Unger's Defense of Skepticism: New Wine in Old Bottles

Canadian Journal of Philosophy

Unger's Defense of Skepticism: New Wine in Old BottlesAuthor(s): Shane AndreSource: Canadian Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 12, No. 3 (Sep., 1982), pp. 453-465Published by: Canadian Journal of PhilosophyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40231270 .

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CANADIAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY Volume XII, Number 3, September 1982

Lingers Defense of Skepticism: New Wine In Old Bottles

SHANE ANDRE, California State University Long Beach

Peter Unger has recently attempted to defend skepticism by means of a novel and ingenious theory about certain general features of our language.1 According to his theory, skepticism is a logical consequence of the fact that certain epistemic terms, including 'certain' and 'know/ belong to a much wider class of absolute terms whose strict meaning is such that they have little or no positive application to things in the world. The purpose of this paper is to enquire whether Unger's theory of absolute terms provides a stronger basis for skepticism than do other, more familiar, approaches. I shall argue that the theory cannot be regarded as an explication of the ordinary meaning of the terms in question; that the ordinary meaning of these terms can be understood by means of an alternative, if less exciting, model; and that the logic of our language does not commit us to skepticism.

1 'A Defense of Skepticism/ Philosophical Review, 80 (1971) 198-219; and Ig- norance: A Case for Scepticism (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1975) chap. 2

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Unger gives the name 'basic absolute term' to certain terms in our language which, on his view, designate limiting properties, where a limiting property is understood as one which does not admit of degrees. For example, 'flaf and 'full' are basic absolute terms whereas 'bump/ and 'heav/ are not, for a surface can (logically) only be so flat or a con- tainer so full: once it has reached the limit of flatness or fullness there is no place further for it to go in that direction. On the other hand, there is no logical limit to bumpiness or heaviness, as is reflected in the linguistic fact that we have no use for expressions like 'absolutely bump/ or 'absolutely heavy/ as we have for 'absolutely flaf or 'absolutely full/

If basic absolute terms designate limiting properties, it would appear that such terms do not admit of comparative or augmentive constructions in the ordinary way. In this way, saying that x is heavier than y can be construed as saying that x has the property of heaviness in a higher degree than y. But if flatness does not admit of degrees, then saying that x is flatter than y cannot be construed in this way; it must mean either that x is flat whereas y is not, or else that x approximates more closely to

being flat than y. Again, in the ordinary way, to say that x is very, extremely, or especially heavy is to imply that x is more heavy than it would be if it were simply 'heavy/ but if there are no degrees of flatness, to say that x is very flat cannot mean this; it must mean that x approximates or is very close to being absolutely flat.

The notion of a limiting property leads Unger to propose two syntac- tical tests to distinguish basic absolute terms from relative terms. Accor- ding to the first test, when the modifiers 'ver/ and 'extremely7 function in the normal augmenting way, signifying that some property which is a matter of degree is present in a comparatively high degree, the adjec- tives which they modify are relative terms; but when, in saying that something x is very $ or extremely $, we imply that x is close to or very nearly $ (i.e., absolutely $), then '$' is a basic absolute term. The second test is based on the observation that certain comparative constructions, such as 'x is $-er (or more $) than y/ are open to different paraphrases, depending upon the kind of term substituted for 'f Where '$' is a relative term like 'bump/ or 'heavy/ to say that x is <|>-er than y is to say that x is <|> to a higher degree than y is, while allowing that both x and y are <|>. But when '$' is a basic absolute term like 'flaf or 'full/ to say that x is $-er than y is to say either that x is $ whereas y is not, or else that x is closer to being absolutely $ than y, in which case neither x nor y is absolutely $.

