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Unpurged PyrrhonismAuthor(s): Barry StroudReviewed work(s):Source: Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 57, No. 2 (Jun., 1997), pp. 411-416Published by: International Phenomenological SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2953729 .Accessed: 23/10/2012 19:00

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Philosophy and Phenomenological Research Vol. LVII, No. 2, June 1997

Unpurged Pyrrhonism BARRY STROUD

University of California, Berkeley

Robert Fogelin's Pyrrhonian Reflections on Knowledge and Justification should be required reading for anyone who is now, or ever has been, engaged in the philosophical project of "definingg" or "analyzing" knowledge. It ex- plains in a new and highly illuminating way why that investigation has taken the form that it has, especially since Gettier's provocation in 1963, and why its problems have resisted, and in that form will continue to resist, solution. The basic idea was present in his account of what he called "warrant state- ments" in his Evidence and Meaning of 1967. Such statements do not just state the warrant or evidential backing for something; they indicate the strength or adequacy of that evidence. They therefore are not reducible to any- thing expressible in exclusively non-warrant or non-evaluative terms. Fogelin argues that it was accordingly wrongheaded to respond to Gettier by looking for non-epistemic surrogates for the apparently problematic "third condition" of knowledge. It was akin to committing what Moore called "the naturalistic fallacy". Whether a person knows that p when those proposed surrogate con- ditions are fulfilled will always be an open question. The history of counter- examples to responses to Gettier suggests that circumstances can always be imagined in which it would get a negative answer.

That is not to say that we cannot describe the use of 'know' and related epistemic words and so in that sense define them. For Fogelin, what someone says when he says that a knows that p is that a's belief that p is reasonably held on grounds that establish its truth. It is essential that the commentator is endorsing or concurring in what he takes to be a's evidential appraisal of the adequacy of his grounds. This is a very important idea, with significant im- plications far beyond "epistemology" narrowly conceived. It is a point at which I think many of those who continue to seek a definition of knowledge (but not I) will balk. They will demand further explanation or "cashing out" in non-epistemic terms of the idea of one belief or set of beliefs' "establish- ing the truth" of another. Fogelin's important idea is that such reductionistic demands must be resisted.

This is the key as well to his admirable resistance to relativism or contex- tualism or "perspectivism" in an account of knowledge. A commentator on

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someone else's knowledge must employ some standards or procedures in de- termining whether or not a knows that p, and he must do so in some context or other, just as a must have employed some standards or procedures of his own in some context in making his original knowledge-claim. But neither the commentator's assertion nor a's knowledge-claim itself mentions or oth- erwise refers to the standards or procedures or contexts involved. That makes it possible to account for a fact that relativism or contextualism would have difficulty explaining: how a commentator's assertion that a does not know that p, made in a different context, can nonetheless contradict a's original knowledge-claim, even though a's assertion met his own (or even the com- mentator's) standards in his context, and a's belief was true.

I have briefly described and praised these and other central contributions of Fogelin's book elsewhere.1 Rather than expanding on the reasons for my admiration, which would be easy to do, I will take up an issue here which on further reflection has puzzled me, and on which I hope Fogelin will say more. Put simply, it looks as if in the end he does not get as far away from the philosophical quandary his book repudiates as his own account of what he is doing seems to imply that he should.

He calls his reflections "Pyrrhonian", and the viewpoint from which the book is written an "updated Pyrrhonism" (p. 9). That is a form of "philo- sophical skepticism" which "arises from philosophical reasoning"; "philos- ophy is the source of the skepticism" (p. 3). But Pyrrhonism also takes philosophy itself as its target. A Pyrrhonist is essentially a philosophical counter-puncher who responds to philosophical "dogmatism". He "philos- ophizes only as a temporary expedient, and once the anxieties produced by dogmatic philosophizing have been surmounted, the Pyrrhonist's own skep- tical arguments may be discarded as a ladder no longer of use" (p. 4). In another metaphor from Sextus Empiricus, Pyrrhonists' skeptical-sounding remarks are said to be "included in the things to which their doubt applies, just as apeirent drugs do not merely eliminate the humours from the body, but also expel themselves along with the humours" (p. 4).

Fogelin appears to accept this self-referential character of his efforts in this book. I think he is right that there is nothing to prevent a Pyrrhonist, so de- scribed, from giving an account of our use of epistemic terms of the kind he gives. Nor is there anything to prevent a Pyrrhonist from using those terms correctly and so making confident knowledge-claims as all the rest of us do in everyday life. All that Fogelin's Pyrrhonist officially opposes is the claim that the philosophical problem of the possibility of human knowledge is solved by a theory of justification of the kind put forward by "dogmatic" epis- temologists. If that problem had to have a positive solution in order for it to be true that we know the things we think we know, then we would know

1 The Journal of Philosophy, December 1995, pp. 662-65.

412 BARRY STROUD

nothing. That negative verdict is the conclusion of the second half of the book.

