2. Against the Theoreticians

Ballantyne notes how a common complaint against theoretical epistemologists is that they offer no practical advice on how to improve inquiry and this makes their work useless, self-absorbed, insular, and trivial (Reference Ballantyne2019, 6). Whether or not the criticism is generally fair, we can see how it plays out in this context.

It is common to think of a paradox as an argument where each step appears plausible but the conclusion seems absurd. Philosophical paradoxes are most troubling and intriguing when their conclusions contradict something fundamental and seemingly obvious. Consider such old favorites as nobody knows anything, tables and chairs do not exist, no one is fat, bald, or rich, everyone is fat, bald, and rich, and it is impossible to give a surprise quiz.

On Lasonen-Aarnio’s rendering of it, the conclusion of the paradox of dogmatism is as follows. “For any proposition h, times t and t’ and evidence E, if t is earlier than t’, at t S knows h, at times up to and including t’ S continues to believe h on the same basis as at t, and at t S knows that E is evidence against h, then at t’ S is in a position to justifiably disregard E as it bears on h” (Reference Lasonen-Aarnio2014, 420). If that is supposed to be a purely abstract “metaphysical” fact that neither offers nor entails any recommendation concerning the conduct of inquiry, it is difficult—for me, anyway—to see why anyone should be all that bothered by it. Is this italicized letter-laden baroquialism of analytic epistemology supposed to contradict some important part of our worldview? Would the average man on the street reject it? Would he even understand it? Is this something even most academic philosophers would reject?

Maybe not. Near the end of her paper, Lasonen-Aarnio suggests that it is intuitively plausible to think a subject who disregards evidence she knows to be misleading is “doing what she epistemically ought to do” (Reference Lasonen-Aarnio2014, 430). But then, you have to wonder, where’s the paradox?Footnote ¹ If someone takes the dogmatist’s argument as support for a general policy meant to govern inquiry, however, things get interesting.

We are often told—especially in introductory philosophy courses—that openness to criticism and a willingness to change one’s mind in response to it is the hallmark of responsible, rational thinking. If you consistently refuse to consider evidence that goes against what you think—even if you know you are right—this will strike many as objectionably irrational (not to mention a little rude). So what gives? Furthermore, if you accept that Entitlement or some similar principle is true and you recognize yourself as fulfilling its antecedent conditions, why would not you let that guide your decision as to whether to engage with the relevant counterevidence? And while you are at it, why not resolve to do that all the time?

For my money, the fact that it raises these kinds of regulative epistemic questions is what makes the dogmatic argument interesting and troublesome. It challenges a very fundamental and highly celebrated conception of how a good truth-seeking inquirer operates. And it does so on some of the same grounds upon which dogmatism is typically disdained. “Sure, you must pay careful attention to the evidence in your effort to get at the truth. But once you know you have it, …” As we see with other paradoxes, this one appears to reveal a glitch or at least a serious tension among our fundamental philosophical commitments. And, as I’ll argue in the next section, viewing the paradox as a regulative epistemic problem reveals a shortcoming in the classic response to it.

3. Reactive versus Proactive Dogmatism and the Classic Solution

There are different ways to understand dogmatism in the context of regulative epistemology. A distinction adapted from the world of business management is helpful. Reactive management policies and procedures address how to deal with problems when they arise (e.g., if a fire breaks out in the office building, calmly direct employees to the exits). Proactive management policies concern how to prevent problems from occurring in the first place (e.g., to prevent office fires, do not allow smoking in the paper supply closet). Similarly, reactive dogmatic policies direct us to ignore misleading evidence once we run across it. And a proactive dogmatic policy directs us to avoid contact with misleading evidence in the first place. This gives us two ways to be dogmatic toward counterevidence. You can, upon confronting it, ignore it. Or you can get proactive and take steps to avoid ever running across it in the first place.

Although he attributes its discovery to Saul Kripke, the paradox of dogmatism was first put to print by Gilbert Harman in Thought (Reference Harman1973). Harman also offers what is now the standard response. The heart of this response lies in the observation that getting new evidence can change what you know (Harman, Reference Harman1973, 148). You can, as others put it, “know less by knowing more” (Ginet, Reference Ginet1980). You can know that P and thereby know any evidence against P is misleading. But, should you come to acquire evidence against P, that might cause you to lose your knowledge that P and, along with it, your knowledge that that very evidence is misleading. Once that happens, you cannot rationally ignore that evidence.

For instance, suppose a student approaches class knowing that it meets in room 227. Suppose also that the student has drawn the conclusion that any evidence indicating otherwise is misleading. Upon arriving at the door, the student notices a sign stating the class has moved to a different room. Even if the sign is misleading (because it was written and hung by a college prankster), it might be enough to defeat the student’s knowledge of where class meets. And if the student no longer knows class meets in room 227, the student does not know the sign on the door is misleading.

