Epistemic Rules (2008) - Paul Boghossian

Here’s an intuitive view, call it the Rule Following Picture of Rational Belief: we follow epistemic rules in order to be rational. For example, Observation(Observation) If it visually seems to you that p, then you are prima facie rationally permitted to believe that p, Induction(Induction) For appropriate F’s and G’s, if you have observed n (for some sufficiently large n) F’s and they have all been G’s, then you are prima facie rationally permitted to believe that all F’s are G’s., and Modus Ponens.(Modus Ponens): If you are rationally permitted to believe both that p and that `If p, then q’, then, you are prima facie rationally permitted to believe that q.

Some natural questions we might ask about this picture: What are the correct epistemic rulesFor example, we recognize that, in addition to the rules that we actually use, there are other rules, different from and incompatible with ours, which we might have used instead. And this seems to raise the question: Are our rules the right ones? Are they the ones that deliver genuinely justified belief?? What would make it a fact of the matter that an epistemic rule is correct?These questions in turn raise a more fundamental one: In what sense could there be a fact of the matter as to what the right epistemic rules are? And if there is such a fact of the matter, how do we find out what it is? And what, in any case, entitles us to operate with the rules that we actually operate with? How would we figure out which epistemic rules are correct?These questions in turn raise a more fundamental one: In what sense could there be a fact of the matter as to what the right epistemic rules are? And if there is such a fact of the matter, how do we find out what it is? And what, in any case, entitles us to operate with the rules that we actually operate with?

Boghossian wants to raise two fundamental problems for the rule following picture: (1) problems about the notion of a ruleThe first concerns how to understand the notion of a “rule” as it is used in the rule-following picture. What exactly is it that we are being said to follow, when we are said to follow epistemic rules?; and (2) problems about what it means to follow a ruleThe second difficulty concerns what it is to follow a rule regardless of how exactly a rule is construed. My worry here is closely related to the famous discussion of following a rule that was inaugurated by Wittgenstein and brilliantly expounded by Saul Kripke.

Problem 1: What are Rules?

Rules could have either imperatival contents or propositional contentsWe need, then, to recognize a distinction between two different kinds of content-the imperatival and the propositional; and we need to clarify whether, in talking about epistemic rules, we are talking about contents of the one type or the other.. Either choice has problems.

1a. Imperatival Contents

Imperatival Contents: Rules have the form ‘If C, do A!’, where ‘C’ names a type of situation and ‘A’ a type of action. In other words, rules prescribe certain types of behavior under certain types of conditions.where ‘C’ names a type of situation and ‘A’ a type of action. On this construal, rules are general contents that prescribe certain types of behavior under certain kinds of condition.

1. Epistemic justification is normative. But imperatives are not normativeTo begin with, epistemic justification is a normative notion. We would expect, therefore, that the contents that encode our conception of it would be normative contents. However, imperatives are not normative in any way. They are merely commands or instructions..
2. Allows us to distinguishThe second reason for favoring a propositional construal has to do with our need to distinguish between different kinds of action-guiding or belief-guiding rules. Thus, there are epistemic rules, prudential rules, aesthetic rules, moral rules and so forth. between different kinds of rules (epistemic, prudential, etc.). Can’t do this with imperatives (“all imperatives are alikeit is hard to see how to get this differentiation on an imperatival picture. The trouble is that all imperatives are alike”)
3. Hard to capture norms of permissionA third reason for favoring a propositional construal of epistemic rules has to do with the need to capture not only requirements but permissions as well. The trouble, however, is that there looks to be a real difficulty capturing a norm of permission in imperatival terms. in imperatival terms.
   • For example, CastlingExample: Castling: ‘If the configuration C, you may castle’ is not in the imperatival form, it’s in a permissive form. So it’s probably propositional.
   • Gideon Rosen response: Use complex imperatives with disjunctive consequentsGideon Rosen has suggested another strategy for the imperativalist-using complex imperatives with disjunctive consequents. Thus, he suggests that the imperative that corresponds to an epistemic norm of permission of the form:
     • For example, a rule that says “If you have evidence E, then it’s permissible to believe H” really says “If you have evidence E, then believe H or suspend judgement about H!
       5. If for some e, f(e, h), then either believe h (on the basis of e), or suspend judgment about h.
       ”
     • Boghossian thinks this goes beyond what (4) is sayingIf that’s right, though, (5) now seems to call for you to do things that go well beyond what (4) says… (4) does not say that you should believe h; it doesn’t say that you should consider whether h; it doesn’t say that you should do anything., though
     • What if we fix it by adding the disjunct “or don’t do anything!”
     • Then it seems like scratching your noseEven without going into the details of what it might mean for someone to “not do something on the basis of e”, I hope it’s clear that, whatever exactly it means, if, in response to e, I scratched my nose on the basis of e, I wouldn’t have done anything that is in violation of the norm of permission issued by (4). would violate it

