Justification and Proper Basing*

 

 

Some thirty or so years ago, Keith Lehrer attacked the idea that causation has much to do with knowledge or justification with the case of the gypsy lawyer, and has more recently endorsed the same kind of attack with the case of the racist scientist.[1]  These cases threaten not only causal theories of knowledge but also theories of knowledge or justification which require that one’s evidence be at least a partial cause of one’s belief.  They threaten, that is, the view that causation is at the heart of the distinction between propositional justification, the justification one has for the content of one’s belief, and doxastic justification, the justification which attaches to the believing itself.  When justification attaches to the believing itself rather than merely to the content of what is believed, it is because one holds the belief in question on the basis of the evidence.  When justification only attaches to propositional contents, there is a failure of such basing, e.g., one may have the evidence but believe for different reasons. 

This distinction is important for at least two reasons.  First, only doxastically justified beliefs are candidates for knowledge, on any theory which requires justification for knowledge.  Propositional justification is a step in the right direction, but if one’s believing itself is not justified, one cannot have met the justificatory requirements for knowledge.  Second, only doxastically justified beliefs satisfy any purely intellectual requirement to believe claims that are justified, for any such requirement will surely include the requirement that we hold such beliefs for the right reason, i.e., on the basis of that which justifies them.  So a proper account of the distinction between doxastic and propositional justification is important for a complete theory of justification and for a complete theory of knowledge. 

Though Lehrer’s arguments played a role in the abandonment of causal theories of knowledge, the epistemological community has not endorsed his view that a causal account of the basing relation is defective.  In some cases, epistemologists have simply found Lehrer’s examples unpersuasive,[2] and in other cases, they have argued against the conclusion Lehrer draws from his examples.  I want to look at this issue here, for I think that there is more to be said on behalf of Lehrer’s view than has been appreciated.  Causality is ubiquitous in nearly all of our experience of the world, but it is not conceptually involved in the concepts of knowledge or justification.  In particular, Lehrer is right that the basing relation is not a species of causal relation. 

A terminological point is in order before beginning.  There is a sense in which, when someone denies that evidence needs to be causally responsible for belief in order for it to be doxastically justified or to count as knowledge, that person is denying that belief needs to be based on that evidence.  After all, in such cases, belief is not causally grounded in, nor explained by, awareness of the evidence.  That is not the concept of basing that is relevant here, however.  What is central here is the distinction between propositional and doxastic justification.  Two jurors, for example, can be presented with precisely the same evidence and both believe the defendant is innocent.  One might believe this claim by attending to the evidence, and the other because his horoscope said, “you will need courage today to make a negative judgment about a very bad person.”  In the second case, the juror does not attend to the evidence or even consider the question of whether the evidence confirms the guilt of the defendant.  He hears the evidence and forms beliefs about it, but this experience is not connected at all with his belief.  So, whereas the first juror is doxastically justified and may know, on the basis of the evidence, that the defendant is guilty, the second juror only has propositional justification and fails to know on the basis of the evidence that the defendant is guilty.  The concept of basing that is relevant here is that concept central to this distinction.  Even if there are other concepts of basing on which a person can be said to know without basing belief on evidence (because the evidence doesn’t cause the belief), the concept of concern here is that concept in virtue of which we distinguish candidates for knowledge in terms of whether the person has doxastic or merely propositional justification for belief.

 

Lehrer’s Examples

 

We can begin with Lehrer’s examples.  The first case concerns a gypsy lawyer of a client accused of eight murders.  The lawyer consults the tarot cards, and they say that the client is guilty of committing all but the eighth murder.  The lawyer believes what the cards say, and his convic­tion of the innocence of his client regarding the eighth murder leads him to reconsider the evidence, which he now comes to see conclusively establishes that his client is innocent of the eighth murder.  Lehrer then goes on to claim:

He freely admits, however, that the evidence which he claims shows that he knows his client to be innocent of that crime is not what convinced him of the innocence of his client, and, indeed, would not convince him now were he not already convinced by the cards...  His conviction could not be increased by his considera­tion of the evidence because he was already completely convinced.  On the other hand, were his faith in the cards to collapse, then emotional factors which influ­ence others would sway him too.  Therefore the evidence which completely justifies his belief does not explain why he believes as he does, his faith in the cards explains that, and the evidence in no way supports ...  or partially explains why he believes as he does.[3]

Lehrer thus claims that the lawyer knows that his client is innocent even though the evidence which justifies his belief does not either prompt his original acquisition of the belief, nor does the evidence lend increased confidence in the belief once it is dis­covered, nor does the evidence at present sustain the belief.  This last point is true in virtue of the fact that, if the influence of the cards were removed, emotional factors would hold sway and the lawyer would no longer believe that his client was innocent.   Nonetheless the lawyer now knows and justifiably believes that his client is innocent of the eighth murder.

More recently, Lehrer has forwarded the case of Ms. Prejudice:

Imagine the case of Ms. Prejudice, who out of prejudice against a race believes that the members of the race who have a certain disease get the disease because of their genetic makeup.  Of course, she, being very racist, believes this is a sign of their racial inferiority, and she is totally convinced because of her racism that the disease is the result of the genetic constitution of the race.  Now imagine that Ms. Prejudice becomes a medical student and learns, to her pleasure, of the medical evidence that supports her prejudiced conviction.  She becomes, however, a medical expert of the highest quality, fully capable of separating her prejudices from her scientific studies.  As luck would have it, she becomes part of a research team assigned the task of checking on the genetic basis of the disease. . . .  She wants to make sure it [the disease] really is [genetically caused], and she will force them [her co investigators] to investigate with the greatest care every reason for doubting that the disease is genetically caused.  She wants to make absolutely sure that she cannot be charged with concluding on the basis of the scientific evidence that the disease is genetically caused because of prejudice.  Of course, her belief that the disease is genetically caused is the result of her still very intense prejudice, but her scientific evaluation of the evidence in favor of this belief must be rigorously tested.

