Christianity and
Contemporary Epistemology
An article reviewing
John L. Pollock’s Contemporary Theories
of Knowledge (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1986). Originally
published in Westminster Theological
Journal 52:1 (Spring, 1990),
131-141. Used by permission.
A Review Article
by John M. Frame
Theologians have
traditionally taken an interest in
philosophical epistemology because of their concern with the
knowledge of God. Sometimes they have sought to use secular
epistemological theories to their advantage; sometimes they have
sought to refute such theories. But the interaction has often
been vigorous. This history suggests the value to theologians of
keeping current in the field. We are still writing quite a bit
about the classical epistemologies of Plato and Aristotle
(against the background of Parmenides and the sophists), about
traditional rationalism and empiricism, Kant and Hegel. Some
theologians have also developed interest in certain twentieth
century developments, particularly those associated with logical
positivism, the later Wittgenstein and the existentialists, and
especially the movement away from "objective" knowledge
represented in different ways by Thomas Kuhn, Michael Polanyi,
Norwood
Hanson, Paul Feyerabend, Alasdair
MacIntyre, D. Z.
Phillips, and others.
Like most
theological works, my own Doctrine of the
Knowledge of God only goes this far. Of course, its purpose was
not to survey secular
theories but to set forth some biblical teachings about
knowledge. But some comparison between biblical and secular
notions was inevitable, and I regret now that I did not in that
book refer at greater length to more current developments in the
secular field.
John Pollock's Contemporary Theories of Knowledge is
an excellent recent survey of the present-day epistemologies of
secular philosophy. Roderick Chisholm, perhaps the best known
contemporary epistemologist, calls the book "A thorough and
accurate survey of the present state of the subject, [Pollock's
book] is also an original contribution of first importance. I
know of no better introduction to contemporary theories of
knowledge" (back cover).
I agree with Chisholm's estimate, and I
think this book is a very useful tool for bringing theological
readers up to date in this area and a good focal point for some
Christian evaluations of the contemporary theories.
It is, for the
most part, a highly technical book,
difficult to read, a book which takes the reader more deeply
into the details of its arguments than many of us would prefer to
go. At times, however, Pollock wakes us up with vivid
illustrations and convenient summaries of his argument. In the
former category is the opening of the book, a three-page suspense
tale ending with the discovery of Harry. Harry's brain has been
surgically removed from his body and placed in a vat of
nutrients, where it continues to live. A computer sends impulses
over wires attached to the brain, which give Harry the impression
that he is living his normal, pre-vat life. The narrator
concludes, "racked by the suspicion that I am really a brain
in a
vat and all this I see around me is just a figment of the
computer" (p. 3).
From this tale,
one might anticipate that the book would
consist largely of reflection upon skepticism. Actually, however,
Pollock deals with the skeptic in short fashion. The skeptical
conclusion, that we know precisely nothing, is, to Pollock, so
implausible, so unlikely, that it actually functions as a
reductio. If an argument logically entails skepticism, he
maintains, there must be something wrong with the premises. Pure
skepticism, of course, is irrefutable, since the skeptic allows
his critic no knowledge on the basis of which to debate. But we
know that the skeptic is wrong; for if we don't know that, we
don't know anything else. And if we do know that, it is evident
that we know some things (e.g. skepticism is false) which we
cannot prove.
Skepticism as
such, then, is not of much interest to
Pollock. But skeptical arguments, he says, are useful; for they
alert us to false premises. If a premise leads to skepticism, it
cannot be accepted. So skeptical arguments are of considerable
negative value (p. 7). From them we can learn various things
about what knowledge involves and does not involve.
From here,
Pollock takes it for granted, not only that we
have knowledge, but also that we have various kinds of knowledge:
perceptual knowledge, memory knowledge, knowledge by induction
and deduction (pp. 10ff). These are the four kinds of knowledge
on which the book focuses. Pollock also seems to believe that we
may have a priori knowledge and moral knowledge, but he
notes candidly that these are highly problematic in modern
epistemology, and he says nothing more about them through the
book. He also ignores, after mentioning it briefly (p. 10),
knowledge of other minds. He does not mention the possibility of
knowledge coming through the testimony of other persons, which I
consider important and sufficiently distinct from the other forms
to deserve separate treatment.
