Knowledge – Page 4 – Maverick Philosopher

Seeing versus Imagining a Ghost: Another Round with Hennessey

It is plain that 'sees' has many senses in English. Of these many senses, some are philosophically salient. Of the philosophical salient senses, two are paramount. Call the one 'existence-entailing.' (EE) Call the other 'existence-neutral.' (EN) On the one, 'sees' is a so-called verb of success. On the other, it isn't, which not to say that it is a 'verb of failure.' Now there is difference between seeing a tree (e.g.) and seeing that a tree is in bloom (e.g.), but this is a difference I will ignore in this entry, at some philosophical peril perhaps.

EE: Necessarily, if subject S sees x, then x exists.

EN: Possibly, subject S sees x, but it is not the case that x exists.

Now one question is whether both senses of 'see' can be found in ordinary English. The answer is yes. "I know that feral cat still exists; I just now saw him" illustrates the first. "You look like you've just seen a ghost" illustrates the second.

So far, I don't think I've said anything controversial.

We advance to a philosophical question, and embroil ourselves in controversy, when we ask whether, corresponding to the existence-neutral sense of 'sees,' there is a type of seeing, a type of seeing that does not entail the existence of the object seen. One might grant that there is a legitimate use of 'sees' (or a cognate thereof) in English according to which what is seen does not exist without granting that in reality there is a type of seeing that is the seeing of the nonexistent.

One might insist that all seeing is the seeing of what exists, and that one cannot literally see what does not exist. So, assuming that there are no ghosts, one cannot see a ghost.

But suppose a sincere, frightened person reports that she has seen a ghost of such-and-such a ghastly description. Because of the behavioral evidence, you cannot reasonably deny that the person has had an experience, and indeed an object-directed (intentional) experience. You cannot reasonably say, "Because there are no ghosts, your experience had no object." For it did have an object, indeed a material (albeit nonexistent) object having various ghastly properties. (Side question: Is 'ghastly' etymologically connected to 'ghostly'?)

This example suggests that we sometimes see what does not exist, and that seeing therefore does not entail the existence of that which is seen. If this is right, then the epistemologically primary sense of 'see' is given by (EN) supra.

Henessey's response: "I grant the reality of her experience, with the reservation that it was not an experience based in vision, but one with a basis in imagination, imagination as distinguished from vision." The point, I take it, is that what we have in my example of a person claiming to see a ghost is not a genuine case of seeing, of visual perception, but a case of imagining. The terrified person imagined a ghost; she did not see one.

I think Hennessey's response gets the phenomenology wrong. Imagination and perception are phenomenologically different. For one thing, what we imagine is up to us: we are free to imagine almost anything we want; what we perceive, however, is not up to us. When Ebeneezer Scrooge saw the ghost of Marley, he tried to dismiss the apparition as "a bit of bad beef, a blot of mustard, a fragment of an underdone potato," but he found he could not. Marley: "Do you believe in me or not?" Scrooge: "I do, I must!" This exchange brings out nicely what Peirce called the compulsive character of perception. Imagination is not like this at all. Whether or not Scrooge saw Marley, he did not imagine him for the reason that the object of his experience was not under the control of his will.

The fact that what one imagines does not exist is not a good reason to to assimilate perception of what may or may not exist to imagination.

Second, if a subject imagines x, then it follows that x does not exist. Everything imagined is nonexistent. But it is not the case that if a subject perceives x, then x does not exist. Perception either entails the existence of the object perceived, or is consistent with both the existence and the nonexistence of the object perceived.

Third, one knows the identity of an object of imagination simply by willing the object in question. The subject creates the identity so that there can be no question of re-identifying or re-cognizing an object of imagination. But perception is not like this at all. In perception there is re-identification and recognition. Scrooge did not imagine Marley's ghost for the reason that he was able to identify and re-identify the ghost as it changed positions in Scrooge's chamber. So even if you balk at admitting that Scrooge saw Marley's ghost, you ought to admit that he wasn't imaging him.

I conclude that Hennessey has not refuted my example. To see a ghost is not to imagine a ghost, even if there aren't any. Besides, one can imagine a ghost without having the experience that one reports when one sincerely states that one has seen a ghost. Whether or not this experience is perception, it surely is not imagination.

But I admit that this is a very murky topic!

Incompleteness, Completeness, and the External World

David Brightly comments:

I appreciate that in discussing these epistemological issues we must use the non-question-begging, existence-neutral sense of 'see'. My point is that for the distinction between 'complete' and 'incomplete' to make any sense, the epistemological question as to whether seeing is existence-entailing has to have already been settled favourably, though with the caveat that mistakes occur sometimes. In the context of your latest aporetic tetrad,

1. If S sees x, then x exists
2. Seeing is an intentional state
3. Every intentional state is such that its intentional object is incomplete
4. Nothing that exists is incomplete,

this would rule out the escape of denying (1). Indeed, can we not replace 'see' with 'veridically see' in (1) and (2) and obtain a rather more vexing aporia?

If I understand David's point, it is that the very sense of the distinction between an incomplete and a complete object requires that in at least some (if not the vast majority) of cases, the intentional objects of (outer) perceptual experience really exist. Equivalently, if there were no really existent (finite-mind-independent) material meso-particulars (e.g., trees and rocks and stars), then not only would the predicate 'complete' not apply to anything, but also would be bereft of sense or meaning, and with it the distinction between incomplete and complete.

I am afraid I don't agree.

Suppose one were to argue that the very sense of the distinction between God and creatures logically requires that God exist. Surely that person would be wrong. At most, the concept creature logically requires the concept God. But while the concept God is a concept, God is not a concept, and the God concept may or may not be instantiated without prejudice to its being the very concept it is. (Don't confuse this with the very different thesis that the essence of God may or may not be exemplified without prejudice to its being the very essence it is.)

I say, contra David, that it is is the same with incomplete and complete objects. The sense of the distinction does not logically require that there be any complete objects of outer perception; it requires only the concept complete object. This is a concept we form quite easily by extrapolation from the concept incomplete object.

As I always say, the more vexatious an aporetic polyad, the better. I am ever on the hunt for insolubilia. So I thank David for suggesting the following beefed-up tetrad:

1. If S veridically sees x, then x exists
2. Veridical seeing is an intentional state
3. Every intentional state is such that its intentional object is incomplete
4. Nothing that exists is incomplete.

This is more vexing than the original tetrad, but I think it falls short of a genuine aporia (a polyad in which the limbs are individually undeniable but jointly inconsistent). For why can't I deny (1) by claiming that veridical seeing does not logically require the real (extramental) existence of the thing seen but only that the incomplete intentional objects cohere? Coherence versus correspondence as the nature of truth.

Seeing: Internalist and Externalist Perspectives

This is a second entry in response to Hennessey. The first is here.

