Justification and units of assertion

It’s clear to me that each of two assertions could individually meet the evidential bar for assertibility, but that their conjunction, being typically less probable than either conjucnt, might not. But then there is something very strange about the idea that one could justifiably assert “S₁. S₂.” but not “S₁ and S₂.” After all, is there really a difference in what one is saying when one inserts a period and when one inserts an “and”?

Perhaps the thing to say is that the units of assertion are in practice not single sentences, but larger units. How large? Well, not whole books. Plainly, as the preface paradox notes, one can be justified in producing a book while thinking there is an error somewhere in it (as long as one does not know where the error lies). I think not whole articles, either. Again, we expect to be mistaken somewhere in a complex article. Perhaps the unit of assertion is something more of the order of a paragraph or less, but more than a sentence.

If so, then in typical cases “S₁. S₂.” will be a single unit of assertion, and to be justified in asserting the unit, one needs to be justified in the conjunction. This gives us a pretty precise definition of a unit of assertion: a unit of assertion is an assertoric locution that is lengthwise maximal with respect to needing to be justified.

What in practice determines the unit of assertion is probably determined by a mix of content, context, intonation, length of pauses, etc. For instance, a topic switch is apt to end a unit of assertion, and it may sometimes make a difference how long the pause between the sentences in “S₁. S₂.” with respect to whether the sentences form a single unit of assertion.

Surely people have written on this.

Justified belief and conditional evidence

Plausibly, a belief that p is justified only if one has good evidence that p. But what about a case where instead of having evidence for a belief, one has evidence that if one believes it, then it's be true? (I'll call this the Belief Conditional.) For instance, tonight Sam will decide whether to watch Battlestar Galactica or Deep Space Nine. But Sam hates being shown to be wrong. So if she now comes to believe that she will watch, say, DS9, then come evening she will watch, say, DS9 in order to make her earlier belief true. She knows all this. She also hates suspending judgment. So she makes herself believe that she will watch DS9. (She's not deciding what she is to watch. The decision will come tonight.) Once she realizes that she has succeeding in coming to the belief that she will watch DS9, she has evidence that she will watch DS9. But we may suppose that there is a short period of time during which Sam hasn't yet realized that she believes she will watch DS9. During that short period of time, she doesn't have evidence that she will watch it. Instead, she just knows the conditional that if she believes she will watch it, she will watch it. I am inclined to think that Sam's belief that she will watch DS9 is reasonable and justified.

But I am not happy to extend this to a general claim that having justification for a Belief Conditional suffices for justification of unconditional belief. Here's a case that worries me. Suppose that having read a lot of papers defending an error theory about folk psychology, and generally hanging about in unfortunate philosophical company, Fred is in possession of strong evidence that nobody believes anything. But despite the evidence, ingrained habits make Fred continue to believe that someone believes something. (I take it for granted that the error theory is mistaken.) Of course, Fred does know the obvious necessary truth that if he believes that someone believes something, then someone believes something. But nonetheless given the evidence against folk psychology, I am inclined to think that Fred isn't justified in believing that somebody believes something.

I don't know how to distinguish the cases of Sam and Fred. I feel pulled to assimilate one to the other, but I don't know which I should assimilate to which.

Fear and epistemic probability

If I resent your doing A and you didn't do A, then my resentment was perhaps justified (if I was justified in thinking you did A) but it was nonetheless misplaced. On the other hand, if I am crossing the road and I notice a car speeding towards me, and I fear it will run me over, but then the driver brakes and stops just barely in time, my fear was entirely appropriate and not at all misplaced.

The proper object of resentment, thus, is an event (or action) taken as actual (and wrongful), and when that action doesn't occur, the resentment is misplaced. But the proper object of fear is an event merely taken to be a serious chance. What kind of chance? An objective chance or a merely epistemic probability?

I will argue that it's an epistemic probability. Suppose that I fear that my investments will fail. I get into a time machine, travel to the future, and notice that my investments won't in fact fail. I go back in time and it would be appropriate for my fear to go away. Nonetheless, there is an objective chance of the investments failing: the chancy processes that make investments go up and down continue to run despite my knowledge. But there is no longer a serious epistemic probability. So it looks like epistemic probability is what is relevant. Moreover, I think it can be appropriate to have fears about things that are in fact necessarily false. For instance, if I have an answering a multiple choice exam in calculus, and I the question asks whether the definite integral of some function over some range range is 2, 3, 5, or π/2. I think it's probably 5, but there is something in my calculation that I am not confident of, and I realize that if I got that wrong the answer is π/2. My fear that the definite integral might be equal to π/2 is in fact appropriate, even if it is necessarily true that the answer is 5.

This makes fear very different from resentment: fear is made appropriate by epistemic probabilities--either the actual ones or the ones my evidence justifies (which one?), while resentment is made appropriate by what people have actually done.

I wonder if this focus on the epistemic dimension isn't partly responsible for the notorious way that fears resist rational thought. No matter how much I reflect on the very good statistics for indoor wall climbing injuries (the chance of injury during a session is about the same as that while driving 26 miles) and what I know about the stringency of Baylor's training of my belayer, when I look down from 50 feet up, I feel fear. This fear is misplaced: my epistemic probability for a fall is tiny (and justifiedly so given the evidence). Why? Because it looks dangerous. Now, in the absence of defeaters, appearances yield epistemic probabilities. Moreover, many times even though a defeater to an appearance of an impending bad is sufficient to defeat belief, a sufficient epistemic probability will remain (after all, we may be wrong about the defeater), and it could take quite a bit of time to evaluate whether the defeater is complete or only partial. Given that physical danger may require a quick response, and the examination of defeaters takes time, it makes sense for us to be wired in such a way that appearances have a strong tendency to directly drive fear. So in cases like my climbing case, while the fear is misplaced, inappropriate and unjustified, it is nonetheless understandable (unlike my pathological fear of dogs!).

(Well, when I reflect on the fact that an indoor climbing session has equal injury probabilities to a 26 mile drive, this actually makes me feel a bit afraid. For I do think driving (or being driven) by an average driver is genuinely dangerous. And so perhaps my fear is justified, just as I would be justified to be afraid of a 26 mile drive (even if in fact I don't always feel afraid). If so, then change the example, say to standing on a five inch thick glass floor above a precipice.)

Justification and subjective Bayesianism

According to subjective Bayesianism, the only constraints on prior probabilities are that they be consistent and, for contingent events, strictly between 0 and 1. But this makes it too easy to be within one's full epistemic rights in believing really silly stuff with no evidence whatsoever, just by having assigned it a high prior.

Perhaps what the subjective Bayesian needs to do is distinguish epistemic permissibility, which one can have without evidence, from epistemic justification, which requires some evidence. I doubt that the subjective Bayesian is going to be able to run a good story here that's consistent with the subjective elements. After all, there are many silly things that we are justified in disbelieving precisely because of their low priors and despite there being evidence for them, such as the law of gravity that says F=Gmm'/r^2+a, where a=10^−1000000, a law that we actually have a lot of evidence for—any evidence we have for Newton's law of gravitation is also evidence for this law, since the two laws are experimentally indistinguishable—but which we rightly disbelieve precisely because of low priors.

