TSZ commenter walto published a paper this year in the Journal of Philosophy entitled Epistemic Closure, Home Truths, and Easy Philosophy. Unfortunately, the paper isn’t free — if you want to read it, you’ll either need to pay for it yourself or get it via institutional access (if you’re fortunate enough to have that.)
Regarding his paper, walto made the following remark to commenter Kantian Naturalist:
I don’t know if it counts as “a refutation”–but I think keiths’ version of skepticism requires the closure of knowledge under (known) entailment [which walto refers to as ‘CLR’ in his paper.] And I think that that premise can be shown to be false.
It’s a long story and you’ll have to get my paper to see how, but the abstract is available for a nickel.
I think walto hesitated to use the word “refutation” because he couldn’t rule out the possibility of arguments for skepticism that don’t rely on CLR. Any such arguments would be unaffected by the conclusion of walto’s paper, and skepticism might therefore remain standing. But any argument that did depend on CLR would be refuted if the conclusion of walto’s paper is correct and CLR is false.
We can (and likely will) discuss many of the technical details in the comments below, but unless I’m missing something fundamental, it appears to me to be surprisingly easy to show why walto’s paper doesn’t work as a refutation of CLR-based arguments for Cartesian skepticism.
His statement of the argument requires the following premise:
(ii) A competent reasoner sometimes knows such things as that she is sitting on a green chair.
That premise effectively amounts to a denial of Cartesian skepticism. So in order to use his argument agains Cartesian skepticism, walto first has to assume the falsehood of Cartesian skepticism just to get the argument off the ground.
The reasoning therefore ends up being circular:
1) assume that Cartesian skepticism is false;
2) using that assumption, deploy the argument laid out in the paper and conclude that CLR is false;
3) use that conclusion — that CLR is false — to negate any argument that requires CLR to be true, including arguments for skepticism.
It looks hopelessly circular to me, but walto is unlikely to take this lying down. Stay tuned for a vigorous debate.
Who like to picture you-know-who with a Scottish accent?
Lost me. Is that a Monty Python reference?
Regarding the keiths stuff here, I think–and you may be getting to this–that he’s actually responding to the considerably simpler NEKP argument I summarize on p. 50 (I doubt he got that far). That one is a modus ponens–modus tollens standoff, and he may say that proponents are begging the question without complaint from me.
But…..that’s NOT my argument. And it’s not anything likely to convince anybody these days–if it ever was.
Like my students, I haven’t done the reading for today, but I do have a question about “categorialism”. Why is categorialism supposed to be a “heavyweight” philosophical thesis? How “heavyweight” it is seems to be depend on what one takes categories to be, right?
Suppose, putting on my Sellars hat, that I say, “categories are syntactic statements in the material mode of speech” (a move that Sellars takes from Carnap). On this view, to say “a chair is a substance” is just to say “the word ‘chair’ is a noun”, and to say “red is a property” is just to say “the word ‘red’ is an adjective”. So there’s nothing terribly exciting about categories: they’re just ways of expressing in a metalanguage the grammatical structure of our language.
It seems that if you want categorialism to be philosophically interesting, you need some account of categories that makes them not boring in the way that Carnap and Sellars did. That would seem to be an important move here. Since I haven’t read your paper, I can’t know if you made it or not. Just wanted to float that concern.
Kantian Naturalist,
Good point. That’s definitely an objection I had to anticipate–and maybe could have done a better job responding to. I said this:
And I add this in a footnote:
So I guess in a way I’m just saying, “Well, it’s been treated like a heavyweight matter for a hundred years: it’s as controversial today as it ever was and seems not to be moving anywhere.”
Which maybe is a cheat. But if it matters, the Thomasson/Yablo debate, which I quote a bit from, is firmly enmeshed in those issues, and neither of them seems to be budging.
Thank you for saying so! I do like being appreciated from time to time.
I agree up to a point: the history of philosophy is crucial for understanding philosophy, and that includes understanding who people were responding to. But there are degrees of understanding. One can read Spinoza, and get more out of it if one has read Descartes. And even more if one has read Maimonides and Gersonides. And understand even more if one has read . . . and likewise for Descartes, and Maimonides, and everyone else in the canon.
(And one needs to also read philosophers who didn’t make it into the canon but who were important interlocutors in those times and places. Very few of us today know who Pierre Gassendi was but Descartes regarded him as one of his most acute critics. Likewise there were many influential women philosophers in the modern period but since they were often prohibited from publishing, their impact is known to us through their private correspondence with Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, etc.)
