Mill's Methods (of knowing cause-effect relationships) and Hume's Problem of Induction

Causality is the relationship between a cause and effect, or one event that is a consequence of the first. However many philosophers theorize that it is not the causes we see, we merely see the correlations between events. Correlation happens when two or more events are more or less likely to occur together than separately, for example I am more likely to wear shorts when it is hot hence there is a correlation between it being hot and wearing shorts. Yet, if I said "I wear shots no matter if it is hot or cold." I am illustrating that no correlation exists between it being hot and my wearing shorts because the two will occur both separately and together, the one does not depend on the other as it will be hot whether I wear shorts or not just like I will wear shorts whether or not it is hot.

Let us go back to the first example, where there was a correlation between wearing shorts and it being hot. How are the two related? For this example it is unlikely that my wearing shorts caused it to be hot, but it being hot caused me to wear shorts. Now if we look at a bigger atmospheric picture, something else caused it to be hot like the earth's proximity to the sun so actually the proximity of the earth to the sun caused both it to be hot and me to wear shorts. Yet, sometimes correlation occurs by total coincidence, for example most times I go to Starbucks Ramon is behind the counter. I am not stalking Ramon and I am pretty certain that Ramon does not make his schedule around me. I go into Starbucks infrequently and it different times of the day so it is mere coincidence that Ramon is behind the counter. I did not cause him to be there and he did not cause me to be there. It is from correlations that we can come to know about causes.

Mill's Method for knowing causes can be broken down as the following:
1. Agreement: If every time event (E) happens, the same event or events (C) always happens before (mixed in with other events (X), then C causes E.
2. Difference: If, E occurs, C happened before, but when E doesn't occur, C wasn't there before, then C causes E.
3. Joint: For all the collections of events one sees, E happens iff C occurs first, then C causes E.
4. Concomitant Variation: If variations in how the  E-event occurs match variations in the C-event, then C causes E.
5. Residues: If you have a events "X", and events "Y" occurring later, but you know from past experiences applying this method that some events in X cause others in Y, then whatever is left in X causes whatever if left in Y.

Unfortunately there are problems with Mill's Methods all of which can be summed up with Hume's Problem of induction. Mill's Methods rely on inductive reasoning as Mill's Methods assume nature and causation are stable, The Principal of the Uniformity of Nature (as induction uses the past, I have always worn shorts when it was hot, to have knowledge of the future, I will always wear shorts when it is hot). Hume would argue that just because I have always worn shorts on hot days in the past it is unreasonable to say I always will, maybe I buy a new skirt that I want to wear on a hot day. However, to be fair to Mill and induction, Hume argued that, instead of a radical skepticism in which everything beyond what we presently see or remember is in complete doubt, a kind of practical skepticism should be used. If you are supposed to pick up your friend at a bus station whom you haven't seen in a month but the last time you saw her she was 5ft tall and had short brown hair it is ridiculous to look at a 6ft tall man with long blond hair and think it might be her. Yet Hume would argue that just because she has always had short brown hair does not mean she did not dye it since you last saw her or that she is wearing a wig now...basically Hume advocates for commonsense and if commonsense includes some amount of induction than such inductive reasoning helps a human being to function. Hume's problem with induction is mainly trusting it solely for knowledge and having no doubt that the future will be like the past. Now back to Mill's Methods. If you notice that every time you water your plants with Coca Cola they wilt and they don't wilt when you water them with water Gatorade, or Snapple, then it makes sense to see a correlation exists between watering your plants with Coca Cola and their wilting, to reason that Coca Cola is the cause of their wilting and to thus know for the future that if you water your plants with Coca Cola they will probably wilt.

Fallibilism and Skepticism

Fallibilism is the theory that all claims of knowledge could be mistaken. Extreme fallibilists even argue that absolute certainty about knowledge is impossible. Fallibilism is a major part of pragmatist theory as pragmatists argue the most knowledge can hope to be is functional. While Fallibilism seems compatible with Skepticism there are fundamental differences between the two which depict the two as opposing views.

The main objection Fallibilists have against Skepticism is the Skeptic's impossibly high standards for knowledge. Skeptic says that, "I S knows p, then S is absolutely certain of p", such is The Certainty argument and as absolute certainty is impossible knowledge is impossible and thus claiming all knowledge should be rejected. The Fallibilist, in contrast, holds that knowledge merely requires very good reasons. For example, if you are standing under a tree and the lighting is good, you have no reason not to trust that your eyes are functioning properly, and you have had previous experiences of trees then, while there is some remote chance of error, you have no reason to think you are making an error, but instead excellent reasons to think you are not making an error. The Fallibilist maintains that one cannot know something that is false. If you are in fact not standing under a tree than you do not know that you are.

