# Epistemology

## Knowledge

### Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:
1. Identify and explain the elements of Plato’s traditional account of knowledge.
2. Describe the Gettier problem.
3. Recall a Gettier case and explain how it is a counterexample to the traditional account of knowledge.
4. Identify and explain a way of thinking that attempts to solve the Gettier problem.
What does it mean to say that one knows something? Knowledge is an important concept in all areas of thought. Knowledge is the goal and therefore enjoys a special status. Investigating the nature of knowledge reveals the importance of other concepts that are key to epistemological theorizing—justification in particular.

### Plato and the Traditional Account of Knowledge

Plato, one of the most important of the Greek philosophers, hypothesized that knowledge is justified true belief. Plato’s analysis is known as the traditional account of knowledge. Plato’s definition is that a person S knows proposition P if and only if
1. P is true,
2. S believes P, and
3. S is justified in believing P (Plato 1997b).
Plato’s hypothesis on knowledge, often referred to as the JTB account (because it is “justified true belief”), is highly intuitive. To say “John knows P, but he does not believe P” sounds wrong. In order to know something, a subject must first believe it. And one also cannot say “Ali knows P, but P is false.” A person simply cannot have knowledge of false things. Knowledge requires truth. Last, someone should not claim to know P if they have no reason to believe P (a reason to believe being justification for P).

### Problems with the Traditional Account of Knowledge

Amazingly, Plato’s view that knowledge is justified true belief was generally accepted until the 20th century (over 2,000 years!). But once this analysis was questioned, a flurry of developments occurred within epistemology in the latter half of the 20th century. This section discusses the counterexample method at play in the dialectic concerning what knowledge is. Plato’s JTB analysis was the first to come under scrutiny.
In 1963, American philosopher Edmund Gettier (1927–2021) published a short paper titled “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?,” which upended the JTB canon in Western philosophy. Gettier presents two counterexamples to Plato’s analysis of knowledge. In these counterexamples, a person seems to have a justified true belief, yet they do not seem to have knowledge. While Gettier is credited with the first popular counterexample to the JTB account, he was not the first philosopher to articulate a counterexample that calls into question Plato’s analysis. But because Gettier published the first influential account, any example that seems to undermine Plato’s JTB account of knowledge is called a Gettier case. Gettier cases illustrate the inadequacy of the JTB account—a problem referred to as the Gettier problem.

### Dharmakīrti’s Mirage

The earliest known Gettier case, long predating the term, was conceived by the eighth century Indian Buddhist philosopher Dharmakīrti. Dharmakīrti’s case asks one to imagine a weary nomad traveling across the desert in search of water (Dreyfus 1997). The traveler crests a mountain and sees what appears to be an oasis in the valley below, and so comes to believe that there is water in the valley. However, the oasis is just a mirage. Yet there is water in the valley, but it is just beneath the surface of the land where the mirage is. The traveler is justified in believing there is water in the valley due to sensory experience. Furthermore, it is true that there is water in the valley. However, the traveler’s belief does not seem to count as knowledge. Dharmakīrti’s conclusion is that the traveler cannot be said to know there is water in the valley because the traveler’s reason for believing that there is water in the valley is an illusory mirage.

### Russell’s Case

Perhaps you’ve heard the phrase “Even a broken clock is right twice a day.” The next case relies on this fact about broken clocks. In 1948, Bertrand Russell offered a case in which a man looks up at a stopped clock at exactly the correct time:
Imagine that the clock the man looks at is known for its reliability. Hence, the man is justified in believing that the time is, for example, 4:30. And, as the cases supposes, it is true that it is 4:30. However, given that the clock is not working and that the man happens to look up at one of the two times a day that the clock is correct, it is only a matter of luck that his belief happens to be true. Hence, Russell concludes that the man cannot be said to know the correct time.

### Fake Barn Country

The last Gettier case we will look at is from American philosopher Carl Ginet (b. 1932) (Goldman 1976). Henry is driving through a bucolic area of farmland and barns. What he doesn’t realize, however, is that the area is currently being used as a movie set, and all the barns save one are actually barn facades. While looking at one of the barns, Henry says to himself, “That is a barn.” Luckily for Henry, the one he points to is the one true barn in the area. Again, all the conditions in Plato’s analysis of knowledge are met. It is true that Henry is looking at a real barn, and he believes it is a barn. Furthermore, he has come to this belief utilizing justifiable means—he is using his vision, in normal lighting, to identify a common object (a barn). Yet one cannot reasonably say that Henry knows the barn is a barn because he could have, by chance, accidentally identified one of the fake barns as a true barn. He fortunately happens to pick the one true barn.
 summarizes the Gettier cases discussed in this chapter.

### Fixing Plato’s Traditional Account of Knowledge

Gettier cases demonstrate that Plato’s traditional account of knowledge as justified true belief is wrong. Specifically, Gettier cases show that a belief being true and justified is not sufficient for that belief to count as knowledge. In all the cases discussed, the subject seems to have a justified true belief but not knowledge. Notice that this does not mean that belief, truth, or justification is not necessary for knowledge. Indeed, when speaking of propositional knowledge, all philosophers grant that belief and truth are necessary conditions for knowledge. A person cannot be said to know a proposition if they do not believe that proposition. And clearly, if a belief is to count as knowledge, then that believe simply cannot be false. Accordingly, attempts to solve the Gettier problem do one of two things: either they replace the justification condition with something more robust, or they add a fourth condition to JTB to make the account sufficient.

### No False Premises

In Dharmakīrti’s case, the nomad believes there is water in the valley based on the false belief that a mirage is an oasis. And in Russell’s case, the man bases his true belief about the time on the false belief that the clock he’s looking at is working. In both cases, the inference that leads to the true belief passes through false premises. In response to this fact, American philosopher Gilbert Harman (1928–2021) suggested adding a condition to the JTB account that he termed “no false lemmas” (Harman 1973). A false lemma is a false premise, or step in the reasoning process. Harman’s fourth condition is that a person’s belief cannot be based on an inference that uses false premises. According to Harman, S knows P if and only if (1) P is true, (2) S believes P, (3) S is justified in believing P, and (4) S did not infer P from any falsehoods.
Harman theorized that many counterexamples to the traditional account share a similar feature: the truth of the belief is not appropriately connected to the evidence used to deduce that belief. Going back to Dharmakīrti’s case, what makes the statement “There’s water in the valley” true is the fact that there is water below the surface. However, the nomad comes to believe that there is water based on the mistaken belief that a mirage is an oasis, so what makes the belief true is not connected to the reason the nomad believes it. If Harman’s condition that the reasoning that leads to belief cannot pass through false steps is added, then the nomad’s belief no longer counts as knowledge.
Harman’s emendation explains why the nomad does not have knowledge and accounts for the intuition that the man in Russell’s case does not actually know what time it is. However, this cannot take care of all Gettier cases. Consider the case of Henry in fake barn country. Henry comes to believe he is looking at a barn based on his perceptual experience of the barn in front of him. And Henry does look at a real barn. He does not reason through any false premises, such as “All the structures on my drive are barns.” His inference flows directly from his perceptual experience of a real barn. Yet it is a matter of luck that Henry isn’t looking at one of the many barn facades in the area, so his belief still does not seem to count as knowledge. Because Harman’s account is vulnerable to the barn counterexample, it does not solve the Gettier problem.

### Ruling Out Defeaters and Alternatives

While driving through fake barn country, Henry happens to form the belief “That is a barn” when looking at the only real barn in the area. While Henry’s belief is not based on false premises, there still seems to be something wrong with it. Why? The problem is that certain facts about Henry’s environment (that it is filled with barn facades), if known, would undermine his confidence in the belief. That the area is predominantly filled with barn facades is what is known as a defeater because it serves to defeat the justification for his belief. Contemporary American philosophers Keith Lehrer and Thomas Paxson Jr. suggest that justified true belief is knowledge as long as there are no existing defeaters of the belief (Lehrer and Paxson 1969). S has knowledge that P if and only if (1) P is true, (2) S believes P, (3) S is justified in believing P, and (4) there exist no defeaters for P. The added fourth condition means that there cannot exist evidence that, if believed by S, would undermine S’s justification.
The “no defeaters” condition solves all three Gettier cases discussed so far because in each case, there exists evidence that, if possessed by the subject, would undermine their justification. Henry cannot be said to know he’s looking at a barn because of the evidence that most of the barns in the area are fake, and Russell’s man doesn’t know the time because the clock is stopped. The “no defeaters” condition thus helps solve many Gettier cases. However, we now need a thorough account of when evidence counts as a defeater. We are told that a defeater is evidence that would undermine a person’s justification but not how it does this. It cannot be that all evidence that weakens a belief is a defeater because this would make knowledge attainment much more difficult. For many of our justified true beliefs, there exists some evidence that we are unaware of that could weaken our justification. For example, we get many beliefs from other people. Research indicates that people tell an average of one lie per day (DePaulo et al. 1996; Serota, Levine, and Boster 2010). So when someone tells you something in conversation, often it is true that the person has lied once today. Is the evidence that a person has lied once today enough evidence to undermine your justification for believing what they tell you?
Notice that because a defeater is evidence that would undermine a person’s justification, what counts as a defeater depends on what justification is. Of the theories of knowledge examined so far, all of them treat justification as basic. They state that a belief must be justified but not how to measure or determine justification.

