Truth and Weak Knowledge in Goldman’s Veritistic Social Epistemology
(preliminary version)
In his groundbreaking book Knowledge in a Social World[1]Alvin Goldman develops a veritistic approach to social epistemology in great detail. Social epistemology is a recently developed branch of epistemology that stresses the multiple social dimensions of knowledge. Social epistemologists emphasize the fact that we are an integral part of a community and that the acquisition and justification of our beliefs is massively determined by various forms of social interaction. These social dimensions of knowledge are either negated or neglected in traditional epistemologies, in particular, in classical rationalism or empiricism.
Traditional epistemological enterprises are mainly focused on private and asocial ways of knowing. Traditional epistemology istherefore mainly individualistic in character since its central goal isto identify and assess methods and processes of knowledge acquisition from the perspective of an isolated individual subject.As a result, the proper use of certain cognitive abilities of epistemic subjects such as reasoning, sense perception, memory, and introspection is regarded as the only legitimate source of knowledge in most traditional epistemologies. In order to account for the social factors in knowledge acquisition, in particular, for the important role of testimony as an essential source of knowledge, social epistemologists like Goldman claim that traditional epistemology needs to be extended to a theory of societal knowledge.
Goldman does not regard his project of a social epistemology as a complete paradigm shift in epistemology. Instead, Goldman’s social epistemology is a continuation of classical (individual) epistemology. Classical (individual) epistemology and social epistemology are both essentially truth-oriented. They both regard the pursuit of truth as the ultimate motivation of our epistemic endeavours, and they both evaluate our epistemic processes and practices in relation to their contributions to the acquisition of true beliefs and the avoidance of false beliefs. Whereas individual epistemic accounts assess the truth-conduciveness of those practices that are typically considered as non-social, it is the main concern of Goldman’s veritistic social epistemology to examine the veritistic properties of various social-epistemic practices, such as testimony, argumentation, technology-based communication, speech regulation, that operate in different areas of the social world (science, law, democracy, education). Since Goldman understands knowledge in the “weak sense of true belief”,[2]veritistic social epistemology can also be described as a normative discipline whose main concern is to assess the impact on knowledge of social-epistemic practices.
Goldman’s veritistic social epistemology sharply contrasts with certain postmodern and radical constructivist positions in whichknowledge is, according to Goldman, exclusively determined by interpersonal and cultural processes and in which a realistic conception of truth as a cross-culturally concern of epistemic subjects and as an objective goal of all of our epistemic endeavours is rejected. Goldman not only distances himself from proponents of anti-realist radical constructivist accounts (which he calls “veriphobes”) but also from proponents of epistemic, pragmatic, and relativist theories of truth since they deny“the basic correspondence idea that what makes sentences or propositions true are real-world truth makers.”[3]Goldman contends that a social epistemology worth the name should go beyond mere social doxology and should account for the truth-orientation of our various social epistemic practices. That is why a social epistemology must be veritistic in character and should embrace the root correspondence idea that truth is defined non-epistemically as a certain successful descriptive relation between a proposition (belief, statement etc.) and a portion of an independently existing external reality.
