Who Needs Intuitions? Two Experimentalist Critiques

I've just finished what I hope is nearly the final set of revisions on a paper on intuitions, philosophical methodology, and experimental philosophy. This is my oldest paper that I haven't given up on; it derives from material that was in my Ph.D. thesis in 2008. If anybody wants to read it, comments are very welcome. (I'm due to submit it by the end of the month, so comments are especially helpful if they're before then.)

Who Needs Intuitions? Two Experimentalist Critiques

Abstract. A number of philosophers have recently suggested that the role of intuitions in the epistemology of armchair philosophy has been exaggerated. This suggestion is rehearsed and endorsed. Many of these philosophers take this observation to undermine the experimentalist critiques of armchair philosophical methodology that have arisen in recent years. The dialectical situation here, I suggest, is more complex than it appears. I will argue that the so-called ‘experimentalist critique’ really comprises two very different kinds of challenges to armchair methodology. One, which I call the ‘defeater critique’, does not depend on any particular view about the philosophical significance of intuitions, even though its proponents often emphasize the language of intuition. The other, however, which I call the ‘arbitrariness critique’—prominent in earlier experimentalist work, especially that of Stephen Stich—does depend on a central role for intuitions. I survey some attempts to motivate this critique without reliance on assumptions about the centrality of intuitions, and find them unconvincing. So rejecting the centrality of intuitions is a sufficient response to the arbitrariness critique, even though it is orthogonal to the defeater critique.

'Knows' contextualism derivative from 'believes' contextualism?

Here's Brian Weatherson:

[B]elief ascriptions and knowledge ascriptions raise at least some similar issues. Consider a kind of contextualism about belief ascriptions, which holds that (L) can be truly uttered in some contexts, but not in others, depending on just what aspects of Lois Lane’s psychology are relevant in the conversation:

(L) Lois Lane believes that Clark Kent is vulnerable to kryptonite.

We could imagine a theorist who says that whether (L) can be uttered truly depends on whether it matters to the conversation that Lois Lane might not recognise Clark Kent when he’s wearing his Superman uniform. And, this theorist might continue, this isn’t because ‘Clark Kent’ is a context-sensitive expression; it is rather because ‘believes’ is context-sensitive. Such a theorist will also, presumably, say that whether (K) can be uttered truly is context-sensitive.

(K) Lois Lane knows that Clark Kent is vulnerable to kryptonite.

And so, our theorist is a kind of contextualist about knowledge ascriptions. But they might agree with approximately none of the motivations for contextualism about knowledge ascriptions put forward by Cohen (1988), DeRose (1995) or Lewis (1996). Rather, they are a contextualist about knowledge ascriptions solely because they are contextualist about belief ascriptions like (L). Call the position I’ve just described doxastic contextualism about knowledge ascriptions. It’s a kind of contextualism all right; it says that (K) is context sensitive, and not merely because of the context-sensitivity of any term in the ‘that’-clause. But it explains the contextualism solely in terms of the contextualism of belief ascriptions.

I think that the kind of view Brian describes is very interesting and worthy of more attention than it's gotten. But I'm puzzled by his characterization of it. How is it that the knows-contextualism is explained by the belief-contextualism here? Belief-contextualism is a view about the word 'believes', which does not typically occur in knowledge attributions, the subject of knows-contextualism. So how could belief-contextualism explain knows-contextualism? In what sense is the theorist in question "a contextualist about knowledge ascriptions solely because they are contextualist about belief ascriptions"?

One might motivate knows-contextualism in a way reliant on belief-contextualism. It might look something like this: belief-contextualism is true. Therefore, for some situation, there are two contexts C1 and C2 such that in C1, 'S believes p' expresses a truth for that situation, and in C2, 'S believes p' expresses a falsehold for that situation. In some such C1, 'S knows p' also expresses a truth for that situation. In all contexts, 'S knows p' expresses a truth only if 'S believes p' expresses a truth. Therefore, in C2, 'S knows p' does not express a truth. Therefore knows-contextualism is true.

That argument gets the job done, but it doesn't seem at all like it must be motivating the combination of views Brian discusses. Why should one run through a metalinguistic principle about the relation between 'knows' and 'believes'? It seems to me to be at least as plausible that the corresponding views about 'believes' and 'knows' are motivated in parallel by considerations about propositional attitude ascriptions in general. I agree with Brian that someone who thinks (L)'s content depends on context for these kinds of reasons is also likely to accept the same for (K). But I don't think there's any reason to think the resulting knows-contextualism is in any sense derivative from the belief-contextualism. It's just that the same kinds of data motivate both views.

