A Puzzle in Zoology

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A Puzzle in Zoology

Isn’t it strange how animals vary in their natural defenses? Some are poisonous, some have armor, some have horns, some have thick skin, some have spikes, some have tough scales, some live in shells, some just taste bad; but some—many—have none of the above. Some can only run and hide. The llama, say, has none of these weapons: it lags behind in the arms race against its predators. Why doesn’t it have a formidable horn, or an armored body, or spikes? Why aren’t more prey animals poisonous? Evolution has had a long time to hone the animal against its natural enemies; you would think natural selection would have favored defensive weapons of the kind we see in other animals. Why aren’t genes for armor and spikes more common? The human animal seems particularly vulnerable, and we are evolutionarily advanced. Our skin is thin and exposed, easily cut; we bleed easily. We have no natural armor or a thick hide or pointy appendages; we have to make these things ourselves. Isn’t it obvious that they would be a good idea survival-wise? Natural selection seems to have been asleep on the job. We are nowhere near as well-protected as an armadillo (also a mammal). We are asking for trouble, as are many animals. You might say it’s a trade-off: we lack these assets but we have others that make up for the selective disadvantage. You can’t run fast, say, if you are heavily armored (think of tortoises). But that seems unconvincing: many better protected animals do a lot better at escaping predators (or did in the old days), and a thicker skin doesn’t seem to have much of a downside. Antelopes would do better if they had spikes on their throat, like a porcupine, or a tooth-resistant hide in the most dangerous parts. Why aren’t all animals armed to the hilt? Millions of years of evolution, with survival depending on it, and that’s the best the genes can come up with! I could design a much tougher antelope myself and yet evolution has left it extremely vulnerable (especially in the throat area). Why must it resort to running away? It needs the biological equivalent of a knife or a gun; then it could stand its ground. We humans have done extraordinarily well by inventing technology to make up for our defensive (and aggressive) deficits, so why hasn’t evolution done the same by means of natural selection? It’s not rocket science. It has the know-how, as better protected animals attest, but it lacks the will—why? Why aren’t all animals more like the armadillo? We wouldn’t be at all surprised if we came upon a planet populated by heavily armed armadillo-like creatures.

And why do some animals live so much longer than others? It isn’t that long life is biologically impossible—just look at turtles, lobsters, sea sponges, and Greenland sharks (400 years!). A longer life means more mating opportunities, which means more offspring, which means more genes in the gene pool. The selfish gene is all in favor of long life, so why is it confined to a minority of species? The selective pressure to live long (and prosper) is strong and yet few animals achieve it. If some can, why not more? If some sea sponges can live for thousands of years, why can’t brainier organisms do the same? There is nothing about biological tissue that condemns it to a brief life—in principle, it could go on indefinitely. And yet most animals have short life spans (comparatively speaking). Is there some law of nature that allows rocks to exist forever but not rats? Apparently not (entropy applies to everything). So: why is life on earth generally short? Why do some creatures live longer than others? Why does death come sooner for some? If there were a divine creator, we would ask why he decided to impose this unjust inequality on life—it seems arbitrary, anomalous. The tortoise, say, is well-armed and long-lived, unlike the rabbit or the deer. If nature can do the one, why not the other? Why aren’t there more genes for longevity and a strong coat of armor? That would seem the natural direction for evolution to take, but it hasn’t taken it. Puzzling.[1]

[1] I don’t recall seeing these questions discussed, but surely, they must have been. The answer is certainly not obvious. It’s no use saying that some animals are just naturally more aggressive than others, or that some are naturally fitter and sturdier. The question is why.

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Beatlemania

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Beatlemania

Beatlemania has always been something of a mystery. True, these were four handsome young men, stylishly dressed, who made great records; but why the hysteria, the extreme adulation? No other band or individual has ever come close, before or since. It seems hard to believe, a kind of collective madness. I think the answer lies in their distinctive personalities joined together into a single unit (musical and personal). John was the tormented artistic intellectual, verbally adroit. Paul was the sentimental musically gifted showman, hard not to like, slightly annoying (the way he tapped his foot on stage). George was the muted diffident one, a mystic, a recluse, relatively mediocre, yet intriguing. Ringo was the regular guy, nothing special, solid, dependable, not even a great drummer, no heartthrob. It was always a question which Beatle you liked best, because each stood out from the others. But the harmonies, the chemistry, the camaraderie! Four different personalities melded into a single incandescent entity—unity in diversity, the transcendent whole and its parts. The mixture was irresistible. Hence the screaming and crying, the absolute devotion. But the disparate elements could only stay together for so long till the cracks began to show. What caused Beatlemania caused Beatle-disintegration. Individually, they could not produce Beatlemania; together it was inevitable. It wasn’t really a mystery—it was predictable and explicable. The Beatles will always exist in our minds as a group, an assembly of contrasting elements, a frail symbiosis.[1]

