Benjamin Bayer | Independent Scholar (original) (raw)
Papers by Benjamin Bayer
This paper examines a persuasive attempt to defend reliabilist theories of justification against ... more This paper examines a persuasive attempt to defend reliabilist theories of justification against the influential “reflective luck” objections popularized by Laurence BonJour and Keith Lehrer. In a series of papers, John Greco and Daniel Breyer have argued that an agent reliabilist version of externalism has the resources to explain why subjects who are the lucky beneficiaries of reliable processes such as clairvoyance and implanted devices do not count as justified after all. They claim a necessary condition of the “subjective” aspect of agent-reliable justification is the subject’s ownership of the belief, and that subjects in these reflective luck cases do not own their beliefs in the relevant way. This paper considers an additional example of reflective luck described by Jennifer Duke-Yonge that seems to run afoul of the agent reliabilist strategy, and shows how it can be further developed in response to Daniel Breyer’s recent criticisms of Duke-Yonge.
In spite of an evolving contemporary debate over the concept of “epistemic possibility,” nearly e... more In spite of an evolving contemporary debate over the concept of “epistemic possibility,” nearly every philosopher assumes that the concept is equivalent to a mere absence of epistemic impossibility, that a proposition is epistemically possible as long as it is not inconsistent with some relevant body of knowledge. I suggest that we challenge this deeply entrenched assumption. I assemble an array of data that singles out the distinctive meaning and function of the attitude of taking propositions as epistemically possible, and suggest that this data is best explained by a positive evidentialist conception of epistemic possibility. On this conception, a proposition is epistemically possible to a subject if and only if the subject has cognitive access to evidence that specifically supports that proposition.
American Philosophical Quarterly (forthcoming), Jan 1, 2012
This paper evaluates recent proposals for compatibilism about doxastic freedom, and attempts to r... more This paper evaluates recent proposals for compatibilism about doxastic freedom, and attempts to refine them by applying Fischer and Ravizza’s moderate reasons-responsiveness compatibilism to doxastic freedom. I argue, however, that even this refined version of doxastic compatibilism is subject to challenging counterexamples and is more difficult to support than traditional compatibilism about freedom of action. In particular, it is much more difficult to identify convincing examples of the sort Frankfurt proposed to challenge the idea that responsibility requires alternative possibilities.
Libertarian incompatibilists are known to argue for their conception of freedom of the will by ap... more Libertarian incompatibilists are known to argue for their conception of freedom of the will by appealing to introspective awareness of their own agency. However in attempting to articulate how such awareness provides evidence of the ability to do otherwise, these libertarians sometimes suggest that paradigmatically free decisions are "close-call" decisions made as a result of "torn" deliberation. In this paper I argue that libertarians have misidentified the appropriate paradigm cases of free decision, and I recommend refocusing the debate away from our experience of practical decision-making to our experience of choices made in the process of cognitive management—i.e., our introspective awareness of our rational agency. Having sketched this alternative account of the phenomenology of agency, I conclude by examining the compatibilist account of agentive experience offered by Terry Horgan, and suggest it is not the best explanation of all of the relevant evidence about how we experience and make judgments about our freedom.
I defend the possibility of a form of doxastic voluntarism, by criticizing an argument advanced r... more I defend the possibility of a form of doxastic voluntarism, by criticizing an argument advanced recently by Pamela Hieronymi against the possibility of believing at will. Conceiving of believing at will as believing immediately in response to practical reasons, Hieronymi claims that no form of control we exercise over our beliefs measures up to this standard. While there is a form of control Hieronymi thinks we exercise over our beliefs, “evaluative control,” she claims it does not give us the power to believe at will because it consists in the consideration of reasons “constitutive” of believing that are not, at the same time, practical reasons. I argue that evaluative control does amount to the ability to believe at will, because there is a practical reason the consideration of which also constitutes some acts of believing: the value of believing the truth. The form of voluntarism I defend is consistent with a robust evidentialism.
Michael Bergmann (2006) has argued that an internalistic view of justification faces a dilemma. A... more Michael Bergmann (2006) has argued that an internalistic view of justification faces a dilemma. Assuming as internalism does that to have a justified belief, subjects must be aware of the justifiers of the belief and of their relevance to the truth of the belief, Bergmann notes that one is either aware of this relevance conceptually or not. But, says Bergmann, if the required awareness is conceptual, internalism is encumbered with an infinite regress. If it is not—if it is only “weak awareness”—then internalism lacks any dialectical advantage over externalism. In this paper, I explore DePoe’s (2012) defense of the dialectical advantage of weak awareness, and show how the case for its ability to account for awareness of the relevance of the justifiers can be improved by supplementation from a direct realist theory of perception and a theory of concept-formation and application informed by that theory of perception.