### The Problem with Justification

The traditional analysis of knowledge explains that knowledge is justified true belief. But even if we accept this definition, we could still wonder whether a true belief is knowledge because we may wonder if it is justified. What counts as justification? Justification is a rather broad concept. Instead of simply stating that justification is necessary for knowledge, perhaps a thorough account of knowledge ought to instead spell out what this means. The next section looks more deeply at how to understand justification and how some theorists suggest replacing the justification condition in order to solve the Gettier problem.

###

The traditional understanding of knowledge, which comes from Plato, is that it consists of justified true belief. Plato’s account was generally accepted until the 1960s, when philosopher Edmund Gettier offered counterexamples, known as Gettier cases. Gettier cases reveal that justified true belief is not sufficient for knowledge, a problemed called the Gettier problem. Many theorists attempt to solve the Gettier problem by strengthening Plato’s account. Fixes include adding another condition to the definition and clarifying what justification is.

###


# Epistemology

## Justification

### Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:
1. Explain what justification means in the context of epistemology.
2. Explain the difference between internal and external theories of justification.
3. Describe the similarities and differences between coherentism and foundationalism.
4. Classify beliefs according to their source of justification.
Much of epistemology in the latter half of the 20th century was devoted to the question of justification. Questions about what knowledge is often boil down to questions about justification. When we wonder whether knowledge of the external world is possible, what we really question is whether we can ever be justified in accepting as true our beliefs about the external world. And as previously discussed, determining whether a defeater for knowledge exists requires knowing what could undermine justification.
We will start with two general points about justification. First, justification makes beliefs more likely to be true. When we think we are justified in believing something, we think we have reason to believe it is true. How justification does this and how to think about the reasons will be discussed below. Second, justification does not always guarantee truth. Justification makes beliefs more likely to be true, which implies that justified beliefs could still be false. The fallibility of justification will be addressed at the end of this section.

### The Nature of Justification

Justification makes a belief more likely to be true by providing reasons in favor of the truth of the belief. A natural way to think of justification is that it provides logical support. Logic is the study of reasoning, so logical support is strong reasoning. If I am reasoning correctly, I am justified in believing that my dog is a mammal because all dogs are mammals. And I am justified in believing that  if I did the derivation correctly. But what if I used a calculator to derive the result? Must I also have reasons for believing the calculator is reliable before being justified in believing the answer? Or can the mere fact that calculators are reliable justify my belief in the answer? These questions get at an important distinction between the possible sources of justification—whether justification is internal or external to the mind of the believer.

### Internalism and Externalism

Theories of justification can be divided into two different types: internal and external. Internalism is the view that justification for belief is determined solely by factors internal to a subject’s mind. The initial appeal of internalism is obvious. A person’s beliefs are internal to them, and the process by which they form beliefs is also an internal mental process. If you discover that someone engaged in wishful thinking when they came to the belief that the weather would be nice today, even if it turns out to be true, you can determine that they did not know that it would be nice today. You will believe they did not have that knowledge because they had no reasons or evidence on which to base their belief. When you make this determination, you reference that person’s mental state (the lack of reasons).
But what if a person had good reasons when they formed a belief but cannot currently recall what those reasons were? For example, I believe that Aristotle wrote about unicorns, although I cannot remember my reasons for believing this. I assume I learned it from a scholarly text (perhaps from reading Aristotle himself), which is a reliable source. Assuming I did gain the belief from a reliable source, am I still justified given that I cannot now recall what that source was? Internalists contend that a subject must have cognitive access to the reasons for belief in order to have justification. To be justified, the subject must be able to immediately or upon careful reflection recall their reasons. Hence, according to internalism, I am not justified in believing that Aristotle wrote about unicorns.
On the other hand, an externalist would say my belief about Aristotle is justified because of the facts about where I got the belief. Externalism is the view that at least some part of justification can rely on factors that are not internal or accessible to the mind of the believer. If I once had good reasons, then I am still justified, even if I cannot now cite those reasons. Externalist theories about justification usually focus on the sources of justification, which include not only inference but also testimony and perception. The fact that a source is reliable is what matters. To return to the calculator example, the mere fact that a calculator is reliable can function as justification for forming beliefs based on its outputs.

### An Example of Internalism: Ruling Out Relevant Alternatives

Recall that the “no defeaters” theory of knowledge requires that there exist no evidence that, if known by the subject, would undermine their justification. The evidence is not known by the subject, which makes the evidence external. The fourth condition could instead be an internal condition. Rather than require that there exist no evidence, one could say that S needs to rule out any relevant alternatives to their belief. The “no relevant alternatives” theory adds to the traditional account of knowledge the requirement that a person rule out any competing hypotheses for their belief. Ruling out refers to a subject’s conscious internal mental state, which makes this condition internal in nature. Like the “no defeaters” condition, the “no relevant alternatives” condition is meant to solve the Gettier problem. It does so by broadening the understanding of justification so that justification requires ruling out relevant alternatives. However, it still doesn’t solve the Gettier problem. Returning to the barn example, the possibility that there are barn facades is not a relevant alternative to the belief that one is looking at a barn. Unless one is in Hollywood, one would not think that facades are a distinct possibility.

### An Example of Externalism: Causal Theories

Externalists hold that a subject need not have access to why their true beliefs are justified. But some theorists, such as American philosopher Alvin Goldman (b. 1938), argue that the justification condition in the account of knowledge should be replaced with a more substantial and thorough condition that effectively explains what justification is. Goldman argues that beliefs are justified if they are produced by reliable belief-forming processes (Goldman 1979). Importantly, it is the process that confers justification, not one’s ability to recount that process. Goldman’s account of knowledge is that a true belief is the result of a reliable belief-forming process.
Goldman’s theory is called historical reliabilism—historical because the view focuses on the past processes that led to a belief, and reliabilism because, according to the theory, processes that reliably produce true beliefs confer justification on those beliefs. Reliable belief-forming processes include perception, memory, strong or valid reasoning, and introspection. These processes are functional operations whose outputs are beliefs and other cognitive states. For example, reasoning is an operation that takes as input prior beliefs and hypotheses and outputs new beliefs, and memory is a process that “takes as input beliefs or experiences at an earlier time and generates as output beliefs at a later time” (Goldman 1979, 12). Usually, memory is reliable in the sense that it is more likely to produce true beliefs than false ones.
Because Goldman’s approach is externalist, the justification-conferring process need not be cognitively accessible to the believer. His view has also been called causal because he focuses on the causes of belief. If a belief is caused in the right way (by a reliable belief-forming processes), then it is justified. One virtue of this approach is that it accounts for the intuition that someone could have a justified belief without being able to cite all the reasons for holding that belief. However, this view is not without fault. The original impetus behind revising Plato’s traditional JTB analysis was to solve the Gettier problem, and Goldman’s account cannot do this. Consider again Henry and the barn. Henry looks at a real barn and forms the belief that it is a barn. Henry’s belief that he is looking at a barn is caused by a reliable belief-forming process (perception), so according to Goldman’s account, Henry does have knowledge. Yet many philosophers think that Henry doesn’t have knowledge given the lucky nature of his belief.

### Theories of Justification

So far, we have looked at theories of justification as applied to individual beliefs. But beliefs are not always justified in isolation. Usually, the justification of one belief depends on the justification of other beliefs. I must be justified in trusting my perception to then be justified in believing that there is a bird outside of my office window. Thus, some theories focus on the structure of justification—that is, how a system or set of beliefs is structured. The theories on the structure of justification aim to illustrate how the structure of a system of beliefs leads to knowledge, or true beliefs.

