If you’re like me, you sometimes dismiss relevant counterarguments for which you can’t, even after reasonably lengthy attempts, produce more than some vague and unconvincing suggestion of where and how the argument breaks down. When it comes to those controversial beliefs for which you have substantial epistemic support—the controversial beliefs that count as
knowledge—knowledge can survive closed-minded dismissal of these counterarguments nonetheless. After all, what’s the greater miracle—that your well-supported belief is wrong or that some clever person has come up with a misleading argument in which you cannot find a hole? The latter happens—at least to me—all the time.
Tom Kelly marshals a similar argument:
In deciding how to respond to any argument which appears to be flawless, one is in effect in the position of performing an inference to the best explanation . . . If . . . the better explanation of one’s failure is one’s own cognitive limitations, then one should remain unmoved in the face of the argument . . . Notice that, if this is dogmatism, there is a respect in which it is an unusually modest variety. For when one reasons in this way, one’s refusal to change one’s beliefs is due to the weight that one gives to one’s own cognitive limitations. (2005, 183)
Intellectual modesty is normally thought to require uncertainty in your beliefs. Kelly’s point is that intellectual modesty requires you to be just as leery about your ability to expose flaws in relevant counterarguments. Just because you can’t expose flaws in some relevant counterargument doesn’t mean that flaws aren’t there. This is especially so when those
counterarguments rely on evidence-types or methods with which you lack sufficient familiarity. If you are an expert on some subject, then this situation might not arise often; perhaps you can
usually expose flaws in misleading arguments. But it can happen often with respect to arguments for or against “lay” propositions: propositions about whose subject you lack special training.
Apparently flawless arguments against controversial lay propositions shouldn’t be too surprising. After all, there are apparently flawless arguments even for the uncontroversial and obvious falsehoods that nothing moves and that I am not bald. If there are apparently flawless arguments for propositions as obviously and uncontroversially false as those, then there could easily be apparently flawless counterarguments against any controversial lay proposition—even those controversial lay propositions you know.15 This is the first step in the argument for
dogmatismFL:
(The Principle of Modesty) For any controversial lay proposition you know, there could easily be an apparently flawless relevant counterargument.
Suppose you know some controversial lay proposition, p. Because p is controversial, there are smart people with an interest in devising convincing arguments for not-p. Many of the smart people who devise those arguments would be convinced by them even if they had all of your evidence for p. Therefore, those arguments are relevant counterarguments. Because p is a lay proposition, many of those arguments will employ methods or evidence-types you can’t reliably evaluate. As a result, you won’t be able to expose flaws in many of those arguments. And because the people who devised them are smart, one of the arguments could easily be an
argument each step of which seems compelling. Therefore, for any controversial lay proposition you know, there could easily be an apparently flawless relevant counterargument. That’s the Principle of Modesty.
15 An argument is only apparently flawless when you’ve actually examined it, find the steps compelling, and are
unable to expose a flaw. So, strictly speaking, when you haven’t examined an argument, it couldn’t easily be apparently flawless. When I say that there could easily be an apparently flawless relevant counterargument, I mean that there could easily be an argument such that, were you to examine it, it would be apparently flawless.
46
Whether there “could easily” be apparently flawless arguments for not-p is an epistemic matter. If your epistemic position excludes the possibility that there are apparently flawless arguments for not-p, then not only couldn’t there easily be such arguments, there couldn’t be such arguments, period. If your epistemic position is consistent with there being such arguments, but makes the existence of such arguments extremely unlikely, then though there could be such arguments, there couldn’t easily be such arguments. But if your epistemic position allows some significant chance that there are such arguments, even if your epistemic position leans against the existence of such arguments, then there could easily be such arguments.
On this epistemic construal of “could easily,” whether there could easily be an apparently flawless relevant counterargument might depend on how versed you are in the literature. If you have made the Holocaust or evolution your life’s work and have seen pretty much all the contrary arguments that are likely to be on offer and feel justly confident you have exposed all their flaws, then it might not be the case that there could easily be apparently flawless relevant counterarguments. But this is not so for most people’s controversial beliefs, because most people are not extremely well versed in the literature about most of the controversial propositions they believe. p, though, is a controversial lay proposition. So, there could easily be an apparently flawless relevant argument that not-p.
Does the fact that there could easily be an apparently flawless argument that not-p mean that you don’t know that p? It had better not. Because if it does, then many people fail to know that things move simply because they can’t figure out how Zeno’s arguments go wrong. For many people, there is an apparently flawless argument that nothing moves. If knowledge can survive an apparently flawless counterargument, then knowledge can survive it being the case that there could easily be an apparently flawless counterargument. So the mere fact that there
could easily be an apparently flawless argument that some controversial proposition is true does not by itself mean that you don’t know that the proposition is false: your knowing p is consistent with it being the case that there could easily be an apparently flawless argument that not-p.
