The Concept of Knowledge

Adrian Heathcote Department of Traditional & Modern Philosophy The University of Sydney

Preface
How do we manage to know the things we know? What is it about some of our beliefs that allows them, and not others, to qualify as knowledge? Or do we, when we examine the matter closely, nd that we really know nothing at all? These are fundamental questions, so fundamental that some answer to each of them is required before we can proceed with any particular enquiry. The student of history, anthropology, or English literature, no less than the physicist or the biologist, needs to know whether it is possible for us to know anything, and, if so, how we might best try to acquire that knowledge. A legal system needs to know the conditions under which a person could reasonably be said to be known to be guilty of some crime. An engineer needs to know the conditions under which a bridge will collapse. The concept of knowledge is such an important part of our intellectual tradition that it is hard to see how we could say what we often want to say without it. How would we fare, for example, if we could not say that we now know that cholera is caused by a strain of bacteria; that the sun is one star among many; that Pope translated the Illiad? But for all the importance that the concept of knowledge undoubtedly has, we cannot take that alone to settle the matter of whether we actually know anything. For all that we know the doubters may be right and there be no such thing as knowledge. Our intellectual tradition may rest on an illusion of which we would do well to be rid. Many might feel that we are already in that position, and thus that we are already in possession of the arguments that will free us from thralldom to an invidious distinction between opinion and knowledge. On this view, yes, we might believe that the sun is one star among many, but we dont really know it; we dont really know that Pope translated the Illiadthat is merely one possible story among many that we tell ourselves. On this view there is

only belief, with knowledge in any strong sense being an impossible ideal. It involves conditions that we can never satisfy, or can never know that we satisfy. My own viewand I think that it would be the view of the majority of philosophersis that this would be a mistaken conclusion. In these notes I aim to give an answer to the question what is knowledge?an answer that meets some of the most common objections, and tries to clarify the concept of knowledge and free it of some common confusions and misunderstandings. But I will attempt to address not only those questions that are of interest to academic philosophers, but also those that are of interest to students and academic non-philosophers. I am convinced that the two types of concern are not identical and that the latter need has now become so pressing that it is the lit taper of a genuine crisis in our rational thinking about the world. Andwithout wishing to be too portentouswe would do well to remember one of the important lessons of history: that on such seemingly abstract matters as rationality, very ordinary human happiness often depends.

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Chapter 1. Analysis of the Concept

e ordinarily take ourselvesthat is, before we allow ourselves to be convinced otherwise by exotic philosophical argumentsto know many things. At the very least we take ourselves to know our own names and where we live. But we also, usually, take ourselves to know very much more than this. And if we want to know what we mean when we say we know something, a reasonable procedure would seem to be to list the various things we take ourselves to know and try to extract the commonalities from the elements of the list. Let us try this approach and see how far we can get. Here is a list of just some things that I hope the reader will agree that we both know. (Again, I stress that this agreement is prior to being affected by philosophical arguments that might lead us to doubt some or all of the items in the list. I am appealing to our pre-philosophical sense of things.) Some people are more than three feet tall. Australia is in the Southern Hemisphere. Water is H2O. Two apples plus two apples makes four apples. If a cat is black then it is black. The battle of Hastings was in 1066. 32=9. Any bacterium is smaller than any Volkswagen. All of these are propositions that I am reasonably sure that we would agree that we knowand if they sound rather trivial that is just to ensure that we will agree that we know them. We might hesitate over some items, and we might innocently cavil over some others (might there not be a bacterium somewhere in the Universe that is larger than any small German car?) but I think the list can stand. Yet the striking thing about the members of the list is what a heterogeneous bunch they are. There was method in this: we have made the list heterogeneous to ensure that we do not inadvertently simplify our result1

ing account of knowledge. So what account of knowledge do we end up with if we try to abstract the commonalities from this rather disparate group of elements? Plato gave an answer to this question in the 4th Century bc that is still accepted today. Knowledge, he said, was justied, true, beliefor, expressed as an equation K(A) = JTB(A), where A stands for any arbitrary proposition. If one checks back over the list one nds that it accords well with the Platonic account: all of the items on the list look to be examples of justied true beliefs. (Ah! you say, but how do we know that they are true? We will answer that question in due course and at unseemly length.) Philosophers now call accounts of knowledge like Platos conceptual analyses of knowledge. In general, a conceptual analysis takes a common concept and attempts to understand the conditions under which it is used. It breaks the concept into its constituent components and shows how it is the obtaining of these constituent component conditions that determines whether we would say that a particular itemin the current case a statement, a belief, or a propositiondoes or does not fall under the concept. So in the above case we would say that we believe that we know each of the above propositions, and we also believe that each is a case of a justied, true, belief. We conclude that when we say we know something we just mean that we have a justied true belief. But the mere fact that we have an analysis of the concept of knowledge does not by itself mean that we really know anything. A conceptual analysis tells us how we apply concepts, it does not, and cannot, tell us that there is something that genuinely answers to the concept. We are, for example, in possession of a perfectly good analysis of the concept of a unicornit is a horned horsebut that, by itself, does not mean that there are any unicorns. Just so, there may be no knowledge at all even though we are perfectly able to use the concept to speak of those things we think we know. For all that the above discussion tells us there may be an argument to the conclusion that even though our concept of knowledge is exactly as Plato suggested, that nevertheless there is no knowledge at all. Just as, in fact, there are no unicorns. 1.1 Global Scepticism In fact there is such an argumentone that is almost as old as Platos analysis itself. It is called the Regress of Reasons Argument. The argument runs as follows. Suppose that there were to be something that we know (call it A). Then according to the analysis A would
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have to be a justied true belief. But if it is a justied true belief then there would have to be some proposition that provides A with its justicationcall it B. But now B must be known as well, for if it is not known then we would not be in possession of the justication (B might justify A but it would not be a justication that we have.) But if B is known then there has to be some proposition C that acts as its justicationbut then C will have to be known as well. And so on, for some D, some E, some F, and on ad innitum. Therefore, in order to know anything we would have to know an innite number of things. But since we cant know an innite number of thingsour brains, after all are only nitethen we cant know anything at all. (The reason that we may draw this conclusion is that since our supposition that we know at least one thing leads to the falsehood that we know an innite number of things, that original supposition must have been false. The logic here is that only the false implies the falsean impeccable piece of logic by the way.) Thus we cant know anything at all. This is the Regress of Reasons Argument. The conclusion of the argument, that nothing can be known is called global scepticismi.e. it is scepticism about everything. What should we make of this argument, so striking in its simplicity? Well, rst we may note that it does not involve the truth component of the denition. The argument would work even against the less demanding concept of justied belief. So it is obviously a very powerful (in the sense of far reaching) argument. Secondly, the structure of justications does look plausibly like an innite regress. (We cannot imagine the justications going round in a circle without A ultimately being the reason for believing itself. But since a circular justication is no justication at all and since an innite regress involves a quantity that goes beyond our capacity, the problem does seem genuine. But even though the argument looks persuasive at rst blush, it is also very peculiar. For note that it actually purports to be a proof of the claim that nothing can be known. But if we have really proven that nothing can be known then we now seem to be in a position to say that we know that nothing can be known. Yet if we know that nothing can be known then something is known after all, namely that! So if we were to think that the regress of reasons argument proved that nothing can be known then we would have to accept that its conclusion is now known and we would have a contradiction. Something has gone very wrong! But what? The regress argument certainly looked convincing, but now we see that it leads to an absurd conclusion. In fact the more convincing the argument is the more we cannot accept its conclusion. (Still, this in itself
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tells us something very interesting: it could only be true that nothing is known if we never have reason to believe it!) We seem to have arrived at a position that is bizarre and near paradoxical. Still, philosophers love challenging problemsthey are their meat and drink. We can solve this one by noting that the regress of reasons argument must be a misleading argument for its conclusion because the more convinced we are by the argument the more it is impossible for the conclusion to be true. So how is the argument misleading? We will answer this question when we have gone much further along in our study, when we have more tools at our disposal. For the moment we leave it as a mystery for the reader to ponder. 1.2 Is JTB sufcient for knowledge? Our previous discussion of Platos account of knowledge is inconclusive on one important point. It does not tell us whether to know something might require more than simply having a justied true belief. In the philosophical jargon, the existence of a justied true belief may be necessary for knowledge, but may not be sufcient. Our next question, therefore, is whether JTB is sufcient for knowledge. In 1963 a philosopher named Edmund Gettier published a now famous paper which purported to show that it could not be. He gave what are called counterexamples to the thesis that justied true belief is sufcient for knowledgein fact two of them. Here is the rst counterexample. Smith and Jones have applied for the same job. Smith has (non-conclusive) evidence for the conjunctive proposition: (d) Jones will get the job, and Jones has ten coins in his pocket. Smiths evidence for (d) is that he has been told by someone who should know that Jones is going to get the job and (by some method best not enquired into) he has counted the coins in Jones pocket only a few minutes ago. This is not conclusive evidence for (d) but it is still evidence, sufcient to justify belief. Proposition (d) logically entails (e): (e) The person who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket. Smith sees that (d) entails (e) and accepts (e) on the basis of (d). The evidence for (d) is thus transmitted to (e); Smith therefore has good reason to believe that (e) is true. It will turn out, however, that he, Smith, will actually get the job, and also that he himselfall unknown to himselfhas ten coins in his pocket. (e) is then true though the proposition (d) from which it was
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inferred is false. So (e) is true, Smith has good reason to believe (e) and does in fact believe it. But Smith couldnt really be said to know (e) because what makes (e) true is the fact that he will get the job and the number of coins in his pocket, and he is ignorant of both of these things. Smiths belief in (e) is based on the false, but well-supported, belief that Jones will get the job. So, Gettier concludes, since someone could have a justied true belief but not have knowledge, having knowledge must require the satisfaction of some extra condition over and above having a justied true belief. Should we agree with this assessment? I think we shouldnt. The proposition that Smith believesthat the person who will get the job has ten coins in his pocketis ambiguous, and it is on this ambiguity that the example depends. If we ask ourselves whom Smith means when he is believing this proposition, the answer is obvious: he means Jones. For sentences, philosophers of language would call this the speaker meaning. If, however, we ask ourselves who the referring expression (the person who will get the job) objectively picks outwho it is in fact true of then the answer is that it picks out Smith, not Jones. We could call this the objective referent meaning. Now usually the speaker meaning and the objective referent meaning coincidebut here they have come apart. Now if we consider the speaker meaning interpretation of (e) we see that it turns out to be a justied but false belief. On the other hand, if we consider the objective referent meaning then we have a true belief but one that is unjustied. So when we disambiguate (e) we either get a justied false belief or we get an unjustied true beliefbut in neither case do we get a justied true belief. The example does not show therefore that justied true belief is insufcient for knowledge; its just a case where we do not have knowledge because we dont have a justied true belief in the rst place. Still, as I said, Gettier gave two counterexamples, and we have only considered the rst of them. Perhaps the next one fares better. Here it is. Smithfor once again it is hehas strong evidence for proposition (f): (f) Jones owns a Ford. Smiths evidencewhich we will not rehearseis strong though nonconclusive. Quite separate from this, Smith has a friend, named Brown, of whose whereabouts Smith is completely ignorant. Smith randomly chooses three place names: Boston, Barcelona, and Brest-Litovsk. He then formulates the following three propositions:
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(g) Either Jones owns a Ford, or Brown is in Boston; (h) Either Jones owns a Ford, or Brown is in Barcelona; (i) Either Jones owns a Ford, or Brown is in Brest-Litovsk. Each of these propositions is logically entailed by (f)a fact that Smith is well aware of. The meaning of the eitheror expression here is what logicians call inclusive disjunction; the compound is true if either or both the disjuncts is true. Since Smith was justied in accepting (f) he is also justied in accepting (g), (h), and (i)despite the fact that in each case he has no reason to believe that the second disjunct is true. As it turns out, however, (f) is falseJones does not own a Ford but Brown is in Barcelona. Therefore (h) is a justied true belief, but says Gettier, Smith does not know that (h) is true. So again, says Gettier, justied true belief is not sufcient for knowledge. Note that in both of these counterexamples Gettier gives no reason for his judgement that Smith does not have knowledgehe merely says that it is obvious. One response that we could make to these cases would be simply to say that Gettier is mistaken: Smith does know. (I am setting aside my response to the rst of them, just for the sake of this point.) The cases are strange and our intuitions are unprepared for them, but Smith does know. Or at least, Gettier has to say more than that it is obvious that he doesnt. Could we not, however, say more than this? Suppose that we were to share Gettiers intuition that Smith does not know (h); couldnt we use the examples themselves to tell us what is missing from our account of knowledge? Surely we could. For if we examine what seems to have gone wrong in the case it is that Smith has no evidence (to support his belief in (h)) of the circumstance that makes (h) true. We could amend our denition of knowledge to include this condition. X knows A iffdef X is justied in believing A; A is true; and the evidence that X has which constitutes the justication is evidence of the very circumstance that makes A true. Not only will this solve the counterexamples that Gettier has given, it will also solve the other counterexamples that I am aware of. Mostly, however, it is unnecessary to add it explicitlybecause the kinds of situations that constitute the Gettier counterexamples are a bit like elements higher in the periodic table than Uranium: they are not found in nature but have to be formed in the nuclear reactor of bizarre
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philosophical imaginings. Henceforth, unless stated otherwise, we will ignore them and the extra condition. 1.3 Certainty or Less? While we are wondering how the concept of knowledge is used we might also wonder about the notion of justication. When we say that someone knows some propositionsay that mice are mammalsdoes that mean that they know it with absolute certainty, in the sense that it is not possible for them to be in error; or do we mean that they have strong reason to believe it, even though the reason might be inconclusive. On the side of the rst view, we do sometimes press people who claim to know something and, if we nd even the slightest occasion for doubt, pronounce that they do not really know after all. On the side of the other view, we do often think that we know things where the basis for the belief is inconclusive. As weve just seen, such non-conclusive beliefs lie at the heart of the Gettier counterexamples. This is a matter that cannot, I think, be solved by conceptual analysis. The concept of knowledge is used in both ways and we cannot settle it by seeing whether we do or do not require the stricter standard when confronted with examples. Instead we will have to try to investigate the way each view might work. There is one aspect of this difference that is worth pointing out now, however. If we think that knowledge requires certainty we do not need to put in as a separate condition that the belief is also true. That is because when we say that someone is certain about a matter we are already implying that it is true (if it is not possible for the belief to be false then it must be true). In short, it would not be possible to have a (conclusively) justied false belief. But if we allow non-conclusive justications then someone could have a justied false beliefin fact Smith had at least two in the last section: they were (d) and (f). Because of this, if we allow that someone can have knowledge when the reasons are non-conclusive, we must add in the fact that the belief must be true as a separate condition. Not to prejudge matters we have done just this, above. (It is worth pointing out, however, so that there is no danger of misunderstanding, that someone who embraces the certainty view has not escaped the notion of truthit is silently included in the view.)