The Bayesian needs non-subjective priors.

The truth norm of assertion

According to the truth norm, p is assertible if and only if p is true. The truth norm is one of four main proposals for a norm of assertion:

• truth
• belief
• justification
• knowledge

One argument for the truth norm is that it is the only one of the four norms that survives, without modification, the counterexamples in this paper.

Another argument is this. Once you have speech acts that are governed by truth norm, you can get for free speech acts governed by all of the other three norms—or even any other imaginable norm. For if, say, some communication calls for a knowledge norm, you can assert "I know that s" instead of just asserting "s". But it is useful to have a variety of speech acts governed by different norms for different contexts. Sometimes, it is useful to have speech acts governed by the belief norm, sometimes by the knowledge norm, sometimes by an inclination norm ("I am inclined to think that s")[note 1]. And what is useful in language is likely to be realized. But it is better, theoretically, if we do not multiply fundamental illocutionary types and fundamental norms. So if we can have one norm from which the others can be derived, that's great.

Note that a similar move cannot be made with the other norms. Suppose that you think the knowledge norm is the right one. Well, you don't get to make a statement that s governed by the belief norm by saying "I believe that s", for the assertibility condition for that will then be that I know that I believe that s, and that's not the same as as the condition that I believe that s. And so on.

We can generalize the point by saying that the truth norm has a universal property with respect to the class of possible norms of assertion-like speech acts. Think of a norm of assertion as corresponding to a predicate N(x,p,C) that gives a condition for x's asserting p in context C being appropriate, say: x knows p in C (on contextualist accounts of knowledge) or just x knows p. Then our universal property is this: Given speech acts with the truth norm, one can engage in speech acts with a norm equivalent to N, simply by modifying the content of what is said.

For, if Assertion(p) is an appropriate speech act if and only if p is true, then Assertion(<N(x,p,C)>) is an appropriate speech act if and only if N(x,p,C).

Here, the notion of assertion-like speech acts is very, very broad. Consider, for instance, weak denial, which is an assertion-like speech act governed by the norm of non-belief. You can weakly deny that s simply by asserting, with the assertion governed by the truth norm, "It is not the case that I believe that s." (Again, you can't do this in terms of the other norms. For you might fail to believe that s and yet not know or believe or be justified in believing that you fail to believe that s.)

The notion of a universal property comes from Category Theory. I am using it analogously here.

Do I believe the multiplication table?

Most entries, like 8x8, in the multiplication table I know off the top of my head. But some may require a quick calculation. If you ask me what 7x8 is, I may do 49+7=56, and if you ask me what 6x9 is, I might do 70-6=54.

But is there really an important distiction here? You ask me what 8x4 is. Just about right away, 32 comes to mind. But what if, in fact, my mind (or brain?) unconsciously calculated it: 64/2=32? After all, I am more confident of my knowledge of 8x8 than of 8x4, and I think it comes to mind faster and more naturally. And even in my 7x8 calculation, there were unconscious elements. I don't have to consciously think: 7x8 = 7x(7+1) = 7x7 + 7x1 = 49+7 = 56. I just consciously think: 7x7=49, 49+7=56. So along with the conscious processing, there is unconscious application of the distributive law. And hence it is quite a reasonable hypothesis that when I am asked about 8x4, I might indeed be making a quick unconscious calculation. And that would help explain why I can call to mind 8x8 faster than 8x4. Furthermore, if the brain is at all like a computer and if the brain is where memories are housed, information is stored in some encoded and maybe even compressed form. There will thus always be a computational process of some sort when making stored data usable.

Actually, in the above I wasn't completely correct. I think I actually do have 7x8 and 6x9 memorized. But normally (though not now, since the examples are fresh in mind) recalling them from memory takes more time and effort, and I feel it is less reliable than doing the quick calculations. However, one could easily imagine that I don't have them memorized at all, and in the following I will counterfactually assume that.

Now, it is tempting to say that I don't believe that 7x8=56 if I have to actually compute it. But if computation is involved in almost all processes of recall, then it seems we believe very little at all, except the things we're occurrently thinking. And that's absurd. For one, it seems plausible that beliefs are needed for justification, and so if we have so few beliefs, and yet many of our beliefs require many other beliefs for their justification, then fewer of our beliefs end up justified than is right.

Perhaps, then, we should say that there is a difference between calling and recalling to mind. But that distinction is going to be hard to draw.

So maybe what we should say is this. When calling something to mind would involve an unconscious process, then we have a case of belief, but when the process would be conscious, there is no belief until the proposition is called to mind. Now the idiot savant who can do very big arithmetical calculations unconsciously counts as believing all the answers ahead of calculation. That doesn't seem intuitively right. However, whether we call it a belief or not, I do think we should not in any important way distinguish the case of unconscious arithmetical computation from more ordinary cases of recall. And once we realize that unconscious computation can be very complex, we really shouldn't distinguish conscious from unconscious computability in any normatively important way.

Here are some potential consequences. First, we might be pushed to some sort of reliabilism, perhaps of a proper function sort. For there ought to be a distinction between justified and unjustified belief, and if we do not distinguish belief from what one has a skill to compute, then we need a similar account of the justification of the outputs of that skill. But that account, very likely, will involve the reliability of the skill. Second, if we want to maintain some distinction between non-occurrent belief and skill at generating occurrent belief, this distinction is likely to be a vague one, involving the amount of computation. In particular, I suspect that the distinction may not match up with what we want to say about knowledge. So it may be that knowledge doesn't entail belief—maybe knowledge merely entails the possession of a skill of calling to mind.

I am not particularly attached to the conclusions. I just want to provoke some discussion about the phenomena.

Justification and love

Justification consists in God's forgiveness of our sins. What does this forgiveness consist in? At least partly in the taking away of the penalty. But what, most deeply, is the penalty? One thinks here of hell-fire. But while hell may contain fire (or it may contain great cold!), it is not constituted by fire, but by separation from God. Now, lack of charity—lack of the right kind of love for God—is at the heart of separation from God.

So: Divine forgiveness must consist, at least in part, in the removal of the penalty of separation from God, and the removal of our lack of charity. Therefore, the instilling of charity is at least partly constitutive of divine forgiveness. Hence, basic sanctification—the movement from lack of charity to the presence of charity—is not merely causally tied to justification, but is at least partly constitutive of justification. Moreover, this sanctification is not appropriate, and maybe not possible, apart from justification, since a just being is unlikely to waive punishment without forgiving.

Johnson's framework for theistic arguments

Occasionally, I've been offering theistic arguments that border on begging the question. Here, for instance, is one that's basically due to Kant, but transposed into an argument in a way that Kant would not approve of:

1. (Premise) We should be grateful for the wondrous universe.
2. (Premise) If something is not the product of agency, we should not be grateful for it.
3. Therefore, the wondrous universe is the product of agency.

The argument is indisputably valid.[note 1] Moreover, if theism is true, it is also sound, and I do take theism to be true. But soundness is, of course, not enough for a good argument. While premise (2) is pretty plausible (in the objective sense of "should"), it feels like premise (1) "begs the question".