Nothing in the nature of beliefs about controversial propositions entails that— controversiality aside—it is impossible to have very strong support for those propositions: support that in many other cases would suffice for knowledge.16 Controversial propositions— again, controversiality aside—can enjoy very high levels of evidential support, be true, be unGettiered, etc. Some of the propositions in question are theoretical or abstract, but that alone doesn’t preclude having very strong support for them. We all know a range of theoretical and abstract propositions. In any case, many controversial propositions are not theoretical. They are about the approximate age of the earth, whether a certain person was guilty of sexual harassment, and the number of people killed in the Holocaust.
Nor does anything in the nature of beliefs about controversial propositions entail that— controversiality aside—you are prevented from having extremely strong support just because you are a layperson. Laypeople have extremely strong support for many propositions about which they lack the relevant expertise. You have enough support, for instance, to know that the earth revolves around the sun, that the green color in plants is the result of chlorophyll, and that dead animals in rivers increase the likelihood of disease transmission downstream.17
Controversiality aside, then, you can have very strong support for the controversial lay proposition, p. But, of course, we can’t just put controversiality aside. The controversiality of p
16 Here and throughout the book I do not assume that there is any fixed level of evidential support such that when a
proposition enjoys that level of support for a believer, the proposition is true and unGettiered, and the belief is based in the right way, then the proposition is known. But I do assume that in every particular case there is some minimal (perhaps vague, but non-zero) degree of evidential support that is required for knowledge, so that falling at or below this level can be the reason why a proposition fails to be known.
48
provides two kinds of evidence that might outweigh18 your strong support for p.19 First there is the mere fact that there is disagreement about whether p. Second, there is the fact that there could easily be an apparently flawless argument that not-p. I consider the first kind of evidence below. With regard to the second, is the fact that there could easily be an apparently flawless argument that not-p guaranteed to be sufficient to outweigh otherwise very strong support for p?
Nathan Ballantyne (2015b) might be taken as arguing that the fact that there could easily be an apparently flawless argument that not-p makes it extremely difficulty to maintain
knowledge that p. Ballantyne’s concern is what he calls “the problem of unpossessed evidence” (316). The worry, with respect to many of our otherwise rational beliefs, is that when it becomes clear to us that there is a large body of evidence we aren’t aware of, and thereby becomes clear that there could easily be undefeated defeaters to our positions and arguments, otherwise rational belief becomes irrational. Ballantyne asks us to consider a case he calls WWW:
Fifteen years ago, you thought carefully about economic ideas and arguments. Then life changed. With a family and busy job, you haven’t kept pace with recent discussion. Now you wonder what has happened in the intervening years, so you search on Google and JSTOR with some relevant keywords (‘government spending economic growth’) and your searches return thousands of results. As you quickly recognize, there are hundreds of articles and books, all potentially relevant to figuring out what to think about this one economic issue, about which you once had carefully considered views. You knew the arguments, replies, and counter-replies, and you had a good rationale for your favoured positions. It’s evident some of the recent discussion challenges your thinking. But you
18 Perhaps disagreement about p doesn’t outweigh your otherwise knowledge-level evidence for p. Perhaps
disagreement implies that you don’t have knowledge-level positive evidence for p; if knowledge-level positive evidence existed, everyone would already believe that p and there would be no disagreement. This objection is unsuccessful because it assumes, falsely, that people are always convinced by knowledge-level evidence.
19 There is another way that the salience of an apparently flawless counterargument might destroy knowledge. David
Lewis, in developing his contextualist account of knowledge, argues for a “Rule of Attention” (1996, 559), according to which mere attention to uneliminated possibilities of error can raise the standards for knowledge high enough that ascriptions of knowledge all go false. We might think that attention to the possibility or actuality of apparently flawless counterarguments is automatically knowledge-destroying in this same sense.
I disagree, for the same reasons that most subsequent contextualists differ from Lewis in requiring not mere attention, but serious attention to the possibility of error in order for the standards to be driven to knowledge- destroying heights. Knowledge survives mere non-serious attention to salience of error, and knowledge survives mere attention to apparently flawless counterarguments, as it does with Zeno’s paradox and trick arguments that 1=0. I see no reason why the situation is different when it comes to controversial propositions.
have not studied any of it. Rehearsing your earlier rationale, it still seems perfectly right to you, but you know of new evidence you do not have. (2015b, 315 ff.)
According to Ballantyne, in many cases like WWW, though you may have started with rational belief, upon learning of the unpossessed evidence, your belief is no longer rational. If you lose rational belief, I’ll suppose, then you lose knowledge too.
One way that Ballantyne considers in which your rational belief could survive confrontation with unpossessed evidence is if you have certain kinds of defeaters for that evidence. For example, you might “learn that Big Smoke, a cigarette manufacturer and proud sponsor of stock car racing, has funded scientists to investigage the longer-term health effects of smoking” and that “Big Smoke’s research team concludes that smoking is not a health hazard” (2015, 322). Though you don’t bother to investigate the details and so don’t possess the evidence that Big Smoke is presenting, you have a defeater for that evidence: Big Smoke is unreliable with respect to the evidence in question.