When applied to the term 'certain/ the two tests are supposed to show that it is a basic absolute term, unlike its epistemic relatives 'confi- denf and 'doubtful/ For, by the test of augmenting modifiers, we find that the sentence 'He is very certain that p' can be paraphrased 'He is nearly certain that p/ meaning that he is close to the limit of certainty,

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beyond which it is impossible to be more certain; but the sentence 'He is very confident (doubtful) that p' cannot be paraphrased 'He is nearly confident (doubtful) that p/ To be very confident or very doubtful is to be more confident or more doubtful than one would be if one were

merely confident or doubtful, but to be very certain is not to be more certain than one would be if one were absolutely certain. The test of

comparatives yields a similar result. Someone can be more confident that p than that q without ceasing to be confident that q, but he cannot be more certain that p than that q without signifying that, at least as far as q goes, he has not reached the limit of certainty.

The conception of certainty as a limiting property leads Unger to

deny that one is certain of anything of which it is possible to be more certain. Thus, if I am more certain that I exist than that there are

elephants, it follows on his view that I am not certain - absolutely certain - that there are elephants; and since Unger holds that being certain is a

necessacy condition for knowledge, as having square sides is a

necessary condition for being a cube,2 it further follows that I don't know that there are elephants. As is so often the case with skepticism, we are led by a series of apparently innocuous steps to a devastating and

preposterous conclusion. The question is, where did we go wrong? In identifying certainty with absolute certainty and making certainty

necessary for knowledge, Unger is aware that he is setting very high standards for certainty and knowledge - standards which are so high that it may safely be presumed that hardly anything, if anything at all, will meet these standards. The setting of very high standards is a familiar move on the part of the skeptic. What makes Unger's argument different from the general run of skeptical arguments is his claim that these high standards are not arbitrary standards imposed by the skeptic, but are standards implicit in the very language we use in everyday life. For

Unger :t is not the skeptic who is guilty of misusing language, but the or-

dinary man who fails to understand the logic of his own language. We

may say, if we like, that ordinary language is at fault, but that would not show that the skeptic is mistaken when he claims that everyday language commits us to nothing less than his high standards.

The critical issue I will concentrate on, therefore, is whether it is the

skeptic or his opponent who misunderstands-ordinary language. Nor- man Malcolm, Paul Edwards, and others have attempted to refute the

skeptic by showing that what he says could not be true unless we

systematically used language differently from the way we do.3 They con-

2 'A Defense of Skepticism/ 203

3 Norman Malcolm, 'Knowledge and Belief/ Mind, 61 (1952) 178-89; Paul Ed-

wards, 'Russell's Doubts about Induction/ Mind, 58 (1949) 141-63

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Shane Andre

tend that, given our use of ordinary language, what the skeptic says is false, and that, given the skeptic's proposed use of language, what he says is true but trivial: the skeptic's claims are paradoxical ways of ex- pressing the commonplace.

The nature of this dispute can be clarified by casting it in terms of

Unger's defense of skepticism. We can imagine the nonskeptic to answer Unger as follows: 'Of course, if we used 'flaf to mean 'absolutely flaf and 'certain' to mean 'absolutely certain,' it would follow that hardly anything in the world is flat and that hardly anyone is certain of anything. But that is not the way we ordinarily use these terms. As we

ordinarily use them, many familiar things are flat - the top of this table, the floor, the ceiling and so on - just as many familiar things are not flat - the human face, the prickly cactus, and balls of all kinds. Similarly, we are certain of many things - that the sun will rise tomorrow, that we were not born five minutes ago, and that there is a sheet of paper before us at this moment - as we are not certain of many other things - that we will be alive at this time next year, that the earth is billions of years old, and that it is raining in Vancouver at this moment. As you are using these terms, however, saying that hardly anything in the world is flat is

only a paradoxical way of saying that hardly anything in the world is so flat that nothing could be flatter; and saying that hardly anyone is certain of anything is only a paradoxical way of saying that hardly anyone is so certain of anything that there is nothing of which he is more certain/

