Question

What is skeptic epistemology? Can we gain data beyond the world of experience? Can we discover the causes of phenomena?

Answer 1

Epistemology of Memory

We learn a lot. Friends tell us about their lives. Books tell us about the past. We see the world. We reason and we reflect on our mental lives. As a result we come to know and to form justified beliefs about a range of topics.

We also seem to keep these beliefs. How? The natural answer is: by memory. It is not too hard to understand that memory allows us to retain information. It is harder to understand exactly how memory allows us to retain knowledge and reasons for our beliefs. Learning is largely a matter of acquiring reasons for changing views.

But how do we keep reasons for the views we keep?

The epistemology of memory concerns memory’s role in our having knowledge and justification. This branch of epistemology, unlike nearly all other branches, addresses our having knowledge and justification over time.

Memory and Knowledge

Most of the interesting features of memory’s relationship with knowledge originate in memory’s relationship with justification. Knowledge requires justification. As a result, when justification connects in interesting ways with a topic, knowledge shares those connections. This section covers what is perhaps the only unique connection between memory and knowledge.

a. The Epistemic Theory of Memory

Semantic memory is responsible for our remembering that something is true. Much philosophizing in the 20th century tried to state necessary and sufficient conditions for propositions of the form S remembers that p. The theory that dominated that discussion is especially important in epistemology: the epistemic theory of memory (see, for example, Anscombe (1981), Ayer (1956), Audi (2002), Locke (1971), Malcolm (1963), Moon (2013), Owens (2000), Pappas (1980) and Williamson (2000)). Roughly put, the epistemic theory states that remembering is a kind of knowing. If S remembers that p, then S knows that p. Many philosophers go even further: if S remembers that p, then S knows that p because S previously knew that p. You remember that Plato taught Aristotle, and this is because in the past you came to know that Plato taught Aristotle, and because that past knowledge has contributed to your present knowledge. (Incidentally, Plato might even agree; he appears to endorse the epistemic theory of memory in the Theaetetus.)

If the epistemic theory of memory is correct, we might not remember as much as we think we do. Remembering requires knowing and the standards for knowing are not low. In particular, it is generally accepted among philosophers that S knows that p just in case p is true, S believes that p, believing that p is justified for S and it is not accidental that S’s justification for p gives S a true belief that p. Knowledge is a kind of justified true belief, a kind where the truth of the belief is tightly connected to its justification. When the connection is not tight, the belief might be “Gettiered” or true by sheer accident. If you see someone walking down the street dressed as a postal worker, you might justifiedly believe that your mail will be delivered soon. Suppose the person you see is not in fact a postal worker, but is merely testing out a Halloween costume. And suppose that, nonetheless, the mail will indeed be delivered soon; your regular postal worker is just around the corner, delivering mail to your neighbor. Your belief that the mail will be delivered soon is justified, but true only by coincidence. So you do not know that the mail will be delivered soon.

If remembering requires knowing, then remembering requires everything required for knowing. If any requirement is not met, one does not remember, but at best merely seems to remember. In other words, if you seem to remember that the keys are on the dresser, but they in fact are not there, or you have no reason to believe that they are there, or you simply deny that they are there, then you do not remember that they are there.

Why endorse the epistemic theory of memory? A main reason is that it fits our ordinary uses of “remembers” and “knows” (see Moon (2013)). Consider the following conjunctive claim: Sally remembers that she has visited Rhode Island, but she does not know that she has. This conjunction sounds odd and one plausible explanation of the oddness is that remembering requires knowing. The second conjunct denies something the first conjunct asserts, so the conjunction seems incoherent.

Here is a closely related reason for endorsing the epistemic theory. Remembering requires knowing just in case all of the following are true: remembering requires believing, remembering requires justification and remembering requires non-accidental truth. And we can argue, one at a time, that remembering does indeed have these requirements. For example, the best explanation of the oddness of certain conjunctive claims is that remembering requires believing. Consider: Peter remembers that he owes Paul a dollar, but he does not believe that he owes Paul a dollar. At least at first glance, it is hard to make sense of this. How could Peter remember that without believing it?

Andrew Moon (2013) proposes another reason for supposing that remembering requires believing. He claims that if S remembers that p, then S can use p as a premise in certain justifying inferences. But, Moon adds, a premise is usable in justifying inference only if believed. If you do not believe that all tigers are mammals and that all mammals are animals, you cannot use thesepropositions as premises for reasonably inferring that all tigers are animals. So, remembering requires believing. Similarly, Moon claims that remembering requires justifiedly believing. This is because a premise is usable in justifying inference only if justifiedly believed. And inferences based on remembered propositions are justifying. So, remembering requires justified belief.