In the next chapter we will discuss the notion of truthwith the hope that we can dispel some of the strange misunderstandings and confusions that now attend the concept.

Chapter 2. Some Notes on Truth

2.0 Nihilism Knowledge implies truthso says the Platonic conception of knowledge, and so far we have found no reason to disagree with it. Butsomeone might objectwhat is this notion of truth? Surely in these modern times we regard the notion of truth with the deepest suspicionas something strangely metaphysical? Many people now share this view. We can encapsulate this position by stating the declaration that usually accompanies it, forceful and emphatic: There is no Truth! We will call such a position: Nihilism (not to be confused with the 19th Century political view of the same name). If we want to be more specic we might call it Nihilism about Truththough usually that is an unnecessary mouthful. It is difcult to nd any philosopher throughout history who has advanced this vieweven in recent timesand yet such a view is undoubtedly quite common among non-philosophers and (in the proper sense) philosophical amateurs. There are hints of such a view in Nietzsche, but no more than hintsand ultimately it runs counter to the tenor of most of his other pronouncements. Even Jacques Derrida, when he has been pressed on whether he holds, or has ever held, such a view, has denied it (and not, it has to be said, without some show of irritation). But our concern here is not with who might have started such a view, it is with whether the position is tenable. That is the hare we are chasing. So is it tenable? The best way to approach this question is indirectly through a long-standing philosophical problem: the Paradox of the Liar. This paradox is thought to have originated in the 5th Century b.c. in the philosopher Empedocles, though it is likely to be much older than that. Very simply, it is this: consider the sentence This sentence is false: is it true or false? If it is true then, because it says that it is false, then that must be so: so it is false. But if it is false then that is what it says about itself, and so what it says is true. But then we have: if it is true then it is false and if it is false then it is true. So it seems to be neither true nor false; or perhaps is both. This is known as the Paradox of the Liar, the Liar Paradox, or sometimes, more properly, as the Antinomy of the Liar. Despite many attempts over the last two and a half thousand years it is still unsolved. Now let us look at a closely related paradox: the so-called Cretan
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Paradox. In this version, a Cretan says, All Cretans are Liars. The question is: is that statement a lie or not? If it is a lie then some Cretans must be truth-tellers. Could this Cretan be a truth-teller? If he is, then, since he has said that all Cretans are liars, that must be truebut then it cant be true since he has told the truth. So if the statement is true then it is false. But note that if the statement is false then we cannot conclude that it is true, since all that would tell us is that some Cretan somewhere is not a liar. So if it is false then all we know is that it is false. Putting these together, we know that All Cretans are liars, when uttered by a Cretan, must be false. For a long time the Liar Paradox and the Cretan Paradox were thought to be the same paradox. But they are not. In fact the Cretan Paradox is not really a paradox at all. It is just an example of a statement that cant be true. Now let us look at Nihilism. Could the statement there is no truth be true? Well, no, not without contradicting itself; for if it is true, then it would be an example of the very thing that it says doesnt exist. So it cant be true. What happens if we take it as not true? Does it then turn out to be truelike the Liar Paradox? No. If it is not true then it follows that some statement, somewhere, is true, and that is all. It wont be this statement that is true, but some other. So, if it is true then it is not true, and if it is not true then it is not true: so it is not true. It is false. In other words, Nihilism has the same structure as the Cretan Paradox, not the Liar Paradox. It is an example of a statement that cannot be true. The underlying problem for the person who wants to avow Nihilism is that we have no idea what it would mean to hold a view and not to hold it as true. If someone says I believe X then we cannot understand them except as saying that they believe X to be true. (Think of the oddity of someone who says Horses are mammals, but, at the same time, it is not true that horses are mammals.) So when someone espouses Nihilism we naturally understand them to be saying something that they believe is true. But that is what they cannot be doing. So what can their saying it possibly mean? Well, we know that, whatever it is, it is nothing thats true. Because of these problems Nihilism is not a view that has ever been taken terribly seriously: it has an air of sounding radical and daring but it does not stand up to any kind of close scrutinyunder which it tends to become ever more vacuous. But usually, in fact, those who believe that they believe it are really trying to say something else. What might that other thing be?
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2.1 Relativism about Truth If someone who espouses the doctrine that there is no truth is pressed, they will likely elaborate as follows: I mean that there is no absolute truth; that all truth is relative, something being merely true-for-me, or true-for-you, but not true in any absolute sense. Very well, let us consider this doctrine, which we will call Relativism. (I nd that I already want to make a protest against prexing the adjective absolute to truth: it is utterly misleading to do so, and creates the false impression that a genuine contrast is being described. But more of this complaint later; for now we will go along with this faon de parler.) Let us assume that the statement R: All truth is relative, correctly describes how things are, so that all truth is relative. Now since what it takes for a statement to be absolutely true is nothing more than that it correctly describes how things are, R must be absolutely true. But since it is absolutely true it is an example of the very thing which it says doesnt exist. So it is falseand absolutely so. It is not the case that all truth is relative. We get the same result from a slightly different angle if we ask, could R be relatively true? Well, if R is relatively true then it will be truefor-A and not true-for-B. But if it is not true for B, then for B truth is absolute. But it makes no sense to speak of something being absolute for B but not for Aso it is just absolute full-stop. So again Relativism is false. (I think this argument is less clear than the previous one even though they reach the same conclusion. The unclarity comes from trying to apply a confused position to itself.) So Relativism is falseand absolutely so. This style of argument is a little abstract and the point may be lost on some readers, but we can reach the same conclusion in a more graphic way with the following scenario. Imagine two people involved in a discussion: call them A and B again. B is making a number of assertions about the weather, the identity of the Prime Minister, that 2+2=4, that Australia is in the Southern Hemisphere, etc. To each of these assertions A responds by saying that these things are true-for-B. All well and good. Finally, however, B makes one more assertion: he says that some statements are absolutely true. Now if A says that that is also just true-for-B then A is directly contradicting Bin other words A is saying that Bs statement is absolutely false. Of course the reason A thinks Bs statement is absolutely false is that he thinks no statements are absolutely truebut then he must think this statement is absolutely true. And from there the
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argument continues as before. (If R is absolutely true then it is absolutely false, and so it is false.) There is a common logical structure to all of these arguments against both Nihilism and Relativism. It is called the Law of Clavius, or sometimes also Reductio ad Absurdam. Symbolically it looks like this: (p p) p. What this says is that if a statement p is such that it implies its own denial (negation) then that statement must be false. ( here stands for ifthen and stands for not or negation.) Strictly we call this rule the Law of Clavius when is, what is called material implication, and Reductio ad Absurdam when it is understood as logical implication. But we can afford to be a little loose with our terminology here. 2.2 Relativism: what has gone wrong? We have just shown that Relativism is falseand, in fact, necessarily false. But to understand what has gone wrong, why so many people believe a view that is so easily shown to be mistaken, it is necessary to see what has made the view attractive in the rst place. We must diagnose the underlying error. If someone believes something then they naturally believe it to be true. We can all agree to that. But it is too easy to slide from A believes X to be true to X is true-for-A. These dont say the same thing at all. For the rst is compatible with X being falseA believes X to be true but A is wrong about thiswhereas the second claim isnt. In fact this seems to be how the view arose in the rst place. In the beginning A believes X to be true is harmlessly paraphrased as X is true for A, where this second claim is taken to say no more than the rst. Eventually X is true for A morphed into X is true-for-A, where this is now taken as a new species of trutha species that supersedes the old absolute truth with a new relative kind. By itself this probably would not have succeeded in confusing anyone, however, had it not been for a second fatal ambiguity. This can best be brought out in the following snippet of dialogue.
Ab: Some statements are true. This property of being true is a matter of the statement correctly describing how things are. Rel: But if it is just a matter of the statement correctly describing how things areif this relationship is external to usthen how would we know that it holds? In other words: how would we know when a statement is true in this 12

absolute sense?

