Epistemic Goals and Epistemic Values
2008; Wiley; Volume: 77; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1111/j.1933-1592.2008.00217.x
ISSN1933-1592
Autores Tópico(s)Philosophy and History of Science
ResumoThe truth exerts a powerful attraction. Reading the newspaper over breakfast a few months ago, I came across the following quote from Ricky Williams, a running back for the Miami Dolphins who was in the process of walking away from his million-dollar salary to pursue a career in holistic medicine. “I’m going to search for the truth,” Williams said. “Everything I’m doing in my life is about finding the truth.” And Socrates, more notably, could think of no greater compliment to pay his dialogue partners than that they entered the discussion only for the sake of truth. Thus when Socrates lost his patience with someone, it was almost always because the person placed more importance in protecting his reputation, or in impressing the crowd, than in finding the truth for its own sake. There are a variety of conclusions that epistemologists are tempted to draw from such examples. That truth is the goal of inquiry, for example. Or that truth has an intrinsic or standing value for us, insofar as we are cognitive agents. Or even that truth is the only thing, from an epistemic point of view, that has an intrinsic or standing value. These apparently straightforward conclusions lead to a number of significant worries, however. For example, if we say that truth is the only intrinsically valuable thing from an epistemic point of view, then why do we think that knowledge is better than mere true belief, or that a justified true belief is better or more valuable than an unjustified true belief?1 A justified true belief that it is raining is not more true than an unjustified true belief (a lucky guess, for example) that it is raining, so why do we take the former to be more valuable than the latter? Or again, if we think that pursuing the truth is intrinsically valuable, then why are we unapologetically indifferent to so many truths? If you propose an evening memorizing the phone book for Topeka, Kansas, and I decline, have I really missed an opportunity to enrich myself, from an epistemic point of view? If the truth is always intrinsically worth pursuing, then it seems that I have. And yet that conclusion seems ridiculous. In this paper I will sketch an approach to epistemic value that suggests a way around these problems, a sketch that attempts to make sense of the value of truth in our epistemic lives. In the final section I will then consider how this account sheds a different light on the nature of epistemic appraisal in general. Our interest in finding out how things stand with respect to a particular subject—of finding out the truth with respect to that subject—is often motivated by our practical goals. If one of my practical goals is to board the next flight to Chicago, for example, I will be interested in finding out when my flight is leaving and where the plane is docked. Or again, if one of my practical goals is to get the best deal on a new camera, I will be interested in comparing prices with respect to the stores in my area, searching the web for customer reviews, and so on. Practical goals aside, however, we also seem to have a purely epistemic or intellectual interest in finding the truth. Thus as Carl Hempel points out in the opening paragraph of his “Aspects of Scientific Explanation,” in addition to the obvious practical incentives we have for wanting to understand our environment, we also seem to have a distinctively intellectual desire to make sense of the world, a desire rooted in our “sheer intellectual curiosity, in [our] deep and persistent desire to know and to understand [ourselves] and [our] world. So strong, indeed, is this urge that in the absence of more reliable knowledge, myths are often invoked to fill the gap” (1965, p. 333). Along with Hempel, Alvin Goldman likewise points to the non-instrumental or intrinsic value that we often associate with acquiring the truth. According to Goldman: Truth acquisition is often desired and enjoyed for its own sake, not for ulterior ends. It would hardly be surprising, then, that intellectual norms should incorporate true belief as an autonomous value, quite apart from its contribution to biological or practical ends. (1986, p. 98) In later work Goldman (1999, 2002) goes further: not only is truth acquisition intrinsically valuable, but on his view truth acquisition is the only thing that is intrinsically valuable, from an epistemic point of view. Thus he argues that although there are a variety of traits that we value from an epistemic point of view—having beliefs that are justified, for example, or that are rational—all of these other traits are valuable only insofar as they tend to lead us to the truth. Goldman’s view raises important issues about the nature of epistemic appraisal that I will take up again towards the end of the paper. For the moment, however, it will help to take