In Descartes’ philosophy, there is a thread that ties together his epistemic concerns in a way that is shockingly similar (in one respect) to the kinds of concerns of those ancient epistemologies adopted by Stoics and Pyrrhonians.
Those ancient philosophers were wildly obsessed with ethics and the good life. I say that with tongue-in-cheek, partly in the mode of satire and partly in the mode of (imagined) nostalgia. I qualify with “imagined” because I do not know what it must have been like to be always connecting one’s metaphysics and epistemology to concerns about the good life. There was a time, not too long ago even, when the very term “metaphysics” connoted also a treatment of philosophical cosmology wherein one would naturally discuss the place of humanity in the wider order of the structured cosmos. That conversation is largely dead, as far as I can tell. It was of course alive and well, for example, in a medieval philosopher such as Boethius who went so far in his Consolation to identify (well... maybe that’s too strong) or at any rate closely relate his own flourishing to that of the cosmos. What’s good for the cosmos must in some sense be good for him, and as such, his intense suffering must be justified. In his mind, a metaphysics that combined Stoic and Christian categories seemed right. (I suppose that I too would cling to almost anything that made sense of my impending death-by-bludgeoning.) But I digress...
Much as the Stoics (who pursued apathia) and Pyrrhonians (who pursued ataraxia) were concerned about a peaceful existence that comes from ordering one’s beliefs in the right way, Descartes also has designs on an epistemic system that will stay put. The possible heresy about which I am wondering: What if Descartes, unlike the ancient epistemologists, had truth in the backseat in his concerns? What if Descartes is really more interested in the calm, intellectual peace that comes with a stable system of beliefs that is psychologically unassailable, independent of the truth question?
If this is the case, then the Cartesian project is non-normative from an epistemic point of view. Descartes is actually like Quine.
An obvious rejoinder is to suggest that Descartes is after both: (i) an efficient, stable superstructure of beliefs that (ii) is actually true!
Granted that he could be after both... But I’m playing with an idea here...
Are there reasons to think that he could be after (i) by itself independent of any concern for (ii)? I think there is. When Descartes begins to deal with his modal notions of what is and is not possible, he adopts a shockingly blunt psychological criterion about the limits and constitution of human noetic structures. This is fascinating. It suggests that he thinks clear and distinct modal notions are brokered not so much by truth/falsity but by dubitability, where the latter is not a reliable indication of the former.
That’s dynamite.
Showing posts with label epistemology. Show all posts
Showing posts with label epistemology. Show all posts
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Thursday, October 30, 2008
Socratic ignorance
Okay, I’m going out on a limb here...
I’m not an Ancient Philosophy scholar, nor do I claim to have any special insight on Socrates/Plato.
But I can’t resist musing about Socrates on this fine, unseasonably warm Fall evening in late October, especially inspired by some thought-provoking conversations with my colleague Eric Snider (our local ancient philosophy aficionado).
Socratic Duplicity
Socrates is famous for claiming that he does not posses knowledge. Does he mean what he says?
Most say that Socrates is not being sincere. He is being duplicitous with good intentions. By feigning ignorance, he is trying to inspire his conversation partners to pursue after the truth with all that much ardor. In order to get them to pursue the truth, however, Socrates must knock out their false foundations of confidence.
I’ve heard (through the philosophy grapevine) that there are pretty unambiguous texts in Plato that suggest this interpretation is not right.
Merely True Belief
The other main interpretation is to deny that Socrates is playing ignorant. This would mean that Socrates is being sincere when he claims that he lacks knowledge. What he has, however, is still pretty good. He possesses true belief. This falls short of knowledge, but it’s better than nothing.
This would require that we view the pursuit of Socrates as a search for true beliefs but not knowledge. This doesn’t sound quite right either. One thing that I think is true of Socrates is that he equated virtue with knowledge. If Socrates must be taken to have given up on the project of knowledge, then he must also be said to have given up on the project of virtue and happiness. For a guy like Socrates, this is tantamount to saying that he has given up on the hope of becoming good (which for him was the task of philosophy). That sounds distinctly un-Socratic.