This is a very common response, and one that has probably done more than any other to convince people that there is something wrong with the idea of absolute truth. But it involves a mistake; a slide from a statement being true, to our knowing that it is true. These are not the same thing. There is no incoherence involved in saying that a statement is true if it correctly describes how things are and at the same time admitting that many statements that are true may never be known to be true. Moreover, the Relativist has no grounds for muddling up the conditions that make a statement true and the conditions that must obtain for us to know that a statement is true. We will explicate this difference in the next section. In summary Relativism arises from a confusion between truth and belief and truth and knowledgeand it eventually causes a confusion between the conated items, belief and knowledge. But these are all separate things, separate and unlike. 2.3 Truth and Knowledge What is it for a statement to be true? We have spoken, above, of a statement correctly describing how things are, and for most purposes that is exact enough. But we can do better, if the need arises. We can dene a formula that captures the notion quite directly. For all sentences p, p is true if and only if p. (This is sometimes called Tarskis Analysis of Truth, but this is a vexed issue given that several different things are called by this name.) We can see what this formula means if we put an actual sentence in the p variable position. Grass is green is true if and only if grass is green. Obviously we could put any other statement-making sentence in the p position and it will yield up a condition of what it means for that sentence to be true. On this account, truth is said to be a property of sentences, and to employ it we need a way of referring to sentences. That is ne because we have a ready way of doing that: it is called quotation. But truth is sometimes employed in a way that doesnt require quotation; it is employed aswhat philosophers are inclined to calla propositional operator. As an operator it can be dened by the following formula: For all sentences p, it is true that p if and only if p. Thus we would say it is true that grass is green if and only if grass is green. This operator, which we will abbreviate to T, has interesting properties it can be added or deleted without effect. Thus, representing iff by , we
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have TTTTTTp TTTTTp TTTTp TTTp TTp Tp p. This has important implications for our account of knowledge. For when we say that A knows p means that p is a justied true beliefthis is also what it means for A to know that p is true. Thus, when in the last section, the Relativist asked the question Yes, but how do we know that p is true the simple answer is The same way you know p. This is because KA(p) KA (Tp). This follows from the above formula and the denition of knowledge. Here, experience tells me, people are inclined to get rather nervousas though they had been led into a dark labyrinth. How can it be, they will say, that to know that grass is green I must have, not only a good reason to believe it, but it must be true, and yet knowing that it is true is nothing more than knowing that grass is green. Surely something has gone wrong! In fact nothing has gone wrong. To know A, A must be true. But to know that A is true, it must be true that A is truewhich reduces to A is true. In formulae, it would look like this. KA(p) (Tp) and (Tp) p. KA(Tp) (TTp) and (TTp) (Tp) and (Tp) p. The rst line says that if A knows p then p is true; and if it is true that p then p. The second line says that if A knows that p then it is true that it is true that p; and if it is true that it is true that p then it is true that p; and if it is true that p then p. There is no inconsistency in any of this. The upshot is that KA(p) KA(Tp). Undoubtedly by now all of this seems quite complex. In its essence it is in fact quite simple; but the fact that it can sound complex has acted as a kind of Shell Gamea single lapse in ones attention and suddenly it seems right to say You see! It is impossible that there be an absolute truth. All truth is relative! We could never know that anything is absolutely true. But that is just to lose sight of the p. 2.4 Facts and Values Let us now ask a different kind of question: what is the source of the
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attraction people have to Relativism? Why does it seem to say something that people feel needs saying? It seems wrong and uncharitable to suppose that there are no positive aspects that lead people to feel attracted to the view. I agree that it is and will now try to assay what that positive thing is. The true-for-you expression does not get deployed in every circumstancebut in some rather than others. Suppose B says: Honesty is the best policy. A might then say: Well, that is true for you, but it is not true for me. Or suppose B says: The purpose of life is self-sacrice. Then, again, A might say: That may be true for you, but it is not true for me. But suppose B says: Kylie Minogue is the Prime Minister of Australia. It would be bizarre of A to respond to this by saying: That may be true for you, but it is not true for me. In fact, under this circumstance we would be hard pressed to say who is the more insane of the two, A or B! Or suppose A asks B the price of a chair in the showroom window. B replies: Fifty dollars. If A then says: that may be true for you, but it is not true for me, B would likely start dialling for security. This tells us something important: when straightforward matters of fact are involved Relativism seems bizarre and inappropriate. The only time it seems to be the right thing to say is when the matter in question is a matter of value or is otherwise unresolvable by rational means. So honesty is the best policy and the purpose of life is self-sacrice are not things that we could easily say are true or falseindeed we may feel that we do not even know how to begin nding outwhat they are. And that seems to be what the Relativist is trying to say, albeit awkwardly: You may believe that it is true that honesty is the best policy, but I do not believe itand moreover I dont see any way of settling who is right. Let us not argue about it, then! And that is why Relativism would be inappropriate in the other cases. There is an obvious fact of the matter as to who is the Prime Minister of Australia and the price of a chair and in neither case is it that difcult to discover what they are. So we can say that the relativist locution is used when, either there is thought to be no fact that could ground some particular claim (as in a matter of value), or when there is such a fact but that it is rationally inaccessible. It would probably be as a result of this latter circumstance that someone might say, if someone else were to declare that God exists, that that might be true for you but is not true for me. But it is a mark of how confused Relativism is that it is equally likely that someone who says that it is true for you that God exists, but not true for me, might also mean that God exists for you in virtue of your
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thinking that He does, but does not exist for me in virtue of my thinking He doesnt. All of which makes no sense at all, and is merely a descent into gibberish. Still, even if we now have a sense of what someone might reasonably mean in saying that something is true-for-you, not-true-for-me, that does not imply that it is the right thing to say, even in the most favourable conditions. For suppose we agreejust for the sake of argumentthat there are no facts that can ground our value judgements. That does not mean that we should say your judgement is true for you. Onceor should I say ifwe become aware that there are no facts that can ground (in the jargon: provide truth-conditions for) our judgements then we should simply say that all such judgements are false. And that means absolutely false. There is no point trying to soften this with Relativist comfort-phrases. If the motivation for Relativism is that there are insufcient facts in the world to ground our assertions and judgements then it is no motivation at all: for all those judgements are simply false, in virtue of their being nothing that could make them true. In a sense Relativist locutions provide a kind of cushion against coming to terms with this point. If there are no facts which can ground value judgementsincluding moral value judgementsthen what the Relativist should say to the person who says that murder is wrong is that that statement is strictly false. But that is a tough thing to say. In fact it is perhaps such a tough thing to say that it is no wonder that the Relativist is looking for a wayany waynot to say it. 2.5 The Tolerance Defence Some people feel that Relativism is a desirable positionthat is, that it ought to be true, or at least that we ought to believe it to be true. This is because, they say, it is a tolerant positionit lets people believe what they want to believe. How credible is this defence? Well, there is an immediate problem: there is no known connection between it being nice for a view to be true and it actually being true. So desirability is not going to make the view believable. In fact no position is one whit more likely to be true no matter if it were as desirable as it could be. Suppose a view was maximally desirableevery inhabitant of the Earth would perish tomorrow unless it is true. That would not make the view believable or any the more likely to be true. Sad, but there it is. There is a second problem. As we have already seen, Relativism is not particularly tolerant of the beliefs of others when it comes to the truth
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about truthand cant be. But even with beliefs that are not about truth Relativism falls short. If B says that God exists and A responds by saying that this is just true-for-B, B is entitled to feel annoyed. For B does not think that it is just true for him, he thinks its true. If he didnt think that he wouldnt bother believing it. When someone believes something they mostlybarring bizarre irrational beliefs that the person retains while knowing that they are irrationalbelieve it because they think they have good evidence. So if someone believes that God exists they will think that their belief is truenot just true-for-them. (Or course, that is not enough to ensure that their belief is true, but that is a commonplace.) The tolerance defence also sits very ill with the most common Relativist views. As I noted in the previous section, most people who are Relativists are so on matters of valuesit is a view that is, so to speak, weighted heavily over the evaluative part of our discourse. Thus the usual Relativist cry is: All morality is just relative (to our culture)! But if that is so how can a moral evaluationtolerance is goodact as an objective evaluation that justies Relativism? On the Relativist view it is not true simpliciter that tolerance is good, it is only true-for-the-one-whobelieves-it. So, on this view, intolerance is good, is true for the one who believes that. The upshot is that there can be no moral justication of Relativism. (It is perhaps worth adding at this point that in my experience Relativists are a little inclined to use Relativism to selectively neutralise the views of others and to forget the view when it comes to their own positions. Thus it seems to be tacitly asserted that your beliefs are just true-for-you, whereas mine are simply true. And perhaps this accounts for the oddityand I am not the rst one to have observed thisthat Relativists are often inclined to hold their Relativism as though it were a dogmatic, uncriticisable, fact.) 2.6 Relative Truth and Relativity If the idea that truth is relative has its origins anywhere it is probably in a confused misunderstanding of the ideas of Relativity Theory. Relativity Theory (specically, Einsteins Special Theory of Relativity (STR)) makes the claim that an objects velocity is relative. That is, something can be said to be travelling at a particular velocity only relative to a particular (inertial) frame of referencethere is no such thing as the real or absolute velocity of an object. In fact in STR it is also true that the time that elapses between two events is also relative to a particular frame of
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referencetwo observers measuring with respect to different frames of reference will measure different elapse times for the same pair of events. Thus there is no such thing as the real elapse time. But even though velocity and elapse time are relative in STRindeed the former is relative even in Newtonian kinematics, where it is called Galilean Relativityit is not the case that everything is relative. It is a strange and difcult to grasp fact that even though velocity is only relative, change in velocity, also known as acceleration, is absolutethat is, it is the same for all observers. Perhaps the doctrine that all truth is relative arose originally from someone hearing of Einsteins theorywhich, by the way, has been borne out by all subsequent experimentsand drawing from it the wrong conclusion. Perhaps someone clumsily paraphrased the theory with the slogan Everything is Relative! and, once started, the misunderstanding proved impossible to stop, eventually seeming to be conrmed when someone else turned mistake into philosophy by claiming that this was the correct view of truth. It is impossible to know. All that is known is that a view that was nowhere espoused in the history of philosophy suddenly, in the middle of the Twentieth Century, acquired the status of a philosophy among people who were not themselves philosophers. A strange fate for a simple mistake to enjoy! 2.7 Truth and RedundancyAn Advanced Topic that may be skipped In recent years there has grown up a view about truth that declares it to be redundant, in the sense that whatever can be said with it can be said without it. This view is variously called, following Ramsay, the Redundancy Theory; following Quine, the Disquotational view; or following Horwich, the Minimalist view. (There are slight differences here which will be described below.) Consider the two schema, described in 2.4 above. (1) (2) For all sentences p, p is true if and only if p For all sentences p, it is true that p if and only if p.

In essence the disquotational view (DT) is that (1) is all that there is to the concept of truthit is nothing more than a device for making assertions that could perfectly well be made without it. If I say: Grass is green is true, I could have said it disquotationally by just saying grass is green. On the redundancy view (call it MT) (2) is all that there is to the concept of truth. It is an operator that just yea-says any proposition. So it is
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true that grass is green just says the same thing as grass is green. This is also called the Minimal Theory of Truth. The idea here can be, has been, variously expressed by saying that truth is not a substantive notion, that the concept adds nothing, that it is trivial, or that it could be eliminated without loss. Indeed if someone were of a mischievous natureand there have been such peopleit might even be claimed that this is a precise statement of the Nihilists basic idea: there is no truth. So is it true? Do either DT or MT express all that there is to truth? To answer this question it is necessary to put it slightly more precisely. Take DTwe could ask whether a theory expressed in a language that contains no truth predicate would be deductively equivalent to the same theory with a language enriched by a truth predicate. Would this extension be, what is called, a conservative extension? (We could ask the same thing about a language augmented with a truth operatoras in MT.) The next thing to ask is whether a language in which a full theory of truth is denedas in Alfred Tarskis seminal 1936 paper On the Concept of Truth in Formalised Languageswould also be a conservative extension. Obviously if one augmentation is a conservative extension and the other isnt then they cant be equivalent and the rst could not be identical to a full theory of truthit couldnt be everything there is to the concept of truth. The answer to this question was given by the same Tarski in that 1936 paper. It is no, they are not equivalent. Our concept of truth is not exhausted by the equivalences in (1) or (2). Moreover, in Peano Arithmetic (PA) augmented by a full truth theory, the consistency of PA is derivablebut not without, by Gdels second incompleteness theorem. (For the readdressing of these questions in a modern context, see Jeffrey Ketlands excellent Deationism and Tarskis Paradise in Mind, vol.108, 1999, 6994.) We could say that a full Tarskian truth theory employing the concept of satisfaction, is not empty or non-substantive, or any one of the other belittling epithets that Minimalists have attempted to hang on it. And moreover this should have been obvious from the efforts of Tarskiover sixty years ago!to dene the conditions under which introducing the predicate does and does not engender paradox. One has to say that much recent writing on this topic has provided a far from edifying spectacle.

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2.8 Some Questions and Answers Let us return to the relation between knowledge and truth. There are a number of matters that come up frequently that need simple clarication. So here, to end this chapter, we have a compendium of frequently asked questions and answers. Q: If I believe that I know something does that mean that I know it? A: Noyou can be wrong. Q: If I know that I know something does that mean that I know it? A: Yes. Q: If I believe that I know that I know something does that mean that I know it? A: No. Q: If I believe something must it be true? A: No. Q: If I know something must it be true? A: Yes. Q: If something is true must I know it? A: No. Q: If I know something must I know that it is true? A: Yes. Q: If I know something will I never know that I know itbecause I can never verify that it is true? A: (This is a tricky one) No. If I know something, say p, then I have a true justied belief, and I could quite reasonably have a justied true belief that I have a justied true belief that p. (I will go into more detail on this one in a later chapter.) Q: Could we just do without the condition that the thing known must be true? A: No. We have a perfectly serviceable concept of rational belief and it is not the same as our concept of knowledge. If we drop the truth condition we will not be able to make the distinction between justied true belief and justied false belief. We need the concept of a rational belief that succeeds in its aimthat is knowledge. (Just as we need the concept not only of trying to win a race, but of actually winning it!) Q: Were there truths before there were any peoplewhen the Universe was, say, three seconds old? A: (Again tricky) This is called the Truthbearer Issue. I think most philosophers would say yesthere would be many things true back then, including the simple claim that there are no humans alive yet. For there to be truths there do not need to be actually uttered sentences. Other philosophers might be of a more Nominalist bentthey may insist that though there are plenty of facts back then, there were no true sentences until they were uttered. I am
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inclined, for present purposes, to be agnostic on this issuethough I think the latter option requires us to speak in an unnecessarily cumbersome way. So I will say that when there were dinosaurs there were many statements that were true about those dinosaurseven though the dinosaurs themselves were not capable of uttering them. That concludes our discussion of truth and its relation to knowledge. There are many other aspects that can be considered, but we can save some of those for later chapters when we have a lot more philosophy under our belt.

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Chapter 3. Descartes Meditation One

et us now return to the question: what do we know? If the argument against the global sceptic in chapter one has as its conclusion that we must know something, then the obvious thing to ask is: what is it that we know? And before we can answer that question we need to know how we can nd out what we know. Ren Descartes (15961650) attempted to answer both questions and presented those answers in a number of works, beginning with the Discourse on Method in 1637, continuing with the Meditations in 1641, and also in Principles of Philosophy in 1644. His work has often been seen as the beginning of modern philosophy, and whether that is true or not he certainly presented a compelling picture of himself as sweeping aside all prejudice and attempting to reinvent the theory of knowledge single-handed. And it must be said that there is an economy and show of precision in his work which subsequent generations have found instructive and refreshing. Here I want to examine the foundation of his foundation of knowledge: the First Meditation, which repeats in economical form the position of the Discourse on Method. It is arguably his single most important contribution to the theory of knowledge and it will repay examination in detail.

