Boghossian on Intuition, Understanding, and the A Priori Once Again1

This chapter replies to Boghossian’s Chapter 15 and amplifies the arguments of the author’s Chapter 14. In particular, it illustrates the loss of underived dispositions with an example from learning mathematics, when the novice gradually ceases to be tempted by a certain kind of mistake. It is also explains why the argument of Chapter 14 does not assume that introspection and postulation are mutually incompatible; rather, it notes the author’s inability to introspect the non-doxastic intellectual seemings Boghossian postulates and suggests that it is not idiosyncratic. Finally, a challenge is raised for Boghossian’s view of a priori justification as coherence with intellectual seemings. What prevents bigoted beliefs being justified a priori in the way he describes by the bigoted intellectual seemings of a consistent Nazi, for example? If nothing does, what prevents the Nazi’s so-justified beliefs as to what one ought to do from justifying the corresponding actions?

Reply to Williamson on Intuition, Understanding, and the A Priori1

This paper argues that Williamson fails to produce successful counterexamples to the existence of understanding–assent links, in particular because he fails to show that the expert in his cases has lost underived dispositions to assent. The paper gives grounds for rejecting Williamson’s argument that intuitions, supposing them to exist, cannot be the source of distinctively a priori justification. Finally, it is argued that Williamson’s argument against the existence of intuitions (understood as sui generis states of intellectual seeming) flounders because it rests on a misguided and naïve dichotomy between ‘introspectable’ and ‘postulated’ mental states.

Williamson on the A Priori and the Analytic

This essay criticizes Williamson’s attempt, in his book, The Philosophy of Philosophy, to undermine the interest of the a priori–a posteriori distinction. Williamson’s argument turns on several large claims. The first is that experience often plays a role intermediate between evidential and merely enabling, and that this poses a difficulty for giving a theoretically satisfying account of the distinction. The second is that there are no constitutive understanding–assent links. Both of these claims are subjected to detailed scrutiny. In particular, it is argued that Williamson’s case of the deviant logician, Simon, fails to constitute an intelligible counterexample to the status of conjunction elimination as an understanding–assent link for ‘and’.

Knowing by Imagining1

This chapter explains the cognitive role of the imagination as a means to knowledge, permitting the offline use of cognitive faculties in both mental and non-mental simulation to assess counterfactual conditionals, in an analogue of online updating and prediction on the basis of new information. Other modal claims can be assessed similarly. This role involves the context of justification as well as the context of discovery. It substantiates the examples in Chapter 10, where imagination is treated as a means to knowledge. An analogy is sketched between the development of hypotheses in the imagination and the tableau method in deductive logic, which casts light on our ability to imagine an F when there is no F that we are imagining. It is suggested that such an overall cognitive role for the imagination makes sense on evolutionary grounds, including the distinction between voluntary and involuntary uses of the imagination.

Reply to Boghossian on the Distinction between the A Priori and the A Posteriori1

This chapter replies to Boghossian’s defence of the epistemological depth of the a priori–a posteriori distinction in Chapter 9 against the author’s critique in Chapter 8. It shows that nothing essential to the argument depends on the distinction between inner and outer experience. It then explains how Boghossian provides no workable alternative to the account in Chapter 8 of the role of imagination in generating knowledge in the key examples, and why the absence of such an alternative leaves Boghossian in danger of drifting into very extensive scepticism about mathematical knowledge. It is also noted that epistemological externalism does not figure as a premise in the key arguments of Chapter 8, although they may offer support for such externalism.

Do We Have Reason to Doubt the Importance of the Distinction between A Priori and A Posteriori Knowledge?

This essay defends the a priori–a posteriori distinction against two skeptical challenges posed by Williamson in Chapter 8. Against the argument that no top-down characterization of the distinction can line up with the intuitive paradigm examples, it contends that the argument’s reliance on the distinction between ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ experience renders it ineffective. An alternative way of running the argument is shown to lead to a different conclusion, one about the nature of justifiers. Against Williamson’s central argument, which presents a pair of cases designed to show that whatever distinction the paradigm examples mark it cannot be one of epistemological significance, the essay argues that Williamson fails to draw the correct conclusions from his cases, and in particular fails to show that the subject in either case can acquire justified belief via the type of exercise of the imagination that he describes.

Inferentialism and the Epistemology of Logic

This essay attempts to clarify the project of explaining the possibility of ‘blind reasoning’—namely, of basic logical inferences to which we are entitled without our having an explicit justification for them. The role played by inferentialism in this project is examined and objections made to inferentialism by Paolo Casalegno and Timothy Williamson are answered. Casalegno proposes a recipe for formulating a counterexample to any proposed constitutive inferential role by imaging a subject who understands the logical constant in question but fails to have the capacity to make the inference in question; Williamson’s recipe turns on imagining an expert who continues to understand the constant in question while having developed sophisticated considerations for refusing to make it. It’s argued that neither recipe succeeds.

Analyticity Reconsidered1

This essay distinguishes between metaphysical and epistemological conceptions of analyticity. The former is the idea of a sentence that is ‘true purely in virtue of its meaning’ while the latter is the idea of a sentence that ‘can be justifiably believed merely on the basis of understanding its meaning’. It further argues that, while Quine may have been right to reject the metaphysical notion, the epistemological notion can be defended from his critique and put to work explaining a priori justification. Along the way, a number of further distinctions relevant to the theory of analyticity and the theory of apriority are made and their significance is explained.

Closing Reflections

The author reflects on the origin of his interest in, and the evolution of his views on, the a priori, including its role in characterizing philosophical activity itself. The author also muses about the extent to which his debate about the a priori with Williamson has been shaped by divergent background philosophical commitments. In particular, the author argues that many of Williamson’s detailed positions on the a priori are traceable back to his largely unspoken allegiance to externalist views about epistemic justification and his endorsement of lax externalist criteria for concept attribution in the theory of understanding and meta-semantics.

Closing Reflections1

In these brief comments, the author discusses the origins of his interest in the epistemology, why he has always found inferentialist accounts of it implausible, and why the similarities between the epistemology of logic and the epistemology of other domains have always been salient to him. There is also a brief account of the asymmetry between the role of internalism in Boghossian’s epistemology and the role of externalism in the author’s epistemology. Finally, there are some reflections on the ways in which we can hope to improve the shaky methodology of traditional epistemology, for example by making more use of formal methods and the findings of experimental psychology.