problem for reliabilist theories of epistemic justification. The old
evil demon problem is the skeptical problem that preoccupied
Descartes. Basically, it is the problem that arises once we
acknowledge that it is possible that someone might have had (apparent)
perceptual experiences and memories indistinguishable from our own
that were induced by a powerful demon bent on deceiving this hapless
subject. Since there is nothing introspectively available that would
allow us to state that this hapless subject's plight is not our own,
it is hard to determine what justification we might have to claim that
we truly know what the external world is like through our sensory
experience.
Unlike the old evil demon problem, the new one is not primarily a
skeptical problem. Imagine an epistemic counterpart of yours. That is,
imagine there is a subject who happens to believe precisely what you
believe, undergoes experiences indistinguishable from your own, seems
to recall and remember everything you recall and remember, finds
intuitive everything you find intuitive, and is disposed to reason in
precisely the same way you reason. Imagine that this subject has been
in precisely the same non-factive mental states as you have since
birth. Imagine that this subject is deceived by a Cartesian demon.
Then let us suppose that you are not. By bracketing the skeptical
worries, it seems that many of your beliefs about the external world
constitute knowledge. As your counterpart is systematically deceived,
her beliefs about the external world do not constitute knowledge.
Moreover, it seems that while you might suppose that your beliefs are
produced by processes that can reliably lead you to the truth, the
means by which your counterpart arrives at her beliefs are wholly
unreliable. On a reliabilist view, since you cannot have a justified
belief about some matter unless the means by which you arrive at that
belief is reliable, it seems the reliabilist ought to say that your
counterpart's beliefs are not justified. However, many would consider
that position to be strongly counterintuitive. They are convinced that
while your counterpart knows nothing, your counterpart is no less
justified in her beliefs than you are in yours. The new evil demon
problem is the problem of accommodating these intuitions about the
justificatory status of your counterpart's beliefs.
1. Introduction
When the new evil demon problem first surfaced in the literature
(Cohen and Lehrer (1983) and Cohen (1984)), it surfaced as a problem
for reliabilists about justification. Consider Goldman's
process-reliabilist account of justification:
R:
S's belief that p is justified iff the processes that produced S's
belief are reliable in the kind of environment in which S's belief was
formed and there is no reliable process the subject has such that if
this process were used as well this would result in the subject's not
believing p (1979: 20).
The problem Goldman faced was that of trying to show how this simple
and intuitively powerful argument could go wrong:
1. Our deceived counterparts are no less justified in their beliefs
than we are in ours.
2. The processes that produce our deceived counterparts' beliefs
are wholly unreliable.
3. It is possible for someone's beliefs to be justified even if the
processes that produced those beliefs are not reliable.
This conclusion contradicts the reliabilist thesis that reliability is
necessary for justification. It is backed by the widely reported
intuition that supports (1), which states that our counterparts are no
less justified in their beliefs than we are in ours. Assuming that we
are in fact justified in our beliefs, it seems we ought to acknowledge
that they are justified in their beliefs. In turn, should we reject
reliabilism? Below, we shall consider reliabilist responses to the
argument.
2. Reliabilist Responses
a. Denial
Although some might reject (R) upon considering the new evil demon
thought experiment, some do not. It seems most epistemologists who
have discussed the problem in the literature do have the intuition
that underwrites (1), but few intuitions are universally shared. Some
defend reliabilism by denying the relevant intuitions. Others say that
if your beliefs about the external world are induced by hallucinatory
experiences, you do not have the right to believe what you do; rather,
you only appear to have that right. Bach (1985), Brewer (1997), Engel
(1992), and Sutton (2005, 2007) have denied that our counterparts'
beliefs are justified. If we accept that you have a right to believe
only those beliefs you would be justified in holding, this response
concedes nothing. It simply denies the claim described as being
supported by ordinary intuition.
What is wrong with asserting that the beliefs of our deceived
counterparts cannot be justified? There have been at least three ways
of trying to bolster the appeal to intuition in the literature. First,
Cohen suggested that this response indicates a failure to appreciate
that justification is fundamentally a normative notion:
My argument [against reliabilism] hinges on viewing justification
as a normative notion. Intuitively, if S's belief is appropriate to
the available evidence, he is not to be held responsible for
circumstances beyond his ken (1984: 282).
Second, some hold the view that justification is a deontological
notion. That is to say, a belief is justified when that belief can be
held without violating any of your epistemic duties. It seems wrong to
some to say that our deceived counterparts have failed to fulfill
their epistemic duties. Haven't they "done their duty," provided that
they reflect on the evidence available to them and judge that things
are for them the way that we think things are for us? Plantinga (1993:
14) suggests that it is part of our traditional view that "you are
properly blamed for failing to do something A if and only if it is
your duty to do A (and you fail to do it)." If there is an epistemic
duty to refrain from believing any belief for which there is not
sufficient justification to hold and if we accept R, it seems to
follow that our epistemic counterparts are properly blamed for failing
to refrain from believing the mundane propositions that seem to them
to be immediately verified through experience (for example, that they
have hands, that the sun is shining, etc…). Surely that is too harsh.