Fricker on concepts and states

Elizabeth Fricker writes:

Williamson maintains that 'knows' has no analysis 'of the standard kind'—this being one that factors knowing into a conjunction of mental and non-mental components, notably the mental state of (rational) belief plus truth and some other factors. Call this thesis NASK. If NASK were false, 'know' having an a priori necessary and sufficient condition in terms of belief plus some other (non-factive) mental and non-mental components, this would establish the falsity of KMS ['knowledge is a mental state']: knowing would be revealed a priori to be a conjunctive 'metaphysically hybrid' state.

I find the suggestion that there is any deep connection between NASK (a claim about the concept 'knows') and KMS (a claim about the nature of knowledge) somewhat confusing. She characterizes the denial of this connection as an 'error theory':

Here I follow Williamson in ruling out the possibility of an error theory—that our concept 'knows' could be complex, while it in fact denotes a simple state. It is doubtful whether this is even coherent, and it can surely be discounted.

I don't see why this would be an error theory, and I don't see why it should be thought incoherent (unless one is worried about the coherence of the very notion of a complex concept, as Fricker clearly is not). It's not true in general that there's any problem with the concept of 'X' having some property, while X itself has a contrary property. (The concept 'sky' has no colour, but the sky is blue.)

So what's going on?

Williamson on Apriority

Here's an argument with the conclusion that there's no deep difference between cats and dogs.

The Dogs and Cats Argument. Although a distinction between cats and dogs can be drawn, it turns out on closer examination to be a superficial one; it does not cut at the biological joints. Consider, for example, a paradigmatic cat, Felix. Felix has the following properties: (i) he has four legs, fur, and a tail; (ii) he eats canned food out of a bowl; (iii) humans like to stroke his back. Now consider a paradigmatic dog, Fido. Fido has all three of these properties as well. For instance, Fido also has four legs, and fur, and a tail, and when he eats, it is often served from a can into a bowl. And humans like to stroke Fido's back, too. In these respects, Fido and Felix are almost exactly similar. Therefore, there can't possibly be any deep biological distinction between them.

I'm sure you'll agree that the dogs and cats argument is terrible. Put a pin in that and consider another argument.

In his contribution to Al Casullo and Josh Thurow's forthcoming volume, The A Priori in Philosophy, Timothy Williamson argues against the theoretical significance of the distinction between the a priori and a posteriori. The thesis of the paper is that "although a distinction between a priori and a posteriori knowledge (or justification) can be drawn, it is a superficial one, of little theoretical interest."

It's a somewhat puzzling paper, I think, because it's not at all clear how it's broad argumentative strategy is supposed to support the conclusion. Williamson does not, for instance, articulate what he takes the apriority distinction to be, then argue that it is theoretically uninteresting. Instead, he identifies certain paradigms of a priori and a posteriori knowledge, then emphasizes various similarities between them. For example, he argues that the cognitive mechanisms underwriting certain a priori judgments are similar in various respects to those that underwrite certain a posteriori judgments. Then he spends most of the rest of the paper arguing that these are not idiosyncratic features of his particular examples. But why is this supposed to be relevant?

Williamson writes:

The problem is obvious. As characterized above, the cognitive processes underlying Norman's clearly a priori knowledge of (1) and his clearly a posteriori knowledge of (2) are almost exactly similar. If so, how can there be a deep epistemological difference between them?

But I do not find this problem at all obvious. The argument at least appears to have the structure of the terrible dogs and cats argument above. The thing to say about that argument is that identifying various similarities between two things does practically nothing to show that there aren't deep differences between them. There are deep biological distinctions between cats and dogs, but they're not ones that you can find by counting their legs or examining how humans interact with them. Similarly, Williamson offers nothing at all that I can see to rule out the possibility that there is a deep distinction between the a priori and a posteriori, but it is not one that is manifest in the cognitive mechanisms underwriting these judgments. For as Williamson himself later emphasizes, there's more to epistemology than cognitive mechanisms. If apriority lives in propositional justification—which is where I think it lives—then there's just no reason to expect it to show up at this psychological level. That doesn't mean it's not a deep distinction.

That Williamson's argument needs to be treated very carefully should also be evident from the fact that prima facie, it looks like it has enough teeth to show that the distinction between knowledge and false belief is not an epistemically deep one—a conclusion that everyone, but Williamson most of all, should reject. For the cognitive processes underlying cases of knowledge are often almost exactly similar to those underlying false beliefs. Should this tempt us to ask how, then, there could be a deep epistemological difference between them? I really don't see why.

