selected for. Other etiological theories, such as Ruth Millikan’s (1984) and Peter Godfrey-Smith’s (1994), share Wright’s general (biology-inspired) ambition to determine teleological functions – what something is for – by looking at their history. Systems theories, on the other hand, try to define (teleological) functions by looking at their role in systems in which the states or performances in question play a part. This strand of thinking about teleological functions originates with Robert Cummins (1975). Mirroring what I said earlier about Dennett’s design stance, Cummins sees teleological functions as the result of the functional analysis of a system, where the appropriateness criteria for the analysis (and hence the identification of functions) are based on our explanatory interest and success. Cummins’ favoured explanandum is the capacity of a complex system; for example, the capacity of a supermarket’s automatic door to open when customers approach, and to close when customers have successfully entered or left the shop. Functions, according to Cummins, are simpler capacities suitable for the explanans – in our case the sensor’s capacity to detect people, and the engine’s capacity to move the door. The downside to Cummins’ account is that the resulting account of function is overly generous for our purposes. Cummins does not distinguish teleological functions from the more inclusive notion on which Turing Machine functionalism in the philosophy of mind, for example, is based. Cummins’ account does not provide the conceptual means to distinguish goals from dispositions; accordingly, the human organism’s capacity to die is just as suitable to distinguish Cummins-functions (e. g. the heart’s capacity to fail) as are its capacity to survive and reproduce. Although it is possible that an etiological account of teleological functions could be put to use in order to account for ESPs, I propose to define teleological functions by combining Cummins’ idea that functions are the result of functional analysis with Dennett’s design-stance strategy. For us to adopt the design stance towards something is, among other things, to treat it as having a functional design (see section 3.1). Consequently, the functions we identify as the result of the analysis of systems with a design are teleological functions. Teleological ESPs are states or performances that are assigned a specific kind of teleological function in the context of the design stance.

3.2 Systems With a Design and Teleological ESPs

113

Definition of Teleological ESPs (First Sufficient Condition for ESPs) We are now in a position to offer one sufficient condition for something to count as an ESP. This condition amounts to a definition of teleological ESPs, i. e. ESPs as identified within systems with a design (as part of a successfully adopted design stance). A full definition of ESPs will only be reached, however, when socialnormative practices (section 3.3) and intentional systems (section 3.4) are shown to allow for the identification of ESPs, too. The condition has three conjunctively related parts: (12) Some state or performance x is a teleological ESP iff: (a) x is a tokening of a state or performance type X with the teleological function of responding differentially to a set of features/properties F of the environment of a system S with a functional design. (b) X’s teleological function is a result of functional analysis of S. (c) S’s overall capacities are best explained by assuming that S differentially responds to its environment by differentially responding to X. Before illustrating this sufficient condition, recall that for something to be a system with a functional design, as it is required in clause (a), is for it to be appropriately treated as one (see section 3.1). Accordingly, for something to be an ESP it is necessary that it makes some (“epistemic”) kind of explanatory contribution. Also, note that S’s differential responses to X (in (c)) need not be spelt out as S straightforwardly acting on X (e. g. by producing output caused by X). Such a differential response can also consist in S acquiring dispositions on the basis of X – perhaps by staying in state X (thereby storing information), or by memorising or acknowledging that X. (The applicability of terms like “information”, “memorising” or “acknowledging” depends on the kind of system under consideration.) Our initial examples involving human beings making epistemic use of their environment (1, 3) should turn out to involve ESPs, because, as we saw earlier, the relevant overall systems (mercury sample plus Jacob; Cassia fistula tree plus farmers) do include intentional systems (human beings). We will discuss intentional systems later. The solar-powered toy car (4) perhaps meets conditions (a) and (b). For the toy car certainly counts as a system with a functional design (the design stance is appropriately adopted towards it), and it may also be described as differentially responding to its environment (reacting to the light conditions by delivering more or less energy). But the toy car fails condition (c), and

114

3 Epistemic States and Performances

hence does not feature ESPs. In order to entertain people, to move every now and again, or to move as often as possible, it is not necessary that the car moves, or that the cells deliver energy, just exactly when there is sufficient light. However, as the addition of Phil the photographer in his dark room shows, well-functioning solar cells do provide energy iff there is sufficient light, and this differential response can be assigned an epistemic function. The relevant system is now not the toy car, but the toy car plus Phil the photographer. The states of the sensor of the automatic door (5) are epistemic, because they meet all three conditions: automatic doors, being artefacts, merit the design stance; the sensor differentially responds to features of the environment; and the door cannot do what it is designed to unless the sensor works reliably. Note that due to its reliance on functions (instead of actual performance), the account handles malfunctioning devices well. It does not matter, for the identification of ESPs, whether the door is in functioning order, or whether any part of it is broken (the sensor, the door’s engine). Because what malfunctions still has a function (which it fails to perform), the sensor’s states still count as ESPs. Slightly trickier, perhaps, is the identification of ESPs in badly designed or fake artefacts. Consider the following two examples: (13) After the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq, the British company ATSC sold fake bomb detectors to the Iraqi government. Before the export of the devices was finally banned in early 2010 (and the company’s managing director arrested), Iraq had spent more than $50 million on a technology that was, as ATSC claimed, based on a technology similar to water dowsing in that the devices react to the “frequencies” of specific explosives.³ (14) Despite conflicting evidence, it now seems that the polygraphs traditionally sold and used as lie detecting devices measure physiological symptoms of excitement (pulse, respiration, breathing rhythm, skin conductivity). Because such states of excitement are not necessarily caused by acts of lying, devices that are colloquially called “lie detectors” are, in fact, mere “excitement detectors”. The conceptual worry raised by these devices is that the functional identification that ensured that malfunctioning devices still count as having ESPs (e. g. an automatic door with functioning sensor but broken engine) could now imply that

 Rod Nordland, “Iraq Swears by Bomb Detector U.S. Sees as Useless”, in New York Times, 4 November 2009, New York edition, section A1; http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/04/world/mid dleeast/04sensors.html (retrieved 23 February 2010).

3.2 Systems With a Design and Teleological ESPs

115

such “detectors” count as having ESPs merely because the manufacturer says so (thinks so, believes them to be, created the device with this function in mind), or because they are generally believed and/or intended to do so. This problem is best solved by taking seriously the idea that ESPs are the result of functional analysis, with explanatory criteria of adequacy, of some overall functional design or capacity. If the device does not have the capacity or functional design to detect explosives (13) or lies (14), as stated in the first part of our definition of teleological ESPs, then the functional analysis that would yield ESPs does not get off the ground. ATSC declaring that their “detector” has specific overall capacities, or even having manufactured it in the honest belief that it will detect explosives, does not ensure that it actually has these capacities or functional design (13). Decades of using polygraphs as lie detectors do not amount to them actually having the capacity to detect lies (14).

Generalising the Design Stance: Adaptations Human artefacts are paradigmatic of the kind of purpose-oriented system whose behaviour is appropriately explained and predicted in functional terms. Their purpose, however, need not originate in the desires or plans of human beings. Artefacts are not the only systems that warrant functional analysis. Natural selection provides a notion of purpose suitable for functional (design stance) explanations of animals’ organs and behaviour, too. We do not have to be creationist to be entitled to say that birds’ wings are for flying, that their hearts serve the purpose of pumping blood, and that they have got eyes in order to see. Such teleological talk is entirely naturalistic in spirit as long as we subscribe to the theory of natural selection in order to determine what it is, in principle, for organs or behavioural patterns to serve a purpose. We do so by describing properties of organisms (including behavioural patterns) as adaptations, where for such a property to be an adaptation is for it to have evolved because there was a selection for it (e. g. Sober 2000). This is one basis for attributing ESPs to Fido the dog and Jim the jogger in our example (6). It is not, however, the basis for attributing intentional ESPs, to which we turn section 3.5; the teleological functions identified as part of the design stance do not allow for conceptually articulated propositional attitudes such as beliefs. But dogs and human beings do have well-developed capacities for perceiving their environment. Jim is part of Fido’s environment. Perceptual capacities, however they are best individuated and described, are adaptations; they have been selected for.

116

3 Epistemic States and Performances

The identification of teleological ESPs in organisms is an empirical matter, and thus one way to cash in the naturalist proposal for interdisciplinary exchange between epistemology and the natural sciences. If we take some relevant overall capacities of the organism as explanandum – perhaps even its general capacity to survive and reproduce (Griffiths 1993) – we will certainly have to invoke perceptual (epistemic) states at some stage. However, more local identification of teleological ESPs is possible, too. Think about jogger Jim’s involuntary reaction to Fido’s initial barking. Jim is startled, blinks, his muscles contract and he instantly moves a step away from the source of the barking noise. Explanations of this reaction (which does, of course serve a purpose) involve teleological ESPs. There are organismic states and/or processes that respond differentially to Jim’s environment (in this case, Fido’s barking), and the appropriateness of Jim’s reaction depends on these responses. Thermometers (2), the Cassia fistula tree (3) and solar-powered toy cars (4) can be described as being in epistemic states, but only if somebody treats them as such by taking them to indicate (i. e. to differentially respond to) something. The simplest kind of system that treats some internal states or events as epistemic are automatic sliding door operators (5). They not only indicate changes in their environment, but also react to these changes in purposeful ways. Although these purposes are still owed to their human designers and users, there is a sense in which the epistemic state is internal to the system. To paraphrase Goldman: the automatic door “knows” that somebody is approaching in a way the thermometer does not know it’s 27° C – and all thanks to its sensor being linked up to a small engine that makes it behave the way it is designed to. Teleological ESPs owe their status to their role in systems with a design. Neither the “design” in “system with a design”, nor the adjective “teleological”, is in any way meant to imply the presence of a designer. The usual, broadly naturalistic restrictions highlighted in our discussion of Quine (section 1.2) apply to any construal of such locutions, with explanations in terms of natural selection being a clear paradigm.

3.3 Social Practice and Social-Normative ESPs Recall the worker bee from example (7) in section 3.1. By performing their waggle dance, worker honey bees can inform other bees about the whereabouts of nectar, pollen, water or potential nest sites. Waggle dances are flying patterns consisting of a “waggle-phase” and a return phase, where the direction (relative to the sun) and duration of the waggle phase indicates the location of the target.

3.3 Social Practice and Social-Normative ESPs

117

A beehive is a social (or, to use a technical term from evolutionary biology, “eusocial”) group, consisting of several individual agents (the bees). The social organisation of such a group can be described as an adaptation. When the behaviour of an organism does not increase its own chances of survival and/or reproduction, explanations of the behaviour in question appeals to the social group as a relevant unit of survival and/or reproduction. Sometimes, cooperative behaviour can be explained in terms of game theory (e. g. Axelrod 1984). At other times, as in the case of sterile worker bees, these explanations need to invoke kin selection, turning on the fact that members of the group are biologically related to each other. Bees’ waggle dances are a nice example of communicative behaviour among non-sapient agents. Similarly to the states of the sensor in an automatic door, we can treat waggle runs as epistemic performances within the beehive; hence they qualify as ESPs in the sense defined earlier. As long as there is some uptake among the dancer’s audience (i. e. as long as the observing bees respond differentially to waggle runs’ direction and duration), our criteria for ESPs are met; waggle dances do perform epistemic functions within a system (the beehive).⁴ We can look in two directions for behaviour relevantly similar to that of the worker bees. On the one hand, we can build, or model, multiple autonomous mobile robot systems. This has the great advantage that we know exactly how much is programmed into the robots. By running simulations, we get a good picture of which differential behavioural dispositions need to be programmed for them to share information (e. g. about the whereabouts of energy sources). On the other hand, we can turn to our mammal relatives. Groundhogs, for example, whistle to alert their conspecifics, earning them the nickname “whistle pigs”. Crows, too, issue warning cries when predators approach. According to a classic paper in ecology, vervet monkeys in Amboseli do not only whistle, but use three different alarm calls, responding differentially to three kinds of predator: leopards and other cat species, eagles, and pythons (Seyfarth, Cheney, Marler  Evolutionary biology can plausibly be invoked in order to further clarify the notion of ESPs, as attributable to organisms. We may, for example, attribute waggle dances as ESPs not to the bees performing the dance, but to the beehives (i. e. the local community of related conspecifics). With the worker bees being sterile, it could be argued that the group constitutes the relevant unit of selection for waggle dances. If we embrace such a distinction between different units of selection, we can differentiate between epistemic organismic adaptations (such as animals’ perceptual apparatus) and epistemic group adaptations, such as the waggle dances (Sober 2000: 90). Note that the difference between describing some trait as a group or organismic adaptation can be relevant for predictions, as it is in the case of altruistic traits. Given that there is no such relevance in the case of artefacts, there does not seem to be an analogous distinction to be made there.

118

3 Epistemic States and Performances

1980). Upon hearing the type of call, the monkeys react differently: the leopard call makes them climb trees, the eagle call has them hiding in bushes, and the snake call lets them run for their lives. Bees’ waggle dances, whistle pigs’ whistles and vervet monkeys’ alarm calls are epistemic performances in the sense envisaged here, and meet my criteria of ESPs, if we assume that design-stance explanations and predictions of adapted social organisation and behaviour are adequate. Such performances then are the result of a functional analysis of the group’s overall capacities (e. g. by contributing to the group’s overall capacity to survive and reproduce) (condition (a)). The function of such performances, furthermore, is to differentially respond to the group’s environment (condition (b)). Finally, in order for the group to have its overall capacities, it relies on the differential responses being reliable (condition (c)). Accordingly, we now have extended our notion of ESPs from intra-organism and intra-artefact states to performances of agents within social groups.

Social Normative Systems: Haugeland on Sanctionability So far, we have looked at ESPs in artefacts such as automatic doors, functionally described organisms such as dogs, and non-normative social systems such as beehives. Human beings, and perhaps many non-human animals too, differ from these cases in many ways. Traditionally, our rationality and intentionality were highlighted as the key differences (cf. Dennett’s intentional stance, as opposed the design stance discussed so far). However, before turning towards fully rational and intentional agents, I would like to discuss normative social systems. A normative social system, as I have it in mind, is a multi-agent social system that is appropriately described in terms of obligations, permissions, prohibitions, commitments, entitlements. Although Dennett’s design stance as applied in the previous section offers a framework in which normative and evaluative terms are harmlessly used (e. g. “The automatic door ought to open now because somebody is approaching”), neither automatic doors, sunflowers or bees, can be appropriately said to be obliged to do something, or prohibited from doing something. If somebody or something is obliged, permitted, prohibited, entitled, committed, then I shall speak of this agent’s normative status. The key idea here is that normative social systems are the kind of social system that allows for at least some explanatory attributions of obligations, permissions, prohibitions, etc. to its agents. If a system is social and normative in this way, I shall call it a “(normative) practice”. Accordingly to these terminological stipulations, there cannot be a single-agent practice, and neither can there be a practice that is entirely bereft of normative status (i. e. in which nobody has

3.3 Social Practice and Social-Normative ESPs

119

any obligation, permission, prohibition whatsoever). Beehives are not practices in the sense envisaged here. What are practices, then? How do we decide whether some behavioural regularities deserve to be described in terms of agents’ normative status? There may be several features of practices that merit such attributions, especially once we allow for intentional, conscious agents of the kind we are ourselves. We could, for example, tie the idea of normative status to personal responsibility, or make them dependent on some sort of acknowledgement. However, the explanatory strategy announced above recommends a notion of normative status that does not presuppose fully intentional, conscious agency. Accordingly, I would like to start with a simple model of practice and normative status due to John Haugeland. Behavioural regularities can be explained in normative terms not only in virtue of performing a certain function (e. g. counting as coordination equilibria), but also because conforming to these behavioural regularities may be enforced. Sometimes one ought to act in certain ways not because the action contributes to the community’s overall good, but simply because failing to perform the action will be sanctioned. In this way dysfunctional, unjust, inefficient or irrational positive laws can be normatively binding because non-conforming is sanctioned. As opposed to the normative claims that are part of the design stance (“The automatic door ought to open now”), there need not be any functional explanation for the behaviour in question. The idea of sanctionability makes it conceptually possible that some agent ought to abstain from doing A (because doing A is detrimental to the community), while she is obliged to do A (because the community enforces this kind of behaviour). Sanctioning behaviour, in turn, can be explained in non-intentional terms. In his paper “Heidegger on Being a Person” (1982), John Haugeland offers a reductive and potentially naturalistic account of normative social practices by means of sanctionability. Haugeland describes the emergence of norms as the production of sorts or types of behaviour by sanctioning behaviour. He starts by imagining a community of conformist agents who tend to produce similar performances under similar circumstances. They not only imitate each other, but are also disposed to sanction each other’s non-conformist behaviour, thereby making future behaviour more likely to conform: The clusters [of behaviour] that coalesce can be called ‘norms’ (and not just groups or types) precisely because they are generated and maintained by censoriousness; the censure attendant on deviation automatically give the standards (the existing clusters) a de facto normative force. (Haugeland 1982: 16)

120

3 Epistemic States and Performances

What gets normalised are not actual instances of behaviour, but the dispositions to behave in certain ways, contingent on the circumstances: Thus, norms have a kind of ‘if-then’ structure, connecting various sorts of circumstance to various sorts of behaviour. It follows that the conforming community (in the differential responses of normal behaviour and normal censorship) must effectively categorise both behaviour and behavioural circumstances into various distinct sorts. We say that [the community] institutes these sorts. (Haugeland 1982: 17)⁵

Within this conformist model, the emergence of norms can be accounted for in non-normative terms of behavioural dispositions to act differentially and to alter one another’s dispositions more or less permanently (by rewarding conformist and punishing non-conformist behaviour). These dispositions can be thought of as being “wired in”; they could, for example, be a product of genetic evolution. Sanctioning behaviour itself “does not presuppose thought, reasoning, language, or any other ‘higher’ faculty” (Haugeland 1982: 16).

Normative Social Practices: The (Normative) Practice Stance Sanctionability is merely a sufficient condition for normative statuses; it is not intended as part of a definition. What makes Haugeland’s proposal relevant in the present context is the fact that the feature highlighted by Haugeland does not depend on agents being rational, intentional, or conscious in any way. Given the present explanatory strategy, sanctioning behaviour is an attractive feature, because it allows for specifying normative status independently of mental and intentional vocabulary. We need not, however, subscribe to the sanctionability account as such. In fact, we are well advised not to, because in order to maximise the inclusiveness of the meta-epistemological framework under development, it is necessary to minimise its collateral commitments. What is important for our purposes is the fact that agents within social systems treat each other as having normative status – as being obliged, permitted, prohibited or committed. One way for an agent to treat her fellow agents as being obliged to do things is by saying that they are, by ascribing the normative status. However, not every attribution of normative status is an explicit ascription. Normative status can be attributed implicitly, too, and Haugeland’s sanctions are one way of doing so. By sanctioning

 I have substituted Heidegger’s technical term “the anyone”, as used by Haugeland, by “the community”. The overall meaning of the passage is not affected.

3.3 Social Practice and Social-Normative ESPs

121

somebody’s behaviour, however the sanctioning behaviour is defined, we implicitly treat the behaviour as governed by norms. We sanction positively if the behaviour abides by the norms; we sanction negatively if it does not. To deny that intentional or rational agents are necessary for some system to count as a practice, or that explicit ascriptions of normative status are necessary, is obviously not the same as formulating necessary and sufficient conditions for some system to count as a normative practice. One strategy for doing so amounts to an extension of Dennett’s stance strategy, as exemplified by the design stance earlier (section 3.2). For something to be a (normative) practice is for it to be appropriately treated as one; to treat something as a practice is to explain and predict its behaviour in terms of agents (implicitly or explicitly) attributing normative status to themselves and each other. For such a stance to be appropriately adopted, its explanations and predictions ought to be successful. Accordingly, we add a “(normative) practice stance” to the design stance discussed earlier, and the intentional stance examined below.

Introducing Normative Epistemic Performances Normative epistemic performances are normative performances (within practices) that have an epistemic function. What makes these performances normative is the fact that the agents within the practice implicitly or explicitly treat them as governed by a norm (typically by sanctioning non-performance). What makes these normative performances epistemic is the kind of functional contribution they make to the community’s overall performance. For present purposes we can call practices that feature at least one epistemic performance “epistemic practices”. Consider the following three practices, one of which features sentry Sam from our earlier example (8): (15) Picture a medieval village surrounded by a town wall. There is only one gate. The village’s most important job is the gatekeeper’s. The village depends on trade, but is also threatened by roaming hordes of robbers. Because trade is limited to daytime, and because the robbers are active only at night, the gatekeeper has the obligation to open the gate in the mornings and to shut it in the evenings.

122

3 Epistemic States and Performances

(16) Even though the town wall protects the village against the robbers, it is not sufficient to keep out well-equipped enemy troops. In case the latter approach, the walls need to be manned by the village’s population. In order to ensure that the villagers are quick to mount the walls, the villagers put sentry Sam on the walls. Sam has the obligation to blow a horn iff enemy troops approach. (17) The neighbouring village’s elders are convinced that they can do without a sentry, because the village priest has his own means to determine when the walls need to be manned. The village priest is assigned the job of reading the birds’ flight patterns every evening. If flight pattern A is instantiated, he shouts “good night”, indicating that it is safe to go to bed. If pattern B is instantiated, he shouts “on the walls”, indicating that an attack is imminent. These three scenarios are meant to exemplify three categories of normative performances, governed respectively by the following conditional norms: (15’) The gatekeeper is obliged to open the gates in the morning and to shut them in the evening. (16’) The sentry is obliged to blow the horn iff enemy troops are approaching. (17’) The priest is obliged to shout “on the walls” iff the bird flight pattern B is instantiated. Despite having the same kind of normative significance (i. e. being governed by conditional obligations), the three performances differ in that the opening of the gate in (15) is normative, yet non-epistemic; blowing the signal horn (16) is a normative and epistemic performance; and the priest’s calls (17) are badly designed epistemic performances. In order to see why, consider the sufficient condition for ESPs from earlier: While both performances, closing the gate (15) and blowing the signal horn (16), have the function of differentially responding to specific conditions (the time of day, enemy troops approaching), only the signal horn is normatively linked up with other performances within the practice in the way required by our definition of teleological ESPs (i. e. villagers manning the town walls). In order for their community to function, the villagers need to be prepared when enemy troops approach; the sentry’s performances allow them to be prepared, as long as the sentry is reliable and acts according to his obligation. This is not to say that the closing of the gates in (15) could not be described as an epistemic performance. Assume that one of the villagers is a blind drunkard

3.3 Social Practice and Social-Normative ESPs

123

who regularly stumbles out of the pub to use the state of the gate to determine whether he should re-enter the pub (in case it is daytime) or go home to sleep. In this case, the relevant system comprises the gate, the gatekeeper, and the drunkard; the drunkard manages to perform as he does (go to sleep at night; go to the pub during daytime) by differentially responding to the states of the gate. Accordingly, the opening and closing of the gate are epistemic performances. However, the drunkard is not part of the description of the practice in (15) above. As far as this description is concerned, there are no relevant differential responses to the states of the gate that would count as the community’s overall capacities, even included all reasonable implications for life in the village. Hence the gatekeeper’s performances in (15) are not epistemic, even though they do differentially respond to the system’s (= village’s) environment.⁶ The priest’s calls in (17) are best analysed along the lines of our treatment of the fake bomb-detector (13) and the polygraph (14). The system is badly designed with respect to its environment, in that the town walls are manned in response to the birds instantiating certain flight patterns. The village does not have the capacity to prepare in response to enemy troops approaching, even though the village elders may say it does. ATSC’s “bomb detectors” and traditional “lie detectors” detect nothing or something different from what they are believed and said to detect. Analogously, the design of the defensive practice in (17) is so flawed that the villagers prepare for battle, not when enemy troops approach, but when the birds instantiate certain flight patterns.

Introducing Epistemic Normative Statuses According to the account presented earlier, for some event to count as a normative performance, it must be attributable to an agent, and it must be treated by agents as governed by a norm within a social system. We discussed sanctioning  It is possible to add features to the practice (15) that make the question of whether the closing of the gates is an epistemic performance somewhat subtle. Suppose, for example, that there is an “emergency door keeper” whose duty it is to open the small emergency door iff the gate is shut. Can the opening and closing of the emergency door now be seen as responses to the opening and closing of the gate, thus meeting the condition that epistemic performances must be differentially responded to by the system of which they are part? This seems to hinge on the question of what the opening of the emergency door is best described as differentially responding to. In the case of our modified scenario (15), the emergency door’s states are better explained as reactions to the gate’s states – and not so much to the time of day, even though they correlate with daytime/night time, too. The villagers need an open emergency door because the gate is shut, not because it is night-time.

124

3 Epistemic States and Performances

behaviour as paradigmatically treating some event or action as governed by a norm. Norms are conditional or unconditional obligations, permissions or prohibitions, as exemplified respectively by (15’), (16’) and (17’). Now we can associate normative statuses with normative performances. Thus, evenings put the gatekeeper in (15) under the obligation to shut the gate, and the sentry in (16) is obliged to blow his horn iff enemy troops approach the town. Our lives are full of epistemic and non-epistemic normative statuses. In many contexts, we are obliged to explain or justify our assertions when appropriately challenged; we are entitled to believe certain claims if we have evidence for them; we are unconditionally prohibited from killing fellow human beings; and so on. If we combine these normative statuses (obligations, permissions, prohibitions and commitments as mutually attributed by agents within a social group) with the kind of functional considerations presented earlier, a new category of epistemic entities becomes available: epistemic obligations, permissions, prohibitions, commitments and entitlements. Let us call these “epistemic normative statuses”, and let the “S” in “ESP” stand for these statuses as well as for states. Henceforth, “ESPs” stands for “epistemic states, (normative) statuses, and/or performances”. “Performances”, in turn, ranges over both normative and non-normative performances. To illustrate the general idea, consider the village’s sentry from (16) again, as well as an example for epistemic permission (18), each followed by a statement expressing the norm responsible for the epistemic status undertaken, and a schema instantiated by the normative statement in question: (16) Epistemic obligation. The town walls of a village need to be manned in case enemy troops approach. In order to ensure that the villagers are quick to mount the walls, the villagers put a sentry on the walls. The sentry has the obligation to blow a horn iff enemy troops approach. (16’) The sentry is obliged to blow the horn iff enemy troops approach. (16’’)If conditions C1… Cn hold, then one must do A (is under the obligation to do A).

3.3 Social Practice and Social-Normative ESPs

125

(18) Epistemic permission. In Aesop’s famous fable, the shepherd boy cries “wolf!” several times, thereby alerting the shepherds and making them run over to help. There is never a wolf present, so the shepherds conclude that the boy keeps violating the norm that gives him permission to issue the “wolf!” call only if a wolf is present. Eventually they stop reacting to the boy’s call. Then the wolf approaches the boy. (18’) Only if a wolf is present has one permission to issue the “wolf!” call. One must: issue the “wolf!” call only if a wolf is present. (18’’)Only if conditions C1… Cn hold has one permission to do A. One must: do A only if conditions C1… Cn hold. I shall have more to say about such normative statements and the norms expressed thereby in chapter 4, the “methodology chapter”. What is important for now is that being undertaken in virtue of a recognisably epistemic norm is not necessary for a normative status to be epistemic in our sense. In order to appreciate this point, consider the following example: (19) Amir is the only undertaker in a village with a population of Muslims and Hindus. For largely moral reasons (Amir is not overly religious, but respects the wishes of the deceased), Amir buries the Muslims and burns the Hindus. Hearing hammering noises, the cooks in the village’s only restaurant infer that a Muslim has died; seeing smoke, they know it was a Hindu. Accordingly they prepare the funeral meal with or without meat. In this case, it is not an epistemic, but a moral norm that triggers Amir’s obligation to either burn or bury the dead. Nonetheless, Amir’s moral obligation is given an epistemic function within the village. Given our account of ESPs as resulting from teleological functions, such moral obligations now count as epistemic obligations too.

(Epistemic) Commitments v. Obligations Norms can make the acquisition of normative statuses such as obligations, permissions and perhaps even prohibitions dependent on necessary and/or sufficient conditions. If they are permissions under necessary conditions, as in (19), they can be invoked to attribute commitments as yet another kind of normative status. Because such commitments can be used to account for the normative

126

3 Epistemic States and Performances

significance of assertoric speech acts (Kuenzle 2005), and hence potentially for their epistemic role, they deserve some clarification. Commitments, as I shall use the term, are not synonymous with obligations, despite of what Robert Brandom, the great advocate of theoretical roles for commitments, says (Brandom 1994). Brandom does indeed treat commitments as a kind of obligation. Perhaps there are some differences in how English speakers tend to use the two terms, Brandom suggests, but both obligation and commitment are the result of obligatory conditional norms as exemplified by (6). If we are ordered to do A in circumstances C, then we are obliged or committed to do A in C. If we promise to do A, in suitable circumstances, we are thereby obliged or committed to do P. This, however, is not the only way we can be committed to something. Here is an example to illustrate two different kinds of commitment I have in mind. Say some medieval nation deals with recruitments for the army in such a way that shaking the hand of the recruitment officer is sufficient for young men to count as recruited. In other words, there is a norm in place (issued by the king, perhaps), according to which the act of shaking the recruitment officer’s hand obliges or commits young men to join the army. This is the first, obligatory sense of “commitment”, exemplifying Brandom’s take on the notion. A second norm may be in place though, ensuring that only men of at least 18 years of age can commit themselves to joining the army. Accordingly, this second norm says that only if you are male and at least 18 years of age are you allowed to (commit yourself to) join the army. This is a permission under necessary conditions, as exemplified in (G). Now, if both these norms are in place, a young man’s act of shaking the recruitment officer’s hand results in two different kinds of commitment: firstly, the young man commits (= obliges) himself to joining the army (= obligation); secondly, he commits himself to being male and at least 18 years of age (≠ obligation). In order to avoid confusions, I shall restrict the term “obligation” to the kind of normative status acquired in virtue of a conditional obligatory norm, and use “commitment” for the normative status resulting from an action that is subject to necessary permission conditions. Both the sentry’s obligation to blow the signal horn on spotting an approaching enemy, and the shepherd boy’s commitment to calling “wolf!” only in the presence of a wolf, are epistemic, according to our account.

Second Sufficient Condition for ESPs: Epistemic Normative Statuses We can now combine the definition of teleological epistemic performances within systems with a design with the account of normative status provided in this

3.4 Intentional and Conceptual Epistemic Practice

127

section to define epistemic normative statuses. This yields a definition of socialnormative epistemic status and performances, and thereby a second sufficient condition for ESPs: (12) Some state or performance x is a teleological ESP iff (a) x is a tokening of a state or performance type X with the teleological function of responding differentially to a set of features/properties F of the environment of a system S with a functional design. (b) X’s teleological function is a result of functional analysis of S. (c) S’s overall capacities are best explained by assuming that S differentially responds to its environment by differentially responding to X. (20) For any performance x the obligation/permission to do x, the prohibition from doing x, and the commitment undertaken in virtue of x are epistemic normative statuses iff x is an epistemic performance. Epistemic normative statuses constitute one kind of ESP, so that something counts as an ESP if it is an epistemic normative status.

3.4 Intentional and Conceptual Epistemic Practice Methodological Preliminaries: No Immanent Epistemology In moving from automatic doors, toy cars and bees’ waggle dances to ourselves (i. e. human beings), we may be tempted to apply the two sufficient conditions for ESPs straight to what we consider to be “our own ESPs”: beliefs, knowledge, perhaps assertions. Although this temptation may be understandable – we have spent a good deal of our training in epistemology looking for definitions of “knowledge”, after all – such a direct application is not in the spirit of the present attempt to develop a meta-epistemological framework. As repeatedly emphasised, I am not putting forward the above sufficient conditions of ESPs as a contribution towards an analysis or explication of the concepts of knowledge or epistemic justification. This methodological point is all the more important because the definitions of teleological ESPs and social-normative ESPs share characteristics of existing analyses of knowledge. After all, they use familiar teleological considerations in order to ensure that epistemic states “respond differentially” to their environ-

128

3 Epistemic States and Performances

ment, which is roughly what Robert Nozick’s (1981) tracking conditions requested of knowledge. Both causal and reliabilist theories can be seen as meeting the same structural requirement. However, I am not trying to analyse, define or explicate knowledge, whether by trying to express its content in other words or by determining its function. For a start, it should be obvious that the above definition is not meant to rival Gettier-inspired analyses or reliabilist theories of knowledge. Not is it aimed at capturing the actual function of the (actual) notion of knowledge, as Kaplan (1985) suggests we ought to do. Finally, I am not “practically explicating” our key epistemic concepts, as urged by Craig’s “conceptual synthesis” project (see section 1.4). I am simply not offering anything like an analysis, genealogy or theory of knowledge. Instead, taking seriously the worries of feminist epistemologists discussed in section 1.5, I wish to step out of immanent epistemology altogether (Haslanger 1999). While systematic work on our actual epistemic concepts is undoubtedly illuminating and theoretically fruitful, the fact remains that these are our epistemic concepts. They are concepts, after all – not crocodiles or atoms. They are, in however weak a sense we want to construe the term, human-made, socially constructed, having emerged in social, cultural practices over time, performing functions that answer to human needs. If our epistemological interests and ambitions were merely descriptive, as in the fourth commitment (C4) extracted from Quine in section 1.2, there would be some justification for the dominance of epistemological concern with our actual concepts (although conventional analytic epistemology’s focus on their content, as opposed to their function, would still be problematic). As we shall shortly see, human beings are concept-using creatures, and if we want to understand and predict their behaviour, we ought to look at their concepts – at the way they categorise things, thereby carving up the world in suitable ways. But epistemology is not only, or even primarily, a descriptive discipline. It has normative ambitions. It aims at telling us when we are best off accepting or revising a belief. It is time to drop the assumption that our concern with our actual epistemic concepts, as manifested by attempts to define, analyse or explicate them, to identify their function, to formulate or fend off sceptical challenges, is the only or best strategy in relation to our normative epistemological ambitions. Instead of applying any definitions of ESPs directly to our epistemic concepts, these will be used to devise a functional and structural characterisation of the epistemic realm or viewpoint as a whole. Our actual epistemic concepts can then be seen as one package of concepts performing epistemic functions within the practice. We organise ourselves, from an epistemic viewpoint, largely by means of the concepts of knowledge, belief, evidence, and epistemic justifica-

3.4 Intentional and Conceptual Epistemic Practice

129

tion. This particular package may or may not be shared across different natural languages; we may open the conceptual space for arguments to the effect that some of the properties of the package are necessary, given its function; we get into a position where we can ask how well the package does its job. Whether the radical refurbishment or retooling option (specifically epistemological functionalism) is compatible with describing our method as being guided by an uncharacteristically wide reflective equilibrium (section 1.1) depends on our generosity with respect to the extension of “method of equilibrium”. The functional identification of ESPs, and hence the delineation of the epistemic realm, is informed by existing conceptions of what counts as an epistemic state, status, performance or evaluation. These existing conceptions, however, are not pre-theoretical in the way moral or rational judgements are when reflective equilibrium serves as a justificatory strategy. The conceptions that do serve as criteria of adequacy for the specification of what counts as an epistemic judgement or concept are drawn from existing epistemological theorising. Moreover, the present framework does not by itself accept existing epistemic concepts and judgements as criteria of adequacy, and it does not by itself provide any justification for existing epistemic judgements. The present framework obviously allows for reflective equilibrium to serve as a justificatory strategy, but it makes such justification subject to a meta-epistemological choice.

The Kitchen Analogy Here is an analogy to illustrate the methodological caveat just issued. Assume that our epistemic concepts and the way we employ them constitute an epistemic realm, as distinct from other normative realms such as the moral sphere. This “realm” or “sphere” is constituted by epistemic norms and evaluations and will be called the “epistemic viewpoint” in chapter 4, but for the time being, there is no harm in the spatial metaphors. On the contrary, we can now take it one step further. Compare the epistemic realm to a room within a residential home – the kitchen, say. Our epistemic concepts (e. g. knowledge, epistemic justification, evidence) correspond to the kitchen’s furniture and tools (e. g. table, spoon, blender). Epistemic concepts are the furniture of the epistemic realm. To continue with the metaphor, conceptual analysis can be compared with attempts to examine the specifics of the kitchen’s furniture and tools. Obviously, there are contexts in which this is a useful inquiry. A curious visitor has a good look around his friend’s new kitchen, or a dealer in antiques examines an Edwardian kitchen table with a magnifying glass. The dealer’s examination would take the function of the furniture and the tools for granted, being mainly

130

3 Epistemic States and Performances

interested in their condition, material, design, age, and monetary value. Alternatively, one could be interested in functionality – in the use people make, or could make, of the furniture and tools. Perhaps the kitchen is from a recently discovered Bronze Age settlement and the archaeologists are unfamiliar with some of the tools. They may well be interested in the functionality of what they have discovered, similar to the way Kaplan and Craig are interested not in the conceptual content of knowledge and epistemic justification, but in their point, purpose or use. While the archaeologist represents a descriptive-functional approach to the point, purpose and use of the furniture and the tools, it is easy to imagine normative-functional interests, too. Engineers of a kitchen hardware manufacturing company could scratch their heads trying to figure out how to improve the functionality of, say, a lemon squeezer. This is not quite what Craig has in mind with respect to epistemic concepts, since he sees his “conceptual synthesis” as a descriptive and explanatory enterprise; but it is implicit in Weinberg’s pragmatist meta-epistemology (see section 1.4). Epistemology as I see it – and, as I think, Haslanger also sees it (1999) – should be conceived of as a systematic investigation of the epistemic realm that allows for all kinds of research activities exemplified by the kitchen analogy. We should be looking at the content of our epistemic concepts, just as the antique dealer looks at the surface of the kitchen table. But we should also look at the purpose and use of our epistemic concepts – both descriptively (like the archaeologist) and normatively (like an engineer). However, we ought to go further. Epistemic concepts come in a package or network, and do their job at least partly as a package. Again, there is space for illustrating this in our analogy. The Bronze Age kitchen we are examining may contain tools that make sense only in relation to other tools. It is conceivable that we simply cannot determine the purpose of some particular object found within the kitchen, until we find other tools. A pestle, for example, may be hard to categorise in the absence of a mortar. Generally, the processes and techniques of food preparation and preservation could have been significantly different from ours, making it difficult to determine the use of objects without putting them into the context of those processes and other tools. Closer to home, as it were, some alien visitors from outer space landing their UFO straight in a twenty-first-century kitchen could find it quite difficult to determine the function of a corkscrew, until they get hold (and later possibly a sip) of a corked wine bottle. Analogously, we should not be restricted to descriptive or normative functional investigations of our actual epistemic concepts. They do their job in a package or network, which in turn ought to be approached functionally. This, in turn, amounts to a functional approach to the kitchen as a whole. Kitchens can be

3.4 Intentional and Conceptual Epistemic Practice

131

equipped differently, so there has got to be an element of contingency in the way they are set up.⁷ This does not, of course, preclude evaluative comparison between kitchens, or indeed between specific pieces of furniture or tools. The point of the analogy is not relativism with regards to the functionality of kitchen equipment. The analogy is open to the possibility that relative to each stage of technological development, to all economic and cultural circumstances, as well as personal tastes, there is exactly one ideal kitchen equipment. It is even open to the possibility that we have already found this ideal way of setting up our kitchens – because I do not intend to deny that “knowledge”, “epistemic justification”, “true belief”, and the like could constitute the most suitable vocabulary for our epistemic practice. However, once we move from specific furniture and tools to the functional organisation of the kitchen as a whole, we can see the benefits of descriptive and normative approaches to the functional organisation of kitchens as a whole, and indeed we are unlikely to make great headway in understanding kitchens and in improving their design if we do not take such functional and conceptual analysis seriously. Plus there is always the option, in principle, to refurbish the whole kitchen; to break up processes, to change tools. So, even if our epistemic realm looks well equipped with a range of interrelated concepts, still this is just one way of equipping it.

