1.1. The starting point of the standard analytic approach to epistemology

Standard Analytic Epistemology (SAE) names a contingently clustered class

of methods and theses that have dominated English-speaking epistemology

for much of the past century. Almost all the contemporary readings in the

most popular epistemology textbooks are prime examples of SAE. Contemporary

versions of foundationalism, coherentism, and reliabilism are

exemplars of SAE. While we object to the methods of SAE, and therefore to

the kinds of theories it leads to, our main goal in this chapter is to distinguish

our approach from that of SAE. So let’s begin with the starting points

of SAE—what proponents of SAE take to be the fundamental phenomena

or evidence of epistemology.

The goal of most philosophers engaged in SAE is to provide an account

of knowledge and epistemic justification. What are the success conditions on

such an account? In a typically clear and careful article, Jaegwon Kim

identifies a number of criteria that any account of justification must meet

in order to be successful. The most important of these conditions is what

we will call the stasis requirement:

Although some philosophers have been willing to swallow skepticism just

because what we regard as correct criteria of justified belief are seen to lead

inexorably to the conclusion that none, or very few, of our beliefs are

8 Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment

justified, the usual presumption is that our answer to the first question

[What conditions must a belief meet if we are justified in accepting it as

true?] should leave our epistemic situation largely unchanged. That is to say,

it is expected to turn out that according to the criteria of justified belief we

come to accept, we know, or are justified in believing, pretty much what we

reflectively think we know or are entitled to believe. (Kim 1988, 382)

It is worth noting that this requirement—that the right account of justification

‘‘leave our epistemic situation largely unchanged’’—is profoundly

conservative. In particular, it is extraordinary that SAE should have built

right into it a requirement that makes it virtually impossible that a successful

epistemological theory would force us to radically alter our epistemic

judgments.

Of course, proponents of SAE will not suggest that they are trying to

provide an account of their naıЁve epistemic judgments, but of their considered

epistemic judgments. One way to spell out the difference is in terms

of reflective equilibrium. Nelson Goodman introduced reflective equilibrium

as a process that involves aligning our judgments about particular

instances with our judgments about general principles. ‘‘The process of

justification is the delicate one of making mutual adjustments between

rules and accepted inferences; and in the agreement achieved lies the only

justification needed for either’’ (1965, 64). Narrow reflective equilibrium is

the process of bringing our normative judgments about particular cases

into line with our general normative prescriptions and vice versa. Wide

reflective equilibrium differs from narrow reflective equilibrium by including

our best theories in the mix. So wide reflective equilibrium is the

process of bringing into alignment our best theories, as well as our normative

judgments about particular cases, and our general normative prescriptions

(Rawls 1971, Daniels 1979).

So according to the stasis requirement, if an epistemic theory forced us

to radically alter our considered epistemic judgments (e.g., our epistemic

judgments in reflective equilibrium), then ipso facto that theory is unacceptable.

While some proponents of SAE might reject the stasis requirement

(e.g., Unger 1984), we agree with Kim that stasis is a fundamental

commitment of SAE. It is not, however, often explicitly stated. That is

because the commitment to epistemic stasis is implicit in the practice of

SAE. Much of SAE proceeds by counterexample philosophy: Someone

proposes an account of justification, others propose counterexamples, and

then the original account is altered or defended in the face of those

counterexamples. What we find objectionable about this mode of argument

is what proponents of SAE accept as a successful counterexample. To see this, let’s consider the mother-of-all counterexamples in SAE, the Gettier

Problem.

Before Gettier, it was generally thought that knowledge is justified

true belief (JTB). Gettier (1963) describes a situation in which the JTB

account is at odds with our considered knowledge judgments. One of

Gettier’s famous cases involves a man named Smith who has overwhelming

evidence, and so justification, for believing that Jones will get a job and

that Jones has ten coins in his pocket. On the basis of these beliefs, Smith

infers that the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket. It turns

out that unbeknownst to Smith, he will get the job, and he has ten coins in

his pocket. His belief that the man who will get the job has ten coins in his

pocket is true and justified. But Gettier insists that it is ‘‘clear’’ that

Smith’s belief is not knowledge (Gettier 1963, 122). For proponents of

SAE, the Gettier examples are important because they show that the JTB

account can’t be right on the grounds that it does not ‘‘leave our epistemic

situation largely unchanged.’’ Rather than explore any more of the

countless and wonderfully rococo counterexamples prevalent in the SAE

literature, let’s look at how some of these counterexamples end:

However, it is perfectly apparent that I know nothing of the sort. (Lehrer

and Paxson 1969, 235)

Even if S correctly predicts that he is going to lose, we would deny that he

knew he was going to lose if the only basis he had for this belief was the fact

that his chances of winning were so slight. (Dretske 1971, 3)

The situation is a peculiar one, and my intuitions, and I would suppose other

people’s, are not completely clear on the matter. But it seems, on the whole,

that we ought not to speak of knowledge here. . . . (Armstrong 1973, 181)

