Epistemic presentism

Abstract

Commonsense functionalism is taken to entail a version of the extended mind thesis, according to which one’s dispositional beliefs may be partly constituted by artifacts. As several opponents of the extended mind thesis have objected, claiming so can generate a cognitive/knowledge bloat, according to which we may count as knowing the contents of trusted websites, even before looking them up (!). One way to retain commonsense functionalism, but avoid the ensuing “cognitive/knowledge bloat” worry is to introduce epistemic presentism—the view that there are no dispositional beliefs and that we can only believe, and thereby know, things in the present. Independently of the above problem, epistemic presentism can be further motivated by shedding light on two central epistemological questions: (1) how to understand the distinction between doxastic and propositional justification and (2) how to interpret the closure principle. The view also aligns with strong intuitions about what we may take ourselves to know, what the relation between action and belief is, and what may count as part of our minds.

Keywords:

• Cognitive bloat
• common sense functionalism
• extended mind
• knowledge bloat

Acknowledgements

I am thankful to Duncan Pritchard and Jesper Kallestrup for comments on a previous draft of the paper. I am also thankful to two anonymous referees for Philosophical Psychology. This paper was partly produced during a postdoctoral fellowship for the AHRC-funded ‘Extended Knowledge’ research project (AH/J011908/1), which was hosted at Edinburgh’s Eidyn Research Centre.

Notes

1. Active externalism has also appeared in the literature under two more formulations: (1) The extended cognition hypothesis (Clark & Chalmers, 1998; Chemero, 2009; Froese, Gershenson, & Rosenblueth, 2013; Palermos, 2014a) and (2) the distributed cognition hypothesis (Hutchins, 1995; Sutton, Barnier, Harris, & Wilson, 2008; Theiner, Allen, & Goldstone, 2010; Tollefsen & Dale, 2011), both of which focus on distributed cognitive processes (as opposed to mental states). Several authors (Chemero, 2009; Froese et al., 2013; Sutton et al., 2008; Theiner et al., 2010; Tollefsen & Dale, 2011; Palermos, 2016b) have recently noted that, due to their focus on cognitive dynamics, the extended and distributed cognition hypotheses can be backed up by dynamical systems theory (DST), which means that they can be motivated independently of the commonsense functionalism that underlies typical arguments for the extended mind thesis.

2. An anonymous referee worries about my claim that in order to motivate the extended mind hypothesis, Clark and Chalmers need only invoke common-sense functionalism. The referee objects that Clark and Chalmers need to also invoke the Parity Principle, which states the following: “If, as we confront some task, a part of the world functions as a process which, were it go on in the head, we would have no hesitation in accepting as part of the cognitive process, then that part of the world is (for that time) part of the cognitive process” (Clark & Chalmers, 1998, p. 8). The assumption that the Parity Principle is an additional step in Clark and Chalmers’ argument is a common mistake within the literature on the extended mind hypothesis. As Clark (2007) and others (e.g., Menary, 2007, 2010) have clarified, the Parity Principle is merely an intuition pump that restates the basic functionalist premise: that so long as a process realizes a function that we would accept as a specific kind of cognitive function, then we should not worry about the material realizers of that cognitive process, or, in the case of cognitive extension, where these realizers are located. The Parity Principle “is about equality of opportunity. It is about avoiding a rush to judgment based on spatial location alone” (Clark, 2007). In other words, the Parity Principle is only meant to guard against spatial prejudice when deciding whether a process may qualify as a cognitive process. Common-sense functionalism, which judges a process to be of a particular cognitive kind solely on the basis of the function it serves, already presupposes that the location of the process—just as its material realizers—should be of no concern. (Tellingly, Clark and Chalmers do not argue for the Parity Principle. Instead, they assume that should one accept common-sense functionalism, then one should also accept the Parity Principle.) It is therefore incorrect to assume that satisfaction of the Parity Principle is an additional step in the argument for the extended mind hypothesis, over and above employing common-sense functionalism.

