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On Explaining Knowledge of Necessity Joel PUST† ABSTRACT Moderate rationalists maintain that our rational intuitions provide us with prima facie justification for believing various necessary propositions. Such a claim is often criticized on the grounds that our having reliable rational intuitions about domains in which the truths are necessary is inexplicable in some epistemically objectionable sense. In this paper, I defend moderate rationalism against such criticism. I argue that if the reliability of our rational intuitions is taken to be contingent, then there is no reason to think that our reliability is inexplicable. I also suggest that our reliability is, in fact, necessary, and that such necessary reliability neither admits of, nor requires, any explanation of the envisaged sort.
1. Introduction Rationalists hold that we, though contingent and fallible creatures, have a priori justification for believing certain propositions on the basis of rational intuition. They may differ on how best to analyze what it is to have a rational intuition (Bealer 1993; Sosa 1996) and on the kinds of beliefs justified by such intuitions, but they commonly claim that intuitions place in our epistemic grasp domains in which the true propositions are necessary in the metaphysical or “broadly logical” sense. Let us agree to call the view that we are capable of a fallible grasp of necessity on the basis of rational intuition, “moderate rationalism.” Even so minimally characterized, moderate rationalism is often charged with objectionable mysteriousness. Many critics seem to think the view troublingly peculiar, immodest, or unnaturalistic. Even some proponents of moderate rationalism appear occasionally concerned by what they believe themselves required to endorse (Nagel 1997). Often the worries are expressed as a question: What kind of acceptable explanation could possibly be provided of the epistemic accomplishment alleged by the moderate rationalist – a fallible, † Department of Philosophy, University of Delaware. Email:
[email protected]
Dialectica Vol. 58, No 1 (2004), pp. 71-87
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but reliable, grasp of domains apparently quite distinct from those known by our other faculties? Naturalist critics point to the difficulty of giving a suitably naturalistic account of such knowledge as grounds for doubting that we actually live up to the epistemic advertisement of the moderate rationalist. In other words, such critics suggest that the impossibility of an explanation of our having reliable intuitions about necessary domains provides good reason to deny that we have epistemic access to them via rational intuition. A very similar concern about the proper explanation of our epistemic powers in such domains appears in the writings of a number of contemporary theistic anti-naturalists. These theists agree with the naturalists that no naturalistic explanation of our reliability in these domains is at all plausible. They go on to hold either (a) that because such an accomplishment is genuine but inexplicable on a naturalistic ontology, we have here an argument of some kind for a supernaturalism involving the existence of the God of traditional theism, or (b) that we cannot rationally regard our intuitions as reliable in the absence of belief in God and so rationalism without a theistic underpinning is epistemically self-defeating. In this paper, I shall explore what sort of explanation might be demanded of the moderate rationalist and whether her failure to provide certain sorts of explanation is significant. I shall argue that the kind of explanation of our putative reliability likely envisioned by the critics is impossible in both naturalistic and supernaturalistic forms. However, contrary to the critics, I claim that this raises no real difficulty for the moderate rationalist because, on the supposition that our reliability is a contingent fact, there is as likely to be an explanation of our reliability as there is of our having the rational intuitions that we have. I go on to suggest that, in fact, there cannot be an explanation of why our intuitions are reliable rather than unreliable because the reliability of rational intuitions is not contingent but is, instead, necessary. Such necessary reliability admits of no explanation, but it surely need not admit of an explanation in order to be epistemically acceptable. As will be apparent to the reader, my discussion is somewhat exploratory and schematic. I shall be satisfied if I succeed in raising doubts about the seriousness of this alleged problem with moderate rationalism, doubts significant enough to warrant further investigation. 2. The Demand for Explanation In the course of attempting to articulate what is fundamentally at issue in Benacerraf’s problem about mathematical knowledge (Benacerraf 1973), Hartry Field writes:
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Benacerraf formulated the problem in such a way that it depended on a causal theory of knowledge. The present formulation does not depend on any theory of knowledge in the sense in which the causal theory is a theory of knowledge; that is, it does not depend on any assumption about necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge. Instead, it depends on the idea that we should view with suspicion any claim to know facts about a certain domain if we believe it impossible to explain the reliability of our beliefs about that domain. (Field 1989, 232-233, emphasis added)
In a quite different context, Robert Adams also expresses the view that an explanation of our beliefs about necessary truths is required. After suggesting that the best a naturalist can do in explaining our power to recognize necessary truths is an unconvincing appeal to natural selection, Adams suggests that there is another explanation of our knowledge of necessary truths, an explanation in terms of divine illumination. … If God of his very nature knows the necessary truths, and if He has created us, He could have constructed us in such a way that we would at least commonly recognize necessary truth as necessary. In this way there would be a causal connection between what is necessarily true about real objects and our believing it to be necessarily true about them. It would not be an incredible accident or an inexplicable mystery that our beliefs agreed with the objects on this. (Adams 1983, 751, emphasis added)
