A New Bit of Philosophy

Are notions of objective truth any more tenable than relativist and constructivist notions of such things?

A brief critique of Boghossian’s Fear of Knowledge

Carin Goodwin (UKZN)

Introduction

With Fear of Knowledge Boghossian makes a worthy attempt to convince the reader that the various explications and defences for knowledge being understood as ‘constructed’, either within societies or by individuals, are any thing from incoherent, counter-intuitive or just plainly wrong. For the purposes of this paper I plan to use the term ‘subjective’ as a sort of crude umbrella term which I believe, reasonably happily, contains all the various forms of constructivism which Boghossian investigates. ‘Subjective’ can be taken to mean: "what is subjective is a mere matter of personal taste or preference; lacking in truth or validity; arbitrary." (Penguin Dictionary of Philosophy; 599). So, subjective knowledge is knowledge which has been derived while greatly, if not entirely, informed by personal inclinations and biases. In my view, any form of constructivist knowledge can be described as subjective too. In short, Boghossian’s chief task in the book is to show that the concept of knowledge makes no sense if construed as something which is context, person, society or discipline dependent.
A short synopsis to start with: Boghossian does good work in dismissing various forms of metaphysical constructivism. It is hard to disagree with the reasons he gives when arguing against possible current relativistic notions of fact, which is, of course, merely a form of constructivism. His work in dismissing epistemic constructivism is less successful though. This, however, will be addressed more carefully at a later stage. Back to metaphysics: The author of Fear of Knowledge points out that there surely can, for instance, only be one actual origin of matter and therefore, Boghossian suggests, an issue such as this one calls for us to be fact-objectivists. And, indeed, it does seem a priori odd to posit that all theories about the origin of matter are equally valid when nearly every proponent of those varying theories will want to say that matter itself could only have originated in one way. So Boghossian’s primary strategy appears to be a good one: He proposes that holding a relativistic notion of knowledge entails some untenable metaphysical dichotomies, if we take the world to be providing the truth conditions for our various claims thereof. We shall look a little later at an explanation by Rorty which shows that the objectivist may be taking the relativist position to be stranger than it is, if not understood in the way it is intended to.
Relativism is often closely associated to a form of Expressivism by some relativist theorists, according to Boghossian. The reason given for this close association is that statements about knowledge are like other types of normative statements in that they are prescriptive, and therefore cannot be shown to be absolutely true. On account of it being a matter of mere preference what epistemic norms are subscribed to, statements about knowledge are nothing more than expressions of a speaker’s preferences (Boghossian; 74). To start, Boghossian grants that the suggested conditional relationship between non-absolutism of epistemic facts and the truth of relativism holds. He then gives his reader hope that he will be able to show that there are indeed things such as absolute epistemic facts. Of course, he does not explicitly promise this outcome at any stage, but it seems that this would have been his strongest counter argument against relativism. But nowhere within the many pages dedicated to addressing this argument for relativism does he demonstrate the existence of absolute epistemic facts. However, he does manage to show that epistemic relativism is incoherent as it allows, no entails, that it is possible for us to make inferences from general propositions which it must acknowledge, by its own criteria, could be false (pg 87). He gives the relativist a momentary hand by proposing that if judgements were completed by adding to each judgement a clause which makes explicit relative to which epistemic system the primary proposition would be true the judgement could then achieve a sort of contextual truth. But, alas, we would then end with an infinite regress (pg 88) based in the fact that each epistemic system itself would need further justification and so on and on. Boghossian takes leaves from epistemic relativism at this point. And who can blame him. But, unfortunately, this does not get him all the way to proving either fact or epistemic objectivism.
We hope to show, counter Boghossian, that it seems to be easier to negate the plausibility of various relativistic or subjective notions of fact and knowledge than it is to show that objective notions about facts and knowledge are the right ones. And the latter simply is not entailed by achieving the former.



