How are objective epistemic reasons possibee?

Philosophical Studies

Volumn 106, Issue 1-2, 2001, Pages 1-40

  Boghossian, Paul ^a  

^a NEW YORK UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 34247509937     PISSN: 00318116     EISSN: 15730883     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/a:1013141719930     Document Type: Article

References (39)

1. For helpful comments, I would like to thank Christopher Peacocke, Stephen Schiffer, Josh Schechter and the audience at the Pacific APA meetings in Albuquerque, NM in April 2000. I am especially grateful to Crispin Wright for agreeing to comment on that occasion and for numerous stimulating conversations on this and related topics. Some sections of this paper overlap with parts of my "Knowledge of Logic," which appears in P. Boghossian and C. Peacocke (eds.): New Essays on the A Priori (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000).
2. For discussion, though, see my "The Rule-Following Considerations,' Mind, 1989.
3. As James van Cleve points out, any epistemic principle has the following form: (EP) If a belief of type B is based on a reason of type R then the belief is justified. On a foundationalist view (and adopting van Cleve's terminology), such principles will include both generation principles and transmission principles. Generation principles specify circumstances under which a belief is justified independently of its logical relations to other beliefs; transmission principles specify under what circumstances the warrant for a given belief transmits to other beliefs. On a coherentist view, epistemic principles will largely consist of some sort of hybrid of these two, assuming the form: If P coheres with the system of propositions accepted by S, then P is justified for S. This is analogous to a generation principle in that its antecedent does not mention any term of epistemic appraisal, but analogous to a transmission principle in that its antecedent specifies relations to other proposition. See can Cleve: "Foundationalism, Epistemic Principles, and the Cartesian Circle," The Philosophical Review, pp. 55-91. For the sake of concreteness, in this essay I will assume that epistemic principles always take the form characteristic of foundationalism; but the arguments will apply to either type of epistemic system.
4. For discussion, see my "Knowledge of Eogic" in Boghossian and Peacocke, op. cit.
5. Some philosophers distinguish between the activity of giving a justification and the property of being justified. My question involves the latter, more basic, notion: Is it possible for our logical beliefs to have the property of being justified?
6. "Comments on Salmon's 'Inductive Evidence,' American Philosophical Quarterly 2 (1965), pp. 274-276. It is cited in van Cleve, "Reliability, Justification and Induction," Minnesota Studies in Philosophy of Science, 1984.
7. Eaurence Bonjour, in his In Defense of Pure Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) attempts to defend a "rational right" view of the a priori.
8. For critical discussion, see my "Inference and Insight" forthcoming in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.
9. See Hartry Field's "Apriority as an Evaluative Notion," in Boghossian and Peacocke, op. cit.
10. See Tyler Burge: "Individualism and Self-Knowledge," in Journal of Philosophy 85 (1988), 649-663.
11. "Explaining the A priori," in Boghossian and Peacocke (eds.), Journal of Philosophy ibid.
12. I owe the term "bad company" to Crispin Wright.
13. The example is Crispin Wright's, drawn from his commentary on a related paper at the Stirling Conference on Naturalism, April 1997.
14. Due to Marcus Giaquinto.
15. Why not consider instead a relativism or non-factualism about logic itself, rather than about justification? The reason is that these views are well-known to be hopeless. A relativism about logic is just a version of a conventionalism about it, a view decisively defeated in Quine's "Truth by Conventiohn," reprinted in The Ways of Paradox ( ). And as I have argued in "Knowledge of Eogic," those objections carry over straightforwardly to a non-factualist construal of logic.
16. Some may find this thought expressed in Wittgenstein's remark: "If I have exhausted the justifications I have reached bedrock, and my spade is turned. Then I am inclined to say: "This is simply what I do." Philosophical Investigations (Oxford: B lackwell, 1953), para. 217.
17. The relativist could also be understood as arguing not that we already speak this way, but that we ought to, if we are to speak cogently.
18. It can be found in Plato's Theaetetus, and in homas Nagel's The Last Word (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).
19. See, for example, Paul Churchland: Matter and Consciousness (Cambridge, M.A.: MIT Press, 1983).
20. Allan Gibbard: Wise Choices, Apt Feelings (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1990).
21. David Velleman has emphasized this point to me.
22. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 47 (1986).
23. C. Wright, "On the Acquisition of Warrant by Transfer," manuscript.
24. MIND, 1895.
25. James van Cleve also suggests that as the moral of the Eewis Carroll argument; but the argument he outlines is distinct from the one I shall present. See his "Reliability, Justification and Induction," Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 1984.
26. The objection is from a draft of a commentary on an earlier version of this paper delivered at the Pacific Division meetings of the ARA, Albuquerque, NM, in April of 2000.
27. E. Bonjour: The Structure of Empirical Knowledge (Cambridge, M.A.: Harvard University Press, 1985),
28. K. Eehrer: The Theory of Knowledge (Boulder, Co,: Westview Press, 1990).
29. A. Prior: "The Runabout Inference Ticket," in Analysis 21 (1960-1961), pp. 38-39.
30. Cf. Christopher Peacocke, "Sense and Justification," MIND, October 1992, p. 802.
31. Christopher Peacocke gives a similar example in "Proof and Truth," in J. Haldane and C. Wright: Reality, Representation and Projection (Oxford: OUP, 1993), pp. 165-190. Peacocke has long urged that a conceptual role semantics be understood in this restrictive thruth-theoretic way. Although my route into these issues is distinct from his, I find myself in agreement with much of Peacocke has to say about the logical constants and the role of meaning in justification.
32. See my "Analyticity," in Hale and Wright (eds.): A Comparison to the Philosophy of Language (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997).
33. I suspect that it is Wittgenstein's failure to appreciate the point that not every conceptual role determines a meaning that led to the relativistic-sounding passages of the Remarks on the Foundations of Mathematics.
34. M. Dummett, The Logical Basis of Metaphysics (Cambridge, M.A.: Harvard University Press, 19).
35. See W. V. O. Quine, "Truth by Convention," reprinted in The Ways of Paradox (NY: Random House, 1996).
36. For further discussion, see my "Knowledge of Logic," in Boghossian and Peacocke, op. cit.
37. Nagel, Knowledge of Logic op. cit. p. 5.
38. In related though distinct contexts, similar points are made both in Alston "Epistemic Circularity," op. cit.,
39. and in James van Cleve "Foundationalism, Epistemic Principles and the Cartesian Circle," Philosophical Review, January 1979.