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.

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”.

Consciousness and Evolution

Evolution by natural selection is a gradual process, not a jumpy jerky one.[1] Small modifications not sudden leaps forward. Complex organs don’t spring into existence from nowhere as a result of spectacular random mutations. This basic Darwinian principle applies as much to the mind as the body. And it applies to consciousness as much as to anything else. It is not to be supposed that human or mammalian consciousness arrived fully formed on planet earth one bright morning. It arose, step by miserly step, from a state of unconsciousness, long ago—probably in the ancient oceans. A genetic mutation in an organism produced a minute variation in brain structure that led to the first glimmers of what we would describe as consciousness—a hint or seed of what was to come. It wouldn’t even be recognizable as consciousness, as we know it today, and its future development by equally small steps would not be predictable (compare the first experiments in eyes). I think it highly probable that pain consciousness was the first kind to grace the planet, so that the initial seed was a type of intermediate stage in which organisms started the transition from absolute unconsciousness into a version of what would become conscious pain. We can’t even call it pain; it was a kind of proto pain, or incipient pain, or pain precursor (like fins to legs, or scales to feathers). We have no name for this intermediate state—it was neither conscious nor unconscious. I will refer to it as “semi-conscious”, intending nothing explanatory. Semi-consciousness is the kind of state that mediated the move from purely physical unconsciousness to the kind of biological state we think of as consciousness. It was a condition of semi-what-it’s-likeness. Think of it as occurring in some mollusk or mite in the primeval ocean—not an impressive creature by any means. Its future would be glorious, but for now it was nothing to write home about, merely a faint stirring. Such a thing must have existed, because nature doesn’t evolve by sudden spurts; it needs intermediate forms, biological bridges.

Does this type of micro-adaptation exist today? Is there any semi-consciousness still around? We don’t know, still less do we know how it might be detected. It might be extinct now, having performed its bridging act. I doubt that our own minds contain anything of it, though they contain much that goes back a long way: we are never semi-conscious (as I understand that term). Our brains either correlate with conscious stuff or with unconscious stuff, never anything in between. Successive mutations and natural selection have dispensed with the semi-conscious. It was never much use, though it evidently had its moment in the sun; it conferred a slight advantage in those early days on creatures that had it. Do any species have it today? Perhaps insects do, or worms, or little fish. How could we tell? Think of a surveillance tape covering all of evolution from bacteria to humans: could we pinpoint the moment at which semi-consciousness appeared? Suppose we could: then we could examine the brains of organisms that have it and those that don’t. We could speculate that this or that change in brains is responsible for the onset of semi-consciousness. We could then trace its evolution into something we would call consciousness proper, noting the cerebral correlates. This would be pretty interesting, no doubt. We would have a gradualist brain science to set beside our gradualist consciousness science, with no stage missing; there would be no gap in the psychophysical record. If we found that some living organisms resembled these long-extinct creatures, we could investigate them thoroughly—dissect them, electrically stimulate their brains, map their genome, tabulate their behavior. Then we would have a model for the creatures that originally gave birth to what would later become consciousness. We might even come up with an explanatory theory of the semi-conscious, a solution to the semi-mind-body problem; we could see how brains give rise to the semi-conscious mind (if that phrase isn’t contradictory). Admittedly, that would not solve the conscious-mind-body problem, but it would be somewhere in the vicinity. Of course, the whole thing would be a methodological nightmare, maybe totally quixotic, but the idea of such a theory does not seem impossible in principle. We do know that a theory of this kind must exist in Platonic heaven, because an intermediate evolutionary stage must have occurred (granted gradualism) and there must be a truth about it. There must be a non-miraculous story to be told. It might even be intelligible within the terms of current science.

Why am I prattling on about this missing link in the evolutionary chain? Because it promises to provide an intelligible path from the insentiently physical to the sentiently mental. The transition is sufficiently gradual to form a bridge from one thing to the other. Of course, I have no idea what this bridge would look like; I don’t have the theory whose existence I am surmising. But this is the place to look if you want to make headway with the problem: go the source, don’t belabor the end-point. Look at the early primitive stages, don’t get weighed down by the final flourishes. The story is going to be complex, intolerably so, but it is a story with narrative structure, not a series of unprecedented lurches forward, sudden plot twists. It makes sense, or would if we had it. This century we tame the semi-conscious mind of lowly creatures like insects; the next we proceed to the simple consciousness of higher organisms like reptiles; maybe one day we can take on mammalian consciousness. We don’t run before we can walk. One point will occupy center stage: the motivational properties of the relevant mental states. It is very plausible to suggest that natural selection favored conscious minds (and the semi-conscious minds before them) because they afford motivational oomph; for some reason these states make the organism more determined to achieve its goals, and more able to. Pain is a great motivator, as is hunger, as is lust. Animals that have these states will win out over those that don’t. The state of unconsciousness is a sluggish state, encouraging sloth; but consciousness (and its precursors) seems designed to galvanize the organism. The more conscious, the livelier—that seems like a biological law (don’t ask me why—the whole thing is pretty mysterious). So, how does the motivating power of consciousness depend on the brain? How does the brain produce conscious motivation? That seems like a tractable problem: there is what it is like and what it makes you do, and these are connected. Subjectivity and willpower go together—seeming and doing. This is not behaviorism but the recognition that consciousness enhances motivation. Semi-consciousness did the same, though to a lesser degree, and it gradually transformed into the consciousness we know today, with its impetus to action. The zombie is apt to be a sluggish operator; the sentient being with alert eyes and pricked-up ears is quick and coordinated (I am not talking about the philosophical conceit of molecular duplicates). Thus, we might trace the evolution of motivation from its earliest days in the semi-conscious up through its later manifestation in the consciousness of mammals.

