Lehrer on Belief and Acceptance

LEHRER ON BELIEF AND ACCEPTANCE

______

A Thesis

Presented to the

Faculty of

San Diego State University

______

In Partial Fulfillment

of the Requirements for the Degree

Master of Arts

Philosophy

______

Joshua Christian Cangelosi

Summer 2016

iii

DEDICATION

This thesis is dedicated to Professor J. Angelo Corlett. Without his mentorship and teaching, neither this thesis nor my career in philosophy would have been possible.

“We must follow the argument wherever it leads.” –Socrates (Laws 667a)

ABSTRACT OF THE THESIS

Lehrer on Belief and Acceptance by Joshua Christian Cangelosi Master of Arts in Philosophy San Diego State University, 2016

This thesis centers on Keith Lehrer’s seminal theory of knowledge, arguing that Lehrer’s acceptance condition of knowledge should be replaced with the traditional belief condition. Chapter One argues that Lehrer lacks good reason to condition knowledge on acceptance instead of belief, while Chapter Two argues that Lehrer has good reason to condition knowledge on belief instead of acceptance.

vii

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PAGE

ABSTRACT ...... vi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... viii INTRODUCTION ...... 1 1 BELIEF VERSUS DOXASTIC ACCEPTANCE: A DISTINCTION WITHOUT A DIFFERENCE ...... 2 Introduction ...... 2 Belief Versus Doxastic Acceptance ...... 3 Epistemic Responsibility ...... 12 Control ...... 13 Reasons-Responsiveness ...... 20 Knowledge ...... 26 Conclusion of Chapter 1 ...... 31 2 LEHRER ON THE REASONABLENESS OF ACCEPTANCE ...... 33 Introduction ...... 33 The Reasonableness of Acceptance ...... 34 The Dilemma ...... 39 Conclusion of Chapter 2 ...... 45 CONCLUSION ...... 46 REFERENCES ...... 47

viii

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am very grateful to the readers on my panel for their time and comments, to the Department of Philosophy at San Diego State University for its superb philosophical training, to my mom for her unfailing support, and to my wife for her way of making life amazing.

INTRODUCTION

In this thesis, I argue that Keith Lehrer’s acceptance condition of knowledge should be replaced with the traditional belief condition. Chapter One contends that Lehrer’s distinction between belief and doxastic acceptance is without much difference by contesting three assumptions that appear in large part to motivate this distinction: (1) the assumption that belief and doxastic acceptance are too different to be considered the same kind of mental state; (2) the assumption that because we are epistemically responsible only for the doxastic attitudes we control, we are not epistemically responsible for beliefs but only for acceptances; and (3) the assumption that acceptance, not belief, is the requisite doxastic attitude for knowledge. Absent further rational for the distinction, acceptance simply appears to be a sort of belief, and there is no reason for Lehrer to condition knowledge on acceptance instead of belief. Not only does Lehrer not have good reason to condition knowledge on acceptance instead of belief; he also has good reason to condition knowledge on belief instead of acceptance. Specifically, Chapter Two argues that Lehrer’s theory of knowledge faces the following dilemma: If acceptance entails justification, Lehrer’s justification condition of knowledge is superfluous; if acceptance does not entail justification, Lehrer’s acceptance condition superfluously replaces the traditional belief condition. Because Lehrer does not want to abandon the justification condition but maintain that acceptance does not entail justification, he has good reason to replace the acceptance condition of knowledge with the traditional belief condition.

CHAPTER 1

BELIEF VERSUS DOXASTIC ACCEPTANCE: A DISTINCTION WITHOUT A DIFFERENCE

INTRODUCTION In this chapter, I challenge Keith Lehrer’s distinction between belief and doxastic acceptance by contesting three assumptions that appear in large part to motivate this distinction: (1) the assumption that belief and doxastic acceptance are too different to be considered the same kind of mental state; (2) the assumption that because we are epistemically responsible only for the doxastic attitudes we control, we are not epistemically responsible for beliefs but only for acceptances; and (3) the assumption that acceptance, not belief, is the requisite doxastic attitude for discursive knowledge. By challenging these assumptions, I considerably reduce, if not eliminate, the motivation for adopting Lehrer’s distinction and, thus, place the onus of justifying this distinction back on those who maintain it. For I argue that, absent further rationale, Lehrer’s distinction is, at best, without much difference and, at worst, misleading insofar as it leads us to think that special doxastic attitudes called ‘acceptances’ are distinct from beliefs and requisite for epistemic responsibility and knowledge. I propose that, instead of adopting Lehrer’s distinction, we classify all doxastic attitudes as mental states within the general class of beliefs. Others can decide if they wish to jettison the category of doxastic acceptance (as I prefer) or preserve it as a subcategory of belief. More specifically, in response to (1), I argue that belief and doxastic acceptance are much more alike than belief and non-doxastic acceptance, and that the minimal differences between these doxastic attitudes can be accommodated by the class of beliefs. In response to (2), I clarify the relevant concept of epistemic responsibility and survey problems with an account of the control condition of such responsibility in terms of alternative doxastic

3 possibilities. Then I turn to a more promising account of the control condition: Conor McHugh’s (2013) epistemic guidance control account, which insightfully adapts John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza’s (1998) guidance control condition of moral responsibility to the analysis of epistemic responsibility.1 I support McHugh’s position that we can exercise epistemic guidance control central to epistemic responsibility not only of doxastic attitudes we actively form via considered judgment (which Lehrer classifies as acceptances) but also of doxastic attitudes we passively acquire via perception (which Lehrer classifies as beliefs).2 However, I deny McHugh’s claim that exercising epistemic guidance control of the latter attitudes requires the potential exercise of doxastic agency in the form of inquiry and judgment—denial which implies the possibility of epistemic responsibility without agency or acceptance.3 In response to (3), I argue that the possibility of exercising epistemic guidance control of passively acquired beliefs weakens the motivation for singling out actively formed doxastic attitudes under the label ‘acceptance’ as necessary for knowledge.

BELIEF VERSUS DOXASTIC ACCEPTANCE Most of the literature contrasting belief and acceptance focuses on non-doxastic (or pragmatic) acceptance, which aims not at truth but at utility and is, thus, “a pragmatic notion, not a cognitive or theoretical one” (Engel 1998, 146).4 Lehrer’s distinction, however, is

1 C. McHugh, “Epistemic Responsibility and Doxastic Agency,” Philosophical Issues 23, no. 1 (2013): 245-269. 2 As McHugh writes, “You are responsible for beliefs formed in this way [automatically via perception sans inquiry], just as much as those that you have formed through conscious inquiry, or indeed reflective deliberation” (Ibid., 134, my explanation). See below for the manner in which Lehrer classifies doxastic attitudes. 3 Ibid., 134-135. 4 For the distinction between belief and pragmatic acceptance, see M. E. Bratman, “Practical Reasoning and Acceptance in a Context,” Mind 101, no. 401 (1992): 9; A. Buckareff, “Acceptance and Deciding to Believe,” Journal of Philosophical Research 29, (2004): 174-179; A. Buckareff, “Acceptance Does Not Entail Belief,” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 18, no. 2 (2010): 255; D. S. Clarke, “Does Acceptance Entail Belief?,” American Philosophical Quarterly 31, no. 2 (1994): 146-147; L. Cohen, An Essay on Belief and Acceptance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992), Ch. 1; P. Engel, “Believing, Holding True, and Accepting,” Philosophical Explorations 1, no. 2 (1998): 143-144, 146-147; and R. Tuomela, “Belief Versus Acceptance,” Philosophical Explorations 3, no. 2 (2000): 123-124.

4 between two kinds of doxastic (or belief-like) attitudes, that is, between the sorts of propositional attitudes we have when we regard something to be the case or true.5 Lehrer recognizes that “[a]cceptance of other kinds, having other purposes, must also be acknowledged”.6 But when examining Lehrer’s theory of knowledge, we find that “[i]t is…a special kind of acceptance…that is a necessary condition of knowledge”.7 In this epistemic context, Lehrer means doxastic acceptance, “[t]he objective of…[which] is to obtain truth and avoid error in the specific thing accepted”.8 (Henceforth by ‘acceptance’, I mean doxastic acceptance unless otherwise indicated.) Before I challenge Lehrer’s distinction between belief and acceptance, let me point out how Lehrer understands this distinction. Lehrer posits a sharp contrast between “belief, a first-order doxastic state, and acceptance, a metamental state ordinarily based on positive evaluation of belief…. [His] thesis is that both belief and acceptance are functional states, though states of different systems”.9 On a functionalist account of mentality, what makes something the kind of mental state it happens to be is the functional role it plays. Lehrer embraces a causal-role functionalism, according to which “[t]he function of a mental state is constituted by its causal relations to other mental states and to sensory inputs and behavioral outputs”.10 Thus, Lehrer classifies belief and acceptance as different kinds of mental states because, on his view, these doxastic attitudes feature distinct causal roles. The state of belief that p is caused by first-order processes like perception, a state which subsequently causes

5 K. Lehrer, “Reply to Christian Piller's ‘On Keith Lehrer's Belief in Acceptance”’ Grazer Philosophische Studien 40, (1991): 64 6 Also see Lehrer, Metamind (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 265. 7 K. Lehrer, “Discursive Knowledge,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 60, no. 3 (2000), 640- 641; K. Lehrer, Theory of Knowledge, 2nd ed (Boulder: Westview Press, 2000), 14 8 Ibid., 138 9 K. Lehrer, “Acceptance and Belief Revisited,” in Believing and Accepting, ed. P. Engel (Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000), 209. 10 K. Lehrer and C. Nine, “The Functional Role of Acceptance in Lehrer’s Theory of Knowledge,” Philosophical Forum 32, no. 1 (2001): 98-99.

5 one in appropriate circumstances to think, infer, and act as if p.11 The state of acceptance that p is caused by metamental evaluation of something considered or believed,12 a state which subsequently causes one in appropriate circumstances not only to think, infer, and act as if p but also to reason as if p and justify p, etc.13 More specifically, a state of acceptance results from one of two types of metamental evaluation: acceptance “ordinarily results from reflectively judging the information to be correct; but the same sort of functional state also arises unreflectively from the processing of information.”14 That noted, Lehrer regularly characterizes reflective judgment as the typical route to acceptance: “To say that a person accepts that p…is to say that he is in a certain kind of functional state which typically arises when a person reflectively judges that p with the objective of judging that p if and only if p”.15 On the other hand, Lehrer regularly characterizes belief as the sort of doxastic attitude we passively acquire as a result of unreflective processes like perception, sometimes against our better judgment: “As we look [at the twinkling stars], we cannot help but believe that these bright objects now exist… [even though] science tells us that some of them have long since disappeared…” 16 On this

11 See K. Lehrer, “Justification, Coherence, and Knowledge,” Erkenntnis 50, no 2-3 (1999): 243; Lehrer, “Acceptance and Belief Revisited,” 209. 12 See K. Lehrer, “Rationality and Trustworthiness,” Protosoziologie 8, no. 9 (1996): 184; Lehrer, “Justification, Coherence and Knowledge,” 245; K. Lehrer, “Discursive Knowledge,” 640. 13 See Lehrer, “Justification, Coherence, and Knowledge,” 243-244; Lehrer, “Acceptance and Belief Revisited,” 214-215; Lehrer, “Discursive Knowledge,” 640-641; K. Lehrer, Theory of Knowledge, 2nd ed (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000c). 14 Also see Lehrer, Metamind, 11, 257; K. Lehrer, “Metamind, Autonomy, and Materialism,” Grazer Philosophische Studien 4, (1991): 1-3; K. Lehrer, Self-Trust: A Study of Reason, Knowledge and Autonomy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 4, 90; Lehrer, “Justification, Coherence and Knowledge,” 245; Lehrer, “Acceptance and Belief Revisited,” 211-212; Lehrer, Theory of Knowledge, 39-40. 15 More recently, Lehrer writes, “The role [of acceptance] is the one that typically arises from reflectively judging that something is the case…” (Lehrer, Self-Trust, 90). Also see Lehrer, Metamind, 2; K. Lehrer, “Reply to Marian David’s ‘On the Roles of Trustworthiness and Acceptance,’” Grazer Philophische Studien 40 (1991): 108. 16 Lehrer, Theory of Knowledge, 125.

