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M4 Justification Part 1 Noetic Structure
Transcript
Philosophy and Contemporary Ideas (Liberty University)
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MODULE/WEEK 4 PRESENTATION: AN OVERVIEW OF ISSUES IN
CONTEMPORARY EPISTEMIC JUSTIFICATION PART 1: NOETIC STRUCTURE
TRANSCRIPT
S1:
Hello, and welcome to another presentation in Philosophy 201: Philosophy and Contemporary
Ideas. I’m Dr. Mark Foreman. I want to continue our discussion in epistemology, and
specifically continue our discussion of the elements of our definition of knowledge. We define
knowledge as justified, true beliefs. We’ve talked about beliefs, where they come from, we’ve
talked about truth theories, and now I want to talk about justification. Today, in contemporary
epistemology, the primary issue—the primary discussion—is mostly about this issue of
justification. And it’s a very complex issue, and is very challenging to understand. I’m dividing
our discussion on the overview of issues in contemporary epistemic justification into two parts.
I’m going to talk about noetic structure in this part and in the second part I’m going to talk about
epistemic obligations.
S2:
There are two debates going on right now in contemporary issues in epistemic justification.
1. One of these concerns something called our noetic structure. This is the structure of
one’s system of beliefs. It kind of deals with the question, “How are our beliefs
related together?” In what way do they support one another? And we’re going to see
that there are two basic views concerning this idea: one is called foundationalism and
the other is called coherentism.
2. The other issue that is a major issue in contemporary epistemic justification has to do
with “Epistemic Obligations.” An epistemic obligation is the idea that we have a duty to
be responsible in justifying our beliefs—that we can’t just believe anything we want and
that we should have a good reason to do that. But it raises a very important question: in
order to say that we know something, do we really have to know, in fact, that we know
that or not? Is it possible to know something and not know that I know it?
That deals with another area where we will see two different views: internalism and externalism.
We are going to cover that more in our next presentation. In this presentation, I want to talk
mostly about noetic structure.
S3:
There are three characteristics of noetic structures I want to talk about. And I want to center
specifically on one of them.
The first characteristic I want to mention is that a person’s noetic structure includes the sum total
of everything that person believes.
·That would mean all of their true beliefs as well as all of their false beliefs—there are
some things you believe that are true and some things you believe that are false. Both
of those come under the area of your noetic structure.
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·It also includes beliefs that you are not currently thinking about. There are some beliefs
you have right now, I’m sure, about ethics, politics, or religion that right now you are
not thinking about, but they are still beliefs that you hold. That’s also part of your noetic
structure.
·These beliefs vary in their significance. They can be very trivial beliefs, such as what
you believe is the best thing to have for dinner tonight to something very important—like
whether or not God exists.
All of that is wrapped up in your noetic structure. And these beliefs are very person-centered.
What’s important to me may not necessarily be important to you. So there is a difference in
degree of importance concerning these beliefs. But all of these are involved in your noetic
structure.
S4:
A second characteristic of a person’s noetic structure is that a noetic structure recognizes the
differing degrees of certainty, firmness, and conviction with which people hold their
beliefs.
·We all hold some beliefs more firmly than we hold other beliefs—we recognize that. For
example, my belief that 2 + 2 = 4 I hold much more firmly than my belief, let’s say, that
there was a conspiracy involving the assassination of John F. Kennedy back in 1963. I
happen to believe there may be good evidence for a conspiracy there, but I certainly
don’t hold that belief anywhere near as firmly as I hold the belief that 2 + 2 = 4 or that
I’m sitting right now at my desk with my computer in front of me, talking to some
students online. So we hold some beliefs more firmly than we hold others, and we
recognize that in our noetic structure.
·There is a continuum, then, of degrees of belief. Some we hold very, very strongly,
some we hold less strongly, and some we hold less strongly than that. Some we may not
hold very strongly at all. And our noetic structure recognizes that continuum.