3.1 The Method The starting point is to try to establish how we can know what we know. Descartes appears to reason that I know that I know something if it is not open to doubt. Thus we nd him at the beginning of Meditation One announcing that if we want to discover what is knownand what can stand as the foundation to the rest of our knowledgewe should try to nd out what is doubtable. Here is what he says. It is now several years since I rst became aware how many false opinions I had from my childhood been admitting as true, and how doubtful was everything I have subsequently based on
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them. Accordingly I have ever since been convinced that if I am to establish anything rm and lasting in the sciences, I must once for all, and by a deliberate effort, rid myself of all those opinions to which I have hitherto given credence, starting entirely anew, and building from the foundations up. But as this enterprise was evidently one of great magnitude, I waited until I had attained an age so mature that I could no longer expect that I should at any later date be better able to execute my design. This is what has made me delay so long; and I should now be failing in my duty, were I to continue consuming in deliberation such time for action as still remains to me. Today, then, as I have suitably freed my mind from all cares, and have secured for myself an assured leisure in peaceful solitude, I shall at last apply myself earnestly and freely to the general overthrow of all my former opinions. In doing so, it will not be necessary for me to show that they are one and all false; that is perhaps more than can be done. But since reason has already persuaded me that I ought to withhold belief no less carefully from things not entirely certain and indubitable than from those which appear to me manifestly false, I shall be justied in setting all of them aside, if in each case I can nd any ground whatsoever for regarding them as dubitable. Nor in so doing shall I be investigating each belief separatelythat, like inquiry into their falsity, would be an endless labour. The withdrawal of foundations involves the downfall of whatever rests on these foundations, and what I shall therefore begin by examining are the principles on which my former beliefs rested. Not everything here is clear, but the main idea is plain enough. The foundations for our knowledge of the world are to be discovered by a process of elimination: we eliminate everything that is dubitable to discover what is certain. Note, parenthetically, that Descartes uses the image of foundations in two ways: rstly for the basis of his proposed new construction, and secondly for the principles that underlie his old set of beliefs. Thus he intends to isolate his new foundation by pulling the foundations out from beneath of his old set of beliefs. This image of foundations really comes from the mathematics of the time, from the axioms in a geometric theory, say. Thus a better name for Descartes theory would really be An
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Axiomatic Theory of Knowledge. The idea is that, what we derive, by logical means, from the axiomsthese derived claims are called theorems are as certain as the axioms themselves. In fact, understanding this motivating analogy will take us a long way to seeing what works and what does not in Descartes account. Our second parenthetical remark is to note that Descartes does not seem entirely clear whether he is trying to winnow out the dubitable to isolate the certain, or whether he is trying to winnow out the false to isolate the true. At this early stage this vacillation does no damage but later we will see that this masks a serious confusion in his thought. But we can now see Descartes answer to his rst question: how can we know what we know? The answer is that we know what is beyond doubt, and that which follows logically from what is beyond doubt. Thus we may conclude that, for Descartes, we know what is certain. 3.2 The Arguments for Doubt What then is beyond doubt? Descartes attempts to answer that question by producing three arguments for doubt that are of increasing strength, or at least increasing scope. The rst argument is from the unreliability of the senses. Here is Descartes statement. Whatever, up to the present, I have accepted as possessed of the highest truth and certainty I have learned either from the senses or through the senses. Now these senses I have sometimes found to be deceptive; and it is only prudent never to place complete condence in that by which we have even once been deceived. This argument is a generalisation from known factthe fact that our senses have sometimes, in some circumstances, led us astray. It invites us to be prudent and not to completely trusti.e. not in other circumstancesthat which has once misled us. How compelling is this argument? Descartes hardly gives us time to consider for he immediately supplies a counterargument, the import of which is that this is in fact a non-prudent overgeneralisation. But, it may be said, although the senses sometimes deceive us regarding minute objects, or such as are at a great distance from us, there are yet many other things which, though known by way of sense, are too evident to be doubted; as, for instance, that I am in this place, seated by the re, attired in a dressing gown, having
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this paper in my hands, and other similar seeming certainties. Can I deny that these hands and this body are mine, save perhaps by comparing myself to those who are insane, and whose brains are so disturbed and clouded by dark bilious vapours that they persist in assuring us that they are kings, when in fact they are in extreme poverty; or that they are clothed in gold and purple when they are in fact destitute of any covering; or that their head is made of clay and their body of glass, or that they are pumpkins. They are mad; and I should be no less insane were I to follow examples so extravagant. So this rst argument for doubt is awed. (Just how awed it can really be, given Descartes later acceptance of a doubt that is even more encompassing, is a point to which we will return.) Descartes then proposes a second argument for doubt, which is often called The Dreaming Argument. None the less I must bear in mind that I am a man, and am therefore in the habit of sleeping, and that what the insane represent to themselves in their waking moments I represent to myself, with other things even less probable, in my dreams. How often, indeed, have I dreamt of myself being in this place, dressed and seated by the re, whilst all the time I was lying undressed in bed! At the present moment it certainly seems that in looking at this paper I do so with open eyes, that the head which I move is not asleep, that it is deliberately and of set purpose that I extend this hand, and that I am sensing the hand. The things which happen to the sleeper are not so clear nor so distinct as all of these things are. I cannot, however, but remind myself that on many occasions I have in sleep been deceived by similar illusions; and on more careful study of them I see that there are no certain marks distinguishing waking from sleep; and I see this so manifestly that, lost in amazement, I am almost persuaded that I am now dreaming. The emphasis in that last sentence should fall on certain. The idea is that when I am dreaming I have an experience as if of sitting by the re, just as when I am awake I have an experience of an actual re. There are no certain marks to distinguish the ersatz from the genuineand so it is pos-

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sible that I am now dreaming though I think myself awake. This is the Dreaming Argument. (Think of it via an analogy: there are no certain marks to distinguish a counterfeit Van Gogh painting from a genuine onetherefore it is possible that this Van Gogh that I am now looking at is a forgery.) This argument seems quite convincing. The only real source of worry is the qualitative gap between the dreaming experience and the waking one. Even Descartes acknowledges that they are not that close. And if they are not very close then I am not likely to be lost in amazement and almost persuaded that I am now dreamingas Descartes rhetorically adds. (Think what a shrug would greet the counterfeiting argument if all Van Gogh counterfeits were terriblelittle more than childrens doodles. Then we would say, yes, we cannot be certain absolutely certainthat this Van Gogh is not a counterfeit, but we can still be pretty damn sure!) Descartes has other worries. The dream experience is, he feels, always simply a recombination of the elements of waking life, and thus is parasitical on waking experience. Let us then suppose ourselves to be asleep, and all these particularsnamely, that we open our eyes, move the head, extend the handsare false and illusory; and let us reect that our hands perhaps, and the whole body, are not what we see them as being. Nevertheless we must at least agree that the things seen by us in sleep are as it were like painted images, and cannot have been formed save in the likeness of what is real and true. The types of things depicted, eyes, head, hands, etc.these at least are not imaginary, but true and existent. For in truth when painters endeavour with all possible artice to represent sirens and satyrs by forms the most fantastic and unusual, they cannot assign them natures which are entirely new, but only make a certain selection of limbs from different animals. Even should they excogitate something so novel that nothing similiar has ever before been seen, and that their work represents to us a thing entirely cticious and false, the colours used in depicting them cannot be similarly cticious; they at least must truly exist. And by this same reasoning, even should those general things, viz, a body, eyes, a head, hands and such like, be imaginary, we are yet bound to admit that there are things simpler and more universal which are the real existents and by the intermixture of which, as in the
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case of the colours, all the images of things of which we have any awareness, be they true and real or false and fantastic, are formed. To this class of things belong corporeal nature in general and its extension, the shape of extended things, their quantity or magnitude, and their number, as also the location in which they are, the time through which they endure, and other similar things. Dreams, then, are essentially recombinations of the fundamentals of reality. Logically, this point should be used by Descartes to suggest that the Dreaming Argument is still rather limitedthat it does not capture everything that is open to doubtyet he does not in fact use it in that way. Instead he suggests that this fact explains the supposed certainty that is often thought to attend studies of the fundamentalsarithmetic and geometryas opposed to studies of the composites, i.e. physics, chemistry, biology, etc. This is rather implausible. If physics discovered fundamental particlestruly fundamental particlesit is hardly likely that at that moment physics would become certain. We must look elsewhere for explanations of the difference between arithmetic and geometry on the one hand, and physics, chemistry and medicine, on the other. Still, Descartes does not linger over this point and neither should we. He immediately points out that the possibilities of recombination afforded by dreams is limited, for arithmetic and geometric facts are constant across both dream and reality. Here are both points together. This perhaps is why we not unreasonably conclude that physics, astronomy, medicine, and all other disciplines treating of composite things are of doubtful character, and that arithmetic, geometry, etc., treating only of the simplest and most general things and but little concerned as to whether or not they are actual existents, have a content that is certain and indubitable. For whether I am awake or dreaming, 2 and 3 are 5, a square has no more than four sides; and it does not seem possible that truths so evident can ever be suspected of falsity. He goes on to try to extend the method of doubt to these things as well. Yet even these truths can be questioned. That God exists, that He is all-powerful, and has created me such as I am, has long been my settled opinion. How, then, do I know that He has not arranged that there be no Earth, no heavens, no extended thing,
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no shape, no magnitude, no location, while at the same time securing that all these things appear to me to exist precisely as they now do? Others, as I sometimes think, deceive themselves in the things which they believe they know best. How do I know that I am not myself deceived every time I add 2 and 3, or count the sides of a square, or judge of things yet simpler, if anything simpler can be suggested? But perhaps God has not been willing that I should be thus deceived, for He is said to be supremely good. If, however, it be repugnant to the goodness of God to have created me such that I am constantly subject to deception, it would also appear to be contrary to His goodness to permit me to be sometimes deceived, and that He does permit this is not in doubt. So if God exists and is all-powerful then He could cause my calculations and my reasoning to go awryeven if to do such things might appear to be contrary to His goodness. This clearly is an enlargement of the scope of doubt. It should now be capable of taking in the truths of reason as well as the truths of experience. But Descartes is not entirely happy with itbecause even though the argument only requires that such an allpowerful God be possible, it may not be possible for a wholly benevolent being to deceive me in this way. So Descartes has to imagine a very powerful being who would not suffer from this moral impediment. This is his famous Evil Demon. Before conjuring up this possibility, however, Descartes rst worries about Mans capacity for error and its relation to his origins. There may be those who might prefer to deny the existence of a God so powerful, rather than to believe that all other things are uncertain. Let us, for the present, not oppose them; let us allow, in the manner of their view, that all that has been said regarding God is a fable. Even so we shall not have met and answered the doubts suggested above regarding the reliability of our mental faculties; instead we shall have given added force to them. For in whatever way it be supposed that I have come to be what I am, whether by fate or by chance, or by a continual succession and connection of things, or by some other means, since to be deceived and to err is an imperfection, the likelihood of my being so imperfect as to be the constant victim of deception will be increased in proportion as the power to which they assign my
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origin is lessened. To such arguments I have assuredly nothing to reply; and thus at last I am constrained to confess that there is no one of all my former opinions which is not open to doubt, and this not merely owing to want of thought on my part, or through levity, but from cogent and maturely considered reasons. Henceforth, therefore, should I desire to discover something certain, I ought to refrain from assenting to these opinions no less scrupulously than in respect of what is manifestly false. This last sentence is puzzling. Descartes says therefore but it is not obvious what this claim actually follows from. Moreover it doesnt seem true. What good could it do in the discovery of certainties to refuse to assent to that which is not certain?(It is a little like saying that if you want to catch lions you must pretend that everything that is not a lion doesnt exist! Its all very zen, but not, ultimately, that helpful.) In fact, the philosopher Leibniz complained on just this point. In part of his commentary on Descartes he said: I do not see what good it does to consider what is doubtful as false. This would be not to lay aside prejudices but to change them. To which we might add that it is hard to see how these new falsehoods could aid in the discovery of certainties: self-deception is not usually thought to be the best way of discovering the truth! In fact Descartes tries to justify this strange manoeuvre in the next paragraph. But it is not sufcient to have taken note of these conclusions; we must also be careful to keep them in mind. For long-established customary opinions perpetually recur in thought, long and familiar usage having given them the right to occupy my mind, even almost against my will, and to be masters of my belief. Nor shall I ever lose this habit of assenting to and conding in them, not at least so long as I consider them as in truth they are, [my emphasis] namely, as opinions which, though in some fashion doubtful (as I have just shown) are still, none the less, highly probable and such as it is much more reasonable to believe than deny. This is why I shall, as I think, be acting prudently if, taking a directly contrary line, I of set purpose employ every available device for the deceiving of myself, feigning that all these opinions are entirely false and imaginary. Then, in due course, having so balanced my old-time prejudice by this new prejudice that I cease to incline to one side more than to another, my judge29

