RE: "Doing" Epistemology?

["Pete Wolfendale" <pete.wolfendale@gmail.com>]

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I'm replying to Luis here, hoping that I've got beyond the whole issue
of metaphilosophy (not that I think that said debate is ended), but I
don't think I've got the hang of this whole mailing list thing yet, so
it might come out wrong.

Luis says that the whole point of doing epistemology is that you don't
know what knowledge is in the first place, and as such that study of
the particular fields of knowledge cannot amount to, and perhaps not
contribute to (perhaps too strong an interpretation) the study of the
conditions of knowledge.

I find the first point interesting, because it brings out some of the
issues I was trying to talk about earlier. How is it that we can even
grasp onto this thing called 'knowledge' in general if we don't
already know what it is to at least some extent. How is it that we
could know whether we'd uncovered its conditions? Can a definition
possibly be adequate to such an inquiry?

These seem like very abstract questions at first, but I'd like to
delve into them a little deeper by looking at a classical
epistemological problem: the Gettier problem. The Gettier problem is a
counter example to the justified true belief definition of knowledge
(JTB), which provides a hypothetical instance of a JTB that we would
intuitively deny the status of knowledge. The thing that interests me
is not the specifics of the example but how it is that such a mode of
proof is possible.

The whole power of the example (and of many similar thought
experiments in epistemology) is intuitive power, i.e. that it accords
with our intuitive grasp of knowledge. If it were the case that we
were trying to redefine knowledge, then there would be no force behind
such an example. We seem to already assume that there is something,
perhaps a kind of entity, to which our term 'knowledge' refers that we
have some intuitive access to, and that this intuition, and as such
said type of entity, can be cached out in terms of a set of necessary
and sufficient conditions.

It seems we have two options for understanding this intuition, and
they are roughly the rationalist and empiricist options.

The rationalist option is to take for granted that there just is
something which our word picks out, and methods of reasoning about it
(thought experiments and so on) give us real access to it, because our
we have a rational intuition of it. This is not really to explain the
intuition, but to explicitly take it for granted, which some people
might be fine with, but I find too easy.

The empiricist option, is to try to locate the conditions of the
intuition. The analogy here is with Hume's analysis of necessity,
where precisely he tries to show that the intuition of necessity comes
about through a particular empirical situation, rather than through
access to a thing. So, why is it that we have an intuitive grasp of
what is and what is not knowledge? How is it that we have an
understanding of the possibilities such that it can take a place
within our hypothetical reasoning?

My personal opinion on this is that we have the intuition for similar
reasons to those of Hume: our abilities to judge whether particular
instances are instances of knowledge and the related behaviours
involved in using the word knowledge within discussion (i.e. using it
in relation to other concepts, like evidence, justification, etc.) are
acquired through a process of habituation, or conditioning. I may get
some stick for these words, but I must insist that they aren't used in
a simple sense, I think the process of learning language is very
complex, but it does undeniably involve gradual learning through a
process of correction, and although it does involve definitions of
concepts later on, this is entirely dependent upon the more basic mode
of habituation.

What this means is that at the origin of our intuitive grasp of
knowledge there is no set of necessary and sufficient conditions,
rather there is a whole social system through which a large variety of
individuals are habituated in different ways. This is not to say that
everyones intuitions are totally different, but rather that we cannot
expect them to be exactly the same, rather we would have to understand
the similarity between our intuitions as a function of the linguistic
system's (the network of speakers') stability, maintaining the use of
the term within a narrow set of behavioural tolerances.

I'm going to try and explain the last point a little bit better. We
normally try to explain the stability of our usage of certain terms
(e.g. basalt, gravity, and other nouns) in terms of the existence of a
definite class of referents. So when we are taught the word 'cat' for
instance, we are taught via exposure to cats or representations of
cats. These things in the world are what our term picks out, and as
such all we have to do is make sure they don't pik out other things,
and cats will take care of themselves. Any study of the conditions of
cathood is then going to involve cats in quite a definite physical
way. I think this story is a little simple, but it serves well to make
the distinction I want to make.

The question is whether the stability of all of our terms is provided
in such a way. Because we use words like knowledge in a very similar
way to words like cat, we intuitively (that word again) treat them in
the same way, we take the existence of an independent referent for
granted. Importantly the fact that the word remains useful and stable
(the latter a condition of the former) seems to prove the point, and
eventually leads to questions like 'what are the conditions of
knowledge?', where knowledge is taken to be similar to cathood. But,
if it is the case that this stability can be provided without any
connection to things that are being picked out, then we would be being
misled by our own intuitions (or being bewitched by mean of language,
yes I've been Wittgensteinian all along muahaha). We only have the
possibility of discovering this bewitchment by trying to uncover the
conditions of our intuitions, and for me that means the social systems
which produce them.

I think I've probably written a bit too much again, and I know I don't
have anything resembling a knock down argument. I haven't really gone
too much into how you can have this kind of stability without
referents yet, and I think it might take a bit too long. Feel free to
rip me a new one on this point. I'll try to end with some of the
consequences of my approach.

If we follow what I've described as the empiricist path, I don't think
this necessarily means the end of epistemology. It does mean the end
of epistemology as a purely definitional exercise however: definitions
are incredibly useful, but they have no power to encapsulate our
intuition. But, just because we admit there isn't pre-existing
referent for 'knowledge' that we can study, does not mean that we have
nothing to study. Of course talking about the conditions of my
knowledge that the chair I'm sitting on exists goes out the window,
because this is such a stable ascription of knowledge that it doesn't
reveal anything interesting, but there are a large range of other
areas in which there are myriad and interesting ascriptions of
knowledge which are very interesting. There are a multiplicity of
scientific fields whose practice is in some ways structured by the use
of the term knowledge, but within which there are all kinds of variant
relations to other terms and methods peculiar to them.

I must add that we are not forbidden from using 'knowledge' in an
uncritical sense, we simply have to avoid trying to work out the
essence of knowledge qua knowledge, and get on with studying things
which we happily ascribe the name knowledge to, and their interaction
with those same systems which produce our intuitive understanding of
it. In short we have to investigate the role that knowledge as a
concept plays in structuring our behaviour, and this necessarily
involves investigating the different fields of knowledge.

Hope I haven't rambled too much here... a lot of these thoughts still need work.

Pete


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