Recent years have seen increasing attacks on the "deontological" conception (or as we call it, th... more Recent years have seen increasing attacks on the "deontological" conception (or as we call it, the guidance conception) of epistemic justification, the view that epistemology offers advice to knowers in forming beliefs responsibly. Critics challenge an important presupposition of the guidance conception, doxastic voluntarism, the view that we choose our beliefs. We assume that epistemic guidance is indispensable, and seek to answer objections to doxastic voluntarism, most prominently William Alston's. We contend that Alston falsely assumes that choice of belief requires the assent to a specific propositional content. We argue that beliefs can be chosen under descriptions which do not specify their propositional content, and that these descriptions—which concern the method of inquiry whereby a belief is to be formed—nonetheless specify the features of the belief that make it epistemically responsible to adopt. More generally, we urge that the identity of a belief is not exhausted by its content.
in and Gotthelf and Lennox (Eds.) Concepts and Their Role in Knowledge: Reflections on Objectivist Epistemology, 2013
In their contributions to the present volume, Onkar Ghate and Gregory Salmieri (drawing on ideas ... more In their contributions to the present volume, Onkar Ghate and Gregory Salmieri (drawing on ideas from Ayn Rand) challenge the traditional distinction between veridical and non-veridical perception and allege that all perception is veridical. In their commentary on Ghate and Salmieri, Pierre Le Morvan and Bill Brewer defend the traditional idea that some perception is non-veridical. The present essay defends Ghate and Salmieri and supports a form of perceptual infallibilism. This is accomplished by showing how the content of illusory perception can and must be characterized in a way that does not mismatch the facts. Second, infallibilism is defended against the charge that extraordinary perceptual responses to ordinary facts (such as hearing colors) would have to count as non-veridical.
Acta Analytica, Jan 1, 2011
The debate in the philosophy of perception between direct realists and representationalists shoul... more The debate in the philosophy of perception between direct realists and representationalists should influence the debate in epistemology between internalists and externalists about justification. If direct realists are correct, there are more consciously accessible justifiers for internalists to exploit than externalists think. Internalists can retain their distinctive internalist identity while accepting this widened conception of internalistic justification: even if they welcome the possibility of cognitive access to external facts, their position is still quite distinct from the typical externalist position. To demonstrate this, Alvin Goldman's critique of internalism is shown to ignore important lessons from the case for direct realism about perception, in particular by unjustifiably assuming that internalism entails that only facts simultaneous with the justification of a belief can justify the belief. Goldman's definition of a "justifier" is also inconsistent with the overall guidance conception of epistemology he takes for granted in his critique of internalism.
Synthese, Jan 1, 2011
Both traditional and naturalistic epistemologists have long assumed that the examination of human... more Both traditional and naturalistic epistemologists have long assumed that the examination of human psychology has no relevance to the goal of traditional epistemology, that of providing first-person guidance in determining the truth. Without slipping into naturalism, I apply insight about the psychology of human perception and concept-formation to a very traditional epistemological project: the foundationalist approach to the epistemic regress problem. I argue that direct realism about perception can help solve the regress problem and support a foundationalist account of justification, but only if it is supplemented by an abstractionist theory of concept-formation, the view that it is possible to abstract concepts directly from the empirically given. Critics of direct realist solutions like Laurence BonJour are correct that an account of direct perception by itself does not provide an adequate account of justification. However a direct realist account of perception can inform the needed theory of concept-formation, and leading critics of abstractionism like McDowell and Sellars, direct realists about perception themselves, fail to appreciate the ways in which their own views about perception help fill gaps in earlier accounts of abstractionism. Recognizing this undercuts both their objections to abstractionism and (therefore) their objections to foundationalism, as well.
