Epistemic blank checks and the heat death of the universe

Phenomenal conservatism is the view that if something seems true to you, you are justified in believing that it is true so long as there isn’t sufficient reason to believe otherwise. For instance, a moral realist may say that we have prima facie justification for believing that things are how they seem. It seems to them that moral realism is true, so they're justified in believing moral realism is true unless you present sufficient arguments to the contrary.

This looks, at first glance, like an epistemically modest principle. If seemings consistently provided a little evidence, just enough to get you started, or to settle a tie, perhaps they can serve in such a role. The proponent of phenomenal conservatism is admitting the fallibility of their position: they could, in principle, be proven wrong. In fact, a belief held merely on the basis of it seeming to be true seems to rest on very tenuous footing. It could be easily overturned the moment any moderately persuasive rebuttal comes along.

Appearances can be deceiving. Far from functioning as a sensible, modest epistemic principle, people who appeal to phenomenal conservatism often treat it as an epistemic blank check that allows them to assign arbitrarily greater epistemic weight to how things seem to themselves than they do to any arguments or evidence to the contrary.

What do I mean by this? I mean that rather than simply treating the fact that something seems true to them as some small degree of evidence in its favor, those who appeal to phenomenal conservatism often treat their seemings as having greater evidential weight than any arguments to the contrary. Consider this exchange:

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(1) Ordinary exchange

Realist: “It seems to me that moral realism is true. This provides 1 point in favor of realism. Unless you can present more points in favor of antirealism, my belief in realism is justified.”

Antirealist: “Here are arguments against realism that provide 2 points in favor of antirealism.”

Realist: “I agree with the force of those arguments. However, not only does it seem like realism is true, here is an argument for realism, which provides 2 points in its favor. So the current scoreboard is 3 points for realism, 2 points for antirealism. Realism is currently winning.”

Antirealist: “I agree. However, let me present yet another argument for antirealism…”

Observe how in (1) above, phenomenal conservatism is doing some work. It’s providing one point in favor of realism, but this quickly gets washed out by the arguments for and against realism. Although I am skeptical of phenomenal conservatism, this is presumably how it is supposed to function in philosophical disputes: it may provide some initial advantage in favor of a particular view, but which view wins will be decided by the overall quality of the arguments for and against it.

In practice, this is not what I observe. Instead, the proponent of phenomenal conservatism won’t merely claim that how things seem to them provides some prima facie justification, but that it provides some unspecified, extremely high level of evidence. By not specifying how strong the evidence is, this allows the proponent of phenomenal conservatism to constantly move the goal posts in response to proposed defeaters, thereby allowing them to always assign arbitrarily greater evidential weight to how things seem to them than the evidential weight assigned to defeaters. I call this “phenomenal dogmatism,” which occurs whenever one appeals to their seemings not as a modest, finite amount of evidence that could be readily overcome, but as an arbitrarily large amount of evidence that no plausible set of arguments could overcome even if the position in question was incorrect.

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Here is how such a conversation might go:

(2) Phenomenal dogmatism discussion

Realist: “It seems to me that moral realism is true. I am justified in believing realism is true unless you can present sufficient points in favor of antirealism.”

Antirealist: “Okay. Here are several arguments against realism. That’s 5 points in favor of antirealism.”

Realist: “That’s it? 5 points? I don’t think you understand just how much it seems to me like realism is true. The seeming is so strong that it’s at least 10 points in favor of realism. You’ll have to do better than that.”

Antirealist: “...Okay. It’s been a year of difficult study, but I’ve come up with some more arguments against realism. Here they are. That’s 100 points in favor of antirealism.”

Realist: “...Really? That’s all you have? 100 points? Look, I don’t think you understood me the first time around. You must understand, it really super strongly seems to me like realism is true. It’s at least 1000 points in favor of realism. You’d have to do far better than that to overcome how strong it seems that realism is true.”

Antirealist: “.....uh, are you going to make any arguments for realism?”

Realist: “I already did. Phenomenal conservatism. Seems true, so is true, unless you’ve got good enough defeaters. Your job is to present defeaters. All I need to do is appeal to how things seem to me.”

Antirealist: “So…you have no other arguments for realism?”

Realist: “Oh, there might be lots of arguments for realism, but why bother? Phenomenal conservatism is all that’s necessary to justify realism.”

Antirealist: “...Sure, okay. I guess since phenomenal conservatism is true that must be right. Let me go see if I can come up with any more defeaters against realism.”

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10,000 Years Later

The antirealist dedicated the rest of their life to acquiring the resources necessary to train thousands of philosophers, who then spend the next 10,000 years studying arguments for antirealism. Generation after generation of philosophers discussed, refined, and devised defeaters against realism, as humanity progressed into the future, developed new technologies, and traveled the stars.