The Problem
On the one hand, Socrates’ claim of ignorance is sincere. He is not pretending when he claims that he lacks knowledge. On the other hand, Socrates claims that he pursues after knowledge. He is not satisfied with true belief. Socrates is not only dissatisfied with true belief, but he actually takes himself to possess knowledge.
Socrates the contextualist?
It’s possible that claims to knowledge might mean different things in different contexts for Socrates. Does this help illuminate what’s going on with the alleged Socratic duplicity? Maybe... but I’m just musing out loud (or whatever the equivalent is when applied to free-flow typing).
Think about the way we ordinarily use language, especially the word “know.” I drove my car to campus today. If someone asks me about the location of my car, there’s a perfectly natural context in which I would say, “I know my car is parked outside.” [In more precise jargon, the appropriate contrast-class of defeaters that needs to be eliminated is set by the appropriate features of the context.]
Suppose, however, that some annoying philosophy student fresh out of an introductory level epistemology class and drunk on his newfound insights, presses me by asking, “Do you really know that your car is parked outside?” (Or perhaps he just shouts “Cartesian Demon!”) This alters the context of inquiry. The conditions for confidence are now higher and more demanding. Maybe I might answer, “Well, ask Rita the Meter Maid; she’s outside standing next to where my car ought to be parked. She knows, and perhaps I don’t know after all.” [Philosophical aside: I think it’s fascinating that “knows” doesn’t appear to admit of degrees under analysis. For instance, strictly speaking, I don’t say “she knows better than I do” as a way of describing a degree of knowing, but rather to express that she’s in a better position to know simpliciter. Does this compete with contextualism? I don’t think it does.]
My saying this, however, does not thereby imply that my earlier claim to knowledge was inappropriate when I uttered, “I know my car is parked outside.” It is perverse to think that what I ought to have said in that context is, “I have a merely true belief that my car is parked outside.” Why? Arguably, the context of inquiry, while not wholly determinative of the conditions for justification, contributes something to those conditions. So, my original claim is appropriate in one context and less appropriate in another. One is less strict and the other stricter.
What this illustrates is that there is an acceptable practice of claiming knowledge in different contexts. [Philosophical aside: I know this is controversial, and I have colleagues who think this is just nuts.] The different contexts fix the rules for when a knowledge claim is legitimate and when it is less legitimate.
Something like this flip-flopping between a strict versus looser contexts of knowledge claims might be going on with Socrates.
I don’t think this is any brilliant insight. I’m sure there’s some Plato scholar who has mapped this territory already.
Did Plato Have a “theory” of Knowledge?
Here’s the standard view of Plato: A condition for a claim to count as knowledge is that the claim must be infallible and therefore certain. This sounds like such a strong condition—infallible certainty! Can it really be what Plato wishes as the distinction between, say, opinion and knowledge? A moment’s reflection indicates that it does. If Plato were to soften the infallibility criterion to something like a simple truth condition—viz., that one of the conditions on knowledge is that a claim must be true—he loses the distinction between opinion and knowledge, since there are such things as true opinions.
That’s the pipe dream of epistemology, and it has lured great minds into it for as long as recorded history. This is no less than the Cartesian project. Descartes had his own reasons for pursuing this, but for those of you who have familiarity with the continental rationalists, you will see the obvious connections to the ancient fascination with infallible certainty.
Satisfaction of this condition would enable one to say of a knowledge claim that one knows it, but also that one knows that one knows it. To claim that one knows that-K requires that one knows-that-one-knows-K (the so-called “K-K thesis”). Let’s call this gussied-up knowledge.
Loosey-Goosey Condition
Let’s recall that knowledge might function differently in different contexts from the perspective of ordinary linguistic practice. Is there a loosey-goosey context that might be appropriate for Plato, a context in which he would be amenable to having Socrates claim that he knows even if he does not know that he knows?