Third, some hold the view, defended by Langsam (2008: 79), on which "a
justified belief is [simply] a belief that is held in a rational way."
Few are willing to characterize our deceived counterparts as
irrational for believing falsely that they have hands.
In light of these responses, one might say that if you deny that your
deceived counterparts are justified in their beliefs, you should be
willing to say that your deceived counterparts are irrational, that
they are blameworthy, and that they are less than fully responsible.
If you say that they are irresponsible, it seems that you have all but
done away with the category of the non-culpable mistake. The beliefs
of our deceived counterparts are mistaken, to be sure, but they reason
just as carefully as we do. If you are to charge them with
irrationality, it seems there ought to be some way of identifying
where their reasoning goes wrong. If you consider them blameworthy, it
seems you will be hard pressed to avoid the unpalatable skeptical view
that anyone who believes propositions about the external world ought
to know better than to do so. It seems to be part of our ordinary
practice to say that if two subjects are perfectly alike in terms of
how things seem to them, the two are equally blameworthy for their
inferences. (This, too, is subject to controversy. Gibbons (2006) and
challenges the idea that credit and blame depend only on the internal
factors common to our counterparts and us.) Some will say that these
are not costs we should be willing to pay.
Not everyone believes these are consequences of denying that our
deceived counterparts' beliefs are justified. It seems that
justification might be a normative notion even if it is not a
normative notion that depends only on matters that are within the
subject's ken (that is, a normative notion that depends only on
factors that determine what a subject's perspective is like or are
accessible to the subject). Permissibility is a normative notion. We
often excuse people for performing impermissible acts when the facts
in virtue of which these acts were impermissible were facts of which
the subject is non-culpably ignorant. If this is so, reliabilists can
agree with Cohen that justification is a normative notion while
denying that justification is among the normative notions that in no
way depends on factors beyond our ken.
Cohen does suggest that by stating that justification is a normative
notion, he is asserting that it does not depend on factors for which
the subject cannot be held responsible. So, perhaps he thinks we ought
to sever the connection between justification and any normative notion
that depends (in part) upon factors beyond those we can be faulted for
failing to take account of. Perhaps he thinks we can only fail to have
justified beliefs if we can be blamed for believing what we do. It is
worth noting that in his remarks concerning blameworthiness, Plantinga
(1993) immediately qualifies his initial remark quoted above by saying
that his remarks concern only "subjective" duty. On the ordinary
conception of objective duty, one might non-culpably fail to do what
one ought to do. If justification is a matter of fulfilling one's
objective duty and the failure to fulfill such duties does not mean
that the subject is culpable for the failure, it does not follow from
the claim that our deceived counterparts believe without justification
that they are properly blamed for so doing. (See Bergmann (2006:
77-105) for further discussion of this point.)
Finally, the identification of the rationally held belief or
reasonably held belief with the justified belief is itself a matter of
controversy. Sutton (2005, 2007) rejects this identification and
attributes much of what he regards as misplaced antipathy towards
externalist accounts of justification, such as reliabilism, as
stemming from conflating the two notions. It would be unfair to
suggest that he believes that subjects who believe without sufficient
justification are less than fully rational or reasonable. Again,
suppose we think of the justified belief as the permissibly held
belief and allow for the possibility of non-culpable, but wrongly
held, belief. It seems that if a subject were normatively competent
(that is, the subject is not an infant, not subject to brainwashing,
and so forth), it would only be proper to excuse them for their
failings if we thought that they arrived at their beliefs in a
rational way.
Rather than try to explain away the intuitions underwriting the new
evil demon argument against reliabilism, the trend in the literature
has been to try to accommodate these intuitions. Below, I shall
discuss five strategies for trying to reconcile the reliability's
approach with seemingly anti-reliabilist intuitions.
b. Normal Worlds Reliabilism
Goldman tried to reformulate reliabilism so that it did not carry with
it the implication that our systematically deceived counterparts
cannot have justified beliefs:
Rnw:
S's belief that p is justified only if the processes that produced
S's belief are reliable in normal worlds (1986: 107).