6 view, “Beliefs…often arise in us without reflection…”17, “automatically”18, and “naturally without our bidding.”19 Charitably, I will consider whether Lehrer’s distinction is warranted with respect to acceptances formed via considered judgment and beliefs acquired automatically via unreflective perceptual processes. (By ‘considered judgment’ I mean what Lehrer appears to understand above by ‘reflective judgment’: the conscious endorsement of some propositional content as true on the basis of preceding reflection about whether that propositional content is true.) Because the attitudes that arise in these ways seem to represent the paragon cases of acceptance and belief, I assume that if Lehrer’s distinction cannot be warranted with respect to such attitudes, then his distinction cannot be warranted with respect to doxastic attitudes that arise in less distinct fashions. That is, given the two routes to acceptance Lehrer identifies, the difference between acceptances formed via considered judgment and beliefs acquired automatically via perception—doxastic attitudes which arise via opposing processes on the scale of epistemic reflectivity—is more pronounced than the difference between acceptances acquired via unreflective metamental processes and such perceptual beliefs— both of which issue from automatic, habitual, and unreflective processes.20 Having clarified Lehrer’s distinction, I propose to challenge the first assumption that belief and acceptance are disparate on three fronts: the conceptual front, the basic-features front, and the functionalism front. First, the distinction is misleading insofar as it implies that acceptance is not belief. For according to the general concept of belief as the sort of propositional attitude we have when we regard something to be the case, acceptance (a propositional attitude that results from judging that p is the case)21 is none other than belief.

17 Lehrer, “Rationality and Trustworthiness,” 183. 18 Lehrer, “Acceptance and Belief Revisited,” 217. 19 Lehrer, Theory of Knowledge, 40. 20 See note 14. 21 See note 15.

As such, belief and doxastic acceptance share basic belief-like features commonly cited to warrant the distinction between belief and non-doxastic acceptance.22 The prima facie similarities between belief and doxastic acceptance can be expressed (roughly) as follows. Both belief and doxastic acceptance aim at truth at least in the minimal sense that to believe or accept that p is to believe or accept that p is the case.23 Pragmatic acceptance, on the other hand, is said to aim at utility in that accepting that p for some practical purpose (for the sake of an argument, e.g.) does not commit one to thinking that p is in fact the case. Both belief and doxastic acceptance are generally shaped (formed or revised, e.g.) in light of the evidence presented to us, while pragmatic acceptance is shaped primarily by practical rather than epistemic considerations.24 Both belief and doxastic acceptance are context independent in that, based on the evidence one has, one now either believes or accepts that p to some degree or does not, irrespective of one’s practical purposes in various contexts. On the other hand, one might at the same time pragmatically accept that p relative to practical purposes in one context (for the sake of an argument with someone who holds that p, e.g.) but not relative to practical purposes in another (for the sake of an argument with someone who holds that not-p). Both belief and doxastic acceptance admit of various degrees of confidence in p “proportional to the degree of evidence that one has for…[p’s] truth…”25—while one accepts that p for some practical purpose, irrespective of one’s degree of confidence in p.26 And both

22 See note 4 for the following points of contrast between belief and pragmatic acceptance. 23 Tuomela, who also distinguishes between belief and doxastic acceptance, regards both doxastic attitudes as aiming at truth (Tuomela, “Belief Versus Acceptance,” 123, 126). Lehrer denies that belief always aims at truth (Lehrer, Justification, Coherence and Knowledge, 244). However, Tuomela and Lehrer seem to be working with somewhat different understandings of what it means for belief to ‘aim at truth’. For a discussion of this topic, on which I rely here, see P. Engel, “Truth and the Aim of Belief,” Laws and Models in Science (2004): 77-79. 24 Tuomela regards belief and doxastic acceptance as normally shaped by evidence (Tuomela, “Belief Versus Acceptance,” 126). Lehrer, who seems to classify wishful thinking as belief, makes it clear that belief is not always shaped by evidence: “The explanation of why a person believes what he does may have something to do with his having the evidence he does, but it need not” (Lehrer, Theory of Knowledge, 198). 25 Engel, “Believing, Holding True, and Accepting,”143. 26 Tuomela, “Belief Versus Acceptance,” 126, regards doxastic acceptance as all-or-nothing. However, on Lehrer’s view, the paradigm case of doxastic acceptance is one that results from considered judgment (see note

8 belief and doxastic acceptance are generally regulated by an ideal of agglomeration—while one might for practical reasons pragmatically accept propositions that do not cohere with one’s beliefs.27 These similarities aside, it is often claimed that belief is involuntary, while acceptance is voluntary.28 In the case of doxastic acceptance, however, this point of contrast confronts both the volitionalist’s contention that some beliefs are voluntary and the involuntarist’s contention that no doxastic attitudes are voluntary. In response to the first contention, those who wish to identify doxastic acceptance as a uniquely voluntary doxastic attitude and thereby distinguish it from belief could argue that it is precisely the sorts of doxastic attitudes that volitionalists identity as voluntary (those arising from considered judgment, e.g.) that should be classified as acceptances.29 But whether one classifies such doxastic attitudes as beliefs or acceptances, one must contend with the worry that they are either involuntary or non-voluntary. First, there is the concern that while things one does might be voluntary, the doxastic attitude that p is not anything one does but a mental state that arises in some cases as a result of something one does (such as inquiring as to whether p and judging that p) and that disposes one to do various things (such as to think and speak as if p). In response to this concern, Michael

15). And assuming that we can judge that p is the case even if we are not certain that p, then the strength of the resulting acceptance will reflect our degree of confidence in the reasons for which we judge that p (Buckareff, “Action-Individuation and Doxastic Agency,” Theoria 77 (2011): 323). While Lehrer does not explicitly mention that acceptance admits of degrees of certainty, this point is consistent with his characterization of ‘reasonable acceptance’ as insufficient for ‘justified acceptance’ (Lehrer, Self-Trust, 29; Lehrer, Theory Knowledge, 143; Lehrer and Nine, “The Functional Role of Acceptance in Lehrer’s Theory of Knowledge, 101); of acceptance as fallible rather than certain (Lehrer, Theory of Knowledge, 125); and of acceptance as aimed at attaining truth and avoiding falsity (Ibid., 14). If the goal of acceptance were only avoiding error, then one would accept only what one could be certain of, but the pursuit of truth may lead one to accept statements without certainty. 27 Both Tuomela, “Belief Versus Acceptance,” 126 and Lehrer regard doxastic acceptance as subject to an ideal of agglomeration, though Lehrer has a technical notion of coherence in mind (Lehrer, “Justification, Coherence and Knowledge,” 246). 28 See note 11. 29 Losonsky, “On Wanting to Believe,” in Believing and Accepting, ed. P. Engel (Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000), 122-123.

Losonsky argues, “a belief is a structure that is part of the process of inquiry. We can find this idea in contemporary functional accounts of belief. If we think of a belief as a function or role…then it is hard to see how inquiry and reflection can be separated from the belief”.30 Lehrer’s functionalism, however, identifies mental states by the distinctive way in which they causally mediate between environmental input, behavioral output, and other mental states.31 Thus, Lehrer acknowledges that because acceptance is a state caused by mental episodes like reflective judgment and, therefore, distinct from such activity, acceptance cannot be easily classified as voluntary or distinguished from belief as such.32 Moreover, even if we consider how doxastic attitudes come about in deciding whether to classify them as voluntary or voluntarily formed, it still proves difficult to classify as voluntary either of the processes Lehrer explains lead to states of acceptance. It is difficult to see how unreflective metamental processing, which operates automatically and unconsciously, can be classified as voluntary.33 In light of the similar observation that some events of coming to accept things are not done “at will or on purpose”, Raimo Tuomela (who also distinguishes between belief and doxastic acceptance) rejects outright the notion that doxastic acceptance must be voluntary or intentional.34 Others contend that we should not even classify as voluntary considered judgment, the remaining route to acceptance. McHugh argues that because one can judge that p only for evidential reasons one considers sufficient, judgment is constrained by epistemic considerations, unlike what are (on his view) paradigm voluntary acts like the raising of an arm for any (or possibly even no) reason at all.35 Still

30 Ibid., 106. 31 Lehrer and Nine, “Acceptance in Lehrer’s Theory of Knowledge,” 98-99. 32 Lehrer, “Acceptance and Belief Revisited,” 214. 33 As Conor McHugh puts the matter, “Perhaps conscious judging is not the only way of exercising evaluative control over beliefs. Perhaps other episodes of belief-acquisition, including non-conscious episodes, also count as episodes of settling a question and thus of evaluative control…. If that’s right, then there is a form of evaluative control the exercise of which is not agentive in any substantive sense” (C. McHugh, “Judging as a Non-Voluntary Action,” Philosophical Issues 23, no. 1 (2011): 256). 34 Tuomela, “Belief Versus Acceptance,” 124-125. 35 McHugh, “Judging as a Non-Voluntary Action,” 252.

10 others regard voluntariness as “responsiveness to practical reasons,”36 in which case the believing attitudes should not be classified as voluntary because one can settle on believing that p only by epistemic considerations one takes to count in favor of p’s truth.37 While belief and doxastic acceptance cannot easily be distinguished in terms of the features commonly cited to distinguish between belief and non-doxastic acceptance, can belief and acceptance be distinguished in terms of their functional differences? I agree with Lehrer that “[t]he fact that beliefs are functional states renders the problem of distinguishing them from acceptances more perplexing, not less.”38 One similarity to notice between these functional states on Lehrer’s view is that the larger set of cognitive and behavioral effects that characterizes acceptance includes the smaller set of effects that characterizes belief.39 Lehrer, however, considers reasoning as if p and justifying p effects unique to the acceptance of p.40 But this claim is called into question by his acknowledgment that individuals may be prepared to defend their beliefs by appealing to the evidence: “The explanation of why a person believes what he does may have something to do with his having the evidence he does, but it need not.”41 Moreover, Lehrer seems to acknowledge that we may not always be prepared in appropriate circumstances to defend our acceptances, as we may “accept something without evidence or justification…”42 A case in point is Lehrer and Cara Nine’s acknowledgment that we may, upon seeing an injured man “writhing and moaning” in pain on the ground, “form the opinion and then accept that the man is, in fact, not in pain”— despite having “no evidence that the man is not in pain.”43 Here, acceptance resembles

36 J. Bennett, “Why Is Belief Involuntary?” Analysis 50, no. 2 (1990): 90. 37 P. Hieronymi, “Responsibility for Believing,” Synthese 161, no. 3 (2008): 367 38 Lehrer, “Acceptance and Belief Revisited,” 214. 39 See notes 11 and 13. 40 See note 13. 41 Lehrer, Theory of Knowledge, 19.8. 42 Lehrer, Theory of Knowledge, 14 43 Lehrer and Nine, “Acceptance in Lehrer's Theory of Knowledge,” 98.

