Maynooth University Epistemology Past Paper PDF 2024-2025

2024–2025 MAYNOOTH UNIVERSITY FIRST SEMESTER (September 2024 – December 2024) Module Title: Epistemology Year: 2BA Module Code: PH206 Module Lecturer: Dr Cyril McDonnell (Arts Bui...

2024–2025 MAYNOOTH UNIVERSITY FIRST SEMESTER (September 2024 – December 2024) Module Title: Epistemology Year: 2BA Module Code: PH206 Module Lecturer: Dr Cyril McDonnell (Arts Building, Office Room 14) Department: Philosophy Week (11&12) [Lecture-Week 10&11] Lectures (18& 19): EPISTEMIC JUSTIFICATION In this week’s lectures, we turn to our third and final topic in contemporary epistemology that concerns ‘epistemic justification’ of our empirical knowledge- claims. There are two main contenders here, called ‘foundationalism’ and ‘coherentism’; so, in this week’s classes we will outline briefly first some of the central tenets of both and in this week’s class examine foundationalism followed by examining in next week’s class (second last week of term) coherentism. This will leave the final week of term for tutorial discussion on topics for the final written examination to be held on campus early in the new year around early-mid January 2025. (See the list of examination topics posted up on Moodle in Lecturer Announcements, and advice on talking examination questions and some information on how answers are assessed and graded.) EPISTEMIC JUSTIFICATION (by H. McCauley, 2008, with some additions) Over the past 60 years or so discussions of epistemic justification have focused mainly on two central theories of epistemic justification: foundationalism and coherentism. More recently, reliabilism—which developed partly from the causal analysis of knowledge put forward as the solution to the Gettier problem (1963)— has entered the fray as a leading contender in the epistemic justification debate and, to a lesser, but increasing extent, contextualism has also begun to attract supporters. (Susan Hack thinks that elements of foundationalism, coherentism, and reliabilism are all needed to reconstruct epistemology to: ‘A is more/ less justified in believing that p depending upon …’ in what she calls ‘foundherentism’—for her, this is the best solution….) 1 In what follows the (our) focus will be on what Laurence Bonjour has recently referred to as ‘the dialectic of foundationalism and coherentism’. (For more on reliabilism and contextualism cf. (a) The Blackwell Guide to Epistemology; (b) Dancy & Sosa’s Companion to Epistemology; or (c) the relevant articles in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Foundationalism and Coherentism are two central theories of epistemic justification: Foundationalism considers knowledge and justified belief to be possible only through foundational beliefs, whereas coherentism holds that components of knowledge must hang together as a coherent whole. o Classical Foundationalists include: Descartes, Hume, McGrew, Chisholm, Moser, and Bonjour (who deserted the coherentist camp). o Some Coherentists are: Lehrer, Quine, Carnap, Dewey, Pierce, and Dancy. So, turning first to, FOUNDATIONALISM: ITS CORE TENETS (i) There are some ‘basic empirical beliefs’; i.e., empirical beliefs which are in some sense self-warranting and thus do not derive their justification from other empirical beliefs. E.g. ‘it is raining now.’ This is true and it needs no further justification (other than the fact that it is raining now). (ii) Those of our empirical beliefs which do not fall into the basic beliefs category derive their justification ultimately from those basic beliefs... though they may also receive justificatory support from other non-basic empirical beliefs. E.g., ‘if I do not bring in the lawn chairs, the cushions will be soaked.’ We may term the beliefs in this category ‘inferentially justified beliefs’ or ‘non-basic beliefs’. So, ‘if I do not bring in the law chairs, the cushions will be soaked’, is an inferential belief that derives its justification from the aforementioned ‘basic empirical belief’ ‘it is raining now’ and the inference ‘cushions out in the rain will get wet’ etc…. (iii) According to foundationalists, all justified empirical beliefs must fall into one or other of these two categories: basic beliefs and inferentially justified beliefs. 2 The following quotation from Timm Triplett nicely catches the inner dynamics of foundationalism: ‘Justificatory relations are linear and one-directional. Foundational propositions justify non-foundational propositions and not vice-versa.’ (T. Triplett, ‘Recent Work in Foundationalism’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 27 (1990), 93-116 (p. 93): copy on Moodle) Since, however, there are few (if any) beliefs that are infallible, then if your basic belief is reliant on a belief system (e.g. looking up at the sky and seeing the dark clouds of rain on their way), problems re relativity to that system loom large regarding how reliable your belief system is, e.g., looking up at the clouds and expecting rain is one thing, but examining a cat’s entrails is not a good belief system when backing a horse… or consulting your horoscopes on who you should decide to marry…. COHERENTISM: ITS KEY TENETS: – (i) Coherentism denies that there are any privileged basic empirical beliefs. (ii) The key idea of coherentism is that all empirical justification is inferential to a greater or lesser degree, i.e., all empirical beliefs derive their justification from other empirical beliefs (i.e., there are no true ones in themselves in isolation…). (iii) To be justified an empirical belief must fit into the system of such beliefs in a consistent manner, receive positive support from the system and have no significant negative impact on that system. E.g. a clue of evidence of a crime for a detective… (Precise definitions of ‘coherence’ vary from coherentist to coherentist… for a comprehensive example, see Lehrer below/next week) Triplett also nicely catches the essence of coherentism: ‘Justificatory relations are interdependent and multi-directional... Belief revision can only come from within the system and no prior judgment can be made about what beliefs will fail to cohere with the system as a whole. Thus no belief or type of belief is in principle immune from revision.’ (Triplett: APQ, 1990, p. 94) 3 FOUNDATIONALISM AND THE REGRESS OF JUSTIFICATION (IRA) The central argument for FOUNDATIONALISM has always been the ‘infinite regress argument’ (IRA) which goes back to Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics. The IRA is a response to what is termed the ‘regress problem’ i.e. the problem which inevitably arises when we begin to ask such questions as ‘How is A’s belief that p justified?’ A variety of responses present themselves, and the IRA is the argument that only one of those responses is, in the end, tenable, as the others lead either to a justificational dead end, or to an infinite regress of justificatory moves (which is possibly worse as it has no end in sight at all!!). THE MAIN VARIETIES OF ‘BELIEF CHAINS’: RESPONSES TO THE REGRESS PROBLEM (I) UNANCHORED CHAINS: (A) INFINITE CHAINS (B) CIRCULAR CHAINS (II) ANCHORED CHAINS: (A) INSECURELY ANCHORED CHAINS (B) SECURELY ANCHORED CHAINS RE: (I) (A) …on the road to nowhere… (I) (B) … this is like coherentism in some sense… (II) (A) … scepticism looms here…. Duncan Prichard called this ‘Agrippa’s Trilemma’: we have the choice between 3 equally unpalatable options re the problem of your justification of our beliefs as they are either: (1) unsupported; or (2) can be justified only through an infinite chain; or (3) can be justified through circular argument…] (II) (B) … but how many of these are there (can there be…?) FOUNDATIONALISM argues, via the IRA, that only some version of (II) (B) provides a proper response to the ‘regress problem’. One of the main enemies of FOUNDATIONALISM, the COHERENTIST Laurence Bonjour, recognises the importance of the ‘regress problem’ and the IRA in epistemology in general and, in particular, their role in FOUNDATIONALISM. In his book, The Structure of Empirical Knowledge, (1985), p.18, Bonjour claims that the regress problem is ‘perhaps the most crucial in the entire theory of knowledge.’ (Important Note: Bonjour has now switched sides in this debate! He’s a foundationalist…) 4  SOME TEXTS ARISTOTLE: ‘Some hold that, owing to the necessity of knowing the primary premisses, there is no scientific knowledge. Others think there is, but that all truths are demonstrable. Neither doctrine is either true or a necessary deduction from the premisses. The first school, assuming that there is no way of knowing other than by demonstration, maintain that an infinite regress is involved, on the ground that if behind the prior stands no primary, we could not know the posterior through the prior wherein they are right (for one cannot traverse an infinite series): if on the other hand—they say—the series terminates and there are primary premisses, yet these are unknowable because incapable of demonstration, which according to them is the only form of knowledge. And since thus one cannot know the primary premisses, knowledge of the conclusions which follow from them is not pure scientific knowledge nor properly knowing at all, but rests on the mere supposition that the premisses are true. The other party agree with them as regards knowing, holding that it is only possible by demonstration, but they see no difficulty in holding that all truths are demonstrated, on the ground that demonstration may be circular and reciprocal. Our own doctrine is that not all knowledge is demonstrative: on the contrary, knowledge of the immediate premisses is independent of demonstration. (The necessity of this is obvious: for since we must know the prior premisses from which the demonstration is drawn, and since the regress must end in immediate truths, those truths must be indemonstrable.) Such, then, is our doctrine, and in addition we maintain that besides scientific knowledge there is its originative source which enables us to recognize the definitions’ (Aristotle: Posterior Analytics, 72b3-24) AQUINAS: ‘Now a truth can come into the mind in two ways, namely, as known in itself, and as known through another. What is known in itself is like a principle, and is perceived immediately by the mind…{e.g. the whole is greater than the sum of its parts}. A truth, however, which is known through another is understood only through an inquiry of reason of which it is the terminus [=the end result of a process of reasoning and experience..]’ (Aquinas:ST:1-2ae q.57 Iª-IIae q. 57 a. 2 co. ; cf. also, for more of this Angelic Doctor’s remarks on sense knowledge etc… at Ia., Q84, a2: SUMMA THEOLOGIAE: How the soul while united to the body understands corporeal things beneath it (Prima Pars, Q. 84) (newadvent.org) for those interested…) Anthony Quinton ‘The Foundations of Knowledge’ (1966): ‘The idea that knowledge forms an ordered hierarchical system is not a new one, but it has been particularly prominent... in the last 50 years.’ Roderick Chisholm Theory of Knowledge (2nd ed. p.19): ‘We might try to continue ad infinitum justifying each new claim by still another claim...but if we are rational beings we will not...we will look for a proper stopping place.’ 5  Timothy McGrew: Western Michigan University McGrew notes that either questions and answers go on forever and we never reach the end of the matter or one ‘reaches a claim so basic that (one) can fairly be said to be justified in believing it without having reasoned (one’s) way to it via other beliefs’ (McGrew, T. ‘A defence of classical foundationalism’, p. 224) Anthony Quinton in The Nature of Things p.119: ‘If any beliefs are to be justified at all [...] there must be terminal beliefs that do not owe their credibility to others [...] there must be a kind of belief that does not owe its justification to the support provided by other beliefs [...] unless this were so no belief would be justified at all.’ The late W.V.O. Quine (1908-2000) Quine on Holistic coherence: ‘our statements about the external world face the tribunal of sense experience not individually, but only as a corporate body […] the unit of empirical significance is the whole of science.’ (From Quine’s ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’) Wittgenstein in On Certainty: Sec.253 (see re insecurely anchored chains) ‘At the foundation of well-founded beliefs there lie beliefs which are not well founded.’ EPISTEMIC JUSTIFICATION 2: SOME TEXTS Classical foundationalism (CF) is committed to a very strong version of the tenets of foundationalism. CF holds that not only are there some basic empirical beliefs which are self-warranting in some sense—but also that the sense of ‘self- warranting’ involved is best captured by words like ‘certain’, ‘self-evident’, or ‘incorrigible’. Moreover, CF is inclined towards the view that the only genuine means by which justification can be transferred from the basic beliefs to the non- basics is via some pattern of logically deductive inference. {This is because a valid logical inference is self-evidently and necessarily true, hence, no room for error here…} It is the sheer strength of these claims which has left CF open to a range of traditional attacks. Descartes is often seen as the great champion of CF. 6 (a) Classical Foundationalism (CF) and the status of Basic Beliefs: ‘If anything is to be probable, then something must be CERTAIN. The data which eventually support a genuine probability must be themselves CERTAINTIES. We do have such ABSOLUTE CERTAINTIES.’ [C.I. LEWIS, An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation (1946) chapt. 7…p. 186: An Analysis Of Knowledge And Valuation Clarence Irving Lewis : Clarence Irving Lewis : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive] {so, we can only talk about probabilities when we have known certainties…if everything is probably true, nothing is probably true!!} (b) ‘incorrigibility’ is usually defined somewhat as follows: ‘p is incorrigible for A if it is impossible that A should believe p and that someone could show A that he is mistaken in his belief’ (For a discussion of an array of words such as ‘incorrigible’, ‘indubitable’ etc cf. the famous paper by W. Alston, ‘Varieties of Privileged Access’, in Chisholm and Swartz (ed): Empirical Knowledge: Readings from Contemporary Sources, (1973), p. 389 ff. ‘incorrigible = not capable of being corrected/ mistaken … ‘indubitable = not capable of being doubted … ‘infallible’ = not capable of being wrong … ‘irrefutable’ = not capable of being repelled by any argument … ‘unreliable’ = not capable of being relied upon/ depended upon … ‘indefeasible’ = not capable of being destroyed/ beaten/ annulled… (c) The Cartesian source for the Classical Foundationalists notion of basic empirical beliefs: ‘I am the one who feels, that is to say, who perceives certain things, as by the organs of sense, since in truth I see light, I hear noise, I feel heat. But, it will be said, these phenomena are false and I am dreaming. Let it be so: still[and here is the passage to note particularly] IT IS AT LEAST QUITE CERTAIN THAT IT SEEMS TO ME THAT I SEE LIGHT, THAT I HEAR NOISE AND THAT I FEEL HEAT.THAT CANNOT BE FALSE.’ (Med.2 Key Writings, p.143) {…here we have ‘certitude’ whatever about ‘certainty’…} (d) Chisholm’s example: In the 2nd ed of Theory of Knowledge, p 26ff, Chisholm cites the above passage from Descartes and goes on to present his own view on how we should understand basic, foundational empirical states. Rejecting the suggestion that we might settle for either ‘Something appears white to me’ or ‘I am appeared to white by something’ he finally goes for the famous (infamous?):’I am being appeared whitely to’. (He is using white as 7  an adverb as it is qualifying the activity of the appearing….whatever about being mistaken about the white object!!!) (Note Tim McGrew in his 1995 The Foundations of Knowledge plumps for ‘incorrigible’ cartesian basics! His example: ‘I am experiencing this’ where ‘this’ can be replaced by e.g. ‘a headache’ etc., see McGrew’s 1997 paper p. 228. Bonjour, since his recent conversion, also goes down this route.) (e) The transmission of justification and the so-called ‘Thin Basics’ problem. The late Roderick Chisholm (a foundationalist) recognises the transmission problem: ‘the transfer of evidence... constitutes one of the most important and most difficult tasks of the theory of knowledge. And it is a topic that has been somewhat neglected in contemporary writings.’ (Chisholm: Theory of Knowledge, p. 49) The problem seems to be this. Here’s Dancy on the ‘thin basics’ problem: ‘If the content of an allegedly incorrigible [infallible] belief is merely that things are looking that way to me [...], there is clearly less room for correction [error] [… as] the less the content, the less the risk and the greater the chance of incorrigibility—it seems probable that a belief can only be genuinely incorrigible if it has no content at all. [...] The point [...] is that the incorrigible [infallible] beliefs are intended [...] to act as those by appeal to which all other beliefs are to be justified. They are the basic beliefs [...]. To perform this role they need to have sufficient content to be used as premises in the inferences involved [... (however)...] with the reduction in content required to keep them incorrigible [infallible], it seems unlikely that any interesting beliefs about the past, future, the unobserved or even our present material surroundings could ever be justified by appeal to them.’ (Jonathan Dancy: Contemporary Epistemology, p. 60.) (I have replaced the word ‘infallible’ in Dancy’s text with the word ‘incorrigible’ and the word ‘error’ with the word ‘correction’...the underlining is also mine{HMcC}…on this see also W.P. Alston’s paper ‘Two types of Foundationalism’ in The Journal of Philosophy vol.73, 1976, p.185) 8 (f) Modest Foundationalists and Basic beliefs: Laurence Bonjour: University of Washington ‘...many recent foundationists (sic) have felt that even (this) relatively modest version of strong foundationism (sic) is still too strong... their alternative is a view which may be called weak foundationism (sic)’ (L. Bonjour in the APQ 1978 p. 4) ‘One matter for the antifoundationalist to take special note of is the emergence since 1975 of versions of foundationalism that make more modest claims than the theory associated with Descartes. It is not clear that the standard arguments against foundationalism will work against these newer, more modest theories.’ (Timm Triplett in the APQ 1990, p.93) ‘The terminal beliefs needed to bring the regress of justification to a stop need not be strictly self-evident in the sense that they somehow justify themselves. All that is required is that they should not owe their justification to any other beliefs.’(A. Quinton: The Nature of Things, p. 119) (g) The passage from Goodman quoted with approval by Mark Pastin in his ‘modest foundationalism’ paper in the Pappas/Swain anthology: ‘Somewhere along the line some statements […] must have initial credibility [...]. To say that some statements must be initially credible if any statement is even to be credible at all is not to say that any statement is immune from withdrawal.’ ‘some statements may be said to have SOME DEGREE OF WARRANT independent of (and in some sense prior to) the warrant which they may derive from other statements.’ (Roderick Firth: ‘Coherence, Certainty and Epistemic Priority’ in Chisholm & Swartz ed Empirical Knowledge.) (i) The Sellars/Bonjour Anti-Foundationalist Argument: 1. S’s ‘basic’ belief B has the property P 2. S believes that beliefs having the property P are justified 3. Thus S believes that belief B is justified 9 Reflecting on this little argument and noting that S actually has a reasoned justification for believing B, Bonjour concludes: ‘We get the disturbing result that B is not basic at all...’ because the claim that P is (1.) ‘basic’ [foundational] is derived itself from two other beliefs that the foundationalist has (2. & 3.). This, for Bonjour, is the most detrimental aspect to the foundationalist theory. Foundationalists tend to identify foundationalist beliefs as incorrigible but the foundationalist-basic beliefs are themselves contingent beliefs that are true in some possible worlds and false in others (‘water runs downhill’ is a ‘basic belief’ …but not in space…). One cannot thus justify the basic beliefs without at the same time opposing their status as basic. Falling back onto such a weak (rather than strong) foundationalism... however, is not very convincing… so the attacks on it... lead to…some form of coherent theory of justification….. (L. Bonjour: The Structure of Empirical Knowledge, p. 32—note that Bonjour no longer supports coherentism—he has now become a strong classical foundationalist and he rejects the Sellars/Bonjour argument, see, Laurence Bonjour, ‘Toward a Defense of Empirical Foundationalism’, in Resurrecting Old-Fashioned Foundationalism, ed. by Michael R. DePaul, pp. 21-38.) 10