Knowledge and Modals in Consequents of Conditionals

Modals interact in a characteristic way with conditionals. Suppose it’s next Wednesday morning, and I haven’t checked the news in a while. Consider:

1. Obama probably won the election.
2. If Romney won Ohio, Obama probably won the election.

Assuming that the last time I looked at the polls, they looked roughly as they do now, (1) is true in my mouth Wednesday morning, and (2) is false. When I say (1), I say something like, ‘most of the epistemically nearest worlds are worlds in which Obama won’. When I say (2), I restrict the worlds I’m looking at: paying attention only to those worlds in which Romney won Ohio, most of the epistemically nearest of them are Obama-winning worlds. I knew going in that the winner of Ohio is likely to win overall, whichever candidate that is. (But I know it’ll probably be Obama.) So (3) is true in my mouth Wednesday morning:

3. If Romney won Ohio, Romney probably won the election.

Let’s suppose that as a matter of fact, Romney did win Ohio, contrary to my evidence. Still, since I haven’t gotten the bad news yet, my evidence still favors Obama’s having won the election. So when I say (1), it’s true. So is (3). If we look naively, this will appear puzzling. It looks like a counterexample to modus ponens, for the following are all true (not assertable by me Wednesday morning, but true):

• Romney won Ohio.
• If Romney won Ohio, Romney probably won the election.
• Obama probably won the election.

Call the inference from X and a sentence of the form "if X, Y" to Y, naive modus ponens. Naive modus ponens leads us wrong in this case.

The solution to this puzzle, of course, is that modals and conditionals interact in a subtler way than is recorded in the surface grammar of (3). The ‘probably’ modal takes wide scope; “if p, probably q” says that, restricting attention to the p worlds, q is probable. Relatedly, I can’t perform naive modus tollens on my probability conditional: Obama probably won; if Romney won, then Obama probably didn’t win; therefore, Romney didn’t win.

The same goes for ‘might’ and ‘must’. Suppose I have seen election results for every state except Ohio, and I know for certain that the winner of Ohio won the election. Then I may truly say:

4. If Romney won Ohio, Romney must have won the election.
5. If Obama won Ohio, Obama must have won the election.

It doesn’t follow from the fact that Romney did win Ohio that I’d express a truth if I said “Romney must have won the election”. Indeed, it’s false—for all I know, Obama might have won. Sentence (4) says that, of all the Romney-winning-Ohio worlds, he wins the election in them.

This is all very different from the way that conditionals interact with non-modal claims. Suppose I truly say to myself:

6. If the carpenter was here today, the picture is on the wall.

Suppose also that the carpenter was there then (the place and time where I said (6)). This entails that the picture was on the wall. Or if the picture is not on the wall, the truth of (6) entails that the carpenter wasn’t there. In other words, with non-modal consequents, you can perform naive modus ponens and modus tollens on conditionals.

Knowledge patterns with the modals. Suppose you’re trying to decide whether to trust someone. I might truly say:

7. If he’s lying, you know he’ll just deny everything later.

This can be true even though (a) he is lying, and (b) you don’t know that he’ll deny everything later. For all you know, he’s honest, and will confirm everything. Indeed, you know that you don’t know he’ll deny everything later. But you can’t reason from this known fact and (7) to the conclusion that he isn’t lying. So naive modus ponens and modus tollens are mistakes here, just as in the cases of the obvious modals like might, must, and probably.

I think this is pretty decent evidence in favor of views like mine that treat ‘knows’ as either something a lot like a modal or a literal instance of a modal. I say, broadly with David Lewis, that ‘knows p’ is an evidential quantifier: it says of a given set of worlds that one’s evidence eliminates all the not-p worlds. When it appears in the consequent of a conditional, it’s very natural to restrict the set with the antecedent. So “If X, S knows p” says, first restrict your attention only to the X worlds; S’s evidence eliminates the not-p worlds that remain.

Sider, structure, reduction, and knowledge first

This is a continuation of yesterday's post. Yesterday I identified what seemed to me to be a problem for the way that Ted Sider wanted to explain why various macro-level things are more privileged—basically, they're said to be more joint-carving. But as I said yesterday, I just don't see that they are.

I suspect, however, that one can get something quite a bit like Sider's picture here if one is willing to add a bit more structure. The prospects for a reasonable purely physical story about chemical objects and properties seem reasonable. It doesn't seem hopeless to try to give a reasonably simple definition of molecule or magnesium or valence in purely physical terms. So if we assume the (absolute) fundamentality of physics, we can run the story Sider wants for why we refer to molecules instead of molecules-or-cucumbers, or even molecules-before-2013-and-regions-of-space-afterwards, because the physical definition of molecule is significantly simpler than these more bizarre properties. (In the former case, a purely physical definition will be insanely complex, as in the case of pig; in the latter, it will still be not insanely complex, but more complex than that for molecule.)