This is hard to say. It is worthwhile to ask if we today have a conception of knowledge that does not require infallible certainty. Indeed we do. We think we have made philosophical progress over a few millennia, and we by and large think it perverse to require infallible certainty for knowledge claims.
We take it to be consistent that we are both fallible and knowledgeable. Here’s how it works. [Philosophical aside: This is why we can also claim to be epistemic foundationalists about the structure of epistemic justification without having to be embarrassed by the crazier forms of foundationalism that tie themselves to further criteria about the nature of the foundations.]
Consider again my belief that my car is parked outside. Call that p. I have evidence for p. My evidence is my memorial belief that I parked my car outside, my memorial belief that I glanced at my car about five minutes ago, my belief based on testimonials from friends who told me that they saw my car parked outside, etc. Call that conjunction of evidence q.
I believe p on the basis of q.
p is true.
q counts as “good enough” evidence for p.
q, however, does not entail p.
Do I know that my car is parked outside? Sure I do. So long as all the conditions are satisfied, then I can be said to know that my car is parked outside. Do I know that I know that my car is parked outside. Clearly not. But the failure to satisfy the very strong condition for a second-order knowledge claim does not by itself show that my first-order knowledge claim is in jeopardy.
From here, epistemology gets very contentious; so I think it is good enough to leave it at that for our purposes.
Okay... the question is whether Plato has available something like this looser-goosier conception of knowledge.
I think the answer is “yes.” Call it Socratic elenchus.
Recall that the main obsession for Plato (and hence of Socrates) is knowledge in the domain of ethics, of “the Good.” On what basis does he and could he claim to know? In actual practice, it is usually through the dialectic of question and answer.
Could something like the model I used to analyze my knowledge that my car is parked outside be adapted to explain Plato’s knowledge by elenchus?
The essence of a fallibilist epistemology is that there is always a strictly logical gap between P and Q, where P is the object of an alleged knowledge claim and Q is the evidence.
When Socrates claims (dialectically) to know P, he must base it on Q.
Maybe Q is the evidence garnered from Socratic badgering, where no contradiction is uncovered after a lengthy, exhaustive inquiry and cross-examination.
So, in essence, it’s a negative condition: We did not uncover any contradictions.
If that’s true, then maybe Socrates is satisfied to claim that he knows (dialectically). To be sure, this is a looser-goosier claim than a claim about infallible certainty. It falls short of infallible certainty. After all, Socrates via the elenchus never claims to have perceived The Forms. Only the gods of Olympus get that honor.
Hence it is not the same as gussied-up knowledge. It’s just plain old “loosey-goosey knowledge.”
Socrates is saying that there is a kind of wisdom or knowledge that is appropriate only for the gods, because they have gussied-up minds. Human minds are loosey-goosey and so can contain only loosey-goosey content. He very clearly owns his human wisdom, but he denies that he has godly wisdom.
What Socrates is rewarded for as well as cursed with is his humble acceptance of the human condition. It is ultimately a religious, pietistic epistemology which disciplines human pretension. It is as if Socrates is saying, “I am not a god, and neither are any of you.”
At the end of it all, when Socrates denies that he has knowledge, he is denying that he has the mind of a god. He is denying any access to gussied-up knowledge.
When he claims that he possesses knowledge, he is claiming merely human wisdom which comes from the humble exercise of the elenchus which delivers loosey-goosey knowledge.
Socrates turns out to be a contextualist, which for him is an ethical epistemology.
Compared to gussied-up knowledge, loosey-goosey knowledge is a pauper. But what do you expect? We do not number among the children of the Titans.
I’m not an Ancient Philosophy scholar, nor do I claim to have any special insight on Socrates/Plato.
But I can’t resist musing about Socrates on this fine, unseasonably warm Fall evening in late October, especially inspired by some thought-provoking conversations with my colleague Eric Snider (our local ancient philosophy aficionado).