These two authors, while differing on much, share the view that some explanation is required of the alleged fact that our beliefs about necessary domains are generally true. As my concern is with rational intuition, I shall take their challenge as a demand for an explanation of how it could be that our intuitions (rather than our beliefs) about necessary truths are suitably reliable. Though he expresses his concern in terms of knowledge rather than justification, Field may plausibly be taken to suggest that even if we are prima facie justified in believing on the basis of rational intuition, if we possess good reason to think such an explanation is impossible, then such prima facie justification is defeated and we are ultimately unjustified in believing on the basis of rational intuition. Adams claims only that we are to some extent justified in believing in God on account of the power of the theistic hypothesis to explain what would be otherwise inexplicable. This is, of course, in itself, no suggestion that skepticism is required here. Indeed, if we assume that the explanandum on which the theistic argument is founded is our reliability, such an argument is inconsistent with such skepticism. However, in the hands of other theists (Plantinga 1993; Rea 2002), the idea that without a theistic explanation, our reliability on such matters would be, at best, a lucky accident, forms the basis of an argument that recognition of this fact provides a non-theist with a defeater for everything she believes on the basis of rational intuition.
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3. Field’s Options In the passages above, the putative explanandum at issue is the reliability of our cognition of a certain domain, the fact that our rational intuitions regarding some domain are generally correct, or, in more inflationary terms, the fact that our intuitions regarding some domain largely correspond to the facts. Many correspondences or correlations may be explained causally in terms of one of the correlated set of facts causing or bringing about the other, or of some common cause bringing about both. However, as Field notes in connection with mathematics, mathematical entities, as the Platonist conceives them, do not causally interact with mathematicians, or indeed with anything else. This means we cannot explain the mathematicians’ beliefs and utterances on the basis of the mathematical facts being causally involved in the production of those beliefs and utterances; or on the basis of the beliefs or utterances causally producing the mathematical facts; or on the basis of some common cause producing both. (1989, 230-1)
It seems to me that Field’s contention here is entirely correct. Indeed, as I now wish briefly to argue, these problems with various ways of explaining our reliability extend well beyond mathematics and exactly the same difficulties arise for any attempt to explain a correlation between our intuitions regarding a domain of necessary truths and the necessary truths themselves. Let us begin by noting that we can make little sense of the truth-makers of necessary propositions being causally implicated in the explanation of any fact, including the fact that we have reliable intuitions regarding necessity (Lewis 1986, 111). This is because the counterfactuals upon which such an explanation would presumably rest, counterfactuals such as “If 2+2 were not equal to 4, then I would not find 2+2=4 intuitive,” are intuitively deviant and, on standard semantics, uniformly and vacuously true. Indeed, the uniformity here means that it is equally true that “If 2+2 were not equal to 4, then I would find 2+2=4 intuitive.” If we ask how anything (including our intuitions and opinions based upon them) would vary if the various necessary truths we take ourselves to grasp were not true, our response must be that this question is incoherent. Hence, a natural strategy often employed in the realm of contingent truth to show that our opinions depend upon the truth – that of showing that if the facts were different, so too would be our opinions – simply has no application to the necessary. That this is so means that Adams must be mistaken in thinking that classical theism will provide a causal connection between the necessary truths and our believing them true. Adams’ suggestion is that God serves as a kind of epistemic mediator who indirectly connects us to the necessary truths and
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hence provides for the allegedly required causal link between the necessary truths and our opinions. However, the suggestion that this provides any help with the current problem is entirely chimerical, for interposing another link in the explanatory chain will not causally connect us to the necessary truths unless we can make clear and non-vacuous sense of the claim that “if some necessary truth p had been false, then God would have seen to it that we did not find p intuitive.” So long as it is agreed that the antecedent of such a counterfactual is incoherent, adding God to the consequent will be unavailing. In fact, it is clear that what is posited by the theist is a being which knows the necessary truths of its very nature and so is equipped to pass such knowledge on to us by means of directly or indirectly causing us to find those propositions intuitively true. However, questions as to why God knows a given necessary truth are not answered by appeal to causes, but by appeal to the nature of God as omniscient. Whatever the merits of this suggestion, it does nothing at all to provide us with a causal link to the necessary truths themselves. At best, this story would explain our intuitions by appeal to God’s knowledge of those truths rather than by appeal to the truths themselves. (In fact, it fails even to explain our knowledge by appeal to God’s knowledge as traditional theism holds that God is a necessary being who is essentially omniscient and so the relevant counterfactuals will require the supposition of God’s failing to know some true proposition and thus have impossible antecedents.) The other options mentioned by Field are similarly stillborn. Inverting the explanatory order and asking what would be necessarily true regarding the domains allegedly known by rational intuition if we had failed to have the intuitions we have or if we were to have different intuitions seems, again, a peculiar question. The proper answer is “Exactly