“The Reconstructed ship is not Theseus’s ship, but would have been if the planks of Theseus’s ship had not been replaced.” Is this position coherent?
Coherent or not, this is the view espoused by E.J. Lowe as a solution to the famous paradox, drawn out by Thomas Hobbes, from the writings of Plutarch. For the purposes of this short essay, I will presume that the reader is already aware of the paradox wherein the original ship; Theseus’s ship is gradually repaired. Planks are replaced gradually whilst those removed from it are reassembled, eventually producing both a renovated ship and a reconstructed ship which seemingly both have claims to be one and the same as (or numerically identical with) Theseus’s ship. If this puzzle is unfamiliar then I refer the reader to Lowe’s ‘A Survey of Metaphysics’ pages 25-28 where he states the paradox more thoroughly.
Lowe’s solution is one of several solutions proposed and I believe that because it attempts to posit an objective fact-of-the-matter regarding identity, it quickly falls into contradiction. Lowe is not alone in making this error; indeed many critics of his view also make this mistake. I believe it is a mistake to regard identity as something objectively real; something that inheres in things, rather than as a concept that we as rational beings bring to bear upon the world. To regard identity as something intrinsic, rather than conceptual, necessitates contradiction.
I hope in this essay to demonstrate that Lowe and others who posit an objective notion of numerical identity have overlooked something fundamental about the nature of identity and perhaps reality as a whole. It is my view that a transcendental idealist perspective offers profound insight into the nature of identity, and that any view claiming either ship to actually be Theseus’s ship can only ever be partly correct, until the role of subject and context are given their due status in addressing the puzzle.
Kant’s notion of an antinomy, wherein reason leads us inexorably towards two opposite and contradictory views, seems to capture the very essence of the problem as resulting from our ways of thinking about things, rather than it (the paradox) highlighting anything problematic about things, such as ships, as they are in themselves. The solution also lies in the structures of our thoughts about things; this is why no philosopher feels the need to perform a practical experiment, or travel to Athens to better understand the problem.
Essentially all that Lowe is claiming, is that in cases where form constancy and matter constancy conflict, form constancy takes priority over matter constancy; where there is no conflict either criterion has the potential to be adequate criterion for numerical identity. He does this by proposing subjective criteria for what qualifies as a part of something and what does not. For example (italics are added for the sake of emphasis):
“…we must decide then to which ship the various parts belong at the time in question.” (Lowe, E.J. 2002, p.31)
or :
“Once the original parts of a ship have been appropriated by another, distinct ship, I suggest, they cease to be parts of the original ship:” (Ibid. p.31)
Lowe’s solution rests entirely upon agreement with this principle and not upon anything more concrete than that. These criteria are in themselves problematic. In his paper on the Ship of Theseus, Theodore Scaltsas lists eight criteria for what might qualify as a part of something:
“x is a part of y or of z if
(1) x is an attached and functioning part of y;
(2) x is an attached but non-functioning part of y;
(3) x has been removed from y but is not used as a part of any other object or for any other function;
(4) x has been removed from y but it has not been replaced by any other such part;
(5) x is a part that could be fitted to y but it has not been fitted yet[…];
(6) x is one of the original parts of y (when y was constructed);
(7) x is originally a part of y (in x’s first use as a part);
(8) x has at some point in its life span been functionally attached as a part to y;”
(Scaltsas, T. 1980, p.155)
His list is by no means exhaustive, nor is it intended to be. As he says:
“I am convinced that this is an incomplete list of the various senses in which x can be taken to be a part of y. Even now it would take a computer to figure out the possible conflicts of ‘being a part’ sufficiency conditions that can occur in various cases in which two or more of the above criteria would oppose one another;”
(Scaltsas, T. 1980, p.155-156)
The problem arises that it would be hard to argue for a hierarchy of such sufficiency conditions. There are numerous ideas we hold about what qualifies as a part of something, and in cases where y and z (or the reconstructed ship and the renovated ship) both have a claim on x we have no objective means of deciding which condition takes priority. This is precisely where the objective account fails.
For Lowe’s answer to have any objective validity, it must be self-evident to anyone looking at the situation regardless of any subjective opinions; yet, several times, Lowe makes appeals for the reader to form opinions about what constitutes a part of a ship and whether it remains so or not when removed, replaced and so on. It falls to each individual to decide whether form constancy or matter constancy have the greater bearing in such cases; when disagreement about these things arises, neither side can bring evidence to settle the matter decisively. To quote Scaltsas once more:
“There is simply the possibility of being differently inclined on the subject of condition hierarchy from your fellow-men, and there is no evidence they can bring to you or you to them to convince one another who is right.”
(Scaltsas, T, 1980, p154)
At least one person can object on perfectly solid grounds to Lowe’s claim that form constancy is more important for numerical identity. Consider the Archaeologist who wants to confirm the age of Theseus’s ship. Lowe cannot rightly say that he should go to the harbour to retrieve planks for carbon dating. In such a case, regardless of whether or not the removed timbers have been reassembled or not, our archaeologist should go to the museum. Lowe would be quite right to point a sailor to the harbour but what is underlined by this, is an issue of context that is overlooked in any solution that posits a fact-of-the-matter answer. How could either the sailor or architect ever agree which ship is numerically identical with Theseus’s? Both prioritise different sufficiency conditions for numerical identity; neither is able to offer the other the least bit of evidence, or proof, of the superiority of either view.
Another common objection to Lowe’s answer is that it violates “the only X and Y principle”. In brief, this principle states that whether X and Y are identical or not can only depend on X and Y, and not upon the existence (or lack thereof) of something else. In his solution, Lowe gives his reasons why he feels this is not the case, on the premise that in the two situations the reconstructed ship would be quite a different ship. To apply Scaltsas criteria, Lowe claims that in the no-renovation situation, conditions (3) and (4) obtain for continued part identity; conversely, in the renovation situation they do not. Therefore, in the no-renovation case the reconstructed ship is Theseus’s ship. In the renovation case, the renovated ship can claim numerical identity on the basis that conditions (1) and (5) obtain with regard to its parts, but problematically for Lowe the reconstructed ship can claim that conditions (3) and (6) obtain in the case of its parts. As demonstrated above he cannot claim either ship to decisively be the original in the renovation situation.
What qualitative difference there is, is indeed puzzling to me. The parts of the reconstructed ship in both cases are qualitatively identical, so how the difference in numerical identity of the whole obtains, is problematic for Lowe. It is hard to see what objectively is different about the reconstructed ship in the two cases. On the other hand, the concepts applied to the parts in the two situations are different. It is perhaps in this regard that Lowe falls foul of the “only X and Y principle”. Because concepts of part-hood are not features of things in themselves, there is no objective way to settle the issue of priority of sufficiency conditions; the subject determines whether X is the same as Y, in the same way as the subject decides which ship the parts are a part of. The only X and Y principle as stated above requires an objective fact-of-the-matter answer, that does not depend upon anything other than the original ship and the reconstructed or renovated ship for its validity.
In attempting to show that his solution does not violate the “only X and Y principle” Lowe clearly indicates his acceptance of its validity whilst basing his argument on concepts that are by their very nature, independent of either X or Y. This is not coherent outside of a more subjective framework; one that already rejects the “only X and Y principle” as it has been stated. The most that Lowe can hope to claim (without establishing an objectively valid hierarchy of part sufficiency conditions) is that, depending upon one’s views about the hierarchy of sufficiency conditions for parthood; there is a case for claiming either ship to be numerically identical with the original. Furthermore the subject plays a crucial role in determining the continuity of identity and the “only X and Y principle” needs to be modified to take account of this.
