Abstract
Recent epistemology has been heavily concerned with the conceptual and methodological foundations of the subject — in particular with the concepts of knowledge, certainty, basic knowledge, justification, and so on. In other ‘words to a considerable extent it has been taken up with meta-epistemology, in contrast with substantive epistemology, in contrast with questions about what we know, how we know it, and how various parts of our knowledge are interrelated. Just as with ethics, meta-inquiries have been pursued throughout the history of the subject (see, e. g., the discussions of the concept of knowledge in Plato’s Theaetetus and in Book IV of Locke’s Essay ), but also as in ethics, meta concerns have been more prominent in twentieth century Anglo-American philosophy than ever before.
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Notes
Needless to say, this quick characterization glosses over many complexities and subleties, which will have to be ignored in this paper.
‘Other Minds’, Proc. Arist. Soc. Supplement, XX (1946). Reprinted in Philosophical Papers (New York: Oxford U. Press, 1946). See also A. J. Ayer’s suggestion in The Problem of Knowledge (London: Macmillan & Co. Ltd., 1956), to the effect that whether we will judge that a person knows that under certain conditions is a matter of ‘attitudes’ that cannot be proved to be correct or mistaken, (p. 32). This sounds very much like Ayer’s emotivist position in meta-ethics.
See especially the second edition of his Theory of Knowledge (Englewood Cliffs, N. J.: Prentice-Hall, Inc., 1977).
Not all epistemologists who present this kind of analysis use the term ‘justified’. ‘Warranted’ is quite common, and Chisholm has a generous budget of terms for various degrees of positive epistemic status —’ some presumption in its favor’, ‘acceptable’, ‘reasonable’, ‘evident’, ‘certain’.
‘A Causal Theory of Knowing’, Journ. Philos. LXIV, 12 (June 22, 1967): 357-372; ‘Discrimination and Perceptual Knowledge’, Journ. Philos. LXXIII, 20 (Nov, 18, 1976): 771-791.
Belief, Truth, and Knowledge (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1973), Pt. III.
Seeing and Knowing (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1969), Ch. 2; ‘Conclusive Reasons’, Austral. Journ. Philos., 49,1 (May, 1971), 1-22.
H.H. Price, ‘Some Considerations About Belief’, Proc. Arist. Soc., 35 (1934-35), 229.
Admittedly this scheme oversimplifies some complicated historical relationships. As I read the situation, the Jtb view developed out of the Intuitive view in the following way. The pure ‘Intuitive’ view, as found, e. g., in Locke, was felt to be too confining in several respects. First, and most obviously, it does not easily accommodate knowledge gained by inference (particularly complicated inference) from pieces of intuitive knowledge. Second, it restricts knowing to the condition one is in at the moment when a fact is presented to ones consciousness; it does not allow for knowledge as a more or less permanent possession. To remedy these deficiencies philosophers (1) allowed knowledge to include not only intuitive knowledge but also what is arrived at by acceptable inferences from that; and, (2) often implicity, treated knowledge obtained in either of these ways to be ‘possessed’ for a period of time. A good place to see a’ snapshot’ of this stage of development is Chapters XI and XII of Russell’s Problems of Philosophy. But then it became evident that we no longer have a unified concept of propositional knowledge. What is common to intuitive knowledge and that gained by inferences therefrom? An answer that suggested itself is that in both cases one’s belief or judgment is ‘reasonable’ or ‘justified’, has sufficient ‘evidence’ or ‘grounds’. This move involved two important steps. First these concepts had previously been attached to beliefs that fall short of knowledge: a belief can be more or less reasonable, have stronger or weaker grounds or reasons; but knowledge is something quite different from all that; it stands outside that field of comparison altogether. In taking knowledge itself to be true justified belief, the earlier separation was broken down; now one envisaged a degree of justification strong enough to make the true belief count as knowledge. Second, these notions, previously restricted to beliefs that receive their justification from other justified beliefs, were extended to cover beliefs not so justified. We now recognize ‘immediate’ as well as ‘mediate’ justification. With these moves the full-blown JTB conception of knowledge is born.
Though the ‘epistemization’ jargon gives us a linqua franca for justificationists and causal-reliabilists it is still not completely general; it leaves out the intuitive conception, which doesn’t construe knowledge as involving belief at all.
For a chronicle of some of its wanderings see R. Firth, ‘The Anatomy of Certainty’, Phil Rev., 76 (1967), 3–27.
Op. cit., Ch. 13, sec. 1.
‘Conclusive Reasons’, esp. section 1.
