Lecture Supplement of Alston’s The Reliability of Sense Perception[1] Chapter 1

     Copyright © 2009 Bruce W. Hauptli

 

Alston wants, as far as it is possible, to demonstrate that one of our basic ways of forming beliefs (what he will call our SP—our sense perceptual practice, p. 7) is a viable source of knowledge.  His technique is going to be to argue that this we can not offer non-circular arguments for any of our sources of belief, but, nonetheless, he can offer an argument from practical rationality that this method of belief formation is reliable.  Two passages will be very important as we take up his extended argument.  First the initial passage from his Preface where he says this work is an outgrowth of his earlier work Perceiving God[2] wherein

 

ix in arguing that putative experience of God can be a source of epistemic justification for certain kinds of beliefs about God, I found myself taking the position that it is impossible to give an effective noncircular demonstration of the reliability of any of ours basic modes of belief formation. 

 

Like Chisholm, [3] then, Alston seems to believe that the epistemological effort to conclusively establish that we indeed have knowledge against the skeptics’ claim that this is not the case are bound to fail.  Nonetheless, again like Chisholm, Alston contends that there is something important he can say in favor of sense perception—something sufficiently important that we should find it more satisfying to adhere to the beliefs produced by this method of belief formation than to countenance either skepticism, or some epistemological orientation which does not have a place for such beliefs:

 

132-133 …if I have shown, by my practical argument, that it is rational to engage in SP, I have thereby shown that it is rational to take SP to be reliable.  For since the acknowledgement of the rationality of the practice commits one to the rationality of supposing it to be reliable, to provide an adequate argument for the former will be to provide an adequate argument for the latter.  Hence our argument from practical rationality, though it does not show that SP is reliable, does show that it is rational to take it to be reliable.  No doubt, it would be much more satisfying to produce a direct demonstration of the truth of the proposition that SP is reliable.  But since that is impossible, we should not sheer at a successful argument for the rationality of supposing SP to be reliable. 

 

Clearly, there will be a complex train of argument here!  We begin, then, with the first chapter. 

 

Chapter 1: Introduction:

 

i. The Problem:

 

1 Alston begins by asking “why suppose that sense perception is, by and large, an accurate source of information about the physical environment?”  Note that the question is put it terms of reliability, and also note that he is prepared to ask the question about our other sources of “information.” 

 

Questions: why not “knowledge?” and “truth?” 

 

1-2 He contends that “traditional attempts” to provide “backing” for this process suffer from “epistemic circularity.” 

 

ii. Significance of the Problem:

 

2 “insofar as our beliefs are false they will, at least in most cases and apart from unusual circumstances, provide poor guidance to our efforts to realize our goals.  And the theoretical interest in finding out the way things are is, obviously, better satisfied by having the truth.” 

 

Question: his footnote points to a contrary case, and it is worth reflecting on it—moreover, especially in perception, just how “exact” do we have to be for the belief to be “true?” 

 

Question: in regard to our theoretical interests: don’t we often settle for theoretical idealizations which employ “fictional concepts” because they provide great explanatory and predictive successes (though employing “untruths”)? 

 

3 He speaks of our doxastic practices—what does he have in mind? 

 

He points out that in addition to talking about reliability to respond to skepticism, recent philosophers have appealed to it to overcome Gettier problems and try to properly characterize knowledge.  They try (either directly) to connect reliability with knowledge [Armstrong, Dretske, and Nozick]; or they try indirectly: linking reliability with justification, and justification with knowledge [Goldman and Swain]. 

 

Iii Ways if Belief Formation:

 

4 “a given [belief] source will, at best, reliably give rise to certain kinds of beliefs and not others….When sense perception is said to be a reliable source of belief, what is meant is that our usual ways of forming beliefs about the physical environment on the basis of sense experience (together, perhaps, with suitable background beliefs) are reliable ones.” 

 

5-6 He notes that different “doxastic functions” differ in their scope and range. 

 

6 He distinguishes between generational and transformative doxastic mechanisms (functions, etc.): the former produce beliefs from nondoxastic inputs, while the latter yield beliefs from beliefs. 

 

6-7 He discusses the importance of distinguishing belief formation from belief preservation, but contends the former is basic: 7 “if beliefs are not formed reliably, we need not bother about the accuracy of their preservation.”  Consider what an evolutionary biologist might say here—for genetics is it the gene production, or the gene preservation which is important to evolution? 

 

Question: while his view certainly seems unobjectionable, is it really important how our beliefs come about?  Are epistemological questions fundamentally about ancestry or about legitimacy?  In matters of inheritance and property, the two may, sometimes, amount to the same thing, but is this clearly the case in epistemology?  On pp. 3-4 his discussion points to some of the difficulties involved in trying to clarify what a “belief forming process” is exactly; it would seem as if it would be even harder to get a handle on “belief preserving” processes!  And yet harder to measure their “reliability. 

 

iv. Doxastic Practices:

 

7 For this work SP will stand for “sense perceptual practice. 

 

Question: what is the importance of his footnote here—what is the importance of his distinction between “sense perception,” and “the activity of forming beliefs (perceptual beliefs) about the physical environment on the basis of sense perception”? 

 

What is the distinction between starting with “beliefs” or “perceptions?” 

 

7-8 “…I have an experience that I would be disposed to describe as something in front of me looking like a birch tree, and on that basis I believe that there is a birch tree before me. 

 

8 “…what I am calling a ‘doxastic practice’ is not a single belief-forming disposition, but some family, grouping, or system of individual dispositions, bound together in some important way.” 

 

v. Reliability:

 

9. “…a doxastic mechanism is reliable provided if it would yield mostly true beliefs in a sufficiently large and varied run of employment in situations of the sorts we typically encounter.” 

 

10 Alston notes that we are going to have to be careful regarding “truth” here—our perceptions “represent” the world as being different from what it is, indeed, like:

 

-sense perception attributes colors to things, characterizes them as “solid,” etc. 

 

“…as I construe reliability, sense perceptual doxastic mechanisms could still be judged reliable if their outputs are usually close enough to the truth, even if they do not strictly hit the mark.” 

 

Critical Comment: how well does this statement (that we will get outputs which are “usually close enough to the truth, even if they do not strictly hit the mark”) comport with his claim, on p. 2, that “insofar as our beliefs are false they will, at least in most cases and apart from unusual circumstances, provide poor guidance to our efforts to realize our goals?”  It appears as if something has gone wrong here.