In the following, I am going to maketwo main critical remarks about Goldman’s veritistic conception of social epistemology. I agree with Goldman that a social epistemology should be truth-oriented and should evaluate social-epistemic processes with regard to their contribution to the production of true beliefs and the avoidance of error. But I do not agree with some aspects of Goldman’s account of truth and knowledge within his veritistic social epistemology.My first criticism concerns Goldman’s own version of a correspondence account of truth and his extremely negative attitude towards pragmatism, epistemic relativism, social constructivism, and all anti-correspondence theories of truth. To my mind, Goldman’s conception of truth consists in an extremely weak “root idea” about truth which is in no way specific to correspondence theories of truth. Many proponents of epistemic, pragmatic, or deflationist approaches to truth subscribe to Goldman’s requirement that truth bearers should describe reality. In particular, certain ideas that are associated with epistemic and pragmatic accounts of truth seem to form a more adequate and useful veritistic basis for the project of social epistemology than a mere correspondence approach. Furthermore, I think that Goldman’s radical and undifferentiated attack on epistemic relativists, pragmatists and social constructivists is unfair to many philosophers who are sympathetic to versions of those theories but who do not embrace radical non-realistic ideas. I would even claim that social epistemology is well-suited to incorporate certain ideas of pragmatism or social constructivism. My second criticism concerns Goldman’s weak understanding of knowledge as mere true belief. Of course, it is not truth simpliciter that epistemic subjects strive for, but truths that are somehow interesting and relevant for the epistemic project in question. That is why Goldman thinks that veritisticvalues should only be assessed relative to the agent’s interests. It is also almost universally acknowledged among epistemologists that knowledge excludes some kind of epistemic luck. A mere true belief that we arrive at via an unreliable belief-forming method, cannot count as knowledge. So it seems that we not only strive for relevant and interesting truths, but also for truths that are in some way reliableorepistemic safe.So, in order to attain a conception of knowledge that is in accordance with his conception of veritistic value and with a certain reliability requirement, Goldman should embrace a stronger version of knowledge.
I will now elaborate on my first criticism. In the second chapter of Knowledge in a Social World Goldman offers the following “Descriptive Success” (DS) account of truth:
“(DS)An item X (a proposition, a sentence, a belief, etc.) is true if and only if X is descriptively successful, that is, X purports to describe reality and its content fits reality.”[4]
Goldman admits that a full theory in terms of (DS)needs to explain, in particular, what portions of the reality are considered to be truth-makers, what determines a descriptive content, and what exactly the relation of “fitting” between the content of X and the reality consists in. Of course, Goldman need not answer these questions. They are clearly beyond the scope of a book on social epistemology. But in trying to develop a full-fledged correspondence theory of truth by spelling out its core notions such as that of the correspondence relation between a truth-bearer and the worldly truth-maker severe problems for the whole project of defining truth in terms of a correspondence relation haveemerged. Correspondence theories only seem appropriate for very limited formal language-fragments with no vagueness, figurative speech, pragmatic implicatures, causal statements, subjunctive conditionals, self-reference.
Without any specifications of the core notions of (DS), the requirement of the descriptive success approach that “what makes sentences true are wordly truth-makers” is not one that only correspondence theories of truth endorse.To my mind, many epistemic, pragmatic, and relativist theories that Goldman explicitly excludes as unsatisfactory wouldn’t deny that the truth or falsity of a sentence is somehow related to how the world is. According to Goldman, the great pragmatist William James defines truth exclusively in terms of the usefulness a proposition has to the prospective believer, and therefore disconnects truth completely from reality.[5] But this interpretation of James’ truth theory does not do justice to James’ actual concern as a pragmatist philosopher. Just like Goldman, James points out that we have a vital interest in acquiring true beliefs. The possession of true beliefs is of utmost importance for us in order successfully to find our way through the world.[6]Furthermore and most importantly, James does not deny the core idea of a correspondence theory: “Truth”, James writes quite at the beginning of his lecture on the pragmatism’s conception of truth, “as any dictionary will tell you, is a property of certain of our ideas. It means their ‘agreement’, as falsity means their disagreement, with ‘reality.’ Pragmatists and intellectualists both accept this definition as a matter of course.”[7]To be sure, James does not equate truth with usefulness.For James it is an “impudent slander” if critics accuse him of claiming that whatever a person finds pleasant and useful to believe fulfils every pragmatic requirement and should therefore be called “true”.[8]James happily subscribes to the core idea of a correspondence theory that truth involves a relation to reality. That is why he writes, for example, that “[t]ruths emerge from facts”[9]and that we are under the influence of the “coercions of the world” such that we feel an “immense pressure of objective control under which our minds perform their operations.”