Every objection to the claim is considered and refuted by the team, all of whom, except for Ms. Prejudice, who plays devil’s advocate, are completely without prejudice.  They all conclude that the scientific evidence shows conclusively that the disease is genetically caused, as Ms. Prejudice has believed all along.  After the investigation, she knows that the disease is genetically caused.  She has the same evidence . . . for believing this as the other members of her team, and if they know that the disease is genetically caused, so does she.  But her belief is the product of an improperly functioning system of racial prejudice.[4]

Just as in the case of the gypsy lawyer, the racist scientist initially comes to a belief on the basis of suspect motivations.  According to Lehrer, these motivations remain the basis for the belief even after learning of the evidence that confirms the belief.  Still, Lehrer claims, the racist scientist has knowledge (and, by implication, justification) if her colleagues do.  After all, they have worked on the project together, knowing the intellectual character and prejudices of each member of the team.  It is obvious that, if asked who on the team knows and who doesn’t, they’d be perplexed at the idea of having to draw such a distinction.  They’d surely say that either everyone knows or no one does.


Since I will be focusing on the issue of the proper construal of the basing relation, it will be useful to recast the discussion in terms of it.  The lawyer and the scientist each have adequate evidence for thinking what they do, but they do not initially base their beliefs on that evidence.  Later on, each comes to see that the evidence confirms their belief, even though the evidence is not even a partial cause of their beliefs.  Since there is nonetheless a distinction between merely having sufficient evidence for a belief and having that evidence justify one’s believing of the claim in question, we can characterize the two cases as follows.  The lawyer and the scientist come to be doxastically justified in believing what they were originally not doxastically justified in believing, and this claim implies that they satisfy whatever basing relation between evidence and belief is appropriate for capturing the distinction between doxastic justification and propositional justification.  Their beliefs are nonetheless not caused, not even partially, by their awareness of the evidence; their deficient intellectual characters result in still-true regrettable causal stories about their beliefs.  Thus, if we accept Lehrer’s account, a causal account of the basing relation is mistaken. 

 

Audi’s Defense

 

Causal theorists have gone in two different directions in response to such cases.  Some have admitted the existence of knowledge and proper basing after investigation by the principals involved, and have attempted to save the heart of the causal theory by giving up the claim that any actual causal relations are required.  Instead, they have attempted to salvage some causality in knowledge by finding a true counterfactual in­volving a causal relation between evidence and belief which is true and hence is com­patible with these admissions, claiming ­that this causality-embedded counterfactual is necessary for knowledge.[5]  I have argued against such theories elsewhere,[6] but will bypass the issues involved here.  For such emendations of a causal requirement on the basing relation do not amount to a defense of a causal theory of basing.  Instead, they agree with Lehrer that a causal requirement is mistaken, so they pose no threat to the conclusion Lehrer wishes to draw from his examples.

The other direction is to argue against the claim that the players in Lehrer’s examples come to have doxastically justified beliefs and hence against the claim that they have knowledge.  Robert Audi presents the only sustained defense in the literature of this position, and his discussion focuses on the case of the gypsy lawyer.  He says,

Let us first consider some consequences of Lehrer's interpretation of the example.  Recall the assumption that the cards are not actually relevant to p.  Thus, even though S (here the gypsy) has (objectively) good evidence for p, given a contrary verdict from the cards he would (other things equal) have had the false belief that not‑p.  Second, given his faith in the cards, he would have believed p even if it had been false, indeed, even if, on the basis of the cards, it had not been rendered so much as objectively likely (to any degree) to be true, i.e., very roughly, likely to some degree given the actual facts relevant to p...  Third, S would have believed other falsehoods about the crime, had the cards pointed to them, e.g. that the client's spouse committed it.  These points, especially the second, strongly suggest that S does not justifiably believe p.  It is, after all, simply good fortune (because the cards happened to be right) that S did not believe something false in place of p.  Surely if one's belief that p is justified by good evidence, it cannot be simply good fortune that one did not believe something false instead.[7]


Audi here worries about a certain sort of epistemic luck in believing a proposi­tion.  This sort of luck is present when one is indiscriminate with respect to the truth.  In the case of the lawyer, his reliance on the cards makes him indiscriminate with respect to the claim that his client is innocent.  As Audi claims, "given his faith in the cards, he would have believed p even if it had been false, indeed, even if, on the basis of the cards, it had not been rendered so much as objectively likely (to any degree) to be true."  This feature of the gypsy lawyer case runs counter to what Audi sees as a reliable indicator connection es­tablished by the presence of personal justification.  That connection is that personal justification implies that if the proposition in question were not true, the person in question would not believe it.  Audi thus claims that because the lawyer's belief is just a matter of this sort of epistemic luck, or "good fortune" as he puts it, it is wrong to think that the lawyer really knows, or justifiably believes, that his client is innocent of the eighth murder.