### Foundationalism

Much of what a subject justifiably believes is inferred from other justified beliefs. For example, Ella justifiably believes the Battle of Hastings occurred in 1066 because her history professor told her this. But the justification for her belief doesn’t end there. Why is Ella justified in believing that her history professor is a good source? Furthermore, why is she even justified in believing that her history professor told her this? To the second question, Ella would reply that she is justified because she remembers her professor telling her. But then one can ask, Why is the reliance on memory justifiable? Justified beliefs rest on other justified beliefs. The question is whether the chain of justification ever ends. Foundationalists hold that justification must terminate at some point.
Foundationalism is the view that all justified beliefs ultimately rest on a set of foundational, basic beliefs. Consider a house. Most of what people see of a house is the superstructure—the main floor, columns, and roof. But the house must rest on a foundation that stabilizes and props up the parts of the house people can see. According to foundationalists, most beliefs are like the superstructure of the house—the frame, roof, and walls. The majority of people’s beliefs are inferential beliefs, or beliefs based on inference. And according to foundationalism, all beliefs rest on a foundation of basic beliefs (Hasan and Fumerton 2016). One of Ella’s foundational beliefs could be that her memory is reliable. If this belief is justified, then all of Ella’s justified beliefs derived from memory will rest on this foundational belief.
But what justifies basic beliefs? If basic beliefs function so as to justify other beliefs, then they too must be justified. If the foundation is not justified, then none of the beliefs that rest on it are justified. According to foundationalism, the beliefs that make up the foundation are justified beliefs, but they are justified non-inferential beliefs. Foundational beliefs must be non-inferential (not based on inference) because if they were inferential, they would get their justification from another source, and they would no longer be foundational. Foundational beliefs are supposed to be where the justification stops.
The strongest objection against foundationalism targets the nature of basic beliefs. What is a basic belief, and what are the reasons for thinking basic beliefs are justified? French philosopher René Descartes (1596–1650) was a foundationalist, and he held that people’s basic beliefs are infallible (Descartes 1986). An infallible belief is one that cannot be mistaken. Clearly, if the foundation is made of beliefs that cannot be mistaken, then it is justified. But why think that foundational beliefs cannot be mistaken? Descartes thought that whatever a subject can clearly and distinctly conceive of in their mind, they can take to be true because God would not allow them to be fooled. As an illustration of how some beliefs might be infallible, recall that knowledge by acquaintance is direct and unmediated knowledge. Acquaintance is unmediated by other ways of knowing, including inference, so beliefs gained though acquaintance are non-inferential, which is what the foundationalist wants. Beliefs gained via acquaintance are also justified, which is why Russell deems them knowledge. As an example, imagine that you see a green orb in your field of vision. You may not know whether the green orb is due to something in your environment, but you cannot be mistaken about the fact that you visually experience the green orb. Hence, knowledge by acquaintance is a possible candidate for the foundation of beliefs.

### Coherence

Coherentism is the view that justification, and thus knowledge, is structured not like a house but instead like a web. More precisely, coherentism argues that a belief is justified if it is embedded in a network of coherent, mutually supported beliefs. Think of a web. Each strand in a web is not that strong by itself, but when the strands are connected to multiple other strands and woven together, the result is a durable network. Similarly, a subject’s justification for individual beliefs, taken alone, is not that strong. But when those beliefs are situated in a system of many mutually supporting beliefs, the justification grows stronger. Justification emerges from the structure of a belief system (BonJour 1985).
Within foundationalism, the justifications for some beliefs can proceed in a completely linear fashion. Ella believes the Battle of Hastings occurred in 1066 because her professor told her, and she believes that her professor told her because she remembers it and thinks her memory is justifiable. One belief justifies another, which justifies another, and so on, until the foundation is reached. Yet very few beliefs are actually structured in this manner. People often look for support for their beliefs in multiple other beliefs while making sure that they are also consistent.  offers a simplified visual of the two different structures of belief.
Often, when we think of the justification for our beliefs, we don’t just consider the original source of a belief. We also think about how that belief fits into our other beliefs. If a belief does not cohere with other beliefs, then its justification appears weak, even if the initial justification for the belief seemed strong. Suppose you need to go to the bank, and on your way out the door, your roommate tells you not to waste your time because they drove by the bank earlier and it was closed. Your roommate’s testimony seems like enough reason to believe the bank is closed. However, it is a weekday, and the bank is always open during the week. Furthermore, it is not a holiday. You check the bank’s website, and it states that the bank is open. Hence, the belief that the bank is closed does not cohere with your other beliefs. The lack of coherence with other beliefs weakens the justification for believing what your otherwise reliable roommate tells you.
To be fair, foundationalists also consider coherence of beliefs in determining justification. However, as long as a belief is consistent with other beliefs and rests on the foundation, it is justified. But consistency is not the same thing as logical support. The beliefs that there is a bird in that tree, it is November, and a person is hungry are all consistent with one another, but they do not support one another. And for coherentists, logical consistency alone does not make a system of belief justified. Justification arises from a system of beliefs that mutually reinforce one another. Support can happen in many ways: beliefs can deductively entail one another, they can inductively entail one another, and they can cohere by explaining one another. Suppose I am trying to remember where my friend Faruq is from. I believe he is from Tennessee but am not sure. But then I remember that Faruq often wears a University of Tennessee hat and has a Tennessee Titans sticker on this car. He also speaks with a slight southern twang and has told stories about hiking in the Smoky Mountains, which are partially in Tennessee. That Faruq is from Tennessee can explain these further beliefs. Note that I can get more assurance for my belief that Faruq is from Tennessee by considering my other beliefs about him. When beliefs mutually reinforce one another, they acquire more justification.
Coherentism more naturally reflects the actual structure of belief systems, and it does so without relying on the notion of basic, justified, non-inferential beliefs. However, coherentism has weaknesses. One objection to coherentism is that it can result in circularity. Within a system of beliefs, any belief can play a roundabout role in its own justification.  illustrates this problem.
Another objection to coherentism is called the isolation objection. A network of beliefs can mutually explain and support one another, thus giving them justification. However, it is not guaranteed that these beliefs are connected to reality. Imagine a person, Dinah, who is trapped in a highly detailed virtual reality. Dinah has been trapped for so long that she believes her experiences are of the real world. Because of the detailed nature of Dinah’s virtual reality, most of her beliefs are consistent with and support one another, just as your beliefs about the real world do. As long as Dinah’s beliefs are consistent and coherent, she will be justified in believing that her experience is of real objects and real people. So Dinah has justification even though all her beliefs concerning the reality of her world are false. Dinah’s situation reveals an important feature of justification: while justification makes beliefs more likely to be true, it does not always guarantee that they are true. Justification is often fallible.

### The Fallible Nature of Justification

The sources of beliefs are varied. Perception, reason, hope, faith, and wishful thinking can all result in belief. Yet just because something results in belief, that does not mean that the belief is justified. Beliefs that result from wishful thinking are not justified because wishful thinking does not make a belief more likely to be true. A source of justification is a reliable basis for belief. Yet while justification is a reliable source, notice that this does not mean that the belief is true; it just makes it more likely. Justified beliefs can turn out to be false. In order to drive this point home, we will briefly look at four different sources of belief. As you will see, each source is fallible.
One source of belief is memory. Memory is not always reliable. First of all, that you do not remember something in your past does not mean that it did not happen. Second, when you do remember something, does that guarantee that it happened the way you remember it? Because people can misremember, philosophers distinguish between remembering and seeming to remember. When you actually remember P, then this justifies believing P. When you seem to remember P, this does not justify believing P. The problem is that remembering and seeming to remember often feel the same to the person trying to remember.
Most beliefs are the product of inference. When you use reason to come to belief, the justification you have is inferential; hence, inferential justification is equivalent to logical justification. But as discussed in the chapter on logic, not all forms of inference can guarantee truth. Inductive reasoning, which is the most common source of beliefs, is only probable even when done well. Furthermore, people often make mistakes in reasoning. Just because someone reasoned their way to a belief doesn’t mean they reasoned well. But assume for a moment that a person comes to a belief using deductive reasoning, which can guarantee truth, and they reason well. Is it still possible that their belief is false? Yes. Deductive reasoning takes as its input other beliefs to then derive conclusions. In good inductive reasoning, if the premises are true (the input beliefs), then the conclusion is true. If the input beliefs are false, then even good deductive reasoning cannot guarantee true beliefs.
Another source of belief is testimony. When you gain beliefs based on the stated beliefs of others, you rely on testimony. Testimony is usually considered something that happens only in a court of law, but in philosophy, the term testimony is used much more broadly. Testimony is any utterance, spoken or written, occurring in normal communication conditions. Instances of testimony include news magazines, nonfiction books, personal blogs, professors’ lectures, and opinions volunteered in casual conversation. Often, testimony is a reliable source of information and so can be justified. When you form beliefs based on the testimony of experts, it is justified. But even when justified, those beliefs could be false because experts are vulnerable to all of the weaknesses of justification covered in this section. More will be said about testimony in the section on social epistemology.
Last, perception can be used as a source of justification. Perception includes the information received from the senses (smell, taste, touch, sight, hearing). People often automatically form beliefs based on perception. However, not all beliefs that follow from perception are guaranteed to be true, as the possibility of knowledge by acquaintance shows. As discussed earlier, Russell maintained that the only automatically justified beliefs gained from perception are about the existence of sense data (Russell 1948). When looking at the bird outside of my office window, I only have knowledge by acquaintance of the experience of seeing the bird on a branch in my visual field. I know that it seems to me that there’s a bird. But how do I get from those sense data to the justified belief that there really is bird on the branch? I must rely on another belief about the reliability of my perception—a belief that I can only get by inference, specifically induction. I reason from past instances where I believe my perception is reliable to the general belief that it is reliable. And of course, induction is fallible. Whenever one moves from knowledge by acquaintance to further beliefs—such as the belief that sense data is caused by actually existing objects—there is room for error.
Not all philosophers agree that all perceptual beliefs are mediated through sense data (Crane and French 2021). The view called direct realism states that people have direct access to objects in the external world via perception. While direct realism holds that one can directly perceive the external world, it still cannot guarantee that beliefs about it are true, for both hallucinations and illusions are still possible.  is an example of an illusion.
If you focus only on the top two lines, it appears as though they are of different lengths. Yet the bottom two lines indicate that this appearance is illusory—the lines are actually of equal length. Illusions function as evidence that perception sometimes misrepresents reality. Even direct realists have to contend with the possibility that beliefs gained through sense perception could be wrong. Hence, sources of beliefs, even when they are usually justified, are nevertheless fallible. The possibility that the subject could be wrong is what gives rise to philosophical skepticism—the view that knowledge in some or all domains is impossible.

