KNOWLEDGE, EPISTEMIC WARRANT & FOUNDATIONALISM

I am going to deal with the foundations of First Philosophy in its entirety. — Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy To say that a belief is [epistemically] warranted or justified for a person is to evaluate it or him (or both) positively; his holding that belief in his circumstances is right, or proper, or acceptable, or approvable, or up to the standard. We evaluate a person’s beliefs (more exactly, her believings) as warranted, or justified, or rational, or reasonable, contrasting them with beliefs that are unwarranted, unjustified, irrational, unreasonable. — Alvin Plantinga, Warrant: The Current Debate [Epistemic warrant] is a normative concept. It is an evaluation of how well one has pursued one’s epistemic goals. — Stewart Cohen & Keith Lehrer, “Justification, Truth and Coherence”

On (two of the) epistemologist’s concerns: the nature & THE BIG IDEAS TO MASTER possibility of propositional knowledge • Doxastic attitudes • Propositional knowledge Before we delve into Descartes’ philosophical project, it will • Traditional analysis of knowledge be helpful for us to understand some basic epistemology, • Epistemic warrant namely, its primary questions and the kinds of answers that • Evidentialism have been offered. • Basic vs. non-basic belief • Foundationalist theory of epistemic As we said, epistemology is the study of the structure and warrant nature of knowledge and well-grounded belief. But what • The Regress Argument exactly does that mean? Let us consider the following. Epistemologists are primarily interested in answering three questions: (1) what is knowledge?; (2) what, if anything, can we know?; (3) how do we acquire knowledge?1

On the ambiguity of the term ‘knowledge’ So, what is knowledge? To answer this, we must recall that the term ‘knowledge’ is ambiguous. The Greeks, you will recall, distinguish it into three types: epistemê, technê and phronesis. Rather than use this set of distinctions, let use the contemporary notions and distinguish it a little differently. The three are: propositional, procedural and acquaintance.

Knowledge

Propositional Non-propositional knowledge knowledge

Procedural Acquaintance knowledge knowledge

1 Descartes hopes to answer these same questions in his Meditations on First Philosophy. What he calls “first philosophy” is, to a large degree, nothing less than a philosophical theory on (a) the nature (i.e., the essence) of knowledge, (b) the possibility of having it, and (c) the proper method for gaining that knowledge. What’s the difference between each type? Let us understand them accordingly: • Propositional knowledge: knowing that such-and-such proposition is true, e.g., Jones knows that Socrates is mortal. • Procedural knowledge: knowing how to do such-and-such, e.g., Smith knows how to ride a bike. • Acquaintance knowledge: knowing such-and-such object, e.g., Brown knows the car.

Here you can see that what distinguishes each type of knowledge is the object that is said to be known. In the case of propositional knowledge, the object is the proposition’s truth-value (whether it’s true or false); in procedural knowledge, it is a procedure for performing a task; and in acquaintance knowledge it is familiarity we might say with a thing’s properties.2 Our concern is with propositional knowledge, knowledge that a proposition is true or false. So what is propositional knowledge?

On the concept of propositional knowledge While epistemologists throughout history have had many different answers to that question, they have traditionally answered it with what is known as the traditional analysis of propositional knowledge (also referred to as justified-true-belief analysis). According to the traditional analysis, propositional knowledge is to be understood as follows:

TAK: If a person S knows that a proposition p (is true), then it must also be that: (i) S believes p (i.e., that p is true), (ii) p is true, and (iii) S’s belief that p is epistemically warranted.

So, for instance, if Jones knows that Socrates is mortal, then it must also be that Jones believes Socrates is mortal, Socrates is mortal, and Jones’ believing that Socrates is mortal is an epistemically warranted belief. Only so long as those things are true can Jones know that Socrates is mortal. In this way, we see that advocates of (TAK) claim that there are three necessary conditions in order to have propositional knowledge:

• The believes condition (the person must believe that p is true), • The truth condition (p must be true), and • The warrant condition (the person must be epistemically warranted in believing that p is true).3

It is the last condition that will be our focus. Why? For two reasons. First, given the nature of Descartes’ skeptical worries, his concern is with (iii), the warrant condition. Second, since knowledge is a special kind of true belief, we have to ask what is the distinguishing feature between having a true