This is basically just a way of expressing the familiar idea that chemistry somehow reduces to, or emerges from, physics. But if we buy into Ted's general ideas, we can add this: it is part of the objective structure of the world that chemical properties are related to physical properties in this way. The 'book of the world' will give us the chemical on top of the physical (and the chemical is objectively privileged over the schmemical).

Now what happens when we go up another level? It's pretty natural to suppose that cell biology relates to chemistry as chemistry does to physics. So --- and here's where the picture I'm describing departs from Ted's --- when adjudicating between which objects we refer to in our discourse about cell biology, objects with reasonably simple definitions in chemical terms --- not physical terms --- are privileged over ones that don't. We don't always go back to the most fundamental; we just go back to the more fundamental domain that is appropriate for the matter at hand. Often, but not always, the simpler definition is the more fundamental theory will correspond to the simpler definition in the ultimately fundamental theory; when it doesn't, I think we should go with the less fundamental one. (It's having a better chemical account that makes a particular referent of 'cell' the preferred one, not having a better physical account.)

The reason I'm interested in this, besides the fact that it's interesting, is that I'm leaning in this kind of a direction as a way of making sense of what the 'knowledge first' attitude is. (Yes, I'm reading metaphysics, but it's in the service of epistemology, I swear!) I understand it as a metaphysical thesis: knowledge is a more fundamental state than has been traditionally recognized. In the terms of this broad way of thinking about theorizing about the world, knowledge shows up at a more fundamental level than one might have thought.  (Compare a 'life first' theorist, who thinks that the attempt to define life in biological terms is a mistake; life's home is really at the chemical level—we need to invoke life to understand, say, combustion.) How early should knowledge appear? Presumably, people could differ about this. If you wanted to, you could think that knowledge was perfectly fundamental; knowledge is as basic as quarks or whatever. You'd oppose any kind of reduction of knowledge to anything. This doesn't sound very plausible, but you could say that if you wanted to. My suspicion is that knowledge will be an important theoretical term from the basics of intentional psychology.

Sider on joint-carving and reference

Humans refer to things sometimes. Ted Sider thinks, with David Lewis, that part of the story for why it is that we refer to some things, rather than other possible things, is that the things we refer to are more natural. This Sider understands as a matter of the primitive structure of the world. To takes one of Ted's examples, Ted's word 'pig' refers to pigs, instead of pigs-before-2011-AD-or-cows-afterwards. And he thinks that general considerations about fundamental structure can yield this intuitive result. Ted writes:

The point may be seen initially by making two strong, crude assumptions about "reasonably joint-carving". Assume first that a notion is reasonably joint-carving iff it has a reasonably simple and nondisjunctive definition in terms of the perfectly joint-carving notions, and second that the perfectly joint-carving notions are those of physics. Then surely no reasonably joint-carving relation that is to play the role of reference could relate a human population to bizarre semantic values. For the bizarre semantic values themselves have no simple basis in the physical, nor do they stand in any physically simple relations to human populations. Given any reduction that does relate us to bizarre semantic values, there is surely some other relation with a simpler basis in the physical that relates us to nonbizarre semantic values. (29)

There is considerable vagueness and imprecision in the notion of "reasonably" simply definitions Ted evokes, but I guess I agree that it's pretty plausible that one couldn't tell a "reasonably simple" story in purely physical terms of how humans are related to bizarre semantic values like pigs-before-2011-AD-or-cows-afterwards. But Ted needs more than just that fact; he needs the comparison. And I guess it just doesn't look very plausible to me that there is a "reasonably simple" definition available in purely physical terms of any of the pieces we need here. By any ordinary standards, a definition of pig --- or human! --- in purely physical terms will be rather unreasonably complex! So I worry that if this is the story about why we don't refer to pigs-before-2011-AD-or-cows-afterwards, it will generalize to show that we don't refer to pigs either. (A related problem; surely it's possible to refer to pigs-before-2011-AD-or-cows-afterwards, right?)

I think this problem persists, even given the less toy version of the theory. He continues the passage above:

The two assumptions of the previous paragraph are undoubtedly too crude, but the point is independent of them. Whether a notion is reasonably joint-carving --- enough to take part in special-science explanations --- has something to do with how it is based in the fundamental. So reference must have the right sort of basis in the fundamental if it's to be explanatory.

But it's just very difficult to say anything halfway reasonably simple about how any of this stuff arises from the fundamental. Things like pigs are just way too far removed from things like electrons. (And presumably, even electrons aren't fundamental anyway.)

More on this theme, and what I think we should say instead, tomorrow.