Facts, Alternative Facts, and Definitions

One of the courses I often teach is an introduction to epistemology. Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that deals with questions about knowledge and rational belief—how is it possible to know something, and why is it important, and what makes some beliefs more reasonable to have than others? I learned early on that one of the first things I have to do for my students is help them get very clear on the difference between, on the one hand, facts and truths, and, on the other, knowledge, belief, and support from the evidence. The former concern how things are in reality, whether or not we have any access to them; the latter concern how we thinkers try, and hopefully succeed, to put ourselves in touch with reality. Many students come into my course a bit fuzzy on this distinction, but getting it crystal clear is a prerequisite for thinking in a rigorous way about epistemology.

This has not been a good winter for the distinction. To cite just a couple of the many examples, when Donald Trump surrogate Scottie Nell Hughes was asked on the Diane Rehm Show whether it's OK for Trump to post made-up lies about who won the popular vote, she explained that "there's no such thing anymore unfortunately as facts". Oxford Dictionaries named "post-truth" as the 2016 Word of the Year. But early indications suggest 2017 will be no better for objective truth. Yesterday my social media feed was overrun with satire, disgust, and incredulity at Kellyanne Conway's description of White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer's blatantly false statements about the inaugration crowd size as expressions of "alternative facts".

I don't think Hughes really thinks, or even really meant, that there are no facts. I think she meant there are, within some restricted sphere of politically interesting claims, no facts that are generally accepted and can be assumed without contest. I don't think Conway really thinks there's a kind of fact other than the true kind. I think she was just spewing some garbage language in an attempt to obfuscate. (Note that later in her interview, she retreats from this metaphysical nonsense to an epistemic claim, saying that there's no way to know the size of a crowd. This is empirically (obviously) false, but it's at least not a denial of the idea of a fact.)

Critics of the Trump administration have of course been all over this. I see that already, one can buy "Alternative facts are lies" t-shirts. Some have observed that the concept is straight out of Orwell. I think they're right, and that that's terrifying. But that's not really my point here. I want to take this in a different direction.

The thing is, some of the anti-alternative-fact rhetoric is no less philosophically confused than this post-fact nonsense. Meriam-Webster tweeted:

📈A fact is a piece of information presented as having objective reality. https://t.co/gCKRZZm23c

— Merriam-Webster (@MerriamWebster) January 22, 2017

When I first saw this tweet, I didn't know what the hell it was trying to do. But most of the interactions with it on twitter (38K retweets as I write) interpret it as criticizing Conway's invocation of 'alternative facts'.

Day 2 of year 1. The resistance is made up of thousands of women and the @MerriamWebster online dictionary.

— Mel Bergeson (@MelianBerges) January 22, 2017

And it's not just Trump critics who are reading the tweet that way.

@Federalist_10 @MerriamWebster @KellyannePolls
Liberals running this twitter account and dictionary are not the same thing, are they?

— TRUMP#MAGA🐸 (@Ismail_Jahan1) January 22, 2017

But this is a terrible definition of facts, and one that does not obviously work against the Trump rhetoric. Look, suppose I tell a lie. I tell my students that the author of "Elusive Knowledge" was Barack Obama, writing under a pen name. And I tell them this in a v. serious tone of voice, and expect them to believe me. I'll announce that I plan to put that on the exam. This lie is a piece of information presented (by me) as having objective reality. So it counts as a fact.

Maybe you think a lie doesn't count as a 'piece of information'. Only truths can be information. OK, in that case, why is M-W talking about presenting as objective reality at all? Truths don't become facts when people present them. And indeed, there are lots of facts that haven't been presented as having objective reality, because nobody knows them.

On this definition, Conway's invocation of alternative facts makes perfect sense. If a fact is just an assertion, then the crowd-size experts have one assertion, and the Trump administration has an alternative assertion. Merriam-Webster has offered something more like a definition of a purported fact. But not all purported facts are facts, just like not all alleged murderers are murderers.

This dictionary seems comfortable with the notion of 'objective reality'. It does use that phrase in its definition. Once we have a grip on that notion, we should define 'fact' much more simply. A fact is a part of objective reality. A fact is something that is true, whether or not someone presents it as true, and whether or not anyone or everyone recognizes that it is true.

This is basic stuff. Literally first-day intro-to-epistemology-and-metaphysics material. Being clear on the idea of a fact is the first step to thinking about how we should go about trying to investigate what the facts are. Attacks on that clarity, whether by demagogic governments or by well-meaning resistance tweeters, make this crucial job that much harder.

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?

Sider, structure, reduction, and knowledge first

This is a continuation of yesterday's post. Yesterday I identified what seemed to me to be a problem for the way that Ted Sider wanted to explain why various macro-level things are more privileged—basically, they're said to be more joint-carving. But as I said yesterday, I just don't see that they are.