Nonetheless, I think there could be something to (1)-(3). Dan Johnson, in the January 2009 issue of Faith and Philosophy has a fascinating little article on the ontological and cosmological arguments. He argues that a certain kind of circularity is not vicious. Suppose that I know p₁. I then infer p₂ from p₁ in such a way that I also know p₂. I then non-rationally (or irrationally) stop believing p₁, but as it happens, I continue to believe p₂. It will then often be the case that there will be a good argument from p₂ back to p₁ (perhaps given some auxiliary premises), and if I use that argument, I will be able to regain my knowledge of p₁. This is true even though there is a circularity: from p₁, to p₂, and back to p₁. Here is an uncontroversial example: I am told my hotel room is 314. I infer that my hotel room is the first three digits of pi. I then forget that my hotel room is 314, but continue to believe it is the first three digits of pi. I then infer that my hotel room is 314.

Johnson proposes that by the sensus divinitatis one may come to know that God exists (actually, throughout this, I can't remember if he talks of knowledge or justified belief). One may then infer from this various things, such as that possibly God exists. Then, one irrationally rejects the existence of God (it does not have to be a part of the theory that every rejection of the existence of God is irrational), but some of the things one inferred from that belief remain. And arguments like the S5 ontological argument then make it possible to recover the knowledge of the existence of God from the things that one had inferred from that belief. Johnson also applies this to the cosmological argument.

This same structure may be present in my Kantian argument. By the sensus divinitatis one comes to know that God exists (obviously this is not a Kantian idea!). One infers that the universe is such that we should be grateful for it. One then irrationally comes to be an atheist (again, there is need be no claim that every atheist is irrationally such), but one continues to believe that gratitude is an appropriate response to the universe. And if that belief is sufficiently deeply engrained, one can reason back from it to theism or at least to agency behind the universe.

Now let me move a little beyond the Johnson paper. I think it is not necessary for this structure that the initial knowledge of God's existence come from the sensus divinitatis. Any other way of having knowledge of God's existence will do—say, by argument or testimony. In fact, it is not even necessary for this structure that one oneself ever had the knowledge or even belief that God exists. Suppose, for instance, one's parents knew that God exists (in whatever way), and inferred from this that the universe is worthy of gratitude. They then instilled this belief in one, and did so in such a way as to be knowledge-transmitting. (Surely, value beliefs can be instilled in such a way.) But they did not instill the belief that God exists (maybe because they thought that the existence of God was something everybody should figure out for themselves). One then knows (1), and can infer (3).

This transmission can be mediated by the wider culture, too. Culture can transmit knowledge, whether scientific or normative, and arguments can work at a cultural level. It could be that a theistic culture where the existence of God was known grew into a culture where (1) was known. The knowledge of (1) can remain even if the culture non-rationally rejects the existence of God (as American culture has not done, and might or might not do in the future). And then the individual can acquire the knowledge of (1) from the culture (we don't need to attribute knowledge to the culture if we don't want to; we can just talk of knowledge had by individuals participating in the culture), and then infer (3).

I think there are probably many consequences of theism that are embedded in the culture, from which consequences one can infer back to theism. If the participants in the culture knew theism to be true when these consequences were derived, then it is perfectly legitimate to reason back from these consequences to theism.

Contextualism: An argument in search of a conclusion

"You know you are a moderately competent art history graduate student. You are visiting a 15th century Italian church Professor Takayama, the world's foremost expert in Fra Angelico. You see a painting that you think is quite definitely not by Fra Angelico. Professor Takayama points to it and says: 'I am quite certain this is by Fra Angelico.' You conclude, on the authority of the great Takayama, that the painting must indeed be by Fra Angelico. Then Professor Takayama turns to you and asks: 'Do you agree?' You respond, quite honestly: 'Yes, quite certainly.'"

Two kinds of mathematical intuitions

Mathematicians have two kinds of intuition. A speculative intuition occurs when they think about a problem, perhaps think quite a lot, and conclude that the problem has answer A, even though they how no idea how to prove this. "It just looks like A is the answer." I do not know how reliable speculative mathematical intuitions are. I suspect that they are not very reliable. In particular, I think they rarely if ever justify belief. Certainly, I did not acquire belief in an answer on the basis of speculative intuitions when I was a practicing mathematician.

However, there is also such a thing as pedestrian intuition. This tells the mathematician: "Clearly, p." The "clearly" is not speculative. The content of the intuition is not just that p is true but that p can be easily proved from what preceded. John Fournier, my mathematics thesis director, once gave me the following advice on papers submitted for publication: when there are two obvious steps in a row in a proof, you can omit one, but not both.[note 1] When a mathematician sees that something follows, even if she does not actually go through the proof of the fact that it follows, that pedestrian intuition is, I think, very reliable. It may even be that had the mathematician written down the proof, the proof would have contained some minor mistakes. For this intuition does not seem to be based on having the proof in one's mind. Rather, it seems to be a direct non-inferential grasp of the easy provability of p.

One small piece of evidence for the reliability of pedestrian intuition is the incredible reliability of mathematical publications. Errata are extremely rare in mathematical journals.[note 2] I suspect this is not just because of the refereeing process, but because this highly reliable intuition was guiding the mathematician in writing the proof. In fact, I think the epistemic weight of the result proved in a mathematics paper goes beyond the validity of the published proof. The published proof may indeed contain a minor slip here or there. But what makes these slips be minor is precisely that one can intuitively see what should be in their place. My last mathematics paper was published when I was significantly out of practice. It went back and forth between me and the referee several times, and the referee was rightly exasperated by the amount of mistakes in the proofs. However, all the mistakes were easily fixable: the intuition was exactly right, in a pedestrian way, despite the logical gaps in the proofs.

This is surprising. One might think that a proof with logical holes has no value at all—it is like tracing your ancestry to Charlesmagne with only two gaps in the chain (this isn't my comparison). But somehow the reliability of the pedestrian intuition goes beyond the proof written down.

What explains the extremely high reliability of pedestrian intuition in a well-trained mathematician? One possibility is that it is a highly developed pattern-matching skill. In the past we've seen p-type claims following from q-type claims, and we can see that the present case fits into the pattern, and so p follows from q. This explanation fits well with the fact that experience seems important for this kind of intuition. But I am not sure this would be sufficient to give the intuition the kind of reliability it has. Pattern-matching would, I doubt, have the right kind of reliability. In typical cases of writing down a proof of a new result, the case at hand is unlikely to be exactly like past cases.

Or could it be that there is a process involving a mental representation of a proof, but a representation not directly available to consciousness? If so, what is interesting is that this is just as reliable as, or even more reliable than, consciously going through the steps of a proof (in fact, I suspect that the reliability of consciously going through the steps often or always depends on the non-conscious process occuring side-by-side). This is kind of neat and reminds me of the speculations central to Peter Watts' novel Blindsight. Moreover, if this is right, then I think it should challenge internalist epistemologies that require justifications to be conscious. In these mathematical cases, the justification can be made conscious, but the making-conscious does not seem central, since the non-conscious reasoning is more reliable than the conscious reasoning.

