Hidden Complication and True Belief

The Inaugural Address: Hidden Complication and True Belief
Author(s): R. F. Holland
Source: Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes, Vol. 59 (1985), pp. 1-
16
Published by: Wiley on behalf of The Aristotelian Society
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4106749 .
Accessed: 03/04/2013 11:24
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Wiley and The Aristotelian Society are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to
Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Volumes.
http://www.jstor.org
This content downloaded from 137.73.70.204 on Wed, 3 Apr 2013 11:24:19 AM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions
The InauguralAddress
HIDDEN COMPLICATION AND TRUE BELIEF

R. F. Holland
I have come to think that epistemology could do with a new
piece of coinage, so I offer you hiddencomplication, without any
definition: it is not a technical term but has an ordinary sense
that can be cottoned on to and extended. I am putting forwarda
homely idea for use as the appropriate heading under which to
treat a range of phenomena that have presented themselves,
since the time of Plato, as an obstruction to the philosophical
task of explaining the nature of knowledge.
Hidden complication has its local and specialised varieties;
some forms of it are bound up with particular pursuits and
institutions. But I am mainly concerned with the freely floating
instances that everybody encounters from time to time. These
fall broadly into two kinds. On the one hand there are the
complications that lie behind almost every sudden departure
from what we have come to rely upon in the behaviour of
familiar objects, structures,materials etc., and behind nearly all
of our misperceivings and other mistakings, indeed behind the
bulk of the misapprehensionsthat we get into unaided: then on
the other hand there are the hidden complications that are
wrought by design; that is to say the lies, let-downs, and other
unsuspected manipulations that we undergo through the
agency of other people. Howsoever these things originate, they
belong to the humanity of our lives without being tied to
particular practices. When they are somebody's fault, it is not
usually that of the epistemic subject, the would-be-knower. In
fact they can be thought of as entering into the idea of what it is
to be a human agent. Certainly there is not much we can do
about them, because although we are familiar with their
existence in a general way, we are seldom in a position to predict
exactly where and when they will crop up.
Hidden complicationsroughen up the pathwaysto knowledge
and constitute an epistemic hazard that is in some ways like the
danger to health presentedby bacteria. They can be devastating,
disturbing, unbothersome or benign, according to the type of

2 R. F. HOLLAND
case. In association with particular practices they can be an

occupational risk. Also it is possible for hidden complication to
become institutionalised into an epistemic counterpart to
endemic disease, I am thinking of the systematic disinformation
and bureaucratic mystification that may be woven into the
fabric of a country's life through the long-standing imposition of
a collectivist system. As for hidden complications constituting
an epistemic equivalent of the occupational health-risk, an
exemplification of that idea lies close at hand in the type of
enquiry we are pursuing, where unseen pitfalls never cease to
catch the wary, even though we came to know what we were up
against when we got involved.
Despite what may be said about particular practices, the fact
remains that, taking human life as a whole, epistemic situations
which are marred by some snag or vice are met with altogether
infrequently by comparison with those which are plain sailing.
And that comment is an instance of a type of observation-
observation about experience-which is also a grammatical
remark: it comes fairly near to saying that anomalies are
anomalous. In the general run of life we carry on for most of the
time as if hidden complication did not exist. Save in exceptional
circumstances, the possibility of it is not taken into account. We
do not walk about the house as though the joists under the
floorboards may have no more sound wood in them than the
thickness of a pencil; we do not pursue our daily activities as
though about to drop dead or be stricken with paralysis; we do
not, while glancing through the morning paper, imagine that
we might be hallucinated or prey to an optical illusion; and
when we want to know whether the No. 2 bus goes to the station,
we make no allowance for the possibility that the person who
tells us might be lying.
I was not meaning to suggest just then that the situation in
regard to the normal case is that we act on the assumption that
there is no hidden complication or act as if there is none. Rather,
we carry on as usual and there is no hidden complication. Yet
that way of putting it is not right either, because it would be a
mistake to exclude from the bounds of normality cases where we
carry on as usual and there is in fact a hidden complication. I
mean: if we are able to proceed as we expected we would-
successfully, comfortably and without hindrance-then what