Intentional States According to our definition of ESPs, something counts as an ESP if it makes a specific kind of contribution to explanations of the overall capacities of some system with a design. We explain the performance of an automatic door by appeal to the on/off-states of its sensor, and by pointing out that the sensors indicate movement. Aiming at a functional characterisation of the kind of practice that our own epistemic practice instantiates, we now need to make room for additional, and more complex, ESPs. The first feature of the kind of more complex ESPs that I take knowledge or beliefs to be is directly derived from the fact that it is part of a different kind of performance explanation.

 It is not easy to determine the needs, tastes, economical restrictions, fancies and fashions that determine how kitchens are set up. I was told that in the 1970s many British middle-class kitchens featured a set for cheese fondue, which then went “out of fashion” in subsequent decades.

132

3 Epistemic States and Performances

On Dennett’s stance-strategy, we explain some phenomenon in terms of the physical stance by relating it to laws of nature and antecedent conditions, whereas the design stance treats the explanandum as the performance of a system with a design. These two stances are generally sufficient to explain why apples fall from trees and why thermostats switch off the heating. But, as Dennett points out, the design of artefacts can be too complex – or our understanding of their functional architecture too poor – for the design stance to be applicable (Dennett 1971). Dennett considers the case of playing against a chess computer. If we ever want to win such games, we cannot do without prediction, of course. We need to anticipate the software’s net moves. The software’s code, however, is far too complex for most of us to explain and predict its moves on the basis of anything like its functional architecture. Instead, just as when we predict and explain the behaviour of human beings and animals, we attribute goals or desires to the system, jointly with beliefs (or states relevantly similar to beliefs). We treat the software as if it aims at winning the game on the basis of its “knowledge” of the rules of chess and past moves by itself and us. Dennett calls this predictive and explanatory strategy the “intentional stance”. The general outlines and the status of the strategy are familiar from the design stance. For something to be a system of kind K is for it to be appropriately treated as one, and for us to appropriately treat something as a system of a kind K is to successfully explain and predict its behaviour on the basis of considerations characteristic of K. The differences between the physical, design and intentional stances concern the way we identify or attribute features of the system K in order to arrive at predictions about its behaviour. The intentional stance itself has already been characterised in section 3.2. But as a reminder, recall that to adopt the intentional stance towards a system is to explain or predict its overall behaviour on the basis of the assumption that the system is at least partly rational, the attribution of goals or pro-attitudes to the system, and the attribution of beliefs, or belief-like intentional states, to the system. What makes these states intentional, rather than just functional, is the fact that they conceive of the system as oriented towards some goal. By attributing such a goal to a system, and by assuming that the system is rational and possesses certain information, we arrive at predictions about what it will do. Watching a cat chasing after a mouse, we conceive of the cat as wanting to eat the mouse, and of the mouse as wanting to survive. If we want to beat a wellprogrammed chess computer software, we are well advised to adopt the intentional stance towards it, too. Instead of trying to trace how the software runs on the underlying computer hardware (which could, in principle, allow for some design-stance predictions of the software’s behaviour, if we are really good at that sort of thing), we attribute a goal to the software (winning games

3.4 Intentional and Conceptual Epistemic Practice

133

of chess), as well as the ability to work towards this goal (by playing the game in a rational and goal-oriented way). If the intentional stance allows for good explanations and true predictions of Jim’s slowing down, as well as the cat’s and the mouse’s runs and the software’s moves, then Dennett thinks that Jim, the cat, the mouse and the software actually have goals and are oriented towards those goals. This is the “interpretational” or broadly pragmatist idea behind the stance methodology. If these explanations and predictions invoke intentional states, then Jim, the cat, the mouse and the software have them. If we can reasonably assume some kind of rationality – some method for our protagonists to act on the basis of their goals and epistemic states – then the systems are rational.

Intentional ESPs The intentional-stance strategy as such does not imply that Dennett is committed to cats, mice and chess software having beliefs, goals and desires, or being fully rational in the sense that grown-up human beings can be (Dennett 1971: 91– 2). By “beliefs” we may mean a specific epistemic state, and we may have reason to resist the attribution of this kind of state to non-human animals and computer software. By the same token there may be good reasons to restrict the applicability of “desire” to human beings, or to limit the kind of “rationality” attributed to chess software. But even though we may have reason to restrict the attribution of these specific states to human beings, or perhaps persons or rational agents, the intentional stance involves the attribution of some kinds of intentional state. Dennett himself remains noncommittal; he mostly speaks of the “information” and “goals” of the (intentional) system: One predicts behavior in such a case by ascribing to the system the possession of certain information and by supposing it to be directed by certain goals, and then by working out the most reasonable or appropriate action on the basis of these ascriptions and suppositions. (Dennett 1971: 90; Dennett’s italics)

Whether the “possession of information” required for the intentional stance amounts to beliefs is open to discussion and depends on our view of the nature of beliefs. It does seem that we are inclined to associate “S believes that…” with tighter application criteria than “S possesses information to the effect that…” – for example, by treating “believing that” as essentially conceptual. We will return to this in the following sub-section. What is important at this stage is

134

3 Epistemic States and Performances

that Dennett’s intentional stance allows for an explanatory, functional specification of “possession of information” that then allows for asking the question whether belief is an appropriate or well-chosen concept (in the case of human beings) for attributing this epistemic state or status. But even if intentional possession of information does not necessarily amount to fully-fledged belief, it nonetheless has to meet the requirements imposed on it by the explanatory strategy (i. e. the intentional stance). A computer hard-drive full of picture and movie files does not “possess” the relevant information in the sense required here, any more than (to re-use Dennett’s example) the Arabian sheik who owns the Encyclopaedia Britannica without knowing any English can be said to “possess” the information contained in the books in the relevant sense. In order for the relevant information to play its explanatory part, it must be shown how the information contributes to the intentional system basing its goal-oriented action on it. In line with Dennett’s specification of the ingredients of the intentional stance as “intentional whatnots” (as a more generous alternative to “belief”), we can label the relevant “possession of information” “intentional”. Because beliefs are suitable to contribute to intentional-action explanations, they are intentional states. So is propositional knowledge (“Jim is slowing down because he knows that running fast agitates dogs”). It is, of course, possible that in order to perform this explanatory function, intentional states need to have the key semantic characteristics that have been labelled “intentional” since Brentano (e. g. referential opacity; possible non-existence of intentional objects). For the time being, however, I shall use the term “intentional” to pick out the kind of state that contributes to intentional explanations, whatever their semantic features. These explanatory requirements on (intentional) “possession of information” can now be used to provide a definition of “intentional ESPs” parallel to the one given earlier for teleological and social-normative ESPs. Again, the definition of intentional ESPs simultaneously counts as a sufficient condition for ESPs in general, so that from now on, the term “ESP” covers teleological, social-normative and intentional epistemic states, statuses and performances.⁸

 Note that my use of “epistemic” deviates from Dennett’s, who restricts it to the intentional stance. I will assume that the design stance, too, warrants the identification of ESPs. This is for two reasons. First, Dennett’s argument for the view that epistemic states should be restricted to intentional systems does not work; second, the identification of ESPs in artefacts and social systems makes a significant explanatory and normative contribution. Thus, it strikes me as unhelpful to exclude the automatic door’s on/off states from the realm of the epistemic, given that reliabilist epistemologists make so much of their similarities to belief and knowledge. According-

3.4 Intentional and Conceptual Epistemic Practice

135

(21) Some state or status x is an intentional ESP iff (a) x is a tokening of a state or status type X with the function of responding differentially to a set of features/properties F of the environment of an intentional system S. (b) X’s function is a result of functional analysis of S. (c) At least some of S’s performances (i. e. actions) are best explained by assuming that S is rational, that the performances are oriented towards goals, and that they are based on X. As with ESPs in general, “intentional ESP” denotes a functional concept. For something to count as an intentional ESP, it must be attributable to an agent (who thereby qualifies as an intentional system), and in combination with the agent’s goals, and on the basis of the agent’s rationality, yield explanations and predictions of the agent’s behaviour. This is, as I have mentioned, a pragmatist and purpose-relative identification of intentional ESPs: something is an intentional ESP iff conceiving of it as such contributes to a specific (i. e. intentional) variety of successful explanation and prediction.

Concept-Using Agents Because the intentional stance can be adopted towards chess-playing computer software, intentional systems need not qualify as applying or grasping concepts. Accordingly, chess-playing computer software can have intentional ESPs (in virtue of being described as such) without being described as applying and grasping concepts, unless we work with a very liberal notion of concepts. Because we are ultimately interested in a functional characterisation of our own practice and the role of epistemic concepts, one more enrichment of intentional ESPs is needed. Some, but not all intentional ESPs are conceptual. There is currently a great deal of philosophical discussion about whether animals have concepts. This question, as well as the attribution of concepts to other non-linguistic creatures and artefacts, depends on our theory of concepts and will not be decided in the present context. Because the ESPs attributed as part of the intentional stance are propositional attitudes (“Fido thinks that joggers are a threat”), there is at least a minimal sense in which we attribute concepts

ly, I shall deviate from Dennett’s terminology. Where he restricts the adjective “epistemic” to the ESPs of intentional systems, I stick to the more generous usage established in this chapter.

136

3 Epistemic States and Performances

(here: the concepts “jogger” and “threat” to Fido). However, there are various ways of construing such attributions, not all of them conceding that computer software and animals actually have concepts (simply by being suitably described in terms of the intentional stance). If we were to identify the possession of a particular concept with a set of behavioural and/or cognitive dispositions, then Fido could conceivably be described as having the concept of a jogger thanks to his differential responses to the presence of joggers – most importantly, chasing after them. If he chases postmen, too, we would have to assume some cognitive or behavioural difference between the respective reactions in order to warrant the attribution of two different concepts. If we conclude that Fido does not differentiate between joggers and postmen, we may still attribute a concept, but concede that it is not the concept of a jogger, but a more general concept, perhaps one suitably expressed by “human territory invader”. If we are less generous, we may insist that despite successfully adopting the intentional stance towards dogs, we do not attribute genuine concepts to them. By describing Fido as “wanting to drive Jim away”, we engage in a useful exercise in anthropomorphism, harmless as long as we are clear about the fact that the dog does not literally want anything. Structurally, such descriptions are harmless in a way similar to talk of organs having purposes, as discussed in section 3.2. According to this line of thought (sometimes referred to as “lingualism”), no creature unable to combine concepts into propositions, no creature unable to express propositions by means of language, and no creature unable to reason (draw inferences) is legitimately described as applying and grasping concepts. Of all the properties and capacities that distinguish us from other animals (e. g. our capacity to laugh), most relevant for epistemological purposes is our capacity to use and understand languages such as English, Urdu or German. Human beings communicate by means of language (“The dog is harmless!”), and they attribute and evaluate ESPs by means of language (“The owner thinks that her dog is harmless. She is probably wrong about that.”) However, to point at German or Urdu as setting us apart from other animals is one thing, to specify quite what is so special about language is another. Firstly, “language” and its cognates are highly generic terms, covering many different systems for coding information (bird song, bees’ waggle dances, computer programming languages, the formal languages of logic). So, it is more precise to speak of “natural languages” as what is exemplified by English, Urdu or German. Secondly, not every episode of natural language use counts as an application of the kind of capacity that people tend to have in mind when they treat the capacity to speak and understand natural languages as distinctively human. Parrots, for example, are quite capable of uttering perfectly grammatical

3.4 Intentional and Conceptual Epistemic Practice

137

natural language sentences, and they may even “understand” natural languages in the sense of uttering such sentences as differential responses to certain situations (saying “this is red” whenever a red object is presented, for example, or giving answers to a set of questions). Although language-processing software, and perhaps even some animals, can generate and process novel sentences built from fixed lexica and the rules of grammar, such grammatical or syntactical competence is still not sufficient for the kind of language understanding we take ourselves and our fellow human beings to exhibit. We, but not parrots or computers, have the capacity to express and grasp the semantic content associated with natural language expressions – propositional content in the case of sentences, sub-propositional content in the case of sub-sentential expressions (e. g. singular and general terms, logical operators). Following common philosophical usage, I shall call the main components of propositional content “concepts”, so that my assertion that the dog is harmless combines the concepts of a dog and of being harmless into a proposition. The same proposition, and hence the same concepts, feature in the owner’s knowledge that the dog is harmless, Sheila’s belief, as well as jogger Jim’s hope, that he is. Unless stated otherwise, I shall use the label “conceptual” to refer to both propositional and sub-propositional semantic content. No matter whether concepts are seen as mental representations, abilities or Fregean senses, it is acknowledged that they have both representational and inferential properties. If Fido’s owner claims that her dog is harmless, then the propositional content expressed by her assertion relates this speech act to the actual, physically existing dog, and/or to the fact that Fido is harmless – in short, to her extra-linguistic, real-world environment. This is the representational dimension of concepts. Content-explanatory representationalism as discussed in section 1.4 maintains that such relations (e. g. reference, truth) can be used to account for conceptual content. Inferential role semantics, on the other hand, awards explanatory pride of place to inferential relations between propositions. Perhaps confusingly in the present set-up, the term “intentional” is often used not in Dennett’s narrow, purely explanatory sense – whereby a state is intentional if it features in one variety of successful explanation – but is rather used to denote representational properties of semantic content. The questions giving rise to Dennett’s “intentional stance” strategy in the 1970s concerned the nature of the human mind, which Dennett divided up into questions of content and consciousness. Addressing the question of content first, Dennett adopted an idea from Franz Brentano, who saw intentionality as responsible for many of the most pressing questions regarding the nature of contentful mental states and processes (Dennett 1969).

138

3 Epistemic States and Performances

This concept of intentionality, however, is richer than the one invoked in the intentional stance. For some state, process or performance to be intentional in this semantic sense is for it to be of or about something. If Jim, having survived his encounter with Fido, wishes that his saviour, scientist Sheila, has dinner with him one night, then his wish is about Sheila, and so is his announcement, perhaps to his work colleagues, that he is having dinner with Sheila. Jim’s colleagues may react to the news by being happy for Jim, and the next time they see Sheila will know that it is this woman Jim referred to. This peculiar “aboutness” relation between states and performances such as wishes, beliefs and hopes on the one hand, and their real or unreal objects on the other, is what is often labelled “intentionality”. I shall stick with my established use of “intentional” and use “representational” to refer to semantic aboutness – i. e. to the capacities of natural languages to refer to objects and events in our environment, to categorise them, to represent facts, to say things that are true because of the way the world is. Without getting into a discussion of how certain combinations of words uttered with the right kind of force manage to represent extra-linguistic, worldly states of affairs, it is clear that our ability to do this kind of representing is of great epistemic significance. Just like vervet monkeys and their alarm calls, we manage to pass on information about our surroundings by reacting differentially to them. The fact that natural language is compositional, however, stretches its potential to communicate information far beyond anything that could be done by means of a fixed code with a finite number of signal types. We constantly convey information with the help of sentence types that have never been uttered before. The second key feature of conceptual states, statuses and performances lies in their inferential properties. Conceptual content does not only relate to the extra-linguistic world (in virtue of its representational properties), but also relates to other conceptual content. If Jim boasts to his workmates that he will have dinner with the doctor of pharmacy he met when out running, then this claim not only relates to Sheila, but also to the content of other actual and potential speech acts. If Sheila is a doctor of pharmacy, then she has a doctorate, and hence an academic degree, because the concept of having an academic degree is entailed by the concept of being a doctor, which in turn is entailed by the concept of being a doctor of pharmacy. Such inferential relations, and more generally the fact that our propositional attitudes function as reasons for each other, as well as for our actions, are at the heart of Robert Brandom’s notion of sapience. According to Brandom, sapience distinguishes us from non-human animals:

3.4 Intentional and Conceptual Epistemic Practice

139

Reason is nothing to the beasts of the field. We are the ones on whom reasons are binding, who are subject to the peculiar force of the better reason. […] Picking us out by our capacity for reason and understanding expresses a commitment to take sapience, rather than sentience as the constellation of characteristics that distinguish us. Sentience is what we share with non-verbal animals such as cats – the capacity of being aware in the sense of being awake. […] One is treating something as sapient insofar as one explains its behavior by attributing to it intentional states such as belief and desire as constituting reasons for that behavior. (Brandom 1994: 5)

The kind of ESPs we attribute to ourselves and each other are not only intentional, but also conceptual. We are epistemic agents who set, and work towards, our own goals, and do so by conceptual means: by representing the goals, by thinking about the means to get there, by gathering information, by discursively cooperating. In short, by playing what Wilfrid Sellars famously called the “game of giving and asking for reasons”. Note that my characterisation of conceptual, intentional epistemic states does not constitute an account of beliefs or knowledge. Our actual concepts of belief and knowledge are specific tools within our actual, up-and-running epistemic practice; they may be responsive to specific aspects of human psychology, or they may be ideologically charged, so as to facilitate ascription to some agents, but not to others (as diagnosed in Fricker 2007). This point is illustrated by the discussion of the “extended mind” hypothesis (Clark and Chalmers 1998): Otto, who suffers from Alzheimer’s disease, relies on his notebook in order to find his way to the MOMA. Would we refrain from ascribing the belief to Otto that the MOMA is located at 53rd street, merely because he consults his notebook (rather than his memory) in order to retrieve this information? Clark and Chalmers’ question of whether Otto believes that the MOMA is at 53rd street may suitably be answered by means of conceptual analysis or explication. According to our epistemological functionalist framework, the statement in Otto’s notebook clearly constitutes an intentional, conceptual epistemic state, and it is not terribly relevant whether we are inclined to label this a case of “belief” or not.

Higher-Order Intentional Systems Let me sum up what has been established in this chapter. For something to be an intentional ESP is for it to play a specific role within intentional descriptions and explanations. There must be a sense in which the state, status or performance is attributed to an intentional system, and the state, status or performance must be epistemic, i. e. contribute to the system’s overall performance by providing information. For something to be a conceptual ESP is for it to be a conceptually articu-

140

3 Epistemic States and Performances

lated intentional ESP. Without having to determine in virtue of what some state or performance is conceptual, I suggest treating its representational and inferential properties as characteristic and relevant for what follows. According to this set-up, ESPs are functional parts of systems that are identified by us, the theorists, in order to explain, predict and influence the behaviour of these systems. As described in section 3.1, we explain and predict automatic doors’ opening and shutting by identifying the states of their sensors as epistemic; we explain some worker bee’s success at flying straight to a source of nectar by treating the waggle dance of the bee’s conspecifics as epistemic. Next, we have complemented these applications of ESPs by the intentional stance. Thus, we explain and predict (e. g.) the next move of the chess software by attributing goals, information and some amount of rationality to it. In each case we, the theorists, are interested in some course of action, and hence adopt some strategy or stance. The major complication introduced by human beings is that they themselves adopt stances. Consequently, they themselves attribute ESPs: Jim adopts the intentional stance towards Fido (“This dog thinks that loud barking will scare me off its territory”), perhaps jointly or alternately with the design stance (“It’s wired in, selected-for behaviour: encroachment of the dog’s territory triggers barking”). Jim, as an intentional system, deals himself with his environment by, among other things, adopting stances towards it. This is why Dennett calls it a “higher order intentional system”; Brandom opts for the terms “first- and second-class intentionality” and “interpreting” vs. “simple” intentional systems, where only attributors qualify as “first-class” or “interpreting” intentional systems (1994: 59). The relevant point for us is this: the systems we credit with intentional and conceptual ESPs attribute ESPs to themselves, i. e. the attributees are themselves attributors. They also evaluate those ESPs. Dennett thinks that higher-order intentional systems need language to ascribe intentional states; they belong to the “subclass of intentional systems that have language, that can communicate” (Dennett 1971: 101). We need not commit to this dependence on language, but attributors clearly do need concepts to ascribe intentional states. Any attribution of belief to some system, whether implicit or explicit, involves the concept of belief. As a consequence of the methodological preliminaries to this section, attributions of beliefs and knowledge are treated as just one way in which a community of higher-order intentional systems explains and predicts the behaviour of its members. In short, then, the subject matter of epistemology consists of epistemic states, statuses and performances (ESPs), which are functionally defined. There are three kinds of ESPs. Teleological ESPs make a specific contribution to the prediction and explanation of the behaviour of a system with a design

3.4 Intentional and Conceptual Epistemic Practice

141

of which it is part; social-normative ESPs contribute to the overall capacities of a social and normative practice; intentional ESPs, finally, contribute to explanations of actions. Since human beings are social higher-order intentional systems (i. e. not only attributees but also attributors of ESPs), the epistemologist must ask what conceptual means are suitable for them. This question can be asked independently of our actual epistemic concepts, pretending, as it were, that we do not have them, or that they are just one tool box (with respects to tasks) or one set of furniture (with respect to rooms) among others. Both the explanation and (eventually) assessment of our epistemic concepts benefit from comparison with possible conceptual alternatives. We thus engage in an exercise of methodological revisionism with respect to our epistemic vocabulary. For while nobody suggests that epistemologists ought to demand large-scale changes to the way we speak (“Look, ‘belief’ and ‘knowledge’ are just not efficient words…”), there is explanatory value to the idea of refurbishment.

4 Varieties of Norm-Talk Philosophical epistemology, as characterised in chapter 2, has normative ambitions. Normativity, however, is not restricted to the theoretical level. Norms and evaluations are part of conceptual epistemic practices themselves. Suppose that our scientist Sheila has given Jim a bunch of lilies. Sheila’s colleague, Jane, may not only infer that Sheila believes that Jim likes lilies; she may also evaluate Sheila’s belief as wrong, if she happens to know that Jim in fact hates lilies. Epistemic agents implicitly and explicitly treat their own and others’ states, statuses and performances as epistemically correct or incorrect. Accordingly, epistemology describes, explains and evaluates, among other things, how higher-order intentional agents describe, explain and evaluate themselves and other agents, focusing on the attribution and evaluation of ESPs. To say that epistemology has normative ambitions is to say that one of its aims is to state how the kind of intentional, concept-using agents that we are should go about identifying and evaluating ESPs. This chapter aims at clarifying those aspects of the semantics and pragmatics of norm-talk that are relevant for these epistemological purposes.

4.1 Descriptive and Normative Purport Anscombe’s Shopping List In section 1.3 I argued that Thomas Kuhn’s classic The Structure of Scientific Revolution, together with results from the sociology of scientific knowledge and other developments (including reliabilism’s emphasis on belief-forming processes), shift the burden of proof with regards to Reichenbach’s distinction between the contexts of discovery and justification. Not least because the distinction is ambiguous, it is no longer available to block the empirical results of psychology, history and sociology from counting as epistemologically relevant (HoyningenHuene 2006). One of the distinctions that is part of the ambiguous original distinction between “contexts” is, according to Hoyningen-Huene, the distinction between different kinds of “perspectives”: What I have in mind is an abstract distinction between the factual on the one hand, and the normative or evaluative on the other hand. This is a distinction of two perspectives that can both be taken regarding scientific knowledge, especially epistemic claims (but also about claims of differing characteristics such as legal, moral or aesthetic claims). From the descriptive perspective, I am interested in facts that have happened, and their description. DOI 10.1515/9783110525458-005

4.1 Descriptive and Normative Purport

143

Among these facts may be, among other things, epistemic claims that were put forward in the history of science, that I may wish to describe. From the normative or evaluative perspective, I am interested in an evaluation of particular claims. (Hoyningen-Huene 2006: 128)

Hoyningen-Huene’s distinction between perspectives can be linked up with a familiar distinction originating in the philosophy of language. One general way of categorising the things we do with language (i. e. speech acts) is into those acts that purport to represent the world, provide information about the world, or speak the truth, on the one hand, and those acts that aim at changing things, modifying parts of the world, or saying how things ought to be, on the other. Here are some examples. I say that Fido is a dog, thereby describing Fido and offering information about the part of the world called “Fido” to my audience. I tell the waiter to get me a class of water, thereby intervening in the world, rearranging it in some way. I say “I do” in the appropriate setting in front of the altar, thereby changing the part of the world that is my marital status. If I later tell my friends that I got married, I thereby report what happened earlier in church. Not every use of language fits this distinction. Questions, for example, seem not, unless we have a particular theory of their force in mind, seeing them perhaps as inherently commanding answers (though that would capture the schoolmaster’s exam questions better than polite queries for driving directions). Also, the distinction is not meant to cut kinds of speech acts at their joints. Although it is possible that all commands, for example, fall into the intervention category, the distinction seems to cut across assertoric speech acts. Indeed, it is easy to see why: instead of ordering the waiter to get me a class of water, I could state that he ought to get me one, thereby moving into assertoric territory. The distinction I have in mind is commonly traced back to Elizabeth Anscombe’s Intention (1957). Anscombe invites us to imagine a man shopping with the help of a shopping list. The man is being followed by a private detective, who uses a piece of paper to write down his target’s purchases. There is a key difference between the shopper’s and the detective’s lists: It is precisely this: if the list and the things that the man actually buys do not agree, and if this and this alone constitutes a mistake, then the mistake is not in the list but in the man’s performance […] whereas if the detective’s record and what the man actually buys do not agree, then the mistake is in the record. (Anscombe 1957: 56)

In the wake of Anscombe’s paper, the distinction illustrated by this example, and labelled as one between two “directions of fit” by Austin (1953), was mainly discussed as applying to two kinds of phenomena: mental states (attitudes) and

144

4 Varieties of Norm-Talk

speech acts. Depending on our view of these phenomena, Anscombe’s example – the two lists representing goods – can be related by analogy or by generalisation. It has been argued that beliefs, like the detective’s list, aim at being true (at accurately representing reality), while desires, like the shopper’s list, aim at realisation (Platts 1979: 257). Standard assertions of “Fido is a dog” are characterised within John Searle’s taxonomy as “assertives”, sharing the detective’s list direction of fit, while orders and requests (“directives”) are of a kind with the shopper’s list (Searle 1975). Depending on what the two lists are thought to be instantiations of, or analogous to, the direction-of-fit distinction relates the mind or linguistic entities to the world: “mind–world direction of fit” and “word–world direction of fit” are common terms within the philosophy of mind and language, respectively. As early as 1966, Bernard Williams wrote that the distinction “between discourse which has to fit the world, and discourse which the world has to fit” is a “now familiar formula” (Williams 1966: 19).

Descriptive and Normative Systematic Ambitions Anscombe’s distinction has been put to use mainly within the philosophy of mind, action theory and the philosophy of language. The distinction, we could say, is part of these disciplines’ conceptual toolboxes. It can be used to categorise mental states and speech acts as the entities these disciplines trade in, analogously to the role of “animalia”, “plantae” and “fungi” within biology. However, the distinction between directions of fit applies to the activity of theorising, too. This application is without an analogue in biology; the labels for biological kingdoms obviously do not apply to the activities of theory building, explaining, reflecting, etc. Many important aspects of scientific practice, however, are linguistic in nature. Many kinds of scientific research depend on, or even consist in, various kinds of language use, and this is certainly true of the philosophical discourse we will ultimately be concerned with. Researchers ask questions, give answers, formulate hypotheses, discuss problems, give and criticise explanations, and sometimes state what ought to be done, and what sort of behaviour is correct or appropriate in which circumstances. In what follows, “theorising” will serve as an umbrella term for the various kinds of language use involved in scientific research, and “systematic” as the adjective marking this genus of language use (“theoretical” would be an obvious choice, but its built-in opposition to “practical” might wrongly suggest the exclusion of the normative, and hence of certain “practical” activities). We need not define these terms; they are meant to cover broadly the kind of argumentative work governed by tight, explicit and publicly discussed epistemic standards (evi-

4.1 Descriptive and Normative Purport

145

dence-based; clarity, precision) that is typically carried out in the context of universities and other research institutions. A biologist theorises when formulating a hypothesis about group selection; her statement is systematic. So are the sociologist’s presentation and interpretation of interview data and the archaeologist’s writing of an article for a peer-reviewed journal. Moral philosophy and epistemology are just as systematic as a narratological analysis of a novel. The activity of theorising, as well as the underlying mental states (the theorist’s beliefs and goals) and the results of systematic activity (hypotheses, theories, accounts), can themselves be meant to capture (represent, describe, explain, predict) phenomena; alternatively, they can be meant to improve, initiate, or change behaviour. Theorising, in so far as it is itself a linguistic activity, does not always share the detective’s list’s direction of fit; it can also share the shopper’s. We can build theories that determine what we ought to do and how we ought to talk. In short, theorising is an activity that can itself be analysed in terms of the distinction between language use with descriptive and normative purport. I am not aware of explicit adoptions of Anscombe’s distinction between directions of fit to theorising, let alone to epistemological theorising. This, of course, does not mean that the two kinds of ambitions have not been previously distinguished. They often are, typically by means of the labels “descriptive” and “normative”. Decision theory, for example, distinguishes questions regarding the decisions people actually make from the theory that models rational decisions. Discrepancies between the description and the normative theory allow for people being irrational. Ethics is usually taken to be inherently normative, but of course there is an important role for descriptive or comparative ethics, examining existing belief systems. Political science involves both descriptive analysis and normative recommendations. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw great promise in sociology going normative, turning into social engineering. There are other labels for capturing the distinction I have in mind; for example “real” vs. “ideal” (e. g. Albee 1907: 40) or “factual” vs. “evaluative” (e. g. Sabine 1912: 433 – 4). In German contexts, there is talk of “Reflexionswissenschaft” and “Handlungswissenschaft” (“reflective science” vs. “action-oriented science”). John Stuart Mill opened his monumental System of Logic (1843) by adopting Archbishop Whately’s distinction between two roles for logic (the latter understood to denote approximately what we would today address as epistemology, the philosophy of science, the philosophy of language, and the philosophy of logic): [Archbishop Whately] has defined Logic to be the Science, as well as the Art, of reasoning; meaning by the former term, the analysis of the mental process which takes place whenever

146

4 Varieties of Norm-Talk

we reason, and by the latter, the rules, grounded on that analysis, for conducting the process correctly. (Mill 1843: 4)

Even though it is doubtful that Mill would have been willing to count astronomy as an art rather than a science, this fits well with the notion of art involved in the medieval “liberal arts” education, where the relevant arts were grammar, logic and rhetoric (the “Trivium”), as well as geometry, arithmetic, music and astronomy (the “Quadrivium”). The distinction between philosophical and scientific disciplines as “arts” and “sciences” has not thrived, even though Mill ends his Logic happily applying it to moral and political philosophy (Mill 1843, book 6, ch. 12). The reason for the distinction not gaining a foothold in contemporary meta-philosophy, philosophy of science and epistemology may be the misleading connotations of both “art” and “science”. Mill’s and Whately’s concept of art is quite different from today’s (folk) notion of art, and “science” is in constant danger of being understood as denoting natural sciences only. In what follows I will speak of disciplines or projects as having descriptive or normative ambitions, a phrase I already used in formulating my conception of epistemology in chapter 2. Disciplines or theories with descriptive or normative ambitions can be called “descriptive or normative disciplines or theories”. Epistemology and moral philosophy are normative disciplines, according to most conceptions; physics lacks normative ambitions. For a discipline or project to have normative ambitions is for it deal, among other things, with statements or larger segments of discourse (or other linguistic entities such as (sets of) sentence types) with normative purport. These statements are formulated from a normative perspective; they answer normative questions. They relate to what they are about in the way the shopper’s rather than the detective’s list relates to the world in Anscombe’s example. By “theorising with descriptive or normative ambitions” I shall designate systematic work in a descriptive/normative project or discipline; when we “theorise with descriptive or normative purport” we engage in a more narrowly individuated activity. “Descriptive or normative theorising” is ambiguous and will only be used when the context makes its meaning clear. The nomenclature now allows for saying that political science, for example, involves claims with descriptive, and others with normative purport; or that pedagogy bases its normative ambitions (answering questions of how and what we ought to teach) on the (descriptive) analysis of existing practices of teaching and learning. Unfortunately, this terminology, too, has a drawback. Many disciplines in the social sciences and humanities, and most certainly philosophy, refer descriptively to norms and evaluations. The norms inherent in a practice, for example, can be used to give a sociological explanation of social phenomena. Such an explan-

4.1 Descriptive and Normative Purport

147

ation is an entirely descriptive and empirical affair, even though it is likely to be saturated with norm-talk. Accordingly, we will have to carefully distinguish the sort of normativity involved in what is examined, and the normative attitude that can be adopted. If a moral philosopher thinks that genuinely normative work in ethics should start with empirical analysis of existing moral systems, we would end up describing her as involved in a descriptive analysis, with normative ambitions, of normative practices, which is not a pretty thing to say. It is, however, accurate, and the remainder of this chapter will provide the conceptual tools to get and remain methodologically self-conscious in such scenarios.

Descriptive and Normative Systematic Ambitions: Examples The smallest unit of any fragment of discourse that can be characterised as having descriptive or normative purport is the statement or the assertion. ¹ More will be said about the epistemic significance of assertions in chapter 5, but for the time being we proceed with a generous use of “assertion” and “statement”, according to which normative and evaluative statements count, but orders, questions and promises do not. “Assertion”, in this chapter, refers to approximately those speech acts that we pre-theoretically (i. e. prior to exposure to non-cognitivist considerations) tend to see as truth-apt. Here are brief fragments of discourse exemplifying (a) the description or representation of facts and (b) the explanation of phenomena.² [a1] The hydrogen spectrum is characterized by four prominent lines – red, green, blue, and violet.

 Non-linguistic representation (pictures, models, sets of equations, etc.) are thought of as sharing the descriptive ambitions of (linguistic) descriptions.  Note that nothing like the logical empiricists’ (strict) criteria on what counts as a scientific explanation (e. g. according to the nomological-deductive model) apply to the notion of systematic explanations as it is used here. In what follows, it is crucial that normative and evaluative statements (containing “ought”, “may”, “correct”, etc.) are eligible as explanans. For these purposes, the research context and the generous set of epistemic standards as constitutive for “systematic activities” cited earlier is sufficient. A good starting point for a tighter characterisation of the concept of explanation that I see as doing work here is Van Fraassen’s pragmatic account of explanations as answers to “why”-questions (Van Fraassen 1981).

