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Basic Knowledge and Jusificaton

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Robert F. Almeder
Robert F. Almeder*
Affiliation:
Georgia State University
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Extract

As an introduction to explicating the concept of basic knowledge, I shall examine Aristotle's argument for the existence of basic knowledge and urge two basic points. The first point is that Aristotle's argument, properly viewed, establishes the existence of a kind of knowledge, basic or non-demonstrative knowledge, the definition of which does not require the specification of, and hence the satisfaction of, any evidence condition. This point has been urged by philosophers like Peirce and Austin but it needs further argumentation because most analytic epistemologists still insist (for reasons that we shall see) that all knowledge, whether basic or non-basic, requires the satisfaction of some evidence condition. Secondly, to urge (as Wittgenstein and Dewey have done) that the basic propositions whose existence is established by Aristotle's argument could be privileged but not known, for the reason that there is no evidence condition for them, would be to adopt a position that either entails wholesale skepticism or undermines the basic distinction between knowledge and belief.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 13 , Issue 1 , March 1983 , pp. 115 - 127
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1983

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References

1 Posterior Analytics, Book I, Chapters 2-3, in the Oxford Translation of Aristotle (Clarendon Press)

2 Examples of such analyses are to be found in Chisholm, R. ‘Comments and Replies,’ Philosophia, 7 (1978) 598CrossRefGoogle Scholar and in his Theory of Knowledge (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall 1966), 24-37; Alston, W. ‘Two Types of Foundationalism,’ Journal of Philosophy, 63 (1976),Google Scholar and ‘Has Foundationalism Been Refuted?', Philosophical Studies, 29 (1976), 287-305, and ‘Self-Warrant: A Neglected Form of Privileged Access,’ American Philosophical Quarterly, 13 (1976) 260; Pastin, M. ‘Modest Foundationalism and Self-Warrant,’ American Philosophical Quarterly, Monograph Series 9 (1975) 141-9;Google Scholar Lehrer, Keith ‘The Knowledge Cycle,’ Nous, 11 (1977) 24,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and also in Knowledge (Oxford: Claren· don Press 1974), 143-4; Bonjour, L. ‘Can Empirical Knowledge Have a Foundation,' American Philosophical Quarterly, 15 (1978) 1–13;Google Scholar Cleve, J. van ‘Founda· tionalism, Epistemic Principles and the Cartesian Circle,’ Philosophical Review, 88 (1979) 55–91;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Rescher, N. ‘Foundationalism, Coherentism and the Idea of Cognitive Systematization,’ Journal of Philosophy, 71 (1974) 695–708CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Scepticism (Oxford: Basil Blackwell1980); Sosa, E. ‘How Do You know?', American Philosophical Quarterly, 11 (1974) 113-22;Google Scholar G. Pappas, ‘Noninferential Knowledge,’ Philosophia (forthcoming).

3 See Armstrong, D.M. Belief, Truth and Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1973), 166ff;CrossRefGoogle Scholar Goldman, A. ‘A Causal Theory of Knowing,’ Journal of Philosophy, 64 (1967) 357-72,CrossRefGoogle Scholar and ‘Discrimination and Perceptual Knowledge,’ Journal of Philosophy, 73 (1976) 771-91; Skyrms, B. ‘The Explication of ux knows that p,’ Journal of Philosophy, 65 (1968);Google Scholar Dretske, F. ‘Conclusive Reasons,’ Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 49 (1971).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Wilfrid Sellars, for example, accepts the regress argument as establishing a class of propositions as basic and hence not to be Justified by appeal to other known propositions. Although such propositions are not directly apprehended or selfjustifying, their authority - which authority must be present for knowledge - derives from the fact that one has learned to use the relevant words in the perceptual situation. In other words, even for Sellars basic propositions need to be authorized or certified as reliable by being noninferentially Justified, and this is proximately a matter of their being licensed by certain constitutive principles of our conceptual framework and ultimately a matter of the acceptability of the framework as a whole. For reasons that will become clear, however, I would not view Sellar's position as an acceptance of Aristotle's argument. See ‘The Structure of Knowledge,’ in Castai'leda, H-N. ed., Action, Knowledge and Reality: Essays in Honor of Wilfrid Sellars (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill 1975), 327ff;Google Scholar ‘Givenness and Explanatory Coherence,’ Journal of Philosophy, 70 (1973) 617. See also Delaney, C. F. ‘Basic Propositions, Empiricism and Science,’ in Pitts, J.C. ed., The Philosophy of Wilfrid Sellars: Queries and Extensions (Dordrecht: D. Reidel 1978), 41–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 For an illuminating discussion of the various senses of the expression ‘How do you know?’ and their bearing on the process of Justification, see Garner, Richard ‘Chisholm on Socratic Interrogation,’ Philosophia 8 (1978) 441-60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Doubtless, the question ‘How do you know?’ does not always have the sense of requesting a Justification. Dr. Watson, for example, often asked Sherlock Holmes how Holmes knew that so-and-so was the killer when the point of the question was less a matter of pressing Holmes for his Justification than it was a matter of curiosity as to how Holmes reached the conclusion. However, bypassing the various senses of ‘How do you know?', my point is that the need for an evidence condition for knowledge is predicated on the need to answer the question ‘How do you know?’ when the question has the sense of requesting or demanding a Justification.