Unger has two lines of defense against the preceding line of argument. The first line is to dismiss certain uses of the disputed terms as irrelevant for either of two reasons. First, some divergent uses can be put down to the fact that the terms in question are equivocal and have senses distinguishable from the ones in which he is interested (e.g., 'flat taste/ 'flat note/ 'flat fee/ 'flat answeK). Second, he offers the following 'diagnosis' to explain divergent uses of the senses of the terms in which he is interested: In everyday affairs we often speak loosely, charitably, and casually; we tend to let what we say pass as being true/4 For example, we may say that a tabletop is flat when it is apparent even to the naked eye that it is not absolutely flat; but for Unger this way of speaking is evidence, not that 'flaf means something less than 'absolutely flat/ but that we are not employing the term in its 'central, literal meaning' or strict sense, in calling the tabletop flat, we say what is false, but since it usually makes no practical difference whether an object is absolutely flat or very nearly flat, the falsehood is close enough to the truth as not to be contradicted by subsequent experience.

4 In Defense of Skepticism/ 214

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The success of this defense depends upon the availability of a non-

question-begging procedure for distinguishing between the 'loose' and 'stricf senses of the disputed terms. This is where Unger's second line of defense comes in. In the fullest statement of his method to date, 'How Better to Focus on Actual Meanings/ he proposes a general method for

determining whether the apparent meaning of a term is its actual meaning.5 If we are puzzled about the meaning of a term t in a sentence S, the method calls for transforming S into another sentence S', which differs from S only in that S' emphasizes or otherwise draws special attention to t. If S' is inconsistent, so must S be, for, as Unger claims, 'Emphasis does not change the meaning of words or sentences to which it is applied/6 The inconsistency of S can then be used to make explicit subtle aspects of the real meaning of t.

The following three pairs of sentences provide examples of Unger's procedure:

A Nelson Rockefeller is the son of John D. Rockefeller, and so is

Winthrop Rockefeller. A' Nelson Rockefeller is the son of John D. Rockefeller, and so is

Winthrop Rockefeller. B The nervous examinee knows his stuff but he isn't certain of it. B' The nervous examinee really knows his stuff but he isn't cer-

tain of it. C The tabletop is flat but not absolutely flat. C The tabletop is really flat but not absolutely flat.

Certain philosophical conclusions are supposed to follow from these

equivalences, together with the premise that the second sentence in each pair is inconsistent. For example, the inconsistency of a sentence of the form 'X is the son of Y, and so is Z' is supposed to show that 'the son of/ in common with other definite descriptions, is a uniquely referr-

ing phrase, whether it occurs in sentences like A or A'. There are two major difficulties in Unger's method. The first has to

do with his claim that two sentences which differ only in emphasis do not differ in meaning. For it is simply false that emphasis does not

change the meaning of a sentence. While it may not do so for all

sentences, it certainly does for some. To say to a guest, on offering him a

5 Ignorance, 74-82

6 Ignorance, 76. In a footnote, Unger adds the qualification: This is true for stress

anyway, discounting syllabic emphasis. With modifiers, the situation may be more complex/

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Shane Andre

tray of drinks, Take one/ is insulting in a way that its unstressed counter- part is not, for the former but not the latter implies 'one and only one/ More generally, the fallacy of accent illustrates the fact that an inference which is appropriate to draw from a statement when it is accented in one way may be inappropriate or uncalled for when the statement is accented differently.

The difference in meaning that results from emphasis affects Unger's own examples. Unger would have us believe that 'X is the son of Y' means the same as 'X is the son of Y,' but this is false, for the circumstances under which it is appropriate to use one may not be appropriate to use the other. If someone asks me 'Who are Y's sons?', apparently assuming that Y has more than one son, it would be appropriate for me, if I believe the assumption to be incorrect, to answer 'X is the son of Y/ Here stress serves as a subtle way of correcting a presup- position in the original question. But if the questioner were to ask 'Who is Y's son?' I could not answer 'X is the son of Y' without suggesting that some special significance attached to this fact: perhaps that it was curious, unexpected, open to dispute in some quarters, or otherwise remarkable. If nothing remarkable attaches to X's parentage, it is misleading for me to use language in a way which suggests that it does. There would be no point in using the emphatic form of a sentence if it meant the same as its normal form.7