[10]But James also points out that the core idea of a correspondence account is not much more than a platitude and as suchis of little use for answering the difficult questions about the nature of truth. First of all, many ideas (such as “power”, “spontaneity” etc.) do not correspond directly to reality. They are, as James put it, rather symbols than copies of realities.[11] Furthermore, in most cases we cannot directly confront our beliefs with reality. We only gain knowledge about the past by its effects on the present. James is also quite aware of the theory-ladenness of observation, andthe underdetermination of theories by empirical evidence.But these factors are not necessarily obstacles to correctness and objectivity in scientific knowledge. There are, according to James, objective criteria of scientific rationality that govern and control our pursuit of truth. So, for example, “[…] consistency both with previous truth and with novel fact is always the most imperious claimant.”[12]
By giving the example of one of the most prominent proponents of a pragmatist account of truth I have tried to show that pragmatist theories are not necessarily incompatible with a project of a veritistic social epistemology. Pragmatists in the tradition of James are not radical anti-realists who deny the existence of an external reality or deny the important role that reality plays in the acquisition of knowledge. To my mind, James does not really want to engage in the metaphysical project of identifying defining conditions of truth in terms of usefulness or utility. According to James, we do have a pragmatic interest in acquiring true beliefs, and James’ main concern is to point out the various factors that determine our processes of verifying our beliefs. These processes are driven inter alia by empirical data, coherence with already accepted “truths” and also pragmatic considerations, such as interests, usefulness, fruitfulness etc. I cannot see that such a pragmatist account is in any way hostile to a veritistic approach to social epistemology that Goldman has in mind.
In a similar vein I would like to argue that Goldman’s critique of social constructivism does not do justice to many philosophers associated with social constructivism. Goldman characterizes social constructivism by six claims. The first two claims express a radical anti-realist attitude: what we call “true” are merely the products of social constructions, but not features of an external world. There is no language-independent reality. There are no objective facts of the matter that make our statements true or false. Even if there were transcendent truths, those truths are inaccessible for us, as the third claim asserts. The fourth claim consists in a certain version of epistemic relativism: There are no neutral, transcultural epistemic standards for settling disagreements. In claim 5 and 6 any attempts to attain truth are rejected since putatively truth-oriented practices are mere instruments of domination or repression and are corrupted by various self-serving interests.[13]
Admittedly, there might be social constructivists who subscribe to such radical anti-realist and relativist positions. But to my mind the main concern of most social constructivists isto emphasize that many epistemic endeavours are social enterprises and as such are determined by social or political interests and goals. This does not necessarily lead to “veriphobia” or to radical anti-realism, for example, with regard to science. It is one thing to claim that scientific facts only come into existence when they are invented and constructed by scientists, as Bruno Latour seems to hold when claiming that before Robert Koch discovered tuberculosis the bacillus had no real existence.[14]It is another, and less radical, thing to claim thatscientific investigations (such as investigations into infectious diseases) as well as scientific descriptions and conceptualizations (such as the conceptualization of tuberculosis) are in part determined (and as such constructed) by human interests and goals. The latter claim in no way implies that the phenomena scientists investigate and conceptualize do not exist independently of them and do not have real natural properties that scientists can detect. John Dupré, for example, argues that “social constructivism is in some ways a fairly banal doctrine, and that the controversy that has surrounded it derives from further claims that are wrongly alleged to follow from it.”[15] Dupré contends that few social constructivists “deny that scientific belief has some important dependence on interactions with the world”. But, according to Dupré social constructivists also point out that in most scientific disciplines “interactions with nature are insufficient to determine scientific belief”, and since scientists have personal, social or political goals these social factors also have an influence on scientific belief formation.[16]These social influences can be obstacles to the scientific pursuit of truth and can corrupt scientific objectivity. Nonetheless, conceding that science has social influences does not mean that science is not truth-oriented. Science, as Dupré argues,can overcome these obstacles by correcting the errors that derive from these social influences.[17]So, I am not quite sure whether there are really many philosophers who would subscribe to all of Goldman’s radical six claims of “veriphobia”. At least there is a branch of social constructivism whose proponents would be quite sympathetic with Goldman’s project of a veritistic social epistemology. As with the version of pragmatist accounts of truth I outlined above, social constructivism is not necessarily hostile to veritistic approaches to social epistemology.