a step back and ask a more basic question: namely, why think that we have this interest in the truth for its own sake in the first place? In other words, why think that acquiring the truth has a more than merely instrumental value for us? In the passage quoted earlier, Hempel offers us an important clue, I think, when he appeals to our natural curiosity to make sense of the intrinsic value that we often associate with acquiring the truth. Goldman too, in his later Knowledge in a Social World, makes the appeal to curiosity explicit: Our interest in information has two sources: curiosity and practical concerns. The dinosaur extinction fascinates us, although knowing its cause would have no material impact on our lives. We also seek knowledge for practical reasons, as when we solicit a physician’s diagnosis or compare prices at automobile dealerships. (1999, p. 3)2 According to both Hempel and Goldman, then, it seems that the reason why we desire truth for its own sake, and quite apart from our practical goals, can be traced to the fact that we are naturally curious beings. Even when nothing of practical importance seems to ride on finding out how things stand with respect to a certain subject, given our natural curiosity we simply have a natural interest in finding out how they do stand. According to this way of thinking, our curiosity about how things stand in the world is therefore importantly like the thirst we (characteristically, at least) feel when our body is dehydrated. When our body is dehydrated—when we experience thirst—satisfying our thirst is naturally thought to possess a kind of intrinsic value: it seems to be a good in its own right, quite apart from whatever further contributions it might make to our well-being. The fact that we are thirsty, moreover, seems to provide us with a standing or pro tanto reason to satisfy our thirst, a reason that holds in virtue of the intrinsic value that comes from satisfying our thirst. Of course, that is not to say that satisfying our thirst does not importantly contribute to our broader well-being; in satisfying our thirst (poisons aside) we replenish our body in a way that helps us to perform our everyday tasks. The point is simply that satisfying our thirst seems to have value in its own right, over and above these other contributions.3 But if curiosity is like thirst in this respect, in another respect it is interestingly different—and to my mind this is where a certain highly seductive, yet also finally flawed, way of thinking about the value of truth gets its footing. For, after all, what does it mean to be curious? Fundamentally, it seems, two things. First, as we have seen, because we are curious we desire the truth for its own sake. But second, and unlike the thirst we feel when we are dehydrated, our curiosity-driven desire for the truth seems open-ended or unrestricted. From the point of view of our natural curiosity, in other words, finding out the truth with respect to any subject would seem to be worthy of our interest. John Stuart Mill, for one, nicely illustrates this unrestricted spirit in Utilitarianism: A cultivated mind—I do not mean that of a philosopher, but any mind to which the fountains of knowledge have been opened, and which has been taught, in any tolerable degree, to exercise its faculties—finds sources of inexhaustible interest in all that surrounds it: in the objects of nature, the achievements of art, the imaginations of poetry, the incidents of history, the ways of mankind, past and present, and their prospects for the future. (2001 [1861], p. 14) Since Mill does not place a limit on his “all that surrounds it” claim, he seems to imply that his list of topics is representative rather than exhaustive. A curious mind, a cultivated mind, finds an interest in how things stand, without exception, or in everything that is the case, without limit. It is because this conclusion seems so seductive, I suggest, that the following deeply important question seems so naïve: namely, what is it about a given truth—or better, about a given subject—in virtue of which it sparks our curiosity? The question seems naïve because it looks like at this point we already have an answer: a given subject sparks our curiosity because it holds the promise of truth, and as curious beings we want the truth. There is not something in addition to the truth that we want, or that explains why we want certain truths. After all, we’ve already said that insofar as we are curious we want the truth as such, the truth for its own sake. In the following sections I will try to explain why this question isn’t so naïve after all, but perhaps the best way to illustrate the need for asking the question is first to consider examples of theorists who seem explicitly to embrace the seductive way of thinking just described. Thus according to Jonathan Kvanvig: [W]e do have an interest in the truth, both pragmatic and purely intellectual. It is the nature of interests to lack specificity: We do not have an individuated