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Causal Theories of Knowledge1 MIDWEST STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY, IX (1984) Causal Theories of Knowledgel FRED DRETSKE AND BERENT ENC ausal theories of knowledge require some causal connection between belief Cand the conditions whose existence make that belief true. Lacking this con- nection, the belief may be true, it may be altogether reasonable, but it is not knowl- edge. Philosophers have a variety of reasons for imposing this requirement. Aside from its intrinsic plausibility in cases of perceptual knowledge, the condition has a solid, naturalistic ring to it. It does a fair job in avoiding Gettier-type examples; it helps fix the object of belief; it shows promise as a device for avoiding skepticism and foundational regresses; and it bids fair to capture the intuition that a belief, to qualify as knowledge, must have no admixture of accidentality in its correspondence with the facts. Whatever the reason, many philosophers have endorsed some version of the causal theory. Our purpose in this essay is to examine the basic elements of a causal theory. We shall argue that it isn’t clear whether a causal theory can do the job it is sup- posed to do, but, if it can, some fundamental revisions must be made in the role the causal condition plays in the production of belief. The following is a first formulation of a causal condition on knowledge. It isn’t intended to be complete. It is, at best, a base clause in most formulations of the causal condition. Nevertheless, it represents the causal theory in its purest form, and it is the pure form of this theory that (allegedly) applies to our clearest cases of knowledge (e.g., perception). C(0): S knows that P only if the fact that P is the cause of S’s belief that P. I can see (hence, know) that I have five fingers on my right hand only if the fact that I have five fingers on my right hand causes me to believe this. Though we commonly talk of events-and sometimes facts-as the cause of things, these modes of description tend to obscure important distinctions that are, we believe, vital to an appropriately formulated causal analysis of knowledge. 517 518 FRED DRETSKE AND BERENT ENC Consider the cause of Tom’s intoxication. On Tuesday afternoon, Tom drinks a quart of clear liquid. The liquid in question happens to be gin, a 94 proof liquid. We have one event (fact?) referred to (expressed?) in different ways: Tom’s drink- ing a quart of clear liquid and Tom’s drinking a quart of gin. Since it is the event it- self (however we may happen to refer to it) that enters into causal relations, it seems to follow that it was Tom’s drinking a quart of clear liquid on that afternnon that caused him to become intoxicated. This, though, isn’t right. What causes Tom’s intoxication is not his ingestion of a quart of clear liquid, but hisingestion of a quart of gin. In drinking a quart of gin he drinks a quart of clear liquid, but the former, not the latter, is (what we will call) the effective cause. If Tom’s ingestion of a quart of clear liquid is (because the liquid in question is gin) the same event (fact?) as his ingestion of a quart of gin, then we need some way of specifying the causally effective or causally relevant elements of this single event (or fact). The notion of an effective cause is our way of doing this. To see why this distinction is important for a causal theory of knowledge, consider Sally’s allergy to lecithin-a substance found in milk and egg yolks and often added to chocolate bars. Sally has noticed that whenever she eats chocolate, she breaks out in a rash. After a dinner party, noting the distinctive rash beginning to appear, she comes to believe that there was chocolate in the food. In fact, there was chocolate (with lecithin) in the mole sauce served with the chicken. The choco- late in mole sauce doesn’t really taste like chocolate and it is hard to detect. Nothing else Sally ate contained lecithin. Under the circumstances, it seems clear that Sally does not know that the food contained chocolate. Is the fact that there was chocolate (with lecithin) in the food Sally ate the same fact as that there was lecithin (in the chocolate) in the food she ate? Is her ingestion of the chocolate with lecithin in it the same event as her ingestion of the lecithin in the chocolate? These questions do not seem to have clear answers. What is clear is that if these facts (or events) are the same, then we need a more discrirn- inating way of referring to the cause of belief. We can, of course, refer to the event that caused Sally’s rash (and resulting belief) with any of the following expressions: Sally’s eating the mole sauce, Sally’s eating the chocolate (in the mole sauce), Sally’s ingesting the lecithin (in the chocolate). And since her belief that the food she ate contained chocolate was caused by the event these expressions pick out, it was, it seems, caused by her eating the chocolate. But though these expressions pick out the same event (token), her belief that the food she ate contained choco- late is distinct from her belief that the food she ate contained mole sauce or leci- thin. A causal theory of knowledge should, therefore, prescribe different causes for these different beliefs. To do this one needs a finer grained analysis of the causal condition, an analysis that looks to those properties of the event that make it a causally effective agent. The food’s containing chocolate (with lecithin) is not what caused Sally’s rash (and subsequent belief). It isn’t (what we are calling) the effec- tive cause. The effective cause was the food’s containing lecithin (whether or not in chocolate). The food’s having chocolate in it is causally irrelevant-its only rele- vance being that, as a matter of fact, this particular chocolate had lecithin in it. CAUSAL THEORIES OF KNOWLEDGE 519 Describing the cause as an event or fact (without focusing on the effective proper- ties) obscures these essential distinctions. Speaking of effective causes is merely a way of shifting from an extensional to an intensional mode of discourse about events and causes, a way of referring to event tokens that exhibits their relevant type affiliation and thereby reflects the lawful regularities that underly their causal power. The event token, c, has its ef- fects (the rash, Sally’s belief) by virtue of being a realization (instance, token) of a certain property (event ype)-the ingestion of lecithin-and there is, under the circumstances, some causal regularity between events of that type and such effects.2 It may be thought that we are putting a burden on the causal condition that it was not designed to bear. It isn’t that C(0) is wrong or too weak. Rather, what disqualifies Sally’s belief (that there was chocolate in the food) as knowledge is not the failure of the causal condition, but the failure of some other condition on knowledge. Perhaps, that is, Sally fails to know there was chocolate in the food be- cause she has a false background belief, the belief that only chocolate produces the rash, and a correct analysis of knowledge requires, besides a causal condition, some condition excluding the presence of false background beliefs. The exclusion of false background beliefs may be required at some point in the proceedings, but we don’t think it is relevant here. The causal theory has the re- sources for handling this case without invoking other conditions. What disqualifies Sally’s belief (as a form of knowledge) is not that she has a false background belief, but that this false belief affects her causal relationship to the world-thereby dis- qualifying her on causal grounds. Compare: what makes the instrument inaccurate is a faulty spring, but the spring is responsible for the instrument’s inaccuracy only because it changes the way the world affects the instrument-changes the way the instrument responds to external conditions. If that didn’t change, the faulty spring would be irrelevant. And so it is with false background beliefs. They are relevant to the acquisition of knowledge, but only because they influence the way we causally interact with the world. A false background belief merely makes it more difficult to satisfy the causal condition on knowledge. C(0) should therefore be reformulated to reflect this more discriminating specification of the cause. The causally effective properties must be made explicit. We do so by abandoning the factive and adopting the gerundive mode of specify- ing the cause: something’s being F, turning G,ingesting H, or whatever. We also, in order to avoid unnecessary complications, restrict ourselves to de re beliefs. C(1): S knows of u that it is F only if a’s being F is the cause of S’s believing of a that it is F. Sally doesn’t know that the food contained chocolate because it was not the food’s containing chocolate that (via the rash) caused her to believe this. It was the food’s containing lecithin. Hence, Sally fails to satisfy C(1). C(l) forces one to distinguish between a house’s being painted blue and a house’s being painted Toby’s favorite color even when blue is Toby’s favorite color. Even though we have one event (or fact?) described in different ways, we have two 520 FRED DRETSKE AND BERENT ENC (potentially) effective causes (or event types): its being painted blue and its being painted Toby’s favorite color.
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