Thursday, April 23, 2009

Skepticism, Infallibilism, and Knowledge

I found it odd being recently called a skeptic. The oddity is compounded because you have, on one end of the spectrum, some Clarkians complaining that I allow too much to be given the honorific title, "knowledge." Hence, for some, my epistemology is not skeptical enough. Given that I afford a whole lotta propositions to be serious candidates for knowledge, I'm incredulous that I'm a skeptic--or that my epistemology is skeptical.

However, I had a phone conversation today with someone who thought that the label 'skeptic' should stick. Based on a slightly edited reproduction, here's why:

i) I was given two candidates for knowledge:

(*) S's wife testifies to S that p, S believes that p, p is true.

and,

(**) S, who knows me, meets me on the street and forms the belief : I am meeting Paul Manata right now.

ii) I was then told that (*) cannot rise to the level of knowledge while (**) can.

iii) Putting aside questions regarding knowledge by testimony and its transitive character, I queried why (*) could not be a candidate for knowledge while (**) could be such a candidate.

iv) I was told that the reason why (**) could be known while (*) could not be, is because it is possible for (*) to turn out false. More clearly, the reason why (*) cannot rise to the level of knowledge, ever, is because it is possible that the wife could be lying. This would mean that p would be false and, following the received view, you cannot know that which is false.

v) This means that the constraint on knowledge expressed in (iv) is what is known as an infallibilist constraint. This means that S cannot know that p if it is possible that p be false. I, and quite understandably, find this hard to swallow.

vi) Without getting into a discussion on infallibilism as such, I wondered how (**) could be known given that epistemic infallibilism is the position of my correspondent. So, "How is it that you know (**)?" I asked.

viii) The response given to me was that God's revelation was infallible and I, being created, indeed; bearing the imago dei, am revelation.

ix) Okay, let's put aside analyzing all of this for the moment, it is still unclear to me how S could know in situation (**). Just as it is possible that S's wife could be lying about p, the below also seem possible when it comes to the situation in (**).

(***) S was dreaming when he "saw" me.

(****) Unbeknownst to S, I have a twin brother, and it is he that S sees, not me.

x) Thus, it seems clear to me that given considerations like (***) and (****) my correspondent cannot know (**) given the reasons he has given for why he cannot know (*). Indeed, with a small amount of effort one can show that someone, S, doesn't "know" things like: (1) Calvinism, (2) paedobaptism, (3) theonomy, (4) etc., all things my correspondent strongly endorses. Perhaps he would bite these bullets. However, it remains why he would claim that he knows (**) but doesn't know, say, Calvinism.1 And, it also remains how he even knows (**) given his strictures.

One might also point out that S might later obtain a defeater for his belief in (**)--say, S comes to believe he is a brain in a vat--and thus lose his knowledge due to the no-believed-defeater constraint.2

Anothe problem is his belief that I, the person he meets on the street, am "revelation," being created and an image bearer. Perhaps I'm a cleverly constructed robot, and hence, not an image bearer. To respond that since I am created I am still revelatory doesn't get you to the claim you said you knew, namely, "I met Paul Manata."

Therefore, and quite ironically, the "kick me, I'm a skeptic" sign has been pulled off of my back and placed on his. Am I off here?


______________________

1 See Certainty, Irrevisability, and Theological Beliefs by Michael Sudduth.

2 See Epistemic Defeaters by Michael Sudduth.

12 comments:

  1. Dear Paul,

    I beg your pardon in advance for this off-topic comment. A request actually.

    If you're able and willing, could you evaluate Professor Eric Reitan's Dissecting and Assessing a Pair of Arguments for Biblical Inerrancy?

    Professor Reitan is an award-winning scholar and writer who teaches philosophy at Oklahoma State University.

    Since you're a philosopher of note, you're much better able to analyze his arguments than me.

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  2. "viii) The response given to me was that God's revelation was infallible and I, being created, indeed; bearing the imago dei, am revelation."

    Oh. Wow.

    That's got to be the wackiest argument I've heard in months.

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  3. TUAD,

    "Since you're a philosopher of note"

    Now that's funny.

    I will look at the paper, however, time may be a factor for me responding. Steve Hays is a machine, though, and he could pop out a 20 page response in 30 minutes, give or take.

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  4. Paul Manata said...