But that verdict is only conditional, or internal to the philosophical pro- ject of assessing human knowledge in general. The Pyrrhonist shows that the reasoning or reflection that leads the "dogmatic" philosopher into his problem is enough to make a satisfactorily positive solution of the problem impossi- ble. What I find puzzling is that, having established that conclusion and thereby put optimistic "dogmatic" epistemologists in their place, Fogelin in the name of Pyrrhonism continues to hold what sound like very pessimistic or skeptical views about his own knowledge and the knowledge of all the rest of us, even in apparent independence of the traditional epistemological project of justification. He does not draw those verdicts directly from facts about the correct use of epistemic terms, but he makes them nonetheless, for reasons that are obscure to me. It looks as if he is still standing on that ladder that was to have been thrown away. The purge seems not to have completed its work.

For example, when he thinks about it even for a moment, he is inclined to say, apparently seriously, that he does not know his own name! He thinks it is possible that, through a mix-up at the hospital, Robert Fogelin is someone now called 'Herbert Ortcutt', and that Ortcutt is the tall Dartmouth professor who wrote this book we are all discussing (p. 93). If he is right about that, then according to his admirably non-contextual or non-perspecti- val account of knowledge, he has never known his own name, even if he first thought of that strange possibility only recently. What is discovered from a "higher level of scrutiny" can contradict what has been responsibly said at "lower" levels.

He also thinks he is not alone in this. Most people, he says, "will ac- knowledge that strictly speaking-if you are going to get picky-given that they do not know they are not changelings, they do not know their own names" (p. 94). Philosophers who reject the principle that 'knows that' is closed under known logical consequence will presumably not acknowledge that, but Fogelin admirably argues that examples which appear to refute that principle are really examples of changing "levels of scrutiny" in which the principle remains unviolated. If that is right, it cannot be mere adherence to that principle that he thinks is responsible for so many people not knowing their own names. It appears to be because he thinks they do not know that they are not changelings. But why does he think that?

My puzzlement can be expressed in two questions. Why does he hold that most people do not know their own names (and so presumably not much else)? And why does he think that holding such a view is an expression of the "updated Pyrrhonism" he espouses in his book?

He holds the view as an instance of the more general point that "reflection on unexcluded remote or not so remote possibilities can lead us to think we

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almost never know the things we claim to know" (p. 94). That is why he thinks that in order to generate what he calls "skeptical problems" we do not have to introduce radical "skeptical scenarios". They are "systematically ine- liminable possibilities", and it might possibly be shown on verificationist or transcendental grounds that they are meaningless or conceptually incoherent or otherwise unrealizable. But that would not matter for the success of Fo- gelin's "skepticism", even if it could be done. It is enough to introduce pos- sibilities that are "eliminable" but have not in fact been "eliminated" in a par- ticular case. Fogelin is struck by the fact that when people make knowledge- claims, "they do not do so in the belief that they have eliminated all elim- inable refuting possibilities" (p. 95). But he thinks his account of knowledge makes it "entirely natural to ask how grounds can establish the truth of some- thing when at the same time there are undercutting possibilities that have not been eliminated" (p. 94). This cannot be simply the misguided complaint that grounds for belief are typically not deductively sufficient. Fogelin's admirable account of the use of 'know' and other epistemic terms insists that 'establishes the truth of' does not mean the same as 'implies'. Whatever its source, reflection on this "entirely natural" question is what has "skeptical" consequences for Fogelin. "Dwelling on uneliminated defeators can produce skeptical doubts no less strong than those produced by skeptical scenarios" (p. 193). The gap between what is required by the truth of what we say and the most that we will ever have actually "eliminated" before making a knowl- edge-claim is what Fogelin thinks reveals the general "fragility of our com- mon epistemic practices" (p. 193). He quotes with approval Wittgenstein's remark "It is always by the grace of nature that one knows something", and he calls one of his own chapters "Epistemic Grace".

My question is why Fogelin thinks remote or not so remote possibilities of the kind he has in mind have not been "eliminated" by my assertion that I know that p. If they are possibilities the realization of which implies that I do not know that p, then in asserting that I do know that p I eliminate them. What I say implies that they are not realized. Of course, I typically do not personally check the non-realization of each and every particular counter- possibility I can think of before I say that I know. But in saying that my grounds establish the truth of what I believe, I imply that nothing that is so undermines or weakens the strength of my grounds, and so in particular that possibilities that I did not explicitly consider do not undermine them. That is what I commit myself to. Of course, I could be wrong about that. But when I say I know I do so in the belief that I have eliminated all refuting possibili- ties from consideration. I exclude them from what I am saying is so.