Nor does he say
anything about knowledge through divine
revelation. God plays no role in Pollock's epistemology
whatsoever, and one gathers that when Pollock describes his
position as "naturalistic" (pp. 168ff, elsewhere) he
means to
reject not only the Cartesian ego, the "ghost in (the)
machine"
(p. 161), but to reject any dependence on religious or
supernatural concepts. He claims an advantage to his view in the
fact that his concept of knowledge can be applied to a
"cognitive
machine" (p. 149), and he spends some time speculating on how
such a robot might be made to function (pp. 149ff). Pollock's
discussion of the cognitive robot is not satisfying to me. He
proposes that "Oscar" be given "sense organs"
(149), "'reasoning'
faculties, both deductive and inductive" (149), "pain
sensors"
(150), "a 'language of thought'" (150),
"pain-sensor sensors"
(151), perceptual organ activation sensors (155), cognitive
process sensors (155), mental representations for objects and
self (156-161). But he doesn't give us any suggestion as to how
these remarkable faculties might be built into a robot. Until he
does, the way is open for a critic to argue that such abilities
can only be performed by a spirit, even a "Cartesian
ego." If
Pollock is simply trying to illustrate his epistemological
proposal, perhaps Oscar serves a purpose; but if he is presenting
this as an argument for naturalism, it certainly does not
succeed.
What is
knowledge? Before 1963, most all analytic
philosophers defined knowledge as "justified, true
belief." In
1963, however, there appeared Edmund Gettier's article "Is
Justified True Belief Knowledge?"Gettier suggested by
counterexamples that not every case of
justified true belief was knowledge. Here is one of Gettier's
counterexamples, paraphrased by Pollock (p.
180):
...consider Smith who believes falsely but
with
good reason that Jones owns a Ford. Smith
has no idea where
Brown is, but he arbitrarily picks
Barcelona
and infers from
the
putative fact that Jones owns a Ford that
either Jones owns a
Ford or Brown is in
Barcelona
. It happens by chance that Brown is
in
Barcelona
,
so this disjunction is true. Furthermore, as Smith
has good reason to believe that Jones owns
a Ford, he is
justified in believing this disjunction.
But as his evidence does
not pertain to the true disjunct of the
disjunction, we would not
regard Smith as knowing that either Jones owns a Ford or
Brown is in
Barcelona
.
Many others published articles trying to
solve the "Gettier problem," mostly by adding a fourth
condition
to knowledge besides justification, truth, and belief (p. 9). But
still others found counterexamples to those fourth conditions,
and so the debate continues to this day.
Pollock's own
solution to the Gettier problem involves
some reconstruction of the concept of "justification,"
to which
we should now turn. "A justified belief," says Pollock,
"is one
that is 'epistemically permissible' to hold" (p. 7). He
distinguishes epistemic permissibility from both prudential and
moral permissibility. I am not persuaded by these distinctions.
Pollock argues only by giving examples of beliefs that he thinks
are prudentially or morally right but epistemically wrong and
vice versa. E.g., someone promises not to think ill of
another; in this case, thinking ill might be morally wrong,
though epistemically right. My own analysis of this case,
however, is that such a promise is invalid, since it pledges
something that cannot be pledged. It is never right to promise
someone that I will regard the truth as false or vice versa.
Therefore thinking ill (when epistemically justified) is both
epistemically and morally right, and the illustration does
nothing to show that the former is not a subset of the latter.
Even Pollock's evaluation, however, entails only that epistemic
permissibility is not the only
kind of prudential or moral
permissibility, not that epistemic permissibility is outside
these two realms. Surely epistemic permissibility is founded upon
our ethical obligation to believe only the truth. If it is not,
then I don't know what basis it might have. (I shall discuss
Pollock's basis at a later point.)
Pollock also
distinguishes epistemic permission from any
concept of epistemic obligation:
epistemic norms never tell us that it is epistemically obligatory to
believe something-- only that it is epistemically
permissible to do so. It is not true, for
example, that if I
believe both P and "if P then Q"
then, in the absence of
conflicting reasons, I ought to believe Q.
This is because I
might not care about Q. (P. 84, emphasis
his; cf. pp. 124, 185.)
Of course, we might be morally obligated to care about Q, which
would prevent us from bringing our uncaringness as an excuse.