ment, no longer dominated by misleading usages, will not be hindered by them in the apprehension of things. In this course there can, I am convinced, be neither danger nor error. What I have under consideration is a question solely of knowledge, not of action, so that I cannot for the present be at fault as being overready to adopt a questioning attitude. This paragraph presents a tangle of issues, that it will take us some time to sort out. We may note immediately, however, that there is really no explanation of Descartes perverse decision forthcoming: we ought to believe that which it is more reasonable to believe than deny; however, for the purposes of the method he intends to employ every available device for the deceiving of [himself]. And having announced this, he assures us that there can in this be neither danger nor error! One is tempted to say that there will be as little of the former as there is as much of the latter. However, more of this later. Following this disclaimer Descartes goes on to state his well-known Evil Demon Hypothesis. Accordingly I shall now suppose, not that a true God, and who as such must be supremely good and the fountain of truth, but that some malignant genius exceedingly powerful and cunning has devoted all his powers in the deceiving of me; I shall suppose that the sky, the earth, colours, shapes, sounds and all external things are illusions and impostures of which this evil genius has availed himself for the abuse of my credulity; I shall consider myself as having no hands, no eyes, no esh, no blood, nor any senses, but as falsely opining myself to possess all these things. Further, I shall obstinately persist, in this way of thinking; and even if, while so doing, it may not be within my power to arrive at the knowledge of any truth, there is one thing I have it in me to do, viz. to suspend judgement, refusing assent to what is false. [Authors note: and also to what is true!] Thereby, thanks to this resolved rmness of mind, I shall be effectively guarding myself against being imposed on by this deceiver, no matter how powerful or how craftily deceptive he may be. After this we have Descartes weary resignation that such extreme doubt is not maintainable for long.

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This undertaking is, however, irksome and laborious, and a certain indolence drags me back into the course of my customary life. Just as a captive who has been enjoying in sleep an imaginary liberty, should he begin to suspect that his liberty is a dream, dreads awakening, and conspires with the agreeable illusions for the prolonging of the deception, so in similar fashion I gladly lapse back into my accustomed opinions. I dread to be awakened, in fear lest the wakefulness may have to be laboriously spent, not in the tranquilising light of truth, but in the extreme darkness of the above suggested questionings. It is easy to miss the strangeness of this rhetorical ourish. The peaceful dream is the supposition that he is being deceived by an Evil Demon. The waking world is the darkness of his former opinions. The former is the tranquilising light of truth, whereas the latter, being in some fashion doubtful, is now completely repugnant. Descartes has here talked himself into a very inverted position, where black is white and white is black! It is hard to see how all of this self-deceiving can end but in false philosophy. 3.3 The Missing French-Remainder Theorem The purpose of the Method of Doubt was to suspend belief in all that is doubtful in order to isolate that which is certain. What is certain will be the remainder once the doubtful is removed. So what does Descartes think is the certain remainder? The answer is: that I exist. And the argument that convinces him that this is certain is the famous Cogito ergo Sum: I think therefore I am. Even if there were an Evil Demon trying to deceive me I must exist in order to be deceived. When I attempt to doubt that I exist it is obvious that I must exist to do the doubting. So I exist. The argument does not tell me who or what I am, nor does it tell me that you exist: all of that is open to doubt. But the argument does tell me that it is certain to me that I exist. We might think of this as Descartes rst isolated axiom. But one axiom alone is not likely to take us very far. In Meditation III Descartes argues that it is also certain that God exists and that He is all good. With these two foundational axioms Descartes attempts to derive our knowledge of the world. I do not intend to say much about this positive, constructive, phase of Descartes philosophy. It is audacious and venturesome but it is also
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unconvincing and of mainly historical interest. Instead I want to focus on Meditation I and the Method of Doubt to see whether it is a cogent starting point. And it is also true that philosophers who have been impressed by Descartes arguments there have seen themas Descartes did notas an argument for scepticism. We want to know if that scepticism genuinely follows. The rst thing to say may seem unimportant but is not. Ostensibly Descartes uses the Method of Doubt to nd that which is insusceptible of doubt. But in order to do this he needs to show that the doubt that he nally arrives at is maximali.e. that everything that is capable of being doubted is now within its ambit. Otherwise he cannot conclude that the remainder will be that which is certain. But there is no hint of such a proof in Descartes. Moreover, as we shall see, there are good reasons why he cannot answer this question. This need for the doubt to be maximal has shaped, howeverin a half-conscious waythe structure of Meditation I. Descartes has progressed through the three arguments for doubt trying to nd the most encompassing. He is enlarging the scope of doubt at every turn. But this makes his response to the rst argument for the unreliability of the senses quite wrong. For he suggests there that my mistrust of my senses will bring me perilously close to those who are madi.e. to those whose senses do in fact deceive them. But this is not the correct reservation for him to have: it should not be that such doubt is too extreme but that it is not extreme enough. It is not maximal. And, of course, by the time we reach the Evil Demon hypothesis we are well beyond those poor simple souls who think that they are pumpkins. In fact, by comparison they seem models of sanity. But even though Meditation I is structured around this progression toward a maximal doubt there is no proof that we have arrived at it. Nor is it at all clearas we will see in the next sectionwhat falls within the scope of the doubt that has been arrived at. Because of this Descartes cannot be sure that the remainder will be certain. This is perhaps why, when he comes to the Cogito, and then to his arguments for the existence of God, he separately, and independently, argues for their certainty. But this means that the Method of Doubt was redundant all along: if we wanted to know what was certain we should have simply gone straight to the particular candidates; we didnt need to approach them stealthily through the doubtful. The method of Doubt is a path that just peters out and we then just jump to what we could have jumped to all along. But this is more than just a slipfor it conceals a problem that goes to the heart of
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Descartes entire enterprise. What that problem is we turn to in the next section. 3.4 The Symmetry of Doubt. The Evil Demon hypothesis goes beyond the Dreaming Argument, but how? Certain truths of reason are constant across dreams and reality and therefore are not cast into doubt by the fact that we might be dreaming. The Evil Demon Hypothesisor, in the rst form, God Himselfis therefore meant to show that even these things can be doubted. Moreover, we could adapt the Unreliability of the Senses Argument to show that all truths of reason are open to doubt. I have sometimes found my reasoning to be deceptive; and it is only prudent never to place complete condence in that by which we have even once been deceived. However, by the time we have come to the conclusion of Meditation I the possibility that our reasoning is open to doubt, just as much as our sensory experience, has been lost. The doubt that Descartes runs through seems to be little different to what was open to doubt at the end of the Dreaming Argument. We havent progressed beyond it after all. This omission allows Descartes to discover the certainties that he nds in Meditations II and III, for these are arguments that depend on the slenderest fact: that I am thinking. As arguments they seek to draw conclusions from that fact, and these conclusions are that I exist, and so also does a perfect being. If reasoning is open to doubt as much as experience what would be the consequences for Descartes enterprise? Well, at the very least, Descartes would not be able to conclude that the consequence of any argument is certain. He might have to rest content with the bare assertion I am thinking, and perhaps not even that. He would, at any rate, not be the principal representative of 17th Century Rationalism that we know today. I am suggesting that the only reason Descartes is hopeful of constructing our knowledge of the world on the basis of the Method of Doubt is that he is treating that method asymmetrically. He takes it to undermine our belief in experience, but not our belief in reasoning. But the arguments for doubt are symmetrical and cut against both if they cut against one. If even reasoning is open to doubt then no argument is secure, no matter how certain it seemsfor I cannot conclude from the fact that an argument seems certain that it really is.
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Someone might conclude that I am suggesting that a complete scepticism follows from Descartes argument; and that moreover I am endorsing that scepticism. Not so. My view is that the Method of Doubt is in error and that it is this error that leads to conclusions so disastrous. Or to be cute: the Method of Doubt is open to the severest doubt. 3.5 Possible Errors and Evidence of Errors We may note that Descartes does not believe that there is an Evil Demon, or even that it is remotely probable; he merely thinks it is logically possible that there be one. What weight should be given to that possibility that is, how should it affect my belief that there is an external world? At a minimum Descartes believes that if my experiences could be caused by an Evil Demon rather than an external world of independent objects then I cannot be logically certain that there is such an external world. Let us grant him this much. But he is normally taken to go much further than this. He is normally taken to believe that we know only that which is certain (one has to say, however, that he himself is never so forthright) and that therefore we do not know that there is an external world. This is a very strong claim. From the mere possibility of the existence of an explanation for our sensory experience other than the usual one, Descartes concludes that we do not know that the usual explanation holds. If we try to distil a principle out of this claim it might be the following: If we believe an explanation E for X then it cannot be that we know that E holds if there is some other conceivable explanation E* for X. It is very hard to say that this principle is true. It puts such a stringent condition on knowledge that it is fairly clear that it rules out the possibility of our knowing anything. If it looks plausible that may be because we are inclined to confuse it with something weaker. To see what that other thing is, think again of the Unreliability of the Senses Argument. There we cite evidence of error and argue from those errors to the conclusion that we could be in error elsewhere. In a sense the argument is inductiveand to the extent that it seems to be overgeneralizing it is rather unconvincing. However, the general principle on which the argument runs is undoubtedly right: evidence of error does make one suspicious that such errors could exist elsewhere, hitherto undetected. Thus if I know that I have been fooled by fake paintings before I should be a little worried that this Van Gogh before me is a fakeeven if I have
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no reason to believe that there are any counterfeit Van Goghs in existence. I may even be able to make a judgement of the likelihood of that event. But what would someone think if there are no couterfeits in existence at all and we have no idea how it could be done; what estimate could that person make on the likelihood of the Van Gogh before them being a fake? At best we could say that they are not certain that it is not, but it is unlikely that we would say that such a person does not know that they are looking at a Van Gogh. In fact Descartes Dreaming Argument is poised half-way between an evidential argument and a mere possibility argument. It cites evidence of past errorthose times in which we have been asleep and believed ourselves to be awakeand, again unconvincingly, tries to suggest that there is some likelihood that though we now think ourselves awake we might be asleep. But the evidence is insufcient; and indeed my waking thought that I am awake has never proven to be wrong. (This should make us think that when, or if, we ever think ourselves awake when we are dreaming that some part of us knows that it isnt true.) We are simply not deceived by dreams to the extent that Descartes argument requires. But suppose, someone might say, that what we were having now is a Super-Dream, in which the experience has all the features of waking reality. How do we know that we are not now having a Super-Dream? The reply is that we have no idea how to estimate the likelihood of a Super-Dream, since weve never had onenor to our knowledge has anyone else. We can conceed that the possibility existsthe logical possibilityand that therefore we cannot be certain that we are not having one right now, but that is about as much as anyone could say. We could summarize this in the following rubrics: possibility arguments show that we are not certain; evidential arguments show that there is some probability that we are mistaken. In the next section we will look at how the the two different kinds of arguments match up with two different conceptions of knowledge, both of which can be found in Meditation I nestled uncomfortably alongside one another. 3.6 The True or the Certain If we reect back on the beginning of Meditation I we see that Descartes mentions the possibility of doing something entirely different to what he ends up doing. I shall at last apply myself earnestly and freely to the general overthrow of all my former opinions. In doing so, it will not be
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necessary for me to show that they are one and all false; that is perhaps more than can be done. But since reason has already persuaded me that I ought to withhold belief no less carefully from things not entirely certain and indubitable than from those which appear to me manifestly false, I shall be justied in setting all of them aside, if in each case I can nd any ground whatsoever for regarding them as dubitable. This, as already noted, is a strange passage. He considers the possibility of winnowing out his false beliefs, thus leaving those that are trueand rejects this approach only because it would be more than can be done. And it is clear what this means: it would be an endless labour, because there is no short-cut method that would simplify the task. Because of this he goes on to adopt a completely different project: that of winnowing out the doubtful to reach the certain. This, fortunately, does have a method attached to it. And to justify this transition from one undoable project to a separate doable one he says something that seems spectacularly falsethat nal sentence above that begins: But since reason has already persuaded me But suppose that Descartes had taken the rst indicated way; what would he have ended with? The answer is: if one winnows out the false one ends with the true. And since we are considering our beliefs we will end up with our more-probable-than-not true beliefsor in other words, knowledge, under our usual denition. But our only way of winnowing out the false to leave the true is to consider the evidence or reasons we had for believing our beliefsand that is just to consider again why we believe them. This is also Leibnizs view. Descartes dictum that everything in which there is the least uncertainty is to be doubted might have been better and more exactly formulated in the precept that we must consider the degree of assent or dissent which a matter deserves, or, more simply, that we must look into the reasons for every doctrine. Just so (though Leibniz does not point out that this would be to do something entirely different to what Descartes does; it is no mere reformulation). But doing this is, we must note, a rather more conservative activity than the one that Descartes pursues. For if we examine the justications for our beliefs to see which are true we are likely to leave them almost untouched. For if we hold beliefs then we generally hold them because
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we think them true. A scrupulous examination may cast out some irrational beliefs that we holdand we would be well rid of thembut if we had always tried to hold beliefs for good reasons, there may be very little weeding to be done. At any rate we are not likely to turn the world upside down, as Descartes tried to do. 3.7 The Two Faces of Doubt There are in Descartes two pictures of belief. On the rst, the view that Descartes adopts, only that which is certain warrants belief. On the second: I ought to believe that which it is more reasonable to believe than not. In a passage already quoted he implies that this second view is the true one, but that for unclear prudential reasons he intends to work with the rst. But if we should, on this picture, believe everything that is doubtful is false then we ought not to believe Descartes Method of Doubt itself, for it is in no sense certain that it is desirable to believe things that are probably true to be false. Likewise, since it is not certain that we only know that which is certain, we ought to believe that false as well. And while we are turning Descartes method against him, let us also note that it has not been established by Descartes that it is possible (or even conceivable) that there be an Evil Demon. We may believe that we can conceive it, but it is by no means certain that we can do so. And so it is false as well. In fact Descartes method rapidly destroys itself. Once we adopt the false principle that drives the Method of Doubt we are already lost-at-sea. Even if we were to be satised with the much weaker claim that we do not know that which is not certain, then that claim itself must still fail to be known. Likewise with Descartes claims about that which it is possible to doubt: Descartes has never shown that it is certain that our empirical beliefs are open to doubt, he merely invites our agreement that they are so. His arguments are all simply invitations to accept what is by no means obviously true. But if we dont know what is doubtful then the method could never have acheived the high goals that Descartes set for himself. Leibniz again: But our author seems sometimes to have preferred applause rather than certainty. I should not blame him for being satised so often with verisimilitude, if he himself had not aroused expectations with so strong a profession of exactness. A judicious verdict on a awed enterprise.