Audi seems to recognize some weakness in this defense of the causal requirement, however.  Consider his formulation of the reliable indicator connection:

[T]here is also an important (and far less widely recognized) connection between personal justification and truth.  The latter connection is our main concern here.  In the most common cases where S's belief that p is justified by good evidence, q, S would not have believed p if p were not true or at least objectively likely to be true.  For here S would not have believed p if he had not believed q, in virtue of which‑‑­since q is (objective­ly) good evidence for p‑‑p is at least objectively likely.  There is, I suggest, a measure of protection from believ­ing falsehoods which justification by good evidence provides.[8]

Audi claims that there is a connection between personal justification (what I have been calling doxastic justification) and a measure of protection from believing falsehoods.  The protection arises from the reliable indicator requirement, to the effect that if the claim had not been true, the person in question would not have believed it.  This protective clause is supposed to support a rejection of Lehrer’s account of his examples, but notice that Audi does not give a complete endorsement of the clause.  Rather, he claims that the requirement holds “in the most common cases . . .”  A response on behalf of Lehrer is easy if this qualifier is taken seriously, for gypsy lawyer cases need not be all that common in order to undermine the causal view. 

If it is granted that the reliable indicator connection only holds in the most common cases, however, it is not clear how the reliable indicator connection can form a strong enough reason for maintaining that there is an exceptionless causal sustaining requirement.  Yet that is just the structure of Audi's argument:  he holds that there is a reliable indicator connection which holds in the most common cases and uses this information to conclude that there is an exceptionless causal sustaining requirement.  That argument is not telling against Lehrer’s view, for it would be at least as plausible to conclude from Audi’s premise that there is a causal sustenance element in the most common cases of knowledge.

Furthermore, Audi’s worries about the presence of luck are not telling, either.  It is well-known that it takes a cooperative environment for knowledge to occur.  Think, for example of Goldman’s fake barn case, in which the residents of a certain area undermine our claim to knowledge by planting a huge number of fake barns in a landscape in which we happen to focus on the one real barn.  Suppose, though, that they were only giddily considering the fun they’d have doing so, but decide at the last minute not to play such a joke on us.  We’d have knowledge in such a case, but be lucky to have it.  Or suppose that they decide to play the joke on us, but we serendipitously happen to take a different road and happen to look at a different landscape with no fake barns on it.  Perhaps a black cat crossed the road, and our superstitions led us to turn to the right rather than the left in order to avoid the horror of having the cat cross the fork in the road that we traveled.  Then we’d still have knowledge, but be lucky to have it. 


Audi might insist that these are not the kinds of luck that knowledge rules out, whereas the kind he is speaking of is that kind.  To defend such a position, we would need an account of the distinction between these two kinds of luck, and Audi recognizes that no such account will be forthcoming by appeal to the reliable indicator connection (since it can only be said to hold in the most common cases).  In addition, progress on the dispute between Audi and Lehrer is not going to be made by relying on some delineation of the various kinds of luck that might infect belief.  As I see it, the only way to determine what kind of luck knowledge rules out is to forward an acceptable account of knowledge, and then classify instances of luck in terms of that account.  That is, I see no grounds for thinking that we could sort instances of luck into kinds apart from our interest in the nature of knowledge, and have one of these kinds be just the right kind to solve the Gettier problem.  In the absence of the plausibility of this approach to the Gettier problem, appeals to the concept of luck will end up as unconvincing as relevant alternatives response to skepticism, which claim that skepticism is false because one need only be immune from error in relevant alternatives, among which are not found skeptical alternatives.  For these reasons, Audi’s arguments based on the concepts of luck and reliable indication against Lehrer’s examples must be determined to be unsuccessful.

 

A General Approach to Justification

 

In terms of persuading the reader to accept the alternative conclusion that a causal theory of the basing relation is mistaken, the discussion to this point has done little more than the presentation of the gypsy lawyer case itself would have done.  We have seen that the arguments against Lehrer’s examples are unconvincing, but it remains the case that this example has not moved many to reject causal accounts.  It seems, then, that some further argument would be useful, and I believe there is a strong argument to buttress Lehrer’s examples from the general nature of justification.  I say “general nature,” because justification is not only a property of beliefs but also of actions.  It is plausible, therefore, to assume that a proper account of justified belief will be extendable to an account of justified behavior.  I want to argue that a theoretically unified approach to the concept of justification, one that attends not only to the nature of justification as a feature of belief but also to its nature as a feature of action, provides a strong argument against a causal view of the basing relation.

In the arena of action, the causal view maintains that there is a distinction between reasons which only justify the action performed and reasons which justify the performance of the action.  On the causal view, if the reasons are causally responsible (in the right way) for the action in question, then those reasons justify the perform­ance of the action as well as the action itself; otherwise they can only justify the action itself.  In this way, the causal account of rational action claims to have explained the dif­ference between a sort of personal justification, where the performance of an action is justified, and a more impersonal justification, where only the action performed, but not the performing of it, is justified.  This distinction mirrors the distinc­tion we have in the arena of belief between propositional justification and doxastic justification.

I believe this causal view is not adequate and I shall argue that it cannot make sense of one feature of justification.  Most of us discover, at one time or another, that our motivations for behavior are less than desirable.  I shall argue that one response to this awareness, a response in which justification is created where it did not exist before, is one for which the causal view cannot account.  Let us begin by considering a bit of behavior which is to be assumed to lack full justification.  Suppose Jim is running for Congress, where this behavior is to be ex­plained by an irrational desire to prove his critics wrong.  This desire arose because, being from the hill country in Texas, he believes that people make fun of him and ridicule him because there is no possibility of his ever "amounting to much." As a matter of fact, Jim has no reason to believe this and is just showing paranoid tenden­cies, but he does hold the beliefs in question and because he does, he forms the desire to prove his critics wrong.  So, Jim is running for Congress to show that he has amounted to something.    

Regardless of how common or understandable such motivations are, they present an explanation for Jim's actions which does not amount to a justification of them.  Whatever reasons there might be which could justify Jim's running for Congress, this irrational desire to prove his critics wrong (irrational because his belief that there are such critics is unfounded) is not among them. 

