El tiempo en la sala: prácticas comunicativas entre pacientes oncológicos

One could maintain that observation statements are selfexplanatory and, hence, that a gain of explanatory coherence results

-102-from the inclusion of such statements within the system. ¹⁴ How can a statement be self-explanatory? When the truth of p explains why the person believes that p. For example, suppose I believe I see blood on my shoe. How is my belief to be explained?

One explanation of why I believe that I see blood on my shoe is that I do see blood on my shoe. According to Bromberger, this explanation appeals to an exceptive principle.

15 In answering the question of why I believe that I see blood on my shoe, we are presupposing a principle affirming that no one believes that he sees blood on his shoe except when he does see blood on his shoe, or when he incorrectly takes what is on his shoe for blood, or when he is hallucinating, and so forth. If I believe that none of the other alternatives is correct and such beliefs cohere with my system of beliefs, then the statement that I see blood on my shoe explains, at least in part, why I believe that I see blood on my shoe. As a consequence, my belief is justified.

The preceding argument shows how a belief could be justified by being

self-explanatory. If what is believed is true, then the truth of the belief explains, at least in part, the existence of the belief. Of course, a fuller explanation should be forthcoming, for instance, one explaining how I happen to see blood on my shoe, perhaps because my bruised foot is bleeding, and so forth. Though the explanation is incomplete, it is acceptable as far as it goes. Moreover, those beliefs most plausibly taken to be self-explanatory in this way seem to coincide with perceptual beliefs. Hence, this sort of justification promises to provide a base of completely justified observation statements.

Memory statements seem amenable to comparable treatment.

Before turning to a critical examination of this theory, it is useful to notice its virtues.

It offers the possibility of providing justified perceptual beliefs within the context of an explanatory coherence theory without dragging in some nonexplanatory feature to account for their justification. Such beliefs are justified because the truth of the belief explains the existence of the belief, that is, the statement that a person believes what he does is explained by the statement that what he believes is true. Moreover, this explanation depends on the system of beliefs a person has, and, consequently, on other beliefs in that system, for example, those that exclude alternative explanations for the existence of the belief. The self-explanatory justification is, therefore, not a form of self-justification. The self-explanatory character of perceptual beliefs depends on explanatory coherence within a system of beliefs.

Self-explanation: An Evaluation

The proposal that justification can be obtained through self-explanation in a system of

beliefs, though promising, evokes criticism appropriate

-103-to the explana-103-tory coherence theory as a whole. It may be doubted whether the purported self-explanation is explanation at all, and it may be affirmed that the justification obtained does not depend on explanation. We shall examine these objections as they apply to the theory of justification through self-explanation and then to the more general form of the theory of justification by explanation.

First, it might be objected that the general principles involved in selfexplanation,

exceptive principles, are trivially true, and, consequently, no explanation can be based upon them. The principle that no one believes he sees something except when he does see it, or when he erroneously takes something else for it, or when he is hallucinating, and so forth, has the appearance of a tautology. It tells us no more than that no one believes that he sees something except when he sees it or when he erroneously believes that he sees it. This, it might be objected, is not a principle of explanation, but rather the barest of tautologies. Moreover, people sometimes see things they do not believe they see just as they sometimes believe they see things when they do not.

If the spot on my shoe is nail polish, not blood, then I may not believe that I see a spot of nail polish on my shoe though I do, and I may believe that I see blood on my shoe though I do not. Thus, we lack any explanatory law, exceptive or otherwise, to provide an explanatory link between what a person believes she sees and her seeing that object.

Second, it might be contended that if a person believes that she sees something immediately before herself, the existence of this belief justifies us in accepting that she sees it, at least when one has no reason to doubt that she sees what she believes she does. If her belief justifies us in concluding that she sees the object in question, then her belief must also justify her. Thus, the example illustrates a self-justified belief, but it does not depend on explanatory considerations. That a person believes that she sees something provides justification for concluding that she does see it without explaining or being explained by any other belief or statement. That is the objection.