HIDDEN COMPLICATION AND TRUE BELIEF 3
we are doing falls within the bounds of our normal way of

carrying on, and in that case, what does it matter if there is a
hidden complication? Hidden complications can exist without
affecting us, like sleeping dogs that stay asleep. They can not
merely exist but come to light too without affecting us, for they
may relate only to a minor aspect of the situation, so that their
disclosure is without interest. Anyhow, the point I would like to
emphasise before going on to say something about the manner in
which the phenomena of hidden complication have been
treated in the history of philosophy, is that the fact that a hidden
complication may be present and may emerge as a feature
of some situation does not mean necessarily that it matters;
and it need no more matter epistemically than in any other
way.
Although comparatively rarely a problem in the ordinary

course of life, hidden complication has been given (but not
under that name) an extraordinarily prominent role to play in
epistemology, with hardly any attention to the variability of its
effects or non-effects. In the history, what has happened is that
philosophers have allowed themselves to become impressed to
the point of unsettlement by the very possibility of it. The most
obvious case is that of Descartes, who idealised a form of hidden
complication, namely that of deceit, into a wholesale theoretical
threat. His confusion in doing so is one of the best known things
in philosophy, and yet there are philosophical writers of repute
who are doing pretty much the same to-day. This is something
that I aim to show with the help of considerations which can
be brought out by looking at an argument from hidden
complication used many years ago by H. A. Prichard.
Prichard's argument was of a responsibility-relieving kind,
although he did not intend it to be such. He claimed that 'the
true answer to any question of the form "Can I do so and so?"
must be "I don't know"'
This is, of course, clear in certain cases. Plainly we never

know that if we were to set ourselves to thread a needle, we
should thread it; or that if we were to set ourselves to draw a
line through a point on a piece of paper, we should succeed.
But in the last resort this is the only answer ever possible,

4 R. F. HOLLAND
since we never knowthat we have not become paralysed.

(Moral Obligation,p. 34)
If I call that a poetic description of what life can be like for the
doddery, I am not seizing on something the passagejust happens
to resemble. No other natural sense is available for it.
Pritchard'sown attempted construal tradeson a muffledappeal
to two stages of hidden complication, the firstof which he might
from his own point of view have by-passed, but I shall not
disregard it. For in order to sketch out an anatomy of the
epistemological misuse of argument from hidden complication,
I can think of no better way of proceeding than to give this claim
of Prichard'sas much life as it will take, and in that way measure
it against reality, without being deterred by fear of inviting
tedium.
Suppose then, on the principle of horses for courses, that a
dashing young seamstress is about to thread a needle and
nobody is stopping her. In what way might it be shown that she
does not know she will thread it? The suggestion being made
about her is not unintelligible if understood in the sense that
there is a particular needle she cannot thread, i.e. that she can
thread others but not this one; in which case she will either know
in advance or she will have come up against a hidden
complication. Doubtless she will have picked up a needle of
appropriatesize for the gauge of thread, but its eye is bent or was
not fully formed in the manufacture. She can discover what the
trouble is quite quickly if she wishes, but rather than bother to
examine the offending needle, she may throw it into the fire and
thread another, so that the nature of the complication is never
discovered. Anyhow, we are supposing that she does not thread
the needle she first took up; so someone could point out (for the
sake of epistemology, he might think) that the truth conditions
were satisfied here for the statement, 'she did not know she
would thread the (or a) needle'. How that statement would fit
into any slice of life is another question, and it seems to me that
nothing follows from it either in practice or in theory. No doubt
it would irritate the seamstressif she heard it, but then So what?,
as she might reply, taking a careful look at the next needle; 'I
know I am going to thread this one'.
From my expansion of Prichard'sneedle-threading example,