The Beatles and I go back a long way. I bought their first album in 1963 and listened to it over and over; I still know it by heart. The covers were even better than the originals (“Anna”, “Chains”, “Twist and Shout”). Then I bought the second and third. We played their songs in my group (The Empty Vessels), though we could never get them to sound right. I paid a lot of attention to Ringo, being a drummer myself. I saw them on TV all the time, once at the local airport in Blackpool. I wore Beatle boots (stolen from me in a public dressing room). I changed from an Elvis-do to a Beatle-do. When I won the English prize at school, I asked for the two John Lennon books. The works. They finally broke up in the late sixties. I lived on 72nd Street in New York and frequently walked past the Dakota, never without a sinking of the heart. I would never get to meet him… Then, years later, when I learned to sing, I rediscovered the Beatles—and this began a new and deeper phase of my Beatlemania. Because in learning their songs (nearly all written and sung by Lennon) I entered into the beating heart of their appeal; it became personal for me. I almost felt like a Beatle. First it was “Anna” (written by Arthur Alexander); then it was “This Boy”, always a favorite and the height of my ambition as a singer (I must have sung it over a thousand times by now). Then, with my singing teacher, “I want to hold your hand”, “You’ve got to hide your love away”, “In my life”, “Please Mr. Postman”, “It’s only love”, “Money”, and so on. Recently I discovered “Leave my kitten alone”, a John rocker, which I didn’t even know existed before. Oh, I have sung along with John Lennon many times! I tried “Yesterday” but just couldn’t hack it (sorry, Paul). I do like to do “Love me do”, which is pretty Paul-ish; also “Blackbird”. I can probably sing at least thirty Beatles songs—something I never did in my teenage band days. So, Beatlemania is real for me. I read both of Paul’s and George’s songbooks; I’ve read lengthy biographies of the Beatles. I feel I know them all very well. Whenever I sing “This Boy” I feel at one with them, especially when I get to the “middle eight” (“Oh, and this boy would be happy just to love you, but oh my-y-y; that boy won’t be happy till he’s made you cry-y-y”). The Beatles were everything they were cracked up to be. Beatlemania was a thing.

[1] Mick Jagger used to describe the Beatles as “the four-headed monster”. This is apt because it emphasizes the plurality of heads as well as the unity of the resulting supernatural monster (or god).

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Knowing Minds

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Knowing Minds

What is the main thing that minds do? A survey of psychological (and philosophical) theories through the centuries suggests a variety of answers: copy, interpret, react, introspect, sense, repress, think, remember, reason, imagine, learn, believe, create, compute, process information, and no doubt others. Each of these might be proposed as the central operation of mind—the salient feature of the natural kind mind. Speaking biologically, this comprises the function of the mind—what it was naturally selected to do. It is what enables survival and reproduction. The trouble is that none of these gives us a plausible overall theory of the main thing that minds do. Is the mind, then, a mere conglomeration? Bodies do a variety of things too—breathe, copulate, eat, excrete, etc.—and this variety seems irreducible. Is that the way it is with the mind—a bunch of discrete organs or functions or features? Granted, we can say that all such traits contribute to survival and reproduction (hence gene propagation), but can we say anything more specific about what all mental traits have in common? Can we say what the science of mind is the science of? What is psychology about—generally, unifyingly? I mean this question to concern not just human minds but all animal minds: what is the mind in general all about? It evolved, to be sure, but what in particular did it evolve to do?[1]

Absent from my list is this word: theorize. Can we say that mind exists in order to theorize? That sounds farfetched, given that much mental activity is not theoretical in the scientific sense. But I think it is close to the truth: for it is possible to understand the word “theorize” in a broad sense and thereby name a distinctive psychological natural kind. The point is familiar enough: people and animals regularly go beyond the data of sense to construct a conjecture about what is out there—from smells to predators (or prey), from bird songs to potential mates, from the ambient temperature to the passing of the seasons. We might say that they infer(again broadly). This is very useful, indeed indispensable—survival depends on it.  Animals need to know the truth about reality, but this truth is seldom immediately given, so they have to theorize—conjecture, guess, speculate, infer, postulate. They are like natural-born scientists. I take it this picture is plausible to the point of banality. But it suggests an answer to our question: the purpose of minds (hence their nature) is to seek truth by means of theoretical methods, the better to survive and reproduce. Bodies don’t seek the truth, but minds do. Sensation, learning, remembering, reasoning, imagining—all these contribute to the enterprise of truth discovery. And truth is what you need if you are going to prosper in a hostile world intent on selecting you out; falsehood will not serve you well. The ability to theorize, in the broad sense, is vital to this goal.