Consider again this aporetic tetrad:

1. If S sees x, then x exists

2. Seeing is an intentional state

3. Every intentional state is such that its intentional object is incomplete

4. Nothing that exists is incomplete.

The limbs of the tetrad are collectively logically inconsistent. Any three of them, taken together, entails the negation of the remaining one. For example, the conjunction of the first three limbs entails the negation of the fourth.

But while the limbs are collectively inconsistent, they are individually very plausible. So we have a nice puzzle on our hands. At least one of the limbs is false, but which one? I don't think that (3) or (4) are good candidates for rejection. That leaves (1) or (2).

I incline toward the rejection of (1). Seeing is an intentional state but it is not existence-entailing. My seeing of x does not entail the existence of x. What one sees (logically) may or may not exist. There is nothing in or about the visual object that certifies that it exists apart from my seeing it. Existence is not an observable feature. The greenness of the tree is empirically accessible; its existence is not.

The meat of Hennessey's response consists in rejecting (3) and runs as follows:

. . . it does not seem to me to be right that the object of an intentional state “is incomplete.” If he and I were both looking at the cat of which he makes mention, I of course from the left and he of course from the right, [of course!] neither of us would see the side of the cat which the other would see. The cat, however, would be complete, lacking neither side. And we would each be seeing the same complete cat, though I would be seeing it as or qua visible from the left and he would be seeing it as or qua visible from the right.

There is a scholastic distinction that should be brought to bear here, the distinction between the “material object” of an intentional act such as seeing and its “formal object.” My vision of the cat and Bill’s vision of the cat has the same material object, the cat. But they have distinct formal objects, the cat as or qua visible from the left and the cat as or qua visible from the right.

5. I conclude, then, that rather than adopting limbs (2), (3), and (4) as premises in an argument the conclusion of which is the negation of (1), we should adopt limbs (1), (2), and (4) as premises in an argument the conclusion of which is the negation of (3). Seeing is an existence-entailing intentional state. But I stand ready to be corrected.

Richard's response is a reasonable one, and of course I accept the distinction he couches in scholastic terminology, that between the material and the formal object of an act. That is a distinction that needs to be made in any adequate account. If I rightly remember my Husserl, he speaks of the object as intended and the object intended. Both could be called the intentional object.

What I meant by 'intentional object' in (3) above is the object precisely as intended in the act, the cogitatum qua cogitatum, or intentum qua intentum, precisely as correlate of the intentio, the Husserlian noema precisely as correlate of the Husserlian noesis, having all and only the properties it appears to have. It seems obvious that the formal object, the object-as-intended, must be incomplete. Suppose I am looking at a wall. I can see it only from one side at a time, not from all sides at once. What's more, the side I see as material object is not identical to the formal object of my seeing. For the side I am seeing (and that is presumably a part-cause of my seeing it) has properties that I don't see or are otherwise aware of. For example, I might describe the formal object as 'beige wall' even though the wall in reality (if there is one) is a beige stucco wall: I am too far away to see if it has a stucco surface or not. The wall in reality, if there is one, must of course be one or the other. But the formal object is indeterminate with respect to the property of having a stucco surface.

Here is a further wrinkle. Necessarily, if x is beige, then x is colored. But if I see x as beige, it does not follow that I see it as colored. So it would seem that formal objects are not closed under property entailment.

This is why I consider (3) to be unassailably true. Richard and I both accept (2) and (4). But he rejects (3), while I reject (1).

So far, then, a stand-off. But there is a lot more to say.

The Epistemologically Primary Sense of ‘See’

Richard Hennessey questions the distinction between existentially loaded and existentially neutral senses of 'sees' and cognates. He quotes me as saying:

'Sees’ is often taken to be a so-called verb of success: if S sees x, then it follows that x exists. On this understanding of ‘sees’ one cannot see what doesn’t exist. Call this the existentially loaded sense of ‘sees’ and contrast it with the existentially neutral sense according to which ‘S sees x’ does not entail ‘X exists.’

I should add that I consider the existentially neutral sense of 'see' primary for the purposes of epistemology. For if visual perception is a source (along with tactile, auditory, etc. perception) of our knowledge of the existence of material things, then it seems obvious that the perception verbs must be taken in their existentially neutral senses. For existentially loaded uses of these verbs presuppose the mind-independent existence of material things.

So here is a bone of contention between me and Hennessey. I maintain that seeing in the epistemologically primary sense does not entail the existence, outside the mind, of that which is seen. Hennessey, I take it, disagrees.

We agree, however, that a parallel distinction ought not be made with respect to 'knows': there is no legitimate sense of 'knows' according to which 'S knows x' does not entail 'x exists.' Now consider this argument that Hennessey's discussion suggests:

1. Every instance of seeing is an instance of knowing

2. Every instance of knowing is existence-entailing

Therefore

3. Every instance of seeing is existence-entailing.

I reject the initial premise, and with it the argument. So I persist in my view that seeing an object does not entail the existence of the object seen. Hennessey and I agree that seeing is an intentional or object-directed state of the subject: one cannot see without seeing something. Where we disagree is on the question whether there are, or could be, cases in which the object seen does not exist.

I would say that there are actual cases of this. Suppose a person claims to have seen a ghost and behaves in a manner that makes it very unlikely that the person is lying or joking. (The person may be your young daughter with whom you have just watched an episode of "Celebrity Ghost Stories.") The person is trembling with fear as she recounts her experience and describes its object in some detail, an object that is of course distinct from the experiencing. (Describing an ugly man with a wart on his nose, she is describing an object of experiencing, not the experiencing as mental act.) Now suppose you are convinced that there are no ghosts. What will you say to the person? Two options:

A. You didn't see anything: ghosts do not exist and you can't see what does not exist!

B. You saw something, but what you saw does not exist, so have no fear!

Clearly, the first answer won't do. The subject had a terrifying visual experience in which something visually appeared. If you give the first answer, you are denying the existence of the subject's visual experience. But that denial involves unbearable chutzpah: the subject, from her behavior, clearly did have a disturbing object-directed experience. You are presumably also confusing not seeing something with seeing something that does not exist. That would be a sort of operator shift fallacy. One cannot validly move from

S sees something that does not exist

to

It is not the case that S sees something.

The correct answer is (B). The person saw something, but what she saw does not exist.

In dreams, too, we sometimes see what does not exist. I once had a dream about my cat, Maya. It was an incredibly vivid dream, but also a lucid one: I knew I am was dreaming, and I knew that the cat that I saw, felt, and heard was dead and gone, and therefore nonexistent (assuming presentism). And so I philosophized within the dream: this cat does not exist and yet I see and hear and feel this cat. Examples like this, which of course hark back to Descartes' famous dream argument, are phenomenological evidence that we sometimes perceive objects that do not exist.

(There are those who will 'go adverbial' here, but the adverbial theory gets the phenomenology wrong, among other things.)