Further, suppose that Jim has not detected his real motivations and that he has given reasons both to himself and others for running which have been quite different from the "real" reasons for which he runs.  But now, having advanced in years and self‑understa­nding, Jim has come to realize his true motives.  He has come to realize that the reasons he has given for running are not what brings him to run for Congress. 


In evaluating the plausibility of this causal view, I will be employing two kinds of claims as a guide to which causal connections exist in a given case.  First, I will employ counterfactuals.  One theory of causation is a counterfactual theory, on which to say that one event or state is the cause of another is to say (roughly) that, were the first event or state absent, the second would be absent as well.[9]  There are many problems with this theory of causation,[10] one of which is especially pertinent here.  For, at most, the counterfactual theory of causation is only adequate for deterministic causation, and is wholly implausible regarding probabilistic causality.  In order to address this concern, I will also look at the issue of probability enhancement by proposed causal factors, in addition to the counterfactuals to be examined.  In each case, I do not presume that the concept of causality can be analyzed or explicated in terms of these notions.  I only presuppose that the existence or lack of such is good evidence regarding the existence of causal connections.  In the case we are considering, we have sufficient evidence for thinking that Jim's running for Congress is the result of his irrational desire because, if Jim's irrational desire were absent, he would quit the campaign.   Perhaps he would become a beach bum instead. 

When Jim's self‑awareness increases, Jim comes to realize that the reasons he has been offering for his behavior (i) did not originally prompt the behavior, (ii) have not, in the past, sustained the behavior, and (iii) do not now sustain the behavior.  Regarding this third fact, what Jim realizes is that he is so constituted at present that the reasons he has offered do not even enhance the probability of his running, even if we were to control for the causal force of his irrational desire.  Upon con­fronting these rather disturbing facts, Jim then reasons as follows:  "the inadequate motivations both past and present are regret­table and everything possible ought to be done to alter them; but, until this alteration can be accomplished, everything possible ought to be done to maintain some motivation or other to keep running for Congress since, after all, it is nonethe­less  true that I am extra­ordinarily good at convincing others of correct policy, that I am best qualified to serve the constituents of his district, and if persons were to attempt to quit doing everything which is done for inadequate reasons, not (as) much good would be done."  So, Jim con­cludes, he ought to do all in his power to keep the race for Congress alive in spite of his bad motiva­tions.

There is an epistemic fact about Jim which needs to be explained by a satisfactory account of justification.  How to express this fact is a bit troublesome, but we might try to put the point as follows.  Jim has made progress of a purely theoretical sort toward the goal of being perfectly rational, of achieving the justificatory ideal.  He has achieved a level of coherence between thought and action which, though not ideal, is closer to the ideal than what his prior self had achieved, first in ignorance of his true motivations and next in a quandary about what to make of the tension between his behavior and his awareness of his inadequate motivations.  The fact which must be explained is this progress. 


The explanation I will argue for is that the progress achieved is that sort attaching to the performance of the action in question which, when it obtains, justifies the performance of that action.  Of course, this explanation cannot be employed by the causal theory, because the reasoning process above does not have any causal impact on the particular behavior with which we are concerned.  Call the reasoning process in ques­tion ‘R’.  The occurrence of R is compatible with the fol­lowing truths:  (a) if Jim did not have his irrational desire, he would no longer be running for Congress; (b) even if R had not occurred, Jim would still be running for Congress; and (c) if R had occurred and Jim's irrational desire disappeared, Jim would no longer run for Congress.  Moreover, if we were to find a way to control for the effect of Jim’s irrational desire, R would have no probabilistic effect on Jim’s behavior.  Surely it is reasonable to assume that R will affect his overall behavior at some point, for that is exactly what the reasoning process shows Jim's intentions to be; but it need not have any im­mediate causal impact on his running for Congress.  We might capture this point by calling the reasoning process a meta‑motiva­tional or meta‑causal reasoning process.  If the reasoning pro­cess is a motivational one, i.e., if it is even minimally causally effica­cious with respect to the action in question, it would be quite confused; for it includes the recognition that Jim cannot, simply by wil­ling it or thinking about it, alter his motivation at present.  I shall assume, though, that Jim is not so confused.

What needs to be explained, to repeat, is the progress Jim makes in the above case.  What I shall argue is that any of the explanations open to a causal theory do not sufficiently explain this progress, and thus that the causal theory is shown to be inadequate by cases involving meta‑motivational reasoning processes.  In order to defend these claims, we need some understand­ing of the components of the justificatory ideal so we will be able to ascertain the variety of alternative explanations open to the causal theory.  This ideal requires, first, that all actions, beliefs, desires, intentions, etc., be fully justified, i.e., all actions be justified ones to perform, and all mental states be justified states in which to be.  Further, it requires that one justifiably perform all of one's actions, and justifiably be in all the rele­vant mental states in question.  Finally, this ideal ­re­quires that the person in question have certain character traits which I shall refer to loosely using the notion of being ­fully rational.  The first two re­quirements of the ideal relate, first, to the ac­tions and states themselves, and then to the relation between the person and the actions and states.  This final requirement relates to the person alone:  he/she must be fully, or ideally, rational as well.  So, we are looking for an explanation in one of these three areas for the progress that Jim has made in reconciling his running with his inade­quate motivations. 

Consider first the implications of the causal theory which give no explanation of Jim’s progress.  The causal theory denies that Jim's running is justified either before or after his discovery and resolution of his real motives, i.e., prior to Jim's discovery his running is not justified, after discovering his motivations and prior to his formulation of R his running is not justified, and after formulating R his running is not justified.  In what follows, I will refer to these three stages of this case as stages one, two, and three, respectively.  A causal theorist may say that there is an impersonal justification in all three stages for the action which Jim performs, but he must deny at each stage that Jim's performing of that action is justified. 