I argue that a counterexample to testimonial reductionism proposed by Jennifer Lackey in Learning... more I argue that a counterexample to testimonial reductionism proposed by Jennifer Lackey in Learning from Words (2008) fails to challenge a genuine reductionist view. Lackey purports to identify a case in which a hearer has a positive reason to accept a speaker's testimony, but in which the hearer nonetheless lacks justification for believing it. I argue that the reductionist should not count the case Lackey describes as one in which the hearer has a positive reason. Because it is a case of nested testimony, the claim involved is qualified according to a nested probability claim, which cancels its status as being based on a positive reason.
International Journal of Philosophical Studies, Jan 1, 2010
I examine a series of criticisms that have been leveled against Quine's naturalized epistemology,... more I examine a series of criticisms that have been leveled against Quine's naturalized epistemology, regarding its response to the problem of skepticism. Barry Stroud and Michael Williams, assuming that Quine wishes to refute skepticism, argue that Quine not only fails to undertake this refutation, but is also committed to theses (such as the inscrutability of reference and the underdetermination of theory by evidence) which imply versions of skepticism of their own. In Quine's defense, Roger Gibson argues that Quine can succeed in showing skeptical doubts to be incoherent. But I contend that both parties of this dispute wrongly assume that Quine wishes to defeat the skeptic in a traditional way. Instead, Quine is happy to "acquiesce" in skepticism about a certain kind of justification. No logical justification of our scientific beliefs is possible on his view. But Quine thinks pragmatic justification is possible, and acknowledging that this is his view this leads to the resolution of a number of interpretive quandaries.
The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Jan 1, 2007
This paper offers an interpretation of Quine's naturalized epistemology through the lens of Jaegw... more This paper offers an interpretation of Quine's naturalized epistemology through the lens of Jaegwon Kim's influential critique of the same. Kim argues that Quine forces a false choice between traditional deductivist foundationalism and naturalized epistemology, and contends that there are viable alternative epistemological projects. However it is urged that Quine would reject these alternatives by reference to the same fundamental principles (underdetermination, indeterminacy of translation, extensionalism) that led him to reject traditional epistemology and propose naturalism as an alternative. Given this interpretation of Quine, it is essential that a successful critic of naturalism also critique Quine's aforementioned principles. The divide between naturalist and non-naturalist epistemology turns out to be defined by the divide between more fundamental naturalist and non-naturalist approaches to semantics.
There is a widespread belief among intellectuals that the domain of philosophy shrinks as the dom... more There is a widespread belief among intellectuals that the domain of philosophy shrinks as the domain of the special sciences expands, and that someday, science might swallow up philosophy entirely. Some philosophical naturalists think that this day may have already arrived. These naturalists believe that philosophy’s methodology should be the same as that of natural science; they imply that philosophy has no distinctive “armchair” methodology of its own.
To determine whether these naturalists are right, one useful approach is to examine proposals for naturalistic (or “naturalized”) epistemology, the recent attempt to transform theory of knowledge into a branch of natural science. In Western philosophy, epistemology has long been considered one of the most distinctively philosophic subjects. If even it can be naturalized, there may be little subject matter left for philosophy to call its own.
Traditional epistemologists object to naturalism on the grounds that it dispenses with the distinctively philosophical content of epistemology. In this dissertation, I argue that traditional epistemologists are correct to reject naturalism, but that new arguments are needed to show why they are correct. I establish my thesis first by critiquing two prominent varieties of naturalism—which I call “optimistic” and “pessimistic”—and then by offering a proposal for how a renewed non-naturalistic epistemology must move forward. In essence, I argue that naturalism fails because it neglects the possibility of a form of epistemological foundationalism which most traditional epistemologists have also neglected.
My first chapter presents a new taxonomy of naturalized epistemologies, dividing them first according to the goals they seek to achieve (“optimistic” and “pessimistic”), and then according to the methodologies used to achieve them. The first variety of naturalism, “optimistic naturalism,” attempts to use scientific methods to give positive answers to traditional epistemological questions. For example, optimistic naturalists like Goldman, Kitcher, and Kornblith propose using results from psychology or evolutionary biology to refute the skeptic and show that our beliefs are justified. “Pessimistic naturalism”—what I call Quine’s view—takes for granted that our beliefs cannot be logically justified, traditionally or naturalistically, and instead offers a pragmatic account of the development of our theory of the world.