3. This paper has been available online since 2006. These criteria, however, date even earlier, as they had already made their appearance in Clark and Chalmers (1998) (although the phrasing was somewhat different). Also, in Clark and Chalmers, the authors consider a further criterion: “Fourth, the information in the notebook has been consciously endorsed at some point in the past, and indeed is there as a consequence of this endorsement” (1998, p. 17). As the authors further note, however, “the status of the fourth feature as a criterion for belief is arguable (perhaps one can acquire beliefs through subliminal perception, or through memory tampering?),” so they subsequently drop it.

4. As Rupert (2004, p. 403) notes, if we allow for Otto’s beliefs to extend, then similar remarks would apply to his knowledge.

5. Within the literature there is an alternative way to account for extended knowledge. According to this alternative, which draws on the combination of the extended cognition hypothesis and virtue reliabilism (see Pritchard, 2010a; Palermos & Pricthard, 2013, Palermos, 2011, 2014b, 2015, 2016a), knowledge extends not in the sense that beliefs extend, but in the sense that justification extends: The involved artifacts are proper parts of the cognitive abilities that reliably produce/justify the agent’s true (occurrent) beliefs.

6. The relevant problem was initially called the “cognitive bloat” worry, but since all known examples of the problem concern outsourced propositional attitudes rather than lower level cognitive processes, it is perhaps more accurate to refer to it as the problem of “knowledge (or, at least, doxastic) bloat.”

7. Though, interestingly, by invoking Clark and Chalmers’ fourth criterion (see note 3), Bjerring and Pedersen (2014) argue in favor of such cases of extended knowledge. In places, they even consider dropping this extra criterion and biting the bullet of the ensuing “knowledge bloat.”

8. Sprevak does not distinguish between the hypothesis of extended cognition and the extended mind thesis. Most of his counterexamples, however, involve extended dispositional beliefs and therefore concern the extended mind thesis.

9. “Negative transfer” is a particular form of interference effect, which appears when past learning negatively impacts the subject’s ability to learn and remember new associations. The “generation” effect, on the other hand, is a mnemonic advantage of subjects who create their own meaningful associations between pieces of materials learned. For more details see (Rupert, 2004).

10. The following list of options is not necessarily exhaustive, as there are some (less obvious) alternative paths one could take (therefore, strictly speaking, the following is not a trilemma). Wikforss (2014), for example, has attempted to block the Otto and similar cases by enhancing commonsense functionalism with the addition of an alternative criterion. It is not clear, however, whether her additional criterion (i.e., automatic direct interaction with other informational states) is not met by some of the existing information storing devices or even by Otto’s notebook. Also, Gertler (2008) offers another way out of the problem by claiming that only conscious states belong to the mind. This may sound close to epistemic presentism but, as we shall see in Section 5, it isn’t.

11. Though compare Bjerring and Pedersen (2014).

12. Prima facie, there is no reason why epistemic presentism couldn’t apply to every kind of belief we may possess. Consider, for example, Stevenson’s (2002, p. 118) six categories of belief: (1) non-linguistic, object directed, (2) non-linguistic, mind-directed, (3) linguistic, object directed and unreasoned, (4) linguistic, mind-directed and unreasoned, (5) linguistic, object directed and reasoned, and (6) linguistic, mind-directed and reasoned.

13. Despite this remark, however, Audi is still skeptical of this assimilatory move, whose proponents, he notes, are Cohen and de Sousa: “Belief that p … is a disposition to feel it true that p … You answer the question whether you believe that p by introspecting or reporting what you are disposed to feel about the matter” (Cohen, 1989, p. 368; note 16). “Bp is a disposition to assent” (de Sousa, 1971, p. 25).

14. For original formulations, see Kvanvig (2003), and Swain (1979). I here define propositional justification in terms of doxastic justification, though Turri (2010) questions which of the two (doxastic or propositional justification) should come explanatorily first. Setting this issue aside, I am here interested in the distinction’s very existence.