11 wishful thinking despite all evidence to the contrary and apparently may not suffice to enable a cognizer to provide any sort of rational defense for what is accepted. Given that we are, by Lehrer’s own admission, occasionally ready to defend beliefs and unready to defend acceptances, belief and acceptance can in appropriate circumstances produce all the same effects. Accordingly, not only does it become difficult to distinguish epistemically between belief and acceptance for the purpose of ascription (since ascriptions of these mental states are based exclusively on observations of what are taken to be these states’ behavioral effects), but we are also left to distinguish ontologically between belief and acceptance primarily in terms of the distinct causes of these mental states. However, it is not clear that we should assign mental states that arise even in markedly dissimilar fashions to different classes just because of those states’ distinctive births. Whether we see the action figure while watching a 3-D movie or see the figure because it appears to us in good light on the shelf, we classify both experiences as visual perceptions. Whether we remember something spontaneously as a result of seeing an old photo, or later upon reflection remember something about that memory (having a meta- memory), we are dealing with memories in either case. Even Lehrer’s functionalism allows for acceptances to arise in different fashions, which are more or less reflective: “Acceptance of p sometimes arises from considered judgment that p, but a functionally similar state of judgment may arise in other ways.”44 Hence, why not also acknowledge that beliefs arise in different ways, which are more or less reflective or higher-order, without excluding acceptance from the class of belief because of acceptance’s distinctive birth? Some might think that this distinctive birth is enough to preserve the label ‘acceptance’ to designate a particular type of belief, a categorization I find tolerable since acceptances would be classified as mental states within the class of beliefs. Rather than multiplying distinctions, however, I just assume refer to such doxastic attitudes as beliefs caused by considered judgment. Henceforth, I adopt this latter usage in considering whether the differences

44 Lehrer, Theory of Knowledge, 40.

12 between the processes that bring about what Lehrer calls ‘acceptance’ and ‘belief’ make any kind of difference with respect to what we are responsible for or justified in believing.

EPISTEMIC RESPONSIBILITY Before considering whether beliefs that arise via considered judgment and beliefs that arise via perception share the feature of being doxastic attitudes for which we can be epistemically responsible, we must gain a clear understanding of the sort of epistemic responsibility at issue. Not at issue is the ‘duty’ or ‘virtue’ sense of ‘responsibility’, according to which an individual is epistemically responsible to the extent that she fulfills her epistemic duties or develops epistemic virtues. At issue is the ‘accountability’ or ‘liability’ sense, according to which an individual is epistemically responsible to the extent that she is accountable for having beliefs in the sense of being an appropriate candidate for praise, blame, or other reactive attitudes with respect to those beliefs. Hence, the issue here is not whether an individual is praiseworthy or blameworthy for having specific beliefs in light of whether they are sound or otherwise consistent with epistemic norms. The issue is whether an individual is accountable for having beliefs at all and, thus, an appropriate candidate for being praised or blamed in light of further considerations about whether those beliefs comply with epistemic norms.45 With the appropriate sense of epistemic responsibility in mind, we must examine the conditions of such responsibility. Taking cue from moral responsibility theory, we might begin by assuming that there are two: an epistemic condition and a freedom or control condition.46 When drawing this parallel, however, we face an underlying difference between what one is being held accountable for at the moral and epistemic levels of analysis. The question of whether we are morally responsible deals with the question of whether we are

45 J. A. Corlett, “Epistemic Responsibility,” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 16, no. 2 (2008): 179-200, provides a detailed taxonomy of the various forms of moral and epistemic responsibility, a taxonomy on which the distinctions I make here are based. 46 J. M. Fischer and M. Ravizza, Responsibility and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 12-14.

13 responsible for our “actions, failures to act (or omissions), and the consequences of those actions and omissions.”47. However, beliefs are not actions we perform or fail to perform, but mental states that result from various belief-forming mechanisms. Hence, the question of whether we are responsible for beliefs is distinctly concerned with the question of whether we are responsible for coming to possess these mental states, failing to come to possess them, or contributing to the consequences of forming or failing to form them. I focus on the question of whether we are responsible for coming to possess beliefs, and (setting aside any epistemic condition) consider whether we have suitable control of belief-forming processes.

Control We tend to hold agents accountable only for those actions over which they have some meaningful control, exempting agents from moral responsibility who behave under force.48 Similarly, we tend to hold cognizers accountable for coming to have only those doxastic commitments over which they have some meaningful control, exempting cognizers from epistemic responsibility if they compulsively acquire beliefs as a result of psychiatric disorders, hallucination, or hypnotic suggestion, e.g.49 So prima facie it appears that we are more likely to be responsible for beliefs we actively form via considered judgment than for beliefs we passively acquire simply by perceiving things as if they were the case. When we actively form the belief that something is the case by consciously deliberating about whether it is the case and then judging that it is on the basis of the evidence we consider, we appear to have some measure of control over the formation of our belief, even if the resulting state is not voluntary strictly speaking. But when beliefs are thrust upon us by perception without pause for deliberation, we do not appear to have so much control over the acquisition of our beliefs.

47 Ibid., 28. 48 Ibid., 12-14. 49 McHugh, “Epistemic Responsibility and Doxastic Agency,” 133.

Lehrer seems implicitly to concur with this claim that it is our ability to control what we accept that makes us accountable epistemically. Lehrer claims that what makes us intellectually virtuous, or epistemically responsible in the ‘virtue’ sense, is our readiness “to accept what is true and avoid accepting what is false…[by] seek[ing] to reason validly…and cogently…, consider[ing] the objections to the candidates for acceptance…, [and] chang[ing] what one accepts when the objections cannot be met in order to avoid accepting what is false.”50 If we rationally reconstruct Lehrer’s view of responsibility in the ‘accountability’ sense, then, what appears to make it the case that we are appropriate candidates for epistemic praise and blame is that we have the ability to control what we accept by reflecting about what to accept and forming or revising our acceptances accordingly—rather than remaining helpless bystanders to the beliefs that “arise in us naturally without our bidding and often against our will.”51. Following in this tradition, subsequent analyses of epistemic responsibility have suggested making acceptance a condition of such responsibility.52 But even if the processes leading to acceptance are the only means by which we control doxastic attitudes, we must still determine exactly what sort of doxastic control is required for epistemic responsibility. Might that control consist in a power akin to what Fischer and Ravizza label ‘regulative control’, which (in the case of belief) would refer to the freedom of the cognizer to select from genuinely available alternative doxastic possibilities with respect to what to believe or whether to believe?53 On this view, a cognizer is epistemically responsible for coming to believe that p only if she could have done otherwise than form the belief that p. As Fischer has emphasized over the years, one drawback to understanding the freedom condition of moral responsibility in terms of regulative control is that such control is

50 Lehrer, Theory of Knowledge, 210. 51 Ibid., 40. 52 See Corlett, “Epistemic Responsibility,” 190. However, Corlett ultimately opts for a Lehrerian- Frankfurtian model of epistemic responsibility that seems to abandon the acceptance condition of epistemic responsibility Ibid., 192. 53 Fischer and Ravizza, Responsibility and Control, 31.

15 threatened by causal determinism, “which, among other things, entails that every bit of human behavior is causally necessitated by events in the past together with the natural laws…”54 Causal determinism also ostensibly excludes regulative control of belief and, thus, threatens epistemic responsibility if it requires regulative control. The well-known ‘Consequence Argument,’55 for instance, can be directed at epistemic responsibility as follows. If causal determinism is true, then my current acquisition of a belief is entailed by facts about the laws of nature and the world in the past. And since I am not free to make it so that natural laws or the past would have been different, then I cannot do otherwise than form the belief I currently form, in which case I do not (by definition) possess regulative control of that belief. Hence, if epistemic responsibility requires regulative control, then I am not epistemically responsible for what I believe if causal determinism is true. But it would be nice if our conception of control did not hang the possibility of responsibility on the thread of causal determinism’s being false.56 Moreover, even if causal determinism is false, the nature of acceptance is such that I am not always free to do otherwise than form a particular acceptance. Imagine a situation of deliberation in which a rational cognizer S faces a crucial epistemic decision and cannot suspend judgment but must come to accept either p or not-p by an act of judgment for the objective constitutive of acceptance, namely “to obtain truth and avoid error in the specific thing accepted.”57 Suppose that S rightly recognizes that all the evidence strongly supports that p and, thus, the denial of not-p. Accordingly, S judges p to be true and, as a result, comes to accept that p. In this case, S is not free to form the acceptance that not-p, which she recognizes as lacking justification, since she is constrained by her aim of accepting only what she “is justified in accepting…in the interests of obtaining truth and avoiding error on the

54 Fischer, “Compatibilism,” in Four Views on Free Will (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2007), 44. 55 P. Van Inwagen, “The Incompatibility of Free Will and Determinism,” Philosophical Studies 27 (1975): 185-199. 56 J. M. Fischer, Deep Control: Essays on Free Will and Value (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 15. 57 Lehrer, Theory of Knowledge, 138.

16 basis of…[her] information.”58 Thus, if epistemic responsibility requires regulative control, or the availability of alternative doxastic possibilities, then in such cases one is not epistemically responsible for what one comes to accept. However, it would seem quite odd if one were not responsible in an accountability sense and, thus, an inapt target for epistemic praise only for being responsible in the virtue sense by following the evidence where it leads. This case teaches a lesson about epistemic responsibility similar to one of the lessons Frankfurt-style cases teach about moral responsibility. In such cases, even though the agent does not have the option of acting in any way other than the way she acts (given the counterfactual scenario of brain manipulation), the agent may still be morally responsible for her action insofar as she wants to be moved by the desires that move her to act.59 Similarly, even though the cognizer above lacks the ability to form any acceptance other than the one she forms (given the nature of acceptance), she still appears to be an apt candidate for epistemic praise by accepting what she considers it reasonable to accept. If these considerations are correct, epistemic responsibility does not require control in the form of the availability of alternative doxastic possibilities.60 Might, as McHugh (2013) suggests, the freedom requisite for epistemic responsibility consist instead in a form of control parallel to what Fischer and Ravizza (1998) label ‘guidance control’?61 Fischer and Ravizza present an actual-sequence theory of moral responsibility, according to which agents, to be morally responsible for their behavior, need not have the regulative control “to pursue alternative courses of action (and thus have

58 Ibid., 74. 59 H. G. Frankfurt, “Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility,” Journal of Philosophy 66 (1969): 829-839. 60 For further applications of Frankfurt-style cases to epistemic responsibility, see Corlett, “Epistemic Responsibility,” 191-195; L. Zagzebski, “Must Knowers be Agents?,” in Virtue Epistemology: Essays on Epistemic Virtue and Responsibility, ed. A. Fairweather and L. Zagzebski (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 142-157; S. Hetherington, “Epistemic Responsibility: A Dilemma,” Monist 85, no. 3 (2002): 398-414; and P. Pettit and M. Smith, “Freedom in Belief and Desire,” The Journal of Philosophy 93, no. 2 (1996), 444. 61 McHugh “Epistemic Responsibility and Doxastic Agency,” 95-103 and Fischer and Ravizza, Responsibility and Control.