148

4 Varieties of Norm-Talk

[a2] Our hypothesis that oxytocin increases the trusting behaviour of investors implies that the investors in the oxytocin group (n = 29) will show higher money transfers than those in the placebo group (n = 29). In fact, our data show that oxytocin increases investors’ trust considerably. (Fehr 2005: 673) [b] Now, with Bohr’s model we can make a physical connection between Balmer’s empirical formula and what happens inside the atom to produce the light. An excited electron falls from an orbit with ni ≥ 3 down to the orbit with nf = 2 to produce the visible light. (Seaborn 1988: 178) And two excerpts from contemporary epistemological theorising: [a] [Nichols, Stich and Weinberg (2001) ran a trial confronting undergraduate students with a thought experiment involving reliable belief formation resulting in a belief that from the subject’s point of view is unjustified. This is what they say about their data:] We found that while both groups [Western and East Asian, D.K.] were more likely to deny knowledge, [East Asian] subjects were much more likely to deny knowledge than were their [Western] classmates. (Weinberg, Nichols, Stich 2001: 440) [b] Therefore, to the extent that a subject population is unwilling to attribute knowledge in this case, we have evidence that the group’s ‘folk epistemology’ may be internalist. (Weinberg, Nichols, Stich 2001: 439) These fragments of discourse have descriptive purport in that they try to state facts, represent the world, provide information or explain phenomena. So is, according to the present conception, conceptual analysis, in so far as it attempts to say in a theoretically privileged base vocabulary what we say by means of some target vocabulary. Here is how Goldman’s (1976) and Longino (1994) set up their analyses: [We] may propose the following (tentative) analysis: At t S noninferentially perceptually knows of object b that it has property F if and only if […] (Goldman 1976: 785; his emphasis) While [the proposal] is modelled on the traditional form of analyses of knowledge, both the object of analysis and the analyzing conditions depart from it somewhat in content: If S1…Sn are members of an epistemic community [C], W is some real-world system or portion of realworld system, and M is a model (of that system), then S1…Sn know W as M if and only if […] (Longino 1994: 153)³

 For support for the classification of conceptual analysis as an exercise in descriptive theorising, see Haslanger (1999) as discussed in chapter 1, and Stich, Weinberg, Nichols (2001). The latter write: “The Descriptive Project can have a variety of targets, the two most common being epis-

4.1 Descriptive and Normative Purport

149

Although for our purposes it is sufficient to treat conceptual analysis as one descriptive methodology among others (i. e. alongside description and explanation), it is sometimes treated as an explanation in itself. Nozick, for example, offers an analysis of knowledge in the standard form (specifying necessary and sufficient conditions), but calls it “explaining the nature of knowledge” (Nozick 1981: 184). Conceptual analysis as a method may seem normative in that it reveals how we ought to employ concepts by revealing the rules that govern their use. However, as I will argue in section 4.3, not every use of normative statements counts as theorising with normative purport. It is possible to discover, describe and explain norms. More recently, and as discussed in chapter 1, description, explanation and conceptual analysis have been complemented by a range of functional and pragmatist descriptive methods, examining the function or purpose of attributions of epistemic states, of epistemic evaluations and concepts. Because these methods can make it difficult to keep descriptive and normative purport separate, they will be discussed separately in the next paragraph. Philosophical theorising often has normative ambitions too, though. As we have seen in chapter 1, one natural way to respond to the worry that conceptual analysis commits us to a strong version of the analytic–synthetic distinction is to allow for regulated departures from our intuitions regarding possible cases – i. e. to give up on the idea that competent language speakers’ intuitions about possible cases are sacrosanct criteria of adequacy for conceptual analysis as they stand. We should, as Frank Jackson puts it, “be prepared to make sensible adjustments to folk concepts, and this may involve a certain, limited massaging of folk intuitions.” (1998: 47) Once this much is admitted, we need to ask what kinds of consideration determine what counts as “sensible” adjustments, and how much adjustment is compatible with the notion of conceptual analysis. Carnap’s explication can be seen as a methodology that, just like conceptual analysis, consists in transforming a target concept (the “explicandum”) that is in some way problematic into a follow-up concept (the “explicatum”) that is less problematic (in Carnap’s case: more exact). Explication is a methodology with normative ambitions, because it proposes improved conceptual tools. Here are

temic concepts and epistemic language. When concepts are the target, the goal is to describe (or ‘analyze’) the epistemic concepts that some group of people actually invoke. When pursued by epistemologists (rather than linguists or anthropologists), the group in question is typically characterized rather vaguely by using the first person plural. They are ‘our’ concepts, the ones that ‘we’ use. Work in this tradition has led to a large literature attempting to analyze concepts like knowledge, justification, warrant, and rationality.” (Stich, Weinberg, Nichols 2001: 430)

150

4 Varieties of Norm-Talk

two examples pondering the explication of knowledge in terms of epistemic virtues: It seems to me, indeed, that there is less difficulty – even if not ultimate success – in explicating epistemic virtue as a kind of trait that yields justified beliefs and, in some cases, knowledge, than in explicating justified beliefs or knowledge by appeal to an independent notion of virtue and construing them as the kind of belief it tends to produce. (Audi 2001: 93) Thus the [virtue] accounts explicate epistemic justification, at least partially, combining for an account secure against the new evil demon problem. Although it is objected against the [virtue] accounts that “there is no evidence that the folk are inclined to relativize virtues and vices,” this is outweighed by the fact that the relativizing may be contextual and implicit. (Sosa 2003: 158)

The method of equilibrium, too, counts as having normative purport, because it is a justificatory strategy that allows for departures from our established practice (see section 1.1). Here is Catherine Elgin’s version of the method: We mold specific judgments to accepted generalizations, and generalizations to specific judgments. We weigh considerations of value against antecedent judgments of fact. We synchronize ends and means, reconcile principle and practice. A process of delicate adjustments occurs, its goal being a system in reflective equilibrium. Achieving that goal may involve drawing new evaluative and descriptive distinctions or erasing distinctions already drawn, reordering priorities or imposing new ones, reconceiving the relevant facts and values or recognizing new ones as relevant. (Elgin 1996: 106)

Explanation, conceptual analysis, explication and the method of equilibrium are fairly familiar tools in the epistemologist’s box. Cashing in on my development of epistemological functionalism (chapter 3) as a reaction to some of the pragmatist challenges to conventional analytic philosophy (section 1.4), additional methods become available, adding to our means to engage in epistemological theorising with the aim of understanding and potentially improving epistemic practices.

Functionalist and Pragmatist Methodologies Brandom’s (2008) analytic pragmatism may provide a helpful addition to epistemology’s descriptive toolbox. Recall from section 1.4 that Brandom’s idea is to illuminate target vocabularies by means of pragmatically mediated relations. Instead of asking how we can express in a base vocabulary what we express by means of a target vocabulary, we examine what abilities or practices that can be specified in a base vocabulary are sufficient for its linguistic expressions to

4.1 Descriptive and Normative Purport

151

count as expressing the content of a target vocabulary. In the case of epistemic concepts such as “knowledge” or “epistemic justification”, we would replace conceptual analysis by a project of specifying linguistic practices that feature kinds of speech act that count as knowledge attributions or epistemic evaluations. Analytic pragmatism’s use-analyses still count as instances of theorising with descriptive purport, as the notion is understood here. Mark Kaplan endorses the definition or analysis of epistemic concepts, as long as such work is “legitimately aimed at advancing or clarifying the proper conduct of inquiry” (Kaplan 1985: 354). The function of the concept of knowledge is to categorise propositions into those known and those not known. This is what the concept is for. Different philosophical contexts make for different conceptions of knowledge, with the appropriateness of these conceptions mainly determined by the concept’s contribution to the advancement or clarification of proper inquiry (Kaplan 1985: 360). Defining “knowledge” is a worthwhile enterprise according to Descartes’ conception, because the epistemic agent can distinguish what she knows (Cartesian conception) from what she merely believes. The truth requirement of the JTB-based conception ensures that the epistemic agent cannot distinguish what she knows (JTB-based conception) from what she merely (justifiedly) believes. The methodological assumption underlying Kaplan’s criticism of the postGettier debates is that descriptive work in epistemology (he speaks only of definition or analysis of knowledge) owes its legitimacy to the advancement or clarification of proper conduct of inquiry (Kaplan 1985: 360). An inquiry is an epistemic practice (something epistemic agents participate in); “clarification” labels a descriptive aim, and “advancement” a normative aim. Epistemology, according to Kaplan, is descriptively and normatively concerned with a kind of epistemic practice. One of its tasks is the choice of suitable “conceptions” of epistemic concepts (e. g. Descartes’ vs. the JTB-based) on the basis of these aims. Conceptual analysis is a fruitful descriptive epistemological method, provided a conception of the analysandum that allows for practical significance. Craig motivates his work by noting that even if we had a definition or analysis of knowledge, we would still have to explain its widespread, trans-cultural use, and this would require functional analysis (Craig 1990: 2– 3). While Craig himself sees his functional analysis as an explanatory version of contractarian justificatory strategies (Craig 1990: 86), we better highlight its thoroughly descriptive ambitions by treating it as a version of “analysis by imagined reconstruction” (Weinberg 2006) or imagined reverse social engineering, familiar from computer simulations of emergent behaviour within multi-agent systems. Thus, we explain features of the concept of knowledge in the way we explain, say, co-operative behaviour among a pack of hunters by programming a multi-

152

4 Varieties of Norm-Talk

agent system with goals (i. e. hunting prey for the hunters; escaping hunters for prey), simple behavioural patterns and adaptive mechanisms. If after a few million rounds of play the pack of hunters in the computer simulation start to cooperate, we have a promising explanation for actual co-operative behaviours among real-world predators such as lions. Such computer simulations are not on the cards for the kind of higher-order intentional, concept-mongering agents that actually use the concept of knowledge, but this just means that thought experiments and functional theorising must do the explanatory job. Weinberg (2006) explicitly distances himself from Craig’s contractarian methodology, because the latter’s “state of nature” metaphors carry potential historical implications that contaminate the purely explanatory relations as “neo-pragmatically” reconstructed (see section 1.4). However, Weinberg effectively proposes, not an explanatory but a straightforwardly normative project, where the question of which epistemic norms we ought to include in our reconstituted practice is tantamount to the justification of these norms, proceeding in the same way as contractarian legitimisation of the sovereign’s power and monopoly on physical force: My operative question will be: were we to consider a radical re-constitution of our epistemic norms, what would we include, what might we strengthen, and what might we abandon as outmoded? (Weinberg 2006: 34)

As illustrated by Craig and Weinberg, imagined reverse social engineering can serve both descriptive (explanatory) and normative purposes. According to the conception of immanent epistemology we attributed to Haslanger (section 1.5), imagined reverse social engineering constitutes immanent epistemology as long as it is an explanatory enterprise (despite its emphasis on the function of epistemic concepts). Once transposed into a normative key (as in Weinberg and Haslanger), the question of whether it still counts as immanent depends on how its relation to our actual practice is conceived of. In Haslanger’s case, it is doubtful that imagined reverse social engineering does count as an instance of immanent epistemology, because our concepts of knowledge and true belief end up not as explanatory or analytical targets, but merely as criteria of adequacy for the choice of suitable “over-arching values”, reducing the extent to which her own proposal remains immanent. According to the conception under development, epistemology is explicitly committed to normative aims. Epistemology tells us what ESPs we ought to attribute, and how they should be evaluated. Theorising with these normative ambitions can have descriptive or normative purport. The definition of ESPs provided in chapter 3 makes a functionalist explanatory, and hence descriptive,

4.2 Norm-Talk: Basic Conditional Normative Statements

153

contribution to our understanding of our own epistemic practice, without addressing any specific features of the practice (its descriptive attention is not on knowledge attributions, for instance). As it is to be expected from a meta-epistemological framework, the present set-up allows for all varieties of epistemological theorising – e. g. conceptual analysis, explication, method of equilibrium, analytic pragmatism, imagined reverse social engineering, functional explanation and design, etc. The present chapter provides methodological clarification for these varieties of theorising. Depending on our account of ESPs, the attribution of ESPs itself can be a normative affair, as made explicit by Brandom’s (1994) proposal to consider assertional commitments as theoretically motivated belief-analogues. Epistemic evaluation is normative; intentional and conceptual agents do not only attribute, but also evaluate ESPs. On the meta-level, epistemology itself has normative ambitions, attempting to specify what kinds of ESPs and epistemic evaluations are suitable for given purposes, and in which conditions such attributions and evaluations are suitable.

4.2 Norm-Talk: Basic Conditional Normative Statements Before proceeding any further, we need to clarify the relation between normative and descriptive statements on the one hand, and statements and states with normative or descriptive purport on the other. The aim is to get sufficiently clear about norm-talk to identify aims, methods and criteria of adequacy of an epistemology that presents itself as the normative and descriptive study of a kind of practice that itself involves norm-talk.

Basic Conditional Normative Statements For a start, let us consider some basic units of normative talk and call them “basic conditional normative statements”. Basic conditional normative statements involve uses of “ought”, “must”, “may” or “must not”, and they can be applied both to agents (roughly: creatures capable of acknowledging norms), to objects and to events: (1) If conditions C1… Cn are met, then A should happen (must, ought to). (1’) If conditions C1… Cn are met, then one ought to do A (must, should).

154

4 Varieties of Norm-Talk

An example for the first variety of use is engineer’s talk: “Look at the way this prototype is set up: if the sensor is triggered, then the engine ought to start”. The second variety is illustrated by social norms or rules: “If somebody sneezes, one ought to say ‘bless you’”. Apart from using “ought”, “should” or “must” in such conditional statements, we also use “may” and “must not”. When applied to social norms, we can label what is expressed by these three modalities of conditional normative statements “obligations”, “permissions” and “prohibitions”. Because non-agents (roughly: creatures incapable of acknowledging norms) that ought to behave in certain ways (given their design) are not thereby “obliged” to do so, we lack a suitable name for the conditional normative statements as applied to their behaviour. For want of better terminology, I will generously use the labels “conditional obligation, permission, prohibition” to cover such statements, too. Where the difference matters, it will be discussed. The scheme for basic conditional normative statements is pitched at maximum generality, so that the following considerations apply to a wide range of norms. We can treat unconditional norms (“One must not kill another human being”) as special cases of conditional norms; we can allow for both non-normative and normative (or evaluative) conditions C1… Cn, and these conditions can be sufficient, necessary, or both:⁴ non-normative sufficient conditions: If you hear me shout “go”, you must run. normative conditions: If I have permission to leave school, I’m allowed to go home, too. evaluative necessary condition: You may intervene only if the player’s move was incorrect. Importantly in the present context, we can also stay liberal with respect to the events or actions in the scope of the normative term (“ought”, “may”, “must not”). Thus, “A” in the basic conditional normative statement is meant to be instantiated not only by acts or actions (as suggested by the “do A” formulation), but also events, states, processes, etc. Not only can we be said to be permitted to act in certain ways, or to acquire or adopt certain beliefs, but also to believe something. So, the following are intended as instantiations of (1), too:

 At least for the time being, questions of deontic logic – i. e. questions concerning the definability of any of these normative statuses in terms of others, questions about the inferential relations between the kinds of status, and questions regarding the reduction of normative to other modalities (e. g. alethic) – are not relevant.

4.2 Norm-Talk: Basic Conditional Normative Statements

155

If p is true, then one may/must believe that p. If one has seen that p, then one may/must adopt the belief that p. I shall speak of normative statements as expressing norms, and of evaluative statements as expressing evaluations. Accordingly, obligations, permissions and prohibitions are norms, expressed by normative statements featuring “must”, “ought”, “is obliged”, “may”, etc. Norms and evaluations are conceived of as abstract entities; they can be thought of as what is expressed both by a normative or evaluative Chinese assertion and its German translation. We need not commit ourselves to norms and evaluations being propositions, or their being merely analogous to propositions; this will depend on our view of the nature of propositions and of the semantics of normative and evaluative statements. Recall our discussion of meta-ethics in chapter 2. While cognitivists are likely to see norms and evaluations as propositions because of their willingness to treat content as individuated by truth-conditions, non-cognitivists tend to disagree, accounting for the content expressed by normative and evaluative statements by means other than truth-conditionally individuated propositions. Epistemic norms, according to the terminology adopted here, are the contents expressed by at least certain uses of epistemic normative statements. Epistemic normative statements are normative statements from an epistemic viewpoint. I will have more to say about the epistemic viewpoint in what follows, but notice that we now have the conceptual means to say that we express epistemic norms by both the statement that Sheila ought to recognise Jim’s running style even from great distance, and the statement that the airport’s facial recognition device ought to recognise Jim’s dad. In order to further examine the specifically epistemic viewpoint constitutive of epistemic norms, we are now looking at viewpoint limitations in general, as well as at different origins of normative authority as a second important distinction disambiguating our uses of basic conditional normative statements.

Viewpoint Limitations I shall start by constructing two apparent contradictions. Two distinctions – between viewpoint limitations on the one hand, origins of normative authority on the other – will then be introduced in order to avoid these contradictions, very much like the disambiguation of expressions such as “bank” helps avoiding apparent contradictions these expressions can give rise to (e. g. “Of course there is no real contradiction in saying that one can and cannot order credit cards from banks, because ‘banks’ can refer to financial institutes and river banks”).

156

4 Varieties of Norm-Talk

Consider “ought”, “may” and “must not”. Scientist Sheila, whose moral dilemma and hanky-panky with Jim should by now be familiar to the reader, ponders experiments on animals in order to confirm her hypothesis. First she asks advice from her friend Frank, the moral philosopher, who thinks briefly about his views about animal rights and tells her “You must not perform these experiments”. Sheila then calls her epistemologist friend Jane, who considers the evidence available for Sheila’s hypothesis, and concludes her survey by saying “You ought to do these experiments”. Now, although Sheila’s situation is tricky, it may not be as bad as it sounds, because Frank and Jane need not be construed as contradicting each other. All three protagonists of this example may agree that the experiments ought to be performed if epistemic considerations were all that mattered, and that they must not be performed if the only relevant concerns were moral. The fact that both epistemic and moral reasoning is involved does not render Sheila’s decision any easier, but neither does it imply a contradiction. I propose to treat basic conditional normative statements, and the conditional norms they express, as having a so-called viewpoint-limitation built into them. These viewpoint limitations can be made explicit, which will be done by talk of “viewpoints”. Accordingly, basic conditional normative statements will be construed as implicitly containing a viewpoint limitation clause that is fully explicit in the following schemata: (3) From a moral, prudential, epistemic… viewpoint: If conditions C1… Cn are met, then A should happen (must, ought to). In cases such as Sheila’s, and assuming that moral considerations do not by definition trump all others (which certainly does not appear to be a crazy view), we face a clash of viewpoints. Perhaps we can ultimately decide whether the considerations from one viewpoint override those of from others, and perhaps we can invoke a broad, viewpoint-transcendent, “all things considered” viewpoint to weigh it all up and give a verdict. In the present context, we do not need a model for such practical, multi-viewpoint deliberation. What matters is that there are different viewpoints, that they can clash, that we can weigh them up, and that one such viewpoint is epistemic. That is, there are uses of “ought”, “may”, “correct”, “right” etc. that implicitly or explicitly invoke the epistemic viewpoint. Meta-epistemology faces the task inter alia of spelling out what we do when we evaluate things from the epistemic viewpoint, just like meta-ethics is concerned with specifying the moral viewpoint.

4.2 Norm-Talk: Basic Conditional Normative Statements

157

System of Norms Assume that Sheila and Jane agree that there are circumstances in which it can be morally permissible to conduct experiments on animals and that Sheila is in one of these circumstances. Assume further that they agree about the conditions, both maintaining that as things stand there is a 90 % chance that Sheila’s hypothesis is true. However, they disagree epistemologically: Sheila thinks that in the circumstances, at least 95 % are needed for her to be entitled to publish her theory, while Jane puts the threshold at, say, 85 %. Accordingly, Jane’s opinion is that the series of experiments is not really needed; it is not the case, according to her epistemological views, that Sheila ought to conduct the experiments. As with the viewpoint-disambiguation earlier, Jane could now state an apparent contradiction involving normative statements: “It is both true and false that Sheila ought to perform experiments on animals”, and just as before, tools can be introduced to ensure that this statement is not construed as expressing a genuine contradiction. What Jane says or implies with the above statement is that the experiments ought to be conducted according to Sheila’s, but not according to Jane’s, epistemological views. Again, we can assume that a fully explicit basic conditional normative statement spells out whose normative views are involved; conditional normative statements may involve the attributee’s system of norms (“Given Sheila’s epistemological views, she ought to go ahead with the experiments”) or the attributor’s (“According to my epistemological rule book, she need not do these experiments”), or indeed anyone’s (“According to some medieval guidelines, …”). Individual human beings are not the only sources of such systems of norms. In the case of legal norms (“ought” and “correct” as oriented towards a legal code, i. e. laws), we best see a community, state, or perhaps the state’s judiciary, as the origin. (3) Assuming System of Norms SN: If conditions C1… Cn are met, then A should happen (must, ought to).

The Normative and Evaluative Normal Forms Without committing ourselves to a specific view about the precise nature of the pragmatic and semantic mechanisms that convey (imply, presuppose) what normative statements leave implicit, we can assume that viewpoint limitations and limitations and specification of the system of norms, when made explicit, togeth-

158

4 Varieties of Norm-Talk

er with the basic conditional normative statement, constitute what we can call the fully explicit “normative normal form”: (4) From a prudential, moral, epistemic, … viewpoint, assuming System of Norms SN: If conditions C1… Cn are met, then A should happen. Closely related to basic normative statements are hitherto unconsidered parts of normative talk, i. e. basic evaluations or assessments. These matter to us, because core epistemic notions such as those of epistemic entitlement, epistemic justification and knowledge look to have at least an evaluative element. At least as they are commonly construed, they help us to assess agents, acts or situations. To assess or evaluate something, however, is not the same as claiming that something ought, may or must not happen; normative statements are not the same as evaluative ones. Nonetheless, these two kinds of statement are closely related, as illustrated here: (5) In these circumstances, Sheila had to conduct the experiments. She did perform them. So, she did the right/correct/good thing (she acted correctly or did well). (5’) In the circumstances, from a moral viewpoint and considering her own moral views, Sheila was not entitled to the experiments. However, she did perform them. So, even though she did the right thing from an epistemic viewpoint and given her own epistemological views, and even though she may have done the right thing all things considered, she acted wrongly from a purely moral viewpoint. “Right”, “correct” and perhaps “good” in some uses are generic evaluative terms, applicable to all sorts of viewpoints and origins. Just as normative statements, they too can be involved in apparent contradictions, and these too can be resolved by distinguishing viewpoints and origins of norms. To use a less artificial, probably even familiar pattern: looking back at our behaviour at school, we may find it comforting to distinguish the moral outlook of children and adults, telling ourselves that what we did at the time was permissible, given our limited knowledge of what counts as acceptable behaviour. Nonetheless, with the behaviour in question falling short of our present moral standards, it was not right. Evaluations apply to events, behaviour and actions subject to all three normative modalities. Thus, something can be correct because it happens and it has to happen, then happens; or because it is allowed to happen, then happens; or because it is prohibited from happening, then does not happen. The relation of

4.2 Norm-Talk: Basic Conditional Normative Statements

159

evaluations or assessments to the normal form of normative assertion is straightforward; call this the “evaluative normal form”: (7) From a prudential, moral, epistemic, … viewpoint, assuming System of Norms SN: A, given conditions C1… Cn, is correct.

Introducing Additional Normative and Evaluative Concepts The distinctions between viewpoints and origins of norms can be used to define additional, more specific normative and evaluative terms. In this section, I would like to hint at a range of “thin” concepts that can be introduced on the basis of the conceptual apparatus sketched so far. Contemporary meta-ethic’s “thick” concepts, combining descriptive components with normative and/or evaluative ones, will be discussed in section 5.2. The stipulative definitions given below are not meant to be directly applicable to the terms in question; they are certainly not suggestions for revisions of established use of normative language. Their purpose is to illustrate the kind of complexity we are likely to face when we try to understand normative and evaluative concepts that are part of everyday natural language, as it is the case with the concepts of knowledge and epistemic justification. In order to highlight the artificial and technical character of the terms, I shall use subscripts. (8) introducing the epistemic “ought”: For any person S and any act or state A, S oughtepist to do or adopt A iff from an epistemic viewpoint, S ought to do or adopt A. (9) introducing an “ought” that is relative to some system of norms: For any person S, any act or state A, and any system of norms SN, S oughtSN to do or adopt A iff assuming system of norms SN, S ought to do or adopt A. (10) introducing the specifically moral “good”: For any person S and any act A or state A, S’s act A is morally good iff it is correct from a moral viewpoint. (11) introducing the “correct” that is relative to some system of norms: For any person S, any act or state A, and any system of norms SN, S’s act A is correctSN iff A is correct assuming system of norms SN.

160

4 Varieties of Norm-Talk

(12) introducing “illegal”: For any person S and any act A, S’s act A is illegal iff it is incorrect from a legal viewpoint assuming as the origin of norms the jurisdiction A falls under at the time of doing A. Depending on what we think is useful, we have options for differentiating our normative and evaluative terms. These options in turn illuminate some of our existing terminology. It does seem, to draw attention to the last example (12), that “illegal” does not just mean “legally incorrect”, because the latter, but not the former, may allow for the possibility that the legal system in relation to which something is judged to be incorrect is not the one binding the evaluated person, but one considered better by the evaluator. Such a manoeuvre seems impossible with the terms “legal” and “illegal”. We may be convinced that the French monarchy’s laws prior to the 1789 Revolution were horrendously unfair and illegitimate; nonetheless we would have to concede that events resulting in the Revolution were illegal.

4.3 Normative Statements With Descriptive Purport We can now spell out what it means to use normative statements with descriptive and with normative purport. In order to stay as close as possible to potential applications of the apparatus within philosophy (and specifically epistemology), I will discuss a range of different uses of normative statements and expand each into its normal form. This section is devoted to uses with descriptive purport; the following one turns to normative purport. I will first distinguish three kinds of descriptive uses, labelled (a) “explanatory”, (b) “constative”, and (c) “analytical”. I will then discuss three important restrictions on explanatory uses of normative statements. Descriptive uses of normative statements are very much neglected in the meta-ethical and epistemological literature. The main reason for this seems to be that they do not appear to be fully, or genuinely normative in the sense non-cognitivists take their paradigm instances of norm- or evaluation-talk to be. That is, if (say) I explain some slave-owner’s cruelty by stating that, given his system of beliefs and values, he had to punish his slaves on occasion, I am doing none of the things non-cognitivists see in norm-talk. There is no way in which I say “hooray”, and I am not endorsing or accepting any part of

4.3 Normative Statements With Descriptive Purport

161

the slave owner’s system of norms. It seems, as my nomenclature suggests, that explanatory uses are, well, merely descriptive. ⁵ On the other hand, such descriptively used normative statements are not reducible to psychology or non-normative dispositions. To say that the slaveowner, given his values and those of his community, had to punish his slaves means just what it says: the slave-owner was under a genuine obligation, given his values and those of his community, to act as he did, in just the same way as we are under moral obligations. Perhaps such obligations can be metaphysically reduced to states or events that are specifiable in non-normative terms; but this would not affect the fact that, as they stand, statements of those obligations are normative.

First Descriptive Use of Basic Conditional Normative Statements (a): Explanatory In the everyday sense of “explanation” (as opposed to, say, more demanding senses in the philosophy of science), normative statements make for perfectly good explanations. If Alastair, my friend from Dublin, accompanies me to watch a game of Hornussen in central Switzerland, I will explain to him what is going on partly by means of normative statements. I will appeal to the rules of the game in order to help my friend understand the players’ behaviour. This is a purely descriptive use of norms; there is no prescriptive force involved, and it is likely that neither Alastair nor I will ever be bound by these norms or rules. Nor is there any need for either of us to endorse the norms in any form; such explanations work even if we both agree that Hornussen is a badly designed game and indeed a waste of time. This point is even more obvious if we imagine an anthropologist using normative statements to explain the behaviour of some priest in a gruesome Aztec ritual centring on a human sacrifice (“At this stage of the ritual, the assistant ought to hand over the knife…”).  This diagnosis does not imply that non-cognitivists lack the conceptual means to account for descriptive uses of norms. It is possible to designate normative statements with normative purport as explanatorily primary, and to then derive an account of secondary, descriptive uses. Such a strategy is all the more feasible because non-cognitivists, thanks to the Frege-Geach problem, are used to deriving treatments of secondary uses of normative vocabulary (in the case of the Frege-Geach problem: embedded uses). Because the problem of the pragmatics and semantics of variously used normative and evaluative statements are not specifically meta-epistemological, I will not discuss any analyses of norm-talk here, whether cognitivist nor non-cognitivist. Instead I shall concentrate on the kind of constraint on such descriptive uses that will prove to be relevant within our meta-epistemological framework.

162

4 Varieties of Norm-Talk

The result we get when attempting to fit my explanation of the Hornussen player’s action into the normative normal form are not stylistically pretty. Nonetheless the following is a plausible candidate for an explicit formulation of an explanatorily used normative statement: (13) Here is an explanation of what player S has just done: From the viewpoint of rule-governed game-play behaviour, assuming the actual rules of Hornussen, if the Nouss has been hit (and C2… Cn), player S ought to down it.⁶ Such normative explanations certainly play an important part in ordinary language use (“Why do I go to school? Silly question. Because I have to!”), and in the present context we are not concerned with naturalistic worries concerning the use of norms in explanations, or with metaphysical “placement problems” relating to the status of the facts involved (see section 2.1). Nonetheless, it is important to highlight three constraints on explanatory uses of normative statements that ensure that they are explanatorily satisfying in many circumstances: first, familiarity with the viewpoint; second, attributee’s perspective; and third, government. Because these three constraints will be important in what follows, I will discuss each in turn.

First Constraint on Explanatory Uses: Familiarity with the Viewpoint Firstly, normative statements can only fulfil their explanatory duties if we are familiar with the explanatory norms’ viewpoint. If I succeed in explaining to Alastair the behaviour of a Hornussen player by reference to what the player ought to do according to the game’s rules, then this success depends partly on Alastair’s familiarity with games, and hence on his knowledge of what it means to be bound by the rules of a game. This does not mean that Alastair has to know the rules of Hornussen for my normative explanation to make sense; but he has to know the practice of games in general. Familiarity with viewpoints need not be an all-or-nothing affair. Perhaps somebody brought up with competitive games aimed at winning has difficulties

 There are obviously things to discuss with this explanatorily used normative normal form. Firstly, something would have to be said about game-playing behaviour as a “viewpoint” alongside moral, epistemic, legal, etiquette, etc. Secondly, in order to use a rule of the game in explanatory fashion, the player’s subjective perspective must be invoked; aspects of the game that are inaccessible to the player cannot contribute to explain his or her behaviour. However, statements of rules as such presumably only concern objective conditions.

4.3 Normative Statements With Descriptive Purport

163

grasping the point of certain co-operative role-playing games (RPGs) aimed at the joint creation of fictional worlds and interesting story lines. Normative explanations invoking the RPG’s rules may vary in their explanatory benefit, relative to the explanation’s recipient ability to grasp the concept of a non-competitive game. “Yes, I understand it is a game, I understand it has rules, and I know that the player had to move because of the rules, but I simply cannot quite grasp the nature of this game. Nobody wins?” Closer to our epistemological home turf, similar considerations apply with respect to moral and epistemic “ought” and “correct”. The trouble here is that we do not have an explicitly spelt out, generally agreed upon understanding of what constitutes these viewpoints. So, even if we all accept the moral incorrectness of experiments on animals as a valid explanation for Sheila’s decision to refrain from performing the experiments, there is no consensus on how to spell out what it means for something to be morally incorrect. Accordingly, we often depend on projecting our own viewpoints – which we are not necessarily able to spell out either – onto the subjects of normative explanations. The familiarity requirement applies to normative and evaluative statements made about artefacts, organisms and practices, too. Suppose aliens land on earth and show off some strange-looking object, trying to convey to us that it ought to behave in certain ways. Unless we know whether it is an artefact or part of the alien flora or fauna, we won’t be able to explain the thing’s behaviour (or lack thereof, in case it dies or otherwise malfunctions on earth). The fact that on our earthly home turf we tend to be reliable at telling the difference between artefacts, organisms and social groups does not imply that identification of the viewpoint is not in principle a necessary requirement for good normative and evaluative explanations.

Second Constraint on Explanatory Uses: Attributee’s Perspective The second constraint on the explanatory use of norms is that the agent whose behaviour is explained is aware that the conditions of the (conditional) norm are met. Reconsider the explanation of the Hornussen player’s behaviour from above: (13) Here is an explanation of what player S has just done: From the viewpoint of rule-governed game-play behaviour, assuming the actual rules of Hornussen, if the Nouss has been hit (and C2… Cn), player S ought to down it.

164

4 Varieties of Norm-Talk

The player downed the Nouss because he had to, according to the rules of Hornussen, and he had to down it because the Nouss had been hit. This latter fact constitutes, perhaps jointly with other facts (C2… Cn), the conditions of the normative statement doing the explanatory work. The “attributee’s perspective” requirement says that we must assume, in order for such an explanation to succeed, that player S was aware that the Nouss had been hit. If S was oblivious to this happening, the norm does not do any explanatory work. As a further illustration of the requirement, assume that somebody keeps winning the lottery, and “explains” this by saying that it’s just a matter of adhering to the right norm. Here it is: (14) If number N will be drawn in the lottery on day d, then one ought to put one’s money on N during the week before d. Unfortunately this normative statement lacks explanatory value, unless it is understandable how the condition in its antecedent is accessible to the winner. A more interesting example of the same phenomenon is the investment banker’s favourite rule: “Buy low, sell high”. The reason such a norm doesn’t constitute a telling answer to the question of how Warren Buffett is so successful on the stock market is, of course, that we additionally need to know just how Buffett identifies what it means for the price of some shares to be “low”, and what it means for them to fetch a “high” price. If we make this requirement explicit and add it to our formulation of explanations involving the normative normal form, we get the following: (15) Here is an explanation of what player S has just done: From the viewpoint of rule-governed game-play behaviour, assuming the actual rules of Hornussen, if the Hornuss has been hit (and C2… Cn), player S ought to down it. And player S was aware that the Hornuss had been hit (and C2… Cn). Let us label the fact that the player needs to be aware that the conditions are met the “attributee’s perspective” requirement. In order for a conditional normative statement to do explanatory work, we need to ensure that the agent whose behaviour we are attempting to explain – the attributee of the “ought” or “correct” doing the explanatory work – has cognitive access to the conditions. One final remark on the attributee’s perspective. Say we detect patterns in an agent’s behaviour over a period of time, enforced by sanctions (e. g. other community members pushing the agent around and shouting at her if she fails to follow the pattern). We take these sanctions to justify the attribution of an explanatory conditional norm, instantiating our basic scheme. Thus, agent S must: do A iff C. Then we realise that S is spared the sanction, even upon failure to do A in C,

4.3 Normative Statements With Descriptive Purport

165

if the community members have evidence that S was unaware of C. In short, the community takes its members’ personal responsibility and control into account. What does this very common and obviously sensible scenario mean for explanatory uses of statements of basic conditional norms? There are at least two prima facie reasonable reactions to the acknowledgement of such sensible sanctions. Firstly, we could add, as we just have done, the attributee’s perspective requirement to any valid normative explanation. But there is another possible reaction, which we must keep separate from the attributee’s perspective, namely to change the formulation of the conditions in the explanatory normative statement, effectively rendering them subjective. Thus, one must: do A iff one thinks that, sees that, is convinced that C. The attributee’s perspective requirement is not the same as the subjective conditions requirement. According to the former, we explain action A by means of a conditional norm such as “If C, S must do A”, presupposing or explicitly adding that S must have been aware of C. The latter strategy would suggest that the norm-triggering conditions for explanatory norms need to be subjective, as in “If S is aware of C, then S must do A”. For explanatory purposes the attributee’s condition requirement is preferable, because norms with subjective conditions are impossibly difficult to implement and sanction. It is very difficult to find intersubjectively accessible criteria to decide whether subjective conditions are met. But once we concede this much, the preference for the attributee’s perspective requirement is backed up by parsimony considerations. That is, we want the same norms to do genuinely normative and explanatory work, and norms with subjective conditions are not great to actually implement in practice. Accordingly, we stick to norms with non-subjective conditions for both jobs, solving the accessibility problem by means of the attributee’s perspective requirement. As with the familiarity requirement, the attributee’s perspective can be adopted with regards to non-intentional systems, too. Although it is certainly a stylistic stretch to say that there ought to be a sense in which a solar-powered toy car must be “familiar” with its surrounding conditions for its behaviour to be successfully explained by means of a conditional norm, the basic point still applies. If we explain the toy car’s behaviour by stating that it ought to move, given its design, as soon as there is sufficient light to power its engine, we do, of course, imply that there is a sense in which the toy car reacts differentially to the relevant conditions. The normative explanation is not complete, of course, unless we have a grasp of such differential reactions. The lack of such an account is what should bother us if somebody tries to sell us his home-made medicine, claiming that his pills ought to develop their full healing-powers tonight because it is a full moon.

166

4 Varieties of Norm-Talk

Third Constraint on Explanatory Uses of Conditional Normative Statements: Governance So far we have seen that for norms to provide explanations of people’s behaviour, we need to be familiar with the norms’ viewpoint, and the attributee must be aware that the conditions triggering the norms are met. Assume that both of these requirements are met in the case of the Hornussen player in our example above. Additionally assume, however, that unbeknownst to the player in question there has been a rule-change over night, signed off shortly after midnight in the Hornussen Association’s global headquarters, but not yet communicated to the players on the field. This new rule, although it could technically be in force at the time of the game, obviously cannot explain the players’ behaviour. The players need to know the rules in order for their behaviour to be explained in terms of them, because such explanations proceed by citing rules which the players are following, rather than merely acting in accordance with. So, normative explanations not only require the attributee’s perspective on conditions, but also depend on the attributee having cognitive access to the norm or rule in question. Let us frame this requirement in terms of a difference between somebody following and being governed by a norm, and somebody being merely acting in accordance with it or being bound by it. Normative statements can play explanatory roles only if the behaviour they purport to explain can reasonably be said to be governed by the norm doing the explanatory work. However, for some behaviour to be governed by a norm it is not sufficient that it be bound by it. To illustrate this difference, consider a moral universalist who judges it to be morally correct that the ancient Aztecs abstained from sacrificing fellow Aztecs to their gods (assume, for the sake of the example, that they really did abstain from doing that). The basis for the universalist’s judgement is a norm expressed by a statement such as “From a moral viewpoint, one must not sacrifice human beings to religious entities”. According to the universalist’s conception of morality, the Aztecs were actually bound by the moral norm; if they had killed fellow Aztecs to please their gods, they would have acted immorally. Had they actually done so, the universalist would have been entitled to condemn them. But, of course, this norm could never do good explanatory work, because it was not accessible to the Aztecs, who had no idea they were bound by it. They quite happily sacrificed their non-Aztec war prisoners, after all. So, our moral norm, although allowing for judging as morally correct their abstinence from sacrificing Aztecs, cannot ex-

4.3 Normative Statements With Descriptive Purport

167

plain it. Even though they were bound by the moral universalist’s rule, their behaviour was not governed by it. Without aiming at anything like a water-proof account of what it is for some behaviour to be governed by a norm,⁷ we may require some counterfactual correlation as a minimal requirement. Thus, if a norm N is said to govern some bit of behaviour B, then, were N suitably different, B would not have happened (no behaviour, or different behaviour, would have taken place). Accordingly, if I use normative vocabulary to explain the game of Hornussen to my friend from Dublin, then, were the rules I am pointing out to my friend different, the player would behave differently. The reason why the counterfactual correlation requirement is preferable to some cognitive access or knowledge condition lies in its applicability to very diverse ways in which behaviour can be said to be governed by norms. In the case of the rules of a game, the correlation is likely to be grounded in cognitive access. Thus, players know the rules of the games they play, and can typically formulate them. In the case of certain moral or rational norms, it may also be possible to construe the access as being unconscious, as in Freudian taboos or the modular “fast and frugal” heuristics championed by Gerd Gigerenzer and his collaborators (e. g. Gigerenzer 2001).

Second Descriptive Use of Basic Conditional Normative Statements (b): Constative Back in Zurich after watching a game of Hornussen, Alastair goes on to dispose of some rubbish without using the proper, municipal, taxed rubbish bag. I will then have to tell him that in Zürich, one must not dispose of rubbish without using the official, taxed bag. “Residents of Zürich are not allowed to dispose of their rubbish in just any bag”, I may tell Alastair; “we must use the taxed bags”. In this case, the normative statement does not do any explanatory work. By making the statement I express a law that is in place and has normative force for us. If we want to dispose of rubbish in the city of Zurich, both Alastair and I are bound by the law, even though our behaviour is not necessarily governed by this law, as Alastair’s attempt to use some other bag illustrates. Nonetheless, my  To give such an account in the context of a story about what it means to use a norm to explain some bit of behaviour may face a problem of circularity. For it is at least not obvious that an account of “behaviour B is governed by norm N” can or should be given independently of an account of “behaviour B can be explained by norm N”.