interest in the truth of the claim that our mothers love us, that the president is not a crook, that Wyoming is north of Mexico, and so on. What we have is a general interest in the truth, and that interest attaches to particular truths in the manner of instantiation in predicate logic. The default position for any truth is that our general interest in the truth applies to it, though, of course, there can be special circumstances involved so that the general interest in the truth is overridden by other factors. (2003, p. 41) And according to Michael Lynch: Without a doubt, there are all sorts of true beliefs that are not worth having, all things considered. But the fact that I should not bother with those sorts of beliefs doesn’t mean that it isn’t still prima facie good to believe even the most trivial truth. (2004, p. 55) Although Kvanvig and Lynch do not directly appeal to the role of curiosity in these passages, in other places in their work they too appeal to our natural curiosity to explain the general value we place in finding the truth.4 For again, it seems, it is a hallmark of our curiosity that we are interested in the truth not for practical purposes but rather for its own sake. Moreover, it seems to be a hallmark of our curiosity that we are interested in the truth in an open-ended way; as Mill suggests, a truly curious person seems to have a desire to learn about anything. Borrowing from Lynch’s own formulation (2005, p. 331), we can therefore think of Kvanvig and Lynch as endorsing the following Prima Facie Good Principle (PFGP) with respect to truth: PFGP: It is prima facie good, for all p (to believe that p if and onlyif it is true that p).5,6 Of course, Kvanvig and Lynch are realistic. They acknowledge that our interest in acquiring particular truths can be overridden; the vast majority of the time, for example, it will be more important to pursue truths that promise a practical payoff of some kind. But on their view this does nothing to undercut the standing value that learning any truth holds for us. Were it not for the fact that we are “finite beings” (Kvanvig 2003, p. 41)—had we world enough and time, as it were—we would apparently be able to exercise our curiosity in its purest form and pursue the truth in an entirely unrestricted way. But why think that? Specifically, why think that, in virtue of our curiosity, it is attaining the truth per se, or finding out how things stand with respect to any subject, that has a standing value for us? Cases along the following lines might be thought to lend support to this idea. Suppose, for example, that as you sit down at a desk in the library you notice a piece of paper turned face down on the upper right corner of the desk. Naturally, you turn the piece of paper over and take a look at it. Why? The answer seems obvious: you’re just curious! Or again, suppose you’re wandering just below the crest of an unfamiliar hill. Many of us, perhaps not so many as would turn over the paper, but many nonetheless, will naturally be interested in what lies beyond the crest of the hill. Why? Again, because we’re just curious! Even when there is no obvious practical benefit that attaches to these actions, we seem to be driven by a fundamental desire to find out how things stand. This all seems to move too fast, however. When we turn over the piece of paper, for instance, what is it, really, that drives us? Why does this particular subject spark our curiosity? On the view just considered, this subject sparks our curiosity because finding out how things stand in general—in other words, finding out how things stand with respect to any subject—sparks our curiosity. Or, as Kvanvig might put it, this is interesting because the truth in general is interesting, and this is an instance of the truth. But this explanation matches the facts quite poorly. If it were truth simpliciter that attracted our curiosity, then why does our interest focus on the piece of paper rather than on the countless other truths within easy reach? Suppose there are presently 53 motes of dust on the desk (cf. Sosa 2003). Why not spend the next few minutes counting them? For that matter, why even focus on one’s immediate surroundings at all? Assuming you have a healthy stock of beliefs, why not just start conjoining them with one another? Or disjoining individual beliefs with any random proposition? The number of potential truths within easy reach quickly begins to look stunningly large (cf. David 2001, p. 159; 2005a, pp. 297–98). But if it does not seem to be my general interest in the truth that explains my interest in the paper, then what is it? Why is learning the truth about this subject worth pursuing? A natural answer—or at least an answer worth serious consideration—is that there is something else, apart from the simple opportunity to acquire another truth, that explains the worthwhileness of this subject. Perhaps, for example, my interest in finding out how things stand with respect to the paper can be explained by the