Knowledge and the Motive for Truth Summary

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1. The motive for truth in our epistemic lives

Zagzebski says that she assumes that a self-conscious being is both conscious of the world and conscious of itself being conscious of the world. And that because we are self-conscious, we reflect upon our own conscious states because we think that in doing so we can monitor and improve the connection between those states and their objects in the world. The material which we reflect upon is what we find our pre-reflective consciousness- our memories, pre-reflective beliefs, and emotions.

Trust is as much a part of our basic endowment as our faculties of perception and reasoning. Our pre-reflective trust is one of the things upon which we reflect when we attempt to monitor the relation between our conscious states and the world.

Zagzebski says that when we reflect , we realise that we have no non-circular way to tell that our faculties have anything to do with the way the world is, so either we turn our pre-reflective trust into reflective trust, or we become skeptics. Linda Zagzebski's view is that the right response to epistemic circulatory is to trust reflectively, which means that the best way to figure out how true a piece of knowledge is is to put trust into our views of it once we've reflected upon it with our experiences (memories, emotions, beliefs etc.).

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The point of reflection is to increase the trustworthiness of our faculties, but we can only do that by using those same faculties in an especially careful and directed way. Reflection makes the connection between our faculties and the world more accurate by increasing the coherence of the outputs of those faculties. If we were living in an Evil Genius world, being conscientious would not increase the trustworthiness of our faculties. In fact, if we were right in our pre-reflective state only a small percentage of the time- say 10%, then careful reflection on the outputs of our faculties could not increase their reliability sufficiently to make them trustworthy. The best we can do is to be reflective, but since most of what we reflect about is, or depends upon, what is unreflective, being reflective is only helpful is we can generally trust our unreflective selves. We must think, then, that our perceptual experiences are generally veridical and our pre-reflective beliefs are generally true. If they were not, then when we are conscientious in the use of our faculties, it would not be reasonable to think that the outcome is truth.

Reflection brings fully to consciousness the use of our faculties and their connection with their ends. The natural end of belief is truth. To believe is to think something is true. When we reflect, we think about the way in which we acquired a belief, or we think about its support from other beliefs and experiences, or the beliefs and experiences of others whom we trust upon reflection. We think that such reflection will lead us to do a better job of having true beliefs. What Zagzebski means by epistemic conscientiousness is doing reflectively what we do unreflectively. What is added is an awareness of our epistemic end- the truth, and the attempt to reach that end as well as we can. The motive for truth does not appear only at the reflective level; it was there all along. But it becomes an object of awareness at the reflective level. The epistemically conscientious person has a reflective motive for truth and reflectively guides her epistemic behaviour by trying her best to reach the end of that motive.

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Aquinas says we always act "under the aspect of good," (De Veritate q. 22, a. 1), and Zagzebski says that she would say that similarly, we always believe under the aspect of true. We are not usually aware of the way we think that something we are doing aims at the good, but when we reflect about our acts, we bring into consciousness the end of good and the way in which what we are doing does or does not reach that end. Similarly, when we reflect about our beliefs, we bring into consciousness the natural end of true and the way in which what we are doing cognitively does or does not succeed in reaching that end. The phenomenon of epistemic circularity reveals that even though our epistemic end is independent of our consciousness, the only way we can tell that we have reached our epistemic end is by the reflective use of our faculties consciously aimed at truth.

Reflection shows us that other people are often better at getting truth than we are ourselves. The human community has developed norms of reasoning by reflection upon the connection between what we do cognitvely and what we later, upon reflection, judge as successful. These norms have been codified into rules. The human community has also identified intellectual traits that we reflectiveley judge make us more successful at getting truth - or reaching other epistemic ends, such as understanding. We call these intellectual virtues. The intellectual virtues are qualities of reflective agents in their attempts to reach their epistemic ends. These traits require basic trust in our faculties, and they would not be virtuous unless our faculties were basically trustworthy.

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2. What is special about knowledge?

For millennia reflective humans have attempted to distinguish success in getting truth from a higher level state of getting truth. Zagzebski does not know whether it is natural to desire a state higher than true belief, but such a desire certainly appears at the reflective level. Ever since Plato it has been thought that there is a state of getting the truth in a particularly good way, a way that is good enough to be worth considerable effort to obtain it. But the fact that we identify and analyse knowledge at the reflective level does not mean that knowledge only exists at the reflective level. Although knowledge is worth effort, it does not necessarily require effort. It might not even require reflection. If we look at the history of philsophy, we see a division on this issue.

