Knowing and Checking

An Epistemological Investigation

Guido Melchior

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780429638602
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

Checking is a very common concept for describing a subject's epistemic goals and actions. Surprisingly, there has been no philosophical attention paid to the notion of checking. This is the first book to develop a comprehensive epistemic theory of checking. The author argues that sensitivity is necessary for checking but not for knowing, thereby finding a new home for the much discussed modal sensitivity principle. He then uses the distinction between checking and knowing to explain central puzzles about knowledge, particularly those concerning knowledge closure, bootstrapping and the skeptical puzzle. Knowing and Checking: An Epistemological Investigation will be of interest to epistemologists and other philosophers looking for a general theory of checking and testing or for new solutions to central epistemological problems.

Part I
Checking

1
Introduction

The Methodological Approach

This book is primarily about checking and only derivatively about knowing. In Part I, I develop a theory of checking. In Part II, I use this theory for explaining central puzzles about knowledge, for example the skeptical puzzle. Knowing is the central concept in epistemology, whereas checking is rather neglected. Hence, the title of the book reflects the existing philosophical landscape rather than the priorities of this book.

Checking is a very common concept for describing a subject’s epistemic goals and actions. I will argue that successfully checking is best explained in terms of the modal features of the method used for checking. Crucially, successfully checking whether p is true requires using a method that is sensitive with respect to p, i.e. a method that would not indicate that p, if p were false. Thus, sensitivity is necessary for checking while it is plausibly not necessary for knowing. Hence, sensitivity marks a crucial distinction between knowing and checking.

The book aims to achieve three main goals. In Part I, I develop a sensitivity account of checking, SAC. To be more explicit, I analyze the internalist and externalist components of the epistemic action of checking, which include the intentions of the checking subject and the necessary externalist features of the checking method such as sensitivity. In Part II, I use the distinction between knowing and checking to explain central puzzles about knowledge, particularly puzzles centering on knowledge closure, puzzles concerning bootstrapping, and the skeptical puzzle.

Moreover, the book aims at clarifying a dispute about modal epistemology, concerning the application of the sensitivity principle. Modal accounts of knowledge are very popular. Proponents of such accounts defend the view that the crucial external condition on knowledge can be spelled out in modal terms, especially in terms of subjunctive conditionals. One of the first modal accounts of knowledge is due to Nozick (1981) who argued that S knows that p, only if S’s true belief that p fulfills the sensitivity condition. Nozick’s sensitivity condition became subject to severe criticisms that led to the development of the safety account of knowledge as introduced by Sosa (1999) and defended by Pritchard (2005 b). Despite the existing criticisms, sensitivity proved an intuitively plausible criterion for knowledge, a fact that led to a second wave of sensitivity accounts as defended by DeRose (1995 and 2017), Black (2002), Roush (2005), and Becker (2007). By arguing that sensitivity is necessary for checking but not knowing, I will explain where our persisting intuitions about sensitivity have their place in epistemology.

Let me briefly explain my overall methodological approach. Most epistemological questions and accounts center on the notion of knowing. However, our epistemic and rational practice is multifaceted and involves checking, arguing, convincing, demonstrating, and proving. Accordingly, many of our epistemic intuitions not only center on the concept of knowing but also concern these alternative epistemic concepts and practices. Nevertheless, these concepts are much neglected in contemporary epistemology. I think this is a shortcoming, for two reasons. First, these phenomena are interesting in their own right and deserve our epistemological attention. Second, our understanding of these concepts enriches our understanding of what knowledge is and of why we have certain intuitions about knowledge in certain contexts. For example, I argue that an analysis that involves checking helps explain puzzles arising from conflicting intuitions about knowledge, such as closure puzzles. Against orthodox epistemology, and especially against knowledge-first epistemology, my methodological approach is to provide an analysis of these common but philosophically neglected epistemic concepts and to use this analysis to explain puzzles about knowledge. This is an open project. First, the elaborated sensitivity account of checking can be further developed and additional applications can be found. Second, other epistemic concepts, such as arguing, can be analyzed analogously and can be used to help explain our concept of knowledge. Thereby we gradually extend the range of recent epistemological analysis.