It would be entirely plausible to claim that, in strict terms, neither ship is objectively numerically identical with Theseus’s Ship. Numerical identity, as seen, depends upon our opinions as subjects and not entirely upon objective properties of things. As rational beings we can consent to either ship being regarded as Theseus’s ship, without it having to actually be the original ship; in much the same way as we accept that the new actor is still James Bond, without him having to be Sean Connery. Since both the renovated and reconstructed ship are merely regarded as Theseus’s ship (as opposed to actually being so,) and both, with commonly accepted (though not objectively valid) reasons, it is no longer problematic that there are now two ships. Neither ship is Theseus’s ship. Both represent the continuance of different concepts we have about numerical identity, but because identity is something we get to decide about, neither ship can be numerically identical in any more concrete sense than subjectively. Lowe’s solution may be coherent within his conceptual framework but, the argument he uses is symptomatic of the misunderstanding that gave rise to the paradox; that numerical identity is purely objective and that we discover it rather than determine it.
Bibliography
Lowe, E.J. (2002) “A Survey of Metaphysics”, Oxford University Press,
Noonan, H. W. (1985) “The Only X and Y Principle” Analysis, Vol. 45, No. 2, pp. 79-83, Blackwell Publishing [Online] Available from: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3327461 [Accessed: 11/01/2009 02:40]
Scaltsas, T. (1980) “The Ship of Theseus” Analysis, Vol. 40, No. 3 pp. 152-157, Oxford University Press [Online] Available from: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3327668 [Accessed 11/01/2009]
Saturday, 4 July 2009
Friday, 3 July 2009
Is religeous belief a matter of practical commitment?
Within Philosophy of Religion there are two quite distinct strands of thought concerning religious belief. There are those who assert that God’s existence can be demonstrated decisively, and rationally, with appeal to reasoned argument (such as ontological, cosmological or teleological arguments). Alternately there are those who see such arguments as flawed, unsatisfactory or symptomatic of an overly simplistic conception of the divine, and opt instead for an account of God that goes beyond what can be empirically verified, favouring practical experience over mere discourse.
I would like to argue that whilst both of these approaches attempt to provide some basis for faith, in both cases authentic religious belief is grounded upon religious experience; no number of logical arguments can sustain us spiritually in the same way as we are nourished by those moments in which we directly experience something divine and transcendent. I intend to show that practical commitment is an essential basis for this kind of religious experience.
Furthermore, it would be pertinent to consider the possibility that practical commitment to strongly held beliefs may be a two-edged sword, capable of as much harm as it is good. I hope to suggest a way in which one can distinguish the kind of beliefs that harm and those that heal. I wish to suggest that where religious beliefs are forced onto people, such activity is at worst harmful and at best futile, but where belief is turned inwards it has great power to transform the believer in many positive ways and this has immense value; especially when addressing many of our human problems. It is practical commitment that makes this transformation is possible.
It is my intent to show a clear distinction between those religious beliefs that have real practical value and so-called religious belief that are charged with responsibility for so much harm in the world today. Where critics of religion such as Richard Dawkins exploit the short-comings of rational theology (such as creationism) and cases of extremist fundamentalism to justify their attacks on religion as a whole, it is my contention that they fail to distinguish properly between religious beliefs, and pseudo-religious beliefs whose real aims are political or worldly. Practical commitments to these pseudo-religious beliefs do not yield the same results because they are invariably motivated at least in part, by entirely different concerns and either mendaciously or ignorantly mistaken for, or misrepresented as, religious beliefs.
What is it about religious experience, or any other kind of experience, that demands practical commitment? Two examples illustrate this point quite adequately:
One can describe “lemon meringue pie” in infinite detail. Its chemical composition can be analysed and precisely detailed and yet no amount of description comes close to the actual experience of tasting it. Similarly God’s existence and good qualities can be argued for and described but none of this can come close to actually experiencing God, or the merits of religious belief, for ones self and this depends upon practical commitment in much the same way as one must commit to eating the lemon meringue pie for ones self.
How could belief in a doctor’s ability to heal you be of any benefit if you never commit to attending an appointment? Furthermore, if you do commit to attend the appointment, your belief in the doctor is strengthened by your experience (assuming the doctor is really as good as everyone says) and becomes not simply an intellectual opinion but an experiential understanding of the doctor’s good qualities.
Of course there is some inclination to distinguish beliefs about doctor’s and lemon meringue pie from beliefs about the divine (perhaps, depending upon ones priorities) and indeed to distinguish ordinary experiences from religious ones; however the point that this is supposed to illustrate is that purely rational theology does not yield more than an intellectual opinion. On its own it is insufficient to create the conducive conditions for religious experience that give rise to strong well founded belief. Such conditions are the natural result of practical commitment.
It should be noted that different beliefs motivate us differently and give rise to different experiences. Belief in a doctor’s aptitude, for example, directs a person very differently to their belief in the doctor’s incompetence. One belief, if it is to be meaningful, impels you to visit the doctor whereas the other, if it is to be meaningful urges you to stay away. These differing beliefs give rise to different experiences that will challenge or justify your initial beliefs. The question then is, what kind of practical commitment does religion require?
Examples of practical commitment to religious beliefs are widespread and differ tremendously; at one end of the scale is the family who commit to going to church on Sunday, or perhaps just for baptisms, weddings and funerals. At the other, those who chose to dedicate their entire lives in service of their beliefs. Ascetics such as the sadhu holy men of India, the celibate monastic communities of so many faiths, missionaries who travel the globe, organisations such as the Red Cross and a vast range in between.
Simone Weil is a writer who I feel captures, rather well, the type of practical commitment that a truly spiritual outlook should instil. In Gravity and Grace, the reader is presented with a concept of Human Mechanics; a dynamic in which humans, from fear of affliction and suffering, communicate their suffering to others or are forced to endure it. She compares this to a force like gravity.
Simone Weil was writing in a time when the horrors of human mechanics were all too clear. The Nazis were committing genocide with all the efficiency of a machine and the Second World War raged. She saw ‘Man’s inhumanity to Man’ at what was arguably some of its worst. She observed a dynamic at play, which she described in the following terms:
“Human Mechanics. Whoever suffers tries to communicate his suffering (either by ill-treating someone or calling forth their pity) in order to reduce it, and he really does reduce it in this way. In the case of a man in the uttermost depths, whom no one pities, who is without power to ill-treat anyone (if he has no child or being who loves him), the suffering remains within and poisons him.
This is imperative, like gravity. How can one gain deliverance? How gain deliverance from a force which is like gravity?” (Weil, 1967, p.5)
She describes suffering as leaving a void within us, which we find unbearable and are driven to fill. We try to fill this void by seeking pity. In doing so we succeed in filling that void with a sense of our own importance, but we leave the other person with an equivalent void; they suffer, so that we don’t have to. Alternately we try to dominate others; again filling the void in ourself with feelings of power or importance whilst leaving our victim with a void of their own to contend with, arisen from the feelings of helplessness engendered by our actions. Human mechanics is a system wherein suffering increases. Everyone seeks to avoid suffering and therefore inflicts it on those around them. Whilst this may seem to be an overly negative assessment of human relationships it seems hard to deny especially in the context of the world as she witnessed it.