In the cases of interest to us, such defeaters can’t be counted on. If you had such defeaters, the various steps in the counterargument would no longer be compelling; you’d be able to dismiss them by saying, for example, that the source of the argument is an unreliable reporter of the relevant facts. Therefore, if you had such defeaters, the counterarguments that could easily exist couldn’t easily be apparently flawless. In the situations we’re concerned with, not only could there easily be arguments against your beliefs, there could easily be apparently flawless arguments.
What we have in the cases of interest are not defeaters of the sort invoked against Big Smoke, but direct positive support for your position. Ballantyne does allow this kind of defeater to save your rational belief from defeat by unpossessed evidence. If, for example, you know that “[t]he evidence I have for believing p conclusively establishes that p is true” (2015, 326) then
50
your rational belief (and, I’ll assume, knowledge) can survive unpossessed evidence you
wouldn’t be able to defeat in other ways. But, argues Ballantyne, while this kind of defeater may save your cogito-inspired rational belief that you exist, it’s not enough to save the majority of beliefs of the sort that are problematized in cases like WWW. As Ballantyne concludes, “We rarely have such powerful reasons when it comes to controversial matters in philosophy or economics, but if we do, our acquaintance with the available evidence will probably be more than casual” (2015, 326).
Ballantyne’s conclusion, then, proves not to be incompatible with the conclusion reached here: that knowledge can survive it being the case that there could easily be an apparently
flawless argument against what you know to be true. If there is a disagreement with Ballantyne, it’s a disagreement in scope. Ballantyne thinks rational belief (and, I’ll assume, knowledge) survives “rarely.” I’m not sure how to quantify the rarity of such survival, but I grant that I’m probably more optimistic than Ballantyne. I think, for example, that knowledge can survive even when your acquaintance with the available evidence is no more than casual. Knowledge about the Holocaust survives, for example, when confronted with the unpossessed evidence presented by mountains of Holocaust-denial literature. Knowledge that homosexuality isn’t a disability and isn’t something that should be prevented or “cured” survives finding out that an otherwise
excellent philosopher has presented arguments to the contrary in a keynote address.20 Knowledge that vaccines don’t cause autism survives the unread evidence offered by anti-vaxxers.
Knowledge, in these and similar cases, can survive not only when there could easily be apparently flawless arguments to the contrary, but when there are apparently flawless arguments
20 See (Hackett 2016). For a response to Swinburne’s argument see (Littlejohn 2016). For the examples of the
demand to engage with Swinburne’s arguments before dismissing them, see the discussion in the Preface to this book.
to the contrary. That’s because, when it comes to controversial propositions, that there is an apparently flawless argument that not-p is not, in general, very strong evidence for not-p,
especially when you lack the facility required to reliably evaluate that argument. There are often apparently flawless arguments for both sides of controversial propositions. But arguments on at most one of the sides have true conclusions. So, a very high proportion of those apparently flawless arguments—especially those you lack the facility to reliably evaluate—have false conclusions.
If that there is an apparently flawless argument for not-p is not in general very strong evidence for not-p, then that there merely could easily be an apparently flawless argument for not-p is even worse evidence for not-p. The mere fact that you have some prima facie evidence for not-p does not preclude your knowing that p. What then should we say about your overall support for p when, other than the ease of there being an apparently flawless argument that not-p, you have extremely strong support for p? At the very least, this: it is not guaranteed that what is otherwise extremely strong support for p is inevitably reduced to a level insufficient for
knowledge. On the contrary, often your strong support for p will swamp the quite weak evidence for not-p.
Wouldn’t the same argument that shows that the fact that there could easily be an apparently flawless argument that not-p is not very strong evidence for not-p also show that the fact that you have seemingly strong evidence for p is not very strong evidence for p? It might in some cases. But, of course, your evidence for p is not just that you have seemingly strong evidence for p. You also have the first-order evidence itself. And, the point here is that this first- order evidence, if knowledge-level strong, will often swamp the weak evidence for not-p
52
provided by the fact that there could easily be an apparently flawless argument for not-p.21 Knowing p is consistent with it being the case that there could easily be an apparently flawless argument that not-p.
Now suppose you become familiar with an apparently flawless counterargument; you find that a counterargument is apparently flawless in the sense that you come to understand the details of the counterargument but, after reasonably lengthy attempts, you fail to expose a flaw. With respect to many such arguments, this shouldn’t be very exciting news to you: there’s nothing too surprising about finding out that something that could easily be, in fact is. It’s not that finding out that there is such a counterargument can never make a difference to epistemic status. As David Christensen says, “it makes a difference whether my friend actually does disagree with me, or whether I just know she could have disagreed with me” (2007, 208). In general, evidence that could easily exist can be epistemically more forceful when you find out it actually exists. But at least in a lot of cases, the fact that it could easily exist means that it won’t make enough of a difference, when it is actually discovered, to destroy knowledge if that knowledge existed in the first place.
As an analogy, consider the Lady Galadriel’s remarks to Sam Gamgee in J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings after Sam looks in the Mirror of Galadriel and, seeing mischief and destruction taking place in his home, the Shire, commits to go home. In response, Galadriel points out to Sam, “You did not wish to go home without your master before you looked in the