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Category Archives: Skepticism
Williamson – POP – 7.5.2
In this post, I will primarily summarize the rest of section 5. I will discuss intuition in detail in connection with section 6, but Williamson does raise some worries about intuition in section 5. Again, Williamson wields the evidence neutrality (EN) thesis. This time he uses EN to claim that it cannot be satisfied in relation to the evidential force of intuitions. A theory of intuitions needs to be able to distinguish weak from strong intuitions. This is because a theory of evidence will need to make choices between conflicting intuitions according to their evidential strength. However, according to Williamson, philosophers will tend to overestimate the strength of intuitions they have a vested interest in seeing succeed (i.e., intuitions that support their favored theory of knowledge, evidence or intuitions). Such theory-driven wishful thinking will result in a lack of “uncontentious decidability” as inquirers disagree whether someone (or, they themselves) have an intuition with a certain strength. A distinction was raised by Derek Ball here between the phenomenological and evidential force of intuitions. He argued it is not always clear which interpretation is at stake. Williamson is overtly talking about the evidential force of intuitions, but when talking about aspects of human psychology and vested interests his discussion could be interpreted in terms of the phenomenological force of intuitions. This is because human psychology is to blame for over or underestimating the strength of intuitions. There will be gradations in felt subjective certainty accompanying various intuitions according to whether the intuitions align with one’s professional and psychological interests. Even trying to compensate for bias will be difficult because one can see bias in another person easier than one can see bias in one’s own self. The phenomenological force of intuitions as experienced in consciousness is not a guide to resolving biases. Such factors make it difficult to reach an uncontentious view of the objective facts about intuitions (i.e., their strength in relation to a hypothesis). In fact, Williamson’s point seems stronger when the phenomenological reading instead of the evidential reading is considered. This aligns Williamson’s comments with Jonathan Weinberg’s comments in his paper on the hopelessness of intuitions (i.e., nothing within the intuition signal, or human psychology, is able to adequately recognize and correct cases of intuitions-gone-astray).
In the last half of section 5 Williamson goes into a discussion on the dialectical standard of evidence. Again, Williamson is trying to address the judgment skeptic. This view of evidence avoids the trap of resorting to psychological facts to try and resolve disputes about the evidence. In a dialectical context evidence is that which is uncontroversial in that debate or context. Evidence does not have to be foundational or uncontroversial across all contexts. Instead, it only needs to be uncontroversial in that context; if inquirers can agree over what counts as evidence, then what they agree on counts as evidence in that context. Williamson finds this view of evidence wanting because it results in conceding too much to the skeptic. Accepting as evidence only propositions that are true if one is a BIV, in order to have meaningful debate with the skeptic, does not have to lead one to a wholesale acceptance of skepticism about the external world. However, according to Williamson, giving the skeptic his or her premises forces one into a conclusion that one does not endorse. If one does not play the skeptic’s game, then the dialectical standard of evidence ends up being irrelevant. Another possibility is to switch to a non-dialectical standard. Given this standard the fact challenged by the skeptic is not disqualified as evidence. For example, one might take the fact that a Gettier subject lacks knowledge or the fact that there are mountains in Switzerland as evidence even though these facts are contentious to the skeptic. To ignore these facts is to violate the Carnapian total evidence requirement. Williamson wonders if such a move is a legitimate response to judgment skepticism?
Williamson’s conclusion is that we need to widen our evidential base. Even if intuitions were the most reliable forms of evidence it does not follow that we should restrict our evidence to just intuitions. Facts that the judgment skeptic hold as highly probable (in contrast to contentious facts about the existence of mountains) are not to be the only facts considered. We do not need to play the skeptic’s game just because she holds that only facts that are certain (because they align with the micro-physical structure of the universe) can be admitted as evidence. According to Williamson there is nothing wrong with continuing to claim knowledge of truths in contention. The “dialectic” is not the measure of all things. As Williamson says:
No methodology is proof against misapplication by those with sufficiently poor judgment.