168

4 Varieties of Norm-Talk

statement has descriptive, not normative purport. Making the statement is similar to Anscombe’s detective writing down a list of the items purchased by the shopper, and hence dissimilar to the shopper writing down a list of things to buy. The normative force of the norm expressed is independent of my own endorsement and/or my act of uttering the statement. I may make the statement, and thus express the norm, all the time being unhappy about it, wishing it were not there, being convinced it ought not to be in place. None of this matters, because the correctness of the statement is determined by its descriptive purport, depending as it does on the question of whether there is in fact such a norm in place. The speaker’s attitude towards the norm in question is irrelevant. Let us call such a use “constative”: (16) Here is a norm by which we are in fact bound: From a legal point of view, assuming the city of Zurich’s actual laws, if one has to get rid of rubbish (and C2… Cn), then one must use the taxed bag. Constative uses of normative statements can, but need not, bind or govern the speaker and the audience. In the case above, Zurich’s rubbish laws obviously bind Alastair and me, as long as we deal with the rubbish within Zurich’s city limits. If I tell Alastair about some Swiss tax regulation, only I (the speaker) will be bound by the law I am stating, because Alastair is not a Swiss resident. I could tell my family about some strange Irish law Alastair has to put up with, not thereby explaining his behaviour, but merely stating the normative situation for the sake of my family’s entertainment and knowledge. This, too, would be a constative use in my sense. Accordingly, we find paradigmatically constative uses of normative statements in teaching. Teaching a legal system, or the norms governing the rituals of a community, will involve constative uses of normative statements. The origin clause introduced earlier helps to make explicit who is bound by the norm stated; our own legal system in civic education, ancient states in history (especially legal history), various states in comparative studies, various communities in anthropology. (17) Here is a norm by which members of the Paleo-Indian Folsom culture were bound: From a ritualistic point of view, assuming the Folsom norms, if one goes out for the bison hunt (and C2… Cn), then one must bury a painted bison skull.

4.3 Normative Statements With Descriptive Purport

169

Third Descriptive Use of Basic Conditional Normative Statements (c): Analytical Having seen a good game of Hornussen and having disposed of our rubbish, Alastair and I go out in the evening and see what turns out to be an actor dressed up as a medieval night-watchman for the benefit of Zurich’s tourists. Alastair is unfamiliar with the job profile of Swiss medieval night watchmen, so I tell him that part of the job is to announce the nightly hours. Medieval night-watchmen, by definition, have the duty to announce the time every hour. This was their line of work in the middle ages, and although job opportunities have dwindled, it is still their job now. The normative statement involved in the duty or obligation to announce the time every hour is not intended as an explanation of somebody’s behaviour, as in the case of the Hornussen players – Alastair and I did not witness the nightwatchman announcing the hours, after all – but is part of an analysis or definition of the concept of night-watchman. I use the normative statement to spell out the conceptual content expressed by “medieval night-watchman” to my friend. Once the concept is defined, it has great explanatory and predictive value; Alastair will see medieval night-watchmen’s behavioural patterns with different expectations once he’s familiar with the concept. As with explanatory and constative uses, I need not endorse norms I express with analytical purpose. The purport of analytical uses of normative statements is descriptive. (18) Here is a partial analysis of the concept of a medieval night-watchman: From a legal (contractual) point of view, assuming the contractual clauses of the medieval night-watchman’s job description, every hour (and C2… Cn), the medieval night-watchman must announce the time. Analytical uses of normative statements can be part of explications and stipulative definitions, too. Instead of analysing or defining existing concepts, new ones can be introduced – either by clarifying or otherwise changing the content of existing concepts (explication), or simply by engineering new ones. Workers in a small office could be informed by their boss that the mineral water supply to the office will be ensured, in the future, by a newly created “water boy” mandate. To be the water boy is to be governed by the norm “if there are less than two bottles of mineral water left in the common room, one must restock the supply”. Although the introduction of such concepts into existing practices constitutes theorising with normative purport (the practice is affected), it is not the an-

170

4 Varieties of Norm-Talk

alytically used norms themselves that are normatively used. The explicated or stipulatively defined concept is introduced to the practice with normative purport because its application conditions, inferential role and consequences of use reshape aspects of the practice (i. e. because of semantic and perhaps pragmatic norms governing its use). Note that none of the three constraints on explanatory uses of normative statements apply to constative and analytical uses. Firstly, we need not be familiar with the viewpoint in order to just state a norm, even though the epistemic and pragmatic status of the resulting assertion would be unusual, to say the least. We would simply tell somebody what other people were obliged or permitted to do, without being in any position to explain the nature of the obligation or permission (“We are not sure whether it was for religious reasons, but it seems that the members of the Paleo-Indian Folsom culture were governed by the following norm…”). Still, with constative uses not bearing any explanatory burden, their success conditions may be seen as more relaxed, and we do manage to convey some information even when ignorant about the viewpoint. Secondly, neither constative nor analytical uses of normative statements depend on the attributee’s perspective on the conditions (C1… Cn), nor, thirdly, do they depend on people’s behaviour being actually governed by the norm, as opposed to being merely bound by it. If urban street crossings are regulated by traffic lights, then pedestrians have permission to cross the road iff the relevant traffic light shows a green person, no matter whether they are aware of the green person or not, and no matter whether they know the traffic light’s colour code or not. We may have all the sympathy in the world for a person who gets run over by a car because he has never seen a traffic light before, but we would not say that his ignorance gave him permission to cross the road in the absence of a green person on the relevant traffic light. It is even conceivable to constatively express conditional norms in scenarios in which the attributee cannot possibly be aware that the conditions are met (the attributee’s perspective requirement is not met), and fails to be governed by the norm. A mad king, for example, could abuse his absolute authority to put his citizens under the conditional obligation to fall on their knees and pray for him exactly ninety-two hours, forty minutes and thirty-three seconds before he develops the first symptoms of a cold. This norm could be in force (if the king has the right sort of authority), it could be (constatively) reported (by the king’s media relations officer, by the press and by the king’s hapless subjects), and there would indeed be times at which the poor ignorant citizens would be obliged to fall to their knees – without having any way of knowing about their obligation in time, and hence without the norm meeting the requirements for explanatory use.

4.4 Normative Statements With Normative Purport

171

The same goes for analytical uses. Although it would not make practical sense for somebody to be designated Zurich’s night-watchman or night-watchwoman without letting him or her know about this newly acquired status, it is all the same conceivable. An irrational or stupidly designed normative system can still bind people. If the City Council designates Lilly as Zurich’s new night-watchwoman at 5pm on Sunday with immediate effect, then there is a sense in which Lilly ought to announce the hours on Sunday night, even if the City Council forget to tell her. Lilly won’t be sanctioned for her failure to announce the hours, of course, because the City Council are to blame for the hours not being announced that night, but it remains true that Lilly, in virtue of being the city’s night-watchwoman, is under the obligation to announce the hours, even though she is ignorant about his status. To sum up this section: The distinction between speech acts with descriptive and normative purport is orthogonal to the two familiar categories of descriptive and normative vocabularies, terms, concepts, sentences, statements or propositions. Statements containing normative or evaluative terms can be used with both descriptive and normative purport. Three important categories of theorising with descriptive purport were considered already, namely (a) explanatory, (b) descriptive (involving constative uses of normative statements), and (c) analytical uses of normative statements. Norms make for perfectly good explanations, as long as certain conditions are met. Thus, we ought to be familiar with the norm’s viewpoint; the attributee’s cognitive access to the conditions must be guaranteed; and there must be some sense in which the attributee is governed (and not merely bound) by the norm.

4.4 Normative Statements With Normative Purport First Normative Use of Basic Conditional Normative Statements (d): Suggestive So far we have looked at examples of uses of normative statements with descriptive purport. We do not properly express what ought to happen, from our point of view, if we express norms or evaluations with explanatory, constative and analytical intent. Often, however, we do express norms that we endorse; we frequently say what we genuinely think should be done. These are the uses of “ought” and “correct” that non-cognitivism takes to be paradigmatic for normative and evaluative speech acts. They are sometimes called “genuinely normative” (Korsgaard 1996). To put it in our terminology: there are normative statements with normative purport.

172

4 Varieties of Norm-Talk

Adding to the three kinds of descriptive use specified in section 4.3, I distinguish two kinds of normative statements with normative purport (“genuinely normative” speech acts). Thus, we express norms (d) suggestively, when we claim what we think ought to happen. And if we have the right sort of authority, we may make (e) authoritative use of normative statements, where the success of the speech act depends on whether the norm is thereby implemented. Let us consider first (d) suggestive uses of normative statements. In these cases we express norms that we think ought to be in place, that we ought to have, that would be good to have. Because these norms in turn determine what should happen and/or how we ought to behave, such suggestive uses genuinely express what should happen according to the speaker. Consider again the game of Hornussen. Holding the controversial view that this game tends to be boring, I could conceivably think of a rule change in order to make the game more attractive: (19) Here is a rule by which the players should be bound: From the viewpoint of rule-governed game-play behaviour, assuming my own views (about the point and purpose of the game of Hornussen), if the Nouss has been missed twice (and C2… Cn), one player ought to leave the pitch. Our second example (for constative uses) above can similarly be adapted and transformed. Thus, if Alastair is impressed by Zurich’s system of taxed rubbish disposal, he may tell his friends in Dublin: (20) Here is a norm (law) by which we Dubliners should be bound: From a legal point of view, assuming my own views about suitable laws for Dublin, if one has to get rid of rubbish (and C2… Cn), then one must use a taxed bag. Other viewpoints allow for suggestive uses. For example, I may sincerely think and proclaim that we should give each other lots of hugs all the time. By expressing this norm, I do not mean to explain anything, nor am I stating a norm that is in place, or analysing a concept. I merely think that this norm should be in place: (21) Here is a norm by which we (I, you) should be bound: From the viewpoint of etiquette, assuming my own views, if one encounters another human being, then one ought to give them a hug.

4.4 Normative Statements With Normative Purport

173

While the examples concerning the rules of a game, jurisdiction and the rules of etiquette fall within the application range of our everyday term “suggestion” (we do indeed suggest better rules and laws), this concept does not sit quite as easily with analogous uses within the moral and epistemic realm. These are the uses scientist Sheila is likely to make of normative statements after having pondered the epistemic and moral dimension of her question of whether to experiment on animals. By concluding her epistemological and moral reasoning by “I ought to collect further evidence” and “I must not perform experiments involving animals”, Sheila performs speech acts that can be made fully explicit by the following two normative normal forms: (22) Here is a norm by which we (I, you) should be bound: From the epistemic viewpoint, assuming my own views, one must not publish a scientific hypothesis unless one has evidence of quality Q. (23) Here is a norm by which we (I, you) should be bound: From the moral viewpoint, assuming my own views, one must not perform experiments that cause harm to animals. This construal of moral judgements is likely to strike moral realists as inadequate. If we think of claims such as “it is morally wrong to perform experiments that cause harm to animals” as purporting to report moral facts, and owing their adequacy (truth) to correctly representing such facts, we are unlikely to see genuinely normative moral statements as “suggesting” a norm that we ought to abide by. In the present context, there is no harm in allowing for such meta-ethical views, too. In fact we can extend the tolerant attitude to meta-epistemology, so that the “suggestive” uses as exemplified above cover both sets of intuitions, non-realist and realist. Instead of construing suggestive uses of epistemic (22) and moral (23) norms analogously to (19)–(21), we treat them as purporting to state epistemic or moral facts. This purport can then be described as characteristic for suggestive uses of epistemic and moral norms, so that the realist intuitions are accounted for within the present framework: (22’) Here is an epistemic fact: one must not publish a scientific hypothesis unless one has evidence of quality Q. (23’) Here is a moral fact: One must not perform experiments that cause harm to animals.

174

4 Varieties of Norm-Talk

Second Normative Use of Basic Conditional Normative Statements (e): Authoritative As a second kind of genuinely normative use of normative and evaluative statements, there are normative statements by which the norms expressed are enforced thanks to the authority of the utterance and/or the speaker. An absolutist king, or some master in a hypothetical master/slave thought experiment, may have the authority to bind agents by certain norms merely by saying so. If the master, in suitable circumstances, says to the slave that snapping his masterly fingers puts the slave under the obligation to pour the master a drink, then the act of uttering this statement enforces this conditional norm. Whereas before the utterance, the master’s snaps had no normative consequences whatsoever, they now do. (24) Here is a norm that is hereby enforced: From an absolutist-legal viewpoint, assuming my own views, if I snap my fingers, then you ought to pour me a drink. Here is a summary (short versions) of the five uses of basic conditional normative statements distinguished so far, each marked by preambles highlighting their use: (a) explanatory: Here is an explanation of agent S’s behaviour: If conditions C1… Cn are met, then one may do A. (b) constative: Here is a norm by which we (I, you, Alastair, the Aztecs) are in fact bound: If conditions C1… Cn are met, then one may do A. (c) analytical: Here is a norm that is constitutive for our concept X/ Here is a norm that is constitutive of the newly introduced concept X: If conditions C1… Cn are met, then one may do A. (d) suggestive: Here is a norm by which we (I, you) should be bound/ here is a normative (moral, epistemic…) fact: If conditions C1… Cn are met, then one may do A.

4.4 Normative Statements With Normative Purport

175

(e) authoritative: Here is a norm that is hereby enforced: If conditions C1… Cn are met, then one may do A. ⁸

Evaluations: Attributee’s Perspective vs. Attributor’s Perspective As with the constraints on explanatory uses of normative statements, specifications of viewpoint and system of norms can help to clarify genuinely normative uses too. Given everything Sheila knows (the conditions for possible action as she perceives them), the experiments on animals are needed to rule out some relevenat hypothesis about the disease. Now assume that unbeknownst to Sheila, the hypothesis is actually false. We, the attributors of normative statuses to Sheila, the evaluators of her actions, may know that it is – we may be in a situation that is epistemically superior to Sheila’s. What is our answer if somebody asks us whether Sheila ought to perform the experiments, or whether it is correct for Sheila to perform them? Even after clarifying the viewpoint issue (“Well, from a moral viewpoint…, however, epistemically speaking, …”), there is a sense in which Sheila ought to do the experiments, while there is also a sense in which this is not the case. From ours (= the attributors’, evaluators’) perspective – given what we know, given the conditions C1… Cn that we think apply (possibly unbeknownst to Sheila) – it is not the case that she ought to. Allan Gibbard has discussed such a difference in perspective when dealing with norms of rationality (Gibbard 1990: 90). He distinguishes “what’s advisable” (given what is known to the attributor, but not necessarily to the attributee/subject) from “what’s rational” (given only what is known to the attributee/subject). Watching Sheila speed over some crossroad with poor sight, knowing that she is in a terrible rush and seeing (from my point of view, which is not available to Sheila) that no vehicles are approaching, I may conclude that what Sheila does is irrational (it is madly dangerous behaviour, given what Sheila sees), but advisable (given what I know, Sheila is doing just the right thing in order to get to her destination as soon as possible). Or in our generalised framework: if Lilly’s aim is to get to her destination as soon as possible, then, from the viewpoint of rationality, she ought to speed over  These five uses of normative and evaluative statements account for what is known as the distinction between “a norm” and “a normative proposition” in deontic logic (von Wright 1963). According to this distinction, only my authoritative uses constitute genuine “norming”, while constative and explanatory uses are merely “descriptive” (suggestive uses are not considered).

176

4 Varieties of Norm-Talk

some vehicle-free crossroad with poor sight from the attributor’s perspective, while she must not do so from the attributee’s perspective. For some behaviour to be rational is for it to be governed by a norm from the viewpoint of rationality, and for the attributee to be familiar with the conditions that render the behaviour correct; this latter qualification is not required for some behaviour to count as “advisable” in Gibbard’s sense. The difference between the attributee’s and the attributor’s perspective is sometimes expressed in terms of subjectivity and objectivity. This is harmless, as it would be in the scenario just considered, as long as we keep in mind that what the attributor thinks is the case need not be what is objectively the case – attributors get things wrong too. However, it’s better to avoid the distinction between subjective and objective norms, because it rarely makes sense to implement or abide by norms that make the normative status of an action dependent on fully subjective conditions. As the term “subjective” suggests, such norms would be hard to enforce, because it is exceedingly difficult to determine criteria for when they are violated. Particularly when the stakes are high, people are unlikely to be honest when asked “Did you really abide by the norm that you have permission to do A only if it seems to you that C1… Cn? – Because your answer is all we have got to work on, ultimately, when deciding whether you did”. Furthermore, people may just not be very good at the meta-cognitive task of determining whether it seemed to them that C1… Cn obtained. The success of descriptive and (genuinely) normative uses of normative and evaluative statements depends on various constraints. Most importantly, we cannot make explanatory use of norms and evaluations unless we are familiar with the norm’s or evaluation’s viewpoint; unless the attributee has access to the norm’s or evaluation’s conditions; and unless he is governed (and not merely bound) by the norm. In the case of normative statements used with normative purport, the attributee’s perspective requirement on explanatory uses emerges as the requirement that for norms to govern as opposed to merely bind behaviour, the correctness of actions must be dependent on conditions the attributee has access to. For norms to be policed, ideally there ought to be intersubjective decision procedures to determine whether the conditions have been met. The correctness of actions and states should not depend on purely subjective conditions (e. g. sense data).

4.5 Epistemic Norms and Evaluations With attributors adopting both descriptive and prescriptive attitudes towards target systems, and with epistemology being interested in attributions of ESP both

4.5 Epistemic Norms and Evaluations

177

descriptively and normatively, we get the following matrix for epistemological concern with epistemic norms and evaluations: (i) descriptive epistemological interest, descriptive attributor’s attitude: What kinds of ESP does the attributor actually attribute or identify? Which specific ESPs does she attribute? In which circumstances? How does she explain the target system’s performance on the basis of these ESPs? How does she arrive at predictions? (ii) descriptive epistemological interest, normative/evaluative attributor’s attitude: How does the attributor actually evaluate the target system’s ESPs? How, from the attributor’s perspective, ought the target system to perform epistemically? What standards, values, ultimate background purposes determine her evaluations? (iii) normative epistemological interest, descriptive attributor’s attitude: What kinds of ESPs should the attributor attribute to the target system? Which specific ESPs should she attribute in given circumstances? (iv) normative epistemological interest, normative/evaluative attributor’s attitude: How should the attributor evaluate the target system’s ESPs (given background interests and constraints)? How should the attributor think normatively and evaluatively about the target system’s epistemic performance? What standards, values, ultimate background purposes should determine her evaluations?

Descriptively Used Normative Statements as Part of Dennett’s Stance Strategy The appropriateness conditions for all three stances in sections 3.2– 3.4 are based on descriptive interests: Dennett’s stances are appropriately adopted iff they enable us to successfully explain and predict the relevant system’s behaviour. What Dennett says about intentional states (in the context of the intentional stance) applies to ESPs in general. Thus, something counts as an ESP in virtue of having a specific function within a specific kind of system, and something counts as a specific kind of system relative to our descriptive interests. Normative and evaluative statements (as made explicit by their respective normal forms) can be used with descriptive and normative purport. Descriptively used normative statements are part of Dennett’s stance strategy. “One’s prediction will come true”, Dennett writes of the design stance, “provided only that the computer performs as designed. […] design stance predictions are generated by assuming that each functional part will function properly” (Dennett 1971: 88).

178

4 Varieties of Norm-Talk

This is just how the design stance works: we explain and predict how a system performs by considering how it is designed, and by determining how it ought to perform, given its design. If it is well designed and does not malfunction, the system will perform as it ought to perform. The intentional stance, too, involves descriptively used normative statements. Dennett explicitly acknowledges this normative dimension of the intentional stance by saying that treating something as an intentional system “permits predictions having a normative or a logical basis rather than an empirical one” (Dennett 1971: 97). If we adopt the intentional stance towards some system, we assume that the system is rational in relevant ways and to a sufficient degree; this rationality assumption, jointly with the beliefs and desires attributed to the system, yield normative statements regarding the system’s overall behaviour (“given its beliefs and desires, the system ought to do A now”). The normativity involved in such predictions are captured by the constative and explanatory uses of normative statements described in section 4.4. In the Hornussen example used there, I explained the behaviour of the player to my friend Alastair as follows: (13) Here is an explanation of what player S has just done: From the viewpoint of rule-governed game-play behaviour, assuming the rules of Hornussen, if the Nouss has been hit (and C2… Cn), player S ought to down it. Here is the explanatorily used normative normal form as part of the design stance (24) and the intentional stance (25): (24) Here is an explanation of why the solar-powered toy car is moving: From the viewpoint of the design stance, assuming the toy car’s actual design, if the sun provides sufficient energy (and C2… Cn), the toy car ought to move. (25) Here is an explanation of why Jim has sent flowers to Sheila: From the viewpoint of the intentional stance, given Jim’s beliefs and desires, if Jim wants to impress Sheila (and C2… Cn), then Jim ought to send her flowers. The constraints on explanatory uses of normative statements hold for stance strategies, too (see section 4.4). Firstly, we ought to be familiar with the viewpoint in order for a normative explanation to be successful. Such familiarity is guaranteed, however, because the normative viewpoint is part of our explanatory stances. To adopt the design stance towards an object just is, in part, to conceive of

4.5 Epistemic Norms and Evaluations

179

the normativity involved as owed to the object’s purpose and design. The same is true of the intentional stance. Consequently familiarity with the viewpoint (knowing what it means for some object to be designed, to be a practice, or to have intentions) is a presupposition of adopting any explanatory stance. Secondly, the fact that the system is designed to move whenever the sun provides sufficient energy ensures that the car actually moves in these conditions (unless it malfunctions). The “attributee’s perspective” condition, although somewhat unhappily labelled in this case, demands that for normative explanations to be successful we need to understand how the system differentially reacts to its environment. The standards that need to be met for this relation to be understood (here: the impact of light on solar power cells) are co-determined by context. No engineers need to be present for “It moves because it ought to, if there is enough light” to be a reasonably good explanation of the toy car’s behaviour. On the other hand, no contextual factors could render “The toy car moves because it ought to, given that Venus is about to enter Aquarius” a valid explanation. The third condition on explanatorily used normative and evaluative statements, phrased in terms of governance, here amounts to the requirement that the system’s actual design, not some ideal design, be invoked for explanatory and predictive purposes.

Epistemic Norms and Evaluations The norms and evaluations exemplified above concern the overall behaviour of a system with a design and intentional systems. They do not qualify as specifically epistemic norms or evaluations. However, the explanatory stances do give us a handle on what counts as the epistemic viewpoint, because the functional identification of ESPs (within systems with a design, social-normative practices and intentional systems) can be used to characterise epistemic normative or evaluative statements as those (normative or evaluative) statements that concern the function of ESPs within the system. Here is an example for how this works in the case of the design stance. An engineer and her apprentice check an automatic door’s sensor. Having been absent-minded for most of the afternoon, the apprentice stares at the sensor, oblivious of its role as part of the door, and asks his boss why it just changed its state. If the engineer’s explanation were to fit the pattern outlined in this chapter, she would proceed as follows: “Look, the sensor is part of an automatic door, that is, a system designed to open when customers approach. The sensor’s states are ESPs; their specific contribution to the system’s ability to automatically open for customers lies in their differential responses to properties of the system’s en-

180

4 Varieties of Norm-Talk

vironment. The specific feature the sensor is designed to respond to is the approach of customers to the store; if somebody approaches, the sensor ought to change its state. This is what you just witnessed. It did change its state. It seems that somebody approached the door, and that the door did not malfunction.” For some state, status or performance to count as an ESP is for it to contribute to the explanation and contribution of a system’s overall behaviour by differentially responding to the system’s environment. Recall the definition of teleological ESPs within systems with a design (alternatively: the first sufficient condition for ESPs) from section 3.2: (12) Some state or performance x is a teleological ESP iff (a) x is a tokening of a state or performance type X with the teleological function of responding differentially to a set of features/properties F of the environment of a system S with a functional design. (b) X’s teleological function is a result of functional analysis of S. (c) S’s overall capacities are best explained by assuming that S differentially responds to its environment by differentially responding to X. Once a state, status or performance is identified as a teleological ESP (because of this explanatory role), its behaviour can be assessed in relation to this function. Such assessments constitute the epistemic viewpoint; they are epistemic evaluations or norms. The same holds for intentional ESPs. If states or statuses are attributed or identified as differentially responding to the intentional system’s environment, and as featuring in intentional explanations of the system’s behaviour (as specified in the definition of intentional ESPs in section 3.4), then normative and evaluative statements relating to this function express epistemic norms and evaluations. Such epistemic normative and evaluative statements should not be confused, of course, with the kind of rational normativity that Dennett sees as implicit to the intentional stance. Dennett’s normative judgements concern the actions that are based on intentional ESPs (“She runs because she has to. She knows she’s late for work”). Epistemic normative and evaluative judgements concern the attribution, identification or evaluation of ESPs (“He believes that p because he ought to, given that he wants to be able to reach his goals.”) Epistemic norms and evaluations can be made explicit by normal forms: (26) From the epistemic viewpoint, assuming system of norms SN: If conditions C1… Cn are met, then A ought to happen.

4.5 Epistemic Norms and Evaluations

181

(27) From the epistemic viewpoint, assuming system of norms SN: A, given conditions C1… Cn, is correct. Abbreviating (26) and (27) back to basic conditional normative and evaluative statements (28, 29), we get what we could call the “basic conditional epistemic normative and evaluative statements” (30, 31): (28) If conditions C1… Cn are met, then A ought to happen. (29) If conditions C1… Cn are met, then A is correct. (30) If conditions C1… Cn are met, then, from an epistemic viewpoint, A ought to happen. (31) If conditions C1… Cn are met, then A is epistemically correct.⁹ Epistemic normal forms can be put to explanatory, constative and analytical use. Postponing the discussion of their application to intentional systems till chapter 5, here are descriptively used epistemic normative statements about (32) systems with a design and (33) social-normative practices: (32) Here is an explanation of why the automatic door’s sensor just changed its state/ here is a “norm” or “obligation” that actually is in place (constative)/ here is a partial analysis of the concept “automatic supermarket door’s sensor” (analytical): From the teleologically epistemic viewpoint, given the door’s design, if somebody approaches (and C2… Cn), the device ought to change its state.

 These normative and evaluative statements sound unfamiliar or even clumsy. There will be more familiar instantiations once these forms are applied to the states and actions of intentional agents; especially, of course, if the concepts picking out these states are familiar epistemic concepts. For example, if conditions C1… Cn are met, then one is epistemically entitled to believe that p.

182

4 Varieties of Norm-Talk

(33) Here is an explanation of why sentry Sam in medieval village V just blew his signal horn/ here is a “norm” or “obligation” that actually is in place in V (constative)/ here is a partial analysis of the concept “sentry” (analytical): From the social-normatively epistemic viewpoint, given the norms implicit in the social-normative practice V, if somebody approaches V (and C2… Cn), Sam ought to blow the signal horn. Note that, according to the full meta-epistemological set-up motivated earlier in this section, such descriptive normative and evaluative normal forms primarily serve to make explicit some attributor’s attitude towards, and/or statements on, a target system. Accordingly there is, of course, room for genuinely normative epistemological theorising with respect to such descriptively used norms. We can always ask whether the attributor is right in adopting some stance, and once a stance is adopted, whether the attributor identifies the right kinds of ESPs, given her descriptive background interests.

Normatively Used Epistemic Norms and Evaluations: Non-Intentional ESPs So far we have followed Dennett in conceiving of ESPs as identifiable relative to descriptive ambitions only (as Dennett does with (teleological) functional states). Accordingly, the three uses of epistemic normative and evaluative statements considered so far (explanatory, constative, analytical) have all been descriptive. The characterisation of epistemological theorising developed in chapter 2, however, explicitly stated that epistemology has normative ambitions too. Epistemology tells us, among other things, how we ought to behave and organise ourselves from an epistemic viewpoint. Accordingly, something needs to be said about the role of ESPs and the epistemic viewpoint in epistemological theorising with normative purport. Consider normative enterprises in general. When automatic doors were invented, the engineers were interested in making them perform in certain ways, rather than in explaining their behaviour. From their commissioner’s and inventors’ perspective, such doors and their sensors ought to behave in certain ways. The same goes for the sentry’s behaviour. The village elders, or somebody else with the right sort of authority, put the sentry under the obligation to blow the signal horn iff enemy troops approach, perhaps by telling him that this is what he ought to do. As in the case of the automatic door’s design, the condition-

4.5 Epistemic Norms and Evaluations

183

al obligatory norm ensuring that the sentry blows his horn at the right times was motivated by concern for the villagers’ overall performance and the village’s safety. These normative ambitions pose no more problems for our definitions of ESPs than the engineer’s talk about hydraulic liquid poses for functional definitions of “hydraulic liquid”. If an engineer points at a bottle of olive oil, and tells her apprentice that this is a fine hydraulic liquid, she is best interpreted as saying that the oil would make a fine hydraulic liquid; that it would be suitable to function as hydraulic liquid within a system whose overall behaviour is best explained and predicted by recourse to the presence of a hydraulic liquid. The same goes for ESPs. If the engineer points at the automatic door’s sensor and says that it ought to change its state, this change of state counts as an epistemic performance (and thereby as an ESP) because the envisaged performance of the automatic door, if it works, would be best predicted and explained by recourse to such a changed state. Generally, descriptive enterprises such as the explanation and prediction of a system’s behaviour and the normative ambitions involved in engineering and evaluation are closely related. Sometimes engineers are asked to design bridges with very low risk of collapsing; at other times they may assess the likelihood of existing buildings collapsing; and on yet other occasions they may try to explain the surprising stability and endurance of ancient bridges. Sometimes they are involved in building machines for given purposes; at other times they may look at rival manufacturers’ products in order to find out how their machines do it. Antiterror agencies ponder how to improve their information management in order to increase the security of the citizens they work for; terrorists are likely to be interested in how this information management is organised in order to exploit its weaknesses. So, once something is identified as a system with a design (in virtue of the design stance being successfully adopted towards it), its functional characteristics can become subject to genuinely normative and evaluative theorising (to theorising with normative purport). As an example of the two uses of “ought” I have in mind, here is a salesman’s pitch contrasting a constative (descriptive) use of “ought” with a suggestive (normative) one:

184

4 Varieties of Norm-Talk

(34) “Your old automatic door, Mr Greengrocer, always opens when a customer approaches, and only rarely opens when people merely pass by the shop. This, of course, is to be expected, given its design. The door is supposed to open – in fact, it ought to open – iff a humansized object enters the area in front of the shop. This behaviour is achieved by cleverly arranging a couple of infrared beams. The door ought to open iff these beams are interrupted. However, this is by no means a perfect performance, given what you are looking for. My new product combines the traditional infrared sensor with facial recognition and opens only if a human being near the shop actually faces the shop. It won’t open for great apes, and it won’t open for passers-by showing only their profile. Finally a product that does what it ought to do!” The salesman’s pitch combines descriptive and normative uses of “ought”. What he says about the ESPs of his own product is not part of the design stance (as an attitude that is identified with respect to its predictive and explanatory goals). Instead, the salesman makes suggestive use of an epistemic norm: (35) Here is how this/an automatic door’s sensor should be designed: From the teleologically epistemic viewpoint, given what the door is (designed) for, if a customer approaches (and C2… Cn), the device ought to change its state. Suggestive uses of epistemic norms and evaluations are available to the entomologist too. Having explained the erratic behaviour of bees that, due to a radical change in environment, perform waggle dances that fail to indicate the location of nectar, the entomologist could go on to suggest how the poor bees ought to perform in the new environment. The fact that the unfortunate bees won’t be in any cognitive position to heed the entomologist’s advice does not change the genuinely normative (suggestive) use of “ought” or “correct” that is thereby made. I will turn to genuinely normative and evaluative epistemic statements concerning intentional ESPs after illustrating normative theorising with the help of a made-up normative epistemic practice.

Application: Inventing an Epistemic Practice In order to get a better grasp on the kinds of questions involved in the attribution and evaluation of non-intentional ESPs from a genuinely normative perspective,

4.5 Epistemic Norms and Evaluations

185

consider a normative and social practice involving a primary school teacher and her class: (36) Teacher Teresa takes her class out to the forest. As part of the game Teresa lets the children play, they need to scatter throughout the forest. Because there have been some cases of rabies in the region, Teresa wants the children back at their camp if there are foxes moving about, so she needs a system that reacts efficiently to sightings of foxes, while allowing for the likelihood of imaginative children seeing foxes where there aren’t any. Teresa implements the following rules (using language less technical than mine): (R1) If you see a fox, then call out your own name followed by “fox”: e. g. “Leo fox!” (R2) If you hear a fox-call, repeat it as loudly as you can; e. g. if you hear anybody yelling “Leo fox!”, shout “Leo fox!” yourself. (R3) As soon as you have heard tokens of two different call types, including your own, get back to the camp. If Leo, for example, after having issued a call himself, hears “Lilly fox!”, then he ought to return to the camp. As soon as Tom has heard, and passed on, both “Leo fox!” and “Lilly fox!”, he, too, ought to head back to the camp. If you have not heard or seen any other classmate for what feels to you like a very long time, return to the camp. The practice implemented by Teresa is aimed at maximising playing time while minimising the danger of a child being bitten by a rabies-infected fox. One factor that needs to be considered in order to assess Teresa’s system is the likelihood of children shouting “fox!” in the absence of foxes. Playing the forest game with grown-ups, Teresa may have opted for a simpler system, telling them to shout “fox!” upon seeing a fox, and to immediately leave the forest upon either seeing a fox (and having issued the call), or upon hearing the call (and having passed it on). Teresa’s experience as a teacher tells her that with children involved, such a system would not allow for much playing time; hence the more complex practice she invented. There are countless other factors that can in principle affect the appropriateness of the system, including the density of the fox population in the region, the regional prevalence of rabies, the size of the forest and the number of children playing (affecting the likelihood that children are within earshot of each other). Perhaps there is a building site near the forest, or some other source of noise that affects the children’s ability to hear each other; some children may have hearing problems. Teresa might be a very popular teacher, certain to be let

186

4 Varieties of Norm-Talk

off the hook by the children’s parents even in the unlikely scenario of a fox bite; or she may have fallen out with the children’s parents already, with the latter eagerly awaiting her next mistake. Teresa’s personal and pedagogic preferences matter, too. Thus, she has to weigh the importance of playing time against the danger of a child needing prophylactic post-exposure rabies vaccination. By selecting and considering such factors, and by engineering her simple epistemic social-normative practice to suit them, Teresa illustrates how empirical questions and research affect genuinely normative epistemology. The more Teresa knows about the forest’s noise levels, the fox population, the prevalence of rabies among local foxes, and the likely distribution of children in the forest, the better she is able to fit her social-normative practice to what she considers an ideal ratio of playing time and danger of exposure to rabies. Because Teresa does not base her system on an existing practice, most of her normative statements (her normative theorising) are genuinely normative, i. e. suggestive or authoritative. If Teresa’s colleague Geoff were to devise his system after spying on Teresa’s measures, he would try to describe and understand Teresa’s system before assessing it (with respect to the circumstances and their respective goals). His use of normative statements such as (R1) would be constative and/or explanatory. Eventually Geoff could decide to adopt Teresa’s system, or to modify it in the light of his own preferences and/or different views with regards to the relevance and nature of the practice’s circumstances (physiology and psychology of children, fox population, etc). So, even before we move on to identifying and evaluating the intentional and conceptual ESPs of communities of sapient, autonomous agents using their capacity for language use to ascribe epistemic states or statuses to themselves and others, it should be evident that the design and evaluation of epistemic practices as simple as Teresa’s presupposes empirical knowledge and research. There is no limit, in principle, to the kinds of considerations that can be relevant for the suitability of the practice. If an epistemic system is designed from scratch, as it is in Teresa’s case, epistemological theorising divides into descriptive and normative components. As soon as part of the research is devoted to understanding existing epistemic systems (artefacts, practices), there is use for the methodological tools introduced in this chapter. The existing system’s behaviour is described, explained and predicted with the help of normative and evaluative terminology. It is then assessed, and possibly improved, by means of genuinely normative uses of normative and evaluative terminology. Let me now sum up my treatment of genuinely normative theorising about non-intentional ESPs. Uses of norms and evaluations from a teleologically-epistemic and a normative-social epistemic viewpoint can be categorised into those that have descriptive purport and those that have normative purport. Descriptive

4.5 Epistemic Norms and Evaluations

187

uses can be divided into explanatory, constative and analytical, where the former two are involved in Dennett’s stance strategy. Whenever an attributor adopts a (descriptive) stance towards a target system, she attributes or identifies ESPs; she explains how they contribute to the system’s capacities; and she predicts the system’s behaviour on the basis of these ESPs. Attributors make constative and explanatory use of normative and evaluative statements on the basis of the target system’s actual design or its purpose. When attributors theorise normatively, the purpose of identifying ESPs is not explanatory. Instead the attributors’ normative and evaluative statements express how the system ought to behave from an epistemic viewpoint – not on the basis of its actual design, but given certain purposes or desirable capacities. Such normative theorising is best understood in the context of engineering. The epistemic behaviour of artefacts is determined, by engineers, on the basis of some targeted performance; the epistemic mechanics of a school class is implemented by the teacher who has in mind a range of goals and constraints.

