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Are Evolutionary Debunking Arguments Self-Debunking?

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Abstract

I argue that, at least on the assumption that if there are epistemic facts they are irreducible, the evolutionary debunking maneuver is prima facie self-debunking because it seems to debunk a certain class of facts, namely, epistemic facts that prima facie it needs to rely on in order to launch its debunking arguments. I then appeal to two recent reconstructions of the evolutionary debunking maneuver (Kahane (2011), Griffiths and Wilkins (2015)) and found them wanting. Along the way I set aside two ways (one envisaged, the other by Sterpetti (2015)) to avoid the self-debunking problem that I find unpromising. I conclude that the evolutionary debunking maneuver needs to clarify the meta-epistemological commitments upon which it is supposed to operate.

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Notes

  1. See, for example, Gibbard (1990), Dennett (1995), Ruse (1995), Dawkins (2006a), Kitcher (2007), Street (2006, 2009), Joyce (2007), Atran and Heinrich (2010), De Cruz et al. (2011), Haidt (2012) and Griffiths and Wilkins (2015). For critical reactions, see Kahane (2011), Shafer-Landau (2012), Enoch (2013), Vavova (2014), Cuneo and Shafer-Landau (2014), FitzPatrick (2015) and Das (2016).

  2. Indeed, evolutionary debunking arguments have been applied to ontology itself. For example, Korman (2014) has explored how such arguments apply to ordinary objects ontology, although he eventually remains optimistic that ordinary objects realism can withstand such arguments.

  3. The reconstruction of evolutionary debunking arguments I provide is similar to Kahane’s (2011:111). I will later on discuss Kahane’s (2011) reconstruction.

  4. The normative, epistemic premise may be explicated in different ways and result in different versions of a debunking argument. Shafer-Landau (2012) distinguishes at least five different variations of what he calls ‘the Darwinian Debunking Argument’. One basic form of the argument suggests that evolutionary theory renders the existence of normative properties, norms and facts explanatorily redundant and therefore unnecessary to postulate. Another basic form of evolutionary debunking argument, the argument from causal tracking, suggests that given that normative properties, facts etc. do not seem natural, it is very unclear how we could causally be responsive to and track such facts if they existed. But if there were such facts, we would be in position to have such causal tracking while we are not. Therefore, it is unlikely that there are such facts. A third version of the argument builds on the prima facie causal inefficacy of normative facts and suggests that this constitutes sufficient reason to debunk their existence. However, no matter what particular form such evolutionary arguments might take, the important thing for current purposes is that they render the existence of normative ontology implausible.

  5. Trivially, any argument that is self-debunking is self-defeating and self-defeating arguments undermine themselves. Thus, they provide us with good epistemic reason to reject them. Of note is that we are concerned here with epistemic self-defeat that implies undercutting (e.g. Descartes’ cogito) and which is to be distinguished from the stronger logical self-defeat that implies contradiction and rebutting (e.g. the self-referential semantic paradoxes). Epistemic self-defeat provides us with pro tanto sufficient epistemic reason to reject an argument. See Fumerton (1995:43–53) for some discussion of the distinction between epistemic and logical\formal self-defeat.

  6. It might seem uncharitable to the debunker to ask epistemic meta-questions in realist-framed terms because the debunker exactly debunks a realist framework and, therefore, denies it in principle. However, there is no pro-realist bias in asking epistemic meta-questions in realist-framed terms because epistemic appearances indicate that the default epistemic framework to be assumed is realist. Thus, epistemic appearances provide us with an independent, Moorean reason why realism is the default framework. That is, insofar as ordinary epistemic appearances go, the debunker is committed to epistemic realism (cf. Kyriacou (2016:section 2)). It is only further arguments against the veridicality of these realist appearances that can force the realist framework to give way to an antirealist one and, of course, these further arguments is what it is at issue. Thanks to an anonymous referee for pressing this worry.

