Epistemic Norms, A Priority, and Self-Knowledge

194 Pages·2011·1.36 MB·English

by  Richard Flockemann

Epistemic Norms, A Priority, and
Self-Knowledge

Richard Flockemann
PhD Thesis
University of York
Department of Philosophy
March 2011
Abstract

This thesis is primarily focussed on developing a novel characterisation of the
distinction between a priori and a posteriori justification. My working hypothesis is
that we can make a surprising amount of progress in this field by paying attention
to the structure of epistemic norms.
I argue that direct a priori beliefs are governed by a structurally different
kind of epistemic norm to the one that governs perceptual beliefs. That, I argue, is
where the fundamental epistemological difference between the two categories lies.
I call this view ‘Seeming-Independence’.
Seeming-Independence holds that while a posteriori beliefs depend
epistemically on how it perceptually seems to us, there is no corresponding
dependence relation between a priori beliefs and how it intellectually seems to us.
Intellectual seemings, or intuitions, simply do not play the kind of epistemological
role that perceptual experiences play.
The central contention of this thesis is that Seeming-Independence is a
theoretically fruitful view of the a priori. The arguments I marshal in favour of
Seeming-Independence are in this way primarily focussed on the explanatory power
and flexibility of the view.
In effect, what I suggest is that Seeming-Independence, unlike some of its
rivals, is a particularly clear way of dividing the a priori from the a posteriori, and it
allows us to neatly bypass some of influential criticisms of a priority.
Contents

Acknowledgements .................................................................................................. i
Declaration .............................................................................................................. ii
Introduction ............................................................................................................. 1
1: Epistemic Normativity .......................................................................................... 6
1.1 Epistemic rationality and epistemic blame .................................................... 8
1.2 Non-moral norms and blame....................................................................... 13
1.3 Normative conflict ....................................................................................... 17
1.4 Subjective and objective norms ................................................................... 22
1.5 Objective epistemic norms .......................................................................... 26
1.6 Epistemic norms and doxastic rules ............................................................. 33
1.7 Conclusion................................................................................................... 39
2: The Infallibility Thesis Reconsidered ................................................................... 41
2.1 Fallible a priori warrant ............................................................................... 42
2.2 Following epistemic norms .......................................................................... 45
2.3 Miscalculations and reasoning slips ............................................................. 48
2.4 Fallacious arguments ................................................................................... 54
2.5 Euclidean geometry..................................................................................... 61
2.6 Intuitions as intellectual seemings ............................................................... 63
2.7 Intuition as pure understanding .................................................................. 67
2.8 Intellectual and Perceptual Seemings .......................................................... 71
2.9 Conclusion................................................................................................... 75
3: A Priority As Seeming-Independence ................................................................. 78
3.1 Experience independence as seeming-independence .................................. 79
3.2 Traditional infalliblism and mathematical knowledge .................................. 88
3.3 Seeming-Independence and ultra-reliability ................................................ 94
3.4 Problems of length and width ..................................................................... 98
3.5 Cognitive processes and epistemic norms ................................................. 105
3.6 Following norms and the transmission of epistemic warrant ..................... 109
3.7 Conclusion................................................................................................. 114
4: Self-Evidence and Analyticity ........................................................................... 116
4.1 Metaphysical and epistemic analyticity ..................................................... 117
4.2 Williamson on understanding-assent links................................................. 121
4.3 Cognitive and non-cognitive accounts of understanding ........................... 126
4.4 Blocked competencies and epistemically ideal conditions ......................... 130
4.5 Analyticity and semantic intuitions ............................................................ 138
4.6 Conclusion................................................................................................. 142
5: Self-Evidence and Self-Knowledge .................................................................... 144
5.1 Self-evidence and the Problem of Self-Knowledge..................................... 144
5.2 Vindicating and non-vindicating explanations ........................................... 149
5.3 Scepticism about self-knowledge .............................................................. 151
5.4 Immunity from brute error and self-knowledge ........................................ 157
5.5 Epistemological explanations .................................................................... 166
5.6 A priority as a solution to the Problem of Self-Knowledge ......................... 171
5.7 Self-knowledge as a subset of the a priori ................................................. 176
5.8 Conclusion................................................................................................. 179
Conclusion ........................................................................................................... 180
References ........................................................................................................... 184
Acknowledgements

I would like to thank first and foremost my supervisor, Professor Tom Stoneham,
for his extremely helpful advice, his insightful observations, and his encouragement.
I am also grateful for the overwhelming generosity and emotional support
my family provided throughout this four year period: particular mention must go to
my parents, Janet and Richard; my siblings, Tanya and Peter; and my grandmother,
Joyce.

i
Declaration

I declare that I am the sole author of this work. None of this material has been
published elsewhere.
ii
Introduction

