RESPONSIBLE BELIEVING
S. Joel Garver
CHAPTER EIGHT
Responsible Believing:
Intellectual Virtue and Real
Existing Knowledge
Section V
The second subsidiary point is this. As noted above, ethics and epistemology are intertwined in that, not only are they both concerned about normativity, but also ethical normativity exerts influence over epistemic normativity and vice versa. For instance, having the right sort of emotional life (and this includes putting on certain virtues, eschewing the vicious, and so on) disposes a subject to believe in a responsible manner (both in terms of having justification and in more comprehensive terms of believing what one ought to believe). Moreover, part of the value of having an emotional life of a certain shape is that it is instrumental to knowledge, which is itself a good, and that a subject's well-ordered emotional life is, in its knowledge-acquiring facility, a good in itself simply in its well-ordering.
This point is important for the relationships between ethical normativity and epistemic normativity and that is important to debates regarding realism (or "cognitivism") in respect to both knowledge and ethics. Now it seems that there are four basic positions that one could possibly take in respect to these issues: [1] realism in respect to both ethical and epistemic norms; [2] anti-realism in respect to ethical norms and realism in respect to epistemic norms; [3] realism in respect to ethical norms and anti-realism in respect to epistemic norms; and [4] anti-realism in respect to both ethical and epistemic norms. Variations are no doubt possible which are realist or anti-realist only in respect to certain kinds of epistemic or ethical norms, but we shall set such positions aside for our purposes.
By "realism" in respect to certain norms, I mean positions that take there to be "facts of the matter" concerning what is right or wrong, virtuous or vicious, knowledge or error, and justified or not. The "facts of the matter" concern states of affairs that obtain--are "real" in the ordinary, strong metaphysical sense that tables and chairs, or at least organisms and simples, are real--and they obtain irrespective of what ascriptions anyone might make. By "anti-realism" in respect to certain norms, I mean positions that do not take there to be facts of the matter regarding those norms in this strong sense I have mentioned. Instead, anti-realism chalks up such norms to conventions, emotive patterns, socially established ways of speaking, and the like. Somewhat mediating "pluralist" positions are doubtlessly also available, but I shall pass over them here.
In light of the connections between ethical values and epistemic ones, let us consider the four positions regarding realism and anti-realism. The second and third positions (ethical anti-realism and epistemic realism or vice versa) involve situations in which the norms at work in knowledge have a different status in respect to their "reality" than the norms at work in ethics. If I am correct about the structure of human knowledge, however, such norms are not so detachable from one another. Perhaps it is possible for there to be facts of the matter concerning knowledge and none concerning ethical norms and vice versa. It seems very odd, though, to assert that the "right sort" of emotional life or that certain "virtues" play an important role in knowledge and justification, if, say, such virtues are conventional and what counts as knowledge is real. It is also odd for knowledge to give value to certain ethical conditions if ethical conditions are real and knowledge is conventional. In such cases, t he normative terms in the two different areas (ethics and epistemology) are functioning quite differently and serious tensions arise if one area is treated in a realist way and the other in an anti-realist way. At the very least, the burden of proof lies with those who maintain realism in one area and anti-realism in the other.
It seems, then, that either a realist or anti-realist position is best held in respect to both areas (positions one and four, above). Moreover, convinced realism (or anti-realism) in respect to one area should dispose one to that position in respect t o the other area.
We have concluded that we are deeply and richly responsible for what we believe. If the picture of human responsible believing that I have outlined is at all compelling, then some philosophical traditions may need to be reexamined. I have already made some suggestions in these essays. We should consider (or reconsider) the following areas:
[a] Epistemological accounts that seek unitary and universalized analyses of epistemic justification--especially insofar as they set to one side the concrete forms in which human knowing subsists with all their particularity, shot through with value, goal directed, and so on.
[b] Epistemologies that intellectualize human believing and knowing to such a degree that doxastic faculties appear as purely rational and mental, disconnected from action, will, and feeling.
[c] Accounts of belief and knowledge that are so reductionist, reliablist, or eliminativist that they set to the side any notions of epistemic virtue and vice or epistemic prescription.
[d] Accounts that portray the will and the realm of human volition solely in terms of flip-of-the-switch notions rather than seeing the will also as a strong, continuous force that may be shaped and directed.
[e] Thinking that sees the realist debate in certain areas of normativity as, more or less, neatly separable from other areas of normativity.
Responsible believing is what we do and a rich, familiar, and persuasive epistemology will embrace it and in so doing will analyze real existing knowledge and the life of intellectual virtue.