  7. See Plantinga’s (1993:216–37) ‘evolutionary argument against naturalism’ and De Cruz et al. (2011:521–2) for different versions of similar epistemic self-defeat worries. They both frame the problem in terms of the reliability of cognitive processes. However, both Plantinga (1993) and De Cruz et al. (2011) do not press the worry at the fundamental metaepistemological-ontological level as we do here (and as they should, I think). Vavova (2014) does press the self-defeat worry at the metanormative-ontological (moral and epistemic) level and, correctly I think, suggests that the evolutionary debunking maneuver is prima facie epistemically self-defeating. Of note is that self-defeat arguments against epistemic antirealists have a celebrated history going all the way back to Plato’s Theaetetus. See Burnyeat (1976) for some scholarly discussion of Plato’s own argument against Protagorean relativism.

  8. See Cuneo (2007) and Cuneo and Kyriacou (2017) for a detailed defense of the claim that epistemic facts are normative just as moral facts are. A similar idea was famously voiced by Clifford (1877) and it is widely accepted: see Fumerton (1995), Feldman (2002), Foley (1987), Alston (2006) and Greco (2011). As we shall see, some debunkers might be tempted to deny this intuitive assumption in order to evade the self-debunking problem. They might opt to suggest with some (e.g. Heathwood (2009)) that epistemic facts are reducible to nonnormative, descriptive facts.

  9. See for instance Joyce’s (2007), Kitcher’s (2007) and Street’s (2006, 2009) debunking of normative facts. Street (2006, 2009) clearly intends her debunking argument to carry over to the epistemic domain.

  10. See Kvanvig (2003), Boghossian (2007), Blackburn (2006), Cuneo (2007), Lynch (2009) Rowland (2013) and C. Kyriacou (Expressivism, Question Substitution and Evolutionary Debunking, unpublished) for various self-defeat arguments against various sorts of epistemic antirealists.

  11. Indeed, it leads to global skepticism about justification\reasons for belief that even more moderate, local skeptics (e.g. about testimony) would find abhorrent. Compare Fumerton (1995:50): “…all strong global skepticism is self-refuting. If one concludes that one has no epistemic reason for believing anything at all, then it follows that one has no epistemic reason for believing that one has no epistemic reason for believing anything at all…That is precisely why so few skeptics have been strong global skeptics”. Yet the evolutionary debunking of epistemic justification seems to imply this strong global form of skepticism. For a defiant global skeptic about knowledge and justification see Unger (1975). Also, it might be objected that it is only if we assume a traditional understanding of epistemology that debunking arguments lead to skepticism. If we assume less traditional naturalistic approaches to epistemology, debunking arguments do not lead to skepticism. This is a possible scenario, but this is something to be argued and not to be assumed. If, for instance, less traditional approaches to epistemology are not plausible, then we are saved of skepticism but at the price of epistemology (see Kim (1988) for this worry). It is precisely for this reason that debunkers need to clarify their meta-epistemological commitments.

  12. Epistemic naturalistic reductionism could be either analytic (cf. Heathwood (2009) or synthetic (cf. Jenkins (2007)). Like moral reductionism, epistemic reductionism faces a number of important challenges (semantic, psychological, ontological etc.), such as a classic Moorean open question argument in the analytic case and a sophisticated neoMoorean open question argument in the synthetic case (cf. see Timmons’ and Horgans’ (1992) twin earth argument). For a recent application of the Moorean open question argument to epistemic concepts see Greco (2015). However, Heathwood’s (2009) argument has been independently criticized as implausible (cf. Rowland (2013), Cuneo and Kyriacou (2017)). I cannot afford to go into the matter here but, first, he seems to misuse an epistemic open question argument and, second, to have a dubious take on probability. At any rate, whether we could be naturalists and epistemic realists in a way that defuses the self-debunking problem is something to be shown, not assumed. Besides, this is the whole point of the paper, namely, to indicate that the self-debunking problem puts pressure on debunkers to clarify their meta-epistemological commitments.

  13. Epistemic constructivism has been a generally underexplored position (though see Warenski L, What is Metaepistemological Constructivism?, unpublished), and to some extent Street (2006, 2008, 2009). Although Street (2006, 2009) is a moral and epistemic debunker and a moral constructivist (2008), as far as I know, she has not done much positive work on epistemic constructivism in particular. She only outlines two ways epistemic constructivism could go (2009:2435). At any rate, Boghossian (2007:Ch.3) traces the view to Goodman, Putnam and Rorty, formulates it and subjects it to criticism (2007:38–41).