In my second chapter, however, I argue that the optimistic project of naturalizing epistemic normativity is more difficult than it might originally seem. In this chapter, I show how some of naturalism’s most basic principles thwart the achievement of traditional epistemological goals. Quine’s principles—the underdetermination of theory by evidence, the indeterminacy of translation, and extensionalism—are regarded as paradigmatically naturalistic if anything is. Drawing on the example of Jaegwon Kim’s critique of Quine, I show how any naturalist (or non-naturalist) taking these principles for granted cannot show our beliefs to be justified.
My third chapter develops a new argument against optimistic naturalized epistemology that is independent of the traditional concern about epistemic normativity. I suggest that a deeper problem is with the naturalists’ use of the concept of “belief.” I argue that naturalistic philosophy of mind, while perhaps acceptable for other purposes, does not deliver a concept of “belief” consistent with the constraints and needs of naturalized epistemology. I achieve this by offering a taxonomy of different methodologies of naturalizing “belief,” and show how they either require appeal to substantive semantic or intensional concepts at odds with naturalism, or fail to deliver a concept of “belief” usable by an epistemology of advanced, scientific beliefs.
In my fourth chapter, I will look at the attempt by pessimistic naturalists to deflate the concept of belief, as illustrated by the simulation theory of Robert Gordon. I argue that simulation theory cannot itself be naturalized because it cannot be squared with evidence from developmental psychology or account for the explanatory power of folk psychology without appeal to explicit mentalistic concepts. In particular, I show how implicit belief attributions via simulation rely on explicit theories of knowledge. This helps undermine one brand of pessimistic epistemology (Michael Williams’ epistemological deflationism) which relies on the claim that the concept “knowledge” has no pre-philosophical theoretical significance.
My fifth chapter describes the project of the remaining pessimistic naturalized epistemology, Quine’s. I examine the debate surrounding Quine’s proposal to respond to skepticism by showing that skeptical doubts are themselves scientific. I argue that Quine’s strategy is not meant to answer skepticism by showing our beliefs to be logically justified after all, but by showing that they are at the very least pragmatically justified. Naturalized epistemology, then, concerns itself with identifying the various steps (justified or otherwise) by which human subjects develop their current pragmatically successful scientific theory. But I question whether a pragmatic account of justification can handle responses from more radical pragmatists, who see no pragmatic basis for privileging natural science over other forms of human discourse.
Whatever we say about the adequacy of pragmatic naturalism, my sixth and final chapter argues that it lacks adequate motivation. The putative motivation for pursuing a pragmatic rather than a traditional program stems from the alleged failure of foundationalism and the inevitability of indeterminacy of translation (underpinned by the underdetermination thesis). First, I argue that looking at the wider context of scientific practice challenges the underdetermination thesis, because it thesis relies on a crude and scientifically unrealistic hypothetico-deductivist view of confirmation (the view that hypotheses are always and only confirmed by their empirical consequences). I show how this anti-skeptical strategy can be generalized to resolve other skeptical problems (at least in part): whenever skeptics themselves assume points of science for the sake of reductio ad absurdum, anti-skeptics have the logical right to make appeal to further science to show how the reductio does not go through. I argue, for instance, that the classical problem of induction can be addressed by appeal to a material rather than a formal theory of induction, which recognizes the variety of methods of confirmation practiced by scientists. Second, I show how regress problems about inductive justification can be resolved in light of evidence from psychology regarding perception and concept-formation which point to the possibility of a new kind of foundationalism. At the same time, I argue that skeptical problems about epistemological foundations are more philosophical and less scientific than Quine seems to allow. This means we cannot fully generalize his anti-skeptical, but it also means that the proposal to make philosophy continuous with natural science is not consistent with the fact that naturalism itself arises as a pragmatic solution to problems generated by non-naturalistic philosophic presuppositions.
Unpublished manuscript. http://www. benbayer. com/ …, Jan 1, 2007
In this paper I consider one of the leading philosophic-psychological theories of "folk psycholog... more In this paper I consider one of the leading philosophic-psychological theories of "folk psychology," the simulation theory of Robert Gordon. According to Gordon, we attribute mental states to others not by representing those states or by applying the generalizations of theory, but by imagining ourselves in the position of a target to be interpreted and exploiting our own decision-making skills to make assertions which we then attribute to others as 'beliefs'. I describe a leading objection to Gordon's theory—the problem of adjustment—and show how a charitably interpreted Gordon could answer this objection. I conclude, however, that the best case for Gordon's position still runs into a new problem concerning basic folk epistemological knowledge. Identifying this new alternative helps undermine the simplicity of a theory based on simulation-based explanation.
