I argue that debates in the philosophy of perception between direct realists and representationalists should influence the debate in epistemology between internalist and externalist theories of justification. If the direct realists are correct, internalists are afforded more forms of access to the justifiers than externalists believe possible, but internalists can maintain their distinctive internalist identity while accepting this widened conception of access. To demonstrate this, I show how Alvin Goldman's critique of externalism fails to draw two important lessons from direct realism—one straightforward, the second analogical—for a theory of justification.

While moral theorists regularly appeal to compatibilist accounts of freedom in order to reconcile the concept of moral responsibility with the prospect of determinism, few epistemologists are as concerned to find a workable doxastic compatibilism to underwrite the concept of epistemic responsibility. I suggest that, at least for internalists about justification, epistemic responsibility is crucial and so some version of doxastic compatibilism is necessary for those who take the prospect of determinism seriously. In this paper, I survey Matthias Steup's recent attempt to formulate just such a version of doxastic compatibilism, modeled along the lines of traditional proposals for compatibilism about the freedom of action. I argue, however, that Steup's proposal does not work, mostly on his own terms. After attempting to refine his proposal to meet my counterexamples, I express a general skepticism about the workability of doxastic compatibilism, and offer a brief libertarian account of doxastic freedom that I believe should be taken seriously by those internalist epistemologists who take epistemic responsibility seriously.

Until recently it has been conventional to assume that ethical egoism is "ethical" is name, alone, and that no account that considers one's own interests as the standard of moral obligation could count as seriously "ethical." In recent years, however, philosophers have shown increasing respect for more sophisticated forms of ethical egoism which attempt to define self-interest in enriched terms characterizing self-interest as human flourishing in both material and psychological dimensions. But philosophers are still skeptical that any conception of self-interest could underpin ethical theory. This paper considers recent arguments by Richard Joyce, who is willing to concede enriched conceptions of self-interest, but who claims that egoism cannot support appropriate counterfactual conditionals about morality, or inferential uses of ordinary moral thinking. I argue that ethical egoism can satisfy each of Joyce's desiderata for morality, provided that it is taken to involve the very notion of enriched self-interest that Joyce is elsewhere willing to consider. In showing that egoism can count as a moral theory, I show, in effect, that Joyce's arguments for error theory about morality are really arguments for error theory about agent-neutral, non-egoistic morality.

NEW: In Search of Direct Realist Abstractionism

(November 2, 2008) (DOC) (PDF)

Both traditional and naturalistic epistemologists have long assumed that the examination of human psychology bears no relevance to the goal of traditional epistemology: the goal of providing first-person guidance in the achievement of truth. In this paper, I apply insight about the psychology of human perception and concept-formation to a solution to the epistemic regress problem, as traditional a problem for epistemic normativity as one could find. 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 are thus 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 argued in my dissertation that "naturalized epistemology" is essentially skeptical in nature. Quine concedes the basic anti-foundationalist criticisms of modern philosophy. Rather than trying to answer them, he offers a pragmatist's consolation: we don't need to worry about the logical justification of our beliefs, we need only try to understand how our beliefs allow us to cope with our experience.

I also argue that the only way to oppose Quineans is to grapple directly with the skeptical concerns that appear to make pragmatism the default. Quine himself thinks that many skeptical doubts arise from new scientific discoveries. Whereas he suggests that we can ease our doubt by considering the pragmatic value of our beliefs, I suggest that these skeptical worries arise from scientific discoveries only when insufficient attention is paid to the wider scientific context, and only given the uncritical acceptance of certain pre-scientific philosophic assumptions.

So my view is that while considering new scientific research can at best help clear up certain philosophic confusions, it is not the basis for new philosophy. Philosophy is an autonomous discipline, and one must accept one philosophical assumption or another before embarking on scientific research. Incidentally, this does not imply that philosophy is a priori or simply a matter of "conceptual analysis." It may well be that philosophic knowledge derives from empirical knowlege that is simply more basic and less specialized than scientific empirical knowledge.