This response to the paradox does not challenge the dogmatist’s principle that you should ignore evidence you know to be misleading. As far as the standard solution goes, there is nothing wrong with that. If the student ignores the sign on the door, what’s objectionable is not that he has chosen to ignore some relevant evidence but that he did so without knowing it is misleading. In other words, if the student had read the sign on the door and (somehow) maintained his knowledge that it is misleading, then, as far as this response to the paradox goes, ignoring it would have been fine. So, Harman’s response to the paradox does not provide the regulative epistemologist with any reason to reject the dogmatist’s key principle. And thus the regulative epistemologist is still left to wonder what, if anything, is wrong with my adopting a policy of ignoring any evidence that tells against what I know.

Another thing worth emphasizing is that the standard solution is relevant only to reactive dogmatism. At most, Harman has explained what makes it objectionable (in those cases where it is objectionable) to ignore counterevidence you have already acquired. But if you know that P and infer that any counterevidence is misleading and (unlike the above student) you avoid contact with such counterevidence, then, as far as the standard solution says, you get to keep your knowledge that P and your knowledge that any evidence against P is misleading. So, the regulative epistemologist is also left to wonder what, if anything, is wrong with adopting a proactive dogmatic policy. Let us look a little closer.

4. Getting Proactive

Whenever P is a proposition he knows to be true, the proactive dogmatist practices what C.S. Peirce called “the method of tenacity.” The tenacious inquirer proceeds “by systematically keeping out of view all that might cause a change in his opinion.” Peirce offers an autobiographical example to explain how this works.

This example nicely highlights the difference between reactive and proactive dogmatic strategies. Peirce’s friend is not advising him to read the article and then ignore what it says. The recommendation is to refuse to read it at all—that is, to get proactive. According to Kripke (Reference Kripke2011), this is how real-world dogmatists generally operate. It’s not hard to see why.

Depending on the circumstances, it can be psychologically difficult to simply ignore counterevidence once we have it. And, as noted in Harman’s response to the paradox, reactively ignoring counterevidence after it is acquired will often fail to preserve knowledge. So, as Kripke explains, the shrewd dogmatist will commit in advance to a resolution “to avoid certain types of contact with alleged evidence, such as reading the wrong books (for they can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion), associating with the wrong people, and so on” (Reference Kripke2011, 49). In inquiry, as in business management, it’s always best to be proactive.

It’s worth emphasizing how the grounds for getting proactive in the fight against misleading evidence is, on this way of thinking about it, primarily epistemic rather than practical. We might decline to engage with some misleading evidence out of a lack of interest or time constraints. It’s also worth noting that this can be a reason to decline to engage with evidence that is not misleading but will only tell you things you already know. In any case, Peirce’s friend is not advising him to put down the newspaper because he does not have the time to read it. He should put it down because reading it might move him away from what he knows to be the truth. In other words, the dogmatist’s rationale for steering clear of misleading evidence, if sound, holds even if time and other resources are unlimited (Fantl, Reference Fantl2018, 148).

You might think the distinction between reactive and proactive dogmatism breaks down if, as Feldman (Reference Feldman, Vitz and Matheson2014) argues, evidence of evidence is evidence. On this view, if you have evidence that there is evidence that P, then you have evidence that P. To see why this might present a problem for the distinction between reactive and proactive dogmatism, consider an example adapted from Matheson (Reference Matheson, McCain and Stapleford2020).

Suppose you believe P, where P is a proposition within your own area of expertise. You receive an email from someone you know to be a smart and fair-minded colleague who is also an expert in your field. The subject line reads, “Devastating Objection to the View that P.” In an effort to avoid having to change your mind, you delete the email.

According to Matheson, your dogmatic strategy is doomed from the start. Once you have seen the email’s sender and subject line, you have evidence that there is evidence against your position. And that is evidence against your position. Given what you know about the source, that’s already enough to undermine your view.

You might draw the following general lesson. You cannot effectively steer clear of counterevidence without having evidence concerning where the counterevidence is. But if you know that yonder lies some counterevidence, you have evidence of the existence of counterevidence. And, therefore, you already have counterevidence. So if you want to be dogmatic, the thought goes, you are going to have to be reactive.

While that might be true of Matheson’s example, it’s not always going to work out that way. Suppose I receive the same email but do not recognize the sender’s name. Its author might be a smart expert in my field or one of those cranks who likes to email professors or some AI-generated spam. In this version of the story, I may have some small amount of evidence that there is evidence against my belief but it is not enough to rationally overturn that belief (and it may not be enough to move the needle at all). If I delete the email to protect myself from any potential intellectual harms, I am being proactively dogmatic. Although there might be cases like the one Matheson describes, where the mere evidence of counterevidence is enough to overturn rational belief, there will also be ones where the evidence of counterevidence is not so potent. And in those cases, acting on a proactively dogmatic policy is not only possible but, perhaps, a defensible way to maintain knowledge and true belief.

We will return to reactive dogmatism later in the paper. For now, I want to focus on the proactive variety. If you know that P, why not, in the manner of Peirce’s method of tenacity, resolve to do what you can to avoid running across any evidence that conflicts with it on the grounds that you know that evidence will be misleading—especially if P is an important proposition? In the next section, we’ll see whether virtue epistemology can help us answer that question.

