Knowledge, Trade‐Offs, and Tracking Truth

Abstract

There are so many ideas in Roush’s dashing yet meticulous book that it is hard to confine oneself to a manageable menu of issues. Here I will reluctantly omit discussion of scientific realism, fallibilism, contextualism, and much else. My focus will be on one core part of Roush’s account of the ‘‘tracking’’ of facts, and the relation between tracking and knowledge. In approaching rival ‘‘theories of knowledge’’ it is helpful to distinguish three sets of facts. An imaginary complete philosophical theory in this area would have things to say on three different matters. First, there are facts about our ordinary concept of knowledge, and related concepts such as those of evidence and justification. The term ‘‘concept’’ might (should) be suspicious here, and I use it in a low-key sense. Perhaps it is better to imagine a complete account of how the words ‘‘knowledge’’ and ‘‘know’’ (etc.) are used, in both everyday circumstances and special ones. A second set of facts concerns how we human beings, and perhaps other organisms, are actually connected to the world with respect to epistemic matters. What sort of coordination and contact with external affairs do our perceptual states, beliefs, and theories achieve, when things go well and when things go badly? What sort of outcomes can be reasonably hope for, when we set out on the task of representing the world? Philosophers have to use some terms and concepts when developing this second body of theory, but they need not be familiar, everyday terms like ‘‘knowledge.’’ A third set of facts follows from, and concerns the relation between, the first two. How do the terms, concepts, and pictures that people ordinarily employ in this area relate to our actual epistemic attributes?