This paper examines a persuasive attempt to defend reliabilist theories of justification against ... more This paper examines a persuasive attempt to defend reliabilist theories of justification against the influential “reflective luck” objections popularized by Laurence BonJour and Keith Lehrer. In a series of papers, John Greco and Daniel Breyer have argued that an agent reliabilist version of externalism has the resources to explain why subjects who are the lucky beneficiaries of reliable processes such as clairvoyance and implanted devices do not count as justified after all. They claim a necessary condition of the “subjective” aspect of agent-reliable justification is the subject’s ownership of the belief, and that subjects in these reflective luck cases do not own their beliefs in the relevant way. This paper considers an additional example of reflective luck described by Jennifer Duke-Yonge that seems to run afoul of the agent reliabilist strategy, and shows how it can be further developed in response to Daniel Breyer’s recent criticisms of Duke-Yonge.
In spite of an evolving contemporary debate over the concept of “epistemic possibility,” nearly e... more In spite of an evolving contemporary debate over the concept of “epistemic possibility,” nearly every philosopher assumes that the concept is equivalent to a mere absence of epistemic impossibility, that a proposition is epistemically possible as long as it is not inconsistent with some relevant body of knowledge. I suggest that we challenge this deeply entrenched assumption. I assemble an array of data that singles out the distinctive meaning and function of the attitude of taking propositions as epistemically possible, and suggest that this data is best explained by a positive evidentialist conception of epistemic possibility. On this conception, a proposition is epistemically possible to a subject if and only if the subject has cognitive access to evidence that specifically supports that proposition.
American Philosophical Quarterly (forthcoming), Jan 1, 2012
This paper evaluates recent proposals for compatibilism about doxastic freedom, and attempts to r... more This paper evaluates recent proposals for compatibilism about doxastic freedom, and attempts to refine them by applying Fischer and Ravizza’s moderate reasons-responsiveness compatibilism to doxastic freedom. I argue, however, that even this refined version of doxastic compatibilism is subject to challenging counterexamples and is more difficult to support than traditional compatibilism about freedom of action. In particular, it is much more difficult to identify convincing examples of the sort Frankfurt proposed to challenge the idea that responsibility requires alternative possibilities.
Libertarian incompatibilists are known to argue for their conception of freedom of the will by ap... more Libertarian incompatibilists are known to argue for their conception of freedom of the will by appealing to introspective awareness of their own agency. However in attempting to articulate how such awareness provides evidence of the ability to do otherwise, these libertarians sometimes suggest that paradigmatically free decisions are "close-call" decisions made as a result of "torn" deliberation. In this paper I argue that libertarians have misidentified the appropriate paradigm cases of free decision, and I recommend refocusing the debate away from our experience of practical decision-making to our experience of choices made in the process of cognitive management—i.e., our introspective awareness of our rational agency. Having sketched this alternative account of the phenomenology of agency, I conclude by examining the compatibilist account of agentive experience offered by Terry Horgan, and suggest it is not the best explanation of all of the relevant evidence about how we experience and make judgments about our freedom.
I defend the possibility of a form of doxastic voluntarism, by criticizing an argument advanced r... more I defend the possibility of a form of doxastic voluntarism, by criticizing an argument advanced recently by Pamela Hieronymi against the possibility of believing at will. Conceiving of believing at will as believing immediately in response to practical reasons, Hieronymi claims that no form of control we exercise over our beliefs measures up to this standard. While there is a form of control Hieronymi thinks we exercise over our beliefs, “evaluative control,” she claims it does not give us the power to believe at will because it consists in the consideration of reasons “constitutive” of believing that are not, at the same time, practical reasons. I argue that evaluative control does amount to the ability to believe at will, because there is a practical reason the consideration of which also constitutes some acts of believing: the value of believing the truth. The form of voluntarism I defend is consistent with a robust evidentialism.
Michael Bergmann (2006) has argued that an internalistic view of justification faces a dilemma. A... more Michael Bergmann (2006) has argued that an internalistic view of justification faces a dilemma. Assuming as internalism does that to have a justified belief, subjects must be aware of the justifiers of the belief and of their relevance to the truth of the belief, Bergmann notes that one is either aware of this relevance conceptually or not. But, says Bergmann, if the required awareness is conceptual, internalism is encumbered with an infinite regress. If it is not—if it is only “weak awareness”—then internalism lacks any dialectical advantage over externalism. In this paper, I explore DePoe’s (2012) defense of the dialectical advantage of weak awareness, and show how the case for its ability to account for awareness of the relevance of the justifiers can be improved by supplementation from a direct realist theory of perception and a theory of concept-formation and application informed by that theory of perception.