But it would be stretching a point to say that all mentality is theorizing—don’t we also have data, evidence? So, let’s generalize a bit: the mind is what produces knowledge. The organ of the mind (the brain) is the organ of knowledge, as the lungs are the organ of breathing. Knowledge is an evolutionary adaptation; it arose by mutation and natural selection millions of years ago. It has a biological function. It is also the essence of the mind, according to the current proposal. There would be no mind without knowledge. Knowledge is the whole point. The concept of mind is the concept of a knowledge machine (producer, storehouse). It is the main event. Descartes was onto something, but he misdescribed it by saying that the essence of mind is thought—because you can think without knowing. The idea isn’t to think per se but to know by thinking. Evolution has no interest in thinking as such, but it cares very much about knowing, because knowing is what gets you success in your biological goals. The problem that all animal life faces is that the reality of things is not fully revealed by how they impinge (or fail to) on the organism’s surface; so, it is necessary to find a means of going beyond the surface to the reality beyond. This requires theorizing. The mind evolved to fill this epistemic gap. No gap, no mind to fill it. God has no mind, because he is not confronted by a gap—everything is already in his…not his mind but his divine cranium (words fail us). There is no mind without the possibility of ignorance. The natural history of mind is a history of ignorance overcome; ignorance is the natural condition of all living creatures. Minds are designed to overcome it. Thus, intelligence, rationality, logic, theory construction, verification and falsification, self-criticism, communication, actual science, technology. It all stems from the primal requirement to know. What would be the point in creating a mind if there was nothing to know with it? It would be like creating space with nothing to put in it (in fact, even more pointless).

You might feel an objection rising up: what about emotion, desire, will, intentional action? Right, we do need to find a place for these in the overall conception; but it is not far to seek. For we need to connect knowledge with behavior, or rather the genes do—or else the knowledge will not serve its biological purpose. Knowledge is no practical use if it just hangs there, so we need an apparatus that links it to action—hence desire, emotion, and will. These things need to evolve too, simultaneously. But notice that their point is precisely to convert knowledge into useful behavior—behavior infused with knowledge. Intelligent informed behavior. I act in the light of the knowledge I possess. I desire what I know is good for me. I feel emotions about what I know to be scary or attractive (I am afraid of what I know will harm me). What about language—how is it connected to knowledge? It can communicate knowledge in the form of speech, so it will be useful in knowledge-heavy communities; but it also helps in the acquisition of knowledge, by providing an instrument of thought. Or rather, an instrument of knowing: thought matters only insofar as it leads to knowledge. No one needs an instrument of false thought. Language evolved in order to aid knowledge—its acquisition, vehicle, transmission, expression, medium. Language is an epistemic resource (though it can be coopted for other purposes such as scolding or singing). One way or another it all comes back to knowledge—the need to get at the truth. At the center of the concept of mind is the concept of truth. Even consciousness must trace back to truth, because it must facilitate access to truth. We (and other animals) are conscious because we are perforce truth-seekers—consciousness is a handy way to gain access to truth (why, is not so clear). All of psychology is truth-oriented, knowledge-imbued. Psychology is really the science of knowing– fundamentally, originally (despite some divagations). It is best to admit it instead of hiding behind jargon. Even conditioning, classical or operant, is really about knowledge: the dog knows that food will come when it hears the bell (Pavlov); the pigeon knows it will receive a pellet if it pecks a certain lever (Skinner). These experiments are about inductive knowledge when you cut through the behaviorist jargon. The same goes for talk of “information” or “computation”. Why psychologists fight shy of using the concept of knowledge explicitly is an interesting question—is it because it doesn’t sound “scientific” enough, too close to philosophy? Is it not mechanistic enough (physics doesn’t study knowledge)? But actually, the study of child development, say, is largely about the growth of knowledge in the child (see Piaget)—hence the growth of his or her mind. Language development is a matter of acquiring knowledge of language, and the language acquired is a means of communicating and processing knowledge. It isn’t just a matter of making the right noises (“speech behavior”).

