Transcript NOT by Argument Alone

G. Randolph Mayes
California State University Sacramento

The central thesis of this talk is that the
process of rational inquiry is not adequately
described as the examination of arguments for
and against competing views.

Rather, rational belief revision typically requires
the interaction of two distinct reasoning
processes.

Argument is one; explanation is the other.

I don’t take this to be a terribly controversial
thesis.

Most of you probably do not need to be
convinced that explanations play a central role
in rational inquiry.

But I think it is also undeniable that we
philosophers typically both represent and study
rational belief formation as the result
argumentation, not explanation.

In other words, I think most of us do not really
have a clear idea how explanation contributes
to rational inquiry.

So I want to try to get clear on this.

And ultimately I want to show how explanatory
reasoning figures explicitly into the great
debates of modern philosophy.

On what I will call the ‘standard view’ a successful
argument is one that compels rational acceptance of its
conclusion.

(As with most standard views, no actual person may
hold this view.)

On the standard view, what compels acceptance of a
conclusion is

(a) rational acceptance of the premises; and

(b) rational recognition of the validity (or strength) of the
argument.

This view pretty clearly just piggybacks on the notion of
validity.

Just as we say :


If the premises are true and the argument is valid, then
the conclusion must be true.
We also say:

If the premises are rationally accepted as true and the
argument is rationally accepted as valid, then we are
rationally required to accept (or at least not deny) the
conclusion.

A small problem arises for the standard view
when we notice that it is possible to
rationally accept false premises.

Rationalists, like Descartes, hoped very
much to show that this is not true.

But today just about everyone recognizes
that human reasoning, like human
observation, is inherently fallible.

What this means, of course, is that it is and
always will be possible to rationally accept
an argument for a false conclusion.

This in itself does not imply that the
standard view is wrong.

It only means that we are sometimes
rationally compelled to accept false
conclusions.

The real problem for the standard view can be seen
when we consider what happens when rationally
accepted conclusions come into conflict.

Suppose you currently rationally accept the following
proposition:


My spouse loves me.
But now you learn from a normally reliable source in
these matters (i.e., your spouse) that s/he does not
love you, and that s/he has in fact never really loved
you.

In other words: When the truth is
found to be lies and all the hope
within you dies… then, what?
(Rabbi Marshak quoting Grace Slick in A Serious Man.)

Well, if you are a Freudian you might
say that we either accept the new
reality, or we go into a pathological
state called denial.

In fact, however, there is nothing
pathological or irrational about rejecting
new information that tends to contradict
previously held beliefs.

In the case just described, it may be
quite reasonable to suspect anything
from a very bad joke, to blackmail, to a
sudden brain disorder, or even that you
are hallucinating or having a bad dream.

How, on the standard view, do we deal with
situations like this?

The answer is that we simply examine the
arguments.

In the given example, we have arguments for
contradictory conclusions (My wife loves me;
My wife does not love me.)

We should simply accept the conclusion with
the strongest argument.

Let’s first be clear that this is a good answer for
many situations, namely those in which one
argument is clearly stronger than the other.

But the truly troublesome (and interesting)
situations in life, in science, and in philosophy are
those in which arguments for contradictory
conclusions appear to be equally good (or bad).

The most vexing of these, because they seem to
transcend any possible resolution by argument or
‘pure reason’ Kant called the ‘antinomies’.

As you know, philosophers are not terribly
concerned about solving problems in real
time.

So our typical attitude in these matters is
that we just need to keep thinking on the
arguments and in the meantime suspend
judgment.

(Which is wonderful work if you can get it.)

But when we’re dealing with matters of practical
urgency, this isn’t really an option. We need to
make up our mind, because action of some sort is
required.

To be fair, this fact is not lost on all philosophers.

Whether to believe in God, for example, is what
William James called a ‘forced option.’

Most of our moral decisions have this feature.

