Discriminating Presuppositionalism

A few days ago, a friend asked me for my thoughts on this video. 

At the outset, the author, David Pallmann, asks, 

Just what is presuppositional apologetics? It is a school of apologetics which tries to show that Christianity is true via a transcendental argument (minute 1).

Now, this is quite a narrow view of presuppositionalism, especially in light of my own criticisms (as a presuppositionalist) of other presuppositionalists who thought transcendental argumentation could conceivably enable one to reason to God (link). His classification of versions of presuppositionalism which might differ from that of Greg Bahnsen as "deviant" (minute 8) is rather restrictive. If nothing else, I hope this post illustrates that one ought to discriminate the varieties of presuppositionalist perspectives. 

Mine bears an affinity with that of Gordon Clark and does not attempt to "show" (prove?) that Christianity is true via argumentation. Any arguments Clark might have made function as a defense of Christianity; but the arguments are not meant to function as "proofs," as if God's word (Clark's foundation or axiom) could have somehow been the conclusion to a (circular?) argument. 

Many flawed criticisms of Clark by fellow believers rest on a conflation between apologetics and epistemology. See my distinction between the two here. In short, apologetics or arguments presuppose epistemology or knowledge [of the most basic premise]. The two must be kept distinct. Apologetics is subordinate to epistemology. 

Another mistake is to think Clark was a traditional coherentist. Even people who claim to follow Clark's view sometimes make this mistake. He was a foundationalist. See point 5 here. A reason people make this mistake is because Clark accepted a coherence theory of truth; while I disagree with Clark on this, the point is that a coherence theory of truth (i.e. a definition of truth) is different than coherentism in epistemology (i.e. how we come to know the truth). See here.  

At minute mark 5, David says: 

In this video, I want to explore a response that has been periodically hinted at in the literature but is never, to my knowledge, been fully developed. I intend to defend the thesis that human reasoning is autonomous.

Given that his final quote in the video is from a chapter on autonomous human reason in a book written as a challenge to presuppositionalism (free on Kindle Unlimited here, by the way), I found this quote confusing. Does he think that his video or channel fully develops a thesis Joe Depoe does not?

Regarding the idea of autonomous human reason, in 1943, Clark anticipated the idea that this might be a problem for presuppositionalists in an article he wrote for The Presbyterian Guardian (link). Clark says: 

A rational being, the liberals argue, cannot abdicate the throne of his autonomy. He cannot avoid the necessity of making the final decision, and even if he decides to abdicate, it is he who decides. Further, if he should abdicate, the question would always remain whether or not he should reascend the throne - and again it would be he who would make the decision. 

The liberal continues: Reason cannot abdicate because it must choose from among different alleged revelations. And to try to persuade a person of the truth of a revelation implies that there is a common ground of persuasion. That common ground is reason. Anyone who argues or persuades at all recognizes reason as the final court.

Is there any reply that an orthodox Christian can make without denying the principle of authority? 

The first observation is that the fact that a decision is our own does not imply that we are the final authority. If a person wishes to measure a distance, there are essentially only two ways of doing it. He may look at the distance and guess its length. This is not a very accurate method, nor does it make the guesser the final court of appeal; but it illustrates the attempt to make one's unaided reason the final court. The second method is to use an accurate measuring device such as a yardstick. In using this method, it is we, of course, who make the decision, but we appeal to the yardstick. And the second method has the advantage of being much more accurate. In such a situation, most people do not object to being bound by an external authority. 

Since all analogies have their limits, a second observation must question the matter of abdication. To abdicate a throne, it is absolutely essential first to be on the throne. A person who has never been king cannot possibly abdicate. The liberals simply assume that man is on the throne, but that is the very point at issue. If God is on the throne, and if man is not autonomous, then the liberal argument is completely irrelevant. 

A third observation is all that the present limits allow. The liberal has argued that we must choose the yardstick, one revelation among other alleged revelations, and that no doubt we seek to persuade others of the truth of the revelation we have chosen. But to persuade is to appeal to the common ground of reason. 

This very plausible argument is obtained only by misunderstanding the implications of supernaturalism. To convict supernaturalism of inconsistency, it is necessary to represent it accurately. The plausibility of the objection to orthodox Christianity results from combining a supernatural view of revelation with a purely naturalistic view of persuasion. And the result is easily shown to be inconsistent. But if persuasion and revelation both are understood supernaturally, no inconsistency can be found. For, be it observed, there is no such thing as a common ground between the Christian and a nonchristian system. From a, world naturalistically conceived, one cannot argue to the God of the Christians. From a world-view that denies all revelation, one cannot produce a Biblical revelation. Persuasion therefore is not an appeal to a common ground or to a nonchristian reason. Persuasion must be regarded as a supernatural work of the Holy Spirit. The true Christian presents the Christian faith to unbelievers, he explains it and shows it in its fullness. Then the Christian prays that the Holy Spirit regenerate, his auditor, renew his mind, and enable him to see the truth of what has been said. This is not an appeal to experience, or to reason, or to a common ground; it is an appeal to the sovereign God of the universe.

Around minute 10, David says: 

By assumptions and presuppositions, I mean beliefs that are taken to be true apart from independent non-circular justification. In other words, I reject the idea that there are any beliefs that must be accepted without a justifying reason. 

I found this confusing too, since David elsewhere claims to be a foundationalist. The above quote appears to be a form of infinitism (link), not foundationalism. Unless I am misunderstanding him, his statement is not consistent with the rest of his video. 

At minute 12:20, David cites Timothy and Lydia McGrew: 

...to claim that there can be genuine epistemic principles that although rationally dubitable cannot be defended against someone who is skeptical about them is to allow an indefensible proposition to have epistemic weight. 

I had to read my own copy of that book for some context. The context is this: "Regardless of whether... a proposition is true, if it really is indefensible, it cannot be used as a premise to justify belief in anything else. If it is indefensible, it is epistemically irrelevant" (Internalism and Epistemology, pg. 80).

The question seems to be whether indefensible propositions can have epistemic weight (positive epistemic status). David blows by this question very quickly - too quickly (at this point) to allow for the nuance necessary to address the question. 

For instance, let's start with this: do axioms/foundations have positive epistemic weight? Well, a foundationalist had better say that in certain cases (i.e. God's word), "Yes, we can know axioms without having to defend them." There is positive epistemic weight regardless of whether we attempt to defend them. If God's word is our axiom and we can't know our axiom, then we are in trouble (this position is known as positism; link). 

Now, does the above mean that it is impossible to defend axioms/foundations? In one sense, yes; in another no. The epistemic justification of an axiom/foundation is not determined by a prior reason, premise, etc. For a foundationalist - as was alluded to above - the positive epistemic status must be intrinsic to the truth of the axiom/foundation itself. I interact with contemporary epistemologists on this very point here and here. 

On the other hand, it is possible to "apologetically" defend one's axiom/foundation. What does this mean? It means that in everyday conversations with others, one can point out that his axiom/foundation coheres with that which is derivable from it, that it answers important questions, etc. It is in this sense that we can understand Clark's affirmation that: "by the systems they produce, axioms must be judged." 

A self-defeating axiom cannot be defended (or known), whereas a self-consistent axiom can be defended insofar as the claims of its adherent can be harmonious, although we should not say we know said axiom by means of this or any other such defense. 