Normatively Used Epistemic Norms and Evaluations: Intentional ESPs The methodological considerations discussed in relation to systems with a design and social-normative practices apply to intentional systems too. As before, the primary unit of epistemological interest is a higher-order intentional system in the role of an attributor, who (or which) attributes ESPs to a target system (the “attributee” if the target system is intentional). An example of a scenario involving two higher-order intentional agents (in the role of attributor and attributee, respectively) is provided by Sheila attributing to Jim the belief that his bus is leaving at 5:02 pm. If Sheila thinks that Jim’s belief is wrong, then she evaluates the belief from an epistemic viewpoint. The epistemologist’s primary task is to descriptively and normatively inquire into the attributor’s attributions and evaluations of intentional ESPs to the attributee. Because the attributor’s dealings with the attributee involve non-normative statements, as well as normative and evaluative statements with both descriptive and normative purport, the epistemologist is in the unenviable position of having to theorise with descriptive and normative ambitions about non-normative, as well as descriptively and normatively used normative statements by the attributor. Here is an update of the methodological matrix from earlier in this section, applying to intentional ESPs: (i) descriptive epistemological interest, descriptive attributor’s attitude: What kinds of intentional ESP does the attributor actually attribute? Which specific ESPs does she attribute? In which circumstances? How does she ex-

188

4 Varieties of Norm-Talk

plain the attributee’s behaviour on the basis of these ESPs? How does she arrive at predictions? What descriptively used normative and evaluative statements does she make? (ii) descriptive epistemological interest, normative/evaluative attributor’s attitude: How does the attributor actually evaluate the attributee’s intentional ESPs? How, from the attributor’s perspective, ought the attributee behave epistemically (what epistemic states should she be in, which epistemic statuses should she acknowledge)? (iii) normative epistemological interest, descriptive attributor’s attitude: What kinds of intentional ESPs should the attributor attribute? Which specific ESPs should she attribute in given circumstances? (iv) normative epistemological interest, normative/evaluative attributor’s attitude: How should the attributor evaluate the attributee’s intentional ESPs? How should the attributor think normatively and evaluatively about the attributee’s epistemic behaviour? How ought the attributor think the attributee ought to behave epistemically? How would it be suitable or correct for the attributor to pass evaluative judgements on the attributee? The epistemologist’s normative interests in the attributor’s evaluations in (iv) can only be served in the light of background purposes. The epistemologist cannot determine how an attributor ought to evaluate somebody’s epistemic states unless ends are specified for which these evaluations serve as means. Although the present meta-epistemological framework need not commit to any such set of purposes, the discussion of Haslanger in chapter 5 will make some suggestions. Note, though, that the fact that chapter 3 defined ESPs in terms of explanatory and predictive value does not imply that they cannot be evaluated for other purposes too. It is true that something counts as the attribution of an intentional epistemic state or status only if it makes an explanatory contribution to the intentional actions of the attributee; but the communal function of intentional epistemic states need not be restricted to mutual predictability. Importantly, such ESPs can be exploited for information management purposes. Sheila can infer from Jim’s behaviour that he believes that the bus departs at 5:02 pm. She can then leave her own house at 4:53 pm, thus basing her own actions on information gained from Jim’s ESPs. Explanatory and predictive success need not be the only criteria of adequacy for our epistemological judgements on the attributor.¹⁰

 The attributor can use non-intentional states of the attributee as sources of information too.

4.5 Epistemic Norms and Evaluations

189

Descriptive epistemological research as in (i) and (ii) tries to describe, explain, analyse and predict the attributor’s stance towards the attributee. One such descriptive goal is served by perspicuously representing the content of the attributor’s normative and evaluative epistemic judgements, which is just what the tools developed in this chapter allow us to do. As an example, here is one attempt to spell out the full epistemic normative normal form for one particular instance of Sheila’s claiming that Jim ought to believe that the bus departs at 5:02 pm; it identifies her claim as a suggestive use of an epistemic normative statement: (37) Sheila (= attributor): Here is a norm by which Jim should be bound: From the epistemic viewpoint, given that he wants to catch the bus, if the bus departs at 5:02 pm, Jim ought to believe that the bus departs at 5:02 pm. This norm is rooted in the intentional stance; the intentional ESP attributed to Jim are meant to allow him to act on his goals by differentially responding to the environment (see section 3.4). Applied to beliefs, this kind of epistemic normativity is involved in judging that we believe that p because we ought to, given that p is true and given that the success of our actions depends on us getting p right. The attributor’s evaluations and attributions can then in turn be approached descriptively and normatively, again most transparently in the normative and evaluative normal forms: (38) An explanation of why Sheila attributes to Jim the belief that the bus departs at 5:02 pm: From the intentionally epistemic viewpoint, given that Sheila wants to explain and predict Jim’s behaviour, if Jim believes that the bus departs at 5:02 pm, Sheila ought to attribute to him the belief that the bus departs at 5:02 pm.

Sheila could, for example, use the colour of Jim’s cheeks to infer his state of embarrassment, or the temperature outside. Our conceptual apparatus allows for acknowledging that this state is epistemic, while not intentional; the system under consideration (allowing for the functional identification of ESPs) would not consist of Jim only, but of Jim-plus-Sheila (with the colour of Jim’s cheeks differentially responding to his environment, and Sheila differentially responding to the colour of Jim’s cheeks by perceiving their colour).

190

4 Varieties of Norm-Talk

(39) Here is a norm by which Sheila should be bound: From the intentionally epistemic viewpoint, given that Sheila wants to use Jim’s ESPs as information, if Jim believes that the bus departs at 5:02 pm, Sheila ought to attribute to him the belief that the bus departs at 5:02 pm.

5 Epistemic Evaluations and Concepts This chapter applies the meta-epistemological framework developed in the preceding chapters to our actual practice: interacting and cooperating human beings attributing and evaluating ESPs by means of epistemic concepts, thereby sharing information and explaining and predicting each other’s actions. The focus will be on the tight connection between conceptually articulated ESPs and the speech act of assertion. As the analogy with meta-ethics suggested (chapter 2), meta-epistemology needs to spell out its commitments with regards to philosophical semantics and pragmatics. The present chapter aims at a high level of generality. Instead of presupposing that human beings are in mental states appropriately classified as “beliefs”, it attempts to show that in principle there is a wide range of conceptual options for conceptual agents to attribute ESPs to themselves and to other intentional agents. While our actual concept of belief suggests a mental state with certain (often contested) psychological properties relating to its being conscious or voluntary, Robert Brandom’s preferred alternative, “assertional commitment”, is explicitly put forward as a normative status – not a mental state – with different properties (1994). Both are closely tied to the speech act of assertion, and both are suitable for important epistemic work within the community. By applying the three systems that allow for identifying ESPs to communities of higher-order intentional agents, I will provide a meta-epistemological framework that accounts for all five developments sketched in chapter 1. Communities of human beings can be described as being in teleological ESPs in so far as they are organisms (and interacting communities of such organisms) shaped by natural selection; they exhibit social normative ESPs in so far as they are agents within practices; and they exhibit intentional ESPs in so far as they are intentional agents. For the specification and evaluation of all these ESPs there are relevant systems of norms: natural selection, communal purposes, and intentional explanations and predictions. We attribute and evaluate (teleological) ESPs when we explain certain behaviours, reactions or intuitions in terms of natural selection, just as epistemologically relevant social psychology and recent developments of “experimental philosophy” do. We share information within the community (to be labelled “information management” below), and we attribute ESPs because we need to cooperate with others, we need to understand them and we need to be able to predict their behaviour (“people management”). All three clusters of purposes fit nicely within the conceptual framework developed in chapter 3. Epistemologically relevant empirical work applies the design stance towards human beings and DOI 10.1515/9783110525458-006

192

5 Epistemic Evaluations and Concepts

their communities, thus identifying and evaluating teleological ESPs. “People management” treats individual intentional agents as the targets of the kind of stance characteristic of ESPs, and “information management” operates at the level of the community. The obvious complication is that in actual epistemic practice, we use the same conceptual toolbox to articulate all three kinds of ESP.

5.1 Content-Specification and Evaluation of ESPs When discussing use theories of linguistic meaning in chapter 3, I distinguished “semantic phenomena approaches” (“theories of meaning”) from “semantic vocabulary approaches” and drew parallels to epistemological methodology. Thus, epistemologists, too, can either approach their subject by examining (analysing, explicating) epistemic concepts (the “epistemic vocabulary approach”), or they can identify and explain epistemic phenomena, aiming at a “theory of epistemic phenomena”, as I call it. The methodological pluralism embraced within our meta-epistemological framework allows for both methods to be used to illuminate epistemic practices, generally prioritising the “epistemic phenomena approach”, not least because its high level of generality allows for the identification of epistemic phenomena in non-conceptual and non-linguistic practices. This section starts by addressing a challenge to this methodology, namely: on what grounds can we specify, discuss and evaluate the content of ESPs if we try not to fall back into “immanent” methodology, i. e. if we resist the “semantic vocabulary approach” that would exploit the content of existing epistemic locutions? This challenge will be met firstly in the context of non-intentional systems; then we will move on to practices involving intentional and ultimately conceptual agents. Because conceptual ESPs (e. g. Jim’s belief that the bus departs at 5:02 pm) are closely related to the semantic content expressed by assertoric speech acts (e. g. Jim’s statement “The bus departs at 5:02 pm”), any theory of the content of conceptually articulated ESPs within such practices must be informed by theories of the semantic content expressed by the speech act of assertion.

Content-Specification for Teleological ESPs The normal forms and the constraints on explanatory uses of norms and evaluations now allow for clarifications in relation to the identification of different kinds of ESP and the specification of the content of ESPs. Sheila approaches her local supermarket; the automatic door promptly opens. What does the

5.1 Content-Specification and Evaluation of ESPs

193

door react to? The Duke of Habsburg approaches Sam’s medieval village with a handful of viciously looking troops; Sam blows the signal horn. What does Sam react to? The automatic door reacts to Sheila, to a world-renowned scientist, to a human being, an animal, an object, an interruption of the door’s infrared bean. Sam reacts to the Duke of Habsburg’s troops, to hostile foreign troops, to a bunch of hostile-looking and weapon-carrying men, to what looks to Sam like enemy troops. While “x reacts to y” expresses a relation that is generous with respect to its content-specification, “x represents y”, for example, does not. Accordingly, causal accounts of representational content such as Fodor’s (1987, 1998) and Dretske’s (1981, 1986) have to state additional conditions for what is represented. Presumably none of the content-specifications exemplified above allow for saying that the automatic door’s or Sam’s performance represent anything. This is not surprising, of course; representative purport and conceptual articulation are not necessary conditions for anything to count as an ESP, as defined in chapter 3. Nonetheless we can now ask what kinds of ESPs are suitable for theorising about systems with a design, so that different kinds of ESP behave differently with respect to their content-specification. Because we are not in the business of illuminating (analysing, explicating) any existing concepts (representation, information, indication, etc.), we are free to engineer interesting and potentially suitable kinds of ESP. Provided suitable generalisation, the design stance and the practice stance allow for constative uses of normative and evaluative statements concerning whatever the automatic door and Sam the sentry can be said to react to. Thus, it is true that the automatic door ought to open iff customers approach the shop, and it is also true that the automatic door ought to open iff the infrared beam is interrupted. The difference between the two norms can be located in the clause relating to the system of norms identified in section 4.2: the first norm is formulated on the basis of the system’s purpose; the second takes the system’s actual design into account. Not only are both constatively used normative statements true; the norms they express can also combine for explanatory purposes, as long as we mark the difference within the “system of norms” clause. The infrared beam features in explanations that invoke the automatic door’s actual design, while customers approaching the shop are part of explanations that trade on what the door is designed for:

194

5 Epistemic Evaluations and Concepts

(1)

Here is an explanation of why the automatic door’s sensor just changed its state: From the epistemic viewpoint, given how the door is designed, if the infrared beam is interrupted (and C2… Cn), the device ought to change its state.

(2) Here is an explanation of why the automatic door’s sensor just changed its state: From the epistemic viewpoint, given what the door is designed for, if a customer approaches (and C2… Cn), the device ought to change its state. These different kinds of explanation can be used to explicate the kind of ESP that is attributed (by an attributor) to a system with a design. Call these, for the sake of the argument, “purpose-relative” and “designed” ESPs, and consider the introduction of two relations, expressed by “x purpose-responds to y” and “x design-responds to y”. One particular event – the change of state in the automatic door’s sensor – counts as both a purpose-relative and a designed ESP. In so far as it is a designed ESP, the sensor ought to change its state iff its infrared beam is interrupted; the sensor design-responds to interruptions of the infrared beam. In so far as it is a purpose-relative ESP, the sensor ought to change its state iff a customer approaches the store. Such changes of state are purpose-responses to approaching customers. Explanations of the artefacts’ and social-normative systems’ behaviour that mention both the purpose of performance and actual design are superior to explanations that lack information about either of these two aspects. These considerations apply to social systems, too. Assume the environment of a beehive to change so radically that the bees’ waggle dances cease to indicate the location of nectar. An entomologist with a soft spot for puns could put it like this: “The bees do, and don’t do, what they ought to do. It depends on how you look at it. Given how natural selection has wired them, they undoubtedly do what they ought to do. Their behaviour is just what was selected for. Given their needs, however, they fail to do what they ought to do. The hive will be in trouble very soon.” If the entomologist were to drop puns in favour of our terminology, she could simply say that the bees’ design-response, but not their purpose-response, is correct. The same holds of the village priest from example (17) in section 3.3: His performances – and accordingly his and his fellow villagers’ normative status – do reliably respond to birds’ flying patterns (design-response), but unfortunately not to real threats (purpose-response).

5.1 Content-Specification and Evaluation of ESPs

195

Purpose-responses are not just design-responses plus evaluations. We do not necessarily move from descriptively used to normatively used normative or evaluative statements when we move from design-responses to purpose-responses. We could simply define “correct design-response” and “correct purpose-response” as two new evaluative concepts. If an orang-utan, on its way to freedom from the local zoo, causes the local supermarket’s door to open, then we can describe the opening of the door as a “correct design response”, but an “incorrect purpose response”.

Experimental Epistemology and the Psychology of Epistemic Agency The description of individual human beings and their communities and practices as systems with a design allows for the identification of teleological ESPs. Because this research perspective is naturalist and empirically oriented, we can see that our meta-epistemological framework, by including teleological ESPs, is indeed incorporating the naturalist lessons from section 1.2. When current research in experimental philosophy and, more generally, empirical work on the psychology of epistemic agency stress their descriptive ambitions, as opposed to philosophy’s traditionally normative outlook (e. g., Knobe and Nichols 2008b: 3), their work can partly be described as dealing with the identification and evaluation of teleological ESPs. Human beings are products of natural selection; some of their epistemic intuitions may be, too. Just as interdisciplinary research in moral psychology investigates how human beings function in moral contexts, there is room and need for a corresponding interdisciplinary psychology of epistemic agency, investigating how human beings function in epistemic contexts. The most obvious task for such research is to investigate the reliability of our internal, hard-wired perceptual and cognitive capacities in various contexts. The general strategy is familiar from influential research in social psychology: There is a huge amount of evidence that our cognitive capacities are prone to various kinds of systematic and predictable bias, leading to epistemic and logical mistakes. Models of our cognitive processes, such as Kahnemann’s (2011) “slow” and “fast” systems, explain and predict these mistakes, often with the help of hypotheses about the contexts and pressures of natural selection. Another parallel to be exploited is the debate, in evolutionary biology and ethics, concerning the relation between biological altruism, psychological altruism and morality (e. g., Kitcher 2011). Although it’s difficult to determine to what extent certain behavioural traits, emotional responses and moral intuitions are the product of evolution, there is substantial evidence from psychology, the neu-

196

5 Epistemic Evaluations and Concepts

rosciences and primatology that human beings are hard-wired to act altruistically (Kitcher 2011, De Waal 2006). However, our framework does not restrict the adoption of the design stance to hard-wired, selected for teleological ESPs: Explanatory genealogical hypotheses concerning hypothetical functional origins and developments of aspects of epistemic practices are perfectly suitable for the identification and evaluation of teleological ESPs. Assume, for explanatory purposes, some specific communities of human beings, in specific circumstances, faced with the task of designing an efficient and reliable flow of information. How would they go about organising themselves? What kind of epistemically relevant behaviour would they punish or reward? How would they bring up their children? From the present methodological perspective, one major question concerning the empirical data of such interdisciplinary work on the psychology of moral or epistemic agency concerns the status of concepts. Typically, experimental philosophers collect as data their subjects’ moral or epistemic intuitions by asking them to react to case studies or thought experiments. Such a reaction would consist in, for example, judging some fictional agent as having knowledge of something, paradigmatically by ticking a box in a questionnaire, labelled perhaps “S knows that p”. When the study extends to subjects that do not speak English, suitable translations are required. The data collected by such studies, then, are “epistemic” intuitions primarily insofar as they concern the application of epistemic terms. Accordingly, one important worry regarding the validity of such data concerns the correctness of the translation. However, in the light of our distinction between “semantic/epistemic vocabulary approaches” and “semantic/epistemic phenomena approaches” from section 1.1, it may be possible to collect data relating to specific epistemic phenomena without testing for the application of the corresponding vocabulary: Instead of ticking a box with the word “very disgusting” next to it, subjects’ implicit reactions would have to be observed and measured. Instead of ticking a box with the words “In this scenario, Tom is morally responsible”, subjects have to decide how they would react to Tom’s actions. Instead of deciding whether Sheila is “justified” in her beliefs, subjects’ tendencies to rely on Sheila as an epistemic agent would have to be observed. In many cases, it might be difficult or impossible to collect data that can plausibly be said to indicate implicit epistemic attitudes or evaluations instead of application conditions of epistemic vocabulary (recall, for example, the “Truetemp”-and Gettier-studies in Weinberg, Nichols, Stich 2001: 26 – 32). There might even be intrinsic epistemological reasons for this, related to attitude-transcendent features of truth and objectivity. However, in connection with the design stance adopted towards communities of human beings as selected-for and (genealogically) as responding to practical

5.1 Content-Specification and Evaluation of ESPs

197

needs, the identification and collection of such empirical data makes experimental epistemology and the psychology of epistemic agency a hugely promising and important field within contemporary epistemology.

Content-Specification for Social-Normative ESPs The purpose-relative specification of content suitable for teleological ESPs captures some, but not all aspects of social-normative practices. In some cases, hypotheses (or, in fictional scenarios, even knowledge) regarding the point and purpose of some ESPs allows for the distinction to be applied directly to social-normative practices. Recall, again, the village priest in example (17), section 3.3. Given the function of his calls within the practice (i. e. allowing the villagers to either go to bed or obliging them to stay up and man the walls), we can describe their purpose as differentially responding to potential attacks. Unfortunately for the villagers, the actual design of the practice is flawed. The priest’s calls actually respond to birds’ flight patterns (design-response). The distinction between design- and purpose-responses even applies to Teresa’s fox-avoiding practice in example (15), chapter 4.5. In order to understand or explain Leo’s call “Leo fox!” we ought to grasp the call’s application conditions and normative significance on the one hand, and the point and purpose of the practice of which the call is a part on the other. Again, there is no single definite answer to the question of what Leo’s call responds to. From an explanatory point of view, we could probably settle on fox-like mammals as the objects of the children’s “design-responses” (with children’s identification skills as the measure for what counts as “fox-like”), and foxes as the objects of purpose-responses. Shifting the focus from the target system to the attributor, simple cases of attribution and evaluation of ESPs can be identified, even in the absence of explicit linguistic ascriptions. One way of doing so is to treat acts of anticipating the performance of some artefact, organism or practice as a version of prediction. Similarly, positive and negative sanctions can be understood as implicit, potentially non-linguistic evaluations. More subtly, perhaps, acts of relying on some system’s ESPs can be said to function as implicit positive evaluations, too. Whether such acts are appropriately described as implicit attributions or evaluations of ESPs needs to be decided on the basis of the explanatory merit of these descriptions in the context of the relevant stance. It is quite unlikely, for example, that we would be entitled (from an explanatory viewpoint) to explain the behaviour of a cat playing with an automatic door not in terms of the differential reactions that are obviously involved, but as acts of treating the door as a functional system with epistemic states.

198

5 Epistemic Evaluations and Concepts

Analogous considerations can be used to specify the content of intentional ESPs. Again, acts of anticipating some intentional system’s behaviour, acts of relying on the system’s epistemic states, and perhaps even sanctions can be described as implicit predictions, attributions, and evaluations. For example, if we are willing to treat at least some animals as higher-order intentional systems, we could observe, and experiment on, how predators anticipate their prey’s behaviour. What would be evidence for such implicitly attributed intentional ESPs to have some content or other (to count as responding to something or other)? Recall the difference between design- and purpose-responses discussed earlier. Some ESP counts as a design-response iff its occurrence is best explained in terms of the system’s actual design. Purpose-responses are best explained by appeal to the system’s overall purposes. Accordingly, intentional design- and purpose-responses can be distinguished by changing the environment of the attribution. Assume, perhaps, some higher-order intentional predator successfully anticipating its prey’s behaviour by attributing intentional ESPs and goals. Take a scenario in which the environment changes, the perceptual apparatus of some prey animal systematically yields incorrect purpose-responses and the prey’s behaviour becomes erratic. If some predator now (unsuccessfully) anticipates successful behaviour, it attributes purpose-responses. If it is capable of adjusting to the prey’s poor performance, it may count as attributing design-responses.¹

The Attribution and Evaluation of Conceptual ESPs English-speakers attribute and evaluate intentional ESPs with the help of locutions such as “S knows that p”, “S has evidence for p”, and “S’s belief that p is justified”. We thereby attribute propositional attitudes. Sometimes we can be described as doing so implicitly, sometimes by means of explicit ascriptions,

 The scenario under consideration is entirely hypothetical. It should not be taken to suggest that the present account of ESPs is in any way committed to animals being higher-order intentional systems; or indeed that any non-conceptual creatures are capable of adopting the intentional stance. The meta-epistemological framework is entirely neutral with respect to these issues. It is committed only to a picture according to which epistemology is concerned with the attribution, identification and evaluation of ESPs; the attributor must be capable of adopting explanatory and predictive stances; some of the target systems are intentional; some or all of those intentional target systems are conceptual; some or all of these conceptual target systems are human.

5.1 Content-Specification and Evaluation of ESPs

199

as performed by standard instantiations of English sentences of the form “S believes that p”. Some of these locutions may be purely descriptive (perhaps “S believes that p” is a case in point), some may be evaluative or normative (“S’s belief is epistemically justified”), and some may combine descriptive and evaluative components (“S knows that p”). Evaluative and normative locutions can be used descriptively (as when agents try to explain and predict other agents’ behaviour) or normatively (as when agents assess, criticise or help others). The attributor’s descriptive challenge derives from the goal of explaining and predicting attributees’ behaviour, which is constitutive of Dennett’s intentional stance. The main epistemological question here concerns the conceptual tools that the attributor has available, or ought to have available, to explain and predict the attributee’s behaviour. To enquire into the attributor’s normative challenge is to ask how she does, and how she ought to, determine what intentional ESPs are good, suitable or correct for the attributee to have. As with the epistemological inquiry into attributions of ESPs, their evaluations, too, are examined with a focus on the conceptual means that allow for explicit epistemic normative and evaluative statements. Applying our familiar combinations of descriptive/ normative epistemological ambitions and the descriptive/normative attributor’s attitudes to conceptual practices, we get the following matrix: (i) descriptive epistemological interest, descriptive attributor’s attitude: By which conceptual means do intentional and concept-using agents (e. g. speakers of English) actually attribute or identify intentional ESPs in the context of describing, explaining, understanding and predicting their own, and other agents’, behaviour? (ii) descriptive epistemological interest, normative/evaluative attributor’s attitude: By which epistemic standards and conceptual means do intentional and concept-using agents (e. g. speakers of English) pass evaluative and normative judgements on attributees’ intentional ESPs? (iii) normative epistemological interest, descriptive attributor’s attitude: By which conceptual means should intentional and concept-using agents (e. g. speakers of English) attribute or identify intentional ESPs in the context of describing, explaining, understanding and predicting their own, and other agents’, behaviour? (iv) normative epistemological interest, normative/evaluative attributor’s attitude: By which epistemic standards and conceptual means should intentional and concept-using agents (e. g. speakers of English) pass evaluative and normative judgements on attributees’ intentional ESPs?

200

5 Epistemic Evaluations and Concepts

Evaluating Intentional ESPs Epistemological functionalism (chapter 3) depends on the possibility of identifying the contribution that ESPs make to the overall performance of the system to which they are ascribed. Teleological ESPs contribute to the system doing what they are designed, or have been selected, for, and social-normative ESPs contribute to the ways communities cope with their environment. These overall purposes allow for epistemological evaluations of such systems; we can judge them to be epistemically well or poorly designed. So far, no such overall purposes were discussed in the case of communities of higher-order intentional agents, who attribute and evaluate conceptually articulated ESPs to each other. Even though the definitions of intentional ESPs invoke some agent’s ability to explain and predict some other agent’s actions (by adopting the intentional stance), this ability need not constitute the only purpose behind mutual attribution and evaluation of ESPs. In fact, as I shall argue below, most attempts to account for epistemic concepts in functional terms do not base these accounts on the role of epistemic states in intentional explanations, but rather on their information value. Epistemology’s normative ambitions, as they have been emphasised throughout this book, require the identification of some purpose or functionality behind attributions and evaluations of epistemic states. The refurbishment strategy cannot succeed without such overarching purposes, goals or values, because we need something with respect to which we can compare and evaluate epistemic concepts. We need something that is responsible for constraints on, and criteria of success for, the practice of attributing and evaluating ESPs within communities. The question of such background purposes must be asked on the level of the epistemic community as a whole, allowing for communal purposes to inform the practice of attributing and evaluating ESPs. Firstly, the epistemologist must not tacitly identify with the attributor. The specific purposes behind the attribution and evaluation of ESPs make it tempting to (misleadingly) see the attributor as a disinterested, objective theoretician facing an individual intentional agent. However, not many attributors are objectively minded social scientists. They are part of the practice, interested in cooperation and perhaps manipulation. Secondly, the successful adoption of the intentional stance, despite providing our definition of intentional ESPs, need not be the only standard for evaluating these ESPs. Recall from the discussion of design-responses and purposeresponses above that the very same (teleological) ESP can be evaluated with respect to different systems of norms.

5.1 Content-Specification and Evaluation of ESPs

201

Background Purposes: Information Management and People Management The pragmatist moves within epistemology discussed in chapter 1 draw attention to the use, function or purpose of epistemic locutions and/or concepts. Specifications of the use, function or purpose of knowledge attributions tend to invoke our interest in “flag[ging] informants” (Craig 1990). The explanatory goals of Bernard Williams’ genealogy of truthfulness (2002) differ from those of Craig’s conceptual synthesis, yet both share the premise that the use of knowledge-attributions relates to what we could call information management. The strategy to account for knowledge in terms of information managment is partially captured by the saying that “four eyes see more than two”, sometimes in combination with the thought that public argumentative discourse improves the community’s overall epistemic situation by allowing for information from different sources to become available as premises. It is undoubtedly desirable for a community to efficiently divide its perceptual, or more generally epistemic, labour. People work and live in different places, have different perceptual strengths and weaknesses, sleep at different times, and differ in their expertise on various topics. Communication is generally helpful, and the pragmatist developments and the tendencies towards social epistemology outlined in chapter 1 go some way towards explaining why testimony as a source of knowledge has been getting so much attention recently (Coady 1992; Lackey and Sosa 2006; Lackey 2008). But information management is not all there is to attributions of ESPs. According to the set-up in chapter 3, intentional ESPs are defined by means of their contribution to the intentional stance. Thus, the defining function of intentional ESPs is not based on their information value, but on their role in predicting and explaining the behaviour of intentional systems. This is how Kornblith puts it: [The] possibility of extracting information from the remarks of others is dependent upon the role of belief in explaining behavior. It is only because people so frequently assert claims that they believe, and that the claims that they believe are so often true, that assertion may play a role in transmitting information from one individual to another. But understanding assertion as a product of underlying belief, under certain conditions, is merely a special case of understanding action as a product of beliefs and desires. The possibility of transmitting information is thus not the sole purpose of belief attribution, nor is it the most fundamental. (Kornblith 2002: 79)

The point can be illustrated with our concept of knowledge. The fact that my friend knows that the bus departs at 5:02 pm can serve as the basis of both an explanation of his running down the stairs and my belief that the bus departs

202

5 Epistemic Evaluations and Concepts

at 5:02 pm. When dealing with other people, we rely on both their co-operation and information. The attribution of ESPs plays an important role in tasks and challenges resulting from both. Call the range of demands and restrictions on the attribution of ESPs that results from predicting and explaining each other’s behaviour “people management”. It is important to be clear about the status of my claim that information management and people management are two clusters of overall purposes that help explaining and assessing the practice of evaluating (by conceptual means) conceptually articulated ESPs. Chapter 3 developed a definition of ESPs in the form of a disjunction of three sufficient conditions: ESPs are teleological, social-normative or intentional ESPs, and nothing except these three species counts as ESPs. Whether something is a teleological, social-normative or intentional ESP is decided on the basis of its role in describing and explaining things (including our fellow human beings). Consequently, the basis for describing something as an ESP is a generalisation (to artefacts, organisms, practices) of what has now been labelled “people management”. The category of ESP, however, as well as its three subspecies, is only formally defined; nothing has been said about the concepts suitable to attribute ESPs, and moreover, nothing has been said about the point and purpose of evaluating such ESPs. This is where, in the context of higher-order intentional systems such as ourselves, the ESPs information value enters alongside their predictive and explanatory role. For the performances or states of some intentional system to count as an ESP as defined in chapter 3, they need not have information value for others; but when it comes to identifying the content of specific (kinds of) intentional ESPs, and when we critically discuss their evaluation, then their information value is relevant. Conceptual ESPs are closely related to the assertions that express them, and assertions serve (among other things) to pass on information. Our framework allows for an entirely new angle on conceptually articulated ESPs such as beliefs and knowledge. Recall that we started our definitions of ESPs in section 3.2 by looking at states that counted as ESPs in virtue of being treated as such by intentional systems. The height of Jacob’s mercury sample, for example, counts as an epistemic state because Jacob uses it in order to determine the room temperature. The relevant system that allows for describing mercury samples as being in epistemic states consists of the sample plus its observer, Jacob. Similar considerations can now be brought to bear on the conceptually articulated epistemic states of intentional agents. Nothing prevents the very same state (e. g. what is identified by means of belief and knowledge attributions) from counting as an epistemic state in relation to two kinds of system, i. e. the individual agent (in so far as the state is used to explain and predict her intentional ac-

5.1 Content-Specification and Evaluation of ESPs

203

tions) and the practice in which the agent participates (in so far as the state functions as a piece of information available for communal sharing and public criticism). This could result in different functional constraints on the concept used for the attribution and evaluation of the relevant epistemic state, which in turn could help explain troubling features of our own epistemic concepts. The thesis that information management and people management serve as twin sources of criteria of adequacy for epistemic evaluation ought to be primarily measured against its explanatory value. The thesis is epistemological, not meta-epistemological in nature, and hence not strictly part of the present meta-epistemological framework. The hope is that we are well placed to understand our actual evaluations of conceptual ESPs such as beliefs by assuming that the point in the evaluations lies, on the one hand, in their role in our capacity to act according to our goals, and in our ability to explain and predict fellow human beings’ actions; and, on the other hand, in the way such attributions facilitate the distribution and quality control of information throughout communities. Epistemology’s normative ambitions then allow for asking whether the attributions and evaluations are suitable with respect to people management and information management as background purposes.

Specifying the Content of Conceptual ESPs: Assertion The content of teleological and social-normative ESPs such as the on/off state of an automatic door’s sensor is relative to the explanatory role of such ESPs. The door responds differentially to customers, for example, because this is what it is designed for; it differentially responds to human-sized moving objects, or even just to non-transparent objects interrupting the infrared beam, because this is what its actual design makes it do. Intentional ESPs such as beliefs cannot be individuated and given content on the basis of some design. Instead of enabling the system of which they are part to perform a specific set of functions, they contribute to successful action in general. Jim’s belief that the bus departs at 5:02 pm enables him to reach his goal (if the belief is true). It thus look as if we could specify the content of intentional ESPs in parallel to non-intentional ESPs such as those of the automatic door’s sensor – with the difference that intentional ESPs would have to be considered as contributing to an open range of potential actions rather than to a fixed purpose and design. Because intentional agents have their own desires and come up with their own goals, the content of their ESPs must be specified so that it enables the agent to act according to her own desires, or reach her own goals, whatever they are.

204

5 Epistemic Evaluations and Concepts

Conceptual intentional agents, however, differ from their non-intentional counterparts not only with respect to their goal setting, but also, and significantly, in that they speak. They talk to each other. Among the great variety of things we do with language, it is the speech act of assertion that is at the heart of epistemological concerns.² Assertions are the kind of speech act that is exemplified by Sheila saying on the phone to Jim, who has just asked her out a second time, “The pizzeria Sognando Napoli is located down at the waterfront” and “but I am allergic to wheat”. They express structured propositional (conceptual) content; they are our primary vehicles for information; and they are subject to norms and evaluation (most importantly, they are true/false, justified/unjustified). Their close relation to belief and/or knowledge is often described as straightforwardly expressive: assertions express belief and/or knowledge. No theory of the content of conceptually articulated intentional ESPs can ignore these tight relations between such ESPs and the assertions that serve to express or state them. On the contrary, it is at least prima facie plausible that one and the same content is involved in (a) Sheila’s assertion “The pizzeria Sognando Napoli is located down at the waterfront”, (b) her intentional and conceptual ESP that allows her to reach her goals in relation to the pizzeria’s location, and (c) in Jim’s ascription “Sheila thinks that the Pizzeria Sognando Napoli is located down at the waterfront”. The properties of assertion mentioned above are all candidates for the explanans in theories of assertion. The question of what we do when we make an assertion, for example, could be answered with the help of the concept of belief, as in Grice (1957), who sees assertions as acts of expressing beliefs with the intention of inducing them in others. Williamson (2000) opts for a rule that makes the correctness of assertions dependent on knowledge of what is asserted. Truth-conditional accounts exploit the fact that the content expressed by assertions is truth-apt, while Michael Dummett, for his part, assembles assertibilityconditions to explain content. In the present context, we need not commit to a general theory of the pragmatics and semantics of assertion. What matters now is only the role of assertion as an epistemic performance within a community of higher-order intentional systems. Whichever way we specify intentional and conceptual ESPs, and whatever our theory of assertion, we must take into account the tight relations between ESPs and assertion. Sheila’s claim that she is allergic to wheat enables Jim,  Brandom argues that the availability of assertion is a necessary condition for there being any contentful speech acts at all (1994, 2008). We need not subscribe to such a strong thesis to be entitled to designate assertoric speech acts as explanatorily privileged from an epistemological viewpoint.

5.2 Epistemic Concepts

205

among other things, to avoid booking a pizzeria for their second date, to infer that Sheila suffers from at least one kind of allergy, and to predict that Sheila won’t order bread with her salad in the French restaurant they eventually settle for. In order to act on its normative ambitions, epistemology engages in theorising with normative purport. It claims how systems with a design ought to be built (from an epistemic viewpoint and given some overall functionality), whether social-normative systems are well organised, which intentional ESPs ought to be attributed to intentional agents, and how these ESPs are best evaluated. Normative and evaluative talk of ESPs is accounted for given in chapter 4. The content of non-conceptual ESPs can be specified with regards to their explanatory role within the system; the question of what such states, statuses or performances differentially respond to does not make sense in isolation from the system’s overall purposes and performance. I argued that full explanations of a system’s overall behaviour cite both the system’s actual design and purpose. The resulting difference in the specification of ESPs (labelled “design-response” and “purpose-response” respectively), together with the distinction between thin and thick specifications of ESPs (exemplified by “correct design-response” and “correct purpose-response”), yields structurally defined types of conceptual ESP specifications. Specifying the content of conceptually articulated ESPs requires an account of the semantics of assertion; it is tempting, albeit not obligatory, to straightforwardly identify the content expressed by assertions of “Sheila ordered a pizza” with what is attributed by ascriptions of the form “Jim believes that Sheila ordered a pizza”. More will be said about our conceptual options when accounting for the relations between assertions and ESPs in the next section.

5.2 Epistemic Concepts A few months after Jim’s encounter with an aggressive dog, Sheila calms him down in an email: “I know you think the dog is a dangerous weapon, but you just don’t know that it is. We have no evidence it is the kind of killing machine you take it to be. In fact, I don’t believe it is.” Sheila’s email is laden with epistemic terminology: “knowing that…”, “thinking that…”, “having evidence for…” and “believing that…”. We now turn to such epistemic terms and concepts, both those actually used in everyday English and non-existent, artificial ones, potentially to be engineered as answering to the demands of our epistemic practice.

206

5 Epistemic Evaluations and Concepts

Thin and Thick Epistemic Concepts Bernard Williams introduced “thick” and “thin” as names for different kinds of normative or evaluative concepts in his 1985 Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. As Williams acknowledges, the distinction had already been discussed by Philippa Foot, Iris Murdoch and John McDowell; the labels themselves seem to originate in Clifford Geertz’ (1973) work on “thick descriptions”, which in turn were inspired by Gilbert Ryle. Foot’s (1958) original distinction – not yet labelled “thick” vs. “thin” – serves the purpose of blocking a specific argument against inferring normative or evaluative statements from descriptive ones. According to Foot’s analysis, the word “rude”, for example, has both descriptive conditions of application (behaviour counts as rude only if it causes offence by indicating lack of respect) and an evaluative dimension. It is not just that one should not be rude, other things being equal, and that it is generally a bad thing to be rude. To call some behaviour “rude” is, in part, to evaluate it (Foot 1958: 507). Foot’s discussion of terms such as “rude” became characteristic of what Williams dubbed “thick ethical concepts” (1985: 129, 140 – 1). He makes thick ethical concepts a cornerstone of a general argument that is closely related to the aims of the present investigation. Much recent work in meta-ethics, Williams claims, is linguistic in nature, engaged in the analysis of moral discourse (Williams 1985: ch. 7). The chief methodology of such work is conceptual analysis, and its driving force is the hope to gain clarity by replacing allegedly confused thick ethical concepts by purely descriptive language on the one hand, and highly general and abstract “thin” ethical locutions on the other. Basically, such work assumes that all normative and evaluative content expressed by thick ethical concepts can be expressed by the use of “ought” alone. Williams and others do not think that such “disentanglement” is possible. Catherine Elgin, for example, speaks of a “fusion of descriptive and normative elements” that does not allow for “factor analysis” (2008: 372– 3). Despite obvious parallels between (meta‐) ethics and (meta‐) epistemology (section 2.1), there has been very little discussion of thick epistemic concepts. Aside from a few scattered papers, a 2008 special issue of Philosophical Papers on “Thick and Thin Concepts in Epistemology” stands out. Most papers in this collection turn on the identification and endorsement of Williams’ concerns about centralism in ethics, and specifically on considerations favouring virtue epistemology. In analogy with virtue ethics, which makes a case for “thickening” ethics, epistemology ought to consider opposition to “thin deontological epistemology” as a genuine option (Axtell and Carter 2008; Battaly 2008; Thomas 2008).

