Epistemology Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement: 64 Edited by Anthony O’Hear Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements The Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements are published twice a year. Institutional subscribers to the journal Philosophy receive the supplements as part of their subscription. The following supplements are available to purchase as books. Volume 37 1994 Philosophy, Psychology and Psychiatry (ISBN 0521469023) 38 1995 Philosophy and Technology (ISBN 0521558166) 39 1995 Karl Popper: Philosophy and Problems (ISBN 0521558158) 40 1996 Philosophy and Pluralism (ISBN 0521567505) 41 1996 Verstehen and Human Understanding (ISBN 0521587425) 42 1997 Thought and Language (ISBN 0521587417) 43 1998 Current Issues in Philosophy of Mind (ISBN 0521639271) 44 1999 German Philosophy since Kant (ISBN 0521667828) 45 1999 Philosophy and Public Affairs (ISBN 0521667844) 46 2000 Logic, Cause & Action (ISBN 0521785103) 47 2000 Philosophy, the Good, the True and the Beautiful (ISBN 0521785111) 48 2001 Philosophy at the New Millennium (ISBN 0521005086) 49 2001 Naturalism, Evolution and Mind (ISBN 0521003733) 50 2002 Time, Reality & Experience (ISBN 0521529670) 51 2002 Logic, Thought and Language (ISBN 0521529662) 52 2003 Philosophy and the Emotions (ISBN 0521537347) 53 2003 Minds and Persons (ISBN 0521537339) 54 2004 Modern Moral Philosophy (ISBN 0521603269) 55 2004 Agency and Action (ISBN 0521603560) 56 2005 Philosophy, Biology and Life (ISBN 0521678455) 57 2005 The Philosophy of Need (ISBN 0521678447) 58 2006 Political Philosophy (ISBN 0521695597) 59 2006 Preferences and Well-Being (ISBN 0521695589) 60 2007 Narrative and Understanding Persons (ISBN 9780521714099) 61 2007 Philosophy of Science (ISBN 9780521718967) 62 2008 Being: Developments in Contemporary Metaphysics (ISBN 9780521735445) 63 2008 Kant and Philosophy of Science Today (ISBN 9780521748513) From Volume 13 onwards the Series is published by Cambridge University Press and some earlier titles are also available. This journal issue has been printed on FSC-certified paper and cover board. FSC is an independent, non-governmental, not-for-profit organization established to promote the responsible management of the world’s forests. Please see www.fsc.org for information. Epistemology ROYAL INSTITUTE OF PHILOSOPHY SUPPLEMENT: 64 EDITED BY Anthony O’Hear PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, CB2 1RP, United Kingdom CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, United Kingdom 32 Avenue of the Americas, New York, NY 10013–2473, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia Ruiz de Alarco´n 13, 28014 Madrid, Spain Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 8001, South Africa # The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2009 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge Typeset by Techset Composition Ltd, Salisbury, UK A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing-in-Publication Data applied for ISBN 9780521138581 ISSN 1358-2461 ii Contents Preface v Notes on Contributors vii Social Epistemology: Theory and Applications 1 ALVIN I. GOLDMAN Knowledge, Understanding and Epistemic Value 19 DUNCAN PRITCHARD Knowledge of Counterfactuals 45 TIMOTHY WILLIAMSON How I Know I’m Not a Brain in a Vat 65 JOSE´ L. ZALABARDO Belief, Reason & Logic 89 SCOTT STURGEON What is Knowledge? 101 QUASSIM CASSAM The Value of Knowledge and The Test of Time 121 MIRANDA FRICKER Index of Names 139 iii Preface This volume is based on lectures given as the Royal Institute of Philosophy’s annual lecture series, held in London during the autumn and spring terms of 2006–7. At least since the 17th century Epistemology has played a role in philosophy. While its foundational status has come to be questioned its overall importance has not. The papers in this volume give a good indication of current directions in the field, from some of those whose contributions are at the forefront of epistemological enquiry. I would like to thank the contributors, both for their lectures and for their contributions to this volume. Adam Ferner prepared the index and did much of the editorial work, and I would like to express my gratitude to him too. Anthony O’Hear v Notes on Contributors Alvin I. Goldman Alvin I. Goldman is Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Duncan Pritchard Duncan Pritchard holds the Chair in Epistemology at the University of Edinburgh. Timothy Williamson Timothy Williamson is the Wykeham Professor of Logic at the University of Oxford. Jose´ L. Zalabardo Jose´ L. Zalabardo is Reader at University College London. Scott Sturgeon Scott Sturgeon is CUF lecturer at Wadham College, Oxford. Quassim Cassam Quassim Cassam is professor of Philosophy at Warwick University. Miranda Fricker Miranda Fricker is Reader in the School of Philosophy at Birkbeck, University of London. vii Social Epistemology: Theory and Applications ALVIN I. GOLDMAN 1. Mainstream Epistemology and Social Epistemology Epistemology has had a strongly individualist orientation, at least