Intuitionism and Epistemology

There is a certain sense in which I'm defending a kind of intuitionism about epistemology. On the account I've been writing about, what plays the role of an intuition are epistemically optional beliefs. They are intuitions in the sense that they are our most obvious beliefs, but there is a reason why they are our most obvious beliefs: because they are our most basic beliefs, and so they play a central role in our webs of belief, so to speak. What this means is that a principle like IBE (if it's basic) is not believed because we have reason to think that it's true, but rather out of a pure intuition--that is, we make an epistemicially optional choice to believe in it. Same with epistemic realism: it's a pure choice, made for no reason having to do with the truth. This is what an intuition could be.

Then there is a sense in which we might be able to defend a corresponding kind of moral intuitionism, at least in theory. Now, epistemic realism is at the very very foundations of our theoretical world, and moral realism plays no such role. But perhaps there is some belief that we may take as basic that does not interfere with out our other basic epistemic principles. This would make it epistemically optional, and then there would be a sense in which belief in certain ethical principles is an intuition.

This is one way of reading Enoch, I think. I think that there are two problems with Enoch. The first is that the I'm not sure why we should take as basic the pragmatic principle--it doesn't seem to get us anywhere. Second, is that unless you deal with all the arguments against moral realism first, the argument is implausible because your moral principle will conflict with your epistemic principles about explanation (for example).

But perhaps the following is a programme:
1. Show that ethics does not conflict with our other epistemic beliefs
2. Then you can take some ethical principle as basic.
3. Then you believe in ethics and can't be blamed for it.

That might just be another way of formulating the question that isn't helpful. But I'm tired, and that's all for tonight.

Belief and Reasons

Scanlon p.36:

"Even if it is true that in order to believe something one must take there to be a reason for thinking it true (so there can be no such thing as believing something simply becuase one would like it to be true)..."

Note: There can be no reason for believing in epistemic realism. Unless we're going to say that the true logic of a denial of epistemic nihilism doesn't resemble it's surface appearance in some strange way (a Wittgensteinian move or something), we're stuck with a regular old belief that we can't have reason to think is true. So if that's not belief, then we have no foundation for knowledge.

Theoretical and Practical Rationality

I understand that some believe that practical rationality is autonomous from theoretical rationality, and that the search for moral realism is a lost cause because it's an attempt to build up practical rationality from theoretical rationality. I sorta understand that. What I don't even sorta understand is why we would try to philosophize about practical rationality, if that is the case. Isn't that the attempt to bring our theoretical reasoning abilities to bear on practical rationality? Yes, to understand something is not to inhabit it, but then how is that different from the original attempt to do moral philosophy from the standpoint of the theoretical reasoner? I'm confused.

Why epistemology, again

Just a reminder:

There are tons of things for which we have reasons. We have reasons to fear, reasons to hope, etc. These are reactions that are conceptually distinct from belief. So why think that the study of what reasons there are to believe things might help vindicate the study of what moral reasons we have to do things? Because unlike most of these areas, it's hard to pass off epistemic statements as being second rate from a cognitive point of view. If epistemic statements can't be true or false, then we would seem to be in a boatload of trouble. And what we really want is to distinguish between reasons to fear something and reasons to believe something, and say that reasons to act morally are more like the latter than the former.

At least, that's the idea. If reasons to believe are ultimately not true/false then all of our knowledge seems to be in trouble.

Anselm on Justice and Injustice

T: Remember also that we've already agreed that once justice has been lost, nothing but the obligation to justice remains in him beyond what he had before he received justice.
S: Right.
T: But before he had justice, he was not unjust and did not have injustice.
S: No.
T: Therefore, either there is no injustice in him and he is not unjust once justice has been lost, or else injustice and being unjust are nothing.

This is Anselm in "On the Fall of the Devil." I think that the point that he's making here is that you require principles of justice and morality in order to criticize one for failing to live up to those norms. When one completely lacks the norms of ethics, one can't be criticized for failing to live up to those norms.

I believe that this is related to the point I've made about things being epistemically optional. One cannot be criticized for failing to live up to the epistemic norms before one has accepted epistemic normativity in some way.

Another post on Enoch and Shechter

I don't think that I properly understood what Enoch and Shechter were trying to do until I started to think things through on my own. I was initially puzzled by their article(s). How could they hope to provide any sort of justification that itself goes beyond justification? OK, that sentence was incomprehensible, lemme try again. Here's what I thought that they were trying to do: provide a justification for a principle such as inference to the best explanation. What's wrong with that? Well, they also claim that inference to the best explanation (IBE) is basic, and isn't justified by anything else. You don't have to be that deep of a thinker to recognize a problem here: they want to justify something that itself is unjustifiable. What?!