what is true.” Again, we cannot make sense of the truths in a necessary domain being other than they are and so cannot endorse a counterfactual according to which, if there were a difference in some contingent state of affairs such as our having various intuitions, different propositions would be necessarily true. A necessary truth cannot genuinely depend counterfactually on anything, necessary or contingent. Appeal to a common cause of both our intuitions and the truths in question, the last remaining of Field’s options (and one defended elsewhere by Adams and others in an Augustinian form in which God serves as the common cause of both), seems to suffer from exactly the problems noted above. The notion of the necessary truths and our opinions being both genuinely dependent upon or explained by something else still seems to commit us to the truth of counterfactuals in which the necessary propositions are imagined to vary in their truth value. If, as well, the purported explanans is some neces-
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sary state of affairs, then we double the difficulty by requiring two impossibilities. The well-known (though not entirely uncontroversial) line of reasoning just reviewed has important implications for the coherence of any explanatory project addressed to the intuitions to which the rationalist appeals. It means that any explanatory account requiring appeal to possible variation in the truthvalue of our intuitions will fail. This is simply a result of the nature of the domain allegedly known and so if we are to have an explanation of our knowledge of necessity, it cannot take any of the aforementioned forms. This problem, though noted regularly in a perfunctory fashion, is, I think, insufficiently appreciated by critics of rationalism (Devitt 1998), perhaps on the basis of a conviction that it is merely a technical problem with the standard semantics for counterfactuals. It is not. The fundamental issue is the intuitive incoherence of such counterfactuals, which the formal semantics merely aims to handle in some acceptable way. The difficulty of remaining resolutely clear about the kind of invariability obtaining with respect to the necessary allows one to think certain epistemological issues pressing which are, in fact, incoherent. Great mischief is done by the conviction that any adequate explanation must involve something suitably similar to the dependence of our views on the facts that is often achievable in the contingent realm. 4. Another Option In order to avoid acquiescing here to the misleading influence of the contingent, we should, before concluding that there is no explanation at all of our reliability on these matters, note that the set of explanatory options mentioned by Field seems incomplete. It is restricted to explanatory scenarios in which the necessary truths themselves appear as explanans or explananda. However, why cannot an explanation of the reliability of our intuitions regarding necessary truth consist entirely of a causal explanation of the existence of those very intuitions, an explanation having nothing to do with the truths grasped through those intuitions? That is, given that we are here focusing on necessary truths, truths that simply could not have been different, why cannot we hold that our actual reliability is entirely explained by whatever it is (if anything) that explains our having the intuitions we actually have? It would seem that the critics of moderate rationalism are as committed as anyone to the existence of an explanation of the obvious fact that we have intuitions with apparently necessary propositions as their content. On this basis, the rationalist may reply to the critics that, to the extent that we have reason to think that there is an explanation of our having intuitions
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with the (necessarily true) content which ours have, there is equal reason to think our reliability has an explanation. If, on the other hand, we have good reason to think it impossible that there be an explanation of our having the intuitions we have, then we have reason to think it impossible to explain why we have reliable intuitions. If that is so, however, then the inexplicability of our reliability regarding these matters is no special problem for the rationalist, as we surely know that the existence of our various intuitions is not in question. I wish to maintain, then, that given prima facie justification to believe the content of our intuitions, we have no epistemological need for an explanation of our reliability, but that such an explanation would necessarily accompany any explanation of our possessing the intuitions we have. To begin to put some flesh on the skeleton of a reply just outlined, we ought to probe the epistemological importance of explaining the correlation between our opinions and the truth. Field explicitly suggests only that we ought to be “suspicious” about claims to know if we believe it impossible to explain the reliability of the claimant. In spite of the title of the present paper, the defense of moderate rationalism that I wish to offer does not directly address the issue of knowledge, nor the proper response to the verbal claims of another, and holds only that we are prima facie justified in believing various propositions to be necessarily true on the basis of our rational intuitions. Still, it might be thought that a person is not ultimately justified in believing on the basis of such a rational intuition if she justifiably believes it impossible to explain the reliability of her intuitions. Though I’ve already indicated that I find this principle implausible when explanation is taken to require variation in the truth of the propositions at issue, in what follows, I wish to point out that we may have to hand some reason to think that Field’s demand can be satisfied, though not in the way that such a demand may be satisfied in the empirical realm. We have already noted that there can be no explanation of the correlation between our intuitions and the corresponding facts if that explanation requires that we admit the genuine possibility that the facts in question might have been different. However, given that it is contingent that we have intuitions at all, there may be a causal explanation of our having the intuitions we have. Now, it will come as no surprise that I have no particular explanation of our intuitions to offer, but I need not have one in hand to turn aside the claim that there can be no explanation of our reliability. The critics under discussion hold that our having reliable intuitions is inexplicable. However, if reliability on these matters is a necessary accompaniment of having a certain content, then it seems to me that we have been given no reason to think our reliability inexplicable as we have been given no reason to think that our intuitions having a