two things emerge. One is that a hidden complication at some

particular place and time, if it causes any epistemic upset at all,
need only affect the knowledge we may have thought we had of
what was the case at that particular place and time. The other
thing that emerges is that Prichard, in producing his argument
from hidden complication, paid no attention to any relevant
actuality. The bare possibility of a hidden complication was all
he had in mind-not as anything even remotely on the cards,
but as a postulate of the pure imagination, so to speak. In other
words he was contemplating a peculiarly abstract kind of
'maybe'. And that is something which can be psychologically
disturbing; but it makes no difference to our knowledge.
You do not get any mileage out of a purely fantasised
complication by making it one of over-bearing size. When not
being contemplated with any degree of predictiveness,
Prichard's would-be-clinching case of seizure by paralysis is as
impotent epistemologically as the bare possibility of getting into
trouble with a needle and thread. It is an entirely different
matter when the actuality of paralysis is brought into prospect,
as it would be for a patient in whom some condition that
generally led to strokes had been diagnosed and judged
untreatable. Ironically, the kind of predictive thinking that
Prichard's reflection on the topic of paralysis would (on his own
view) render impossible is the very thing required in order to
turn that reflection into anything other than a vain piece of
imagining. And the same applies to Hume's great but empty
gesture at the possibility of an all-embracing hidden complica-
tion-tomorrow's famous non-sunrise. Cases of this kind that
have over-bearing implications as regards the difference that
their actuality would make, could do with a distinguishing
label, so I call them cases of radical hidden complication.
Argument from hidden complication has most commonly

been employed in phenomenalistic theories of perception,
where it has been called by commentators the argument from
illusion; but I shall not discuss that employment here, for there is
a theory of knowledge which stands in more immediate need of
criticism. It is a theory about the nature of propositional
knowledge with quite a strong following in contemporary
philosophy. Since it requires the use of not just one but several

6 R. F. HOLLAND
arguments from hidden complication, it consists of virtually

nothing else but the systematic misuse of this form of argument.
A succinct presentation of the theory can be found in Robert
Nozick's book, Philosophical Explanations. Under the heading
'Knowledge' he writes the sub-title, 'Conditions of Knowledge',
and then:
Our task is to formulate further conditions to go alongside
(1) p is true
(2) S believes that p.
We would like each condition to be necessary for
knowledge, so any case that fails to satisfy it will not be an
instance of knowledge. Furthermore, we would like the
conditions to be jointly sufficient for knowledge, so any
case that satisfies all of them will be an instance of
knowledge. We first shall formulate conditions that seem to
handle ordinary cases correctly, classifying as knowledge
cases which are knowledge and as nonknowledge cases
which are not; then we shall check to see how these
conditions handle some difficult cases discussed in the
literature. (PhilosophicalExplanations, p. 172)
Why should this be our task? Nozick cites a historical genius as

having been the first to make a point. The point is crucial: if it
were not established, the philosophical business which the rest of
his chapter is meant to transact would not exist. Here is the
citation (pp. 169-70):
Plato first made the point that knowledge is not simply a
belief that is true; if someone knowing nothing about the
matter separately tells you and me contradictory things,
getting one of us to believe p while the other believes not-
p, although one of us will have a belief that happens to be
true, neither of us will have knowledge. Something more is
needed for a person S to know that p, to go alongside
(1) p is true
(2) S believes that p.
Nozick's example in that passage belongs to a species of hidden
complication-manipulation by another person. In the Platonic
dialogue alluded to, Socrates used a more natural example to
convince Theaetetus that something more was needed. He

reminded him of the antics of barristers in the Athenian courts:

the beliefs induced in the minds of the jurymen were often true,
but that did not make them the same thing as knowledge.
Plato's example of the manipulated juryman is the prototype
of those in current use and its modern counterparts are assumed
to prove exactly what he believed that his example proved.
Instead of taking it to show no more than what it plainly does
show, viz. that there is a distinction to be drawn between
knowing and having a true belief here-in this particular case
and others of a broadly similar type, including for instance that
of the person who in totting up a bill makes two errors which
cancel each other out-instead of attributing that degree of force
to his example, Plato took it to establish that having knowledge
and having a true belief must amount to something different
everywhere; that they must be characterised as what they are in
respect of each other by some all-pervasive distinction-in-
general. He was not deterred and neither are his modern
successors deterred from embracing this assumption by the fact
that it is unclear what having a true belief (just that) would
amount to in separation from the particular examples brought
in to illustrate the distinction. Having a true belief is treated as a
sui generis cognitive position, with a life of its own outside these
rather special cases. Likewise knowledge too is treated, not only
as all one thing, but as involving always the self-same extra
factor on top of true belief.
So the true-belief-plus theory of knowledge, as we may call it,
is generated by an insidiously attractive version of the error that
we saw being committed by Prichard when he tried to use the
difficulty of threading a needle as a counter-example to (e.g.) the
proposition that in a vast number of cases we know what we are
going to do next, after this meeting etc. By misplaced
generalization, a hidden complication is credited with the
capacity to wreak epistemic havoc beyond its setting. In the
context of the true-belief-plus theory of knowledge, the mistake
consists in attributing to the example of the manipulated
juryman, or some latter day equivalent, the power to deliver a
sweeping blow-not a complete knock-out; more the sort of
punch that leads to running repairs, but still the counter-
example is reckoned to deliver whatever it delivers right across
the board so to speak, with the result that the knowledge-as-