In other words, I agree with his denial around minute 13 of any attempt to circularly justify a knowledge-claim. I (and Clark) reject traditional coherentism, since it would be impossible to discriminate between circles without a foundational principle (like John Frame's foundational principle about the different between "narrow" and "broad" circles at minute 14; how could Frame say one is better than the other without assuming axiomatically that there is a difference in desirability?). 

As an aside, it's a bit funny that if Van Tilians defend traditional coherentism, then Clark's presuppositionalism is somehow "deviant." One would think that the very name of "presupposition"alism would more closely associate with foundationalism, not coherentism. 

Anyways, the point is that apologetic defenses of axioms/foundations are practical and persuasive, not epistemic. I put it this way in a post I have elsewhere said (link) I am planning to write in response to an article by Dan Kemp (link), whom David cites at minute 14:40:

When a mom calls a child to dinner, she doesn’t need to identify who she is for the child to "know" who is calling. If she did identify herself, such self-attestation ("Ryan Hedrich, your mom is calling you!") wouldn’t be "needed"... but it also wouldn’t be unreasonable. Self-attestation might serve as a reminder to the child to take her words seriously. Aside from questions of knowledge, such reminders might have a psychological or pragmatic purpose (e.g. behavior reinforcement, mindfulness).

Apologetics or defenses of our axioms can be useful in terms of being means by which the Spirit convicts the hearts of others without thereby becoming premises or reasons by which we somehow circularly know the axioms/foundations. Indeed, our methods for apologetic defenses ought themselves to be derivable from our axiom/foundation (e.g. 1 Peter 3, Acts 17, etc.). 

One final point. A phrase that David cites which caught my eye is "rationally dubitable." If David is talking about principles that are open to rational doubt and whether these can be defended in the face of a skeptic, he seems to suggest that if the answer is no, there is a problem. But if I am understanding him correctly, I don't see the problem? If something is "open to doubt" (dubitable), of course it is possible a skeptic is going to doubt it. In fact, some skeptics will even claim to doubt even those things which are indubitable, such as the revelation or promises of God. Just because we can't prove to the skeptic that God's word is God's word (or would David claim to be able to do this?) does not mean there is a problem - nor does it mean that our axiom/foundation is "rationally dubitable" after all. On this point, the problem with the skeptic is ethical. He refuses to submit to the self-justifying truth of God's word. 

Maybe I am misunderstanding what David means by a "defense" - or maybe I am misunderstanding something else But this is why it is important to provide some nuance to statements and quotes of other authors. Instead, David skips quickly to the claim that he sees no other way forward than to vindicate deduction and induction. That is much too fast a conclusion. If it isn't a non sequitur, then at the very least, I couldn't follow his reasoning. 

At around 18:30, David distinguishes between "self-justifying" beliefs and "immediately justified" beliefs. He thinks the former implies justificatory circularity (traditional coherentism) and the latter implies foundationalism. I disagree with his definitions, and so do contemporary epistemologists - see here, where Jeremy Fantl refers to "self-justifying" reasons or beliefs in the context of foundationalism. But to be clear, I also reject justificatory circularity. 

I've read Fumerton's work. I actually quite like him. I gave a former student his introductory book on epistemology. At the same time, I don't agree with everything Fumerton says (link). And I suspect that the idea of "direct acquaintance" (which David gets from Fumerton) might be another area of disagreement. He says: 

Direct acquaintance with correspondence between truth-bearer and truth-maker ensures that the belief is justified and infallibly so... Direct acquaintance is not itself a belief but it relates a subject to a fact in such a way that the subject is aware of the correspondence between his thought and the fact that makes it true. 

Notice what is being argued: justification for beliefs depends on "acquaintance." But "acquaintance" is not itself a belief. Well, if "acquaintance" is not a belief, can "acquaintance" be a truth-bearer? If it can't, then how is it that "acquaintance" can "ensure" the justification of beliefs? Can that which does not bear a truth-value function as a justification for that which does? 

In other words, what does it even mean to say that direct acquaintance can "ensure" justification? That sounds suspiciously like saying that acquaintance is itself a logically distinct and preceding justificatory condition for one's belief(s) - a reason. But this would undermine the David's claim to be a foundationalist. 

Relatedly, a topic in contemporary epistemology is how something without that is neither true nor false - say, a sensory experience qua experience - could function as a justification for the truth or falsity of a proposition[al belief]. This seems to be a directly relevant question, for David goes on to say: "...one can be immediately justified through direct perceptual awareness..." 

Notice the word "perceptual" (and see his headache example at minute 21 and his direct reference to sensation at 21:30). Recall every Clarkian argument against empirical knowledge (link). He even admits that one's sensations may not correspond to external states of affairs (but attempts to suggest that our beliefs regarding our private experiences are not open to question - this move doesn't work insofar as David later admits to holding to fallibilism, contrary to his above statement that direct acquaintance can ensure "infallible" justification, on which see below). 

In short, his reply to possible objections at minute 22 is dismissive and avoidant. He responds to an easy objection while failing to address more difficult ones (how is "direct acquaintance" able to function as justification). This is a meta-epistemic concern, but meta-epistemology has direct relevance to normative epistemology. Analogously, infinitism is a meta-epistemic position on the structure of epistemic justification. If infinitism is inherently problematic, an infinitist does not actually know anything by the structure he claims is correct. If "direct acquaintance" is inherently problematic, a direct acquantaincist does not actually know anything by "direct acquaintance" (so-called).

This gets a little deep, but here is another question David fails to entertain: while I agree that there is a correspondence between truths and other realities - I reject the idea that everything is metaphysically reducible to [sets of] propositions - does that mean non-propositional realities (like my body) are truth-makers (like propositions about my body)? 

As a Reformed Christian, I rather think that God is the truth-maker of all propositions. In particular, it is He who determined the truth-values of contingent propositions in accordance with His eternal decree. As such, it's possible that the truths God has eternally decreed may, in some way, actually be means by which non-propositions (like my body, which is not eternal) are made. For a probably clearer idea of what I'm getting at, read this article by Clark in which he writes: "when compared with verses in the Pentateuch the words strongly suggest that the visible world came from a suprasensible, ideal world."

Moving ahead to minute 26: "Knowledge does not require certainty." Three questions: 

1) Is David certain of this? If not, wouldn't such an admission be problematic in the possible case that certainty actually is required for one's beliefs to count as knowledge (a possibility which I don't understand how he could rule out non-arbitrarily)? 

2) I thought that David earlier said, "Direct acquaintance with correspondence between truth-bearer and truth-maker ensures that the belief is justified and infallibly so..." What happened? When is and is not infallibility applicable to one's beliefs? 

3) If knowledge does not require certainty, then what does it mean to say that any beliefs are "justified"? 

Around 30:30, David shows the three potential responses to Aristotle's transcendental argument for the laws of logic. They are ones I've encountered and thought about before. In response, I will offer three counters: 

1. David basically says that "Aristotle might be right that one must think in accordance with the laws of logic, but that this doesn't establish anything is true." In response, two questions: 1) What is the David's alethiology (theory of truth)? Perhaps one's alethiology (which might entail consistency amongst true propositions) would entail that in accordance with said theory, the laws of logic cannot be false. He somewhat gets around to this at minute 37. 2) If David acknowledges that one cannot speak without first assuming the laws of logic, then his own response admittedly presupposes the laws of logic. But in that case, is it legitimate to use that which he might purport to reject? Is it legitimate to admit that a hilltop (truth) can only be reached by climbing a ladder (the laws of logic) and then from said hilltop deny that he ever used a ladder? Ironically, in another video David makes against presuppositionalists, he cites a "magic 8-ball" illustration that it seems he himself falls prey to here. 