Apart from that, however, Pollock's argument does present a good
reason why we would not in this case be obligated to believe Q
consciously. Most of our beliefs, however, are not
being
entertained consciously at a particular moment. "Caring"
is one
reason (among others) why we might consciously attend to a
particular belief at a particular time; but it doesn't seem to
have much to do with what we believe or don't believe.
My own account of
this is that if someone believes P and
"if P then Q," in one sense he already believes Q, since
Q does
not include any information not included in the premises; in
another sense he will believe it if and when he has (at least
once) become conscious of the entailment. The element of
obligation becomes evident when someone tries to deny what he
knows-- denying it either to himself or to someone else. At that
point, it becomes legitimate to say "you ought to believe Q;
and when asked in an appropriate forum, you ought to admit that
you believe Q."
One reason
Pollock seems to resist any subjection of
reasoning to moral evaluation may be his view that we "do not
literally 'decide' what to believe" (p. 22). On p.80, he
adds,
We do not have voluntary control over our
beliefs. We cannot just decide to believe
that 2 + 2 = 5 and
thereby do it. We have at most indirect
control over what we
believe. We can try to get ourselves to
believe something by
repeatedly rehearsing the evidence for it,
or putting
countervailing evidence out of our minds,
or by deliberately
seeking new evidence for it, but we cannot
voluntarily make
ourselves believe something in the same
sense that we can
voluntarily clench our fists.
There is much truth in this. It
may be that we simply believe what we believe, and apparent
"struggles to decide what to believe" are either
struggles to
form a new belief (by confronting evidence as Pollock outlines
above), struggles to determine which of two or more inconsistent
beliefs will prevail in our thinking, or introspective struggles
to determine what we already believe in our heart of
hearts.
Nevertheless, if there is no voluntary decision
concerning what to believe as such, there certainly are voluntary
decisions to be made as to whether and how a belief is to be
confessed, applied, implemented, etc. Especially when people
refuse to acknowledge what they know to be true ("exchanging
the
truth for a lie"), the will is obviously active. And there
are
voluntary decisions concerning the use of evidence as Pollock
mentions in the above quote. Thus there is plenty of room for
moral evaluation in the epistemic sphere. And since epistemology
deals not only with the beliefs we actually have but also with
the processes by which we confess, defend, implement, apply,
resist, deny our beliefs, it is not wrong to say that there are
certain beliefs which we "ought" to hold,
beliefs which are justified by a kind of moral rightness.
The final thing
to note about Pollock's view of epistemic
justification is that it is subjective, rather than objective (p.
10; cf. p. 183). He also characterizes this concept as the
"belief-guiding" or "reason-guiding" sense of
justification (p.
10). It helps us "in determining what to believe." A justification gives us
reasons for
adopting a particular belief.
Justifications in
this sense are person-variable. A good
reason for one person to believe P will not necessarily be a good
reason for someone else to believe it. A child may believe in
the existence of Santa Claus because his mother has testified to
that proposition. He has found his mother to be trustworthy, and
so he rightly believes he has good reasons for his conclusion.
But the child's father, having had much broader experience of
Christmas celebrations in their cultural context, would not be
right to accept the child's justification for belief.
Now on this view
of justification, one may be justified
in believing something, say P, even though P is false. That fact
is illustrated in the previous paragraph. The child has good
reasons to believe in Santa and no good reasons to deny that he
exists. Therefore he is justified in believing a proposition
which, most of us would say, is objectively false.
The rest of the
book focuses on the exploration of this
concept of justification. Pollock insists that "The central
topic
of epistemology is epistemic justification rather than knowledge"
(p. 9). He is right as to the importance of this concept in the
epistemology literature. I would agree that
subjective
justification is an important category and therefore deserves
study. I don't understand, however, why this concept dominates
the literature (including the present volume) to the extent that
it does. It is certainly not the only kind of epistemic
justification, and it may not even be the most important kind.
Consider again
the child who believes in Santa Claus on
his mother's testimony. Is he justified in believing in Santa
Claus? I have explained how we could answer "yes" to
this
question, by taking "justified" in the subjective sense.
But
is it not obvious that in another sense the child's belief is
not justified? Is it not common for freshmen entering
college to be told that beliefs uncritically acquired at mother's
knee are not adequately justified for the purposes of higher
education?
