Epistemology: An Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge

2. Fallibilism and Truth Estimation

15 Chapter 2 Fallibilism and Truth Estimation SYNOPSIS • Metaknowledge, the development higher-order knowledge about our knowledge itself, is one of the principal tasks of epistemology. And one of its key lessons is that of fallibility, the almost inevitable liability of our knowledge to the discovery of error. • The acknowledgment of error with its denial the overall conjunction of one’s affirmations seems paradoxical. (Indeed it is characterized as “The Preface Paradox.”) Nevertheless, such fallibility represents a fact of life with which we must come to terms. • The ancient problem of the diallelus posed by the absence of any cognitiveexternal standard of cognitive adequacy—also has to be reckoned with. • There is a wide variety of possible responses to this view of the cognitive situation. • But in balancing costs and benefits it emerges that a fallibilism that views our knowledge-claims in the light of best-available estimates is itself our best-available option. • Such a fallibilism means that our “scientific knowledge” is no more (but also no less) than our best estimate of the truth. • Accordingly, we have to see our knowledge claims in scientific matters as representing merely putative truth, that is, as truth-estimates. PROBLEMS OF METAKNOWLEDGE The reflexive aspect of human cognition is one of its most characteristic and significant features. Nothing is more significant for and characteristic of our human cognitive situation than our ability to step back from what we deem ourselves to know and take a critically evaluative attitude toward it. The development of metaknowledge—of information about our knowledge itself—is a crucial component of the cognitive enterprise at large. Metaknowledge is higher-order knowledge regarding the facts that we know (or believe ourselves to know); the object of its concern is our own knowledge (or putative knowledge).The prospect of metaknowledge roots in the reflexivity of thought—the circumstance we can have doubts about our doubts, beliefs about our beliefs, knowledge about our knowledge. The development of metaknowledge is a crucial component of epistemology, and in its pursuit we encounter some very interesting but also disconcerting results, seeing that attention to the actual nature of our knowledge yields some rather paradoxical facts. Of course, knowledge as such must be certain. After all, we are very emphatically fair-weather friends to our knowledge. When the least problem arises with regard to a belief we would not, could not call it knowledge. There is no such thing as defeasible knowledge. Once the prospect of defeat is explicitly acknowledged, we have to characterize the item as merely putative knowledge. Let K * be the manifold of propositions that we take ourselves to know: the collection of our appropriately (though not necessarily correctly) staked knowledge claims, specifically including the theoretical claims that we endorse in the domain of the sciences. Thus K * is the body of our putative knowledge, including all of the claims which, in our considered judgment, represent something that a reasonable person is entitled—in the prevailing epistemic circumstances—to claim as an item of knowledge. It includes the sum total of presently available (scientific) knowledge as well as the information we manage to acquire in ordinary life. Given this conception of knowledge, it is clear that we can appropriately endorse the rule: (R) For any p: If p belongs to K*, then p is true. In effect, (R) represents the determination to equate K* with K, the body of our actual knowledge. We accept this precisely equation because its membership in K * represents acceptance as true; a claim would not be a K *-member did we not see it as true. However, K * ⫽ K represents not a theoretical truth but a practical principle—a matter of procedural policy. Unfortunately, we know full well that we are sometimes mistaken in what we accept as knowledge, even when every practicable safeguard is supplied. And this is true not only for the 16 Knowledge and Its Problems ordinary knowledge of everyday life but for our scientific knowledge as well. Accordingly, the rule (R) is not a true generalization but rather represents a rule of thumb; it is a practical pinnacle of procedure rather than a flat out truth. It reflects our determination to treat our putative knowledge as actual. The following considerations confront us with some of the inescapable facts of (cognitive) life: Cognitive Imperfection We are (or at any rate should be) clearly aware of our own liability to error. We cannot...