2. David's response to Aristotle certainly isn't a persuasive response. But that's how I interpret a correctly oriented defense of the laws of logic in the first place: again, a defense or apologetic needn't be interpreted as a circular justification. 

3. David's reference to dialetheism returns us to the question of alethiology. This is probably the strongest counter he raises (then again, he addresses his own concerns by providing a very good quote at 38:55 which undercuts dialetheim). I needn't say much more, since David denies dialetheism himself (44:45ff.).

Nevertheless, I will offer a few more thoughts. In particular, are there some cases in which the law of noncontradiction do not hold? Typically, a dialetheist will not be a trivialist; he will not suggest that every pair of contradictories can be or are true (which is subject to the principle of explosion). 

Underlying this theory, then, seems the assumption of alethic particularism: rather than start with a broad, theory of truth (e.g. consistency among propositions which may correspond to kinds of realities), we might start with what we consider are intuitive and particular examples of truths - some of which might consist of contradictories which can both be "true" - and attempt to form a resultant theory of truth (such as dialetheism) with these examples in mind. 

While I would like to flesh an argument against dialetheism further than I am able at present, given the above, one possible line of argument against it and its implicit alethic particularism could perhaps be made along the same lines as I have made against epistemic particularism (in isolation from epistemic methodism) here.  

This is probably a more important point than I can emphasize here, for repeatedly in the video, David often uses paradigm cases to defend his position. For example, at minute 36:10, he uses an particular example that he assumes his audience will agree is justified to defend a broader methodological principle. That is, in appealing to his audience's intuitions, he appears to be a particularist, and if he is not, he does not sufficiently distance himself from particularism; a quote around minute 52 might obliquely allude to it, but even there, not enough context in the quote is provided to even understand its purpose. 

With the above in mind, can logic justify logic? No. Again, circularity is not the structure of epistemic justification. In other words, we do not know anything by reasoning in a circle. As I've mentioned before, though, we can still make arguments for propositions we know non-inferentially or foundationally. These arguments do not justify said foundations but can function to persuade others [especially that alternatives to our view are non-viable]. 

The laws of logic in particular are embedded within the Scripturalist's foundation as a subsidiary, ontological precondition for knowledge, as I argue here and here. Thus, our knowing them is, in conjunction with our knowledge of God's revelation, immediate or non-inferential.  

I don't have much further to say about his discussion on analyticity, except to note that he doesn't think he needs to explain how we have them "so long as we do" (minute 26:30). Well, does he have concepts? If the answer is potentially "no," that is a serious problem. 

But as I said in an earlier post, God's word is not rationally dubitable. The problem the skeptic has is one of ethical rebellion (which affects his ability to reason soundly, not his ability to reason validly per se a la Clark). 

David's part of the video on induction was extremely weak. He did not address the question of what number of observable cases would suffice for epistemic justification. He does not address what constitutes a "large sample." The concept of "large" is finite and therefore relative. As one might approach infinitely many observations, any concrete number of observations is infinitesimally small by comparison... in which case, is not an inductivist's epistemic justification (and "confidence" therein) virtually (as well as really) non-existent? This is a much more difficult issue than David intimates. 

In my opinion, the best one can expect on this topic is doxastic defendability. A Scripturalist (and only a Scripturalist, insofar as any kind of "defenses" are parasitic upon internalist and infallibilist "knowledge") might be able to defend his extra-Scriptural beliefs to the extent that they conform to his alleged experiences (this would be inductive), but he must also be open to revising such beliefs in the case of alleged defeaters, e.g. experiences which do not conform to what he has experienced previously. This theory only would apply to extra-Scriptural information, and it would not qualify as strict epistemic justification (although we might also colloquially refer to any such beliefs as "known"). 

Another reason the response to the problem of induction was weak was because David only went so far as to address Hume's skepticism. Clark's concerns regarding induction - as an anti-empiricist - deserved more attention than Hume's. 

My friend mentioned that he thought David is an evidentialist. In his last part of the video, I can see why: he says as much. In particular, at 1:00:50, he cites an author who says, "the epistemic justification of a belief is determined by the quality of the believer's evidence for the belief." Again, I am confused how such a view can be consistent with foundationalism. If foundations do not rely on evidence, then one's justification for one's foundational beliefs cannot fall within the realm of an evidentialist theory. David appears plainly inconsistent on several points. 

David concludes, "...the Christian [presuppositional] apologist tries to gerrymander the rules of epistemology..." 

I had a good chuckle at this! Still, I enjoyed the video insofar as I'm glad to see professed Christians engaging in contemporary epistemological issues. I agreed with him regarding foundationalism, the resolvability of paradoxes, and some other points. I wouldn't want my above responses to be taken as suggesting his videos are valueless, only that, as with anyone (Clark and myself included), one must wisely apply discrimination where appropriate.

Infinitism: Transcriptions of Various Papers

Back when I was a public policy undergraduate and thought I might segue into a graduate program for philosophy, I was just beginning to learn the language of and popular topics in contemporary epistemology. I continued to use my free time (and probably time I ought to have been studying) researching and writing posts on this blog.

Typically, I would take on an annual "project," research whose content was more in depth and focused, and I've posted most of them. Some of these larger projects overlapped with my essay submissions for the annual TrinityFoundation contests. Others were various transcriptions, like a near comprehensive compilation of Gordon Clark's epistemological views from available publications at the time.

Another such project that I haven't posted until now was preparation for a literature review on infinitism that I thought could be used for a master's thesis and expanded, down the road, in a PhD dissertation. While I can't quite bring myself to call the university door entirely shut for me, I did apply once many years ago (using a polished edit of this post as my writing sample) and was rejected.

Thus, I don't know that I will ever return to the classroom as student instead of teacher. So to give myself some solace that my youthful energy did not go to waste, hopefully somebody finds useful my 1000+ pages of transcribed, collated philosophy papers on the epistemological concept of "infinitism," which can be found here. Each paper was found on google scholar, and while it may be missing a few of the longer, book-length treatments, I believe it is otherwise fairly comprehensive up until around 2011.

P.S. For those who are interested in the topic of infinitism in general, this book is excellent.

Contemporary Epistemology: Positism

History

There is very little that has been said about the positist theory of the structure of epistemic justification, probably because there are so few adherents. It has been explicitly acknowledged as a distinct position only recently. James van Cleve’s contribution to Contemporary Debates in Epistemology (2005, link) is the first instance in which I encountered the term, and I have not found anything prior to that essay which mentions “positism” in an epistemic context. He defines it there as the belief that “chains of justifying reasons can terminate in reasons that are not justified themselves, but are simply individual or societal posits” (pg. 168). In a footnote to this essay, van Cleve writes:

The distinction between positism and foundationalism is lost on those who cannot hear the word “justified” as anything but a past participle, implying that some act or relation of justifying has occurred whereby a belief is justified by something else that serves as a reason for it. For foundationalists, “justified” simply connotes a favorable epistemic status, which a belief may have even though the subject has no reason for it. In this connection, another term, such as “evident” or “credible,” might be less misleading than “justified.” (pg. 178)

In other words, van Cleve believes a positist would admit his basic beliefs do not have a favorable epistemic status. It's just a belief one has, and on the basis of this belief other beliefs of his can be “justified,” or one can be “justified” in coming to believe other things. Ryan Herbert (link) defines positism similarly, stating positists hold that basic beliefs “can serve to justify other beliefs” (pg. 15), although these basic beliefs “are not autonomously warranted and… are neither epistemically justified nor unjustified” (pg. 14). [Herbert slightly misstates positism when he says this, as positists do view basic beliefs as epistemically unjustified. He also does not seem to distinguish, as Engel does, between doxastic and personal justification (see below).] Herbert adds that this encompasses both doxastic and propositional justification (pg. 15), which is significant in comparison to some who are infinitists about propositional but not doxastic justification. 

