Main authors discussed: Michael Smith, Donald Davidson, Phillip Pettit, Thomas Nagel

Schueler presents a dilemma for the defender of the Humean theory of motivation. First, let’s define the theory. Schueler focuses on the theory as one that explains why a person acted as she did and not as a theory of what a person ought to do (103). According to Schueler, contemporary advocates of the Humean theory, “…agree with Hume in holding that a desire or some analogous motivational state is always needed to move anyone to act” (105). His main example of a contemporary Humean theory of motivation is Michael Smith’s, according to which:

R at t constitutes a motivating reason of agent A to Φ if and only if there is some Ψ such that R at t consists of an appropriately related desire of A to Ψ and a belief that were she to Φ she would Ψ (106).

The first horn of the dilemma arises when we fill in the reason for the phrase “appropriately related to” in Smith’s formulation. Schueler argues that this phrase is necessary to avoid counter-examples in which a person does Φ, has a desire for Ψ, and a belief that if she were to Φ she would Ψ, and yet this particular belief-desire pair has nothing to do with the agent Φing. Schueler develops an example to make this clear. Suppose he knows that the bus that goes by his house goes to the University. One day when his car won’t start and he wants to get to the University, he gets on the bus. However, he got on the bus, not to get to the University, but rather to get to his sister’s office. There he plans to borrow her car and then drive to the University. The reason the belief-desire pair (“I want to get to the University” and “I believe this bus goes to the University”) does not explain his action is because they were not “put together” in the right way by him (108-9). It is analogous to something that happens in theoretical reasoning (107). Suppose someone has two beliefs that entail a third. This person comes to believe the third belief, not on the basis of the two that entail it, but because he heard a rumor that it might be true and he is easily swayed by rumors.

One lesson that Schueler takes from the bus example is that practical reasoning is an activity–it is not the mere presence of the belief-desire pair that explains behavior. Rather, the explanation of the behavior requires that the agent engage in practical reasoning in which the agent “puts them together” (109). But this causes a problem for the Humean. For if the explanation of the action traces back to the activity of an agent reasoning about beliefs and desires, then the actual desire is not what explains the action, and can, in fact, be dropped out of the explanation altogether (110). This is seen more clearly when we consider that an agent can be wrong about what she desires—when, for example, the agent believes she wants to Ψ but actually does not want to Ψ (111). In such a case, the desire to Ψ simply cannot explain what the agent does, for that desire does not exist. And yet, someone might mistakenly believe that she wants to Ψ, reason about how to satisfy this desire, and come to believe that if she were to Φ she would Ψ, and as a result of putting these two things together, Φ. What this shows us, argues Schueler, is that it is the representation of a desire to Ψ that is relevant in the explanation of the action and not the desire itself (112). According to Schueler, this first horn of the dilemma is not strong enough by itself to refute the Humean theory of motivation. But, the “putting together” point discussed here will be relevant when we move to the second horn of the dilemma.

The second horn focuses on the fact that from a phenomenological point of view our practical reasoning often does not take the form of explicitly reasoning about how to satisfy one of our desires. Instead, we often seem to reason about what to do based on what we find to be important, worth doing, or think we ought to do. These are not desires, and yet they are the sorts of the things we “put together” with beliefs in our practical deliberation (117).

Humeans, such as Smith and Pettit, are aware of this fact and respond by introducing the distinction between a desire that exists in the foreground and a desire that exists in the background of a decision. A desire that exists in the foreground of the decision is one that the agent is consciously aware that she has and is one that she is reasoning about how to satisfy. One that exists in the background helps to motivate the action, but the agent need not be aware that it is there–it is not one about which the agent is consciously reasoning. Smith and Pettit claim that the Humean can respond to the objection by claiming that in those cases in which it appears to us that we are not reasoning about how to satisfy one of our desires, we nevertheless have a background desire that is doing the motivational work (118).

Now we can see the dilemma clearly. To accommodate what seems to be an obvious point about the phenomenology of our practical deliberation, the Humean must claim that our desires that motivate us exist in the background. But to avoid counter-examples like the bus case, they must claim that the desires that motivate do not exist in the background. The Humean cannot have it both ways. According to Schueler, the best way to avoid this dilemma is to reject the Humean theory of motivation.

Reviewed by Scott Wilson
Wright State University

Main authors discussed: Alfred Tarski, Kirk Ludwig, Matti Eklund

Douglas Patterson argues that the best way to respond to the semantic paradoxes that arise in natural language is to take natural language semantics to be (explosively) inconsistent. According to Patterson, to understand a natural language is to share with others cognition of a false semantic theory. Patterson’s main argument runs as follows. English is expressively rich. So, the first sentence occurring in this review could be:

S: The first sentence occurring in this review is not true.

But plausibly truth-conditions and hence meaning are given by T-sentences. That is, a sentence is true iff what it says is the case. S says that it isn’t true. So, S is true iff S is not true. So, the T-sentence for S is inconsistent. If indeed the truth-conditions for English sentences are given by the T-sentences for the English sentences, then the truth-conditions for English sentences are inconsistent. So, if S means what it appears to mean, then English is inconsistent. Everything follows from everything in English. English sentences are true under every condition.