8 R. F. HOLLAND
true-belief rubric in its first simple form is thought to have been

rendered wholly untenable: if it does not hold in this case, it
cannot hold in any other.
Counter-examples do sometimes exert this force, but only
when the subject matter is of a certain kind. They exert it against
rules of inference and principles of logic, and similarly in
mathematics; they also exert it against scientific laws and
theories when the exception cannot be explained away, as most
often it would be (I suppose it often would be in logic, come to
that). However, knowledge is not a logical or scientific concept:
to treat it as either is as peculiar a construal as making it out to be
a mathematical concept, which nobody is tempted to do.
The true-belief-plus theory of knowledge is not, I would say,
an explanatory account of the nature of knowledge but a
procedure for turning the idea of knowledge into something
artificial. The process begins with the abstract and technical
way in which the theory uses the idea of true belief. Talk of
people's beliefs being true never made much of an entry into our
daily dealings: there is hardly any work there for it to do. Hence
if asked point blank to consider the way knowledge and true
belief are related in actuality, howsoever their relationship
might be presented in theory, we would feel at a loss, although
looking at the actuality of the relationships which form the
subject matter of the theory isjust what we should be doing. The
solution is to leave out 'true' and concentrate on the relation-
ships between knowledge and belief. Are they ever inseparable?
Can knowledge and belief amount to the same thing? To say
they cannot would be one way of expressing the point assumed
to have been established by that first use of the counter-example,
and to say that they can would be a strong way of denying it.
An expression commonly found on forms of reference when
the applicant is seeking a position of trust is: 'I certify to the best
of my knowledge and belief.. .'. Not only are knowledge and
belief inseparable here from the standpoint of what can be relied
on, but it does not make any difference which heading the
referee thinks of his statements as belonging to. Perhaps
someone will urge that this is a special case. But there are hosts of
expressions both verbal and behavioural that may be called
expressions of knowledge or expressions of belief interchangeably
in the same circumstance. He says 'Shush'. He tiptoes past the

bedroom. Are these expressions of knowledge or belief? An idle

question: call them which you please. Unless there is an
unmentioned complication, nothing hangs on the choice. 'She is
asleep', he whispers and we all go away. No question arises.
There is certainly the possibility of a consideration's being
brought to bear that would introduce the distinction: 'She will
be delighted by the news, so unless you are quite sure she is
asleep, shouldn't we knock and tell her?' But if this is thought to
show that there must have been a distinction there already, the
'must' is metaphysical. The difference comes in only when the
question does.
But what if she had been awake all along? This supposition
might be thought to show that the difference between knowledge
and belief was there already. For as somebody might say: 'the
distinction between her being asleep and not being asleep
cannot be held to enter the situation only when the question
does; and if she was awake, the man outside had a false belief, as
distinct from knowledge.'
The dependence on the condition should not be forgotten.
Providedshe is awake, the distinction comes in. And normally it
does not, because normally she is asleep. So my claim that knowl-
edge and belief can amount to the same thing is not disturbed.
The case of the girl who is not asleep, when past experience and
the present signs all point to her being so, belongs to my
epistemological category of hidden complication; and as I earlier
showed, it is a mistake to think that these cases must cast doubt
on our knowledge in cases where there is no such complication.
Let us go back to Robert Nozick who, after (1)p is true and (2)
S believes that p, gives as his next condition of knowledge:
(3) not-p -not-(S believes that p)

This means that if p were not true, S would not believe that p.
Now why, when he has accepted the Platonic example as proof
that a continuation beyond the first two conditions is necessary,
does the modern 't.b.+' theorist not favour the suggestion Plato
himself put forward, namely that knowledge consists in true
belief together with a justification? The answer is: because of the
Gettier cases, as they have come to be called since 1963 when
they were first presented in Analysis.