So we don’t have to hold all beliefs at exactly the same
level. S5:
The most important characteristic that I want to talk about is this third characteristic: a noetic
structure is characterized by how the beliefs are related together. Some of our beliefs are
unrelated. But most of them are related together in systems of justification; they justify one
another. For example, my belief that Abraham Lincoln was the 16th president of the United States
is based on my belief in the history books I’ve read. And my belief that those history books are
reliable is based upon the expert authorship of those history books—the persons who authored
them are experts. And my belief that I should listen to the experts is based upon my belief that it
is reasonable to listen to people who know what they are talking about. They’ve done the study.
They’ve done the research. They have the information, and I should trust them to have that.
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In other words, we recognize that most of our beliefs are formed by what we call an epistemic
chain. We believe proposition P because of proposition Q, and we believe proposition Q because
of proposition R. So there’s a chain of beliefs that goes on there.
Now, what is the nature of this chain? The nature of the chain depends upon how those beliefs
relate together. There are two main theories of how that happens: one is called foundationalism
and the other is called coherentism. Let’s look at them.
S6:
Foundationalism believes that all beliefs fall into two categories: you have some beliefs that we
call basic beliefs, and then all other beliefs are called non-basic beliefs. This idea is that some
beliefs, then, are more foundational than other beliefs. And we symbolize it with a triangle.
Belief P is based upon belief Q, which is more foundational than P. And Q is based on belief R,
which is even more foundational than Q. And finally, belief R is based upon some basic belief
that is the most foundational of all the beliefs.
The most foundational beliefs then are called properly basic beliefs. They are basic beliefs that
properly belong in that particular area. Properly basic beliefs are what we call first principles.
They don’t need any other beliefs to justify them. They—in a sense—justify themselves. We call
them first principles of knowledge.
There are two versions of foundationalism that we want to look at here. And these two versions
depend on differing views concerning two basic things:
1. What are the criteria in order for a belief to be considered a properly basic belief?
What does it have to meet?
2. The second difference we will see between these two has to do with what’s called the
basing relation. What is the nature of the basing relation? The basing relation has to do
with the relationship between the basic beliefs that are at the bottom of our
pyramid and all of the beliefs above that. What is the nature of their relationship?
We are going to see that the two different versions of foundationalism are going to differ on these
two areas: 1) the criteria for properly basic beliefs, and 2) the basing relation.
S7:
The first version of foundationalism is called classical or strong foundationalism. What are the
criteria in order for a belief to be considered properly basic under strong foundationalism? It has
to meet one of these three criteria:
1. First of all, it could be a self-evidential belief. By self-evidential, we mean something
that you can immediately see as true. You don’t need anything else to justify it. For
example, the phrase “the whole is greater than the parts”—that just seems to be right to
us. It seems obvious that you can’t have parts that are greater than the whole. The
whole is going to be greater than the parts, and so that is self-evidentially true.
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2. A second criteria is that the belief is incorrigible. When we say it is incorrigible, we mean
it is impossible for you to believe this and to be mistaken about it. For example, suppose I
feel pain in my hand right now. I know that I feel pain simply because I know that I feel
it. Therefore, that belief is considered incorrigible. Now, maybe it’s possible that there is
no relationship for why there is pain in my hand—there’s no reason for that. But the point
is that I still feel the pain. The fact that I believe that I feel the pain—that belief is
incorrigible. Whether the pain is actually there or not, I still believe that I feel it.
3. Finally, our third criteria is evident to the senses. For example, I look out and I see
green outside in the grass or the leaves. That is something that is evident to my senses,
and that’s something that is also a criteria for a properly basic belief.
If a belief has one of these criteria behind it, then it falls into the category of being properly
basic.
The other thing we want to talk about with strong foundationalism has to do with the basing
relation. What is the nature of that relationship? Under strong foundationalism, the basing
relation between non-basic and basic beliefs is primarily deductive. That means that the
truth of our basic beliefs guarantees the truth of our non-basic beliefs. Remember in
deduction we derive our conclusions that must be true, or necessarily are true. And therefore, if I
have a strong deductive relationship between these two, then, in fact, I can hold to that very
strongly. I know that one guarantees the other.