It is an interesting question how the two kinds of mathematical intuition connect up with kinds of philosophical intuition. I do find myself with a quite reliable intuition in philosophy akin to the pedestrian sort of mathematical intuition—an intuition as to what conclusions can be made to follow from what kinds of assumptions. In fact, this is probably just the same intuition at work, though I find it is a bit less reliable in philosophy than in mathematics. (I think I have at least three times been significantly deceived by such an intuition, and in a number of other cases have needed to add plausible ancillary assumptions to make an argument go—though on reflection that probably can happen in mathematical cases, too, which slightly weakens what I said in previous paragraphs.)

There is, however, a second kind of intuition: an intuition that pointless torture is wrong, or that we are not identical with our left big toes, or that identity is non-relative, or that the good is to be pursued and the bad avoided, that nothing can be causally prior to itself, or that every contingent truth has an explanation. I am inclined to class this intuition as different from both the pedestrian and the speculative mathematical intuitions. This intuition is of variable strength, unlike pedestrian mathematical intuition which is pretty uniformly very strong. Sometimes, this kind of philosophical intuition gives us certainty, as in the case of the good being to be pursued, and sometimes it merely inclines us in favor of a proposition. The range of strengths here makes it different from speculative mathematical intuition which, I think, never justifies belief, while this kind of philosophical intuition does justify belief.

Or maybe we need to split this second kind of philosophical intuition into two kinds. One kind is speculative, and this is akin to speculative mathematical intuition. I am, let us suppose, inclined to think electrons are not conscious, but this intuition is not sufficient to compel or justify belief. Another kind is self-evidential which presses belief on us, and I suspect justifies it as well. This kind is more like the highly reliable pedestrian mathematical intuition in respect of the way it compels belief (the reliability question is a different matter on which I want to remain silent), but is unlike the mathematical case in that it is substantive and not merely logical in nature.

Lies, deception, testimony and faith

One of the routes to being epistemically justification that p is true is to be told by a reliable reporter that p. This is justification by testimony. On the other hand, I might be told something by you and not accept it as testimony, but instead treat the fact that you told it to me as evidence, doing a Bayesian update of my credences based on the fact that you said the thing. If I treat your saying that p in this way, my credence that p may go up and may go down (e.g., if I think you're lying so that your asserting that p makes it more likely that p is false). Moreover, there is a difference between accepting your testimony and taking your assertion of p to be evidence for the truth of p. I want to focus on this difference, and say a few things about the difference between lying and deception.

The first point I want to make is that I can only take your assertion that p is true to be testimony if either you made the assertion to me, or I stand at the end of a chain where you told it to A₁, A₁ told it to A₂, and so on, until we get to someone who told it to me. Suppose that instead I stand in no such chain. Instead, I overhear your saying that p to B. Then I cannot properly accept p as testimony, since you were not speaking to me. That you asserted p to B is evidence for p, if I think it is likely you were telling the truth to B, but it is not testimony to me. Testimony is at least a ternary relation: A testifies that p to B (where B might be an individual or a group). If I am not testified to, I cannot properly believe on testimony.

Here's one reason. It is perfectly permissible to speak in ways that your interlocutor understands but which others will misunderstand. You do have a responsibility to ensure your interlocutor will not misunderstand. If you have a foreign vegan guest whom you know to think that the English word "egg" denotes a kind of plant (eggplant, say), you are neglecting not just your hostly responsibilities but your responsibilities as a speaker in saying: "This dish is made of egg." In fact, you are lying—in speaking, you are inviting your guest to take your words as testimony to the dish being made of a kind of a plant. You are giving false witness.

When we speak we have a responsibility not to be misunderstood by an interlocutor, and the interlocutor in turn gain the right—barring defeaters—to take what she thinks you've said as true. This right is tied to the responsibility. But when I overhear your asserting p to B, you have no responsibility to ensure my understanding you—your only responsibility is to ensure that B understands. Thus you do not confer on me the right to take what I think you've said as true.

Suppose this is right. Assume that you know that George is at Mark's house, but want to mislead me. You are talking with Frank and notice that I am listening in (maybe I am behind the arras, and you hear a rustle). You tell Frank: "George is at Jennifer's house", but you do so with a wink that ensures Frank doesn't take your words as literal truth. I don't see the wink, of course, so I come to have evidence that George is at Jennifer's house. But you haven't lied to me. You haven't lied to me because you weren't speaking to me, though you expected me to hear. Your properly speakerly responsibilities were to Frank, and these you fulfilled.

Note, too, that it may be that you are not even intending that I believe George is at Jennifer's house. It could be that you are merely intending that I take myself to have evidence for George's being at Jennifer's house. (This point is based on an idea of Mark Murphy's.) And in intending this, you are intending that I believe something true, viz., that I have evidence for George's being at Jennifer's house. My believing this is likely all you need for your purposes, since whether I actually believe on the evidence or not, presumably the presence of the evidence will get me to look for George at Jennifer's house, if I want to find him.

I once read in an early 20th century moral theology textbook (Smith, I think) that someone who is tortured and says something false is no more lying than an actor on stage, because she is not really engaging in the practice of assertion, but is uttering words more like a madman (I am very loosely paraphrasing the main idea from memory). Here is one way of saying something like this in the above setting. If I am torturing you, you shouldn't expect me to take your words as testimony. Instead, you would expect me to take your words as your way of saying whatever it takes to get the pain to stop. Thus if you say something that is false, you are not offering me testimony, but simply bringing it about that I have evidence of the Bayesian, not testimonial, sort.

In summary, here are some claims that I suspect are true, though I have not given much of an argument for many, or perhaps any, of them:

• Lying is not just deceitful or misleading speech. It is speech that provides (or maybe: is intended to provide) false testimony to the person being lied to. When you are not providing testimony to me, e.g., because you are not talking to me, you are not lying to me.
• It is a speaker's responsibility not to be misunderstood by the interlocutors.
• There is a difference between being known to be a listener and being spoken to, and only someone spoken to can be lied to.
• Credences should be differently updated on testimony than on evidence.
• There is an epistemic virtue, which I will call "the doxastic aspect of faith", which is the virtue of appropriately updating on testimony.
• Presumably, demons believe many claims made by Jesus, because they have evidence that Jesus is God and that God does not lie. However, this need not be the same as even the doxastic aspect of faith, because it may be that the demons are updating on Jesus's words considered as evidence, and not as testimony directed to them. Likewise, it would be possible for a human being to come to believe that what Jesus said on some topic is true without having even the doxastic aspect of faith in Jesus.

Imputed righteousness

Reformed Christians believe that justification—the event by virtue of which a person comes to be saved—consists in the juridical imputation of righteousness. This is distinguished from God's sanctifying the person, where righteousness is induced in the person. Reformed Christians, of course, believe that sanctification comes along with justification, but want to maintain a distinction between the two.

