Fallibilism - epistemology?

Question

I know that this thesis is very complex - yet I have 2 simple questions

1. "I know the sun will rise tomorrow"; would a falliblist make such a statement and would this acceptance of induction as knowledge be limited to within fallibilism?

2. Does fallibilism in essence "lower the bar" with respects to what is considered knowledge? Does fallibilism make these concessions because of the believer's fallibility as well as the UNCERTAINTY of the truth value of the proposition?

Just trying to sort things out, thanks for you answers!

Answer 1

Fallibilism denies the possibility of knowledge. A fallibilist might say offhandedly that he knows the sun will rise tomorrow, but he would not write it in a philosophical paper. The language that we use in everyday speech is often different than our specific philosophical beliefs, and it is useful to employ shorthand from time to time. But specifically, would a fallibilist stand behind the statement "I know the sun will rise tomorrow?": No. Fallibilists believe that certainty is impossible (which of course it is).

Fallibilism doesn't lower the bar of what is considered knowledge, in one sense they eradicate it, and in another sense they raise it. Since they believe (certain) knowledge is impossible, there is no bar to reach. Or if you prefer to think of it another way, they raise the bar of knowledge to a height that is impossible to achieve. Either way, knowledge is impossible, all that we can do is hold beliefs in accordance to the available evidence, and since it is impossible to have ALL the evidence, that is why it is impossible to know for certain.

In answer to your question about the believer's fallibility: Some fallibilists say that empirical knowledge alone is impossible, and some say that all knowledge is impossible (even within axiomatic systems such as math). This means that some of them say it is the "fault" of the human system that WE cannot attain knowledge but it is in theory possible, and there are others who state that it is impossible to even know a truth value of a proposition, ever. The first position is a confusion, sort of like agnosticism, it really isn't sensible at all. The fallibilists that know what they are talking about deny the possibility of knowledge, not simply the fault of the believer.

Fallibilism is basically science. Charles Pierce and Karl Popper both considered themselves fallibilists and they are the two biggest names in the Philosophy of Science in the last century. Science has the built-in feature of being adaptable, changeable, flexible, and therefore it is fallible, science can never provide certain knowledge (nor can anything else...) but it can give us adequate justification for our beliefs based on the evidence available. Fallibilism is correct and obvious, almost trivial. Even those who do not identify themselves as fallibilists probably are if they took the time to follow their beliefs to their logical conclusions.

Answer 2

I think the best way to understand fallibilism is in contrast to skepticism. This is because the two philosophies agree about some of the underlying facts, but disagree about what that means.

We all know, for example (or at least, we probably SHOULD know) that our senses are not perfectly accurate. Even for the narrow ranges of reality to which they are sensitive, they make mistakes and pre-process information instead of handing us raw data. And they are the primary bridge between the mind and the external world.

To a hardcore skeptic, such a shaky bridge means we can't know much of anything in the first place. You can know subjective things, but you can never really know anything objective. You see the sky as blue, but you will never know if it is REALLY blue. Since there is always doubt, knowledge in impossible.

A fallibilist takes rather the opposite approach. He would assert that even though you can't know things beyond ANY doubt, that hardly means that you don't know them. Even if you make complete guesses about things, some of them will turn out to be right. A good way to put it would be that reason helps eliminate wrongness even if it doesn't guarantee rightness.

Tout the two views approach epistemology from opposite directions, to me they are not mutually exclusive. You could be a skeptical fallibilist and believe that knowledge is hard to come by and that even when you have it you can't be certain of it. You might be just a skeptic and believe that it's hard to get knowledge but once you have it you need never doubt it. Or you could be just a fallibilist and decide that you 'know' everything, just with greater or lesser degrees of uncertainty.

So fallibilism doesn't NECESSARILY 'lower the bar' on what is considered knowledge, though I would say the tendancy is there simply because falliblists know they're going to self-correct later so they can afford to be more generous in the beginning.

In practice, I think falliblists (knowing that they're prone to error) don't tend to make unilateral statments about what they know. Instead one might say "To the best of my knowledge the sun will rise tomorrow" or "I see no reason to believe that the sun will NOT rise tomorrow". They think they know something... what they don't know is whether it's correct.

Answer 3

Uncertainty s the basis for a perception of fallibilism. The sun will rise tomorrow is taken for granted that a black hole will not devour the galaxy tonight or some other natural phenomenon won't occur to render the statement false.