What Simone Weil envisages as an alternative is unexpected, profound, challenging and shows great heroism of spirit. It has parallels in many of the great mystical traditions such as Hinduism, Mahayana Buddhism and Gnostic traditions (as well as with notable contemporaries of hers such as Kahlil Gibran) whose aims are diametrically opposed to those of the materialism so prevalent in current thought. In Human mechanics one seeks rewards, be they material, imaginary or otherwise; where the desired reward is not obtained, one feels a void within oneself. Rather than endure this, one is ordinarily driven to harm others.
Where Simone Weil and the mystics differ from human mechanics and materialism is in seeking happiness and fulfilment from a different source. For materialists the reward is to be found in material gain. For those who seek power and to dominate others, high status or sense of importance is the reward they seek. For those following a spiritual path, the reward is not to be found within the world as we know it.
Instead of spending our lives struggling to maintain balance and transferring our afflictions to others, she offers a radical alternate possibility. Rather than seeking what we feel we need, we reassess what it is that we need in the first place. The results of this can be surprising:
“If we go down into ourselves we find that we possess exactly what we desire” (Weil, 1967, p.20)
When a smoker wants a cigarette what they desire is to stop craving a cigarette. The short-term solution is to smoke a cigarette; alternately they could put time and effort into overcoming their desire to smoke thus stopping the craving permanently. This example illustrates the view of the mystic and that which they seek. The smoker who quits has found the cigarette that actually works, the one that stops the craving permanently! Likewise the rewards that the mystic seeks are not the short lived imperfect ones of the material world they are the supernatural rewards of divine grace; perfect happiness rather than temporary imperfect rewards:
“The necessity for a reward…if, doing violence to this necessity, we leave a vacuum, as it were a suction of air is produced and a supernatural reward results.” (Weil, 1967, p.10)
This outlook is the very antithesis of our materialistic world and the human mechanics thereof. Someone who has the capacity to endure the void and find meaning within it will find that they already have what they desire within them, and no longer have need to fill that void with the suffering or pity of others. As the Buddha famously said “Who has contentment has the greatest wealth of all for with it he has all that his heart desires.” The human mechanics are replaced with ‘superhuman’ mechanics, which rather than being factors for social stability in a world with great social problems, are a solution to so much discontent and greed.
What she also shows is that religion should direct us in a very different way than we are familiar with behaving. What differs is that the latter emphasises short term worldly gain, whereas the former aims away from such hollow victories, seeking spiritual rewards instead. The religious worldview takes into account something bigger than our one short life and the happiness that we experience therein. It teaches us to aim beyond this fleeting existence towards a higher goal be it heaven (or at least avoiding hell), coming to know god, or achieving nirvana. What happiness one achieves in this world through religious pursuits, is a happy consequence but is not supposed to be an end in itself. In superhuman mechanics, rather than avoiding problems and hardship, the mystic finds meaning in such things. The refusal to pass on suffering coupled with the acceptance of it, entails a practical commitment to harm no-one that is to be found amongst the core beliefs of all religion.
In accepting our suffering rather than avoiding it or pushing it onto someone else, we experience it in a deeper more meaningful way. It opens our hearts and minds to the suffering of others. Human mechanics finds its very antithesis in the desire to take from others all their sorrow and give them all of ones happiness; this compassionate view similarly elicits a practical commitment from anyone who shares it. Compassion is a common theme in religion yet something that is frequently overlooked in favour of more esoteric topics of discussion (such as those of rational theology) yet it is absolutely essential to any religious view. A view of the divine that is grounded in experience, shows one that which is divine in others, and elicits non-harmfulness in a way that no rational theological argument can. Perhaps for this reason, the most important practical commitment of all, is that of doing no harm.
A religion that forgives you, teaches you to forgive others. Political leaders who seek revenge teach vengeance. It is lamentable that so often the two become confused; a situation barely helped by those with political aims who use peoples faith in religion cynically, or exploit oversimplistic accounts of religious belief to achieve worldly ends. It is hard to deny that the suicide bombers of 9/11 were practically committed to their beliefs, and while these beliefs contained religious terminology, such as the name of Allah and the language of martyrdom; it seems to me that the human mechanics motivating these acts were all too apparent. The introspection, willingness to endure hardship, and basic compassion that so characterise practical religiosity, were considered to be of less significance that sending a message that was intended to achieve worldly aims – the very antithesis of religion and spirituality’s aims. This led many without personal experience of religious faith to conclude that religion itself was responsible:
‘Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where's the harm? September 11th changed all that. Revealed faith is not harmless nonsense, it can be lethally dangerous nonsense. Dangerous because it gives people unshakeable confidence in their own righteousness. Dangerous because it gives them false courage to kill themselves, which automatically removes normal barriers to killing others. Dangerous because it teaches enmity to others labelled only by a difference of inherited tradition. And dangerous because we have all bought into into a weird respect, which uniquely protects religion from normal criticism. Let's now stop being so damned respectful!’ (Dawkins, 2001)
This attack on religion has become a call to arms for many atheists in recent years. The danger of strong practical commitment to ones belief is undoubtedly dangerous but just as atheists were quick to condemn the attacks as immoral, so were those with religious belief. Dawkins as an evolutionary biologist is someone who was not persuaded by the arguments of rational theology. His field of study faces great difficulties in addressing a very particular brand of Christian and Islamic fundamentalism whose interpretation of religion is relatively primitive and simplistic. The more evolved views of practical theology and mysticism escape many of the criticisms that Dawkins levels.
Whilst what Dawkins attacks is strong practical commitment to beliefs, he fails to distinguish between ordinary worldly beliefs or ideals, and religious ones. Where one differentiates the two along lines such as human/superhuman mechanics, a clearer picture emerges of the motivating beliefs. The beliefs that Dawkins attacks are not religious; not all faith is revealed, religion puts barriers in place to prevent killing, politics removes them; where religion teaches fellowship and togetherness, or altruism, politics teaches partiality. I heartily agree with him that whatever makes people behave in such ways, is reprehensible in the extreme but where I differ is that I do not consider the motivating beliefs to be religious ones, because they are not based on practical experience of religious truths.
Bibliography
Dawkins, R.(2001) Has the world Changed?, The Guardian, available from http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/oct/11/afghanistan.terrorism2 ,
date accessed 16/05/2009
Weil, S. (1967) Gravity and Grace, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London (ed)
I would like to argue that whilst both of these approaches attempt to provide some basis for faith, in both cases authentic religious belief is grounded upon religious experience; no number of logical arguments can sustain us spiritually in the same way as we are nourished by those moments in which we directly experience something divine and transcendent. I intend to show that practical commitment is an essential basis for this kind of religious experience.
Furthermore, it would be pertinent to consider the possibility that practical commitment to strongly held beliefs may be a two-edged sword, capable of as much harm as it is good. I hope to suggest a way in which one can distinguish the kind of beliefs that harm and those that heal. I wish to suggest that where religious beliefs are forced onto people, such activity is at worst harmful and at best futile, but where belief is turned inwards it has great power to transform the believer in many positive ways and this has immense value; especially when addressing many of our human problems. It is practical commitment that makes this transformation is possible.
It is my intent to show a clear distinction between those religious beliefs that have real practical value and so-called religious belief that are charged with responsibility for so much harm in the world today. Where critics of religion such as Richard Dawkins exploit the short-comings of rational theology (such as creationism) and cases of extremist fundamentalism to justify their attacks on religion as a whole, it is my contention that they fail to distinguish properly between religious beliefs, and pseudo-religious beliefs whose real aims are political or worldly. Practical commitments to these pseudo-religious beliefs do not yield the same results because they are invariably motivated at least in part, by entirely different concerns and either mendaciously or ignorantly mistaken for, or misrepresented as, religious beliefs.