17 alternative scenarios genuinely accessible to them)…”62 but must exercise guidance control of their actual behavior, which “an agent exercises insofar as it issues from his own, appropriately reasons-responsive mechanism.”63 In adapting this guidance control account of moral responsibility to the analysis of epistemic responsibility, McHugh (who does not distinguish between belief and acceptance) advances two primary theses. First, he defends the ‘Reasons-Responsiveness View’: “A believer is epistemically responsible for a given belief only if that belief is formed or sustained by a mechanism that is the believer’s own, and that is receptive and reactive to epistemic reasons.”64 When a belief meets the two conditions of mechanism ownership and reasons-responsiveness (the latter consisting of reasons-receptivity and reasons-reactivity), the belief is said to be “under epistemic guidance control.”65 I am inclined to agree with McHugh that epistemic guidance control is necessary (and possibly sufficient) for epistemic responsibility.66 That is, overlooking McHugh’s point about belief-sustaining mechanisms in order to focus on belief-forming mechanisms, I assume that one is epistemically responsible for coming to have the belief that p only if one exercises epistemic guidance control of the formation of the belief that p. And I assume that one exercises epistemic guidance control of the formation of the belief that p (or of the belief that p, in short) if and only if the mechanism that forms the belief that p is (in the appropriate senses) one’s own and reasons- responsive. However, I disagree with McHugh’s second primary claim that we exercise epistemic guidance control of beliefs only by means of actual or potential doxastic agency in the form of inquiry and judgment. In McHugh’s own words, “I argue that the central condition on

62 Fischer and Ravizza, Responsibility and Control, 37. 63 Fischer, “Compatibilism,” 78. 64 McHugh, “Epistemic Responsibility and Doxastic Agency,” 142. 65 Ibid., 143. 66 As McHugh explains, “The [Reasons-Responsiveness] view states only a necessary condition on epistemic responsibility. I suspect, but will not argue, that this condition is also sufficient” (Ibid.).

18 responsibility is a kind of reasons-responsiveness [i.e., epistemic guidance control], and that it is only because we are doxastic agents—because we can regulate our beliefs through the activity of inquiry, and, in particular, acts of judging—that as believers we can satisfy this condition.”67 McHugh encapsulates this point in his “Agency Thesis: Responsibility for belief is grounded in control through actual or possible conscious activity.”68 The general idea seems to be that we exercise epistemic guidance control of beliefs (at least with respect to their formation) only if we (1) form beliefs through conscious inquiry into whether p and subsequent judgment that p, or (2) stand ready to regulate (i.e., reject, revise, etc.) “by acts at the level of judgment and inquiry” the beliefs that we acquire via automatic, non-deliberative processes (and McHugh focuses on beliefs acquired automatically as a result of perception).69 On one hand, McHugh’s point that we can exercise guidance control central to responsibility not only of doxastic attitudes formed via considered judgment (what Lehrer labels ‘acceptances’) but also of automatically acquired perceptual beliefs70 opposes what seems to be Lehrer’s suggestion that we are responsible only for the acceptances we control and not the beliefs that control us. On the other hand, both views more generally appear to regard epistemic responsibility as made possible only by our ability to control our doxastic attitudes by means of considered judgment, a view I oppose. Let us call the mechanism by which belief is formed as a result of inquiry and judgment the ‘considered judgment mechanism’, which I have defined above, and let us call the mechanism by which belief, though “susceptible to control by acts at the level of judgment and inquiry,”71 is acquired as a result of non-deliberative perceptual experience the ‘perception mechanism’. I assume along with Lehrer that the judgment mechanism is

67 Ibid., 132, my clarification. 68 Ibid., 135. 69 Ibid., 134-135. 70 Ibid., 134. See note 4. 71 Ibid.

19 reflective, while the perception mechanism is unreflective. McHugh mentions in passing that “[i]nquiry need not be reflective; it can be wholly first-order. Its goal need not be explicitly represented by the subject. You might simply wonder whether p, consider the evidence, and come to a conclusion.”72 Rather than siding with Lehrer (who treats considered judgment as metamental activity) or McHugh on the level of mentality at which epistemic deliberation must occur, I wish only to point out that the inquiry preceding judgment is reflective in the ordinary sense of involving both thought about whether p is the case and evaluation of the evidence in arriving at the judgment that p. Granted, the inquiry preceding conscious judgment might involve unreflective activities, such as “observing, evidence-gathering, [and] remembering.”73 However, I will use ‘inquiry’ and ‘deliberation’ synonymously to refer to the reflective “conscious cognition that is directed toward the goal of making one’s mind up…”74 On the other hand, since McHugh characterizes what I label the ‘perception mechanism’ of belief acquisition as not involving any conscious inquiry but only as remaining susceptible to inquiry,75 I assume that the perception mechanism is unreflective in bringing about the belief that p simply as a result of the event of one’s perceiving the world as if p.76 Now let us evaluate McHugh’s claim that exercising guidance control of the formation of beliefs (whether they issue from the judgment or perception mechanism) requires actual or potential doxastic agency at the level of inquiry and judgment in the belief- forming process. For this claim to be true, either the ownership or reasons-responsiveness of the mechanism issuing in the belief must require such doxastic agency. Passing over ownership, McHugh argues only that the reasons-responsiveness of the judgment mechanism requires actual doxastic agency in the form of inquiry and judgment, and that the reasons-

72 Ibid. 73 McHugh, “Judging as a Non-Voluntary Action,” 247. 74 McHugh, “Epistemic Responsibility and Doxastic Agency,” 134. 75 Ibid. 76 That is not to say that all perceptual beliefs are formed sans reflection.

20 responsiveness of the perception mechanism requires potential doxastic agency of this sort. As he states, “it is often through the exercise of doxastic agency that our beliefs respond to reasons…, [and] even beliefs that are formed…automatically often satisfy the epistemic guidance control condition only because they are susceptible to agential control…”77 McHugh summarizes this point in his “Reasons-Action Principle: Responding to a putative reason involves conscious agency, at least dispositionally.”78. I too will pass over ownership to consider whether the reasons-responsiveness of the judgment and perception mechanisms requires actual or potential doxastic agency, after more carefully defining ‘reasons- responsiveness’.

Reasons-Responsiveness According to Fischer and Ravizza, A mechanism of kind K is moderately responsive to reason to the extent that, holding fixed the operation of a K-type mechanism, the agent would recognize reasons (some of which are moral) in such a way as to give rise to an understandable pattern…, and would react to at least one sufficient reason to do otherwise (in some possible scenario). That is, a mechanism is moderately responsive to reason insofar as it is ‘regularly’ receptive to reasons…and at least weakly reactive to reasons.79 This principle of practical reasons-responsiveness can be reformulated in terms of epistemic reasons-responsiveness as follows: A mechanism of kind K is moderately responsive to epistemic reason to the extent that, holding fixed the operation of the K-type mechanism by which the believer comes to have a particular belief, the believer would recognize reasons for believing otherwise (in a way broadly consistent with relevant epistemic norms) and react to those reasons by coming to believe otherwise for those reasons in at least some possible counterfactual situation. I agree with McHugh that both the judgment mechanism and perception mechanism of belief formation can be epistemically reasons-responsive. I also agree with McHugh that

77 McHugh, “Epistemic Responsibility and Doxastic Agency,” 145. 78 Ibid., 146. 79 Fischer and Ravizza, Responsibility and Control, 243-244.

21 the reasons-responsiveness of the judgment mechanism requires actual inquiry and judgment. After all, one comes, by means of that mechanism, to recognize reasons and form beliefs for those reasons as a result of inquiry and judgment.80 However, contrary to McHugh’s Reasons-Action claim that reasons-responsiveness simpliciter requires dispositional doxastic agency, I argue that the reasons-responsiveness of the perception mechanism need not nor cannot require even the potential doxastic activity of inquiry and judgment on an actual-sequence account of epistemic responsibility. Therefore, I conclude that while exercising epistemic guidance control of beliefs formed via the judgment mechanism requires actual doxastic agency in the form of inquiry and judgment, it has not been shown that exercising epistemic guidance control of beliefs acquired via the perception mechanism requires even potential doxastic agency of this sort. That is, it has not been shown, contrary to McHugh’s Agency Thesis, that epistemic guidance control of (and, hence, responsibility for) belief simpliciter “can only be secured through agency” in the form of actual or potential inquiry and judgment.81 And it is this possibility of exercising epistemic guidance control of passively acquired beliefs sans the agential control of considered judgment that marks the possibility of epistemic responsibility without acceptance or agency. Much like practical reflection about what to do is a prime candidate for reasons- responsiveness in the case of action, so too is epistemic reflection about what to believe a prime candidate for reasons-responsiveness in the case of belief. If we hold fixed the judgment mechanism that features epistemic reflection, rational cognizers who form the belief that p via deliberation and judgment would often—in counterfactual situations in which the mechanism is operative but the cognizer has sufficient reason to believe otherwise (not-p say)—reflectively recognize that reason to believe that not-p in a way consistent with epistemic norms and follow the evidence where it leads by judging that not-p. In this way, rational cognizers are both regularly receptive and strongly reactive to reasons when forming

80 McHugh, “Epistemic Responsibility and Doxastic Agency,” 145. 81 Ibid., 132.

22 beliefs by means of considered judgment. Assuming that such cognizers own the judgment mechanism and satisfy any further conditions of epistemic responsibility, they will be epistemically responsible on this model for what they come to believe as a result of considered judgment. But can we be epistemically responsible for beliefs acquired via perception? According to McHugh, we can: Think, for example, of all the beliefs about your immediate environment that you form and revise automatically through perception. For example, if you see in front of you a wall that looks red you will tend automatically to form the belief that there is a red wall in front of you. You are responsible for beliefs formed in this way, just as much as those that you have formed through conscious inquiry, or indeed reflective deliberation.82 And McHugh claims that we are responsible for beliefs formed via perception only because they are normally susceptible to control by acts at the level of judgment and inquiry…. If circumstances are normal and you do automatically form the belief that the wall is red, you will nonetheless be in a position to extinguish that belief by an act at the level of conscious judgment, should some evidence arise that casts doubt on the normality of the lighting conditions. In this way, beliefs that are not being actively consciously controlled are nevertheless normally under a form of dispositional conscious control on the part of the agent.83 On this view, beliefs formed via the perception mechanism satisfy the reasons- responsiveness condition of epistemic guidance control only because they are subject to regulation by the conscious activity of inquiry and judgment.84 However, this explanation of the perception mechanism’s reasons-responsiveness departs from an actual-sequence account of epistemic responsibility by failing to hold fixed the operation of the perception mechanism that issues in belief in the actual sequence of events. In determining whether that mechanism is reasons-responsive on an actual-sequence