What would justification consist in on such a view? What is the difference between being justified and not being justified? In this post I want to clear the way for further discussion by rejecting some accounts that I think are particularly problematic. While I myself reject the Reformed distinction between justification and sanctification, I want to offer these arguments in a friendly way to my Reformed brethren.

Problematic account 1: Justification consists in predestination.[note 1] On this account what makes Patricia justified is that God has predestined her for salvation. Thus, her being justified is not grounded in any intrinsic property of hers, but in a property of God—that God intends to save her.

The most obvious problem with this account is that then Patricia is justified from the first moment of her existence. But if so, then she does not change in respect of justification when she repents of her sins and accepts Christ as her savior. It seems plausible to suppose that justification does not precede faith. (One argument for this is that according to the Reformed, one is saved by faith, and hence being justified cannot precede faith; this is a bad argument because it neglects the possibility of backwards causation or causation mediated by God's foreknowledge.) It likewise seems plausible to connect justification and the forgiveness of sins. Something changes for the Christian. She was lost, and now she is found. And this change seems tied to justification. The correct thing vis-à-vis Reformed Theology (and probably the truth, too) to say seems to be that prior to receiving salvific grace, Patricia was predestined but not yet justified; after receiving salvific grace, she is predestined and justified.

Problematic account 2: Justification consists in a changing divine attitude. On this account, when Patricia becomes justified, God's attitude towards Patricia changes.

A major difficulty with this approach is that it is difficult to square with divine simplicity or immutability. Perhaps one can square it with immutability by positing that God eternally has one attitude towards Patricia-at-t for t<t₀ and eternally has another attitude towards Patricia-at-t for t>t₀, where t₀ is the moment of justification. If so, then in some sense there is no real change at all in anything at the time of justification—it's simply that Patricia has reached a time at which she is favored, but any change here whether on the part of Patricia or of God is a Cambridge change. Can justification be a Cambridge change? Does it make sense to rejoice in a mere Cambridge change in the way in which one rejoices in one's salvation?

Moreover, this will not take care of problems of divine simplicity. God being omnipotent could, surely, have justified Patricia not at t₀ but at t₁ instead. Consider a world just like this one but where that happens. What is the difference between this world and that world in virtue of which in this world Patricia is justified at t₀ but in that world she is justified at t₁? Since justification is an extrinsic property of Patricia on this view, the difference must lie in God's attitudes: in one world God has one set of attitudes and in the other another. But this seems to violate divine simplicity: it suggests that God is not identical with divine attitudes. There is a way of handling this in general, and that is to suppose that the attitudes are extrinsic properties of God. But this solution raises the question of what properties of creatures are such that in virtue of them it is correct to talk of God having one attitude in one world and the other in the other? Since on the present account Patricia's justification was supposed to be solely a fact about God's attitudes, it does not seem that there is room for such properties of creatures.

Problematic account 3: Justification is a dispositional property: x is justified at t iff were x to die at t, x would go to heaven. Granted, before the time t₀ of justification, it was true of Patricia that she will go to heaven (this is true in virtue of predestination, say). But if t_-1<t₀, it was not true that of Patricia that were she to die at t_-1, she would go to heaven—predestination only ensures the indicative that she will go to heaven, and therefore that she won't die before t₀.

This account has several problems. The first is that on this view, it seems one only has instrumental reason to desire justification: the value of justification consists in going to heaven. Moreover, it is not clear why it makes sense, given predestination, to rejoice at all at having acquired justification. After all, now having this dispositional property is of little value as such (except insofar as now might be the exact time of one's death, which is improbable, especially of the now is instantaneous). What is of value is having this dispositional property at the moment of death. It is true that Reformed Christians generally believe that once you have this dispositional property, you have it for the rest of your life. Thus, evidence for having the property now is equally evidence that one will have it at the moment of one's death. But then one does not have reason to rejoice even instrumentally in the present possession of the dispositional property. The true object of rejoicing is the salvation, rather than the present having of the property of justification. It is true that on some Reformed views one comes to have knowledge that one will be saved at the time that one becomes justified, and it would make sense to rejoice in this knowledge. But the knowledge is distinct from the salvation. Granted, we can talk of Martha rejoicing at the negative results of her HIV test. But it seems that the appropriate object of rejoicing is her being HIV negative, or her knowing that she is HIV negative, though we admittedly transfer our joy to things associated with the primary object of our joy, and so perhaps there is something to the idea that Martha rightly rejoices in the negative results of the test. But, in any case, the joy at being justified should not be joy by association.

Another problem is with the ground of the dispositional property. We can't just "jump into heaven" at our death. "To go to heaven" is to be placed in a heavenly state by God. The dispositional property is not, then, grounded in some kind of a power of the person who has it. Nor, on the Reformed view, is it grounded in the merits of the person. Rather, it seems to be grounded in God's will. But if so, then the problems of Account 2 come back.

Conclusions: These three accounts are problematic, especially for those who accept divine simplicity (as at least some classic Reformed creeds apparently do). What these accounts all have in common is that they make the imputation of righteousness be an extrinsic, Cambridge property of the person being justified. I suspect that this is what is wrong with all of these accounts. Instead, one needs an account on which justification consists in a real, grace-wrought change in the person. From a Reformed perspective, the difficulty with such an account is the danger that the change will then consist in actual righteousness in the person, and hence the distinction between justification and sanctification will be erased. Personally, I don't mind this danger at all—the distinction between justification and sanctification is shaky biblically and pretty much non-existent patristically. But Reformed folks do mind it. I think that what they might do well to do is to adopt a view according to which it is a genuine intrinsic property of a person that the person is guilty or innocent of something (there are suggestions to that effect in Wojtyla's The Acting Person, so it's a view that not just Reformed folks might find congenial), and then hold that in justification God directly produces a change in the person in respect of that property.

"Once we have the evidence, we will pull the trigger"

The quote in the title is from 2004, and concerns a city's plan to shut down an adult business, once evidence of illegality is gathered. This sounds funny, but to be charitable, the quote is only funny if "evidence" means epistemic evidence, but in context it probably means "legally admissible evidence"--the speaker is a lawyer after all.

At times, people have a near-certainty that future scientific findings will vindicate a view that they hold. One meets this in contexts related to naturalistic assumptions. Thus, some have a near-certainty that future neurophysiology will find evidence that there is no physically inexplicable influence on the brain of a sort that could be reasonably attributed to a soul. And some have a near-certainty that future biological research will fill in present-day explanatory gaps without having to posit any radically different kinds of processes from the ones the current neo-Darwinian synthesis posits. An example from the past would be 18th century folks who might think that all the fundamental things we are ever going to discover in the future course of physics is more forces, and that this will fill in the currently unexplained phenomena (cf. this post of mine).

I want to suggest that to justify a view by reference to the expected future findings of science is epistemically unacceptable. For there are, I think, two sources of evidence for the expectation. The first is independent evidence for the view in question. Certainly, there can be times where one has evidence that a view is true, and evidence that the view is likely to fall within the competence of a future science, and then one can conclude that future science will likely vindicate the view. However, in that case the prediction about future science is a fifth wheel and does no justificatory work. Here the invocation of future science is no more than a rhetorical device, an attempt to apply the prestige of science to one's view.