I suspect, however, that one can get something quite a bit like Sider's picture here if one is willing to add a bit more structure. The prospects for a reasonable purely physical story about chemical objects and properties seem reasonable. It doesn't seem hopeless to try to give a reasonably simple definition of molecule or magnesium or valence in purely physical terms. So if we assume the (absolute) fundamentality of physics, we can run the story Sider wants for why we refer to molecules instead of molecules-or-cucumbers, or even molecules-before-2013-and-regions-of-space-afterwards, because the physical definition of molecule is significantly simpler than these more bizarre properties. (In the former case, a purely physical definition will be insanely complex, as in the case of pig; in the latter, it will still be not insanely complex, but more complex than that for molecule.)

This is basically just a way of expressing the familiar idea that chemistry somehow reduces to, or emerges from, physics. But if we buy into Ted's general ideas, we can add this: it is part of the objective structure of the world that chemical properties are related to physical properties in this way. The 'book of the world' will give us the chemical on top of the physical (and the chemical is objectively privileged over the schmemical).

Now what happens when we go up another level? It's pretty natural to suppose that cell biology relates to chemistry as chemistry does to physics. So --- and here's where the picture I'm describing departs from Ted's --- when adjudicating between which objects we refer to in our discourse about cell biology, objects with reasonably simple definitions in chemical terms --- not physical terms --- are privileged over ones that don't. We don't always go back to the most fundamental; we just go back to the more fundamental domain that is appropriate for the matter at hand. Often, but not always, the simpler definition is the more fundamental theory will correspond to the simpler definition in the ultimately fundamental theory; when it doesn't, I think we should go with the less fundamental one. (It's having a better chemical account that makes a particular referent of 'cell' the preferred one, not having a better physical account.)

The reason I'm interested in this, besides the fact that it's interesting, is that I'm leaning in this kind of a direction as a way of making sense of what the 'knowledge first' attitude is. (Yes, I'm reading metaphysics, but it's in the service of epistemology, I swear!) I understand it as a metaphysical thesis: knowledge is a more fundamental state than has been traditionally recognized. In the terms of this broad way of thinking about theorizing about the world, knowledge shows up at a more fundamental level than one might have thought.  (Compare a 'life first' theorist, who thinks that the attempt to define life in biological terms is a mistake; life's home is really at the chemical level—we need to invoke life to understand, say, combustion.) How early should knowledge appear? Presumably, people could differ about this. If you wanted to, you could think that knowledge was perfectly fundamental; knowledge is as basic as quarks or whatever. You'd oppose any kind of reduction of knowledge to anything. This doesn't sound very plausible, but you could say that if you wanted to. My suspicion is that knowledge will be an important theoretical term from the basics of intentional psychology.

Sider on joint-carving and reference

Humans refer to things sometimes. Ted Sider thinks, with David Lewis, that part of the story for why it is that we refer to some things, rather than other possible things, is that the things we refer to are more natural. This Sider understands as a matter of the primitive structure of the world. To takes one of Ted's examples, Ted's word 'pig' refers to pigs, instead of pigs-before-2011-AD-or-cows-afterwards. And he thinks that general considerations about fundamental structure can yield this intuitive result. Ted writes:

The point may be seen initially by making two strong, crude assumptions about "reasonably joint-carving". Assume first that a notion is reasonably joint-carving iff it has a reasonably simple and nondisjunctive definition in terms of the perfectly joint-carving notions, and second that the perfectly joint-carving notions are those of physics. Then surely no reasonably joint-carving relation that is to play the role of reference could relate a human population to bizarre semantic values. For the bizarre semantic values themselves have no simple basis in the physical, nor do they stand in any physically simple relations to human populations. Given any reduction that does relate us to bizarre semantic values, there is surely some other relation with a simpler basis in the physical that relates us to nonbizarre semantic values. (29)

There is considerable vagueness and imprecision in the notion of "reasonably" simply definitions Ted evokes, but I guess I agree that it's pretty plausible that one couldn't tell a "reasonably simple" story in purely physical terms of how humans are related to bizarre semantic values like pigs-before-2011-AD-or-cows-afterwards. But Ted needs more than just that fact; he needs the comparison. And I guess it just doesn't look very plausible to me that there is a "reasonably simple" definition available in purely physical terms of any of the pieces we need here. By any ordinary standards, a definition of pig --- or human! --- in purely physical terms will be rather unreasonably complex! So I worry that if this is the story about why we don't refer to pigs-before-2011-AD-or-cows-afterwards, it will generalize to show that we don't refer to pigs either. (A related problem; surely it's possible to refer to pigs-before-2011-AD-or-cows-afterwards, right?)

I think this problem persists, even given the less toy version of the theory. He continues the passage above:

The two assumptions of the previous paragraph are undoubtedly too crude, but the point is independent of them. Whether a notion is reasonably joint-carving --- enough to take part in special-science explanations --- has something to do with how it is based in the fundamental. So reference must have the right sort of basis in the fundamental if it's to be explanatory.