Patterson considers various standard ways around this apparent problem: First, one could insist that English is (classically) consistent and hence deny that S is an English sentence. English then is not expressively rich: it cannot describe its own syntax and semantics. This, however, does not seem right. English appears to be expressively rich. Second, one can revise the logic. For example, we might accept that S is both true and false and deny ex falso (as done by Priest and others). This route holds some promise but requires what some would consider an unintuitive rejection of classical logic. Third, one can insist that S is expressible in English but that it is abnormal or pathological. This is what Patterson calls ‘the orthodox approach.’ On the orthodox approach, it is thought that speakers will assent to the claim that some of their sentences are pathological and have no determinate truth conditions, whereas others have determinate truth conditions. This is supposed to ensure expressive richness and logical non-triviality. However, Patterson argues, if this approach really does ensure expressive richness, then ‘pathological’ must be allowed in the object language. But that then gives rise to new paradoxes, witness ‘This sentence is either not true or is pathological.’ This is the ‘revenge problem.’

Patterson then looks closer at the inconsistency theories offered by Kirk Ludwig and Matti Eklund. Ludwig holds that an adequate meaning theory is one that implies all and only true M-sentences, i.e., sentences of the form ‘s in L means that p.’ The connection between the M-sentences and the T-sentences of a given language are given by the bridge principle: If s in L means that p, and s is semantically complete and coherent, then s in L is true iff p. So, even if the T-theory for L is inconsistent and trivial, the M-theory for L may well be consistent and non-trivial. Given this view, we can accept that S means that the first sentence in this review is not true, but we need not accept that S is true iff S is not true. Patterson, however, argues that Ludwig’s approach ultimately requires supplementation by the orthodox approach because Ludwig assumes that some but not all interpretive axioms are true.

On Eklund’s inconsistency theory, there are expressions in languages like English that can be understood only if one accepts untrue claims about them. So, speakers will accept ‘inconsistent verdicts’ about pathological sentences and yet treat other sentences as normal. The problem that now arises for Eklund is explaining why speakers do not treat all sentences as pathological if they are disposed to treat some as pathological and are also disposed to accept ex falso. Eklund proposes a kind of supervaluationist approach to this problem where speakers implicitly assign the truth-value ‘true’ to sentences of the language if they are super-true (that is, if the truth-value assignment is such as to make speaker judgments maximally correct). But, according to Patterson, this approach too ultimately requires supplementation by the orthodox approach.

Patterson himself defends a version of inconsistency theory which does not attempt to draw a line between pathological and non-pathological T-sentences. If English is expressively rich, then it resists coherent assignments of truth conditions to its sentences. According to Patterson, English seems to its speakers to be both expressively rich and logically non-trivial, but the seeming is a mere seeming – an illusion. According to him, there is no need to think that meaning theories must be true as long as speakers implicitly treat them as such. What is required for communication is that speakers share their opinions about the conditions under which the sentences of a language are true. These opinions, of course, need not be doxastic in nature. According to Patterson, they are pre-doxastic seeming or cognition states. For the speakers, it seems pre-doxastically that there is a true semantics for English. Moreover, ‘acceptance’ is not closed under classical consequence. So, while speakers are in general prepared to accept T-sentences such as ‘ “snow is white” is true iff snow is white,’ they are not prepared to accept that ‘snow is white’ is true iff q, for any arbitrary choice of q, even though the latter is a consequence of semantic theory.

The upshot of Patterson’s view then is this: Because semantic paradoxes occur in English, the semantics for English is false and logically trivial. However, this does not present an obstacle to semantic competence. Cognizing or understanding English requires merely that it seems to its speakers that certain T-sentences are true (but not false).

Owing to length limitations I can offer only one minor criticism here. According to Patterson, the semantics for English is inconsistent and logically trivial. So, every T-sentence obtains according to the semantics for English. But speakers understand English by having a quasi-perceptual impression that a non-trivial set of sentences constitutes the T-theory for English. This set of sentences, however, is not the T-theory for English though it could be the T-theory for a different language. So, competent speakers then understand English by grasping a semantic theory that is a semantic theory for a different language. I think that this is the least attractive feature of Patterson’s otherwise elegant proposal.

Reviewed by Berit Brogaard
University of Missouri, St. Louis

Main authors discussed: David Lewis and Jason Stanley

The fallibilist claims that it’s possible to know p even if your evidence for believing p does not entail p.  It seems that infallibilism entails scepticism because it seems that we don’t have infallible grounds for most of our beliefs about the external world.  Trent Dougherty and Patrick Rysiew defend fallibilism from David Lewis’ criticism and address Jason Stanley’s criticism of Rysiew’s earlier response to Lewis.

As Lewis (1996: 550) observed, overt statements of the fallibilist view seem contradictory.  Consider this concessive knowledge attribution (CKA):

(1)     I know that Harry is a zebra, but it might be that Harry is just a painted mule.