5.2 Epistemic Concepts

207

In line with this goal, recent work on thick and thin epistemic concepts tends to see epistemic virtue concepts such as “open-mindedness” and “intellectual courage” as paradigmatically thick. Because these virtues are contrasted with traditional epistemology, “knowledge” and “epistemic justification” are typically described as “thin”. To “thicken” epistemology, on this approach, is to embrace virtue epistemology and to reject the centralism surrounding the concept of knowledge. What is much less clear, however, is why “knowledge” and “epistemic justification” tend to be seen as thin epistemic notions (Battaly 2008: 435; Siegel 2008: 465; Thomas 2008: 365; Väyrynen 2008: 391). While the rhetoric and perhaps strategic point of this nomenclature may be granted (i. e. to describe the move towards virtue epistemology as “thickening” one’s key epistemic concepts), it is hard to see how “knowledge” and “epistemic justification” can be labelled “thin” if one takes “thick” and “thin” still to label Foot’s and Williams’ original distinction. I propose to extend the domain of the thick/thin distinction to any concept that, if featuring as the predicate in an assertoric statement, entails norms or evaluations. Foot’s original example, “rude”, qualifies as thick-or-thin (in this case as thick, of course) no matter whether it is construed as a moral concept or a concept of etiquette. This is a claim about entailment; it does not presuppose the possibility of disentangling analysability. The norms or evaluations entailed by thick-or-thin concepts need not be of the basic conditional variety discussed so far in this chapter – or at least not straightforwardly so. Thick concepts can have complex structure, and their inferential links to claims about what behaviour ought to ensue can be intricate. While thin concepts entail norms or evaluations only, thick concepts entail descriptive content too. So, “epistemic correctness” is a thin concept, because if something is epistemically correct, then it is epistemically correct, and no descriptive content is entailed (an instance of what medieval logic called the “stuttering inference”). “Open-mindedness” is a thick concept, because if somebody is open-minded, then she is not only disposed to do and believe what counts as sensible or correct from an epistemic viewpoint (the evaluative entailment), but she additionally has the tendency to consider all potential sources of evidence, no matter how much they conflict with her expectations. The inference to her having this laudable tendency amounts to the kind of descriptive entailment characteristic of thick concepts. “S knows that p”, according to our construal, is a thick concept, because such ascriptions entail both descriptive content and epistemic evaluations. Category presuppositions of concept application must be ruled out from providing a basis for descriptive entailments, if the criterion is to have any bite.

208

5 Epistemic Evaluations and Concepts

There may be a case for treating statements of the form “x is correct” as entailing “x is not a stone” (a descriptive statement), simply because stones are not candidates for being evaluated as correct or incorrect. However, drawing the boundary between descriptive entailment and category presupposition is something every theory of thick and thin concepts has to deal with, even if restricted to the moral sphere, and need not detain us here. One consequence of my proposal is that thin concepts are relative to a point of view. With the exception of normative and evaluative statements resulting from the deliberation of several viewpoints, as when scientist Sheila weighs up an epistemic obligation against a moral prohibition, the apparatus above treats viewpoints as implicit in any normative or evaluative statement. Accordingly, it is best to adjust the individuation of concepts so that “epistemic correctness” is treated as a concept different from “moral correctness”. Both are thin.

Varieties of Epistemic Concepts Suppose that a shopkeeper complains to the manufacturer of the automatic door installed in his shop on the grounds that the door has opened for an orang-utan that has just escaped from the local zoo. As part of her response, the manufacturer could appeal to a distinction between two kinds of epistemic performance, namely design-responses and purpose-responses. Thus, she could say that the door’s sensor design-responded correctly, but purpose-responded incorrectly. This manoeuvre amounts to the introduction of the terms “design-response” and “purpose-response” as epistemic concepts serving to identify different kinds of teleological ESPs. While these two concepts are of particular structural and epistemological importance, there are many other options for defining epistemic concepts. We could, for example, build into new epistemic concepts the sensor’s infrared-technology or even brand name, advertising it as “infrared-responding”, “infrared purpose-responding” or “ShopDoorTechTM infrared design-response”. Additionally it does appear to be practical (although it may be prone to conceptual confusion) to identify specific response types with their material manifestation. If ShopDoorTechTM sensors happen to involve any kind of switch from left to right whenever the infrared beam is interrupted, the engineers could prefer talk of “position left” and “position right” to careful functional characterisation. This would be harmless as long as the interlocutors are aware that the sensor’s “position left” and “position right” are the material manifestations of functional epistemic states.

5.2 Epistemic Concepts

209

Evaluations add more conceptual options to the mix. In the simplest case, we use the predicates “… is correct”, “… is good” in statements that contain the epistemic viewpoint when made explicit (they can be made fully explicit by the epistemic evaluative normal form). Technically, it would further be possible to use some of the additional evaluative concepts suggested in chapter section 4.4. Thus, viewpoint and system of norms could be stipulated to be part of the application conditions of the evaluative predicate, rendering it permissible to say that the automatic door’s sensor oughtepist to change its state if the infrared beam is interrupted, while it would be wrong to say that we oughtepist to respect each other’s property (because “oughtepist” is reserved for the epistemic viewpoint). Instead of working with a combination of non-evaluative concepts for the attribution and thin evaluative concepts (as expressed by the predicate “… is epistemically correct”) for the evaluation of ESPs, we can opt for thick evaluative concepts. The descriptive constituent of such thick concepts can be purely functional (as with “sensory failure” or “correct design-response”) or it can contain the material ingredients mentioned above (as in “correct infrared design-response”, or “successful ShopDoorTechTM purpose-response”). These concepts need not be expressed as transparently as in our examples. The expressions might be shortened or otherwise transformed, so that there are engineering contexts in which the term “a hit” is used to express the concept of a correct purpose-response. All these concepts – descriptive, evaluative, thick, purely functional, material, or mixed – are available for further definitions, carrying over their epistemic content to new concepts. In the course of many years of long working hours on automatic doors, a group of engineers may come to develop their own idiosyncratic terminology, such that (e. g.) a sensor counts as a customer spotter iff it is part of an automatic supermarket door and is designed to indicate approaching customers; it is a confused customer spotter iff it is a customer spotter and its ESPs tend to be neither correct purpose-responses nor correct design-responses. A keen customer spotter tends to perform correct design-responses but incorrect purpose-responses (it is badly designed), while an expert customer spotter reliably indicates approaching customers. Yet again, the applicability of all of these functional and evaluative concepts can always be restricted by adding material application conditions to their definitions. Like “correct” and “ought”, any such epistemic vocabulary can be put to the various uses distinguished in chapter 4. Attributors can (constatively) describe something as a customer spotter or simply a sensor; we can explain some sensor’s switch from the “off” to the “on” position by claiming that this switch amounts to a correct design- or/and purpose-response; and we can analyse

210

5 Epistemic Evaluations and Concepts

the concept “expert customer spotter” by means of the concept “correct purposeresponse”. If the made-up concepts two paragraphs back were in use, it would be possible to theorise about them along the familiar lines. Thus, we could take (i) a descriptive interest in the conceptual means by which the sensor’s states (one kind of teleological ESPs) are identified; or we could take an interest (ii) in the evaluative concepts that serve to assess their performance. Such research could proceed by following the epistemic vocabulary approach (section 1.1), thereby trying to determine the content of expressions such as “keen customer spotter”; alternatively, it could proceed by attempting to identify implicit attributions and evaluations of teleological ESPs on the basis of a functional analysis of the practice (the “epistemic phenomena approach”). If epistemological theorising acts on its normative ambitions, it examines the suitability of concepts such as “customer spotter’, in so far as they are used to (iii) attribute and (iv) evaluate ESPs.

Epistemic Concepts and Conceptual Epistemic States Our version of epistemological functionalism guarantees the availability of both the epistemic vocabulary and the epistemic phenomena approach in the case of sapient target systems (attributees). The functional definition of intentional ESPs allows for the identification of attributions and evaluations of intentional and conceptual ESPs without having to subscribe to the translatability of the ascriptions used within the explanatory target practice. Additionally the conceptual options outlined above help us to both (descriptively) explain and (normatively) assess conceptual epistemic practices. Recall the specifics of conceptual epistemic practices (as opposed to nonconceptual epistemic systems and practices) as they have been outlined in the course of this book. Both attributor and attributee are intentional, concept-mongering agents; the attribution and evaluation of ESPs proceeds by conceptual means. Although such attributions serve to predict and explain other agents’ behaviour, the fact that conceptual agents express their ESPs by making assertions is a game-changing feature of conceptual practice. The content of ESPs is tied up with the semantic content expressed by assertoric speech acts. If this is correct, though, the communicative function of assertions indicate that the evaluation of conceptual ESPs is not fully explained by their role in explaining and predicting each others’ behaviour. At least prima facie we are judging the value of some claim as potential information when assessing it as wrong or unjustified.

5.2 Epistemic Concepts

211

As in the case of a system with a design (e. g. an automatic door), this setting can be used to discuss some elementary structural features of the concepts suitable for the specification of conceptual and intentional ESPs. Because we are not engaged in conceptual analysis or explication, we must be careful to avoid the concepts of belief and knowledge in this exercise in conceptual engineering. For the purposes of such engineering, let the verb “to CESP” express the conceptual ESP as discussed in the context of its use. A minimal notion of CESPs (conceptual ESPs) results from their (a) explanatory and predictive function in intentional explanations, and (b) their tight relation to the semantic content expressed by assertions (if some agent S sincerely asserts that p, then she CESPs that p). Enriching this minimal notion involves a host of decisions. Take issues of closure: is CESP closed under entailment, i. e. if some agent S CESPs that p, and if p entails q, does S CESP that q? Should CESP be closed under entailment? What kinds of consideration would decide this question? Recall that the intuitions that usually serve as decisive considerations are not available here, because we have no intuitions with regards to the attribution of CESPs. The question of closure would have to be decided on exclusively functional grounds. Another important question concerns responsibility and control. Sapient agents hold each other responsible for their actions and assertions; we must be able to justify what we do and say. Is this responsibility fruitfully extended to CESPs? It seems that the need for such responsibility does not arise in the context of CESPs explanatory and predictive function. However, as was hinted at earlier (and will be discussed in what follows), assertions at least appear to put forward CESPs as information to fellow sapient agents, and this is where the appeal of personal responsibility lies. But does responsibility require control and awareness, so that nothing would count as an CESP unless the attributee had freely adopted it and was fully aware of its presence? There are rich and fruitful discussions of these questions as applying to our notion of belief (e. g. Owens 2000), but our functional angle allows for an entirely different take on the issue. Instead of asking whether we are responsible for, and in control of, our beliefs, we now investigate the more general question of the functional significance of personal responsibility for, and control over, ESPs in general. Here is one way to express the sentiment behind the change of tactics: “No matter what beliefs are and what we do when we attribute them, it is undeniably an effective communal strategy to distribute the responsibility for the community’s knowledge among all agents.” The addition of evaluative concepts opens up a new range of options. Attributors could take to using a generic “correct” from an epistemic viewpoint; or they could define viewpoint-specific evaluations, e. g. “epistemically correct”,

212

5 Epistemic Evaluations and Concepts

“correctepist”, or a new predicate defined in terms of epistemic correctness. There is no need to stick to one epistemic evaluative predicate. Perhaps several are needed, serving specific needs in relation to purposes of information management and people management. The epistemic conceptual toolbox can neatly separate (thin) evaluative predicates from non-evaluative CESP concepts; it also contains thick evaluative concepts that serve to attribute epistemically evaluated CESPs. A further engineering decision pertains to the absolute or relative character of predicates of epistemic evaluation. The applicability of relative evaluative or normative predicates depends on a set of norms, goals or standards serving as the predicate’s reference frame. This implies that it need not be contradictory to claim that some given CESP is both epistemically correct and incorrect, for it could be epistemically correct relative to one reference frame and incorrect relative to another. Analogously, epistemic evaluations can be stipulated as contextual, so that the attributor’s context determines their applicability to the attributee. Drawing from the discussion of epistemological contextualism, we can even consider Hawthorne’s (2004) subject-sensitive invariantism and MacFarlane’s (2005) assessment relativism as design options for our epistemic vocabulary. Although such a discussion of contemporary relativism and contextualism within the framework of epistemological functionalism is essential and fruitful, one major difference between the proposal outlined in this work and existing discussions in conventional analytic epistemology remains, namely that our meta-epistemological assumptions ban direct appeals to intuitions regarding existing epistemic concepts. What are potential criteria for deciding whether a conceptual epistemic practice is well served by relative or absolute, contextual or invariant, thin or thick evaluations? How do we decide whether sapient agents within an epistemic practice are well advised to attribute CESPs for which the attributees are responsible and in control of? Throughout this and the previous chapter I have emphasised that we cannot, from an epistemological perspective, explain or evaluate an attributor’s epistemic evaluations without specifying some background purposes. We need to discuss what epistemic evaluations within the target system are for in order to decide whether the conceptual means used to make these evaluations are well chosen. Hence the conceptual means to attribute and evaluate conceptually articulated ESPs cannot be critically discussed unless we are clear about the factors that allow for the identification of background purposes.

5.3 Assertion, Belief and Knowledge

213

5.3 Assertion, Belief and Knowledge Even though epistemology, according to the conception defended here, is a descriptive and normative theory of ESPs in general, epistemologists tend to concentrate on our own ESPs. These are commonly conceived of as mental states, attributed by means of propositional attitude ascriptions. Although on the street and in the pub we do not often hear locutions of the form “S believes that p”, the concept of belief has long been accepted as the main tool for the attribution of non-evaluated ESPs to ourselves and our fellow human beings. Knowledge, of course, accompanies belief as its evaluated counterpart.

Williamson on Belief and Knowledge In section 5.2 I suggested that our actual epistemic standards might be best explained by accepting information management and people management as two clusters of background purposes. This proposal differs from existing use-oriented explanations of knowledge not only because it bypasses “knowledge”, and indeed all our actual epistemic concepts, but also because it approaches the identification of ESPs in terms of both their explanatory and predictive roles (as relevant in people management), on the one hand, and their role in our sharing of information (as in information management), on the other. It uses explanatory and predictive functions for formally defining ESPs, while acknowledging that information management considerations may be indispensable for a full explanation of our intuitions regarding the application conditions of sentence types instantiating “S beliefs that p” and “S knows that p”. If the thesis is correct, then the conceptual means by which higher-order intentional systems such as ourselves attribute ESPs have been forged under two different kinds of hammer. One reason it may be denied that our intuitions regarding the application conditions of epistemic concepts are shaped by their double duty in the context of information management and people management lies in an assumed division of labour between “knowledge” and “belief”. According to a traditional combination of belief-desire explanations of action with JTB-accounts of knowledge, beliefs are attributed to explain and predict intentional action. Additionally, these beliefs can be exploited for information purposes if considered true and justified, thereby qualifying as knowledge. Some potential informant’s belief that p is not sufficient for me to add p to my own body of beliefs. The informant’s knowledge is sufficient, on the other hand, but it is unsuitable to explain her actions because its in-built truth makes the correctness of the attribution dependent on the external world, which is potentially inaccessible to the attributee.

214

5 Epistemic Evaluations and Concepts

Our actual use of “S believes that p” and “S knows that p” fails to constitute direct evidence for such a division of labour. Of course we do use knowledge-ascriptions to flag informants, as when Jim sends Sheila an email asking a question about chemistry because she knows all about chemistry. But people use belief-ascriptions for the same purpose. Thus, “Sheila believes that Einsteinium has atomic number 99, and since she’s got a PhD in chemistry and generally is the cleverest person I know, this has got to be right. Einsteinium has atomic number 99.” Similarly for people management, where in addition to describing agents as “believing things” or “thinking that something is the case” we often make explanatory use of “knowledge”. Thus, Jim’s workmate might console him the day after being stood up by Sheila by saying: “She systematically fails to turn up for first dates, because she knows that only men who are serious about her will ask her out again.” Not only is there surprisingly little direct evidence for anything like a neat division of labour between “knowledge” (as used in information management) and “belief” (for purposes of people management), but there are theoretical reasons against such a traditional picture of the nature of, and the relations between, knowledge and beliefs. As Williamson argues in Knowledge and its Limits (2000), we tend to subscribe to the traditional model because we assume that belief, but not knowledge, is transparent and purely mental (i. e. in the attributor’s head). The idea that belief, but not knowledge is a mental state because mental states are transparent (in the sense that attributees must be in a position to know whether they are in these mental states; Williamson 2000: 24) is mistaken because mental states often fail to be transparent. Loving is a mental state, yet Jim’s realisation that he has a crush on Sheila dawns on him only gradually. There is a stretch of time, as Jim admits to himself, during which he was in love with Sheila without being aware of it. Williamson suggests that not even beliefs are transparent; Jim may have been in no position to determine whether he believed that Sheila would agree to go for dinner with him, or whether he merely fancied the thought. Before his actual decision settled the case in favour of belief, the question hinged on dispositions to act (and hence on counterfactual considerations) that could have been inaccessible to Jim (Williamson 2000: 24). But if transparency or “luminosity” considerations, as Williamson calls them (2000: ch. 4), do not support the traditional conception of belief and knowledge, it can perhaps be argued that beliefs, but not knowledge, are in the attributee’s head. We give explanations of action after all, and it is tempting to think that causal explanations of such actions should not invoke properties that transcend the agent’s internal physical states in the way truth does. Whether somebody has a particular belief can be decided on the basis of her internal states and what-

5.3 Assertion, Belief and Knowledge

215

ever supervenes on those states. If we want to determine whether somebody knows something we have to check the external world too. This attempt to defend the traditional division of labour is committed to semantic internalism or anti-individualism, i. e. the view that the content of our mental states (what we actually believe, for example) must be determined by our physical states (Brown 2004). Externalists deny this, holding that the content of agents’ mental states is partly determined by their environment. If externalism about mental content is correct (and there is good evidence that it is a correct account for most attributions of content in natural languages; Williamson 2000: 53), then we lose another potential argument for the traditional division of labour between “belief” and “knowledge”. Attributions of both knowledge and belief depend on the state of the attributee’s environment (Williamson 2000: ch. 2). None of this is to say that there are no semantic and pragmatic differences between ascriptions of belief and ascriptions of knowledge; of course there are. However, natural language use does not back up the traditional way of dealing with the double pressure exerted by people management and information management functionality by assigning “belief” to do duty in the former context and “knowledge” in the latter. Nor do (a) transparency and (b) internalism about mental content, which both serve as prima facie reasons for it, withstand scrutiny.

Assertion and Intentional ESPs: Beliefs vs. Assertional Commitments The intentional stance allows for inferring an agent’s ESPs from her actions and knowledge of her goals (people management). These ESPs can then be used as information (information management), as when the good people of Königsberg set their clocks according to Immanuel Kant’s postprandial strolls. Reversing the explanatory direction, it is possible to use what has been put forward as information (information management) to predict and explain the informer’s behaviour (people management). Medieval sentry Sam from chapter 3, now described as an intentional agent, is unlikely to get undressed and go to bed after blowing the signal horn indicating the approach of an enemy army. The simplest scenario in which to describe the people and information management double function amounts to exploiting intentional ESPs as information and to use information as intentional ESPs. Perhaps such a scenario is even possible with non-linguistic creatures. If we decide that in some cases it is appropriate to adopt the higher-order intentional stance towards non-linguistic animals, thus treating them as adopting the intentional stance themselves (something Dennett is sceptical about), it is conceivable that intelligent animals utilise

216

5 Epistemic Evaluations and Concepts

ESPs for purposes of both people management and information management. This would require not much more than perceiving the behaviour of other animals as goal-directed (i. e. intentional) in order to find out about their information (e. g. about the location of food or threats), and their behaviour (on the basis of the information they are likely to have). In the case of sapient agents, however, the speech act of assertion plays an important role within the practice of attributing and evaluating ESPs. In addition to what we could call “default attributions” of ESPs and the inferences from intentional actions mentioned above, assertions are an important basis for determining the epistemic states or statuses of linguistic intentional agents. As an illustration of both descriptive and normative work on the question of the function and content of ESPs, and also as evidence for the wide scope of my meta-explanatory framework, consider the contrast between (a) a traditional combination of representationalism, belief-desire psychology and JTB-based analysis of knowledge; (b) Williamson’s prime role for knowledge; and (c) Brandom’s notion of assertional commitments. All three positions will be briefly discussed with respect to how they determine the nature of ESPs, their theory of assertion, and how they account for people management and information management purposes. (a) Traditional representationalists assimilate the mind of human beings to a computer by conceiving of the act of acquiring a new belief to the storing of a token with representational properties (a symbol) in memory. Belief is roughly the mental state of having such a symbol stored. This mental state is generally taken to be identical to, or to supervene on, physical events within the believer’s brain. Such an account of belief can serve, as it does in Fodor (1987), as the basis for what chapter 2 called “content explanatory representationalism”. According to content explanatory representationalism, the term “belief” as used in belief attributions is a natural kind term. It is standard to think of the extension of a natural kind term as fixed, not by its intension (its meaning, as it is accessible to speakers), but by demonstratively referring to a sample, thereby attaching the natural kind term as a label for it and items or stuff of the same kind (Putnam 1973, 1975; Kripke 1972). To learn a natural kind term, according to this conception, is to link up, with the help of a chain of speakers, to an original sample, to which the term’s extension is then owed. Thanks to this causal chain, speakers can be competent users of such terms without being in any position to define them (just like they can be competent users of proper names without being able to define them). The construal of “belief” as a natural kind term ensures that we can competently use the term (knowing what it means), while seeing ourselves as engaged in empirical research into the nature of beliefs. Specific beliefs (e. g. the belief that snails are rich in protein) are identified or even discovered more often than they are attributed (allowing, of course, that we sometimes

5.3 Assertion, Belief and Knowledge

217

misidentify or wrongly think we have discovered them). According to this picture, both intentional actions and assertions relate to beliefs as evidence. ³ Beliefs, according to the representationalist construal, are suitable for people management considerations, because they can be assigned causal roles in the explanation of behaviour. Beliefs are not suitable, however, for information management purposes; epistemic agents make mistakes. They sometimes store a token representing p when p is not the case. Consequently, the concept of knowledge is preferable for information management purposes. Knowledge, according to JTB-based conceptions, is just belief with added positive evaluations, ensuring that it is factive, i. e. that if it is true that S knows that p, then p is true. (b) Williamson opposes the traditional view by insisting on the “primeness” of knowledge (2000: ch. 11). Knowledge is still a mental state, its built-in evaluation as true notwithstanding. Assertions are governed by a rule that makes their correctness dependent on the asserter’s knowledge of what is asserted. The “knowledge rule”, as Williamson calls it, is a constitutive norm for the speech act of assertion; it says that one must “assert p only if one knows that p” (Williamson 2000: 243). Because knowledge is factive (attributors can deduce p from the attributee’s knowledge that p), it is suitable for information management. Williamson also argues that when it comes to explanations of action, knowledge is of greater value than belief: factive ESPs in the explanans, he points out, raise the probability of the explanandum more than non-factive ones (Williamson 2000: 61– 2). (c) An alternative view of ESPs has been put forward by Robert Brandom (1994, 2000). Because Brandom’s theory was primarily presented as a non-representationalist (i. e. inferentialist) account of semantic content, it has not got much attention as a different take on the nature of ESPs (of the kind of states or statuses that do the epistemic work beliefs are generally seen as doing). The leading idea is that normative statuses, not mental states, serve as intentional and conceptual ESPs (and as primary bearers of semantic content). Brandom turns the traditional explanatory order on its head, using norms governing assertions to explain their pragmatic and semantic significance, much like the rules of chess explain the significance of every move. The norm that carries most weight in this account is a specific conditional obligation. To make an assertion, according to Brandom, is to undertake the conditional obligation to justify the

 This account of beliefs is not compatible with Dennett’s general stance-strategy as adopted to account for beliefs. However, as emphasised throughout chapter 3, the strategy was never adopted to account for beliefs. For something to be an intentional ESP is for it to play a certain role in intentional explanations; the identification of beliefs can be one way to link such explanatory ESPs with the psychological and physical make-up of the kind of intentional agent that we are.

218

5 Epistemic Evaluations and Concepts

claim made if challenged. By asserting that snails are high in protein, Jim accepts a conditional obligation to say why this is so, should Sheila ask him for an explanation. Brandom calls this conditional obligation “assertional” or “discursive commitment” (1994). Assertional commitments function as ESPs, just like beliefs-asmental-representations do in the rival account. Where the representationalist sees belief-attribution as the attempt to identify mental states on the basis of assertions and intentional actions as evidence, however, we now have a much tighter connection between assertional commitments and assertions. Intentional actions may serve as evidence for somebody’s assertional commitments, but the relations between assertions and assertional commitments are much tighter. In fact, they are as tight as the relation between acts of scoring goals in football and the fact that goals have been scored. The suitability of assertional commitments for people management purposes is ensured by treating intentional action as the acknowledgement of a practical commitment (Brandom 1994: section 4.5). Practical commitments (Jim’s “I shall order coffee now”) stand in material inferential relations to assertional commitments (“… because ordering coffee is the only way this date with Sheila can be prolonged”). For information management purposes, Brandom sketches a “hybrid” normative status that relates to assertional commitments very much like knowledge relates to belief according to JTB analysis. For somebody to know that p, according to this theory, is for her to have an assertional commitment to p (B) that she is entitled to have (J), and that the attributor acknowledges himself (T) (Brandom 1994: 202). In other words, attributors of knowledge do not only attribute an ESP (assertional commitments), but simultaneously acknowledge them too.

Belief as a Conceptually Articulated ESP The package of representationalism about mental content, belief-desire psychology and traditional JTB analysis of knowledge accounts for the background purposes of predicting and explaining behaviour (people management) by means of a mental state (belief); it also lets the mental state and its evaluations do information management duty (belief plus truth plus justification). Williamson denies that belief is conceptually primary; he defends the view that knowledge, too, is a mental state, and suggests that knowledge is perfectly suitable for people management. Going in a different direction entirely, Brandom proposes to do without mental states and to explain assertoric practice by means of normative statuses.

5.3 Assertion, Belief and Knowledge

219

Because these three accounts address different questions and serve different purposes, they cannot be straightforwardly compared. However, it does emerge that despite the different takes on the metaphysics of the relevant ESP (its nature as a physical state, mental state or normative status), there is general agreement that at the heart of our epistemic practice is the attribution and evaluation of an epistemic state or status that (i) has semantic content (which is intimately related to the semantic content expressed by assertions); (ii) has propositional (subjectpredicate) structure; (iii) is evaluated in various ways (true or false; justified or unjustified); (iv) stands in inferential relations to other specimens of its kind; and (v) contrasts with acts of merely entertaining a thought or proposition (in that being in the state or having the status implies some commitment to its truth). Other properties seem open to negotiation in the light of the background purposes of information management and people management, and our intuitions regarding such properties of the ESP are quite flexible. Whatever is attributed by means of belief-ascriptions, for example, seems to have features of performances or actions, because we can be held responsible for our beliefs. Its phenomenology, however, resembles the phenomenology of mental states or dispositions. Finally, beliefs, like normative statuses, can perhaps be acquired willynilly, in virtue of semantic norms determining the content of our assertions. Epistemology ought to be interested in explaining these properties, which is what I have in mind when postulating information management and people management as background purposes allowing for functional assessment of our attributions of ESPs. Perhaps it is a good thing to have just one concept with flexible application conditions and inferential properties do all the epistemic work, because we can always clarify if needed (“He did not strictly believe that his father threatened the bond between him and his mum; it was an unconscious thing”). Epistemological functionalism however, when combined with over-arching background purposes, also allows for critically discussing our established use of locutions of the form “S believes that p”. Even at this basic level, the revision of our epistemic ways is at least a theoretical option.

Conceptual Analysis, Explication and the Concept of Knowledge In section 1.1 I argued that attempts to define the concept of knowledge have reached a point where the methodology of conceptual analysis that they assume is no longer suitable for the job. Applying our new meta-epistemological framework to this debate allows for a range of qualifications and clarifications. Good old-fashioned conceptual analysis of knowledge is an attempt to illuminate an

220

5 Epistemic Evaluations and Concepts

epistemic practice (in this case, our own) by clarifying what attributors (including ourselves) say when they make statements of the form “S knows that p”. Now, firstly, the methodological pluralism that is part of our meta-epistemology ensures that conceptual analysis is not the only game in the epistemological town. We can attempt to clarify our own epistemic practice by analysing our concepts, but this is certainly not the only, and probably not the best means to understand our own practice (let alone to contribute to epistemology’s normative ambitions). Secondly, it is possible that there are at least some categories of concept that are not suitably addressed by means of conceptual analysis. Recall that Brandom’s (2008) analytic pragmatism distinguishes old-fashioned conceptual analysis from his own analysis, which attempts to describe what we must be able to do in order to count as applying concepts (section 1.5). Indexicals, according to Brandom, provide one category of terms that cannot be captured by means of conceptual analysis. We cannot express with a language lacking indexical vocabulary what indexicals allow us to express. We can, however, explain important aspects of their use by attempting to state what speakers must be able to do in order to count as using indexicals. Normative and evaluative terms raise related problems, and “knowledge” is typically seen as a thick concept with evaluative components. According to this line of thought, Kaplan, Craig, Alston and Weinberg are right when they urge combining or even replacing conceptual analysis of key epistemic concepts with functional and pragmatic analysis, looking into their use, function and practical significance. Such a functional and pragmatic explanation of our use of locutions of the form “S knows that p” need not aspire to say in some privileged vocabulary (the analysans) what we say when making the ascription. Thirdly, the thesis of the present chapter, namely that our epistemic evaluations respond to two kinds of background purposes, paves the way for an explanation of the diverging intuitions relating to the application of our epistemic concepts. There are two main constraints on how we go about evaluating intentional epistemic states, i. e. information management and people management, and there are substantially different views about the metaphysics of our own ESPs (roughly: beliefs, knowledge or assertional commitments). Although it would be possible, in principle, for a community to use different concepts to attribute ESPs with different properties, this does not seem to be the case in English or German. Hence we have a group of phrases (“S thinks that p”, “S believes that p”, “It is S’s opinion that p”, and in some cases “S knows that p”) that are often interchangeable and that need to be further clarified if we need to make explicit specific properties of the ESP thereby attributed. Under which relations

5.3 Assertion, Belief and Knowledge

221

are these ESPs closed? Is the agent responsible for them? Is she in control of them? Given our options for engineering new epistemic concepts (see section 5.2), the philosophical obsession with analysing or explicating the concept of knowledge may surprise us further. It is easy to change epistemic concepts so that their application is restricted to more or less specific functionality, or even to material (as opposed to functional) properties. We can effortlessly replace talk of a sensor’s design responses (where “design response” applies to every teleological ESP) with talk of its “infrared design response”. This new concept would exclude the ESPs of other types of sensors, or even “ShopDoorTechTM infrared design-response”, requiring a specific manufacturer for the concept to apply. It is conceivable that the intuitions of English and German speakers, including our own, are affected by such conditions when they are asked to decide on the applicability of “knowledge” in possible cases and with regards to different target systems (e. g. robots, animals, automatic doors).⁴ Despite these doubts, nothing in what has been said necessarily precludes conceptual analysis from doing important epistemological work. Our meta-epistemological framework is pluralist with respect to methods, and “analytical” uses of normative and evaluative statements constitute one way for epistemology to (descriptively) illuminate engaging practices. The same holds for explication, i. e. the attempt to clarify and otherwise improve existing concepts by re-defining them in the light of explicit criteria of explicatory adequacy. Explication is an important tool in the epistemological box. Contrary to conceptual analysis, it allows for acting on epistemology’s normative ambitions. However, we should not conceive of it, or of the concomitant method of equilibrium, as the only (or master) method of epistemology, because explication does carry a commitment to a version of epistemology that I have called “immanent”. I proposed to replace immanent epistemology with a combination of epistemological functionalism and optional radical refurbishment, as defended in this work.

 The fact that knowledge, if it were restricted to (say) human beings, does not wear this restriction on its linguistic sleeve, as “ShopDoorTechTM infrared design response” does (and as “human knowledge” would, for example), does not affect this possibility. This is because conceptual content does not necessarily change in sync with the expressions that serve to express it. “Googling something” may already, or soon, apply to the use of any search engine on the world wide web, and not just to the use of Google. In the UK, the verb “hoovering” covers use of all brands of vacuum cleaners, not just Hoover’s.

222

5 Epistemic Evaluations and Concepts

5.4 Consequences of the Framework Most of the twentieth-century challenges to traditional epistemology described in chapter 1 have shaped the meta-epistemological framework as developed throughout this book: Our focus on agency and practice has pragmatist roots; the wide nature of this focus, always considering epistemic communities, owes much to empirically informed social epistemology. The whole refurbishment project is partly driven by feminist worries with respect to our existing epistemic conceptual toolbox. Other developments, arguments and questions, however, both from traditional epistemology and the developments sketched in chapter 1, are not as easily incorporated into the present framework. They are discussed in what follows.

Kim vs. Quine on Naturalised Epistemology The functionalist reduction of our epistemic practice to structural properties results in a community of sapient agents that attribute and evaluate conceptually articulated ESPs for information management and people management purposes. With this model in mind, we can distinguish two ways of locating the notion of epistemic justification within epistemology. We can treat “epistemic justification” as labelling a property of agents or ESPs that serves as the condition (or perhaps one of the conditions) upon which the appropriateness of ESPs depends. Alternatively, we can understand “epistemic justification” in functional term, as applying to whatever it is that renders ESPs appropriate. Call the first use of “justification” “material” and the second “functional”. Here is the material understanding expressed in a familiar conditional normative statement: (3) If one’s belief that p is epistemically justified, then one’s belief that p is appropriate. If we agree with Kim’s claim that traditional epistemology aims at spelling out criteria for when we are entitled to adopt or maintain beliefs, then the use of epistemic justification in the antecedent of (3) – i. e. the use as putative condition or criterion – constitutes an appeal to epistemic justification in order to decide on epistemic appropriateness. We decide whether someone’s belief in p is appropriate by checking whether her belief is justified. When functionally used, the concept expressed by “epistemic justification” is roughly equivalent to epistemic appropriateness or entitlement:

5.4 Consequences of the Framework

223

(4) If conditions C1… Cn are met, one is epistemically justified in believing that p. Set up this way, the notion of justification is used without any commitments as to what epistemic justification involves (e. g. internalist or externalist views of epistemic justification). It merely indicates epistemic appropriateness or entitlement, whatever that is. We are still free to specify the content of the notion of justification (e. g. in internalist or externalist terms), but whatever precise content we assign to justification, in order to do its job (in order to perform its function within the theory) it must constitute epistemic appropriateness or entitlement. Kim’s initial formulation of the concern of traditional epistemology – “to identify the criteria by which we ought to regulate acceptance and rejection of beliefs” (Kim 1988: 381) – can now be clarified in the light of our distinction. When Kim goes on to ask “what conditions must a belief meet if we are justified in accepting it as true”, he merely equates epistemic justification with epistemic appropriateness; for a belief to be worthy of acceptance, for it to be appropriately accepted, just is for it to be epistemically justified (Kim 1988: 381). This is a functional use of the concept of justification as described above. Consequently, for purposes of generalisation, we can see traditional epistemology, according to Kim, as concerned with formulating conditional normative statements so that the conditions serve as criteria. According to Kim, the demand for conditions to be stated in descriptive, nonnormative terms does not only fail to motivate Quinean naturalisation, but in fact precludes it, because we are after criteria for deciding when we are entitled (“justified” in its functional use) to hold certain beliefs. In order to fully understand why Kim sees this task as precluding Quinean naturalisation, recall that Kim’s Cartesian epistemologist theorises with normative ambitions, i. e. aims at formulating normative and evaluative statements with normative purport. Descartes’ meditating “I”, after all, genuinely wants to find out “[what] propositions are worthy of belief” (Kim 1988: 381). The demand that the conditions of such conditional normative statements serve as criteria can then be illuminated by means of our concept of the attributee’s perspective. Thus, to find out whether some proposition is “worthy of belief” we ought to decide whether it is epistemically appropriate or “epistemically justified” in the functional sense. This can only be done if the conditional evaluative statements that specify such appropriateness make it conditional on factors that we have cognitive access to. However, judged within our meta-epistemological framework, Kim’s argument against Quine depends on a number of assumptions. I have long subscribed to Kim’s point that epistemology must not be restricted to descriptive, or more narrowly explanatory theorising. Epistemology importantly uses norms

224

5 Epistemic Evaluations and Concepts

and evaluations in ways other than just explanatory (suggestive, analytical or authoritative). It has normative ambitions. However, the search for criteria for appropriate beliefs is certainly not the only task for contemporary epistemology. We are not only interested in what we ought to believe, but also in what ESPs to attribute to others; and this may hinge, not on the belief’s epistemic worth, but simply on our interest in explaining and predicting behaviour. Quine is correct to insist on the continuity between empirical sciences such as psychology, linguistics and biology on the one hand, and philosophical epistemology on the other. Earlier in this chapter, I claimed that a full explanation of an artefact’s behaviour requires both the attribution of purpose-responses (what the artefact is designed to do) and design-responses (how it is actually designed). Human beings are the product of evolution, and their perceptual and cognitive apparatus is far from perfect. Not only does psychological research improve our performance as attributors, but also allows for its evaluation based on what our perceptual and cognitive capacities have been selected for. All of these factors may well have to be considered if (say) a male friend tells us about his suspicion that his wife cheats on him. Male sexual jealousy may have been selected for, so there might be a sense in which our friend’s belief is “correct” as some kind of design-response, even if it turns out not to be true and never has been sufficiently backed by evidence. So Quine is right in emphasising the continuity of philosophical epistemology and the empirical sciences, and he is also right that we ought to discuss and accept restrictions on epistemology’s base vocabulary. But such restrictions, even where they are naturalistically motivated, must be kept separate from the methodological question of whether philosophical epistemology should retreat to analysis, description and explanation. According to our meta-epistemology, it should not do that.

