C. Descripción de los aspectos socioeconómicos

What these examples do clearly establish is that what seems to us to be obvious a priori is not always true. One may be supremely confident that a belief based on a priori reasoning is true even when it is false. However it has not yet been settled whether these examples establish that the Infallibility Thesis is false. It is important to note that the Infallibility Thesis is a claim about the relation between a priori warrant, and truth: it holds merely that if p really is warranted a priori, then it is true. This thesis does not entail that if p seems a priori obvious to subject S, then p is true. For p seeming a priori obvious to S, is not sufficient for S having a priori warrant for believing that p.

What the previous chapter established is that there is a dialectical move available to the infallibility theorist that has not yet been taken seriously: that is, she might claim that these above examples are simply cases of blameless but yet unwarranted belief. If this move is a plausible one, then we have not yet produced counter-examples to the claim that a priori warrant is infallible, or truth

guaranteeing.

Now all three of these examples are cases where a person arrives at a (false) belief on the basis of some sort of a priori reasoning. What we need to establish is whether the kind of reasoning exhibited in these examples is in compliance with the relevant epistemic norms. So what needs to be made clear at this stage is how to distinguish reasoning that is in compliance with epistemic norms from reasoning that is not.

However, as I argued in the previous chapter, it is perfectly possible for us to mistake a doxastic rule for a genuine epistemic norm: that is, while it might seem to

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us that some belief-forming method or inferential principle is perfectly acceptable, it might turn out that we are wrong about this. The sort of reasoning involved in Gambler’s Fallacy strikes many gamblers as eminently reasonable: this does not alter the fact that it is not.

What this indicates, then, is that just because a person takes herself to be reasoning in a perfectly correct manner, it does not follow that she is.

So in determining whether the above examples are indeed examples of a priori warranted but false beliefs, we must determine whether the doxastic rule the believer is following in each of the above examples is an epistemic norm or a mere doxastic rule.

At this point is it worth briefly considering what following a rule entails. I do not hope to put forward a thoroughgoing account of rule-following here: such a task would take us too far off-course. All I want to make clear is that there is a distinction between following a rule, and acting in a way that is consistent with a rule. Suppose a chimpanzee is put in front of a chess board, and, purely at random, he picks up a pawn and moves it one square further forward. This action is

consistent with the rules of chess but the chimpanzee is not following the rules of chess: he is simply moving pieces about at random.

For my action to be following a rule, it must be the case that, at the very least, the rule explains the action. While it is far from obvious that this is a sufficient condition for following a rule, it is uncontroversial that it is a necessary condition. To say that a rule explains my action is simply to say that I acted as I did at least partly because of ‘some appropriate relation’ (Boghossian, 2008, p. 10) that obtains between the rule and my action. This leaves it entirely open-ended what the

appropriate relation might consist in. Boghossian, for example, thinks that the appropriate relation in question is one that makes the explanation a rationalizing explanation. He says:

However the notion of acceptance [of a rule] is understood, what is important is that, in any given case of rule-following, we have

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of rule acceptance; and some nondeviant causal chain leading from that state to a piece of behaviour that would allow us to say that the accepted rule explains and rationalizes the behaviour. (Boghossian 2008, p. 11)

Burge, on the other hand, would find this view to be an example of ‘hyper-

intellectualization’ (Burge, 2010, p. 314), since some rules are ‘basic, natural norms’ that apply not only to us, but also to non-rational, unreflective creatures.4 Yet he still thinks that even basic, natural norms must play some sort of appropriate explanatory role; just not (necessarily?) a rationalizing one:

An individual need not understand or be guided by the norms, or by any other general principles, even though general principles help

explain the individual’s actions. Basic natural norms apply to such

agency even if an individual cannot understand or be guided by them. (Burge 2010, p. 340 my emphasis)

However, he does not specify what this explanatory role may or may not consist in. Complications about what sort of explanations suffice for rule-following aside, it is clear that the first step in assessing whether or not a person is genuinely following a norm is considering whether that norm could plausibly be construed as

4

It would be interesting to see what Boghossian makes of this account. At the end of Boghossian 2008, he speculates that a primitivist account of rule-following with regard to epistemic norms might be the best way to avoid an infinite regress problem. A primitivist account is one where our reliance on epistemic norms is not something that itself requires justification; it would be one where: ‘we take as primitive a general (often conditional) content serving as the reason for which one believes something; without this being mediated by inference of any kind’ (Boghossian, 2008: p. 29). The inference Boghossian is concerned about here is the one that supposedly takes place when we recall a rule, and infer from it to what we ought to do (or believe) in our current situation. Boghossian argues that this inference itself requires justification, which sparks an infinite regress: employing an epistemic norm involves performing an inference from general rule to particular belief, which itself would require employing another epistemic norm, which in turn requires another inferential step. Given Burge is at pains to deny that basic norms inform or guide our actions and beliefs in the way this picture of rule-following suggests, he is offering precisely the primitivist account Boghossian was speculating about.

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an explanation for the person’s action. If it could not, then we have established that the person is certainly not following that norm.

As such, when we consider these examples of supposedly a priori

warranted, but false beliefs, it is important that we keep in mind not only whether their beliefs were a result of a belief-forming procedure that is consistent with a genuine epistemic norm, but also whether that epistemic norm could plausibly explain the belief in question. To be genuinely following an epistemic norm, it cannot, for example, be purely accidental that one is reasoning in the way that one is.