But there may be times when one actually has reason to think that science will conclude to a particular view, and one's reason to think this is independent of evidence for that view. For instance, one might have an inductive argument from "the direction a science is heading" as to where it will end up. There are two ways of understanding this. One way is that we are simply extrapolating from past data. In that case we are not actually basing anything on future science. We are doing science now by taking past data and extrapolating from it--this is standard scientific practice. Again, future science is a fifth wheel epistemically. And if this is what we are doing, we have to be careful to adhere to all of the standards of the science in question--basically, our extrapolatory work has to be of a sort to count as good statistical work in the relevant field in order to invoke the authority of science for the findings.

There is, however, one remaining way to understand "the direction a science is heading." The sciences are human enterprises, and as such are appropriately studied by sociology and anthropology. One can thus make sociological and/or anthropological predictions about where a science is going. But these predictions, when made sociologically or anthropologically, unless they embody the sort of extrapolation that I discuss in the previous paragraph, do not justify one's believing that the predicted conclusions of the science are true. Thus, one might have anthropological reasons for thinking that future neurophysiologists are going to be by and large naturalists and are not going to accept any explanations involving non-physical processes. But this anthropological prediction yields no additional evidence for the claim that non-physical processes have no impact on neurophysiological functioning. One can equally well make the sociological prediction that future scientists will by and large focus on theories for defending which one can get good grant money, but this sociological prediction does not justify belief that theories for defending which one can get good grant money are more likely to be true. Basically, the sociological/anthropological prediction is based on our knowledge of the biases of scientists in the field.

In summary, invoking future science as evidence for one's view is epistemically irresponsible. One can make predictions about the future progress of science in three ways:

1. Having independent evidence of a view and evidence that it falls within the purview of science
2. Doing good science now in extrapolating past data
3. Doing good sociology or anthropology of science

But on none of these approaches does the prediction about future science carry independent epistemic weight. Typically, I submit, it is just rhetoric. I also suspect that often the source of a near-certainty about where science is going is (3), which is the most epistemically objectionable as evidence for the truth of a view.

Liberal theology

Consider a revealed religion, say Christianity. I will use "the Sources" for the locus or loci where revelation is believed to be discursively embodied. In the case of Catholic Christianity, the Sources are Scripture and Tradition, in the case of Protestant Christianity, the Sources might be just Scripture, and in the case of Islam, the Sources will be the Qur'an and various traditions. The liberal theologian does not believe that any part of the Sources is infallible in matters of faith or morals. I will take this to be part of the definition of a liberal theologian, and will argue that liberal theology is untenable.

As an adherent of a revealed religion, the liberal theologian has to accord some authority to the Sources. And so she has to decide when to follow the Sources and when not to. Since no part of the Sources is taken by her to be infallible, she has to make that decision by the light of her reason.

Thus we get our first conclusion: The liberal theologian, to be consistent, must have a high view of reason. I suspect that some liberal theologians, in the thrall of postmodern thought, do not have a high view of reason. But then they are inconsistent. For there to be any hope of a liberal theology, reason has to be capable of trumping the Sources.

Let us, then, suppose that our liberal theologian has a high view of reason. She rejects claims from the Sources when she takes them to conflict with reason. But what does it mean to conflict with reason? There are two kinds of deliverances of reason: (1) apodeictic ones are justified by a logically impeccable argument from self-evidently true premises, and (2) plausibilistic fall short of that, either by employing inductive or probabilistic argumentation, or by relying on premises that are not self-evidently true. Now I am not planning to offer any argument against in this post against being a liberal theologian in whose theological practice only the apodeictic deliverances of reason trump the Sources. But I just don't think there are any liberal theologians like that. The typical disagreements with the Sources rely on plausibilistic arguments. There are, for instance, no available apodeictic arguments for claims like:

• salvation apart from Christ is possible
• any non-reproductive role that a man can appropriately play, a woman can appropriately play as well
• same-sex sexual relations are permissible
• marital contraception is permissible
• miracles do not happen
• we are the product of a random, unguided, natural process
• everyone achieves salvation
• all the major religions tell us the same truth about God

While there certainly are arguments for these claims, these arguments either rely on premises that are plausible but not self-evident, or somewhere the argument makes a plausible and not logically strict step, or both. I do not think any self-conscious liberal theologian should deny that. Consider, for instance, the second example claim. That claim presumably has to rely on empirical data about men and women, as well as on a non-self-evident normative interpretation of that data. The liberal theologian should not be ashamed of using plausibilistic arguments--we use them all the time in our daily lives--but she should be aware that that is what is she is doing.

So our liberal theologian now not only has a high view of reason, but also believes that some merely plausibilistic arguments trump the Sources. But now we have a problem. Merely plausibilistic arguments can be wrong, no matter how strong they are. That is what distinguishes them from apodeictic ones. Now, if the Sources have some authority, it cannot be that every merely plausibilistic argument trumps the Sources.[note 1]

Thus, we get our second conclusion: The liberal theologian needs to distinguish between those plausibilistic arguments that are strong enough to trump the Sources and those that are not strong enough. (The degree of strength required may depend on which part of the Sources is contradicted by the argument.)

From this it follows: The liberal theologian's methodology closes the door to the possibility that we be corrected by divine revelation when there is a sufficiently strong plausibilistic argument for a false conclusion. After all, no matter how great a degree of strength we require in a plausibilistic argument, an argument could have that strength and still lead to a false conclusion. That is because it is plausibilistic and not apodeictic. And if the argument is strong enough, it will trump anything in the Sources. This is an unfortunate conclusion, and one that should worry the liberal theologian, given the possibility of very strong plausibilistic arguments for false conclusions.

On the other hand, revelation often concerns things beyond our experience and beyond the powers of our reason. If one takes somewhat seriously the authority of the Sources and the fallibility of reason, one will be very cautious about the idea of reason trumping the Sources. Thus: The liberal theologian needs to accept that the Sources trump reason in many of the areas of revelation, because these areas go beyond reason's competence. Thus a liberal theologian with a realistic view of reason's limitations cannot be too liberal. And, in fact, I think a realistic view of reason's limitations in regard to plausibilistic arguments makes the project of liberal theology implausible.

Let me end with what I think is one of the most serious in-practice objections to certain moral aspects of liberal theology. Many of the plausibilistic arguments in the liberal theologian's repertoire at most establish a presumption in favor of the conclusion, and thus have the form: "In light of such-and-such facts, there is a presumption in favor of claim p, absent considerations to the contrary." But surely arguments of that form should not trump the Sources--the Sources, after all, are a consideration to the contrary. Let me explain what I mean here by way of example, using an idea from this old post of mine. Take, for instance, a liberal Christian theologian who wants to argue that some form of sexual activity (e.g., same-sex sexual relations) that the Sources say is wrong is in fact acceptable. But in fact there really aren't any very strong positive arguments for the permissibility of a form of sexual activity apart from a presumption of permission, i.e., a view that if we can't find an argument against A, then we should assume A to be permissible. Granted, there might be some arguments based on considerations of autonomy, but Christians who believe that God is in charge of us--and it is hard not to believe that even if one is a liberal theologian--are surely going to be suspicious of that. Nor are there any very strong positive arguments against the claim that God in his omniscience might see some bad consequences of an activity that we do not see--this happens quite often. The most reason can say in favor of the form of activity is something like: "As far as we can tell by reason, there are no strong considerations to the contrary." Yes, but a judgment like that will certainly be trumped by the Sources, unless one has such a low view of the Sources that one is not really considering them to be Sources anymore.