Skeptics also used the Possibility of Error Argument, that is a belief can be mistaken than it is not a case of knowledge. This is refuted by Fallibilists who argue that the possibility of error is compatible with knowledge. So with the tree example, you believe for excellent reasons that you are standing under a tree, and you actually are, then you have knowledge. If you are the victim of a hallucination or some other funny business and it is not a tree than you do not have knowledge. Such is closely linked to The Certainty Argument as a Skeptic may defend the Possibility of Error Argument as Feldman explains, "If you can be mistaken about something than you are not absolutely certain of it. If you are not absolutely certain than you do not know it. So if you are mistaken about something than you do not know it." However, this is promptly dismissed by Fallibilists as they have no need for absolute certainty in knowledge.

The Skeptics also argue The Introspective Indistinguishably Argument, there cannot be cases of knowledge that are introspectively indistinguishable from cases of nonknowledge, but if knowledge requires good reasons and not perfect reasons then such a theory, according to the Fallibilists is wrong. Skeptics will maintain that just because the reasons are extremely good and not perfect, then there will be other cases in which one's "extremely good" reasons lead to false beliefs and a lack of knowledge. For example if you believe you are standing under a tree because the lighting is good and you have no reason to believe your vision is failing you, but it turns out you are actually standing under a very high quality inflatable palm tree than you have no knowledge. The Skeptics hold that absolute certainty is a mental state which guarantees truth and which are introspectively distinguishable from beliefs which are not certain. Suppose you cannot tell the difference between Boston Terriers and French Bulldogs. Seeing one and seeing the other are to you indistinguishable. Analogously, a skeptic would say that you can never know if you are seeing a real dog or being tricked by a demon, your senses, or whatever into dreaming you are seeing a dog and such a state introspectively indistinguishable from seeing a real dog hence you cannot know that you are seeing a real dog.

A further objection to Fallibilism is the Knowing That You Know Argument which says if fallibilism is true than one can never tell whether or not he has knowledge. Fallibilists avoid this by saying that knowledge about knowledge is like knowledge about other things. If I know I am standing under a tree because I have a justified true belief of standing under a tree then I can have knowledge that I know the fact by having a justified true belief that I know I am standing under a tree. However, both bits of knowledge are fallible. I am not absolutely certain of standing under a tree nor am I absolutely certain for knowing I know I am standing under a tree.

The Reliability Theory of Knowledge and the KK-Principal

According to the Reliability Theory of Knowledge, knowing a proposition does not imply that you know that you know it. In contrast the KK-principal which says that if S knows that P, then S knows that he knows P. Such a theory is convenient for the skeptics who, in following the principal, do not believe they have knowledge and therefore do not have knowledge. Such an idea applied to all propositions is simply not reasonable for example, if Sam has blond hair, but he does not believe he has blond hair, therefore he does not know he has blond hair, then he does not have blond hair.

The Reliability Theory of Knowledge is so offensive to Skeptics because it largely involves externalism, the idea that one can have a justified belief without having access to the evidence for it. It is similar to the theory of Truth Tracking where people are basically thermometers and can tell the temperature, or whether the dog is in the room or the television is on, merely by sensing it (petting and smelling the dog, hearing and seeing the television) just like a thermometer senses the external temperature. However, Reliabilism (the parent of the Reliability Theory of Knowledge as it in itself focuses more on justification than knowledge) formulates a theory of justified belief as "One has a justified theory of p iff the belief is a result of a reliable process". Reliabilists agree that knowledge is justified, true, belief and also take into account the Gettier cases where it is possible to be right about something by accident, which coincides with evidentialist theories. However, Reliabilists do not care about the actual evidence. Instead Reliabilists are concerned with how the beliefs were formed and if they were formed by some reliable process so "S is justified in believing p iff S is justified in believing that S's source for p is reliable." For example, "Paul is rich if he has made money on his own or is he is the child of rich parents." The example does not deal with what rich actually is, but the concept is not circular in that the second clause of the sentence can be reformulated as "Paul is the son of rich parents" as it explicitly states a way into being rich.