But I wouldn’t want to get so attached to the question of origins that it over-rides everything else. I’m suspicious of the very idea that there are origins from which everything else springs. I think that there are multiple lines of influence, often conflicting, that come and go, which can be accepted, criticized, scrutinized, rejected, or endorsed.
Plato’s originality as a thinker consisted in realizing that the antidote for the moral and spiritual corruption of Athens before, during, and after the Peloponessian War had something to do with what was right and wrong about Parmenides, Heraclitus, and post-Parmenidean philosophers.
But that’s just specific case — I think that every philosopher who makes a genuine contribution to the conversation of humanity has to do something new with the influences to which he or she is subjected, and often has to reconcile quite different and even opposing influences.
That said, I do think that ancient Greek and Roman Skepticism is far more fascinating than the Cartesian variant!
No, you have to click on the link, helpfully reproduced here.
Maybe a bit of cheat, yeah, but I’ll allow it. We all need to cheat a little bit just to get the problem down to manageable size! Thanks for that response!
I asked because my current paper (only six days past due for the edited volume, but it doesn’t matter because I’m the editor) is about Sellars on categories, so I’m really trying to get clear on his views on this stuff. Oy!
Yes, I agree that is an interpretation of his argument, and as you say, that it does refer to a real circularity. I also am convinced by your points that that is not the argument the paper is making.
To me, in the OP and several follow-ups, Keith is also interpreting your paper as arguing against Cartesian skepticism. But I think such a position is wrong. Neither the informal nor formal statements of your argument in the paper include such a conclusion. Instead, the conclusion is that “CLR is false”.
Now perhaps Keith is saying that concluding CLR is false along with claiming the existence of easy knowledge amounts to an argument that Cartesian skepticism is false. But that would require an argument that CLR is the only way to get to Cartesian skepticism from easy knowledge. More importantly, as you argue at the top of page 42, the existence of easy knowledge is compatible with both the truth and falsity of CLR. I also think you are making this same point earlier in this thread.So if that is what Keith is arguing, then I would say his position is wrong.
I do want to acknowledge that my posting this is somewhat unfair to Keith in that he is currently unable to respond. I trust that he will when he can do so
Is he? I haven’t actually been able to follow/understand the dozen or so changes that have been made to his status by Alan, Neil and Jock. I’d thought he could write stuff on this thread…but who the hell knows?
Even if you needed CLR, it wouldn’t be enough. So the inference to the falsity of Cartesian skepticism would be fallacious.
I believe KN is correct, that keiths is now unable to respond.
Neil Rickert,
Ah OK. (I think you meant Bruce, rather than KN, though.)
I read and enjoyed these both of these well-rated graphic novelizations (“comic-books” to my generation) giving overviews of events and people in the history of philosophy:
Heretics! The Wondrous (and Dangerous) Beginnings of Modern Philosophy Interview with the authors here.
Logicomix: An epic search for truth which is about Russell and his encounters with philosophers he worked with/argued with.
To your generation “graphic” meant there would be sex, right? 😉
Bruce, I think this might be more up my alley:
The Cartoon Introduction to Philosophy
I realized that preceding is not right as worded. I should have said that the referenced page in the paper and linked post show that the existence of easy knowledge on its own does not say anything about CLR and so it cannot be used to claim that easy knowledge on its own leads to Cartesian skepticism through CLR. I do read Keith as sometimes saying easy knowledge is tantamount to Cartesian skepticism.
Right! Another case of I-know-it-when-I-see-it.
However, seeing it for that knowledge was hardly easily acquired in the small town where I lived in those days.
ETA: re-arrange for better comic effect.
Not sure what you’re here.
I ws thinkg eg of this in the OP
ETA:
But to get from that to Cartesian skepticism, Keith seemed to rely on Closure to be true. And references to your material were meant to show that CLR’s truth/falsity was independent of easy knowledge.
The more I post it, the less I think it was a particularly important point.
BruceS,
Ah, tantamount to a denial of it.
Yeah, no.
As discussed. His posts on this are pretty confused. I don’t think he really read the paper–just sniffed around a bit for a a couple of remarks he could say begged the question against a view he likes. But, of course I wasn’t claiming or trying to refute cartesian skepticism. That’d be much harder. Sellars tries to do that in empiricism and the philosophy of mind. Tough row to hoe.
