R O U T L E D G E . TAYLOR & FRANCIS Epistemology A Routledge Collection for APA Members www.routledge.com/philosophy Contents Epistemology: Current Controversies 2 Current Controversies in Epistemology ed. by Ram Neta Introduction 10 Don't Be Fooled: A Philosophy of Common Sense by Jan Bransen The Power of Power 27 Power and Capacities in Philosophy: The New Aristotelian ed. by John Greco and Ruth Groff 20% Discount Available Enjoy a 20% discount across our entire range of Philosophy books. Simply add the discount code APA17 at the checkout. Please note: This discount code cannot be combined with any other discount or offer and is only valid on print titles purchased directly from www.routledge.com. This discount is valid until 31/12/2017. www.routledge.com/philosophy Epistemology Current Controversies RAM NETA Introduction If you are reading this book, then it is very likely that you are either affi liated with an institution of tertiary education (a college or university), or that you have had some such affi liation in the past. 1 Such institutions describe their missions in different ways, but one thing that their various descriptions have in common is a focus on the acquisition and dissemination of knowledge. To the extent, then, that we care (as many of us increasingly do) to understand and evaluate the mission of such institutions, we should be concerned to understand what knowledge is and why it is worth acquiring or disseminating. Epistemology is the attempt to answer such questions. And while epistemol- ogy is much older than any current institution of tertiary education, it arose in response to the systematic attempt to acquire and disseminate knowledge. Early work in Greek epistemology arose in refl ecting on Meno’s question whether virtue could be taught, or in refl ecting on Theaetetus’ dedication to acquire knowledge. But, as so often happens in philosophy, refl ection on these issues has led to controversy on several other, closely related issues. Four of these controversies have been especially important in the history of episte- mology over the past three centuries at least: the nature and extent of a priori knowledge, the nature and extent of a posteriori justifi cation, the solution to the problem of the regress of justifi cation, and the question of whether skep- ticism can be refuted. The current state of these four controversies is repre- sented in each of the four parts of this volume. 3 • Ram Neta You will notice that the term “justifi cation” occurs in the title of the fi rst three of these four parts of the volume, but the term “knowledge” does not. Why? For at least the past century, epistemology has proceeded under the assumption that the very same procedures or capacities or grounds that some- times give us knowledge do on other occasions fail to give us knowledge, but fail in such a way as to leave us rationally permitted—perhaps even rationally obligated—to believe something that we (unbeknownst to ourselves) don’t know to be true. The evidence all strongly indicates that the patient will die within 6 months, and so we are rationally permitted, perhaps obligated, to believe that the patient will die within 6 months—but what if, nonetheless, the patient were to live longer? Then we would have been rationally permitted or obligated to believe something that turns out to be false, and so that we could not have known to be true. The controversies discussed in the fi rst three parts of this volume are controversies concerning the kind of permission or obliga- tion that rationality can issue us with respect to a proposition, even when we fail to know that proposition to be true. This kind of permission or obligation is what I, following at least some common parlance in epistemology, call “jus- tifi cation.” Though different epistemologists use the term “justifi cation” in dif- ferent ways, and even when they use it the same way they often end up having very different theories of what constitutes possession of the relevant deontic status, the controversies discussed in the fi rst three parts of this volume tend to proceed on the assumption that we can fi x our attention in common on a single deontic status and engage in a fruitful dispute concerning the nature or extent of that status. Since it is that deontic status that is of distinctive concern to epistemologists—the deontic status that is involved in knowing, but can on occasion occur without it—the fi rst three parts of the volume are framed as controversies concerning justifi cation, rather than knowledge. 1. The A Priori: Can We Gain Justifi cation Independently of Experience? Throughout much of its history, epistemology has been interested in under- standing whether—and if so, then how—it is possible for us to know not merely what happens to be the case, but what must be the case. (Indeed, many philosophers interpret Plato as having Socrates advance the view, in the Republic, that knowledge is possible only with respect to what must be the case, and not with respect to what merely happens to be the case.) If we know what happens to be the case (e.g., that the clouds are now hiding the sun from view, or that the automobile behind us just honked its horn), then we know these things by means of what we currently see, or hear. Perception is thought to be the source of our knowledge of what happens to be the case ( Part II of this volume is devoted to examining how this is possible, and Part IV to whether we can prove that it is possible). But can perception tell us about not 4 Epistemology: Current Controversies • merely what happens to be the case, but rather what must be the case? Many philosophers 2 have thought that it could not do so. But if perception cannot tell us what must be the case, then how, if at all, is it possible for us to know what must be the case? Descartes devotes much of his Meditations on First Philosophy 3 to answer- ing this question. He attempts to identify the source of our knowledge of what must be the case by supposing that all of the information that we receive by means of sensory perception is false. On this supposition, what, if anything, is it still possible for us to know? Descartes argues that, even on this supposi- tion, it is possible to know of one’s own existence as a thinking thing, it is pos- sible to identify the source of this knowledge as a faculty of clear and distinct perception (or what Descartes sometimes calls “the natural light”), and it is possible to articulate the knowledge provided by this source as knowledge of the nature of extended substance, knowledge of the nature of thinking sub- stance, and knowledge of the nature of perfect substance. All such knowledge, on Descartes’ view, is fully precise, even if very incomplete. Whatever exactly this faculty of clear and distinct perception amounts to, for Descartes, it must be distinct from sensory perception, because we gain knowledge by means of it even on the supposition that all of the information acquired by means of sensory perception is false. This sort of knowledge is what philosophers since Kant have called “a priori.” Notice that, as I just defi ned a priori knowledge, it is knowledge of what must be the case, it is knowledge acquired by means of a faculty that is distinct from sensory perception, and it is, fi nally, knowledge acquired by means of a faculty that could give us knowledge even on the supposition that sensory perception fails to do so. But it is a substantive commitment that there is some kind of knowledge that bears all of these properties. A number of Descartes’ successors may be understood as criticizing this commitment in different ways. David Hume, for instance, thinks that claims about what must be the case, to the extent that they are not confused, are claims that concern only relations of ideas, viz., relations among the various combinations of traces left on our minds by impressions. 4 The faculty by means of which we know such claims to be true is simply the faculty that preserves traces of our impressions and combines them in various ways. But this is the same faculty by which we gain knowledge of such contingent features of the world as that the clouds are now hiding the sun, and so the faculty that delivers knowledge for necessity is the same, for Hume, as that which delivers knowledge of contingency. Immanuel Kant thinks that our knowledge of what must be the case arises not from one but rather from two distinct sources: the form of our intuition, and the cat- egories of the understanding, and the ability of these sources to give us knowl- edge is not entirely independent of the ability of sensory perception to give us knowledge. 5 In particular, for Kant, we gain knowledge of the necessary by abstracting away from particular features of our knowledge of the contingent. 5 • Ram Neta The question of whether there is a priori knowledge is the question of whether our knowledge of what must be the case—our knowledge of such necessary truths as those of mathematics and logic, for example—is knowl- edge that is furnished by means of a faculty that is distinct from sensory per- ception, or not. In Chapter 1 , C.S.I. Jenkins defends the fi rst option. In the Chapter 2 , Michael Devitt defends the second option.