Empiricism and Rationalism

What is the source of knowledge? Where do basic beliefs come from? Empiricism maintains that basic beliefs are the products of experience therefore all knowledge begins as primitive experience (ideas, imagination, intuition are all products of experience). Hence the Empiricist view as a major part of the scientific theory as hypotheses are tested against the external world rather than accepting them as a priori, or intuition. Empiricists believe that people are born with tabula rasa, or a blank slate, and it is through experience, observations of the external world, that human develop beliefs. Extreme Empiricism theorizes that all propositions should be reduced to "protocol sentences", "X at location Y at time T observed P", or "I observed Shelly in the cafeteria at noon." Such is to render a synthetic assertion genuine as it tests if or not it can be reduced to express a direct experience.

The position which contrasts with Empiricism, is Rationalism as it theorizes that truths can be known without experience, it is something innate or comes from tradition. However, to use the example of Shelly, knowing that she is a girl, or blond, or short, requires pre-existing rationalist knowledge and anything that does not require pre-existing knowledge is to primitive to be informative and therefore not knowledge at all (like a pain in my arm or an itch on my nose do not really inform me about the external world like how I got the pain or why my nose is itchy).

Pragmatism marries the two theories together with the idea that knowledge is that which works. Charles Piece, one of the fathers of the scientific method, argued that while experience is paramount to knowledge, rationalist beliefs allow one to go further with observations. Using Shelly again as an example, the sentence "Shelly was eating lunch at the cafeteria." Uses rationalist theory to deduce that Shelly was indeed eating lunch because we had the experience of observing her eating at noon, or lunchtime. If Shelly had symptoms of severe food poisoning and passed out in her bedroom, one could say "Shelly was eating lunch in the cafeteria." The observation was actually only that he saw Shelly in the cafeteria at noon, but it is from innate rationalist knowledge that he, even if he never saw Shelly in the cafeteria before and had no memory or other experience of her ever eating lunch, deduced she was eating lunch. This belief helps doctors save Shelly as they were able to go to the cafeteria and find out what they served for lunch that day. Pragmatism is one part instinct to one part experience which illustrates that it is possible for Empiricism and Rationalism to produce knowledge together it terms of knowledge being something that works.

Human Irrationality

The Naturalistic View does not makes any claims on the conditions for knowledge, instead it deals with the proper role of science in epistemology in accordance with the Standard View of knowledge.

Proponents of the Naturalistic View argue people are irrational in forming beliefs which is rooted in a survival instinct, to overestimate how many dried fish we will need to survive the winter is infinately better than underestimating. It is because of logical mistakes which draws criticism from the naturalists. How is it that we can claim to have any knowledge?

Alleged human irrationality is illustrated by the following example in which you have to rank the likelihood of the propositions about the person following an initial description. Tim is 20 years old, has a girlfriend, is shy, and intelligent. He plays football for his college.

a. Tim is a proffesional football player.
b. Tim is married.
c. Tim is married and a proffesional football player.

If you answered c., as people frequently do in examples such as this, than you are wrong because while it is nice to believe Tim is married and a proffesional football player it totally violates the rules of probability. It is much less likely for Tim to be both married and a proffesional football player than for him to be just one of the two. It is from examples such as this that it is clear people frequently give incorrect and unreasonable answers to questions which in turn makes them irrational.

Serious Relativism

The theory of absolutism says there is only one correct system for forming beliefs for all people. Serious Relativism stands in contrast to this theory by saying there are different correct systems for forming beliefs from one person to another are one group of persons to another. An example if this is two children, one went to Montessori school and the other went to regular Kindergarten, both begin 1st grade and have the fundamentals they need to be successful learning phonics and math among other things.

There are philosophers who argue rationalism has no distinction between rational belief and locally accepted "rational" belief. To the relativist no idea is without its context. Philosophers will also argue that this summation of a relativist belief is really the equivalent of and absolutist theory which states according the Feldman's Epistemology,  "It is always really rational for a person to conform to the locally accepted standards of rationality" (So if you accidentally moved into a nudest colony and cannot afford to move out it is rational to conform and become a nudest yourself). Here lies the problems for relativism. Yes, people are diverse and it is arrogant to assume one's idea's superior to another's, but this is not epistemology.

Uncontroversial Forms of Relativism

I am taking a break from Non-Evidentialism to discuss Relativism beginning with it in its most uncontroversial form, knowledge is something relative to person, time, and place. What I know now undoubtedly differs in some way from what a 19 year old in Africa knows just as what I know now differs from what I knew 10 years ago and will know 5 years from now. This same idea can apply to a society as the American experience is different from other cultural experiences and the American experience today is different from what it was in the past. The key to Relativism is the existence of secrets...different people know different things not conflicting things. It is not that I know the Earth moves around the sun while the African teenager knows the sun moves around the Earth, instead he knows what it is like to be an African teenager while I know what it is like to be an American teenager.