Intellectual Trust in Oneself and Others

[Pages:26]Intellectual Trust in Oneself and Others

RICHARD FOLEY New York University

published by the press syndicate of the university of cambridge The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom

cambridge university press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA

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Richard Foley 2001

This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,

no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2001

Printed in the United States of America

Typeface Bembo 10.5/13 pt. System DeskTopPro/UX [bv]

A catalog record for this book is available from the British Library.

Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication data Foley, Richard.

Intellectual trust in oneself and others / Richard Foley. p. cm. ? (Cambridge studies in philosophy) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-521-79308-4

1. Knowledge, Theory of. I. Title. II. Series. BD161 .F565 2001 121'.6?dc21 00-065171

ISBN 0 521 79308 4 hardback

Contents

Acknowledgments

page ix

Part One Intellectual Trust in Oneself

1

1 The Importance of Intellectual Self-Trust

3

1. Classical foundationalism and intellectual trust

3

2. Attempts to refute skepticism

6

3. Externalism and the analysis of knowledge

8

4. Epistemology, theology, and natural selection

13

5. Epistemology and the leap of intellectual faith

18

2 Intellectual Self-Trust, Rational Belief, and Invulnerability

to Self-Criticism

25

1. Confidence and depth

25

2. Rational belief as invulnerability to self-criticism

27

3. Two thought experiments

37

4. Self-trust and inconsistency

47

5. Rationality and less than ideal outcomes

51

3 Empirical Challenges to Self-Trust

55

1. Studies documenting our tendencies to make errors

55

2. First-person epistemological issues raised by the

studies

63

3. Self-monitoring

68

4. The limits of self-monitoring

72

5. The lack of guarantees

76

6. Internal conflict and conflict with others

78

vii

Part Two Intellectual Trust in Others and in One's Own

Future and Past Self

81

4 Self-Trust and the Authority of Others

83

1. Epistemic egotism and epistemic egoism

83

2. Locke on the authority of others

89

3. The social construction of opinion

92

4. The incoherence of epistemic egotism and egoism

99

5. Intellectual conflict with others

108

6. Anonymous reconsidered

117

7. Egalitarianism and expert opinion

122

8. Individualism and autonomy

126

5 Past Opinion and Current Opinion

131

1. The diary problem

131

2. Three theses about past opinion

132

3. An attempt to motivate the credibility thesis

136

4. The incoherence of not trusting past opinion

138

5. Differences in the credibility of past opinions

141

6. The priority thesis and the special reason thesis

143

7. Radical conflicts with one's own past opinions

146

8. Past opinions and the opinions of others

154

6 Future Opinion and Current Opinion

157

1. Epistemic Ulysses problems

157

2. Trust in future opinion

158

3. Reasons for believing that I will believe P

161

4. Conflicts between current and future opinions

166

5. Future opinions and current deliberations

167

6. Self-trust radiates outward

168

Conclusion

173

Index

179

viii

1

The Importance of Intellectual Self-Trust

1. CLASSICAL FOUNDATIONALISM AND INTELLECTUAL TRUST

To what extent should we intellectually trust ourselves? Questions of trust arise about our opinions, and they also arise about the faculties, practices, and methods that generate these opinions. Moreover, there is a relation between the two. If I have trust in the reliability of my faculties, practices, and methods, I will tend also to have trust in the overall accuracy of my opinions, and vice-versa. Trust in one tends to transfer to the other.

Questions of intellectual trust also arise about other people's opinions and faculties, and they can even arise about one's own past or future opinions and faculties. Moreover, there is a relation between these questions and question of self-trust, for whenever one's current opinions conflict with those of others, or with one's own past or future opinions, there is an issue of whom to trust: one's current self, or the other person, or one's past or future self? However, one of the central claims of this work is that there is also an interesting theoretical relation between the two sets of questions. I argue in Part Two that the trust it is reasonable to have in one's current opinions provides the materials for an adequate account of the trust one should have in the opinions of others and in one's own past and future opinions. But in Part One, my focus is more limited. I am concerned with intellectual trust in one's current self.

Most of us do intellectually trust ourselves by and large. Any remotely normal life requires such trust. An adequate philosophical account of intellectual trust will go beyond this observation, however, and say

3

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