We use our minds all the time (as we breathe all the time) and this consists of deploying our knowledge. All jobs involve knowledge of one kind or another, as do all hobbies, sports, and human interactions. We are knowing beings—the best knowers of the lot (though bees are pretty impressive). Knowledge means everything to us; without it we are nothing. All of culture depends on knowledge. It is instinctive and deep-seated. We put a lot of effort into acquiring it; education is systematic knowledge increase. Knowledge has status, brings wealth, helps you find a mate. This is why skepticism cuts at the heart of what we are and aspire to be—consummate knowers. For skepticism insists that we don’t know after all; we can’t know—we are not capable of it. Skepticism is tantamount to declaring us null and void—empty of the very thing we prize most. If we have no knowledge, then we have no nature—just the aspiration towards a nature. No one knows more than another, because no one knows anything. The mind is rendered pointless, incapable of performing its proper function. You may as well not have a mind. So the skeptic insinuates and he can be very persuasive. You pride yourself on your knowledge, but your pride is baseless. You are therefore nothing—a total blank slate. We badly want to be able to respond to the skeptic who insults us thus, but that is no easy task. The fear remains that our minds are not up to the job—incompetent impostors, phony knowers. But then we slip back into the marketplace and the warm glow of knowing returns. It’s nice to know stuff. It makes having a mind worthwhile. All minds are knowing minds (putting skepticism aside).[2]

[1] There was almost certainly an intermediate stage between non-knowledge and knowledge—a kind of twilight zone in which knowledge proper does not yet exist. This stage will have showed adaptive promise so that natural selection naturally led to knowledge as we know it today. Far down the evolutionary line advanced knowledge came to exist—science, philosophy, etc. No doubt this was a long, convoluted story that gradually allowed knowledge to progress. Presumably, it will continue to develop in the future. The first law of knowledge: knowledge keeps growing, improving, evolving. Knowledge is one of evolution’s best ideas, like walking on four legs. There would be no minds to speak of on planet Earth unless knowledge had been invented.

[2] Epistemology and psychology are not really separable: you need the former to do the latter. You need an analysis of knowledge and a theory of justification and a theory of truth. You need to know what knowledge is, how it is justified, and what its aim is (i.e., what truth is).  Psychology thus needs philosophy. Cognitive science needs epistemic science. The concept of knowledge is the central concept of any cognitive science worthy of the name. And the mind is ultimately all about cognition. Emotions without knowledge are empty and blind. Plato was right to see in knowledge the key to self-understanding. Descartes was right to appreciate the urgency of defeating skepticism. Philosophy of knowledge is philosophy 101. There is no alternative to the epistemic turn (even the linguistic turn is all about knowledge—knowledge of language). Human (and animal) life is shot through with epistemic concerns—with what we know and what we don’t know. The mind (or soul) is an epistemic engine. It has no other being. For the self, to be is to know. (Am I exaggerating? A little, but the point needs some rhetorical excess.)

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Skateboard Encounter

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Skateboard Encounter

The other day I was practicing skateboarding at my usual location—round the corner on a slight incline, around 5pm. Suddenly a red car drew up next to me and the driver opened the passenger side window. She said: “I see you every day as I’m driving home from work and I just want to say you are the coolest person I have ever seen”. I felt flattered but slightly bemused: what was so cool about seeing me skateboarding? It’s not as if I am good at it. Was it my outfit—with helmet and padded knees and elbows? Hardly. Then it occurred to me: it was the fact of my age that had prompted her (sincere) declaration. It was cool that someone as old as me would be out learning to skateboard. That or my naturally cool demeanor… Anyway, we got talking—she was Cuban and evidently lively. Soon we were discussing people and I expressed my misgivings about Americans I have known (a frequent refrain). She didn’t immediately react but then abruptly announced, “Americans are assholes”. I doubled up with laughter. I remarked incredulously that the women are no better than the men. “Oh no”, she replied, “they are much worse than the men”. A couple of minutes later she drove off, saying she would see me again, same time same place. I went back to skateboarding. Make of this what you like; I found it fascinating.

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A Christmas Love Song

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Christmas With You

 

I don’t care for jingle bells

I’m not fond of the Christmas tree

Santa Claus can go to hell

I’d like to set his reindeer free

 

I’m not one for turkey and stuffing

I don’t love all that Christmas cheer

Don’t give me carol huffing and puffing

I don’t even want a yuletide beer

 

But Christmas with you

Would be a dream come true

Yes, Christmas with you

Would get me through

 

I say no to Christmas snow

I won’t wear no Christmas sweater

I’d rather keep it quiet and low

And avoid the dreaded Christmas letter

 

But Christmas with you

Would be a dream come true

Christmas with you

Would make me new

 

So, let me stay home with you

Let’s be together just we two

Let’s keep Christmas away

That’s my idea of a Christmas day

 

Because Christmas with you

Would be a dream come true

It would be a dream come true

Christmas with you

Christmas with you

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Is Belief Necessary For Knowledge?

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Is Belief Necessary for Knowledge?