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certain content is inexplicable. Indeed, as I’ve indicated, most of the critics surely think that there is an explanation of our having various phenomenological states with such content as they have. My suggestion is simply that any such explanation is also an explanation of our having reliable intuitions, given that the context is one in which we are granted prima facie justification for believing the content of the intuitions. Of course, it is not an explanation in which the truth of the intuited proposition plays a role, but we have seen that such an explanation cannot be had, and the claim that a specific kind of explanation is required is substantially stronger than the claim that some explanation is required. 5. The Possibility of Different Intuitions Now, it may still be asked why we happen to find intuitive those propositions that we do rather than some other propositions. The possibility of merely different intuitions, however, is not sufficient to create a genuine epistemological concern. What is required is the possibility of contradicting intuitions. After all, even if I might have had intuitions with different (but non-contradicting) propositions as their content, this seems, at least when considered by itself, to tell not at all against the reliability of the intuitions I do have. One way of making vivid the concern here is to suppose that we might have had intuitions that explicitly contradicted those we now have. Perhaps the critic will claim that we could have been differently constituted so as to have intuitions of the truth of the negations of those propositions that now seem so clear to us. If that were possible, then it would have to be a contingent fact that we have intuitions regarding the propositions we do rather than contradicting intuitions. So, it might be said that what is required is an explanation of why we have the intuitions we have rather than contradicting ones. If that is the demand of the critics however, we may reply (a) that the envisioned situation is not possible, and (b) even if it were possible, there remains an explanation of our reliability if there is an explanation of our having intuitions with the content that ours possess. I’ll develop these replies in reverse order. Consider, first, the claim that the epistemological problem with intuitions regarding necessity is that there seems no possible explanation of why we have reliable intuitions, where that means intuitions with the content that ours actually have rather than some other set of intuitions with genuinely conflicting content. It appears clear that whatever accounts for our having such intuitions as we actually have is exactly what accounts for our having reliable intuitions. Recall that we have resolved to keep in clear focus the fact that it is senseless to suppose that the propositions in fact presented to us by intuition might have differed in truth-value. That being so, whatever explains the undeniable fact
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that we have intuitions with specific contents, suffices as an explanation of the actual reliability of our intuitions as it surely excludes contradictory content. Unless we have reason to think that the metaphysical or nomic possibility of the contrary of some actual state of affairs means that the actual state of affairs has no explanation, we have no reason to think there is no explanation of our reliability, even on the supposition that we might have had intuitions contradicting our present intuitions. Still, it may be thought that the worry reappears in a new guise: if we might have had generally unreliable intuitions, then even if there is some explanation of why we have the (reliable) intuitions we do have, might it not still be accidental that we have the intuitions we have rather than contradictory ones? If we have latched onto the truth, then there is some explanation of that fact and, in the case of necessary truths, this explanation is the only possible explanation of our reliability. But might we not have so latched? If that is a possibility, then isn’t there a sense in which our grasp is accidental? It seems, according to this worry, that we could have had different (and necessarily false) intuitions regarding various domains and irrespective of the facts, believed them to be other than they (necessarily) are. Much here depends on what sense of “accident” is at issue and whether that sense has epistemological import. In spite of the fact that epistemologists frequently maintain that one cannot know if one’s arriving at the truth is “accidental,” it is less than clear (a) how to make such claims precise (especially while avoiding falling back on the incoherent claims about counterfactuals we’ve just considered) and, (b) how such concerns might translate into concerns about justification. Normally, we believe that one can accidentally have good evidence for believing a proposition. Indeed, when evidence is good evidence, it seems to matter not at all that one has that evidence accidentally. That Sean knows his finding the note from his wife’s lover under the doormat was “accidental” seems irrelevant to the question of what he now, having read it, ought to believe regarding her fidelity. If the universe is deterministic, it might still be said to be “accidental” in some sense that the initial conditions and laws of nature were such as to produce me with my particular intuitions. If the universe contains genuine chance, it may be in some sense “accidental” that I exist at all or have intuitions at all. However, recognizing those possible senses in which my having the intuitions I have (rather than contradicting ones) is accidental does nothing to undermine the justification I now have. Furthermore, if these kinds of accidents in our history did suffice to undermine justification, then every belief would be accidental and no special problem would have been provided for intuition-based beliefs.