  14. Another reductionist position would be Goldman’s (1992) process reliabilism. As we shall see, the Milvian Bridge principle of Griffiths’ and Wilkins’ (2015) seems to assume process reliabilism as an epistemological theory, but this is no particular help with the self-debunking problem at the metaepistemological level. For one thing, it is of no particular help with the problem because the Milvian Bridge principle seems to deny reliability in regard to epistemic facts, which again implies epistemic self-defeat and self-debunking.

  15. See Cuneo and Kyriacou (2017) and Rowland (2013) for criticism of epistemic reductionism. See also Greco (2015) for the application of a Moorean, open question argument to epistemic reductionism.

  16. See Boghossian (2007:38–41) for criticism of epistemic constructivism along similar lines. He takes the problem of disagreement to be particularly sharp.

  17. Of note is that the ‘the problem of acquiescence to normative authority’ is sufficiently similar to Enoch’s (2006, 2011) well-known ‘schmagency challenge’ to Kantian constructivism in ethics, so the same style of challenge would apply to epistemic constructivism.

  18. See Kappel (2011) and Carter and Chrisman (2012) for a defense of epistemic expressivism, Olson (2010, 2011) for a defense of epistemic error theory and Kusch (2010) and MacFarlane (2014) for a defense of epistemic relativism. See C. Kyriacou (Expressivism, Question Substitution and Evolutionary Debunking, unpublished) for a reaction to Carter and Chrisman (2012).

  19. That is, without any extra metaphysical baggage, especially non-natural or supernatural baggage that would sit ill with a naturalistic framework. Of course, the standard understanding of evolution is unguided Darwinian evolution (cf. Dawkins (2006b)) and this is to be distinguished from guided Plantingian theistic evolution. In the broadly Reidian, Plantingian (1993) framework, God somehow orchestrates the evolutionary process towards ‘design’ of minimally reliable cognitive faculties for morality, religion, aesthetics, logic, epistemology etc. In this scheme of things, there is no danger for the epistemology of morality, religion, epistemology etc. and of course no evolutionary debunking arguments and no threat of self-debunking. That being said, the Plantingian is required to independently justify guided theistic evolution, which raises a whole host of difficult questions. For example, how does God ‘orchestrate’ the evolutionary process? Thanks to an anonymous referee who has asked to distinguish the two understandings of evolution.

  20. The causal premise is implausible in the sense that it completely ignores the inevitable cultural\environmental stimulation and influence on our doxastic practices. Kahane (2011:18) has precisely made the point that the diversity of normative beliefs over cultures “makes the suggestion that all evaluative beliefs can be given a straightforward evolutionary [debunking] explanation extremely implausible”. As Ruse (1995: 158) also notes, our evolutionary nature constrains culture but this is not to say that it predetermines the exact development of culture. “Rather, in a sense sits on top of a bed of biological constraints and dispositions”. Therefore, evolution singlehandedly does not explain the sort of evaluative beliefs we have. It should also take into account cultural influences and their interplay with evolved cognitive dispositions.

  21. It might be objected that we accept the epistemic premise on the basis of evolutionary theory, which is independently scientifically justified and, therefore, there is no self-defeat problem. But this way of presenting the problem belies what it is really at stake: if there is no justification facts, properties etc. then it seems idle to appeal to scientific ‘justification’ because there is none. So, the epistemic premise would still seem self-defeating if there are no epistemic facts, in spite of appeal to scientific ‘justification’. Of course, there may be ways to go around the problem and salvage scientific (and other) justification without commitment to robust epistemic facts and properties, but again this is something to be shown and not to be assumed.

  22. Olson (2010, 2011) has tried a kind of similar approach in his defense of moral and epistemic error theory against the self-defeat worry (cf. Cuneo 2007). He distinguishes between first-order moral\epistemic theory and second-order, metaethical\metaepistemological theory and suggests that his error theory applies only to the first-order theory. This, though, leads to a dilemma. Either his error-theory applies only to the first-order level or not. On the one hand, if it applies only to the first-order level, then it seems ad hoc to apply it only to the first-order level. Why not apply it to the second level, which is also in need of a theory? On the other hand, if it applies to the second–order level, then an infinite regress looms. Why not apply it to a third-level, and then a fourth-order level and so on ad infinitum. Both horns of the dilemma seem hard to follow. Note that the epistemic antireductionist realist can avoid the regress if she appeals to a priori foundational epistemic facts, like the Humean injunction that ‘we ought to proportionate belief to evidence’. Such facts could be true in virtue of conceptual content. For an analogous proposal in regard to moral facts see Cuneo and Shafer-Landau (2014). For some criticism of Olson’s (2010, 2011) epistemic error theory, see Rowland (2013).