Hallucinations and dreams provide actual (nonmodal) examples of cases in which we perceive what does not exist. But even if we never dreamt or hallucinated, we would still have (modal) reason to deny the validity of the inference from 'S sees x' to 'X exists.' For suppose I see a tree, one that exists apart from my seeing it. My perception would in that case be veridical. But it is an undeniable phenomonological fact that there is no intrinsic difference, no difference internal to the experience, between veridical and nonveridical perception. That is: there is no feature of the intentional object that certifies its existence outside the mind, that certifies that it is more than a merely intentional object. It is therefore logically possible that I have the experience of seeing a tree without it being the case that the object of the experience exists. Since the object seen is what it is whether or not it exists, I cannot validily infer the existence of the object from my seeing it. It is possible that theobject not exist even if in actuality the tree perceived exists extramentally.

What I am saying is consistent with perception being caused in the normal cases. For me to see an existing green tree it is causally necessary that light of the right wavelengths enter my retina, that my brain be supplied with oxygenated blood, etc. What I am saying is inconsistent, however, with a philosophical (not scientific) theory according to which causation is logically necessary for perception. So consider a third senses of 'sees' according to which there are two logically necessary conditions on seeing, first, that the object seen exists, and second, that the object seen stand in the right causal relation to S. This is a gesture in the direction of a causal theory of perception according to which causation is a logical ingredient in perception.

What I am maintaining is clearly inconsistent with such a philosophical theory. For if the proverbial drunk literally (not figuratively) sees the proverbial pink rat when in the grip of delirium tremens, a rat that does not extramentally exist, then his seeing cannot involve causation from the side of the rat. For presumably an existent effect cannot have a nonexistent cause.

In the Absence of Knowledge, May One Believe? Remarks on Magee

According to Bryan Magee ("What I Believe," Philosophy 77 (2002), 407- 419), nobody knows the answers to such questions as whether we survive our bodily deaths or whether God exists. Citing Xenophanes and Kant, Magee further suggests that the answers to these questions are not only unknown but impossible for us to know. Assuming that Magee is right on both counts, what follows?

One inference one might draw from our state of irremediable ignorance about ultimates is that it provides us with 'doxastic wiggle-room' (my expression): if one cannot know one way or the other, then one is permitted either to believe or not believe that we survive and that God exists. After all, if it cannot be proven that ~p, then it is epistemically possible that p, and this epistemic possibility might be taken to allow as reasonable our believing that p. Invoking the Kantian distinction between thinking and knowing (Critique of Pure Reason, B 146 et passim) one could maintain that although we have and can have no knowledge of God and the soul, we can think them without contradiction, and without contradicting anything we know. Does not the denial of knowledge make room for faith, as Kant himself famously remarks? CPR B xxx: Ich musste also das Wissen aufheben, um zum Glauben Platz zu bekommen… "I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith…." (And given that contact with reality is a great good, would it not be better to venture contact with the unknowable portion of it via faith rather than have no contact with it at all by insisting that only knowable truth is admissible truth?)

This inference, however, the inference from our irremediable ignorance to the rational allowability of belief in the epistemically possible, is one that Magee resolutely refuses to draw, seeing it as a shabby evasion and an "illegitimate slide."(408) Thus he holds it to be illegitimate to move from the epistemic possibility of post-mortem survival to belief in it. As he puts it, "What I find myself wanting to drive home is not merely that we do not know but that the only honest way to live and think is in the fullest possible acknowledgment of that fact and its consequences, without ducking out into a faith of some kind, and without evasion or self-indulgence of any other sort." (417) Near the beginning of his essay, Magee cites Freud to the effect that no right to believe anything can be derived from ignorance. (408)

The relevance of the Freudian point, however, is unclear. First of all, no one would maintain that ignorance about a matter such as post-mortem survival justifies, in the sense of provides evidence for, the belief that one survives. And a person who thinks it rationally allowable to believe where we cannot know will presumably not take a deontological approach to belief in terms of epistemic rights and duties. In any case, the issue is this: Is it ever rationally permissible to believe where knowledge is unavailable? Magee answers this question in the negative. But I cannot see that he makes anything close to a convincing case for this answer. I will simply run through some questions/objections the cumulative force of which will be to neutralize, though perhaps not refute, Magee's view. Thus I play for a draw, not a win. I doubt that one can expect more from philosophy. This post presents just one of my questions/objections.

Probative Overkill?

One problem with Magee's argument is that it seems to prove too much. If we have no knowledge about such metaphysical/religious matters as God and the soul, and so must suspend belief in them lest we violate the putative epistemic duty to believe only on sufficient evidence, then we must also suspend belief on a host of other issues in respect of which we certainly cannot claim knowledge. Surely, the very same reasons that lead Magee to say that no one knows anything about God and the soul must also lead us to say that no one knows whether or not there are cases in which justice demands capital punishment, or whether or not a just society is one which provides for redistribution of wealth, or whether or not animals have rights, etc. Indeed, we must say that no one knows what justice is or what rights are. And of course it is not merely about normative issues that we are ignorant.

Do we know what motion, or causation, or time are? Do we know what properties are, or what is is for a thing to have a property, or to exist, or to change, or to be the same thing over time? Note that these questions, unlike the God and soul questions, do not pertain to what is transcendent of experience. I see the tomato; I see that it is red; I see or think I see that it is the same tomato that I bought from the grocer an hour ago; applying a knife to it, I see or think I see that slicing it causes it to split apart.

For that matter, Does Magee know that his preferred ethics of belief is correct? How does he know that? How could he know it? Does he have sufficient evidence? If he knows it, why do philosophers better than him take a different view? Does he merely believe it? Does he believe it because his fear of being wrong trumps his desire for the truth? Does he want truth, but only on his terms? Does he want only that truth that can satisfy the criteria that he imposes? Would it not be more self-consistent for Magee to suspend belief as to his preferred ethics of belief? Why is it better to have no contact with reality than such contact via faith? Isn't it better to have a true belief that I cannot justify about a life and death matter than no belief about that matter? Does the man of faith self-indulgently evade reality, or does the philosopher of Magee's stripe self-indulgently and pridefully refuse such reality as he cannot certify by his methods?

No one knows how economies really work; if we had knowledge in this area we would not have wildly divergent paradigms of economic explanation. But this pervasive ignorance does not prevent people from holding very firm beliefs about these non-religious issues, beliefsthat translate into action in a variety of ways, both peaceful and violent. It is furthermore clear that people feel quite justified in holding, and acting upon, these beliefs that go beyond what they can claim to know. What is more, I suspect Magee would agree that people are often justified in holding such beliefs.

So if Magee is right that we ought to suspend belief about religious matters, then he must also maintain that we ought to suspend belief about the social and political matters that scarcely anyone ever suspends belief about. That is, unless he can point to a relevant difference between the religious questions and the social-political ones. But it is difficult to discern any relevant difference. In both cases we are dealing with knowledge-transcendent beliefs for which elaborate rational defenses can be constructed, and elaborate rational refutations of competing positions.