What is the difference between a priori justification or warrant and a posteriori
warrant? Can we plausibly construe this distinction such that it is both genuinely
epistemological and philosophically important? What does it mean to say that a
priori warrant is independent of experience? What sort of mental state counts as
experience in this sense? What kinds of propositions can we know a priori?
These are the sort of questions that this thesis is devoted to exploring. My
working hypothesis is that we can make a surprising amount of progress on
questions like these by paying attention to the structure of epistemic norms.
In essence, the view I defend is that direct a priori beliefs are governed by a
structurally different kind of epistemic norm to the one that governs perceptual
beliefs. That, I argue, is where the fundamental epistemological difference between
the two categories lies.
This project as a whole is very firmly grounded in a particular understanding
of epistemic norms. I begin by drawing attention to the fact that, amongst those
that take a normative approach to epistemology, questions of whether a believer is
rational in holding her beliefs are often settled by considering whether it would be
appropriate to epistemically reproach, or criticise, or in any sense blame her for
how she went about forming and maintaining her beliefs. If there is nothing to
criticise or find fault with in her epistemic behaviour then this establishes that her
belief is rational.
A key contention of this thesis is that this is a mistake. What I take to be the
central error here is that discussions of epistemic normativity tend to uncritically
model epistemic norms on moral norms. There is a strong tradition in moral
philosophy to take normative moral judgements to be closely connected to
‘reactive attitudes’ like praise and blame. The assumption being made in normative
epistemology is that there is a similarly close connection between analogous
epistemic judgements and analogous epistemic sentiments.
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The presumption that epistemic norms have much in common with moral
norms is a long-standing one, dating all the back to Clifford’s classic The Ethics of
Belief (1877).
However, in my view, it is an assumption that should be challenged. Of late
there has been considerable and increasing discussion of non-moral norms.
Philosophers frequently debate about what the norms of assertion are, or whether
mental content and beliefs are things that properly have their own distinct norms.
Now the picture of normativity that emerges from these debates is importantly
different from moral normativity in that there is nothing like the close connection
between normative judgements and blame-like sentiments.
This is because exactly what these non-moral norms require from us is not
always transparent to us. For example, consider the norm of assertion. The two
most influential accounts of the norms of assertion, are the Knowledge Account
(‘assert only what you know’) and the Truth Account (‘assert only what is true’).
Now since it is not always transparent to us whether some proposition p is
true or known, it follows for both accounts that the fundamental norm of assertion
is structured such that it is possible to misunderstand, through no fault of our own,
what it is that we may and may not assert. If we are fooled into thinking we know p
when p is false, then we will have violated the norm of assertion if we assert that p,
even if we had excellent reasons for thinking we knew that p (and hence that p was
true).
I claim that some epistemic norms are non-transparent in exactly this way:
we may, through no fault of our own, be mistaken about what epistemic norms
require from us in some specific context. As such, we may also blamelessly fail to
comply with those norms. The resulting beliefs, I argue, are both irrational and
blameless.
Now the use I put this account of epistemic norms to, as I have mentioned,
is to develop and defend a new characterisation of the a priori. I call the account
‘Seeming-Independence’.
Seeming-Independence might be described as follows: while a posteriori
beliefs depend epistemically on how it perceptually seems to us, there is no
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corresponding dependence relation between a priori beliefs and how it
intellectually seems to us. Intellectual seemings, or intuitions, simply do not play
the kind of epistemic role that perceptual experiences play.
The fact that a priori beliefs are not epistemically dependent on intuitions, I
argue, indicates that the norms governing non-inferential a priori beliefs are—
unlike those governing perceptual belief—truth guaranteeing. Insofar as one really
does correctly follow those particular epistemic norms, one is guaranteed to arrive
at true belief.
Now the major contention of this thesis is that Seeming-Independence is a
theoretically fruitful view of the a priori. The arguments I marshal in favour of
Seeming-Independence are in this way primarily focussed on the explanatory power
and flexibility of the view.
In effect, what I suggest is that Seeming-Independence, unlike some of its
rivals, is a particularly clear way of dividing the a priori from the a posteriori, and it
allows us to neatly bypass some of influential criticisms of a priority.
Since Seeming-Independence is fundamentally a claim about epistemic
norms, one advantage it has is that it uses a clearly epistemological criterion in
dividing the a priori from the a posteriori. It is well positioned to respond to
criticisms that the a priori/a posteriori distinction is ad hoc or incoherent.
Another advantage of Seeming-Independence is that it does not wed itself
to an implausible philosophy of mind. Seeming-Independence does not commit us
to the existence of any kind of strange, perception-like faculty of priori insight.
Seeming-Independence is also perfectly consistent with the thought that humans
are limited and fallible reasoners.
The plausibility of Seeming-Independence, however, depends crucially on
whether the idea of a truth-guaranteeing norm is intelligible. The latter part of the
thesis is devoted to exploring whether it is.
This exploration leads us relatively far afield: into discussions of analyticity
and discussions of self-knowledge.
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Essentially, the plausibility of Seeming-Independence depends crucially on
whether or not we can make sense of an unusual property; a property that I call
self-evidence. Seeming-Independence ultimately presupposes that self-evidence is
actually a property that some propositions have. And this presupposition would be
illegitimate without any explanation of what self-evidence is.
I suggest that there are two readily available, paradigmatic examples of self-
evident propositions: those propositions that are analytic and those propositions
that we can know introspectively.
Now neither suggestion is entirely unproblematic. While Paul Boghossian
has developed a new account of analyticity that appears capable of avoiding the
problems that Quine famously raises, this version of analyticity—epistemic
analyticity—has recently encountered a major set-back. Timothy Williamson has
developed a recipe for generating decisive-looking counter-examples to it.
The account of analyticity Boghossian advocates depends crucially on the
claim that there are links between understanding analytic propositions, and
assenting to them. Failures to assent entail failures of understanding.
Williamson offers several very plausible-looking counter-examples to this
suggestion: examples of highly competent language users who, as a result of
suitably bizarre background beliefs, steadfastly refuse to assent to a number of
paradigmatically analytic propositions.
The claim that our own beliefs, desires, intentions, and so forth are self-
evident to us likewise faces challenges. While it is widely agreed that self-
knowledge of the sort I am interested in seems to have many of the same
epistemological characteristics that self-evident beliefs do, there is decidedly less
agreement over whether it really does have those characteristics. There are a
number of prima facie plausible construals of self-knowledge that deny that it
genuinely does have any special epistemic qualities.
Moreover, the suggestion that self-knowledge is self-evident would imply
that Seeming-Independence is committed also to the view that our knowledge of
our own contingent intentions, beliefs, etc., counts as genuinely and substantively a
priori, a view which some might find unacceptably implausible.
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