It is not the job of good methodology to silence all people who propose, for instance, astrological predictions as truths. Instead, good methodology must separate good from bad intellectual practices. I imagine Williamson thinks he is doing this by contributing to the literature on philosophical methodology, by uncovering things like the consequence fallacy and other ways methodology goes astray. This is a useful endeavor, but because of Williamson’s clear bias for knowledge-first epistemology, epistemic externalism and a whole host of other theoretical commitments in analyticity, assertion, and so on Williamson’s work could be accused of the very thing he is arguing against, namely, proposing an account of methodology to philosophy in general (even giving the book the sweeping title The Philosophy of Philosophy) in a way that is highly uncontentiously decidable and violates the total evidence requirement by primarily using evidence from Gettier cases and revisionary metaphysics. As I have studied chapter 7 in POP I have kept coming back to inconsistencies between the content Williamson is arguing for and the methodology he is using in arguing for it. I’d be curious to know if anyone else has noticed the same inconsistencies.
Williamson – POP – 7.5.1
Because there are many ideas of interest in section 5 of chapter 7 in The Philosophy of Philosophy (POP) I have decided to split this section among a couple of posts. In this first post I consider the following argument (p. 235) on how traditional skepticism narrows the base of evidence:
- Evidence is true (assumption).
- The proposition that I have hands (p) is not evidence in a skeptical scenario because it is false (given 1).
- According to the skeptic it is contentious that I am not in the skeptical scenario (assumption).
- So, it is contentious that p is evidence (2,3).
- Therefore, given the Evidence Neutrality (EN) thesis, p is not evidence (EN,4).
- Only the proposition that it appears to me that I have hands (p*) is evidence (assumption).
- Since both the common sense scenario and the skeptical scenario are consistent with all my evidence I cannot regard the former scenario as more probable than the latter (skeptical conclusion).
The moral of the story for Williamson is that the traditional skeptic can use EN, which is defined and explored in this post, to make it the case that the skeptical scenario cannot be ruled out; thus, it is not the case that I know I have hands or that the external world exists. One problem I have with Williamson’s formulation of the argument is the transition from p to p*. In 2, the proposition p is false because in the skeptical scenario it falsely appears to me that I have hands. My experience of hands is just an induced delusion at the hands of a mad scientist or an architect of The Matrix. In 6, the proposition p* is true. How can p be false because it falsely appears to me that I have hands and p* be true because it appears to me that I have hands? Is not falsely appearing the same as apperances being false? Even though in the skeptical scenario it is true to me that it appears that I have hands I cannot use that psychological fact to satisfy EN because it is contentious that p* is true because it falsely appears to me that I have hands. In the skeptical scenario p* is false as well as p.
Another feature of the argument I find puzzling is the jump from 5 to 6. Even if p is not evidence it is not clear that the only option for finding a proposition that can count as evidence is to resort to psychological claims. Even if, as I explained above, the shift from p to p* fails because p* is also false it is not clear that the only option for looking for true propositions is by turning inward. In a scenario like The Matrix there are glitches in the system that clue people, like Neo, into the fact that reality is not what it seems. A skeptic who uses a Matrix-type scenario can search for evidence in propositions about glitches in the fabric of space-time or computer-coded reality. In The Animatrix these things include:
a section of the house where it’s raining, cans that float in mid-air, doors that go nowhere, and best of all the characters get to slow down time and do leaps and twirls reminiscent of someone who’s jacked into the Matrix knowing how to bend its rules. http://www.thematrix101.com/animatrix/beyond.php
Williamson could make 6 a disjunction: the skeptic must use either a true proposition that exposes the falsehood of appearances or a proposition about appearances. Because propositions about appearances are not true (and only truths count as evidence) this forces the skeptic to use, for example, a proposition that cans float in mid-air (p**) as evidence that the skeptical scenario cannot be ruled out. This makes it the case that no matter which way the skeptic turns she cannot get her conclusion that the common sense scenario and the skeptical scenario are equally probable conditional on one’s evidence. This blocks the use of EN to generate traditional skepticism, which is not a bad thing because it is not clear that traditional skeptics endorse anything like “uncontentious decidability” among a community of inquirers. The traditional skeptic cannot and need not psychologize evidence.