I must say that I think Bob Fogelin does in fact know his own name. I think he is wrong to conclude on the basis of such flimsy speculation that he doesn't know it. In fact, I think I know his name. In saying that I know it I am claiming that my grounds establish the truth of my belief that his name

414 BARRY STROUD

is 'Robert Fogelin'. I think my grounds do establish the truth of that belief. And I think his grounds establish it too. I thereby imply that the possibility that he was switched after having been named was never realized. Does Fo- gelin think I should not dare to claim that much? Why not? I do claim it, and if what I say and imply is true, doesn't it follow on his account that I do know? Of course, it does not follow from my asserting it fully responsibly on those grounds that I do know, even if I am right about his name. It could be that my grounds do not in fact establish the truth of my belief. But that is what I deny is actually so in this case.

But even if it is true that Fogelin does not know his own name, and even if he is right to regard our epistemic practices in general as "fragile", my other question is why he thinks that in holding such views he is expressing his "updated Pyrrhonism". Pyrrhonism is said to be a form of "skepticism" that arises only from "philosophical reasoning". Its source is "philosophy". What "philosophical reasoning" or reflection leads Fogelin to say that he does not know his own name, or that our epistemic practices are at best "fragile"? He does think he has shown that the search for a positive solution to the gen- eral epistemological problem of justification leads to the "skeptical" conclu- sion that human beings know virtually nothing, and so in particular that they do not know their own names. But that cannot be the reflection he is relying on. "Dogmatic skeptics" detach the consequent from that special philosophi- cal reflection and say human beings know virtually nothing. Pyrrhonian skeptics do not. Fogelin emphasizes that they (and so presumably he) will claim to know certain things, and to be sure and even absolutely dead certain of things, just as all the rest of us do in our common epistemic practices. One thing most of them could claim to be dead certain about is their own names. Why then is it Pyrrhonian to deny as Fogelin does that he knows his own name?

He appears to think that we can be led to deny that we know things we thought we knew simply by reflecting on remote or not so remote possibili- ties of error that we had not explicitly considered. Whether that is so or not would seem to depend on what kind of reflection it is and on what the possi- bilities in question are. In particular cases, it would seem, it could turn out either way. If, in a particular case, I conclude that I probably do not know what I said I knew, is that a form of Pyrrhonian skepticism? It is true that Pyrrhonists as Fogelin depicts them have at their disposal the Modes of Agrippa for inducing suspension of belief, and perhaps Fogelin thinks that the grounds for his belief that his name is 'Robert Fogelin' cannot meet the challenge they present. "If the Pyrrhonists are right," he says, "no argument, once started, can avoid falling into one of the traps of circularity, infinite regress, or arbitrary assumption" (p. 116). But those traps are invoked by the Pyrrhonist only for dialectical purposes, in opposition to arguments given by "dogmatic" philosophers in their project of showing that we do know or are

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justified in believing things. The Pyrrhonist in everyday life is not threatened by them, just as they pose no threat to the competent physicist or mathe- matician or detective, or to any of the rest of us who know our own names and many other things but do not reflect on human knowledge in the "dogmatic" philosophers' way.

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Article Contentsp. 411p. 412p. 413p. 414p. 415p. 416

Issue Table of ContentsPhilosophy and Phenomenological Research, Vol. 57, No. 2 (Jun., 1997), pp. 249-494Front MatterTwo Types of Circularity [pp. 249 - 280]Nietzsche on Ressentiment and Valuation [pp. 281 - 305]Abstraction, Inseparability, and Identity [pp. 307 - 330]Husserl, Wittgenstein and the Snark: Intentionality and Social Naturalism [pp. 331 - 349]Salmon Trapping [pp. 351 - 370]Dion's Left Foot (and the Price of Burkean Economy) [pp. 371 - 379]Feeling Fine About the Mind [pp. 381 - 387]Explanatory Priority: Transitive and Unequivocal, A Reply to William Craig [pp. 389 - 393]Book SymposiaPrcis of Pyrrhonian Reflections on Knowledge and Justification [pp. 395 - 400]The Relativity of Skepticism [pp. 401 - 406]So Do We Know or Don't We? [pp. 407 - 409]Unpurged Pyrrhonism [pp. 411 - 416]What Does a Pyrrhonist Know? [pp. 417 - 425]Prcis of The Construction of Social Reality [pp. 427 - 428]Collectives and Intentionality [pp. 429 - 434]Searle on Social Institutions [pp. 435 - 441]John Searle's The Construction of Social Reality [pp. 443 - 447]Responses to Critics of The Construction of Social Reality [pp. 449 - 458]

Review Essay: Engineering the Mind [pp. 459 - 468]Critical Noticesuntitled [pp. 469 - 473]untitled [pp. 473 - 476]untitled [pp. 477 - 479]untitled [pp. 480 - 482]untitled [pp. 482 - 485]untitled [pp. 485 - 487]

Recent Publications [pp. 489 - 494]Back Matter