Both van Cleve and Herbert credit the origin of positism to what Ludwig Wittgenstein called “hinge” propositions: 

…the questions that we raise and our doubts depend upon the fact that some propositions are exempt from doubt, are as it were like hinges on which those turn.  

That is to say, it belongs to the logic of our scientific investigations that certain things are in deed not doubted.  

But it isn’t that the situation is like this: We just can’t investigate everything, and for that reason we are forced to rest content with assumption. If I want the door to turn, the hinges must stay put. (On Certainty, §§341-3)

Any act of questioning or doubting presupposes we believe certain propositions. In a skeptical context, question or doubt has to relate to some (or even all) propositions, but that is to already acknowledge, in some sense, the existence of this or these propositions, or at least that which gives this or these propositions meaning. In short, one can't deny, doubt, or question all propositions without rendering those denials, doubts, or questions unintelligible.

Wittgenstein goes on to say hinge propositions can’t be known, but that may just be due to his definition of knowledge: “One says “I know” when one is ready to give compelling grounds. “I know” relates to a possibility of demonstrating the truth” (On Certainty, §243). John Robbins had a similar definition, and I very much doubt he was a positist. In any case, it is obvious that on this definition, only something believed by inference can be “known.” If one were to have confronted Wittgenstein with a different definition of knowledge that would not have automatically ruled out basic beliefs – perhaps this happened – I am unsure of how Wittgenstein would have replied. Positism does remind me of the emotivist position taken up by the logical positivists (link), and Wittgenstein was involved with this latter group in the early part of his life. I still think it would be too ambitious to call Wittgenstein a positist on the foregoing evidence alone, although in an undeveloped or logically implicit sense it could be true.

Introduction to Engel's Paper

Surprising as it may seem, this is all that I could find that had been said about positism prior to last year. Perhaps it has been elsewhere discussed, but aside from these few scant references in papers by non-positist philosophers, I haven't encountered a self-aware defense of this position besides Mylan Engel Jr.'s “Positism: The Unexplored Solution to the Epistemic Regress Problem” (link). The reason is, I think, simple: philosophers have for a long time assumed epistemic justification is either intrinsic or transferred. Thus, there is no logical room for a position in which a belief is justified by an unjustified belief (link).

This assumption that epistemic justification is transferred has been recently challenged by a rising number of infinitist epistemologists, so it is not unexpected that at least one defendant of positism has seen and taken the opportunity to piggy-back on this objection and also claim “reasoning itself can be justification generating” (Metaphilosophy, Volume 45, Issue 2, 2014, pg. 152). In his abstract, Engel defines the transmittance assumption - which leads to an epistemic regress, as positists don't believe in justified basic beliefs - as follows: “Person S is mediately justified in believing p iff (1) S has a doxastic reason q for p and (2) S is justified in believing q.” Two defenders of infinitism, Jeanne Peijnenburg and Scott Aikin, also highlight this aspect of Engel's defense of positism:

Mylan Engel Jr.'s “Positism: The Unexplored Solution to the Epistemic Regress Problem” develops and defends the view that a justification-conferring chain of reasons may legitimately begin with an unjustified belief. Engel holds that, under certain circumstances, reasoning itself can be justification generating, and not just justification transmitting. He argues that a person S can be justified in coming to believe a proposition p on the basis of an unjustified posit R, provided S does not realize she is unjustified in believing R and she has no defeaters that defeat R's status as a reason for p. Engel maintains that when one believes a proposition p, one is rationally committed to what is knowingly entailed by p, unless one is prepared to abandon p in light of those entailments. Accordingly, the propositions one believes provides defeasible reasons for believing the propositions they knowingly entail. Engel characterizes his positist view as a form of nondoxastic coherentism that is compatible with other meta-epistemic views. In particular, Engel is keen to show that his view is compatible with the existence of basic beliefs grounded in sense experience and also compatible with a version of infinitism that holds that inference itself is justification enhancing. (Ibid., pg. 141)

So much for a general canvassing of Engel's aims. He intends to defend the legitimacy (though not justificatory exclusivity) of positism, accepting van Cleve's definition (pg. 146). Before delving into his arguments, I found there to be a lot of terminological nuance, enough to warrant a whole section of Engel's essay. I suppose this is to be expected in cases where not much has been said on a subject, so it's necessary to look at what Engel is specifically defending. I'll also break up my following sections to correspond to the main sections of Engel's article.

Terminology

Roughly, the principle distinction between the doxastic and propositional justification is that doxastic justification is concerned with the justificatory relationships among and statuses of one's actual beliefs, not merely potential propositions that could or should serve those purposes for an epistemic agent. The relationship between propositional and doxastic justification corresponds, respectively, to ex ante and ex post justification. This is the preferred terminology of Engel, who accepts Alvin Goldman's definitions in “What is Justified Belief?” (1979, pg. 21): “The ex post use occurs when there exists a belief, and we say of that belief that it is (or isn't) justified. The ex ante use occurs when no such belief exists... Here we say of the person, independent of his doxastic state vis-à-vis p, that p is (or isn't) suitable for him to believe.” Ex ante or propositional justification determines whether one may or should [have] acquire[d] a belief; ex post or doxastic justification determines whether a belief one already accepts should be kept or discarded. Accordingly, doxastic justification is sometimes said to be parasitic on propositional justification in that having the former entails having the latter but not vice versa. With this in mind, Engel proposes to evaluate positism in terms of ex ante justification (2014, pg. 148).

Engel further intends to evaluate positism with respect to “personal justification,” meaning he is concerned with the circumstances under which a person is worthy of epistemic praise for believing that p (cf. Engel, “Personal and Doxastic Justification in Epistemology,” 1992). Engel says that this sort of epistemic justification occurs when one believes “that p only if she has an undefeated reason for believing that p” (pg. 147). In this context, her reasons must be “internally accessible;” that is, her reason “to believe that p is a consideration, from [her] egocentric point of view, that suggests that p is true” (pg. 147). 