Williamson – Philosophy of Philosophy – 7.4
Section 4 of chapter 7 in The Philosophy of Philosophy aims to identify the judgment skeptic’s mistake. In context, Williamson argued in section 3 that the same line of critique judgment skeptics use against folk theory can be used against elements of judgment skepticism that rely on folk theory. A judgment skeptic holds that we cannot know mountains exist because our evidence is neutral between the ordinary hypothesis and the skeptical hypothesis. Instead, there are only micro-events that humans errantly, though conveniently, classify as mountains. The result, however, is that we cannot possess knowledge or justification about beliefs concerning mountains. When this kind of reasoning is ported over to general skepticism it become clear (according to Williamson) that the reasoning is unsound. With the context of section 3 in mind I return to section 4. Williamson wants to identify the mistake in the judgment skeptic’s reasoning. What makes this line of reasoning bad?
There are two mistakes that Williamson identifies. The first mistake is the use of so-called appearance principles, and the second mistake is committing the consequence fallacy. I will discuss each of these mistakes in turn.
An appearance principle is defined as follows:
[O]ne should be confident that P (on the basis of common sense) only if its appearing (by the standards of common sense) that P is good evidence that P. (2007: 227)
Williamson shows that appearance principles can be used as premises in an argument for general skepticism as well as judgment skepticism. This is a problem because judgment skeptics want to exclude the results of particle physics from skepticism so that they can claim underlying micro-physical events entail the impossibility of mountains. I will provide you with an overview of Williamson’s argument.
Let SS be the judgment skeptic’s scenario in which there are no mountains. In this scenario it falsely appears that there are mountains even though mountains are a metaphysical impossibility. If there really are mountains, then SS must not obtain. For the judgment skeptic: one should be confident that SS does not obtain only if its appearing that SS does not obtain is good evidence that SS does not obtain. However, appearing that SS does not obtain is not good evidence that SS does not obtain, according to the judgment skeptic, so one should have low confidence (in one’s judgment) that SS does not obtain. Now, I turn to a distinction.
Roughly, something is truth-indicative if the appearance of it raises the probability of P. If, on the other hand, appearance (used as a conditional on P) does not raise the probability of P above the probability of P alone, then appearance is falsity-indicative. Appearance principles require one to modulate one’s confidence in P according to how appearance that P provides evidence that P, and only if the appearance of P is truth-indicative should one be highly confident in P.
The use of appearance principles in the reasoning above can also generate general skepticism. Let p be a description of the external world that jives with the judgment skeptic’s understanding of particle physics. Imagine SS* is an evil demon scenario in which p is false but an evil demon makes the truth of p seem to hold. By the same reasoning, the appearance that SS* does not obtain is not evidence that SS* does not obtain (i.e., it is not truth-indicative) because appearances to a subject are systematically deceived by the demon. So, given the appearance principle, one should have low confidence that SS* does not obtain. Because p (the existence of the external world) entails that SS* does not obtain, then one should modulate one’s confidence in p to accord with one’s confidence that SS* does not obtain. The result is that confidence in p should be low even when its appearance raises the probability of p. So, we should be skeptical about the existence of the external world as described by particle physics. Williamson cuts the legs out from under the judgment skeptic’s reasoning. Or, does he?
I’m not satisfied with Williamson’s pattern of pulling the judgment skeptic into general skepticism. Why? The mere possibility of an evil demon scenario precludes the use of appearance principles. In such a scenario appearances are false and, consequently, apperance principles do not hold. Who would reasonably argue that in a Matrix world one should be confident that P only if it appears that P is good evidence that P? By the assumptions of the scenario it appearing that P will not be good evidence that P. So, to argue that appearance principles used in such a scenario result in skepticism about a domain judgment skeptics endorse (particle physics) seems like a ticky-tacky move at best and unwarranted at worst.
The second mistake in judgment skepticism is the consequence fallacy. This fallacy involves criticizing confidence in a theory by focusing on a logical consequence of the theory whose probability is not raised by the evidence. Take the following argument Williamson outlines (2007: 233):
- Physical events occur that folk geography takes to constitute the presence of mountains in Switzerland.
- If physical events occur that folk geography takes to constitutes the presence of mountains in Switzerland, then there are mountains in Switzerland.
- There are mountains in Switzerland.