general value I place in the well-being of others: someone may have left this behind, I think, and if so perhaps I can help them recover it. Sadly but more likely, it can be explained by the standing value I place in finding out other people’s business, combined with my sense that this paper holds the promise of such information. All of this is to emphasize, however, that finding out how things stand with respect to the paper is not valuable just insofar as it represents a new truth to be acquired. Instead, finding out how things stand with respect to the paper promises to lead to other things we value: for example, the value we place in altruistic acts or voyeuristic discoveries. To this Kvanvig and Lynch might respond that while these additional values might explain the particular salience of finding out how things stand with respect to the piece of paper, that does not in itself tell against the value that the subject had all by itself, simply in virtue of its promise of truth. Adding extra value to a subject will help it to stand out from the crowd of subjects with this promise, but that is not to say that from an epistemic point of view it was not the truth per se that we found worth pursuing. What’s more, it is in this sense that counting the motes of dust on the desk can claim the same standing value, from an epistemic point of view. Again, the idea would be that, had we world enough and time, we would realize that these truths too were valuable and worth learning—but as things stand our other interests tend to crowd out our purely epistemic interests. This still seems very difficult to accept, however. Suppose we take away my finitude, at least in the sense of making me immortal. If at some point counting the motes of dust on my desk seemed worth doing from a purely intellectual point of view, then I can only conclude with Bernard Williams (1976) that immortality would be a tedious and dreary prospect indeed, and itself not worth having.7 When the only data we have to go by tells us that there is nothing intrinsically worthwhile at all about counting motes of dust (or memorizing phone books, or disjoining our beliefs with any random proposition), then we should take these data at face value and look for a better way to explain our interest in the truth.8 Clearly, we have gone off course somewhere. Remember that we began with the Hempel-Goldman observation that from a purely intellectual point of view we are often interested in learning the truth as-such, or for its own sake. This then spun off into various claims about value. Most importantly, that the reason why we desire truth for its own sake is because acquiring the truth per se has a standing value for us, a standing value that seems to be traceable to our natural curiosity. But it doesn’t take much argument to show that finding out how things stand with respect to countless subjects seems to possess no intrinsic epistemic value at all. We need to find a new approach, then, one that makes sense of two of our earlier results: first, that as intellectual beings we often desire the truth intrinsically or for its own sake; and second, that even those of us with a passably cultivated mind seem indifferent to countless truths. To get a better sense of how to move beyond this impasse, it will help to consider a roughly analogous situation, one where we likewise start with an end that we seem to desire for its own sake, yet where it likewise seems to make sense to ask further, explanatory questions about why the end has this status. So, for example, suppose that: Reading Don Quixote is something I desire for its own sake. Why think [1]? Well, among other things, the goal of reading Don Quixote seems to be something for the sake of which I do many other things. For example, it is something for the sake of which I will go to the bookstore and buy it, clear away my evenings so that I might have free time, and so on. Moreover, it is certainly conceivable that in reading it I might have no other practical goal in mind: no literature course to prepare for, no friends I hope to impress at cocktail parties, and so on. All that said, however, a number of questions still seem perfectly sensible. For instance: Why is reading Don Quixote something that I desire for its own sake? Why is it something I find worth doing? On the Kvanvig-Lynch model considered in the previous section, the answer might seem to be because: Reading [anything] is something that has a standing value for me. But, patently, [2] is false: reading anything does not have a standing value for me. Reading Paris Hilton’s Confessions of an Heiress, for instance, is not something that I find worth doing, nor is reading the fine print of the latest Sears catalogue. And by this I mean that reading the fine print in the latest Sears catalogue does not even have pro tanto value for me; it is not the kind of thing which has some weight, and which happens to be outweighed by other things I value.9 Then what is it about the reading of Don Quixote