Epistemic Explanations: A Theory of Telic Normativity, and What it Explains

A new book by Ernest Sosa is always an event. In a philosophical age where much of the focus is on piecemeal issues, Sosa has forged ahead with a novel virtue-theoretic treatment of a range of core questions in epistemology that is self-consciously systematic. Note that ‘epistemology’ is here broadly conceived. Indeed, a key part of the Sosa project has been to enlarge the reach of mainstream epistemology and thereby draw out connections with other areas of philosophy that have hitherto been underexplored, especially ethics, philosophy of mind and action, and metaphysics. Moreover, Sosa is also unusual among contemporary philosophers in having an acute grasp of the history of the subject, which he brings to bear in support of his program. The result is an incredibly sophisticated vision of how a range of topics in epistemology fit together.1Epistemic Explanations: A Theory of Telic Normativity, and What it Explains is the new installment in Sosa’s distinctive brand of virtue epistemology. The book is organized into four parts. Part 1 is devoted to articulating the telic virtue epistemology framework that Sosa defends. In light of this framework, he explores how we should account for the undoubted importance of first-hand knowledge and understanding and how we should conceive of the relationship between the theory of knowledge and intellectual ethics. Part 2 offers a comprehensive treatment of the epistemology of suspension. Part 3 is primarily concerned with default assumptions and understanding how they lead to refinements of telic virtue epistemology. Among other things, this part defends a metaphysical hierarchy of epistemic categories that includes a discussion of what Sosa terms secure knowledge, which is a particularly important epistemic category within his framework. Part 4 builds on the account of default assumptions in part 3 by offering an extended discussion of how this bears on the Wittgenstein–Moore debate (roughly, the clash of hinge epistemology with a form of epistemic foundationalism). Like all Sosa’s work, the writing is refreshingly crisp. It is also deceptively readable, in that one can find oneself surprised at just how much philosophical ground is being covered.There is much that I agree with in this book, but I would like to take this opportunity to critically focus on Sosa’s intriguing appeal to default assumptions and how it plays out both in terms of his theory of knowledge and his approach to radical skepticism. As will be familiar to readers of Sosa’s work, he understands knowledge in terms of what he calls aptness. Roughly, a performance is apt (‘accurate because adroit’) when one’s success in the target endeavour is properly attributable to one’s manifestation of relevant skill. As applied to the epistemic realm, we thus get the idea that knowledge is apt belief—that is, one knows when one’s cognitive success (true belief) is properly attributable to one’s manifestation of relevant cognitive agency.2Sosa’s novel claim is that apt performances can legitimately presuppose certain background conditions that the agent might have no way of knowing obtain, and which might in fact obtain simply by luck. Sosa gives the example of the performance of a baseball fielder in a nighttime game who presupposes that the lighting is working (160). Sosa argues that these background conditions can be non-negligently assumed to be in place (at least if one is given no explicit reason to consider them), even if their obtaining is just a matter of luck, and hence is unsafe. Indeed, to concern oneself with the obtaining of these conditions, and thereby weaken one’s focus on the skillful task in hand, would be negligence. (The baseball fielder would likely be less effective at his game if he is concerned about whether the lighting is working safely).3When such an account of apt performance is applied to the epistemic realm in the form of apt belief, we end up with a version of relevant alternatives theory. Recall that the basic idea behind relevant alternatives theory is that in order to know we do not need to exclude all possibilities of error but just the relevant ones. The irrelevant error possibilities can be legitimately assumed to be false (i.e., without one having any specific reason to think they are false). That certainly sounds right. Knowledge can be fallible, after all (i.e., acquired via fallible processes), and hence why would it be required for knowledge that all possibility of error be excluded? If that is correct, however, then the view seems to have immediate antiskeptical import, since if any error possibility looks like it would be irrelevant in the target sense of the term it is surely radical sceptical scenarios. Accordingly, our everyday knowledge of shoes, ships, sealing wax, cabbages, and kings can be compatible with our failure to know the denials of radical skeptical hypotheses.All that we need to make this story stick is a principled account of how to delineate the relevant alternatives from the irrelevant ones. Various proposals have been offered in this regard, such as accounts in terms of the modal closeness of the error possibility, its conversational salience, and so on. Sosa is offering his own slant on this topic by arguing that apt performance, and hence apt belief, can legitimately involve assuming default assumptions and that this can be so even when those assumptions concern modally close error possibilities. So long as the default assumptions are false and the subject is given no specific reason for entertaining them, then she can nonetheless manifest apt belief and thereby acquire knowledge. Moreover, Sosa explicitly draws an antiskeptical moral from this point by claiming that everyday knowledge can legitimately coexist with our default assumption that radical skeptical hypotheses are false. As he puts it, “Conscientiously enough, without negligence or recklessness, we normally assume ourselves free of skeptical scenarios. And this assumption is proper even on the rare occasions when it is true but not known to be true and even quite unsafe” (159).Notice that in taking this line Sosa is embracing what is regarded by many as an unfortunate consequence of (a