Part One
At first glance it seems necessary that one of the inferences from Equal Validity, a type of social constructivism about knowledge, is that when new ways of thinking about, for instance, the origin of matter, arise this ought to entail that there is in actuality new ways in which matter itself arose. But then, on closer inspection, and as is advocated by theorists such as Richard Rorty, it is perfectly possible to be a theorist who maintains that there are no means by which we can be justified in favouring one type of reasoning and knowledge acquisition over another, such as science over social myths, and yet still hold that certain matters of fact must be mind-independent. This is because the former is an epistemological issue and the latter a metaphysical one. So it is possible to hold that all theories about the origin of matter are socially constructed and equally valid even though the actual way in which matter arose must be independent of societal or personal values, traditions and biases. However, is Rorty correct? Can it ever be a priori consistent to do so? Surely, claiming to have knowledge has everything to do with claiming to be representing, truthfully, the matters of fact. And if one maintains that all theories about, for instance, the origin of matter are equally valid, despite the fact that some of these theories may be overtly contradicting each other, then one must infer that any one of them may be true which must, in turn, entail that the matters of fact would have to be different in each case in order to make true the theories thereof. But then, is an appeal to strange metaphysics really enough to overthrow the theory of Equal Validity when all that Equal Validity holds is that, in the absence of the sorts of objective norms which will favour one discipline over another and/or in the absence of conclusive evidence about the metaphysics in question, all theories are, in fact, equally valid. This, as we all know, is not the same as saying that they are all equally true or sound. The latter would be indeed problematic in exactly the way Boghossian proposes. But it seems that the proponents of Equal Validity may have escaped defeat by virtue of the distinction between truth and validity.
In reading Fear of Knowledge it becomes quickly evident that some of the confusion inherent to this polemic must surely be about the pervasive equivocation when using the term ‘fact’. It is here being posited that this equivocation is not just a feature of this book but also of the wider debate on which it comments. According to Boghossian the classical picture of knowledge (Boghossian; 22) has it that objectivism about facts (that is the world) means that the world is largely independent of us and our beliefs about it. On the other hand, constructivism about facts holds that the world is not what is independent of us but that all facts are socially constructed based on various criteria. The suggestion here is that if the arguments were not guilty of equivocation, and ‘fact’ was used consistently to refer to the same thing (i.e. the form, function and properties of the world independent of our minds) we would then be able to see more clearly exactly where the two positions come apart and where they do not. And then, if fact is to be used consistently, constructivists must be taken as proposing that our minds are responsible for manifesting, or conjuring up, an actual and even material reality not existing within our minds anymore, after its manifestation, as mere ideas but as creations in a similar way as God created the world. But it seems significantly clear that this sort of very ambitious claim about the causality of ‘facts’ would exceed, in a nearly ridiculous way, what even most constructivist metaphysicians are claiming. Boghossian should note that by even his own stipulative definition, on behalf the constructivists, it is evident that what is meant by a constructivist notion of ‘fact’ is not such a conjured up independent material reality but rather something like the world, or facts, not being that which is independent of us but rather something like our various abstractions or descriptions thereof. And these abstracts or descriptions reflect certain contingencies of the person, society and/or context. Hence, social constructivism. But surely the well established distinction between an independently existing material reality caused by something independent of our minds and then our perception of this material reality is a distinction even a fact objectivist would be willing to concede is not only possible but is a reality. It is important to decide what exactly everyone means when speaking about facts: the world or our perception thereof? But these meanings are certainly not interchangeable. And, depending on what ‘fact’ should be taken as making reference to, it changes the efficacy of the arguments both for and against constructivism and objectivism. Boghossian’s included.
We see a clear example of the sort of equivocation to which this paper makes reference when Boghossian quotes Rorty as saying: “…none of us antirepresentationalists have ever doubted that most things in the universe are causally independent of us. What we question is whether they are representationally independent of us.” (Boghossian; 43) According to this quote ‘fact’ would mean something like the relative description of a causally mind-independent world. So it would not take fact as meaning the world itself. And if it did take ‘fact’ to mean the world itself this would mean that the world actually changes its material form depending on who is describing it. So when Boghossian himself uses the term ‘fact’ in a sentence such as in the conclusion to Chapter 4: “…we also see that we have been given no reason for supposing that those facts aren’t just ones we always took them to be- facts about dinosaurs, giraffes, mountains and so forth” he seems to be using it in a confusing way yet again. He must decide: Are ‘facts’ the objects and their properties which constitute a mind-independent world such as the dinosaurs, giraffes and mountains themselves? Or are ‘facts’ our descriptions thereof. This would have to be the case if claims such as “…there are no facts which could obtain that would make certain propositions true…” were to make any sense. In which case facts cannot be “…facts about…” as this implies that ‘facts’ are bits of knowledge that we have about the world and not the world itself. Yet for half of the writings in Fear of Knowledge ‘fact’ means the world itself and the other half it means the other.
Thus, it is not necessarily the case that the constructivist categorically denies the existence of a causally independent world, but rather maintains that the only form thereof, which is available, relevant or interesting to us, is the abstracted version thereof. And this is an epistemic claim, not a metaphysical one. Nor is it the case that the fact objectivist necessarily denies the existence of something like a world-view based on a mind independent reality, but which is informed by our predispositions and desires. So, in the end, there is not such a great departure between fact-objectivists and fact-subjectivists, if fact is taken to mean two very different things. And it does seem to be used generally to be making reference to different things. The consequence of this is that the departure between these two positions, in one sense, is smaller than we think but the confounding effect on the discourse itself is unfortunately large.
The issue simply seems to be an epistemological one. ‘Fact’ this and ‘fact’ that confounds the real issue at hand. And if it is epistemological it is deeply controversial. But if it is a metaphysical concept it is, I am afraid, uncontroversial because the distinction is one which both camps would be willing to concede quite easily. The only way in which the polemic can be more than one which is about the boundaries of knowledge is if it is maintained, by constructivists themselves, that the mind has given rise to (caused) a world which has other properties than that of just an idea or world-view or some such. But a determined effort is made to avoid such misunderstanding. Hence, the very intentional and explicit use of the phrase ‘description-dependence’ by Richard Rorty (Boghossian; 27, 28). It is for this reason that the constructivist challenge is, sadly, not met when Boghossian concludes his argument (and his book) by an overly simple claim which has not really been supported by any form of proof, and which, therefore, amounts to nothing more than begging the question. It goes “…The intuitive view is that there is a way things are which is independent of human opinion, and that we are capable of arriving at beliefs about how things are that is objectively reasonable, binding on everyone capable of appreciating the relevant evidence regardless of their social or cultural perspective.” (pg 130) Is there such a way? Are we capable of objective justification or knowledge? If Boghossian wants to provide a firm and conclusive ‘yes’ in answer to these two questions he needs to show how objective knowledge is possible, not just show how subjective knowledge is not. And, unfortunately, it does not really strengthen his case to categorically state that his position is more in line with general intuitions about such matters. Even though my intuitions are with Boghossian’s here, I cannot see how he has demonstrated this to be so anywhere in Fear of Knowledge. And surely demonstration is the point.

