Groundless Belief

An Essay on the Possibility of Epistemology - Second Edition

Michael Williams

• Éditeur: Princeton University Press
• Année: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780691222028
• Édition: 2
• Sujet: Philosophie
• Sous-sujet: Epistemologie in der Philosophie

Inspired by the work of Wilfrid Sellars, Michael Williams launches an all-out attack on what he calls "phenomenalism, " the idea that our knowledge of the world rests on a perceptual or experiential foundation. The point of this wider-than-normal usage of the term "phenomenalism, " according to which even some forms of direct realism deserve to be called phenomenalistic, is to call attention to important continuities of thought between theories often thought to be competitors. Williams's target is not phenomenalism in its classical sense-datum and reductionist form but empiricism generally. Williams examines and rejects the idea that, unless our beliefs are answerable to a "given" element in experience, objective knowledge will be impossible. Groundless Belief was first published in 1977. This second edition contains a new afterword in which Williams places his arguments in the context of some current discussions of coherentism versus the Myth of the Given and explains their relation to subsequent developments in his own epistemological views.

1. Introduction: Epistemology and Scepticism

1. INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

In this essay I shall be concerned with the philosophical problem of perceptual knowledge and, especially, with an approach to that problem which I shall call ‘phenomenalism’. I understand that term in a broad sense to be explained and defended as my argument proceeds. My interest in the topic is both philosophical and metaphilosophical: philosophical in that I shall argue that any theory of perceptual knowledge which is phenomenalistic in my sense is radically defective; and metaphilosophical in that I want to use my discussion of phenomenalism to raise, in a fairly concrete form, the question of whether epistemology, as traditionally conceived, constitutes a coherent intellectual discipline. I shall argue that it does not.

Many contemporary philosophers would agree that epistemological theories are best seen as offering different ways of reacting to the threat of scepticism. I think that this view is appealing on both philosophical and historical grounds.¹ But also think that it is not the whole story. It is sometimes said that associating epistemology too closely with scepticism gives a distorted picture of the subject. For example, a recent writer claims that the task of the epistemologist is not to refute scepticism but to show, given that knowledge is possible, how it is possible.² However, this strikes me as a distinction without a difference and, in any case, the claim rests on a misunderstanding of the view that epistemological theories are concerned with responding to scepticism. This view need not be taken to imply that there are sceptics who need to be refuted or that we have doubts, say about the reality of the external world, which need to be allayed. Rather, the point is that there are certain seemingly plausible arguments which purport to show that scepticism is true, and that different epistemological theories can be seen as different ways of meeting such arguments. That is to say, epistemological theories can be seen as the result of assuming that the conclusions of sceptical arguments are false and arguing, on this basis, either that the arguments are invalid or that they contain false premises. Such a strategy, it seems to me, amounts to an attempt to show that knowledge is possible, given that it is possible. More than this, if sceptical arguments did not exist, I do not think that any content could be given to the idea of showing that knowledge is possible. The task is a meaningful one just because there exist arguments purporting to show that knowledge is impossible. And indeed, this same writer admits that traditional theories of perceptual knowledge can be seen as arising out of objections to various steps in a certain pattern of sceptical argument. Such a connection can hardly be accidental.

Similar remarks apply to Chisholm’s attempt to divorce the epistemological enterprise from sceptical doubts.³ Chisholm thinks that an epistemological theory should be a contribution to an analytic science of evidence. An acceptable theory will recognize a certain order of epistemological priority amongst our beliefs and will lay down principles of evidence in virtue of which more primitive beliefs can be said to justify or confer reasonableness upon less primitive beliefs.

But what is the point of this analytic science? ‘Analysing’ concepts is not, I take it, something which is done simply for its own sake. Neither can Chisholm’s approach to questions of justification be seen as a contribution to the sociology of knowledge: that is, he is not just interested in what people actually say when asked to justify their beliefs. Such an investigation would not reveal the kind of epistemological order he professes to find. People do not, in general, go in for systematic attempts to justify their beliefs at large. Certainly, they are not to be found offering ultimate justifications by appealing to classes of epistemologically primitive truths.