This form of foundationalism, classical or strong foundationalism, has been heavily criticized in
the past several decades. In fact, I believe you would find that very few people hold this
anymore. What are some of these criticisms?
1. One criticism says that these criteria may be sufficient, but are they necessary? Can
we have a basic belief that doesn’t fit into one of these three criteria? For example,
what about the belief that my memory is reliable? That doesn’t seem to be self-
evidential, incorrigible, or evident to the senses, and yet it seems to be pretty basic.
Many people argue that the criteria are simply too restrictive.
2. Some have argued that the criteria are too self-defeating. As a matter of fact, this is the
biggest criticism raised against the strong foundationalists. These three criteria don’t
meet their own criteria. The statement that in order for a basic belief to be properly basic
it has to be self-evidential, incorrigible, or evident to the senses—that statement itself is
neither self-evidential, incorrigible, or evident to the senses. Many have pointed out the
self- defeatingness of that statement.
3. Another problem with strong foundationalism is it fails to do the very thing it is trying to
do, which is to halt the infinite regress problem. The purpose of strong foundationalism
is to have first principles that make it so we don’t have an infinite regress of justification.
But many people argue that it doesn’t succeed in doing that.
4. Finally, many people criticize strong foundationalism because of the basing
relationship. It is simply too strict. It doesn’t really work sometimes. Is it really
deduction that is going on here between my non-basic beliefs and basic beliefs? What
about other forms that I can use for basing relations, such as adduction or induction
or congruence? Strong foundationalism seems to leave those out.
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For these reasons, many people have rejected strong foundationalism. Now this doesn’t
necessarily mean that foundationalism is wrong, but maybe this version of it is not the best one
to go with. Let’s look at another version.
S8:
There is another form of foundationalism that agrees that there are two different kinds of beliefs,
basic and non-basic beliefs. But the relationship between them is a lot more modest. As a matter
of fact, this is known sometimes as modest foundationalism (also called moderate
foundationalism, or sometimes you’ll hear it referred to as weak foundationalism, as
opposed to strong foundationalism).
What is the difference between the weaker version of foundationalism and strong
foundationalism? First of all, the criteria are a little bit different.
1. They still hold to the self-evidential criteria like the strong foundationalists do.
2. However, instead of saying something is incorrigible—it’s impossible for me to be wrong
about it—they instead say my beliefs are indefeasible. What that means is that I am
justified in holding this belief in the absence of defeaters (you might remember, we
talked about defeaters in a previous presentation). In the absence of having any evidence
against this belief, I am justified in holding it. Now we are not saying it’s impossible that
I’m wrong; we are just saying that I have no reason to believe that I am wrong if there’s
nothing to defeat my belief.
3. A third criteria is instead of saying that it is evident to the senses, what we now say is that
it is Prima Facie Justified. Why do we say that? It’s possible that my senses could be
wrong about what they perceive. So what I want to say is at face value, I have no reason
to reject what my senses tell me. I’m not saying that it’s impossible that they could be
wrong, but I have no reason to not believe in them.
A second difference between modest or moderate foundationalism and the stronger version has to
do with the basing relationship between the non-basic and basic beliefs. It’s not as strict. Rather
than going for a strict deductive relationship, the basing relationship here is more open, more
inductive—or more abductive. Abduction has to do with the idea that I look for the best
explanation behind an argument. Or concurrence, which has to do providing a bunch of
evidence and the evidence all together leads me to a particular belief. Rather than being strictly
deductive, moderate foundationalism is open to other forms of logical inference. What happens
is my basic beliefs make my non-basic beliefs probable, but not certain. You may remember
from previous discussions that maybe certainty is just too high a level at which to aim for
knowledge. As long as I have good reasons—probable reasons—then I’m justified in holding the
beliefs that I hold here.
A final difference in modest/moderate foundationalism is that some moderate foundationalists do
not believe one needs to access basic beliefs or be aware of structural relationships in order to be
justified. This is called externalism. We will examine this more later when we talk about
epistemic obligations. But the point is that moderate foundationalism is open to an externalistic
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type of justification, whereas strong foundationalism is strictly internalistic. You’ll understand
more about that when we discuss it in a future presentation.
