Epistemic circularity and skepticism about reason

Question

Disclaimer: I'm not a philosopher and I'm not a native speaker, so apologies if my question is somehow flawed as a result. I'm happy to clarify anything that is unclear. So here it is:

Reason's own standards of justification require that any claim meet objective criteria independent of the believing subject. But reason cannot justify itself according to these standards. It cannot provide an objective, non-circular proof of its own legitimacy and authority. Using reason to show that reason is indeed reliable is like asking a man whether or not he is honest. In either way he'll say that he is.

So it relies on an initial "act of faith". From a purely rational perspective, this seems problematic and suggests reason falls short of its own criteria for knowledge and justification. It fails to meet the very standards it sets for other claims. Doesn't this reveal a kind of "irrationalism" at the core of rationalism - an inability of reason to be fully self-critical and self-grounding according to the objectivity it demands of other beliefs? I got the intuition if you have to begin with an act of faith, everything that follows is spoiled by it.

I know one might object that one cannot conclude from this argument that reason is indeed unreliable or at least dubious as it uses reason itself to make this point. It would be self-defeating to do so. On the other hand, it might be thought of as a reductio. We take reason's premises and bring them to their logical conclusion. Is this really self-defeating? And even if it were, is this worse than the circularity or the ad-hoc assumptions that the "defender of reason" would have to rely on?

It seems to me that the worst result the reason skeptic has to expect here is an impasse. And I don't think that this is problematic for the skeptic as she doesn't need to "win" the argument, it's sufficient for her that the anti-skeptic doesn't win either. If the question remains undecided, doubt remains. The draw is a win for the skeptic, so to speak.

I would really like to read your thoughts on this. So thanks in advance for your replies.

Answer 1

Your entire post starts with a suspect claim.

Reason's own standards of justification require that any claim meet objective criteria independent of the believing subject.

Says who? Is this a quote from the Handbook of the International Body of Official Reasoning Reasoners?^* :D The term reason is not defined and does not demarcate practice in quite the crisp manner you believe it does. From WP:

Reasoning is associated with the acts of thinking and cognition, and involves the use of one's intellect. The field of logic studies the ways in which humans can use formal reasoning to produce logically valid arguments.2 Reasoning may be subdivided into forms of logical reasoning, such as deductive reasoning, inductive reasoning, and abductive reasoning. Aristotle drew a distinction between logical discursive reasoning (reason proper), and intuitive reasoning,3 in which the reasoning process through intuition—however valid—may tend toward the personal and the subjectively opaque.

What this means is that your belief about what reasoning is is itself a subjective and normative description, and it highlights how linguistic artifacts are often proxies for political and conventional ideas by way of nuance of definition. In fact, it goes to the heart of what the term objective really means, which is not to say that it really means this or that, but that what the term reason means itself is open to interpretation.

So, first, the claim "reason's own standards of justification require..." is itself questionable. What standard? Who is responsible for codifying standard? When was this standard codified? What are your sources about the standards? At best, we can argue that logicians have a general practice and corpus to which they refer. But let's for the sake of comity accept that there is a mythical fictional Average Logician that represents the best practices of modern logicians who study reason. Does that mean that the contemporary Average Logician believes fully in the objectivity of logic? Are there really Laws of Thought?

The laws of thought are fundamental axiomatic rules upon which rational discourse itself is often considered to be based. The formulation and clarification of such rules have a long tradition in the history of philosophy and logic. Generally they are taken as laws that guide and underlie everyone's thinking, thoughts, expressions, discussions, etc. However, such classical ideas are often questioned or rejected in more recent developments, such as intuitionistic logic, dialetheism and fuzzy logic.

The contemporary Average Logician is more of the mind, perhaps, that logic and reasoning are not universal and objective, but are particular and somewhat subjective. In fact, now is the good time to introduce the notion of intersubjectivity:

In the debate between cognitive individualism and cognitive universalism, some aspects of thinking are neither solely personal nor fully universal. Cognitive sociology proponents argue for intersubjectivity—an intermediate perspective of social cognition that provides a balanced view between personal and universal views of our social cognition. This approach suggests that, instead of being individual or universal thinkers, human beings subscribe to "thought communities"—communities of differing beliefs. Thought community examples include churches, professions, scientific beliefs, generations, nations, and political movements.

Thus, reasoning is not some magical, universal practice that floats about the universe that requires rigid and formal epistemological proof, but is rather a process that exists independent of its justificatory foundations. People have been reasoning long before the Pre-Socratics of Asia Minor and philosophy was born. What you believe to be true about reasoning, that it is objective and disembodied is a particular fiction that is popular, but not necessarily true. In fact, reasoning is an empirical fact in that it regardless of what you claim reasoning is, it occurs independent of you and is an aspect of the Wittgensteinian Sprachspiele.

We don't believe that there is a formal justification for claiming singing songs makes people feel emotions, nor is there one for claiming that feeding people keeps them from feeling hungry. Reasoning exists and is used in its most rudimentary forms without a justification for the claim that it helps produce more reliable truth about the world. Stone-age cultures reason, and little children reason. Non-logicians reason and monkeys reason. And none of that requires a thorough justification. The project of justification is a philosophical program for logicians and philosophers, and while it may add value to reasoning (I believe it does), isn't strictly speaking relevant to most people who reason.

