Show-Me the Argument

Does the following ascription seem infelicitous?

“Fred knows that Sally loves him, but he has a little bit of doubt that she does”

How about the following?

“Fred believes that Sally loves him. Indeed, he knows that she loves him, but he has a little bit of doubt that she loves him only because of an unconscious fear of being loved. He doesn’t have any reason for the doubt. Yet, he knows that she loves him.”

Conservatism is often defined as follows:

(C) If S believes that p, then, in the absence of defeaters, S thereby has at least some degree of justification for believing that p.

I will now give a rough characterization of the distinction between propositional and doxastic justification for p. For S to have propositional justification for her belief that p is for her to have reasons for her belief that p. This does not imply that S bases her belief on those reasons; S might believe that p on a whim or she might not even believe p at all. However, if S has propositional justification for p and S bases her belief that p on her propositional justification, then S has doxastic justification for p. These considerations show that propositional justification for a belief alone does not make a belief have any positive epistemic status. Sally might have great reasons for believing that there has been an increase in global warming (say, the testimony of reliable scientists she knows), but if her belief is based solely on the results of her ouija ball, then her belief has little positive epistemic status. However, if she bases her belief on the testimony of those scientists, then the belief will have positive epistemic status; it will be doxastically justified. (more…)

In an earlier post, http://philosophy.missouri.edu/show-me/?p=138#more-138, I followed Plantinga in arguing that our memorial beliefs constitute cases of knowledge without evidence.  I still think this is right, but I’m going to try to pull from a new set of cases.

Some of my knowledge is inferred from other beliefs; this is the case for my knowledge that the lights at my apartment are currently turned off (which is based on my knowledge that I turned out all the lights when I left and that no one has been there since).  Call this sort of evidence propositional evidence.  My perceptual knowledge, however, is noninferentially believed; the evidence here will be constituted at least partly by my sensory experiences and not by other beliefs, e.g., the experience of being appeared to redly or the tactile experience of touching a hard round ball.  Call this sort of evidence sensory evidence.  (For more careful explication of these points, see http://philosophy.missouri.edu/show-me/?p=128#more-128.)

But consider my knowledge that 5+2=7 or that I was in California recently.  The evidence for these beliefs is neither propositional nor sensory.  The suggestion for what constitutes evidence for these beliefs is that they seem true to me.  Upon considering the propositions, they seem true, and so I believe them.  I disputed this in the above linked posts, but I will grant the point.

The mental state of its seeming to me that 5+2=7 or that I was in California recently must not just be mere phenomenal reflection on the belief itself.  Otherwise, evidence would be entailed by belief, and so it would be trivially the case that knowledge entails evidence.  If seemings are to count as evidence, they must be something beyond mere belief.
Now consider my knowledge that I believe that 5+2=7 or that I believe that I was in California recently.  Upon considering these propositions, I immediately know them.  While it is plausible that I know that 5+2=7 on the basis of its seeming true to me, it’s less clear that I know that I believe that 5+2=7 on the basis of its seeming true to me.  Or so I am suggesting.  What do ya’ll think?

Fantl and McGrath use a case like the following.  It matters very little to Smith whether a train will make various stops.  Smith asks a man he’s been conversing with if the train will make the various stops.  Casually, the man says “yep, the upcoming train makes those stops; I just checked the ticket.”  The man has no indicators which make him look unreliable.  Supposing it’s true that the train will make the stops and Smith believes this, we are inclined to say that Smith knows that the train will make various stops. (more…)

In Knowledge and Practical Interests, Jason Stanley asks us to consider the following case, which he calls ‘Ignorant High Stakes’ (IHS):

Hannah and her wife Sarah are driving home on a Friday afternoon.  They plan to stop at the bank on the way home to deposit their paychecks.  Since they have an impending bill coming due, and very little in their account, it is very important that they deposit their paychecks by Saturday.  But neither Hannah nor Sarah is aware of the impending bill, nor of the paucity of available funds.  Looking at the lines, Hannah says to Sarah, ‘I know the bank will be open tomorrow, since I was there just two weeks ago on Saturday morning.  So we can deposit our paychecks tomorrow morning.’ (p. 5)

Stanley then writes that “our reaction is that Hannah’s utterance of ‘I know the bank will be open tomorrow’ is false”.

In a previous post (http://philosophy.missouri.edu/show-me/?p=328#comments), I asked people’s intuitions about this case.  Many said that they don’t have Stanley’s intuition, although one person did.

But what if we revised IHS so that Hannah ought to know that there are high stakes.  Suppose Hannah had been reminded of hte bill by the landlady or suppose she knew that she should write accounts of her bills in her planner, but had neglected to do so.  Call this revision of the case ‘Culpably Ignorant High Stakes’ (CIHS).

Are people still inclined to think that Hannah knows in CIHS?  I really could use people’s intuitions on this matter, even if you don’t focus on epistemology.

Peter Markie’s review (Phil. Quarterly 58, July 2008) of Bergmann’s book Justification Without Awareness is out.  It’s a very nice and clear review, and it’s fun to see some of the discussion from our reading group on Bergmann’s book (two summers ago) come to fruition in this publication.

I want to consider one of Markie’s objections to Bergmann’s arguments.  (more…)

Suppose I believe that the widgets I see are red.  I am appeared to redly, and my visual faculties are working as most humans’ visual faculties would work.  There’s nothing abnormal about the situation.  Intuitively, I know that the widgets are red.

Suppose, then, that a lying factory worker (whom I don’t know is a liar, but looks like an ordinary factory worker) walks in and tells me that there are red lights shining on the widgets.  Intuitively, I now have a defeater for my belief that they are red.  I ought to withhold belief.  If I continued to believe, my true belief would no longer be warranted (where ‘warrant’ is used to designate whatever turns a true belief into knowledge).

Note that there were certain faculties responsible for my forming belief that the widgets are red (mostly visual faculties), and there was a different set of faculties responsible for my coming to withhold belief (my aural faculties, faculties responsible for taking account of testimony, etc.).

Let’s revise the case in the following way.  Suppose, instead, that when the factory worker tells me that there are red lights shining on the widgets, my aural faculties suddenly and momentarily malfunction (I get hit by a stray cosmic ray) so that I do not end up hearing what the factory worker says.  I smile and nod, the factory worker smiles and nods, and then he walks away.  I continue to believe that the widgets are red, guessing that what the factory worker had to say was something like, “Hello, the weather sure is nice today!”

Intuitively, is my belief no longer warranted?  Or does my true belief not count as knowledge?

Epistemologists (influenced by Chisholm) tend to split our doxastic attitudes into beliefs and withholdings.  For any proposition p that I’ve considered, I either believe that p, withhold belief that p, or believe the denial of p.

I wonder if withholding belief that p can be reduced to having other beliefs about p.  Here’s one shot at an equivalence:

1) S withholds belief that p iff S believes that there’s some likelihood that p and that there’s some likelihood that ~p, and it’s not the case that (either S believes that p or S believes that ~p)

In other words, to withhold belief in a proposition is really just to have two beliefs about its likelihood (and not believe it or its denial).  Is this plausible?  Suppose I withhold belief that it’s raining in Beijing right now.  Is all this really saying is that I believe that there’s some likelihood that it is raining there, I believe that there’s some likelihood that it isn’t raining there, and I don’t believe either way?  It seems plausible at least in this case.

Aren’t there cases where I withhold belief, but I don’t form those corresponding beliefs?  I’m not sure.  Any help?

A Mizzou alumnus and former contributor to Show Me the Argument, Ted Poston, has published an article on Internalism and Externalism on the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.  It’s a nice article, and I recommend it.  See here.