Table Of ContentROUTLEDGE LIBRARY EDITIONS:
EPISTEMOLOGY
Volume 13
THE RELIABILITY OF THE
COGNITIVE MECHANISM
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THE RELIABILITY OF THE
COGNITIVE MECHANISM
A Mechanist Account of Empirical Justification
W. J. TALBOTT
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The Reliability
of the Cognitive
Mechanism
A Mechanist Account of
Empirical Justification
W. J. Talbott
GARLAND PuBUSHING
NEW YORK & LoNDON
1990
Copyright © 1990 by
W.J. Talbott
All Rights ReseIVed
Ubrary of Congress Cataloglng-ln-PubUcation Data
Talbott. W.J.
The reliability of the cognitive mechanism: a mechanist
account of empiricaljustlficatlon / W.J. Talbott.
p. cm. - (Harvard dissertations in philosophy)
Thesis (Ph.D.)-Harvard University. 1976.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 0-8240-3211-X
1. Justification (Theory of knowledge). 2. Mechanism
(Philosophy) I. Title. ll. Series.
BD212.T34 1990
121'.6-dc20 89-71074
AU volumes printed on acid:free, 25Q-year-Ufe paper
Manufactured in the United. States ofA merica
Design by Julie Threlkeld
PREFACE
It has been thirteen years since I completed this
dissertation. Much of that time has been spent changing
diapers and in other child care activities that temporarily took
me away from philosophy. Publication of the dissertation
coincides with my delayed entry into the philosophical profession.
Much has changed in the last thirteen years. When this
dissertation was completed, there were no what-would-now-be-
called responsibilist (also called deontolotical) and no
reliabilist theories of epistemic justification in the
literature. Both sorts of theory were novelties in 1976. Their
combination into a single, unified theory still has much to
recommend it. If I were writing the dissertation today, it would
be very different, but mostly because of developments in my
thought. There ~s very little that I would recant, though I
would make many modifications, some·,'of which are discussed below.
Before trying to place the arguments in the dissertation into the
context of current debates in epistemology, let me say something
about what lies behind the arguments. This dissertation received
its impetus from three different directions: (1) dissatisfaction
with a paradigm of epistemic justification (the inferentialist
parad~gm); (2) fascination with a logical puzzle about the
PREFACE -1-
relation between truth and epistemic justificat1on; and (3) a
holist vision of a theory of epistemic justification as part of
our theory of the world, not prior to it.
Let me briefly discuss these three sources of 1mpetus for
the dissertation. In the following discussion, for ease of
exposition, I often replace the modifier "epistemic" w1th a
subscript He" (e.g., justificatione).
1. The Inferentialist Paradigm.
Reliabilist theories of justificatione (e.g., Goldman [1979
and 1986] and Swain [1979 and 1981]) have been labeled
"externalist", and have been opposed by "internal1sts" (e.g.,
BonJour [1980] and [1985]). BonJour qU1te rightly identifies
"internalismn with the philosophical tradition in epistemology.
I believe that it is useful to draw another Ilne of demarcation
between some recent epistemology and the philosophical tradit10n
~n ep~stemology--the line between trad1t~onal lnferent1alist
accounts and what, for want of a better term, I refer to as
mechanist accounts of justiflcatione• Mechan1st accounts are
based on a causal rather than an inferential analysls (whlle
allowing for the possibility that some of the slgn1f1cant causal
relations may be inferential). The mechanist account of
unjustified belief in the d1ssertat1on has much 1n common with
e
Elster's [1983] account of irrat10nal belief. On Elster's
account, irrationality results ~hen rat10nal mental processes are
"undermined by irrelevant causal 1nfluences" (p. 141)--that 1S,
PREFACE -2-
by "blind pSYChlC causallty operating 'behind' the back of the
person" (po 16). The main difference between Elster and me is
one of emphasis. He describes the processes involved as "blind".
However, I believe that examples of beliefs acquired through
partiality and bias illustrate that the processes involved need
not be blind. The problem, from an epistemic point of view, is
not that they have ~ goal in view, but that they have the wrong
goal--e.g., one of self-aggrandizement rather than truth. I
prefer Elster's alternative characterization of the processes as
"irrelevant"--irrelevant, that is, to the epistemlc goal of
bellef, which lS truth.
Reliabilist theories of justificatione are of necesslty
externalist and not inferentlalist. Responsibllist (or
deontological) theories can be of either kind, usually depending
on whether or not one's epistemlc responslblllty is analyzed in
lnferentlallst terms--e.g., ln terms of followlng rules. The
responsiblllst theory in this dlssertatlon is mechanlst, not
lnferentlalist, and externallst, not lnternallst, for reasons
that I return to below.
2. A Logical Puzzle About Truth and Epistemic Justification.
There are two sides to this puzzle. One side of the puzzle is
this: Let B be your set of bellefs. The skeptic grants that B
lS as simple, elegant, and coherent a set of beliefs as she has
ever seen. She only wonders why you believe the members of B to
be ~, as opposed to, say, admlrlng B as a work of art. At
PREFACE -)-