Socratic Duplicity
Socrates is famous for claiming that he does not posses knowledge. Does he mean what he says?
Most say that Socrates is not being sincere. He is being duplicitous with good intentions. By feigning ignorance, he is trying to inspire his conversation partners to pursue after the truth with all that much ardor. In order to get them to pursue the truth, however, Socrates must knock out their false foundations of confidence.
I’ve heard (through the philosophy grapevine) that there are pretty unambiguous texts in Plato that suggest this interpretation is not right.
Merely True Belief
The other main interpretation is to deny that Socrates is playing ignorant. This would mean that Socrates is being sincere when he claims that he lacks knowledge. What he has, however, is still pretty good. He possesses true belief. This falls short of knowledge, but it’s better than nothing.
This would require that we view the pursuit of Socrates as a search for true beliefs but not knowledge. This doesn’t sound quite right either. One thing that I think is true of Socrates is that he equated virtue with knowledge. If Socrates must be taken to have given up on the project of knowledge, then he must also be said to have given up on the project of virtue and happiness. For a guy like Socrates, this is tantamount to saying that he has given up on the hope of becoming good (which for him was the task of philosophy). That sounds distinctly un-Socratic.
The Problem
On the one hand, Socrates’ claim of ignorance is sincere. He is not pretending when he claims that he lacks knowledge. On the other hand, Socrates claims that he pursues after knowledge. He is not satisfied with true belief. Socrates is not only dissatisfied with true belief, but he actually takes himself to possess knowledge.
Socrates the contextualist?
It’s possible that claims to knowledge might mean different things in different contexts for Socrates. Does this help illuminate what’s going on with the alleged Socratic duplicity? Maybe... but I’m just musing out loud (or whatever the equivalent is when applied to free-flow typing).
Think about the way we ordinarily use language, especially the word “know.” I drove my car to campus today. If someone asks me about the location of my car, there’s a perfectly natural context in which I would say, “I know my car is parked outside.” [In more precise jargon, the appropriate contrast-class of defeaters that needs to be eliminated is set by the appropriate features of the context.]
Suppose, however, that some annoying philosophy student fresh out of an introductory level epistemology class and drunk on his newfound insights, presses me by asking, “Do you really know that your car is parked outside?” (Or perhaps he just shouts “Cartesian Demon!”) This alters the context of inquiry. The conditions for confidence are now higher and more demanding. Maybe I might answer, “Well, ask Rita the Meter Maid; she’s outside standing next to where my car ought to be parked. She knows, and perhaps I don’t know after all.” [Philosophical aside: I think it’s fascinating that “knows” doesn’t appear to admit of degrees under analysis. For instance, strictly speaking, I don’t say “she knows better than I do” as a way of describing a degree of knowing, but rather to express that she’s in a better position to know simpliciter. Does this compete with contextualism? I don’t think it does.]
My saying this, however, does not thereby imply that my earlier claim to knowledge was inappropriate when I uttered, “I know my car is parked outside.” It is perverse to think that what I ought to have said in that context is, “I have a merely true belief that my car is parked outside.” Why? Arguably, the context of inquiry, while not wholly determinative of the conditions for justification, contributes something to those conditions. So, my original claim is appropriate in one context and less appropriate in another. One is less strict and the other stricter.
What this illustrates is that there is an acceptable practice of claiming knowledge in different contexts. [Philosophical aside: I know this is controversial, and I have colleagues who think this is just nuts.] The different contexts fix the rules for when a knowledge claim is legitimate and when it is less legitimate.
Something like this flip-flopping between a strict versus looser contexts of knowledge claims might be going on with Socrates.
I don’t think this is any brilliant insight. I’m sure there’s some Plato scholar who has mapped this territory already.
Did Plato Have a “theory” of Knowledge?