So, what I am saying is that there is no monolithic practice called Reason. That is a trope of a narrative of a particular Weltanschauung that comes from the Enlightenment (the Age of Reason). It's a popular "cinematic trope". Laws of Thought. The Objectivity of Reason. Universal Engines of Rational Thinking. These are stories, not properly speaking facts.

^* No such body exists. ;)

Answer 2

It is rather too strong to require that any claim meets objective criteria. But you are correct to say that if we ask what rational grounds there are for being rational, it is difficult to supply a non-circular answer. Any proposed response just invites the retort, "And what reason do I have to accept that?"

There is a closely related issue within logic, which is: how can you justify deduction? Anyone attempting such a justification will find themselves using deduction and so inviting an objection of question-begging. There are several answers on this site relating to that question, e.g. this one.

This does not mean that a justification of reason is impossible or that skepticism is inevitable. Various types of answer have been offered:

1. Skepticism about reason is self-defeating. If you try to offer me a reason to be skeptical about reason, then why not be skeptical about that reason?

2. Reason is justified pragmatically. It just works. Do you have anything that works better?

3. Reason is justified naturalistically. If reason didn't work, at least approximately, we would not have survived and prospered as we have. Reasoning well is positively selected for.

4. Reason is justified because it is based on fundamental intuitive principles that are self-evident and indubitable. We just cannot imagine it being any other way.

5. Reason and its standards are the product of a social convention. If you reason badly you will be sanctioned by the tribe you belong to.

6. Reason is part of the scientific enterprise. Our knowledge of logic and of how to reason well advances in the same way our scientific knowledge advances. There are competing accounts of how scientific knowledge advances, but there is little doubt that it does.

I daresay there are other responses. If you google "why be rational?" you will find a number of resources on the subject. Some authors will disagree with your initial assertion that any claim should be justified by objective criteria. Maybe the best we can hope for is consistency and coherence.

Answer 3

I'm not a philosopher, either. I think you're basically right. Philosophers and mathematicians have been trying for centuries to formalize reasoning, and while they've added significant structure to it, and discovered many useful properties, they've also discovered that there are always some holes. Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem proved this about mathematical logic.

All systems of logic and reasoning are ultimately based on some premises, AKA axioms. These have to be accepted as given, and they also include the processes that are used to manipulate the symbols in the system. But then you can reasonably ask, "Why are these the right axioms?". The answer is generally something along the lines of "Because they're the most useful for answering questions about the real world." But how do we arrive at that conclusion? Essentially, it's just intuition and concensus. Yet we know that human intuition is often not very good (although this often applies to conclusions made quickly, not conclusions that are reasoned out carefully), so why should we accept that as a basis for anything? No matter what you do, eventually you keep explaining a previous conclusion on some other arbitrary reason that intuitively seems right.

It's kind of like when a child keeps asking a series of "why?" questions, and eventually the parent resorts to "because I said so" or "because that's the way it is". Or see Turtles all the way down.

Ultimately we just have to accept that our reasoning processes are "good enough" -- they work for what we need them to do. While we sometimes make mistakes in reasoning, that doesn't seem to be a fault of the systems, but just our ability to use the systems -- "we're only human" -- and it doesn't happen enough to cause overall failure.

Answer 4

Put another apple next to an apple, and you've got two apples.

You can therefore reason that 1+1=2, and that if you do the same with oranges you will get the same result.

Reason (facts, universal laws, evidence, truth) are all objectively, intuitively, and independently observable, no faith required.

Answer 5

Over many years I have come to the conclusion that most questions in philosophy are best answered- or at least considered- through a Darwinian lens. Sure, our thoughts are always questionable- but there are some patterns of thought that seem more reliable than others, in the sense that they lead the thinker to conclusions that are more likely to ensure the thinker's survival. You can, in that sense, consider reason not to be some method of thought that is correct in an absolute sense, but instead to be a way of thinking that is more likely to guide a human out of trouble. We have evolved to be able to reason and to consider that reason is better than irrationality. In that sense, reason can be viewed as a useful recipe for making sensible decisions, and the position of the skeptic becomes entirely academic.

Answer 6

[some] bootstrapping amounts to a vicious form of epistemic circularity [emphasis added].

I do not know if that is the specific form of epistemic circularity you had in mind, but

this problem is not specific to reliabilism (Cohen 2002). Indeed, the problem arises for all theories that allow for “basic justification”—that is, justification that is obtained via some process or method X without antecedent justification for believing that X is reliable.

So some justifications don't have autonomous reasons to believe them, and

As van Cleve (2003) forcefully argues, theories that do not allow for [these] basic justification seem to lead to wide-ranging skepticism.

The problem seems to be

can we still give a principled explanation of why some forms of bootstrapping seem illegitimate [emphasis added]

Which is an open question.

Whether or not a solution to that, an account for when we are just ignorant of something, will defeat other arguments for radical skepticism, such as "dialectical ineffectiveness and the failure to defeat defeaters", probably depends on the nature of philosophy in general.

I personally/naively don't find them very convincing, as I don't see how different it is to doubting a premise of absolutely any argument: so what? Consistency - absolutely nothing works - so I don't have to respond - is not a virtue if it's feigned. And antiskeptics can make the alternative appealing, by e.g. showing some circular reasoning is not vicious but virtuous

A virtuous circle is a circular definition or argument whose circularity does not matter for the purpose at hand.