Is it not also
common for a reviewer of, say, a
biography, to criticize the author for making "unjustified
allegations?" In that context, the reviewer is not referring
to
whatever private, subjective reasons the author may have had for
his disputed beliefs. Rather, the reviewer is expressing
disappointment that the author has not given reasons in the
book sufficient to convince others
to believe as he does.
I think that usually when we speak of justified
beliefs, we are speaking of
beliefs well enough grounded to stand the scrutiny, not only of
those holding the beliefs, but of those who know the subject
best.
Remarkably,
Pollock, in the Appendix where he considers
the Gettier problem, notes that subjective justification as he
has earlier defined it is not the kind of justification necessary
for knowledge. In response to the Gettier challenge, Pollock
develops a concept of "objective" justification which he
thinks
will do justice to our intuition that justification is a
necessary condition of knowledge. After exploring several
possibilities, he settles on this one:
S knows P if and
only if S instantiates some argument A
supporting P which is (1)
ultimately undefeated relative to the set
of all truths, and (2)
ultimately undefeated relative to the set
of all truths socially
sensitive for S. (p. 193).
"Instantiates" here roughly means
"accepts," but see p. 188 for more precision.
"Ultimately
undefeated" means that all of the potential refutations to
the
argument can themselves be decisively refuted. "Socially
sensitive" truths are truths which S is "expected to
know" by
others in his social group. If S is expected to know a
proposition Q which if true would defeat P, and if he does not
know an adequate defeater for Q, then S does not know P even if Q
is false. But if S's argument defeats such Q's and all other
potential defeaters, then S knows P. This concept of
"objective
justification" makes more precise the concept which I
sketched
intuitively in the previous paragraphs.
Well, if Pollock
is right that objective, not subjective
justification is the kind of justification necessary to
knowledge, and if I am right that objective justification is at
least as important to epistemology as subjective, then I cannot
understand why Pollock devotes 95% of the book to subjective
justification! Is it perhaps that, having eliminated any role for
God in this epistemology, he is thus unable to give any cogent
account of "objective truth?"
Let me try to
show how a theistic commitment would modify
his perspective and make it more cogent. It is perhaps
significant that in describing objective justification, Pollock
gives a role to the knower's social group, to what the knower is
"expected to know." If Pollock were sufficiently
broadminded to
accept the membership of God in such a social group, then
"expected to know" would take on moral significance
(contrary to
Pollock's earlier insistence) and we would have some concrete
guidance on how to evaluate claims to objective knowledge: since
God is omniscient, anyone who meets condition (2) will
automatically meet condition (1). We can then judge A's claim to
knowledge on the basis of our knowledge of what God expects A to
know = knowledge of God's
revelation. (Otherwise, we would need
to be omniscient ourselves to judge whether someone has met
condition (1).)
The main body of
the book is devoted to a survey of
contemporary epistemologies in which Pollock defends one type of
epistemology and attempts to refute the others. By
"epistemologies" we are here to understand views of
subjective
justification, and the term "justification" will
henceforth refer
to subjective justification unless I indicate otherwise. He first
distinguishes between "doxastic" and
"nondoxastic" theories. (His
taxonomy is found on pp. 19-25.) The former holds that
justification of a belief for S is entirely a function of the
other beliefs held by S. On a doxastic view, one justifies his
beliefs by relating them (by comparison, deduction, induction,
etc.) to other beliefs one holds. On a nondoxastic view, one is
not limited to this sort of justification. E.g., on one kind of
nondoxastic view, a belief derived "directly" from
perception is
justified because perception is a legitimate cognitive process,
whether or not we have beliefs about the origin of the
belief and the legitimacy of perception.
Pollock's
taxonomy of epistemological views is as
follows:
I. Doxastic
A.
Foundationalism
B.
Coherentism
1.
Linear positive
2.
Holistic positive
3.
Negative
II. Nondoxastic
A.
Externalism
1.
Probabilism
2.
Reliabilism
B.
