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Constructing a Comprehensively Anti-Justificationist Position

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Constructing a Comprehensively Anti-Justificationist Position 28 Constructing a Comprehensively Anti-Justificationist Position Antoni Diller 1 Introduction The central epistemological problem in a justificationist philosophy is that of justification. This is the problem of how we can justify our theories or beliefs. Virtually all philosophical systems in the Western tradition, from the time of Descartes until the twentieth century, have been justificationist ones. These philosophies can be distinguished by the different ways in which they solve the problem of justification. The revolutionary nature of Popper’s thought is due to the fact that he removed the problem of justification from its central position in epistemology and replaced it with the problem of criticism, that is to say, the question of how theories can be criticized. By doing this he showed that the problem of justification is irrelevant to epistemology (Popper 1983, Part I, 2(I)). Popper criticized many aspects of justificationism in his first published§ book (Popper 1935), but he was not fully aware of just how radical he was being. In that book Popper was particularly interested in the problems of induction and demarcation and he developed his solutions partly in the context of a debate with several logical positivists, especially Carnap, who were thoroughly justificationist in their thinking. It was Bartley, in the 1960s, who realized that Popper’s originality was not restricted to solving particular problems, like that of induction and demarcation, but involved a thoroughgoing re-orientation of the problem situation in epistemology. Bartley was interested in the problem of the limits of rationality and his discussion of this is largely conducted in the context of a debate with var- ious liberal theologians who made much use of the tu quoque (you too) or boomerang argument. One version of this goes as follows: ‘(1) [For] certain logical reasons, rationality is so limited that everyone has to make a dogmatic irrational commitment; (2) therefore, the Christian has a right to make what- ever commitment he pleases; and (3) therefore, no one has a right to criticize him for this’ (Bartley 1962, p. 90). This argument is persuasive only if a justi- ficationist conception of knowledge is presupposed. Bartley also thought that there were remnants of justificationism in Popper’s critical rationalism, which led to what he saw as Popper’s fideism. This emerges in Popper’s discussion of rationality where, unable to justify his critical rationalism logically, he says 119 120 Antoni Diller that his minimal concession to irrationalism is to make a decision to believe in reason (Popper 1945b, Chapter 24, ii). In forging his comprehensively criti- cal rationalism, later rechristened ‘pancritical§ rationalism’, Bartley sought to present a solution to the problem of rationality free from any taint of justific- ationism. It is not surprising, therefore, that the term ‘anti-justificationism’ was used to describe his views (Watkins 1969, p. 60). Bartley’s anti-justificationist ideas came to be accepted by many in the Popper camp, including Watkins, Agassi, and Lakatos (Bartley 1962, p. 157), though some later recanted. As Bartley’s ideas spread, differences of emphasis began to emerge and various facets of anti-justificationism were stressed by different thinkers. Disputes arose between people who actually had a great deal in common. The purpose of this paper is to present a systematic account of anti-justificationism. I hope thereby to show that the debate between just- ificationism and anti-justificationism is far more important than arguments within anti-justificationism. I start by characterizing justificationism, men- tioning some of the criticisms that have been brought against it, and then I characterize anti-justificationism. Having a clear characterization of anti- justificationism it is easier to see what distinguishes it from justificationist philosophies and this enables me to present a novel argument showing the su- periority of anti-justificationism. (I do not wish to suggest that all conceivable epistemologies are either justificationist or anti-justificationist ones, but I do not have the space to consider other approaches here.) 2 Justificationism I am not trying to answer the question, ‘What is justificationism?’ I agree with Popper that such questions are not helpful. Instead, I identify the main features of justificationism. (1) In justificationism knowledge is defined to be justified true belief. This is known as the standard analysis and Bartley takes it to be the unique de- termining feature of justificationism (Bartley 1962, pp. 172f.). Not only do justificationists accept the standard analysis, they also think that this def- inition is important and many of them have been seriously troubled by ex- amples that show that it is flawed (Gettier 1967). Recently, however, Wright has sought to draw the sting of Gettier’s counterexamples by conceding that ‘knowledge is not really the proper concern of epistemological-sceptical en- quiry’ (Wright 1991, p. 88). He explains, ‘We can live with the concession that we do not, strictly know some of the things we believed ourselves to know, provided we can retain the thought that we are fully justified in ac- cepting them.’ Thus, Wright accepts the standard analysis and the validity of Gettier’s counterexamples, but is not troubled by them. This is because he thinks that epistemologists should be concerned with justified true belief even if this is not knowledge! Wright’s approach to epistemology shows that he regards the standard analysis as a real or, what Popper calls, an essent- A Comprehensively Anti-Justificationist Position 121 ialist definition (Popper 1945b, Chapter 11, ii). When people ask what-is? questions, they are looking for real definitions.§ The standard analysis arises when philosophers take the pseudo-problem, ‘What is knowledge?’, seriously. Popper, and most anti-justificationists, do not accept the existence of real definitions. (2) One consequence of the standard analysis is that knowledge is taken to be something subjective. Thus, the epistemological focus for justificationism is the knowledge that some individual or other possesses. There is, certainly, knowledge in this sense, but Popper has persuasively argued that it is not the primary concern of epistemology. Instead, he argues that the study of objective knowledge should be the primary focus of philosophy (Popper 1972, Chapters 3 and 4). Popper follows such thinkers as Frege and Bolzano in singing the praises of objective knowledge. Such knowledge has many advantages over the subjective variety. For example, objective knowledge can stand in logical relations to other objective knowledge, whereas subjective knowledge cannot. Objective knowledge can be grasped by many people, whereas an individual’s subjective knowledge is unique to that individual. Objective knowledge has a permanence that fleeting subjective knowledge does not have. (3) Another consequence of the standard analysis is that knowledge is under- stood as being certain. This has led many epistemologists to engage in what Popper, following Dewey, calls ‘the quest for certainty’ (Popper 1972, Chap- ter 2, 13). Lakatos, in comments he made at the 1966 Denver Colloquium, describes§ how the quest for certainty, rigorously applied by a justificationist empiricist, continually diminishes the class of things that can be known for certain (Lakatos 1970, p. 221): [Justificationism] inexorably leads to a step by step reduction of the field of rational inquiry. The most important pattern of such reduction is this: First cast doubt on any source of indubitable knowledge about the world except for sense-experience and arrive at (realistic) empiricism; then cast doubt on whether sense-experience was a proof of the external world and slip into solipsism; then cast doubt on the coherence of your ego and replace solipsism by the mist of ‘fleeting bundles of perception’ — the infinite abyss of doubt leaves one with nothing spared. Anti-justificationists can have a lot of fun with any philosopher who claims that a particular class of statements or some specific proposition is certain and, therefore, immune from criticism, because, with a little effort, luck, and creativity, it is possible to find a way of criticizing any given statement. (4) In the standard analysis knowledge is defined to be justified true belief. A justification involves three components, namely the foundational statements that form the premises of the justification, the collection of acceptable logical procedures or rules of inference that allow the conclusion or statement being justified to be inferred from the foundational statements and a non-logical and non-linguistic rational authority that establishes the truth of the founda- 122 Antoni Diller tional statements. A specific justificationist philosophy is obtained by choosing a particular rational authority that validates foundational statements and by choosing the collection of allowable logical procedures. The choice of rational authority then determines the class of foundational statements. The reason why justificationists need such a rational authority is in order to ensure that justifications contain only a finite number of steps. This is how they prevent the occurrence of an infinite regress of reasons. There are, however, other ways of dealing with the threat of such an infinite regress (Armstrong 1973, pp. 150-161; Bartley 1962, pp. 211-216), but I do not have the space to discuss them here. The currently most popular version of justificationism is empir- icism. Here, the rational authority
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