Engel then provides a sort of useful glossary of terms. Notably, a belief or experience is considered “basic” if a subject is “noninferential” and “immediately justified” in having it (pg. 148). Doxastic [foundations of coherence] theories assume “only beliefs can serve as reasons for other beliefs,” whereas nondoxastic theories reject this assumption (pg. 148). Most of what else Engel mentions may be here passed over, as their primary function just seems to be to show the number of contrasting theories of epistemic justification in terms of structure and nature. The specific theory that is worth mentioning is the one Engel defends. The following closes out this section:

...there is a third form of coherence theory that epistemologists have not recognized. Like foundations theories, modest nondoxastic coherence theories acknowledge that some reasoning is linear and admit that some beliefs are basic, for example, simple perceptual beliefs. Unlike foundations theories, however, modest linear noncircular nondoxastic coherence theories insist we can be justified in holding nonbasic beliefs that do not ultimately trace their justification back to basic beliefs. In section 3, I argue that a Positist version of this sort of Modest Coherentism (PMC) allows us to solve the regress problem for ex ante justification as it most frequently arises. (pg. 149)

Clearly, Engel's views indeed live up to his self-titled description as an epistemic “ecumenical beast” (pg. 157). He thinks epistemic justification can be had in a number of ways, but while some of these variations are interesting, I will restrict myself to commenting on why and how he thinks positism suffices.

The Epistemic Regress Problem for Ex Ante Justification

Engel begins section 2 of his article with an important historical point: 

...the epistemic regress problem was put forth as a skeptical challenge designed to undermine the very possibility of rational belief. In its contemporary guise, the regress problem has been formulated as an argument from elimination in favor of foundationalism - one designed to show that basic beliefs must exist if we are to be epistemically justified in believing anything at all. (pg. 149)

One comment that should be made at this point also relates back to Engel's epistemic ecumenicism, and that is with regards to the weak standard Engel has set for the goal of epistemic justification to be met. I don't have a problem with much of Engel's terminology outlined in the previous section, but if all that it takes for one to be justified in coming to believe p is that he have an undefeated (but not undefeatable) reason for it, and if what suffices as a reason is that it merely suggests to his mind that p is true, then one could easily imagine scenarios in which two people could be justified in coming to believe contradictory propositions. Does Engel think this qualifies as rational belief? According to the original context of the skeptical challenge to which Engel alludes, I don't see how he could. But then I fail to see how the skeptical challenge can be addressed by Engel in the first place. It would be one thing if Engel wished to propose positism in a different context, but in the beginning of this section he has made it clear he knows the original point of the regress argument and believes PMC provides a solution. But unless he were willing to argue against the much more stringent (indeed, infallibilistic) skeptical standard of epistemic justification - which he does not do here, in any case - that would require he deal with the skeptical challenge on its own terms, not his. The force of this point will, I hope, become clearer in the following discussion.

Next, Engel lays out premises of the regress argument for ex ante justification:

A1. S is justified in coming to believe that p iff either (1) S is immediately justified in coming to believe that p or (2) S is mediately justified in coming to believe that p. 

A2. S is mediately justified in coming to believe that p iff (1) S has a doxastic reason q for p (where q might be a conjunction), and (2) S is ex post justified (either mediately or immediately) in believing q. (pgs. 149-150)

He then reasons how a foundationalist would use these premises to argue that foundationalism must be true. Clearly, he doesn't believe this succeeds. He makes three points, none of which I believe are persuasive.

Firstly: “Even if sound, all RA shows is that there must be basic beliefs, if we are to have any justified beliefs at all, and it remains a theoretical possibility that justification skepticism is correct” (pg. 151). One may claim “no one is justified in believing anything,” but those words only have intelligible, definite meaning in the context of the claimant being epistemically justified in assigning said meaning. Otherwise, it could mean anything, including “everyone is justified in believing anything,” In other words, justification skepticism cannot be consistently maintained, and any argument to the contrary presupposes this is true, Engel's own argument to this effect included.

Secondly:  “...even if there are basic beliefs, as RA allegedly shows, in order for foundationalism to be correct, there must be enough basic beliefs to support the structure of our justified nonbasic beliefs, and RA does nothing to show the latter” (pg. 151). He goes on to say he does believe perceptual beliefs are properly basic (I'm not sure if Engel distinguishes between basic beliefs and properly basic beliefs) if they are grounded in perceptual experiences, but he argues many nonbasic beliefs we think we are justified in believing, like moral and philosophical beliefs, cannot be traced back to basic beliefs. This is backwards, and Engel repeats this mistake a few times. A foundationalist reasons from foundations, not to them; he only is in a position to know what is a justified nonbasic belief because he was first in a position to know what is a justified basic belief. Assuming certain nonbasic beliefs are justified and then using that to rule out the possibility of there being a sufficient number of justified basic beliefs to account for these is to put the cart before the horse. If this is the external critique it appears to be, a foundationalist will find it unpersuasive simply because he does not operate from the same bases as Engel, so to speak.

Thirdly: “Take the current debate between foundationalism, coherentism, infinitism, and positism. No matter which of these positions you believe is correct, you won't be able to trace this philosophical belief back to properly basic beliefs” (pg. 151). Engel cites Plantinga in his footnote to this comment, further adding that this would make foundationalism self-refuting. But why Engel thinks, for instance, that the belief “divine revelation is self-authenticating” cannot be basic, I don't know. I think that belief could put one in a position to make the regress argument for foundationalism. If Engel's flat denial is due to people disagreeing about things regarding God, I don't see how that is relevant. People can disagree about everything. Does that imply there can be no incorrigible beliefs? No. Here again the importance of discussing infallibilism is demonstrated.

Justification Ex Nihilo

Having spelled out the regress problem and addressed why he thinks foundationalism fails, Engel turns to his own view, which is primarily targeted at explaining how reasoning itself can be justification generating rather than justification transmitting.

In the first subsection, Engel makes the argument that one is “justified in believing q” if he also believes “that p and that p entails q,” even if he is unjustified in believing either that p or that p entails q (pg. 152). I don't think this is true. The internal logic of the individual should lead him to believe q, but this is an entirely separate question from whether or not he is justified in believing q. This is true even on Engel's already watered down definition of epistemic justification as one's having an undefeated reason for q, not to mention more robust perspectives. If one encounters a defeater for p and still believes that p and that p entails q, would Engel say that he is still justified in coming to believe q? If so, he must revise his definition of epistemic justification. If not, he must admit that it is not “his commitment simpliciter to p and p entails q that rationally commits him to q” (pg. 153). It appears the second is the route Engel opts for, as in the next subsection he prescribes N2, a norm stating “If you believe that p and that p entails q, and you care about whether q, then if you have no defeaters for p as a reason for q, believe q” (pg. 155). So I missed the point of this subsection.

In his second subsection, Engel discusses justificational opacity and norm followability. He first discusses what epistemic norms are, writing that “S is justified in coming to believe that p if and only if S would not violate any epistemic norms by coming to believe that p” (pg. 153). If epistemic norms are usually merely permissive rather than mandatory, as Engel says they are, then I would say that rather than calling S justified in coming to believe p, it makes more sense to say he is just permitted to believe p. Epistemic justification connotes a favorable epistemic status, whereas epistemic permission norms seem more neutral. Regardless, Engel next argues that 

On the plausible assumptions that (i) we ought to be able to reason the way we should reason and (ii) ought implies can, the correct epistemic norms, whatever they are, must be such that we are actually capable of following them and guiding our beliefs in conformity with them. Accordingly, an adequacy constraint on any regulative epistemic norm is that it be followable. A person cannot be criticized for failing to follow a norm that is impossible to follow, for no one can be expected to follow an unfollowable norm. (pg. 153)

To begin with, notice that Engel is willing to accept plausibility assumptions only when they suit his purposes. Justification skepticism isn't plausible, but that was nevertheless cast as a mark against foundationalism. Plausibility should work both ways in these discussions. But more importantly, freedom doesn't ground or follow from norms. This would transition into a discussion of moral ontology, which I have written about elsewhere (link). Suffice it to say as a person who thinks determinism is an epistemic necessity and that persons do have moral obligations, I disagree with this assumption.