Because the new evil demon argument concerns the necessity of
reliability for justification, we need not consider what additional
conditions might be needed for stating the set of sufficient
conditions for justification. Note the crucial difference between (R)
and (Rnw). According to (R), someone's belief can be justified only if
the processes that produce that belief are reliable in the very
circumstances they operate or are imagined to operate in. According to
(Rnw), what matters is that the processes that produce a belief are
reliable in normal worlds. Normal worlds are worlds in which our
general beliefs about the actual world are true. A general belief we
all seem to share is that perceptual experience is a good guide to our
immediate surroundings. In evaluating our beliefs and the beliefs of
our epistemic counterparts, we have to identify the processes by which
we all arrive at our beliefs (for example, taking experience at face
value) and then ask whether such processes are reliable in normal
worlds. Since the processes that lead our counterparts as well as
ourselves to hold our beliefs about our immediate surroundings are
reliable in normal worlds (that is, it is part of our very conception
of such a world that perception is generally reliable in such worlds),
the beliefs of our counterparts do not turn out to be unjustified. The
conflict between reliabilism and the intuition that our deceived
counterparts are justified has been removed.
Normal worlds reliabilism never really caught on. First, it seemed to
have the unhappy implication that a process such as clairvoyance could
not confer justification under any possible circumstance. In normal
worlds, clairvoyance is unreliable. So, in any world in which it is
reliable, that world is abnormal. It seems wrong to some to say that
there could be no possible world in which clairvoyance generated
knowledge much in the way that, say, perception does. Yet, in
evaluating the beliefs of these subjects, (Rnw) states that we can
only say that their beliefs are justified if they would be reliable
not in the circumstances in which they are used, but reliable in
worlds that are normal (Lemos 2007: 96). Second, it seems that the
normal worlds reliabilist has to say that we cannot coherently
question the justification of those beliefs that determine our
conception of what a normal world is like. A normal world is a world
in which our general beliefs about the actual world are true. The
claim that those general beliefs are justified would seem to be
trivial, according to the normal worlds reliabilist. Yet, it seems to
be no trivial matter whether those beliefs are in fact justified
(Peacocke 2004: 133).
c. Weak Justification and Strong Justification
Goldman was not satisfied with the normal worlds reliabilist response
to the new evil demon problem and sought to accommodate the intuitions
causing trouble for (R) by appealing to a distinction between what he
calls "weak" and "strong" justification. According to Goldman, a
belief might be either strongly justified or weakly justified:
SJ:
S's belief that p is strongly justified only if the processes that
produced S's belief are reliable in the kind of environment in which
S's belief was formed.
WJ:
S's belief that p is weakly justified if and only if S is blameless
for believing p but believes p on the basis of a process that is
unreliable in the circumstances in which S's belief is produced.
How does this distinction help? Goldman (1988: 59) tries to
accommodate the intuition that our deceived counterparts' beliefs are
justified by saying that their beliefs are weakly justified. Having
drawn the distinction between weak and strong justification, he has
shown that there is a sense in which even the uncompromising
reliabilist can say that our deceived counterparts' beliefs are
justified while saying that there is also a sense in which no belief
can be justified unless the processes that produced it were reliable
in the circumstances in which they produced that belief.
Critics cried foul. BonJour remarked (2002: 248), "The question is
whether this really accommodates the intuition … which seems to be
that the demon world people are at least as justified in their beliefs
as we are in ours." BonJour seems to be suggesting that what the
intuitive observation critics of reliabilism want explained is not how
there is some sense in which the beliefs of the demonically deceived
are justified. What they want to see is how the reliabilist can
explain how it is that the demonically deceived are no less justified
than we are. Goldman wants to distinguish between two types of
justification, assigning one type to the demonically deceived and
another type to us. BonJour seems to suggest that while this might
take care of the problem by saying that our deceived counterparts are
irrational, unreasonable, or blameworthy, it does not take care of the
problem that it seems, intuitively, that there is a sense in which
they are as well aware of as we are.
It might seem that this problem could be mitigated if Goldman made a
simple modification to his proposal. As it stands, no belief can be
both weakly justified and strongly justified. A belief is weakly
justified only if it is blamelessly held and ill formed. A belief is
strongly justified only if reliable processes produce that belief.
Suppose Goldman were to modify (WJ) as follows:
WJ*:
S's belief that p is weakly justified if and only if S is blameless
for believing p.
Someone might wonder why a reliabilist would propose (WJ*) since the
concept of reliability does not figure in the formulation of (WJ*),
but the concept of reliability does not play any significant role in
(WJ), either. Moreover, it is not entirely clear why Goldman would
insist that there is a kind of justification that requires
unreliability. On this modified proposal, we can say that our beliefs
are both strongly justified and weakly* justified. We can satisfy
BonJour's demand that we not only say that there is a perfectly good
sense in which their beliefs are "justified," but also that there is a
sense in which we are no more justified in our beliefs than they are
in theirs. Our beliefs and the beliefs of our deceived counterparts
are all weakly* justified. The problem with this proposal, however, is
that it seems not to go far enough. If someone has been brainwashed
into believing p, it seems they would be weakly* justified in
believing p. Suppose we might know p on the basis of veridical
perception and our demonically deceived counterparts might believe p
on the basis of a subjectively indistinguishable veridical perception.