What is it about religious experience, or any other kind of experience, that demands practical commitment? Two examples illustrate this point quite adequately:
One can describe “lemon meringue pie” in infinite detail. Its chemical composition can be analysed and precisely detailed and yet no amount of description comes close to the actual experience of tasting it. Similarly God’s existence and good qualities can be argued for and described but none of this can come close to actually experiencing God, or the merits of religious belief, for ones self and this depends upon practical commitment in much the same way as one must commit to eating the lemon meringue pie for ones self.
How could belief in a doctor’s ability to heal you be of any benefit if you never commit to attending an appointment? Furthermore, if you do commit to attend the appointment, your belief in the doctor is strengthened by your experience (assuming the doctor is really as good as everyone says) and becomes not simply an intellectual opinion but an experiential understanding of the doctor’s good qualities.
Of course there is some inclination to distinguish beliefs about doctor’s and lemon meringue pie from beliefs about the divine (perhaps, depending upon ones priorities) and indeed to distinguish ordinary experiences from religious ones; however the point that this is supposed to illustrate is that purely rational theology does not yield more than an intellectual opinion. On its own it is insufficient to create the conducive conditions for religious experience that give rise to strong well founded belief. Such conditions are the natural result of practical commitment.
It should be noted that different beliefs motivate us differently and give rise to different experiences. Belief in a doctor’s aptitude, for example, directs a person very differently to their belief in the doctor’s incompetence. One belief, if it is to be meaningful, impels you to visit the doctor whereas the other, if it is to be meaningful urges you to stay away. These differing beliefs give rise to different experiences that will challenge or justify your initial beliefs. The question then is, what kind of practical commitment does religion require?
Examples of practical commitment to religious beliefs are widespread and differ tremendously; at one end of the scale is the family who commit to going to church on Sunday, or perhaps just for baptisms, weddings and funerals. At the other, those who chose to dedicate their entire lives in service of their beliefs. Ascetics such as the sadhu holy men of India, the celibate monastic communities of so many faiths, missionaries who travel the globe, organisations such as the Red Cross and a vast range in between.
Simone Weil is a writer who I feel captures, rather well, the type of practical commitment that a truly spiritual outlook should instil. In Gravity and Grace, the reader is presented with a concept of Human Mechanics; a dynamic in which humans, from fear of affliction and suffering, communicate their suffering to others or are forced to endure it. She compares this to a force like gravity.
Simone Weil was writing in a time when the horrors of human mechanics were all too clear. The Nazis were committing genocide with all the efficiency of a machine and the Second World War raged. She saw ‘Man’s inhumanity to Man’ at what was arguably some of its worst. She observed a dynamic at play, which she described in the following terms:
“Human Mechanics. Whoever suffers tries to communicate his suffering (either by ill-treating someone or calling forth their pity) in order to reduce it, and he really does reduce it in this way. In the case of a man in the uttermost depths, whom no one pities, who is without power to ill-treat anyone (if he has no child or being who loves him), the suffering remains within and poisons him.
This is imperative, like gravity. How can one gain deliverance? How gain deliverance from a force which is like gravity?” (Weil, 1967, p.5)
She describes suffering as leaving a void within us, which we find unbearable and are driven to fill. We try to fill this void by seeking pity. In doing so we succeed in filling that void with a sense of our own importance, but we leave the other person with an equivalent void; they suffer, so that we don’t have to. Alternately we try to dominate others; again filling the void in ourself with feelings of power or importance whilst leaving our victim with a void of their own to contend with, arisen from the feelings of helplessness engendered by our actions. Human mechanics is a system wherein suffering increases. Everyone seeks to avoid suffering and therefore inflicts it on those around them. Whilst this may seem to be an overly negative assessment of human relationships it seems hard to deny especially in the context of the world as she witnessed it.
What Simone Weil envisages as an alternative is unexpected, profound, challenging and shows great heroism of spirit. It has parallels in many of the great mystical traditions such as Hinduism, Mahayana Buddhism and Gnostic traditions (as well as with notable contemporaries of hers such as Kahlil Gibran) whose aims are diametrically opposed to those of the materialism so prevalent in current thought. In Human mechanics one seeks rewards, be they material, imaginary or otherwise; where the desired reward is not obtained, one feels a void within oneself. Rather than endure this, one is ordinarily driven to harm others.
Where Simone Weil and the mystics differ from human mechanics and materialism is in seeking happiness and fulfilment from a different source. For materialists the reward is to be found in material gain. For those who seek power and to dominate others, high status or sense of importance is the reward they seek. For those following a spiritual path, the reward is not to be found within the world as we know it.
Instead of spending our lives struggling to maintain balance and transferring our afflictions to others, she offers a radical alternate possibility. Rather than seeking what we feel we need, we reassess what it is that we need in the first place. The results of this can be surprising:
“If we go down into ourselves we find that we possess exactly what we desire” (Weil, 1967, p.20)
When a smoker wants a cigarette what they desire is to stop craving a cigarette. The short-term solution is to smoke a cigarette; alternately they could put time and effort into overcoming their desire to smoke thus stopping the craving permanently. This example illustrates the view of the mystic and that which they seek. The smoker who quits has found the cigarette that actually works, the one that stops the craving permanently! Likewise the rewards that the mystic seeks are not the short lived imperfect ones of the material world they are the supernatural rewards of divine grace; perfect happiness rather than temporary imperfect rewards:
“The necessity for a reward…if, doing violence to this necessity, we leave a vacuum, as it were a suction of air is produced and a supernatural reward results.” (Weil, 1967, p.10)
This outlook is the very antithesis of our materialistic world and the human mechanics thereof. Someone who has the capacity to endure the void and find meaning within it will find that they already have what they desire within them, and no longer have need to fill that void with the suffering or pity of others. As the Buddha famously said “Who has contentment has the greatest wealth of all for with it he has all that his heart desires.” The human mechanics are replaced with ‘superhuman’ mechanics, which rather than being factors for social stability in a world with great social problems, are a solution to so much discontent and greed.
What she also shows is that religion should direct us in a very different way than we are familiar with behaving. What differs is that the latter emphasises short term worldly gain, whereas the former aims away from such hollow victories, seeking spiritual rewards instead. The religious worldview takes into account something bigger than our one short life and the happiness that we experience therein. It teaches us to aim beyond this fleeting existence towards a higher goal be it heaven (or at least avoiding hell), coming to know god, or achieving nirvana. What happiness one achieves in this world through religious pursuits, is a happy consequence but is not supposed to be an end in itself. In superhuman mechanics, rather than avoiding problems and hardship, the mystic finds meaning in such things. The refusal to pass on suffering coupled with the acceptance of it, entails a practical commitment to harm no-one that is to be found amongst the core beliefs of all religion.
In accepting our suffering rather than avoiding it or pushing it onto someone else, we experience it in a deeper more meaningful way. It opens our hearts and minds to the suffering of others. Human mechanics finds its very antithesis in the desire to take from others all their sorrow and give them all of ones happiness; this compassionate view similarly elicits a practical commitment from anyone who shares it. Compassion is a common theme in religion yet something that is frequently overlooked in favour of more esoteric topics of discussion (such as those of rational theology) yet it is absolutely essential to any religious view. A view of the divine that is grounded in experience, shows one that which is divine in others, and elicits non-harmfulness in a way that no rational theological argument can. Perhaps for this reason, the most important practical commitment of all, is that of doing no harm.