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Justification for a belief makes the belief more likely to be true. How justification works and the nature of justification are important to the study of epistemology. Internalism is the view that justification is entirely dependent on factors internal to the mind of the knower. Externalism is the view that at least some elements that determine justification are external to the mind of the knower. Attempts to solve the Gettier problem have come in both internal and external forms. Theorists also study justification as it exists in the structure of entire belief systems. Foundationalists believe that all beliefs rest on a foundation of basic beliefs, while coherentists hold that beliefs exist in a web of mutually supporting and consistent beliefs. Justification has many sources, but all of them are fallible, which means that even justified beliefs can be false.

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# Epistemology

## Skepticism

### Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:
1. Define skepticism as it is used in philosophy.
2. Compare and contrast global and local skepticism.
3. Offer and explain a skeptical hypothesis.
4. Outline the general structure of argument for global skepticism.
Philosophical skepticism is the view that some or all knowledge is impossible. A skeptic questions the possibility of knowledge—particularly justification—in some domain. A global skeptic rejects the possibility of knowledge in general. But one need not reject the possibility of all knowledge. A local skeptic questions the possibility of knowledge only in particular areas of study. One can be a local skeptic about moral knowledge or scientific knowledge. This section will first look at global skepticism and the arguments offered in support of it and then will briefly look at local skepticism.

### Global Skepticism

Global skepticism is a view that questions the possibility of all knowledge. To make their case, global skeptics point to the lack of the possibility of certainty in our beliefs. Because we cannot know that our beliefs are true, we cannot know in general. Usually, global skepticism attempts to undermine the possibility of forming justified beliefs. Global skeptics target all beliefs, or all beliefs about the external world (which amounts to most beliefs). Most beliefs tacitly or explicitly assume the existence of an external world. When I have the experience of seeing a bird in a tree and think, “There is a bird in that tree,” I assume that there is an actually existing physical bird in an actually existing physical tree in an actually existing real world outside of me. There is means “there exists.” I believe the bird, tree, and world all exist independently of my thoughts. The global skeptic questions beliefs such as these.

### The Dream Argument

How many times have you realized that you were dreaming while you were dreaming? Most people believe that whatever they are dreaming is real during the dream. Indeed, the fact that people think dreams are real while dreaming is what makes nightmares so terrible. If you knew the content of a nightmare was a dream, then it would not be nearly as scary. Zhuang Zhou (c. 369–286 BCE) was a Chinese Taoist philosopher who argued that for all we know, we could currently be dreaming while thinking we are awake. Imagine dreaming that you are a butterfly, happily flitting about on flowers. When you wake, how can you determine whether you have just woken from dreaming you are a butterfly or you are a butterfly who has just started dreaming that you are human? Zhuang Zhou explains:
Zhaung Zhou puts forward the possibility that all of what we take to be conscious experience is actually a dream. And if we are dreaming, then all our beliefs about the external world are false because those beliefs take for granted that our current experience is real.

### The Evil Demon Argument

Nearly two millennia after Zhuang Zhou, René Descartes also proposed a dream hypothesis. Descartes argued that because dreams often incorporate experiences we have in real life, it is impossible to distinguish between dreaming and waking life (Descartes 2008). But Descartes eventually concludes that even if he could be dreaming, there are still some beliefs he can know, specifically arithmetic. Even in dreams, 1 + 1 = 2, and a square will always have four sides. And so, Descartes devises an even stronger skeptical hypothesis: what if we are being tricked by an evil demon?
Descartes’s evil demon is powerful. It can make you believe things, and it can trick you by controlling your experience. The evil demon can make you believe you are currently eating a sandwich by directly feeding you the sensory experience of eating a sandwich (the sight, the smells, the taste, the feel). Under this scenario, you cannot tell the difference between actually eating a sandwich and merely believing you are eating one because the evil demon is tricking you. If we cannot reliably tell the difference between experiences caused by reality and experiences caused by an evil demon, then we cannot know anything. We can represent Descartes’s argument as follows:
1. If I cannot rule out the possibility that an evil demon is tricking me, then I do not have any knowledge of the external world.
2. I cannot rule out the possibility that an evil demon is tricking me.
3. Therefore, I do not have knowledge of the external world.
Why does Descartes claim we can’t have knowledge if we cannot rule out the evil demon hypothesis? If an evil demon is tricking us, then all our beliefs are wrong. And if we cannot rule out the possibility that we are wrong, then we are not justified. And if we are not justified in our beliefs, then we cannot have knowledge of them.

### Putnam’s Brain in a Vat

If you don’t like evil demons, then consider a more modern version of a skeptical hypothesis: the “brain in a vat” conceived of by American philosopher and mathematician Hilary Putnam (1926–2016). Imagine that while you were asleep last night, a group of scientists kidnapped you and took you to their lab. There, they surgically removed your brain and placed it in a vat of nutrients. The scientists then hooked up your brain to a sophisticated new computer system. They were able to download your memories so as to create new experiences. The result is a seamless experience of consciousness between yesterday and today. When you woke this morning, your life seemed to proceed without disruption. Can you prove that you are not a brain in a vat? No, you cannot. The scenario stipulates that your experience will seem exactly the same whether you are a brain in a vat or not. Other, similar skeptical scenarios are easy to come up with. Consider the possibility that you are caught in a virtual reality world or that you are trapped in the Matrix.

### General Structure of Global Skeptical Arguments

Skeptical hypotheses and the arguments that they inspire all have a similar structure:
1. If I cannot rule out the possibility of SH, then I cannot be justified in believing that P.
2. I cannot rule out the possibility of SH.
3. Therefore, I cannot be justified in believing that P.
SH is a skeptical hypothesis. P is any proposition about the external world. Premise 1 is the skeptic’s challenge—that you must rule out skeptical hypotheses. Premise 2 relies on limitations within your perspective. The skeptic claims that you can rule out the possibility of whatever skeptical hypothesis is at hand only if you are able to construct an argument that defeats that hypothesis using the evidence you have (and a priori knowledge). As demonstrated, this is difficult to do. The nature of the skeptical hypotheses used for global skepticism limits your evidence to the contents of your thoughts. What you take to be evidence of the external world (that you perceive things that seem to be separate from yourself) is effectively neutralized by the possibility of a skeptical hypothesis.

### Responses to Global Skepticism

The philosopher who wishes to overcome philosophical skepticism must find reasonable grounds for rejecting the skeptic’s argument. The different skeptical arguments reveal a specific conception of the level of justification required for knowledge. Skeptical arguments rely on the existence of doubt. Doubt exists when we cannot rule out a possibility. If we have doubt, we are not certain. We cannot be certain that we are not, say, a brain in a vat. And if we cannot be certain, then we cannot know anything that implies we are not a brain in a vat. Certainty is a very strict measure of justification. One clear possible response is to simply deny that one needs certainty in order to be considered justified. This section looks at some of the classical responses to the skeptic’s argument that we cannot know anything.