What Chisholm is looking for is the ‘logical’ structure of justification. This structure is uncovered by asking questions about justification in a highly systematic way. That is, Chisholm raises the questions one would raise if one were entertaining sceptical doubts about human knowledge. Using scepticism this way as a methodological device does not imply that any actual doubts are being entertained, so I do not think that it does any real violence to Chisholm’s approach to epistemology to see it as involving a kind of methodological scepticism. In fact, it makes his position more intelligible. I shall have more to say about Chisholm’s programme as my argument progresses.

2. RADICAL SCEPTICISM

I have said that epistemological theories can be seen as offering different ways of reacting to the threat of scepticism, but I have a particular kind of scepticism in mind which I shall call ‘radical scepticism’.⁴

By ‘radical scepticism’ I mean the thesis that one is never justified in believing anything at all. But we can also talk about radical scepticism about such and such—say, other minds, or the external world. Then we have more limited theses to the effect that one is never justified in believing anything about the minds of others or the external world or whatever.

I appeal to the notion of radical scepticism because it is the most interesting form of scepticism and the most important philosophically. Its interest and importance derive from its being formulated in terms of justified belief. I want to distinguish this interesting form of scepticism from forms of scepticism which amount to little more than carping about the use of the verb ‘to know’. For example, it has been thought that knowing precludes even the logical possibility of error. Since little or nothing meets this strong condition, it is concluded that we believe much but know little or nothing. Hume in the Treatise wanted to distinguish three kinds of justified belief which he called ‘knowledge, proofs and probabilities’:

By knowledge, I mean the assurance arising from the comparison of ideas. By proofs, those arguments which are derived from the relation of cause and effect, and which are entirely free from doubt and uncertainty. By probability, that evidence which is still attended with uncertainty.⁵

Proofs do not yield knowledge because there is always the possibility, however remote, that what has been ‘proven’ should turn out to be false. Anyone inclined to accept Hume’s usage would have to hold that we have no ‘knowledge’ of the external world, or of what is going on in the minds of other people (if such there are), and so on. But this kind of scepticism is not very interesting once we realize what is going on. We can allow philosophers of Hume’s persuasion to use ‘knowledge’ in their idiosyncratic way and let that be the end of it. Of course, that isn’t always the end of it with philosophers like Hume. But this is because, when we look into the motivation for the idiosyncratic use of ‘knowledge’, we find, in spite of all the talk about freedom from doubt and uncertainty, the idea that there is something intrinsically second-rate about the kind of justification we have for, say, our beliefs about the physical world; and this brings us back into the domain of what I called ‘radical scepticism’. The ‘scepticism’ which results from narrowing the normal use of ‘know’ is interesting only as a symptom of a deeper problem.

3. KNOWLEDGE AND JUSTIFICATION

Some recent discussion in the theory of knowledge has centred around attempts to formulate necessary and sufficient conditions for its being true that S know that P. This problem was brought into prominence by Gettier in an influential paper which presented arguments to show that the traditional conditions for knowledge—justified true belief—were insufficient.⁶

Gettier’s strategy was to construct examples in which a person makes what seems to be a warranted inference from a justified but false belief to a belief which happens to be true, though its truth has nothing to do with the premise from which it was inferred. Linguistic intuitions, it is claimed, tell us that such cases do not count as cases of knowledge, though they do count as cases of justified true belief.

Gettier’s original examples are of a fairly restrestricted kind. It is essential to such examples that the subject make an inference. But some writers use the phrase ‘Gettier example’ in a wider sense to apply to any example designed to show that the traditional conditions for knowledge are insufficient.⁷ Consider the following case: it looks to a perceiver as if there is a candle in front of him. Further, suppose that there really is a candle in front of him, so that his belief is true, although the candle he actually sees is one placed off to the side reflected in a mirror. If he has no reason to suspect such an elaborate deception, he will be justified in believing that there is a candle in front of him. Again, we have a case of justified true belief which, intuitively, does not count as knowledge.