A religion that forgives you, teaches you to forgive others. Political leaders who seek revenge teach vengeance. It is lamentable that so often the two become confused; a situation barely helped by those with political aims who use peoples faith in religion cynically, or exploit oversimplistic accounts of religious belief to achieve worldly ends. It is hard to deny that the suicide bombers of 9/11 were practically committed to their beliefs, and while these beliefs contained religious terminology, such as the name of Allah and the language of martyrdom; it seems to me that the human mechanics motivating these acts were all too apparent. The introspection, willingness to endure hardship, and basic compassion that so characterise practical religiosity, were considered to be of less significance that sending a message that was intended to achieve worldly aims – the very antithesis of religion and spirituality’s aims. This led many without personal experience of religious faith to conclude that religion itself was responsible:
‘Many of us saw religion as harmless nonsense. Beliefs might lack all supporting evidence but, we thought, if people needed a crutch for consolation, where's the harm? September 11th changed all that. Revealed faith is not harmless nonsense, it can be lethally dangerous nonsense. Dangerous because it gives people unshakeable confidence in their own righteousness. Dangerous because it gives them false courage to kill themselves, which automatically removes normal barriers to killing others. Dangerous because it teaches enmity to others labelled only by a difference of inherited tradition. And dangerous because we have all bought into into a weird respect, which uniquely protects religion from normal criticism. Let's now stop being so damned respectful!’ (Dawkins, 2001)
This attack on religion has become a call to arms for many atheists in recent years. The danger of strong practical commitment to ones belief is undoubtedly dangerous but just as atheists were quick to condemn the attacks as immoral, so were those with religious belief. Dawkins as an evolutionary biologist is someone who was not persuaded by the arguments of rational theology. His field of study faces great difficulties in addressing a very particular brand of Christian and Islamic fundamentalism whose interpretation of religion is relatively primitive and simplistic. The more evolved views of practical theology and mysticism escape many of the criticisms that Dawkins levels.
Whilst what Dawkins attacks is strong practical commitment to beliefs, he fails to distinguish between ordinary worldly beliefs or ideals, and religious ones. Where one differentiates the two along lines such as human/superhuman mechanics, a clearer picture emerges of the motivating beliefs. The beliefs that Dawkins attacks are not religious; not all faith is revealed, religion puts barriers in place to prevent killing, politics removes them; where religion teaches fellowship and togetherness, or altruism, politics teaches partiality. I heartily agree with him that whatever makes people behave in such ways, is reprehensible in the extreme but where I differ is that I do not consider the motivating beliefs to be religious ones, because they are not based on practical experience of religious truths.
Bibliography
Dawkins, R.(2001) Has the world Changed?, The Guardian, available from http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2001/oct/11/afghanistan.terrorism2 ,
date accessed 16/05/2009
Weil, S. (1967) Gravity and Grace, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London (ed)
‘Knowledge is true belief which …’ Can one satisfactorily fill in the dots?
For the purposes of this essay, I intend to look at some attempts to ‘fill in the dots’ most notably the tracking account developed by Robert Nozick, and contextualism as advocated by Keith DeRose. I intend to look at some of the difficulties faced by these accounts and consider whether they give any hope that a satisfactory resolution is possible.
Since the ancient Greek philosophers, a widely accepted definition of knowledge was as ‘justified true belief’. That is to say that:
S knows that p, if and only if:
1. It is true that p
2. S believes that p
3. S is sufficiently justified in believing that p.
On the face of it this seems straightforward enough and therein lays the problem. This tripartite account of knowledge went more or less unchallenged for over 2000 years and although there was perhaps disagreement over what qualified as sufficient justification (especially given the possibilities presented by radical scepticism) it enjoyed widespread acceptance. What happened next was as unexpected as it was overdue.
All was well until in 1963, Edmund Gettier published a three page long paper entitled “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” In this paper, it is widely agreed that Gettier provided two counter examples to the tripartite account of knowledge as justified true belief.
Gettier begins by stating three differing versions of justified true belief and formulates two counterexamples wherein p is true, S believes that p and is justified in doing so. Unfortunately, S does not know p because their reasons for believing p are wrong. Essentially, Gettier had shown that justification, truth and belief failed to be jointly sufficient and necessary criteria for knowledge attributions; something else was required. An explanation of knowledge that was generally accepted since Plato suggested it, had been shown to be flawed and was not easily repairable.
Many attempts to address the problem, address the question of what qualifies
as justification. One attempt to fill in the dots dispenses with justification entirely. In Philosophical Explanations Robert Nozick seeks to formulate conditions that are “jointly sufficient for knowledge so any case that satisfies all of them will be an instance of knowledge” (Nozick, 1981 p.23). What he argues for instead is the idea that when beliefs ‘track’ the truth they are instances of knowledge.
Nozick’s tracking account of knowledge is stated as follows:
S knows that p, if and only if:
1. p (it is true that p)
2. S believes that p
3. If not-p then S would not believe that p for the same reason
4. If p then S would believe that p for the same reason
Conditions 3 and 4 replace the traditional ‘justification’ requirement. In circumstances where all four criteria obtain, Nozick considers the subject, S’s belief to “track” the truth. ‘To know is to have a belief that tracks the truth’ (Nozick, 1981. pp.28). Part of Nozick’s intent here is to address the problem of scepticism and on this regard he has some sucesss, and in addressing Gettier’s counter examples the tracking account appears initially promising.
There are numerous Gettier-type counter examples and many versions of them are in circulation. For the purposes of this essay for the sake of convenience, clarity and my own familiarity I shall use the examples as quoted in Murali Ramachandran’s How Believing can Fail to be Knowing, mainly for the clarity of his presentation of these sample cases.
When testing such accounts against an array of Gettier-type counter-examples it becomes apparent that any such account of what it is to know needs to tread a fine line. On the one hand one wants to avoid ruling out cases in which a true belief that has been appropriately acquired, fails to qualify as knowledge; conversely, one wants to avoid classifying as knowledge those cases where an inappropriate belief has been inappropriately acquired, yet happens to be correct through chance. This is made clear in the case of NOGOT.
NOGOT
A colleague in S’s office, Mr Nogot, has given evidence which leads S to
justifiably believe (r) that Mr. Nogot owns a Ford, from which S correctly deduces (p) that someone in this office owns a Ford. But, unbeknownst to S, Nogot has been shamming and p is only true because another person in the office, Ms. Havit, owns a Ford.
In this situation Nozick’s tracking account fares well and produces the correct outcome. His first criterion is met because it is true that p (because, purely coincidentally someone in the office does indeed own a Ford) and the second also obtains because S believes p. Condition 3, however, is not satisfied because if no-one in the office owned a Ford then S would still believe p on the basis of r. It is obvious that since r is false, S’s belief that r is not adequate justification for knowledge that p. Because S’s belief in p is deduced from r, then we can conclude that whether or not p was true, S would believe p and so condition 3 does not obtain. The tracking account therefore produces the correct result. S does not know that someone in the office owns a Ford.
A possible objection is that without p being true, it would have been impossible for Mr. Nogot to provide the evidence upon which S justifiably came to believe r. This ambiguity is avoided in the following variation and the results are not so good for the tracking account:
DEVIOUS NOGOT
Mr Nogot is mad. He decides that he will fool his gullible colleague S into believing (p) that someone in the office owns a Ford if and only if someone in the office does own a Ford. (Let us suppose that Nogot has the means to find out if someone does.) Nogot finds out that Havit owns a Ford and embarks on his plan. The rest is history—S comes to believe truly (p) that someone in this office owns a Ford.