Lagerspatz seems to agree with me. He suggests that empirical research in, for example, psychology, presupposes the acceptance of common sense ("folk") psychological concepts which guide the research. For example:

First, the scientist identifies a particular instance of perception on a common-sense basis. Someone knocks at the door and we hear it. Afterwards, there is an investigation of acoustic and physiological processes involved in this event. But the event has already been carved out of a larger whole and defined as a specific event. This is something we do because we understand what is relevant in it. And this gives rise to the task that the neurobiologist sets herself. We can ask questions about relevant processes because there is consensus about what it (roughly) means to say that a person hears something.

Like my approach, Lagerspatz uses this perspective to clear up skeptical confusions that arise from scientific discoveries. Consider his response to Antonio Damasio's contention that because perception involves internal physiological processing, that therefore the objects of perception must be internal (rather than external physical objects):

But that does not lend support to the claim that all you can perceive is constructed images. The quoted passages indeed start with a description that takes perception for granted. You are not imagining, remembering or hallucinating the landscape outside your window. This gives us the distinction between what Damasio calls ‘perceptual’ and ‘recalled’ images.8 But further down in the quote, the description implies you have noway of knowing that the initial description is true, as all these images are just constructions of your brain. This collapses the initial distinction between perception and hallucination....Yet the argument as a whole rests on the initial description that takes perception to be both possible and distinct from hallucination. It exploits our tacit commitment to what it moves on to deny.

In other words, no discoveries about the nature of perception are going to tell us that perception is not importantly different from hallucination--and it would not be importantly different if its objects were internal images rather than external objects. No research will show this, because scientists studying perception are already studying a physical process they assume to be different from the physical process involved in hallucination.

(I should note, incidentally, that this polemical move of showing how some philosophical arguments rely on common sense concepts but then empty them of meaning is underexplored and worthy of attention from the perspective of informal logic.)

Lagerspatz's approach also has important implications for the philosophy of mind. He considers the contemporary use of the concept "representation," a concept often used to describe the internal objects of perception. There may be a role for the concept, but it should not be used in a way that denies that we already know what perception is or what its objects are:

To say that one thing represents another is perhaps to say that the one is made to stand proxy for the other; or perhaps, that someone is employing it in order to convey an idea of the other thing, or to find out something about it. The traces represent something to the detective and to the neurobiologist. Thus it is very natural for the neurobiologist to say that the monkey’s primary visual cortex contained a representation. She [the neurobiologist] may use the trace to derive information about what the monkey was looking at."

It may (to repeat: may) then be useful to speak of representations in the brain. But we also need to see why this should be. Clearly not all traces of causal influences on the brain will be called representations. Brain damage is not called a representation of the thing that hit the patient on the head. In the experiment just cited, the neurobiologist looks for a likeness in the brain. She also has an idea of where to look, namely in the part of the brain previously identified as one connected with vision. Visual likenesses accidentally found somewhere else in the brain or elsewhere in the animal’s body would have to be explained in some other way.

So perhaps the neurobiologist may speak of patterns of neural activation as "representations," in which case it would be obvious that mental representations are themselves neurological properties. But his overall point here has a further important implication even for questions about eliminativism or reductionism vs. commonsense realism about the mental:

Neurobiological descriptions of perception do not reduce mental events to physiological processes. In fact they cannot do so, because the phenomena they describe are themselves individuated on the basis of mental,11 not physiological criteria. Thus the method itself excludes reduction.12 In sum, the neurobiologist explains physiological data in terms of perception, not the other way around.13 She expands our knowledge of the unknown, namely the role of certain physiological changes, by relating it to what is known, namely perception.

Lagerspatz makes the above point a little too quickly, before he has commented on the sense in which "representations" may be said to be neurological. What is especially clear is that if our ability to identify mental "representations" presupposes our ability to distinguish perceptual conscious awareness from, say, patterns resulting from a brain imagery, then nothing about the physical nature of these "representations" can lead us to a Churchland-style eliminativism. Whatever is true about patterns of neural stimulation, we also know that we are perceptually conscious of the world and have real knowledge and beliefs about it (we could not specify any patterns if we did not presuppose this).