  23. Sterpetti (2015) is concerned with scientific reasoning instead of epistemic reasoning more broadly. He also understands the epistemic premise in terms of evolution’s non-truth-trackingness tout court, not mere evaluative non-truth-trackingness. As far as I can see, these differences have no direct bearing on the discussion and I therefore ignore the complications.

  24. Although Sterpetti (2015) takes his inspiration from a similar argument in the context of the discussion of a self-defeat problem that Godel’s second incompleteness theorem gives rise to, such arguments are not novel. This ‘biting the bullet’ line of thought is the one ancient pyrrhonists followed in order to avoid epistemic self-defeat for similar reasons- at the price of pyrrhonist skepticism, of course. But the difference of Sterpetti with the pyrrhonist is that the pyrrhonist insists on suspense of judgment rather than claiming that we can positively assert that since scientific reasoning is not truth-tracking, there is no self-defeat for the evolutionary debunking maneuver because it is itself not truth-tracking. See Sextus Empiricus’ (1933).

  25. See Chakravartty (2011) for a discussion of scientific realism.

  26. See Unger (1975), Williamson (2000) and Pagin (2014) for the knowledge norm of assertion.

  27. They call it ‘the Milvian Bridge’ principle after the homonymous battle (312 AD) of Constantine the Great that allegedly Constantine won due to the truth of Christianity. The idea is that Constantine won due to the perceived truth of Christianity that helped galvanize the morale of his troops, independently of whether Christianity is really true. In analogy, moral, religious and other talk and thought may have been adaptive although there are no corresponding moral and religious facts\truth. Such talk and thought is useful but it doesn’t correspond to anything. In motto, pragmatic success is one thing, truth another.

  28. A similar principle seems to be at least implicit in the work of Street (2006, 2009).

  29. Compare Ruse (1995:183): “Although there may not be an objective necessity in the world…it is part of our evolved nature that we are inclined to think that there is such a necessity in the world. Because we are thus deluded by our biology, we act in ways that are advantageous to us.”

  30. See Mackie (1977) for a classic statement of these worries in regard to moral facts and Olson (2010, 2011) about epistemic facts. Recall also of Street’s (2006, 2009) evolutionary version of this challenge in regard to normative facts more generally.

  31. Such self-defeat arguments are often run by anti-reductionists against naturalistic metaphysical principles. See for example Shafer-Landau (2003: 110–4) on the Shoemakerian ‘causal criterion of ontological legitimacy’.

  32. See Cuneo and Shafer-Landau (2014:427–8) and Huemer (2008:216) for a similar point. Also, it might be observed that we should not conflate between evolved ‘innate beliefs’ and ‘innate cognitive abilities’. The Milvian Bridge principle might not be innate, of course, but it is on the basis of innate cognitive abilities (such as reflection and perception) that we come to develop science (and the Milvian Bridge principle) and there is nothing objectionable to that. Newton developed the law of universal gravitation with the same cognitive tools and there is nothing objectionable to that. In response, the fact that scientific theories develop out of evolved cognitive abilities does not really help with the self-debunking problem for the Milvian Bridge principle. In the absence of epistemic facts, it remains prima facie self-debunking. To repeat, there may be non-traditional epistemological ways to rescue evolutionary debunking arguments (e.g. antirealist) and account for the fact that our scientific theories are justified, but this something to be argued and not to be assumed. Thanks to an anonymous referee.

  33. See Vavova (2014:12) for a similar point against evolutionary normative debunking.

  34. Such an epistemically realist position could dovetail with Enoch’s (2013) defense of moral realism by appeal to the practical indispensability of moral facts. In the epistemic case, epistemic facts would be epistemically indispensable for theoretical reasoning. Perhaps we could also -following Cuneo’s and Shafer-Landau’s (2014) case for ‘moral fixed points’ of conceptual truths- understand these epistemic facts as ‘epistemic fixed points’ of conceptual truths. But these are topics we cannot discuss here.