In both cases we are dealing with very abstruse and 'metaphysical' issues such as the belief in equal rights, a belief which manifestly has no empirical justification. And in both cases we are dealing with
issues of great importance to our welfare and happiness. On the other hand, if Magee thinks that we are justified in holding beliefs about social and political matters, something he does of course hold, then he should also maintain that we are justified in holding beliefs about religious matters. There is no justification for a double standard. In this connection, one should read Peter van Inwagen's Quam Dilecta, in God and the Philosophers, ed. T. V. Morris (Oxford University Press, 1994), 31-60. See especially 41-46 for a penetrating discussion of the double standard.

Memory and the Operations of Reason

"Memory is necessary for all the operations of reason." (Blaise Pascal, Pensées, Krailsheimer, #651)

This seems right. Consider this quick little argument against scientism, the philosophical, not scientific, view that all knowledge is natural-scientific knowledge:

1. I know by reason alone, a priori, and not by any natural-scientific means, that addition has the associative and the commutative properties and that these properties are distinct.

2. If scientism is true, then it is not the case that (1).

Therefore

3. Scientism is not true.

I grasp (understand) this argument and its validity by reason. To grasp any such argument, it is not sufficient that a succession of conscious states transpire in my mental life. For if the state represented by (1) falls into oblivion by the time I get to (2), and (2) by the time I get to (3), then all I would undergo would be a succession of consciousnesses but not the consciousness of succession. But the consciousness of succession is necessary to 'take in' the argument. And this consciousness of succession itself presupposes a kind of memory. To grasp the conclusion as a conclusion — and thus as following from the premises — I have to have retained the premises. There has to be a diachronic unity of consciousness in which there is a sort of synopsis of the premises together with the conclusion with the former entailing the latter.

But of course something similar holds for each proposition in the argument. The meaning of a compound proposition is built up out of the meanings of its propositional parts, and the meaning of a simple proposition is built up out of the meanings of its sub-propositional parts, and these meanings have to be retained as the discursive intellect runs through the propositions. ('Discursive' from the L. currere, to run.) This retention — a term Husserl uses — is a necessary condition of the possibility of understanding.

And so while I do not grasp an argument by memory (let alone by sense perception or introspection), memory is involved in rational knowledge.

The Pascalian aphorism bears up well under scrutiny.

Example of associativity of addition: (7 + 5) + 3 = 7 + (5 + 3). Example of commutativity: (7 + 5) + 3 = (5 + 7) + 3. The difference between the two properties springs to the eye (of the mind). Now what must mind be like if it is to be capable of a priori knowledge? Presumably it can't just be a hunk of meat.

But if the below companion post is right, not even sense knowledge is such that its subject could be a hunk of meat. We are of course meatheads. But squeezing meaning out of mere meat — there's the trick!

Companion post: Pascal on the Immateriality of the Subject of Experience

More on Knowledge and Belief

Here is yesterday's aporetic triad:

1. Knowledge entails belief.

2. Belief is essentially tied to action.

3. There are items of knowledge that are not essentially tied to action.

Daniel K comments and I respond in blue:

First, as to your aporetic triad: I would like to reject (3) in one sense that I describe below, and reject (1) absolutely. Not sure where that leaves the triad. But I'd be interested in whether you think I've clarified or merely muddied the waters.

In one sense I think all knowledge is action guiding. In another sense I think it is not essentially action guiding. All pure water is drinkable (at the right temperature etc.), but drinkability is not an essential feature of water (I wonder if this works).

BV: I don't think it works. I should think that in every possible world in which there is water, it is potable by humans. Therefore, drinkability is an essential feature of water. (An essential property of x is a property x has in every possible world in which x exists.) Of course, there are worlds in which there is water but no human beings. In those worlds, none of the water is drunk by humans. But in those worlds too water is drinkable. Compare the temporal case. Before humans evolved, there was water on earth. That water, some of it anyway, was potable by humans even though there were no humans. Water did not become potable when the first humans arose.

Rejecting (3): The having of knowledge always contributes to how one acts. You give examples of a priori knowledge as counterexamples. My response: it seems to me a priori knowledge is "hinge" knowledge that opens the door for action and cannot possibly not inform action. In other words we won't find circumstances where such knowledge is not action guiding in the presuppositional sense. So, I disagree that we will find knowledge that doesn't inform action. A priori knowledge is presuppositionally necessary and occasionally practically useful (math for engineering). Empirical knowledge will be used when it is available. So, I don't think defending (3) is necessary to defend (2).

BV: Willard maintains that one can have propositional knowledge without belief, and that belief is essentially tied to action. The conjunction of these two claims suggests to me that there can be knowledge that is not essentially tied to action. And so I looked for examples of items of knowledge that are not essentially tied to action, either by not being tied to action at all, or by not being essentially tied to action. If there are such items, then we can say that the difference between belief and knowledge is that every belief, by its very nature, can be acted upon, while it is not the case that every item of knowledge can be acted upon.

Much depends on what exactly is meant by 'acting upon a proposition,' and I confess to not having a really clear notion of this.

While I grant that much a priori knowledge is 'hinge' knowledge in your sense, consider the proposition that there is no transfinite cardinal lying between aleph-nought and 2 raised to the power, alepth-nought. Does that have any engineering application? (This is not a rhetorical question.)

Now consider philosophical knowledge (assuming there is some). If I know that there are no bare particulars (in Gustav Bergmann's sense), this is a piece of knowledge that would seem to have no behavioral consequences. The overt, nonlinguistic, behavior of a man who maintains a bundle-theoretic position with respect to ordinary partiulars will be no different from that of a man who maintains that ordinary particulars have bare particulars at their ontological cores. They could grow, handle, slice, and eat tomatoes in the very same way.

(Anecdote that I am pretty sure is not apocryphal: when Rudolf Carnap heard that fellow Vienna Circle member Gustav Bergmann had published a book under the title, The Metaphysics of Logical Positivism, he refused to speak to Bergmann ever again.)

It seems we should say that some, though not all, philosophical knowledge (assuming there is philosophical knowledge) consists of propositions upon which we cannot act. Here is another example. Suppose I know that the properties of ordinary particulars are tropes. Thus I know that the redness of a tomato is not a universal but a particular. Is that knowledge action-guiding? How would it guide action differently than the knowledge that properties are universals? Is the difference in ontological views a difference that could show up at the level of overt, nonlinguistic, behavior?

Admittedly, some philosophical knowledge is action-guiding. If I know that the soul is immortal, then I will behave differently than one who lacks this knowledge.

Now consider the knowledge of insignificant contingent facts. I know from my journal that on 27 April 1977 I ate hummus. Is that item of knowledge action-guiding? I think not. Suppose you learn the boring fact and infer that I like hummus. You might then make me a present of some. But if I am the only one privy to the information, it is difficult to see how that item of knowledge could be action-guiding for me. Recall that by action I mean overt, nonlinguistic behavior.

