Reply to Critic, II Ctd.

I did a poor job of responding to this criticism last time, so let me try to handle it again. The reason why the criticism lands is because, in my account, I never explicate what is wrong with a paradoxical or self-defeating reason. Without such an account I leave myself wide open for misinterpretation, and I think that the objection that I considered last time is a kind of misinterpretation. So first I'll do the negative work and explain why that objection fails to land, and that will (hopefully) lead me into a positive account of what's wrong with paradoxical reasons.

Allow me to begin with the case of skepticism about the external world, a case that the objector raised. Here's the case that he raises. Suppose that we have some theory about the external world that implies that we have knowledge of that world. And then suppose that the evidence from our senses shows us that the evidence we have is compatible with us being fundamentally mistaken about our beliefs from the external world, and based on this tension we come to doubt that we have any knowledge of the external world. What's happened in this case is that we started without a belief in skepticism about our knowledge, and we end up with such a skeptical position. In between comes beliefs based on external world evidence; meaning, what got us to reject a belief that we have knowledge of the external world is a tension in our belief about the external world.

There seems to be nothing paradoxical about that. And the reason why there isn't anything paradoxical or self-defeating about that is because there's nothing that requires you to continue to believe something that motivated you to some further belief. To give another example, you might have an entire train of thought, the problems in each link of the chain motivating you to accept the next theoretical step, but that doesn't mean that you have to keep on believing the old theory, even though without it you wouldn't have made the progress that you made!

This is supposed to cause trouble for my argument about self-defeating reasons, since the argument seems to depend on the faulty premise that one must continue to believe something that was a motivating consideration.

This, however, is a bad analogy. In order to have the proper analogy you need to talk not about beliefs or knowledge that is discarded in the reasoning process, but rather reasons and norms. And once you focus on the actual reasons for skepticism that show up in the external world case, things become clarified. What is you reason for doubting that you have any knowledge of the external world in the above case? The reason is not your beliefs, but rather the tension in your beliefs. So you have a belief that you have a reason, something along the lines of "I ought not believe that I have knowledge of an area when my being completely wrong is consistent with the evidence." And there's nothing paradoxical about that at all.

Let's say that we wanted to construct a case that's really analogous--not fake analogous--to my case of rejecting epistemic norms for internal epistemic reasons. Many cases suggest themselves, and they're all pretty wacky. Suppose that the first rule of hockey was "There are no rules in hockey." Isn't this funny? Here's another one: a book that tells you on the first page, "Don't believe a single thing--including this sentence--that you read in this book." Isn't that odd? I've got one more: Suppose that you had a moral code, and one of the maxims in your moral theory is "To be moral is immoral." In all these cases you have the normative theory eating itself, more or less. And these all feel weird, precisely in the way that the external world/perception case does not.

OK, but this fails to ease our concerns, because we still haven't landed on precisely what is wrong with a self-defeating reason. Here's one suggestion of what I'm committed to (thanks to BN for the suggestion): "A thinker must be able to retain the reasons for her belief even after a change in view prompted by accepting that belief." Now, we need to be precise, because we're not interested in what the thinker concludes upon reflection after having made a judgment right now. What we're actually interested in is whether this counts as an epistemic reason to doubt epistemic realism at all. The suggestion is that my argument depends on the view that, in order for something to count as a reason, the thinker must not know that it won't disappear in the future.

If that's what I'm committed to, so be it. That would mean that I'm committed to what Thomas Nagel famously called "timeless reasons", which means that I'm committed to the view that reasons are timeless. This is a formal requirement on reasons, that requires something to be effective at all times in order for it to count as a reason at all. If that's all it takes to get epistemic realism, then fine.

But I'm not sure that I'm even committed to that, or at least nothing quite as strong as that. All I need is that, for a reason to be a reason at all, there's no way that it could be paradoxical in this sense, not that at no time in the future will this reason disappear. Now the challenge facing me is to get precise about what exactly is wrong with such a reason.

I'll start by making a distinction between formal and substantive considerations against a reason. A formal consideration against a reason is a consideration that counts against it counting as a reason at all. For example, in Nagel that a consideration is not consistent with a metaphysical conception of oneself as equally real across time counts against something being a reason at all. If it's not timeless, then it's not even a reason. A substantive consideration is a reason that stands in opposition to some reason, always countering it.

Let me begin by offering a formal account of why a self-defeating reason is not a reason. A reason must give us a clear directive on how to alter our behavior, and something that fails to do this does not count as a reason at all. According to this standard, a self-defeating fails as a reason because it offers no clear directive due to its self-defeating nature. Just as we do not know whether to believe the Cretan when he says that all Cretans are liars, we do not know whether any reason that resembles a Cretan in this way--it only counts in favor of something if it doesn't, it only doesn't count in favor of something if it does--counts as a reason at all.

Here's a substantive account of what's wrong with a self-defeating reason. Suppose that epistemology gave us an epistemic reason to doubt that epistemology gave us reasons at all. I'm assuming that this doesn't fail to count as a reason at all; suppose that it's a consideration against belief in epistemology. Here's something that seems generally true: you only have reason to promote X if all the propositions whose truth it presupposes are true. Now, what does it mean for a reason to presuppose a truth? By that, all I mean that if that proposition were false then there wouldn't be a reason. These are familiar; if it's not true that this property belongs to someone else then it wouldn't count as stealing and there wouldn't be a reason to avoid taking it for yourself. Anyway, what does a reason to doubt epistemic realism depend on? If it's an objective reason, then it depends on the truth of the proposition that there's are objective reasons. And so you have a direct contradiction in your epistemology: on the one hand you have a reason that there are no objective episteimc reasons, but you also think that its true that there are objective epistemic reasons. This explanation is completely general, it applies to any system of norms, and seems to make it impossible to make any progress on the issue.

Now, here's a good objection against this last paragraph: "A contradiction isn't exactly a great situation for epistemology either!" But now we're just running in circles. I AGREE that it's not good for epistemology to have contradicitons of any sort, but I just disagree that this can be construed into any clear epistemic reason. This provides a strong non-epistemic reason, perhaps, to reject epistemic realism. All that I'm saying is that epistemic realism is epistemically optional; it's up to you if you think that there's some non-epistemic reason for rejecting epistemic realism. Just don't pretend that this has anything to do with truth. It doesn't--otherwise it would be an epistemic reason!

In short, the example brought by the objector fails. I might rely on the formal requirement on reasons, argued for by Nagel, that reasons are always timeless. I might say that there's an even more minimal formal requirement. Or I might say that there's a substantive impasse that's necessarily brought by internal anti-realist reasons. I don't really care which one the reader likes, but I have three solid responses to the objection.