There is another ground for maintaining that sentences like A and A' are not equivalent. For if the stressed form of a definite description im-

plies uniqueness, as Unger maintains, we can find cases where its unstressed form does not. Suppose a guest at a party in your home asks 'Where's the John?' when there is one right behind him: surely it would be in order to answer 'If s right behind you,' even though you know that it is only one of two bathrooms in the house, the other of which is upstairs. Of course, there are circumstances when the fuller answer would be called for; for example, if the questioner were a prospective buyer to whom you were showing your home. But unless there is reason to think that the questioner is interested in more than the availability of the nearest bathroom, there is no need to answer 'Well, there's one right behind you and another upstairs' in order to avoid the charge of saying or implying what is false.

The second major difficulty in Unger's method arises from his con- tention that certain sentences are seen to be inconsistent, once special

7 An illuminating account of the role of emphasis in the use of statements will be found in Fred I. Dretske, 'Contrastive Statements/ Philosophical Review, 81 (1972)411-37.

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attention is focussed upon certain terms in those sentences. Certainly, there is something odd about saying 'He really knows it but he isn't certain' or The tabletop is really flat but it is not absolutely flat/ but it does not follow that these sentences are inconsistent, since, as is well known by now, a sentence can be odd or absurd to use without being logically inconsistent. It is absurd to say 'He knows that p but I don't know that p,' but what is said can still be true. What is required, therefore, is some evidence that a given sentence is not just absurd but logically absurd, and Unger does not supply this evidence.

The absurdity of saying 'He really knows it but he isn't certain' can be explained by considering the difference between asking someone if he knows something and asking him if he really knows it. The effect of calling special attention to 'know7 is to suggest that, whatever answer is for- thcoming, it is more likely to be challenged than it would otherwise be, thus putting the hearer on the defensive. It is thus misleading to say that someone really knows something unless one takes him to be in the best possible position to know. Since uncertainty on his part may be taken as evidence that he is not in the best possible position to know, it is self-

defeating to indicate that he is in the best possible position to know, and at the same time to admit that he is not certain. It is rather like saying 'I know that p but I'm not certain that p' - a sentence which, as A.D.

Woozley has shown, is epistemologically but not logically absurd.8

Similarly, it is normally self-defeating to use sentences like This surface is really flat but it is not absolutely flat or 1 am really certain but I am not absolutely certain/ For the first part of each sentence offers an assurance that is immediately withdrawn in the second half. This assurance comes from the fact that the circumstances in which it is natural to say This surface is really flat or 'I am really certain' differ from those in which it is natural to say This surface is flaf or 'I am certain': in

using the emphatic rather than the normal form, the speaker indicates, not just that he is predicating a 'property' of a designated object, but that he is prepared to take a stand, that he is not speaking casually or lightly, that he is not to be easily gainsaid. The speaker can say, without apparent oddity, 'As far as I can see, this surface is flaf but not 'As far as I can see, this surface is really flat/ Again, the speaker can say 'I'm certain for my part,' but to say I'm really certain for my parf is scarcely less

strange than 'I know for my part.' Since the use of the emphatic form of these sentences normally conveys the speaker's strong assurance, it is

self-defeating for him to immediately add a disclaimer which suggests

8 'Knowing and not Knowing/ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 53 (1952-53) 151-72

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Shane Andre

that he should not have given this much assurance in the first place. The

absurdity arises because of incompatibly doings, not, as Unger would have it, because of incompatible meanings.

However, even if Unger were correct in maintaining that the em-

phatic forms of the sentences he discusses are logically inconsistent, his method for focussing on actual meanings would still fail, for, as we have seen, it assumes that emphasis does not change the meaning of terms to which it is applied. I have argued, on the contrary, that it is a mistake to think that, by stressing a term, we can somehow get clearer about its meaning in normal use, as if we were in the position of a partially deaf person who cannot hear distinctly unless the speaker raises his voice. But this is a lesson we might have learned from Austin, who said, albeit in another connection, 'No modification without aberration.'9 Ironically, philosophers produce aberrant account of meaning when they ignore this lesson, as Unger apparently does.