Rejecting Longino’s Rational-Social Dichotomy Social studies of science have challenged philosophically oriented epistemologists (labelling them “rationalists”), typically by presenting case studies in which social dynamics determine epistemic evaluation. The arguments based on such case studies often follow similar patterns. They establish that what at some time, in some community, was accepted as true, knowledge, epistemic justification, observation statement, evidence, etc., depended on social, political, or ideological factors. As a consequence of the way these debates were typically carried out, something like what Helen Longino calls the “rational-social dichotomy” emerged

5.4 Consequences of the Framework

225

(Longino 2002). Longino attributes this dichotomy to both sides of the warring parties, the “sociologists” and the “philosophers”. Because both parties have implicitly accepted the dichotomy, Longino argues, it has become difficult for sociologists to acknowledge the genuinely normative, truth- and objectivity-related dimension of epistemic evaluations; on the other hand, says Longino, philosophers tend to ignore the social conditions of knowledge production. The trouble is that both parties make substantive use of epistemic vocabulary. Depending on their interests, aims and methods, however, they tend to end up with different takes on epistemic evaluations. Longino makes the point with respect to the concept of knowledge (2002: 77– 89). According to her, the empirical sociological investigator starts her analysis with knowledge-producing processes or practices, while the philosopher starts from what she labels the “content-sense” of knowledge, being ultimately interested in the truth condition (Longino 2002: 84). As a consequence, researchers from these two camps tend to talk past each other when they use the term “knowledge”; they have different concepts of knowledge. What sociologists mean by the term are products of certain practices and processes that have been accepted at a given time by a given community. This is why they work with a “social” concept of knowledge. Philosophers, on the other hand, tend to stick to truth as a necessary condition of knowledge; nothing can be knowledge unless it is true. Given this “rational” take on the concept, much of what was accepted as knowledge in the past (and presumably a lot of what we accept now) has turned out to be (will turn out to be) not really knowledge. The meta-epistemological framework developed in this study allows us to join Philip Kitcher (2002) in rejecting Longino’s diagnosis in terms of anything like a rational-social dichotomy, while endorsing Longino’s insight that “sociologists” and “philosophers” have indeed tended to talk past each other because of different concepts of knowledge. These different concepts, however (and this is where Kitcher is right), have ultimately nothing to do with social considerations. Instead they are, where they are not based on prejudice and ideological disagreement, the result of different scientific interests and corresponding methodological constraints. The difficulty with identifying the roots of the disagreements is that familiar distinctions between descriptive and normative terms, concepts or statements, while pointing the purported diagnosis in the right direction, are too crude to allow for making explicit the relevant differences. Many epistemic terms and concepts are normative, however they are used. If sociologists are interested in them, then they are by definition interested in normative and evaluative terms or concepts.

226

5 Epistemic Evaluations and Concepts

If we now approach the fundamental disagreements between philosophers and sociologists of scientific knowledge from within our meta-epistemological framework, it is evident that sociological investigations describe, analyse, interpret and/or explain epistemic practices. They do not, in so far as they are empirical investigations, evaluate. This does not, of course, prevent empirical investigations from using normative vocabulary or statements. As I have gone to great lengths to show, normative terms often feature in explanations. In fact, in chapter 4 I identified explanation as one important use of normative statements, rendered here in both general and specific versions: (5) normative explanation in general: Here is an explanation of agent S’s behaviour: If conditions C1… Cn are met, then one may do A. (5’) specifically epistemically normative explanation: Here’s an explanation of agent S’s epistemic state: If conditions C1… Cn are met, then one may believe that p. Such explanatory uses of the normative and the evaluative must deal with three constraints (section 4.3). First, the explanatory norm’s or evaluation’s viewpoint ought to be known; second, the attributee’s perspective of the norm’s or evaluation’s conditions must be ensured; third, the attributee must be governed (not only bound) by the norm. These minimal conceptual tools take us some way towards explaining and justifying why empirically oriented social scientists appear to redefine the epistemologist’s concepts. “Knowledge” and “epistemic justification” are thick evaluative concepts. They can be used not only in evaluations, but also in descriptions and explanations, and hence in empirical investigations. But they can only do so if the norms can be said to govern the actions of the epistemic agents. In order to understand how the counterfactual correlation necessary for the governing-relation can hold, we must establish that the epistemic norms and standards are accessible to the agent whose behaviour we are attempting to explain. In order to ensure governance, we must avoid unqualified explanatory uses of “knowledge”, “epistemic justification”, “evidence”, etc., in relation to epistemic practices other than our own. The epistemic standards that govern the application of our own epistemic concepts may bind epistemic agency within other communities in the sense that they allow for judging them, but they are explanatorily idle. Hence they are of no interest to the empirical researcher. These considerations do not justify the retreat to revisionist and openly relativist definitions of knowledge as what is accepted within a community at a time. What the Aztecs treated as knowledge does not count as knowledge for

5.4 Consequences of the Framework

227

us; it is not knowledge. There are methodological considerations that motivate sociological and historical explanatory work on the basis of epistemic standards governing behaviour within a community other than our own. However, these considerations do not imply any relativism with respect to any such epistemic standards, for any such standards can themselves be assessed from an epistemic viewpoint and in the light of background purposes. Given that “social” owes its anti-rational overtones exclusively to its role in empirically minded research, nothing prevents us from allowing for social facts occurring as conditions in epistemic norms. The disagreements between “rationalist” philosophers and the sociologists of scientific knowledge in the second half of the twentieth century are best explained as conceptual confusions resulting from poorly reflected methodology when dealing with various uses of normative and evaluative statements and concepts. If we insist on a diagnosis of these debates, we ought to replace the rational-social dichotomy with a distinction between predominantly explanatory and genuinely normative ambitions.

Boghossian’s Attack on the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge In his 2006 refutation of relativism and social constructivism, Paul Boghossian takes Barnes and Bloor’s causality principle, as characterised in section 1.3, to entail two versions of social constructivism. Thus, if the principle holds that epistemic considerations (“exposure to the evidence”) alone never suffice to explain somebody’s beliefs, then it entails what Boghossian calls “weak constructivism about rational explanation” (2006: 112). If, on the other hand, it is taken to claim that exposure to the evidence never makes any explanatory contribution whatsoever, then “strong constructivism about rational explanation” follows. The reason Boghossian takes the Strong Program to be committed to the latter, stronger version of constructivism lies in its symmetry postulate. According to the symmetry principle, the (wholly or partly) causal explanations of knowledge must invoke “the same kind” of causes when explaining both true and false, rational and irrational beliefs. According to Boghossian’s assessment, the symmetry postulate commits Barnes and Bloor to strong constructivism only when it is meant to apply to rational and irrational beliefs; symmetry about truth is not sufficient for strong constructivism (Boghossian 2006: 114– 15). Accordingly, Boghossian sees Barnes and Bloor as committed to the view that rational and irrational beliefs must be explained by the same kind of cause, which, according to Boghossian, must be non-epistemic in order for the symmetry principle to make sense. This he then goes on to reject; firstly, because it is “impossible to see what would prevent our epistemic reasons from sometimes

228

5 Epistemic Evaluations and Concepts

causing our beliefs”; secondly, because we need a distinction between beliefs that are “appropriately grounded” and others that are to be criticised; and thirdly, because there is a danger of circularity in the strong constructivist’s position (Boghossian 2006: 117– 18). Boghossian concludes that constructivism about rational explanation is “wrong, unwarranted and unstable” (2006: 118). Our conceptual tools allow for rejecting Boghossian’s criticism by reinterpreting the symmetry principle in a way that does not imply strong constructivism. The idea behind this reinterpretation is that norms, values and standards are allowed in what sociologists label “causal” explanations, as long as certain requirements on such explanations are met. Again, we can use the constraints on explanatory uses of normative and evaluative statements from section 4.5 to spell out the symmetry principle in a way that does not preclude epistemic considerations from having any explanatory value (as Boghossian has it). According to our second constraint, the perspective on the norm’s or evaluation’s conditions must be that of the attributee. Conditions that are not accessible to the attributee, even if available for attributor-perspective assessments of her actions and states, cannot explain her behaviour. Given a suitably generous notion of “causal” (which, given the textual evidence, is what Barnes and Bloor have in mind), this constraint can be seen as a necessary condition for generously construed causality. The third of our constraints states that the system of norms or standards doing the explanatory work must be such that the attributee can plausibly be said to be governed (and not only bound) by them. Again, this can be seen as necessary for norms and standards to play causal roles. In section 4.4, I proposed counterfactual dependence as a minimum requirement for “being governed by a norm”. Thus, if a norm N is said to govern some bit of behaviour B, then, were N suitably different, B would not have happened (no behaviour, or different behaviour, would have taken place). If this take on the symmetry principle is correct, then the sociologists of scientific knowledge should not have emphasised the relativist implications of their position, as they sometimes have. Instead, they ought to have insisted on an attitudinal and methodological shift, according to which epistemology ought to engage in empirical inquiry in all possible reasons and causes, epistemic and non-epistemic, of (self‐) attributions and evaluations of epistemic states within a practice, independently of whether these attributions and evaluations are correct from our own point of view. The symmetry principle ought to be understood as a research maxim motivated by the Strong Program’s empirical results, rather than as way of barring epistemic norms and standards from doing explanatory work. Nothing about the principle, thus construed, implies strong constructivism about rational belief, even though it still makes for an important political instrument. For it can

5.4 Consequences of the Framework

229

still serve to unmask ideological content (“social interests”) in (purportedly) epistemic values, as exposed by feminist or Marxist epistemology, and by the ambition to improve our epistemic practice. The discussion of relativism about knowledge or other epistemic evaluations can then be newly framed. As pointed out earlier in this chapter, we can ask whether, given certain background purposes, it is advisable to construe epistemic evaluative predicates as being relative to some reference frame. On its own, our pragmatist set-up does not imply relativism about any epistemic concepts, neither our own nor freshly engineered ones. As we shall see in a moment, it is entirely possible that absolute epistemic evaluations are best suited to regulate our own epistemic practice in the light of certain background purposes and/or overarching values. The meta-epistemological primacy of agency and practice (see sections 1.4 and 1.5) does not imply any reductive account (definition, analysis) of truth, knowledge or epistemic justification in terms of usefulness. Nor does it imply that they are relative to a given reference frame (communities, practices, purposes).

Virtue Epistemology and the “Value Turn” in Epistemology Recent discussions under the heading of “epistemic value” generally deal with the function and authority of various kinds of epistemic evaluations, and more specifically with the value of knowledge, especially as compared with merely true belief (Haddock, Millar, Pritchard 2009: 1). I would like to briefly discuss how five aspects of these developments map into the present framework. First, the “value turn” amounts to a widening of the epistemological focus from narrow questions concerning knowledge to inquiries with wider remit concerning all kinds of epistemic evaluations. This mirrors the claims, repeated within this book, that epistemology ought to describe, socially and functionally explain and evaluate every way in which epistemic agents within a practice evaluate their own and each other’s ESP. Second, talk about “epistemic values” makes explicit that epistemology is dealing with normative and evaluative, as opposed to purely descriptive, claims. Within the present framework, we could ask for further clarification with regards to these claims: Questions regarding the value of knowledge can be construed as appropriately answerable with descriptive or normative purport, depending on our meta-epistemological conception of the status of knowledge. Third, insofar as the shift from talk of knowledge to talk about value emphasises the practical significance of such evaluations, the “value turn” is still very much in the spirit of the present investigation. This is, in fact, how we started: In

230

5 Epistemic Evaluations and Concepts

section 1.4 I discussed Mark Kaplan’s claim that the (descriptive) definition or analysis of epistemic concepts is meta-epistemologically justified, as long as it “legitimately aimed at advancing or clarifying the proper conduct of inquiry” (Kaplan 1985: 354). Much of what I said throughout this book directly relates to the requirement that all attributions and evaluations of ESPs are ultimately answerable to our practice. Finally, there are more narrow questions that take centre stage in the debates concerning epistemic value, such as the question of why knowledge should be more valuable than mere true belief and whether epistemically speaking, everything valuable ultimately relates to truth. The present framework gives us ample resources to unpack and clarify the first question. It could do so by considering individual epistemic agents as relevant units of functional evaluation, plausibly along the lines of Plato (knowledge is “tethered down” in a way that true belief need not be) and Williamson (2000: 78 – 80), according to whom knowledge is less vulnerable to being undermined by future evidence. Additionally, it allows for considering the function of knowledge attributions within a community, for purposes both of people management (cooperation) and information management. One starting point might be Craig’s idea to see the concept of knowledge as flagging sources of information (Craig 1990: 8 – 12). Martin Kusch (2009) offers one development of this idea, combining Craig’s methodology with Bernard Williams’ (2002) account of some epistemic evaluations as necessarily having intrinsic value. Much recent work in virtue epistemology has implemented important changes suggested by the developments characterised in chapters 1 and 2: It has exploited the parallels between (meta‐) ethics and (meta‐) epistemology, it has stressed that epistemology has normative ambitions, and it has supported shifts towards epistemic agency and practice. Consequently, research in virtue epistemology tends to fit our description of what philosophical epistemology should be all about very well. For a more detailed assessment, however, much depends on the specific virtue epistemologists’ specific commitments. Note, however, that the present metaepistemology is by no means inconsistent even with virtue epistemology’s more ambitious commitments: Assume that virtue epistemology is not only committed to epistemic virtues being a worthwhile topic of analysis, but to explaining some performance’s epistemic quality by recourse to the performer’s perceptual or intellectual virtues. This may appear incompatible with our meta-epistemology, because of our functional definition of ESPs. However, the virtue epistemologist’s claim concerns epistemic evaluations and values, not epistemic states or performances. It is entirely possible that the purposes of a community of epistemic agents are best served if these agents

5.4 Consequences of the Framework

231

attribute intellectual virtues to themselves and to each other, and evaluate each other’s ESPs by relating them to these virtues. It is possible that such a tendency is hard-wired in human beings, it is possible that it is has culturally developed under environmental and social pressure, it is possible that this is the best way to account for many of our intuitions. Furthermore, it is likely that there are ideological and potentially harmful aspects to such a practice, given that we are prone to halo effect and confirmation bias. The fact that people management is one important source of evaluative authority over intentional ESPs suggests that our epistemic evaluations do not, and should not, boil down to reliable production. Although reliabilism might well be a plausible approach to specific epistemic faculties such as perception and memory, it neglects the function of ESPs within the intentional stance. Social epistemology should not just conceive of human beings as potential sources of information, but also as autonomous intentional agents that act on their own ESPs. Separate epistemic evaluations for co-operation and information purposes would, of course, remedy the situation.

Epistemology and Ideology In section 1.5 I introduced Miranda Fricker’s (2007) diagnosis of cases of “epistemic injustice”. Here is the central case of the first kind of epistemic injustice she discusses, “testimonial injustice”: A person experiences testimonial injustice iff he or she suffers a credibility deficit because he or she is subject to identity prejudices. If a woman is judged to be less credible than a man, just because she is a woman, then she suffers testimonial injustice caused by the attributor’s prejudices. These prejudices are in turn epistemically deficient, because they are adopted and maintained against conflicting evidence. This resistance against evidence requires affective investment on the part of the attributor. If the attributor has a chance to identify and amend these prejudices by means of reflection, and if he or she doesn’t do so, he or she is epistemically culpable for his or her prejudices, and thus for cases of testimonial injustice that might result from these prejudices (Fricker 2007: 30 – 43). Such prejudices can potentially be defined and epistemically criticised in the context of empirical work on social cognition. In section 5.1 I sketched how the design stance, as adopted towards individuals or communities as selected-for, allows for the identification and evaluation of teleological ESPs. One strategy for dealing with such epistemically flawed states is exemplified in Tamar Gendler’s work (2008a, 2008b). According to her, ideological beliefs’ remarkable resistance to counter-evidence and rational revision is best accounted for by intro-

232

5 Epistemic Evaluations and Concepts

ducing the new notion of “alief”. Aliefs are meant to be better aligned to certain kinds of affective reactions and behaviours than beliefs. The present meta-epistemological framework ideally accommodates Gendler’s manoeuvre: We identify ESPs on the basis of various kinds of explanatory and predictive stances. Complete explanations may combine various kinds of stances. I might successfully explain and predict many moves of my chess computer by attributing beliefs and intentions, but there might also be cases when I have to switch from the intentional stance to the design stance, taking into account the computer’s software design or even properties of its hardware. Analogously, human beings sometimes fail to act according to their intentions, or they exhibit unintentional affective reactions while acting intentionally. Such behaviour can then be explained by aliefs as mental states that function as specific kinds of teleological ESPs. If widely shared epistemically defective states or attitudes are not the product of natural selection, but of history and culture – if Francis Bacon would have categorised them as “idols of the market” or “theatre”, instead of “idols of the tribe” –, we might label them “ideological”. Definitions of ideology broadly fall into two camps. Either we build epistemic deficiency into the definition of “ideology”, stressing that ideological systems necessarily involve deception and illusion, or we define the term in epistemically neutral terms. Sally Haslanger opts for the latter, defining ideologies as “representations of social life that serve in some way to undergird social practices” (Haslanger 2007: 75). Broadly speaking, ideology constitutes a cognitive and affective frame that provides actions and identities with meaning, thus contributing to the stability of the social system. Ideology cannot be reduced to sets of beliefs; it can manifest itself in slogans, dominant concepts, symbols, body language and institutional structure. Critique of ideology typically has moral and epistemic components, because paradigmatic ideologies are both unjust (often discriminating against groups) and epistemically flawed. If ideology is understood as such a pervasive and ubiquitous frame, it is clear that neither the moral nor the epistemic aspects of social life are insulated from, and protected against, the forces of ideology. According to my account of epistemic norms and evaluations, they can, of course, function to serve deplorable social goals, such as the establishment and stability of some sort of inequality, favouring one social group over another. Important kinds of conceptual epistemic appraisal might have unjust bias built-into their application conditions, or epistemic concepts with neutral, fair application conditions might be applied in systematically biased ways. The constitutive rules of epistemically important kinds of speech act might be skewed towards some purposes or social groups.

5.4 Consequences of the Framework

233

Socially and epistemically important institutions, such as institutionalised research communities, are in danger of being tainted by ideology. I hope it has been clear throughout this book, starting with the discussion of feminist epistemology in section 1.5, that social critique of epistemic injustice and other epistemic aspects of “bad” ideology ought to be accommodated by my meta-epistemology. We ought to see epistemology as a project with genuinely normative ambitions, ultimately trying to determine various kinds of systems and practices with optimally defined and sensibly evaluated ESPs. We should describe and discuss the changes that would result from conceptually “refurbishing epistemology”, accounting for the specific properties of human beings and their communities, including their propensity for ideology.

Background Values and Purposes The states of an automatic door’s infrared sensor count as ESPs because of their functional contribution to the door’s overall performance. In order to identify this contribution, and hence to specify such functional ESPs, we need an account of such overall performance – in this case, the door’s capacity to open upon being approached. Honeybees’ waggle dances are ESPs in virtue of the same reasoning; they contribute to the bees’ overall ability to survive and reproduce. Although the specification of intentional ESPs is more complicated because they are (self‐) attributed by intentional agents, we still need overall goals or capacities that allow for functional evaluation of what is (self‐) attributed. This is just the cost of epistemological functionalism’s entitlement to assess our actual epistemic concepts, evaluations and practices without falling back on descriptive ambitions or reflective equilibrium considerations. The strategy to identify such overall goals, values and capacities as constitutive for the epistemic realm is adopted from Sally Haslanger (1999), as discussed in section 1.5 and illustrated by the kitchen analogy (section 3.4). According to Haslanger, we should begin our epistemological inquiries by asking what is cognitively valuable for beings like us (Haslanger 1999: 470). She then proposes to treat an overriding, “intrinsically good” ideal of autonomous, moral agency as the overall goal. This goal, she suggests, can serve to identify and assess the conceptual means by which we engage in epistemic management (Haslanger 1999: 471). A related line of thought is present in Hookway’s construal of sceptical challenges as undermining our ability to participate in inquiries as free, autonomous and rational agents (Hookway 1990; see section 1.4). In general, the thought is mirrored in work in contemporary virtue ethics that attribute intrinsic value to epistemic virtues by linking them to moral values.

234

5 Epistemic Evaluations and Concepts

One of the reasons Haslanger chooses such a rich ideal is that she thinks that mere survival is not sufficient to explain anything like knowledge and true beliefs. If it were all merely about survival, Haslanger conjectures, then we would be well equipped with empirically adequate, or “not too grossly false” beliefs (Haslanger 1999: 471). Accordingly, we should not try, as Edward Craig (1990) does, to account for knowledge by looking at how it serves to flag good informants, who in turn help us to efficiently deal with our environment. Instead, we ought to look for more demanding goals. Haslanger’s functional delineation of the epistemic realm in relation to nonepistemic moral values undoubtedly makes for non-immanent epistemology in our sense (for “critical or normative immanent epistemology”, in Haslanger’s 1999: 467). At the same time, however, she implicitly accepts our actual notions of true belief and knowledge as criteria of adequacy for the choice of “over-arching value”. Autonomous agency is a better choice for epistemology’s over-arching value than mere survival because the latter would not explain our concepts of true belief and knowledge; empirical adequacy would be sufficient to explain these notions. It is hard to see how this role of our actual epistemic concepts as criteria of explanatory adequacy for the overall purpose of our epistemic practice wouldn’t violate Haslanger’s own conditions for what counts as “immanent” epistemology. Consequently, if my reading of Haslanger’s proposal is adequate, then her implicit acceptance of our actual epistemic concepts as criteria of adequacy for the values constitutive of the epistemic realm looks like a lapse back into immanent epistemology. The meta-epistemological conception presented in this book is both more and less radical than Haslanger’s. It’s more radically non-immanent in that I don’t see why our actual epistemic toolbox should even count as a criterion of explanatory adequacy for epistemic practices’ potential overall purposes. It’s less radical, however, in that the functional definition of the epistemic realm succeeds without proposing non-epistemic over-arching values. Even if we agree with Haslanger’s overall, essentially “normative and critical” meta-epistemological approach, and even if we agree that existing “mere survival”, information-oriented accounts do not yield anything like our actual epistemic concepts, still moral enrichment of the overall capacities or ideals constitutive of the epistemic realm is not the only solution (Haslanger 1999: 467). Our epistemic practice is constituted by interacting intentional agents who attribute and evaluate intentional and conceptual ESPs with both descriptive and normative purport. The statements they use for doing so are inferentially related to other statements, allowing for attributions, evaluations and norms to feature as premises and conclusions of arguments. “Mere survival” may be a strangely unambitious value to serve as the overriding goal of epistemic practice

5.4 Consequences of the Framework

235

as a whole, but given who survives in this scenario (i. e. higher-order intentional, concept-mongering creatures) and how they survive (i. e. by talking to each other, by describing and evaluating each other, by attributing and evaluating ESPs, by playing the game of giving and asking for reasons), there is plenty of room within the epistemic realm to associate illuminating functions to truth and knowledge without invoking moral overriding values. Haslanger’s hypothesis of over-arching moral goals and values is explanatorily motivated. Autonomous agency and perhaps a good life in the Aristotelian sense, according to Haslanger, provide the best explanation of relevant aspects of our own epistemic practice (e. g. of our attributions of beliefs and knowledge). Hence the specific over-arching values, as well as their non-epistemic character, is the result of an inference to the best explanation. According to this line of thought, we cannot (functionally, instrumentally) understand belief and knowledge attributions unless we relate them to moral values and ideals. This claim contrasts with my strategy to highlight the tight connection between the pragmatics and semantics of the speech act of assertion in relation to people management and information management as interrelated clusters of purposes providing criteria for epistemic attributions and evaluations. These purposes, too, can be seen as the result of inference to the best explanation. One important motivation for my alternative proposal lies in the ambition to solve as many epistemological problems as possible on the level of epistemic engineering. This does not mean that it is mistaken to invoke richer, moral values to explain our actual epistemic practice; indeed I do not see any arguments precluding such a move. However, the same parsimonious, and perhaps naturalist, spirit that drives evolutionary psychologists to search for explanations of altruism in terms of natural selection should push our inquiries to exhaust the explanatory potential of mundane everyday demands on a community of interacting and communicating agents. There are three main reasons the explanatory potential of simple, collective, performance-oriented practice (under non-moral descriptions) is often overlooked. Firstly, traditional epistemology is individualist in character. Social epistemology, as the story was told in chapter 1, is a recent development. Secondly, even in those cases in which social aspects are taken into account (as, for example, in Craig’s and Williams’ exercises in conceptual synthesis; section 1.4), the focus is on information management only. However, as the definition of ESPs within Dennett’s framework of explanatory and predictive stances has shown, collective information management is not the only demand on the attribution of ESPs. Epistemic concepts do not only help to pass on information, but are implicit in social interaction and cooperation.

236

5 Epistemic Evaluations and Concepts

The third reason concerns the semantic function of truth. One of Haslanger’s main reasons for postulating a moral ideal of autonomous agency is that she is sceptical that instrumental considerations can sufficiently explain the fact that we evaluate our beliefs as true. Empirical adequacy would be sufficient, she writes, if mere survival were at stake (Haslanger 1999: 471). However, this claim oversees the semantic role of truth, which is a condition for the expressive power of our language. If, say, there are explanatory reasons to account for semantic content in terms of truth conditions instead of assertibility conditions (for example to account for the properties of content embedded in compound sentences; Brandom 1976), then such considerations could yield an alternative, nonepistemological explanation for our practice of evaluating ESPs as true or false.

Conclusion Given that the Introduction announced this book as urging and preparing a “meta-epistemological turn” based on recent challenges to traditional epistemology, it is rather ironic that the proposed method of radical refurbishment, as my title-giving metaphor puts it, harks back to perhaps the single most influential exemplification of traditional epistemology, namely Descartes’ Meditations. In order to ensure the certainty of his beliefs, Descartes’ meditating “I” decides to systematically and methodically doubt everything that can possibly be doubted. The strategy’s upshot is that if I could be mistaken, I had better assume to be in fact mistaken, just to be on the safe side. As an explanatory bonus, the reconstruction of our knowledge on safe, indubitable foundations teaches us about the structure of our body of knowledge. In a similar spirit, this book suggests that it is better to err on the side of caution when thinking about our epistemic concepts. After all, they are the products of history and culture. Given the proverbial proximity of knowledge to power, it should never strike us as a surprise if contexts are pointed out to us in which the applicability of epistemic concepts is co-determined by non-epistemic, ideological factors. Because we could conceivably be in such a context ourselves, we are well advised to follow Descartes’ clean sweep. We ought to stop our preoccupation with the semantics and pragmatics of our actual epistemic terms (“knowledge”, “justification”); instead, we should define the epistemic viewpoint, and start thinking about purposes and functions that allow us to assess potential epistemic concepts as more or less suitable. There is a parallel to Descartes’ explanatory bonus, too. Successful refurbishment will provide (a) an account of what it is for some phenomenon or concept to be epistemic; (b) a description of structural properties of epistemic systems (practices); (c) the identification of overall purposes that allow for functional identification of epistemic states and performances; and (d) functional analyses of the kinds of concept that are eligible to do epistemic work. Because this book operates on the level of meta-epistemology, it does not aim at criticising our existing epistemic concepts, nor at introducing new epistemic locutions or changes to the way we use our existing epistemic vocabulary. Having the option of radical refurbishment on the table, however, forces us to clarify our meta-epistemological views and to explicitly state our assumptions; hence my proposal to define epistemic states, statuses and performances in terms of their function within various kinds of system; to conceive of conceptual epistemic systems as communities of interacting higher-order intentional agents that attribute and evaluate epistemic states by conceptual means in order to preDOI 10.1515/9783110525458-007

238

Conclusion

dict and explain each other’s behaviour and to pass on information and engage in argumentative discourse. Because we both attribute and evaluate epistemic states, and because we sometimes do both at the same time, I ask what kinds of concept are suitable to feature in such attributions and evaluations. Epistemological functionalism contrasts with the two conceptions of epistemology this book started with. Firstly, it contrasts with available dictionary definitions of epistemology, because it is not necessarily concerned with knowledge or epistemic justification. Secondly, it differs from the implicit characterisation of conventional analytic epistemology in terms of a list of typical epistemological problems, mainly because of its methodological pluralism, its emphasis on epistemic social practices, its ability to incorporate empirical research and its compatibility with the possibility of radical departures from our epistemic folkways. This book covers a lot of ground. It essentially tries to spell out what epistemology ought to be construed as being all about: the systematic study, with normative ambitions, of functionally defined epistemic states, statuses and performances and their implicit and explicit evaluations within epistemic practices. The motivation and construction of the meta-epistemological framework that allows for determining the topic, methods and goals of epistemology have taken many steps. Inevitably, some of these steps have been described in greater detail than others. The hope is that even the latter can be taken in the spirit in which they were all presented, namely as invitations for further discussion and critical assessment.

Bibliography Albee, E. (1907) “Descriptive and Normative Sciences”, Philosophical Review 16 (1): 40 – 9. Alston, W. (1978) “Meta-Ethics and Meta-Epistemology”, in A. Goldman and J. Kim (eds), Values and Morals. Dordrecht: Reidel, pp. 275 – 97. Alston, W. (1980) “Some Remarks on Chisholm’s Epistemology”, Nous 14 (4): 565 – 86. Alston, W. (1989) Epistemic Justification: Essays in the Theory of Knowledge. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Alston, W. (1993) “Epistemic Desiderata”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 53: 527 – 51. Alston, W. (2005) Beyond “Justification”: Dimensions of Epistemic Evaluation. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press. Anscombe, E. (1957) Intention. Oxford: Blackwell. Armstrong, D. (1973) Belief, Truth and Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Audi, R. (2001) “Epistemic Virtue and Justified Belief”, in Fairweather and Zagzebski 2001, pp. 82 – 97. Austin, J.L. (1946) “Other Minds”, Supplement to the Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 20. Reprinted in J.L. Austin 1961, pp. 76 – 116. Austin, J.L (1953) “How to Talk: Some Simple Ways”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 53: 227 – 46. Austin, J.L (1961) Philosophical Papers, edited by J. Urmson and G. Warnock, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Austin, J.L (1962) How To Do Things With Words, edited by J. Urmson and M. Sbisá. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Axelrod, R. (1984) The Evolution of Cooperation. New York: Basic Books. Axtell, G. and Carter, A. (2008) “Just the Right Thickness: A Defense of Second-Wave Virtue Epistemology”, Philosophical Papers 37 (3): 413 – 34. Ayer, A.J. (1936) Language, Truth and Logic. London: Gollancz. Barnes, B. (1974) Scientific Knowledge and Sociological Theory. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Barnes, B. (1977) Interests and the Growth of Knowledge. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Barnes, B. (1982) T. S. Kuhn and Social Science. London: Macmillan. Barnes, B. (1987) “Concept Application as Social Activity”, Critica 19: 19 – 44. Barnes, B. and Bloor, D. (1982) “Relativism, Rationalism, and the Sociology of Knowledge”, in M. Hollis and S. Lukes (eds), Rationality and Relativism. Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 21 – 47. Barnes, B. and Shapin, S. (eds) (1979) Natural Order: Historical Studies of Scientific Culture. London: Sage. Barnes, B., Bloor, D., and Henry, J. (1996) Scientific Knowledge: A Sociological Analysis. London: Athlone. Barnes, W.H.F. (1933) “A Suggestion About Value”, Analysis 1: 45 – 6. Battaly, H. (2001) “Thin Concepts to the Rescue: Thinning the Concepts of Epistemic Justification and Intellectual Virtue”, in A. Fairweather and L. Zagzebski (eds), Virtue Epistemology: Essays on Epistemic Virtue and Responsibility. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 98 – 116.

DOI 10.1515/9783110525458-008

240

Bibliography

Battaly, H. (2008) “Metaethics Meets Virtue Epistemology: Salvaging Disagreement about the Epistemically Thick”, Philosophical Papers 37 (3): 435 – 54. Belnap, N.D. (1962) “Tonk, Plonk and Plink”, Analysis 22 (6): 130 – 4. Bernecker, S. and Dretske, F. (eds.) (2000) Knowledge: Readings in Contemporary Epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Blackburn, S. (1986) Spreading the Word. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Blackburn, Simon (1998) Ruling Passions: A Theory of Practical Reasoning. New York: Oxford University Press. Blackburn, Simon (2010) “The Steps From Doing to Saying”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 110 (1): 1 – 13. Bloor, D. (1983) Wittgenstein: A Social Theory of Knowledge. New York: Columbia University Press. Bloor, D. (1991 [1976]) Knowledge and Social Imagery, 2nd edn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Bloor, D. (1992) “Left and Right Wittgensteinians”, in A. Pickering (ed.), Science as Practice and Culture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, pp. 266 – 82. Boghossian, P. (2006) Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructivism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. BonJour, L. (1980) “Externalist Theories of Empirical Knowledge”, in P.A. French, T.E. Uehling, H.K. Wettstein (eds), Midwest Studies in Philosophy 5: Studies in Epistemology. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 53 – 73. Reprinted in Bernecker and Dretske 2000, pp. 178 – 98; page references to 2000 reprint. BonJour, L. (1985) The Structure of Empirical Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. BonJour, L. and Sosa, E. (2003) Epistemic Justification: Internalism vs. Externalism, Foundations vs. Virtues. Oxford: Blackwell. Brandom, R. (1976) “Truth and Assertibility”, The Journal of Philosophy 73(6): 137 – 49. Brandom, R (1994) Making It Explicit: Reasoning, Representing, and Discursive Commitment. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Brandom, R (2000) Articulating Reasons. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Brandom, R(2008) Between Saying and Doing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Brown, J. (2004) Anti-Individualism & Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Brown, J.R. (1989) The Rational and the Social. London: Routledge. Brueckner, A. (1994) “The Structure of the Sceptical Argument”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 54 (4): 827 – 35. Carnap, R. (1962 [1950]) Logical Foundations of Probability. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Cassam, Q. (2007) The Possibility of Knowledge. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Chisholm, R.M. (1964) “Theory of Knowledge in America”, in The Princeton Studies: Humanistic Scholarship in America: Philosophy. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Reprinted in R.M. Chisholm, The Foundations of Knowing. Brighton: Harvester Press, 1982, pp. 109 – 93. Chrisman, M. (2007) “From Epistemic Contextualism to Epistemic Expressivism”, Philosophical Studies: An International Journal for Philosophy in the Analytic Tradition 135 (2): 225 – 54. Clark, A. and Chalmers, D. (1998) “The Extended Mind”, Analysis 58 (1): 7 – 19.

Bibliography

241

Coady, C.A.J. (1992) Testimony: A Philosophical Study. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cohen, S. (1988) “How to Be a Fallibilist”, Philosophical Perspectives 2: 91 – 123. Collins, H. (1985) Changing Order: Replication and Induction in Scientific Practice. London: Sage. Craig, E. (1990) Knowledge and the State of Nature: An Essay in Conceptual Synthesis. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Cummins, R. (1975) “Functional Analysis”, The Journal of Philosophy 72 (20): 741 – 65. Dancy, J. (1982) “Intuitionism in Meta-Epistemology”, Philosophical Studies 42: 395 – 498. Darwall, S. (2006) “How Should Ethics Relate to (the Rest of) Philosophy? Moore’s Legacy”, in T. Horgan and M. Simmons (eds), Metaethics After Moore. Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp. 17 – 38. Davidson, D. (1963) “Actions, Reasons, and Causes”, Journal of Philosophy 60: 685 – 700. Reprinted in D. Davidson, Essays on Actions and Events. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980, pp. 3 – 19. Davidson, D. (1973) “Radical Interpretation”, Dialectica 27: 314 – 28. Reprinted in D. Davidson, Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001, 2nd edn., pp. 125 – 40. Dennett, D. (1971) “Intentional Systems”, Journal of Philosophy 8: 87 – 106. Reprinted in D. Dennett Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology. Brighton: The Harvester Press, 1981, pp. 3 – 22. Davidson, D. (1973) “Mechanism and Responsibility”, in T. Honderich (ed.), Essays on Freedom of Action. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Reprinted in D. Dennett, Brainstorms: Philosophical Essays on Mind and Psychology. Brighton: The Harvester Press, 1981, pp. 233 – 55. Davidson, D. (1981) “True Believers: The Intentional Strategy and Why It Works”, in A.F. Heath (ed.), Scientific Explanation. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reprinted in Dennett 1987, pp. 13 – 35. Page references to 1987 print. Davidson, D. (1987) The Intentional Stance. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. DeRose, K. (1992) “Contextualism and Knowledge Attributions”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 52 (4): 913 – 929. DeRose, K. (1995) “Solving the Sceptical Problem”, The Philosophical Review 104 (1): 1 – 52. DeRose, K. (2007) “Review of Stanley, Knowledge and Practical Interests”, Mind 116: 486 – 9. DeRose, K. (2009) The Case for Contextualism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Descartes, René (1996 [1641]) Meditationes De Prima Philosophia, In qua Dei existentia, & animæ humanæ à corpore distinctio, demonstratur. English translation by J. Cottingham, Meditations on First Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. De Waal, Frans (2006) Primates and Philosophers. How Morality Evolved. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Dreier, J. (1996) “Expressivist Embeddings and Minimal Truth”, Philosophical Studies 83: 29 – 51. Dreier, J. (1996) (2004) “Meta-Ethics and the Problem of Creeping Minimalism”, Philosophical Perspectives 18: 23 – 44. Dretske, F. (1971) “Conclusive Reasons”, The Australasian Journal of Philosophy 49: 1 – 22. Reprinted in Bernecker and Dretske 2000, pp. 42 – 62. Dretske, F. (1981) Knowledge and the Flow of Information. Cambridge, MA/London (MIT Press).