5. Arrogance and Humility

Dogmatism is typically viewed as a manifestation of the intellectual vice of arrogance and therefore in opposition to the virtue of humility. A virtue-theoretic approach, however, will not solve the problem the paradox presents.

The fact that all evidence against P is misleading is a direct and obvious consequence of P. If you know that P, it is no more arrogant of you to draw the conclusion that all counterevidence is misleading than it is to infer that Joe is not married from the fact that he is a bachelor. So, if the dogmatist is arrogant, it is not in making the inference from the premise that P to the conclusion that all evidence against P is misleading. If arrogance is on display here, it must lie in the subject’s decision to close himself off to all counterevidence. But if the aim is to solve the paradox, calling the dogmatist arrogant will not help. Simply calling attention to the tension between dogmatism and intellectual humility does not tell us where—if anywhere—the dogmatist’s reasoning goes wrong. And unless we do that, the problem raised by the paradox remains unsolved.

Furthermore, since the same sort of reasoning found in the paradox has been used as an argument for radical skepticism (Unger, Reference Unger1975), a bare appeal to humility might make things worse. If knowing P entails that you ought to be dogmatic toward counterevidence and that is deemed arrogant, to say you ought always to be humble is to imply that you never know anything. Absent a diagnosis of the error in the paradoxical argument, it is hard to see what the humble epistemologist can say to block this radically skeptical consequence. And once you can diagnose the error in the argument, appeal to the virtue of humility is superfluous.

A further problem with this approach is that the opposition between dogmatism and humility is dubious. The choice to be proactively dogmatic can just as easily be understood as an act of intellectual humility. Think of it this way. Joe has no desire for a drink and a strong desire to quit the stuff altogether. Being an accomplished bachelor, Joe also has a fully stocked bar in his study. In this moment of clarity, Joe realizes his limitations and knows that, at some time in the future, he might succumb to a fleeting desire for the demon rum. So, rather than risk tying one on, he ties himself to the mast and dumps it all down the sink. If Joe did not do that and kept the booze around—just in case an old friend stops by and wants a nip—that would be a failure to properly recognize and account for his own weakness (i.e., arrogance).

In the same way, the proactive dogmatist recognizes the fallibility of his future self. He recognizes his own potential to be taken in by misleading evidence. Rather than tell himself he can handle it, he takes steps to avoid getting into situations where he might get duped because he acknowledges his own propensity to be deceived. What’s arrogant about that?

In response, one could claim the dogmatist’s decision to close himself off to any counterevidence that might undermine his position amounts to unfairly privileging the perspective of his current self. And that’s what’s arrogant. But any subject who knows P and has undergone the dogmatic line of reasoning will know that all not-P evidence is misleading. He will also thereby know that, should he be taken in by that evidence, he will lose out on the truth and, if the evidence is persuasive enough, he will end up replacing a true belief with a false one. And then his future self will be epistemically worse off—even though that future self, intoxicated by the fog of misleading evidence, will be unable to see things so clearly. So it would appear that, as long as he knows P, the subject can make a case for privileging his current self over any future self that would doubt P on the basis of what his current self knows is misleading evidence. As we saw with the standard solution to the paradox, the virtue-theoretic approach does not explain what (if anything) is so bad about adopting a dogmatic epistemic policy.

6. The Pitfalls of Proactive Dogmatism

Let us put the proactive dogmatist’s advice like this: Avoid situations where you stand to acquire evidence you know to be misleading. We’ve already seen examples of how this advice might be (and is) applied in the real world. Do not open emails, read news articles, or interact with people who might attempt to convince you of the falsity of any proposition you know to be true because, after all, you know that any evidence they offer in favor of that proposition will be misleading. Of course, there will be occasions where you cannot help but confront misleading counterevidence. But, insofar as you are capable, why not follow the dogmatist’s advice?

My earlier answer, to review, is that you cannot, from your own point of view, distinguish those truths you know from the falsehoods you merely think you know. So, if you adopt the proactive dogmatic policy, you will misapply it and ignore evidence that is not misleading. And then, in your effort to hang on to the truth, you cut yourself off from it.

You might respond to this line of thought by pointing out that any policy can be misapplied (Fantl, Reference Fantl2018, 134). But misapplication of the proactively dogmatic policy has downstream consequences that make it particularly pernicious. This becomes clear when we compare proactive dogmatism to more ordinary forms of advice.

For instance, blackjack strategy websites advise beginners to implement the following policy. If the total value of your hand is 12 through 16 (excluding pairs), hit if the dealer’s upcard is 2 through 6 and stand if the dealer’s upcard is 7 through Ace. This is solid advice even though a player might misread a card or make an arithmetical mistake and misapply it. But provided the player is not dogmatic in his belief about the total value of his hand, his mistaken belief is correctable. And, should his false belief cause him to lose the hand—or cause another player at the table to lose the hand—his mistake will be made apparent in a memorable way, thus reducing the chances that it gets made again.

