PROPOSAL OF A BOOK
TITLE OF THE BOOK:
Basic
Epistemology
AIMS OF THE BOOK
My plan is to write a short book with 200 pages or
less. The book is planned as a supplementary textbook, appealing to scholars as
well as to students. Its aim is to expose the most fundamental problems of
epistemology from perspectives chosen and sometimes to a certain extent
developed by the author. They are not to be found in the usual introductory
books of epistemology. Some of these views are in my judgment clearly relevant,
though not sufficiently discussed, like, for instance, the perspectival
definition of knowledge defended by Robert Fogelin, by Michael Williams, and even
by myself. Others, like a new answer to the Humean skepticism (once suggested
by Keith Campbell) and a new answer to skepticism about the external world (inspired
in Carnap’s distinction between internal and external questions of existence)
are views that I have developed and published some years ago. In the whole, the
book will be what one could call (following D. M. Armstrong) ‘an opinionated
introduction.’
In accordance with the usual definition of
epistemology as the investigation of the origins, nature, and limits of
knowledge, the book will be divided into five loosely interconnected chapters
after the preface. They are 1. Origins of Knowledge, 2. Defining Knowledge, 3.
Theories of Justification, 4. Limits of Knowledge (skepticism).
CHAPTERS’
SUMMARY
1. SOURCES OF KNOWLEDGE: the general aim of this first
chapter is to evaluate the divide between empiricism and rationalism. It begins
by considering the sources of knowledge: secondary ones, like memory and
testimony, and primary ones, like perceptual (including introspective)
experience and reason (or intuition). Perceptual experience and reason justify
the divide: the empiricist gives full importance to the experience, while the
rationalist gives full importance to the a priori knowledge originated from
reason or intuition. The main thesis of the chapter comes from the evolutionary
epistemology. Our innate dispositions and capacities to acquire knowledge a
priori are the result of natural selection.
Some cases
are considered. One of them is our capacity to understand Euclidian geometry.
It seems more intuitive to us, and it is all we need in order to deal with the
space around us, even if from the standpoint of the physicists it is not the
most precise way of considering space. Another case is that of logical
principles, like the principle of non-contradiction. (For instance, no living
animal could survive without the capacity of distinguishing its prey from its
hunter.) Still other cases would be those of arithmetic knowledge, supposed
synthetic a priori knowledge, and conventional definitional knowledge. They are
all, if not fully trivial, conditioned by natural evolution, which means that
they have at the end of the day empirical sources. From this, some philosophers
like Michael Devitt concluded that rationalism is over, as empiricism has
tracked the real source of our knowledge.
I disagree
with this. Empiricism, with its theory of mind as a blank slate,
cannot show how our knowledge can be constructed and why it is similarly
constructed in different minds. Moreover, rationalist philosophers were
insightful in grasping the importance of our innate dispositions to react and to
the creation of possible views about the world much earlier than the theory of
evolution could explain this scientifically. This is the kern-insight of
rationalism and not the discovery that innate knowledge is usually fallible or
that it was not posed in our minds by God. An actualized form of rationalism (that
we can find in Karl Popper, Noam Chomsky, Jean Piaget, and others) is not only
compatible but complementary with empiricism. Evolutionary theory has
not demolished the distinction but contributed to the dissolution of its traditional
polarization.
2. DEFINING KNOWLEDGE: The second chapter concerns
analysis of knowledge. After an introductory examination of the different forms
of knowledge, I focus on propositional knowledge. The traditional definition of
knowledge is exposed together with Gettier’s problem. Some main attempts to
solve Gettier problem (like Goldman’s and Nozick attempts) are critically
exposed.
My central task in this chapter is to bring again
to the fore a theory developed by Robert Fogelin,[1] by
Michael Williams,[2]
and by myself.[3]
according to this view, the problem with the traditional definition of
knowledge is that it does not show how the condition of justification is linked
with the condition of truth in the definition of knowledge as justified true
belief. In all counterexamples of Gettier’s kind, the given justification has
nothing to do with what makes the proposition true. Consequently, the most
natural way to solve the problem is to find the right link between these two
conditions. Aiming to warrant this link, Robert Fogelin has suggested a fourth condition,
according to which the evidence given by the knowledge-claimer must be able to
make the proposition true. Fogelin has also implicitly introduced a third
person in the story, which I call the knowledge-evaluator (which can be the
knowledge-claimer in a later time…). The knowledge evaluator has an
informational set that is wider than that of the knowledge-claimer.
Consequently, he or she is able to see that the justifications given by the
knowledge-claimer in counterexamples of Gettier kind are unable to make the
proposition true.
My
contribution to this perspectival definition of knowledge (the term was
proposed to me by John Cottingham) was strengthening Fogelin’s answer by
showing the precise formal relationship between the condition of justification
and the condition of truth: I have modified the traditional definition in order
to show that the given justification must belong to the informational set of justifying
evidences accepted or at least acceptable by the knowledge-evaluator in the
time of this evaluation as able to make the proposition true. Gettierian
counterexamples are never able to do this.[4] I
held this as the only proper answer to the problem.
1. THEORIES OF JUSTIFICATION: The dispute between
coherentialism and foundationalism are also central in epistemology. My aim in
this chapter is to show that a form of modest foundationalism that gives to
coherence its due role as organizer and transmitter of beliefs without severing
our web of beliefs from the external world is the most plausible theory of
justification.