However, Moon’s argument faces worries. Suppose S remembers that p, but also remembers that all experts deny that p. Can S use p as a premise in any justifying inferences? Perhaps not. If S cannot, then not all we remember is usable as a justifying premise and Moon has not shown remembering requires believing. Or, suppose S justifiedly does not believe p. Couldn’t S nonetheless have reason to believe that if she uses p (rather than not-p) in her inferences, she will be more likely to arrive at the truth (if, say, p is a scientific theory that is likely ‘false but approximately true’)? If so, S might be able to use p as a premise in justifying inference, without believing p. Even if remembering that p allows justified inference from p, justified inference from p would not guarantee belief that p. It would not follow that remembering requires believing.

While the epistemic theory may make sense of certain conjunctive claims, it faces many objections. As noted above, if remembering requires knowing, then remembering requires everything required for knowing: belief, justification and non-accidental truth. Arguments against the epistemic theory have tried to show that remembering is possible even when at least one of these three requirements for knowledge is not met.

Martin and Deutscher (1966) give a well-known example, in which there (allegedly) is remembering without believing. A painter paints a detailed farmyard scene. He believes he merely imagined the scene. However, it turns out that the painting captures an actual farmyard scene that the painter saw as a child. Unwittingly, the painter simply reproduced that scene. Martin and Deutscher (1966) add that the painter “did his work by no mere accident,” suggesting that the painter’s childhood experience caused him to bring to mind the scene (even though he believes that he merely imagined the scene). They conclude that this is a case of remembering without belief. Since knowing requires believing, this would be a case of remembering without knowing.

Martin and Deutscher’s conclusion may in a sense be right, yet their example may also not pose any problem for the epistemic theory. We can agree that the painter does not believe that the scene occurred. But exactly what is it the painter is remembering? It is plausible that, if he is indeed remembering something, he is remembering the scene or his visual experience of it. It is less plausible that he is remembering that the scene occurred or remembering the scene ashaving occurred. In other words, Martin and Deutscher may have given a case of remembering without believing, but the remembering is not semantic. It is episodic or some other sort of memory. If that is correct, then the example is no threat to the epistemic theory of memory, since that theory concerns only semantic memory.

Audi (1995) and Bernecker (2010: 75-7) appear to offer cases of remembering without the sort of justification that knowledge requires. Knowledge requires fairly strong justification and this justification must not be defeated. If Billy knows that there is a cookie on the table, then Billy has strong reason to believe that it is on the table. Even if he has some reason to doubt that there is a cookie on the table (he may have reason to suspect that his sister shaped some clay to look like a cookie), these doubts do not defeat his justification, when he knows that there is a cookie on the table.

Audi and Bernecker offer the following kind of case. Suppose you remember that Plato taught Aristotle. However, your friends go on to play a prank on you and give you convincing reasons to think Plato never taught Aristotle–Plato never existed and Aristotle had no teacher. You retain your belief, but the prank defeats your justification. Your justification is no longer strong enough for you to know that Plato taught Aristotle. Nonetheless, Audi and Bernecker would think, you remember that Plato taught Aristotle. So, they conclude, remembering does not require justification.

But why suppose that, after the prank, you still remember that Plato taught Aristotle? The answer is unclear. Is it because you still have a true belief, which you acquired in the past, even though you lack overall reason for keeping it? Why would that be sufficient for remembering? Unless an explanation is offered, we may not have reason to count the case as a counterexample to the epistemic theory of memory.

Bernecker (2010) describes a case, in which there appears to be remembering without non-accidental truth–that is, the remembered proposition is true by mere accident: you justifiably, but incorrectly believe that your friend has borrowed a certain book from the library. Later, your friend indeed checks out that very book. As a result, your belief is true, but by coincidence alone. Bernecker thinks you still count as remembering that your friend has borrowed the book from the library. If this is a case of remembering an accidentally true proposition, it is a case of remembering without knowing. But is the antecedent here true? Some philosophers (for instance Moon (2013),) see no reason to suppose that it is. If Bernecker can persuade us that it is in fact true, he will have provided a genuine counterexample to the epistemic theory of memory.