Part Two
Let us look for a minute at the constructivist accusation of objectivism being guilty of norm circularity. According to one scientific model the world was created in the same moment as a very large explosion. By the Judeo-Christian model the world (or reality) was created by God in seven days, or in the time symbolised by that of seven days, as the ambiguous claims of “Christian Liberals” will have it. The challenge forwarded by the fact-constructivist is that there are no objective and absolute norms or criteria by which we are justified in favouring a particular world-view. In other words, there are no objective criteria which allow us to, rationally, favour the scientific world view as opposed to, for instance, the Judeo-Christian one or other famous traditions in mythological thinking. And the accusation reaches further into the den of the objectivist by saying that if we were to say that “…the scientific world view favours the theory about a very big explosion…” we would be doing nothing more than stating a sort of tautological truth. This type of reasoning would be self-referential to the point of being counter productive. We would be, and are, guilty of norm-circularity. An accusation of norm circularity is an irresistible and very effective tactic to show that science, for instance, cannot elevate itself to a position of being an ultimate authority on the nature of reality. And it is easy to cast a deep doubt over the possibility of the existence of over arching and absolute norms which will perform the task of such an elevation of one discipline over the many others. Once this doubt has grown roots deep into the discourse of epistemology, fact-constructivism clears further space for itself in the undergrowth of the pathways to knowledge by proposing that knowledge is, in fact, relativised to the discipline in which it is constructed. In this way the contradictions entailed by possibly holding that there are many different ways in which the actual world is and how we can know this world are side-stepped. And thus we see the, according to Boghossian, unnatural birth and growth of fact-relativism.
It has already been mentioned in the introduction how Boghossian shows fact-relativism to be fundamentally incoherent. Accepting fact-relativism entails having to accept an infinite regress of norms which must justify particular judgement. But these norms themselves need justification. And so on. Boghossian draws from Nagel’s argument which illustrates very clearly how incoherent such a position would be. The interesting point, here, about Boghossian’s train of thought is that he provides (Boghossian; 74) a proof for epistemic relativism, which at first makes it seem as if he is going to refute it by overthrowing one or more of the premises. If he, however, could have denied the truth of premise 3 by demonstrating the existence of absolute epistemic facts, and then also shown that the conditional set up in premise 4 is not valid, he would have achieved not only a refutation of epistemic relativism but, more importantly, would also have taken a more solid step towards offering support for his closing lines about objectivism about facts and knowledge.

Part Three
So, let us see if something can be done to offer a more substantial support for objectivism: The first is an attempt to set up a sort of a priori conditional and the second is then to show that epistemic objectivism is as hard to come by as the relativist positions are intuitively unpalatable, inconsistent and sometimes just plainly wrong. The result, needless to say, is a withdrawal into scepticism about knowledge. In an effort to avoid any further confusion set up by an equivocation of sorts we shall take ‘fact’ to refer to a metaphysical state-of-affairs (whether thought to be mind-independent or mind-dependent) and ‘description’ to mean our perception or understanding (whether objective or subjective) of such a metaphysical state-of-affairs.

Argument 1
Premise 1: Mind-independent means that which is not a construct of the human mind, but is caused, and exists, independently of the human mind.
Premise 2: Knowledge is only that which accurately represents the facts.
Premise 3: Objective is a quality of knowledge when derived by means distinct from the predispositions, inclinations and passions of that of an individual or society.
Premise 4: Knowledge of mind-independent facts is distinct from the predispositions, inclinations and passions of that of an individual and society.
Conclusion:
Therefore, knowledge of mind-independent facts is objective.