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3.8 Appendix: Peter Markie on Descartes In an article in 1981 Peter J. Markie criticised a number of earlier criticisms of Meditation I (Dreams and Deceivers in Meditation One, The Philosophical Review, April 1981, vol. xc, no. 2, 185209) from G.E. Moore and Margaret Wilson. Markie reconstructs Moores and Wilsons argumentsdirected against the Dreaming Argument and the Evil Demon Argument respectivelyas follows. According to Moore Descartes is committed to the following inconsistent pair of claims: (1) I am uncertain that I am not now dreaming. (2) I am certain that my present experience is qualitatively indistinguishable from dreams I have had. According to Wilson Descartes is committed to the following inconsistent pair of statements: (3) I am uncertain that God does not deceive me (4) I am certain that I am uncertain that God does not deceive me. (This formulation overlooks Descartes scruple that such deception would be inconsistent with the Divine Nature, a scruple that requires him to suppose the possibility of an Evil Demon in place of God. But let us let that pass. Neither the Moore nor the Wilson argument is particularly close to Descartes text.) Markie claims that Descartes can escape the charge that he is asserting inconsistent claims by distinguishing between strong, metaphysical, certainty and weak, moral, certainty. This is a distinction that Descartes makes in the Discourse on Method, though not explicitly in the Meditations. The idea is that in (2) and (4) he is claiming only a moral certainty whereas in (1) and (3) he is denying a metaphysical certainty. Hence, no inconsistency. Let us look at what Moores argument is. Here is the passage from Certainty in which he states it. [T]here is a very serious objection to the procedure of using it [(5): my present experience is indistinguishable from dreams I have had] as a premise in favour of the derived conclusion [(1)]. For a philosopher who does use [(5)] as a premise is, I think, in fact implying, though he does not expressly say, that he himself knows it to be true. He is implying therefore that he himself
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knows that dreams have occurred. And, of course, I think he would be right.But can he consistently combine this proposition that he knows that dreams have occurred, with his conclusion that he does not know that he is not dreaming? Can anybody possibly know that dreams have occurred, if, at the time, he does not himself know that he is not dreaming? If he is dreaming, it may be that he is only dreaming that dreams have occurred; and if he does not know that he is not dreaming can he possibly know that he is not only dreaming that dreams have occurred? Can he possibly know therefore that dreams have occurred?I do not think he can; and therefore I think that anyone who uses this premise and also asserts the conclusion that nobody ever knows that he is not dreaming, is guilty of an inconsistency. (Philosophical Papers p. 244.) So the argument is that if (2) is true then (1) must be false, and vice-versa. (My own view, however, is that the argument establishes that if (1) is true then (2) is false, which is not the right direction to show that the argument is invalid. For the other direction: it is not obvious, I think, that if I know that dreams have occurred then I know that I am not now dreaming. Markie misses this aw in Moores argument. It must also be said that Moore acknowledged that there were mistakes in this paperthis seems a particularly glaring one.) Margaret Wilsons criticism of the Evil Demon argument is similar to the complaint that we made in the previous section: she thinks that it is self-refuting. More particularly she thinks that Descartes cannot make positive claims to knowledge which stand as premises for the conclusion that I do not know that I am not now subject to systematic deception. Since the Deceiver Argument itself involves premises, it is in a certain sense self-annihilating.The very question the Deceiver Argument attempts to pose is undermined by that argument. This is a familiar style of argument against attempts to prove some sweeping form of scepticismindeed we used it in chapter one, above. Does it work in this particular case? Well, rst we should say that it is reasonably clear what argument form this self-annihilation is meant to have: suppose p logically implies q and q logically implies not p; then p is false, indeed necessarily false (a fact that is easily proved by elementary

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methods). Now if we want to formulate the Evil Demon argument in the way that Wilson envisages then we may do so as follows: (6) I know that I dont know that I am not being comprehensively deceived. (7) I do not know any empirical or mathematical truths. The claim is that (6) entails (7) and (7) entails the falsity of (6); and so (6) is falsenecessarily false. This is a rather satisfying result because it is not obviously so. Moreover, an only slightly altered argument will show that the premise for the Dreaming Argument is also necessarily falseas would be expected from the close similarity of the two arguments. Now what is the signicance of Markies counter-argument? He claims, as already noted, that Descartes has two concepts of certainty, or, by a simple change of terminology two concepts of knowledge. In fact we made the same point in a less sympathetic spirit above; the difference is that Markie wants us to believe that both kinds of certainty are in play throughout Meditation I, rather than both being noted and only one used. This seems to me both a misreading of Descartes text and, more importantly, to make a nonsense of the Method. For if Descartes can simply draw on our non-metaphysically certain beliefs at any time in the inquiry then he is not starting afresh in the way he has announced. Moreover everything discovered will be conditional on the truth of those premises. Markie is saving Descartes arguments only by destroying the project that requires them. I feel impelled to note in addition that Markies paper evinces some of the more lamentable features of academic philosophy. The arguments of authors are rst badly formulated and then the authors are chastised as though the poor formulations are their own. We then have a series of patronising emendations. This serves to stretch a modest contribution to immodest length. Finally, the authors own views do not really address obvious objections. It is more than a little depressing that modern appraisals of Descartes are considerably less acute than those that were published in 1680. And hagiography is no excuse.

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3.9 An Afterword on Scepticism We have just seen that the claim that I know that I dont know that I am not being comprehensively deceived is necessarily false. But what of the claim that I dont know that I am not being comprehensively deceived? Is that necessarily false? The answer is that it is not. And moreover, it is this claim that Descartes explicitly makes. So how does the falsity of the rst indict Descartes argument and method? Let us consider Descartes argument again. It is (8) I do not know that I am not being comprehensively deceived. Therefore (9) I do not know any empirical or mathematical truths. Now this argument is valid, I suggest. But from the fact that it is valid we do not have any reason to believe the conclusion. We have reason to believe a conditional statementif (8) then (9)but it would be a fallacy to suppose that we have discharged the premise to leave us believing the conclusion. And yet that is what Descartes does repeatedly in Meditation I and scores of sceptics have followed his lead. For having stated his premises for doubt he immediately embraces the sceptical conclusion, detaching it from the claims that it is still conditional upon. Thus, we have this categorical assertion: Accordingly I shall now suppose, not that a true God, and who as such must be supremely good and the fountain of truth, but that some malignant genius exceedingly powerful and cunning has devoted all his powers in the deceiving of me; I shall suppose that the sky, the earth, colours, shapes, sounds and all external things are illusions and impostures of which this evil genius has availed himself for the abuse of my credulity; I shall consider myself as having no hands, no eyes, no esh, no blood, nor any senses, but as falsely opining myself to possess all these things. Normally this fallacious reasoning is not noticable because there is a meta-inference that says that the conclusion will be known when the premises are known. But with sweeping sceptical arguments this metainference is unavailable and so all we have left is a conditional with an undetachable conclusion. In fact when we try to augment the premises, to give us I know that I dont know that I am not being comprehensively
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deceived then we have a statement that is necessarily false. And since it is necessarily false it will imply anythingincluding the claim that it is not possible for me to be deceived at all! (While we are at it we might ask whether I know that I know that I dont know that I am not being comprehensively deceived is necessarily falsei.e. is a claim to know something that is necessarily false, itself necessarily false? I think it must be. After all, there can be no possible world in which anyone could actually know itfor in such a world it would have to be true!) We can see from this that Descartes can give no argument for scepticism that will make it believable, and thus that, though it could be true that nothing can be known, we could never know that that is so. (This is much what we argued in chapter one.) And nor could it ever be reasonable to believe it. Descartes and other propounders of sceptical arguments are guilty of disconditionalising the consequences of inferenceswhich are then asserted as free-standing claims. If they try to justify this discharging of the premises, then they must committ themselves to a contradiction. Scepticism is attainable only through some such faulty reasoning.

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Chapter 4. Humes Empiricism, Naturalism and Scepticism

here Descartes model of knowledge was designed to show the power and reach of reasonby a judicious choice of axioms that would stand as the foundation for a, much revised, knowledge of the worldHumes aim is to show the narrow scope and reach of reason. He wants to show that many of the things we believe are not arrived at by reason (or Reasonas Hume uses this term in a proprietary way that is rather different to modern usage). Instead he thinks that we are caused to believe many of the things we believe by mechanisms that operate automatically in us. These mechanisms take sensory inputs and operate upon them to produce doxastici.e. belieflikeoutput. He is an Empiricist because he thinks that doxastic output is ultimately dependent on sensory inputs; he is a Sceptic because he thinks that many of our beliefs are not based on reason; and he is a Naturalist because he thinks that naturally occurring mechanisms take up the slack that has been left by Reason. We need to examine each step of Humes argument carefully, and so we will concentrate on what he considered one of his central claims: that our belief that future events will resemble past events is not founded on reason. It is a problem that is more usually called Humes problem of Inductive Scepticism.

4.1 Humes Argument Hume presents his central argument as a dilemma: Reason is of just two kinds; one cant establish that the future will resemble the past on either kind of reasoning; therefore the belief that the future will resemble the past cannot be based on Reason at all. Here is his statement of it. All reasonings may be divided into two kinds, namely, demonstrative reasoning, or that concerning relations of ideas, and moral reasoning, or that concerning matter of fact and existence.
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That there are no demonstrative arguments in the case seems evident; since it implies no contradiction that the course of nature may change, and that an object, seemingly like those which we have experienced, may be attended with different or contrary effects. May I not clearly and distinctly conceive that a body, falling from the clouds, and which, in all other respects, resembles snow, has yet the taste of salt or feeling of re? Is there any more intelligible proposition than to afrm, that all the trees will ourish in December and January and decay in May and June? Now whatever is intelligible, and can be distinctly conceived, implies no contradiction, and can never be proved false by any demonstrative argument or abstract reasoning a priori. There we have the rst horn of the dilemma: no demonstrative argument can have as its conclusion that the future will resemble the past. Now we get the second horn. If we be, therefore, engaged by arguments to put trust in past experience, and make it the standard of our future judgement, these arguments must be probable only, or such as regard matter of fact and real existence, according to the division above mentioned. But that there is no argument of this kind, must appear, if our explication of that species of reasoning be admitted as solid and satisfactory. We have said that all arguments concerning existence are founded on the relation of cause and effect; that our knowledge of that relation is derived entirely from experience; and that all our experimental conclusions proceed upon the supposition that the future will be conformable to the past. To endeavour, therefore, the proof of this last supposition by probable arguments, or arguments regarding existence, must be evidently going in a circle, and taking that for granted, which is the very point in question. We now have the argument before us, but in order to assess its validity we need to have a sharper idea of the structure of the two parts. To get this we need to represent what Hume means by demonstrative reasoning and, what he calls, moral reasoning. Let us look at the rst one rst.