I now turn to my second critical remark about Goldman’s veritistic social epistemology. Goldman characterizes veritistic epistemology as a discipline that “is concerned with the production of knowledge, where knowledge is here understood in the ‘weak’ sense of true belief.”[18] According to Goldman, dealing with issues concerning strong knowledge, i.e., knowledge in which,apart from true belief an additional internalistic or externalistic condition of justification is required, would be a digression from the main concern of his book. Furthermore, he thinks that our dominant epistemic goal is “to obtain true belief, plain and simple.”[19] Admittedly, our epistemic endeavours are truth-oriented. We strive for true beliefs since we are interested in being correctly informed. The possession of true beliefs and the absence of erroneous beliefs usually helps us in successfully navigating through life and in satisfying our interests and needs. But mere true beliefs, plain and simple, are not per se epistemic valuable. To be sure, people’s dominant epistemic goal is not the mere collection of random or trivial true beliefs or beliefs that are of no importance and relevance for our epistemic projects. Unless, for example, the correct information about the exact number of leaves on a particular tree in my backyard at a certain time is of any relevance for an epistemic project, having this information does not seem to be a desirable goal we should aim at.[20]
Goldman seems to be aware of the fact that from an epistemic point of view the possession of interesting true beliefs is more valuable that the possession of mere true beliefs that are uninteresting, trivial or irrelevant. While introducing his account of veritistic value (V-value), i.e. the measure he employs in order to evaluate (social) practices with regard to their contribution to knowledge, Goldman assumes that the V-values of belief states “should always be assessed relative to questions of interests.”[21]That iswhy he only assigns V-values to belief states on the assumption that the epistemic subject has an interest in knowing whether the respective proposition is the case:
“Suppose, then that Shas an interest in a yes/no question: ‘Is it the case that P?’ […] Then we can assign the following V-values to the three possible states in the trichotomous scheme. If S believes the true proposition, the V-value is 1.0. If he rejects the true proposition, the V-value is 0. And if he withholds judgement, the V-value is .50. The first state constitutes knowledge, the second error, and the third ignorance.”[22]
So, in his epistemic evaluation of belief states in terms of V-values, Goldman does not regard having true beliefs, plain and simple, but having interesting true beliefs, as epistemically valuable. As a consequence, knowledge in Goldman’s theory,is not epistemically valuableper se since knowing, i.e., merely believing something true, need not have veritistic value.Let’s assume that a person S is not at all interested in football. In particular, he does not give a damn about who won the champions league in 1998/1999. In a boring conversation between his friends about football, S picks up the (correct) information that Manchester United won the champions league in 1998/1999 (2:1 against Bayern Munich). As a result, he forms the true belief that Manchester United won the champions league 1998/1999. Since S has no interest in this information,his knowing that Manchester United won the champions league 1998/1999 has no veritistic value.[23]
Furthermore, in order to evaluate social practices in terms of their causal contributions towards V-values of belief states, the fulfilment of a certain kind of a reliability requirement is necessary.[24]According to Goldman, a practice can only be evaluated with regard to its veritistic outcome if we take into account the performance of this practice “across a wide range of applications, both actual and possible”. We must therefore consider the veritistic “propensities” of social practices.[25] This means that we must consider the reliability of practices (whether they already have a track record or whether they haven’t been employed so far)with respect to their veritistic impact. Consequently, methods or practices which are not reliablebut lead to (epistemically lucky) true beliefs in single cases – as, for example, in Gettier cases or in Goldman’s famous “barn-façade” example,[26] or in cases of true beliefs that arise out of wishful thinking–are, according to Goldman’s weak conception of knowledge, knowledge-producing, but they do not deserve any epistemiccredit. So, in defining knowledge as mere true belief, neither the possession of knowledge nor practices of acquiring knowledge are per se epistemically valuable. In Goldman’s account the notions that have positive epistemic value are true belief states with a V-value of 1.0 and practices with high veritistic propensities that deserve positive credit because they increase the V-values of the belief states of epistemic subjects. These notions are analysed in terms of the agent’s interests and in terms of certain reliability requirements, respectively – and as such they are richer than Goldman’s notion of (weak) knowledge.