The line ‘if and only if someone in the office owns a Ford’ is analogous to the objection that it would only have been possible for Nogot to engender S’s justified belief in p if someone in the office owned a Ford. In this variant Nozick does not fare so well. All four conditions are satisfied, so Nozick would say that S’s belief in p tracks the truth. S knows that p but that belief has not been acquired appropriately and so the desired outcome should be that S does not know p. Clearly, something gets overlooked, because it appears Nozick is committed to saying that in the case of DEVIOUS NOGOT, S knows that p. The four criteria as they are, do not differentiate between sound and unsound justifications such as the false lemma (r). Nozick’s four points capture the importance of there being a causal relationship between the truth of p and S’s belief that p, however they do not account for the possibility of some deception resulting from a less direct chain of belief.
The rescue for Nozick seems to come from holding the criteria up to r. Conditions 1 and 3 do not obtain for r, because it is not true that r and because S would believe r even if it were false; because 1 and 3 do not obtain for r we can say that r is a false-lemma or false-belief. If we add a fifth condition that S’s belief that p cannot rest on any false beliefs, then the Devious Nogot case is no longer problematic.
One significant problem for the tracking account was proposed in a lecture by Saul Kripke. It goes along the following lines.
RED BARN
S is driving in a region of the countryside where, unbeknownst to her, there are many papier-maché facsimiles of barns (easily mistaken for genuine barns from the roadside—indeed, we may suppose that S has mistaken many of them for barns in the course of her journey).S does not know it but none of the fake barns are painted red. As it happens, S stops in front of a red barn and believes truly (p) that there is a red barn in front of her.
The problem here is that all four conditions obtain. (It is true that there is a red barn in front of her; S believes there is a red barn in front of her, she would not believe that there wasn’t a red barn in front of her if there wasn’t, and she would believe it if there was.) Even with the extra modifications S’s belief that p tracks the truth and is an example of knowledge. What is hard to believe is that S does not know (q) that there is a barn in front of her because condition 3 does not obtain for q – it is quite likely that if she had parked in front of a fake barn she would still believe that q.
How is it possible to know a specific without knowing the generality of which it is a part, namely how can you know that what is in front of you is a red barn, but not know that it is a barn? What Kripke’s Red Barn highlights, as well as a paradox that arises from the denial of closure, is an issue of context.
Context is an issue that is considered to be of particular significance, especially with regard to closure and entailment. Contextualists propose a semantic solution insofar as they argue that what it means ‘to know’ varies in meaning relative to context. A classic example of this is borrowed from Fred Dretske, wherein two people are at the zoo. The first one upon seeing stripy horse like creatures claims to know they are zebras. Quite a reasonable claim to make; they know they’re zebras, however the friend says “So you are sure they’re not just cleverly painted mules?”
Before that question was posed the situation seemed unproblematic; normally knowing that a certain creature is a zebra entails that you already know it’s not a cleverly painted mule. To ascribe knowledge suggests S has exhausted all reasonable alternate possibilities. The problem now is that one is less eager to say our subject knows. In raising alternate possibilities such as deception, we see how S might have believed p even if it were untrue and condition 3 of the tracking account would not obtain. This is similar to the problem of the red barn insofar as knowing you are standing in front of a red barn but not knowing something entailed by that (that it is a barn); the subject knows it’s a zebra but doesn’t know something which that should necessarily entail- that they know it’s not a painted mule.
The standard of justification for knowing you are standing in front of a barn, is higher in a fake barn scenario than it would be in a situation where there are no fake barns. In a zoo where they couldn’t afford real animals it would require a lot more evidence to persuade you that you knew what any given animal really was. The contextualist would argue that saying S ‘knows’ means something different in the dodgy zoo and kosher zoo situations. They argue furthermore that conversational factors affect what it means to say somebody knows. Contextualism, therefore, allows that prior to the question about mules, one can say he knew; but still accept the possibility that he does not know after the question.
For contextualists; ‘Attributor factors…affect how good an epistemic position the putatative knower must be in to count as knowing’ (DeRose, 1992)
When S’s friend raises the possibility of fake zebras, what occurs is a raising of the requirements to attribute knowledge. Duncan Pritchard refers to this as ‘epistemic ascent’; and its reverse, which occurs when one forgets the possibility of a scam and epistemic standards return to normal, ‘epistemic descent’.
Pritchard uses an everyday example to illustrate the problem. In everyday conversation it seems fine to say that S knows p –the table is flat. However when someone raises the possibility that the table is in fact not flat, due to microscopic bumps and irregularities, it becomes nonsensical to maintain that S knows p because with higher epistemic demands, and different context, the statement means something different.
What I hope to have shown is that the tracking account demonstrates that an account of knowledge should require that belief be truth-sensitive (as is shown by the successes with some problem cases) but as shown by the Red Barn example, this is not sufficient. The essential difference between S not knowing they are in front of a barn, yet knowing that they are in front of red barn, is not because of any information they possess.
It is an attributor factor which makes the difference (the attributor’s knowledge about which colour barns could be fake, etc). The context, such as the possibility of there being fake barns or not, is something that knowledge attributions need to be sensitive to. The problem is that this contextualist view is not straightforward to state clearly and precisely in the form of a sufficiency condition for instances of knowing.
Additionally it opens the door to the threat of scepticism once more. In the context of a discussion about Brains in Vats (BIV) the epistemic ascent is such that no knowledge claim becomes justifiable; furthermore it becomes unclear why the reverse should ever occur once some time has passed.
It seems counter-intuitive that S could later make the claim to know that the creatures were not cleverly painted mules without going and checking, just because time had passed since the possibility was raised. Similarly, in the BIV scenario, it seems wrong to lower epistemic standards just because the conversation moves on. As Duncan Pritchard puts it;
‘It seems highly counterintuitive that one should both assert and deny knowledge of the same proposition whilst consciously remaining in the same epistemic position.’ (Pritchard, 2000, pp19)
With this problem of justification for epistemic descent, contextualism is unable to claim to be any more context sensitive than sceptical invariantism, since there is no justification for ever considering the BIV hypothesis to be irrelevant once it has been raised. Ones epistemic position in relation to the possibility goes unchanged.
Issues such as these have led more recent thinkers to argue along different lines, suggesting that justification, (which is still undefined) may simply be a shorthand for what it means to know. Such thinkers reject the justified true belief account. Instead arguing that knowledge simply denotes a certain kind of relation; one between belief and truth, or in the case of Timothy Wiliamson (in Knowledge and its Limits,) go one step further to argue that knowledge is irreducible and whilst it consists of justification, truth and belief, it is itself conceptually unanalyseable, or sui generis. What is interesting about this is that such accounts of knowledge have moved beyond the old formulation of true belief plus something, and are looking at knowledge in new ways.