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Finally, the critic might insist that merely recognizing the possibility of a creature having intuitions generally contradicting our own is sufficient to undermine whatever justification we might have derived from our own. Perhaps it could be claimed that if we genuinely admit that a creature might have had rational intuitions providing it with justification for believing propositions which contradict those which we find intuitive, then we must admit that we have insufficient reason for thinking our own intuitions are reliable. In fact, I think it is likely that something like this thought is what really moves the critics. It seems sufficient, however, to reply to this concern by claiming that even if it is a mere contingent fact that we do not have misleading evidence in the form of contradicting intuitions, that fact does not undermine our justification for believing on the basis of such evidence as we have. After all, it surely isn’t generally true that if someone could have been justified in believing the negation of what I believe, then I am not now justified in believing as I do. Notice, as well, that the evidence (construed phenomenally) in the envisaged case must be different from our actual evidence, hence we cannot have a situation in which some creature believes a necessary falsehood on exactly the same evidence. In this respect, the situation at issue is entirely unlike standard possible cases of deception about contingent non-mental phenomena. In those cases, unlike the present one, the deceived person has, it seems, exactly the same phenomenal evidence in spite of the belief she forms being false. This means that the worry is that one might have had misleading evidence different from the evidence one actually has and not that one’s actual evidence might be misleading. So construed, the worry is not at all compelling. Moreover, even if the critic finds a plausible principle that can be shown to render it epistemically problematic that someone (perhaps oneself) might have had good reason to believe what contradicts one’s own beliefs, we can reasonably maintain that the principle will not apply in the present case because it is a necessary truth that intuitions are reliable. However, before proceeding to that topic, it should be noted that the present epistemological worry has (a) nothing to do with explanation and (b) nothing special to do with rational intuition. Instead, it is motivated by a quite general concern regarding the possibility of globally misleading evidence. If one finds oneself moved to skepticism by such reflections when it comes to a priori intuitions, one ought find oneself similarly moved to skepticism regarding any domain in which one can admit the possibility of being in error while relying on the best evidence. Whatever the force of these skeptical concerns, then, they cut equally against justified belief regarding the external world on the basis of fallible sensory evidence and so provide no reason to be especially concerned about rational intuition.
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6. Necessary Reliability Let us now turn to the question earlier set aside: Is it possible for a creature to have intuitions that explicitly contradict the bulk of our own? That it is possible appears often assumed by critics of rationalism, but it seems to me that the rationalist may rightly maintain that it is not possible. To claim that intuitions are necessarily reliable is to claim that most of the intuitions we have are, and must be, veridical. I am not here claiming that it is necessarily true that most of a creature’s beliefs about the kinds of domains revealed by intuition are true. Instead, I am addressing only those propositions about which a given creature has clear rational intuitions, propositions that are such that it intellectually seems to the creature (in the way that, for example, it seems to us that ponens is valid) that they are true and, on reflection, necessarily so. It is, I submit, intuitively impossible that a creature be generally unreliable on such matters, at least if it is sufficiently attentive and intelligent. This is not, of course, to say that a creature could not be mistaken about some such propositions or even about a significant number. (Indeed, we know that we are mistaken about some such intuitive propositions). One can, of course, clearly conceive of a creature that utters sounds we would unreflectively take to be utterances of necessary falsehoods. However, to conceive of such a creature is to conceive of a certain type of behavior and not clearly to conceive of a creature that has radically different intuitions and it is the latter that is required for the critic’s case. In fact, the greater the amount of apparent disagreement, the less sure we should be that we are dealing with a rational creature. And, recall, it is the critic of the moderate rationalist who must sustain the claim of possibility regarding such a creature, as their best case against moderate rationalism (a case I have already suggested is quite far from compelling) requires the possibility claim. I won’t pretend to have here provided much argument for the claim that rational intuitions are necessarily reliable. I’ve merely pointed to the intuitions on which such a question must be decided and indicated that they seem to me to support such a view. Suppose, for the sake of argument, that the claim is correct. Then might we have concerns about the explanation of the reliability of our rational intuitions? It seems to me that we could not. If we are asked for an explanation of why our intuitions are reliable rather than unreliable, an acceptable explanation would cite some fact, event or occurrence that made the difference between those two contrasting states of affairs. But if the latter state is a genuine impossibility, then there can be no explanation of why we are reliable rather than unreliable since there is no possibility of our being unreliable.