15. In other words, how is it possible to believe/know one’s reasons for some proposition p and fail to believe/know p (at least also) in virtue of these reasons? Lehrer’s (2015) Mr Raco is a recent attempt to provide just such a case: Mr Raco is initially a racist who believes that the members of some race are susceptible to a disease that the members of Mr Raco’s race are not. As it happens, after a while, Mr Raco becomes a doctor and, as a result, acquires evidence that his racist conviction is in fact correct. So far so good, but Lehrer wants us to further imagine that, after all is said and done, Mr Raco keeps holding his initial belief not on the basis of the newly acquired scientific evidence, but because of his initial racist prejudice. In other words, Mr Raco is not doxastically justified in his racist belief, because he does not hold it on the basis of his propositional justification. On my part, I find this hard to imagine. While it is certainly plausible to think that Mr Raco may now hold his initial belief for both reasons (which is why he would still qualify as a racist, despite the fact that he also holds scientific evidence for the target proposition), I do not see how he could concurrently believe both reasons for his racist belief but still fail to hold it on the basis of both of them at the same time. To my knowledge, Lehrer provides no reasons why we should reject this (arguably) more plausible alternative over his assessment of the thought experiment.

16. So, with respect to Mr Raco, the way to make sense of Lehrer’s assessment of the case would be the following: Mr Raco may only hold his racist belief for racist reasons alone—even when he possesses internally accessible scientific evidence for it—if Mr Raco does not believe, but is only disposed to believe, the relevant scientific evidence. In this case, Mr Raco would only be propositionally, but not doxastically, justified.

17. An anonymous referee worries that, contrary to my claim, the competent deduction principle is an improvement to the classical formulation of the closure principle, not because it makes explicit that all knowledge should be occurrent but because it makes explicit that the relevant inference should be competent. After all, one might draw incompetent inferences from occurrent beliefs. The anonymous referee is correct to point out that inference should be competent. However, the above formulation of the principle—which stresses that knowledge of the entailing proposition should be retained—makes it obvious that epistemologists have been mostly worried about the possibility that one could lose knowledge of the entailing proposition while drawing the inference. Pritchard is explicit about this in his discussion of the competent deduction closure: “Since competent deductions are diachronic processes, it is also important to specify that the subject retains her knowledge in the entailing proposition throughout. For if the knowledge in the entailing proposition is lost during this process (perhaps as a result of the process itself), then clearly there is now no longer the same intuition that the entailed proposition should be known” (Pritchard, 2016, p. 14).

18. It may be objected here that even on the epistemic presentist reading of the closure principle (but not on the competent deduction closure), S’s belief that q could be based on something other than the entailment in play. However, just as in the case of propositional justification (see the discussion on the propositional/doxastic justification above), it seems impossible to believe/know one’s reasons for some proposition p and fail to believe/know p (at least also) in virtue of these reasons. (See also note 15).

19. The effect is much more impressive with a deck of Uno cards, where there are more than just two possible colors one can guess from.

20. Moreover, notice how Clark and Chalmers’ criteria are designed to capture precisely this aspect of our phenomenology.

21. A similar story can be told with respect to second person knowledge attributions. Say someone asks, “Do you know what time the epistemology reading group starts?” and you reply, “I am sorry, I don’t, but Helen does, why don’t you give her a call?” It seems natural to say that Helen “knows,” even though she is probably not currently entertaining the thought in question and thereby is not, according to epistemic presentism, in a position to know. The reason, according to the above line of thought, is that, were we to ask her, she would have immediate access to the corresponding information, as if she knew it all along.