Bibliography
DeRose, K. (1992) Contextualism and Knowledge Attributions, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 52, pp. 1-51
Gettier, E.L. (1963) Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? (available online from http://www.ditext.com/gettier/gettier.html) accessed 19/11/2008
Nozick, R. (1981) “Knowledge and Scepticism”, extract from Philosophical Explanations. Reprinted in Dancy, J. (ed.) Perceptual Knowledge. Oxford University Press, (1988)
Pritchard, D. (2001) Contextualism, Scepticism and the Problem of Epistemic Descent, Dialectica 35, pp.327-49
Ramachandran, M. How believing can fail to be knowing, Theoria 56 (May, 2006) pp. 185-94
Since the ancient Greek philosophers, a widely accepted definition of knowledge was as ‘justified true belief’. That is to say that:
S knows that p, if and only if:
1. It is true that p
2. S believes that p
3. S is sufficiently justified in believing that p.
On the face of it this seems straightforward enough and therein lays the problem. This tripartite account of knowledge went more or less unchallenged for over 2000 years and although there was perhaps disagreement over what qualified as sufficient justification (especially given the possibilities presented by radical scepticism) it enjoyed widespread acceptance. What happened next was as unexpected as it was overdue.
All was well until in 1963, Edmund Gettier published a three page long paper entitled “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” In this paper, it is widely agreed that Gettier provided two counter examples to the tripartite account of knowledge as justified true belief.
Gettier begins by stating three differing versions of justified true belief and formulates two counterexamples wherein p is true, S believes that p and is justified in doing so. Unfortunately, S does not know p because their reasons for believing p are wrong. Essentially, Gettier had shown that justification, truth and belief failed to be jointly sufficient and necessary criteria for knowledge attributions; something else was required. An explanation of knowledge that was generally accepted since Plato suggested it, had been shown to be flawed and was not easily repairable.
Many attempts to address the problem, address the question of what qualifies
as justification. One attempt to fill in the dots dispenses with justification entirely. In Philosophical Explanations Robert Nozick seeks to formulate conditions that are “jointly sufficient for knowledge so any case that satisfies all of them will be an instance of knowledge” (Nozick, 1981 p.23). What he argues for instead is the idea that when beliefs ‘track’ the truth they are instances of knowledge.
Nozick’s tracking account of knowledge is stated as follows:
S knows that p, if and only if:
1. p (it is true that p)
2. S believes that p
3. If not-p then S would not believe that p for the same reason
4. If p then S would believe that p for the same reason
Conditions 3 and 4 replace the traditional ‘justification’ requirement. In circumstances where all four criteria obtain, Nozick considers the subject, S’s belief to “track” the truth. ‘To know is to have a belief that tracks the truth’ (Nozick, 1981. pp.28). Part of Nozick’s intent here is to address the problem of scepticism and on this regard he has some sucesss, and in addressing Gettier’s counter examples the tracking account appears initially promising.
There are numerous Gettier-type counter examples and many versions of them are in circulation. For the purposes of this essay for the sake of convenience, clarity and my own familiarity I shall use the examples as quoted in Murali Ramachandran’s How Believing can Fail to be Knowing, mainly for the clarity of his presentation of these sample cases.
When testing such accounts against an array of Gettier-type counter-examples it becomes apparent that any such account of what it is to know needs to tread a fine line. On the one hand one wants to avoid ruling out cases in which a true belief that has been appropriately acquired, fails to qualify as knowledge; conversely, one wants to avoid classifying as knowledge those cases where an inappropriate belief has been inappropriately acquired, yet happens to be correct through chance. This is made clear in the case of NOGOT.
NOGOT
A colleague in S’s office, Mr Nogot, has given evidence which leads S to
justifiably believe (r) that Mr. Nogot owns a Ford, from which S correctly deduces (p) that someone in this office owns a Ford. But, unbeknownst to S, Nogot has been shamming and p is only true because another person in the office, Ms. Havit, owns a Ford.
In this situation Nozick’s tracking account fares well and produces the correct outcome. His first criterion is met because it is true that p (because, purely coincidentally someone in the office does indeed own a Ford) and the second also obtains because S believes p. Condition 3, however, is not satisfied because if no-one in the office owned a Ford then S would still believe p on the basis of r. It is obvious that since r is false, S’s belief that r is not adequate justification for knowledge that p. Because S’s belief in p is deduced from r, then we can conclude that whether or not p was true, S would believe p and so condition 3 does not obtain. The tracking account therefore produces the correct result. S does not know that someone in the office owns a Ford.
A possible objection is that without p being true, it would have been impossible for Mr. Nogot to provide the evidence upon which S justifiably came to believe r. This ambiguity is avoided in the following variation and the results are not so good for the tracking account:
DEVIOUS NOGOT
Mr Nogot is mad. He decides that he will fool his gullible colleague S into believing (p) that someone in the office owns a Ford if and only if someone in the office does own a Ford. (Let us suppose that Nogot has the means to find out if someone does.) Nogot finds out that Havit owns a Ford and embarks on his plan. The rest is history—S comes to believe truly (p) that someone in this office owns a Ford.
The line ‘if and only if someone in the office owns a Ford’ is analogous to the objection that it would only have been possible for Nogot to engender S’s justified belief in p if someone in the office owned a Ford. In this variant Nozick does not fare so well. All four conditions are satisfied, so Nozick would say that S’s belief in p tracks the truth. S knows that p but that belief has not been acquired appropriately and so the desired outcome should be that S does not know p. Clearly, something gets overlooked, because it appears Nozick is committed to saying that in the case of DEVIOUS NOGOT, S knows that p. The four criteria as they are, do not differentiate between sound and unsound justifications such as the false lemma (r). Nozick’s four points capture the importance of there being a causal relationship between the truth of p and S’s belief that p, however they do not account for the possibility of some deception resulting from a less direct chain of belief.
The rescue for Nozick seems to come from holding the criteria up to r. Conditions 1 and 3 do not obtain for r, because it is not true that r and because S would believe r even if it were false; because 1 and 3 do not obtain for r we can say that r is a false-lemma or false-belief. If we add a fifth condition that S’s belief that p cannot rest on any false beliefs, then the Devious Nogot case is no longer problematic.
One significant problem for the tracking account was proposed in a lecture by Saul Kripke. It goes along the following lines.
RED BARN
S is driving in a region of the countryside where, unbeknownst to her, there are many papier-maché facsimiles of barns (easily mistaken for genuine barns from the roadside—indeed, we may suppose that S has mistaken many of them for barns in the course of her journey).S does not know it but none of the fake barns are painted red. As it happens, S stops in front of a red barn and believes truly (p) that there is a red barn in front of her.
The problem here is that all four conditions obtain. (It is true that there is a red barn in front of her; S believes there is a red barn in front of her, she would not believe that there wasn’t a red barn in front of her if there wasn’t, and she would believe it if there was.) Even with the extra modifications S’s belief that p tracks the truth and is an example of knowledge. What is hard to believe is that S does not know (q) that there is a barn in front of her because condition 3 does not obtain for q – it is quite likely that if she had parked in front of a fake barn she would still believe that q.
How is it possible to know a specific without knowing the generality of which it is a part, namely how can you know that what is in front of you is a red barn, but not know that it is a barn? What Kripke’s Red Barn highlights, as well as a paradox that arises from the denial of closure, is an issue of context.
Context is an issue that is considered to be of particular significance, especially with regard to closure and entailment. Contextualists propose a semantic solution insofar as they argue that what it means ‘to know’ varies in meaning relative to context. A classic example of this is borrowed from Fred Dretske, wherein two people are at the zoo. The first one upon seeing stripy horse like creatures claims to know they are zebras. Quite a reasonable claim to make; they know they’re zebras, however the friend says “So you are sure they’re not just cleverly painted mules?”
