Epistemology joke

This is probably an old joke, but it does get to the heart of many kinds of debates in perception and (alleged) knowledge by induction.

An engineer, an experimental physicist, a theoretical physicist, and a philosopher were hiking together through the hills of Scotland. They reached a hilltop. Looking over to the next hilltop, they saw a black sheep.

In delight, the engineer cried, “What do you know? The sheep in Scotland are black!”

“Well, some of the sheep in Scotland are black,” replied the experimental physicist.

The theoretical physicist considered this a minute, then said, “Well, at least one of the sheep in Scotland is black.”

The philosopher thought for a second, then responded, “Well, it’s black on one side, anyway.”

The allusion here is to a well-known 1976 article by Alvin Goldman, which among other things warns against us allowing lucky circumstances into our concept of knowledge. One part of that article is well-summarized in an entry titled "Defeaters in Epistemology" in the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

Suppose Henry is driving through a Wisconsin town, admiring the scenery. He sees a barn and believes “there’s a barn.” Unbeknownst to Henry, this Wisconsin town is full of papier-mâché barn facsimiles, which look like real barns when viewed from the road. However, the structure Henry happens to look at is a genuine barn. He just happens to glance in the direction where one of the few real barns is located. His belief is true since he’s looking at a genuine barn. He also appears justified in holding this belief. Henry believes what seems to him to be the case. He has no reason to believe that anything is suspicious about his perceptions, much less that he’s in a town mostly populated with fake barns. He also knows that barns are fairly common in this part of the state. Nonetheless, it seems that, however justified Henry may be in holding this belief, he doesn’t know that there is a barn present. He is of course lucky to believe what is true in this circumstance, but it’s precisely this feature of the situation that raises doubt about whether he knows there is a barn before him. Had he looked at any other time, his eyes would have landed on a fake barn and his resultant belief would have been false. Knowledge would seem to require that it not be a matter of epistemic serendipity that one’s belief is true.

Ah, such is the life of philosophy, that even its jokes require analysis. But that's a good thing!

O.

REFERENCES

[image] Slow Leadership Website (Accessed 4/30/2009)

Epistemic Oddity: "I know, but I might be wrong."

Let p be the proposition, "I will see a sparrow tomorrow." Suppose someone in Seattle, Mr. S, were to say, "I know p, but I might be wrong." This sounds very strange!

If S were to say "I believe p, but I might be wrong," then there would be little contention. Maybe S would see a sparrow, maybe not. Both states of affairs have occurred in the past with some regularity: sometimes S saw sparrows on some days, and sometimes S didn't see sparrows on some days. There is no contradiction on the one hand in believing something will occur, but on the other hand in being wrong about that occurrence. (This is how bets are won or lost.)

Consider Mr. S saying, "I am a bachelor, but I might be married." This too sounds strange, but the reason is quickly identifiable. All bachelors are unmarried by definition of the term 'bachelor' in the same way that all triangles are three-sided by definition of the word 'triangle'. However, consider carefully how these definition types subtly vary.

This pair, < bachelor, triangle >, is not quite related to this pair, < unmarried, three-sided >, by an identical relationship. The < unmarried, three-sided >, pair contains in its first position a negative attribute, what a term excludes in meaning; while the second position contains a positive attribute, what a term includes in meaning.

This pairwise difference indicates that one might have to be vigilant in deciding whether to define knowledge with positive or negative attributes. Take a uninstantiated definitional schema pair for 'know':

s1: < know, X > < wrong, Y >

If (s1) is a negative type definitional schema, then X will be defined by at least one concept it excludes--namely, Y. And If (s1) is a positive type definitional schema, then X will be defined by at least one concept it includes--again, Y.

If we substitute 'triangle' for 'X' and 'three-sided' for Y, then part of what defines the concept of 'know' is in terms of what it includes. What, therefore, does 'wrong' include? It might be that S (allegedly) know something, but it includes what's false. Alas, here's a contradiction, and why S's utterance seems so strange. It would be irrational on the one hand to claim that I'm wrong about p, that it's false; but on the other hand to claim I know p. This is not how the word 'know' is used in natural language in common contexts. (Compare: suppose I decide to hold a person's feet to the fire to obtain terrorist information. You say I should not torture. I say that this action isn't torture. Question: Who has the precedent here for how the word 'torture' is used? Answer: how the word is used by the statistically significant community of discourse. One might be tempted to worry that a dictionary decides the issue. But if you or the interrogator buy a company that prints dictionaries with your own definitions, this hardly resolves the issue.)

But there is another way to read the definition of knowledge which does not make S's utterance a contradiction, and which doesn't make it seem so strange.