The point generalizes. Although any advice can be misapplied, we will typically have ways of knowing when this has happened and we can take steps to correct things in the future. This is not true of the proactive dogmatist’s advice. If a proactively dogmatic inquirer succeeds in avoiding all contact with evidence against P when P is false and he merely thinks he knows it to be true, his false belief will be forever immune to correction because he has cut himself off from anything that would correct it. He is not just wrong but incorrigible. The proactive dogmatist can rationally correct a false belief that he takes to be knowledge only if evidence against it seeps through by accident or oversight. This is not the case with other kinds of advice.

Beyond the problem of misapplication, the proactively dogmatic epistemic policy faces other difficulties as well. Even if you know all evidence against P is misleading, there are various intellectual fringe benefits to be had from engagement with that evidence. Even if Peirce knows protectionism is false and thus knows the article’s argument is misleading, the author’s premises may contain important truths Peirce would not learn without reading it. It could also be that, while the author’s premises fail to show protectionism is true, they provide good reasons for some other important truth of political economy or some related subject. In that case, Peirce stands to learn something new and important by confronting and engaging with the argument. Or it could be that the article’s argument for protection rests on some false assumptions that Peirce, before reading the article, would have agreed with. And then, by engaging with the protectionist argument, the falsity of those assumptions gets revealed. In this sense, Peirce has improved his overall understanding of the issue and his belief in free trade is now better grounded than it would have been had he followed his friend’s advice.

These points generalize. Avoidance of misleading evidence causes us to miss out on any epistemic fringe benefits engagement might bring. When added to the problem of misapplication, this presents a strong case against adoption of the proactively dogmatic policy. Still, the dogmatist will insist, to reject that policy and engage with what you know to be misleading evidence carries severe epistemic risk. But the risks here are overblown. To demonstrate this, I will propose an alternative anti-dogmatic epistemic policy and argue that it is superior to proactive dogmatism. After that, we will reconsider reactive dogmatism.

7. Following the Argument Wherever It Leads

The Socratic injunction to follow the argument wherever it leads is a time-honored epistemic ideal. But what does it really mean? On the account defended by Thomas Kelly (Reference Kelly2023), a subject follows the argument wherever it leads with respect to P in the course of inquiry if and only if three conditions are met. First, the subject has a reasonable doxastic attitude. In other words, whether S believes, disbelieves, or suspends judgment on P, S’s propositional attitude is well supported by his total evidence. Second, S is disposed to change his mind on whether P in response to any new evidence that would make it reasonable to do so. In other words, whatever S’s current doxastic attitude happens to be, he is not disposed to stick to his guns as new evidence comes in regardless of what it indicates. Instead, his disposition is to keep his attitude in line with what his evidence supports even if that requires adjustments. And third, S is not dogmatically averse to considering, seeking out, and engaging with new evidence concerning p—especially when that evidence tells against the reasonableness of his current position. To be dogmatically averse is to be averse for a certain reason, namely, because considering that evidence could result in a change of mind.

In the context of regulative epistemology, following the argument wherever it leads (FAWL) can be put as a packaged bundle of three regulative principles. The first bit of epistemic advice tells us to keep our current doxastic attitudes in line with our total evidence. The second tells us to change our doxastic attitudes in response to any new evidence when that new evidence makes it reasonable to do so. And this means we must not ignore evidence. The third component of FAWL prohibits us from being dogmatically averse to seeking out and engaging with new evidence. In other words, we must not refuse to seek out or consider new evidence for fear that it might change our minds.

FAWL has none of the above-noted problems we find with the dogmatist’s epistemic policy. A subject who mistakenly takes himself to know that P when P is false will not seek to avoid counterevidence and will change his attitude toward P when the evidence warrants such a change. So, any false belief is in principle rationally correctable. The subject who FAWLs is also in a position to reap whatever intellectual fringe benefits may accompany engagement with misleading evidence.

That said, it must be acknowledged that FAWL has its downside. There will be cases where you aren’t wrong about P—where, in fact, you know that P—and engaging with counterevidence undermines your knowledge, compels you to give up a true belief or adopt a false one. But, so long as our sources of evidence are generally reliable, this will not be the norm. And, given the self-corrective nature of FAWL, we are not enduringly committed to our mistakes in the way we are if we follow the dogmatist’s advice. Any mistake is, in principle, correctable. So, in the long run, FAWL is the superior policy.

We are now in a position to understand the proactive dogmatist’s mistake, when considered as the basis for a regulative recommendation on how to conduct inquiry. Knowing P enables you to know any not-P evidence is misleading. But contra what the dogmatist proposes, it is bad epistemic policy to protect your knowledge by avoiding confrontation with such evidence. For the reasons noted above, it is better to FAWL. It is better to follow the evidence wherever it leads even when you know that evidence is misleading.

That last part may sound absurd to some ears. But it is not. To see why, it helps to take another look at reactive dogmatism and consider some examples of cases where epistemologists have claimed that the dogmatic response to misleading evidence is the best way to proceed.

