Meta-Coherence

Posted on June 22, 2008
Filed Under Philosophy |

Richard over at Philosophy, et cetera, had an interesting post on suspecting wishful thinking. That is the accusation we often make that someone believes a proposition because they want it to be true. I suggested that for many beliefs (including typically philosophical beliefs) that we have weak justification for the belief. Therefore other a-rational thinking can swamp out the purely consciously rational. (Note I’m distinguishing between the a-rational and ir-rational. To believe the sky it red when it appears blue is usually irrational. Believing in free will in typically a-rational.)

Richard replied that considerations of meta-coherence deflates the claim (hardly original with myself) that values play a role in reasoning and epistemology. (He goes through this in his meta-coherence post)

Richard’s position is the following.

As a reflective agent, to truly believe something you must consider it to be epistemically superior to its negation. You must therefore hold that anyone who believes otherwise is ipso facto your epistemic inferior in this respect. (They are failing to believe what is best supported by reasons.)

Now the one problem is of course what it means to be epistemically superior. One could simply say that to be epistemically superior isn’t purely a matter of reasons but also values.

The second problem is that it seems very difficult to discern what is or isn’t better supported by evidence and logic. (I’ll avoid the term reason here since it isn’t always clear what we mean by that) If one buys into Bayesianism or similar methods then one can. However most people don’t reason that way. (I don’t think I’ve ever calculated a Bayesian probability outsider of information processing code I’ve written) I think it fair to be very skeptical about the idea we can compare most judgments in a straightforward way. Clearly we can for some ideas say one is very weak and the other strong. But those don’t seem to be the kinds of comparisons Richard is after.

More problematically if one can’t ground ones judgment comparisons in reasons one might be led down a nasty regress. We try to compare judgements A & B. But the comparison is a judgment and most likely can be judged in multiple ways. We then have to adjudicate between these new judgments. But those too lead to multiple judgments. How do we escape the regress?

Now when we’re sticking purely with straightforward evidence and deductive logic (or very simple inductive judgments) things are easy. I’d simply note that typically this isn’t the usual case. In the kinds of reasons we consider in philosophy it seems rarely the case. (Usually philosophy is very good about establishing some logical inconsistency but rather poor at establishing positive claims - which is why, unlike the history of say physics, there are so many contradictory positions accepted within philosophy.)

The bigger problem for Richard’s coherence attack is asking whether there is a disbelief in metacoherence that is as well supported as metacoherence. If there is it seems we must be agnostic about it, which renders it problematic at best.

Comments

2 Responses to “Meta-Coherence”

Hi Clark, thanks for this response. (Though I think your blockquote is missing a close tag!)

I was meaning ‘epistemically superior’ to be a purely rational notion. The thought is that a reflective agent must take their beliefs to be more likely true than false, so that those with the contrary view are most probably going wrong.

In cases where it’s difficult to judge, one arguably should not have all-out beliefs at all, but only some intermediate degree of belief (or perhaps total suspension if we cannot even judge that).

I’m not sure I understand the regress problem. A rational belief state is one in which one’s first-order and higher-order credal values are in equilibrium (i.e. mutually supporting, or meta-coherent). Are you suggesting this isn’t possible? Note that these may be dispositional states, so it’s not like we actually have to attend to all those [infinitely many] propositions. And many will be pretty vague as well, especially when it gets to third-order judgments and the like. Perhaps it’s better to frame the constraint negatively: a rational agent had better not be in a state whereby their (perhaps merely dispositional) higher-order judgments undermine their first-order beliefs.

On your last point, I don’t think ‘disbelief in metacoherence… is as well supported as metacoherence’. I think the weight of reasons determinately supports my view. (You’re right that it would make the view weirdly self-undermining to think otherwise.)

What are the reasons for meta-coherence? It doesn’t seem a straightforwardly obvious position.

I fixed the blockquote. Thanks. I’m not sure how I missed that. (Must have been having to run away from the computer after posting)

With regards to coherence, I think that for any coherent view there are multiple other views also coherent. If I understand you your position entails out epistemic duty being to withhold judgment on coherent views but judge inferior any that are less coherent. My view is that among those that are coherent (say the free will positions in philosophy) there are ways to adjudicate among them that are reasonable. You’re position is that it is irrational to do this and I just don’t think that to be true.

I’ll have to think more about the equilibrium issue. The issue for me isn’t whether it’s possible to have an equilibrium state. (I think our brain moves to such a state on its own independent of conscious thought) I just think that the relation of the conscious and the unconscious here make it difficult to talk about superiority. I think you’re saying the same thing but moving from just not talking superiority to withholding judgment entirely. That seems a leap I don’t see as being valid.

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