What Plato called "epitome" and Aquinas called "scientia" was a state that demanded considerable reflection and cognitive effort. What most contemporary philosophers call "knowledge" does not. So contemporary epistemologists typically treat simple, true perceptual beliefs in ordinary conditions of knowledge, whereas typical ancient and medieval philosophers did not. Zagzebski suspects that there is no determinate answer to the question whether Plato and Aquinas differ from contemporary philosophers on the analysis of the same epistemic state, or whether ancient and medieval philosophers were simply talking about a different epistemic state than the one that has received the most attention in contemporary epistemology. But she also thinks the answer to this question is not very important. If there are a number of good kinds of distinguishable states of believing the truth, it is worth calling attention to them, whether or not they all fall under the class of states of knowing.

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There is a pre-reflective desire for truth as well as a reflectively conscious desire for truth. It is not natural for us to be reflectively conscious all the time, and it is not natural for us to be reflectively guided by the motive for truth all the time. Even when we are unreflective, some ways of getting the truth are better than others, and it is a good idea to call attention to the difference. Some virtue epistemologists have identified knowledge with using our faculties in a way that makes the success of getting the truth credited to the agent rather than to luck or to some external cause, and on this view, unreflective true beliefs can qualify as knowledge. (See, for instance, Riggs 1998), Greco 2003), Sosa 2003). Zagzebski's view is that gettong to the truth through the reflective use of our faculties is a higher level epistemic state than getting the truth through the unreflective use of our faculties, but agrees that the latter is better than getting to the truth through luck or some way that is not due to the use of our faculties. So there are at least three levels of getting the truth, and there are at least two places at which we can draw the line between knowledge and a lesser state. Ernest Sosa (2007) has drawn the line in both places and calls one "reflective knowledge" and the other "animal knowledge." Put simply, reflective knowledge is reflective true belief, animal knowledge is unreflective true belief that is credited to one's perceptual and epistemic faculties, and mere true belief is not credited to one's faculties is not knowledge.

Zagzebski has no objections to drawing the distinction between knowledge and lesser states this way as long as reflective knowledge does not disappear from epistemological discussion. We can conclude that being epistemically reflective is a good thing. Zagzebski's view is that it not only makes us more likely to reach our epistemic end, it is esstential to self-governance. When we believe reflectively, we own our beliefs in a way that parallels our ownership of the acts we perform reflectively. We not only make it more likely that our states will bear the right relation to an external world, we also make it more likely that we will have a unified self. Then, the value of believing reflectively is undeniable. But as Zagzebski has said, she cannot see anything that forces us to connect that state with knowledge and she doubts that there is a single state that legitimately falls under the heading "knowledge".

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There are many different good ways to believe. We can be good by satisfying internalist norms. We can be good by having the proper external relation to the ground of truth. We can be good by having intellectual virtues. We can be good because we are fortunate enough to have a properly functioning endowment in a benign world. The particular way our belief states are good in a state of knowledge is partly a matter of theoretical decision, but our decision is guided by certain theoretical desiderata. Zagzebski suggests that we want our definition to capture our most important epistemic values, we want it to have roughly the same extension as other contemporary definitions, and we want to avoid classic objections to previous definitions such as Gettier problems. We want to find a definition that is not only theoretically explanatory, but is also practically useful, one that has a direct connection with the things we can do ourselves to achieve knowledge.

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3. Knowledge as a state acquired by a conscientious agent

Zagzebski proposes that knowledge is epistemically conscientious attainment of truth. It is a state in which we get to the truth by governing our epistemic lives well. Epistemic conscientiousness is the desire for truth brought to reflective awareness, accompained by using one's faculties as well as one can to satisfy that desire. In Zagzebski short book, On Epistemology, she proposed the following definition. "Knowledge is belief in which the believer gets to the truth because she acts in an epistemically conscientious way."

Epistemic conscientiousness requires caring about truth, but not necessarily caring about truth for its own sake. The intellectual virtues are traits of intellectual character that an epistemically conscientious person would attempt to develop and would admire in others. These qualities do not necessarily require intellectual discipline. A conscientious person has general epistemic self-trust. The phenomenon of epistemic circularity means that either a reflective person must have self-trust or succumb to skepticism. Some of the virtues restrain self-trust (e.g. attentiveness, open-mindedness, intellectual humility, intellectual fairness). Other virtues enhance self-trust (e.g. intellectual courage, perservance, firmness). But none of these traits would be virtues if basic self-trust were not the stance of the conscientious person. That is because the reflective person is aware that she is wasting her time in being attentive, open to the views of others, courageous, persevering, etc., unless her faculties are basically trustworthy.