As we have just seen, this answer can be maintained only if the causal theory can also explain the progress Jim makes toward the justificatory ideal in some other way than by claiming he comes to have a justification for the performance of an action where he previously only had a justification for the content of the action.  We can categorize the options which a causal theory can appeal to by which to explain the movement toward the ideal as follows.  First, the theory can appeal either to some present difference in Jim or to a difference there will be in the future.  If the appeal is to some present dif­ference in Jim, the options are several: (i) the appeal may be to some internal mental state of Jim which becomes (more) justified, (ii) the appeal may be to certain acts or omissions, or aspects of certain acts or omis­sions, which undergo an increase in their level of justification, or (iii) the appeal may be that Jim, himself becomes more rational. 


As far as I can tell, there are no other options to which a causal theorist can appeal.  In order to show that the causal theory is inadequate, what needs to be done is to show that Jim's progress is compatible with no increases of the sort described in the last paragraph to which a causal theorist might appeal.  I shall begin this extended argument to eliminate the available options by considering the appeal to features of the future.  We shall see that this option is the least attractive, and thus we will devote the major portion of this elimina­tion argument to features of the present and features of Jim himself to which a causal theorist might appeal in explaining Jim's progress.

 

Features of the Future

 

The causal theorist might attempt to account for the case by claiming that the only difference is a future differ­ence.  So, for example, the causal theorist might hold that, given R, it is now true that in the future, Jim will justifiably run for Congress (perhaps when he comes up for re‑election); whereas without R, he will not.  On this option, no present difference exists except for the fact that it is now true that the future will be different than it otherwise would have been. 


This claim seems straightforwardly wrong, however.  There is clearly a present dif­ference between stages one and three, and any view which cannot explain that difference is inade­quate.  Once we have recognized our inadequate moti­vations and seen that it is better that our behavior not change, we are closer to the justificatory ideal, at that instant, than we were before.  Were we to die in the next instant, our legacy should include our having made such an advance during the final moments of our lives.  If the above explanation of the differ­ence is all that the causal theorist can offer, all he can say is that we would have made such an advance had we not expired.  Hence, the causal theorist must look at features of the present for an account of Jim's progress.

Internal Features of the Present

 

A more promising attempt looks for certain mental states to which a causal theorist might appeal to explain Jim's progress, mental states which in virtue of their enhanced justificatory state can explain Jim's progress toward ideal rationality.  The answer to the question whether there are such mental states is, I think, "no".  First, the progress is not merely a matter of increased self‑­awareness.  Jim is no more aware of himself after reconciling his inadequate motivations with his con­tinued playing than he was before that reconciliation, i.e. no increase in self‑awareness occurs between stages two and three.  Yet, progress is clearly achieved between stages two and three, so we cannot explain his progress by appeal to some increased self‑awareness.

Also, we cannot explain the progress made by an appeal to an increase in the rationality of any of Jim's beliefs or desires.  First, consider his desire to run for Congress.  If Jim's desire is to run in order to show his critics wrong, this desire has the same irrational status both before and after constructing R.  On the other hand, it might be claimed that Jim has the desire to run, after construct­ing R, in order to use his abilities for his constituents, thus making the desire to run a rational one where no such desire was rational before constructing R.   The problem with this view is that Jim need not have any such desire.  He may only intend to come to have that sort of desire, knowing (regret­tably) that his only present desire is to show his critics wrong.  So, in either case, the causal theory cannot be rescued by appeal to Jim's desire to run for Congress.

An appeal to Jim's desire or intention to alter his motivational structure is of no use either.  Jim could have added this desire or intention (and had either be justified) prior to construct­ing R and hence prior to resolving his motivations with the continuation of his cam­paign.  In other words, such a desire or intention could have been added before stage three arises, and hence before the progress which needs to be explained had been achieved.  In fact, if Jim is like the rest of us, he probably added this desire or intention in stage two prior to resolving his behavior with his motivations.  And yet his distinctive progress does not occur until stage three.  Hence, neither of these internal states can be the only explan­ation of the differ­ence in Jim's state before constructing R and after con­structing R.

The final internal state to which a causal theorist might appeal is Jim's belief that he should (continue to) run for Congress.  A causal theorist might claim that, before constructing R, this belief was not doxastically justified, for it was sustained by Jim's desire to prove his critics wrong; after con­structing R, R comes (at least in part) to sustain that belief.  Hence, the progress Jim makes is to be accounted for by noting that, before con­structing R, Jim may have had a justification for thinking that he should continue to run, but he did not justifi­ably believe that claim.  After constructing R, he comes to justifiably believe that he should continue the cam­paign. 


The difficulty with this attempt is that there is no reason to think that R must sustain in part the belief in question.  The irrational desire to prove his critics wrong may be responsible both for his behavior and for his belief that he should continue the campaign.  Jim may know this sad fact about himself, to try to sever the causal connection between his desire and this belief in addition to trying to sever the causal connection between his desire and his running for Con­gress.  Nonetheless, it is still intuitively obvious that Jim has made prog­ress; thus, appeal to the belief in ques­tion will not explain this progress.