Internalism
Direct Realism- Pollock's view
Under the
doxastic category are two distinct views,
foundationalism and coherentism. On a foundationalist view,
beliefs are ultimately justified by reference to
"foundational"
or "basic" beliefs. Among all the beliefs we hold, some
are more
fundamental to justification than others. Through the history of
philosophy, various sorts of beliefs have been considered
"foundational:" we will recall Descartes' "clear
and distinct
ideas," Spinoza's "axioms," Leibniz's "laws of
thought, Hume's
"impressions," Thomas
Reid's "common sense," the "logical atoms" of
Russell and the
early Wittgenstein. We may recall also the recent proposal of
Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff that belief in God be
considered "epistemologically basic." The
most common view today, however, is a variety of empiricism in
which the foundation consists of reports of sense-experience, or
at least of reports of the "appearances" with which we
are
acquainted. These beliefs are
considered self-justifying, and all other
beliefs must be justified in relation to them. The
nonfoundational beliefs are derived from the foundational by some
kind of "reasoning."
Pollock tries
very hard to present views he ultimately
rejects in their very best form. His practice in this respect is
commendable. J. Gresham Machen was also very good at this, and
present day theologians would do well to follow such examples. I
will not, obviously, be able to reproduce Pollock's expositions
and arguments in detail, but I will try to summarize accurately.
The following is
a highly condensed summary of Pollock's
argument against foundationalism: (1) We do not always know how
we are being appeared to; indeed, we can be wrong about that.
After an accident, let us say, witnesses often correct their
first impressions of how they were appeared to (pp. 59-61).
Therefore appearance beliefs are not self justifying. (2) We
rarely have beliefs
about how we are appeared to. Evidence
of our senses does not take the form of beliefs (p. 61).
Therefore, if sense-perception plays some basic role in
justification, it is not by way of beliefs about our
perceptions, as on a foundationalist theory. (3) Should we say
that epistemologically basis beliefs are, not incorrigible or
self-justifying, but only prima facie justified? To say that
is to say that such beliefs are justified until we have reason to
disbelieve them, "innocent until proved guilty." But
there is no
better reason to make this claim for sensory appearance-beliefs
than for any other kind of belief; so there is no reason, on this
basis, to make any particular kind of belief epistemologically
basic. Without "basic" beliefs, what we have is a
coherence
theory, not a foundations theory (pp. 60-66). (This is, I think,
what Pollock would say in reply to the type of foundation theory
proposed by Plantinga and Wolterstorff.) (4) Even granting the
incorrigibility of sense beliefs, we can reason from them to
other beliefs only by way of memory, and that requires memory to
be an additional source of "basic" beliefs (in which
case the
above problems recur) or to function nondoxastically (pp. 46-57).
It is of course
normal for us, when questioned about our
reason for holding a belief, to derive that belief inductively or
deductively from a belief of which we are more sure. This is the
intuitive basis for foundationalism. But we should keep reminding
ourselves of the specific question Pollock is addressing. That is
the question of subjective
justification. Thus it is not
particularly relevant how we seek to justify our beliefs to other
people; that is more in the category of "objective"
justification.
Rather, he is asking how we gain "epistemicpermission"
to
believe what we believe. And he is arguing, therefore, that
whatever role "assured beliefs" may play in our
epistemic
self-defenses, they are not the reason why, in general our
beliefs are subjectively justified. Not every justified belief
can be derived from a sensory "basic" belief, and
sensory beliefs
are not in any meaningful sense self-justifying.
A coherence
theory differs from a foundations theory in
that for the coherentist there are no "basic" beliefs,
no
epistemically privileged propositions. A person justifies a
belief by relating it somehow to all his other beliefs.
("Beliefs," because like foundationalism, coherentism is
doxastic.) If that belief "coheres" with the rest, then
it is
justified; otherwise, not. Pollock distinguishes positive
coherence theories, in which positive support is required for all
beliefs, and negative
coherence theories, in which all
beliefs are "innocent until proved guilty" and are to be
abandoned only by sufficient negative reasons (pp. 71ff). Another
distinction is between linear
and holistic coherence
theories. In the former, our basic reason for believing a
proposition is a small set of beliefs which, to be sure, when we
ask reasons for reasons, expands to include our entire stock of
beliefs. In the latter, one cannot reduce the justification for a
belief to any such linear chain.
Against linear
positive coherence theories, Pollock
argues that these cannot produce any "plausible candidates
for
reasons for beliefs that result directly from perception" (p.