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Zagzebski thinks that this definition satisfies a number of desierata in a definition of knowledge. It avoids Gettier problems; it identifies a feature of knowing that makes it better than mere true believing; it has the practical advantage of connecting norms of reasoning and the intellectual virtues with the good-making features of knowledge. In On Epistemology Zagzebski said that she would not maintain that satisfaction of the conditions given in the definition necessary for knowledge, only that it is sufficient. Zagzebski has already mentioned that the issue of whether reflection is necessary for knowledge has changed in the history of investigation of knowledge, so the connection between reflection and the definition above needs to be examined. There is also the issue of counter-motives, or motives opposed to the motive for truth, and whether they affect the conditions for knowing. So there are at least two types of cases in which the conditions given in my definition appear to be unnecessary for knowledge. These are cases in which the believer is (a) un-reflective, or (b) reflective but vicious in reaching the truth.

The first kind of case is one that Zagzebski calls "easy knowledge." It is a situation in which a person forms a true belief on the basis of simple perception or memory or testimony, and does so automatically, with no reflection. In standard cases of these kinds, many philosophers claim that the person knows. For instance, I wake up in the morning, see sunlight and believe that the sun is up, or I recall that today is my sister's birthday and believe it without any reflection between the act of remembering and the act of believing. Or my neighbour tells me that they are going out of town, I believe what she tells me immediately, without any intermediate steps. In each case, it is tempting to say my belief state is good enough for knowledge, provided the belief is true. I know that the sun is up. I know that today is my sister's birthday. I know that the neighbours are going out of town.

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In On Epistemology Zagzebski argued that easy knowledge is not ruled out by the definition above. An epistemically conscientious person has basic self-trust and is not continuously reflective. She need not engage in the special cognitive discipline of following norms of reasoning that require conscious attention, nor need she exemplify virtuous habits when the discipline of the virtues is not called for, but she would do so in the relevant counterfactual circumstances. The epistemically conscientious person monitors her cognitve activity, reflecting when she is aware of cues that call into question either her basic self-trust, her trust in others, or trust in her environment. A conscientious person does reflect upon her beliefs from time to time. She expects her beliefs to survive conscientious self-reflection. But it is not necessary to engage in self-reflection about every belief that would survive such reflection. To do so would be to succumb to a kind of intellectual neurosis. Managing our cognitive lives appropriately does not mean reflecting on each and every belief at the time it is formed. But if what we would do in relevant counterfactual circumstances is important, then what we do do when those circumstances arise is also important. In this way, what we do on other occassions of forming beliefs is relevant to the issue whether the belief now is an instance of knowledge.

The same response applies to the case of vicuously motivated believer. A knower need not be motivated to get truth for its own sake, and she need not be reflectively aware of the desire for truth every time she gets knowledge. She need not directly engage the motives that are the components of the intellectual virtues on each occassion in which she obtains knowledge, and she need not refer to the norms of reasoning in order to be a conscientious believer. But if knowledge is the result of the conscientious governance of our epistemic lives, the place of the virtues in consciousness is important. Most of the virtues aid our self-governance by acting as constraints on or enhancements of what we do naturally and unreflectively. The parallel point applies to moral virtues. It does not count against an agent's virtue if she does not directly engage the motives. of the various virtues every time she acts, but if she is virtuous, she is disposed to do so when the appropriate occassion arises. She may believe upon reflection that many classes of her acts succeed at reaching their ends when she is acting unreflectively, but she is alert to features of a situation that call for reflection and require her to exercise the discipline of the virtues.

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But if she acted against the virtues, we would think that counts against the fact that she is morally conscientious. Similarly, if she flagrantly violates the norms of reasoning, or acquires a belief in a way that is close-minded, intellectually arrogant, inattentive, or sloppy, she has done something unconscientious, and consequently she has risked losing the truth. These constraints are vague because there are many virtues and many norms of reasoning, and there are many ways in which an agent can violate them. Some ways are not very serious; others are much more so. The vagueness in the notion of believing conscientiously leads to vagueness in the application of Zagzebski's definition of knowledge. Since there are degrees of good believing, it is probably not surprising that there are degrees of epistemically valuable states of true believing, and in this way there are degrees of knowledge.

Zagzebski ends by summarising her position on the place of motivation in knowledge. We desire truth at the pre-reflective level, and at the level we have trust in our epistemic faculties for the end of getting truth. A reflective person makes the desire for truth conscious and acquires reflective self-trust. What she means by epistemic conscientiousness is the reflective awareness of the desire for truth, and the reflective attempt to satisfy that desire as well as one can. She suggests that knowledge, in at least one of the senses, is the conscientious satisfaction of the desire for the truth. Zagzebski has argued that this definition does not rule out easy knowledge obtained from perception, memory, or testimony, but it does not rule out true belief that is unconscietiously acquired through the exercise of intellectual vice or disregard of the rules of conscientious reasoning.