This chapter
must be linked with the last one, since according to the perspectival
definition of knowledge what justifies the true belief (satisfying the
conditions of justification) and what makes the belief true (satisfying the
condition of truth) must be sufficiently parallel justifying evidences. My
suggestion will be that the modest foundationalist theory of justification
(which includes coherence) must be parallel to a form of correspondence theory
of truth (which also includes coherence). The real difference here is that the
foundationalist theory of justification is applied by the knowledge-claimer,
while the correspondence theory of truth is applied by the knowledge-evaluator
(often representing the epistemic community). For this reason, the belief
sustained by a piece of justifying evidence can more easily be proved to be false. In
the case I succeed in doing this, we will be able to show how the opposition
coerentialism versus foundationalism in theory of justification is
related to the opposition coerentialism versus correnspondentialism in theory
of truth. They are both parallel procedures differing only in their different
positions in the social process of constructing knowledge.
5. LIMITS OF KNOWLEDGE: In this chapter, I introduce
and develop answers to two main kinds of skepticism: (i) skepticism on
induction (Humean) and (ii) skepticism about the external world.
Regarding the
first one, I extend a plausible but forgotten answer that can be found in Keith
Campbell.[5]
According to him, our world must be intrinsically open to induction, since in
order to apply a concept we need to be able to reapply it, what means that our
world must contain enough regularity to allow this reapplication and therefore
induction. This structural permanence of things alluded by Campbell is what I
would call synchronic uniformities. These uniformities are very
different from the uniformities that sustain the causal relations focused on Hume’s
analyses, which can be called diachronic uniformities. It seems, in fact, impossible to conceive a world without any diachronic and any synchronic
uniformity. Even stories of the destruction of our world, like St. John’s Book
of Revelations remain full of at least synchronic uniformities of confused but
identifiable things in order to preserve its intelligibility. I suggest that an
improved reading of Hume’s principle of uniformity of the universe understood
as a principle that demands increasing accumulation of uniformities that finds their
limits in the present, when both, future and past uniformities, must be the
identical. This principle seems to be able to replace Hume’s metaphysical
principle as a kind of analytic-conceptual principle that cannot be denied
without contradiction.[6]
Concerning
skepticism about the external world, I expose first the ‘argument of ignorance,’
according to which we cannot know any trivial proposition since we cannot know
that the skeptical hypothesis is false, followed by its contrapositive moorean
anti-skeptical ‘argument of knowledge.’ Although I intend to review some main
solutions, like relevant alternatives and contextualism, and show their
limitations, I concentrate on a solution that I find the most plausible.
This solution was inspired by Carnap’s distinction between internal and
external questions of existence and I have developed it in some articles.[7] Although
it is impossible to summarize this solution in a few words, the main steps are
the following: (1) I suggest that in the non-skeptical, normal context, we are
committed with what I call inherent sense of external reality (or existence),
which is based on the sum of the traditional criteria of reality attribution
(like maximal perceptual intensity, possible intersubjectivity, independence of
will, the allowance to natural laws), while in the skeptical context we are committed
with what I call an adherent sense of external reality, which has very
different criteria of application, based on coherence criteria (like how it
would be if someone would turn conscious of his or her past brain-in-a-vat
existence?). (2) Because of this difference of meaning, the argument of
ignorance (as much as the Moorean argument of knowledge), when formulated in a
totally explicit way shows different senses of external reality contextually
committed in their different statements, what makes both arguments equivocal
and consequently fallacious. (I am aware that in this compressed form these arguments
cannot sound clear enough, but I am sure that in the book they will be understood
by anyone with basic training in analytic philosophy.[8])
[1] Robert Fogelin, Pyrronian
Reflections on Knowledge and Justification (Oxford University Press, 1994),
ch. 1. The point was clearly diagnosed much earlier, for instance, in D. J.
O’Connor & Brian Carr’s An Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge
(The Harvester Press, 1982) pp. 80-82.
[2] Michael Williams follows the same
argumentative line in his book Problems of Knowledge: A Critical
Introduction to Epistemology, Oxford University Press, 2001), ch. 1.
[3] Claudio F. Costa, “A Perspectival
Definition of Knowledge”, Ratio 23 (2), 2010, 151-157. A revised version
of this paper was published as the chapter 5 of the book Lines of Thought:
Rethinking Philosophical Assumptions (2014), which I am sending attached.
[4] See chapter 5 of my book Lines
of Thought: Rethinking Philosophical Assumptions.
[5] Campbell, K., “One form of
Skepticism about Induction”, in R. Swinburne, The Justification of induction
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974)
[6] The essentials of this view
were already presented in the appendix of chapter 5 of my book Lines of
Thought: Rethinking Philosophical Assumptions (CSP, 2018).
[7] Claudio Costa, “The Skeptical
Deal with our Concept of External Reality”, Abstracta 5 : 1, pp. 43 – 76, 2009. An edited version
of the paper has been published as the chapter 6 of the book Lines of
Thought: Rethinking Philosophical Assumptions (CSP, 2014).
[8] They are clear enough in the papers
I have published exposing them, mainly in chapter 6 of the book Lines of
Thought: Rethinking Philosophical Assumptions (CSP, 2014). I am sending the
texts for the case in which the referee wishes to check the paper.
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