How does Gettier’s problem—the problem of formulating necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge—relate to the dominant concerns of traditional epistemology? On the face of things, only distantly. I am arguing that epistemological theories such as phenomenalism, direct realism and so on, can be seen as different ways of reacting to the threat of radical scepticism. The important point to bear in mind is that radically sceptical theses are stated in terms of justified belief: thus traditional epistemological theories attempt to tell us something about justification, but they do not necessarily pretend to offer analyses of knowledge, in the sense of answers to Gettier’s problem.

There is, however, a possible source of confusion here. Scepticism is often taken to be the thesis that knowledge is impossible. Given the traditional analysis of knowledge in terms of justified true belief, this amounts to radical scepticism. But if we take the traditional conditions to be insufficient, we have to recognize two ways in which the possibility of knowledge might be denied. The first of these is radical scepticism which denies the possibility of justified belief, a necessary condition for knowledge. But a second, and to my mind much less interesting, form of scepticism can result from adding to the justified true belief condition, in an attempt to reach conditions which are sufficient as well as necessary, a further condition which turns out to be rarely, if ever, satisfied. The position thus reached, especially if stated in terms of the impossibility of knowledge, can look like radical scepticism. However, failure to know anything, now that knowledge is no longer equated with justified true belief, is compatible with being justified in believing all sorts of things and so does not amount to being landed in the position of the radical sceptic.

An example of a kind of scepticism which falls short of radical scepticism has been defended by Peter Unger.⁸ His argument takes off from a distinction between ‘absolute’ and ‘relative’ terms. These are distinguished by a paraphrastic test. If we take an absolute term like ‘flat’, a sentence like ‘My table is flatter than yours’ can be paraphrased by ‘My table is more nearly flat than yours.’ But if we consider a relative term like ‘bumpy’, such a paraphrase will not work. The sentence ‘My table is bumpier than yours’ does not mean the same as the sentence ‘My table is more nearly bumpy than yours.’ This latter sentence does not even make much sense.

We can obtain similar results for some epistemic terms. (I do not follow Unger’s own examples exactly.) Thus, ‘John’s claim is more certain than Bill’s’ can be rendered as ‘John’s claim is more nearly certain than Bill’s’, whereas ‘John’s claim is more confident than Bill’s’ cannot be rendered as ‘John’s claim is more nearly confident than Bill’s.’ By the paraphrastic test, ‘certain’ is an absolute term while ‘confident’ is not.

Unger argues that absolute terms are only dubiously applicable. In the case of an absolute term, F, it is rarely, if ever, the case that anything is, strictly speaking, (absolutely) F. Is anything we encounter absolutely flat? If we look more closely, say through a microscope, we find bumps. More importantly, is anything we believe ever absolutely certain? Surely not, for there is always the possibility that we have made some kind of mistake. Evidence of human fallibility is all too common.

Does knowing require being absolutely certain? That it does is shown, according to. Unger, by the fact that it is linguistically anomalous to say things like ‘I know it’s raining but I’m not absolutely certain.’ The sense of anomaly can be heightened by putting in suitable emphases to show that the claim to knowledge is to be taken literally. Thus consider the sentence ‘He really knows, but he isn’t certain.’ Unger claims that this is a contradiction, and so knowing must entail being certain. Since ‘certain’ is an absolute term, and since absolute terms, taken strictly, are rarely, if ever, applicable, it follows that there is hardly anything, if anything at all, that any of us really knows.

This conclusion strikes me as remarkably uninteresting. That Unger’s scepticism is not radical scepticism is shown by the fact that he is quite prepared to admit that ‘there is much that many of us correctly and reasonably believe’.⁹ But he thinks that much more is required for us to know anything at all. This ‘more’ turns out to be certainty, so the ‘scepticism’ which has been defended amounts to no more ...

Table des matières

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Preface to the Second Edition
• 1. Introduction: Epistemology and Scepticism
• 2. The Appeal to the Given
• 3. The Regress of Justification
• 4. Meaning or Theory?
• 5. Basic Propositions
• Afterword
• Index