So one way of putting our question is:

What is the rational response to information that
(a) would introduce a contradiction into our system of
beliefs;
(b) for which the argument is about as strong as the
argument in favor of what we presently believe;
(c) and for which suspending judgment is not a
practical option?

What other rational resources do we have?

One standard answer to this question goes
by the name of ‘minimalism.’

The basic idea is that how we treat the
new information depends on the overall
effect it will have on our current set of
beliefs.

Minimalism is the view that we should do
whatever allows us to best preserve as
many of our current beliefs as possible.

Obviously minimalism is a conservative
strategy.

The basic idea is that, all things being equal, it
is rational to prefer to avoid making radical
changes to a functional belief system.

The burden of proof is on those who would
require the biggest changes.

(If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.)


Conservatism belongs to the pragmatic philosophical
tradition. In “What Pragmatism Means,” he wrote
The process here is always the same. The individual
has a stock of old opinions already, but he meets a new
experience that puts them to a strain. Somebody
contradicts them; or in a reflective moment he
discovers that they contradict each other; or he hears of
facts with which they are incompatible; or desires arise
in him which they cease to satisfy….. This new idea is
then adopted as the true one. It preserves the older
stock of truths with a minimum of modification,
stretching them just enough to make them admit the
novelty, but conceiving that in ways as familiar as the
case leaves possible.


But conservatism can not be the whole story, and it may not
even be an essential part of the correct one.
It’s not the whole story simply because there can be many
different equally minimal changes. Just consider this set of
sentences:





Frank is my friend.
Frank deals drugs.
My friends are good people.
Drug dealers are bad people.
This is a clearly inconsistent set of sentences that can be fixed
by eliminating either of the first two claims. Both changes are
equally minimal.

Another problem is that conservatism can
be implemented simply by always rejecting
the new information when it challenges
what we currently believe.

This would be the right method for infallible
agents, but disastrous for humans.

(It should be noted, however, that we all
operate with a strong bias in favor of what
we currently believe.)

William James’ view of belief revision has much in common
with what has become known as Duhem/Quine holism.

One implication of the Duhem/Quine thesis is that our views
about the world can not be tested in isolation.

If, for example, you believe there is coffee in the pantry, and
you look to find no coffee in the pantry, then on the surface it
seems as if the rational conclusion is that there is no coffee in
the pantry.

But this holds true only in virtue of a background assumption,
viz., that you are competent to detect coffee in the pantry,
which itself may depend on the assumption that you have had
your coffee.

Quine (in)famously wrote in “Two
Dogmas of Empiricism” that:

Any statement can be held true come
what may, if we make drastic enough
adjustments elsewhere in the system.
Even a statement very close to the
periphery can be held true in the face of
recalcitrant experience by pleading
hallucination or by amending certain
statements of the kind called logical laws.

Quine did not conclude from this that every revision
that preserves logical consistency is as rational as any
other.

Nor did he believe that we should make only the
changes that would preserve the “older stock of truths”
intact.

Rather, what Quine suggested is that our primary aim
should be to preserve the structural integrity of our web
of belief.

What Wilfrid Sellars and others subsequently called its
“explanatory coherence.”

Philosophers and psychologists have
used a variety of terms to characterize
the elements of explanatory coherence
in structural terms.

But what I want to focus on here is the
sense in which achieving explanatory
coherence requires us to engage in
specifically explanatory reasoning.

The basic idea is surprisingly easy to
understand.

First, every proposed resolution to a
contradictory set of claims raises specifically
explanatory questions.

Second, the preferred resolution is always
the one for which the best explanations can
be provided.


Before we proceed let’s take a moment to get clear on
what an explanation actually is and how it differs from
an argument.
We can get at it through a distinction between two
different kinds of questions.

Argument: How do you know?
 We request arguments when we do not yet accept a
conclusion, and are looking for a rational basis for doing so.

Explanation: Why is that so?
 We request explanations when we already accept something
as a fact, and are trying to understand why it is the case.