straightforward version of) relevant alternatives theory, which is the denial of the closure principle for knowledge.4 After all, one can now know everyday claims and be fully aware that they entail the denials of radical skeptical hypotheses, but be merely assuming that these denials are false. Sosa also makes a further claim that to my knowledge no other proponent of relevant alternatives theory makes (at least not explicitly anyway), which is that one’s knowledge can be unsafe and no less bona fide as a result. In particular, since it is compatible with one’s knowledge of the target proposition that the background assumptions are only luckily true, and hence could have easily been false, and since the falsity of these background assumptions can make one’s belief in the target proposition false, then one’s belief in the known target proposition can be only luckily true (i.e., it could have easily been false).I think Sosa is quite right about apt performance in general being compatible with unsafety; indeed, I take this to be a deep insight of Sosa’s work. As we can put the point, achievements (i.e., successes that are because of ability, or apt performances in Sosa’s terminology) can be modally fragile (i.e., the target success could have easily been a failure). And Sosa has put his finger on the source of the issue here: all that matters for apt performance is that the legitimate background assumptions are true—in particular, it does not matter whether they are luckily true. That is why the fielder’s apt performance is compatible with the fact that the stadium lights could have easily failed (in which case his attempted catch would have gone awry).Where I would diverge with Sosa is that I do not think the same is true of knowledge. That is, if one’s cognitive success (true belief) could have easily been failure, then it is not knowledge. Knowledge excludes luck (fragility) of this kind because it excludes high levels of epistemic risk (i.e., the epistemic risk that one’s belief is false). That is why, when one knows, one’s basis for belief is such that one could not easily be wrong, which is what safety demands. In contrast, Sosa’s proposed alternative picture would commit us to allowing that knowledge can coexist with high levels of epistemic risk. The upshot then is that knowledge is not apt belief (relatedly, knowledge is not a cognitive achievement).5Even if we grant to Sosa that apt belief (or cognitive achievement), even when unsafe, can amount to knowledge, it is not clear that this affords us a purchase on the problem of radical skepticism as he supposes. Consider what his view amounts to. We can recognize that our everyday knowledge presupposes the falsity of global error possibilities that we can never (even in principle) exclude, and yet be content to continue regardless as if we have knowledge. So long as skeptical scenarios do not in fact obtain (and even if they could very easily obtain), then our beliefs can be aptly formed even though we groundlessly presuppose that we are not radically in error, and hence can amount to knowledge. Relatedly, and in line with the rejection of closure, one can self-consciously be aware that one has knowledge of everyday propositions that one knows entail the denials of skeptical hypotheses (e.g., that one has hands) while being unable to know the entailed proposition (e.g., that one is not a BIV).While I find Sosa’s general line in epistemology very persuasive, I find the line he takes on radical skepticism deeply unpersuasive. To begin with, if radical skeptical scenarios could easily occur, then surely we are all epistemically doomed! Why would we be tempted to suppose otherwise (except unless we were already in the grip of an—undoubtedly compelling—picture that suggested this position)? But our inability to exclude them is troubling even if we do not grant that they are modally close. The worry is that if we cannot exclude them, then how can we be sure that our beliefs have satisfied any bona fide epistemic standard, even of the lowest kind? This is precisely why they are very different from normal, ‘local,’ background conditions, which do not call into question one’s general epistemic relationship to the world.In defense of his antiskeptical line, Sosa notes that “no-one is likely to entirely avoid illusion and every other perceptual error” (138). But what is the relevance of this in the context of radical skepticism? Remember that the radical sceptic is not appealing to a high epistemic standard, as if we need to be infallible in order to know. Their claim is rather that on the face of it, we have satisfied no epistemic standard at all (i.e., not even a fallible one). Consider also this remark: “Because we are essentially rational animals, we have no real option on how to proceed cognitively over the enormous span of the animal knowledge we rely on in any ordinary day” (138). I do not think anyone would dispute this, but what exactly is meant to follow? For note that even the radical sceptic can agree with such a claim. It may well be that we need to act as if we have knowledge. But that does not provide any reason for thinking that we do have knowledge.For what it is worth, I entirely agree with Sosa that we cannot know that we are not radically in error, but I do not think he correctly captures why this is so. For that, we need to embrace Wittgenstein’s conception of hinge commitments, albeit in a very different form to how Sosa conceives of this notion (see Wittgenstein 1969). Our conviction that we are not radically in error is not an assumption, nor is it an incidental lack on our parts. What is needed is an understanding of why such claims are not properly even in the market for knowledge (such that our not knowing them does not amount to ignorance). But that entails, contra Sosa, differentiating our hinge commitments from local background conditions. Wittgenstein’s point is precisely that our failure to know our hinge commitments is not a cognitive limitation on our parts, but reveals an important truth about the structure of rational evaluation, a structure that both the radical skeptic and the traditional antiskeptic (including, I would argue, Sosa) misunderstands.6 But a defense of that claim is a topic for another day.7