But, to make such an assumption is counterintuitive. In everyday situations

we do not regard deception as precluding rationality. Likewise, we do not

regard the fact that we have been deceived, or will be deceived, or would be

deceived, as precluding rationality. (Foley 1985, 192)

And, surely, we do not want to say that the fact that his friend has a

generator in his basement prevents S from having knowledge that the

company’s generators are causing the lights to be on. (Pappas and Swain

1973, 66)

In the above passages (and we could have chosen literally hundreds of

others), we are urged to share the philosopher’s considered epistemic judgments

about some imagined scenario. And we usually do. The problem,

10 Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment

on our view, is that SAE rejects various accounts solely on the grounds that

they violate these judgments.

The shockingly conservative nature of the method of SAE may only

become clear when we compare it to methods in other fields of inquiry.

The fact that relativity denies people’s considered judgments about simultaneity

is hardly a reason to reject it. If physics had been burdened

with such a conservative method, we wouldn’t have relativity, quantum

mechanics (or perhaps even Copernicanism!). If biology had been taken

over by such a conservative method, we wouldn’t have Darwinism. If

cultural studies had had such a conservative method, we wouldn’t have

postmodernism.

Okay, so sometimes conservatism is a good thing.

Behind this joke is an important point. The problem with conservative

methods is not that they are conservative per se. Conservative methods

work very well when applied to theories or propositions for which we have

overwhelming evidence. It is perfectly reasonable to be conservative about

the commitments of theoretical chemistry reflected in the periodic table, or

about the core attachments of contemporary physics or biology. That

doesn’t mean we rule out the possibility that new developments will force

us to abandon them. Conservatism isn’t mulishness. Conservatism is appropriate

in the case of the core commitments of these theories because we

have so much evidence in their favor that in absence of extraordinary

counterevidence, they deserve our allegiance. But while conservatism is fine

for excellent theories, it is poison in domains where progress awaits deep

and durable changes inmethod and outlook. The alchemist’s attachment to

conservatism was ill advised; it only protracted the alchemist’s crippling

(and it turns out, thanks to mercury and lead, fatal) ignorance. This raises

an obvious concern for SAE, which we will explore more fully in chapter 7.

No matter how polished or well thought-out our epistemic judgments, no

matter how much in reflective equilibrium they might be, are we so confident

in them that it is reasonable to make them the final arbiters of our

epistemological theories?

Standard Analytic Epistemology (SAE) names a contingently clustered class

of methods and theses that have dominated English-speaking epistemology

for much of the past century. Almost all the contemporary readings in the

most popular epistemology textbooks are prime examples of SAE. Contemporary

versions of foundationalism, coherentism, and reliabilism are

exemplars of SAE. While we object to the methods of SAE, and therefore to

the kinds of theories it leads to, our main goal in this chapter is to distinguish

our approach from that of SAE. So let’s begin with the starting points

of SAE—what proponents of SAE take to be the fundamental phenomena

or evidence of epistemology.

The goal of most philosophers engaged in SAE is to provide an account

of knowledge and epistemic justification. What are the success conditions on

such an account? In a typically clear and careful article, Jaegwon Kim

identifies a number of criteria that any account of justification must meet

in order to be successful. The most important of these conditions is what

we will call the stasis requirement:

Although some philosophers have been willing to swallow skepticism just

because what we regard as correct criteria of justified belief are seen to lead

inexorably to the conclusion that none, or very few, of our beliefs are

8 Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment

justified, the usual presumption is that our answer to the first question

[What conditions must a belief meet if we are justified in accepting it as

true?] should leave our epistemic situation largely unchanged. That is to say,

it is expected to turn out that according to the criteria of justified belief we

come to accept, we know, or are justified in believing, pretty much what we

reflectively think we know or are entitled to believe. (Kim 1988, 382)

It is worth noting that this requirement—that the right account of justification

‘‘leave our epistemic situation largely unchanged’’—is profoundly

conservative. In particular, it is extraordinary that SAE should have built

right into it a requirement that makes it virtually impossible that a successful

epistemological theory would force us to radically alter our epistemic

judgments.

Of course, proponents of SAE will not suggest that they are trying to

provide an account of their naıЁve epistemic judgments, but of their considered

epistemic judgments. One way to spell out the difference is in terms

of reflective equilibrium. Nelson Goodman introduced reflective equilibrium

as a process that involves aligning our judgments about particular

instances with our judgments about general principles. ‘‘The process of

justification is the delicate one of making mutual adjustments between

rules and accepted inferences; and in the agreement achieved lies the only

justification needed for either’’ (1965, 64). Narrow reflective equilibrium is

the process of bringing our normative judgments about particular cases

into line with our general normative prescriptions and vice versa. Wide

reflective equilibrium differs from narrow reflective equilibrium by including

our best theories in the mix. So wide reflective equilibrium is the

process of bringing into alignment our best theories, as well as our normative

judgments about particular cases, and our general normative prescriptions

(Rawls 1971, Daniels 1979).

