Certain Doubts

Some readers may be interested in this critique of recent work in experimental philosophy: Simon Cullen, “Survey-Driven Romanticism: What’s Wrong with Experimental Philosophy”: pdf link. A lot of the work that is discussed involves epistemology. There was also an interesting discussion of the paper, that Cullen took part in, about three months ago at the Experimental Philosophy blog here.

I now see that Brian Weatherson linked to these over at Thoughts, Arguments, and Rants a while ago, but I missed it, and thought others who might be interested may have missed it, too. Thanks to Jennifer Nagel, who sent Cullen’s paper to me. (I then did a little googling, and found Brian’s earlier link to it.) Jennifer sent me the paper because, in e-mail correspondance, I had told her about one of my chief complaints about the experimental philosophers work in epistemology: What’s up with them asking their survey takers whether subjects “really know, or only believe” the proposition in question? The function of that “really” is unclear, and muddies the waters, I think. Why wouldn’t the options just be “knows” and “doesn’t know”? That would seem a lot cleaner, and would avoid a lot of needless worries in interpreting the results, it seems to me. That’s one of the issues Cullen discusses. (It turns out, according to Cullen’s own studies, that the results are quite substantially different when the cleaner question is asked: see pp. 19-20.) But that’s just my own pet peeve. There are a lot of issues discussed, and I haven’t studied it at all carefully.

Help! I have a question, and a follow-up, regarding propositional warrant – a.k.a. “ex ante warrant.” (I here follow Burge’s generic use of ‘warrant’. Beware of messing it up with Plantinga-warrant or Wright-warrant). I hope I can get some help. Here is the question:

Question: Can a subject, S, be propositionally warranted (at time t) in a proposition, p, that she is in principle incapable of thinking (at time t).

The question concerns the extent to which S’s limited conceptual resources limit the propositions that she may be propositionally warranted in. Here is the follow-up:

Follow-up: If so, what does it take for S to be propositionally warranted in p (at t)?

I am strongly inclined to answer ‘yes’ to the first question. It seems that we sometimes presuppose, at some stage our cognitive life, propositions that we cannot, at that stage, think or conceive of. And it seems that we may be rational in doing so. It is, however, not trivial that the question should be answered in the affirmative. For not only do we lack something such as a belief-generating process that may serve as the basis for an epistemic evaluation – we moreover lacks a *potential* belief-generating process. So, I am interested in hearing from people who think that our conceptual capacities set some limits on the propositions we can be propositionally warranted in.

However, my interest is mainly in the follow-up question. I am ready to assume that some psychological connection has to hold between S and p for S to be propositionally warranted in p – even when S cannot think that p. For example, we cannot automatically ascribe propositional warrant to S if someone smarter than S would believe that p had they been in her place.
To see this, consider a modestly talented mathematician, Sam, who believes that a set of axioms, A, is true. Assume moreover that a complicated theorem, T, follows from the axioms. Assume finally that the theorem T is too complex for Sam to think and, much less, prove. In such a case, it seems implausible to regard him as propositionally warranted in theorem T – even if a more talented mathematician could prove T from A (and would had she been in Sam’s shoes).

I have a couple of candidate examples of psychological connection (certain exercised competencies) that may underwrite the ascription of propositional warrant to S in a proposition, p, that she is incapable of believing. But I lack any sort of general characterization of such psychological links.

So, I would like to hear the opinions of folks with opinions about propositional warrant and the conditions under which it may be ascribed.

Best,
Mikkel

PS: The issue is important, I think, in its own right. But it is also important for assessing a particular kind of move that is often made in defending knowledge-accounts of assertion and action against obvious counter-examples. What I have in mind is the appeal to “excuses” or “secondary propriety” by Williamson, DeRose, Hawthorne & Stanley etc. But that is for another discussion.

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The attempt is to gather data from ordinary folk as well as philosophers, so they are hoping a bunch of us will complete the survey. The authors of the study are Thomas Nadelhoffer, Trevor Kvaran, and Eddy Nahmias, and you can find the study here.

Vincent Hendricks and Duncan Pritchard have edited a “5 Questions” book for Epistemology, and Vincent has posted Clark Glymour’s contribution. (Thanks to Jeff Helzner for the link!)