See his analysis of non-inferential perceptual knowledge on pp. 785-786 of ‘Discrimination and Perceptual Knowledge’. The fallibilism stems from the fact that the knower is required to be capable of ruling out only ‘relevant’ alternatives. In some ‘irrelevant’ state of affairs he might form a false non-inferential perceptual belief that p. Thus the conditions of belief formation do not strictly rule out the falsity of the belief.
Op. cit., p. 103.
See his The Concept of Knowledge (Evanston, I11.: Northwestern University Press, 1970), Pt. I., sec. 4.
For simplicity of exposition I am leaving out of account what some writers call ‘metaphysical’ and ‘theological’ naturalism, in which ethical terms are defined in terms of non-empirical metaphysical or theological facts, such as the will of God.
See, e. g., Armstrong, op. cit., p. 191, and Goldman, ‘Epistemology and Epistemics’ (unpublished), pp. 23-25.
After my buildup this passage may seem a bit disappointing, in that Chisholm speaks of ‘presupposing’ or ‘adopting as a working hypothesis’ or’ supposing’, rather than taking a more extreme intuitionist line that we have immediate knowledge that we know various things and are justified in various beliefs. But it is not clear that Chisholm is not wholly in earnest in this cautious talk of ‘working hypotheses’. As we shall see in a moment, he lays down a principle to the effect that whenever anyone knows anything, he can, just by reflecting on that fact, come to know that he knows.
Op. cit., p. 116. See also Butchvarov, op. cit., p. 28-29, and K. Lehrer, Knowledge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1974), pp. 228–232. For Prichard’s view see his Knowledge and Perception (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1950), p. 86.
I owe my appreciation of this point to Lawrence Davis and Robert Gordon. Of course, it seems highly implausible that, given the Heteronomist conception of knowledge, all one’s knowledge should be so readily accessible, even if common everyday knowledge is. One might well have a highly reliable mechanism for generating scientific explanations without realizing how reliable it is. But I shall suppress this consideration, in the interest of preserving the clean lines of the opposition.
See also Butchvarov, op. cit., pp. 28-29, and Lehrer, op. cit., pp. 228-232.
I cannot take time to align this brief note with what actually goes on in the Meditations. What I am talking of under this title is an enterprise often associated with the name of Descartes and which has become prominent largely because of Descartes’ influence.
For suggestions along this line see Armstrong, op. cit., p. 163, and Goldman, ‘Discrimination and Perceptual Knowledge.’
C. I. Lewis, An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation (La Salle, I11.: Open Court Pub. Co., 1946), Ch. VII.
Bertrand Russell, Problems of Philosophy (London: Williams & Norgate, 1912), p. 77
G. E. Moore, Some Main Problems of Philosophy (London: George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1953), Ch. II.
R. M. Chisholm, op. cit., Ch. 2.
Panayot Butchvarov, The Concept of Knowledge (Evanston I11: Northwestern University Press, 1970), Pt. I, sec. 6: W.P. Alston, op. cit.
In claiming that one can realize that his belief is justified when it is, the Autonomist is committed to the easy accessibility not only of the presence of what justifies the belief but also of the fact that it is sufficient to justify it. And one may doubt that the latter is so easily accessible. Can I come to know that all beliefs of a certain type are justified by being of that type, just by raising the question? Can persistent controversies in epistemology be settled that easily? Is it that the opponents of the self-justification position, or of Chisholm’s truth-justification position, have never reflected on the matter?
See, e. g., two articles reprinted in M.D. Roth & L. Galis, eds., Knowing (New York: Random House, 1970): Keith Lehrer, ‘Knowledge, Truth, and Evidence’, p. 57; and Brian Skyrms, The Explication of ‘X Knows That p’’, p. 91, fn.5.
Chisholm is a notable exception to this trend in JTB theory. For example, his principle (G) on p. 82 of Theory of Knowledge reads: If the conjunction of all those propositions e, such that e is acceptable for S at t tends to confirm h, then h has some presumption in its favor for S at t.
He does not also require that S know that the conjunction of those propositions tends to confirm h. It would seem that this principle does not sort well with Chisholm’s position that when a proposition has a certain epistemic status for me I can know that it does just by considering the matter. Is there any guarantee that I can realize that the above relationship holds when it does hold. Considering that one term of the relationship is all the propositions that are acceptable to me at t I may well be at a loss to determine whether the relation does hold.
Just as we find Chisholm deviating from the natural Autonomist line, so we find Armstrong arguing for the necessity of the subject’s knowing that the evidence really is adequate evidence, (op. cit., pp. 151,199). In Ch. 14, Armstrong finds himself enmeshed in considerable difficulties because of this requirement.
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Alston, W.P. (1978). Meta-Ethics and Meta-Epistemology. In: Goldman, A.I., Kim, J. (eds) Values and Morals. Philosophical Studies Series in Philosophy, vol 13. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-7634-5_15
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