77). On a coherence view, all reasoning is by inference; but
"...perception is not inference. When I believe on the basis
of
perception that the book is red, I do not infer that belief from
something else that I believe. Perception is a causal process
that inputs beliefs into our doxastic system without their being
inferred from or justified on the basis of other beliefs we
already have" (p. 75).
Remember again
that Pollock is concerned with subjective
justification, with how we acquire epistemic permission to
believe, not with how we defend our beliefs to others. In fact we
may always choose to defend our beliefs by inference; but that
cannot be the way our original subjective justification comes
about.
Against holistic
coherence theories, Pollock objects that
in fact we do not derive all our beliefs from beliefs about the
coherence of our belief system; in fact we very rarely have
such beliefs about coherence. And if we did, how would we get
those beliefs? In order to believe P, we would first have to
believe Q, namely that P coheres with our other beliefs. But to
believe Q, we would first have to believe R, namely that Q
coheres. The result is infinite regress.
Against negative
coherence theories, Pollock replies that
if we consider all beliefs justified until defeated or refuted,
then reasons play no positive role in justify beliefs, only the
negative role of rebutting. But this means that no sense can be
made out of the notion of believing something for a reason, a
notion crucially important to the concept of subjective
justification (pp. 83-87).
Under nondoxastic
theories, Pollock explores externalism
and internalism. A nondoxastic theory says that our beliefs are
subjectively justified not only by means of otherbeliefs, but
also by some states of affairs about which we may not have
beliefs. In an internalist view, those states of affairs are only
internal to us. In an externalist view, they may be external to
us as well.
He examines two
types of externalism, probabilism and
reliabilism. Probabilism, the view that beliefs are justified
when they have a sufficiently high probability, gets Pollock into
some complicated mathematics, from which he concludes that there
is "no appropriate kind of probability for use in probabilist
theories of knowledge" (p. 113). The more intuitive,
ordinary-English concept of epistemological probability, he says,
"is defined in terms of epistemic justification, so this
provides
no analysis of epistemic justification and no support for
probabilism" (P. 113).
Reliabilism
teaches that "a belief is justified if and
only if it is produced by a reliable cognitive process" (p.
114).
Pollock rejects this principle also, on the ground that
reliability of processes has nothing to do with epistemic
(=subjective)
justification. Poor Harry, the
brain-in-the-vat, has unreliable perceptive faculties. But
he has no reason to think his faculties are unreliable, so
he has no alternative but to trust them. In other words, Harry's
beliefs about his "normal life" are, in general,
subjectively
justified, though mostly false. More fundamentally, Pollock
argues, most "reliable cognitive processes" (color
vision is his
example) are reliable only in certain circumstances. But if we
narrow the circumstances too far (such as by presupposing the
truth-value of the belief under consideration) we reach the
conclusion that the belief is justifiable only if it is true,
which is not the way subjective justification is supposed to
work.
Against all
externalism, Pollock insists that in our
moment to moment belief formation we do not always have access to
data concerning the reliability of cognitive processes or
concerning the probability of propositions. We do, of course,
have access to the cognitive processes themselves; but those are
internal rather than external.
By process of
elimination, then, we are left with a form
of internalism. Pollock calls his version of internalism
"direct
realism," because it is nondoxastic: in it we gain
justification
for beliefs without the mediating presence of other beliefs. Our
reasons for believing, fundamentally, are our mental processes
themselves. We believe because our mental processes lead us to
believe as we do. We do not need to have beliefs about our
mental processes (e.g. about their reliability) for this to
happen. If we sometimes appeal to reliability or probability, or
to "basic" ideas or to systematic coherence, that is
just the way
our mental processes sometimes work. So the fundamental
justification is not an appeal to reliability or whatever; it is
simply that our mental processes work in this particular way.
But aren't our
mental processes sometimes fallible? Yes,
but we discover that by means of mental processes themselves, one
checking another. And more importantly: don't forget that we are
here talking about subjective
justification. There is often
a lack of correlation between subjective justification and truth.
So the fallibility of our mental processes is irrelevant to their
primacy in subjective justification.
Consider poor
Harry, the brain-in-a-vat. His faculties
are supremely unreliable; yet because he himself has no reason to
doubt them, his beliefs about his living a normal life are
subjectively justified. He is subjectively justified because that
is simply the way his faculties work.