I wasn’t trying to win a Nobel Prize. (I mean if they gave them in philosophy. Weirdly, Russell got one for literature.) I’d have settled for a ‘congratulations!’ thread.
There’s only been one status change. Keiths is currently suspended as of 2nd August. It didn’t take effect cleanly for which my apologies. Lizzie is reviewing the situation.
So perhaps other members should consider not talking to an empty chair.
Moved a comment to guano.
I’d probably say that Sellars’s principle aim in that particularly essay was to refute a certain version of logical positivism, perhaps the Aufbau in particular. I do think that if one were to read a lot of Sellars, a refutation of Cartesianism would eventually come to light. (It has for me.) But man, he is a difficult nut to crack! I’ve been trying to make sense of Sellars for five years and sometimes I think I’ve got it.
Walto, I apologize for not having congratulated you on a publication in Journal of Philosophy. That’s a really prestigious and difficult journal to get into, and an impressive accomplishment!
Kantian Naturalist,
I thought you were on nice vacation without internet access…
TSZ is addictive?
Kantian Naturalist,
Thanks, man! That Sellars paper is killer. I remember puzzling over some stuff in it about color words for days. I do think he wanted to throw out skepticism–along with the Aufbau–with his “new way of words.’
In case anybody is interested, a year has now passed since this paper appeared and I am now allowed to put an (inexact copy only) on the web. You can find it here:
https://www.academia.edu/38174776/Epistemic_Closure_Home_Truths_and_Easy_Philosophy_-_Horn.pdf
or here:
https://philpapers.org/rec/HORECH
Due to moderator interference and censorship, this discussion ground to a halt prematurely in August of 2018.
Alan is now gone — permanently, if we’re lucky — and the remaining two moderators seem to have been chastened by their experience during the Mung debacle, which was another abuse of moderator privileges.
Given all that, now seems a good time to post the comments that I was unable to post during the illicit ban. They’ll follow forthwith.
KN:
Descartes himself raised both issues. Here he addresses the possibility that reason itself might be untrustworthy:
I’ve addressed this in earlier discussions, but I can summarize here: Yes, we might be wrong even about the most seemingly self-evident, seemingly trustworthy deliverances of our reason. That’s why I published an OP on The Myth of Absolute Certainty.
I already rule out absolute certainty, even of “self-evident” truths, on those grounds. The only reason I don’t rule out knowledge of them, as well, is that the apparent consistency of our reasoning makes it likely to be largely correct, in my estimation. (Consistency has different implications for reasoning than it does for the senses. I can elaborate on that if needed.)
I could be wrong about that, though, and maybe even knowledge of something as basic as “a thing is identical to itself” is impossible. If so, no crisis. I already attach an implicit “if my senses are veridical” to the word “know” in cases that require it, so I can easily do the same with “if my reasoning is correct”.
walto:
Who’s Bill?
And I did congratulate you on the publication of your paper.
KN:
Please provide a link to that conversation, and/or quote it here if you’d like.
I’m happy to discuss it with you.
walto,
If I had been unsure about something in the article, and needed clarification, then I would have asked a question or two.
It’s the opposite. I accept Cartesian skepticism because the arguments for it are extremely strong, and I am unaware of any refutations. Remember, even you and KN have acknowledged that you cannot refute the arguments for Cartesian skepticism.
Which of us is being religious? The one who accepts the conclusion of an unrefuted argument, or the one who rejects it? The one who is guided by reason, or the one who appeals to authority?
keiths:
walto:
I’m not infallible, and I’ve never claimed to be. I’m making arguments, and I’m inviting responses from you, Bruce, KN, and anyone else who wants to weigh in. Perhaps I’m wrong, and one of you will find a flaw in what I’m saying and set me straight. If so, great. If you can’t, that’s great too. Either way, we can learn something.
At least you’re acknowledging the crabbiness problem. 🙂
Bruce:
Yes, which is why Haugeland’s essay doesn’t help walto. The four flaws I identified above remain problems unless walto is willing to abandon his framework.
Here’s an old comment that might help, taken from a thread in which you were involved. The comment is effectively about infallibilism, though KN and I didn’t use that term:
KN,
Almost, but not quite. If even one of the items in the infinite disjunction can’t be ruled out as unlikely, then that alone is enough to necessitate the asterisk.
That’s why your acknowledgement regarding Bostrom’s scenario specifically — that it “has a likelihood of being true that cannot be estimated” — invalidates your claim to know that you are not being fooled in general.