Moreover, there is something unsatisfying about the general approach suggested here, that Jim’s progress can be explained by citing some additional mental states that are justified.  Mere numbers of unrelated beliefs, desires, intentions, or other mental states would add to Jim’s overall epistemic condition, but would not explain the unique kind of progress Jim has made.  Furthermore, the mere addition of further justified mental states about the particular issue of running for progress won’t explain his progress either.  For note that such changes are bound to occur between stages one and two, for the simple reason that new experience can be counted on to provide additional evidence for new mental attitudes.  Yet, the sense of progress that Jim makes between stages two and three is simply not there in the transition from stage one, where he is unaware of his inadequate motivations, to stage two, where he becomes aware of them.  With this new awareness comes a host of new mental attitudes about himself and his situation, attitudes which we may presume to be justified.  Some progress in terms of justification or rationality has been achieved because of this change, but it is not the distinctive kind achieved in the transition from stage two to stage three.  This fact suggests that it is not in virtue of adding justified mental states that explains the progress Jim has made.

So, it would seem, appeal to internal states cannot salvage the causal theory from the case of the ill‑motivated politician.  Let us turn then to a different area to see if it offers more hope for the causal theory, for if internal states cannot explain what needs to be explained, perhaps external features, i.e., that which counts as overt behavior by Jim, can.

 

Acts, Omissions, and Aspects of Each

 

These external features include the acts, omissions, and aspects of each which characterize or might characterize Jim at present.  One such external feature which cannot be of any use to the causal theorist is the act of running for Congress itself.  That act had a justification for it before Jim discovered his motivations for performing it, and presumab­ly the act itself is also justified after Jim constructs R.  Fur­ther, the causal theorist cannot hold that Jim justifiably performs the act either before or after constructing R, for in neither stage does that which justifies the act causally sustain his so acting.

A causal theorist might claim, though, that the act in question comes to have a greater justification, or perhaps a justifi­cation all things considered (of which Jim is aware), after constructing R.  The appeal to a greater justification, though, does not explain the advance toward the justificatory ideal.  For one can acquire a greater justification for believing, e.g., that all ravens are black just by seeing another black raven, without making any such advance.  The intuitively obvious point about Jim is that he has made that sort of progress, and since greater justification can occur without such progress, citing it in this case does not explain that progress.  Nor does the appeal to justification all things considered explain the progress.  The only way for this appeal to explain the progress would be for the act to fail to be justified, all things consid­ered, before Jim undergoes the reasoning process in question, for otherwise there would be no differ­ence (on these grounds) between the first and second stages.  Yet, when Jim was not aware of his poor motivations for running, he had a justifica­tion, all things con­sidered, for his campaign; so if we are to accept this explanation, we must hold that after finding out about his poor motiva­tions, Jim loses this justification, and then regains it after engag­ing in the reason­ing process described.  This explanation is inade­quate pre­cisely because the process from lack of awareness to reconciliation through the reasoning process involves progress toward an ideal­, whereas the proposed explanation leaves Jim at the same level after the total process as before.  Hence, this attempt fails to free the causal theory of the counterexample of the ill‑moti­vated politi­cian.

Could the causal theorist claim that Jim has greater justification than he had before for running for Congress?  I think the answer is no.  On the proposal above, Jim loses justification for running when he becomes aware of his inadequate motivations.  This information defeats whatever justified his running in the first place.  The force of the reasoning process is, then, to override the defeating information.  When such overriding occurs, the force of the original justification is reinstated, but it is not enhanced.  For enhancement to occur, some other explanation of the stages would have to be forthcoming.

Perhaps a causal theorist might appeal to however Jim is proceed­ing in attempting to alter his motivational structure.  Perhaps this act is justified and can explain Jim's progress­.

It cannot.  Jim may be doing nothing at present to even attempt to alter his motivational structure.  His intention may be simply to take any actions he can find to alter it, but he may not have found any as yet.  ­

Since there are no other actions which Jim must be performing at the time in question, perhaps a causal theorist will appeal to acts which Jim omits to perform to explain his advance in rationality.  Perhaps one might appeal to Jim's not taking steps that will alter his desires and cause him to quit the Congressional race, or to Jim's not looking for acts to undermine the effects of his inadequate motiva­tional structure.

Any such explanation is adequate only if it is the omitting which is justified, and not just the content of the omission.  If we suppose that only the omission (and not Jim's omitting) is justified, no progress will have been explained.  Rather, such in­stances present an even greater need for progress toward the ideal in question ­because, in the case at hand, if only the omission were justified, we would have a case in which an omission occurs but the omitting is not justified.  Such an explanation would add to Jim's problems regard­ing justification, not explain how he is eliminating them. 

So, any omission cited needs to be justifiably omitted.  Regarding steps which would alter his desires and cause him to quit the race, it is hard to see why one would think Jim justifiably omits such steps.  Perhaps if he had some steps in mind, he could justifiably omit them; but Jim may have no idea of how to go about altering his desires and thereby causing himself to quit the race.  There simply is no good reason to suppose that Jim justifi­ably omits such actions.

This argument does not affect Jim's omitting to look for such steps.  Jim's not looking may be justified, but it is not clear that this fact helps the causal theory.  When an absence of action is jus­tified, at least in certain types of cases, such justification obtains only because some other action (which is not an omis­sion) is justified.  The sorts of cases in which this is so are cases where the action, the omission of which is justified, has a prima facie jus­tification for it.  For example, if a doctor's failing to stop and help an accident victim is justified, it is so justified only in virtue of some other action over­riding the importance of the first (such as being needed at a more serious operation at the hospital).  In Jim’s case, looking for a way  to alter his  motivational structure is prima facie justified‑‑at least in part because it is either a part of, or inextricably linked to, Jim's per­forming an action which will alter his motivational structure (an action which Jim correctly believes to be prima facie justified).  So to say that Jim justifiably fails to look for such an action cannot be the end of the story.  For to say that an omission of a prima facie justified act is justified requires the justification of some other action which implies that the prima facie justification for the omis­sion is over­ridden. 