2 Notice that propositional knowledge and procedural knowledge are rather similar to the Greek conceptions of epistêmê and technê, respectively. 3 Two things. First, these three conditions are necessary in that if a person does not satisfy each of them, knowledge is not possible. They are, however, not by themselves sufficient. Whether they are jointly sufficient is the matter of a great deal of debate. Second, notice how this analysis differs from that of Plato’s analysis in that it drops the fourth condition: the understanding condition. belief that a proposition is true and knowing the proposition is true. It is generally regarding that epistemic warrant is (at least a substantive part of) what does that distinguishing. So, we will have to ask what is epistemic warrant? Before I give that, however, let us state what it is to believe something.4

On being a believer We all believe things. We don’t necessarily believe all of the same things. No, some of us, for instance, believe that the earth is an orb-shaped object; others believe that the earth is a flat disk. To be sure, these are contrary attitudes, but they are what people believe.5 But what is it to believe something? Philosophically speaking, to believe something is simply to assent to the truth of a proposition. It is think that the proposition correctly corresponds to the facts, that it correctly describes “the world.” So, for instance, to say that

(A) Hawking believes that gravity is the curvature of spacetime, just means that

(A*) Hawking thinks that gravity is the curvature of spacetime is a true proposition.

Believing a proposition, however, is just one of three possible doxastic attitudes. The three (and only three) doxastic attitudes are:

• S believes p if S thinks or accepts that p is true, • S disbelieves p if S denies or rejects that p is true, and • S suspends judgement about p if S neither believes p nor disbelieves p.

Now, it should be clear that each of these attitudes seems to be tied up with making a judgement. If so, then to believe a proposition p is to make the judgement that p is true; to disbelieve p is to make the judgement that p is false; to suspend judgement is to withhold making a judgement about whether p is true or false. Two more things. First, having a given doxastic attitude does not mean you are correct. No, people believe and disbelieve mistakenly all time. These are called misjudgements. Second, that a person has a given doxastic attitude does not mean that attitude is epistemically warranted. Certainly they think it is warranted; arguably, no one adopts a given doxastic attitude without what they believe are good reasons for doing so. But whether their reasons are in fact good is another question altogether. So, let’s see if we can make sense of what’s required to have actually good reasons for adopting a particular doxastic attitude.

On the concept of epistemic warrant As Cohen and Lehrer note in the above quote, epistemic warrant—what some philosophers call ‘epistemic justification’—is a normative or evaluative property. It is a property that makes one’s doxastic attitude rationally good, or right, or appropriate to have in their given circumstances. It specifies the ideal attitude state to have. But what is it? What is that property exactly? To answer this, let us begin by

4 We already defined what ‘…is true’ means on the course handout entitled “Plato, Philosophical Inquiry, and the Elenctic Method.” 5 You might be tempted to say that some people don’t believe the earth is an orb-shaped object, but that they know it is. But as we’ll discuss, it’s more accurate to say they don’t merely believe it, they also know it. distinguishing two types of doxastic attitudes: those that are properly held by a person versus those that are improperly held by a person. (Note: by ‘held’ I mean accepted or adopted.) Here’s the difference:

PROPER-BELIEF: A person’s S’s doxastic attitude A is properly held by S when and only when there is no contrary attitude A* that S should adopt instead in exactly the same circumstances, and

IMPROPER-BELIEF: A person’s S’s doxastic attitude A is improperly held by S when there is a contrary attitude A* that S should hold instead in exactly the same circumstances. So, here we can see that the difference has to do when something is what one should believe, when that’s the right thing to believe. But not right in the sense that it’s true; rather, right in the sense that that is what the ideally rational person believes in those circumstances. What then are the conditions for a doxastic attitude being properly held versus improperly held? Like many topics, different epistemologists have different answers. Since our concern is with Descartes, we need to understand two theories about epistemic warrant to which Descartes was committed: evidentialism and foundationalism.

Evidentialism For the purposes of this course, let us understand Descartes’ theory of warrant according to evidentialism. What is evidentialism? It is the epistemological theory that

EVIDENTIALISM: If a person S adopts a doxastic attitude A toward proposition p (about whether it’s true or false), then S’s having A is (epistemically) warranted just in case S has adequate evidence that p is true or false.