Recent years have seen increasing attacks on the "deontological" conception (or as we call it, th... more Recent years have seen increasing attacks on the "deontological" conception (or as we call it, the guidance conception) of epistemic justification, the view that epistemology offers advice to knowers in forming beliefs responsibly. Critics challenge an important presupposition of the guidance conception, doxastic voluntarism, the view that we choose our beliefs. We assume that epistemic guidance is indispensable, and seek to answer objections to doxastic voluntarism, most prominently William Alston's. We contend that Alston falsely assumes that choice of belief requires the assent to a specific propositional content. We argue that beliefs can be chosen under descriptions which do not specify their propositional content, and that these descriptions—which concern the method of inquiry whereby a belief is to be formed—nonetheless specify the features of the belief that make it epistemically responsible to adopt. More generally, we urge that the identity of a belief is not exhausted by its content.
in and Gotthelf and Lennox (Eds.) Concepts and Their Role in Knowledge: Reflections on Objectivist Epistemology, 2013
In their contributions to the present volume, Onkar Ghate and Gregory Salmieri (drawing on ideas ... more In their contributions to the present volume, Onkar Ghate and Gregory Salmieri (drawing on ideas from Ayn Rand) challenge the traditional distinction between veridical and non-veridical perception and allege that all perception is veridical. In their commentary on Ghate and Salmieri, Pierre Le Morvan and Bill Brewer defend the traditional idea that some perception is non-veridical. The present essay defends Ghate and Salmieri and supports a form of perceptual infallibilism. This is accomplished by showing how the content of illusory perception can and must be characterized in a way that does not mismatch the facts. Second, infallibilism is defended against the charge that extraordinary perceptual responses to ordinary facts (such as hearing colors) would have to count as non-veridical.
Acta Analytica, Jan 1, 2011
The debate in the philosophy of perception between direct realists and representationalists shoul... more The debate in the philosophy of perception between direct realists and representationalists should influence the debate in epistemology between internalists and externalists about justification. If direct realists are correct, there are more consciously accessible justifiers for internalists to exploit than externalists think. Internalists can retain their distinctive internalist identity while accepting this widened conception of internalistic justification: even if they welcome the possibility of cognitive access to external facts, their position is still quite distinct from the typical externalist position. To demonstrate this, Alvin Goldman's critique of internalism is shown to ignore important lessons from the case for direct realism about perception, in particular by unjustifiably assuming that internalism entails that only facts simultaneous with the justification of a belief can justify the belief. Goldman's definition of a "justifier" is also inconsistent with the overall guidance conception of epistemology he takes for granted in his critique of internalism.
Synthese, Jan 1, 2011
Both traditional and naturalistic epistemologists have long assumed that the examination of human... more Both traditional and naturalistic epistemologists have long assumed that the examination of human psychology has no relevance to the goal of traditional epistemology, that of providing first-person guidance in determining the truth. Without slipping into naturalism, I apply insight about the psychology of human perception and concept-formation to a very traditional epistemological project: the foundationalist approach to the epistemic regress problem. I argue that direct realism about perception can help solve the regress problem and support a foundationalist account of justification, but only if it is supplemented by an abstractionist theory of concept-formation, the view that it is possible to abstract concepts directly from the empirically given. Critics of direct realist solutions like Laurence BonJour are correct that an account of direct perception by itself does not provide an adequate account of justification. However a direct realist account of perception can inform the needed theory of concept-formation, and leading critics of abstractionism like McDowell and Sellars, direct realists about perception themselves, fail to appreciate the ways in which their own views about perception help fill gaps in earlier accounts of abstractionism. Recognizing this undercuts both their objections to abstractionism and (therefore) their objections to foundationalism, as well.
I argue that a counterexample to testimonial reductionism proposed by Jennifer Lackey in Learning... more I argue that a counterexample to testimonial reductionism proposed by Jennifer Lackey in Learning from Words (2008) fails to challenge a genuine reductionist view. Lackey purports to identify a case in which a hearer has a positive reason to accept a speaker's testimony, but in which the hearer nonetheless lacks justification for believing it. I argue that the reductionist should not count the case Lackey describes as one in which the hearer has a positive reason. Because it is a case of nested testimony, the claim involved is qualified according to a nested probability claim, which cancels its status as being based on a positive reason.