82 Ibid., 134. 83 Ibid., 134-135. 84 Ibid., 145.

23 account, we must determine whether a cognizer who acquires a belief via that mechanism would, in at least some counterfactual situation in which the cognizer has sufficient reason to believe otherwise, recognize that reason and come to believe otherwise for that reason by means of the perception mechanism. If one walks into a room, sees that the wall is red, and automatically acquires the belief that the wall is red as a result of the perception mechanism, what makes that mechanism nonreflective “is that the agent does not ask himself the question what he ought to…[believe] and weigh various reasons in an attempt to figure out an answer to this question.”85. However, in the counterfactual scenario that McHugh presents—in which some visual evidence (say) casts doubt on the color of the wall, one inquires as to what to believe, recognizes that one has sufficient reason to believe that the wall is not red, and then judges that the wall is not red—there would be “a movement from a nonreflective to a reflective mechanism…[that rules] out an agent’s…[believing] from the same mechanism in the relevant alternative scenario as in the actual sequence.”86 That is, in the actual sequence, the cognizer acquires the belief that p automatically as a result of perception, whereas in the alternative scenario, the cognizer acquires the belief that not-p as a result of considered judgment. And because the alternative scenario does “not involve the actually operative mechanism…, the actually operative mechanism could not be considered moderately reasons-responsive.”87 Hence, on an actual-sequence account of epistemic responsibility that holds fixed the operation of the perception mechanism leading to belief, the reasons- responsiveness of the perception mechanism cannot be grounded in the potential regulation of belief by the activity of inquiry and judgment. Since McHugh’s strategy fails to ground the reasons-responsiveness of the perception mechanism, can that unreflective mechanism of belief acquisition be reasons-responsive? We might take our cue once again from Fischer and Ravizza, who broach a similar question

85 Fischer and. Ravizza, Responsibility and Controly, 87, my adaptation. 86 Ibid., my adaptation. 87 Ibid.

24 when considering whether we can be morally responsible for actions that issue from unreflective mechanisms. They conclude, “Not all actions for which agents are responsible issue from an exercise of practical reason.”88 One way they lend credence to this conclusion is by suggesting that unreflective mechanisms may themselves be reasons-responsive—that is, both receptive to reasons in the agent’s “capacity to recognize the reasons that exist” and reactive to reasons in the agent’s “capacity to translate reasons into choices (and then subsequent behavior).”89 In considering the case of an individual who exits the freeway without reflecting, for example, they contend that he can be morally responsible for this action, even though he did not exit “as a result of explicit practical reflection or deliberation.”90 For in the alternative scenario in which the freeway is blocked, the person may implicitly recognize—without reflecting or deliberating about what to do—that there is a sufficient reason to take the next exit and act for that reason. On this plausible view, recognizing and reacting to reasons “does not require that the agent actively engage in deliberation or that he consciously consider the sufficient reason in question”—but only that, if asked for that reason, he be able in appropriate circumstances to give that reason as the reason for his action.91 And these facts help “to show that the agent’s actual-sequence action (from a non-reflective mechanism) is moderately reasons-responsive.”92 A similar case can be made for the claim that the unreflective perception mechanism is reasons-responsive. Someone sees a red wall and automatically forms the belief that the wall is red without reflecting. Holding fixed the perception mechanism that issues in the belief, consider what might happen if the individual were to see a suspicious lighting arrangement. It seems reasonable to assume that in some cases the individual might automatically form the belief that the wall is not red when she sees the lighting arrangement,

88 Ibid., 85. 89 Ibid., 69. 90 Ibid., 86. 91 Ibid., 64. 92 Ibid., 86.

25 without having to deliberate about whether the wall is red. In such a counterfactual situation, which holds fixed the unreflective perception mechanism, the individual implicitly recognizes that there is sufficient reason to believe that the wall is not red. For if asked whether the wall is red, she will in appropriate circumstances indicate that it is not and point to the tricky lighting as the reason for her belief. And the perception mechanism is at least weakly reasons-reactive because, as this example illustrates, there is a counterfactual scenario in which the perception mechanism is held fixed and the cognizer would, for the reason she recognizes, believe other than what she believes in the actual sequence of events. Hence, the perception mechanism can be appropriately reasons-responsive sans the dispositional conscious control of inquiry and judgment. Nevertheless, McHugh attempts to support his Reasons-Action Principle that reasons- responsiveness involves dispositional conscious agency with two final arguments. However, neither supports his repeated claim (which his Reasons-Action Principle purportedly summarizes) that reasons-responsiveness involves conscious agency in the form of dispositional inquiry and judgment. Both arguments serve only to highlight that reasons- responsiveness involves ‘agency’ qua believing for reasons, but believing for reasons need not involve judgment even if judgment involves believing for reasons. McHugh argues, first, that “recognising a reason implicates actual or potential consciousness. To recognize a reason is to be aware of it—of the consideration that constitutes it—in some way, if only implicitly, and of its probative force.”93 But one need not be able to deliberate about what to believe and form a judgment in order to recognize one’s reason for belief. The person who automatically acquires the belief that the wall is not red via perception in the counterfactual situation above will in appropriate circumstances recognize that the lighting gives her reason to believe that the wall is not red—all without needing to deliberate or to be ready to deliberate about what to believe. Maybe she has imbibed so much punch at the party that she is hardly able, when asked why she believes that the wall is not red, to point to the lighting—

93 McHugh, “Epistemic Responsibility and Doxastic Agency,” 146.

26 though she is not quite lucid enough to engage in any coherent deliberation about what to believe. In this way, even though recognizing a reason may require at least potential consciousness of the reason, that fact is not enough to show that reasons-recognition requires potential deliberation and judgment. Second, McHugh argues that “reacting to a reason implicates agential control. This claim receives intuitive support from the observation that things with respect to which the subject is essentially passive don’t seem to count as done for reasons.”94 But the question is whether reasons-reactivity requires agential control in the form of (a) dispositional inquiry and judgment or (b) coming to believe for reasons. As the above counterfactual situation of perceptual belief acquisition demonstrates, one may come to believe for reasons that one will in appropriate circumstances cite as the reasons for one’s belief, yet one need not be ready or able to depart from the actual-sequence perception mechanism by deliberating about what to believe. In this way, the perception mechanism of belief acquisition can be not only reasons- receptive but also reasons-reactive (and thus reasons-responsive), even though instances of that process of belief acquisition are ‘agential’ only in the minimal sense of being instances of coming to believe for reasons. Hence, in failing to support his claim that reasons- responsiveness requires dispositional agency in the form of inquiry and judgment, McHugh fails to support his Agency Thesis that epistemic guidance control central to epistemic responsibility requires such agency. And this conclusion brings us closer to rejecting the ‘Lehrerian’ view that epistemic responsibility depends on our ability to control what we accept by means of reflective judgment.

KNOWLEDGE According to Lehrer, acceptance is also required for knowledge: “It is the acceptance of something defined in terms of the epistemic purpose of attaining truth and avoiding error rather than mere belief that is the required condition of knowledge.”95 In Lehrer’s theory,

94 Ibid., 146. 95 Lehrer, Theory of Knowledge, 13.

27 knowledge that p is ‘discursive’ or ‘defensible’ in that it is conditioned, in part, on one’s being justified in accepting that p in the sense of one’s being able to sufficiently defend p on the basis of one’s doxastic system.96 Hence, Lehrer selects acceptance as necessary for defensible knowledge because acceptance that p, unlike belief that p, purportedly enables one to reasonably, if not sufficiently,97 defend p—a functional role in reasoning that uniquely qualifies acceptance for potential justification: “When a person accepts that p…[t]hey will also be ready to justify the claim that p.”98 Granted, if the functional roles of belief and acceptance were such that we were never able to defend our beliefs but were able to defend our acceptances, then acceptance would constitute the requisite doxastic attitude for defensible knowledge since such knowledge is conditioned on our ability to defend our doxastic attitudes. But since Lehrer acknowledges that we are sometimes able to defend our beliefs and sometimes unable to defend our acceptances, as referenced above, then either doxastic attitude may satisfy the functional role in reasoning required for defensible knowledge. In that case, Lehrer’s motivation for conditioning knowledge on acceptance because of acceptance’s purportedly unique functional role in reasoning is unwarranted. For either doxastic attitude may enable us to defend the target claim, however exhaustively or ineffectually in practice, and the justification condition will disqualify from knowledge any doxastic attitude that we cannot sufficiently defend. That we may be able to defend our beliefs as well as our acceptances is supported not only by Lehrer’s admission of this point but also by what we have learned about the reasons- responsiveness of the perception mechanism. As demonstrated above, the perception mechanism of belief acquisition can in fact be reasons-responsive sans the dispositional

96 Lehrer, “Discursive Knowledge,” 638; Lehrer, Theory of Knowledge, 10-11, 198. 97 As Lehrer explains, “it might be reasonable for somebody to accept something she is not justified in accepting because justification requires something beyond reasonableness, namely, that all objections to the target claim can be met” (Ibid., 143). Also see Lehrer, Self-Trust, 29; Lehrer and Nine, “Acceptance in Lehrer’s Theory of Knowledge,” 101. 98 Lehrer, Theory of Knowledge, 39-40.

28 control of reflective judgment associated with acceptance. And this reasons-responsiveness (or ability to recognize and react to evidential reasons in forming beliefs) is evidenced by the believer’s ability to cite the reasons for her belief. Therefore, this potential of the believer to defend passively acquired perceptual beliefs apart from their acceptance by supplying reasons for those beliefs further weakens the motivation for singling out actively formed doxastic attitudes under the label ‘acceptance’ as necessary for defensible knowledge. Lehrer could object that we are seemingly able to supply reasons for some passively acquired perceptual beliefs only because we have automatically accepted the content of such beliefs by unreflective metamental evaluation, in which case we are actually defending the acceptance that p and not the belief that p we also possess. According to Lehrer, “In the usual case, belief is carried over into acceptance. Indeed, the default mode…is to accept what is believed, especially in the case of perceptual belief.”99 This point is encompassed by Lehrer’s more general point that it is common for a cognizer to possess states of belief and states of acceptance with the same propositional content, even if acceptance does not entail belief: “If S accepts that p, then S believes that p may be expected to hold true in most instances”.100 On the contrary, I demonstrate below that if S possesses a functional state of acceptance that p at t, then S cannot possess a distinct functional state of belief that p at t. Accordingly, neither acceptance entails belief nor belief entails acceptance—but only because a distinct belief and acceptance with the same propositional content cannot coexist on Lehrer’s functionalism. So in the present case, Lehrer would have to argue that the passively acquired attitude that is reasons-responsive constitutes an acceptance that has no belief counterpart. For the only sorts of beliefs we can possess on his functionalism are incontinent beliefs the content of which we have not accepted via judgment or default metacognition either because we reject that content as unreasonable or remain ambivalent about its truth compatibility. But then Lehrer’s distinction between belief and acceptance will