Thus, the difference in levels of rationality before and after having reconciled his bad motivations with continuing to run cannot be explained merely by claiming that certain omissions are justified.  That may be true, but if it is, it is only true in virtue of Jim's justifiably doing something else.  One obvious option here is that it is justified in virtue of its understood relationship to Jim’s running for Congress in spite of his inadequate motivations, but that explanation is not open to the causal theory.  For it would first have to be granted that Jim’s running is itself personally justified since its impersonal justification is no different from stage one to stage three.  Without appeal to this action and its justification, however, it is hard to see where to find an action whose justification confers justification on the omission in question.  So we must conclude that this attempt at an explanation is only as ­good as some other one as yet forthcom­ing.


The only remaining alternative is to claim that some of Jim's actions, or some aspects of his action, are justified while some others are not.  The causal theor­ist might hold that Jim's running is not justified, though his attempting to help his constituents is.  Or he might claim that Jim's running is not justified though his acting so as to alter his motivational structure is. 

This approach does not work either.  For the aspects of the action, or the different acts (however one chooses to individuate actions), are inextricably linked.  Perhaps some of the elements are prima facie unjustified whereas others are prima facie jus­tified.  Given the inextricable linkage that occurs, however, none of the elements can achieve actual justificatory status without all the others achieving the same status.  There may be possible circum­stances in which the linkage is dissolved so that, say, Jim's running is not justified and yet his attempting to help his con­stituents is.  But it would be quite regrettable if this possibility were taken to imply that the justificat­ory status actually diverges.  For the only way to make sense of the transition from prima facie justification to actual justifica­tion is with refer­ence to the entire set of elements of the actual circumstances‑‑to say that a prima facie justified action is actually justified is to say that there is nothing else in the actual circumstances that overrides the prima facie justi­fication.  And to say that a prima facie unjus­tified action is not on the whole justi­fied is to say that no other action has a prima facie justification strong enough to override the prima facie lack of justifica­tion in such a way as to justify the second action.  But that is equiva­lent to requiring that the jus­tificatory status of the elements stand or fall together, given that they are all parts of the same situation.  Thus, the causal theorist cannot hold that Jim's playing is not justified whereas his using his talents is, and hence we must look elsewhere if the causal theory is to escape the case of the ill‑motivated politician. 

 

Rationality of the Person

 

The final option open to the causal theorist is to claim that, whereas no progress is made in the areas considered above, progress is made in that Jim, himself is more rational after constructing R than before.  It is, on this option, progress regarding the rationality of the person in question (rather than his (present or future) mental states, acts or omissions) which explains Jim's progress.

In order to evaluate this attempt to rescue a causal theory, we must consider what it is for a person to be rational.  When we claim that a person is rational, there are two things we might be claiming:  first, we may be saying something about the collec­tion of actual beliefs, actions, etc., of the person and noting that the collection is con­stituted by a sufficiently high degree of rational beliefs, actions, etc., to warrant calling the person a rational one; or, alternative­ly, we may be claiming that a positive evaluation applies to the character of that person.  The first option is ruled out by the above discussion of the internal and external features of the case of the ill‑motivated politician, for all the same points can be made about the presence of rational belief and action as were made about the presence of justified belief.  So let us con­centrate on the second option.  On it, to say that a person is rational is to say something about the way in which that person determines what to do and how to do it, what to believe, what and how to change, or what and how not to change.  In other words, we are saying some­thing about the disposi­tions of the person in question to proceed ra­tionally or justifiably in forming and holding beliefs, choosing actions, etc.

To return to the case of Jim, our ill‑motivated politician, the causal theory is claiming that Jim has better disposi­tions with regard to his actions, beliefs, desires, etc., after con­structing R than he had before constructing R.  There is something to be said in favor of the view that, through the process of self‑discov­ery, Jim himself becomes more rational.  Perhaps prior to learn­ing of his poor motiva­tions, he was disposed to form beliefs and perform actions in line with poor motivations; after becoming aware of his poor motivations, he is less inclined to do so.  After learning that his irrational desire can prompt his behavior, perhaps he is less likely to form a belief or perform an action when all it has in its favor is that it satisfies such an irrational desire. 

This difference is not sufficient for the causal theorist.  In the case of the politician, we have three separate stages: the first stage is where he is unaware of his poor motivations, the second is where he becomes aware of his poor motivations, and the third stage involves his reconciliation of his poor motivations with his continu­ing to play professionally.  Any advance in the rationality of Jim's character, as clarified in the last paragraph, occurs in the second stage, for his awareness of his poor motivations and the role his irrational desire can play in his behavior have already been perceived prior to the reconciliation in ques­tion.  The progress Jim makes for which we are seeking an explanation, however, occurs most obviously at stage three.  ­Hence, this explanation fails to account for the data.

It may be thought that Jim adds an intention in the third stage, so that this stage involves two distinctive elements:  first, the reconciliation about the particular bit of behavior under ques­tion and second, an intention to alter his motivational structure if he can.  It might then be claimed that the progress to be explained is that the additional intention is justified, and given its presence Jim is both better off now and will be better off in the future. 


The intention in question could just as easily have been added during the second stage, however, and if it were added at that point, it would still be the case that Jim makes progress toward ideal rationality in the third stage.  Thus, the case does not depend on the additional intention at the third stage.  Further, even if the added intention were central to the third stage, that would not explain the progress in question, for, as we saw earlier, appeals to desires, inten­tions, and increased self‑awareness on their own do not explain the distinctive advance characteristic of stage three, as opposed to stage two, which involves increased self-awareness and new mental attitudes which can be presumed to be justified.  It appears, then, that the causal theorist has no resources whatsoever by which to explain the progress Jim makes toward ideal rationality.