1b. Propositional Contents

Propositional Contents: Rules have normative propositional content.

1. If rules are propositional, then it seems the “rule following picture of belief” and the rules themselves conflict.If we put these two facts together, we get the following peculiar result: The only way to implement the rule-following picture of rational belief, with the rules construed as normative propositions, is to accept that the normative propositions that we are required to follow, in order to acquire rational belief, must be false epistemic propositions! To have rationally permitted beliefs a thinker is required to follow false epistemic normative propositions.
   • For example, let’s capture the RFPoB with RuleRatBel(RuleRatBel) S’s belief that p is rationally permitted if and only if S arrived at the belief that p by following the correct rule N.:
     • (RuleRatBel) S’s belief that p is rationally permitted if and only if S arrived at the belief that p by following the correct rule N.
   • And take some rule, (EpNorm(EpNorm) If C, then S is rationally permitted to believe that p.):
     • (EpNorm) If C, then S is rationally permitted to believe that p.
   • Well, according to RuleRatBel, EpNorm is false, because it’s not just that S has to be in circumstance C to rationally believe p, but that they must believe p by following the correct ruleHowever, the rule-following picture of rational belief (RuleRatBel) implies that it is not sufficient for my being rationally permitted to believe that p that C obtains-in addition, I need to have followed the rule EpNorm..
   • So it seems if we go the propositional route, it implies that rational thinkers are required to follow false epistemic normative propositionsIf we put these two facts together, we get the following peculiar result: The only way to implement the rule-following picture of rational belief, with the rules construed as normative propositions, is to accept that the normative propositions that we are required to follow, in order to acquire rational belief, must be false epistemic propositions! To have rationally permitted beliefs a thinker is required to follow false epistemic normative propositions..
   • Note footnote 10FN10: 10 It might be thought that some self-referential device might meet this problem. Perhaps we should think of the epistemic rules as consisting in propositions of the following form:(EpNorm*) If C, then if S were to believe that p on the basis of this very norm, he would be rationally permitted to believe that p. This suggestion is worth exploring, although, for obvious reasons, I am always leery of self-referential devices and am not sure I understand them., we might be able to solve this by making rules self-referential, but that probably gets weird.

Summary of this section: What are rules? A dilemma:

1a. If epistemic rules have imperatival content, then it seems hard (impossible?) to capture norms of permission. 
1b. If epistemic rules have propositional content, then it seems that our epistemic norms are all false. 

Problem 2: What does it mean to follow a rule?

Boghossian thinks person-level rule following is characterized by these four theses:

• Acceptance: If S is following rule R (‘If C, do A’), then S has somehow accepted R.
• Correctness: If S is following rule R, then S acts correctly relative to his acceptance if it is the case that C and he does A; incorrectly otherwise.
• Explanation: If S is following rule R by doing A, then S’s acceptance of R explains S’s doing A.
• Rationalization: If S is following rule R by doing A, then S’s acceptance of R rationalizes S’s doing A.