So, according to EVIDENTIALISM, if we are to think rationally, we are to let the evidence guide which doxastic attitudes we adopt. If a person has adequate evidence that a given proposition p is true, then she should believe p. She may not, but she should; for that is what the rational person does. However, if she does not have such evidence, then she must adopt a different doxastic attitude. Which? Again, it depends on the adequacy of her evidence. If she has adequate evidence that p is false, then she should disbelieve p (that is, believe not-p). Again, she may not; but she should. However, if she fails to have adequate evidence either way, then she should suspend judgement, i.e., she should neither believe nor disbelieve p. For how long? Until that point in which she gets adequate evidence that “tilts” the evidence scales one way or the other. Of course, the all-important question for the evidentialist is how we are to understand the concept of a person’s having adequate evidence for a proposition being true. Evidentialists have varying views on that matter. Generally speaking, evidentialists require that p is to some degree more likely to be true than false. Since we’re studying Descartes, we’ll consider his standard for having adequate evidence for accepting that a proposition (which as we will see is the claim that it must be certain and indubitable).

Foundationalism Foundationalism is a theory about the nature of epistemic warrant. Given that, it should be clear that it is a normative theory—i.e., it tells us when we are warranted, reasonable, or permitted to assent, not assent or suspend judgment regarding a proposition. Most importantly, it tells us about the structure of epistemically warranted doxastic attitudes. That is, it explains for us how our epistemically warranted doxastic attitudes are related to each other. Put differently, it tells us that every member of a cognitive being’s set of doxastic attitudes is organized and formally related in very important ways. What is that organization and formal relation? According to the foundationalist, genuine (propositional) knowledge and epistemically warranted belief has a two-tier structure: some instances of our knowledge and epistemically warranted belief are “foundational” and every other instance is “non-foundational.” What is the difference between these two categories of knowledge and epistemically warranted belief? We can make sense of it by distinguishing two types of beliefs from one another: basic beliefs versus non-basic beliefs. Let us understand the distinction as follows:

BASIC: A belief b1 is a basic belief if there are no other beliefs b2, b3,…bn that b1 is evidentially based on, and

NON-BASIC: A belief b1 is a non-basic belief if there is one or more beliefs b2, b3,…bn that b1 is evidentially based on.

(Note: basic beliefs are also called foundational beliefs; non-basic beliefs are also called non- foundational beliefs.) As you can see, the important difference has to do with the evidence basis. Both belief types have an evidence basis, but what serves as the evidence basis is importantly different. Basic beliefs are based on evidence that does not come in the form of beliefs; non-basic beliefs are based on evidence that does come in the form of beliefs. Even so, there is one more detail we need to understand: to say that to say that a non-basic belief b has an evidence basis that is composed of beliefs means that b is inferred from other beliefs. While we’ll talk about how Descartes understands this more in detail, let us say this for now. To say that a belief is inferred from another belief is to say this:

INFERRED-BELIEF: If a person S believes that p on the basis of an inference, then there is some other proposition q, such that: (a) S believes: q (is true), and (b) S believes: q being true implies that p is (also) true. With this all before us, we can now say this. Given the principles PROPER-BELIEF and BASIC, when we say a belief is properly basic, we're saying that the belief is properly held by the person and it does not have that status on the basis of making an inference from one or more other beliefs. Given the principles PROPER-BELIEF, NON-BASIC and INFERRED BELIEF, when we say that a belief is properly non-basic, we're saying that the belief is properly held by the person and it does have that status on the basis of making an inference from one or more beliefs. Now we can state (the theory of) foundationalism:

FOUNDATIONALISM: All properly non-basic beliefs are warranted in virtue of their being properly inferred from (at least) one properly basic belief.

Putative examples of basic and non-basic warranted beliefs (for at least some people at some times) are, respectively: (1) Jones’ belief there is a chair in front of me, and (2) Jones’ belief the chair will not break underneath my weight when I sit in it. So, should we accept that foundationalism is the correct structure of warrant? Why would anyone think that it is? This brings us to the classic argument for foundationalism: The Regress Argument. That argument is this:

The Regress Argument 1. If S has (epistemically) warranted beliefs, then either (i) S has at least one properly basic belief, or (ii) every one of S’s warranted belief has an evidence chain that: a. terminates with an unwarranted belief, b. regresses to infinity, or c. is circular. [premise] 2. (1a) is false: no beliefs based on unwarranted beliefs is warranted. [premise] 3. (1b) is false: an infinite regressing chain cannot warrant beliefs. [premise] 4. (1c) is false: a circular chain cannot warrant beliefs. [premise] Therefore, 5. If S has (epistemically) warranted beliefs, then S has at least one properly basic belief. [from 1-4]6

6 © 2018, Richard G. Graziano. All rights reserved. This material may not be used, or duplicated in part or whole without express written permission by the author.