There is also modal knowledge to consider. I might have been sleeping now. I might not have been alive now. I might never have existed at all. These are modal truths that, arguably, I know. Suppose I know them. How could I act upon them? I am not sleeping now, and nothing I do could bring it about that I am sleeping now. Some modal knowledge would seem to without behavioral consequences. Of course, some modal knowledge does have such consequences, e.g. the knowledge that it is possible to grow tomatoes in Arizona.

It seemed to me in your post that you took the truth of (2) as giving support to (3). If belief is essentially action guiding and knowledge is not essentially believing, then there should be knowledge that is not action guiding.

But again, I would like to affirm that in the sense you mean it in the post all knowledge is action guiding: either presuppositionally or consciously/empirically. For instance, the law of noncontradiction is action guiding in the sense that I cannot act if essential to that action is that the object has characteristic X, but I affirm that the object is both X and not-X. [. . .]

BV: Consider an example. I cannot eat a bananna unless it is peeled. My affirming that it is both peeled and unpeeled (at the same time, all over, and in the same sense of 'peeled') would not, however, seem to stand in the way of my performing the action. Clearly, I know that nothing is both peeled and unpeeled. It is not clear to me how one could act upon that proposition. If I want to eat the bananna, I can act upon the proposition that it is unpeeled by peeling the bananna. But how do I act upon the proposition that the bananna is either peeled or unpeeled? What do I do?

Rejecting (1): So, what if both knowledge and belief are in one sense "action guiding" (rejecting 3)? Does it imply that we have no reason to think that belief is not an essential component of knowledge (accepting 2 and rejecting 1)? I think we still do have a good reason for thinking belief is not essentially a component of knowledge. When Willard says that belief is not essential to knowledge I take him to be distinguishing between the irrelevance of being concerned with action in the act of knowing and the universal appeal of knowledge for action.

Forget the terms "knowledge" and "belief" for a moment. Distinguish between the
following states:

One is in a state (intentional?) (Y) to object (X) iff one has a true representation of X that was achieved in an appropriate way (Willard's account of knowledge). Notice that there is nothing in the description that essentially involves a readiness to act. That is not a part of its intentional character or directedness of state (Y). It is directed purely at unity, period.

Alternatively, one is in an intentional state (Z) to object (X) iff one has a representation of reality that is essentially identified by its being a ground for action. Here, essential to (Z) is its providing a ground for action.

(Y) is not a state that essentially involves action guidance but (Z) is. So, the achievement of (Y) does not involve essentially the achievement of (Z). That is, the achievement of (Y) is the achievement of a kind of theoretical unity with (X) while the achievement of (Z) is the achievement of a motivator for acting in certain ways regarding (X). Response: but Daniel, you've already said that all knowledge is action guiding! Yes, but it is not an essential feature of the state of knowing. Analogy: all water is drinkable. But drinkability is not an essential feature of water.

I'm going to stop there. I'd appreciate any comments you have. That is my effort, thus far, to make sense of both Willard's suggestion and your aporetic triad.

BV: I do appreciate the comments and discussion. Let's see if I understand you. You reject (1), the orthodox view that knowledge entails belief. Your reason seems to be that, while belief is essentially action-guiding, knowledge is not essentially action-guiding, but only accidentally action-guiding. You deny what I maintain, namely, that some items of knowledge (some known propositions qua known) are not action-guiding. You maintain that all such items are action-guiding, but only accidentally so. Perhaps your argument is this:

4. Every believing-that-p is essentially action-guiding.

5. No knowing-that-p is essentially action-guiding.

Ergo

6. It is not the case that, necessarily, every knowing-that-p is a believing-that-p.

But (6) — the negation of (1) — doesn't follow from (4) and (5). (6) is equivalent to

6*. Possibly, some knowings-that-p are not believings-that-p.

What follows from (4) and (5) is

7. No knowing-that-p is a believing-that-p.

(7) is the thesis I am tentatively proposing.

This is a very difficult topic and we may be falling into de dicto/de re confusion.

Well, at least I am in the state that Plato says is characteristic of the philosopher: perplexity!

Knowledge and Belief: An Aporetic Triad

Here is a trio of propositions that are jointly inconsistent but individually plausible:

1. Knowledge entails belief.

2. Belief is essentially tied to action.

3. There are items of knowledge that are not essentially tied to action.

Clearly, any two of these propositions is logically inconsistent with the remaining one. Thus the conjunction of (1) and (2) entails the negation of (3).

And yet each limb of the triad is very plausible, though perhaps not equally plausible.

(1) is part of the classical definition of knowledge as justified true belief, an analysis traceable to Plato's Theaetetus. (1) says that, necessarily, if a person S knows that p, then S believes that p. Knowledge logically includes belief. What one knows one believes, though not conversely. For example, if I know that my wife is sitting across from me, then I believe that she is sitting across from me. (At issue here is propositional knowledge, not know-how, or carnal knowledge, or knowledge by acquaintance.)

(2) is perhaps the least plausible of the three, but it is still plausible and accepted by (a minority of) distinguished thinkers. According to Dallas Willard,

Belief I understand to be some degree of readiness to act as if such and such (the content believed) were the case. Everyone concedes that one can believe where one does not know. But it is now widely assumed that you cannot know what you do not believe. Hence the well known analysis of knowledge as "justified, true belief." But this seems to me, as it has to numerous others, to be a mistake. Belief is, as Hume correctly held, a passion. It is something that happens to us. Thought, observation and testing, even knowledge itself, can be sources of belief, and indeed should be. But one may actually know (dispositionally, occurrently) without believing what one knows.

[. . .] belief has an essential tie to action . . . .

Although I am not exactly sure what Willard's thesis is, he seems to be maintaining that the propositions one believes are precisely those one is prepared to act upon. S believes that p iff S is prepared to act upon p. Beliefs are manifested in actions, and actions are evidence of beliefs. To determine what a person really believes, we look to his actions, not to his words, although the words provide context for understanding the actions. If I want to get to the roof, and tell you that the ladder is stable, but refuse to ascend it, then that is very good evidence that I don't really believe that the ladder is stable. I don't believe it because I am not prepared to act upon it. So far, so good.

But if belief is essentially tied to action, as Willard maintains, then it is not possible that one believe a proposition one cannot act upon. Is this right? Consider the proposition *Everything is self-identical.* This is an item of knowledge. But is it also an item of belief? We can show that this item of knowledge is not an item of belief if we can show that one cannot act upon it. But what is it to act upon a proposition? I don't know precisely, but here's an idea:

A proposition p is such that it can be acted upon iff there is some subject S and some circumstances C such that S's acceptance of p in C makes a difference to S's overt, nonlinguistic behavior.