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Perhaps my claim will be clearer if considered in light of some alternative contrastive explanatory questions (Dretske 1973). The question at issue might be put as follows: (1) Why does S have reliable rational intuitions? But this question may be taken in a number of ways that should be distinguished: (2) Why does S exist (rather than not)? (3) Why does S have (rather than lack) rational intuitions? (4) Why does S have reliable (rather than unreliable) rational intuitions? On the view I am here trying to defend, (2) is a coherent question in virtue of the contingency of S’s existence, (3) may be coherent if S might have existed without rational intuitions, and (4) is incoherent as it requires the possibility of unreliable intuitions on the part of S. Notice, however, that if one failed to distinguish these questions one might be inclined to think that (1) is to be read with a contrast case in which it is not the case that S has reliable rational intuitions. That contrasting case would obtain if S did not exist and also if S did not have rational intuitions. This can’t be the interesting contrast as it is surely epistemologically irrelevant to the question of whether I am justified in believing on the basis of rational intuitions that I might have never existed or might never have been capable of conscious reflective thought. Notice that the fact that (1), so taken, is a coherent question which may have an answer in some contingent state of affairs does not entail that (4) is a coherent question as (4) presupposes what (1) allows as contrastive variation, that S exists and has rational intuitions. So, the fact that there is an explanation of why we exist (rather than not) does not entail that there is an explanation of why our intuitions are reliable (rather than unreliable). One of the most able recent defenders of moderate rationalism, Laurence Bonjour, seems to be suggesting that the thesis I have been attempting to defend is indefensible when he writes: That beings like ourselves have rational insights that are even generally correct, or weaker still, correct more often than not ... does not appear to be even an initially plausible candidate for the status of metaphysical necessity. (Bonjour 1998, 144)
Of course, I’ve admitted that our existence is entirely contingent. It is, furthermore, clearly contingent that any finite conscious creatures exist. In that sense, it is contingent that we or “beings like ourselves” have reliable intuitions. It is, however, not at all clear that it is a mere contingency that creatures such as ourselves, creatures presently capable of having rational intuitions, will
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have reliable intuitions. Why might Bonjour suggest otherwise? Perhaps because he neglects to separate the existence of contingent creatures with various contingent capacities from what would necessarily follow if there existed such creatures with such capacities. In fact, it seems to me that anyone who thinks that we are justified a priori in thinking certain propositions necessary true, should think that any creature with the same kind of justification for the same propositions would necessarily be reliable. If I am a priori justified in thinking p1…pn necessarily true, then surely I am a priori justified in thinking any creature with the same intuitions is necessarily reliable. Furthermore, I need not take an intuition to be my own to be justified in believing on the basis of that intuition and to be justified in thinking any creature with such an intuition would be equally justified. That such a creature’s existence might be contingent and its possessing that sort of justification might be contingent does not mean that given the existence of the creature and that kind of justification, that the reliability of such a creature is a mere contingency. Perhaps we may profitably compare rational intuition with introspection of occurrent mental states. It is surely contingent in one sense that we form reliable beliefs regarding our occurrent conscious mental states, either because our existence is contingent, or because our power to introspect is contingent. However, there is another clear sense in which it is not at all contingent that we are reliable. There is no possible world in which a creature forms mostly false beliefs regarding its occurrent mental states and so we may say that a creature’s being reliable (rather than unreliable) about such mental states is without explanation though the creature’s existence may well have some such explanation. Contrasts parallel to those outlined above make clear what is going on here. It is contingent that our introspective beliefs are reliable (rather than it not being the case that our beliefs are reliable). This contrasting situation would obtain if we did not exist or were incapable of introspecting. It is not at all contingent that our introspective beliefs are reliable (rather than unreliable). This contrasting situation requires that we exist and form introspective beliefs and this question presupposes certain contingencies to obtain. A further concern regarding the line I have been attempting to sketch and defend is the question of scope. Is it at all plausible that our intuitions necessarily have the scope they have and our intuitive knowledge necessarily has its corresponding limits? Is the view I have been defending committed to such a claim? Adams perhaps raises such a worry when he notes that we might suppose that it is simply the nature of the human mind, or perhaps mind as such, to be able to recognize necessary truths. Then the explanation (and indeed the cause) of our recognizing necessary truths as such would be that this recognition fol-