Lewis claims the second conjunct flatly denies what the first asserts.  Rysiew (2001) defended fallibilists from the charge that their view is contradictory, arguing that CKAs only seem contradictory.  In ordinary speech, he said, “It might be that ~p” pragmatically imparts that the speaker doesn’t know that p (2001: 493).

Stanley (2005) criticized Rysiew’s proposed defense because it didn’t offer any semantic account of epistemic possibility statements.  Rysiew agreed with Lewis that (1) captured the fallibilist’s view but claimed that (1) could express a truth.  The problem, according to Stanley,  was that given a standard treatment of epistemic modals Rysiew’s defense would fail.  Consider:

(EPk)     p is epistemically possible for S iff ~p isn’t obviously entailed by something S knows.

If (EPk) is correct, (1) entails:

(2)     I know that Harry is a zebra, but I do not know that Harry is not just a painted mule.

Since (2) must be false, it appears (1) must be false as well.

Dougherty and Rysiew (2009) offer a defense of fallibilism that builds on Rysiew’s (2001) earlier work and meets Stanley’s challenge to provide a semantic account of epistemic possibility statements on which (2) isn’t a consequence of (1).  Siding with Lewis against Stanley, they say that (1) does capture the fallibilist’s view.  Against Lewis, they insist that (1) can express a true proposition.  To explain how (1) could be true when it is agreed by all that (2) is false, they reject (EPk) and offer in its place this account of epistemic possibility:

(EPev)     p is epistemically possible for S iff ~p isn’t entailed by S’s evidence.

To explain why (1) seems defective, they give a pragmatic explanation.  If there are genuine reasons to doubt (i.e., reasons to doubt that do not arise simply from the recognition that there is some non-zero chance of having made a mistake), then it is acceptable to assert ‘It might be that ~p’, but inappropriate to ascribe knowledge to oneself given that there are genuine reasons to doubt.  According to Grice’s Maxim of Quality, you shouldn’t say what you believe you lack adequate evidence for.  To say that you know, you deny that you lack adequate evidence for your belief and this clashes with the claim that there are real reasons for doubt.  If, however, the reasons to doubt are simply that there is some non-zero chance of being mistaken it seems Grice’s Maxim of Relation recommends not introducing such chances into the conversation by asserting that it is epistemically possible that ~p  since these are not significant reasons for doubt (2009: 129).

Their pragmatic account may be sufficient to explain the oddity of CKAs, but note that to meet Stanley’s challenge they replaced (EPk) with (EPev).  They can’t do this without rejecting Williamson’s claim that evidence just is knowledge:

(E=K) S’s evidence consists of all and only the propositions known to S.

Their defense of fallibilism succeeds only if Williamson’s equation (E = K) is wrong.  They acknowledge this in a footnote saying, “that principle is sufficiently controversial that most would join us in assuming that the distinction between (EPk) and (EPev) is real” (2009: 127).

While (E=K) is controversial, I wish they had said more about the relation between (EPk) and (EPev) than just this.  There are two reasons that I think (E=K) needs to be revised.  According to (E = K) if you know p non-inferentially, you can then add additional propositions to your body of evidence via competent deduction.  That seems odd.  I think of inference as a way of applying old evidence to justify new beliefs and acquire new knowledge without having to acquire new evidence.  According to (E = K) if you know p and someone else fails to know p for purely Gettierish reasons, you have evidence they lack.  That seems odd, too.

If we revise (E=K) to accomodate these points, it seems we could still say that there is this connection between knowledge and evidence:

(IKSE)     If S knows p non-inferentially, p is part of S’s evidence.

If (IKSE) is true, immediate knowledge of p’s truth suffices for p’s inclusion in your evidence. While (E = K) might be controversial, (IKSE) seems far less controversial.  To deny it, you have to say that more is needed to get p into your evidence than just non-inferential knowledge.  (Remember that we want a non-sceptical view.  If we want a non-sceptical view, should we really insist that we need more than knowledge to get something into our evidence?  What would that be, superknowledge?)  If (IKSE) is true, a CKA of the form ‘I know p, but it might be that ~p’ would express a false proposition on Dougherty and Rysiew’s view if the speaker knew non-inferentially that p.

Let ‘p’ be the proposition that S has hands.  If S could assert truthfully that it is possible that she does not have hands (or that she’s a handless BIV), according to (EPev) S’s evidence does not include the proposition that she has hands.  (The only way that they could deny that S could assert this truthfully is if they say that whenever S knows she has hands she has evidence that entails that she has hands.)  It follows from the fact that her evidence does not include the proposition that she has hands and (IKSE) that she does not know that she has hands.  Perhaps they will just deny (IKSE), but (IKSE) is a consequence of:

(IJBSE)     If S is non-inferentially justified in believing p, p is part of S’s evidence.

If they deny (IKSE) they also have to deny that S can be non-inferentially justified in the belief that she has hands.  As a fallibilist, I’d prefer to retain (IJBSE) and (IKSE) if possible.

Reviewed by Clayton Littlejohn
Southern Methodist University