10 R. F. HOLLAND
The subjunctive condition 3 serves to exclude cases of the

sort first described by Edmund Gettier, such as the
following. Two other people are in my office and I am
justified on the basis of much evidence in believing the first
owns a Ford car; though he (now) does not, the second
person (a stranger to me) owns one. I believe truly and
justifiably that someone (or other) in my office owns a Ford
car, but I do not know someone does. Concluded Gettier,
knowledge is not simply justified true belief. (Nozick, op.
cit., p. 173)
Another example of hidden complication, and it is used in

exactly the way the Platonic example was: as though the giving
of an account or explanation could never show that a person
knew something and was not just voicing an opinion which
happened by accident to be true.
What ought to be added in order to get round Gettier
examples has been a matter for dispute among 't.b.+' theorists.
The most recent article I have seen on the subject-R. L.
Kirkham's 'Does the Gettier Problem Rest on a Mistake?' Mind,
October 1984-rejects every proposal that has been made.
Kirkham's conclusion is that 'no analysis of knowledge which
does not require that the would-be-knower bejustified such that
his premisses necessitate his belief is immune from all Gettier type
counter examples' (p. 511). But Kirkham holds nevertheless
that 'the Gettier counter-examples reveal the correct analysis of
knowledge' (p. 512), and hence that a radical form of scepticism
is justified. In other words, he believes that the mistake other
't.b.+' theorists have made in their handling of the Gettier
examples has been to underestimate their power.
If the Gettier counter-examples were satisfactory in them-
selves, which I shall argue is not the case, the consequence of
using them in the way the 't.b.+' theory uses them would no
doubt be theoretical ignorance if it were not to be some other
kind of folly. Nozick, after responding to the Gettier business
with his subjunctive condition, not-p - not-(S believes that p),
decides that he cannot stop there because the condition just
mentioned is satisfied by the following example: Someone is
floating in a tank, having been rendered oblivious to everything
around him, and is being given, by direct electrical and

chemical stimulation of the brain, the belief that he is floating in

a tank with his brain being stimulated. Nozick's comment on
this imaginary example is that although it is the case that if the
person in the tank were not floating in the tank he would not
believe he was, he does not know that he is in the tank, because
his belief is not sensitive to the truth. 'The operators of the tank
could have produced any belief, including the false belief that he
wasn't in the tank; if they had he would have believed that' (p.
172 and pp. 175-6).
This example of manipulation falls in the epistemological
category of radical hidden complication; but I do not think it is
coherent, for the person in the tank described by Nozick has
been reduced to a registering device on the end of a piece of wire.
Words may come out of him, but that does not mean he says
anything. His case is altogether different from that of a patient
undergoing neuro-surgery who after being given a local
anaesthetic is subjected to a limited degree of probing and can
converse with the surgeon. There is something for the expression
of that patient's beliefs to amount to-I mean the beliefs caused
by the neural stimulation as well as those he may entertain at
will in connection with the conversation-for he is in the
ordinary way conscious, and being conscious, he can make
judgments. But I see no reason to go along with Nozick in
attributing beliefs to the person in the tank. In fact we are
invoking what he once was, and invoking the prospect of his
being restored to a normal human condition, when we say that
he continues to be a person at all. In his present situation at least,
the internal relations between perception, agency, judgment
and belief, which make each of those things what they are for a
person, have been severed. Nozick has imagined here a case in
which the epistemic subject has to all intents and purposes been
obliterated; and this is (not surprisingly) the final stage of
counter-exemplification in his development of the theory.
My earlier remark that the true-belief-plus theory of
knowledge consists in the systematic misemployment of
examples of hidden complication was no exaggeration, as you
see, and I am adding now the further point that the examples
misused in generating the theory are awry in themselves-
excepting the one given by Plato. Plato's juryman is as large as
life and drawn from experience; there is no unreality, nothing

