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Moderate epistemic expressivism

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Abstract

The present paper argues that there are at least two equally plausible yet mutually incompatible answers to the question of what is of non-instrumental epistemic value. The hypothesis invoked to explain how this can be so—moderate epistemic expressivism—holds that (a) claims about epistemic value express nothing but commitments to particular goals of inquiry, and (b) there are at least two viable conceptions of those goals. It is shown that such expressivism survives recent arguments against a more radical form of epistemic expressivism, as well as two further arguments, framed in terms of the two most promising attempts to ground claims about epistemic value in something other than commitments to particular conceptions of inquiry. While this does not establish that moderate epistemic expressivism is true, its ability to explain a significant but puzzling axiological datum, as well as withstand strong counterarguments, makes clear that it is a theory to be reckoned with.

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Notes

  1. See, e.g., Alston (2005, p. 30), Haack (1993, p. 199), and BonJour (1985, pp. 83–84) for three representative statements, and David (2001) for further references.

  2. The term is borrowed from Goldman (1999), who introduces the term ‘veritism’ to capture the particular brand of epistemology that is concerned with the varieties of processes and practices involved in the production of true belief.

  3. See references in footnote 1.

  4. Why are we interested in conceptual rather than natural necessities here? In short, because the latter is of no obvious relevance to axiology. For example, say that we found that, in worlds like ours, inhabited by creatures with a psychological make-up like ours, basing one’s beliefs upon evidence tends to give one a distinct sex appeal. That would be an interesting fact, but it would not render sex appeal a proper object of study for philosophers interested in epistemic axiology. And why is that? I submit, because no one—irrespective of their particular notion of epistemic value—would consider it conceptually necessary that beliefs based on evidence gives you such sex appeal. (For more on the limits of possible conceptions of epistemic value, see Sect. 4.) That said, natural necessities may still be relevant when thinking about the implications of particular axiologies for normative epistemology, as will be argued in Sect. 7.

  5. For example, some epistemic value pluralists take understanding to be non-instrumentally valuable in a manner not reducible to the value of believing truly (see, e.g., Kvanvig 2003 and Pritchard 2010). I have no quarrel with the pluralist for the purposes of this paper. Presently, I am concerned with those who deny that true belief is non-instrumentally valuable; not with those who suggest that true belief is not the sole bearer of such value.

  6. Feldman (in correspondence) confirms that there has been a shift in his views on epistemic value, from his (1988, pp. 247–248), where he accepts that true belief is a goal of inquiry, and simply denies that true belief has anything to do with value, to his (2002), where he (as we have seen) denies that true belief has anything to do with epistemic value by denying that it is a goal of inquiry.

  7. Nothing said so far goes to show that no evidentialist about justification can be a veritist. See, e.g., Goldman’s (2011) evidentialist reliabilism. The point is simply that there are forms of evidentialism (such as Feldman’s) that are incompatible with veritism, because the particular theory of epistemic success that is invoked to explain the value of justification rules out believing truly being a goal of inquiry.

  8. See Field (2009, pp. 276–278).

  9. See Field (2009, p. 275).

  10. See, e.g., Boghossian (2006, Chap. 6), who rejects relativism exactly on account of the problems raised by the relativist’s insistence on the equivalence of instances of schemata like (O) and (O*).

  11. The same point can be made, mutatis mutandis, against any analogous attempt in terms of there being a constitutive or conceptual connection between truth and belief, on account of the former being the norm of the latter, and inquiry being the practice of belief-formation. See, e.g., Lynch (2009a).

  12. As such, a veritist may, of course, disagree with Feldman while, at the same time, being an epistemic value pluralist in virtue of postulating some other non-instrumental epistemic value in addition to that of true belief.

  13. See, e.g., DePaul (1993) and Kvanvig (2005) for two defenses of epistemic value pluralism.

  14. See, e.g., Kvanvig (2003), Zagzebski (2003), Sosa (2003), and Swinburne (1999).

  15. Are these conceptual facts normative facts? Not exactly. As suggested above, the relevant facts put certain constraints on what one may take the goals of inquiry to be. Since what one takes the goals of inquiry to be determines what one takes to be epistemically valuable, the relevant conceptual facts are not themselves normative facts but rather constraints on what epistemically normative facts there can be. Notice, however, that all of this “fact talk” is consistent with the anti-realism of expressivism, since such anti-realism is perfectly compatible both with there being conceptual facts, and (as argued above) with there being normative facts in the minimal sense of facts about what we take to be valuable.

  16. Lynch (2004) provides six arguments in total. However, three of these pertain to instrumental values (pp. 174–177), and the fourth and fifth fail for the same reason as the sixth does (see footnote 17), which is the argument to be discussed here.

  17. The same goes for Lynch’s (2004) structurally identical arguments about intellectual integrity (p. 136) and sincerity (p. 157). Notice also that we can run the same argument even if we interpret (AP*) in terms of supervenience. After all, it does not follow from y being valuable in itself that, if x is part of the supervenience base of y, then x is also valuable in itself. By way of illustration, assume that being a person is valuable in itself. Assume, furthermore, that facts about person-hood supervene on neurological facts, and that I am the person I am in virtue of instantiating the particular neurological facts N 1–N 850. Then, take any neurological fact in this series, say, N 46. Is instantiating N 46 valuable in itself? It is not—despite it being part of the supervenience base of something that (by hypothesis) is valuable in itself.

  18. See Haack (2001) for a convincing set of arguments to this effect.

  19. Chisholm does at times write as if epistemic duties are a mere subspecies of ethical duties, e.g., in his (1991, p. 119). However, when spelled out, the claim turns out to be that ethical duties are duties that are not overridden by any other requirement, and non-overridden epistemic duties (like any non-overridden duties), hence, are ethical duties (see pp. 127–128). This only goes to show that some epistemic duties are ethical duties, not that all are, nor consequently that the former are a mere subspecies of the latter.

  20. Wolterstorff (2005) is a possible exception.

  21. See, e.g., Blackburn (1993, p. 174), as well as Gibbard’s (1990) discussions of authority and Socratic influence.

  22. See Ridge (2006) for a fairly recent, comprehensive discussion.

  23. See Kvanvig (2003) and Cuneo (2007) for two variants on this objection.

  24. See, e.g., Carter and Chrisman (2011).

  25. See also Chrisman (2007) on how epistemic expressivism can retain the virtues while shedding the characteristic vices of contextualism, and Kappel (2010) on accounting for the value of knowledge in expressivist terms.

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Acknowledgments

Many thanks to J. C. Bjerring, Jeff Dunn, Mikkel Gerken, Alvin Goldman, Nikolaj Jang Lee Linding Pedersen, Klemens Kappel, Hilary Kornblith, Michael Lynch, Emil Møller, Jonathan Vogel, Åsa Wikforss, and an anonymous reviewer for this journal for valuable comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Research underlying the present paper was conducted with generous support from the Wenner-Gren Foundation.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Copenhagen, Njalsgade 80, 2300, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Kristoffer Ahlstrom-Vij

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Ahlstrom-Vij, K. Moderate epistemic expressivism. Philos Stud 163, 337–357 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-011-9818-y

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