Arguing against reductionism about the mental is a little trickier. The reductionist can concede that of course we are conscious and have beliefs, but argue that conscious or belief states are themselves neurological states. To argue that the mental does not reduce to the physical simply because the relevant phenomena are "themselves individuated on the basis of the mental" would beg the question, because the reductionist could concede the latter point, and simply insist that the mental basis for our original individuation is itself a neurological state (even if we don't originally know that).

I think there is another route to Lagerspatz' desired conclusion, one that takes a cue from his own strategy. It has to do with identifying the mentalistic presuppositions behind even the concepts of the physical. But I won't go into that now.

I don't know too much about the experimental philosophy angle, but I have a new paper coming out in the Southern Journal Philosophy that evaluates the Kim/Quine debate. So if you'll give me the opportunity to do some (relevant) plugging:

http://www.benbayer.com/wholequine.pdf

As you'll see from this paper, I agree with the first commenter that naturalized epistemologists are not much interested in folk concepts. To whatever extent they are, it's mostly for the purpose of refashioning folk concepts, and "explicating" them (a la Carnap) to serve their own, pragmatically-oriented purposes.

At the same time, there may be data out there of interest to X-philes that is relevant to evaluating naturalized epistemology. I pursue one of these leads in chapter 5 my dissertation (and in a paper derived therefrom), where I argue that Quine's own explication of intentional idioms can find a home in current "simulation theory" accounts of folk psychology. But I argue that the problems with simulation theory--some traditional ones, some of my own devising--are even bigger problems for naturalism than they are for ST.

http://www.benbayer.com/dissertation.pdf
http://www.benbayer.com/simulationtheory.pdf

Good luck with your work.

Ben Bayer

Quine's Acquiescence in Skepticism
(November 1, 2007) (DOC) (HTML) (PDF)
I examine a series of criticisms that have been leveled against Quine's naturalized epistemology, regarding its confrontation with 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 refuation, 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. Instead, Quine is happy to "acquiesce" in skepticism. No logical justification of our scientific beliefs is possible on his view. But pragmatic justification is possible, and acknowledging that this is his view this leads to the resolution of a number of interpretive quandaries.

"Naturalized epistemology"—the recent attempt to transform the theory of knowledge into a branch of natural science—is often criticized for dispensing with the distinctively philosophical content of epistemology. In this dissertation, I argue that epistemologists are correct to reject naturalism, but that new arguments are needed to show why this is so. I establish my thesis first by evaluating two prominent varieties of naturalism—"optimistic" and "pessimistic—and then by offering a proposal for how a new version of non-naturalistic epistemology must move forward. "Optimistic naturalism" attempts to use scientific methods to give positive answers to traditional epistemological questions. Epistemologists, for example, are urged to draw on psychology and evolutionary biology in order to show our beliefs are justified. I argue that this project fails. First, the naturalist’s thesis that theory is underdetermined by evidence poses difficulties for the optimist's attempt to show that our beliefs are justified, even according to naturalized standards. Second, while critics usually contest naturalists’ logical right to use the concept of normative justification, I suggest that a deeper problem is with the naturalists' use of the concept of belief. 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. "Pessimistic naturalism"—Quine's project—takes it for granted that "belief" is problematic and logical justification elusive, and instead offers a pragmatic account of the development of our theory of the world. This project, while deeply unsatisfactory to the traditional epistemologist, also faces the challenge of privileging scientific discourse over other pragmatically successful modes of discourse. Whatever its merits, we can undermine its motivation by challenging the underdetermination thesis it rests on. We can do this by appealing to facts about scientific practice that undermine the conception of confirmation driving the thesis, by appealing to other facts about scientific practice, and by challenging some philosophical preconceptions, in order to make room for a new brand of inductivist foundationalism.