12 R. F. HOLLAND
contrived or out of the way in Plato's description of the

circumstances: whereas the examples that enter into the modern
development of the theory are forced and tricksy. I doubt
whether it would be possible to find a realistic example of
someone's having a true belief that did not amount to
knowledge, without the example's reproducing in some way the
structure of the juryman case. Nozick's example of the person
floating in the tank is not a genuine instance of belief, but if its
over the edge aspect is discounted, you can discern behind the
surface dissimilarity an exact resemblance to Plato's prototype.
In the Platonic example, a person in the hands of a clever
rhetorician is stimulated to believe something willy-nilly, so that
he exercises no independent judgment; he believes whatever the
smooth operator wants him to, and on the occasion cited, what
he is made to believe is true. Nozick gives us a high tech. version
of the same thing. A person in the hands of clever operators is
stimulated, in the physiological sense this time, to believe
something willy-nilly, so that he etcetera. The example is
structurally identical with Plato's. But in between comes the
example derived from Gettier, about which I have said nothing
so far save that, like the rest, it belongs to the category of hidden
complication.
The character of the Gettier cases can best be appreciated by
placing them in relation to the distinction I drew when
introducing the category of hidden complication at the start:
there is on the one hand the kind of hidden complication that
arises by accident and on the other hand the kind that occurs by
design. Both may be accepted as part of the rough and tumble of
the world. But when Nature herself (alias the recalcitrance of
things) interposes an unseen barrier, perhaps in the form of a
sudden change, between you and what lies in front of you,
thereby doing you out of some knowledge you would otherwise
have had, she leaves you with a combination of ignorance and
false belief, and does not give you to believe instead a
proposition which is true and which by some magic is the very
one you would have known to be true if you had not been
prevented from knowing it. What a lusus naturaethat would be!
Such a thing is only possible when persons get up to some game.
You might wonder why they should; but maybe a barrister or a
neurologist is out to show what he can do. And I would say that

these two examples together, Plato's and Nozick's, exhaust the

available choice of method: word-spinning or interference with
the brain. In the Gettier examples the effect is brought about by
word-spinning. However, the word-spinning is of no ordinary
kind, for it is represented as being indulged in by the epistemic
subject spontaneously.
Gettier cases, remember, are designed to show the possibility
of a fully justified true beliefs not amounting to knowledge.
Gettier originally presented two. In the first, Smith and Jones
have applied for a job and we are asked to suppose that Smith
has strong evidence for the proposition 'Jones is the man who
will get the job, and Jones has ten coins in his pocket' (prop. 1).
Smith then 'sees the entailment' from this to 'The man who will
get the job has ten coins in his pocket' (prop. 2). We are then
invited to imagine that Smith himself is, without knowing it,
going to get the job and has, without knowing, ten coins in his
pocket. Gettier's claims about this bizarre imaginary case are
that prop. 2 is true, that Smith is clearly justified in believing it
to be true, and that equally clearly Smith does not know it to be
true (Analysis, June 1963, p. 122).
When Smith is said to believe prop. 2, after having seen it to
be entailed by prop. 1, what exactly is he being represented as
believing? The gratuitously entertained prop. 1, though utterly
queer, is at least clear in what it says, whereas prop. 2 is an
imported piece of grammatical smog (I do not say gratuitously
imported-it is required exempligratia). 'The man' might mean
the man Jones, or it might mean whoever will get the job, be he
Jones, Smith or someone else unmentioned, leaving the identity
of the successful candidate an open question. The belief that
Jones is the man who will get the job (prop. 1) does not imply the
belief that the job may go perhaps to Jones or perhaps to
someone else indifferently, but is actually incompatible with so
believing. When Smith utters prop. 2 therefore, he can only be
using the expression 'the man' to mean Jones. But Gettier needs
the other interpretation too so that Smith can inadvertently
make the proposition true when he gets the job. The proposition
made true in that way is then presented as the one Smith had all
along believed.
In Gettier's second example, Smith, who has strong evidence
for the proposition, 'Jones owns a Ford', 'selects three place