Let me provide an overview of the book. Chapter 2 surveys existing modal knowledge accounts and problems they face. First, I present Nozick’s (1981) knowledge account, based on the two modal notions of sensitivity and adherence, and his refined notion of knowing via a method. Second, I discuss three types of objections that have been put forward against Nozick: (a) Not all instances of knowledge are sensitive; for example, induction is insensitive but can still yield knowledge, as Vogel (1987) and Sosa (1999) point out. (b) Sensitivity leads to highly implausible instances of closure failure, as Kripke (2011) argues. (c) Sensitivity accounts of knowledge do not allow for knowing via one-sided methods that can indicate only that p is true, but not that p is false, as Luper-Foy (1984) maintains. Third, I present a second wave of sensitivity accounts that have been formulated in order to avoid these problems, for example DeRose’s (1995 and 2017) sensitivity-based contextualism, Black’s (2002) invariantist Mooreanism, Roush’s (2005) sensitivity account that preserves knowledge closure, and Becker’s (2007) theory, which combines sensitivity with reliability. Fourth, I present the modal principle of safety, introduced by Sosa (1999) and further developed by Pritchard (2005 b), which is currently the most widely accepted modal principle for knowledge, and I briefly discuss objections against it.

In Chapter 3, I elaborate the sensitivity account of checking, SAC. Successfully checking that a proposition p is true is characterized as follows:

S checked that p was true via method M iff

• (1) S intentionally used M for determining whether p is true.
• (2) M has certain modal features with respect to p (especially sensitivity).
• (3) M accurately indicated that p.

Checking as an epistemic action has internalist as well as externalist features. The internalist features are S’s intentions to use the method for determining whether p is true as specified by condition (1). According to these internalist features, S checks that p is true, only if S entertains the proposition p (e.g. by raising the question whether p is true) and intentionally uses a method for settling this question. In this respect, checking diverges from knowing, since S can come to know that p unintentionally, i.e. without entertaining p and without intentionally using a method prior to believing that p. The externalist features of checking are the modal features of the method, and the requirement that p must be true, as specified by conditions (2) and (3). I argue that checking that p is true requires a method that is at least minimally sensitive with respect to p, viz. a method that would not easily indicate that p is true if p were false. Moreover, I show that safety is not sufficient for checking because a method can be safe with respect to p even though it is not minimally sensitive. (This can be the case, if there is no nearby possible world where p is false.) I demonstrate that SAC does not suffer from Luper-Foy’s problem of one-sided methods, and I will provide necessary and sufficient conditions for checking methods that are asymmetric with respect to p and ¬p. Furthermore, I will elaborate the relations between the sensitivity-based checking account, SAC, and existing knowledge accounts. SAC avoids some persistent problems that sensitivity accounts of knowledge (and other externalist accounts of knowledge) face. I argue that SAC, despite being based on methods, does not suffer from the notorious ‘generality problem,’ since the method is specified by the intentions of the checking subject. This solution to the generality problem is not available for externalist knowledge accounts, since it relies on characteristic internalist features of checking that knowing lacks. Finally, I show that SAC is not affected by problems of closure failure as presented by Kripke (2011) because checking, or being in a position to check, is not closed under known entailment.

In Chapter 4, I extend the analysis of checking. The first part of the chapter is devoted to checking and relevant alternatives. First, I provide a more fine-grained analysis of checking, distinguishing between cases such as checking that it is true that Peter cleaned the kitchen, checking that Peter (and not somebody else) cleaned the kitchen, and checking that Peter cleaned the kitchen (and not something else). Second, I investigate checking with respect to particular alternatives, e.g. checking that Peter and not Frank cleaned the kitchen. Third, I analyze the conditions for checking in combination with wh-clauses, e.g. when checking who cleaned the kitchen. Each of these cases is specified by the particular intentions of the checking subject and the particular sensitivity conditions. The second part of Chapter 4 is devoted to discrimination. I elaborate a modal theory of discriminating in analogy to checking with respect to particular alternatives, viz. a theory about the modal conditions for having the capacity to discriminate between Fs and Gs via a particular method. We will see that sensitivity not only plays a crucial role for checking but also for discriminating, i.e. S cannot discriminate Fs from Gs via method M if, in the nearest possible worlds where x is G, M indicates to S that x is F.

Empirical methods, such as observation, or ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• PART I Checking
• PART II Checking and Knowledge Puzzles
• Appendix
• References
• Index