Here’s the standard view of Plato: A condition for a claim to count as knowledge is that the claim must be infallible and therefore certain. This sounds like such a strong condition—infallible certainty! Can it really be what Plato wishes as the distinction between, say, opinion and knowledge? A moment’s reflection indicates that it does. If Plato were to soften the infallibility criterion to something like a simple truth condition—viz., that one of the conditions on knowledge is that a claim must be true—he loses the distinction between opinion and knowledge, since there are such things as true opinions.
That’s the pipe dream of epistemology, and it has lured great minds into it for as long as recorded history. This is no less than the Cartesian project. Descartes had his own reasons for pursuing this, but for those of you who have familiarity with the continental rationalists, you will see the obvious connections to the ancient fascination with infallible certainty.
Satisfaction of this condition would enable one to say of a knowledge claim that one knows it, but also that one knows that one knows it. To claim that one knows that-K requires that one knows-that-one-knows-K (the so-called “K-K thesis”). Let’s call this gussied-up knowledge.
Loosey-Goosey Condition
Let’s recall that knowledge might function differently in different contexts from the perspective of ordinary linguistic practice. Is there a loosey-goosey context that might be appropriate for Plato, a context in which he would be amenable to having Socrates claim that he knows even if he does not know that he knows?
This is hard to say. It is worthwhile to ask if we today have a conception of knowledge that does not require infallible certainty. Indeed we do. We think we have made philosophical progress over a few millennia, and we by and large think it perverse to require infallible certainty for knowledge claims.
We take it to be consistent that we are both fallible and knowledgeable. Here’s how it works. [Philosophical aside: This is why we can also claim to be epistemic foundationalists about the structure of epistemic justification without having to be embarrassed by the crazier forms of foundationalism that tie themselves to further criteria about the nature of the foundations.]
Consider again my belief that my car is parked outside. Call that p. I have evidence for p. My evidence is my memorial belief that I parked my car outside, my memorial belief that I glanced at my car about five minutes ago, my belief based on testimonials from friends who told me that they saw my car parked outside, etc. Call that conjunction of evidence q.
I believe p on the basis of q.
p is true.
q counts as “good enough” evidence for p.
q, however, does not entail p.
Do I know that my car is parked outside? Sure I do. So long as all the conditions are satisfied, then I can be said to know that my car is parked outside. Do I know that I know that my car is parked outside. Clearly not. But the failure to satisfy the very strong condition for a second-order knowledge claim does not by itself show that my first-order knowledge claim is in jeopardy.
From here, epistemology gets very contentious; so I think it is good enough to leave it at that for our purposes.
Okay... the question is whether Plato has available something like this looser-goosier conception of knowledge.
I think the answer is “yes.” Call it Socratic elenchus.
Recall that the main obsession for Plato (and hence of Socrates) is knowledge in the domain of ethics, of “the Good.” On what basis does he and could he claim to know? In actual practice, it is usually through the dialectic of question and answer.
Could something like the model I used to analyze my knowledge that my car is parked outside be adapted to explain Plato’s knowledge by elenchus?
The essence of a fallibilist epistemology is that there is always a strictly logical gap between P and Q, where P is the object of an alleged knowledge claim and Q is the evidence.
When Socrates claims (dialectically) to know P, he must base it on Q.
Maybe Q is the evidence garnered from Socratic badgering, where no contradiction is uncovered after a lengthy, exhaustive inquiry and cross-examination.
So, in essence, it’s a negative condition: We did not uncover any contradictions.
If that’s true, then maybe Socrates is satisfied to claim that he knows (dialectically). To be sure, this is a looser-goosier claim than a claim about infallible certainty. It falls short of infallible certainty. After all, Socrates via the elenchus never claims to have perceived The Forms. Only the gods of Olympus get that honor.
Hence it is not the same as gussied-up knowledge. It’s just plain old “loosey-goosey knowledge.”