99 Lehrer, Metamind, 11. 100 Lehrer, Theory of Knowledge, 32.

29 have relegated all beliefs to the class of incontinent beliefs, an absurd consequence (as I will argue) that counts heavily against Lehrer’s distinction. A state of belief that p and a distinct state of acceptance that p could coexist on Lehrer’s causal-role functionalism only if the belief that p were able to form prior to, along with, or after the acceptance that p. Lehrer’s position that many beliefs are accepted by default implies that S can form the belief that p prior to forming the acceptance that p. However, the possibility of a belief state existing prior to the default formation of an acceptance state with the same content is complicated by Lehrer’s characterization of the metamind as automatic and comprehensive in its evaluations of first-level mentality.101 If the metamind is as ubiquitous and efficient in its processing of mentality as Lehrer contends, then it seems that we will accept positively evaluated information before we have a chance merely to believe it. For the metamind’s efficiency would be reduced if sense experience or other mental states said to form beliefs remained outside the metamind’s evaluative purview, thereby forcing the metamind to wait for beliefs to form at the first-level in order to then evaluate those beliefs. But if all first-level mentality remains under the watchful eye of metamental evaluation, acceptance can beat belief to the punch by forming as a result of metamental endorsement of the content represented by sense experience or other mental states that would otherwise issue in mere belief had the metamind not positively evaluated that information. And since the resulting doxastic state will satisfy the allegedly broader functional role of acceptance, not merely the more limited functional role of belief, then that state will qualify as an acceptance, not as a belief. But what if S forms the belief that p without forming the acceptance that p by default, only later to accept the belief that p as a result of considered judgment? Allow me to answer this line of inquiry by way of answering another: Can the belief that p and acceptance that p be formed simultaneously? Assume that S forms the acceptance that p as a result of default or reflective metamental evaluation of the content of first-level sensory input, but has not

101 Lehrer, Metamind, 3.

30 formed the belief that p prior to this acceptance formation. If, upon that acceptance, S is not merely disposed to think and infer as if p but is also disposed to regard and defend that thought and inference as correct, why not simply regard S as possessing just the acceptance that p since acceptance is said to feature all these functional effects? According to Lehrer, all the functional effects of belief are functional effects of acceptance, while only some of the effects of acceptance are effects of belief.102 And since the doxastic state that p under consideration satisfies the broader functional role of acceptance, Lehrer should classify that doxastic state as an acceptance, not as a belief. To answer our original question, then, if one were now to accept what one formerly had merely believed (that p), then in that very moment the doxastic state now directed towards p would fully satisfy the functional role of acceptance and, in this way, would no longer be characterized by the more limited functional role of belief. Finally, can the belief that p be formed after the acceptance that p? Lehrer thinks so: “A person may decide to accept something, and…such a decision may lead him to believe something…”103 But in accepting that p, one has (in a manner of speaking) come to believe it fully, because one will, in the right sorts of circumstances, not only think and infer as if p but also reason as if p, etc. So how can one then come to believe that p less fully while one already fully believes (i.e., accepts) that p? The person who accepts that p already satisfies the functional description of the belief that p, and then some. In sum, one cannot have at the same time the functional state of belief that p and acceptance that p. So if Lehrer wishes to maintain his distinction between belief and acceptance, he must concede that all acceptances are ones we do not believe and that all beliefs are ones we do not accept. But it is difficult enough to acknowledge Lehrer’s point that a person occasionally “may…accept something he does not believe…and…refuse to

102 See notes 11 and 13. 103 Lehrer, Metamind, 229.

31 accept something he does believe.”104 For it is difficult to see how holding something to be true on our better judgment can be anything but belief. And it is difficult to see how beliefs we do not hold to be true on our better judgment are beliefs at all—that is, the sorts of attitudes we have when hold something to be true. Hence, when Lehrer mentions the possibility of accepting that the stars do not exist though we cannot bring ourselves to believe it as we watch them twinkle,105 or of refusing (in light of the evidence) to accept that our loved ones care about us though we cannot help but believe they do,106 it is easier to abandon Lehrer’s distinction and regard ourselves as believing that the stars do not exist though they appear to, and as believing that our loved ones do not care about us though we wish they did.

CONCLUSION OF CHAPTER 1 In my estimation, Lehrer’s distinction between belief and doxastic acceptance amounts to much philosophical ado about nothing. For the so-called ‘acceptances’ we actively form via considered judgment and ‘beliefs’ we passively acquire via perception are, despite the obvious difference between the processes that bring about these doxastic attitudes, much more alike than dissimilar. They are both what we ought to call ‘beliefs’ and, as such, share basic belief-like features non-doxastic acceptance does not possess. Moreover, a promising analysis of epistemic responsibility in terms of guidance control yields the first indications that we can be responsible not only for beliefs we actively form via considered judgment but also for beliefs we passively acquire via perception. In fact, the reasons- responsiveness of the perception mechanism of belief acquisition does not even require the potential activity of deliberation and judgment. Hopefully this recognition of our ability to cite reasons for the beliefs we passively acquire will allow some of these humble beliefs to

104 K. Lehrer, “The Gettier Problem and the Analysis of Knowledge,” in Justification and Knowledge: New Studies in Epistemology, ed. G.S. Pappas (Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Reidel, 1979), 65. 105 Lehrer, Theory of Knowledge, 125. 106 Lehrer, “Gettier Problem and Analysis of Knowledge,” 66.

32 rejoin their rightful place on the throne of defensible knowledge, which has been usurped by more actively formed beliefs under the banner ‘acceptance’.

CHAPTER 2

LEHRER ON THE REASONABLENESS OF ACCEPTANCE

INTRODUCTION According to Richard Manning, Keith Lehrer must attribute functional acceptances to cognizers in order to evade Gettier problems and other challenges to Lehrer’s theory of knowledge but, in so doing, must concede that “… we always have adequate justification for the claims we accept.”107 So, Manning argues, either Lehrer cannot handle those objections by ascribing functional acceptances, or Lehrer must embrace the unacceptable result of such ascription: namely, that mere acceptance entails personal justification.108 In response to Manning, Lehrer and Cara Nine reaffirm Lehrer’s commitment to a functionalist account of acceptance and to the leveraging of that account to answer certain challenges to Lehrer’s theory.109 However, they reject Manning’s objection that acceptance entails justification by reiterating Lehrer’s longtime conceptual principle that ‘reasonable acceptance’ is insufficiently reasonable for ‘personally justified acceptance’.110 This principle highlights the often-overlooked fact that the reasonableness of acceptance implicitly admits of degrees in Lehrer’s theory. Once acceptance’s potential range of reasonableness becomes evident, however, so does Lehrer’s ambiguity regarding acceptance’s requisite degree of

107 R. Manning, “Justified Acceptance, Information, and Knowledge,” Philosophical Forum 25, no. 3 (1994): 212. 108 Ibid., 219. 109 Lehrer and Nine, “Acceptance in Lehrer’s Theory of Knowledge,” 95-103. 110 Ibid., 99-101.

34 reasonableness. On Lehrer’s strong view of the reasonableness of acceptance, acceptance may entail personal justification as Manning suspects—in which case, Lehrer’s justification condition of knowledge becomes superfluous. If, however, acceptance does not entail personal justification but at times may even resemble wishful thinking, per the weak view of acceptance that Lehrer and Nine present to resist Manning’s objection, acceptance becomes evidentially comparable to Lehrer’s conception of belief. In that case, Lehrer superfluously bucks tradition by conditioning justification and knowledge on acceptance instead of belief. Hence, wherever Lehrer’s conception of acceptance ultimately lands amid the range of reasonableness, one of Lehrer’s conditions of knowledge must be rejected. Because Lehrer wants to resist Manning’s conclusion by retaining the justification condition of knowledge, Lehrer should abandon the belief condition.

THE REASONABLENESS OF ACCEPTANCE To recognize Lehrer’s ambiguity concerning acceptance’s requisite degree of reasonableness, we must first determine acceptance’s possible range of reasonableness. In Lehrer’s theory of knowledge, the actual degree of reasonableness of an acceptance seems to depend on (1) the acceptance’s degree of coherence with a cognizer’s ‘evaluation system’, marked by the acceptance’s degree of defensibility against objections on the basis of that evaluation system, and on (2) the acceptance’s degree of coherence with a cognizer’s ‘ultrasystem’, or truth-compatible evaluation system, marked by the acceptance’s degree of defensibility against objections on the basis of that ultrasystem.111 This conclusion follows from Lehrer’s explication of three distinct levels of reasonableness concerning acceptance: Though I am worthy of trust in what I accept, I may, nevertheless, accept something which has a competitor that is neither beaten nor neutralized. The defense against all competitors essential to personal justification is not essential to reasonable acceptance. Reasonable acceptance is a step into the life of reason that

111 For more on the evaluation system, see Lehrer, Theory of Knowledge, 153-154.

may fall short of providing the justification needed to convert true acceptance into knowledge when undefeated by error.112 While moderately reasonable acceptances hold the title ‘reasonable acceptance’ and more exhaustively reasonable acceptances hold variations of the title ‘justified acceptance’, every brand of acceptance has presumably stepped “into the life of reason” that Lehrer analyzes in terms of the coherence relation between a cognizer’s accepted propositions and evaluation system/ultrasystem. Therefore, every acceptance presumably enjoys some degree of the same species of reasonableness—coherence with an evaluation system/ultrasystem— regardless of how far along the life of reason each acceptance has travelled. Hence, one must distinguish between this implicit sense of ‘reasonableness’ that characterizes every acceptance and Lehrer’s explicit use of ‘reasonable acceptance’ to refer to the partial coherence of particular acceptances. Granted, Lehrer technically defines the equivalent notions of ‘coherence’ and ‘personal justification’ as all-or-nothing notions: “… my acceptance of p coheres with my evaluation system if and only if all objections to my acceptance of p are beaten or neutralized on the basis of my evaluation system…. Coherence is, therefore, a form of justification in terms of the evaluation system. Coherence of an acceptance with an evaluation system is personally justified acceptance.”113 However, it is crucial to recognize that coherence simpliciter and the reasonableness corresponding to that coherence implicitly admit of degrees in Lehrer’s theory. Lehrer states that an evaluation system indicates how reasonable an acceptance is in terms of how well that acceptance coheres with the system: I confront the question of whether or not to accept some information…. My … [evaluation] system answers the question by telling me how reasonable it is to accept the information in comparison to other competing considerations. If, on the basis of my … [evaluation] system, the information is more trustworthy … than conflicting or undermining objections, then it is more reasonable for me to accept