As Audi (1993: 28) stresses, it seems there is more going for the
beliefs of our demonically deceived counterparts than there is for
someone who has been brainwashed into thinking that p is true.
Unfortunately, (WJ*) fails to capture this. Moreover, (SJ) cannot help
us distinguish between the beliefs of the deceived and the beliefs of
the brainwashed since we are supposing that neither arrives at their
beliefs by reliable means.
d. Apt-Justification Beliefs and Adroit-Justification Beliefs
Sosa (1991) maintains that a justified belief is arrived at through
the exercise of one or more intellectual virtues. In turn, he
maintains that nothing could count as an intellectual virtue unless it
would lead us to a high ratio of true beliefs through its exercise.
Comesana (2002) and Sosa (2003: 159-61) have tried to solve the new
evil demon problem by drawing a distinction between two ways in which
we might use the notion of an intellectual virtue in appraising
someone's beliefs. We can say that someone's belief about p is
"apt-justified" only if the belief is acquired through the exercise of
an intellectual virtue that is reliable in the circumstances in which
that belief is formed. The beliefs formed by the demonically deceived
are, unfortunately, not apt-justified. However, we can say that their
beliefs are "adroit-justified." A belief is adroit-justified only if
the belief is acquired in an intellectually virtuous way where this is
partially a matter of acquiring beliefs in a way that would be
reliable if only the subject did not suffer the misfortune of being in
the inhospitable epistemic environment in which a demon is bent on
deceiving our intellectually virtuous counterparts. The suggestion is
that in some contexts we refer to someone's belief as justified if the
belief is produced in such a way that beliefs of that type will
reliably turn out to be correct in the very circumstances they are
formed while in other contexts we refer to someone's belief as
justified if the processes would have reliably led to the truth here.
Sosa (1985) considers this latter notion of adroit-justification as
being largely a matter of the coherence of the attitudes of the
subject being evaluated, and since our deceived counterparts' beliefs
are no less coherent than our own, we are entitled to say that there
is a sense in which justification requires reliability
(apt-justification) and a sense in which our deceived counterparts are
no less justified than we are (adroit-justification).
Goldman (1993: 281) objected to this proposal by saying that ordinary
folk are in no way inclined to engage in the sort of epistemic
appraisal that would make use of both of these notions. If Comesana
and Sosa are suggesting that their account accommodates folk intuition
because the folk use both of their notions of justification, Comesana
and Sosa seem to be suggesting that we describe our beliefs as
"justified" because the processes that produced them were reliable in
the circumstances in which they were deployed (that is, they are
apt-justified) while we state that our counterparts' beliefs are
"justified" because the processes that produced them were reliable in
circumstances other than those in which those processes were deployed
(that is, they are adroit-justified). Goldman thinks that it is not
part of our ordinary practice of epistemic evaluation to make
attributions of justification by making them relative to these
different kinds of circumstances in this way.
e. Home World Reliabilism
Majors and Sawyer have defended a version of reliabilism–home world
reliabilism– which states that what is necessary for justified belief
is not reliability in normal worlds or reliability in the scenario in
which a belief is actually formed, but instead says this:
Rhw:
S's belief that p is justified only if the processes that produced
S's beliefs are reliable in S's home world understood as that set of
environments relative to which the natures of her intentional contents
are individuated (2005: 272).
To understand this view, it is important to understand something about
the anti-individualist approach to the individuation of intentional
contents. It is now widely believed that features of the external
environment are among the conditions that go towards determining the
contents of our intentional states. It has been suggested w that it is
possible for two individuals who are microphysical duplicates to have
different beliefs if they were raised in different environments and
the further view that the contents of their perceptual states could
also differ in light of differences in their environments. If the
first individual had been raised in a linguistic community such as
ours where "gold" was used to refer to a metallic element which had 79
protons in its nucleus and the second individual was raised in a
linguistic community similar to ours that used "gold" to refer to a
superficially similar metal which did not have 79 protons in its
nucleus, what these two speakers would assert if they said "That is
gold" would differ. For example, what the first speaker says might be
false if said while pointing at a hunk of fool's gold even if what the
second speaker says could be true if said while pointing at the same
hunk. Suppose these speakers then added, "Well, that is what I
believe, at any rate." Just as, "That is gold," would express
different propositions, "I believe that that is gold" would express
different propositions. Unless we are prepared to assert that one of
these speakers cannot correctly self-ascribe beliefs, we have to
accept that their assertions and beliefs differ in content. The
conditions that determine what these individuals believe include their
"narrow" conditions (that is, the conditions held constant when we say
that these two individuals are microphysical duplicates) and the
conditions found in their environment (that is, the conditions that
determine whether they have been interacting with gold or some
superficially similar metal that is not gold).