You can make this intuitive by just noticing
that for virtually any statement we make
about the world we can adopt either an
argumentative or an explanatory stance.

Example

My cell phone is broken.
 How do you know that? It won’t power up.
 Why is that? I dropped it in the toilet.

Note how argument and explanation work together
in this case.

The explanatory step is distinct, but also helps to
solidify confidence that your argument is on the
right track.

Without a model explaining how it might have been
broken, you will be less confident that it is broken.

Also, if you accept this explanation, it helps to set a
rational plan for action.

So, here is what I said before that
commercial break.

First, every proposed resolution to a
contradictory set of claims raises specifically
explanatory questions.

Second, the preferred resolution is always
the one for which the best explanations can
be provided.


Before we proceed let’s take a moment to get clear on what an
explanation actually is and how it differs from an argument.
We can get at it through a distinction between two different
kinds of questions.


Argument: How do you know?
Explanation: Why is that so?

We request arguments when we do not yet accept a
conclusion, and are looking for a rational basis for doing so.

We request explanations when we already accept something
as a fact, and are trying to understand what causes it to be the
case.



To see this, consider a mundane example in which
the consistency of your belief system is threatened
by incoming information:
Your friend Marcie says she’ll call you tonight if she
is going to the movies. Marcie doesn’t call. A week
later you find out from your mutual friend Claire
that Claire and Marcie went to the movies that
night together.
This problem can be represented as a
contradiction that results from accepting three
propositions.
1.
2.
3.


If Marcie goes to the movies, she will call me.
Marcie went to the movies.
Marcie didn’t call me.
This is an inconsistent set of (we’ll say) equally plausible
propositions. It can be repaired by denying any one of
them. But which one?
The answer is that the decision to deny any particular
proposition generates one or more explanatory questions.
We deny the one whose questions we are best capable of
answering.
1.
2.
3.
If Marcie goes to the movies, she will call me.
Marcie went to the movies.
Marcie didn’t call me.

Suppose we deny the first proposition, what explanation
question arises?

Why did Marcie say she would call me?

Possible answers:
 She intended to call me but forgot.
 She intended to call me but decided against it.
 She had no intention of calling me, but didn’t want to hurt my
feelings.
1.
2.
3.
If Marcie goes to the movies, she will call me.
Marcie went to the movies.
Marcie didn’t call me.

Suppose we deny the second proposition.

Explanation question: Why did Claire say this?

Possible answers:
 Claire mistakenly believes that Marcie went to the movies
with her.
 Claire wishes to deceive me.
1.
2.
3.
If Marcie goes to the movies, she will call me.
Marcie went to the movies.
Marcie didn’t call me.

Suppose we deny the second proposition.

Explanation question: Why didn’t I receive the call?

Possible answers:
 My phone wasn’t working.
 I accidentally had the phone on vibrate and didn’t hear it ring.
 Marcie dialed the wrong number.

The idea, then, is that we deny the proposition whose corresponding
explanation-seeking question(s) we are best capable of answering.

Clearly, what you judge to be the most plausible explanation, depends
a great deal on beliefs that you have about Marcie, Claire, cellular
networks, your own competence, etc.

Moreover, your acceptance of any particular explanation is subject to
further inquiry.

For example, if you decide the best explanation is that Marcie did not
go to the movies and Claire is simply lying, you would ordinarily not
accept this without a further explanation of why she lied, and finally some
independent evidence that she actually did lie.


Right now I’m representing this as a normative model, but
there is evidence that it is descriptively accurate as well.
Recall that the competing model is ‘minimalism,’ that we
simply make the changes that preserve the greatest number of
previous beliefs.

This view would suggest that people will typically respond to
challenges by rejecting particular categorical propositions and
preserving generalizations.

This is because when you deny or revise a generalization, it
will affect many inferences you may have made with that
generalization.