8. Reactive Dogmatism Reconsidered: Mailbox Epistemology

The second component of FAWL—the part that prohibits us from ignoring any of our evidence—conflicts with the reactive dogmatic policy, which we can put like this: if you get any evidence that tells against what you know, just ignore it. It is clear how the misapplication problem shows up here and, once again, demonstrates FAWL’s superiority over the dogmatic alternative. If your belief that P is false and you merely think you know it, ignoring any not-P evidence you come to acquire on the grounds that it is misleading makes your mistake forever uncorrectable. But still, one might well wonder, isn’t the reactive dogmatist right at least sometimes? Aren’t there some cases where it is rational to ignore counterevidence that we have acquired precisely because we know it is misleading? Wouldn’t it be disastrous to do anything else? And does not that mean FAWL is bad epistemic policy at least in those kinds of cases?

Thomas Kelly presents an example he says is like that. Kelly reports that he often receives mail for someone named “Frederick Jacobs” with the Kelly family’s own address on the envelope. This is evidence that Mr. Jacobs lives in his house. But, Kelly goes on to say, “on the basis of my knowledge that only members of my family live at 76 Alexander Street and that Jacobs is not a member of my family, I reasonably conclude that this evidence is misleading and dismiss it without further ado” (Kelly, Reference Kelly2008, 72). And this point is taken to show that the dogmatist is right at least some of the time.

Upon finding that letter in his mailbox, it would indeed be a mistake for Kelly to start doubting his belief that no one named Frederick Jacobs lives with him. But that does not mean this is a case where it is wise to ignore evidence. And therefore, this example presents no problem for FAWL as a regulative epistemic strategy.

Here’s why. If you ignore evidence E with respect to P, then, upon acquiring E, you did not change your mind on P. But the fact that you have not changed your mind in response to some evidence does not mean you ignored it. Following the argument wherever it leads is a matter of following your total evidence. It is not necessarily to follow any particular argument or any particular piece of evidence where it leads because getting new evidence does not always warrant a change of mind. Something can be evidence for a given proposition even though acquiring that evidence and incorporating it into your total evidence has no implications for what it is currently rational for you to think about that proposition.

To see why, consider an example from Richard Feldman. If I walk into a large, crowded, and obviously well-lit auditorium, I might go around the room asking others whether the lights are on. (Here I’m reminded of a remark from On Certainty. “This fellow isn’t insane. We are only doing philosophy” (Wittgenstein, Reference Wittgenstein1969, 467).) I do not become more and more justified in believing that the lights are on each time another person testifies that they are. At some point, the evidence “tops out” (Feldman, Reference Feldman, Vitz and Matheson2014, 296).

Feldman is there talking about evidence that confirms something I already believe. But the same thing can happen with evidence against what I believe. As he heads out to the mailbox, Kelly’s total evidence is such that getting another letter for Frederick Jacobs with his own address on it does not rationally require any adjustment in his views about who lives in his house. If, upon finding the letter, Kelly dogmatically ignored it in order to protect his knowledge, he was overreacting.

On standard definitions, to ignore (or disregard) something is to pay it no attention. But Kelly can fully attend to the fact that this letter has appeared in his mailbox. He can record that fact and include it in his total evidence without it warranting a change of mind on who lives with him. He can also, if he wishes, explain the misleading evidence away. (“Jacobs’ mail often shows up in my box. Evidently, he used to live here but he doesn’t now because if he did, I’d have bumped into him. It’s not that big of a house.”) To explain away is not to ignore. In any case, if Kelly FAWLs, it makes no difference to what he should believe about who lives in his house.

This might lead you to wonder whether we should count the letters in Kelly’s mailbox as evidence concerning who lives in his house in the first place. If E makes no difference to what it’s rational to believe about P, how is E evidence for P? Here, another line from Feldman is helpful. “Defeated evidence is evidence” (Reference Feldman, Vitz and Matheson2014, 298). The letter provides some indication that someone named Frederick Jacobs lives at Kelly’s address. But, given what else he knows, that evidence carries no weight for him with respect to his belief about who lives there. So, this is not a case where FAWLing carries any intellectual risk.

This should calm the above-noted concern that a policy of FAWLing will have disastrous or absurd consequences in cases where you do indeed know some item of evidence is misleading. As the example above shows, this is not as dangerous as it might sound at first. FAWL is most likely to strike people as an epistemically suicidal strategy in cases where the relevant not-P evidence is obviously misleading. But the stronger your reason to think E is misleading, the less likely it is to have any impact on what you ought to think if you happen to acquire E. So even those who find dogmatic policies attractive will have little reason to employ them in these kinds of cases. And, on the other hand, if you think there are cases where an item of misleading evidence might warrant a change of mind, then you already think there is some chance you are wrong. So why not FAWL?

9. On Not Knowing What to Say: Kripke versus the Necromancers

Kripke also contends that sometimes dogmatism is a rational epistemic strategy. Having not read much on “astrology, necromancy, and the like,” he confesses to sometimes not knowing what to say when confronted with defenses of such doctrines. Despite “not being able to refute specific claims” (Reference Kripke2011, 49), Kripke tells us that he just assumes that these are works of no value and he gets on with his life without changing his mind.