Finally, they complete their task. The disciples of The Great Antirealist gather together to present their arguments against realism. They spent decades drawing on the energy of a Dyson sphere, harnessing the power of an entire star, to construct a massive database to store all their arguments against realism, a database spanning the diameter of a solar system.

They have sacrificed much in this task. They abandoned their chance to traverse the stars and explore new worlds, all in the name of their dedication to provide a sufficient number of defeaters against realism. And on that last day, in the year 12,022, at 2:52 PM Cosmic Central Time, the last bit of data is uploaded into the database.

The database is a masterpiece not just of philosophy, but of art. Embossed in rare minerals gathered from across the stars, it is a testament not just to human achievement, perseverance, and ingenuity, but to our capacity for beauty and creativity. With their last gasps, they collapse, mentally and spiritually spent, and await the judgment of the moral realists.

In the thousands of years since 20th century analytic philosophy, the field has changed little. Moral realists still represent the most dominant position within the field. Philosophers have long abandoned the use of the term “philosopher.” They are now known as Phenomenal Priests, a sacred group of people endowed with the unique capacity to determine the fundamental nature of reality merely by thinking about it.

They review the great database for a century and more, reviewing all of the arguments amassed over the past 10,000 years. Sure enough, they acknowledge, the database provides a great deal of arguments and evidence in favor of antirealism. A hundred trillion units, in fact. That’s a lot of evidence in favor of antirealism. Moral realists, having long considered the matter settled, have developed no new arguments in favor of realism.

The moral realists among the Phenomenal Priests, reach their verdict, and choose the greatest among them to reply to the antirealists.

The Greatest Realist: “That’s it? That’s all you have? Look, we understand if you have a hundred trillion points in favor of antirealism. But I don’t think you quite understand how much it seems to us like realism is true. It’s at least a million trillion points in favor of realism. I’m sorry, but as our ancestors told you, any arguments against realism are less plausible than realism. You’ll just have to present better defeaters.”

The antirealists, defeated, cannot muster the strength to continue their work. One by one, they drift away from the great database. Some travel the stars. Some adopt a quiet life of contemplation in a monastery on a distant moon, still others move on to new philosophical projects. The database is scavenged for scrap metal eons later. Moral antirealism is eventually forgotten, as is philosophy, as is all notion of debating philosophical topics. Humanity ceases to explore intellectual topics, content with how things seem, as the stars dim and the cold hand of entropy slowly drags the universe into a cold, quiet slumber.

At this point, it’d be reasonable to ask if I have any examples of anyone actually employing phenomenal conservatism in this way. Even better if they’re a professional philosopher. I agree. I do have one in mind, in a recent comment from William Lane Craig.

In a recent response to a submitted question, which you can find here, Craig states the following:

The question before us concerns not the truth of the premise 2. Objective moral values and duties exist. but our justification for believing it. My claim is that we are justified in believing (2) on the ground of our moral experience unless and until we have a defeater of that experience, just as we are justified in believing that there is a world of physical objects around us on the ground of our sense experience unless and until we have a defeater of that experience. Such a defeater would have to show not merely that our moral experience is fallible or defeasible but that it is utterly unreliable, that we may apprehend no objective moral values or duties whatsoever. Our moral experience is so powerful, however, that such a defeater would have to be incredibly powerful in order to overcome our experience, just as our sense experience is so powerful that a defeater of my belief in the world of physical objects I perceive would have to be incredibly powerful in order for me to believe that I have no good reason to think that I am not a brain in a vat of chemicals or a body lying in the Matrix. As Louise Antony put it in our debate, any argument for moral scepticism will be based on premises which are less obvious than the existence of objective moral values and duties themselves, that is, than (2) itself. (emphasis mine in the latter half of this quote)

Does Craig help himself to an epistemic blank check? I suspect he does. First, note that he says that such a defeater would “have to be incredibly powerful in order to overcome our experience.” How powerful? He doesn’t say. Nominally, there could be some finite, reasonable value in mind, such that some defeater could, in fact, convince Craig of antirealism. Yet Craig is not at all specific here with what an adequate defeater would look like. And that’s just the point. If we’re not clear on what would or wouldn’t have to be the case to convince us, it’s easy to respond to any proposed defeater by declaring it “not good enough,” not on principled epistemic grounds, but on what may be an unconscious bias against acknowledging error, or a failure to recognize a compelling rebuttal for what it is.

Yet it is the last remark that more closely gestures towards the blank check status that I have in mind:

any argument for moral scepticism will be based on premises which are less obvious than the existence of objective moral values and duties themselves, that is, than (2) itself.

If someone genuinely subscribes to this principle, it would appear that they really are licensing (2) with arbitrarily greater epistemic weight than any arguments to the contrary, not merely as a matter of practice, but a matter of principle. This is the armchair philosopher’s equivalent of an unfalsifiable hypothesis. This is not phenomenal conservatism. It is phenomenal dogmatism.