So according to the stasis requirement, if an epistemic theory forced us

to radically alter our considered epistemic judgments (e.g., our epistemic

judgments in reflective equilibrium), then ipso facto that theory is unacceptable.

While some proponents of SAE might reject the stasis requirement

(e.g., Unger 1984), we agree with Kim that stasis is a fundamental

commitment of SAE. It is not, however, often explicitly stated. That is

because the commitment to epistemic stasis is implicit in the practice of

SAE. Much of SAE proceeds by counterexample philosophy: Someone

proposes an account of justification, others propose counterexamples, and

then the original account is altered or defended in the face of those

counterexamples. What we find objectionable about this mode of argument

is what proponents of SAE accept as a successful counterexample. To see this, let’s consider the mother-of-all counterexamples in SAE, the Gettier

Problem.

Before Gettier, it was generally thought that knowledge is justified

true belief (JTB). Gettier (1963) describes a situation in which the JTB

account is at odds with our considered knowledge judgments. One of

Gettier’s famous cases involves a man named Smith who has overwhelming

evidence, and so justification, for believing that Jones will get a job and

that Jones has ten coins in his pocket. On the basis of these beliefs, Smith

infers that the man who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket. It turns

out that unbeknownst to Smith, he will get the job, and he has ten coins in

his pocket. His belief that the man who will get the job has ten coins in his

pocket is true and justified. But Gettier insists that it is ‘‘clear’’ that

Smith’s belief is not knowledge (Gettier 1963, 122). For proponents of

SAE, the Gettier examples are important because they show that the JTB

account can’t be right on the grounds that it does not ‘‘leave our epistemic

situation largely unchanged.’’ Rather than explore any more of the

countless and wonderfully rococo counterexamples prevalent in the SAE

literature, let’s look at how some of these counterexamples end:

However, it is perfectly apparent that I know nothing of the sort. (Lehrer

and Paxson 1969, 235)

Even if S correctly predicts that he is going to lose, we would deny that he

knew he was going to lose if the only basis he had for this belief was the fact

that his chances of winning were so slight. (Dretske 1971, 3)

The situation is a peculiar one, and my intuitions, and I would suppose other

people’s, are not completely clear on the matter. But it seems, on the whole,

that we ought not to speak of knowledge here. . . . (Armstrong 1973, 181)

But, to make such an assumption is counterintuitive. In everyday situations

we do not regard deception as precluding rationality. Likewise, we do not

regard the fact that we have been deceived, or will be deceived, or would be

deceived, as precluding rationality. (Foley 1985, 192)

And, surely, we do not want to say that the fact that his friend has a

generator in his basement prevents S from having knowledge that the

company’s generators are causing the lights to be on. (Pappas and Swain

1973, 66)

In the above passages (and we could have chosen literally hundreds of

others), we are urged to share the philosopher’s considered epistemic judgments

about some imagined scenario. And we usually do. The problem,

10 Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment

on our view, is that SAE rejects various accounts solely on the grounds that

they violate these judgments.

The shockingly conservative nature of the method of SAE may only

become clear when we compare it to methods in other fields of inquiry.

The fact that relativity denies people’s considered judgments about simultaneity

is hardly a reason to reject it. If physics had been burdened

with such a conservative method, we wouldn’t have relativity, quantum

mechanics (or perhaps even Copernicanism!). If biology had been taken

over by such a conservative method, we wouldn’t have Darwinism. If

cultural studies had had such a conservative method, we wouldn’t have

postmodernism.

Okay, so sometimes conservatism is a good thing.

Behind this joke is an important point. The problem with conservative

methods is not that they are conservative per se. Conservative methods

work very well when applied to theories or propositions for which we have

overwhelming evidence. It is perfectly reasonable to be conservative about

the commitments of theoretical chemistry reflected in the periodic table, or

about the core attachments of contemporary physics or biology. That

doesn’t mean we rule out the possibility that new developments will force

us to abandon them. Conservatism isn’t mulishness. Conservatism is appropriate

in the case of the core commitments of these theories because we

have so much evidence in their favor that in absence of extraordinary

counterevidence, they deserve our allegiance. But while conservatism is fine

for excellent theories, it is poison in domains where progress awaits deep

and durable changes inmethod and outlook. The alchemist’s attachment to

conservatism was ill advised; it only protracted the alchemist’s crippling

(and it turns out, thanks to mercury and lead, fatal) ignorance. This raises

an obvious concern for SAE, which we will explore more fully in chapter 7.

No matter how polished or well thought-out our epistemic judgments, no

matter how much in reflective equilibrium they might be, are we so confident

in them that it is reasonable to make them the final arbiters of our

epistemological theories?