### Moore

British philosopher G. E. Moore (1873–1958) presented an argument against skepticism that relies on common sense. In his famous paper “Proof of an External World,” Moore begins by raising his right hand and claiming, “Here is one hand,” then raising his left hand and claiming, “Here is another hand” (Moore 1939). Therefore, he concludes that skepticism is false. At first glance, this argument may seem flippant. It is not. Moore means to replace the second premise in the skeptical argument with his own premise: I know I have hands. The skeptical argument starts with the premise that if you cannot rule out a skeptical hypothesis, then you do not have knowledge of some proposition pertaining to the external world. Moore uses “I have two hands” as his proposition about the external world. In effect, he accepts the skeptic’s first premise, then uses his commonsense belief in the truth of “I have two hands” to defeat the skeptical hypothesis. Here is the argument’s structure:
1. If I cannot rule out the possibility of SH, then I cannot be justified in believing that P.
2. I am justified in believing that P.
3. Therefore, I can rule out the possibility of SH.
In claiming that he has two hands, Moore claims that he is justified in believing propositions about the external world. And if he is justified, then he can rule out the skeptical hypothesis. The skeptic’s argument takes the form of what is called , meaning a valid inference where the antecedent of a conditional is affirmed. Moore’s argument takes the form of what is known as , meaning a valid inference where the consequence of a conditional is denied.
But notice that the two arguments contradict each other. If we accept the first premise, then either Moore’s or the skeptic’s second premise must be false. So why did Moore think his second premise is better? The choice is between thinking you are justified in believing that you have two hands and thinking you are justified in believing the skeptical hypothesis might be true. Moore thinks he has better reason to believe that he has two hands than he does for believing the skeptical hypothesis is true. For Moore, it is just common sense. You have reason to believe that you have two hands—you can see them and feel them—while you have no reason to believe the skeptical hypothesis is true.
Many philosophers remain unconvinced by Moore’s argument. Any person who accepts the possibility of the skeptical hypothesis will disagree with his premise 2. The possibility of the skeptical hypothesis effectively undermines justification in the belief that you have two hands.

### Contextualism

As we just saw, some theorists reject the notion that you must be certain of a belief—that is, rule out all possible defeaters—in order to have knowledge. Moore thinks he has more justification to believe he has two hands than he does that there’s an evil demon tricking him. And in determining whether I am justified in believing in the bird outside my office window, I rarely consider the possibility that I could be a brain in a vat. I’m more likely to focus on my poor vision as a defeater. In the context of bird identification, wild skeptical hypotheses seem out of place. Indeed, we often adjust how much justification we think is needed for a belief to the task at hand. Contextualism is the view that the truth of knowledge attributions depends on the context. Contextualism is a theory about knowledge and justification. When we attribute knowledge to a subject S, the truth of the knowledge claim depends on the context that S is in. The context of S determines the level of justification needed for a true belief to count as knowledge. Contextualism comes from the observation that the level of confidence needed for justification changes depending on what the belief is as well as its the purpose and its importance, among other things. We expect a high degree of justification from physicians when they diagnose disease but less justification from friends recalling the title of a movie because there’s much more at stake in medical diagnoses.
Contextualism deals with skepticism in a unique way. Rarely are we in situations where we must rule out skeptical hypotheses to consider ourselves justified. Indeed, it is generally only when a skeptical hypothesis has been explicitly raised that we think we need to rule it out to be justified. And in our daily lives, the skeptical hypothesis just does not seem relevant. Yes, the possibility that we are brains in a vat technically still exists; we just do not think of it.

### Skepticism in Specific Domains

As explained above, local skepticism questions the possibility of knowledge only in particular areas of study. People can accept that knowledge of the external world is possible while also questioning whether knowledge is achievable in more specific domains. A common form of local skepticism focuses on religious belief, specifically knowledge of the existence of God. Another form of local skepticism concerns the ability to ever have moral knowledge. Skepticism in these domains does not entail that there is no God or that all moral claims are false. Rather, skepticism means that we can never be sufficiently justified in believing that there is a God or that moral claims are true. We simply can never know either way whether, for example, God exists.
Skepticism about morality arises due to the nature of its subject. Moral claims are normative, which means that they assert claims about what ought to be the case rather than what is the case. But moral claims are difficult to prove, given their normative nature. How can you prove what ought to be the case? Usually, moral claims are grounded in value claims. An ethicist may say that we ought to help a stranger because well-being is morally valuable. But the skeptic will point out that we cannot prove that something is valuable. We do not have sensors that can confirm moral value. Moral claims instead rest on arguments. The problem, as Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume (1711–1776) explained, is that no amount of description can ever help us logically derive a normative claim (Hume 1985). This leaves room for doubt, and therefore skepticism.
Skeptical positions about God also focus on the lack of sufficient evidence. A skeptic can reasonably ask, What sorts of evidence would show the existence of God? Certainly, if God unambiguously appeared right now to everyone in the world simultaneously, then we would have reliable evidence. But God has not done so. The most we have is testimony in the form of religious texts. And testimony, particularly a chain of testimony stretching back hundreds and hundreds of years, is not necessarily reliable. Why believe, for example, the Christian Bible? Blaise Pascal (1623–1662), himself a devote Catholic, argued that the very nature of God—having no limits and existing beyond time—precludes the possibility of ever comprehending the full true nature of God or God’s existence. He states, “Who then can blame the Christians for not being able to give reasons for their belief, professing as they do a religion which they cannot explain by reason. . . . It is in lacking proofs that they do not lack sense” (Pascal 1973, 93). Pascal contends that not attempting to give proof of God is the sensible thing to do. A person can simply rely on faith, which is belief based on insufficient evidence.

###

Skepticism is the view that all or some of our knowledge is impossible. A global skeptic rejects the possibility of all knowledge and often focuses on the possibility of justification for beliefs of the external world. Global skeptics usually put forth a skeptical hypothesis—a way that the world could be that would entail that all our beliefs are false—and show that we cannot rule out the hypothesis. Skeptical hypotheses include the possibility that we are dreaming, that a powerful demon is tricking us, and that we are brains in vats or trapped in virtual reality. All skeptical arguments take advantage of the fact that we cannot rule out skeptical hypotheses on the evidence we have. Those who argue against skepticism claim we do not need the level of justification that skeptics claim we do.

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# Epistemology

## Applied Epistemology

### Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:
1. Define applied epistemology.
2. Describe the social aspect of knowledge and justification.
3. Describe standpoint epistemology.
4. Identify examples of epistemic injustice.
Applied epistemology, like other areas of applied philosophy, takes the tools of philosophy and applies them to areas of practical concern. Specifically, it applies philosophical methods and theories particular to epistemology to current social issues and practices. Applied epistemology often approaches epistemological questions on a collective or systems level. When looking at systems, applied epistemology investigates whether the systems of investigation (like those in the sciences) are structured in the best way to lead to true beliefs. When applied to collectives, applied epistemology examines whether and how groups of people conduct deliberation that leads to reliably true and justified beliefs. The groups focused on can range from small groups, such as a jury, to large collectives, such as a democracy.

### Social Epistemology

The traditional epistemology that most of this chapter has covered is singularly focused on individuals. Theories are focused on what a person can know or when a subject is justified. For the most part, gaining knowledge is often treated as an individual effort. Social epistemology instead investigates how groups pursue knowledge and justification and how an individual can best seek justification and knowledge in a social world. Social epistemology takes seriously the fact that humans are, by and large, social animals that rely on others for belief formation. Because humans are social creatures, we rely on others for much of what we come to know. Our dependence on others for true beliefs eases knowledge acquisition, but it also complicates the task due to concerns regarding the reliability of others.
How much of your knowledge was gained strictly from independent investigation conducted only by yourself? Very little, most likely. We rely on other humans from the past and present for a very large proportion of our knowledge. Scientific endeavors consist of amending and adding to the work of others over the course of centuries. The propositional knowledge learned in school is gained through layers upon layers of individuals trusting the testimony of others—students trusting the testimony of teachers, teachers trusting the testimony of books, the writers of the books trusting the testimony of sources, and so on. The news we view, the books we read, the conversations we overhear—all of these are social means of gaining knowledge.

### Testimony

Social means of gaining knowledge are called testimony. Any time you believe something because you read it or heard it somewhere, you believe based on testimony. Of course, people are not always reliable. People sometimes use poor reasoning, misremember, or even lie. Hence, testimony is also sometimes unreliable. And this raises the question, When is testimony justified?
Testimony is clearly of importance to social epistemology. In determining whether to believe what others tell us, we ask whether they are trustworthy. A trustworthy source of testimony is honest, unbiased, rational, well-informed, and clearheaded. We further look for an expert or authority. An expert or authority is a person whose experience, education, and knowledge in an area make them more reliable. Questions surrounding testimony are questions about justification. When are we justified in believing others? Who are we justified in believing in particular situations? When and how does testimony give us justification for a belief? And what do we do when the testimony of others conflicts with our already held beliefs?