Online versions: (DOC) (HTML) (PDF)

The question is if separating “inductive” probability from this kind of “physical probability” really implies that inductive probability “does not depend on the nature of the coin.” Presumably the motivation for saying that the physical probability is either 0 or 1 is a way of saying that if we knew the full nature of the coin, we would know with certainty whether it would land heads or not. If we knew it was heads on both sides, then we would know for sure that it would land heads up. Surely there is a difference between probabilities we assign in the absence of knowledge of particular facts, and those we would assign in its presence facts: this is one of the most important insights of Bayesianism.

But this makes us think that the difference between the two probabilities here is a difference between two instances of the same kind of probability, not two kinds of probability. After all, even our judgment in the absence of the specific nature of the coin (probability = 1/2) still requires some general knowledge about the coin, and about other facts of the matter. We need to know, for example, that coins are such as to fall on one side rather than another the vast majority of the time (rather than on their edges), such that we can discount this third possibility and say that the chance of heads is 1/2 , rather than 7/16 or some fraction incrementally smaller than 1/2.

Now it might be objected that this ignores the supposition of the example, that we “have been told that a coin either has heads on both sides or else has tails on both sides and it is about to be tossed.” The idea would be that we should take it for granted that it will fall on one side or the other, and judge the probability with that assumption. But it is curious that this simple example of an inductive probability is as complex as it is. An even simpler example would be to ask our probability judgment about what we know to be an ordinary coin that is about to be tossed. In this example, it would be very clear that our judgment of a 1/2 probability of landing heads would be based on our knowledge of the nature of the coin: not only our knowledge that it is extremely unlikely to land on its edge, but on the fact that it has two sides, each of which is different. The artificial example of being told that the coin is one of two possible double-sided coins obscures this.

In fact, I think that even the artificial example could be understood in terms of knowledge about certain facts, rather than anything a priori. The only realistic case in which we could form a judgment of 1/2 after having been told that the coin is either one double-sided coin or another is the case in which we must rely on someone’s testimony to this effect (if we were merely to consider the possibility for ourselves, to select these two possibilities rather than others would in turn presuppose special knowledge of the coin). In that case, we are depending on our knowledge of facts about the reliability of the person’s testimony, and of facts about the general possibility of the construction of such coins—still including the fact that they are likely never to land on their edge.

The artificiality of this example even leads us to wonder if any probability can be assigned in this case at all. In order to judge that there is a 1/2 probability given that we have been told there are two possibilities, we would also have to presuppose that these two possibilities are equally likely. We might naturally do this in the absence of any special reason to think that one is more likely than the other, but only if we know something about how coins are selected. We say 1/2 about a normal coin because we know about its physical construction. But we do not judge that there is always a 1/2 probability of rain, even though we know there are only two options (rain or non-rain), because know the mechanism that produces rain and know it requires a special combination of events. In the absence of any knowledge of the mechanism whereby we are to be given one of these two double-sided coins, it is hard to see why we should assign a probability of 1/2, or any probability at all.

In short, I see no reason to draw a line between “inductive” probabilities and physical probabilities, based on this kind of example. The example does point to a real difference in probability assignments, but can be accounted for by the normal Bayesian method of understanding probabilities as conditioned on amount of available evidence. In short I see every reason to agree here with Norton, that even probabilistic induction is dependent on knowledge of local facts of the matter.

It is important that John Norton (2003) considers priors as in need of justification of their own, because on any other view it is not entirely clear what relevance Bayesianism would pose for solving the classical problem of induction, the problem we have now returned to examine in order to find the justification for our scientific knowledge. Of course it is always open to Bayesians to suggest that the “justification” of prior probabilities is assigned on an a priori basis, but then the force of one of Norton’s points is not to be ignored, that it is curious that such an a priori prior “formed in advance of the incorporation of any evidence, decides how any evidence we may subsequently encounter will alter our beliefs.” If we are concerned with examining probability in order to deal with the classical problem of induction, the question of what justifies our beliefs epistemically, what makes them likely to be true, then unless we have a special theory about how a priori priors relate to the a posteriori claims whose probable truth is in question, it is unclear how we can get by without finding some source of justification for our priors. This, along with other considerations, is what leads Lange (2004) to say that a solution to the problem of induction requires a solution to the problem of the priors (199-203

MAHER, P. (2006), Confirmation theory, in Donald M. Borchert, The Encyclopedia of philosophy, 2nd ed., New York: Macmillan.