Of course, the truth of this argument is not secured by virtue of it being valid. And surely the truth of it will depend on the truth of the controversial premise number 4. So, how to defend premise number 4? Firstly, attention is drawn to the fact that the argument does not set out to establish the actual existence of mind-independent facts nor does it make claims to the actual real possibility of objective knowledge. It aims to do something much less ambitious: It aims to establish an a priori link between mind-independent facts and objective knowledge: In developing an accurate perception and understanding of something which is not of ones own design and does not depend, for its particular features, on ones own inclinations, requires a very particular type of attention to be paid. If the attention is mitigated by personal or societal preferences, inclinations, passions and biases, in other words if it is subjective, it will be focussed, at least partially, towards personal and societal contingencies. Hence, whether or not successful arguments can be made for the equal validity of all the competing judgements, or even for the value of regarding judgements as relative to self-imposed normative systems, it cannot be denied that subjective attentions will only yield further mind-dependent constructs or facts. In other words, it seems true that, while staring deeply into ones navel, that is all one will see.
But the above a priori association does not conclusively establish the referents of either of the two concepts which are associated with each other. It merely serves to show that objective knowledge, if there is such a thing, is the appropriate sort of knowledge for grasping mind-independent facts, if there are such things. But are there such things? My suggestion, counter Boghossian’s own ambitious conclusion in Fear of Knowledge, is that, if there are, we simply cannot tell.
Let us see if the following proof is defensible:

Argument 2
Premise 1: Knowledge of mind-independent facts is objective (from Argument 1).
Premise 2: Subjective knowledge is a mere matter of personal taste or preference.
Premise 3: We are able to distinguish between objective and subjective knowledge.
Conclusion: Therefore, we are able to know when our knowledge is of mind-independent facts and when is a matter of personal taste or preference, lacking in truth or validity.

We take ‘Premise 1’ to be a priori true because we have concluded, in Argument 1, that knowledge of something like a mind-independent reality must possess the feature of being objective, if we aim to know such a reality for what it actually is and not for what we see it as. In other words, if there are such things as mind-independent facts our knowledge of it should not be influenced by our personal taste or preferences, irrespective of what these are.
The prognosis for ‘Premise 3’, however, does not bode as well for it. The first reason is really just a technical one. It is not possible for the claim: “We are able to distinguish between objective knowledge and subjective knowledge” to be necessarily true. We simply are or are not able to distinguish objective knowledge from subjective knowledge. There is no logical necessity of any kind between the concepts “we” and one of being able to make this “distinction”. It is entirely a contingent matter, and its contingent truth, of course, would be dependent on whether or not this is the case in reality. So, the question must be asked: Are we then able to conclusively and with certainty make this distinction? And to me it seems evident that, despite the brave claims of Boghossian and others that we obviously can and do, I do not know of any sort of substantive demonstration of how we do this. There may be guidelines or indicators to an effective theoretical explication of how we could do this, but this does not solve the problem at hand, which surely is a practical one.
The other reason for why the prognosis does not bode well for ‘Premise 3’ must touch on Boghossian’s claim that there are “…decisive objections to the idea that we cannot explain belief through epistemic reasons alone.” (Boghossian; 129) I should make explicit my personal sentiments: It seems perfectly obvious to me on an intuitive level, as it evidently does for Boghossian, that belief ought to be justified by epistemic reasons alone. But the more difficult question surely is, is it ever, and if it were to be, how would we recognise this to be the case? So, I only depart from Boghossian in how hopeful I am of the success of a defence for something like objective knowledge. In other words, a belief that something ought to be the case does not get one all the way to that it is the case. Most of us, is my hope, agree with the Humean truism that we can infer no “oughts” from “is’s”. However, it seems conversely true that too hastily inferring “is’s” from “oughts” be just as fraught with challenges. And until it can be properly demonstrated that what someone believes ought to be the case is, in fact, the case we have nothing more than a sentiment at hand. It is, herewith, being posited that Boghossian is guilty of just this. Even if it is a widely shared sentiment, it still remains a sentiment.
In conclusion then, Premise 3 of Argument 2 poses problems for the proponents of knowledge as objective and belief being justified by evidence alone. No doubt, we can go some way towards showing that some knowledge has been derived more objectively than other knowledge, but it seems that it has not been, so far, possible to completely exorcise, from our pursuit for objective knowledge, the possible confounding variables imported by our contingent nature. And the delineation between where objective ends and subjective begins remains an arbitrary one until we have achieved this.

Bibliography
Boghossian, P; Fear of Knowledge. 2007. Clarendon Press. Oxford.
Mautner, T; Dictionary of Philosophy. 2005. Penguin. London.