This does not
mean that all of our beliefs are justified.
Some of our beliefs are chosen arbitrarily, the result of wishful
thinking, etc. They are not the result of the working of our
cognitive faculties. (But I wonder how on Pollock's basis one can
distinguish properly cognitive faculties from other
psychologically actual means of forming beliefs.)
Pollock includes
much more exposition and argument in
favor of his internalism, but I will stop my exposition here.
Internalism appears to be almost the inevitable conclusion of the
book, once the reader gains clarity as to the concept of
"subjective justification." Certainly it is true that we
use
foundationalist, coherentist, reliability and probabilistic
arguments to justify our beliefs to others. Sometimes we use
these methods of justifying our beliefs to also ourselves in
situations where we gain some detachment from our own belief
commitments. But these are justifications which aim at showing
the objective truth of these ideas. They are not the original
means by which we acquire such beliefs.
In the original
acquiring of beliefs, much is
mysterious. Pollock is right; we rarely argue explicitly with
ourselves. We rarely appeal to "foundations" or
coherence or
probability or reliability. Rather, we just find ourselves
believing. And when we are assured of them, we cannot always say
why or how we are assured. Rather, our minds are simply
"programmed" to give us assurance in certain situations.
Foundationalism,
coherentism, probabilism and reliabilism
therefore really confuse subjective with objective justification
to some extent. Internalism is the only fully subjective
mechanism available for subjective justification.
Having agreed
with Pollock's main point, however, I would
like to add something about its vacuity. For when I ask "how
am I justified in believing P?" Pollock's answer seems to
boil
down to this: "You are justified by the justificatory
faculties
of your mind." That's a bit like the scholastics' explanation
of
falling bodies by reference to "falling tendencies"
within those
bodies. Now Pollock isn't quite as bad as all that. He does
present some illuminating psychological description of how we
come to make up our minds about beliefs. But most of that
description is negative, telling us what we don't do. And,
we recall, Pollock does no more than to reflect on the general
ignorance on such important matters as a priori and moral
knowledge. (If my arguments in DKG are correct, without moral
knowledge there is no knowledge of anything.) He says nothing
positive about them. What he does say positively is mostly the
affirmation of such things as "sensors" (as in the Oscar
chapter); but we didn't need him to tell us we had such
faculties. So in general, he leaves our mental processes (and
hence subjective justification) under a great veil of mystery. In
the end, we think as we do because we think as we do. And as
Pollock's main conclusion that seems too vacuous to be of help.
This reminds me
of what some philosophers have called the
"paradox of analysis:" Often when someone tries very
hard to
analyze something and insists on a rigorous equation between the
analysis and the analysandum, he comes up with something
uninformative. What are black holes? The only way to come up with
a perfect equation between analysis and analysandum is to say
that a black hole is a black hole. Has Pollock tried to seek too
much analytical perfection?
It also reminds
me of Cornelius Van Til's point that
philosophical rationalism, insofar as it seeks an exhaustive
explanation of reality, leads us to see the world in terms of
"blank identity," like Parmenides' "being,"
Plato's "good,"
Aristotle's "thought thinking thought," Plotinus'
"one," etc.
What might be an
alternative, motivated by Christian
theism? Well, we can certainly concede that the mind works the
way it works! But we should insist that subjective justification
is only a small part of the story in epistemology. Objective
justification is part of our responsibility to "test all
things"
and to seek and apply God's truth rightly. That deserves far more
analysis than Pollock gives it. And we have epistemic obligations
from the living God; not just epistemic
permissions, as Pollock insists.
As for subjective
justification, well, a Christian view
would stress that God made man's mind to know him and to know his
truth. So in man as originally created, subjective justification
and objective justification coincided. Unlike Harry's brain, our
mental faculties were reliable. Sin, however, led man to flee
from the truth, especially from God. This fact introduced
distortions, self-deceptions.
A Christian
analysis would have to discuss this process
of self-deceptionand also the restoration
of
sound thinking as part of God's redemptive grace.
We can learn
much, certainly, from the thoroughness and
rigor of Pollock's argument. But clearly we need to learn much
more about human knowledge than Pollock (and, I gather, modern
philosophical epistemology in general) has to teach us.