To see why this matters, note that in setting up the new evil demon
thought experiment, we were asked to imagine that there was an
individual who is mentally just like us (that is, an epistemic
counterpart), who was situated in an environment that is radically
different from our own insofar as this subject was systematically
deceived and cut off from causally interacting with her environment in
the ways that we do. Anti-individualists might say that this is latent
nonsense. An anti-individualist can say that it is impossible for a
subject to satisfy the first condition and be mentally just like us
whilst being situated in a radically different environment because a
condition necessary to being mentally just like us is that the subject
causally interacts with the kinds of things that we do. The home world
reliabilist can say that the new evil demon thought experiment does
not cause trouble for reliabilist accounts of justification because
when we describe a systematically deceived subject, we are not
describing a genuine possibility in which an epistemic counterpart of
ours has beliefs produced by wholly unreliable processes. Thus, the
home world reliabilist can say that if a subject is an epistemic
counterpart of ours, that subject's beliefs are justified and to the
extent that this subject's mental life is like ours, we have to assume
that this subject is not prevented from causally interacting with the
environment in the way that the systematically deceived subjects would
have to be.
As Comesana (2002: 264) notes, however, it isn't clear that an appeal
to anti-individualism alone can take care of the problem because the
problem can reemerge in the form of "switching" cases. Let us suppose
that anti-individualism is true and that it is impossible for a
subject who has been tormented by a Cartesian demon from birth to be
an epistemic counterpart of ours. By depriving this subject of the
opportunity to causally interact with an environment like ours, the
demon prevents this individual from acquiring the kinds of intentional
thought contents that we have. What if a subject were allowed to
acquire the kinds of thought contents we have by interacting with her
environment for a period of thirty years, but the day after the
subject's thirtieth birthday the demon decides to cause her to
hallucinate and so deceive her about her surroundings? Intuitively, it
seems that this newly deceived subject is no less justified in forming
her beliefs, but her beliefs will now be wrong as a rule. The home
world reliabilist might say that their view delivers this verdict
because if the subject had been forming beliefs in the kind of
epistemically hospitable environment in which she initially had been
forming her beliefs, her beliefs would have largely turned out to be
correct. This seems to require the home world reliabilist to
individuate environments in such a way that with the demon's decision
to start deceiving our hapless subject, the subject is thereby "moved"
into an environment that is not part of the "home world". I suppose
that those sympathetic to Goldman's (1979) original formulation of
reliabilism would be bothered by the implication that so far as the
facts that matter to justification are concerned, nothing of
significance happened when the demon decided to deceive the subject.
It is also odd that on the home world reliabilist view, if the subject
thought to herself just after the switch that the beliefs formed after
her thirtieth birthday were justified, that belief would be true, but
if the subject inferred that those very same beliefs are produced by
reliable processes, that belief would be false.
It is worth noting that if the home world reliabilist response is to
be complete, it must mention something about the epistemic status of a
demonically tormented subject's beliefs. Even if no subject tormented
from birth by a demon has thoughts or perceptual experiences with the
contents that ours have, unless the home world reliabilist is going to
say that such subjects have no beliefs at all, we can ask whether such
a subject is justified in believing whatever they happen to believe.
We know that the home world reliabilist will have to say that if these
subjects have justified beliefs, there must be some matters about
which their beliefs are reliably correct. It is hard to imagine what
these subjects might have reliably correct beliefs about. It is also
worth noting that the view's verdicts might not be quite in line with
the intuitions to which the critics of reliabilism appeal. Suppose
that philosophers discovered that some sort of error theory is true.
Although the folk might believe things are colored, noisy, good, or
what have you, philosophers learn that the world contains no secondary
qualities or moral properties. Are we to say that in light of this
hard-earned philosophical discovery, the ordinary judgments that
ordinary folk make about colors or moral properties can never be
justified? It seems that the home world reliabilist would have to say
that if we were to discover that a subject's beliefs are not reliably
correct by taking account of facts of which ordinary folk are
non-culpably ignorant, we would have to describe their beliefs as
unjustified. It is not clear that this is consistent with the basic
intuition that underwrites the new evil demon argument.
f. Personal Justification and Doxastic Justification
According to Bach (1985) and Engel (1992), the intuitions thought to
cause trouble for reliabilism do no such thing. They think we should
grant that our deceived counterparts are no less justified than we
are. Intuition confirms this. Nevertheless, these authors claim that
this observation is consistent with R. While R does imply that the
beliefs of our deceived counterparts are not justified, it does not
carry with it the further implication that the systematically deceived
believers are any less justified than we are. Following Bach, these
authors claim that there is an important difference between
ascriptions of "personal" justification (that is, ascriptions of the
form "S is justified in believing p") and ascriptions of "doxastic"
justification (that is, ascriptions of the form "S's belief that p is
justified"). Both ascriptions attest to the fact that something is
justified. Reliabilism is a theory about the conditions under which a
belief is justified and ascriptions of doxastic justification turn out
to be true. The intuition underwriting the new evil demon argument,
according to Bach, concern ascriptions of personal justification.