One might defend the explanatory coherence theory against such objections either by rejecting the doctrine of self-explanatory beliefs or by maintaining that such

explanation is genuine. We cannot offer any decisive argument against the possibility of sustaining these alternatives, but neither seems tenable. Of course, these remarks are no defense of a foundation theory against a coherence theory. The way in which perceptual beliefs cohere with a system of beliefs may render them completely

justified even though the coherence is not explanatory. Coherence may be explicated in some other manner. We now turn to

-104-other criticisms of the explanatory coherence theory which point in that direction.

Justification Without Explanation: Some Examples

The first example of a completely justified belief whose justification does not depend on explanatory considerations was presented above. It is the example in which a person deduces from the Pythagorean theorem and boundary conditions that the mouse is five feet from the owl, even though he has no explanation of why this is so.

The belief is completely justified, but the justification of the belief does not depend on explanatory relations. It is enough that the person knows the Pythagorean theorem, the distance to the pole, and the height of the pole, and deduces the conclusion. He is then completely justified in his belief that the mouse is five feet from the owl, even if he has no idea how to explain that nor any idea about how to explain anything else in terms of that belief.

For a second example, suppose that David Hume in eighteenth century Edinburgh sees a dead man before him. If asked whether the dead man was sexually conceived,

Hume would reply that he was and would be justified in his belief because he would be justified in accepting that all who die are conceived. Death, however, does not explain conception any more than conception explains death. ¹⁶ The constant

conjunction Hume observed between conception and death did not indicate a causal connection. Conception does not cause death any more than death causes conception.

Neither explains the other. Moreover, the observed conjunction will cease to hold in our century and is no law when some die who were laboratory artifacts. Hume was justified in accepting that the dead man was once sexually conceived, nonetheless.

These are two examples of completely justified beliefs whose justification does not depend on explanatory relations to other beliefs. They may be neither explained nor explanatory, but are justified because they cohere, in some way independent of explanatory function, with the other beliefs within a system of beliefs. Because the beliefs that the mouse is five feet from the owl and that the dead man was once

conceived cohere with other beliefs, they are completely justified, but the coherence is not explanatory.

A defender of the explanatory coherence theory could reply to these objections that we have ignored the way in which the conclusions and premises in question function in the overall explanatory system. She might argue that those beliefs are only completely justified because of the explanatory relations of those beliefs within an overall system having a maximum of explanatory coherence. She could also claim that the

Pythagorean theorem and the general principle concerning how people

-105-come to exist are themselves completely justified because of their systematic explanatory role. Finally, she could say that such general beliefs within an overall system having a maximum of explanatory coherence are what make our conclusions justified.

It is difficult to comment on this reply without indulging in simple counterassertion.

However, with some imagination we may, I believe, construct something of an

argument. Imagine a group of people who, perhaps because of their religious beliefs, meticulously avoid asking for explanations of what they observe. They are

anti-explanationists. Antiexplanationists ask not why or how things happen but are content to observe the way things happen and rely on such observations without seeking

explanations. They pride themselves in their intellectual humility. Such people might arrive at the Pythagorean theorem from observation. They may not inquire as to why it is true and they may not have deduced it from more general axioms. Nonetheless, they might be completely justified in accepting what they derive from it, for example, that the mouse is five feet from the owl, whether or not the theorem or the conclusion derived from it contributes to the explanatory coherence of some overall system of beliefs. It would be most peculiar to affirm that what made them completely justified in accepting what they did on these matters was the explanatory role of such beliefs within the system of their beliefs. They might be wholly oblivious to such explanatory virtues, and, indeed, would be indifferent or perhaps even hostile to receiving

suggestions concerning the explanatory merits of what they believed. What makes them completely justified in accepting what they do has something to do with the way in which these beliefs cohere with a system of beliefs they have, but the coherence involved is not explanatory. Thus, explanatory coherence is not necessary for

complete justification.

