Despite the provocative title of this piece, the British philosopher Michael Williams (1947-) does accept that
“[w]e can have an account of the use and utility of [the word] ‘know’ without supposing that there is such a thing as human knowledge”.
Williams also makes similar claims about truth.
Yet the quote above still seems very radical or even extreme. That is, if we shouldn’t “suppos[e] that there is such a thing as human knowledge”, then that must mean that Williams believes that there is no such thing as human knowledge. That said, Williams (again) happily concedes that
“[a] deflationary account of ‘know’ may show how the word is embedded in a teachable and useful linguistic practice”.
So will that be enough for philosophers and laypersons? Well, as we shall see, it’s certainly not enough for what Williams calls the epistemological realist.
Heat and Knowledge/Truth
Michael Williams compares the philosophical study of truth/knowledge with the study of heat in physics. He writes:
“Naively, we might be inclined to suppose that just as in physics we study the nature of heat, so in philosophy we study the nature of truth. But once plausible deflationary views are on the table, the analogy between truth and things like heat can no longer be treated as unproblematic.”
It must follow that since (many) philosophers do believe that they’re attempting to “study the nature of truth” or the nature of knowledge, then that must mean that there is something to be discovered. What’s more, that something must be (or be seen to be) determinate and fixed. Like heat, then, that something must have a given nature.
Yet even if we do have an unquestioning position on truth and knowledge, then we still can’t see such things as being anything like heat… or water, trees, animals, etc. Thus, in that provisional sense at least, studying the nature of truth and knowledge is very unlike studying the nature of heat. And from that fact, many other things follow.
So why assume that truth and knowledge have determinate and fixed natures?
Surely for that to be the case, almost everyone would agree on what truth and knowledge are (as most people do on, say, what water is). But that’s never been the case — and not just when it comes to philosophers.
What is Epistemological Realism?
Michael Williams emphasises an important terminological distinction. He states that epistemological realism
“is not a position within epistemology…[it is a] realism about the objects of epistemological inquiry”.
In other words, this is realism about epistemology, not realism within epistemology.
This essentially means that although a philosopher may be, say, an anti-realist within epistemology, he may also be — or probably is — a realist towards (or about) epistemology itself. More precisely, he may be anti-realist in that he thinks that we can’t acquire knowledge of an objective, mind-independent reality. However, he may still believe that there are “underlying epistemological structure or principles” common to all epistemological methods.
Moreover, the epistemological realist
“thinks of knowledge in very much the way the scientific realist thinks of heat: beneath the surface diversity there is structural unity”.
This leads the realist to believe that not “everything we call knowledge need be knowledge properly so called”. This means that he also believes that his job is to generalise and extrapolate: i.e., to bring “together the genuine cases into a coherent theoretical kind”. Thus the right kind of, say, justification effectively becomes a natural kind. And so on. And when we bundle all these epistemic things together, then we knowledge as a whole becomes a natural kind.
So what if the world of knowledge and epistemology isn’t like that?
Michael Williams also refers to Thomas Nagel’s realist view of epistemology.
According to Williams, Nagel’s phrase “our knowledge of the world” contains various presuppositions. That’s because it assumes that there is a “genuine totality” to have knowledge of. Nagel’s phrase also assumes that
“there are invariant epistemological constraints underlying the shifting standards of everyday justification”.
Thus it can be said that Nagel sees the universal and general rather than the Wittgensteinian particular.
Williams cites the specific example (among many) of W.V.0. Quine’s own criticisms of the analytic-synthetic distinction.
Here again, many epistemologists have attempted to generalise and perhaps create two natural kinds — the analytic and the synthetic. Yet what if there isn’t a “fixed, objective division between a theory’s meaning postulates and its empirical assumptions”?
Epistemology and Knowledge
Michael Williams also makes a distinction between
1) theories of knowledge
and
2) theories of the concept of knowledge
This is a distinction he also (more or less) makes about truth.
So 2) above can be said to be about the word “knowledge” and how it is used. In addition, it’s also about the concept/s (or meaning/s) “behind” the word “knowledge”.
A theory of knowledge, on the other hand, is about the thing (or property) which is knowledge. This presupposes that there is something above and beyond our words, concepts, practices/usages, methods, etc.
Williams’s position is primarily aimed at what he calls “epistemological realism”.
The epistemological realist believes that there’s a single correct view of justification, a single kind of truth, a single correct method, and so on.
As stated at the beginning, Williams thinks that epistemological realism is very much like scientific realism.
Take the case of the analysis and classification of heat again.
When the physicist or chemist explores the nature of heat he looks for
“some underlying property, or structure of more elementary components, common to [all] hot things”.
Scientific realists (though not necessarily scientists themselves) therefore see heat as a natural kind. In other words, for the scientific realist,
“deep structural features of the elementary components of things determine the boundaries of natural, as opposed to merely nominal or conventional, kinds”.
The epistemological realist attempts to do the same kind of thing with knowledge and also with the methods and means he uses to acquire knowledge. Thus he believes that “there must be underlying epistemological structures or principles”.
Take the specific case of justified true belief.
For a long time many epistemologists argued that knowledge is justified true belief (even if they still had problems describing and/or explaining justification and belief when taken separately). Then along came Edmund Gettier’s demonstration that this analysis of knowledge (to use Williams's word) “fails to state a sufficient condition for knowledge”.