Before that question was posed the situation seemed unproblematic; normally knowing that a certain creature is a zebra entails that you already know it’s not a cleverly painted mule. To ascribe knowledge suggests S has exhausted all reasonable alternate possibilities. The problem now is that one is less eager to say our subject knows. In raising alternate possibilities such as deception, we see how S might have believed p even if it were untrue and condition 3 of the tracking account would not obtain. This is similar to the problem of the red barn insofar as knowing you are standing in front of a red barn but not knowing something entailed by that (that it is a barn); the subject knows it’s a zebra but doesn’t know something which that should necessarily entail- that they know it’s not a painted mule.
The standard of justification for knowing you are standing in front of a barn, is higher in a fake barn scenario than it would be in a situation where there are no fake barns. In a zoo where they couldn’t afford real animals it would require a lot more evidence to persuade you that you knew what any given animal really was. The contextualist would argue that saying S ‘knows’ means something different in the dodgy zoo and kosher zoo situations. They argue furthermore that conversational factors affect what it means to say somebody knows. Contextualism, therefore, allows that prior to the question about mules, one can say he knew; but still accept the possibility that he does not know after the question.
For contextualists; ‘Attributor factors…affect how good an epistemic position the putatative knower must be in to count as knowing’ (DeRose, 1992)
When S’s friend raises the possibility of fake zebras, what occurs is a raising of the requirements to attribute knowledge. Duncan Pritchard refers to this as ‘epistemic ascent’; and its reverse, which occurs when one forgets the possibility of a scam and epistemic standards return to normal, ‘epistemic descent’.
Pritchard uses an everyday example to illustrate the problem. In everyday conversation it seems fine to say that S knows p –the table is flat. However when someone raises the possibility that the table is in fact not flat, due to microscopic bumps and irregularities, it becomes nonsensical to maintain that S knows p because with higher epistemic demands, and different context, the statement means something different.
What I hope to have shown is that the tracking account demonstrates that an account of knowledge should require that belief be truth-sensitive (as is shown by the successes with some problem cases) but as shown by the Red Barn example, this is not sufficient. The essential difference between S not knowing they are in front of a barn, yet knowing that they are in front of red barn, is not because of any information they possess.
It is an attributor factor which makes the difference (the attributor’s knowledge about which colour barns could be fake, etc). The context, such as the possibility of there being fake barns or not, is something that knowledge attributions need to be sensitive to. The problem is that this contextualist view is not straightforward to state clearly and precisely in the form of a sufficiency condition for instances of knowing.
Additionally it opens the door to the threat of scepticism once more. In the context of a discussion about Brains in Vats (BIV) the epistemic ascent is such that no knowledge claim becomes justifiable; furthermore it becomes unclear why the reverse should ever occur once some time has passed.
It seems counter-intuitive that S could later make the claim to know that the creatures were not cleverly painted mules without going and checking, just because time had passed since the possibility was raised. Similarly, in the BIV scenario, it seems wrong to lower epistemic standards just because the conversation moves on. As Duncan Pritchard puts it;
‘It seems highly counterintuitive that one should both assert and deny knowledge of the same proposition whilst consciously remaining in the same epistemic position.’ (Pritchard, 2000, pp19)
With this problem of justification for epistemic descent, contextualism is unable to claim to be any more context sensitive than sceptical invariantism, since there is no justification for ever considering the BIV hypothesis to be irrelevant once it has been raised. Ones epistemic position in relation to the possibility goes unchanged.
Issues such as these have led more recent thinkers to argue along different lines, suggesting that justification, (which is still undefined) may simply be a shorthand for what it means to know. Such thinkers reject the justified true belief account. Instead arguing that knowledge simply denotes a certain kind of relation; one between belief and truth, or in the case of Timothy Wiliamson (in Knowledge and its Limits,) go one step further to argue that knowledge is irreducible and whilst it consists of justification, truth and belief, it is itself conceptually unanalyseable, or sui generis. What is interesting about this is that such accounts of knowledge have moved beyond the old formulation of true belief plus something, and are looking at knowledge in new ways.
Bibliography
DeRose, K. (1992) Contextualism and Knowledge Attributions, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 52, pp. 1-51
Gettier, E.L. (1963) Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? (available online from http://www.ditext.com/gettier/gettier.html) accessed 19/11/2008
Nozick, R. (1981) “Knowledge and Scepticism”, extract from Philosophical Explanations. Reprinted in Dancy, J. (ed.) Perceptual Knowledge. Oxford University Press, (1988)
Pritchard, D. (2001) Contextualism, Scepticism and the Problem of Epistemic Descent, Dialectica 35, pp.327-49
Ramachandran, M. How believing can fail to be knowing, Theoria 56 (May, 2006) pp. 185-94
Philosophy Essays
I've decided to post some of my philosophical writings up here, mainly to share with those who know me and set myself up for some honest criticism and late night chats.
It also gives me something to put up here till i get around to writing some reviews.
Enjoy
It also gives me something to put up here till i get around to writing some reviews.
Enjoy
Wednesday, 1 July 2009
Some ideas?
So i'm thinking where to begin...
what occurs to me is that i am about to embark on re-watching some horrible films; films i wish i'd never seen the first time around, and quite naturally this is a daunting prospect and its hard to know where to begin....when the choice is between "Matrix Revolutions" and "Malachi's Cove" or perhaps "Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith" (yup...that one's got it coming for sure!) Its hard to pick one...maybe i'll just stick on "Bring it on again" and hope the tedium puts me off the whole project altogether.
actually i'm in the mood for dinosaurs...its gonna be Jurassic Park III
what occurs to me is that i am about to embark on re-watching some horrible films; films i wish i'd never seen the first time around, and quite naturally this is a daunting prospect and its hard to know where to begin....when the choice is between "Matrix Revolutions" and "Malachi's Cove" or perhaps "Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith" (yup...that one's got it coming for sure!) Its hard to pick one...maybe i'll just stick on "Bring it on again" and hope the tedium puts me off the whole project altogether.
actually i'm in the mood for dinosaurs...its gonna be Jurassic Park III
hello =)
I was inspired to turn my talents to blogging after being inspired by the delightfully funny and sardonic ravings at http://sfdebris.com
Whilst Sci-fi may not be everyone's cup of tea the author of these reviews is damn funny...my hope is to be half as funny but keep it to subjects with wider appeal. if you ever watched "voyager" check out some of his reviews...he gives credit where it's due but what is frequently required of him is to rip the piss, which he does with flair.
what i plan to put up here over the coming months are reviews of some of the most truly awful films i have ever seen or had inflicted on me. no offence is intended to any of the hardworking individuals involved in the creation of these monstrosities (unless they truly deserve it) we all have to make a living, it's just that not all of chooose to do so by making "Holllyoaks" or "Neighbours", or films like "Insanitarium" or the truly awful "Jurassic Park III".
As far as i'm concerned, those who earn a living making utter tripe like this are begging for it...
Whilst Sci-fi may not be everyone's cup of tea the author of these reviews is damn funny...my hope is to be half as funny but keep it to subjects with wider appeal. if you ever watched "voyager" check out some of his reviews...he gives credit where it's due but what is frequently required of him is to rip the piss, which he does with flair.
what i plan to put up here over the coming months are reviews of some of the most truly awful films i have ever seen or had inflicted on me. no offence is intended to any of the hardworking individuals involved in the creation of these monstrosities (unless they truly deserve it) we all have to make a living, it's just that not all of chooose to do so by making "Holllyoaks" or "Neighbours", or films like "Insanitarium" or the truly awful "Jurassic Park III".
As far as i'm concerned, those who earn a living making utter tripe like this are begging for it...
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