since Descartes. Knowledge, for Descartes, starts with the fact of one’s own thinking and with oneself as subject of that thinking. Whatever else can be known, it must be known by inference from one’s own mental contents. Achieving such knowledge is an individ- ual, rather than a collective, enterprise. Descartes’s successors largely followed this lead, so the history of epistemology, down to our own time, has been a predominantly individualist affair. There are scattered exceptions. A handful of historical epistemolo- gists gave brief space to the question of knowing, or believing justifi- ably, based on the testimony of others. Testimony-based knowledge would be one step into a more social epistemology. Hume took it for granted that we regularly rely on the factual statements of others, and argued that it is reasonable to do so if we have adequate reasons for trusting the veracity of these sources. However, reasons for such trust, according to Hume, must rest on personal observations of people’s veracity or reliability.1 Thomas Reid took a different view. He claimed that our natural attitude of trusting others is reasonable even if we know little if anything about others’ reliability. Testimony, at least sincere testimony, is always prima facie credible (Reid 1970: 240–241). Here we have two philosophers of the 18th century both endorsing at least one element of what nowadays is called “social epistemology.” But these points did not much occupy either Hume’s or Reid’s corpus of philosophical writing; nor were 1 Hume wrote: “[T]here is no species of reasoning more common, more useful, and even necessary to human life, than that which is derived from the testimony of men, and the reports of eye-witnesses and spectators...[O]ur assurance in any argument of this kind is derived from no other principle than our observation of the veracity of human testimony, and of the usual conformity of facts to the reports of witnesses.” (Hume 1972: 11) doi:10.1017/S1358246109000022 & The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 2009 Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 64 2009 1 Alvin I. Goldman these passages much studied or cited by their contemporaries and immediate successors. Fast forward now to the second half of the 20th century. Here we find intellectual currents pointing toward the socializing of epistem- ology. Several of these movements, however, were centered outside of philosophy and never adopted the label of “social epistemology,” or adopted it only belatedly. I have in mind movements in the social studies of science and cultural studies. In science studies, the most influential figure was Thomas Kuhn, whose Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) was itself a revolution in the interpretation of science. Kuhn influenced other investigators in the history and soci- ology of science to view science as just another social institution, not as a paragon of objective rationality, the stance that had been standard among positivist philosophers of science. According to Kuhn, the replacement of one scientific paradigm by a rival does not occur because the old paradigm is rationally overwhelmed by new evidence. Rival paradigms, according to Kuhn, aren’t even (evidentially) “com- mensurable”. It appeared, in other words, that Kuhn denied any rational basis for scientific revolution. Instead, it has a social basis. Although Kuhn’s precise commitments were ambiguous, many thought that, according to Kuhn, paradigm change is just a matter of “mob psychology” (Lakatos 1970: 178). In the wake of Kuhn, many historians and sociologists of science abandoned a rational per- spective on science in favor of a sociological one. An earlier champion of this idea was Ludwig Fleck (1979). Kuhn also expressed doubt about truth as the goal of science, or at least as an achievable goal, and other sociologists of science followed suit. Thus, in the 1970s, the “strong programme” in the sociology of science emerged, centered in Edinburgh, that sought to study science without any assumption that science uses methods that are either rational or superior avenues to truth. Indeed, along with postmodern thinkers like Michel Foucault, many of these authors contended that so-called scientific “facts” or “truths” are mere social constructions. What happens in scientific laboratories isn’t the discovery of scientific truths, but their creation or “fabrication.” Latour and Woolgar wrote: [W]e do not conceive of scientists ...as pulling back the curtain on pregiven, but hitherto concealed truths. Rather, objects are constituted through the artful creativity of scientists. (1986: 128–129) So-called truth, facts, rationality – they are all a matter, not of mind- independent, or society-independent nature, but of social negotiation or politics. 2 Social Epistemology: Theory and Applications Most writers in sociology of science have shied away from calling their enterprise “social epistemology,” but this is the label chosen by Steve Fuller, both for the title of his first book (1988) and for a journal he founded.