I suspect Kripke was being overly humble here. Are we to believe that the man widely regarded as one of the greatest philosophers and logicians of the 20th century was bested by astrologers and necromancers? And even if he was, this presents no problem for FAWL as a regulative policy.

Upon first encountering them, many people do not know what to say in response to Zeno’s arguments against motion. This does not mean that they should change their minds about whether things move. That thought is perfectly compatible with endorsement of FAWL as a regulative epistemic policy.

The average person has overwhelming evidence for the existence of motion. To believe in accordance with this evidence and conclude that there must be some mistake in Zeno’s arguments is not a violation of FAWL. To refuse to engage with Zeno’s arguments to avoid having to change your mind, however, would be. Given the philosophical importance and value of those arguments—that is, the epistemic fringe benefits—disregarding or refusing to engage with them for that sort of reason would be a mistake. So here again we see the superiority of FAWL over the dogmatic alternative.

Returning to Kripke, either his total evidence supports his anti-astrology and anti-necromancy beliefs or it does not. If it does, then the mere fact (if it is a fact) that he could not refute sophistical arguments for astrology and necromancy but refused to change his mind does not entail a violation of FAWL. If his total evidence does not support these beliefs, then he is in violation of the first element of FAWL—his beliefs are unreasonable. In that (I assume unlikely) case, he should change his mind and suspend judgment.

As Kripke sees it, the challenge raised by the paradox of dogmatism is to figure out when dogmatism is an acceptable strategy and when it is not. But he has given us no reason to think we should not reject dogmatism altogether and just FAWL. The fact that adoption of FAWL does not force us into making decisions about when to be dogmatic in the course of inquiry is yet another point in FAWL’s favor.

10. A Packet for Mr. Bookman

What of cases where we know in advance that engagement with misleading evidence will warrant a change of mind? Isn’t dogmatism the best policy there? Roy Sorensen (Reference Sorensen2018) constructs a clever hypothetical case designed to show that it is. I will argue that, even in this kind of case, it is not.

Sorensen’s example works like this. I am a library detective who witnessed Tom Grabit steal a copy of Harman’s Thought. As I wait to testify at Grabit’s trial, Miss Lead—a notorious professional deceiver—hands me a pink envelope that contains either blank pages or misleading evidence to the effect that Tom Grabit is innocent. If it is the latter, the evidence will consist solely of truths. But these truths will be misleading in that they will offer support for both the false proposition that Tom did not steal the book and the false proposition that Miss Lead’s evidence is not misleading. These facts about Miss Lead and her packet are all now known by me. I will testify that Tom stole the book only if I know he did. So, Sorensen advises me to refuse to look inside the envelope, lest I let Grabit get away with it again.

I’m going to open it anyway. Given how the example is set up, I do not see why the information contained in the packet (assuming it’s not all blank pages) would undermine my knowledge that Tom stole the book. And of course, if the packet is not a threat to my knowledge, then there is no reason not to FAWL. And since the packet contains only truths, there are all those epistemic fringe benefits I will miss out on if I refuse to give it a look. The information in the packet promises to provide me with a better overall understanding of Grabit’s legendary heist.

Sorensen does not offer much in the way of details about what the packet might say but, in keeping with standard Grabit lore, he suggests it might contain a transcript of Mrs. Grabit reporting that Tom has an evil twin and, Sorensen adds, “such a transcript would undermine your knowledge that Tom stole the book” (Reference Sorensen2018, 1788). I disagree. I know that this piece of information was put there by Miss Lead who also knows Tom stole the book and is trying to deceive me into thinking he did not. So, rather than change my mind, why isn’t the rational response to hang on to my belief that Tom stole the book and infer that perhaps Mrs. Grabit was lying or suffering from delusions or maybe, if Tom does have a twin brother, he was not in the library that day or, if he was, he did not steal the book?

You might answer by reminding me of how it is part of the story that the information in the packet will also undermine my knowledge that the information contained therein is misleading. But if I start off knowing that the information in the packet is misleading, how could the information in the packet rationally convince me that it is not? Sorensen suggests that “perhaps there will be a transcript of Miss Lead’s father claiming his daughter has a non-deceptive twin who also deposits pink packets” (Reference Sorensen2018, 1788). But still, given my total evidence, why isn’t it rational for me to keep my belief about who gave me the packet and account for Old Man Lead’s testimony in the same manner I did Mrs. Grabit’s?

Sorensen’s answer to this sort of question relies on his earlier “junk conditional” response to the paradox of dogmatism (Reference Sorensen1988, Reference Sorensen2018). I know that my car is in the parking lot. I infer and thereby come to know that if my reliable and trustworthy colleague, Noah Carr, says otherwise, then his testimony is misleading. This bit of conditional knowledge is junk in the sense that it cannot be rationally expanded under modus ponens. If I learn that its antecedent is true—in other words, if Noah tells me my car has been towed—the rational response is not to conclude that his testimony is misleading but to give up my belief in the conditional. This appeal to junk conditionals is supposed to buttress the standard solution to the paradox of dogmatism by giving an account of the mechanism by which getting new evidence changes what you know.