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4.2 The A Priori Horn Demonstrative reasoning, or a priori reasoning, is in fact familiar to us from Descartes, for it is essentially pure axiomatic reasoning. On this form of reasoning we have a set of axioms whose content is non-empirical, and thus is known to us a priori, and some basic rule(s) of inference. We then ask: can we validly infer that the future will resemble the past, or some instance of thisfor example, that in the future snow will feel cold to the touchfrom our given axioms. Humes claim is that no such claim is derivable from any such set of axioms. Humes reasoning is a little tortuous, but we can represent it as follows. Call our arbitrarily large, though nite, set of axioms An and our target claim E. Hume argues that no An could logically imply E because if it did then E (the denial of E) would entail a contradiction. It is not the case that E entails a contradiction, therefore E cannot be the conclusion of any demonstrative argument or abstract reasoning a priori. QED In fact we could make the same point by saying that E could not be proven false (which, for Hume, is the same as saying that E cannot be proven true) by any demonstrative argument or abstract reasoning a priori because E can be clearly and distinctly conceived and thus will imply no contradiction. In fact, this is very close to what Hume actually says. You might ask: what are the underlying logical principles that Hume is using here? Well rst let us introduce one little piece of terminology. If a statement q is such that neither it nor its negation q follows from some set of statements Pn then q is said to be independent of Pn. (Intuitively, q is neither provable nor refutable from Pn.) Humes argument says that E is independent of any set of An. The logical principles that he is using are: (1) From necessary truths only necessary truths logically follow, and (2) All and only contradictions will logically imply contradictions. Thus, Humes argument could have been stated succinctly using 1 and 2. The An is a set of necessary truths and E is not a necessary truth, therefore An cannot entail E. We know that E is not a necessary truth for if it were its denial E would be a necessary falsehood (a contradiction); if E were a contradiction it would imply a contradiction (by 2); E implies no contradiction, therefore it is not the case that E is refutable by some An. Thus An does not imply E. It is worth noting that 1 and 2 were logical principles that Hume would have been familiar with. They were clearly stated in the Middle
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Ages and were in every textbook by the Fourteenth Century. (For example they are contained in William of Ockhams Summa Totius Logic of c. 1310.) Indeed Hume assumes our familiarity with these principles and feels no need to state them. We may also note that the argument contains a number of assumptions that are not so easily justied. Hume believes that we can tell that E is not a contradiction because it is clearly and distinctly conceivable. Can we be sure that clear and distinct conception is a sufcient condition for non-contradictoriness? Hume certainly believes so and many philosophers of his time seem to have thought the same way. The modern opinion, however, is that this is falsethat treating conceivability as a sufcient condition of possibility will not give us the full notion of logical possibility but only something weaker. (In the technical jargon of modal logic, conceivability generates S4 possibility not the full S5 possibility.) But if we drop conceivability as a sufcient condition of logical possibility it is not clear how Hume can justify his claim that E is not a necessary falsehood. We will see later that this leads to a natural and more serious criticism of Humes argument. 4.3 The A Posteriori Horn We turn now to the second horn of Humes dilemma, his claim that there can be no moral reasoning that is capable of entailing E. Again we may think of the underlying reasoning as being based on an axiomatic system. So let us take some arbitrary set of a priori axioms An again, but now let us augment them with a set of empirical statements Sn that we know to be true from our experience. Will any such An+Sn entail E? No, says Hume, for all the An+Sn could be true and yet E be false. The only way we could make a set of statements entail E would be if we had already assumed that the future will be conformable with the past, but this would be begging the question or reasoning in a circle. Therefore the premises of any such argument must be either insufcient to entail E or they must beg the question by assuming something that is effectively equivalent to E. We could summarise Humes argument here by saying that E must be independent of anything we are entitled to assertwhere this entitlement is given by what we have observed. Hume calls this reasoning moral reasoning and the meaning of the word moral may be obscure to a modern reader. The 17th and 18th
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Century meaning of this word might be roughly translated as human. Thus moral certainty meant certainty to the degree that ought to satisfy humans in the ordinary conduct of their affairs. Thus when Hume speaks of moral reasoning, or that concerning matter of fact and existence he means that the premises of a moral argument are known a posteriori. And so when he speaks later of arguments being probable only, or such as regard matter of fact and existence, he means that the premises are known a posteriori and that the statements are contingent and not necessary. Thus Hume does not mean what we mean by a probable argumenti.e. one that draws inferences by the rules of probabilitybut rather one whose premises are merely probable, and not certain in the way that necessities are thought to be certain. This is an older meaning of probable in which all matters that are not known a priori, though possibly morally certain, are said to be merely probable. Thus probable here means roughly what we would mean by contingent. (The reader may wonder why then, in all of this, I have included the a priori axioms An in with the additional contingent premises Sn. The answer is simply for completeness sake. We know from the rst horn of the argument that Hume thinks that the An cannot entail E, so the natural way to put Humes argumentas he himself does not quiteis to think of augmenting An to give us An+Sn. Otherwise Hume will have to separately argue that this mixed set of premises cannot entail Egiving us a trilemma. It is better to suppose that Hume was thinking of it in the way that I have represented him, and that he thinks of the An as being idle in this circumstance. Not an unreasonable thing to think!) Humes argument is an impressive piece of logic, and the right way to see him, I suggest, is that he is the inventor of the independence proof! Or if not quite the inventor, then he seems at least to have been the rst to have crystallised it into a philosophical method. Against Descartes attempt to deduce all knowledge from some simple set of axioms, Hume shows just how much must fail to follow. He shows the limits of our deductive reasoning. But he is not showing just the limits of Cartesian a priori reasoninghe is showing the limits of even a deductivist empiricism. It is this that makes his contribution so important. 4.4 An Earlier Misinterpretation: an aside Contemporary commentators of Hume seem to have given little weight to his argument on inductionstrangely, because they were much concerned with his views on causation which lie right next to it in logical
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space. It was only in the Twentieth Century that Humes argument was dusted off and taken seriously. But the argument was misunderstood by those philosophers who took it most seriouslyand Hume was thought to have shown something that he had never actually conceived. What was the source of the misunderstanding? Philosophers such as Karl Popper had thought that Humes dilemma argument, given above, was not between two kinds of deductive argumentsone with necessary premises, the other contingentbut rather between any deductive argument and any probabilistic (now in the modern sense) inference. So the idea was that Hume had shown that even probabilistic inference was unjustied. But David Stove (in Hume, Probability, and Induction The Philosophical Review, (1967), 160177) argued convincingly that this was a mistake and would make nonsense of what Hume actually says. For to suppose that Humes dilemma is between the deductive and the probabilistic would be to make the rst part plainly invalid, and the second parts accusation of circularity completely misplaced. Moreover, as Stove pointed out, when the phrase probable argument is understood as Hume intended, it is clear that Humes text contains no argument whatever against, what Stove calls, inductive predictive (I.P.) arguments. When Hume speaks of reasoning being of two kinds, he means that there are two, and only two, kinds of deductive inferencewhere the two kinds refer to the two kinds of premises, necessary and contingent. Indeed in two books published after the above article he argued that Inductive Scepticism must lead to probabilistic incoherence. Hence, Humes argument cannot be strengthened into the claim that even probabilistic inferencein the modern sensefails to provide a foundation for our inductive beliefs. It does. (This is a point to which we will return.) 4.5 Humes Naturalistic Solution Hume believes that he has shown that Reasonin the only sense that he acknowledgescannot be the cause of our believing that the future will resemble the past; in general, or in some particular instance (i.e. that tomorrow snow will feel cold to the touch, rather than feel of re). But we now have an explanatory gapfor why do we have the inductive expectations that we have? Hume believes that he has an answer to this question: there is a natural faculty of the mind that produces such beliefs automatically, or at least, automatically once it is provided with the right

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input. He calls this faculty the faculty of custom or habit. Here, in his own words: This hypothesis seems even the only one, which explains the difculty, why we draw, from a thousand instances, an inference, which we are not able to draw from one instance, that is, in no respect, different from them. Reason is incapable of any such variation. The conclusions, which it draws from considering one circle, are the same which it would form upon surveying all the circles in the universe. But no man, having seen only one body move after being impelled by another, could infer, that every other body will move after a like impulse. All inferences from experience, therefore, are effects of custom, not reasoning. Custom, then, is the great guide of human life. It is that principle alone, which renders our experience useful to us, and makes us expect, for the future, a similar train of events with those which have appeared in the past. Without the inuence of custom, we should be entirely ignorant of every matter of fact, beyond what is immediately present to the memory and senses. We should never know how to adjust means to ends, or to employ our natural powers in the production of any effect. There would be an end at once of all action, as well as of the chief part of speculation. Custom is a faculty, or principle, of the mind, which carries us from certain repeated past conjunctions of events to expect certain conjunctions in the future. Thus custom makes us expect that tomorrow snow will feel cold to the touch because we have a certain regular experience in the past of snow feeling cold. Hume thinks that this transition of the mind from one idea to another needs explaining; it isnt effected by reason, therefore it must be the principle of custom. Now that we have Humes argument and his solution before us we should examine both to see whether they are cogent. We will consider the argument rst. 4.6 Objections to Humes Dilemma Recall the rst part of Humes dilemma: An cannot entail E because E entails no contradiction. But what did Hume actually say to convince us that E entails no contradiction?