Since the reliabilist need not say that any justified believer who
believes p has a justified belief that p is the case, the reliabilist
view is consistent with the intuition that our systematically deceived
counterparts are all justified in believing what they do.
The basic idea behind this proposal is simple enough. If epistemic
evaluation is concerned with believer qua believer, it is not
surprising that we end up saying that our systematically deceived
counterparts are no less justified than we are because they reason
just as well as we do and take just as much care as we do. If
epistemic evaluation is concerned with our beliefs, there is a
perfectly good sense in which our beliefs turn out to be better than
theirs (their beliefs cannot constitute knowledge because the
processes by which their beliefs are produced are unreliable, their
beliefs are all false, etc…). In asserting that a believer is
justified, we are asserting that the believer does not hold the
beliefs she does because of some defect in her. In asserting that a
belief is justified, we are asserting that there is not some defect in
the belief or the means by which the belief is produced that should
lead us to give up that belief.
Perhaps the most serious difficulty for this proposal is that it can
only accommodate the relevant intuitions by saying that we are just as
(personally) justified in our beliefs as our counterparts are in
theirs while denying that their beliefs are (doxastically) justified.
According to Kvanvig and Menzel (1990), ascriptions of personal
justification of the form "S is justified in believing p" logically
entail ascriptions of doxastic justification of the form "S's belief
that p is justified." If this account of the logic of justification
ascriptions is correct, then we cannot consistently say that while our
deceived counterparts are justified in their beliefs, their beliefs
are not justified. argues that there is no entailment from ascriptions
of personal justification to ascriptions of doxastic justification and
that we need the personal/doxastic justification distinction to make
sense of the more familiar distinction between excuses and
justifications.
3. Newer Evil Demon Problems
The original new evil demon problem was a problem for reliabilism. The
intuitions thought to cause trouble for the reliabilist now play a
role in the internalism/externalism debate, discussions of the nature
of evidence, and the literature on warranted assertion.
a. The Internalism/Externalism Debate
Reliabilism is not the only account of epistemic justification that
seems to deliver the wrong verdict by classifying the beliefs of our
deceived counterparts as unjustified. Consider the
proper-functionalist account of epistemic justification defended by
Bergmann (2006). While Plantinga (1993) defends a proper-functionalist
account of warrant, warrant is typically taken to be distinct from
justification and Bergmann intends his account to be one of
justification rather than warrant. According to the
proper-functionalist account of justification, a belief can be
justified only if the belief is the product of cognitive faculties
that are functioning properly in an environment in which those
faculties will reliably lead to the truth and for which that faculty
was "designed" to function. The proper-functionalist position about
justification can assert that our systematically deceived counterparts
can be justified in their beliefs provided that cognitive faculties
that would be truth-conducive in the environments for which they are
designed to operate produce their beliefs. However, it seems they must
concede that if a counterpart of ours lacks cognitive faculties that
reliably lead to truth in the environments in which they were designed
to function, this counterpart could never have justified beliefs in
spite of being our counterpart. So, it seems that proper-functionalism
is at odds with the intuition underwriting the first premise in the
argument against reliabilism. This point is not lost on Bergmann
(2006: 136), who concedes that only some of our systematically
mistaken epistemic counterparts have justified beliefs.
Consider also the knowledge account of epistemic justification
defended by Sutton (2005, 2007) or the knowledge account of epistemic
reasons defended by According to the knowledge account of
justification, a belief can be justified only if it constitutes
knowledge. According to the knowledge account of epistemic reasons, p
is an epistemic reason of S's if S knows p. We know that our deceived
counterparts do not know their external world beliefs to be true. The
knowledge account of justification implies that our deceived
counterparts do not have adequate justification for their beliefs. If
you think that it is possible for S to have a justified belief that p
is the case only if p can serve as an epistemic reason for S to
believe obvious consequences of p, it follows from the knowledge
account of epistemic reasons that our deceived counterparts' external
world beliefs are unjustified.
According to Wedgwood (2002), the intuitions that underwrite the
argument against reliabilism underwrite an argument against all
versions of externalism about justification. If a theory of epistemic
justification is committed to saying that some subject's belief about
p can be justified only if some condition C obtains such that C does
not strongly supervene on the subject's (non-factive) mental states,
it seems that this theory will be at odds with the intuition that
underwrites (1). He maintains that the new evil demon thought
experiment does not merely tell us what justification is not. It tells
us something about what justification is. It tells us that epistemic
justification is an internalist notion. It tells us that so long as
two subjects are in precisely the same (non-factive) mental states,
their beliefs will attain the same justificatory status.
