Subject: Determinism precludes knowledge

From: [email-masked] (ASP-Disc)
Date: Wed, 25 Jan 1995 10:11:36 -0500

From: Mike <[email-masked]>

Continuing my defense of Bryan, let me try to explain the knowledge
argument against determinism, since I think I caused Bryan to give
it to begin with.
 
As we know, knowledge requires more than true belief.  Your beliefs
have to be true non-accidentally, or non-coicidentally.  (Some
people would cash this out as 'reliability'; others as
'justification'.)  The argument is that if physical determinism
were true, your beliefs would only get to be true accidentally.
 
Note: by "physical determinism" I mean the proposition that all
changes are determined in accordance with the laws of nature, by
physical causes.  I don't apply the argument in case there are
mental (but non-physical) causes, or we can interact with abstract
objects.
 
Now we need an intuition pump, to congeal our understanding of this
sense of non-accidentalness.  Suppose subtle scientists are
implanting beliefs into you by hypnotic suggestion and/or injection
of chemicals (I don't know whether this is possible, but you get
the idea).  Then do these beliefs constitute knowledge?  No.  What
if they only implant true beliefs into you?  Still, no.  What if
they carefully find out if each proposition is true, and decide
only to implant true beliefs into you?  Still, you do not know
these things -- even though *in a sense* the truth of the
propositions causes you to believe them, still, your process of
arriving at them is non-rational.  You might imagine, though, that
these determined scientists decide to implant in you, in
succession, beliefs corresponding to the steps of a valid (and
sound) proof of some proposition (we must assume they also implant
the starting premises).  Again, I don't think this gives you
knowledge.
 
I view this situation as being comparable to what would always be
happening to us if determinism were true.  The above case, in fact,
gives you the most that you can get from determinism -- it gives
you the true beliefs, the beliefs that justify them, and the causal
connection between your belief and the corresponding fact.  What's
missing?  As far as I can see, the only thing that's missing, is
that the process by which the belief is *immediately* formed is
non-rational; the proximate causes are blind forces.
 
But, you might say, perhaps, per the mind/brain identity theory,
the physical states that proximately cause your beliefs are really,
at the same time, identical with some conscious reasoning &
reflection.  In that case, would the belief be determined by
irrational forces, or by rational ones?  I think we should still
say the former, on this ground:  it is only the purely physical,
non-rational description of us & our brains that, according to any
good physicalist, is causally relevant.  The laws of physics are
only going to mention what I call 'blind forces' as such, and these
laws are supposed to be the fundamental explanation of all changes
that happen; so the mentalistic description of what's happening in
our brains is (in a sense) epiphenomenal -- it has no explanatory
function.  So I view this case as still being like the hynotically-
implanted beliefs.
 
Admittedly this is a somewhat esoteric argument.  Has this made it
clearer?
 
Of course, if any of this makes sense, it would be a misunder-
standing to suggest that, if determinism is true, perhaps we are
determined to have our beliefs be justified; that would be
hypothesizing that we may be determined to have our beliefs be
formed in a manner incompatible with determinism (Cf. the
supposition that we might be determined to make free choices).