My stance on closure is that the principle seems both obvious and true, and I haven’t seen an effective argument against it. Walto says this in his paper:
Walto is correct about the skeptic’s response, at least in my case. That is exactly why I say that we can retain CLR if we are willing to acknowledge the truth of Cartesian skepticism. Walto’s entire attempt at refuting CLR is unnecessary. He only thinks its necessary because of the problems created by his unsupported assumption regarding Cartesian skepticism.
Bruce:
Thanks for the recommendation. I’ve now read Haugeland’s essay, and while it’s clear that he’s arguing against a sharp line between mind and world — a position I share — it’s not clear at all that this prevents Cartesian skepticism from getting off the ground. At least not the Cartesian skepticism I hold.
One source of confusion in these discussions is that several distinct positions have come to be labeled “Cartesian”, and people tend to conflate them. Recall, for instance, of walto’s conflation of “Cartesian theaterism” with “Cartesian skepticism” in an earlier thread.
Descartes thought the mind was immaterial; I obviously don’t. But what I share with Descartes is the belief that there is a causal chain linking things in the outside world, whatever it is, to the beliefs we hold about it. There doesn’t need to be a sharp boundary anywhere along the chain. The important point is that aspects of the external world — say, the existence of a green chair in which I am sitting — are separate and distinguishable from my beliefs about those aspects. The chair might be red, rather than green; or the chair might not exist at all, and I might be suspended in a pod in the Matrix.
I see nothing in Haugeland that invalidates the kind of skepticism I’ve just described.
walto,
Again, that doesn’t help you or your paper. You think that there are external objects, that chairs are among them, and that people can know that they are sitting in those external objects. And obviously, what the vast majority of people mean when they say “I know I am sitting in a chair” is that the chair is a physical object in which they are sitting. You say they can know that. That means you are affirming the correctness of the knowledge claim.
I understood your paper quite well, and I’ve identified and explicated serious flaws in it and in your argument against CLR-reliant Cartesian skepticism, which depends on the anti-CLR argument you present in the paper.
1) I’ve shown, in detail, why your argument against CLR-reliant skepticism is circular. You’ve been unable to refute me, so you’re now simply repeating “there is no circle” over and over.
2) I’ve also shown that your paper depends on an unjustified assumption — namely, that Cartesian skepticism is false. You’ve acknowledged that you cannot refute the arguments for skepticism presented by me and others. Why assume something when you can’t refute the arguments against it? It makes no sense.
3) I’ve shown that the goal of your paper — to disprove CLR — is misguided. The only reason you are trying to disprove CLR is because you fear that it leads to “Too Easy Heavyweight Knowledge”. As I pointed out above, it isn’t CLR that’s the problem. It’s your assumption that Cartesian skepticism is false.
4) I’ve shown that your justification for that assumption is merely a fallacious appeal to authority.
BruceS:
Huh? Those are utterly distinct concepts.
Bruce:
No, not at all. If you reread the OP, you’ll see what I’m actually claiming, which is that walto has made an argument against CLR-reliant Cartesian skepticism. That argument uses the argument from walto’s paper, but it is distinct.
That’s not it either. What walto is saying is that if CLR is false, then CLR-reliant arguments for Cartesian skepticism fail. My objection, now and throughout the thread, has been that walto’s reasoning is circular. Why? Because it depends on assuming the falsehood of Cartesian skepticism. Here’s how I put it in an exchange with walto:
walto:
keiths:
KN,
Do you have a link to that conversation? If I “just wouldn’t have it”, I suspect that I gave my reasons.
walto,
No, I’m responding to you, not to the NEKP argument you mentioned. The criticisms I’ve given apply to things that you have claimed and arguments that you have made on your own behalf. I haven’t addressed NEKP.
walto,
In my OP, I made it clear what you were trying to accomplish and quoted you directly:
As your own words make clear, you were trying to disprove CLR, thus refuting any CLR-reliant arguments for Cartesian skepticism.
I showed that your argument is circular.
KN,
But not a refutation of Cartesian skepticism. You and walto have both told me that you cannot refute Cartesian skepticism. And I believe you. :-).
Descartes was a prolific guy, and many distinct ideas get labeled as “Cartesian”. For example, remember how walto kept conflating Cartesian skepticism with “Cartesian theaterism” on the old thread, and how tough it was for us to get him to see his mistake?