But it's just very difficult to say anything halfway reasonably simple about how any of this stuff arises from the fundamental. Things like pigs are just way too far removed from things like electrons. (And presumably, even electrons aren't fundamental anyway.)

More on this theme, and what I think we should say instead, tomorrow.

Sider on epistemic value and nature's joints

Ted Sider thinks that it's epistemically preferable to think in joint-carving terms; this is a way of better matching one's beliefs to the world. While something about that sounds right, I think that some of the the things he says must go too far. He writes, for example, that

[j]oint-carving thought does not have merely instrumental value. It is rather a constitutive aim of the practice of forming beliefs, as constitutive as the more commonly recognized aim of truth. (WtBotW p. 61)

I don't think this can be right. The idea of somebody forming beliefs without any kind of sensitivity or regard for whether they are true is incoherent; this is not so for someone who doesn't care whether her beliefs carve nature at the joints. Suppose one is charged with failing to carve at the joints with her beliefs, and replies flippantly --- so what? --- and maintains her previous beliefs? She might be criticizable on epistemic grounds, but her attitude is comprehensible, even if we do not approve of it. Compare the person who is charged with having false beliefs, and replies in the same way --- indifferently accepting the charge, and continuing to believe as before. This isn't just epistemically vicious; this runs counter to what it is to be a belief. In other words, a truth aim has a better claim to a constitutive connection to belief than a joint-carving aim does.

Here is another difference that should not be overlooked: some instances of non-joint-carving beliefs are absolutely correct to hold. Maybe they're not as good as their joint-carving cousins, but one needn't choose between them. You can believe that the emerald is green and that it is grue. In fact, that's exactly what you should do. And you shouldn't feel at all epistemically deficient for having the latter belief. Compare this to false beliefs: every false belief you have prevents you from having a true one.

Moore-paradoxes show a deep connection between belief and truth; there is a deep incoherence in the idea of accepting: "I believe that p, even though not-p." But there is no corresponding incoherence in "I believe that p, even though the terms in p do not carve at nature's joints."

Whatever epistemic value attaches to joint-carving, it is less central to belief than truth is.

Joint-Carving and Projectability

So this weird thing has been happening to me lately where I think about metaphysics. My current symptom is an attempted negotiation of Ted Sider's recent book, Writing the Book of the World. Ted's Big Idea is that there is objective structure to reality, and that this structure is really important for all kinds of reasons; I find the general picture a pretty attractive one, but I'm rather puzzled by some of his remarks on the applicability of structure to induction and confirmation.

Ted writes:

Which observations confirm a generalization 'all Fs are Gs'? A natural answer is the "Nicod principle": observations of Fs that are Gs confirm 'All Fs are Gs'. But suppose that an observation confirms any logical equivalent of any sentence that it confirms. Then, as Hempel pointed out, the observation of red roses confirms 'All ravens are black' (given the Nicod principle it confirms 'All nonblack things are nonravens', which is logically equivalent to 'All ravens are black'.) And as Goodman pointed out, Nicod's principle implies that observations of green emeralds before 3000 AD confirm 'All emeralds are grue' (sice green emeralds observed before 3000 AD are grue.) But anyone who believed that all emeralds are grue would expect emeralds observed after 3000 AD to be blue.
[This conclusion] can be avoided by restricting Nicod's principle in some way -- most crudely, to predicates that carve at the joints. Since 'is nonblack', 'is a nonraven', and 'grue' fail to carve at the joints, the restricted principle does not apply to generalizations containing them. In Goodman's terminology, only terms that carve at the joints are "projectable". (35)

I'm confused about this strategy. Ted says we can avoid the conclusion that nonblack nonravens confirm ravens' blackness because 'nonblack' and 'nonraven' don't carve at the natural joints. But 'nonblack' carves at exactly the same joint as 'black' does -- to push the metaphor only slightly further, it's the very same cut. So if 'nonblack' isn't joint-carving, and is therefore nonprojectable, then it looks like just the same would go for 'black', and mutatis mutandis for ravens and nonravens. So now it looks like I can't confirm that all ravens are black by observing black ravens. This isn't the result Ted wanted, surely.

So I'm worried that one of these things must be true:

1. The story quoted above about why red roses don't confirm that all ravens are black is wrong;
2. Black ravens don't confirm that all ravens are black; or 
3. The 'black' joint is natural, but the 'nonblack' joint isn't.

When I asked Carrie about this, she suggested that Ted might be intending something like (3) here. After all, she pointed out, there might be more of an objective sense in which all black things resemble each other than that in which all non-black things do. I guess the thought would be that the metaphor is breaking down here; 'joint-carving' isn't the right term. Maybe this is right, but I didn't see that Ted could go this way, since he doesn't want to take objective similarity as the most fundamental thing. He wants structure to be most fundamental, and to explain objective similarity in terms of structure.

I feel like I must be missing something obvious here, but I can't see what it is. Somebody help?