The cognitive psychologist Philip Johnson-Laird has
demonstrated that this isn’t what people do.
E.g., Subjects are presented with a problem like this.





If the student doesn’t stay on task, then s/he stays after
school.
Winifred didn’t stay on task.
Winifred didn’t stay after school.
Subjects usually choose to resolve the contradiction
by modifying the generalization rather than rejecting
either of the singular propositions.






The explanatory hypothesis predicts this because exceptions
to generalizations are common and these exceptons explain
the non occurrence of expected results.
In other words, if we do this:
If the student doesn’t stay on task, then s/he stays after school.
Winifred didn’t stay on task.
Winifred didn’t stay after school.
We can easily explain why this is not so in terms of
reasonable departures from the rules, such as students whose
failure to stay on task isn’t their fault.
But if we do either of these:





If the student doesn’t stay on task, then s/he stays after
school.
Winifred didn’t stay on task.
Winifred didn’t stay after school.
Then we are stuck with what will be very ad hoc
explanations of why Winifred appeared not to be on
task when she really was, or why she appeared to be
kept after school when she really was.

I should note here that we very often do favor
revisions that are minimal. In the following we might
actually deny a singular proposition rather than revise a
general one:




If you follow this diet, you will lose weight.
Sam followed this diet.
Sam did not lose weight.
But the explanatory hypothesis would tend to predict
this as well, since people often claim to follow diets
when they don’t, whereas dieting without loss of weight
is challenging to explain.

Ultimately, what I want to claim here is that the explanatory
model of belief revision is something that philosophers need to
learn to practice in an explicit way.

This is because a great deal of philosophical theorizing
results from contradictions arising from sets of equally
plausible claims.

We need to recognize explicitly that we are not limited to
simply comparing the strength of the arguments for an against
the claims involved.

We can also produce and evaluate theories that explain why
one of the claims may appear to be true, even though it is not.
Consider a crude version of the
problem of skepticism about the
external world.




1. Humans have knowledge of the
external world.
2. Knowledge requires certainty.
3. Certainty about the external world is
impossible.




1. Humans have knowledge of the external world.
2. Knowledge requires certainty.
3. Certainty about the external world is impossible.
A philosophical skeptic doesn’t really need to claim (to know)
that 1 is false. Skepticism is really just what happens when
you can’t resolve this antinomy.

But if we take the resolution of the antinomy seriously and
employ the explanatory hypothesis, it is not difficult to see that
the denial of 1 is not even an option.

This is because if 1 is false, no explanatory question that
arises from denying 1 can be answered.



1. Humans have knowledge of the external world.
2. Knowledge requires certainty.
3. Certainty about the external world is impossible.

Classical foundationalists like Descartes attempt to
deny premise 3.

Unlike the skeptic, Descartes did not simply infer the
falsity of 3 from the truth of 1 and 2.

Rather, he tried to prove that we could be certain that
our sensory and intellectual faculties are reliable when
used as God intended.

Descartes was, I think, keenly aware of the explanatory problems
associated with asserting that we can know some things with
certainty.

Indeed, one of his lasting contributions was to have
developed a skeptical hypothesis -the evil demon- that would
explain how we could feel perfectly certain about some things
even though we are wrong about everything.

Descartes, did not suggest this hypothesis was plausible.
But he believed that it had to be ruled out if we were to believe
that our subjective certainty was any real basis for genuine
knowledge.

And as it turns out, he could not rule it out.



1. Humans have knowledge of the external world.
2. Knowledge requires certainty.
3. Certainty about the external world is impossible.

The final option is to deny that knowledge of the
external world requires certainty.

The main explanatory question that arises here is:
How is it possible for an agent to both know that P
and accept that P may be false?

There are actually several different interesting
ways of answering this question.
Now let’s consider a related problem,
sensory knowledge of the physical world.




1. We have knowledge of a physical world.
2. Our knowledge of the physical world is
based on our senses.
3. Our senses do not reveal the existence of a
physical world.