that makes it something I desire for its own sake? I’m sure there are many sophisticated ways of answering this question, but a commonplace answer will do: so let us simply say, crudely, that reading Don Quixote has this standing value for me because it is very funny and poignant. The reading of Don Quixote is valuable, therefore, not because it is an instance of reading but rather because of these other features. Provisionally, we can therefore say that the proper explanation for [1] is something along the lines of Reading [very funny, poignant things] is something that has a standing value for me. So we might say: some reading is worth pursuing for its own sake, but the explanation as to why it is worth pursuing for its own sake does not appeal primarily to the fact that it is an instance of reading but rather to these other features.10 If this rough analogy is apt, at any rate, it suggests a way around the impasse identified earlier. Specifically, it suggests a way to reconcile the fact that (a) from an epistemic point of view, attaining the truth often seems intrinsically valuable, and hence worth pursuing for its own sake, with the fact that (b) countless truths seem flatly indifferent to us, considered from an epistemic point of view. For if the Don Quixote comparison is apt, then even if we acknowledge truth as a goal worth pursuing for its own sake, there is still a significant explanatory question to be asked: namely, what is it, in virtue of which, attaining certain truths is desirable for its own sake? Or better, why is finding out how things stand with respect to certain subjects worth pursuing while others are not? Let us suppose provisionally, then, that the value of particular truths can be accounted for in a similar way. In other words, let us suppose that there is some way to fill in the brackets along the lines of [3], so we can acknowledge that it is often the truth as such that we want, rather than the truth for some particular purpose, while also acknowledging that these truths might have their value at least in part in virtue of possessing other features. The outstanding question then is this: what are these additional features, in virtue of which certain truths are interesting? I think this question can be answered most fruitfully if we re-orient it a little. In particular, rather than asking “What is it that makes certain truths interesting?,” I suggest we would be better off asking “What is it that makes certain subjects or topics interesting?” For not only does the former question sound poorly formed, but it seems to get things back to front. What interests us is certain subjects or topics, and what we want to find out is how things stand with respect to these subjects or topics; more briefly, we want to find out the truth with respect to these subjects or topics. But it is the subject or topic that interests us initially, and the truth about the subject or topic that promises to satisfy this interest. So with respect to those subjects or topics that offer the promise of truth, why are some worth pursuing and others not? Philip Kitcher has recently addressed a question along these lines. As Kitcher points out: The resolute efforts to ban talk of values from the philosophy of science have obscured the fact that certain types of questions arise for us, and we seek explanations that answer these types of questions. (2004, p. 216; original emphasis) He elaborates this thought as follows: Thoughtful and perceptive people throughout history have sometimes entertained a question not because the answer would enable them to do something practical, something they couldn’t have managed without it, but simply because the question itself fascinated them. When we view a completely pragmatic account of the sciences as inadequate, I think we’re responding to this (almost?) universal human sense of curiosity. Our aim ... [is] simply to answer the questions that matter to us. (p. 216) Two suggestions from these passages seem particularly important, one of which we have discussed already: namely, that certain questions interest us simply in virtue of our curiosity. The other suggestion remains to be explored: namely, that the questions or topics that interest us in this way tend to share certain common features—that they belong to certain types.11 Unfortunately, Kitcher’s account of the kinds of questions or topics that interest us is rather vague. The questions that pique our curiosity are questions that matter to us, he tells us, and they matter to us in a non-pragmatic way. Though unexceptionable, this doesn’t seem to tell us much that we don’t already know. Can more be said? Although to my mind several types of questions are specially tied to our sense of curiosity, we can get a better sense of the distinctive ways in which our curiosity comes into play by focusing on two types in particular. Thus, one important type of question that seems to be specially linked to our sense of curiosity has something like the following form: Why are