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But, he maintains I do not believe the explanation I have just sketched. We are too easily mistaken about necessary truths and too often unable to recognize them. (1983, 751)
Adams’ first objection is that we are too easily wrong about necessity. Perhaps we are often wrong about complex questions or philosophical theory, but we are much less often wrong about those propositions about which we have clear rational intuitions. Here we ought note again that our beliefs about necessity are not coextensive with our intuitions and so we should not conclude that the rate of error in our beliefs or philosophical theories is the same as that in our intuitions. Hence, I cannot see that our intuitive errors show that it is not our nature to be generally reliable regarding intuitive propositions. As well, Adams’ second worry, that there are limits to our intuitions, seems to me only as powerful as the notion that there is something objectionable, something unacceptably brute, about a creature with a limited nature. If there is something unacceptably brute here, this is a problem best left for the metaphysician as it seems no clear epistemological threat to our intellectual vision that we or some other possible creatures might have seen further. That we have no answer as to why our intuitive grasp on the necessary extends only as far as it does, seems no reason to think such grasp as we have fails to justify us. We may lack an explanation of why it is that we are not so constituted as to see a greater range of the wavelength spectrum, but this is no cause for concern about what we are able to see. Likewise, the field covered by our intuitions may be contingent, but it does not follow that the reliability of those intuitions we have is contingent. 7. Has a Question Been Improperly Begged? Critics will no doubt maintain that nothing I have argued suffices to show that our intuitions are reliable (whether or not we might have had unreliable intuitions). Given a common understanding of what “showing” requires, they are, of course, correct. I have taken for granted the general reliability of our intuitions regarding necessity. However, such an assumption was entirely proper in the context of responding to the charge that there is no possible explanation of our having reliable intuitions. When we seek an explanation for the reliability of our views on contingent matters, we are entitled to rely upon our conception of the truth-makers of the contingent propositions at issue. Surely we are entitled to do the same when considering the possibility of explaining how we might be reliable about necessity. So there seems no reason to think our
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explanatory project here must be hobbled by some initial agnosticism regarding the necessary. Given the contents of our intuitions, and given our prima facie justification to believe such contents, a creature with those intuitions cannot have unreliable intuitions, so it is clear that our reliability comes for free and so whatever explains our having intuitions with the contents ours have, suffices as an explanation for our reliability. Still, a critic might withdraw the concession that we are prima facie justified in trusting the contents of our rational intuitions. They might claim that this must be shown to be so on intuition-independent grounds. To show a putative source of evidence reliable in the indicated sense presumably means to provide an argument for the conclusion that source is reliable, which argument does not rest in any way on the source in question (Alston 1993). Even if that might be done for some sources of evidence, it cannot be done for our most basic as there is nothing else we might appeal to in order to demonstrate the reliability of a basic faculty. What is being asked of the rationalist is that she justify the view that our intuitions are reliable, without relying in any way on rational intuitions. What is sought, in other words, is an entirely empirical reason for thinking that intuitions about necessary matters are reliable, a reason that in no way relies upon intuitions. Such a reason cannot be provided. After all, what is sought is an entirely independent reason to think that various necessary truths are both necessary and true. How could some other faculty provide that? However, I cannot see why this should be a problem. If, as the rationalist claims, we have a mode of justification by rational intuition, why should she be expected to show that it is reliable on the basis of exclusively empirical evidence? Furthermore, we might ask why the empiricist does not require any such independent showing of reliability in order to justifiably make use of sense perception. Unless some non-arbitrary ground can be provided for requiring such a “showing” on the part of rational intuition while exempting sense perception, the critics will be offering us an unjustified requirement (Pust 2000). Finally, it ought to be noted that the justification for any such requirement and its application would, it seems, have to be based on rational intuitions regarding justification and explanation (Pust 2001). The general lesson here is that demands for an explanation of our reliability regarding some domain must either start from the assumption that we are reliable or start without such an assumption and require that the reliability be shown on independent grounds. If the apparent justificatory force of our intuitions is admitted at the outset, then the explanation of that reliability will simply consist in the explanation of our having the intuitions we have. In the case
