Causal theories contrasted with traditional accounts of justification

lang=EN-US style='font-size:10.0pt;line-height: 112%'>There are still many problems to be worked out before a causal the­ory can be accepted as an answer to our original question: What is knowledge? But causal theories are certainly one important response to Gettier's problems.

There are two major ways in which these theories are unlike the sorts of traditional approaches we have considered. First of all, tra­ditional epistemologies assume that the difference between people who are justified in believing something and people who are not must depend on states of which those people are consciously aware. Traditional epistemologies give what we can call phenomenological accounts of the justification condition. (“Phenomenological,” remember, means having to do with the conscious aspects of our mental life.) Such accounts of justification are also sometimes called “internalist,” because on these accounts what a person is justified in believing depends only on states internal to the believer's mind.

Descartes and Locke, for example, both gave phenomenological theories of justification. Justification, for Descartes, had to be inde­feasible, and if you have indefeasible evidence, you can tell that you have it simply by reflection on the contents of your own conscious mind. Locke's justifications came from experience, but experience too, as he conceived of it, is something you are aware you have whenever you have it.

Goldman's causal theory of knowledge, on the other hand, is not phenomenological. It is not phenomenological because the facts that he told us about Henry—the facts that made us change from saying he knew there was a barn there to saying that he didn't know it—had nothing to do with the nature of his conscious mental life.

The second break with tradition is that causal theories are not foundationalist. Causal theories do not, of course, deny that one belief can be the basis for reasonably believing another. But they do deny that whether a belief is justified depends on whether it is supported by beliefs in some foundational class. Provided the belief is produced by a reliable method, Goldman says, it is suit­ably justified.

There are many cases where the causal theory works in a non- foundationalist way. If, to use an example of Goldman's, I am able to tell the twins Trudy and Judy apart without knowing what it is about them that allows me to do it, then I have a reliable method of form­ing the belief that this one is Trudy. If I do form that belief correctly, then, the causal theory says—surely correctly—that I know it is Trudy. But since I am unable to say what it is about Trudy that allows me to tell her apart from Judy, I have no foundational beliefs that justify my claim that it is, in fact, she.

In recent years, many philosophers have become skeptical of foundationalism anyway. For once it is agreed that no beliefs about the world are indefeasible, there seems no point in looking for a secure foundation of beliefs that are certain.

a)  the foundational class were certain, and

b)     the process of justification could transfer the certainty to the derived beliefs,

foundationalism would be very attractive. But beliefs about the physical world—unlike mathematical beliefs—satisfy neither of these conditions.

Causal theories, then, are both objective and nonfoundational- ist. These two features make theories such as Goldman's quite dif­ferent from Locke's and Descartes'. But it is the fact that Goldman's theory is objective that allows it to provide an answer to the double question with which we began: Do you know that you aren't just a brain in a vat—and if so, how do you know it? To see why this is so, we must first provide the causal theory's answer to the question.

That answer, of course, is that you know you aren't a brain in a vat, provided your true belief that you have a body that moves about in the physical world is produced by a process that is reliable in the circumstances. Since, in fact, you are not a brain in a vat, your beliefs about the world are produced by the reliable process of using your eyes, ears, and other senses, and therefore you do know that you are not a brain in a vat. Of course, if, like Albert, you were a brain in a vat, you would not know that you were. As a mat­ter of fact, you would know practically nothing about the physical world. All your beliefs about it would be produced by something like Marie's computer, and that is an extremely unreliable way of forming beliefs, since Marie, you'll remember, faked all Albert's experiences.

This solution to our original question has something of an air of paradox about it.

If you don't accept an objective theory of justification, then you are bound to allow that the brain in the vat is as justified as we are in believing that it is not in a vat, since it has exactly the same sort of experiences as a person who is living a normal human life. I objected to Locke's theory that if Marie gave Albert the true belief that the sun was shining, that still wouldn't mean that the brain in the vat knew the sun was shining. But any phenomenological theory of justification has to say either

a)     that Albert's belief is justified—and thus wrongly conclude that he knows that the sun is shining—or

b)     that Albert's belief is not justified—and thus wrongly draw the skeptical conclusion that my belief that the sun is shining is not justified either.

Causal theorists say that since neither of these conclusions is cor­rect, no phenomenological theory of knowledge can be accepted.

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