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I know within ten seconds whether a room will laugh, but I can’t say how. Does that count as knowing?

Gemma Pritchard Contributor
· 5 replies · 171 views
Knowledge & beliefAnalyticGreek & RomanAgrippaAlvin GoldmanAristotleLaurence BonJourLudwig Wittgenstein#externalism#regress-problem#reliabilism#tacit-knowledge
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I do stand-up on the northern circuit. After a few hundred gigs you develop a sense for a room. I walk on, say two lines, and I know whether tonight is going to work. I'm right far more often than I'm wrong. Promoters have started asking me before they book acts, which is flattering and slightly terrifying.

But if you ask me how I know, I've got nothing. Something about the noise before I start, the way people are sitting, who laughed at the compère. I can't turn it into reasons. I've tried.

A friend who did philosophy at university says this touches a big old problem. Apparently there's an ancient argument that if knowing requires giving reasons, you're stuck: every reason needs another reason, so the chain goes on forever, or goes round in a circle, or stops somewhere for no reason. And she says one modern answer is that knowing doesn't require being able to give the reasons at all, which she called "externalism".

So: do I know the room is going to be dead, or am I just a good guesser? And could someone explain the externalism thing in plain English? I left school at sixteen and I'm fine with that, but I'd like to understand this one.

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5 answers

Accepted answer

  1. Derek Hollis

    ✓ Accepted answer Fellow

    The problem is the ancient sceptic Agrippa's: if every reason needs a further reason, you get an endless chain, a circle, or an arbitrary stop.

    Internalism says that what justifies a belief must be accessible to you on reflection: reasons you could cite. On that view, if you can't say why you think the room is dead, your belief isn't justified, however often you are right.

    Externalism says justification, or at least knowledge, depends on facts you may not be able to access. The best-known version, reliabilism, associated with Alvin Goldman, says a belief is justified if it is produced by a reliable process. Your room-reading has been tested over hundreds of gigs. On that view, you know. And the regress never starts, because knowing never required a chain of reasons.

    A favourite parallel: people who sort newly hatched chicks by sex very accurately without being able to say how.

    The cost. Laurence BonJour imagined a man with a perfectly reliable clairvoyant power who has no idea he has it and no evidence either way. Does he know what his power tells him? Many say no. But you have a track record and know you have it, so most philosophers would give you knowledge even if they hesitate about him.

    Helpful · 3
    1. Gemma Pritchard

      Contributor

      Derek, thank you, that is the clearest anyone has explained anything to me in years. So I'm a chick sorter of laughter. I'll take it. And Sam's right, the promoters do sometimes ask why, and "trust me" is a hard sell.

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Other answers

  1. Sam Ellery

    Contributor

    From the debate world, the other side. Judges are trained to distrust "I just know", because in an argument knowing isn't enough: you have to show. I think Gemma's case shows that knowing and being able to show are different achievements. She has the first. A promoter who asks her for reasons is asking for the second, and might reasonably want it before spending money.

  2. Elin Lindqvist

    Fellow

    Nurses have this too. Experienced intensive care nurses often sense that a patient is about to deteriorate before the monitors show it, and some hospitals now take that worry seriously as a signal in its own right. The nurse frequently can't say why. Wittgenstein has a line in the Philosophical Investigations I've always liked: when he has exhausted the justifications he has reached bedrock, his spade is turned, and he is inclined to say, "This is simply what I do." I don't think that means the knowledge is worthless. It means reasons run out somewhere.

    Helpful · 2
  3. Hicham Ouazzani

    Contributor

    Aristotle has a nice passage on this at the start of the Metaphysics. People of experience, he says, often succeed better than people who have only theory, because they know that something is so even when they cannot say why; the person with the art knows the cause. As a carpenter I recognise both. My father knew where the cedar would split and couldn't explain it. I can explain some of it now, and I'm not sure my hands got any better for it.

    Helpful · 3