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of paradigmatic empirical sensory beliefs, it is clear that the explanation of many of our beliefs adverts to the objects of belief. Not so, I concede, in the case of rational intuition. However, in either case, if there is an explanation of the fact that we have experiences or intuitions with various contents, that explanation suffices, in conjunction with our justification for thinking the contents true, as an explanation of reliable belief based upon such evidence. So, my conclusion is that no skeptical conclusion regarding our own beliefs can be supported simply on the basis of concerns about the explanation of our reliability if it is conceded at the outset that we have, in general, prima facie good reason for our beliefs in the domain. However, if no such concession is made, if we are faced with the demand for an explanation of our reliability without any assumption that we have good reason to believe as we do on the basis of that faculty, then what is really being demanded is an independent reason for believing that the faculty in question is reliable. Of course, the provision of such a reason would suffice, if we were apprised of it, to provide us with independent reason for trusting the faculty in question. But it should then be clear that what is being demanded is entirely impossible to have for every belief source, and if failure to provide it in the case of rational intuition is to undermine our a priori justification, then similar arguments will undermine all putative sources of justification. What is required, to repeat, is a good reason to think that such a requirement is properly made of rational intuition but not of the other faculties favored by the critics. No such reason has been offered. 8. Conclusion I’ve attempted to explain why a certain kind of explanation of our knowledge of necessity is impossible given the nature of the domain known, but another kind of explanation is guaranteed to be available if there is an explanation of our possessing the intuitions we possess. I hope to have made it somewhat plausible that there is no special problem explaining our intuitive reliability regarding necessity, even if that reliability is regarded as contingent. However, I’ve suggested that it is plausibly a causally inexplicable necessary truth that intuitions are generally correct, one which neither requires, nor could have, any contrastive explanation of the sort befitting contingent contrasts. Of course, throughout this discussion, I have proceeded on the assumption that our rational intuitions are generally veridical and so have not directly engaged the antecedent skeptic about intuitions. However, to such a skeptic we may respond (a) that an epistemology without appeal to rational intuitions may well be impossible, (b) that attempts to argue against the notion that rational intuitions provide reason to believe run the risk of being self-undermining
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(Bealer 1993; Pust 2001), and (c) that intuitive arguments of the sort mentioned above suggest that intuition is necessarily reliable. So, as long as the skeptic seeks to displace our reliance on intuitions by argument or to justify her own skepticism, she will inevitably fail.*
REFERENCES ADAMS, R. 1983: “Divine Necessity”, Journal of Philosophy 80, 741-751. ALSTON, W. 1993: The Reliability of Sense Perception, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press. BEALER, G. 1993: “The Incoherence of Empiricism”, In S. Wagner and R. Warner (eds.): Naturalism: A Critical Appraisal, Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press. BENACERRAF, P. 1973: “Mathematical Truth”, Journal of Philosophy 70, 661-679. BONJOUR, L. 1998: In Defense of Pure Reason, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DEVITT, M. 1998: “Naturalism and the A Priori”, Philosophical Studies 92, 45-65. DRETSKE, F. 1973, “Contrastive Statements”, Philosophical Review 81, 411-437. FIELD, H. 1989: Realism, Mathematics and Modality, New York: Blackwell. LEWIS, D. 1986: On the Plurality of Worlds, Cambridge, MA: Blackwell. NAGEL, T. 1997: The Last Word, New York: Oxford University Press. PLANTINGA, A. 1993: Warrant and Proper Function, New York: Oxford University Press. PUST, J. 2000: Intuitions as Evidence, New York: Garland/Routledge. PUST, J. 2001: “Against Explanationist Skepticism Regarding Philosophical Intuitions”, Philosophical Studies 106, 227-258. REA, M. 2002: World Without Design: The Ontological Consequences of Naturalism, New York: Oxford University Press. SOSA, E. 1996: “Rational Intuition: Bealer on Its Nature and Epistemic Status”, Philosophical Studies 81, 151-162.
* I’m grateful to Thomas Bontly, Christopher Boorse, Frank Hofmann, Jeff Jordan, Katherine Rogers, Davor Bodroˇzi´c, and the participants at the Intuitions and Epistemology Workshop in Fribourg for helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.