In rejecting UngeKs analysis, however, we are still left with the pro- blem of suggesting an alternative account of the meaning of terms like 'flaf and 'certain/ I suggest that these terms, like the other examples of absolute terms specifically mentioned by Unger, can be regarded as members of a special class of vague terms. As the term 'vague' is generally used in the theory of meaning today, a term is said to be vague if, while there are clear cases where it does apply and cases where it does not, nevertheless there are marginal or borderline cases where the application of the term is disputable, because the criteria for the use of the term are not altogether specific. For example, 'bald' and 'middle-aged' are generally said to be vague terms, because while there are standard cases for the correct and incorrect application of these terms, there are borderline cases where it is not clear whether we should affirm or deny that a man who has only a few wisps of hair on his head is bald, or whether a person who reaches his thirty-ninth birthday has become middle-aged.

Although the terms 'bald' and 'middle-aged' are both vague, however, there is an interesting difference between them, for the first is unlike the second in having a limiting sense. Although we can and do apply 'bald' to men whose heads are not altogether hairless, there is ob- viously a limit (logically) to how bald a man can get: once his head becomes totally hairless, he has reached the limit of baldness. But there is not a limiting sense, in the same way, to the term 'middle-aged/ No doubt we cannot apply the term correctly to babies or octogenarians, and in that sense the term is limited, but it is not limited in the sense that

9 'A Plea for Excuses/ Philosophical Papers (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1961) 137

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Lingers Defense of Skepticism

there is some determinate point at which a man becomes as middle-

aged as he can (logically) be. A middle-aged man eventually becomes old and so ceases to be middle-aged, but at no time during the period of his middle-age can we say: 'Now he has reached it: he has become total-

ly (absolutely, completely, etc.) middle-aged/ In other words, whereas our concept of baldness allows us to conceive of a state of total or absolute baldness - the limit of baldness, from which people can diverge somewhat (but not too much) without ceasing to be bald - our concept of middle-age does not allow us to conceive of an analogous state of total or absolute middle-age, and so, in this sense, the concept is without a limiting sense.

What the comparison of 'bald' and 'middle-aged' shows, I think, is that a term can be indeterminate in some respects as regards marginal cases without being indeterminate in others. Whereas the boundary of

'middle-aged' is, as it were, open at both ends, the boundary of 'bald' is

open only at one end. A term can be vague, therefore, and yet have a

partially determinate sense. For this reason I suggest that many terms are

vague which are not commonly considered to be so, including the terms in which Unger is especially interested - 'flat,' 'certain/ and 'know/

'Flaf and 'certain' are like 'bald' in having a limiting sense and so be-

ing partially determinate in meaning. A surface can (logically) become

only so flat: once it has become absolutely flat, it has reached the limit of flatness. Similarly, a person can (logically) become only so certain: so

long as there is something of which he is more certain than he is certain that p, he has not reached the limit of certainty with respect to p. Because of their limiting senses, it would not be entirely inappropriate to follow Unger in calling such terms 'absolute.'10 However, it would be a mistake to focus upon the limiting sense of these terms to the extent of

overlooking the fact that, as these terms are used by native English speakers, they are also partially /ndeterminate in meaning, no less than 'bald/

We say of many things that are not absolutely flat that they are flat, and we say this not in ignorance of the fact that they fall short of the limit of flatness, but in full knowledge of it. It can hardly be maintained, therefore, that by 'flaf we mean 'absolutely flat/ Nor can it be maintained that in using the term in this way we speak loosely/ To do so is to confuse loose usage with vagueness. The term 'flaf is vague in the sense

that, apart from its limiting sense, there is, in general, no determinate

10 In one place Unger calls such terms 'absolute (limit) terms' (his italics; Ignorance, 49).

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Shane Andre

point at which to delimit its correct application. Whether it is appropriate to call something flat is very much a matter of context and the human purposes that may be aided or frustrated by so doing.