It has always seemed that the stipulation that belief is a necessary condition for knowledge is a touch unrealistic. One wants to say, “I don’t just believe it, I know it”. Belief goes with opinion, uncertainty, faith—but knowledge is a matter of being indisputably right, in the know (as we say). I am not of the opinion that I am writing an essay about belief and knowledge, as I am of the opinion that the Beatles are better than the Stones; I damn well know it. Do I believe that I exist or do I simply know it? Could Descartes have said, “I think, therefore I believe that I exist”? I can say that I merely believe something but not that I merely know it. Genuine knowledge appears to preclude belief: if I know something I know it, I don’t just take myself to know it. To this objection there is a standard reply: it confuses implication and implicature. To say “I believe” when you really know conversationally implies that you don’t feel entitled to claim knowledge, but logically it is compatible with knowing. Knowledge logically implies belief, but we don’t say the weaker thing when we could truly say the stronger thing—as in saying “It seems to me there is apple there” when you are in plain sight of an apple and have no doubt that you are in the presence of an apple. Now, that reply may indeed be a theoretical option, but what if it really is false that the knower is also a believer? What if belief really is incompatible with knowledge? What if the believing state of mind just doesn’t exist in an ordinary case of knowledge? What if someone could be a knower and yet not have the corresponding belief?[1] Is that logically possible? Maybe in most actual cases belief and knowledge coexist, but the former is not a necessary condition of the latter—knowledge doesn’t rule out belief, but it doesn’t presuppose it either. Maybe belief can be replaced by knowledge once the knower’s epistemic situation is improved, so that it no longer exists in the new knowledge state. The connection may be loose not logically tight. It is certainly not a truism that knowledge logically implies belief, as it is a truism that knowledge logically implies truth.[2]

Here is a counterexample to the claim of necessity. A scrupulously rational person, Bertie, has been reading a lot about skepticism recently and is mightily impressed with it. He becomes a passionate skeptic, refusing to accept that he knows anything; he undertakes to suspend belief about matters that most people unhesitatingly take for granted—for example, that there is a table in front of him. He declines to believe it, convinced that he might be wrong (he could be a brain in a vat). However, he is well aware that his well-being depends on acting in a certain way in response to his subjective experience—he has to behave as if he knows there is a table there, or else he will receive sensory impressions of a barked shin etc. Inwardly he doesn’t believe in tables (nor does he disbelieve in them); outwardly he behaves as if he does believe in them. You wouldn’t know to look at Bertie that he is a skeptic with regard to the external world. But if he tells you of his attitude towards such matters, you will refrain from ascribing the usual beliefs to him—for Bertie is a very determined rational man. He doesn’t believe in tables, period. But does he know anything about tables? Wouldn’t you say that he knows there is a table in front of him, even though he doesn’t believe it? He isn’t like a blind man: his eyes are open and he clearly sees tables; he acts as if he knows the disposition of tables. He knows the table is there; he just doesn’t believe it. The reason this verdict seems correct is obvious: Bertie’s sensorimotor system is giving him the information that tables are all around—he just refuses to convert this information into belief. He is a non-believing knower. His senses and actions track the presence of tables, but his belief system is disengaged. We could say that part of his mind tracks tables but not the belief part. He mentally represents tables perceptually (and in his actions) but his beliefs don’t match these representations. This mental representation might well be a necessary condition of his knowing, but the corresponding beliefs are not essential. Thus, it is possible to know that p and not believe that p. Less scrupulous believers may well dive into belief irrespective of skepticism, but in their case also the real basis for an ascription of knowledge is their sensorimotor capacities not their state of belief. The classic analysis of knowledge has mistaken the contingent for the necessary, elevating belief into a central role it does not deserve. And the sensorimotor basis is not a species of opinion—it isn’t a type of uncertain judgment or speculation or conjecture or article of faith. It doesn’t belong to that part of the mind.

Here is another counterexample of a more science fiction type. A certain individual, Phineas, has had an injury to the head in which his ability to form beliefs has been damaged. Phineas finds that he can’t form opinions anymore (he used to be full of them). If you ask his opinion on any subject, he will report that he has none. His doctors declare him a victim of “doxastic paralysis” and publish learned articles about him. But suppose that he is otherwise undamaged—nothing wrong with his eyes or motor system. Doesn’t he still know things? He perceives his environment, has memories, conducts himself like a normal person—he knows what’s what. He just has no beliefs about any of this (he is a “belief zombie”). Perhaps he slides into simply acting as if he believes this or that—his life works out better if he does that. Zero belief, much knowledge. The lesson is that belief is not essential to knowledge; what is essential is some sort of tracking of the world by the organism—by the brain and body. Knowledge is less intellectual than belief, less a matter of judgment and deliberation, of opinion formation. It isn’t a type of belief at all—though beliefs do populate the knowing mind in normal cases. And, come to think of it, belief is unsuitable for knowledge in most cases, because it is far too friable, far too shaky. One might almost say that it is not me that knows but my body and brain—whereas I am a believer. The rational ego forms beliefs, but knowledge typically arises from more basic capacities, which don’t require the participation of the conscious rational self. When did I ever form the belief that I am surrounded by physical objects? Do I really believe this, as I believe in democracy and the rule of law and the superiority of the Beatles? I don’t believe in physical objects; I know it without having to undertake a process of belief formation. Do animals believe in such things, or do they know them without benefit of belief? They are set up to know; they don’t need a faculty of belief to get them there. Belief is a luxury they can ill afford; they need to know things without such time-consuming lucubration. Knowing doesn’t generally involve study, reflection, thought, meditation, judicious decision. Evolution made us knowers before believing ever came into the picture. Knowing dates back millions of years, but believing only hundreds of thousands. Believing is coeval with civilization, roughly, but knowing is primitive and instinctual—as it needs to be. Knowing is not a superior form of belief (the true and justified kind) but in some ways more animalistic (not in any pejorative sense); it is part of animal nature, or the animal part of human nature. Belief is as inessential to knowledge as it is to perception. You can see and know without ever going to the trouble of believing things.[3]