### Peer Disagreement

When the testimony of another contradicts your own belief, what should you do? In cases where the other person is an expert and you are not, then the testimony ought to weaken your confidence in your belief. You should either change your belief or withhold from believing either way until you can get further justification. But what should you do when the person is not an expert but an epistemic peer? An epistemic peer is a person who is in an equal epistemic position relative to some domain—that is, they have the same cognitive ability, evidence, and background knowledge in that domain. A person can be an epistemic peer with respect to one domain but not another. You may know that you are on level epistemic ground with regard to the subject of baseball with your best friend but that they are an authority compared to you on the subject of baking.
Social epistemologists theorize about how peer disagreement ought to function in justification and belief. Some theorists argue that you should always modify your conviction in some way in the face of peer disagreement, though they disagree about exactly how you ought to modify your view. Others maintain that peer disagreement does not always give you reason to think you are mistaken (Frances and Matheson 2018).

### Group Justification

So far, we have looked at how social factors influence an individual’s justification and beliefs. Social epistemology also investigates whether it is possible for groups to have beliefs. We often attribute beliefs to groups of people. We say things like “The United States believes in freedom,” “The Supreme Court holds that a right to privacy exists,” “Scientists believe in climate change,” and “The jury knew he was guilty.” When can it rightfully be said that a group believes something? One answer is that a group believes P only in cases in which all or almost all members of the group believe P. However, we do attribute beliefs to groups while not always assuming that every member holds the belief. The Supreme Court example above illustrates that not every member of a group must believe something for us to say that the group does. When the court decides an issue with a 6–3 vote, we still attribute belief to the court as a whole.
Another view is a commitment view. Group belief does not require that all members believe; rather, members of the group are jointly committed to a belief as a body merely by virtue of being members of that group (Goldman and O’Connor 2019). Group commitment to a belief creates a normative constraint on members of a group to emulate the belief. Commitment views may work for any group formed around allegiance to specific ideas. Take religious groups, for example, which coalesce around beliefs pertaining to God and religious dogma.
If groups are capable of beliefs, then clearly the question of justification of group belief is relevant. Note that some of the previous theories on epistemic justification are applicable to questions of group justification. Goldman focused on reliable processes. Social epistemology also focuses on the reliability of processes used in juries, democracies, and the sciences.

### Standpoint Epistemology

Social epistemology accounts for the social nature of knowledge and justification. The quality and extent of an individual’s knowledge depends heavily on the people that individual deems trustworthy. The same is the case for group or public knowledge (knowledge generally accepted as true by a collective). Individuals and perspectives granted expert status have more influence on what is accepted, but this means that many individuals and perspectives will be ignored. Furthermore, it is often types or groups of people who are excluded, which becomes problematic if the perspectives of those groups are valuable to the task of knowledge creation. Standpoint epistemology takes this worry seriously. Standpoint epistemology studies the relationship between an individual’s social status and that individual’s epistemic position. Of particular importance to the theory is the notion that the relative power of individuals and groups influences who we consider to be reliable sources, causing us to ignore the perspectives of less powerful groups. Furthermore, standpoint theory argues that the exclusion of entire groups harms the entire enterprise of gaining knowledge.
Take as an example the president of a large factory who wants to increase efficiency and cut down on waste. The president convenes all the department heads and managers to identify areas of inefficiency and waste; essentially, they want the perspectives of those individuals with more power within the factory. But if the president doesn’t elicit the opinion of any of the workers in the warehouse or on the factory floor, they miss out on potentially valuable perspectives. A manager may think they can adequately identify problems in the way that the manual work is done. But given the position of a factory worker—situated day after day on the factory floor—the factory worker has a unique perspective. Standpoint theorists hold that perspectives such as that of the factory floor worker are uniquely valuable and cannot be emulated by those not in that position.
Standpoint epistemology is applied to many areas of study. In the social sciences, where the goal is to describe social structures, behaviors, and relationships, standpoint theorists advocate for focusing on the perspectives of traditionally marginalized groups. If the general goal is to study how people do things, then it does not do any good to ignore the experiences of entire classes of people. And when the goal is to discover facts about power dynamics within social institutions, focusing only on privileged perspectives is woefully inadequate. If anthropologists in the 1950s wanted to understand racism and the unequal power structure in the American South, interviewing Black citizens would generate more insightful evidence than interviews with White citizens. Black Americans were in a better epistemic position compared to their White counterparts to describe the power structure. Similarly, women are in a better position to explain sexism within a workplace than their male counterparts. People who use wheelchairs are in a much better position to design a truly accessible bathroom. Examples such as these abound.
Standpoint epistemology also critiques the traditional hard sciences and medical research. Hard sciences, such as biology, chemistry, and physiology, are those that rely on controlled experiments, quantifiable data, and mathematical modeling. Hard sciences are generally noted for being exact, rigorous, and objective. Standpoint theorists question this objectivity and reveal how biases and perspectives of researchers can influence these supposedly objective fields. A clear example of this is early research on heart disease. Because medical researchers, who were mostly male, focused their studies on men, heart disease was considered a men’s disease. The symptoms of a heart attack that doctors and patients were warned to look out for did not include many symptoms that women experience when having a heart attack (Kourany 2009). Men most often experience chest pain, while women are more likely to experience symptoms such as jaw pain and nausea (American Heart Association n.d.). As a result, many women did not seek medical attention when experiencing heart problems, and doctors failed to properly diagnose them when they did seek medical treatment. Standpoint theory reveals not only that varied standpoints are valuable but also that specific standpoints often include implicit or explicit bias—not including women or people of color in data sets, only including particular variables in modeling, and so on.

### Epistemic Injustice

If standpoint epistemology is correct in concluding that valuable perspectives are often excluded from social and scientific discourse, then this is an instance of epistemic injustice. Epistemic injustice is injustice related to epistemology. Epistemic injustices include the exclusion and silencing of perspectives, systematic misrepresentation of group or individual views, unfair conferring of expert status, and unjustified distrust of certain perspectives. British philosopher Miranda Fricker (b. 1966), who coined the term epistemic injustice, divides epistemic injustice into two categories: testimonial injustice and hermeneutical injustice (Fricker 2007). Testimonial injustice occurs when the opinions of individuals or groups are unfairly ignored or treated as untrustworthy. Hermeneutical injustice occurs when a society’s language and concepts cannot adequately capture the experience of people living within that society, which thereby limits understanding of their experiences.

### Testimonial Injustice

Silencing and distrust of someone’s word often occurs by virtue of that individual’s membership in a marginalized group. Women, people of color, people with disabilities, low-income individuals, and religious minorities are all examples of marginalized groups. Take as an example a criminal trial. If the jury takes the testimony of a witness less seriously because of their perceived class status or membership in a particular group, this is an example of epistemic injustice, specifically testimonial injustice. Philosophers who focus on testimonial injustice utilize research to show how the voices of individuals and groups are unfairly ignored and discounted compared to others. For example, many studies over the past few decades have illustrated that reports of pain by Black patients are taken less seriously by medical professionals than similar pain reports by White patients. An outcome of this is that Black patients are given less pain medicine and pain management than White patients, even in cases where the patients had the same injury or surgery (Smedley, Stith, and Nelson 2003; Cintron and Morrison 2006). This is clearly a case of testimonial injustice: Black patients receive less care because their testimony (reporting pain) is not taken as seriously as the testimony of their White counterparts.
But testimonial injustice also occurs when someone’s opinions are systematically misrepresented. To misrepresent a view is to interpret that view in a way that does not align with the original intended meaning. As an example, consider the Black Lives Matter movement and a popular response to it. Black Lives Matter was formed in response to police brutality and racially motivated violence against Black people. The idea was to affirm the value of Black lives. However, a popular response to the movement was the phrase “All lives matter.” This response implies that the message of Black Lives Matter is really that only Black lives matter, which is an unfair and inaccurate representation of the view.

### Hermeneutical Injustice

Hermeneutical injustice occurs when language and concepts cannot adequately capture an individual’s experience, resulting in a lack of understanding of that individual’s experience by both the individual and those around them. The classic example of hermeneutical injustice focuses on sexual harassment. Before the concept and phrase sexual harassment was introduced and understood by society, women had a difficult time describing certain experiences in the workplace. Women experienced unwanted attention and focus, exclusion, comments concerning their bodies and looks, and different treatment based on negative assumptions about their gender. Many women were fired for not going along with such treatment. But there was no word for their experience, so many women could not understand or explain their discomfort. Furthermore, accounts of their distressing experience ran the risk of not being taken seriously by others. The phrase sexual harassment was coined to fill a gap in the concepts used to explain and describe experience. Perhaps you have had the experience of being introduced to a word or concept that suddenly illuminated a part of your experience in a way that greatly increased your understanding of yourself and your ability to explain yourself to others.

###

Applied epistemology uses the concepts, methods, and theories particular to epistemology and applies them to current social issues and practices. An important area of applied epistemology is social epistemology, which focuses on the social facets of knowledge and justification and how groups form beliefs. Testimony refers to how we gain knowledge from and share knowledge with others. Social epistemology studies how to evaluate our beliefs when they conflict with the testimony of others. Social epistemology also illuminates how injustice can arise in epistemological endeavors in a social world. Testimonial injustice occurs when the opinions of individuals are systematically discounted or ignored unfairly. Hermeneutical injustice occurs when a society’s language and concepts cannot adequately capture the experience of all its members.