242

Bibliography

Dretske, F. (1986) “Misrepresentation”, in R.J. Bogdan (ed.), Belief: Form, Content and Function. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 297 – 314. Dretske, F. (1995) Naturalizing the Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Elgin, C. (1983) With Reference to Reference. Indianapolis: Hackett. Elgin, C. (1996) Considered Judgment. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Elgin, C. (2006) “From Knowledge to Understanding”, in S. Hetherington (ed.), Epistemology Futures. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 199 – 215. Elgin, C. (2008) “Trustworthiness”, Philosophical Papers 37 (3): 371 – 87. Fairweather, A. and Flanagan, O. (eds) (2014) Naturalizing Epistemic Virtue. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fairweather, A. and Flanagan, O. and Zagzebski. L. (eds) (2001) Virtue Epistemology. Essays on Epistemic Virtue and Responsibility. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fehr, E. et al. (2005) “Oxytocin Increases Trust in Humans”, Nature 435: 673 – 6. Finlay, S. (2014) Confusion of Tongue: A Theory of Normative Language. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Firth, R. (1959) “Chisholm and the Ethics of Belief”, Philosophical Review 68 (4): 493 – 506. Fleck, L. (1973) The Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Fodor, J. (1987) Psychosemantics: The Problem of Meaning in the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Fodor, J. (1998) Concepts: Where Cognitive Science Went Wrong. New York: Oxford University Press. Fricker, E. (2006) “Testimony and Epistemic Autonomy”, in Lackey and Sosa 2006, pp. 225 – 50. Fricker, M. (2007) Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fuller, S. (1988) Social Epistemology. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. Fumerton, R. (1995) Metaepistemology and Skepticism. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. Gendler, T. (2008a) “Alief and Belief”, The Journal of Philosophy 105 (10): 634 – 663. Gendler, T. (2008b) “Alief in Action (and Reaction)”, Mind & Language 23 (5): 552 – 585. Gettier, E.L. (1963) “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?”, Analysis 23: 121 – 3. Reprinted in Bernecker and Dretske 2000, pp. 13 – 15. Gibbard, A. (1990) Wise Choices, Apt Feelings. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Gibbard, A. (1992) “Thick Concepts and Warrant for Feelings”, The Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 66: 267 – 83. Gibbard, A. (2003) “Reasons Thin and Thick”, The Journal of Philosophy 100 (6): 288 – 304. Gigerenzer, G. (2001) “The Adaptive Toolbox”, in G. Gigerenzer and R. Selten (eds), Bounded Rationality: The Adaptive Toolbox. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 37 – 50. Godfrey-Smith, P. (1994) “A Modern History Theory of Functions”, Noûs 28: 344 – 62. Goldman, A. (1967) “A Causal Theory of Knowing”, The Journal of Philosophy 64: 357 – 72. Reprinted in Bernecker and Dretske 2000, pp. 18 – 30. Goldman, A. (1976) “Discrimination and Perceptual Knowledge”, The Journal of Philosophy 73: 771 – 91. Reprinted in Bernecker and Dretske 2000, pp. 86 – 102. Goodman, N. (1983) Fact, Fiction and Forecast. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Greco, J. (2010) Achieving Knowledge: A Virtue-Theoretic Account of Epistemic Normativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Bibliography

243

Grice, H. P. (1957) “Meaning”, The Philosophical Review 66: 377 – 88. Reprinted in H.P. Grice, Studies in the Way of Words. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989, pp. 213 – 23. Griffiths, P. (1993) “Functional Analysis and Proper Functions”, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 44 (3): 409 – 22. Gupta, A. (2006) Empiricism and Experience. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Haack, S. (1996) “Science as Social: Yes and No”, in L. Hankinson Nelson and J. Nelson (eds), Feminism, Science, and the Philosophy of Science. Dordrecht: Kluwer, pp. 79 – 94. Haddock, A., Millar, A., and Pritchard, D. (eds) (2009) Epistemic Value. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Harding, S. (1986) The Science Question in Feminism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Harding, S. (1991) Whose Science? Whose Knowledge?, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Hardwig, John (1985) “Epistemic Dependence”, The Journal of Philosophy 82: 335 – 49. Hardwig, John (1991) “The Role of Trust in Knowledge”, The Journal of Philosophy 88: 693 – 708. Haslanger, S. (1993) “On Being Objective and Being Objectified”, in L. Antony and C. Witt (eds), A Mind of One’s Own: Feminist Essays on Reason and Objectivity. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, pp. 85 – 125. Reprinted in Haslanger 2012, pp. 35 – 82. Haslanger, S. (1999) “What Knowledge Is and What It Ought To Be: Feminist Values and Normative Epistemology,” Philosophical Perspectives 13: 459 – 80. Reprinted in Haslanger 2012, pp. 341 – 64. Haslanger, S. (2007) “But Mom, Crop-Tops Are Cute!” – Social Knowledge, Social Structure and Ideology Critique”, Philosophical Issues 17: The Metaphysics of Epistemology, pp. 70 – 91. Reprinted in Haslanger 2012, pp. 406 – 428. Haslanger, S. (2008) “Changing the Ideology and Culture of Philosophy: Not by Reason (Alone)”, Hypatia 23 (2): 210 – 23. Haslanger, S. (2012) Resisting Reality: Social Construction and Social Critique. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hawthorne, J. (2004) Knowledge and Lotteries. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Henderson, D. (1993) Interpretation and Explanation in the Human Sciences. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Henderson, D. (2002) “Norms, Normative Principles, and Explanation”, Philosophy of the Social Sciences 32: 329 – 64. Henderson, D. (2005) “Norms, Invariance, and Explanatory Relevance”, Philosophy of the Social Sciences 35 (3): 324 – 38. Hetherington, S. (ed.) (2006) Epistemology Futures. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hookway, C. (1991) Scepticism. London: Routledge. Hookway, C(2006) “Epistemology and Inquiry: the Primacy of Practice”, in Hetherington 2006, pp. 95 – 110. Horwich, P. (1998) Truth. Oxford: Blackwell. Hoyningen-Huene, P. (1987) “Context of Discovery and Context of Justification”, Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 18: 501 – 15. Hoyningen-Huene, P. (2006) “Context of Discovery Versus Context of Justification and Thomas Kuhn”, in J. Schickore and F. Steinle (eds), Revisiting Discovery and Justification. Historical and Philosophical Perspectives on the Context Distinction. Dordrecht: Springer, pp. 119 – 31. Hurley, S. (1989) Natural Reasons: Personality and Polity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

244

Bibliography

Jackson, F. (1998) From Metaphysics to Ethics: A Defense of Conceptual Analysis. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Kaplan, M. (1985) “It’s Not What You Know That Counts”, Journal of Philosophy 82: 350 – 62. Kim, J. (1988) “What Is ‘Naturalized Epistemology’?”, Philosophical Perspectives Vol. 2: Epistemology, pp. 381 – 405. Kim, J. (1993) Supervenience and Mind: Selected Philosophical Essays. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Kitcher, Philip (1990) “The Division of Cognitive Labor”, Journal of Philosophy 87 (1): 5 – 22. Kitcher, Philip (1991) “Socializing Knowledge”, Journal of Philosophy 88: 675 – 6. Kitcher, Philip (1993a) “Function and Design”, Midwest Studies in Philosophy 18: 379 – 97. Kitcher, Philip (1993b) The Advancement of Science: Science Without Legend, Objectivity Without Illusions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kitcher, Philip (2001) Science, Truth, and Democracy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Kitcher, Philip (2002) “The Third Way: Reflections on Helen Longino’s The Fate of Knowledge”, Philosophy of Science 69 (4): 549 – 59. Kitcher, Philip (2008) “Science, Religion, and Democracy”, Episteme 5 (1): 5 – 18. Kitcher, Philip (2011) The Ethical Project. Cambridge Mass. and London: Harvard University Press. Klein, P. (2005 [1998]) “Epistemology”, in E. Craig (ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. London: Routledge. Retrieved 25 August 2009, from http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/P059 Klein, P. (2005) “Skepticism”, in E.N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Summer 2010 edition. Retrieved 28 November 2015, from . Knobe, J. and Nichols, S. (eds) (2008a) Experimental Philosophy. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press. Klein, P. (2008b) “An Experimental Philosophy Manifesto”, in J. Knobe, and S. Nichols (eds) (2008a) Experimental Philosophy. Oxford & New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 3 – 14. Koppelberg, D. and Tolksdorf, S. (eds) (2015) Erkenntnistheorie – wie und wozu? Münster: Mentis. Kornblith, H. (2002) Knowledge and Its Place in Nature. New York: Oxford University Press. Korsgaard, C. (1996) The Sources of Normativity. New York: Cambridge University Press. Kripke, S. (1972) “Naming and Necessity”, in G. Harman and D. Davidson (eds), Semantics of Natural Language. Dordrecht: Reidel, pp. 253 – 355. Reprinted as S. Kripke, Naming and Necessity. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980. Kuenzle, D. (2005) Referring Performances: Towards an Account of Singular Term Use. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of Sheffield. Kuenzle, D. (2011) “Expressivismus in Gebrauchstheorien der Bedeutung”, in H. Sturm et al. (eds), Brandoms Explikation von Vernunft zwischen Kant und Hegel. Paderborn: Mentis, pp. 271 – 300. Kuenzle, D. and Georg Brun (2008) “A New Role for Emotions in Epistemology?”, in G. Brun, U. Doguoglu, and D. Kuenzle (eds), Epistemology and Emotions. Aldershot: Ashgate, pp. 1 – 31. Kuhn, T. (1977) The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in Scientific Tradition and Change. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Kuhn, T (1996 [1962]) The Structure of Scientific Revolution, 3rd edn. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

Bibliography

245

Kusch, M. (ed.) (2000) The Sociology of Philosophical Knowledge. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Kusch, M. (ed.) (2002) Knowledge by Agreement. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Kusch, M. (ed.) (2009) “Testimony and the Value of Knowledge”, in A. Haddock, A. Millar, and D. Pritchard (eds) (2009) Epistemic Value, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 60 – 94. Lackey, J. (2008) Learning from Words: Testimony as a Source of Knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lackey, J. and Sosa, E. (eds) (2006) The Epistemology of Testimony. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Lafleur, L. (1941) “Epistemological Functionalism”, The Philosophical Review 50 (5): 471 – 82. Laudan, L. (1990) “Normative Naturalism”, Philosophy of Science 57 (1): 44 – 59. Lewis, D. (1979) “Scorekeeping in a Language Game”, Journal of Philosophical Logic 8: 339 – 59. Lewis, D. (1996) “Elusive Knowledge”, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 74 (4): 549 – 67. Longino, H. (1990) Science as Social Knowledge: Values and Objectivity in Scientific Inquiry. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Longino, H. (1992) “Essential Tensions—Phase Two: Feminist, Philosophical, and Social Studies of Science”, in E. McMullin (ed.), The Social Dimensions of Scientific Knowledge. Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, pp. 198 – 216. Longino, H. (1994) “The Fate of Knowledge in Social Theories of Science”, in F. Schmitt (ed.), Socializing Epistemology. Rowman & Littlefield, pp. 135 – 57. Longino, H. (2002) The Fate of Knowledge. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Lynch, M. (2009) “Truth, Value and Epistemic Expressivism”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 79 (1): 76 – 97. MacFarlane, J. (2005) “The Assessment Sensitivity of Knowledge Attributions,” in T. Szabo-Gendler and J. Hawthorne (eds), Oxford Studies in Epistemology 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 197 – 233. Reprinted in E. Sosa, J. Kim, J. Fantl, and M. McGrath (eds) (2008) Epistemology: An Anthology, 2nd edn. Oxford: Blackwell. MacFarlane, J. (2007) “Relativism and Disagreement,” Philosophical Studies 132: 17 – 31. MacFarlane, J. (2009) “Nonindexical Contextualism”, Synthese 166: 231 – 50. Macklin, R. (2003) “Dignity is a Useless Concept”, BMJ 327: 1419 – 20. May, J. et al. (2010) “Practical Interests, Relevant Alternatives, and Knowledge Attributions: An Empirical Study”, Review of Philosophy and Psychology 1 (2): 265 – 73. McDowell, J. (1994) Mind and World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Mill, J.S. (1843) A System of Logic, in J. M. Robson (ed.), The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, 33 vols. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1963 – 1991, vols 7 – 8. Miller, A. (2003) Introduction to Contemporary Metaethics. Cambridge: Polity Press. Millikan, R. (1984) Language, Thought and Other Biological Categories. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Mittelstrass, J. (ed.) (1980–) Enzyklopädie Philosophie und Wissenschaftstheorie. Wien, Zürich und Mannheim: Bibliographisches Institut. Moore, G.E. (1993 [1903]) Principia Ethica. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Moser, P. (1993) Philosophy After Objectivity. New York: Oxford University Press. Nelson, L.H. (1993) “Epistemological Communities”, in L. Alcof and E. Potter (eds), Feminist Epistemologies. New York: Routledge, pp. 121 – 60. Neta, R. (2003) “Contextualism and the Problem of the External World”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 63: 1 – 31.

246

Bibliography

Nickles, T. (1980) “Introductory Essay: Scientific Discovery and the Future of Philosophy of Science”, in T. Nickles (ed.), Scientific Discovery, Logic, and Rationality. Dordrecht: Reidel, pp. 1 – 59. Nozick, R. (1981) Philosophical Explanations. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Owens, D. (2000) Reason Without Freedom: The Problem of Epistemic Normativity. London and New York: Routledge. Price, H. (2003) “Truth as convenient friction”, Journal of Philosophy 100: 167 – 90. Price, H. (2004) “Naturalism Without Representationalism”, in D. Macarthur and M. de Caro (eds), Naturalism in Question. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 71 – 88. Price, H. (2009) “One Cheer for Representationalism?”, in R. Auxier (ed.), The Philosophy of Richard Rorty. Library of Living Philosophers XXXII. Chicago: Open Court, pp. 269 – 89. Price, H. and Macarthur, D. (2007) “Pragmatism, Quasi-Realism and the Global Challenge”, in C. Misak (ed.), The New Pragmatists. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 91 – 120. Prior, A.N. (1960) “The Runabout Inference Ticket”, Analysis 21: 38 – 9. Pritchard, D. (2012) “The Methodology of Epistemology”, The Harvard Review of Philosophy 18: 91 – 108. Putnam, H. (1973) “Meaning and Reference”, Journal of Philosophy 70: 699 – 711. Putnam, H. (1975) “The Meaning of Meaning”, in K. Gunderson (ed.), Language, Mind and Knowledge. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 131 – 93. Reprinted in H. Putnam, Philosophical Papers Vol. II: Mind, Language, and Reality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Putnam, H. (1982) Reason, Truth and History. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Quine, W.V.O. (1952) “Two Dogmas of Empiricism”, in W.V.O. Quine, From a Logical Point of View. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, pp. 20 – 46. Quine, W.V.O. (1969) “Epistemology Naturalized”, in W.V.O. Quine, Ontological Relativity and Other Essays. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 69 – 90. Rawls, J. (1999) A Theory of Justice. Revised Edition. Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press. Reichenbach, H. (1935) “Zur Induktionsmaschine”, Erkenntnis 5: 172 – 3. Rawls, J. (1938) Experience and Prediction. An Analysis of the Foundations and the Structure of Knowledge. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Risjord, M. (1998) “Norms and Explanation in the Social Sciences”, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 29 (2): 223 – 37. Rorty, R. (1979) Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Rorty, R. (1992 [1967]) (ed.) The Linguistic Turn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Rosenberg, J. (1975) “Transcendental Arguments Revisited”, Journal of Philosophy 72 (18): 611 – 24. Rudwick, M. (1985) The Great Devonian Controversy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Sabine, G.H. (1912) “Descriptive and Normative Sciences”, Philosophical Review 21 (4): 433 – 50. Sainsbury, R.M. (1988) Paradoxes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Sartwell, C. (1992) “Why Knowledge Is Merely True Belief”, The Journal of Philosophy 89: 167 – 80. Schaffer, J. (2004) “From Contextualism to Contrastivism”, Philosophical Studies 119: 73 – 103. Schaffer, J. (2004) and Knobe, J. (2012) “Contrastive Knowledge Surveyed”, Noûs 46 (4): 675 – 708.

Bibliography

247

Schaffner, K. (1980) “Discovery in the Biomedical Sciences: Logic or Irrational Intuition?”, in T. Nickles (ed.), Scientific Discovery: Case Studies, Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol. 60. Dordrecht: Reidel, pp. 171 – 205. Schiemann, G. (2003) “Criticizing a Difference of Contexts. On Reichenbach’s Distinction Between ‘Context of Discovery’ and ‘Context of Justification’”, in F. Stadler (ed.), The Vienna Circle and Logical Empiricism. Re-Evaluation and Future Perspectives. Dordrecht: Kluwer, pp. 237 – 51. Schiffer, S. (1996) “Contextualist Solutions to Scepticism”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 96: 317 – 33. Seaborn, J. (1988) Understanding the Universe: An Introduction to Physics and Astrophysics. New York: Springer. Searle, J. (1975) “A Taxonomy of Illocutionary Acts”, in K. Gunderson (ed.), Language, Mind, and Knowledge. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 344 – 69. Sellars, W. (1951) “Some Reflections on Language Games”, Philosophy of Science 21: 204 – 28. Sellars, W. (1953) “Inference and Meaning”, Mind 62: 313 – 38. Sellars, W. (1997 [1956]) “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind”, in H. Feigl and M. Scriven (eds.), Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science Vol. I. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Reprinted as W. Sellars, Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1997. Sellars, W. (1967) “Some Remarks on Kant’s Theory of Experience”, Journal of Philosophy 64 (20): 633 – 47. Seyfarth, R.M., Cheney, D.L., and Marler, P. (1980) “Monkey responses to three different alarm calls: Evidence for predator classification and semantic communication”, Science 210: 801 – 3. Shapin, S. (1982) “History of Science and Its Sociological Reconstructions”, History of Science 20: 157 – 211. Shapin, S. (1994) A Social History of Truth: Gentility, Credibility, and Scientific Knowledge in Seventeenth-Century England. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press. Shapin, S. (1996) The Scientific Revolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Shapin, S. and Schaffer, S. (1985) Leviathan and the Air Pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the Experimental Life. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Siegel, H. (1980) “Justification, Discovery and the Naturalizing of Epistemology”, Philosophy of Science 47: 297 – 321. Siegel, H. (2008) “Is ‘Education’ a Thick Epistemic Concept?”, Philosophical Papers 37 (3): 455 – 69. Sinclair, N. (2007) “Propositional Clothing and Belief”, The Philosophical Quarterly 57: 342 – 62. Sober, E. (1978) “Psychologism”, Journal of Theory of Social Behavior 8: 165 – 91. Sober, E. (1985) “Panglossian Functionalism and the Philosophy of Mind”, Synthese 64: 165 – 93. Sober, E. (2000) Philosophy of Biology, 2nd edn. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Sokal, A.D. (1996) “Transgressing the Boundaries: Towards a Transformative Hermeneutics of Quantum Gravity”, Social Text 46/47: 217 – 52. Solomon, M. (2001) Social Empiricism. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Sosa, E. (1988) “Beyond Scepticism, to the Best of Our Knowledge”, Mind 97: 153 – 88.

248

Bibliography

Sosa, E. (1998) “Foundationalism”, in E. Craig (ed.), Routledge Encyclopaedia of Philosophy. London (Routledge). Retrieved 18 August 2006, from http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/P021. Sosa, E. (2003) “A Virtue Epistemology”, in BonJour and Sosa 2003, pp. 156 – 70. Sosa, E. (2011) Knowing Full Well, Soochow Lectures in Philosophy. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Stanley, J. (2005) Knowledge and Practical Interests. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stanley, J (2015) How Propaganda Works. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Steinpreis, R.E., Anders, K.A., and Ritzke, D. (1999) “The Impact of Gender on the Review of the Curricula Vitae of Job Applicants and Tenure Candidates: A National Empirical Study”,Sex Roles 41 (7/8): 509 – 28. Stevenson, C. (1937) “The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms”, Mind 46: 14 – 31. Stevenson, C. (1944) Ethics and Language. New Haven and London: Yale University Press. Stich, S. (1990) The Fragmentation of Reason: Preface to a Pragmatic Theory of Cognitive Evaluation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Stroud, B. (1984) The Significance of Philosophical Skepticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stroud, B. (1985 [1981]) “The Significance of Naturalized Epistemology”, in Midwest Studies in Philosophy VI. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 455 – 71. Reprinted in H. Kornblith (ed.), Naturalizing Epistemology. Cambridge, MA and London: MIT Press, 1985, pp. 71 – 89. Stroud, B. (1989) “Understanding Human Knowledge in General”, in M. Clay and K. Lehrer (eds.), Knowledge and Skepticism. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Reprinted in Bernecker and Dretske 2000, pp. 307 – 23. Page references to 2000 reprint. Thomas, A. (2008) “The Genealogy of Epistemic Virtue Concepts”, Philosophical Papers 37 (3): 345 – 69. Unger, Peter (1971) “A Defense of Skepticism”, Philosophical Review 80 (2): 198 – 219. Unger, Peter (1975) Ignorance: A Case for Scepticism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Van Fraassen, B. (1980) The Scientific Image. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Väryrynen, P. (2008) “Slim Epistemology with a Thick Skin”, Philosophical Papers 37 (3): 389 – 412. Velleman, D. (1999) “A Right of Self-Termination?”, Ethics 109 (3): 606 – 28. Von Wright, G.H. (1963) Norm and Action: A Logical Enquiry. New York: Humanities Press. Von Wright, G.H(1971) Explanation and Understanding. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. Weinberg, J., Nichols, S., and Stich, S. (2001) “Normativity and Epistemic Intuitions”, Philosophical Topics 29 (1 – 2): 429 – 60. Weinberg, J. M. (2006) “What’s Epistemology for? The Case for Neopragmatism in Normative Metaepistemology”, in Hetherington 2006, pp. 26 – 47. Weinberg, S. (1998) “The Revolution That Didn’t Happen”, New York Review of Books 45(5), pp. 48 – 52. Williams, B. (1966) “Consistency and Realism”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (Supplement) 40: 1 – 22. Williams, B. (1985) Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Bibliography

249

Williams, B. (2002) Truth and Truthfulness: An Essay in Genealogy. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press. Williamson, T. (2000) Knowledge and its Limits. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Wright, L. (1973) “Functions”, The Philosophical Review 82 (2): 139 – 68.

Author Index Alston, William 49 – 51, 56, 63, 65, 77 – 79, 82, 220 Anderson, Elizabeth 56, 58 – 61, 63, 77 Anscombe, Elizabeth 142 – 146, 168 Antony, Louise 56, 59 – 61, 63 Aristotle 1, 235 Armstrong, David M. 79 Audi, Robert 150 Austin, John L. 78 f., 143 Ayer, Alfred J. 10, 39, 74

Dennett, Daniel 5, 104 – 109, 112, 118, 121, 132 – 135, 137, 140, 177 f., 180, 182, 187, 199, 215, 217, 235 Descartes, René 1 f., 7, 17, 20, 37 f., 151, 223, 237 Dewey, John 36 Dretske, Fred 79, 193 Dummett, Michael 204

Bacon, Francis 232 Barnes, Barry 30 – 34, 74, 227 f. Battaly, Heather 206 f. Blackburn, Simon 39, 51, 71, 73 f. Bloor, David 30 – 35, 227 f. Boghossian, Paul 24, 34, 227 f. Brandom, Robert 28 f., 36, 39, 44, 52 – 54, 91, 126, 138 – 140, 150, 153, 191, 204, 216 – 218, 220, 236 Brentano, Franz 134, 137 Brown, Jessica 215 Brun, Georg 75 Buffett, Warren 164

Feyerabend, Paul 29 Firth, Roderick 77 f. Fodor, Jerry 39, 111, 193, 216 Foot, Philippa 206 f. Fricker, Miranda 58 f., 139, 231 Fumerton, Richard 77, 81 f., 86

Carnap, Rudolf 4, 9, 11 – 13, 15, 17, 27, 47, 66, 149 Chalmers, David 139 Chisholm, Roderick 10, 77 – 79 Chomsky, Noam 59 Chrisman, Matthew 79 Clark, Andy 139 Coady, Tony 201 Collins, Harry 30 Craig, Edward 46 – 52, 55, 63, 65, 67, 83, 128, 130, 151 f., 201, 220, 230, 234 f. Cummins, Robert 112 Darwall, Stephen 87 Darwin, Charles 110 Davidson, Donald 13, 38 De Waal, Frans 196

Elgin, Catherine

14, 19, 150, 206

Geertz, Clifford 206 Gendler, Tamar 231 f. Gettier, Edmund 7 f., 10, 44 – 46, 49, 63, 75, 128, 151, 196 Gibbard, Allan 39, 74, 175 f. Gigerenzer, Gerd 167 Godfrey-Smith, Peter 112 Goldman, Alvin 9, 79, 107, 116, 148 Goodman, Nelson 14 Grice, Paul 204 Haslanger, Sally 22 f., 56, 58 f., 63 – 65, 77, 85, 93, 128, 130, 148, 152, 188, 232 – 236 Haugeland, John 118 – 120 Hawthorne, John 212 Heidegger, Martin 119 f. Hobbes, Thomas 32 Hookway, Christopher 42, 54 – 56, 63, 65, 233 Horwich, Paul 73 Hoyningen-Huene, Paul 28 f., 142 f. Hume, David 2, 16 f., 59 Jackson, Frank James, William

10 f., 71, 149 36, 51

252

Author Index

Kahnemann, Daniel 195 Kant, Immanuel 1, 27 f., 37, 57, 69, 215 Kaplan, Mark 44 – 47, 49 – 51, 54 f., 63, 65, 128, 130, 151, 220, 230 Kekulé, August 28 Kim, Jaegwon 17 – 20, 22 f., 26, 35 f., 222 f. Kitcher, Philip 62, 110, 195 f., 225 Knobe, Joshua 195 Kornblith, Hilary 22 f., 83, 201 Kripke, Saul 216 Kuenzle, Dominique 13, 75, 126 Kuhn, Thomas 4, 23 – 31, 34 – 36, 62 f., 66, 99, 142 Kusch, Martin 230 Lackey, Jennifer 201 Lafleur, Laurence 99 Laudan, Larry 83 Longino, Helen 24, 33, 42, 56, 61 – 63, 148, 224 f. Macklin, Ruth 57 Marx, Karl 229 McDowell, John 36, 206 Mill, John Stuart 70, 145 f. Millikan, Ruth 110, 112 Moore, George Edward 71 f., 86 Moser, Paul 77, 80 – 83, 86 Murdoch, Iris 206 Nichols, Shaun 148 f., 195 f. Nietzsche, Friedrich 48 Nolan, Christopher 7 Nozick, Robert 128, 149 Owens, David

211

Pascal, Blaise 57 Peirce, James Sanders 36 Plato 2, 7, 44, 79, 230 Popper, Karl 30

Price, Huw 39, 71 Pritchard, Duncan 229 Putnam, Hilary 216 Quine, Willard Van Orman 1, 4, 8, 11, 15 – 20, 22 f., 26, 35 – 38, 41 f., 59, 61, 66, 77, 85, 88, 95, 116, 128, 222 – 224 Rawls, John 14 Reichenbach, Hans 27 f., 30, 142 Rorty, Richard 1, 36 – 43, 55, 66, 77, 90 Rudwick, Martin 30 Ryle, Gilbert 206 Schaffer, Simon 30, 32 Schaffner, Kenneth 29 Sellars, Wilfrid 1, 36 – 39, 41 f., 139 Shapin, Steven 30, 32 Sober, Elliott 17, 110, 115, 117 Socrates 2 f., 44 Sokal, Alan 23 f. Sosa, Ernest 87, 150, 201 Stanley, Jason 23 Stich, Stephen 14, 64, 148 f., 196 Stroud, Barry 18, 20 – 23, 35 f., 54 Unger, Peter

54

Van Fraassen, Bas 147 Velleman, David 57 Weinberg, Jonathan 26, 50 – 52, 55, 63, 65, 67, 77, 82 – 84, 86, 130, 148 f., 151 f., 196, 220 Weinberg, Steven 26 Williams, Bernard 46, 48, 51, 55, 65, 67, 144, 201, 206 f., 230, 235 Williamson, Timothy 6, 204, 213 – 218, 230 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 12, 36, 42 f., 91 Wright, Larry 111 f., 175

Subject Index Adaptation 108, 110 – 111, 115 – 116 Agency, epistemic 55 Alief 232 Altruism 195 – 196 Ambition, descriptive vs. normative 4 – 5, 16, 20, 27, 51, 65, 94 – 95, 144 – 153 Androcentrism 58 – 59 Anticipation 198 Anti-Individualism 215 A priori 17, 52 Assertion 21, 73, 124, 137, 144, 147, 191 – 192, 201 – 205, 210, 213 – 221, 235 – 236 Autonomy 57, 65, 79 Basic conditional epistemic normative statements 181 Basic conditional normative statements 153 – 176 – Analytical (descriptive) uses 169 – 171 – Authoritative (genuinely normative) uses 174 – Constative (descriptive) uses 167 – 168, 193 – Explanatory (descriptive) uses 161 – 167, 193 – 194, 226 – 229 – Suggestive (genuinely normative) uses 172 – 173 Belief 191, 213 – 220 – Natural kind 217 Bias paradox 59 – 60 Bumblebee 21 Certainty 15, 54 – 55, 94, 237 Closure 211 Cognitivism 71 – 74 Cognitive bias 195 Commitments 124 – 126, 191 – Assertional commitments 218 Concepts 127 – 131, 135 – 139, 191 – 196, 200 – 212 – Thin and thick concepts 159, 205 – 208, 212, 220, 226 Conceptual analysis 3, 8 – 10, 14 – 15, 17, 44, 53, 91 – 92, 129, 148 – 150, 219 – 221

Conceptual synthesis 46 – 48 Constraints on explanatory uses of norms – Attributee’s perspective 163 – 165 – Familiarity with viewpoint 162 – 163 – Governance 166 – 167 Context of discovery vs. context of justification 26 – 30, 35, 142 Contextualism 212 Control 211 Democracy 57 – 58 Dignity 57 Direction of fit 144 – 145 Disjunction problem 111 Emotivism 73 – 74 Empiricism 60, 73 – Logical Empiricism 27 – 30, 36, 38, 76, 147 Engineering – Concepts, standards, rules, values 66, 169, 179, 183, 186 – 187, 208 – 211, 221 – Kitchen hardware 130 – Reverse social engineering 48, 55, 66, 151 – 153 Epistemic injustice 58, 61, 231 – 233 Epistemic norms and evaluations 179 – 190 Epistemic phenomena approach 13, 91 – 94, 97 – 98, 192, 196, 210 Epistemic realm 66, 77, 89, 128 – 131, 233 – 235 Epistemic value 159, 229 – 231 Epistemic virtues 150, 207, 229 – 231 ESP (= epistemic states, normative statuses and performances) 99 – 141 – Content-specification of ESPs 192 – 198 – Evaluations of ESPs 198 – 200 – Kinds of ESP: conceptual ESPs 135 – 139, 210 – 213 – Kinds of ESP: intentional ESPs 127, 131 – 139, 187 – 190 – Kinds of ESP: teleological ESPs 113 – 116, 178 – 179

254

Subject Index

– Kinds of ESP: social-normative ESPs 116 – 127, 184 – 187 Ethics – Applied and normative ethics 69 – 71 – Meta-ethics 68 – 74 Evidence 14, 16, 17, 19, 61 Explication 9, 11 – 15, 47 – 48, 91 – 93, 127, 149, 219 – 221 Experimental Philosophy 22, 191, 195 – 197 Expressivism 39, 43, 74, 79, 86 Extended mind hypothesis 139 Fake bomb detectors 114, 123 Feminist epistemology 1, 5, 56 – 67, 77, 95, 231 – 236 Frege-Geach problem 161 Function – Teleological (= proper) function 109 – 115 – Etiological theories of 110 – 111 – System theories of 110 – 111 Functionalism – Epistemological functionalism 97 – 107 – In the philosophy of mind 98 – Functional analysis 110 – 111 – Turing Machine functionalism 98 – 99, 108 – 112 Game theory 117 Genesis vs. validity, see Context of discovery vs. context of justification

Intuition 10 – 15, 22 – 23, 37, 50, 55, 79, 82 – 83, 93, 149, 196, 211 – 213, 220 – 221, 231 – intuition-driven romanticism 51, 67, 82 – 83 Invariantism 212 Jim the jogger 103 – 106, 115 – 116, 133 – 141, 155 – 156, 178, 187 – 192, 203 – 205, 214, 218 Justification, epistemic 1, 3, 15, 18 – 19, 41 – 42, 48 – 52, 56, 79 – 82, 87 – 90, 151, 159, 207, 226, 237 – 238 – Functional vs. material use 222 – 224 – Representational vs. social accounts 41 – 42 Kitchen analogy 129 – 131 Knowledge – Ambiguity of the concept 33 Analysis of; see Conceptual analysis – Explication of; see Explication – Causal Explanations 31 – 34 – Primeness 217 – Rational Reconstruction of; see Rational Reconstruction – Relations to belief and assertion 213 – 222 – Transparency (Luminosity) 214 – 215 Lie detectors

Hornussen

114 – 115

161 – 167

Ideology 31, 56, 59, 139, 229, 231 – 234 Idols of the tribe, market, theatre 232 Immanent epistemology 22, 63 – 67, 93, 127 – 129, 152, 192, 221, 234 Indexicals 220 Individualism 18 Inferential roles 10, 13, 39, 43 – 44, 74, 76, 87, 91 – 92, 137 – 139, 154, 170, 207, 217 – 218, 234 Intentional states 106 – 107, 131 – 135

Management – Information management 183, 188, 191, 201 – 203, 211, 213 – 221, 230, 235 – People management 191, 202 – 203, 213 – 221, 230, 235 Meaning – Linguistic 12 – 13, 42 – 43, 72, 90 – 92, 192 – Theories of Meaning 13 – 14, 91 – 93, 192 – Semantic vocabulary approaches 90 – 92, 97, 192 – Semantic phenomena approaches 90 – 92, 97, 192

Subject Index

Meta-epistemology 2, 4 – 5, 50 – 51, 68 – 96, 156, 224, 230, 237 – Epistemology of epistemology view 80, 84 – 86 – Goals, methods and criteria view 85 – Epistemic judgements view 85 – 86 Meta-ethics 68 – 74, 86 – 87, 89, 155 – 156, 206 Myth of the Given 37 Naturalised Epistemology 15 – 23, 35, 55, 59 – 61, 64, 66, 77, 222 – 224 Naturalism 20, 51, 79, 83 Non-cognitivism 71 – 74 Normal form 157 – 164, 178, 189, 209 – Epistemic normal form 180 – 181 – Evaluative normal form 159 – Normative normal form 158 Normativity – Epistemology’s normative ambitions 4 – 5, 16, 19 – 20, 26 – 27, 51, 60, 65, 94 – 95, 128, 146 – 150, 182 – 183, 200, 203, 205, 210, 220 – 224, 233 – Normative statuses 118 – 121, 125 – 127, 176, 194, 218 – 219 Ontology

84

Philosophy of language 1 – 2, 5, 12 – 14, 90 – 91, 143 – 145 Placement problems 71, 162 Practice – Intentional practice 127 – 141 – Social-normative practice 116 – 127 – Primacy of the practice 42 – 43, 90 – 94, 96, 229 Pragmatism 36 – 56 – Analytic pragmatism 52 – 53, 91, 150 – 153, 220 – Semantic pragmatism 53 – Pragmatist epistemology 36 – 56, 63 – 67 – Pragmatist meta-epistemology 82 – 84, 94, 130 Purport, descriptive vs. normative 73 – 74, 97, 142 – 150, 160 – 176 – Descriptive purport of epistemic (normative) statements 179 – 182

255

– Descriptive purport of normative statements 160 – 171 – Normative purport of epistemic (normative) statements 182 – 190 – Normative purport of normative statements 171 – 176 Psychology 4, 15 – 30, 35, 37, 66, 106, 139, 142, 191, 195 – 197, 216, 224 Rational decision theory 145 Rational reconstruction 15 – 16 – Doctrinal 15 – 16 – Conceptual 16 Rational-social dichotomy 33, 62, 224 – 227 Rational vs. advisable 175 – 176 Regress problem 7, 90 Reflective Equilibrium 8 – 9, 12 – 15, 63 – 66, 127 – 129, 150, 221, 233 Relativism 24, 30 – 32, 61, 66, 131, 212, 227 – 229 Representation 37 – 44, 61, 137, 147, 193, 218 Representationalism 38 – 43, 218 – Content-Explanatory representationalism 38 – 43, 137, 216 – 217 – Epistemological representationalism 40 – 43 – Semantic-Talk representationalism 38 – 41 Responses (design and purpose) 192 – 195, 198, 205, 208, 224 Responsibility 119, 165, 211 Sapience 138 – 139, 186, 210 – 212 Scepticism 7, 18 – 20, 41, 54 – 56, 81 – 82 Science Wars 23, 32, 62 Scientific paradigm 25 – 26 Scientific revolution 24 – 26 Scientist Sheila 45, 68 – 75, 81, 91, 96, 106, 137 – 138, 142, 155 – 158, 163, 173, 175, 178, 187 – 196, 204 – 218 Semantics – Inferential roles 10, 13, 39, 43 – 44, 74, 76, 87, 91 – 92, 137 – 139, 154, 170, 207, 217 – 218, 234 – Representationalist 38 – 43

256

Subject Index

Semantic internalism and externalism 215 – Truth-conditional 10, 38, 62, 73, 204 Sanctions 118 – 121 Sexist epistemic practices 56 – 59, 64, 66 Sin 57 – 58 Social Construction 24, 30 – 34, 61 – 63, 224 – 231 Social epistemology 56, 61 – 63, 201, 222 Sociology of Scientific Knowledge 26, 30 – 32, 61 – 63, 224 – 231 Stance strategy 104 – 118, 177 – 179 – Design stance 107 – 118, 177, 192 – 195 – Intentional stance 106, 132 – 142, 177 – 180, 189, 199 – 201, 215, 231 – 232 – Physical stance 107, 132 – Practice stance 120 – 121, 193 – 195 Symmetry principle of explanation 31 – 34, 227 – 229 Systems – Teleological systems (systems with a design) 104, 106, 108 – Higher-order intentional systems 139 – 141 – Intentional systems 104, 106, 139 – 141, 179, 181, 187

– Social-normative systems 197 – Systems of norms 157

104, 186, 194,

Testimony 201 Thermometer 5, 100, 116 Third person perspective 18, 20, 22 – 23 Truth-conduciveness 40 UFO

21

Vervet monkeys 117 – 118, 138 Viewpoint 68 – 70, 128, 155 – 156 Vocabulary approaches 13, 196 – Semantic vocabulary approaches 90 – 92, 97, 192 – Epistemic vocabulary approaches 92 – 94, 192, 210 Virtue epistemology 206 – 207, 229 – 231 Waggle dance (honey bees) 103 – 104, 111, 116 – 118, 136, 140, 184, 194, 233 Whig history 25, 30, 31