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That there are no demonstrative arguments in the case seems evident; since it implies no contradiction that the course of nature may change, and that an object, seemingly like those which we have experienced, may be attended with different or contrary effects. May I not clearly and distinctly conceive that a body, falling from the clouds, and which, in all other respects, resembles snow, has yet the taste of salt or feeling of re? Now what Hume is here asking us to conceive is that tomorrow we put our hand out under falling white akes and our hand is burnt. And indeed I, and Im sure we all, can imagine this: it just requires that we imagine small akes of frozen sulphuric acid falling from the skyor if frozen sulphuric acid wont do, some unknown substance that looks just like snow and that burns on contact. But note that this is not what is required for the above argument to go through. For that argument to work I need to be able to imagine snowactual snowburning me tomorrow; not what Hume asks me to imagine: namely, that something that resembles snow may burn me tomorrow. And the reason that Hume changes the case is perfectly clear: it is not at all clear that I can imagine snowfrozen, crystalline, waterburning on contactnot, at least, without imagining snow to be something other than snow. If snow is frozen, crystalline, H2Oif that is its essencethen it is quite plausible that it must have the causal powers that are a constitutive part of that essence. Which means that it must feel cold to the touch rather than cause our hand to burst into ames. Thus if Hume were to ask us to try to imagine snow that lacks the causal powers that are constitutive of snow we would be justied in throwing up our hands and saying It just cant be done! Snow is snow and not something else! Hume himself must have been sensitive to this point or he would not have tried to make things easier for our imagination by asking us to imagine ersatz snow, rather than snow. And shortly after he has give the dilemma argument he separately attacks the idea of causal powers as deeply mysterious and unknowable. But the point is that these positions rather stand or fall together: to the extent that we believe that there is an essence of snow and that that essence is dened by a set of constitutive causal powers we are unlikely to agree with Hume that such essences and powers are unknowable. After all, we think we do know an awful lot about the chemistry and physics of water, more than enough to make claims of comprehensive mysteriousness seem nave and overblown. Snow is not Voodoo, after all!
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The idea of essences of constitution was a Medieval commonplace (which is not to say that it was not hotly debated) but only revived in the 1960s by the philosopher Saul Kripke. Kripke argued, against the reigning orthodoxy, that there could be necessities that were not known a priori, but were instead only knowable a posteriori. Water=H2O, for example, is a statement of identity, and therefore, if true, a necessary truth. But we only discover its truth by doing some chemistry. From at least the 17th Century onwards the standard view had been that all necessary truths were known a priori. Statements of constitution, therefore, would have to be contingent; but this would mean that something could be water and not be H2Oa difcult thing to believe. Kripke revived the idea that some statements of identity are necessities. This issue may be claried by reaching back into the Medieval sources of the theory of knowledge. It was recognised early that our knowledge is composed of a knowledge of four kinds of things: (i) Particularse.g. there is an apple on the table (ii) Abstractionse.g. an angel lacks materiality (iii) Necessitiese.g. snow is white or snow is not white (iv) Generalitiese.g. all apples are nutritious. In its early form the main lines of the theory of knowledge came down from St Augustine, who thought that we have knowledge of particulars and necessitiesnot unaided, but because of a special assistance: Divine Illumination. Indeed this is not too far from Descartes view. We have certain ideas and they either come from God, or God does not stand in the way of our operating our natural faculties to gain understanding. It is a hallmark of such views that necessities present no special problem for themand in some ways present us with knowledge in its purest form, unalloyed with problems created by our imperfect, Human, senses. In the 13th and 14th Centuries, however, a greater scepticism took hold. The absolute power of God was reasserted against certain kinds of renewed Aristotelianism and the result was a very sparse Empiricism represented by Ockham and his followers. For Ockham there was knowledge of particulars, but not generalities and necessities, apart from purely logical necessities that were founded on relations among concepts. Knowledge is derived from the senses, and then is elaborated by the nexus of ideas that constitute the basis for reasoning. This Ockhamist view is still visibly present in Hume. Insofar as there are necessary truths they are relations of ideas and can tell us nothing about matters of contingent existence. Thus it would be entirely foreign to Hume, as it would have been to Ockham, to imagine that there are
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necessities in nature. Necessities in nature could never be observed as necessities. Moreover, for Ockham, such necessities would only constitute a barrier to Gods ability to act in the worldand thus would constitute a limitation on His absolute power. For both, essences as natural necessities would be anathema. But, unlike Ockham, Hume is not a believer. In a sense, Humes world is a world in which there are no obstacles to Gods absolute power to actexcept that there is no God. He keeps the runways clearlong after all the planes that could land have vanished forever. 4.7 Humes Dilemma Argument Rejoined. What should one say of the rst horn of Humes dilemma if there are essences of constitution? Is it sound or valid? Well, the answer is that if the statement that tomorrow snow will feel cold is a necessary truth because it follows from the necessary truth that snow is frozen water then the rst part of Humes argument fails. The reason is that a necessary truth is implied by any set of necessary truthseven seemingly unrelated ones. Thus its denial is a necessary falsehood and will imply a contradiction after all. So An does entail E. Note that this will only work if the target statement is plausibly a necessity. But we make inductive predictions and generalisations in circumstances where that doesnt seem to hold, statements such as the sun will rise tomorrow, John will eat pizza again this Friday night, and the Stock Market will crash within ten years. These are statements that we might well feel that experience has given us some reason to believe, but they do not seem to be true in virtue of the essences of the Sun, John, or the Stock market. What do we do about these cases? Such statements are contingent, not necessary, so the rst horn of Humes dilemma will go through as he says. What about the second horn? This is where Stoves complaint against Hume becomes signicant. Hume may have ruled out a non-circular deduction of such statements from statements describing our experience but he has not ruled out the existence of an inductive (i.e. probabilistic) inference to the conclusion. And it seems that there is such an inference. A long acquaintance with the sun rising in the morning does make it more probable that it will rise tomorrow; a long acquaintance with Johns Friday night eating habits does make it likely that he will have pizza this Friday; and so on. If you have an urn whose contents you cant see, and you repeatedly
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take out white marbles from the urn (without replacement) then the probability that all marbles in the urn are white goes up with each draw. Note that it is not certain that all the marbles are white, it is just increasingly probable. Such probabilistic inferences would, moreover, constitute reasons for believing the statementthough it would not be Reason in Humes use of that term. What we have, in other words, is a reason to believe that Humes conception of Reason is too narrow. In summary: an inductive expectation may be either a necessary statement or a contingent one. If it is necessary then it will be the consequent of a demonstrative argument, and if contingent then it will be made probable by a probabilistic inference from repeated, similar, past experience. Hume has simply taken too narrow a view of how inductive beliefs may be supported by good reasons. 4.8 Problems for Humes Naturalistic Solution We may wonder where this leaves Humes positive proposal: his citing the existence of a faculty of custom or habit which, given the right input, issues in our inductive expectations. What Hume says about this facultyimmediately before he introduces itshould strike us as more than a little odd. My practice you say refutes my doubts. But you mistake the purport of my question. As an agent, I am quite satised in the point, but as a philosopher who has some share of curiosity, I will not say scepticism, I want to learn the foundation of this inference [from past to future experience]. No reading, no enquiry has yet been able to remove my difculty, or give me satisfaction in a matter of such importance. Hume goes on from this to note that inductive expectations are had by animals and infants and stupid peasants but that it is implausible to think that they are led to the conclusion by any process of argument or ratiocination (in other words, by Reason, in his narrow sense). Since there can be no argument or ratiocination Hume concludes that it must be a faculty that operates semi-automatically, and separate from Reason. We may note in this Humes tendency to identify Reason with the production of explicit premises and the drawing of conclusions from them. Reason is something that philosophers do, but it is not clear who else.
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Though we should conclude, for instance, as in the foregoing section, that, in all reasonings from experience, there is a step taken by the mind, which is not supported by any argument or process of the understanding; there is no danger, that these reasonings, on which almost all knowledge depends, will ever be affected by such a discovery. If the mind be not engaged by argument to make this step, it must be induced by some other principle of equal weight and authority; and that principle will preserve its inuence as long as human nature remains the same. This principle is, of course custom or habit. But we should be struck more struck, I suggest, than philosophers of the past have beenby Humes declaration that this principle has an equal weight and authority to reason. But what can this mean, other than that the dictates of such a principle are more often than not right? We can state this worry more clearly by standing back from the particulars of the case before us. Suppose someone were to say that there is a faculty of the mind that, given a certain input, produces superstitious beliefs. Let us call this, in fact, the faculty of the Superstition. Now all we have done is say that there are causal mechanisms within us that produce superstitious beliefs. We have given a name to a particular set of causal pathways and supposed that they can all be said to fall within the operation of the one principle. So far so good. But what if someone were to ask whether the output of this faculty is likely to produce true rather than false beliefs. We could certainly not conclude from the mere existence of such a faculty that it was. The fact that there is a faculty that produces beliefs is no reason, by itself, to think that those beliefs are true. For all we know it might be systematically producing rubbish. We can ask the same question about the faculty of custom or habit. Is it likely to produce true rather than false beliefs? Hume seems to believe that it is, but there is no argument from him to justify this condence and we can be reasonably sure that he would not have thought our faculty of the Superstition was something to be relied on. In fact Hume never considered the crucial question that his own account must face: does the faculty of custom operate to produce beliefs in accord with some normative account of inductive expectation, or not? In other words: should we believe what the faculty offers us up for belief? If he thinks we shouldand his condence is everywhere in evidence then what is the normative account that this faculty is meant to be operating in accord with? If there were a faculty of the Superstition that pro54

duces superstitious beliefs Hume would probably thinkwith everyone elsethat we should ignore its output. Why ought we not ignore custom or habit? Hume is entirely silent on this matter except to imply that it has been mostly reliable in the past. But if Hume applied his own sceptical argument to his own solution then he could well ask: by what reason do we believe that this faculty of custom will continue to operate to produce mostly true beliefs; why ought it not start producing mostly false beliefs in the future? When the force of this objection is seen it will be realised that Humes solution is no solution at allbecause to say that there is a faculty that produces beliefs says nothing about whether that faculty is likely to produce true beliefs in the future. The real question is: what is the normative basis to the belief that the future will resemble the past? 4.9 Hume as an Inductive Probabilist I want to propose a radical solution to the problem that I have set for Hume; I want to suggest that Hume was, in reality, an Inductive Probabilista velvet st in an iron glove. I dont claim that he saw himself in this light; or that he would have welcomed being made to seem so sensible. But I think if the problem of the last section had been put to him, and the principles of the modern theory of probability had been laid out before him, he would have seen that this was the only way of explaining his own emphatic belief that our inductive expectations are on the whole correct. What stopped him from seeing this at the time was nothing more than that crucial parts of the modern theory were missing, or too much embedded in esoteric mathematics to be accessible to him. After all, Bayes Theorem was only published by Richard Price in 1763and then, partly in response to Humes own challenge. Little wonder that Hume did not take it into account! (Laplaces Law of Succession appeared even later, in 1810.) To claim that Hume had a tacit belief in inductive probability is not, I think, the same as saying, with Galen Strawson (in The Secret Connexion), that Hume was a Realist about causal connections. But I do agree that Humes ambivalence about many of his own sceptical conclusions tends to be expressed in the same formula: an explicit rejection of the idea that there is some foundation in Reason; a belief that nevertheless some other faculty is present to do the job; a belief, warranted by no argument, that the output of this faculty is normatively correct. And it is

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because of this that Realists will always be able to nd in Hume hints of the views that they take to be correct. Too often, however, they ignore the fact that Hume is not obviously entitled to these Get-Out-Of-Jail-Free cards. Indeed he is playing fast and loose with a distinction that he himself taught us to make: the distinction between a descriptive account of the causes of some set of beliefs; and a normative account of the correctness of such a mechanism. He knows as well as we do now that they are different and that a gulf separates them. But still he hints at the reader that if the faculty is natural that it must be normatively correct. In this way Hume gets to run with the fox and hunt with the hounds. 4.10 The Failure of Naturalism Because of these problems I am reluctant to fully endorse my own suggestion that Hume was an Inductive Probabilist. We must set the suggestion alongside Humes own obscure pronouncements on the status of the principle of custom. He says, for example, in a passage already noted in all reasonings from experience, there is a step taken by the mind, which is not supported by any argument or process of the understanding. [My emphasis] Now if we take him at his word here, we must conclude that the faculty of custom or habit is disjoint from the faculty of the understandingand that therefore there can be no normative justication for its functioning. Perhaps it would be best therefore to conclude that Hume is hopelessly ambivalenteven confusedon the point. But what should be our verdict on the general prospects for that kind of naturalism that was initiated by Hume, and continued in Kant, and later was made so much of by Quine? To be precise: can we study the formation of our beliefsthe causal processes that give rise to themand gain a better understanding of knowledge in that way? And what if we just conne ourselves to the specic case at hand: do our beliefs, in general, conform to the normative theory of subjective probability? There are four kinds of cases where our reasoning seems to diverge from what would be normatively prescribed. (a) Conditional Probability problems: e.g. the Three Doors Problem; the Ace versus the Ace of Spades problem; the two marbles problem. (b) Estimation of Coincidence Problems: e.g. the Von Mises Birthday Paradox.
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(c) Induction over Independent Events: e.g. Gamblers who believe that if the number 32, say, appears twice on a roulette wheel then it more likely to appear a third time. Counter-induction over independent events: e.g. the traditional Gamblers Fallacy. (d) Stochastic Process Errors: e.g. confusions over the Law of Large Numbers and the Arc-Sine Laws. All of these errors are robust and have caused signicant confusions over the centuries. Their existence is enough to show that Humans are not particularly good at forming beliefs where subtle calculations of probabilities are involved. Therefore it would be clearly false to suggest that our natural belief forming mechanisms are always likely to produce the beliefs that would be prescribed by a normative theory. We diverge often and systematically. What we want to know about our beliefs is whether they are supported by good reasonsi.e. whether they are justied. This means that we must not only have beliefs that are supported by evidence, but also that our inferred beliefs be properly drawn. For this latter task we need to have a grasp of the normative theory of belief justication as enshrined in probability theory. The idea that this investigation of the normative status of belief justication can be replaced by a descriptive-causal account of belief formation seems simply wrong-headed. Whatever we were to nd out about the ways people do form their beliefs would be no help in understanding whether those beliefs are likely to be true. Thus Quines view (expressed in his article Epistemology Naturalised) that epistemology will end up as a sub-discipline of psychologya view that accords remarkably well with Humes own Naturalistic Programseems about as wrong-headed as a view can be. Nor, despite being heavily promoted for the last forty years, has there been a single worthwhile insight into the nature of knowledge to come from this Naturalistic Epistemology. Some philosophical views are deep, while others are shallowbut Naturalistic Epistemology is not even shallow; it is simply non-existent. It is a theory-shaped hole in the philosophical landscape, like a building site in which something was long promised but nothing ever erected.

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Epistemology I
Solution to 'Three Doors' Problem
Initially the three doors have an equal chance of a third of having the car behind them. If the car is behind the door that you've chosen (say it's door #1) then the G.S. host has two doors that he can choose from to open. Therefore there is a probability of one half of each of them being opened. Suppose that he opens door #3. Then if you switch you will lose. Suppose, however, that the car is not behind the door that you've chosenand remember that that is twice as likely (two-thirds compared to one-third). Then the G.S. host has only one door that he can open, namely the door with no car behind it. Suppose that the car is behind door #2 and he again opens door #3. Then since he had to open door #3 there was a probability of one of him doing so. So when the G.S. host opens door #3 there are twice as many times when it is favourable to switch as keep your original choice. But that then means that the probability of the car being behind door #2 is twice as high as the chance of it being behind your original choice (the probability of which has not changed). So door #2 has now a chance of two thirds of being the winning door. Therefore you are more likely to win if you switch. (Technically this is the determination of a conditional probability.) The nub of the matter is that the G.S. host unwittingly provides you with important information when making his choice of which door to open. He did not open door #2. And probably he didn't because he couldn't. See: Leonard Gillman 'The Car and the Goats' American Mathematical Monthly January (1992) pp. 3-7.