In any case, Engel mentions these two assumptions to argue that premise A2 of the regress argument for ex ante justification can be formulated as unfollowable norm N1: “For any belief B1 that you hold, employ B1 as a reason for some new belief B2 only if you are justified in believing B1” (pg. 153). There several problems with this. Firstly, the aforementioned distinction between permission and justification becomes evident, as one may be permitted to believe B2 even if B2 cannot be deduced from justified belief B1. This is permitted as long as ~B2 also cannot be deduced from a justified belief, so N1 only holds if it is further stipulated that one wishes to be justified in coming to believe B2. That is very different from just wishing to be permitted to hold B2. But further, even if it is “psychologically unrealistic” (pg. 154) to separate our justified and unjustified beliefs, it is not unfollowable, it's just hard. We typically don't want to do that except in philosophical or apologetic contexts. But the point is that even on Engel's “plausibility assumptions,” A2 can hold.

Engel then attempts to bolster his case by providing memorial beliefs as an example of how A2 can't be followed: “Given the justificational opacity of memorial beliefs, we can't follow the epistemic norm (i.e., N1) implicit in A2. Consequently, A2 is false, where the regulative conception of justification is concerned” (pg. 154). Setting aside what points I've already made in regards to unfollowability, Engel's short discussion of memorial beliefs really seemed out of place in the context of his article. For starters, doesn't any reasoning session engage in memorial beliefs? As temporal creatures, it appears to me we take time to think any proposition. Doesn't that mean each belief we have is in some sense memorial, as we have to remember that to which each concept in a proposition refers? Or does Engel believe propositions and even arguments can be comprehended instantaneously? The latter appears dubious to me - Engel doesn't even define what he thinks a memorial belief is, let alone address any of these relevant concerns - but the former calls into question Engel's assertion that “we can't tell introspectively which of our memorial beliefs we are justified in holding and which we aren't” (pg. 154), as he must have assumed the opposite in believing himself to be justified in arguing this position. Either way, I think it was a mistake to squeeze one page worth of material about a heavy metaphysical topic like memorial beliefs into a discussion about the structure of justification and think it decisively or forcibly shows anything. I certainly did not follow the logic of the following statement from subsection 3: “Since we can't tell introspectively which of our memorial beliefs we are justified in holding and which we aren't, we rightly regard all memorial beliefs as having a default (albeit defeasible) permissible-to-reason-from status” (pg. 155). 

He ends this second subsection by providing N2 (defined above) as an alternative method of reasoning to N1, promising that the next section will explain why people do and are right to reason in thusly. Now, I don't necessarily have a problem with N2. I would say it's a fine permission norm. Engel even makes the useful point (and again on pg. 157) that Peter Klein, a notable infinitist about propositional justification, seemingly accepts N2 as a permission norm about doxastic justification and has really committed himself to positism. But to recap above criticisms, as a solution to the regress problem in the context of the skeptical challenge, I think it doesn't suffice. 

Unfortunately, this next subsection mostly explains how people reason, not why it is right. Engel notes we often reason from premises we don't question until we encounter a defeater, at which point we see if there are any defeaters of said defeater. How we proceed from there depends on what we find. He compares our private reasoning to our public reasoning as well as computer simulations. This is descriptive language. The closing paragraph is the closest thing I found to justification for N2:

Reasoning in this way is extremely efficient. If we had to stop and reevaluate our beliefs each time before we reasoned from them, we would draw very few conclusions. The point is not merely that we do regularly engage in default reasoning but that, given both the efficiency and the self-correcting nature of such reasoning, it is entirely rational for us to do so. Objection: But won't engaging in default reasoning make us prone to countless irremediable errors? Response: No, for when we employ default reasoning, we're constantly engaged in what John Pollock (1986, 56-57) describes as “primed research” - the subconscious monitoring of our reasoning, constantly being on the lookout for reasoning errors and potential defeaters for our reasons. In this way faulty reasoning and faulty beliefs are constantly getting corrected, as new information become available. (pg. 156)

From this account, it seems the purpose of positism is utilitarian. If the point of reasoning this way is to arrive at more conclusions rather than truly justified conclusions, it does make more sense to allow for more premises than basic beliefs. And given the existence of permitted beliefs in addition to mandatory ones, this is fine. But then positism becomes less about solving the regress problem and more about its indirect value in being unwittingly used in other, less strict contexts than epistemology. 

Additionally, it seems positism only works within the context of a different theory of structural justification. Notice that Engel hastens to assure the reader that this view is self-correcting (retroactive) and includes primed research (proactive). While this never seems to get us to the point of infallible justification in believing anything, upon further consideration, it might already presuppose it. For in accordance with what standard[s] are we correcting or protecting our beliefs from faultiness? How is it we can sense when something we believe or encounter is erroneous? If whatever standard Engel would have in mind can itself be revised, this deflates his response to the posed objection: we might be correcting our beliefs according to a standard which itself needs or will be corrected. Who knows what is erroneous in such a case? If, on the other hand, the standard is a necessary one, then it seems we have a belief which has been justified by some other structural theory than positism, as positism is fallibilistic. Given Engel's epistemic ecumenism and prior defense of coherentism, this makes sense. But then once again, positism seems to be less about philosophical concerns and more about its potential usefulness as an add-on to some extant, self-sufficient theory of epistemic justification.

In the last subsection, Engel attempts to outline a sufficient condition for positist justification (pg. 156): 

(PJ) S is justified in coming to believe that q on the basis of her belief p, which she's ex post unjustified in believing, IF: 

(i) S believes that p,

(ii) S believes that p entails q (or that p makes q sufficiently probable), 

(iii) S appreciate the fact that (p & p entails q) is a reason to believe q,

(iv) S does not realize that she is unjustified in believing p,

(v) S has no reason to believe ~q, i.e., S is not aware of any rebutting defeaters for p as a reason for q,  

(vi) S has no reason to deny that p would not be true unless q were true, i.e., S is not aware of any undercutting defeaters for p as a reason for q, and 

(vii) S has no reason to believe ~p, i.e. S it not aware of any negating defeaters for p. 

I don't have much more to add to what I've already said. I will say that this seven-step process by which one can allegedly be justified in coming to believe q doesn't strike me as plausible or psychologically realistic per Engel's earlier remarks. I am particularly curious how a self-conscious positist - such as Engel appears to be - could exercise PJ(iv). Once you've done all that work in defending or coming to understand how you are justified on positist grounds, I would think it would be hard to fail to realize what one's unjustified premises are. That may just be because I tend to think about epistemology a lot, but then again, you'd probably have to think about epistemology a lot to become a positist in the first place. 

He finishes this section by noting p can itself come to be justified either by providing a reason for it, whether directly due to some new belief or because “the best explanation for why p has given rise to so many other beliefs that cohere with the rest of her belief system is that p is true” (pg. 157). It isn't clear whether Engel now believes, in light of this paper, which, if any, structural theory of epistemic justification can stand alone.

The Many-Solutions Solution to the Regress Problem and Conclusion

Engel wraps up his article with these two short sections, summarizing his position in them. The first section consists of what Engel perceives to be the positive and negative qualities of the various theories of epistemic justification, a discussion which can for these purposes be put aside, interesting though it may be, because it doesn't really concern positism.