For example, *It is raining* can be acted upon because there are circumstances in which my acceptance of it versus my nonacceptance of it (either by rejecting it or just entertaining it) makes a difference to what I do such as going for a run. Accepting the proposition, and not wanting to get wet, I postpone the run. Rjecting the proposition, I go for the run as planned.

In the case of *Everything is self-identical,* is there any behavior that could count as a manifestation of an agent's acceptance/nonacceptance of the proposition in question? Suppose I come to know (occurrently) for the first time that everything is self-identical. Suppose I had never thought of this before, never 'realized it.' Would the realization or 'epiphany' make a difference to my overt, nonlingusitic behavior? It seems not. Would I do anything differently?

Consider characteristic truths of transfinite set theory. They are items of knowledge that have no bearing on any actual or possible action. For example, I know that, while the natural numbers and the reals are both infinite sets, the cardinality of the latter is strictly greater than that of the former. Can I take that to the streets?

(3) therefore seems true: there are items of knowledge that are not items of belief because not essentially tied to action.

I have shown that each limb of our inconsistent triad has some plausibility. So it is an interesting problem. How solve it? Reject one of the limbs! But which one? And how do you show that the rejection of one is more reasonable than the rejection of one of the other two? And why is it more reasonable to hold that the problem has a solution than to hold that it is insoluble and thus a genuine aporia?

I'm just asking.

On the Obvious

As Hilary Putnam once said, "It ain't obvious what's obvious." Or as I like to say, "One man's datum is another man's theory."

But is it obvious that it ain't obvious what's obvious?

It looks as if we have a little self-referential puzzle going here. Does the Hilarian dictum apply to itself? An absence of the particular quantifier may be read as a tacit endorsement of the universal quantifier. Now if it is never obvious what is obvious, then we have self-reference and the Hilarian dictum by its own say-so is not obvious.

Is there a logical problem here? I don't think so. With no breach of logical consistency one can maintain that it is never obvious what is obvious, as long as one does not exempt one's very thesis. In this case the self-referentiality issues not in self-refutation but in self-vitiation. The Hilarian dictum is a self-weakening thesis. Over the years I have given many examples of this. (But I am now too lazy to dig them out of my vast archives.)

There is no logical problem, but there is a factual problem. Surely some propositions are obviously true. Having toked on a good cigar in its end game, when a cigar is at its most nasty and rasty, I am am feeling mighty fine long about now. My feeling of elation, just as such, taken in its phenomenological quiddity, under epoche of all transcendent positings — this quale is obvious if anything is.

So let us modify the Hilarian dictum to bring it in line with the truth.

In philosophy, appeals to what is obvious, or self-evident, or plain to gesundes Menschenverstand, et cetera und so weiter are usually unavailing for purposes of convincing one's interlocutor.

And yet we must take some things as given and non-negotiable. Welcome to the human epistemic predicament.

Ignorabimus

We are ignorant about ultimates and we will remain ignorant in this life. Perhaps on the Far Side we will learn what we cannot learn here. But whether there is survival of bodily death, and whether it will improve our epistemic position, are again things about which — we will remain ignorant in this life.

It is admittedly strange to suppose that death is the portal to knowledge. But is it stranger than supposing that a being capable of knowledge simply vanishes with the breakdown of his body?

The incapacity of materialists to appreciate the second strangeness I attribute to their invincible body-identification.

If All Knowledge Comes from Experience, is All Knowledge Subjective?

This is the kind of e-mail I like, brief and pointed:

Recently I've encountered an argument that runs like this:

1. All knowledge comes from experience
2. All experiences are subjective
3. Ergo, all knowledge is subjective.

I think I can argue somewhat against this argument, but I need a nice snappy response to it.

The snappiest response to this invalid argument is that it falls victim to a fallacy of equivocation: 'experience' is being used in two different senses. Hence the syllogism lacks a middle term and commits the four-term fallacy (quaternio terminorum).

To experience is to experience something. So we need to distinguish between the act of experiencing and the object experienced. The act is subjective: it is a mental occurrence. The object is typically not subjective. For example, how do I know that there is a cat on my lap now? I experience the cat via my outer senses: I see the cat, feel its weight, hear it purr. The experiencing is subjective; the cat is not. I have objective knowledge of the existence and properties of the cat despite the fact that my experiencing is a subjective process.

Now I don't grant that all knowledge comes from experience; I grant only that all knowledge arises on the occasion of experience. But suppose I grant premise (1) arguendo. What (1) says is that all knowledge is knowledge of the objects of the senses. (There is no a priori knowledge.) So we can rewrite the argument as follows:

1*. All knowledge is knowledge of sensory objects (either directly or via instruments such as microsopes).

2*. All acts of experiencing are subjective

Ergo

3*. All knowledge is subjective.

This syllogism is clearly a non sequitur since there is no middle term.

The subjectivity of experiencing is logically consistent with the objectivity of knowledge via the senses. There is no knowledge apart from minds. And yet minds have the power of transcending their internal states and grasping what is real and true independently of minds. How this is possible is a further question, and perhaps the central question of epistemology.

One way to embarrass an empiricist is to ask him how he knows propostions like (1*). Does he know it by experience? No. Then, by his own principles, he doesn't know it. Why then does he think it is true?

Psychotropic Drugs, Veridicality, Criteria

It is gratifying to know that I am getting through to some people as is evidenced by the fact that they recall my old posts; and also that I am helping them think critically as is evidenced by the fact that they test my different posts on a given topic for mutual consistency. This from a Pakistani reader:

Continue reading “Psychotropic Drugs, Veridicality, Criteria”

Can Reason Be Understood Naturalistically? More Notes on Nagel

This is the third in a series of posts on Thomas Nagel's Mind and Cosmos (Oxford 2012). The first is an overview, and the second addresses Nagel's reason for rejecting theism. This post will comment on some of the content in Chapter 4, "Cognition."

In Chapter 4, Nagel tackles the topic of reason, both theoretical and practical. The emphasis is on theoretical reason, with practical reason receiving a closer treatment in the following chapter entitled "Value."

We have already seen that consciousness presents a problem for evolutionary reductionism due to its irreducibly subjective character. (For some explanation of this irreducibly subjective character, see my Like, What Does It Mean?)

'Consciousness' taken narrowly refers to phenomenal consciousness, pleasures, pains, emotions, and the like, but taken widely it embraces also thought, reasoning and evaluation. Sensory qualia are present in nonhuman animals, but only we think, reason, and evaluate. We evaluate our thoughts as either true or false, our reasonings as either valid or invalid, and our actions as either right or wrong, good or bad. These higher-level capacities can be possessed only by beings that are also conscious in the narrow sense. Thus no computer literally thinks or reasons or evaluates the quality of its reasoning imposing norms on itself as to how it ought to reason if it is to arrive at truth; at best computers simulate these activities. Talk of computers thinking is metaphorical. This is a contested point, of course. But if mind is a biological phenomenon as Nagel maintains, then this is not particularly surprising.