112 Lehrer, Self-Trust, 34. 113 Lehrer, “Justification, Coherence, and Knowledge,” 247.

the information on the basis of that system because of the way it coheres with that system.114 In terms of the evaluation system, then, it would seem that the reasonableness of an acceptance increases as the acceptance’s degree of coherence, or defensibility against competitors on the basis of that system, increases. If coherence simpliciter were an all-or- nothing concept, i.e., if an acceptance generally cohered with an evaluation system if and only if all the objections to that acceptance were answered, Lehrer would be forced into the following dilemma: either (a) recognize only personally justified acceptances as reasonable (contrary to his characterization of reasonable acceptance as moderately reasonable in terms of limited coherence insufficient for personal justification); or (b) explain the moderate reasonableness of reasonable acceptance apart from the coherence relation between an acceptance and evaluation system (contrary to his coherence theory of justification). Rather, Lehrer’s depiction of reasonable acceptance as partially coherent with an evaluation system implies that Lehrer regards coherence simpliciter as admitting of degrees. Lehrer defines ‘reasonable acceptance’, the entry level of reasonableness concerning acceptance, by negation: “Reasonable acceptance is not sufficient for justified acceptance….”115 Unlike reasonable acceptance, ‘personally justified acceptance’, the second level of reasonableness or ‘justification’ proper, obtains if and only if a cognizer is able in principle to neutralize or beat every objection to an acceptance on the basis of the cognizer’s evaluation system, in which case the acceptance ‘coheres’ in the technical all-or- nothing sense with that evaluation system because the prospect of incoherence posed by objections is eliminated entirely.116 As Lehrer states, “… it might be reasonable for

114 Here, I replace “acceptance” system with “evaluation” system. See note 116. (Lehrer, Theory of Knowledge, 126.) 115 Lehrer, Self-Trust, 29. 116 Lehrer formerly identified coherence with an acceptance system as necessary and sufficient for personal justification but revised that view to identify coherence with an evaluation system as necessary and sufficient for personal justification. Hence, when quoting Lehrer on this matter, I opt to replace “acceptance system” with “evaluation system” to represent Lehrer’s current view of personal justification. See Lehrer, “Discursive Knowledge,” 644-645). For Lehrer’s definition of “personal justification,” see Lehrer, Theory of

37 somebody to accept something she is not justified in accepting because justification requires something beyond reasonableness [i.e., beyond reasonable acceptance], namely, that all objections to the target claim can be met.”117 Lehrer’s ‘justification game’ illustrates this distinction between the first two levels of reasonableness concerning acceptance. The justification game is “a game a person plays with a critic, who is a kind of internalized skeptic, to show that she is personally justified in accepting what she does.”118 As Lehrer explains, In short, we could say that acceptance is what a person has while aiming for truth and avoiding error even before she can win the justification game—without being able to answer all possible objections relevant to her … [evaluation] system. On the other hand, justification is what a person achieves only after she can win the justification game—when she can successfully answer all of the objections to her acceptance that are relevant to her … [evaluation] system.119 Therefore, assuming reasonable acceptance entails a positive degree of coherence with an evaluation system, reasonable acceptance’s range of reasonableness is marked by the set of degrees of coherence contained in the exclusive range between (a) the defensibility of an acceptance against no objections on the basis of an evaluation system and (b) the defensibility of an acceptance against every objection on the basis of an evaluation system (i.e., personal justification). Furthermore, neither reasonable acceptance nor personally justified acceptance suffices to satisfy the third level of reasonableness—‘undefeated/irrefutable justification’ or ‘knowledge’—obtained if and only if a cognizer is able in principle to neutralize or beat

Knowledge, 171. For Lehrer’s current conception of coherence, see Lehrer, “Justification, Coherence and Knowledge,” 245-247. My explanation of coherence also relies on K. Lehrer, “Coherence and the Truth Connection: A Reply to My Critics,” in The Current state of the Coherence Theory: Critical Essays on the Epistemic Theories of Keith Lehrer and Lawrence Bonjour with Replies, ed. J. Bender (Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Kluwer, 1989), 253-254. 117 Lehrer, Theory of Knowledge, 143, my addition. 118 Ibid., 132 119 Here, I replace “acceptance” system with “evaluation” system. See note 116. (Lehrer and Nine, “Acceptance in Lehrer's Theory of Knowledge,” 101.)

38 every competitor to the target acceptance on the basis of her ultrasystem120 Were a cognizer to play Lehrer’s ‘ultra justification game’ against an ‘ultra critic’, who is equipped with knowledge of the truth-compatibility of every member of the cognizer’s evaluation system, the cognizer’s acceptance would be irrefutably justified if and only if it were defensible against every objection without inadmissibly relying on truth-incompatible acceptances, preferences, or reasoning in that evaluation system.121 As one can see, then, the “acceptance system is fallible” in that acceptances therein might be insufficiently reasonable to attain justificatory status in any of the following ways:122 (1) in a cognizer’s inability to answer every objection to an acceptance on the basis of her evaluation system (insufficient even for personal justification);123 (2) in a cognizer’s ability to answer every objection to an acceptance without considering relevant evidence in her evaluation system regarding the unreasonableness of that acceptance (insufficient even for personal justification);124 (3) in the potential falsity of a target acceptance (insufficient for undefeated justification);125 and (4) in the potential justificatory reliance of an acceptance on truth-incompatible acceptances, preferences, or reasoning in the cognizer’s evaluation system (insufficient for undefeated justification).126 If we put all this information together, the full range of reasonableness concerning acceptance can be rationally reconstructed as follows. On the most straightforward analysis, the least reasonable of all acceptances (located in the set of reasonable acceptances) are defensible against only one objection on the basis of the cognizer’s evaluation system.127

120 Lehrer, Theory of Knowledge, 171. 121 Ibid., 153-154, 160. 122 Ibid., 125. 123 Ibid., 170. 124 Lehrer and Nine, “Acceptance in Lehrer’s Theory of Knowledge,” 99-100. 125 Lehrer, Theory of Knowledge 171-172. 126 Ibid., 171. 127 I assume that there will be many possible objections to every acceptance. Moreover, the reasonableness of a target acceptance might also be affected by its truth compatibility, by the cognizer’s degree of epistemic

(This point assumes that all acceptances must be reasonable to some degree by cohering, at the very least, with an evaluation system to some positive degree.128) The most reasonable acceptances in the set of reasonable acceptances are defensible against all but one objection on the basis of the cognizer’s evaluation system. Next, the defensibility of an acceptance against every objection on the basis of the cognizer’s evaluation system marks the degree of coherence equivalent to personally justified acceptance. From that point on, a personally justified acceptance enjoys more or less reasonableness proportionate to the degree that the target acceptance coheres with an ultrasystem. The least reasonable personally justified acceptances, we can assume, are defensible against no objections on the basis of the cognizer’s ultrasystem, i.e., defensible against no objections without relying on any truth- incompatible members of the cognizer’s evaluation system. The most reasonable personally justified acceptances are defensible against all but one objection to the target acceptance on the basis of the cognizer’s ultrasystem, i.e., defensible against all but one competitor without relying on error. The defensibility of an acceptance against every objection on the basis of the cognizer’s ultrasystem marks the all-or-nothing pinnacle of an acceptance’s reasonableness: knowledge.

THE DILEMMA Now that the range of reasonableness concerning acceptance is evident, the vast measure by which acceptance may fall short of personal/irrefutable justification should surprise us since “[t]he objective of acceptance is to obtain truth and avoid error in the

certainty concerning that acceptance or members in her evaluation system on which the evaluation of that acceptance is based, the number or truth compatibility of members in the cognizer’s evaluation system aiding in the target acceptance’s defense, the ratio between members in the evaluation system that favor the positive evaluation of the acceptance to those that do not, etc. I set aside all such complications for the purpose of straightforwardly adumbrating what seems to me to be the overall range of an acceptance’s reasonableness in Lehrer’s theory. 128 While this assumption holds true on Lehrer’s strong view of acceptance, this assumption may not hold true on Lehrer’s weak view of acceptance, as discussed below.

40 specific thing accepted.”129 As Lehrer and Nine admit, “Because an acceptance aims at obtaining truth and avoiding error, it may seem that there is little difference between (a) [acceptance] and (j) [personal justification].”130 Indeed, this difference becomes hardly noticeable in passages that portray the state of acceptance as issuing only from a rigorous, epistemically responsible attempt at accepting only what one is justified in accepting: “Acceptance … represent[s] our best efforts to accept what has worth….”131,132 As Lehrer explains, “Once we do care [about the reasonableness of a belief], though, we start to ask serious questions, the ones concerning justification. The very first is whether the person is justified in accepting what he does in the interests of obtaining truth and avoiding error on the basis of his information.”133 Arguably, of the two forms of metamental evaluation that Lehrer claims lead to functional states of acceptance, the route to acceptance via reflective judgment, rather than via unreflective default processing, better suits this depiction of acceptance as resulting from deliberate inquiry into the justificatory status of belief.134 Nevertheless, if a state of acceptance results only from one’s best efforts at accepting what one is justified in accepting, acceptance would seem to require much of the work necessary to avoid the unreasonableness inconsistent with justification. As Lehrer concludes, “If the goal of acceptance is to accept something just in case it is true, then acceptance, which

129 Lehrer, Theory of Knowledge, 138. 130 Lehrer and Nine, “Acceptance in Lehrer’s Theory of Knowledge,” 99. 131 Lehrer, Self-Trust, 3, my emphasis. 132 Or again, “… since acceptance incorporates positive evaluation in terms of the interest of truth, that is, of accepting something in the interest of obtaining truth in a way worthy of our trust, the evaluation constitutes our best effort to satisfy that interest on the basis of the information we possess at the time” (Lehrer, “Justification, Coherence, and Knowledge,” 244). 133 Lehrer, Theory of Knowledge, 73-74. 134 On the formation of functional states of acceptance, (Lehrer, “Justification, Coherence, and Knowledge,” 245); (Lehrer, Self-Trust, 90); (Lehrer, Metamind, 2-3); and (Lehrer, “Acceptance and Belief Revisited,” 217).

41 guarantees its own truth, provides us with a prophylactic against accepting something false.135 Lehrer’s conclusion is reinforced by the fact that metamental evaluation of the reasonableness of information for the purpose of acceptance must take into account that information’s degree of coherence with the cognizer’s evaluation system. On Lehrer’s strong view of acceptance, then, the state of acceptance is specifically effected by rigorous metamental evaluation of the defensibility of the proposition in question against objections on the basis of one’s evaluation system. In other words, evaluating whether one is reasonable in accepting that p amounts to evaluating whether p coheres with one’s evaluation system, i.e., to evaluating whether one can answer objections to p on the basis of that system. Consider the implication, then, of adopting Lehrer’s all-or-nothing conception of ‘coherence’. If acceptance that p demands our best efforts to ensure that p coheres with our evaluation system, and coherence requires that we be able to personally justify p by answering every objection to p on the basis of that system, then how can we be said to accept that p if we have not bothered to consider all the objections to p or made sure that we can defend p against them on the basis of all the relevant members of our evaluation system? How can we be said to have put forth our best efforts “… to accept that p if and only if it is true that p …” if we have not even made the conscious effort to ensure that our acceptance is personally justified, let alone irrefutably justified?136 But if our best efforts at accepting only what is justified need not require that great of an effort, how much effort must our best justificatory efforts at acceptance require? More precisely, if “[c]oherence with a system is the result of defending … [an] acceptance against objections or competitors[,]” and the rigorous pursuit of truth and avoidance of falsity requisite for acceptance is accomplished just by testing the defensibility of an acceptance against competitors, then what is the degree to which such initial inquiry or resulting