Notice that a Cartesian consciousness cannot evolve by Darwinian principles. For there can be no gradual transition between material substance and immaterial substance. There is no such thing as a Cartesian semi-mind. On no planet has an immaterial mind evolved; for that you really do need God (which rules out such minds altogether). Any evolved mind must be a physical mind, in the innocuous sense that it arose from physical raw materials by gradual purposeless steps (this is compatible with genuine emergence). There was no sudden saltation to an immaterial soul at some pivotal moment in evolution. There were only slight modifications of unconscious bodily tissue—some of these being quite mysterious. Since minds did (and must) evolve by Darwinian principles, they cannot be Cartesian, necessarily so. What we need to understand is howconsciousness arose by incremental steps, smoothly, naturally, one small step at a time. Somewhere in this history the mystery is removed, perhaps quite unspectacularly, certainly not magically.

Suppose for the sake of argument that the hard nut (as I once dubbed it) of the mind-body problem was belief not consciousness. Consciousness we have solved, but belief leaves us baffled. How can mere brains produce states of belief? Neurons don’t believe, even bunches of them, so how do they enable people to believe? The essence of belief is assent plus propositional content—how does the brain contrive to do this? Well, let’s look at the evolutionary history. We know that belief must have evolved gradually over a long period of time by small modifications, so it must be capable of such an evolution. Therefore, there must have been a transition from non-belief to belief, with accompanying brain transitions. Since this transition can’t be saltatory, there must have been an intermediate state of semi-belief. Perhaps this state no longer exists in life on earth; or perhaps some living creatures still possess it, if not quite in its original form—reptiles, birds, octopuses. We might try investigating such creatures, their behavior and brain. We find slight differences between their brain and the brains of simpler creatures as well as more complex ones (true believers). This is the cerebral mark of the state of semi-belief. Then we would see how non-belief led to belief, physiologically; this would be pretty interesting, and might lead to insights into belief proper (“Ah, so that’s how the brain did it!”). We would have an origin story—about how belief came to be. I venture to suggest that such a story is possible: for we already have ideas about states of semi- or quasi-belief—informational states of various kinds. These are not quite belief but close to it; they could be precursors to belief. And the same can be said of other types of mental state—desires, perceptions, emotions. Each has its own gradualist history, its Darwinian dawn, its continuous ascent up the evolutionary ladder. Such ladders are illuminating, if difficult of access, and may shed light on the end result. An evolutionary perspective may thus help with understanding the mind and its relation to the body and brain. At the least it can supplement frontal attacks on the problem.[2]

[1] If you need a defense of gradualism, see Richard Dawkins, “Universal Darwinism”, reprinted in Science in the Soul (2017).

[2] I might cite the conversion of leaves into flowers, scales into feathers, arms into wings, bacteria into mitochondria, kin altruism into general altruism, and other wonders of evolutionary transformation. Consciousness and the mind in general must have resulted from transformations of other traits into what we see today, in ourselves and other animals. There is a story to be told, whether we can tell it or not. And surely, this history must illuminate what it is the history of. Does the secret of consciousness lie in its early days in semi-conscious pain? What ingredients were added? How did it come to be so dominant in controlling the life of the organism? How did it come to be the center of human existence? It wasn’t even a distant dream in our unconscious forebears. An history of consciousness would be well worth reading: “Once upon a time, long long ago, in a swamp in Africa, there lived a mollusk that felt a tingle in its extremities, and that was when consciousness first entered the natural world…”.

Advice for Obituarists

I have reached that point in life at which a man starts to wonder about his obituaries, and whether there will even be any. In my case cancellation might go that far. It’s a nasty question. In a close counterfactual world, I would be perfectly sanguine, given my life history; but as things are in the actual world, they will likely be less than wholly positive. I really have only one piece of advice but it’s a big one: Try not to think in cliches and stereotypes. This is a piece of advice I frequently find myself giving about all sorts of matters, but in the present case it is particularly urgent. I know it’s hard, I know it will hurt your brain, I know it will make you unpopular (heaven forbid!)—but try to find out the truth, look at the details, then come to a reasonable assessment. It doesn’t sound like much but it’s surprising how difficult it is for people to follow this elementary advice (Americans seem to need more help with it than most). Surely you don’t want your obituary, as an obituarist, to be riddled with cliches and stereotypes about obituarists—how vengeful and ignorant they are, how little work they put into the job, how smug and small-minded they can be. It’s a tough job, obituary-writing: this is a whole life you are trying to sum up, to be fair about, to force into a nutshell. I doubt you will take my advice, because I will be dead and unable to reply to you. You can get away with murder. I appeal to your conscience—try to do what is right! Already you are sharpening your pen, hoping to make a name for yourself, busily insulting the still-warm corpse. I wish I could say otherwise, but there it is.