A person who subscribes to folk geography is likely to endorses the whole argument. However, a judgment skeptic jumps off the boat at premise 2. That is, the evidence may increase the probability of premise 1 but not premise 2. The fallacy comes from arguing that the failure of increased probability in 2, conditional on the evidence, is reason to hold that a high degree of confidence in both 2 and 3 is not warranted. It may be that it is still reasonable to hold a high degree of confidence in 2 and 3 even though evidence raises the probability of 1 but not of 2. The problem comes from, “identifying a logical consequence of the theory (not itself a logical truth) whose probability is not raised by the evidence” (2007:232). It is not the case that evidence raising the probability of a hypothesis makes more probable a logical consequence of that hypothesis. In fact, according to Williamson, when the evidence makes the hypothesis more probable, but not certain, it decreases the probability of the logical consequence of the hypothesis. When evidence makes a hypothesis certain it does not make a logical consequence of that hypothesis more probable. Thus, evidence making more probable premise 1 but not 2 is not a basis from which to argue that one is not entitled to a high degree of confidence in premise 2 and 3.
Williamson’s logical consequence point brings up issues in confirmation theory. His point has prompted me to explore confirmation theory in more detail. Some useful reads in this regard can be found here and here.
Williamson – Philosophy of Philosophy – 7.3
In section 3 of Philosophy of Philosophy chapter 7, Williamson targets judgment skepticism. He wonders if skepticism about intuitions is not skepticism about a special form of judgment, but, rather, a special form of skepticism about any kind of judgment. Judgment skeptics try to falsify common sense in favor of science. They question practices of applying concepts in judgment (e.g., the concept of a mountain, belief, knowledge, and possibility). One goal of the skeptic is to show that folk judgments presuppose a false theoretical basis, yet such judgments afford an evolutionary advantage. For example, mountains do not really exist because the underlying metaphysics is false, but use of the ‘mountain convention’ facilitates quick communication and offers practical advantage over, say, giving an accurate yet labored explanation of the true metaphysics of the phenomenon. How does this connect with intuitions?
For Williamson (2004) an ‘intuition’ is arrived at through typical capacities for making judgments. In philosophy this involves the construction of thought experiments. A complex host of cognitive capacities are, for instance, used to arrive at the intuition that the Gettier subject does not know. These capacities include making modal judgments and making counterfactual conditional judgments. The judgment skeptic argues against these ‘armchair’ cognitive capacities. As Williamson mentions:
For judgment skeptics, appeals to intuition are nothing more than the last resort of dogmatic conservativism, in its desperate attempt to hold back the forward march of scientific and metaphysical progress. (2007: 223)
Williamson, as a defender of armchair practices, wants to defend the use of intuitions as he understands them. He makes the following points against the judgment skeptic:
- Self-undermining: Scientific practice involves perceptual judgments. Judgment skeptical arguments apply to the use of microscopes, telescopes, and other instruments that magnify perceptual capacities but do not replace them. Observations including macroscopic objects threaten the use of such observations as evidence because they are grounded in the very common sense ontology skeptics are keen to argue against.
- Question Begging: Looking at judgment skepticism Williamson wonders, “what is the status of scientists’ evidential judgments?” When a scientist judges that a set of evidence best explains a theory, and then a judgment skeptic questions, “what evidence is there that our rankings of explanations are reliable?”, the scientist cannot avoid the charge of begging the question if she answers her rankings are reliable because they best explain another thing (e.g., survival of the species). Using empirical evidence to argue against folk theory does not remove the practices used to obtain the empirical evidence from exposure to judgment skeptical forms of argument.
I’m not sure what I want to say about Williamson’s discussion. The points he makes against judgment skepticism seem valid and well-placed. In fact, I have more of a problem with Williamson’s characterization of intuitions as involving the application of routine capacities for judgment-making. Surely they involve such capacities, but I do not think they can be reduced to or dissolved into those capacities.
I’ll close by pointing you to a good discussion of Williamson (2004, 2005) in David Sosa’s article “Scepticism About Intuition.” Among other things, Sosa argues that intuitions play an illimitable epistemic role that cannot be reduced to ordinary capacities.