Now apply this reasoning to Miss Lead’s packet. Prior to opening the envelope, I know that any exculpatory evidence it contains concerning Tom’s thievery or Miss Lead’s trickery is misleading. But, should I open it and get that evidence, I cannot conclude that it is misleading. If I do, I am improperly relying on another junk conditional: If the packet contains evidence that Tom did not steal the book, that evidence is misleading. Upon learning that the antecedent is true, perhaps by reading a transcript of Mrs. Grabit’s testimony, the rational response is not to apply modus ponens and conclude that the evidence is misleading. Instead, the thought goes, I must give up my belief in the conditional and, along with it, my belief that Tom stole the book. And since I now know something like this is bound to happen, I should get proactive and refuse to open the packet.

That line of thought overlooks an important difference between the Miss Lead example and the one involving Noah Carr. Before Noah offers his testimony, my only basis for believing the relevant conditional—if Noah says my car is not in the parking lot, his testimony is misleading—is my belief that my car is in the parking lot. Aside from that, I have no reason to believe that Noah is not a reliable source. In fact, it’s part of the story that I have strong independent reason to think he is. The conditional is junk because, once I add Noah’s testimony to my total evidence, I must throw out my belief that my car is in the parking lot and, along with it, my belief that if he says it is not, he’s wrong.

This is not the case with Miss Lead’s packet. My basis for believing the relevant conditional—if the packet contains evidence that Tom did not steal the book, that evidence is misleading—is not simply my belief that Tom Grabit stole the book. And therefore, that conditional is not junk. It’s a valuable item of knowledge, one that survives my acquiring knowledge of its antecedent and licenses a modus ponens inference.

Miss Lead, recall, is someone I independently know to be a notorious deceiver. So even if I did not believe that Tom stole the book, I would know that if one of Miss Lead’s pink packets contains evidence he did not, all of that evidence is misleading. Moreover, suppose I did not see Tom steal the book but I found the pink packet and knew its origin. Knowing what I know about Miss Lead, the information in the packet would provide me with a way to come to know Tom stole the book. The fact that the statements in the packet would ordinarily invite an inference to his innocence is, given what else I know, excellent evidence of his guilt.

That observation opens up an alternative route for Miss Lead to mislead me that is not noted in Sorensen’s discussion. Suppose I open the packet and find that it contains evidence in support of Grabit’s guilt. Given my background knowledge that Miss Lead’s pink packets are reliable counter-indicators of the truth, this evidence perhaps gives me some reason to doubt my belief that Tom stole the book. Whether this is sufficient to undermine my knowledge will depend on the details. (Will the packet contain information attesting to Miss Lead’s unreliability? If so, should I take that to be evidence of her reliability? Is that even coherent?) But if it does, this is a consequence I will happily accept. Epistemologically speaking, taking the word of a counter-reliable testifier as a word against the truth is no different from taking a reliable testifier’s word as a point in its favor.Footnote ²

As for the practical concerns in this case, it is worth noting that, even if Miss Lead somehow succeeds in undermining my knowledge that Tom stole the book, I can still testify that I saw someone who looked just like him steal it and let the lawyers sort it out from there. Furthermore, if I follow Sorensen’s advice, Grabit’s defense team could use that against me. Would my refusal to consider this potentially exculpatory evidence amount to a legally culpable act of willful ignorance on the part of the library detective? Failing that, might they use my refusal to consider this new evidence as a way to embarrass and discredit me in cross-examination? In the event you find yourself in this sort of situation, I say take a look at what’s in the packet, take the stand, and tell them what you know. The moral of the story is that even in a wild and unusual case like this, FAWL is the best policy.

11. Overcoming Definitional Difficulties

The possibility that Miss Lead will dupe me into thinking Tom did not steal the book by indicating that he did puts pressure on our notion of misleading evidence as evidence for a falsehood. On the one hand, since it is true that Tom stole the book, if the information in the packet suggests the same, it seems we should not call it misleading. Yet, on the other hand, if I know Miss Lead to be an anti-reliable source, then anything Miss Lead says in favor of the proposition that Grabit is guilty is, for me, misleading.

Although Kelly was unmoved by the letter in his mailbox, he says we should count it as misleading evidence because a stranger who walked by and took out the letter would have good reason to believe Mr. Jacobs lives there. So perhaps, it is best to think of misleading evidence as evidence that would rationally move your average, neutral, truth-seeking homo epistemolocus toward thinking some false proposition is true.

If we subscribe to FAWL, however, it does not much matter how we define misleading evidence. This is yet another point in FAWL’s favor. As far as regulative epistemology goes, it is important to carefully sort misleading evidence from the real McCoy only if we plan to ignore or avoid one and not the other.