International Journal of Philosophical Studies, Jan 1, 2010
I examine a series of criticisms that have been leveled against Quine's naturalized epistemology,... more I examine a series of criticisms that have been leveled against Quine's naturalized epistemology, regarding its response to the problem of skepticism. Barry Stroud and Michael Williams, assuming that Quine wishes to refute skepticism, argue that Quine not only fails to undertake this refutation, but is also committed to theses (such as the inscrutability of reference and the underdetermination of theory by evidence) which imply versions of skepticism of their own. In Quine's defense, Roger Gibson argues that Quine can succeed in showing skeptical doubts to be incoherent. But I contend that both parties of this dispute wrongly assume that Quine wishes to defeat the skeptic in a traditional way. Instead, Quine is happy to "acquiesce" in skepticism about a certain kind of justification. No logical justification of our scientific beliefs is possible on his view. But Quine thinks pragmatic justification is possible, and acknowledging that this is his view this leads to the resolution of a number of interpretive quandaries.
The Southern Journal of Philosophy, Jan 1, 2007
This paper offers an interpretation of Quine's naturalized epistemology through the lens of Jaegw... more This paper offers an interpretation of Quine's naturalized epistemology through the lens of Jaegwon Kim's influential critique of the same. Kim argues that Quine forces a false choice between traditional deductivist foundationalism and naturalized epistemology, and contends that there are viable alternative epistemological projects. However it is urged that Quine would reject these alternatives by reference to the same fundamental principles (underdetermination, indeterminacy of translation, extensionalism) that led him to reject traditional epistemology and propose naturalism as an alternative. Given this interpretation of Quine, it is essential that a successful critic of naturalism also critique Quine's aforementioned principles. The divide between naturalist and non-naturalist epistemology turns out to be defined by the divide between more fundamental naturalist and non-naturalist approaches to semantics.
There is a widespread belief among intellectuals that the domain of philosophy shrinks as the dom... more There is a widespread belief among intellectuals that the domain of philosophy shrinks as the domain of the special sciences expands, and that someday, science might swallow up philosophy entirely. Some philosophical naturalists think that this day may have already arrived. These naturalists believe that philosophy’s methodology should be the same as that of natural science; they imply that philosophy has no distinctive “armchair” methodology of its own.
To determine whether these naturalists are right, one useful approach is to examine proposals for naturalistic (or “naturalized”) epistemology, the recent attempt to transform theory of knowledge into a branch of natural science. In Western philosophy, epistemology has long been considered one of the most distinctively philosophic subjects. If even it can be naturalized, there may be little subject matter left for philosophy to call its own.
Traditional epistemologists object to naturalism on the grounds that it dispenses with the distinctively philosophical content of epistemology. In this dissertation, I argue that traditional epistemologists are correct to reject naturalism, but that new arguments are needed to show why they are correct. I establish my thesis first by critiquing two prominent varieties of naturalism—which I call “optimistic” and “pessimistic”—and then by offering a proposal for how a renewed non-naturalistic epistemology must move forward. In essence, I argue that naturalism fails because it neglects the possibility of a form of epistemological foundationalism which most traditional epistemologists have also neglected.
My first chapter presents a new taxonomy of naturalized epistemologies, dividing them first according to the goals they seek to achieve (“optimistic” and “pessimistic”), and then according to the methodologies used to achieve them. The first variety of naturalism, “optimistic naturalism,” attempts to use scientific methods to give positive answers to traditional epistemological questions. For example, optimistic naturalists like Goldman, Kitcher, and Kornblith propose using results from psychology or evolutionary biology to refute the skeptic and show that our beliefs are justified. “Pessimistic naturalism”—what I call Quine’s view—takes for granted that our beliefs cannot be logically justified, traditionally or naturalistically, and instead offers a pragmatic account of the development of our theory of the world.
In my second chapter, however, I argue that the optimistic project of naturalizing epistemic normativity is more difficult than it might originally seem. In this chapter, I show how some of naturalism’s most basic principles thwart the achievement of traditional epistemological goals. Quine’s principles—the underdetermination of theory by evidence, the indeterminacy of translation, and extensionalism—are regarded as paradigmatically naturalistic if anything is. Drawing on the example of Jaegwon Kim’s critique of Quine, I show how any naturalist (or non-naturalist) taking these principles for granted cannot show our beliefs to be justified.
