More On justification And Moore's Paradox

Author(s): Anthony Brueckner

Source: Analysis, Vol. 69, No. 3 (JULY 2009), pp. 497-499
Published by: Oxford University Press on behalf of The Analysis Committee
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 JUSTIFICATION AND MOORE'S PARADOX I 497

More on justification and Moore's paradox

Anthony Brueckner

In his (2004), Williams offered a solution to Moore's paradox that centred

on the concept of justification. Consider the omissive Moore-paradoxical
sentence:

(Om) p and I do not believe that p.

Williams appealed to the principle

(EP) Whatever justifies me in believing that p justifies me in believin

I believe that /?.

Suppose that I am justified in believing (Om). Then I am justified in bel

its first conjunct. By (EP) I am justified in believing that I believe that
I am also justified in believing the second conjunct, I am justified in be
that I do not believe that p. Williams claimed that 'this is impossible, b
anything that justifies me in believing that something is the case rend
unjustified in believing that it is not the case' (Williams 2009 )}
In a response to Williams, I argued that (EP) is false. Williams concede
objection, and in Williams (2009) he seeks to offer a variant on his j
tionist solution to Moore's paradox that does not rest upon (EP). C
this instance of (Om).

(W) There will be a third world war, and I do not believe that th
be a third world war.

Suppose that I am justified in believing the first conjunct on the basis of the
following evidence:

(e) North Korea is planning a surprise attack on rival countries also

possessing nuclear arms.

Williams (2009) stipulates that his resolution of the paradox applies only to
rational agents.2 He argues as follows:

I am a rational agent in circumstances in which I believe (e) and in

which were I to form the belief that there will be a third world war
on that basis, as indeed I tend to do, my belief would be justified. This
description of my circumstances is itself a justification for thinking that I
believe that there will be a third world war. Admittedly, I might not

1 The quoted claim has the consequence that it is impossible to justifiably believe (p while
justifiably believing ~<p. For by the claim, if I justifiably believe <p, then I am unjustified in
believing ~<p. Some would dispute this consequence.
2 This stipulation blocks a second objection I made to Williams's original paper.

Analysis Vol 69 I Number 3 I July 2009 I pp. 497^99 doi:10.1093/analys/anp065

© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Analysis Trust. All rights reserved.
For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

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498 I ANTHONY BRUECKNER

actually describe these circumstances as such. Nonetheless, if someone

asks me why I think I believe that there will be a third world war, I am
in a position to sensibly reply, That's what any rational person would
think who knows something like (e)'. (492)

I reconstruct this reasoning as follows. If I were to reflect upon my circum-

stances, they would provide me with a justification for believing that I believe
that there will be a third world war. I would reflect: 'I know (e). Any rational
person who knows (e) would believe that there will be a third world war.
I am rational. So I believe that there will be a third world war'. The last
sentence expresses my resultant second-order belief that I believe that there
will be a third world war, and were I to form this belief as a result of the
foregoing reflection, it would be a justified second-order belief, according to
Williams. That is Williams's desired conclusion: justified belief of the first
conjunct of (W) implies the existence of a justification for believing a prop-
osition that is incompatible with the second conjunct, viz. the proposition
that I believe that there will be a third world war. But given that I justifiably
believe (W), I also have justification for believing the second conjunct - an
impossibility, according to Williams.
My reflection upon my epistemic circumstances involves several beliefs.3
For example, I believe that I know (e). This implies that I believe that I believe
(e). This seems to presuppose that in general, when I believe that <p, I am in a
position to come to correctly believe that I believe that (p. Without this pre-
supposition, Williams's treatment of (W) will not extend to arbitrary
instances of (Om). But this presupposition is sufficient to generate a resolu-
tion of Moore's paradox that is distinct from Williams's. This is a resolution
that has been advocated by Sydney Shoemaker. He argues that given certain
assumptions about rationality, when a thinker believes that <p, he also believes
that he believes that cp.4 Given Shoemaker's thesis, a rational thinker who
believes an omissive Moore-paradoxical proposition will believe contradic-
tory propositions, since his belief of the first conjunct will induce a belief that
he believes that /?, which belief is incompatible with his belief of the second
conjunct (his belief that he does not believe that p).
Williams's apparent reliance upon the Shoemaker-style principle linking
first- and second-order belief renders his own resolution of Moore's paradox
superfluous.
Suppose Williams were to reply that in my reflection upon my epistemic
circumstances, I need not believe, or come to believe, that I have the eviden-
tial belief (e); I only need to have the evidential belief. Then my reflection

3 We need not enter into the question of whether the beliefs would be justified in order to
see the following difficulty for Williams's account.

4 For the argument, see Shoemaker 1995. For a critical discussion of Shoemaker's argument,
see Brueckner 1998.

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 HOW SPECKLED IS THE HEN? I 499

upon my epistemic circumstances would need to run as follows. 'North

Korea is planning a surprise attack on rival countries also possessing nuclear
arms. (This is (e)). Given (e), any rational person would believe that there will
be a third world war. I am rational. So I believe that there will be a third
world war.' But in this reflection, the second sentence is simply false. From
the sheer truth of (e), nothing follows about what any rational person would
believe. In order to draw an inference about what a rational person S would
believe about war given the truth of (e), we would need some information
about whether S believes (e). So it is crucial to the reflection that generates a
justified belief that I believe that there will be a third world war that there is a
premiss to the effect that I know, or at least believe, (e). But in order to ensure
that a belief in such a premiss is available to me, we must assume a
Shoemaker-style principle linking first- and second-order belief. Then we
need not bring the concept of justification onto the scene at all in resolving
our paradox.

University of California, Santa Barbara

Santa Barbara CA 93106, USA
brueckne@philosophy.ucsb.edu

References

Brueckner, A. 1998. Shoemaker on second-order belief. Philosophy and

Phenomenological Research 58: 361-64.
Brueckner, A. 2006. Justification and Moore's paradox. Analysis 66: 264-66.
Shoemaker, S. 1995. Moore's paradox and self-knowledge. Philosophical Studies 77:
211-28.

Williams, J.N. 2004. Moore's paradoxes, Evans's principle and self-knowledge. Analy
64: 348-53.

Williams, J.N. 2009. Justifying circumstances and Moore-paradoxical beliefs: a respon

to Brueckner. Analysis 69: 490-96.

How speckled is the hen?

Bence Nanay

1 . We can see a number of entities without seeing a determinate num

entities. For example, when we see the speckled hen, we do not see
having a determinate number of speckles, although we do see it as h
a lot of speckles. How is this possible?

Analysis Vol 69 I Number 3 I July 2009 I pp. 499-502 doi:10.1093/analys/anp072

© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Analysis Trust. All rights reserved.
For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

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