In his conclusion, Engel clarified that his rejection of the transmission-only thesis is mainly grounded on the unfollowability of A2/N1, which is why I paid so much attention to the second subsection above. He finishes with a distinct point that wasn't mentioned in the body of the paper but is worthy of mention:

As for the arbitrariness thesis, PMC's combination of default reasoning and primed search for errors mitigates against the charge of arbitrariness. Although S might have acquired some belief B inappropriately/arbitrarily, the fact B has persisted, that is, B hasn't been purged due to countervailing considerations, despite S's having been on the lookout for such considerations, makes B more than just an arbitrary belief. The longer B survives this primed-search-self-monitoring process, the less arbitrary B becomes, True, even if B persists indefinitely, S won't be justified in believing B, unless she acquires an undefeated reason for B, but S needn't be justified in believing B in order for B to cease to be arbitrary. (pg. 158)

I would have been interested to see Engel address this more fully. For instance, at what point can B entirely cease to be arbitrary? What does it mean for B to be arbitrary or non-arbitrary, given that it can in both cases be unjustified? I didn't even realize this was a concern until the last paragraph of the paper.

To summarize my findings, I do not believe positism is a solution to the regress problem, nor do I think it can be synthesized with any other theory to nevertheless epistemically justify individuals in certain cases. It may have some function in the context of permitted beliefs.

Contemporary Epistemology: Infinitism

In my break from blogging, I've read a lot about how contemporary epistemologists think beliefs can be justified. There are three typical suggestions as to how this can be done: foundationalism, traditional coherentism, and infinitism. The first says that a belief is justified if it 1) itself is or 2) is eventually inferred from a [justified] basic belief, a belief which is itself not inferred from anything else. The second says that the justification of a belief is circular: premises used to support an allegedly justified belief will actually evidence themselves as being premised upon on the very belief in question. The third says that beliefs require justification via a series of non-repeating, non-ending beliefs. There are variations within these frameworks - some say justified beliefs can be based on "unjustified" foundations; some hold to a non-traditional coherentism which actually turns out to be a sort of foundationalism - but in general, the idea that justified beliefs end somewhere, repeat, or neither end nor repeat are taken to be comprehensive alternatives to global skepticism, the conclusion that no beliefs can be justified.

Most contemporary epistemologists aren't global skeptics, so most contemporary epistemologists are obliged to defend one of the above structural theories. Historically, a usual point of departure for such defenses has been a quick dismissal of infinitism by arguing that an infinite regress is somehow vicious. But in the past 15 years, infinitism has experienced increasing support in the philosophic community. Each philosopher has his own specific emphases and disagrees with others on certain points, but among others, Peter Klein, Scott Aikin, David Atkinson, Jeanne Peijnenburg, Jeremy Fantl, and John Turri have defended it.

As is often the case, however, the proponents of a theory are often the first to mention its weaknesses, even if unwittingly. For instance, in "Modest Infinitism" (link), Fantl writes:

It is true that infinitism (on my construal) will give no answer to the question of what degree of justification is required for knowledge. But infinitism is not the only epistemic theory with this difficulty. Any fallibilistic epistemic theory will have trouble specifying a non-arbitrary threshold for knowledge. Certainty is too high a threshold (because the theory is fallibilistic), and any degree of justification less than certainty seems arbitrary. To solve this problem we might want to say that the degree of justification required for knowledge varies according to non-epistemic features of your situation. The degree of justification required for knowledge would thus be determined by context (for example, your stake in the belief being true). Whether one is tempted by a view like this (and it is open to the infinitist to adopt it), the difficulty infinitism runs into in setting a threshold for knowledge is not unique to infinitism and therefore cannot be decisive against it. (pg. 559)

While I have seen Klein, Atkinson, and Peijnenburg make the same appeal to pragmatic contextualization to specify the degree threshold, I have yet to see anyone specify how to non-arbitrarily choose it. So Fantl's conclusion is ironic, given that Klein and others principally reject foundationalism for allegedly requiring that one arbitrarily choose what to hold as a basic belief. Even more ironic is the fact that earlier in his article, Fantl explains how a foundationalist can avoid arbitrarity, an explanation which is strikingly similar to what I have argued on this blog regarding necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge:

We can ask why self-justifying reasons are self-justifying. If the traditional foundationalist has an answer, it seems like it must involve some metajustificatory feature. If the traditional foundationalist has no answer, it seems like the view has arbitrary foundations. (See BonJour, Structure, 30-3, for a similar argument.) 

However, the traditional foundationalist can argue that completely self-justifying reasons are not self-justifying in virtue of some metajustificatory feature, nor are they arbitrary. It may be that certain reasons have to be assumed to be self-justifying if skepticism is to be avoided. This is a rather familiar form of rationalist argument for the existence of a priori justification. Here, the main implication of these arguments is that there might be a way to non arbitrarily show that we need to take certain reasons to be completely self-justifying without requiring that there be a metajustificatory feature which makes those reasons self-justifying. What convinces us we need to take those reasons to be self-justifying need not make them self-justifying. (pg. 544) 

So Fantl himself has put a certain kind of foundationalism in a rather favorable light, only to reject it himself. Why? Because such foundationalism cannot admit of degrees. But interestingly, as often as infinitists [rightly] complain that foundationalists beg the question by using the concept of "warrant-transfer" to falsify infinitism - which I'll get to in a moment - here we see just the reverse; foundationalism is ruled out because it proves too much. Or, more simply, foundationalism is ruled out because it proves. But so what?

See, while there are discrepancies here and there among infinitists, one core agreement seems to be that all justification is probabilistic and, hence, provisional. This is an assumption prevalent among contemporary epistemologists, and infinitists have helped themselves to it. This has worked out nicely for infinitists in some respects.

For instance, it allows them to appeal to probabilistic support for beliefs instead of relying on a deductive inference by which one could see the inheritance of a truth value from one proposition to another. What would be so bad about such a transfer theory? What would be so bad is that infinitism has no place for it. Justification of a proposition can't be inherited from a reason whose justification is inherited from another reason whose justification is inherited from another reason ad infinitum, because then we have a sort of argumentative analogy to a moral theory in which, since there is never an end good, there can never be a method by which we could judge any so-called means to be good. Everything is an instrument to and for nothing with the relevant feature possessed intrinsically, so there is no means of determining that any one of the links in the chain actually possesses the feature. At most, there is only a series of conditionals: "if this is justified or good, then that is justified or good." And in the case of justification, even the justificatory status of these conditionals gets called into question.

Perhaps the above could be phrased better, but in any case, Klein, Atkinson, Peijnenburg, etc. have acknowledged the force of the gist of this argument, which is usually the point at which the objection arises that justification doesn't have to be construed as a transfer. Rather, it can simply "emerge" from a set of propositions. b probabilistically supports a, which is probabilistically supported by c, which is probabilistically supported by d, ad infinitum. The degree to which b probabilistically supports a can differ from the degree to which c probabilistically supports b (though each will by definition be more probable than not). So there is no strict transfer here. Furthermore, the degree to which a is justified is defined by the limit of a series of summed products, so justification has thereby "emerged" from a whole string of reasons. This seems to be the infinitist's response to foundationalism, and so far as a foundationalist accepts the principle that justification comes in degrees, he may find it hard to fight infinitism without hurting his own cause.