things this way rather than that? A second type of question relates to our interest in human behavior and might be put (again quite crudely) as follows: What is he/she doing?12 In claiming that questions of these types are specially tied to our sense of curiosity what I mean is that finding out the answer to particular instances of these questions holds a standing value for us in a way that finding out the answer to instances of other types of questions does not. Perhaps the clearest way to make this point is by comparing an instance of a “What is he/she doing?” question with an instance of the “phone book” style question discussed earlier. Thus suppose someone sits down next to you at the local coffee shop and proceeds to take out a book. It is very likely that you will be at least mildly interested in what she is reading. If she gets up to leave, you will probably be at least mildly interested in where she is going. And so on. Even if the practical demands of life typically make it impossible for us to pursue questions of this sort, it is plausible to think that, had we world enough and time, we would find an unanswered question of this kind at least modestly worth pursuing. “Phone book” style questions, by contrast, seem to lack this natural connection to our sense of curiosity. It hardly seems to be the case, for example, that, with respect to any phone book, if we happen to be ignorant of the number of the person listed on the top of page 12, we will be at least mildly interested in finding out the number of that person.13 Although we might become interested in finding out how things stand with respect to such a subject—say, if we were to get a job as a typesetter for the local phonebook company—this is not the kind of subject or question that has a standing interest for us. It is not tied, in the way an instance of the question “What is he/she doing?” seems to be tied, to our natural sense of curiosity. Kitcher seems entirely right, therefore, in claiming that some distinctive types of questions hold a special or standing interest for us, in virtue of our natural curiosity. Other types of questions, moreover, also seem to lack this special, curiosity-driven interest. What I now want to suggest, however, is that there is a still further and considerably more important distinction to be drawn among types of questions that seem naturally to elicit our curiosity. More specifically, what I now want to suggest is that some forms of curiosity are driven more by what we might think of as our standing prudential needs or concerns, and that some are driven more by our standing epistemic needs or concerns. For short, we might think of these two prospective types of curiosity as prudential curiosity on the one hand and as epistemic curiosity on the other. If we are right in thinking that there is such a distinction to be drawn, moreover, then we need to be even more careful than we originally suspected when we appeal to the idea that there are certain subjects that interest us just “as such” or just “insofar as we are intellectual/curious beings.” As a first approximation, we can try to capture the distinction as follows: whereas epistemic curiosity essentially responds to our sense of puzzlement, prudential curiosity responds to some basic prudential concern of ours (such as a concern for survival, etc.), but not in a way that essentially involves a sense of puzzlement. Jonathan Lear, for one, marks a distinction of this kind when he points out that when Aristotle begins the Metaphysics by claiming “All men by nature desire understanding (episteme),” the desire Aristotle appeals to here is fueled more by puzzlement than (as it were) “mere”curiosity (p. 3). It is worth quoting Lear at length here: From earliest childhood humans display an innate curiosity. Indeed the British psychoanalyst Melanie Klein once called this childhood curiosity epistemophilia—love of episteme. But curiosity is not, I believe, the best way to conceptualize what drives men on. Perhaps it is better to think of man’s natural capacity to be puzzled. We tend to take this capacity for granted. Yet it is a remarkable fact about us that we cannot simply observe phenomena: we want to know why they occur. We can imagine beings who simply watched the sun set and the moon rise in the heavens: they might come to expect regular transitions, but they would lack curiosity as to why the changes occur. We are not like that. The heavenly motions cry out (to us) for explanation. (1988, p. 3) On Lear’s view, then, curiosity seems to have a kind of prudential orientation that distinguishes it from a more purely epistemic or intellectual puzzlement. From our perspective, however, we do have to agree that the kind of puzzlement Lear describes is distinct from our natural curiosity. Instead, I think we can say what Lear, following Aristotle, is correctly pointing to in emphasizing the notion of puzzlement is that there is a distinctive kind of curiosity we need to be alert to, a kind
Referência(s)