So is that partly — or even largely — because knowledge is not a thing (or property) that can even have a correct analysis in all situations? (This, as Williams argues, isn’t also to argue that there is no such the thing as knowledge.)
Again, Williams makes a connection with analysis in science. He writes:
“[W]e might be inclined to suppose that just as in physics we study the nature of heat, so in philosophy we study the nature of truth. But once plausible deflationary views are on the table, the analogy between truth [knowledge] and things like heat can no longer be treated as unproblematic.”
Essentially, then, epistemological realists — and many others — reify truth and knowledge. That is, they turn truth and knowledge into two — perhaps abstract— things or properties.
Now let’s concentrate on truth
Truth
Of course many people do agree on what they take to be true. However, they don’t necessarily also agree on why it is true or on what constitutes its truth.
This means that taking the claim, say, “Water is wet” or “Killing people for fun is wrong” as true is fairly unproblematic. What is problematic is why this statement is true or what constitutes its truth. So it’s not the taking of any given p as being true that’s being discussed here. Countless people take the statement “Cats are animals” or “Killing for fun is wrong” to be true. That isn’t disputed by most people.
Similar points holds for knowledge too.
More specifically in terms of Williams’s own position.
Just as Williams detects realist views about epistemology, so too he detects realist positions when it comes to truth.
Put at its simplest: the problem is that many people take truth to be a thing — even if an abstract thing. Yet Truth may not be a thing at all. And if that’s the case, then perhaps we can never discover its nature.
As a result of all this, Williams doesn’t believe that truth is a “theoretically significant property”. (Perhaps he doesn’t think it’s a property at all.) Thus he cites the case of the deflationary theory of truth.
Thus, to Williams, true sentences are “merely a nominal kind”. That is, all true statements don’t share the same something - viz., the same entity (or same property) truth.
Williams also argues that “there are endlessly many truths, [but] there is no such thing as truth”. (Perhaps we should write “Truth” here instead.)
Realists about truth, on the other hand, believe that truth is a single property — or even a single thing. Therefore, like heat or a cat, it can be analysed and correctly described. Such realists believe that truth is an “important property shared by all true sentences”. That said, the realist needn’t also be obliged to state exactly what truth is. He may offer any one of Williams’s following possibilities:
“[C]orrespondence to fact, incorporability in some ideally coherent system of judgements, or goodness in the way of belief.”
It must follow that if one of these accounts is the true way of describing truth, then all true statements will, say, be incorporable into an ideally coherent system, be correspondent with facts, etc.
So the truth realist wants something very substantial. He wants something shared by all true statements. This means, then, that he isn’t interested in the “use of a word” or the “point of the concept”. The realist, instead, believes that
“there is more to understanding truth than appreciating the utility of the truth-predicate”.
Conclusion: Michael Williams vs. Realism
Towards the end of his paper Williams lets an epistemological realist speak for himself. He quotes Thompson Clarke (1928–2012) thus:
“‘Each concept or the conceptual scheme must be divorceable intact from our practices, from whatever constitutes the essential character of the plain…[we] ascertain, when possible, whether items fulfil the conditions legislated by concepts.’”
The above is as strong a statement of metaphysical and epistemological realism as one can imagine. Williams would also no doubt argue that it’s an epistemologically realist position toward (i.e., not within) epistemology (which is of course the main tenor of Williams’s paper).
Williams, on the one hand, stresses the fact that concepts, conceptual schemes, epistemological methods, etc. are determined by the nature of our practices — they have no reality apart from them. Thompson Clarke, on the other hand, argues that the aforementioned can be “[divorced] intact from our practices”. Thus he must believe that there is a right and a wrong about all our concepts. That also means that correct concepts must match the world as it is in itself. Incorrect concepts, however, distort the world’s nature.
Yet Michael Williams himself still believes in the falsity or truth of our concepts. However, their truth or falsehood will be internally determined by our practices. Without practices, there is nothing.
Michael Williams also takes a very Wittgensteinian — as well as a deflationary — position on knowledge and truth.
He argues that a deflationary account of the word “know” may show “how the word is embedded in a teachable and useful linguistic practice”. (Surely this is a meaning-is-use definition of “know”.) In other words, Williams doesn’t suppose that being known to be true “denotes a property that groups propositions into a theoretically significant kind”. Williams nevertheless still accepts that the word “know” (as well as “truth”?) does have utility value. (Perhaps we can say that it works!)
Finally, in opposition to epistemological realism (at least of the kind Williams is talking about) we have Williams’s alternative of “various practices of assessment, perhaps sharing certain formal features”. And that’s all we’ve got. Williams writes:
“It doesn’t follow from this that the various items given a positive rating add up to anything like a natural kind.”
These various practices of assessment may not even be a “surveyable whole” or a “genuine totality rather than a more or less loose aggregate”.
Williams also argues that it’s the topics or subjects we study (with our epistemological hats on) that determine our epistemological methods and — perhaps — our goals too. So it largely depends on the subject we’re studying. That is, we can’t expect — or desire — that there’s “an order of reasons [that operate independently] of all circumstances and all collateral knowledge”. Moreover, every subject doesn’t have the same methodology which is applicable to it. And not even all the sciences use (to take just one example) the hypothetico-deductive method.
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