The Validation Theory of Epistemology P.2

First we should start with clarifying what it means to validate a theory as a candidate for true belief.

One of the most popular theories of justification in epistemology at the moment is the idea that a theory is justified when it is shown to be 'likely true'. This position is an attempt to get around the traps fallibilism present in the vindication approach, without having to give up on its merits. Basically, if you can show that something is likely true, this makes it an appealing candidate for true belief, in the same sort of way that showing a theory is definitely true would. 
It doesn't really work, though. To say something is likely true is still to make an appeal to certainty. Now, instead of saying that you are certain that p is true, you are saying that you are certain that p is likely true. The difference is not fundamental. 

A second, less popular approach is to say that justification is to show a theory is a 'possible truth'. This gets around any of the problems of making an appeal to certainty, but again, it doesn't really work. It's such a weak requirement of a justification to say that 'it could be true' that you could say it of anything, and it therefore becomes meaningless.

Popper made one of the only serious attempts to make the 'possible truth' route work. He argues that a theory is justified as a candidate for true belief, if it is a possible truth in the sense that it has not yet been shown to be false. His 'reasons to believe something' are negative, then, not positive. It's not that the theory has any particular strength we're pointing to to indicate that there's good reason to believe it, it's that it's the only surviving theory left.

But the problem with the Popperian approach is it assumes too much of falsification. Now Popper did admit that a falsification could be wrong, but he failed to recognise the impact this has on his theory. It's only that we're able to eliminate some 'possible truths' in the Popper approach, that makes preferring one possible truth over another meaningful. If we actually can't eliminate any theories, the Popper project falls down.




But validation theories needn't be as strong as to make claims to likely truth or as weak as making claims to possible truth, there is a middle ground, one that is often overlooked. 

Continues here
For part 1 click here

The Validation Theory of Epistemology P.1

Traditional epistemology is based on something called the 'Cartesian Foundationalist Program' (CFP). CFP assumes that natural knowledge (knowledge of the sciences) must be based somehow on sense experience, meaning that knowledge reduces to observation and can be deduced from observation. 

However, neither project works. In the case of reduction, as Quine argues, even the most modest of generalisations about observable traits will cover more cases than its utterance can have occasion to actually observe. Put simply, observation itself never offers enough content to account perfectly for the generalisations made about them. Similarly, Hume persuaded us all long ago that one can't deduce theory from observation. A scientific theory is not guaranteed by it's observational premises in the way deduction requires it would be.

These problems with CFP are well known and widely accepted, and yet epistemology has not yet been willing to let go of it. To understand why we need to understand what was so attractive about CFP in the first place. 

In a nutshall, CFP has been preferred because it offers a clear definition of what a justification is, a.k.a. a justification is a 'certain truth'. It's harder to make the case that we are justified in believing a 'likely truth' or a 'possible truth', but a person who believed in a certain truth would clearly be justified in doing so. Unfortunately, the promise of 'certain truth' is unfulfillable. CFP believed it was possible due to the above two mistakes, but also because of a much larger, often ignored, mistaken belief that sensory data is more credible than it actually is, and the often missed point that observation is theory-laden.   

Epistemology, has therefore been forced to find a new standard of justification. It has been suggested that rather that attempting to 'vindicate' theories, then, we should merely attempt to 'validate' them. That is to say, offer some reason why they are good candidates for true beliefs independent of them necessarily being true beliefs. And the validation approach is widely accepted. No one around these days in philosophy seriously believes in vindicating theories. But paradoxically, philosophers still find themselves attracted to CFP, and time and time again, efforts will go into making CFP work.

The problem is, although we're left with validation as our only option, this approach has not been established as a coherent, tight philosophy in the same way that the 'vindication theory of epistemology' had been. That is, it's obvious how, if it were possible, a vindicated approach to justification would act as a candidate for truth, it is not obvious how a validated approach would. I conjecture that this is why CFP, though understood to be false, remains so prominent in epistemology, and I believe it will, until the validation theory is fully thought-through. 


For more on the problems of the validation theory of epistemology, see P.2
For my purposed solution see P3.

The Relevance of Scepticism

When a sceptic asked of your proposition 'ah, but what if you're a brain in a vat on Mars?' the appropriate response in almost all cases is simply this: 'so what?'

There's an unwritten. unspoken, often unthought clause to all our theories and propositions, and that is, that when we are arguing they are true or false--good or bad, we mean as theories or propositions to describe this world we live in, whatever this world is when looked at from above it: An illusion, part of a multi-verse full of other worlds with differing truths, or whatever else it could be.

To point out that there could be a scientist, looking over your brain as it thinks within its vat, who can see this extra context about your world that you don't know (a.k.a that you're imagining it), is in many ways the same kind of claim as saying that there's a God looking at you with the extra information that he created you and put your world into motion. It's the same in the following sense: that despite the fact that it is extra information that would change your perceptive on your theories and propositions, it doesn't really affect the quality of your theories and propositions given that you live in the world that you do, a.k.a one that almost entirely ignores this "extra information".

For this reason, let Moore say to the sceptic, "damnit, I have a hand!"* And let it be unsaid that he means 'at least in my world I do'


*'cause I see it' isn't really a good reason to believe you have hands in and of itself, but that's quite another matter