This post is inspired by discussions with Trent Dougherty, but he should not be thought of as endorsing anything here.

Unjustified true belief

Suppose a supernatural being tells me, and I know that he is speaking truthfully, that if I so choose, he can make sure that over the next year I will unjustifiedly acquire a lot of true beliefs about all kinds of topics that are important and interesting, and, moreover, I will adhere to these beliefs quite firmly even though they will remain unjustified and will not constitute knowledge. Moreover, he promises that the true beliefs will not be misleading[note 1], and that in the process, I will not acquire any false beliefs that I wouldn't have otherwise acquired. Furthermore, if I accept the offer, I will forget that I have accepted it.

Should I accept the offer?

On the one hand, truth is worth having. On the other hand, it seems that my acquiring these beliefs will involve epistemic vice. If I agree to the offer, I am acting like a doxastic consequentialist: getting things right justifies what might be thought by some to be inappropriate means.

I don't for sure know the answer to the question. But I want to observe one thing. The answer to the question does not seem to lie within epistemology as it is usually practiced. I already know the beliefs wouldn't be knowledge. I also know they wouldn't be epistemically justified. But now that I know all that, I need to decide whether or not to allow myself to gain these beliefs. And this, I think, is a question about what a good human life is like, about what virtue and vice are. It seems to me to be a moral question.

If this is right, then ultimately the question how one should act in the doxastic sphere is a moral question. For although this case is contrived so as to make the questions it raises more obvious, I think similar issues of value are present in any decision on a course of doxastic action.

This isn't an argument that epistemic norms, insofar as they have normative force, are a species of moral norms (something that I also think is true), but rather it is an argument that any guidance we get from epistemic norms is subordinated to moral norms, even when the doxastic life is all that is relevantly in view.

Counting on people

It seems to me that there is an epistemological asymmetry when relying on the good or bad actions of others. Karla has a sterling character, and is an expert on the relevant topic, and he says p. I conclude that p. Patrick has a horrible character, and is an expert on the relevant topic, and it would clearly be in his interest to lie about this to me, and he says q. I conclude that not-q. The two conclusions may have extremely high probability based on the evidence about Karla's and Patrick's past behavior, but it is plausible to me that only the inference in Karla's case gives knowledge. Why? Because we have a right to count on someone's good character but have no right to count on someone's bad character, even if the probabilities of acting out of character are equally small.

Similarly, given past behavior, I think sometimes we are justified in believing that a particular person will do the right thing in some circumstances, not just that she will very likely do the right thing. But we are never justified in believing of a person that she will do the wrong thing in some circumstances, though we may be justified in believing that she will very likely do the wrong thing. It would be uncharitable to do so--she might reasonably complain that we shouldn't have formed such a belief, given her free will.

One might think the second case, and maybe the first, confuses moral justification with epistemic justification. But morality governs every aspect of our lives (this is clearest from a Jewish or Christian standpoint--we are to love God with every aspect of our lives), and in particular governs our believings.

Love and benevolence

There are two fairly standard claims about love:

1. benevolence--willing the good--towards the beloved is an essential component of love, and
2. love gives one the reason par excellence to benefit the beloved.

Now this may be obvious to some readers, who will simply reflect on my ignorance when reading this, but it is only today has it occurred to me that the two claims stand in some tension. Nothing can cause either itself or an essential part of itself (my body can cause my teeth to grow, because teeth are not essential parts of the body). Likewise, how can an attitude justify an essential part of itself?

As usual in the case of such a tension, there are four options available. Discarding both (1) and (2) is implausible.

Frankfurt in effect discards (1)--it is care, but not benevolence, that is an essential part of love on his view, and this care justifies the benevolence. But this is implausible, as it seems to imply that one could love someone and at the same time will the worst evils for one's beloved. Even if one adds a claim that justice towards the beloved is a component of love, still the idea that one could fail to will anything for one's beloved, despite the opportunity to do so, and still count as loving is implausible. Also, such a view is incompatible with the Christian idea that love fulfills the law--a love that does not imply some benevolence does not fulfill the moral law.

One could discard (2) but keep (1). On this view, I think one will end up saying that it is not love that justifies benevolence, but whatever it is that justifies the love likewise justifies the benevolence that is a part of this love. Another attractive feature of this view is that if one explains why one made some sacrifice for Bobby, and one says: "Bobby is my son and I love him", the "and I love him" is one thought too much--it is the sonship that justifies both the love and the sacrifice that is a part of the love. If one hates Bobby, one still has reason to make that sacrifice. I like this view a lot.

One could just be careful and hold on to both (1) and (2). Thus, some benevolence will be an essential part of love, and the love will then justify further benevolence. But what justifies the bit of benevolence that forms an essential part of love, and why does it not also justify all the benevolence by itself? Suppose our proposal is that the initial bit of benevolence is justified by the fact that we're all children of God, or that if something is good for x then it is good and hence it is worth promoting, or some other general claim like that. But such a fact seems to equally give one a reason for unlimited benevolence. Moreover, let "love*" be the aspects of love beyond the bit of benevolence that is an essential part of love (maybe love* is appreciation and/or a desire for union). Then, ex hypothesi, love* plus the little bit of benevolence justifies more benevolence. But it is not clear how a little bit of benevolence can help justify more benevolence. So, then, it seems it is love* that justifies the extra benevolence. But if so, then it is not love, properly speaking, that justifies the extra benevolence, but love*.

Perhaps one can combine the best of the last two views. Whatever it is that justifies the love justifies all the benevolence involved in the love. However, the love creates an additional reason for continued benevolence, and after the initial moment of love, the benevolence is rationally overdetermined. Thus, "Bobby is my son and I love him" correctly states two distinct reasons for making a sacrifice for Bobby, but is felt to be one thought too many because of an implicature that if one did not love Bobby, one wouldn't have the reason. This seems to be the best view.

Might Intelligent Design turn out to be right?

I am going to argue that for all anybody knows, evolutionary science might develop in such a way that an Intelligent Design (ID) argument would be plausible. Hence, while one might well be justified in saying that ID arguments right now do not work, one is not justified in saying that future ID arguments won't work given a fully developed evolutionary science. Moreover, our current state of biological knowledge, interpreted in an uncontroversial and friendly way, gives us relatively little, if any, reason to accept the claim that ID arguments won't work given a fully developed evolutionary science. (In the interests of full disclosure I should say that I do not think any extant ID argument succeeds in establishing the existence of a designer.)