But here's where the niceness ends, because I don't see why the foundationalist should have to grant the probabilistic assumption in the first place. The only reason I have seen given for the rejection of infallibilism is that it rules out too much of what we want to say we know. But that's ad hoc, not an argument. On the other hand, Gettier cases provide an actual argument as to why there can be no such thing as fallible "knowledge" (in the epistemic sense).

Furthermore, just as I have yet to see an infinitist explain how he has non-arbitrarily chosen a specific threshold for "knowledge," I have yet to see an infinitist explain how he has non-arbitrarily assigned probabilities. Does the infinitist have a reason for his assertion that b probabilitistically supports a to degree n? When and how did his capacity to non-arbitrarily assign probabilities arise? How does one non-arbitrarily adjudicate a disagreement?

And then what about the mathematical principles which the infinitist utilizes? In many of Peijnenburg's and Atkinson's papers, they append mathematical "proofs" as to how the convergence and determination of the limit of an infinite series is possible. Are these proofs not infallible? Are there no necessary truths? Can what is probable be improbable? When we reject these things, are we not worse than admitted skeptics?

I haven't even mentioned the old finite mind objection - that we as humans can't hold an infinitude of beliefs and so can't be infinitists. There has probably been more written on this objection than any other. And yet even here, I think infinitists are being put on their heels a bit. Klein has said that the requirement that one actually believe an infinitude of propositions would reduce infinitism to absurdity, but the alternative he provides does not give us any assurance that the point at which we stop providing reasons for a belief is not the point at which the justification for our belief begins to dip below whatever threshold we've "established." In other words, another arbitrarity problem.

I think the popularity of infinitism has brought to light more problems than answers. Still, it is interesting reading, and I'll look forward to this book coming out next year. Until then, I guess I'll be satisfied with google scholar and the library. Ok, back to hibernation.

Thoughts on Contemporary Epistemology

I recently received Contemporary Debates in Epistemology as a birthday present. I was curious was the hot topics are among the epistemologists of today and figured that sooner or later I should branch out my reading if I seriously intend to pursue a degree in philosophy. Anyway, there are eleven topics debated in this book. I won’t go through all of them, not the least reason for which is that I don’t feel I have an adequate grasp of all of them. But among these topics are closure, skepticism [with respect to the external world], contextualism, and infinitism. With so many opinions, it’s hard not to find someone to [dis]agree with. It’s a mixing and matching. You have to read critically, i.e. you can’t just cross someone off for making one point with which you disagree. I disagreed with Dretske regarding closure, yet I think he makes a good argument against contextualism. The same goes for my readers. I’m sure I made bad points. Hopefully, I made some good ones too, and I hope further these points are not overridden by my bad ones. Now then, with respect to this book, you’ll have to get it to read specifics one way or the other, as I’m just going to comment on a few points that were of interest to me:

Closure

Closure is the idea that “If S knows p and knows that p implies q, then S is in a position to know that q” (pg. 2). On the face of it, this seems obviously true. Another author, Richard Fumerton – whose helpful distinction between necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge I have quoted on this blog before (link) and whose books Epistemology and Metaepistemology and Skepticism would seem to be worth a look – remarked in a footnote of an essay on a different subject that “the bottom line is that if a philosopher advances a view that forces us to reject closure, that should be taken as a reduction of that philosopher’s view” (pg. 96). A very well made and succinct point.

The reasons why one would reject closure, however, make it a worthwhile discussion. One reason to reject closure is that it allegedly makes possible “ordinary knowledge.” If we reject closure, we could in principle know, for example, that “John ate all the cookies” without having to know “There are physical objects,” “There are other minds,” or “The past is real” (pg. 3). “John ate all the cookies” may implies these propositions, but we don’t have to know these propositions to know “John ate all the cookies” if closure is rejected. Likewise, we wouldn’t have to worry so much about Descartes’ demon, solipsism, and recently spontaneously generated universes.

Of course, we could accept closure, these “heavyweight implications” of so-called ordinary knowledge, and on these accounts reject ordinary knowledge as infallibilistic. In fact, as a Scripturalist, that seems highly preferable. Much of what we say or do are not based on beliefs which can’t be mistaken. Clark was right to throw the objection that he couldn’t know his wife back in the faces of his critics. So what if our knowledge of such isn’t infallible? The more interesting question is what knowledge is infallible.

Skepticism

This brings me to the issue of skepticism with respect to the – or perhaps “an” would be less question-begging - external world. Surprisingly – pleasantly surprisingly – the two authors seemed to agree that “we cannot avoid knowledge skepticism with respect to the physical world if we understand knowledge as requiring justification so strong that it eliminates the possibility of error” (pg. 86). [This too was written by Richard Fumerton.] His reference to a sort of justification which would preclude the possibility of error is another allusion to infallibilism, which I wrote about here a few months ago. Scripturalists will do well, I think, to focus on metaepistemology – the definitions of knowledge, epistemic justification, truth, and the like. It may turn out there is more agreement to be had with the scholastic paragons of contemporary epistemology than one could hope for.

Contextualism

If I understand contextualism correctly, it rests either on an equivocation of the meaning of “knowledge” or is a flat contradiction, neither of which is particularly useful. It basically says (pg. 45):

…whether S knows something – that she has two hands, for instance – depends on the context of the person who is saying S knows it. If I, a philosopher, worried about brains in vats and Cartesian demons, say it, then S doesn’t know she has two hands… But if S, an ordinary person on the street, someone without the least tincture of philosophy, says she knows that she has two hands, what she says is true. She attributes knowledge to herself in an ordinary, practical, context, in which demons and handless-brains-in-vats are not relevant possibilities… 

So who, according to contextualism, is right? Am I, a philosopher, right when I (given my context) say that nobody knows they have hands. Or is S right? We are, I’m afraid, both right. And that is where my low opinion of contextualism comes from.

If there is an equivocation – if what S means by “knowing” she has two hands is different from what the philosopher means when he says S [does not] “know” she has two hands – then rather than preserving knowledge of having two hands, it just highlights that S is probably not squarely facing the skeptic’s challenges (cf. the “heavyweight implications” in the section on Closure above).

Infinitism

Of all the debates I skimmed, this and perhaps the debate on a priori knowledge seemed to arouse the most incredulity from any of the debaters. The ideas that infinitism could be true or that there is no a priori knowledge are, thankfully, seemingly minority positions. With respect to infinitism in particular, the closing paragraphs from the detractor will close out this post (pg. 155):

In my essay I said that the (to my mind) most severe difficulty with Klein’s infinitism is that it is committed to the thesis that inference alone can create justification. Here Klein seems to embrace this commitment wholeheartedly, holding that the longer the chain of inferential justification for a given belief the greater the justification created, and that, if the chain is long enough (but still finite), the justification can “increase to the degree required for knowledge.” This seems to give us the result that knowledge does not require infinitely long chains of inferential justification after all: infinitism gives way to inferentialism. Worse yet, given Klein’s thesis that inferential justification is the only sort of justification there can be, we seem to get the result that one could start with a belief (or set of beliefs) that is totally unjustified, because it lacks any inferential justification, and by spinning out a long enough chain of inference from it reach a belief that has the degree of justification required for knowledge. 

These results are so counterintuitive that I hesitate to attribute them to Klein. But how else are we to interpret the quoted remarks?