Fantl (Reference Fantl2022) offers an example designed to raise a different sort of definitional problem for our notion of misleading evidence. Suppose four incompatible and equally probable hypotheses are in contention to explain the same phenomenon. And we know one of them is true. Then, we acquire some evidence E which rules out the first hypothesis. In doing so, E thereby raises the probability of the other three. But we know that two of those are false. So, on the assumption that misleading evidence is evidence for a falsehood, E is misleading evidence twice over. There are two falsehoods E made more likely than they were before. And yet that same evidence also makes the true hypothesis more likely.

Fantl takes this as a reason to reject the idea that misleading evidence is evidence for a falsehood. I take it to show something else. It would obviously be a bad move to ignore E in this kind of situation. Rather than see this as a reason to redefine “misleading evidence,” we should see it as another point in favor of FAWL as a regulative epistemic policy. The example shows that we often do and should refuse to ignore evidence we know to be misleading.

12. Anscombe on Ambien and Arational Means of Misleading

The Doors of Perception (Reference Huxley1954) is Aldous Huxley’s famous report of his own mescaline induced psychedelic experiences. These included visual experiences of the walls no longer meeting at right angles, a Zen-like feeling that everything is one, and an overwhelming and lasting sense that the mescaline shows him reality as it really is while ordinary sober perception is an inaccurate distortion. Setting aside legal and health concerns, do we philosophically minded inquirers have epistemic reason to expand our total evidence by enjoying misleading drug-induced sensory experiences? The dogmatist is an epistemic square who advises us to just say know. Those who guide their inquiry in accordance with FAWL, however, are hip to the epistemic benefits acquisition of this type of evidence could bring. The propensity of psychedelic experience to tell against ordinary perception and commonsense is no reason not to turn on, tune in, and FAWL out.

The same point applies to moral inquiry. Deontological ethicist Chris Heathwood reports how taking the sleep aid Ambien fundamentally (but temporarily) altered his moral intuitions. After some time on the drug, utilitarianism started to seem obviously true, standard anti-consequentialist thought experiments that were so convincing to him before now struck him as childish. And he contemplated quitting his academic job to pursue a life devoted to altruism.Footnote ³

In a famous passage from “Modern Moral Philosophy,” G.E. Anscombe advocates a proactively dogmatic stance toward the arguments of consequentialist philosophers. Anscombe refuses to engage with anyone who thinks there is or even might be circumstances in which executing an innocent person is morally justified (Reference Anscombe1958, 17). If Anscombe knows that hanging the innocent is always impermissible, then the bottle of Ambien is analogous to Miss Lead’s pink packet. Dr. Sorensen recommends that she keep it sealed. I’m writing Miss Anscombe the opposite prescription. As far as her purely epistemic interests are concerned, it would do her some good to pop a few Ambien, open the doors of moral perception, and FAWL.

I assume here (perhaps incorrectly) that mescaline and Ambien generate evidence in the form of experiences and moral intuitions without directly instilling beliefs or undermining my reasoning abilities. In other words, the drugs leave my background knowledge and inferential reasoning capacities undamaged and it is ultimately up to me to weigh the total evidence and decide what to believe. But what about situations where I might be more forcibly or arationally misled? What does FAWL recommend in those kinds of cases?

Consider Phryne, the ancient Greek courtesan who was tried for impiety around 350 BC. Legend has it that she overcame the mountains of damning evidence against her by standing up and exposing her breasts to the jurymen who were so mesmerized by her beauty that they lost their wits and acquitted her.Footnote ⁴ Or imagine that, instead of packing her pink envelope with misleading truths, Miss Lead fills it with a powder that will become airborne upon opening and, once inhaled, automatically erases all memory of Tom’s theft.

Nothing in FAWL prohibits me from doing what I can to avoid being misled in these kinds of cases. FAWL prohibits us from ignoring or avoiding evidence in the course of inquiry. But neither Phryne’s breasts nor Miss Lead’s Magical Forgetfulness Powder constitute evidence for the relevant propositions. And therefore, avoidance of that sort of misleader would not constitute a violation of FAWL.

13. Fringe Benefits and Practical Limitations

The Ambien example calls attention to another way in which FAWL is superior to the dogmatic epistemic policies. Mill points out how engagement with contrarians can bring about a “clearer perception and livelier impression” (Reference Mill2007 [1859], 77) of the truth and breathe new life into dead dogmas. This is so even if the contrarian is certainly wrong. In the same way, engagement with misleading perceptual experiences or moral intuitions can advance our understanding in numerous and often unpredictable ways. An ethicist’s experiences on Ambien can force her to think about fundamental moral, epistemological, and personal issues in a way she had not before and would not have otherwise: Is the Ambien hindering my moral sense or improving it? If my moral intuitions are so easy to manipulate, why should I ever trust them? Should I give all my stuff to the poor?

This is not to say that, all things considered, we must always seek out new and contrary evidence. Some efforts to gather evidence are too time consuming, too expensive, too dangerous, or too illegal. FAWL prohibits avoiding or disregarding evidence for a certain reason, namely, to avoid situations where you may get good reason to change your mind. This allows that there might be other reasons that make investigation not worth the cost. How to formulate epistemic policies that take account of those kinds of reasons is a further project for regulative epistemology.