Socrates is saying that there is a kind of wisdom or knowledge that is appropriate only for the gods, because they have gussied-up minds. Human minds are loosey-goosey and so can contain only loosey-goosey content. He very clearly owns his human wisdom, but he denies that he has godly wisdom.
What Socrates is rewarded for as well as cursed with is his humble acceptance of the human condition. It is ultimately a religious, pietistic epistemology which disciplines human pretension. It is as if Socrates is saying, “I am not a god, and neither are any of you.”
At the end of it all, when Socrates denies that he has knowledge, he is denying that he has the mind of a god. He is denying any access to gussied-up knowledge.
When he claims that he possesses knowledge, he is claiming merely human wisdom which comes from the humble exercise of the elenchus which delivers loosey-goosey knowledge.
Socrates turns out to be a contextualist, which for him is an ethical epistemology.
Compared to gussied-up knowledge, loosey-goosey knowledge is a pauper. But what do you expect? We do not number among the children of the Titans.
Friday, October 26, 2007
fun with Pyrrho and Chisholm
Sextus Empiricus makes a clear distinction between (a) affirmations concerning how things appear and (b) affirmations concerning real existence. (a) is supposed to be neither an overly technical notion nor a philosophical term of art. It's just supposed to be a common sense report of how things seem, how the phenomena strike a perceiver. (a), for example, is NOT supposed to connote sense data, ideas qua tertium quid, or anything of that ontic nature. (b) is supposed to be a judgment, whereby in the very judgment one is affirming that reality corresponds to the judgment.
In modern terminology, (b) is a belief (where belief implies a commitment to the truth of the propositional content of the belief).
Sextus' advice to us is to "live by the appearances," to "live without beliefs."
In my seminar on skepticism, we've been wresting with what this could mean. We've had a lot of fun discussing what the distinction between "appearance" and "belief" amounts to, whether there is a relationship to doxastic voluntarism in the mix, what relation Sextus' distinction may have to ancient models of active/passive intellect, and (assuming the distinction is stable) whether such a comportment in life is feasible.
For Sextus, it is clear that he doubts that the epistemic gap between (a) and (b) can be bridged. Or, at any rate, it *appears to him* that the gap has not thus far been bridged, and it *appears to him* that he cannot conceive how that gap could be bridged... all the while withholding judgment about whether it is likely or possible. Fair enough...
Why think, however, that the epistemic gap between an appearance (i.e., a mere report of one's sense contents) and a judgment concerning real existence (i.e., a belief about the world, independent of one's mind) must be bridged in one fell swoop, by something that secures, maybe even entails, the truth of one's representation? This standard is incredibly high, perhaps too high. Assuming deontological conceptions of epistemic justification apply (which is debatable), hankering after this standard is an instance of massively supererogatory epistemic action... WAY beyond the call of epistemic duty.
At least that, among many other things, is what seems to be the import of Roderick Chisholm's classic essay, "The Problem of the Criterion." There are so many things in Chisholm's classic essay that deserve patient, careful commentary. For now, I focus only on the following: I think it's mighty fine how he, in effect, turns Sextus on his head. Earlier, I mentioned the epistemic gap between appearance and judgment about the nature of real existence. Chisholm denies that the epistemic enterprise of procedural rationality requires a justificatory rationale or account (logos) that entails the truth of the content of the appearance or belief. Something much more modest is proposed—viz., the analog of "getting one's epistemic foot in the door." What Sextus refers to as "mere appearances" is what Chisholm marshals into at least a prima facie justification, insofar as an appearance results ceteris paribus in an agent epistemically preferring the belief that real existence corresponds to the appearance.
Does this secure or entail the truth of the appearance or belief? Of course not! But... that's okay. All that is secured is the epistemic preference for the affirmation rather than suspension. In other words, there is an epistemic foot in the door. There is merely at this point a mild, eminently defeasible prima facie justification that admittedly may fall (far) short of knowledge (assuming an internalist conception of justification). But the point is that this is a start, a modest start to be sure, but definitely epistemic progress.