[1] A point that used to be made is that it is possible to be unsure about the answer to a question and just guess the answer—correctly, because the memory of the answer still lingers. Here it is natural to say that the person really knows but doesn’t have the confidence to fully (or even partially) believe. I will be pressing this kind of point a lot harder.

[2] Question: are there any undisputed truths of philosophy that are not truisms?  It’s hard to come up with any.

[3] Believing is hard, effortful, time-consuming, anxious, fraught, and modern; but seeing and knowing are automatic, reflexive, easy, well-honed, and ancient. There is no need to worry about seeing and knowing, but believing is inherently burdensome (“I don’t knowwhat to believe!”). The whole picture of knowledge encouraged by the belief condition is false to the reality of it—a typical philosopher’s error of over-intellectualizing the phenomena. Knowledge is not generally like philosophical knowledge, which is mostly opinion. Plato was right sharply to distinguish knowledge from opinion. Knowledge is not high-class opinion; it isn’t opinion at all. Knowledge is more democratic, widely distributed, humble, biological. It is pretty much coextensive with consciousness (though often unconscious). Think of our knowledge of language: we don’t have opinions about grammatical rules.

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Analyzing Knowledge

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Analyzing Knowledge

We are familiar with Gettier problems, which bring out the insufficiency of the classic analysis of knowledge as true justified belief. But there are other problems with that analysis, centering on circularity. They question the pretensions of such an analysis to provide conditions that don’t presuppose the concept of knowledge but together add up to it. The classic analysis is at best misleading about the constitutive structure of the concept of knowledge, its inner constituents. The first problem concerns the concept of belief, usually introduced without much fanfare and little reflection. Thus, we are baldly told that if x knows that p, then x believes that p—while the latter does not entail the former. But what is it to believe that p? Isn’t it to take oneself to know that p? If I believe that the Battle of Hastings took place in 1066, I take myself to know that—and in this case I am right so to take myself. In other words, I believe I know it—or else I wouldn’t believe it. Thus, the concept of knowledge enters the concept of belief. If we were interested in defining belief, we might well offer: x believes that p if and only if x believes that he knows that p. True, we are using belief as part of its own definition, but the definition is informative and not viciously circular. We might also try to eliminate the concept of belief from it and replace it with something less repetitious (taking oneself to believe, or a disposition to assent, or brain-based functional role). In any case, the definition seems perfectly correct, and it invokes the concept of knowledge—the very concept we are supposed to be analyzing. What else is belief but an attempt at knowledge? How could you have the concept of belief and not realize that belief is linked to knowledge? Belief is would-be knowledge. Belief doesn’t entail actual knowledge, to be sure, but it alludes to that concept—it entails knowledge aspirations. The classic analysis only looks non-circular because we don’t ask ourselves how belief is to be understood, i.e., what it is. It is hardly a satisfactory entry point in the quest to specify what adds up to knowledge but doesn’t presuppose it.

The same question recurs with respect to the next two conditions—truth and justification. What is justification? Isn’t it precisely information that leads to knowledge, or is apt to lead to knowledge in favorable conditions? You can’t have the concept of justification and not see that justification leads to knowledge; no one could possess that concept and have never heard of knowledge. At any rate, we need an argument to show that such a thing is possible, or else circularity looms. Thirdly, the concept of truth is also inextricably linked to the concept of knowledge: truth is what the search for knowledge is the search for. How could you have a grasp the concept of truth and not know that truth is linked to knowledge in this way? The circle of concepts is too tight for that. You couldn’t learn what knowledge is by consulting the classic definition, because you would already need to have the concept in order to understand the definition. Truth and justification don’t individually entail knowledge, to be sure, but they incorporate the concept at one remove. The classic theory is not wrong exactly, but it fails to provide the kind of illumination advertised on its behalf. The concept of knowledge doesn’t pop out of the three conditions like the proverbial rabbit from a hat, because it already lurks close to the surface of the concepts used to define it, particularly belief. In the matter of conceptual priority, the concept of knowledge seems to come first—as primitive not constructed (as has often been contended).