Kripkenstein thinks it is impossible to follow rulesLet us turn now to asking why there is supposed to be a problem about rulefollowing. Why, in particular, does Kripke’s Wittgenstein maintain that it is not possible for us to follow rules?. And Acceptance seems to be the real problem.

Rather, acceptance(Acceptance) If S is following rule R (‘If C, do A’), then S has somehow accepted R. seems to involve either an intentional state, or a dispositionKripke’s argument proceeds by elimination. There look to be only two serious candidates for constituting the state of rule acceptance: either it consists in some intentional state of a thinker, or it consists in his dispositions, very broadly understood, to use that symbol in certain ways. And he finds fault with both options., in a thinker. But either view of acceptance has problems!

2a. Intention View

1. Kripkenstein: Insufficiently fundamentalA reductive Naturalist would have reason to think of it as insufficiently fundamental. Such a Naturalist would insist that intentional states be shown to be naturalistically reducible before they may legitimately be appealed to in solving the rule acceptance problem. However, it is none too clear how such a reduction of the intentional to the naturalistic is to be pulled off
   • There seems to be a fairly easy anti-reductionist responseTo the first objection, one might respond by saying that reductive Naturalism is not obviously correct and so can hardly be used to constrain the acceptability of an otherwise intuitively compelling account of rule-following. After all, it continues to prove difficult to account for other important phenomena, such as consciousness, within a reductive naturalistic setting to this, but I take it this is not the main problem for the intention view
2. Kripkenstein: Doesn’t seem to cover all the intuitive rule-following casesSecond, and even if we were to put reductive Naturalism to one side, there look to be two severe difficulties with taking the Intention View to be a sufficiently general account: not everything that we would intuitively count as rule-following looks like a case if acting on an intention.
   1. It seems like we follow rules without knowing their exact contentOne problem is posed by the fact that we typically think of ourselves as having quite goodindeed, especially privileged-access to our own intentions: we know without empirical investigation what they are. Yet, although we are able to give some rough indication of what our epistemic rules are, there continues to be some controversy about their precise formulation (are we dogmatists or conservatives about perception, for example?). If they were the contents of intentions of ours, wouldn’t we expect to know what they are with a much higher degree of precision and clarity than we seem capable of?. But if it were intentional, we’d know the content of those intentions (and thus the content of those rules)
   • Maybe there is a kind of “tacit intentionTo the second objection one could try responding by appealing to the notion of a tacit intention, an intention to do something that is not explicitly articulated in someone’s consciousness but which he could be said to have implicitly or tacitly. The idea would be that the mental states by which rules are accepted or internalized are tacit intentions, rather than the sorts of explicit intention with which we are familiar in ordinary action.” strategy for response here?
   2. The Meaning AssumptionB. Kripke’s “meaning assumption” argument: To follow rules, you need intentions, to have intentions, you must have meaning, to have meaning you must follow rules… vicious regress problem
      • Kripke’s “meaning assumptionit should be obvious that combining the Meaning Assumption with the Intention View will lead rather quickly to the conclusion that rule-following, and with it mental content, are metaphysically impossible. For given the two assumptions, we would be able to reason as follows.” argument: To follow rules, you need intentions, to have intentions, you must have meaning, to have meaning you must follow rulesIn order to follow rules, we would antecedently have to have intentions. To have intentions, the expressions of our language of thought would have to have meaning. For those expressions to have meaning, we would have to use them according to rules. For us to use them according to rules, we would antecedently have to have intentions. And so on, ad infinitum.… vicious regress
      • Rule-following explanation of publicit does look as though one can make a strong case for the Meaning Assumption as applied to public language expressions.20 When I apply the word `tiger’ to a newly encountered animal, it is very natural to think that my application of the word is guided and rationalized by my understanding of its meaning, an understanding that is rule-like in its generality. meaning might make sense, but Boghossian isn’t sure it makes sense for our internal thoughtsAt a personal level it appears to make very little sense to say that we follow rules in respect of our mental expressions, expressions to which the ordinary person has no access and which, for all that such a person knows, may not even exist.
      • So if we reject the meaning assumption here, then it seems like we can get out of Kripke’s slew of Intention View problemsIt looks, then, as though, at least as far as personal-level rule-following is concerned, we are free to reject Kripke’s Meaning Assumption, at least as it applies to mental expressions. And with that observation we seem to have answered the third of the three objections we had posed for the Intention View.
3. Boghossianstein: Rule-following requires inferenceAt least in this case, then, rule-following, on the Intention model, requires inference: it requires the rule-follower to infer what the rule calls for in the circumstances in which he finds himself… On the Intention View, then, applying a rule will always involve inference., but inference requires rule-followingInference, however, as we have already seen above, is a form of rulefollowing par excellence. In the email case, in moving from the intention, via the premise about the antecedent, to the conclusion, I am relying on a general rule that says that from any such premises I am entitled to draw such-and-so conclusion.. Another vicious regress!