135 Lehrer, Theory of Knowledge, 49. 136 Ibid., 53.

42 coherence is necessary to render some doxastic state an acceptance?137 The formation of the acceptance aside, how well must an acceptance, to earn its name, cohere with one’s evaluation system—which is to say, how reasonable must a state of acceptance be? If one were to play Lehrer’s justification game, how rigorously must one be able to defend an acceptance against competitors on the basis of one’s own evaluation system for the required reasonableness of an acceptance to be satisfied? If acceptance need not be personally justified, how far along the range of reasonableness must acceptance travel to be considered an acceptance? Lehrer leaves unanswered all these questions concerning the requisite reasonableness of acceptance. In practice, of course, a cognizer’s reflective judgment or unreflective metamental evaluation of a consideration’s defensibility may result in a state of acceptance that is personally, even irrefutably, justified or that falls far short of justified acceptance, depending on the degree to which one is able to defend that acceptance against competitors on the basis of one’s evaluation system/ultrasystem. Given cognizers’ varied rational capacities and proclivities, acceptance may serve as a meager or potent prophylactic against error indeed. One’s acceptance system simply “… represents the outcome of … [one’s] efforts, however brilliant or ineffectual, to distinguish truth from error.138 Conceptually speaking, however, just how miserably can acceptance fail in one’s best efforts at pursuing truth and avoiding falsity and remain an acceptance? To win the title ‘reasonable acceptance’, would not an acceptance need to be defensible at the very least against one competitor? On the contrary, Lehrer seems to suggest that acceptance can fail miserably, even to the point of being based on no evidence at all: “If I accept something without evidence or justification, … I fall short of knowing that what I have accepted is true. Thus, we require a third condition affirming the need for justification.”139 Countering Manning’s point that

137 Lehrer, Self-Trust, 35. 138 Lehrer, Theory of Knowledge, 125-126. 139 Ibid., 14.

43 acceptance entails justification, Lehrer and Nine also concede that acceptance may represent an entirely unreasonable doxastic state. As they explain, if I see an injured man “writhing and moaning” in severe pain on the ground but “… form the opinion and then accept that the man is, in fact, not in pain…”—despite having “… no evidence that the man is not in pain …”— then it is doubtful that functional acceptances can be attributed to me that will justify my acceptance that the man is not in pain.140 Here, acceptance resembles wishful thinking despite all evidence to the contrary and apparently may not suffice to enable a cognizer to provide any sort of rational defense for what is accepted. So even if Lehrer and Nine have succeeded in demonstrating that acceptance does not entail personal justification, they have done so at the cost of inconsistently acknowledging that a state of acceptance can be formed without any effort on a cognizer’s behalf “… to use the information … [she has] to be reasonable.”141 Ultimately, Lehrer’s ambiguousness regarding the requisite reasonableness of acceptance calls into question Lehrer’s motivation for identifying acceptance as a necessary condition of discursive knowledge. Put simply, the demand of discursiveness states that a cognizer who knows that p must be able to defend that p.142 Lehrer selects acceptance, not belief, as necessary for discursive knowledge because accepting that p, unlike believing that p, supposedly requires (among other things) a cognizer to be able to justify or defend that p on Lehrer’s account: “When a person accepts that p, … [t]hey will also be ready to justify the claim that p.”143 According to Lehrer, “… acceptance, which goes beyond the mere belief and includes the evaluation of it, is justified by the evidence.”144 Hence, on the one hand, if acceptance results only from a justificatory job well done, as the strong view seems to

140 Lehrer and Nine, “Acceptance in Lehrer’s Theory of Knowledge,” 98. 141 Lehrer, Self-Trust, 5. 142 Lehrer, Theory of Knowledge; Lehrer, “Discursive Knowledge,”638-640. 143 Lehrer, Theory of Knowledge, 39-40. 144 Ibid., 198.

44 require, then conditioning knowledge on acceptance renders the justification condition redundant. If, on the other hand, acceptance need not be reasonable, per the weak view, acceptance becomes evidentially comparable to Lehrer’s conception of belief. Belief, which is said to “aim at truth,” is often distinguished from wishful thinking and is, thus, characterized as being shaped by a cognizer’s evidence.145 Lehrer too acknowledges the possibility of evidence-based belief but also seems to classify wishful thinking, based on no evidence or despite all evidence to the contrary, as a form of belief.146 As Lehrer states, “The explanation of why a person believes what he does may have something to do with his having the evidence he does, but it need not.”147 Hence, Lehrer’s acknowledgement that cognizers may be able to cite some or no evidence for both acceptances and beliefs calls into question Lehrer’s motivation for conditioning discursive knowledge on acceptance when either doxastic state may enable a cognizer to justify her claims equally well or feebly. Indeed, notwithstanding the strong view of acceptance, Lehrer’s justification condition of knowledge demands a greater level of reasonableness than acceptance entails. Hence, the justification condition excludes as candidates for knowledge any insufficiently reasonable doxastic mental states, whether acceptances, beliefs, or cases of wishful thinking. Since the justification condition of knowledge will weed out as candidates for knowledge any doxastic states cognizers cannot fully defend on the basis of their evaluation system, then forcing acceptance in the first condition of knowledge to do some unspecified measure of evidential weeding, which acceptance may not even suffice to do on the weak view, is unnecessary. This conclusion presents further evidence that Lehrer’s acceptance condition of knowledge should be abandoned for the traditional belief condition.

145 P. Engel, “Believing, Holding True, and Accepting,” Philosophical Explorations, 143. 146 K. Lehrer, Theory of Knowledge, 13. 147 Ibid., 198.

CONCLUSION OF CHAPTER 2 Lehrer and Nine’s treatment of the reasonableness of acceptance in response to Manning’s objection that acceptance entails justification raises important concerns for Lehrer’s epistemology. In characterizing acceptance as potentially unreasonable and, thus, insufficient for justification, Lehrer and Nine intensify Lehrer’s ambiguity concerning the requisite degree of reasonableness with respect to acceptance. If that degree resembles the requisite degree of reasonableness with respect to belief, then Lehrer unfairly consecrates acceptance as the doxastic centerpiece in the crown of knowledge because of acceptance’s evidential worth, which the twin jewel of belief may possess in matching imperfection or clarity. Should acceptance and belief alike sometimes fall short of the justified grade, then the loupe of justification must evaluate both doxastic states before true gems of either sort are set in the crown of knowledge. Conversely, should acceptance suffice to prove its own evidential worth, the loupe of justification becomes unnecessary. Because Lehrer does not want to abandon the justification condition of knowledge, then he should abandon the acceptance condition and replace it with the traditional belief condition.

CONCLUSION

There is no reason for Lehrer to condition knowledge on acceptance and good reason for him not to do so. Acceptance just is another sort of belief, and various sorts of belief can qualify for epistemic responsibility and knowledge, not just the sort of belief that Lehrer labels ‘acceptance’. Moreover, since acceptance does not entail justification, Lehrer should let the justification condition do its own job, measuring doxastic attitudes of any sort, rather than outsourcing that job by conditioning knowledge on acceptance.

REFERENCES

Bennett, J. “Why Is Belief Involuntary?” Analysis 50, no. 2 (1990): 87-107. Bratman, M. E. “Practical Reasoning and Acceptance in a Context.” Mind 101, no. 401 (1992): 1-15. Buckareff, A. “Acceptance and Deciding to Believe.” Journal of Philosophical Research 29 (2004): 173-190. ———. “Acceptance Does Not Entail Belief.” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 18, no. 2 (2010): 255-261. ———. “Action-Individuation and Doxastic Agency.” Theoria 77 (2011): 312-332. Clarke, D. S. “Does Acceptance Entail Belief?” American Philosophical Quarterly 31, no. 2 (1994): 145-155. Cohen, L. An Essay on Belief and Acceptance. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992. Corlett, J. A. “Epistemic Responsibility.” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 16 no. 2 (2008): 179-200. Engel, P. “Believing, Holding True, and Accepting.” Philosophical Explorations 1, no. 2 (1998): 140-151. ———. “Truth and the Aim of Belief.” Laws and Models in Science (2004): 77-79. Fischer, J. M. “Compatibilism.” In Four Views on Free Will, 44-84. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing, 2007. ———. Deep Control: Essays on Free Will and Value. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012. Fischer, J. M., and M. Ravizza. Responsibility and Control: A Theory of Moral Responsibility. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Frankfurt, H. G. “Alternate Possibilities and Moral Responsibility.” Journal of Philosophy 66 (1969): 829-839. Hetherington, S. “Epistemic Responsibility: A Dilemma.” Monist 85, no. 3 (2002): 398-414. Hieronymi, P. “Responsibility for Believing.” Synthese 161, no. 3 (2008): 357-373. Lehrer, K. “Acceptance and Belief Revisited.” In Believing and Accepting, edited by P. Engel, 209-220. Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000. ———. “Coherence and the Truth Connection: A Reply to my Critics.” In The Current State of the Coherence Theory: Critical Essays on the Epistemic Theories of Keith Lehrer

and Lawrence Bonjour with Replies, edited by J. Bender, 253-275. Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Kluwer, 1989. ———.“Discursive Knowledge.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 60, no. 3 (2000), 637-653. ———. “The Gettier Problem and the Analysis of Knowledge.” In Justification and Knowledge: New Studies in Epistemology, edited by G.S. Pappas, 65-78. Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Reidel, 1979. ———. “Justification, Coherence and Knowledge.” Erkenntnis 50, no. 2-3 (1999): 243-258. ———. Metamind. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990. ———. “Metamind, Autonomy, and Materialism.” Grazer Philosophische Studien 40 (1991): 2-11. ———.“Rationality and Trustworthiness.” Protosoziologie 8, no. 9 (1996): 183-196. ———. “Reply to Christian Piller's ‘On Keith Lehrer's Belief in Acceptance.”’ Grazer Philosophische Studien 40 (1991): 62-69. ———. “Reply to Marian David’s ‘On the Roles of Trustworthiness and Acceptance.’” Grazer Philosophische Studien 40 (1991): 108-111. ———. Self-Trust: A Study of Reason, Knowledge and Autonomy. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997. ———. Theory of Knowledge. 2nd ed. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 2000. Lehrer, K., and C. Nine. “The Functional Role of Acceptance in Lehrer's Theory of Knowledge.” Philosophical Forum 32 no. 1 (2001): 95-103. Losonsky, M. “On Wanting to Believe.” In Believing and Accepting, edited by P. Engel, 101- 131. Dordrecht, the Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2000. Manning, R. “Justified Acceptance, Information, and Knowledge.” Philosophical Forum 25, no. 3 (1994): 212-230. McHugh, C. “Epistemic Responsibility and Doxastic Agency.” Philosophical Issues 23, no. 1 (2013): 132-157. ———. “Judging as a Non-Voluntary Action.” Philosophical Studies 152, no. 2 (2011): 245- 269. Pettit, P., and M. Smith. “Freedom in Belief and Desire.” The Journal of Philosophy 93, no. 9 (1996): 429-449. Tuomela, R. “Belief Versus Acceptance.” Philosophical Explorations 3, no. 2 (2000): 122- 137. Van Inwagen, P. “The Incompatibility of Free Will and Determinism.” Philosophical Studies 27 (1975): 185-199.

Zagzebski, L. “Must Knowers be Agents?” In Virtue Epistemology: Essays on Epistemic Virtue and Responsibility, edited by A. Fairweather and L. Zagzebski, 142-157. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001.