We have seen several attempts to show that remembering does not require knowing. Each attempt faces a similar problem: when knowledge is absent, it is unclear whether semantic remembering is present. Support for the claim that semantic remembering is indeed present has typically involved an appeal to intuitions that some critics apparently lack. But there may be a less controversial way of showing that remembering does not entail knowing. If epistemologists discard the storehouse view of memory and adopt the generative view, they may discover clearer kinds of cases, where propositions are remembered, yet not known, or at least not known in the past by the subject.

For debates about the epistemic theory of memory, it matters significantly whether remembering entails knowing. And it matters significantly for another debate in epistemology. Timothy Williamson (2000) has influentially argued that the concept of knowledge is fundamental in our thinking. Having the concept of knowledge crucially allows us to understand quite a bit of psychology and epistemology and we cannot fully explain knowledge in terms of other psychological or epistemological conditions and relations.

In support of this, Williamson (2000: 34) claims that “knowing is the most general factive stative attitude.” He means roughly that, if the state of having a certain kind of attitude toward p (like hearing that p or seeing that p) guarantees that p is true then being in that state guarantees that p is known. Knowing is the most general factive stative attitude, in that there is no way that S could be in the state of having a truth-guaranteeing attitude toward p without also knowing that p. Now, many philosophers think that remembering that p guarantees that p is true, even if remembering that p does not guarantee belief that p, strong overall justification for believing that p or the non-accidental truth of p. If they are right and remembering does not require knowing, then Williamson’s claim is incorrect. Remembering is factive, but is not knowledge, so knowledge is not the most general factive stative attitude. As a result, his argument would weaken; it is less clear that the concept of knowledge is fundamental to our thinking.

A closely related claim of Williamson’s may also be challenged, if remembering does not require knowing. Williamson says that all and only evidence is knowledge. More precisely, he says that S knows that p just in case p is included in S’s total evidence. It is plausible that if S remembers that p, then S’s total evidence includes p. If this is right and if remembering does not require knowing, then not all evidence is knowledge. Some of what we remember is evidence, yet not known.

3. Memory and Justification

For most debates in the epistemology of memory it does not matter whether remembering entails knowing. This is because most debates ultimately concern the connections between memory and epistemic justification. So, even if remembering does not entail knowing, there remains much to discuss. One neutral way of proceeding is to think about cases of apparent remembering: cases, in which a subject has a memory experience that p, or recollects that p, or recalls p as known or as true and so on. Even if the subject is not in fact remembering that p, memory may still justify the subject in believing that p. But how? And in exactly what circumstances?

a. Problems

In debates about epistemic justification, philosophers have construed memory mainly as a source of challenges. A main way to test a theory of justification is to see if it has the right implication in cases, where memory plays some special role. Philosophers apply this test most frequently in the debate about internalism and externalism in Epistemology.

It is controversial what these views even are, but here is a rough characterization. At a minimum, internalism states that mentally alike individuals are completely alike in their justification (see Conee and Feldman (2001)). Environmental differences by themselves make no difference to justification. So if, for example, you are justified in believing that there are boxes in the basement, that justification would remain even if your neighbor stole all the boxes from the basement. In order for your justification to change, your mental life would have to change–you would need to have a visual experience of an empty basement, or to seem to hear your spouse report that the basement is bare and so forth. You, and someone mentally just like you, are both justified in believing that there are boxes in the basement, even if only one of you has boxes, even if only one of you lives in a world with basements.

Externalism is the denial of internalism. It states that environmental differences can result in differences in justification, even if they do not result in mental differences. What is actually downstairs may matter. Or it may matter what is downstairs in nearby possible worlds. It may matter whether the particular way, in which you would form or keep the belief that there are boxes in the basement, tends to get at the truth.

Any theory of justification appears to face some challenge from facts about human memory. Externalists have argued that their view can overcome these challenges better than internalism can (see, for example, Bernecker (2008, 2010), Goldman (1999, 2009, 2011), Greco (2005) and Senor (1993, 2010)). A fine way to test a theory of justification is to check its implications about particular cases.

A complete theory of justification will have implications about every particular case. The implications of a good theory of justification will also match our intuitive judgments about each case. The implications of a bad theory will not.

That is, a good theory will typically imply that ordinary people, in ordinary circumstances are justified in believing what clearly trustworthy people tell them, in believing what their senses tell them about the world, in believing what seems to them to be the best explanation of what they have to go on and so on. A bad theory will not have all these implications and will imply that in some of these circumstances believing what is commonsensical is unjustified.