2b. Disposition View

1. We will have performance errorsKripke pointed out that any such dispositional view runs into two problems. First, a person’s dispositions to apply a rule are bound to contain performance errors; so one can’t simply read off his dispositions which rule is at work., which makes it hard to tell which rule is actually at work.
2. Rules (like MP) are defined over an infinite set of pairs of propositions. But a person’s dispositions are finiteSecond, the rule Modus Ponens is defined over an infinite number of pairs of propositions. However, a person’s dispositions are finite: it is not true that I have a disposition to answer q when asked what follows from any two propositions of the form p and `if p, then q’, no matter how large..
3. It seems that a disposition to draw a conclusion on MP is explainedSecond, if I am following the rule Modus Ponens, then not only is my actually inferring q explained and rationalized by my accepting that rule, but so, too, is my being disposed to infer q. Suppose I consider a particular MP inference, find myself disposed to draw the conclusion, but, for whatever reason, fail to do so. That disposition to draw the conclusion would itself be explained and rationalized by my acceptance of the MP rule. by my acceptance of MP. But something cannot explain itselfHowever, it is, I take it, independently plausible that something can neither be explained by itself, nor rationalized by itself. So, following rule R and being disposed to conform to it cannot be the same thing.. So acceptance != having the disposition.

Even if we try to go sub-personal (and reject the Explanation(Explanation) If S is following rule R by doing A, then S’s acceptance of R explains S’s doing A. characterization), it seems like we face the same intentionBut then what we would have on our hands would be some version or other of a dispositional view (with the dispositions now understood sub-personally). And although we would no longer face the rationalization problem-because, presumably, sub-personal mechanisms are not called upon to rationalize their outputs-we would still face the enormous problems posed by the error and finitude objections. and dispositionBut then what we would have on our hands would be some version or other of a dispositional view (with the dispositions now understood sub-personally). And although we would no longer face the rationalization problem-because, presumably, sub-personal mechanisms are not called upon to rationalize their outputs-we would still face the enormous problems posed by the error and finitude objections. problems.

Section summary: We again have a dilemma, this time for what it means to follow a rule, since following a rule requires acceptance of the rule.

2a. If acceptance is intentional, then we run into infinitary and regress problems.

2b. If acceptance is dispositional, then we run into performance errors, infinitary, and self-explanation problems. 

Conclusion

There is an intuitive picture whereby what rationalizes epistemic practices has to do with following epistemic rules. But (1) there is a dilemma for understanding the notion of a rule, and (2) there is a dilemma for understanding the notion of following a rule.

Boghossian’s final suggestion: maybe the way out of this is to say that rule following is somehow primitiveThe only other option with respect to our second problem (I don’t at the moment know what to say about the first) is to try taking the notion of following-or applying-a rule as primitive, effectively a rejection of proposition 4 above..