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### Suggested Readings

Kidd, Ian James, José Medina, and Gaile Pohlhaus Jr., eds. 2017. The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Injustice. New York: Routledge.
Greco, John, ed. 2008. The Oxford Handbook of Skepticism. New York: Oxford University Press.
Russell, Bertrand. (1912) 1959. The Problems of Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press.
Truncellito, David A. n.d. “Epistemology.” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by James Fieser and Bradley Dowden. https://iep.utm.edu/epistemo/.

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BonJour, Laurence. 1985. The Structure of Empirical Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Cintron, Alexie, and R. Sean Morrison. 2006. “Pain and Ethnicity in the United States: A Systematic Review.” Journal of Palliative Medicine 9 (6):1454–1473. https://doi.org/10.1089/jpm.2006.9.1454.
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# Value Theory

## Introduction

Chances are you have found yourself in a debate with someone about a matter involving judgments about what is good or bad. Maybe your disagreement was about a contemporary moral issue like abortion or the death penalty. Maybe the conflict had to do with a course of action, like going to college or joining the military, and whether it was the right thing to do. Maybe you got into a disagreement about whether a work of art was beautiful or a movie was good or bad. These types of conversations deal with values, and there is a specific area of philosophy that helps people think about these types of debates: value theory.
Value theory is the philosophical investigation of values. In its narrow sense, it refers to ethical concerns. In its broader sense, it addresses ethical, social, political, religious, aesthetic, and other types of values. Philosophers use value theory to approach questions that require people to think about what they value in life as individuals and as communities, especially in terms of morality, happiness, goodness, and beauty. Value theory provides tools that you can use to navigate difficult debates about what you value and why. This chapter will help you understand what a value is and how it differs from facts, the types of questions and distinctions that help people discuss values and their relations, and specific areas of value theory like metaethics and aesthetics.


# Value Theory

## The Fact-Value Distinction

### Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:
1. Articulate the fact-value distinction.
2. Distinguish between descriptive and evaluative claims.
3. Explain the is-ought problem
4. Describe the naturalistic fallacy
5. Evaluate objections to the fact-value distinction.
Values are woven into how you live and relate to others. The ideals that guide your life decisions, the morals that shape how you treat others, and even the choices that define your personal aesthetic all express your values. Values signify judgments about the way people ought to think, feel, or act based on what is good, worthwhile, or important. For example, you might think you ought to read Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man because it is considered a great American novel or because you believe that reading about anti-Black racism in the United States is important for forming a more just worldview. Here, your reasoning for a course of action—reading Invisible Man—is based on value judgments about the novel’s greatness and the importance of understanding racial injustice.
Values describe how people think things should be, not necessarily how they are. Philosophers describe this difference as the is-ought distinction or, more commonly, the fact-value distinction. The fact-value distinction distinguishes between what is the case (facts) and what people think ought to be the case (values) based on beliefs about what is good, beautiful, important, etc.
The line between facts and values is not always clear. It can be easy to mistake a value for a fact, especially when a person feels strongly about something and believes it is truly good or bad beyond any doubt. For example, the statement “killing an innocent person is bad” may seem like a fact, but it is not a description of how things are. This statement describes the way people think things should be, not the way the world is. For this reason, the fact-value distinction is an important place to begin. This section will give an overview of the fact-value distinction by examining the types of claims you can make about facts and values and how facts and values are related to or distinct from each other.

### Descriptive vs. Evaluative Claims

One way to think about the difference between facts and values is through the different types of claims you can make about them. People talk about facts using descriptive claims and values using evaluative claims. Descriptive claims are statements about matters of fact, whereas evaluative claims express a judgment about something’s value.

### Descriptive Claims: How the World Is

Descriptive claims make statements about how the world is. They describe the facts of something, what you observe to be the case without any form of evaluation or judgment. For example, “the weather today is sunny” is a descriptive claim because it simply describes what someone observes.

### Evaluative Claims: How the World Ought to Be

Evaluative claims make statements about how the world ought to be. They express judgments of value: what is good, just, fair, beautiful, healthy, important, etc. Instead of simply describing, evaluative claims interpret facts or assert what should be the case.
Evaluative claims can be prescriptive—that is, they state what should be the case or what people ought to do in a given situation. For example, “I should go outside to get some sunshine” is an evaluative claim. It is based on a descriptive claim (“the weather today is sunny”), but it interprets this fact and ascribes a value to it (“sunshine is good for mental health”) in a way that prescribes an action (“I should go outside”). When people make evaluations about the goodness of something, it implies that they should do it. Evaluations are thus connected to actions and choices.
Sometimes people struggle to distinguish between facts and values and mistakenly think an evaluative statement is simply a positive claim about the way things are. As the next section will describe, this mistake is a type of fallacy.

### The Naturalistic Fallacy

When thinking about values, it can be easy to make errors. A fallacy is an error in logical reasoning. Fallacies involve drawing the wrong conclusions from the premises of an argument or jumping to a conclusion without sufficient evidence. There are many types of logical fallacies because there are many ways people can make mistakes with their reasoning.
The naturalistic fallacy is an error in reasoning that assumes you can derive values (what people ought to do) from facts about the world (what is the case). The British philosopher G. E. Moore (1873–1958) explains the problem with this fallacy in his 1903 book Principia Ethica. For Moore, if philosophers based the judgment “x is good” on a set of facts, or natural properties, about x, they have committed the naturalistic fallacy.
There are frequent examples of the naturalistic fallacy in popular discourse. Debates about whether monogamy is good or bad are frequently posed in terms of whether it is “natural,” and proponents for either side of the argument often point at monogamous or nonmonogamous animals to justify their answer. Claiming what humans ought to do from observations about animal behavior is an attempt to derive values from facts about the world.

### Hume and the Is-Ought Problem

The naturalistic fallacy is related to the is-ought problem. This problem asserts the challenge of moving from statements of fact (something is) to statements of value (something ought to be). The Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume (1711–1776) provides one of the most famous explanations of this problem in his  (1739–1740).
At the time Hume was writing the Treatise, philosophers were rejecting a morality based on religious faith or dogmatic beliefs and were instead trying to find justifications for morality that relied on undeniable reasons for being a good person or trying to build a better society. Hume countered that you cannot derive ought from is because morality has to do with sentiments, not facts. In other words, morality has to do with what people believe and how we feel, and beliefs and feelings are not factual or derivable from facts. As Hume explains in the passage below, facts have to do with relations between objects. Morality, however, has to do with a human subject expressing their sentiments about a matter.

### The Open-Question Argument

Hume’s description of the is-ought problem lives on in contemporary philosophy, especially in 20th-century ethics. In his 1903 book Principia Ethica, G. E. Moore introduces the open-question argument to argue against the naturalistic fallacy, which he sees as trying to derive non-natural properties, such as “right” and “good,” from natural properties. Unlike claims in the natural sciences, which extend understanding of or express a discovery about natural properties of the world, goodness and rightness are non-natural properties that cannot establish their truth based on natural properties and thus are always open to questioning. For example, the natural properties of water (H20) are not open to questioning in the same way that the non-natural properties of things that people judge to be “good” or “right” are.
In order to answer the question “Is x good?” people frequently have to assert that something else is good. Is being kind to your neighbor good? Yes. Why? Because compassion for others is good. This does not “close” the question because it amounts to saying “good is good.” It is circular and thus uninformative, so the question remains open. Moore did believe that claims about moral properties can be true, but not in the same way as claims about natural properties.

### Objections to the Fact-Value Distinction

Not all philosophers agree that there is a strict distinction between facts and values. Moral realists argue for a more objective concept of morality. They feel that there are certain moral facts about the world that are objectively true, such as the claim “murder is immoral.” Moral skeptics, on the other hand, often use the fact-value distinction to argue against an objective basis for morality by emphasizing that moral values are not factual and involve a different mode of thinking that is distinct from logical or scientific reasoning. Disagreements with the fact-value distinction come in different forms.

### Putnam’s Objection to the Fact-Value Distinction

Some philosophers reject the concept of empirical facts by demonstrating that scientific reasoning uses values to establish facts. In his 1982 article “Beyond the Fact-Value Dichotomy,” American philosopher and mathematician Hilary Putnam (1926 – 2016) argues that scientists frequently must choose between conflicting theories and use desirable principles like simplicity or coherence to devise an explanation for complex observational data. To illustrate his point, he explains that Einstein’s theory of gravity was accepted over competing theories because it was simpler and preserved other laws of physics. Putnam argues that science’s creation of facts is an evaluative practice and does not necessarily stand on a firmer ground than conclusions about values like goodness or kindness. This approach to refuting the fact-value distinction is provocative because it challenges the idea that science is an objective presentation of facts.