    "Steve Hays is a machine, though, and he could pop out a 20 page response in 30 minutes, give or take."

    While I appreciate the compliment, the credit really goes to my creator–Dr. Miles Bennett Dyson.

    ReplyDelete
  5. "Does it make any sense to claim simultaneously that God could and did make a perfect Bible using fallible human beings to do so, but could or did not make a perfect world containing fallible human beings?"

    http://exploringourmatrix.blogspot.com/2009/04/imperfect-world-imperfect-bible.html

    Of course, this fails to take into account the entire arc of God's plan for the world:

    creation>fall>redemption>glorification

    “All I do is refuse to make claims about the hypothetical "original text" that are not supported by the manuscripts we actually have. To suggest that God inspired original texts of Matthew and Luke that did not have a discrepancy between the dates Jesus is supposed to have been born, for instance, and that this discrepancy was introduced before the earliest manuscripts we currently have, is to suggest that God inspired an inerrant Bible and then allowed it to be rewritten so as to introduce errors so early as to leave no trace in the manuscript tradition. I prefer to deal with the Bible I have, not the Bible some people wish they had.”

    I don't know of any inerrantist scholar who resolves the alleged chronological discrepancy between Matthew and Luke on this issue by appealing to a mistranscription.

    So either this is a deliberate straw man argument by McGrath or else he's too lazy to actually read inerrantist scholars.

    Given his Catholic background, followed by his dalliance with Pentecostalism, I can well believe that he was never exposed to the most sophisticated version of Protestant theology.

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  6. Thanks Steve for that rejoinder to McGrath. I've posted it on his thread.

    As to whether McGrath deliberately set up a strawman or is lazy, it's not out of the realm of likelihood that it's both.

    Moreover, he doesn't grant you your argument that he has has to choose between attacking either inerrancy or attacking faithful textual transmission.

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  7. Steve Hays is a machineI've marvelled at both the quantity and quality of what he has to say; however, it seems more likely to me that he is just among those few who are, by the grace of God, turning one talent into 10 or 100 or something like that.

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  8. Paul said:
    ---
    viii) The response given to me was that God's revelation was infallible and I, being created, indeed; bearing the imago dei, am revelation.
    ---

    Dude, Paul. I say this with all manly love since I just watched Top Gun again and think you can be my wingman any day and all...

    But you SOOOOOO missed missile lock on this one.

    (Okay, I'll stop the Top Gun references--although seriously, it was on sale along with Ghost for $7.50, and who am I to turn down awesome '80s movies that I never bothered to buy back in the '80s now that it's almost the 2010s?)

    Anyway, the correct response is:

    1) God's revelation is infallible.
    2) Paul Manata is God's revelation.
    .: Paul Manata is infallible.

    I believe that's called Game-Set-Match.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Peter,

    I'm not too sure about that. :-)

    You believe in general revelation. You believe all creation reveals its creator. So, you believe a particular rock is revelation. Yet I don't think you would claim that the rock is infallible.

    Thoughts, Ice Man?

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  10. Paul, you don't have time to think up there. If you think, you're dead.

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  11. Paul,

    I enjoyed this post.

    I think whether or not (*) counts as a case of knowledge depends upon what you take the necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge to be. If you take knowledge to be accurately defined by the JTB account, then you are going to run into problems. A Gettier case could be constructed based upon the scenario presented in (*) and S would actually turn out to not have knowledge.

    What I'm getting at really is that I am interested to know that you take to be a proper characterization of knowledge in the first place.

    What do you think of the attempted answers to Gettier's conundrum, i.e. the No Falsity view, the No Defeator view, the Causal Theory, Reliabalism, etc.

    Also, the charge that you are a skeptic seems strange to me. Is he charging you with local or global skepticism?

    Thanks,

    Josh

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  12. Hi Josh,

    I largely follow Plantinga, Bergmann, and even some Williamson (and am currently trying to see how virtue ala Sosa &c. fit into the analysis). So, I don't hold to JTB. I am externalist. Proper functionalist. I also hold to a no-believed-defeater constraint (see the endone to Sudduth's paper on defeaters, if you haven't read it already).

    I also think the skeptical accusation is odd. I think he means it that my theory of knowledge reduces to global skepticism, yet I in fact know some thing on his epistemology. It's like a counterfactual global skepticism, perhaps.

    ReplyDelete