These reflections encourage a reformulation of the classic analysis. This reformulation doesn’t dispose of the circularity problems, but it does simplify the intent of the classical analysis. It brings out what is really going on when someone knows something propositionally. Let’s say that x knows that p if and only if (1) x believes that he has a true justified belief that p (the belief condition), and (2) this belief is true (the truth condition). For he knows what knowledge is (true justified belief) and it is true that he is in the state in question. Intuitively, he believes he is in a state of knowledge and he actually is. The classic analysis analyzes his belief according to its own theory, incorporating this into the belief condition, and then it says that that belief is true. If it is correct in its analysis, then x will (perhaps tacitly) know what knowledge is, and then it only remains to specify that the conditions in question are actually satisfied. Knowledge emerges as a combination of belief and truth, just as we might have expected; but the belief turns out to have more structure than we might have supposed. We upload the analysis into the belief component, so to speak. This is really what is going on when a person knows something: he has a belief about his epistemic status and that belief is true. He doesn’t just have a belief in the proposition in question (e.g., that the Battle of Hastings took place in 1066); he also has a belief about this belief, to the effect that it is true and justified. This gives us a more accurate and illuminating picture of what knowledge entails—at any rate, of the kind of knowledge in question (rational, reflective). The person doesn’t just believe the first-order proposition, but also has other beliefs of an epistemological nature, concerning his entitlement to believe. The structure of the situation is made more apparent in this reformulation, though the substance is much the same (knowledge as true justified belief). The knower doesn’t merely have the belief in the first-order proposition; he also has various attitudes about his state of belief. Animals, presumably, don’t have such attitudes, so according to this analysis they don’t have knowledge (in the way we do at least). To have knowledge in the way a typical adult human does, you need to have the attitudes in question—which is the normal condition of human knowers. Knowledge is thus more richly structured cognitively under this formulation than under the classic formulation.[1]

[1] Here is a somewhat paradoxical result if Gettier is right and no one has an adequate analysis of knowledge: it will not be sufficient for knowledge that the subject’s belief about his epistemic state is true, since the true justified belief analysis is not sufficient. Accordingly, no one ever knows anything, or anything for which a Gettier case can be produced. In order to know, you need the correct analysis of knowledge; but according to Gettier no one knows the correct analysis, so no one knows anything. The strong belief condition rules out the possibility of knowledge, apparently. You can’t know without knowing what knowing is, but we don’t know that. Yet the reformulated classic analysis seems very plausible. One way out would be to say that we do know the correct Gettier-proof analysis, namely that knowledge is non-accidentally true justified belief—or whatever your favorite answer to Gettier is. This is an interesting wrinkle on the problem.

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Philosophy as Science, Literature, and Religion

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Philosophy as Science, Literature, and Religion

What kind of subject is philosophy? Is it a type of science? Is it a form of literature? Is it a religious calling? Or is it all three? I think it is all three: philosophy is a literary science touching on religious themes (among other things). Once this is understood it can proceed on its course secure in its knowledge of itself. It doesn’t have to worry about what it is up to. So, our first question is whether and why philosophy should be deemed a science. I don’t mean that it is one of the disciplines commonly called a science—physics, chemistry, biology, psychology, etc. Nor is it the sum of those, or the more speculative parts of those. I mean that it is a science in its own right, even when it seems at its least “scientific”. I won’t argue for this here, as I have done so at length elsewhere.[1] The general idea is that philosophy is the science of conceptual questions, or logical questions, or non-empirical abstract questions, or a priori questions, or metaphysical questions. It proceeds by rigorous conceptual analysis, a priori methods, and thought experiments—not by laboratory experiments, or sense-based observations, or quantitative analysis. It is what used to be called a “moral science” not a “natural science”. It resembles mathematics in some respects, or parts of economics, or parts of physics—the philosophical parts. Philosophy is apt to be foundational, highly general, theoretical in the extreme. Above all, it is systematic, analytical, logical, and impersonal—all the marks of a science in good standing. It isn’t poetry or exhortation or politics or preaching or merely rhetorical or artistic (unless science in general is artistic). It belongs with the other sciences in its intellectual aims and criteria of success. I am speaking mainly of what is called analytical philosophy, but other kinds also fall under this general characterization (e.g., phenomenology). I think that, once understood, this categorization of philosophy should be (and is in fact) widely accepted. Philosophy is scientific in the honorific sense—it’s not unscientific.