In retrospect, I feel kind of stupid about this picture of their work. It's awfully simplistic. I always knew that this couldn't be quite what they were getting at, but I didn't know what they were aiming at either.

Here's what I think they're trying to do:

It's hopeless to try to justify the truly, truly basic beliefs. Some beliefs really are unjustified--for example, the first epistemic beliefs that you take on will be unjustifiable. After all, if all you have is a knowledge that epistemic realism is true (and so you are able to entertain the possibility that some given epistemic sentence is true) how are you able to evaluate the truth of some epistemic sentence? You have nothing available to justify it with, since you don't know of any other epistemic sentences that are true. On the other hand, this also means that you can't be rationally criticized for accepting this sentence as true, since the epistemic resources for challenging any belief-practice epistemically simply aren't available yet. So as far as the truly basic beliefs go--they're optional in a particular sense. Indeed, this is what I argue for in the first chapter. And so you can't expect this to help ethics at all, since ethics is not optional in this sense at all.

What about Enoch and Shechter? Are they simply trying to justify the unjustifiable basic beliefs? This would be silly. And we know that they are trying to provide justification ("How are Basic Belief-forming methods justified?" is the title of their article, after all). So the most plausible reading is that they're not actually trying to justify sentences that are unjustifiable (duh, right?).

So what does it mean to be a basic sentence? All it means is that it's a basic method. Here's an important quote: "We cannot justify our use of IBE by appealing to other belief-forming methods, since IBE is a basic rule. Thus, there is nothing in virtue of which we are justified in using IBE. Or so it may seem." I think that the idea in this sentence is that there are no methods--no other beliefs?--upon which IBE rests in order to gain justification. But justification is still possible, they argue, because pragmatic considerations can provide epistemic justifications. Then they give their account.

It remains unclear to me in virtue of what the pragmatic account doesn't deserve to be called a "belief-forming method" though. Because, if my understanding of them is correct, what they're saying is that a sentence like "a thinker who does not inquire about the world around him is intuitively doing something wrong" determines what has positive epistemic value. That is, what I think they're saying is that what is truly basic in epistemology is not the belief-forming methods, but rather certain projects that are "intrinsically indispensable"--certain projects have great, positive, epistemic value. Why not just say that there is a foundational belief-forming method: "You are justified in believing that which is indispensable to any of the following projects: explanatory, deliberative, etc." That seems just as much as a method as the other stuff. And if I've understood them correctly, this is much more clear then bringing in all these pragmatics.

You would still have to take this new, foundational principle for granted, but you're going to have to take something for granted (and you won't be able to be criticized for it--how could someone even begin to criticize you?)

I think that I still have worries about Enoch's argument that ethics gets in via this way of seeings things. But at least this makes way more sense to me than my first few readings.

Intrinsic indispensability of epistemology

I borrow the phrase "intrinsic indispensability" from Enoch, and I use it in a much more limited capacity than he does.

As Cuneo points out, there is no non-question-begging way to argue against epistemic nihlism (and let's pretend middle positions between nihlism and realism don't exist for this post, to make my life slightly easier) and for epistemic realism. Why? Because if epistemic nihlism is true then there are no arguments, evidence or reasons to believe anything. Hence, any argument against epistemic nihlism would beg the question against epistemic nihlism, simply by presupposing that there is anything such as an argument, or anything such as categorical reasons to believe anything.

So one can't argue against epistemic nihlism. Rather, one simply has to reject it for no epistemic reason. Your rejection of epistemic nihlism has to be because you want to, not because you have a good reason to. I think that this is a fairly secure conclusion.

Now, if you are embracing epistemic realism (because I'm pretending nihlism and realism are the only options) what exactly are you embracing without justification? Presumably, that epistemology can be true/false, some epistemic statements are true, and that they're true in a non-reductive way. But if this is all we embrace, we're still going to be lost, because we don't know which epistemic statements are true or false. This is more than a problem of epistemic access, but it's a built in problem; how can we justify belief in statements concerning what counts as good evidence or justification before we've determined the truth of ANY statements about what counts as good evidence or justification? There seems to be no good way to get started in the epistemic enterprise. So if one is going to reject epistemic nihlism and embrace epistemic realism, it's not enough to just embrace some kind of abstract realism, but one must also take certain epistemic beliefs for granted. (Unless you want to advocate the view that epistemic realism is true, and we just don't know anything about epistemology. This seems bad.)

I wonder if this is part of the answer to the challenge of epistemic access that exists parallel to epistemology in ethics. This is how epistemology gets started, and there's no corresponding story about ethics to be told.