I shall understand a successful ID argument for a design hypothesis H (say, that God has designed the world) to be an argument that starts with some biological fact F about the world going over and beyond the mere existence of life, a fact such as that the world contains intelligent life, or that the world contains the mammalian eye, or that the world contains highly complex organisms, and then argues:

1. F is very unlikely to happen if the only processes in play are those of evolutionary biology.
2. F is not unlikely to happen on the relevant design hypothesis H.
3. Therefore, F provides significant evidence for the design hypothesis over and against the hypothesis that the only processes in play are those of evolutionary biology.

Assuming that before we give the argument our probability for our design hypothesis (say, that God exists and has created the world) is not too low, we're going to get a successful ID argument as soon as we can find a biological fact F satisfying (1) and (2). My claim, now, is that the present state of evolutionary science gives us little reason to believe that we will not find such a fact F. Note that the above is not the only way of formulating an ID argument. But if we are not in a position to know that no ID argument of this sort is successful, then we are likewise not in a position to know that no ID argument of some sort or otheris successful.

Let's start by considering the fact that evolutionary science gives a statistical explanation of events. It is not shown that, given an earlier state of affairs, bipeds had to evolve. All that is done in an evolutionary explanation is that an evolutionary pathway is traced out and it is argued that that pathway had a certain probability.

Next observe the fact that for most high-level biological states of affairs, we have very little in the way of estimates of estimates of the objective probability of the states of affairs arising. It would be a very, very difficult task, for instance, to estimate the probability that winged vertebrates would exist on earth given the state of things a billion years ago. Thus, although evolutionary explanations are in a significant respect statistical in nature, the statistics have by and large not been worked out.

Now, even if evolutionary science is the whole truth about biology after the initial beginning of life, there will surely be biological features of the world whose objective probability given the initial conditions is tiny. Gould talks of how if we turned the clock back and re-ran the evolutionary processes, we would get something completely different from what we have. That may or may not be true, but surely there are some biological features the probability of whose arising was tiny. For instance, consider the precise kind of pattern that a copperhead snake has on its skin. It may well be that there are myriads of patterns that would do the same job as this pattern does. It may well be that the probability that a snake-like animal would arise with that precise pattern, given the initial state of things, is tiny. (Presumably, if we conjoin enough features, we easily get cases where the probability is about as small as we like.)

Now I have two arguments for my conclusion.

Argument 1: Take a particular feature, intelligence, intelligence of the sort humans have. I think it is far beyond the current state of the art in biology to give estimates of the probability that intelligence would arise given how things were a billion years ago. Intelligence was a solution to certain evolutionary problems, but had things gone somewhat differently, these problems might not have arisen and, for all we know, many, many other solutions are possible. Moreover, we have very little in the way of estimates of the sort of organismic complexity that is needed for intelligence. All in all, we have little reason to assert that intelligence is not very unlikely given how things were a billion years ago. We just don't know how to estimate such a probability, and, unless evolutionary computing ends up yielding experimental data that shows that the evolution of intelligence is easy, it may be quite a while before we know how to estimate such a probability.

A developed evolutionary science will, presumably, assign some probability to the arising of intelligence. But I have argued we have little reason to think that this probability is not going to be very low. Suppose that this probability will in fact be very low, and developed evolutionary science discovers this. Then, a design argument, where the fact in question is the existence of intelligent life (or intelligent life on earth?), will be a good one. For we will have (1). That, by itself, is not enough. Even if it is very unlikely that the precise pattern on a copperhead should arise through evolutionary processes, there being too many other patterns that could do the job, there is no good ID argument based on this pattern, because we do not have reason to believe that a designer would not be unlikely make precisely that pattern.

However, in the case where the fact F is intelligence, and if our design hypothesis is that the world is created by the God of traditional monotheism, then the fact F is not unlikely given the existence of God, since the God of traditional monotheism is perfectly good and generous, and hence it is not unlikely that he would want to create intelligent beings (on earth? that might be an issue to consider) to bestow his goodness on. Hence, we have (2).

Thus, if we do not have much reason to deny that (1) holds of intelligence--and the present state is such that we do not--we neither have much reason to deny that a design argument based on the existence of intelligence will work. Instead, we should just suspend judgment on this. Hence, for all we know, at least one ID argument will be successful.

Argument 2: There is a myriad of biological facts, such as the precise pattern on a copperhead, each of which satisfies (1). This is no evidence at all against evolutionary biology, but just a fact about probabilistic processes like those of mutation, recombination, selection, etc. A priori improbable things happen all the time. Bob wins a lottery. A dart lands within 0.000000000001 mm of point x (this is extremely improbable whatever the point x is, but of course the dart has to land somewhere, so whenever a dart is thrown, it lands within 0.000000000001 mm of some point, and hence always something improbable happens). No surprises there. Let S be the set of very unlikely biological facts like that.

Now to have reason to hold that no ID argument for some relevant design hypothesis will be successful, one would have to have to reason to judge that none of the facts in S satisfies (2). First note that this judgment would go beyond the competence of biological science. Biological science does not estimate the probability that God, if he existed, would design a snake with such-and-such a pattern on its back. So biological science by itself would not be sufficient to establish the unavailability of an ID argument.

Now in the case of the pattern on the back of the snake, we have little reason at present to think that God would design that pattern rather than any of the many others that the snake could have had. Now in the unlikely case that we might discover that the pattern encodes some text in some natural way, the relative probability of that pattern over the others might rise. But we don't expect that to happen.

Nonetheless, I do not think we have much reason to believe that none of the facts in S satisfies (2), and we even do not have much reason to believe that none of the facts in S will be discovered to satisfy (2). So, once again, we have little reason, if any, to believe that a working ID argument won't be discovered in the future.

Conclusions: Being sure that ID will be unsuccessful is unjustified. But there is a proviso that I have to add, which was implicit in my assumption that (1) and (2) are all one needs for ID's success: unless there is good independent reason to deny the conclusion of the ID arguments (this was the assumption that the probability for H before the ID argument isn't too low).

Circles of justification

This is a fun little riddle, coming from a discussion with Dan Johnson. At t2 Mary believes q because she believes p. At t1 (t1<t2), she had come to believe p because she had believed q. No new evidence came in after t1 for p. Yet her beliefs that p and q are both justified and, indeed, knowledge. How could this be?

One solution: p and q are mathematical theorems. At t0 (t0<t1), Mary saw a proof of q. At t1, she saw that p easily follows from q. Between t1 and t2, Mary forgot all about q, the proof of q, and the fact that she derived p from q. She continued to know p, since we know mathematical theorems that we once had known the proofs of even if we do not remember these proofs. At t2, Mary realized that q easily follows from p, and came to believe q. Since she knew p, she now has knowledge of q.

Comments: This appears to involve a circularity in the order of justification, but only if we confuse the contents of beliefs with believings (or types of belief with belief tokens). Mary has three relevant, believings: (1) her believing between t0 until after t1 that q, (2) her believing starting at t1 that p, and (3) her new believing that q starting at t2. Here, (1) has independent justification; the justification of (2) depends on the justification of (1); the justification of (3) depends on the justification of (2). There is no real circularity.