But is it just like the other sciences? That seems more questionable, because of the role of style in philosophy—literary style. Different philosophers write differently, whereas other types of scientist tend to converge on a common style. In philosophy, style matters. Some of it is candidly literary—Plato’s dialogues, existentialism, Wittgenstein (early and late), Nietzsche. Many philosophers are noted writers (Hume, Russell, Sartre, Ryle, Quine, Austin, Strawson, Murdoch, Davidson, Fodor, and many others). I myself pay particular attention to style and think it integral to my performances and productions; I am influenced stylistically by people like Max Beerbohm and Nabokov (not to mention a host of philosophers, particularly Russell). Thus, philosophy verges on literature (consider the many philosophical novels). Do you think these philosophers would have the influence they have absent their style? Would Quine, for example, have commanded many followers just in virtue of the content of his doctrines? It isn’t so in the regular sciences; here content matters almost exclusively (Watson and Crick didn’t need a persuasive style). There is nothing special about Newton’s literary style—or any number of distinguished scientists. Philosophers have a voice that makes them stand out, that confers authority, but not so scientists. It is hard to be a good philosopher without being a good writer. If you want to be one, you had better work on your literary talents. So, philosophy, in addition to being a science, is a form of literature—an artistic form in its own way. Aesthetics plays a part. The style should sparkle, resonate, inspire—it should get to you.

You might be with me so far but jib at the religious affiliation. Philosophy isn’t a religion! It’s not Christian, or Muslim, or Jewish, or Buddhist. It’s secular. But doesn’t it consider religious questions, among others? A whole department of it is called “philosophy of religion” and questions about the existence and nature of God are surely philosophical. It isn’t totally divorced from religion, like chemistry or psychology. The reason is that philosophy, in part, is concerned with the same questions as religion proper: the meaning of life, right and wrong, the natural versus the supernatural, the possibility of God’s existence, free will, the self or soul, the significance of death. Many an analytic philosopher, rigidly atheist as he or she may be, got into the subject via religious questions (till graduate school knocked it out of them, if not before). That is, philosophy is characteristically concerned with the “deep questions” of human life—why are we here, where are we going, how should we live, what does it all mean. You can’t deny it—religion is a common gateway to philosophy (even if you end up far away from it). The religious impulse is close to the philosophical impulse. Even an atheist has religious views—he has thought hard about religious questions. But the scientist qua scientist need have no such preoccupations, or the novelist for that matter (still less the painter or musician). Have you ever met a philosopher sublimely indifferent to religious questions? How can you be a philosopher and not be interested in the ontological argument? It’s part of the job. Botanists may never have heard of it, or metallurgists, or astronomers. In philosophy religion is just around the corner, flee from it as you might.

Thus, philosophy has a triple identity—a split personality. It combines three distinct areas of human intellectual effort: the scientific, the literary, and the religious. If you like science, appreciate good writing, and can’t escape the religious, it’s a good fit for you. The excellent philosopher is part scientist, part poet or novelist, and part priest (or priest critic). He or she has a bit of each in him or her. Some may emphasize the scientific part, some the literary part, some the religious part; but all recognize these three elements as components of what they are up to. Russell is the perfect illustration: mathematician and scientist, consummate stylist and winner of the Nobel Prize for literature, and religiously preoccupied (see his autobiography). I fully confess to all three foibles: fascination with science, love of literature, religious interests (good and evil, the meaning of life, our origin and destiny). Philosophy without all three components feels dead. The scientific rigor is bracing, the writing is a delight, and the human predicament is an ever-present concern. These elements pulse through many other practitioners: Nabokov, say, is a scientist (lepidopterist), superb stylist, and stern moralist (contrary to his popular reputation).[2] Similarly for Descartes, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume, and their followers. I think the same is true of contemporary analytical philosophers, though the university setting has obscured the fact (Thomas Nagel is a good example). Perhaps this is why the philosopher is apt to excite hostility in certain quarters—because he is a hybrid figure, chronically suspended uneasily (or easily) between three stools. The critics don’t know how to classify him (pigeonhole him), though he is (or should be) quite at home in his triple identity. He is an identifiable intellectual natural kind.[3]

[1] See my “The Science of Philosophy”.

[2] He actually had an active interest in philosophy and even published reviews of philosophy books. Humbert Humbert, for all his faults, has a somewhat philosophical turn of mind and a pompous academic style. The main character, Krug, in Bend Sinister is a philosophy professor.

[3] The real essence of this natural kind might be defined as “rational answers to profound questions”. Of course, we need to say more about “rational” and “profound”.

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