If we substitute 'bachelor' for 'X' and 'unmarried' for Y, then part of what defines the concept of knowledge is in terms of what it excludes. What, therefore, does 'wrong' exclude? It might be that S knows something, but S excludes his justification being guaranteed adequate. So there is no contradiction in this interpretation of S's utterance. S still knows something, but it's possible S knows it for reasons unrelated to what S takes to be it's grounding. Of course, p must still be true, and S must still believe p. It's just that S is willing to make no claims to infallibility for his justification. Here it looks like in making a claim to knowledge, one prioritizes the truth of a claim over its justification. This seems right, since the practical affairs of choosing among reasons are what guide actors. (Question: Is being factually correct about where a predictor is in nature more important to survival and reproduction than having justification? Answer: for the individual, yes. For the social group with teaching/learning outcomes that affect group survival? Maybe not.)

O.



[image] Kingston Field Naturalists (Accessed Jan 27, 2009).

Justification: of me or of my belief?

Suppose the year is 1350AD, and I go to several medicine men in friendly tribes in order to get an explanation for my skin element, a multi-colored, unsymmetrical patch of skin that has a raised center and has been growing larger lately, although slowly.[1] With some variation, they tell me that sometimes the yellow jacket bee and the ant will fight[2], and if one has recently touched an ant after such a fight, the anger of the ant can remain in me. The general agreement is that an ant probably crawled over my arm sometime in the past, and this was the cause of my ailment. Consider, then, the statement --

p: "An angry ant which touched me caused my skin condition."

There are two ways to think about the justification of p. First, one might be saying that I, the person, am justified in holding p. And second one might be saying that p itself, the proposition, is justified. Put more tersely, is it the believer or the belief which is supposed to be justified?

In my 1350AD existence, no one could say I was somehow gullible or irresponsible in my belief, since I sought the best authoritative sources available for me, and since I had no better explanation to offer. (After all, the germ explanation for disease lies 500 years in the future.) Furthermore, ants and bees are known to cause painful skin marks in other ways, so there's a certain analogy of experience to my skin ailment. Suppose, as is highly likely, I come to believe the explanation of the medicine men. Someone might be tempted to think I am indeed justified.

But I think this is the wrong way to think of justification, since it seems to say that my lack of negligence or due diligence is what justifies a belief. The cold reality of the matter is this: my belief that p is wrong. The correct explanation is actually at the cellular level, with cancer cells multiplying and the rest. But it's 1350AD, so I have no clue about such things. Neither does anyone else. p is believed on defective and misleading evidence.

I think this is one problem with many religious beliefs. People think they (the religious beliefs) are justified because they (the religious believers) exercise due diligence in their inquiry, just as the 1350AD person did for the skin ailment. But that's not enough for justification of beliefs. Whether the believers are justified is a different kind of issue. There are two different targets here: Epistemic justification must be carefully distinguished from Ethical justification.

O.

REFERENCES

[image] A.J. Isbister "The Critics"

[1] These are classic signs for skin cancer

[2] "The Yellow Jacket and the Ant" Native American Lore Index (Accessed Jan. 17, 2008)

Commitments to knowledge and defaults to knowledge

I've been reading in epistemology lately, and shall be doing so regularly for a while yet. I've seen a couple of moves which strike me as puzzling.

First, it's claimed by some writers that knowledge has a normative element. Apparently, when I assert a claim to knowledge, I am making a "commitment" to truth, that (on the basis of evidence) I am "entitled" to this commitment, and that I have a "right" to believe it. Such strange talk! When I claim to "know" something, I certainly feel I'm correct, that the world is a certain way, but I don't feel like I'm making an ethical claim. Can one make an ethical claim and not be aware of doing it? Suppose I'm saying to the janitor, in the act of handing her the object in question, "The trash can is here," which I would claim to know. Am I making a commitment, or feeling entitled or asserting a right to my belief that the trash can is at a certain place? I think not. I am disposed to think a certain way about the world when I make a knowledge claim, but that I'm committed, entitled, asserting a right, etc. -- that would be a very odd way of talking about what I'm doing in making a knowledge claim. Odd because I'm not doing that. I somehow think others are not doing it either. Why is it that people so quickly want to artificially inject ethics into everything?

Second, I've seen it claimed that, lacking any other contextual cues, any assertion I make is tacitly defaulted to a knowledge claim. Really? In the normal course of my daily utterances, anything I say is a claim to knowledge? Automatically unless shown otherwise? Now that's a strong claim! I think it's fair to say I'm asserting a belief in what I say, and that I've a certain level of psychological attachment to what I say. "Yes, Pat, I think the trash can is right behind the filing cabinet." Do I claim to know that? Often, I don't even consider the epistemic status of what I say. After the fact I might say I was psychologically assured of my statement to Pat, and that I indeed believed it. But to claim that I knew something or that I was asserting a knowledge claim at that instant is way over-stated. I can't see why some writers in epistemology want to make such assured claims about people's utterances. What surveys or psychological studies show that this is the default way that people view their utterances? I sure don't see them giving any citations to this effect.

O.

A Few Basic Epistemology Thoughts

Just a few thoughts on Epistemology, mostly uttered as a way of testing my ability to post Quicktime videos.

O.