Also, in ‘Self-Warrant: A Neglected Form of Privileged Access,’ American Philosophical Quarterly, 13 (1976) and elsewhere, W. Alston distinguishes between one's being Justified and one's showing that one is Justified. On Alston's view, knowledge (both basic and nonbasic) requires the former but not the latter; for a person can be adequately Justified in his true belief (and hence know what he claims to know) without being able to say or show how he is Justified. However, given that the purpose behind having an evidence condition is that the person claiming to know be able to answer the question ‘How do you know?', then Alston (and others) would be wrong in thinking a person could be Justified, or satisfy the evidence condition for knowledge, without being able to show how he is Justified. In short, given the purpose for having a Justification condition, one could not satisfy the Justification condition for knowledge without being able to show that one is Justified.

6 Austin, John Sense and Sensibilia (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1962) 115Google Scholarff.

7 Peirce, Charles S. The Collected Papers of Charles S. Peirce, ed. Harthshorne, C. and Weiss, P. (vols. 1-6) and Burks, A. (vols. 7 & 8), (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1931-35, 1958).Google Scholar I conform to the usual method of citing from Peirce's works: thus, for example, vol. 1, paragraph 355 would read 1.355.

8 Peirce endorsed Aristotle's argument for the existence of basic knowledge in 2.07; MS 425 and in MS 736 (p. 7). See also MS 425 (log. 87); MS 473 (pp. 8 and 24); MS 628 (p. 5). However, for Peirce, the basically known propositions are the product of inference (5.213ft), and hence basically fallible. They are basic in that these are the propositions for which the question ‘How do you know?’ will not admit of an answer in any line of conscious inference.

9 Armstrong, 168

10 Goldman; see also note 3 above.

11 See, for example, Aune, B. Knowledge, Mind and Nature (New York: Random House 1967), 43,Google Scholar and Alston, W. ‘Two Types of Foundationalism,’ Journal of Philosophy 63 (1976) 168;Google Scholar Bonjour, Sff; Lehrer, ‘The Knowledge Cycle,’ 24;Google Scholar van Cleve, 88; Will, Frederick Induction and Justification (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 1974).Google Scholar

12 Basically, this is the reason why Wittgenstein rejected Moore's claim that he (Moore) knew he had a hand, and that Wittgenstein was correct in thinking that Moore was wrong because he had misused ‘I know.’ See Malcolm, N. ‘Moore and Wittgenstein on the Sense of “I Know,“’ Thought and Knowledge (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press 1977), 170-99;CrossRefGoogle Scholar C.G. Luckhardt, ‘Beyond Knowledge: Paradigms in Wittgenstein's later Philosophy,’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (1978) 240-52; Canfield, J.,’ “I Know That I Am In Pain” Is Senseless,’ in Lehrer, K. ed., Analysis and Metaphysics, (Dordrecht: D. Reidel 1975).Google Scholar

13 Dewey, J. Experience and Nature (New York: Dover Publications 1958), 108,Google Scholar 154, and Logic: The Theory of Inquiry (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1938), 139-58

14 Aristotle did not explicitly argue that the premises of a demonstration must be known if the conclusion demonstrated by them is to be known; but he did assert as much in the regress argument and elsewhere. Moreover, if we grant that Aristotle saw the distinction between knowledge and belief, and that belief is a weaker epistemic state than knowledge, then he would need to conclude that one must know the premises of a demonstration to know what is demonstrated by them, because he held the view that the inference can be no stronger than the weakest premise.

15 This objection was raised by James Humber.

16 An earlier version of this paper was read at Ohio State University, the University of Toronto, Syracuse University, State University of New York at Buffalo, and Bowling Green University. For their various comments and criticisms I would like to thank the members of the Department of Philosophy at each of these universities. I would also like to thank C. Grant Luckhardt and R.L. Arrington for their comments.