What makes consciousness fascinating is that while it is irreducibly subjective, it is also, in its higher manifestations, transcensive of subjectivity. (This is my formulation, not Nagel's.) Mind is not trapped within its interiority but transcends it toward impersonal objectivity, the "view from nowhere." Consciousness develops into "an instrument of transcendence that can grasp objective reality and objective value." (85) Both sides of mind, the subjective and the objective, pose a problem for reductive naturalism. "It is not merely the subjectivity of thought but its capacity to transcend subjectivity and to dsiscover what is objectively the case that presents a problem." (72)

Exactly right! One cannot prise apart the two sides of mind, segregating the qualia problem from the intentionality problem, calling the former 'hard' and imagining the latter to be solved by some functionalist analysis. It just won't work. The so-called Hard Problem is actually insoluble on reductive naturalism, and so is the intentionality problem. (Some who appreciate this go eliminativist — which is a bit like getting rid of a headache by blowing one's brains out.)

The main problem Nagel deals with in this chapter concerns the reliability of reason. Now it is a given that reason is reliable, though not infallible, and that it is a source of objective knowledge. The problem is not whether reason is reliable as a source of knowledge, but how it it is possible for reason to be reliable if evolutionary naturalism is true. I think it is helpful to divide this question into two:

Q1. How can reason be reliable if materialist evolutionary naturalism is true?

Q2. How can reason be reliable if evolutionary naturalism is true?

Let us not forget that Nagel himself is an evolutionary naturalist. He is clearly a naturalist as I explained in my first post, and he does not deny the central tenets of the theory of evolution. His objections are to reductive materialism (psychophysical reductionism) and not to either naturalism or evolution. Now Nagel is quite convinced, and I am too, that the answer to (Q1) is that it is not possible for reason to be relied upon in the manner in which we do in fact rely upon it, if materialism is true. The open question for Nagel is (Q2). Reason is reliable, and some version of evolutionary naturalism is also true. The problem is to understand how it is possible for both of them to be true.

Now in this post I am not concerned with Nagel's tentative and admttedly speculative answer to (Q2). I hope to take that up in a subsequent post. My task at present is to understand why Nagel thinks that it is not possible for reason to be reliable if materialism is true.

Suppose we contrast seeing a tree with grasping a truth by reason.

Vision is for the most part reliable: I am, for the most part, justified in believing the evidence of my senses. And this despite the fact that from time to time I fall victim to perceptual illusions. My justification is in no way undermined if I think of myself and my visual system as a product of Darwinian natural selection. "I am nevertheless justified in believing the evidence of my senses for the most part, because this is consistent with the hypothesis that an accurate representation of the world around me results from senses shaped by evolution to serve that function." (80)

Now suppose I grasp a truth by reason. (E.g., that I must be driving North because the rising sun is on my right.) Can the correctness of this logical inference be confirmed by the reflection that the reliability of logical thinking is consistent with the hypothesis that evolution has selected instances of such thinking for accuracy?

No, says Nagel and for a very powerful reason. When I reason I engage in such operations as the following: I make judgments about consistency and inconsistency; draw conclusions from premises; subsume particulars under universals, etc. So if I judge that the reliability of reason is consistent with an evolutionary explanation of its origin, I presuppose the reliability of reason in making this very judgement. Nagel writes:

It is not possible to think, "reliance on my reason, including my reliance on this very judgment, is reasonable because it is consistent with its having an evolutionary explanation." Therefore any evolutionary account of the place of reason presupposes reason's validity and cannot confirm it without circularity. (80-81)

Nagel's point is that the validity of reason can neither be confirmed nor undermined by any evolutionary account of its origins. Moreover, if reason has a merely materialist origin it would not be reliable, for then its appearance would be a fluke or accident. And yet reason is tied to organisms just as consciousness is. Nagel faces the problem of explaining how reason can be what it is, an "instrument of transcendence" (85) and a "final court of appeal" (83), while also being wholly natural and a product of evolution. I'll address this topic in a later post.

Why can't reason be a cosmic accident, a fluke? This is discussed in my second post linked to above, though I suspect I will be coming back to it.

The Pragmatic and the Evidential: Is It Ever Rational to Believe Beyond the Evidence?

Is it ever rational to believe something for which one has insufficient evidence? If it is never rational to believe something for which one has insufficient evidence, then presumably it is also never rational to act upon such a belief. For example, if it irrational to believe in God and post-mortem survival, then presumably it is also irrational to act upon those beliefs, by entering a monastery, say. Or is it?

W. K. Clifford is famous for his evidentialist thesis that "It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything on insufficient evidence." On this way of thinking, someone who fails to apportion belief to evidence violates the ethics of belief, and thereby does something morally wrong. This has been called ethical evidentialism since that claim is that it is morally impermissible to believe on insufficient evidence. Sufficient evidence is where there is preponderance of evidence. On ethical evidentialism, then, it is morally permissible for a person to believe that p if and only p is more likely than not on the evidence the person has.

A cognitive evidentialist, by contrast, maintains that one is merely unreasonable to believe beyond a preponderance of evidence. One then flouts a norm of rationality rather than a norm of morality.

Jeffrey Jordan, who has done good work on this topic, makes a further distinction between absolute and defeasible evidentialism. The absolute evidentialist holds that the evidentialist imperative applies to every proposition, while the defeasible evidentialist allows exceptions. Although Clifford had religious beliefs in his sights, his thesis, by its very wording, applies to every sort of belief, including political beliefs and the belief expressed in the Clifford sentence quoted above! I take this as a refutation of Clifford's evidentialist stringency. For if one makes no exceptions concerning the application of the evidentialist imperative, then it applies also to "It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything on insufficient evidence." And then the embarrassing question arises as to what evidence once could have for the draconian Cliffordian stricture which is not only a morally normative claim but is also crammed with universal quantifiers.

If I took Clifford seriously I would have to give up most of my beliefs about politics, health, nutrition, economics, history and plenty of other things. For example, I believe it is a wise course to restrict my eating of eggs to three per week due to their high cholesterol content. And that's what I do. Do I have sufficent evidence for this belief? Not at all. I certainly don't have evidence that entails the belief in question. What evidence I have makes it somewhat probable. But more probable than not? Not clear! But to be on the safe side I restrict my intake of high-cholesterol foods. What I give up, namely, the pleasures of bacon and eggs for breakfast every morning, etc. is paltry in comparison to the possible pay-off, namely living and blogging to a ripe old age. Surely there is nothing immoral or irrational in my behavior even though I am flouting Clifford's rule. And similarly in hundreds of cases.

The Desert Rat

Consider now the case of a man dying of thirst in a desert. He comes upon two water sources. He knows (never mind how) that one is potable while the other is poisonous. But he does not know which is which, and he has no way of finding out. Should the man suspend belief, even unto death, since he has insufficient evidence for deciding between the two water sources? Let us suppose that our man is a philosopher and thus committed to a life of the highest rationality.