NORTON, J. (2003a), A Material theory of induction, Philosophy of Science, 70: 647-670.

This paper examines Daniel Bonevac's arguments against Wilfrid Sellars's critique of the 'Myth of the Given.' Bonevac argues that while Sellars's arguments do not generalize in a way that refutes 'entire framework of givenness,' rather than simply the sense data theorists Sellars originally targeted. Bonevac takes special issue with Sellars's arguments from holism, which he thinks result in absurdities. I argue that Sellars does not intend to establish the absurd conclusions Bonevac thinks he wishes to establish. Bonevac also thinks that even if Sellars’s arguments for holism are correct, they do not imply a rejection of the Myth. I argue, however, that Sellars's holism, understood in the proper way, does in fact bear on the truth of the Myth. If one wishes to de-mythologize the myth, one must come to terms with Sellars's holism.

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 two leading objections to Gordon's theory--the problem of pretense and the problem of adjustment--and show how a charitably interpreted Gordon could answer these objections. I conclude, however, that the best case for Gordon's position still runs into a new problem concerning the epistemological presuppositions of belief-attribution. These presuppositions are themselves explicit and theoretical, and seeing how they operate shows how simulation theory lacks the elegant simplicity it seemed at first to have.

This book gives solid factual evidence needed to explain away various anomalies often cited as evidence for a U.S. government-supported conspiracy to stage the 9/11 attacks. Towards the end, the authors correctly note that there is something wrong with a theory based entirely on the anomalies of a rival theory, rather than on independent evidence of its own.

I think, however, that the book is too kind. There are far bigger problems with the conspiracy theories in question than the fact that the anomalies can be given simple, alternative explanations, or that they are lacking evidence of their own in crucial places.

Many of the theories are simply manifestly incoherent. Just one example: Why would the government go to the trouble of crashing planes into the WTC *and* planting bombs, when it could simply plant the bombs, and blame the bombs on the terrorists (who actually did try a bombing in 1993). Or, even assuming that planes alone couldn't bring the towers down, why not just settle for coordinated plane crashes? Many would still die and the public would still be outraged.

There are many other similar contradictions between the motives of the alleged conspirators, and the actions the real plotters undertook. Most of the conspiracy theorists ignore them. Given these contradictions, there is almost no obligation to appease the demand to explain anomalies. We should not consider it within our dignity to go the extra mile to refute incoherencies.

In this paper, I outline a new strategy for answering skepticism, inspired by the words of Quine. It begins with the assumption that if skeptics have the right to make scientific assumptions for the sake of reductio ad absurdum, then anti-skeptics also have the right to make further free use of science in order to block the reductio. I illustrate how this strategy may be applied to three related skeptical conclusions: Quine's own underdetermination thesis, Humean inductive skepticism, and anti-foundationalism. Underdetermination is undermined by an appeal to scientific practice to see that it relies on a crude and unrealistic hypothetico-deductivist conception of confirmation. The classical Humean problem of induction can be resolved by appeal to a material theory of induction which recognizes diverse methods of confirmation practiced by scientists in different domains of fact. Finally, by appealing appealing to psychological evidence regarding perception and concept-formation, I show how the regress of inductive justification can be terminated in perceptual foundations.

This paper evaluates Jaegwon Kim’s influential critique of Quine’s naturalized epistemology and urges that a proper critique must evaluate the fundamental principles of Quine’s philosophy. Kim argues that Quine forces a false choice between traditional deductivist foundationalism and naturalized epistemology, contending that there are viable alternative epistemological projects. But Quine would reject these alternatives by reference to the same fundamental principles (underdetermination, indeterminacy of translation, extensionalism and behaviorism) that led him to reject foundationalism. Understanding Quine’s fundamentals also helps to defuse Kim’s charge that naturalized epistemology is inadequate or incoherent to the extent that it dispenses with epistemic normativity.