Nelson (2002) has further claimed that the intuitions underwriting the
new evil demon argument tell us something about the epistemic status
of epistemic principles (that is, principles that state non-normative
conditions in virtue of which we might have prima facie justification
for our beliefs). He suggests that our intuitions provide us with a
priori justification for believing that certain modes of belief
formation (for example, perception) confer justification. If this is
right, then it seems that the externalist position regarding epistemic
justification faces a further difficulty. It seems that on some
externalist views (for example, Goldman's (1979) reliabilist account
or Bergmann's (2006) proper-functionalist account), it is a purely
contingent matter that perceptual experience provides justification
for our beliefs about the external world. If an externalist were to
agree with Nelson that we have a priori justification for saying that
perceptual experience confers justification, it seems that they will
have to say that this proposition is a contingent proposition for
which we have a priori justification.
b. Evidence
The new evil demon problem also seems to be a problem for externalist
accounts of evidence. Internalists, such as Conee and Feldman (2004),
maintain that if two subjects are in precisely the same (non-factive)
mental states, they will necessarily share the same evidence. The
externalists deny this and assertthat it is possible for two subjects
to be in precisely the same (non-factive) mental states while having
different bodies of evidence. Some epistemologists (for example, Hyman
(1999), Unger (1975), and Williamson (2000)) defend views of evidence
in the neighborhood of this view:
E = K:
S's evidence includes the proposition that p if S knows p.
According to E = K, since you and some deceived counterpart of yours
know different propositions to be true, there are propositions
included in your evidence that are not included in your deceived
counterpart's evidence. To make this concrete, suppose that you know
you have hands. Your counterpart's "experience" of the external world
is nothing more than a series of demonically induced hallucinations.
Your counterpart might be a handless, disembodied spirit living in a
dark world. According to E = K, while your evidence will include the
proposition that you have a hand, your counterpart's evidence will not
include this proposition. Some find this implication of E = K
problematic. First, says it is intuitively correct to say that the two
of you share the same evidence. Perhaps this is what explains the
comparative epistemic judgment that the two of you are equally
justified in your beliefs about the external world. Second, Silins
(2005) notes that if we think that a subject's degree of confidence
ought (ideally) to match their evidence, E = K has the odd implication
that you ought to have a higher degree of confidence in the belief
that you have hands than your counterpart should in her (false) belief
that she has hands.
c. Warranted Assertion
Let us say that a subject's assertion that p is the case is warranted
if the subject's assertion that p is true is epistemically
permissible. That is to say, the subject's assertion is warranted when
it is not the case that the subject ought to refrain from asserting
that p is true for epistemic reasons. One of the more popular accounts
of warranted assertion is the knowledge account of assertion, ascribed
to byDeRose (1996), Slote (1979), Sutton (2005, 2007), Williamson
(2000), and Unger (1975). According to this account, assertion is
governed by the knowledge norm:
K:
S ought not assert that p unless S knows p.
Some (for example Weiner (2005)) have defended the weaker externalist
view that assertion is governed by the truth norm:
T:
S ought not assert that p unless p is true.
Suppose we were to grant that our intuitions concerning our deceived
counterparts did in fact show that their beliefs are justified.
According to Lackey (2008), the intuitions that cause trouble for
externalist accounts of epistemic justification cause trouble for
externalist accounts of warranted assertion on which knowledge or
truth is necessary for permissible assertion. Just as it seems
intuitive to some to say that our epistemic counterparts' beliefs are
justified, it seems to her that our epistemic counterparts' assertions
are warranted.
It seems that epistemologists either do not share Lackey's intuitions
about warranted assertion or do not think that they ought to
accommodate those intuitions in their accounts of warranted assertion.
It is interesting to note that many who defend externalist accounts of
warranted assertion are unwilling to defend externalist accounts of
epistemic justification. But, it might be that this is an untenable
combination of views. For, if Sutton (2005, 2007) is right, you cannot
be justified in believing what you lack warrant for asserting:
J:
If S's belief that p is justified and S asserts that p is the case,
S's assertion that p is the case is warranted.
If our deceived counterparts' beliefs are justified and there is
nothing wrong with their holding them, how could it be wrong for them
to assert that their beliefs are true? Since, according to (K) or (T),
it would be wrong to assert that something is true unless it actually
is true, those who endorse (K) or (T) either ought to say that our
deceived counterparts do not have sufficient justification for their
beliefs or deny (J) and say that a person's beliefs can be justified
even if the person lacks sufficient warrant for asserting what she
justifiably believes to be the case. At any rate, the arguments that
have been offered for (J) suggest that the position of those who adopt
internalist accounts of justification because of intuitions about our
systematically deceived counterparts while defending externalist
accounts of warranted assertion cannot have it both ways.