S9:
The opposing view to foundationalism is called coherentism. It is important to remember that
coherentism is not the same thing as the Coherence Theory of Truth. This has to do with theories
of justification, and Coherence Theory of Truth has to do with whether a proposition is true or
not. Although they are similar in the way that they work, they are talking about two different
things.
coherentism says that all beliefs fall into one category. We don’t have basic and non-basic
beliefs; we just have beliefs. No beliefs are more foundational than any others. And you can see
that, whereas in our description of foundationalism we used a pyramid, in coherentism we use
something like a spider’s web to describe the relationship between our beliefs.
Coherentism holds onto a principle called the doxastic assumption. That basically says that what
justifies a belief is that it coheres with other beliefs. You can see that P is justified because it
coheres with Q, and Q is justified because it coheres with R, and R is justified because it coheres
with S and T and V, and they all cohere together, which is what holds the system together.
While there are no basic beliefs in coherentism, some believe that there are beliefs that are more
central than other beliefs. There are certain beliefs that are more central to one’s noetic structure.
For example, R is right in the center of my structure. Therefore, if you were to defeat R, it would
do more damage to my structure than if you were to defeat T, which is only related to a few other
beliefs. R is related to all of my other beliefs—it is the center of my noetic structure. So, while I
wouldn’t say R is a basic belief, R is a central belief. And if you destroy that, you destroy other
things.
We can see this in the way our beliefs are. For example, if you show me that it’s not true that
JFK was assassinated through a conspiracy, that’s not going to affect too much of my noetic
structure. But if you can show me that I have reasons to believe that God doesn’t exist, that’s
going to affect a large percentage of my noetic structure because it is much more central to what
I believe. That is what goes on with coherentism as well.
S10:
Next, we will talk about some problems with coherentism that make many people want to reject
it as a viable way of doing justification.
First of all, there is the problem of circularity. It’s obvious when you look at the web diagram
that we saw on the previous page that there seems to be a circularity with it:
How do I justify my belief in P? By saying it coheres with Q.
How do I justify my belief in Q? By saying it coheres with R.
How do I justify my belief in R? By saying it coheres with P.
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But wait, P is where I started. It seems like we are going in a circle. We have a circular argument,
and if that’s true then there really is no ultimate justification independent of the system that we
have. And we want something that is going to justify us and give us ultimate justification.
foundationalism tends to do that a little bit better than coherentism does.
A second problem is what is called the isolation problem. That is the idea that coherentism
isolates my beliefs from the external world. What is real does not matter as long as it fits in with
the system. But I want a little bit more than that. I also want to know if my beliefs are true—if
they match up with the real world. I want to know that my justification has something to do with
that. But Coherentism doesn’t give me that.
This leads to something like the Christopher Columbus example. Columbus believed that he had
discovered a new path to the Indies. He died believing that. Why? Because it cohered with all of
this other beliefs. It cohered with his maps. It cohered with his assumptions about the world, and
all of those other things. And yet he was completely wrong in holding that belief that he
discovered a path to the new world. It cohered with his system, but it had nothing to do with
reality. I want my justification to bring me back to reality. Coherentism doesn’t seem to do that.
Also, one could ask with this isolation problem, how does one get the system started? How do I
justify my first belief? How do I do that if I don’t yet have a system in which it would cohere?
A third problem with coherentism is the plurality problem. It is possible to have two coherent
systems that are logically incompatible. How do I know which system I should go with? When
do I know if the system that I’m holding is what’s true or what’s not true or what’s well
justified? If all I have are systems to justify things, and I can’t match them up to anything in
reality, then how do I know that is the best way to go?
Coherentism has some serious problems with it that make many people want to come back to
foundationalism. While the strong version of foundationalism is certainly not acceptable, many
people look at modest foundationalism as having some warrant behind it.
That covers our discussion on noetic structure. In our next discussion, we will talk
about epistemic obligations and the controversy between internalism and externalism.
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