Absolute evidentialism implies that the desert wanderer should suspend judgment and withhold assent: he may neither believe nor disbelieve of either source that it is potable or poisonous on pain of either irrationality or an offence against the ethics of belief.

On one way of looking at the matter, suspension of belief — and doing nothing in consequence — would clearly be the height of irrationality in a case like this. The desert wanderer must simply drink from one of the sources and hope for the best. Clearly, by drinking from one (but not both) of the sources, his chances of survival are one half, while his chances of survival from drinking from neither are precisely zero. By simply opting for one, he maximizes his chances of reality-contact, and thereby his chances of survival. Surely a man who wants to live is irrational if he fails to perform a simple action that will give him a 50-50 chance of living when the alternative is certain death.

He may be epistemically irrational, but he is prudentially rational. And in a case like this prudential rationality trumps the other kind.

Cases like this are clear counterexamples to evidentialist theories of rationality according to which rationality requires always apportioning belief to evidence and never believing on insufficient evidence. In the above case the evidence is the same for either belief and yet it would be irrational to suspend belief. Therefore, rationality for an embodied human agent (as opposed to rationality for a disembodied transcendental spectator) cannot require the apportioning of belief to evidence in all cases, as Clifford demands. There are situations in which one must decide what to believe on grounds other than the evidential. Will I believe that source A is potable? Or will I believe that source B is potable? In Jamesian terms the option is live, forced, and momentous. (It is not like the question whether the number of ultimate particles in the universe is odd or even, which is neither live, forced, nor momentous.) An adequate theory of rationality, it would seem, must allow for believing beyond the evidence. It must return the verdict that in some cases, to refuse to believe beyond the evidence is positively irrational.

But then absolute evidentialism is untenable and we must retreat to defeasible evidentialism.

The New Neighbors

Let us consider another such case. What evidence do I have that my new neighbors are decent people? Since they have just moved in, my evidence base is exiguous indeed and far from sufficient to establish that they are decent people. (Assume that some precisifying definition of 'decent' is on the table.) Should I suspend judgment and behave in a cold, skeptical, stand-offish way toward them? ("Prove that you are not a scumbag, and then I'll talk to you.") Should I demand of them 'credentials' and letters of recommendation before having anything to do with them? Either of these approaches would be irrational. A rational being wants good relations with those with whom he must live in close proximity. Wanting good relations, he must choose means that are conducive to that end. Knowing something about human nature, he knows that 'giving the benefit of the doubt' is the wise course when it comes to establishing relations with other people. If you begin by impugning the integrity of the other guy, he won't like you. One must assume the best about others at the outset and adjust downwards only later and on the basis of evidence to the contrary. But note that my initial belief that my neighbors are decent people — a belief that I must have if I am to act neighborly toward them — is not warranted by anything that could be called sufficient evidence. Holding that belief, I believe way beyond the evidence. And yet that is the rational course.

So again we see that in some cases, to refuse to believe beyond the evidence is positively irrational. A theory of rationality adequate for the kind of beings we are cannot require that belief be always and everywhere apportioned to evidence.

In the cases just mentioned, one is waranted in believing beyond the evidence, but there are also cases in which one is warranted in believing against the evidence. In most cases, if the available evidence supports that p, then one ought to believe that p. But consider Jeff Jordan's case of

The Alpine Hiker

An avalanche has him stranded on a mountainside facing a chasm. He cannot return the way he came, but if he stays where he is he dies of exposure. His only hope is to jump the chasm. The preponderance of evidence is that this is impossible: he has no epistemic reason to think that he can make the jump. But our hiker knows that what one can do is in part determined by what one believes one can do, that "exertion generally follows belief," as Jordan puts it. If the hiker can bring himself to believe that he can make the jump, then he increases his chances of making it. "The point of the Alpine hiker case is that pragmatic belief-formation is sometimes both morally and intellectually permissible."

We should therefore reject absolute evidentialism, both ethical and cognitive. We should admit that there are cases in which epistemic considerations are reasonably defeated by prudential considerations.

And now we come to the Big Questions. Should I believe that I am libertarianly free? That it matters how I live? That something is at stake in life? That I will in some way or other be held accountable after death for what I do and leave undone here below? That God exists? That I am more than a transient bag of chemical reactions? That a Higher Life is possible?

Not only do I not have evidence that entails answers to any of these questions, I probably do not have evidence that makes a given answer more probable than not. Let us assume that it is not more probable than not that God exists and that I (in consequence) have a higher destiny in communion with God.

But here's the thing. I have to believe that I have a higher destiny if I am to act so as to attain it. It is like the situation with the new neighbors. I have to believe that they are decent people if I am to act in such a way as to establish good relations with them. Believing the best of them, even on little or no evidence, is pragmatically useful and prudentially rational. I have to believe beyond the evidence. Similarly in the Alpine Hiker case. He has to believe that he can make the jump if he is to have any chance of making it. So even though it is epistemically irrational for him to believe he can make it on the basis of the available evidence, it is prudentially rational for him to bring himself to believe. You could say that the leap of faith raises the probability of the leap of chasm.

And what if he is wrong? Then he dies. But if he sits down in the snow in despair he also dies, and more slowly. By believing beyond the evidence he lives better his last moments than he would have by giving up.

Here we have a pragmatic argument that is not truth-sensitive: it doesn't matter whether he will fail or succeed in the jump. Either way, he lives better here and now if he believes he can cross the chasm to safety. And this, even though the belief is not supported by the evidence.

It is the same with God and the soul. The pragmatic argument in favor of them is truth-insensitive: whether or not it is a good argument is independent of whether or not God and the soul are real. For suppose I'm wrong. I live my life under the aegis of God, freedom, and immortality, but then one day I die and become nothing. I was just a bag of chemicals after all. It was all just a big joke. Electrochemistry played me for a fool. So what? What did I lose by being a believer? Nothing of any value. Indeed, I have gained value since studies show that believers tend to be happier people. But if I am right, then I have done what is necessary to enter into my higher destiny. Either way I am better off than without the belief in God and the soul. If I am not better off in this life and the next, then I am better off in this life alone.

I am either right or wrong about God and the soul. If I am right, and I live my beliefs, then then I have lived in a way that not only makes me happier here and now, but also fits me for my higher destiny. If I am wrong, then I am simply happier here and now.

So how can I lose? Even if they are illusions, believing in God and the soul incurs no costs and disbelieving brings no benefits.

Things Not Worth Knowing

One's own genealogy, for example. What does it matter who begat whom in one's line? Most of us will discover the names and dates of insignificant people who have left nothing behind but their names
and dates.

Or is it just a philosopher's prejudice to be concerned more with timeless universals than with temporal particulars? To thrill to the Thoreauvian admonition, "Read not The Times, read the eternities"?