For example, we can compare the use of 'flaf in geographical contexts with its use in technical contexts such as science or technology. In geographical contexts, it may be appropriate to call something flat -

say, a field or plain - which has visible irregularities, even to the eye of the casual observer. When people called the earth flat hundreds of years ago they were, of course, mistaken, but they were mistaken because of the overall shape of the earth, not because a limited portion of its surface was visibly irregular. In technical contexts, however, we would hesitate to call something flat unless, after careful inspection with a suitable measuring device, such as a gauge or precision-made straight- edge tool, we found it to be without visible irregularities. We may say, if we like, that we are more careful about our use of the term 'flaf in technical contexts, but this is only because our use of the term in such contexts requires greater care. It would be a mistake to infer that our use of the term is more precise, in the sense of approximating more closely to its real meaning. For we would not be more precise if, in geographical contexts, we used the term in the way in which we use it in technical contexts; we would merely be using it in a way which is irrelevant to the purposes at hand (e.g., plowing a field, building a house, or laying a road). In the same way, our use of the term in technical contexts could not be rendered more precise by using it in its limiting sense. For to deny that a precision-made straight-edge tool was flat on the ground that under a powerful microscope irregularities would be found in minute portions of its surface, would betray, not an eye for precision, but a blindness to relevance. The engineering of precision instruments is not at odds with the theory of the atomic structure of matter.

The objection may be made that, if anything is flat in the limiting sense of the term, then it would necessarily be flat in all contexts, whereas the converse does not hold, and hence the limiting sense expresses the 'central, literal' meaning of the term. This objection fails on two counts. First, it is false that if anything is flat in the limiting sense, then it would be flat in all contexts, for the limiting sense of 'flaf does not require that what is flat must be horizontal, but in the use of the term in geographical contexts we would deny that e.g., a field was flat if, however smooth its surface, it was inclined at an angle far removed from the horizontal. Second, even if it was true that whatever is flat in the limiting sense would be flat in all contexts, it does not follow that the limiting sense of the term expresses its 'central, literal' sense unless we assume what, in effect, needs to be proven - that the central sense of a term is its limiting sense, where it has one. It seems at least as plausible to hold that the central sense of a term is that sense which, as a rule,

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native speakers have in mind when they use the term, but such a conception gives no support to the above objection.

If the term 'flat is vague but has a limiting sense, it is not surprising that the same thing should turn out to be true of certain/ That this term is vague can be seen from the fact that, while there are clear cases where we can say that we are certain and other clear cases where we cannot, the boundary between the two kinds of case is not at all clear. I am certain that this sheet of paper exists at this moment and only a little less certain that it will exist five minutes from now unless I destroy it; but I am not at all certain that it will exist in its present form a year from now, as I am certain that our planet will exist a year from now. Somewhere in the interval between five minutes from now and one year from now I cease to be certain that this sheet of paper will continue to exist, but I cannot, except arbitrarily, state what that point is.

But although the term 'certain' is vague in the classical sense, it too seems to have a limiting sense. For while I am certain of many things, I am not equally certain of all of them, and there are some things of which I am certain of which I could not be more certain. Assuming that the latter represent, for me, the limiting sense of 'certain/ nevertheless I find that I cannot identify being certain with being certain in its limiting sense. The reason for this is that, although I am more certain, at this mo-

ment, that I exist than I am certain that polar bears exist, for me to deny that I am certain that polar bears exist would be misleading, for it would

suggest that my state of mind with regard to the existence of polar bears is similar perhaps to my state of mind with regard to the existence of the

planet Pluto, which it is not. Philosophers have sometimes suggested that certainty, unlike conviction or belief, does not admit of degrees,11 but this view is certainly false, if it is true, as I have suggested, that we can be certain of various things without being equally certain of all of them. Nor are we just relatively certain of the things of which we could

(logically) be more certain. I am not just relatively certain that there are

polar bears; I am certain, though not perhaps as certain as it is possible to be.