My third chapter develops a new argument against optimistic naturalized epistemology that is independent of the traditional concern about epistemic normativity. I suggest that a deeper problem is with the naturalists’ use of the concept of “belief.” I argue that naturalistic philosophy of mind, while perhaps acceptable for other purposes, does not deliver a concept of “belief” consistent with the constraints and needs of naturalized epistemology. I achieve this by offering a taxonomy of different methodologies of naturalizing “belief,” and show how they either require appeal to substantive semantic or intensional concepts at odds with naturalism, or fail to deliver a concept of “belief” usable by an epistemology of advanced, scientific beliefs.
In my fourth chapter, I will look at the attempt by pessimistic naturalists to deflate the concept of belief, as illustrated by the simulation theory of Robert Gordon. I argue that simulation theory cannot itself be naturalized because it cannot be squared with evidence from developmental psychology or account for the explanatory power of folk psychology without appeal to explicit mentalistic concepts. In particular, I show how implicit belief attributions via simulation rely on explicit theories of knowledge. This helps undermine one brand of pessimistic epistemology (Michael Williams’ epistemological deflationism) which relies on the claim that the concept “knowledge” has no pre-philosophical theoretical significance.
My fifth chapter describes the project of the remaining pessimistic naturalized epistemology, Quine’s. I examine the debate surrounding Quine’s proposal to respond to skepticism by showing that skeptical doubts are themselves scientific. I argue that Quine’s strategy is not meant to answer skepticism by showing our beliefs to be logically justified after all, but by showing that they are at the very least pragmatically justified. Naturalized epistemology, then, concerns itself with identifying the various steps (justified or otherwise) by which human subjects develop their current pragmatically successful scientific theory. But I question whether a pragmatic account of justification can handle responses from more radical pragmatists, who see no pragmatic basis for privileging natural science over other forms of human discourse.
Whatever we say about the adequacy of pragmatic naturalism, my sixth and final chapter argues that it lacks adequate motivation. The putative motivation for pursuing a pragmatic rather than a traditional program stems from the alleged failure of foundationalism and the inevitability of indeterminacy of translation (underpinned by the underdetermination thesis). First, I argue that looking at the wider context of scientific practice challenges the underdetermination thesis, because it thesis relies on a crude and scientifically unrealistic hypothetico-deductivist view of confirmation (the view that hypotheses are always and only confirmed by their empirical consequences). I show how this anti-skeptical strategy can be generalized to resolve other skeptical problems (at least in part): whenever skeptics themselves assume points of science for the sake of reductio ad absurdum, anti-skeptics have the logical right to make appeal to further science to show how the reductio does not go through. I argue, for instance, that the classical problem of induction can be addressed by appeal to a material rather than a formal theory of induction, which recognizes the variety of methods of confirmation practiced by scientists. Second, I show how regress problems about inductive justification can be resolved in light of evidence from psychology regarding perception and concept-formation which point to the possibility of a new kind of foundationalism. At the same time, I argue that skeptical problems about epistemological foundations are more philosophical and less scientific than Quine seems to allow. This means we cannot fully generalize his anti-skeptical, but it also means that the proposal to make philosophy continuous with natural science is not consistent with the fact that naturalism itself arises as a pragmatic solution to problems generated by non-naturalistic philosophic presuppositions.
Unpublished manuscript. http://www. benbayer. com/ …, Jan 1, 2007
In this paper I consider one of the leading philosophic-psychological theories of "folk psycholog... more In this paper I consider one of the leading philosophic-psychological theories of "folk psychology," the simulation theory of Robert Gordon. According to Gordon, we attribute mental states to others not by representing those states or by applying the generalizations of theory, but by imagining ourselves in the position of a target to be interpreted and exploiting our own decision-making skills to make assertions which we then attribute to others as 'beliefs'. I describe a leading objection to Gordon's theory—the problem of adjustment—and show how a charitably interpreted Gordon could answer this objection. I conclude, however, that the best case for Gordon's position still runs into a new problem concerning basic folk epistemological knowledge. Identifying this new alternative helps undermine the simplicity of a theory based on simulation-based explanation.