Fricker on concepts and states

Elizabeth Fricker writes:

Williamson maintains that 'knows' has no analysis 'of the standard kind'—this being one that factors knowing into a conjunction of mental and non-mental components, notably the mental state of (rational) belief plus truth and some other factors. Call this thesis NASK. If NASK were false, 'know' having an a priori necessary and sufficient condition in terms of belief plus some other (non-factive) mental and non-mental components, this would establish the falsity of KMS ['knowledge is a mental state']: knowing would be revealed a priori to be a conjunctive 'metaphysically hybrid' state.

I find the suggestion that there is any deep connection between NASK (a claim about the concept 'knows') and KMS (a claim about the nature of knowledge) somewhat confusing. She characterizes the denial of this connection as an 'error theory':

Here I follow Williamson in ruling out the possibility of an error theory—that our concept 'knows' could be complex, while it in fact denotes a simple state. It is doubtful whether this is even coherent, and it can surely be discounted.

I don't see why this would be an error theory, and I don't see why it should be thought incoherent (unless one is worried about the coherence of the very notion of a complex concept, as Fricker clearly is not). It's not true in general that there's any problem with the concept of 'X' having some property, while X itself has a contrary property. (The concept 'sky' has no colour, but the sky is blue.)

So what's going on?

Metaphysical and Conceptual Knowledge Connections

Knowledge shows up in theories a lot lately. Or should I say that 'knowledge' shows up in statements of theories? One question I'm hoping to research a fair amount in the near future concerns the status of theoretical claims about knowledge. The knowledge first program, broadly construed, says that knowledge has some kind of priority or privileged status, which makes it a good candidate to explain other states. (My broad construction applies not just to the Williamson project, but to all of those recent projects that posit strong theoretical roles for knowledge, such as the knowledge-action links of Hawthorne and Stanley.) Here's a question I'm interested in: how should we understand the knowledge first attitude? Here are two candidate interpretations:

1. Knowledge, the mental state, is metaphysically (relatively) fundamental; it is among the (more) basic building blocks of the world. Questions about knowledge are questions about the (relatively) natural epistemic joints.


2. KNOWLEDGE, the concept, is conceptually (relatively) fundamental; it is among the (more) basic ideas in our understanding of the world. Questions about knowledge are questions about our (relatively) fundamental conceptual framework.

(The hedges there indicate that knowledge 'first' should surely not be meant to imply absolute priority; one can subscribe, for instance, to the metaphysical interpretation of the knowledge first project and still believe that physical particles are the most fundamental bits of the universe; knowledge is prior to most of psychology and epistemology, perhaps, but not prior to physics.)

My suspicion, which I'm not yet in a position to make good on, is that a lot of authors are fairly indiscriminate about this distinction, and furthermore that it matters. But I'm not at all ready to argue for that claim; I need to re-read a lot of this literature with the question in mind. In this blog post, however, I'll highlight a number of passages that suggest each of the readings. Inclusion on this list is not meant as an indication either that the author endorses one interpretation over the other, or that the author is in any way confused on the matter; this is just a list of passages that strike me as suggestive of one of the two views, so that eventually I can look back and have a whole list of material to scrutinize.

I'll continue to update this blog post as I find passages that appear relevant. Suggestions, of course, are extremely welcome!

E = K as foundationalism?

I'm re-reading Timothy Williamson's Knowledge and Its Limits for a reading group at UBC. I'm struck by this passage, from the introduction to Chapter 9 on Evidence.

[W]e may speculate that standard accounts of justification have failed to deal convincingly with the traditional problem the regress of justifications—what justifies the justifiers?—because they have forbidden themselves to use the concept knowledge. E = K suggests a very modest kind of foundationalism, on which all one's knowledge serves as the foundation for all one's justified beliefs.

I'm not at all sure what to make of this. I'm very impressed by E = K, but I have a hard time seeing reason to accept either of these claims:

1. E=K is a kind of foundationalism


2. E=K provides a solution to the traditional problem of the regress

Here's the story about foundationalism and the regress that I tell to my undergrads. I think it's pretty standard; if its somehow idiosyncratic, I hope someone will tell me. Everybody thinks that the justification for some beliefs depends on other justified beliefs. How do those other beliefs get justified? Maybe by yet further justified beliefs. Foundationalism is the thesis that there are basically justified beliefs -- beliefs that are justified in some other way than by being supported by other justified beliefs. If you're not a foundationalist, then you think that all justified beliefs are justified by other justified beliefs; for any given justified belief, there must be a chain of justified beliefs in successive support relationships that never ends, either because it continues infinitely, or because it doubles back on itself. Insofar as these latter two options are implausible forms of regress, there is intuitive support for foundationalism.

So as I understand it, what it is to be a foundationalist is to think that there are basic beliefs — i.e., beliefs that are justified, not in virtue of being supported by other justified beliefs. I'm surprised to see Williamson suggest that his view is a foundationalist one; E = K appears to me to be neutral on the question of whether there are basic beliefs. The Knowledge First project is consistent with the traditional idea that knowledge entails justified belief; I don't think it's a stretch to say that, on Williamson's view, knowledge is a (special, metaphysically privileged) kind of justified belief.

So if one's knowledge is among one's justified beliefs, then read literally, the claim that "[all of] one's knowledge serves as the basis of all one's justified beliefs" is tantamount to the claim that the chains of justification of the sort foundationalists talk about are in fact circular: some of my justified beliefs—the knowledgable ones, at least—are supported by chains that include themselves. But this is anathema to foundationalism, as the label for that view makes vivid.

Maybe I'm reading uncharitably literally; the thesis is that the knowledge is basic, and it supports the mere justified beliefs. All the knowledge is at the bottom of the pyramid and nowhere else. This now looks like foundationalism, but it carries the commitment that all knowledge is basic: all knowledgable beliefs are justified, not in virtue of being supported by other justified beliefs. This is a stronger claim than any I'd thought Williamson was committed to; I'm not sure it's particularly plausible. There is such a thing as inferential knowledge; in such cases, it seems very intuitive that justification depends on justification of the beliefs from which it's inferred. If you're a knowledge first program, you shouldn't think that's the main thing or the fundamental thing or the most interesting thing going on -- knowledge first people should be more excited about the fact that the knowledge of the conclusion flows from the knowledge of the premise -- but I see no reason to deny that there's also justificatory dependence at a less fundamental level. But foundationalism is (I thought) precisely about justificatory independence.

So what's going on? Does Williamson intend a weaker sense of 'foundationalism'? Or am I wrong about what the traditional sense would require, given his comments? Or is Williamson really committed to the thesis that if S knows that p, then S's justification for p does not depend on S's justification for any other proposition?