It may be objected to my account that, in allowing for degrees of cer-

tainty, I am simply paving the way for the familiar distinction between the 'strong' and 'weak' senses of 'know/ and defending the relatively un- controversial claim that, in the weak sense of 'know,' the man on the street knows many of the things which skeptics, using the strong sense of the term, deny that he knows. It is difficult to deal with this objection because the distinction between the two senses of 'know/ while

1 1 E.g., H.A. Prichard, Knowledge and Perception (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1950) 87

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familiar, is not always drawn in the same way. Even Malcolm, who apparently introduced the distinction, gives an account which is not altogether free from ambiguity.12 One way of interpreting his distinction is that a person knows that p in the strong sense if, in addition to its being true thatp and his being justified in believing thatp, he is absolutely certain that p, as indicated by his total unwillingness to consider the possibility of a refutation; whereas a person knows that p in the weak sense if, in addition to the truth and justification conditions, he is con- vinced thatp but less than absolutely certain. On this interpretation, the difference between the strong and weak senses of 'know7 comes down to a difference in the degree of certainty, and Malcolm may be understood as saying that human knowledge in the weak sense is exten- sive - a minimal claim that leaves skepticism largely unaffected.

My reply to this objection is twofold. First, it takes for granted what the skeptic needs to prove: namely, that certainty, as a propositional at- titude, is necessary for knowledge. Once this assumption is granted, it is natural to conclude that, if certainty admits of degrees or gradations, the same thing must be true of knowledge. But why should we accept this assumption? Although some philosophers have argued for it on the

ground that it is self-contradictory to say 1 know that p but I'm not certain that p/ this argument cannot be sustained, as the case of the nervous examinee shows. For the examiners may allow that the candidate knows that p even if they are not satisfied that he is certain that p, pro- vided the candidate gives the correct answer and can back up his answer with the right kind of reasons. Of course, under the same conditions the candidate cannot be justified in saying 'I know that p/ but it does not follow from that that what he says is not true. Philosophers who maintain that certainty is necessary for knowledge have, I submit, conflated the conditions under which it is true to say something with the conditions under which one is justified in saying that thing.13

My second reply to the above objection is that the distinction between the strong and weak senses of 'know7 is a philosophers invention rather than an elucidation of the ordinary meaning of 'knowing thatp/ If Jones and Smith both know that (say) Edmonton is the capital of Alberta, it is hard to see how Jones could know that 'better' or to a higher degree

12 'Knowledge and Belief/ 178-89. For different interpretations of Malcolm's distinction, see Jonathan Harrison, 'Mr. Malcolm on "Knowledge and Belief,"

'

Analysis, 13 (1952-53) 66-71; and Richard Taylor, 'A note on Knowing and Belief,' Analysis, 13 (1952-53) 143-4.

1 3 I have borrowed freely from ideas expressed in A.D. Woozley, 'Knowing and not Knowing.'

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than Smith. Of course, Jones may know a lot more about the city, having lived there or studied it whereas Smith has not, but knowing about, like knowing how, is not the same thing as knowing that. Again, Jones' knowledge may be first-hand whereas Smith's is second-hand, or Jones' knowledge may be based on conclusive evidence whereas Smith's is not, or Jones may be absolutely certain whereas Smith is not. But none of these differences shows that, as language is ordinarily used, Jones knows that Edmonton is the capital of Alberta more than, better than, or in a different sense than Smith does.

However, some of the differences between the epistemic situations of Jones and Smith may strike a philosopher as so important that he wishes to stake them out by labelling them with different terms, especially quasi-evaluative terms like 'strong' and 'weak,' but in doing so he will be legislating rather than elucidating the meaning of the terms in

question. Without denying that such semantic legislation might have a

point, I maintain that it should be recognized for what it is. Neither

Malcolm, who proposes to study 'the ordinary usage of "know" and

"believe," ' nor Unger, who tells us 'how better to focus on actual mean-

ings,' has done just that.

December 1980

465



Documents

Unger's Defense of Skepticism: New Wine in Old Bottles