I think that one value of Chisholm's argument is that it blows the whistle on a kind of blind spot in Pyrrhonian epistemology, which is recapitulated by a lot of Early Modern epistemology—viz., the all-or-nothing mentality when it comes to what sort of evidence bears epistemic currency. Instead, why not start with a little bit of justification, admittedly short of what is needed to convert a representation into knowledge, and build on that little bit in a stepwise fashion? That seems to be a pretty dandy way of de-fanging the more implausible aspects of Pyrrhonian pessimism.
But I'm sure many of my students, especially the ones who (sincerely) think that something like Pyrrhonian pessimism *is* the commonsense position, will accuse me of begging really important questions (though sometimes I have a hard time really understanding what they are).
In modern terminology, (b) is a belief (where belief implies a commitment to the truth of the propositional content of the belief).
Sextus' advice to us is to "live by the appearances," to "live without beliefs."
In my seminar on skepticism, we've been wresting with what this could mean. We've had a lot of fun discussing what the distinction between "appearance" and "belief" amounts to, whether there is a relationship to doxastic voluntarism in the mix, what relation Sextus' distinction may have to ancient models of active/passive intellect, and (assuming the distinction is stable) whether such a comportment in life is feasible.
For Sextus, it is clear that he doubts that the epistemic gap between (a) and (b) can be bridged. Or, at any rate, it *appears to him* that the gap has not thus far been bridged, and it *appears to him* that he cannot conceive how that gap could be bridged... all the while withholding judgment about whether it is likely or possible. Fair enough...
Why think, however, that the epistemic gap between an appearance (i.e., a mere report of one's sense contents) and a judgment concerning real existence (i.e., a belief about the world, independent of one's mind) must be bridged in one fell swoop, by something that secures, maybe even entails, the truth of one's representation? This standard is incredibly high, perhaps too high. Assuming deontological conceptions of epistemic justification apply (which is debatable), hankering after this standard is an instance of massively supererogatory epistemic action... WAY beyond the call of epistemic duty.
At least that, among many other things, is what seems to be the import of Roderick Chisholm's classic essay, "The Problem of the Criterion." There are so many things in Chisholm's classic essay that deserve patient, careful commentary. For now, I focus only on the following: I think it's mighty fine how he, in effect, turns Sextus on his head. Earlier, I mentioned the epistemic gap between appearance and judgment about the nature of real existence. Chisholm denies that the epistemic enterprise of procedural rationality requires a justificatory rationale or account (logos) that entails the truth of the content of the appearance or belief. Something much more modest is proposed—viz., the analog of "getting one's epistemic foot in the door." What Sextus refers to as "mere appearances" is what Chisholm marshals into at least a prima facie justification, insofar as an appearance results ceteris paribus in an agent epistemically preferring the belief that real existence corresponds to the appearance.
Does this secure or entail the truth of the appearance or belief? Of course not! But... that's okay. All that is secured is the epistemic preference for the affirmation rather than suspension. In other words, there is an epistemic foot in the door. There is merely at this point a mild, eminently defeasible prima facie justification that admittedly may fall (far) short of knowledge (assuming an internalist conception of justification). But the point is that this is a start, a modest start to be sure, but definitely epistemic progress.
I think that one value of Chisholm's argument is that it blows the whistle on a kind of blind spot in Pyrrhonian epistemology, which is recapitulated by a lot of Early Modern epistemology—viz., the all-or-nothing mentality when it comes to what sort of evidence bears epistemic currency. Instead, why not start with a little bit of justification, admittedly short of what is needed to convert a representation into knowledge, and build on that little bit in a stepwise fashion? That seems to be a pretty dandy way of de-fanging the more implausible aspects of Pyrrhonian pessimism.
But I'm sure many of my students, especially the ones who (sincerely) think that something like Pyrrhonian pessimism *is* the commonsense position, will accuse me of begging really important questions (though sometimes I have a hard time really understanding what they are).
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