  35. Of late, the a priori is not seen with as much Quinean skepticism (1953). See Bonjour (1998) for a defense of a priori justification and Cuneo and Shafer-Landau (2014) for a defense of moral a priori, what they call ‘moral fixed points’. If the moral-epistemic normative parity holds and the Cuneo-Shafer-Landau argument is sound, there may also exist epistemic fixed points.

  36. Compare Cuneo and Shafer-Landau (2014:427): “…For one thing, beliefs to the effect that certain propositions are conceptual truths are sufficiently abstract that they are likely to be at many removes from susceptibility to the pressures of natural selection. Moreover, while our abilities to understand conceptual truths and to appreciate their modal status are neither especially adaptive nor maladaptive, such abilities are the natural extension of more general powers of reasoning that are themselves surely fitness-enhancing. In this respect, these advanced cognitive skills are just like those that enable us to excel at quantum physics or set theory.”

  37. See FitzPatrick (2015) and Das (2016: section 2) for discussion of the point. Compare FitzPatrick (2015:883): “…evolutionary debunking arguments…rely on strong explanatory claims about our moral beliefs that are simply not supported by the science unless it is supplemented by philosophical claims that just beg the question against realism from the start.”

  38. It is also to be noted that the very phenomenon biology studies, life, seems by the lights of many biologists and biochemists irreducible to more basic molecular mechanisms. So it is a moot point whether even biology’s own subject-matter is reducible. See Ball (2003:33–5) for such pessimism. Others of course are more optimistic, such as Dawkins (2006b:Ch.6).

  39. See Shafer-Landau (2003:64) and Das (2016: 418–9, ftn. 3) for similar points. Of note is that we could have an even stronger form of naturalism than strong reductionism: eliminativist naturalism such as Churchland (1981) about mental states, Garner (2007) about morality and Dawkins (2006a) about religion.

  40. For some responses to Street (2006), see Brosnan (2011), Setiya (2012), Enoch (2013), Vavova (2014), Cuneo and Shafer-Landau (2014), FitzPatrick (2015), and Das (2016).

  41. A particularly acute challenge for the realist is the Benacerraff-Field-Street style of challenge as applied to epistemic facts: to explain why if there are epistemic facts we can non-coincidentally and reliably track these facts. I suppose one negative response is that epistemic facts are fundamental and indispensable for any justified reasoning and denying some minimal reliability of tracking would render any reasoning unjustified. That would be a prima facie reductio result for the challenge. Still we would need a positive account of how such tracking works, if there is to be one. One idea is to suggest, dovetailing Cuneo’s and Shafer-Landau’s (2014) account of moral conceptual truths, that there are indispensable epistemic conceptual truths. These are truths in virtue of the meaning of the constituent concepts and no causal tracking (as in perception) is involved. Conceptual competence would suffice for understanding such truths. I suppose a good candidate for an epistemic fixed point is: knowledge entails truth. But these matters would take us too far afield.

  42. See also how Heathwood (2009) runs a Euthyphronic argument in order to show that epistemic reasonability depends on objective probability facts.

  43. Compare Street (2008:225): “things are good, valuable, and required ultimately because we take them to be”.

  44. Compare Vavova (2014: 12): “The debunker aims to give us good reason to believe that we cannot trust our beliefs about reasons for belief. But this itself –what the debunker wants to give us- is a reason for belief. So we cannot trust it. We are therefore not permitted to take for granted the very thing we need to call our evaluative beliefs into question…what we are supposed to be mistaken about includes, crucially, epistemic principles about how to revise our beliefs in light of evidence”. Also, for an indispensability argument in favor of irreducible moral facts see Enoch (2013). It is anyone’s guess that the same kind of reasoning, in light of the profound normative analogues between the moral and the epistemic, could as easily apply to irreducible epistemic facts.

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Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Fabio Sterpetti for helpful correspondence, two anonymous referees as well as the participants of a workshop at the University of Amsterdam in 2015 for helpful discussion.

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  1. Department of Classics and Philosophy, University of Cyprus, Nicosia, 1678, Cyprus

    Christos Kyriacou

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  1. Christos Kyriacou
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Kyriacou, C. Are Evolutionary Debunking Arguments Self-Debunking?. Philosophia 44, 1351–1366 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-016-9780-1

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