It might be objected that the anti-explanationists are simply ignorant of what makes their beliefs justified. What makes their beliefs justified is the explanatory coherence of their system of beliefs, even though they have no idea that this is so. Suppose, however, that their system of beliefs based on observation, empirical generalization, and deduction from those generalizations is not sufficient to insure that anything is explained. It might, nevertheless, suffice for justification.

Some Final Objections: Weak Explanations and Competing Systems There remain two related objections which shall be mentioned because they illustrate some problems to be solved by any satisfactory form of the coherence theory,

explanatory or not. First, suppose that some

-106-hypothesis provides a better explanation of other beliefs within a system having a maximum of explanatory coherence, even though the explanation is not fully

adequate. Imagine, for example, that a man has been shot and that the maid is the prime suspect. Her fingerprints are on the gun and she admits the deed. Moreover, suppose that she has a motive. Nevertheless, imagine that she has never fired a gun previously, the spot from which she would have had to fire the gun was a good

distance from the victim, and moreover, there are footprints outside the window and in the room where the crime took place, made by boots which clearly were not worn by the maid. Even if the maid avows that she made the footprints with boots to turn suspicion away from herself and then destroyed the boots, we may have our doubts.

They hypothesis that she shot the victim may be the best explanation because we can conceive of no better one. In this situation, we would not claim to know; there is too much in doubt for that; and, even if we do believe that the maid is the killer, we would not be completely justified in accepting this. We would not think we were that well justified, nor would others.

Following the justificatory theory offered above, we would be completely justified in accepting that the maid is the killer. This suggests that we must require that a

hypothesis not only explain better than any alternative we can conceive but also be a

comparatively good explanation, good enough so that we are completely justified in accepting it. More generally, beliefs must cohere in some comparatively strong way with other beliefs within a system for such coherence, however it is explicated, to yield complete justification.

Our final objection to the explanatory coherence theory is that it has a defect characteristic of coherence theories, to wit, inconsistent statements turn out to be completely justified. Two systems of beliefs may each have a maximum of explanatory coherence and yet be inconsistent with each other. There may be two or more

systems of beliefs each having a maximum of explanatory coherence. Each may be such that no other consistent system of beliefs leaves less unexplained, and none explains what it does explain better. Consequently, a belief may cohere with one system of beliefs having a maximum of explanatory coherence while the contradictory of that belief coheres with another system of beliefs having a maximum of explanatory coherence. In the current account both beliefs would be completely justified.

One might attempt to meet this objection by (i) requiring that there be one system which is, from the standpoint of explanation, the best, or (ii) requiring that the

concept of complete justification be made relative to a system. Both these maneuvers fail. The first fails because we have no reason to believe that there is one best system from the standpoint

-107-of explanation. There are always conflicting theories concerning some aspect -107-of

experience that are equally satisfactory from the standpoint of explanation. Hence, if it is required that there be a best overall system before any belief is completely justified, we shall never be completely justified.

As for the second suggestion that complete justification be made relative to a system of beliefs, there remain two objections. First, and perhaps most important, the

question of whether a person is completely justified in accepting that p is not

answered by the announcement that he is completely justified in accepting it relative to a system B. We must ask whether a person who is completely justified in his belief relative to system B is completely justified in his belief. In other words, is system B a system to which a man may appeal to justify his beliefs completely? If B is but one of a set of systems having maximal explanatory coherence which are inconsistent with each other, then we have no way of answering this question.

We are left with the problem of inconsistent systems of beliefs having a maximum of explanatory coherence, and, consequently, inconsistent beliefs being completely justified by such systems. It is interesting to notice that the very defect of idealistic coherence theories, the inconsistency of equally coherent theories, is also a defect of the theory of explanatory coherence. Moreover, the difficulty is not hard to discern. No relation between statements suffices for complete justification. In addition to relations between statements, some other feature must be an ingredient of justification.