### Lack of Distinction Claims

Another approach to challenging the fact-value distinction is to emphasize how people connect them in their everyday ways of speaking. Some philosophers argue that certain types of descriptive claims imply an evaluative claim, especially if they are linked by the concept of purpose or function. For example, if a person says, “This knife is too dull to cut anything,” then you can assume they also mean “This is a bad knife” because it does not fulfill its function. If you understand the purpose of function of the knife, you can follow this implication easily. Since people make these types of connections easily in everyday speech, the distinction between facts and values may not hold much meaning.

### Claims of Objective Moral Reasoning

Finally, some philosophers reject the fact-value distinction through the concept of telos (purpose, end, or goal). They argue that values are based on the fulfillment of a goal. You can objectively assess whether an action does or does not fulfill a goal. For example, if your goal is to help others in need, an action will be good if it fulfills that goal, like volunteering at a homeless shelter. Using this goal, you can objectively determine whether any action is good, bad, or neutral. Telos, therefore, establishes an objective morality.
To investigate the is-ought distinction further, you must explore what a value is. The following section will take up this question.

###

The fact-value distinction distinguishes between what is the case (facts) and what we think ought to be the case (values) based on beliefs about what is good, beautiful, important, etc. Descriptive claims are statements about matters of fact, whereas evaluative claims express a judgment about something’s value. Descriptive claims make statements about how the world is. Evaluative claims make statements about how the world ought to be.
The naturalistic fallacy is an error in reasoning that assumes we can derive values (what we ought to do) from facts about the world (what is the case). The is-ought problem asserts the challenge of moving from statements of fact (something is) to statements of value (something ought to be).
Moral realists argue for a more objective concept of morality. They feel that there are certain moral facts about the world that are objectively true. Moral skeptics, on the other hand, argue against an objective basis for morality by emphasizing that moral values are not factual and involve a different mode of thinking that is distinct from logical or scientific reasoning.

###


# Value Theory

## Basic Questions about Values

### Learning Objectives

By the end of this section, you will be able to:
1. Relate extrinsic values to intrinsic values.
2. Distinguish between monism and pluralism in value theory.
3. Explain the concept of incommensurability in value theory.
4. Compare and contrast moral pluralism and moral relativism.
People spend much of their time trying to accomplish goals that they deem as “good.” But what do people mean when they say something is “good”? What does it mean to value something? Can conflicting values be resolved? This section will explore different answers to these questions and, in doing so, help you understand the meaning of value.

### Intrinsic and Extrinsic Value

One way to think about what a value is has to do with whether it is valuable for its own sake or valuable for the sake of something else. Something has intrinsic value if it is valuable for its own sake. For example, Aristotle asserted that happiness has intrinsic value because it is an end in itself. He believed that all actions ultimately aim at happiness, but happiness is pursued for its own sake. If someone were to ask, “What is happiness good for?” Aristotle would reply that it simply good in and of itself.
Something has extrinsic value if it is valuable for the sake of something else. It is a means to an end. For example, you probably engage in a variety of activities that are good insofar as they help your health. Eating a well-balanced diet, going to the doctor regularly, and keeping an active routine all contribute to health and well-being. Health is thus the intrinsic good that makes each of those activities extrinsically good.

### Fundamentality

One could argue, however, that health is yet an extrinsic value because people only value health because it contributes to happiness. When people distinguish between intrinsic and extrinsic values, they think about not only what is valuable but also how values are related to each other. The example of health and happiness raises the question of fundamentality—whether there is only one intrinsic value or many.
Monism argues that there is only one fundamental intrinsic value that forms the foundation for all other values. For example, hedonists think that pleasure is a fundamental intrinsic value and that something must be pleasurable to be good. A monist believes that if people evaluate their values carefully—and the relationship between their values—then one value will be more important than the others and the others will serve that intrinsic value. For a monist, it is important to identify which value is more fundamental so that it can guide your beliefs, judgments, and actions.
Pluralism argues that there are multiple fundamental intrinsic values rather than one. A pluralist can still evaluate which values are intrinsic and which are extrinsic, but that process does not lead them to identify one ultimate intrinsic value that forms the foundation for all other values. Pluralism holds that people have two or more fundamental values because these values are not reducible to each other. For example, knowledge and love are both intrinsic goods if what is good about knowledge cannot be summed up in terms of love and if what is good about love cannot be summed up in terms of knowledge.
Philosophers who argue for monism often see pluralism as a type of relativism that can prevent people from resolving moral issues when values come into conflict. Consider physician-assisted suicide. A monist would want to address the issue of ending one’s life for medical reasons by evaluating it according to one ethical principle. For example, if monists hold that pleasure is the intrinsic good, they might argue that physician-assisted suicide is good when it allows the cessation of pain, particularly in cases where the patient’s suffering prohibits any pleasure of mind or body. Pluralists, however, would have to evaluate this physician-assisted suicide based on multiple intrinsic values, such as pleasure and life. In this case, the cessation of pain and the continuation of life are both good, and neither is better than the other. As a result, pluralists may not find a way to resolve the conflicting values or may not be able to identify whether this action is right or wrong. By contrast, monism allows someone to hold a unified and coherent metaethical framework because it asserts one fundamental value rather than many.
Pluralists, however, consider life to have many intrinsic goods including satisfying one’s desires, achieving one’s aims, developing one’s abilities, and developing deep personal relationships. In Women and Human Development, American feminist and moral philosopher Martha Nussbaum (1947 - present) describes many intrinsic goods—including life, health, emotional attachment, affiliation, play, reason, and more (2000). A flourishing life will have many goods, not just one. Pluralists, moreover, are concerned with the consequences of monism. Asserting that there is only one intrinsic good, despite differences in opinion, could potentially restrict individual’s freedom, especially when their values differ from the mainstream.

### Incommensurability

Pluralism frequently relies on the concept of incommensurability, which describes a situation in which two or more goods, values, or phenomena have no standard of evaluation that applies to them all. You can compare the size of one object in feet and another object in centimeters by converting feet to centimeters. But you cannot compare the speed of a running cheetah to the size of the Taj Mahal because one involves measuring miles per hour and the other involves measuring square feet.
Similarly, some values are simply too different to be evaluated in the same way. For example, there are some things in life that you cherish and cannot describe in terms of a dollar amount, such as love or friendship. The value of friendship is not commensurate with the value of money. Furthermore, physical health and supportive friends are both valuable, but they are good in different ways, so they are incomparable values. Even if you can evaluate values in the same way, you might not be able to compare them in the sense of judging what is better or worse than the other. For example, you might have many friendships that you value highly but not be able to rank them or determine who your best friend is.

### Moral Pluralism vs. Moral Relativism

Moral pluralism argues that there are different moral frameworks that cannot be unified into one. One implication of this is that one culture may have difficulty understanding the values of another culture because they have completely different concepts of what is good, and we might not be able to find a way to reconcile these differences. Cultural differences play an important role in value pluralism and the idea that there can be multiple frameworks for understanding morality.
At the same time, pluralism is not the same as relativism. Moral relativism makes a larger claim than pluralism because it not only asserts that there are multiple moral frameworks, it also asserts that each framework is equally valid insofar as individuals, communities, and cultures determine what is moral. Moral relativism thus prohibits cultures from judging each other’s value systems.
Nussbaum uses the example of genital mutilation as an example of why moral relativism raises issues (1999). If morality is completely relative to a culture’s own traditions and values, it would be impossible for any outsiders to condemn female genital mutilation or other practices that harm women or keep them in a weakened or exploited state. Nussbaum argues that feminist issues should not be evaluated by local traditions and that a global notion of justice is needed to address gender inequality. She thus argues for a universal account of justice that is sensitive to differences between cultures, which she calls reasonable pluralism.
Pluralism and relativism get at the heart of many real-world ethical issues that people navigate in life, especially when they look at moral beliefs from historical or cultural perspectives that show how different values can be. Situating different values in relation to each other is difficult, and how people do so has practical outcomes for how they define what is right or wrong, which actions they consider ethical or unethical, and what aims they pursue in life.

###

Something has intrinsic value if it is valuable for its own sake. Something has extrinsic value if it is valuable for the sake of something else. The question of fundamentality is the question of whether there is only one intrinsic value or many. Monism argues that there is only one fundamental intrinsic value that forms the foundation for all other values.	Pluralism argues that there are multiple fundamental intrinsic values, rather than one.
Pluralism frequently relies on the concept of incommensurability, which describes a situation in which two or more goods, values, or phenomena have no standard of evaluation that applies to them all. Moral relativism makes a larger claim than pluralism because it not only asserts that there are multiple moral frameworks, it also asserts that each framework is equally valid insofar as individuals, communities, and cultures determine what is moral.

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