1. We have knowledge of a physical world.
2. Our knowledge of the physical world is based on our senses.
3. Our senses do not reveal the existence of a physical world.

Perhaps the most straightforward way to resolve this
contradiction is direct or naive realism. This was Thomas
Reid’s position.

But, again, the main problem with direct realism is
explanatory in nature.

How can we be directly aware of something that is external
to us? For Reid this question is not answerable, because
any causal theory of perception would implicitly deny direct
realism.



1. We have knowledge of a physical world.
2. Our knowledge of the physical world is based on our senses.
3. Our senses do not reveal the existence of a physical world.

Locke and Galileo also would deny 3, distinguishing primary
from secondary qualities.

We know both secondary qualities and primary qualities
through sensation, but primary qualities (like bulk, figure,
extension) are understood to be in the world in a way that
secondary qualities (color, sound, odor) are not.

This is because primary qualities are what science uses to
explain the occurrence of secondary qualities (and not vice
versa).






1. We have knowledge of a physical world.
2. Our knowledge of the physical world is based on our senses.
3. Our senses do not reveal the existence of a physical world.
Berkeley is famously associated with the denial of 1, as he
explicitly characterized ideational representation of a
physical world as incoherent.
The main challenge for Berkeley’s phenomenalism is to
explain the apparent stability of the world in non physical
terms.
As you know, Berkeley proposed that the best explanation is
an infinite spirit, viz., God.



1. We have knowledge of a physical world.
2. Our knowledge of the physical world is based on our senses.
3. Our senses do not reveal the existence of a physical world.

Of course, the extreme rationalist simply denies 2. But denying 2,
while accepting the existence of a knowable physical reality means
that an alternative explanation of how we come to know the physical
world is owed.

Descartes made a run at this with his famous wax example,
explaining our grasp of the real properties of objects as an act of ‘pure
mental scrutiny’.

Kant, on the other hand, provided a revolutionary answer in which
physical properties are not features of transcendent reality at all, but
simply the form in which transcendent reality appears. Kant explains
the objectivity of the physical world in terms of the fact that we all run
the same operating system, hence condition transcendent reality in
the same way.
Finally, let’s look at the problematic
relation between mind and body.




1. Mental phenomena cause physical
phenomena.
2. Mental phenomena and physical
phenomena have no common properties.
3. Phenomena with no common
properties can not be causally related.
1. Mental phenomena cause physical phenomena.
2. Mental phenomena and physical phenomena have no common
properties.
3. Phenomena with no common properties can not be causally related.



Anyone who denies 1 owes a model that explains why
mental and physical phenomena appear to interact when
they really do not.


Epiphenomenalists explain that mental events are just a
byproduct of physical events.

Occasionalists explain that God intervenes to connect the two.

Parallelists explain that there is a pre-established harmony
between two entirely separate systems.
1. Mental phenomena cause physical phenomena.
2. Mental phenomena and physical phenomena have no common
properties.
3. Phenomena with no common properties can not be causally related.



Anyone who denies 2 must provide a model that explains
why we see physical and mental properties as
metaphysically distinct, even though they are not.


Phenomenalists tried to explain this as the result of physical
language talk being an extremely useful shorthand.

Behaviorists tried to explain this as the result of mentalistic
language being a very convenient shorthand.

Physicalists try to explain the appearance of irreducibly mental
properties as an illusion created by the human brain’s ability to
monitor it’s own outputs.



1. Mental phenomena cause physical phenomena.
2. Mental phenomena and physical phenomena have no common
properties.
3. Phenomena with no common properties can not be causally related.

It is not at all common to deny 3, but one can do so
on the basis of a view of causation that simply does
not depend on folk notions like ‘physical contact.’

For example, one could assert that things are
causally related iff they are nomologically related.

This move would require its proponents to explain the
relation between mental and physical events in terms
of strict laws.
Thank you!