22. An anonymous referee worries about my appeal to intuitions with respect to what one may believe. Specifically, by treating the view that there are dispositional beliefs as an intuition makes it easier to abandon it. Instead, if we treated the existence of dispositional beliefs as an empirical hypothesis, then the view would not be as easy to abandon in the face of epistemic presentism. In response, there are two reasons why the existence of dispositional beliefs may be seen as an intuition. First, given the current state of cognitive science, which is nowhere close to explaining the nature of dispositional beliefs, their existence, at least for the time being, is precisely that—an intuition. Secondly, due to eliminative materialism (see, for example, Churchland, 1981, 1986), dispositional beliefs might only be part of our intentional stance (Dennett, 1989). According to this view, dispositional beliefs can only be seen as conceptual abstractions, which “though real are not candidates for straightforward reduction or elimination as the result of cognitive science research” (Ramsey 2016). Accordingly, the existence of dispositional beliefs may fail to qualify as an empirical hypothesis, even in principle. Whether eliminative materialism is true such that we would have to resort to the intentional stance or whether the existence of dispositional beliefs could one day count as an empirical hypothesis, the aim of the present paper is to demonstrate the viability of epistemic presentism as an alternative to the view that dispositional beliefs exist—either as an alternative intuition in the logical space of our conceptual analysis of commonsense functionalism or as an alternative full-fledge empirical hypothesis, depending on whether eliminative materialism is true or false.

23. It has been suggested to me that the claim that the notion of dispositional beliefs “forms no part of our commonsense, folk psychology” may be too quick. We often say things like “she believes that Brazil will win the World Cup,” or “he still believes in Santa Claus” without intending to imply that the subject is thinking about the World Cup or Santa Claus at the moment. While this is certainly true, I fail to see how such sentences demonstrate that commonsense psychology presumes the notion of ‘dispositional beliefs’ but not the notion of ‘dispositions to believe.’ Note that these sentences are formulated in the simple present tense, which is used to refer to an action or event that takes place habitually. Therefore, the above examples can be interpreted as indicating that whenever the subject is asked or thinks about the relevant matters, she tends to believe (in the present) that Brazil will win the World Cup or that Santa Claus exists. In other words, such sentences cannot vindicate the inclusion of ‘dispositional beliefs’ over ‘dispositions to believe’ in our commonsense psychology and claiming so would, in the face of epistemic presentism, beg the question. The commonsense functionalist status of ‘dispositional beliefs’ could only be established on the basis of expressions such as “she dispositionally believes that Brazil will win the Wold Cup.” I have never heard of expressions like this.

24. Moreover, in relation to the above discussion on semantic inferentialism and the effect of beliefs and dispositions to believe on guiding action, such actions may indeed be said to be driven by a number of mentally available proposition such as that “there is a highway code”; that “all drivers should respect the code”; that “according to the code, drivers should stop at red lights and pass with green lights,” and so on. According to epistemic presentism, however, such propositions can only count as dispositions to believe, as it would be implausible to claim that they directly guide our actions every time we sit behind the wheel. Instead, the only beliefs that seem to have a direct effect on driving behavior are beliefs such as “the light is green” or the “light is red”—even if they are only subconsciously entertained.

25. Allowing subconscious occurrent states to count as beliefs is another significant difference between epistemic presentism and Gertler’s (2008) view, which limits the mind to what is strictly conscious.

26. Here we must not forget that drawing an inference on the basis of a belief is just another form of (mental) action.

27. In closing, we can offer one more point in favor of epistemic presentism: Avoiding treating knowledge (and beliefs in general) as dispositional mental states seems to also be in line with the general approach of virtue reliabilism within contemporary epistemology. For reasons having to do mostly with Gettier cases and the value of knowledge (see Pritchard, 2010a; Section 2.4; Pritchard, 2010b; Greco, 2008, 2010) virtue reliabilists treat knowledge as a cognitive achievement. Ontologically speaking, Mourelatos (1978) has argued that achievements fall under the topic-neutral category of “occurrences” (or “processes” [Joos, 1968]), which contrasts sharply with the category of ‘states’ (pp. 422–424). In this sense, epistemic presentism’s denial that beliefs and knowledge are mental states combines well with virtue reliabilism.