4. Conclusion
The new evil demon problem has been a persistent problem for
reliabilists for over two decades. It is most unclear how someone can
consistently maintain that the justification of our beliefs depends on
the reliability of the processes that produce them while at the same
time acknowledging that our systematically deceived counterparts are
fully justified in their beliefs. The problem is now not a problem for
reliabilists only. The thought experiment Cohen introduced into the
literature and the intuitions it elicits now play a significant role
in the literature on the internalism/externalism debate, the nature of
evidence, and the conditions of warranted assertability.
5. References and Further Reading
Audi, R. 1993. The Structure of Justification. New York: Cambridge
University Press.
Bach, K. 1985. A Rationale for Reliabilism. The Monist 68: 246-63.
Bergmann, M. 2006. Justification Without Awareness. (New York: Oxford
University Press).
BonJour, L. 2002. Internalism and Externalism. In P. Moser (ed.) The
Oxford Handbook of Epistemology. (New York: Oxford University Press):
234-64.
Brewer, B. 1997. Foundations of Perceptual Knowledge. American
Philosophical Quarterly 34: 41-55.
Cohen, S. 1984. Justification and Truth. Philosophical Studies 46: 279-96.
Cohen, S. and K. Lehrer. 1983. Justification, Truth, and Knowledge. Synthese 55.
Comesana, J. 2002. The Diagonal and the Demon. Philosophical Studies
110: 249-66.
Conee, E. and R. Feldman. 2004. Evidentialism. (New York: Oxford
University Press).
DeRose, K. 1996. Knowledge, Assertion, and Lotteries. Australasian
Journal of Philosophy 74: 568-80.
Engel, M. 1992. Personal and Doxastic Justification. Philosophical
Studies 67: 133-51.
Gibbons, J. 2006. Access Externalism. Mind 115: 19-39.
Goldman, A. 1979. What is Justified Belief? In G. Pappas (ed.)
Justification and Knowledge (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press):
1-23.
Goldman, A. 1986. Epistemology and Cognition. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press).
Goldman, A. 1988. Strong and Weak Justification. Philosophical
Perspectives 2: 51-69.
Goldman, A. 1993. Epistemic Folkways and Scientific Epistemology.
Philosophical Issues 3: 271-85.
Knowledge and Action. Journal of Philosophy Hyman, J. 1999. How
Knowledge Works. Philosophical Quarterly 49: 433-51.
Kvanvig, J. and C. Menzel. 1990. The Basic Notion of Justification.
Philosophical Studies 59: 235-61.
Lackey, J. 2008. Learning from Words. (New York: Oxford University Press).
Langsam, H. 2008. Rationality, Justification, and the
Internalism/Externalism Debate. Erkenntnis 68: 79-101.
Lemos, N. 2007. An Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge. (New York:
Cambridge University Press).
Littlejohn, C. The Externalist's Demon. Canadian Journal of Philosophy.
Majors, B. and S. Sawyer. 2005. The Epistemological Argument for
Content Externalism. Philosophical Perspectives 19: 257-80.
Nelson, M. 2002. What Justification Could Not Be. International
Journal of Philosophical Studies 10: 265-81.
Peacocke, C. 2004. The Realm of Reason. (New York: Oxford University Press).
Plantinga, A. 1993. Warrant: The Current Debate. (New York: Oxford
University Press).
Silins, N. 2005. Deception and Evidence. Philosophical Perspectives 19: 375-404.
Slote, M. 1979. Assertion and Belief. In J. Dancy (ed.) Papers on
Language and Logic (Keele: Keele University Library): 177-90.
Sosa, E. 1985. The Coherence of Virtue and the Virtue of Coherence.
Synthese 64: 3-28.
Sosa, E. 1991. Knowledge in Perspective. (New York: Cambridge University Press).
Sosa, E. 2003. Epistemic Justification: Internalism vs. Externalism,
Foundations vs. Virtues (Malden, MA: Blackwell).
Sutton, J. 2005. Stick To What You Know. Nous 39: 359-96.
Sutton, J. 2007. Without Justification. (Cambridge, MA: MIT University Press).
Turri, J. The Ontology of Epistemic Reasons. Nous.
Unger, P. 1975. Ignorance. (New York: Oxford University Press).
Weatherson, B. Deontology and the Demon. Journal of Philosophy.
Wedgwood, R. 2002. Internalism Explained. Philosophy and
Phenomenological Research 65: 349-69.
Weiner, M. 2005. Must We Know What We Say? Philosophical Review 114: 227-51.
Williamson, T. 2000. Knowledge and its Limits. (New York: Oxford
University Press)
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