It is important to notice that none of my arguments against the causal view here presupposes a deterministic theory of causation.  These arguments work just as well against the proposal that Jim’s reasoning provides some degree of causal support, however minute.  It is just as possible for this reasoning to occur and have no probabilistic causal impact on his behavior as it is for it to occur without having a deterministic impact.  A denial of this possibility could be sustained only by arguing that reasons must always be causes, but such a claim wreaks havoc with the idea that Jim’s running failed initially to be personally justified.  For in stage one, Jim has reasons for what he is doing (he gives these reasons to himself and to others when asked), and hence if reasons are always causally active in some way, these reasons would have to be partial causes even in stage one.  Such a maneuver would make a defense of the causal view even more difficult than it is on the assumption that reasons need not always be causes, for if reasons are always causes, then the causal view has no interesting story to tell to distinguish doxastic from propositional justification. 

No matter how causal theorists wish to view such a problem, however, the point remains that nothing argued here presumes a non-probabilistic account of causation.  So there is nowhere for a causal theorist to turn for rescue from the case of the ill‑motivated politician.

 

Conclusion

 

The most natural account of this case is just this:  before constructing R, Jim did not possess the kind of rationality which implies that he is justifiably running for Congress; but after constructing R, his running is rational in a way which implies that it is perfectly justified.  The advance Jim makes is to be explained by his moving from performing a jus­tified action to justifiably performing that action, from performing an impersonally justified action to performing a personally justified one.

Such a conclusion gives us an account of the nature of justification that covers the variety of things to which it applies and one which fits well with Lehrer’s intuitions about the gypsy lawyer and the racist scientist.  The only relevant difference between the racist scientist and the ill-motivated politician, in this view, is that the scientist has no remorse for her racism whereas the politician has regrets for his motivational structure.  In that way, the politician is better off than the scientist.  Still, the relevant beliefs and actions are on par, being justified by the reasons available to each person, contrary to the demands of the causal account of basing. 


One may worry here that in accepting the non‑causal account of the case given above, we have lost the obvious point that there is someth­ing lacking about Jim and his relation to his Congressional campaign.  That is not so.  We can readily grant that Jim has not achieved ideal rationality, even if it turns out that the lack of rationality in his running for Congress is the last vestige of ir­rationality or lack of justification remaining among any of his acts, beliefs, intentions, desires, valua­tions, etc.  In order to be ideally rational, Jim must have a proper character; and having a proper character requires being disposed toward rationality and justification in the arenas of action, belief, desire, intention, valuation, etc.  Resolving his inadequate motivations with his continued running surely does not eliminate the character flaw he possesses, even if this event is part of the process toward character perfection. 


I close with one last word of speculation on the attractions of the causal theory.  Perhaps the more fundamental kinds of knowledge, such as perceptual knowledge, are kinds for which meta-motivational reasoning processes such as those discussed here are not possible.  Perhaps, that is, perceptual beliefs rely essentially for their justification on a causal element in perception, and no circuitous route through a meta-motivational reasoning process could make up for a faulty causal story about such beliefs.  Given the central place that perceptual knowledge plays in the construction and defense of theories of knowledge, it would be understandable for theorists to generalize from what may be true of such fundamental kinds of knowledge to all knowledge of any type.  It would still be a mistake, but an understandable one.

Endnotes

 


* This essay is written in honor of Lehrer’s luminary career in philosophy, out of deep respect for his intellectual achievements and gratitude for his acquaintance and gracious assistance throughout my career.  It is a privilege  to know him, and I dedicate this essay to a splendid human being and brilliant philosopher. 


[1].  Keith Lehrer, Knowledge, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974), pp. 124-125; “Proper Function versus Systematic Coherence,” in Jonathan L. Kvanvig, ed., Warrant in Contemporary Epistemology, (Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1996), pp. 25-46.

[2].  The common attitude is represented in discussion of the issue by John Pollock, who footnotes his claim that the basing relation is in part a causal relation as follows:  "Lehrer has argued against this, but I do not find his counterexample persuasive," (Contemporary Theories of Knowledge, (Totowa, NJ:  Rowman and Littlefield, 1986), p. 81).  He offers no argument, supplies no discussion. 

[3].  Keith Lehrer, Knowledge, pp. 124‑125.                                                                                                      

[4].  Keith Lehrer, “Proper Function versus Systematic Coherence,” pp. 33-34.                                                

[5].  See, for example, Marshall Swain, Reasons and Knowledge, (Ithaca:  Cornell University Press, 1981), chapter 3.

[6].  See "Swain on the Basing Relation," Analysis, Vol. 45, No. 3, June 1985, pp. 153‑158.  Lory Lemke criticizes my arguments in "Kvanvig and Swain on the Basing Relation," Analysis, Vol. 46, No. 3, June 1986, pp. 138‑144; I reply to his objections in "On Lemke's Defense of a Causal Basing Requirement," Analysis, Vol. 47, No. 3, June 1987, pp. 162-167. 

[7].  Robert Audi, "The Causal Structure of Indirect Justification," Journal of Philosophy, 1983, p. 406.

[8].  ibid., p.  407.                                                                                                                                          

[9].  For a developed defense of the counterfactual theory of causa­tion, see David Lewis, Counterfactuals, (Oxford:  Basil Black­well, 1973). 

[10].  See, e.g., Jaegwon Kim, "Causes and Counterfactuals," in Ernest Sosa, ed., Causation and Conditionals, (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 1975), pp. 192‑195.