14 R. F. HOLLAND
names quite at random, and constructs the following three

propositions': Either Jones owns a Ford, or Brown is in Boston;
Either Jones owns a Ford, or Brown is in Barcelona; eitherJones
owns a Ford, or Brown is in Brest-Litovsk. Brown is a friend, of
whose whereabouts Smith is 'totally ignorant', and Gettier says
that Smith is 'completely justified in believing' each of the three
propositions mentioned. We are now asked to suppose that
Jones does not own a Ford and that Brown 'by the sheerest
coincidence and entirely unknown to Smith' is in Barcelona.
The example having thus been set up, Gettier makes the same
claims about the Barcelona proposition as he made about prop.
2 in the first example: the proposition 'either Jones owns a Ford
or Brown is in Barcelona' is true, and Smith believes it with
justification, but he does not know it.
If Smith had been looking for a disjunctive proposition in
order to express what he believed, he could have come up with
'Either Jones owns a Ford or I am a Dutchman'. That would
have done no more than add an exclamation mark to the
thought he started with, but he would have said something by it,
whereas his roving eye for material implications prompts him
instead to conjugate propositions. Erecting propositional
structures does not amount to saying anything, and Smith has
nothing to say about Brown's whereabouts in any case because
he is totally ignorant on the topic. The simple propositions
about Brown are merely responses to the wish, 'Let me have a
sentence--anything will do'. Neither they nor the complex
propositions involving them are credenda.The only proposition
Smith believes is the one he has evidence for, namely 'Jones
owns a Ford'. Moreover, his attitude towards it is one of belief
simpliciter,not: 'Either I believe this about Jones or you can put
me down for a belief that Brown is somewhere-I don't mind
where, but let us suppose he is in Boston or Barcelona or Brest-
Litovsk'. What an absurd proposal that would be. Yet it is a fair
characterisation of the position Gettier tacitly attributes to
Smith so as to credit him later with having a true belief when the
hidden complications rear their heads.
The variation by Nozick, which I mentioned earlier, relates to
Gettier's first example, where there was a shift between two
interpretations of the expression 'the man'. The corresponding
shift in Nozick's presentation is between two ways of using the

word 'someone'. In one use it means someone or other and

makes no reference to anyone in particular, whereas in the other
use it refers to a particular person. Here is an illustration:
Tomkins: I need someone to repair this gate.
Simkins: I live next door to someone who will do it.
Let me remind you of Nozick's example:
Two other people are in my office and I amjustified on the
basis of much evidence in believing the first owns a Ford
car; though he (now) does not, the second person (a
stranger to me) owns one. I believe truly and justifiably
that someone (or other) in my office owns a Ford car, but I
do not know someone does.
The brackets round 'or other' aid the presentation by oiling the
slide from the particular someone to the someone who might be
anybody.
It is hard to see how equivocation or quasi-deductive
subterfuge can be avoided in the framing of Gettier examples.
But possibly it can be done at the cost of stepping up the element
of unreality that is in them already, and this brings me to my
final example. A sure-fire way of creating cases of'justified true
belief which are not instances of knowledge is to grant yourself
the liberty of interpreting 'justified' to mean justified in the
mind of an imbecile:
Consider Smith who is allergic to cheese. His idiot cousin
Ernie tells him that the moon is made of green cheese.
Smith believes Ernie and deduces that if he (Smith) eats
two pounds of the moon, he will get sick. And let us
stipulate that it is true that anyone who eats two pounds of
the moon will get sick. Hence, Smith has a justified true
belief, but Smith does not know. (R. L. Kirkham, Mind,
October 1984, p. 504)
Ernie's saying that the moon is made of green cheese is just
babble, which Smith repeats. Smith adds more idiotic babble of
his own when he says he will get sick if he eats two pounds of
moon (the example might as well have started with this bitise).
Then someone with delusions of grandeur certifies, indeed
stipulates, that anyone who eats two pounds of the moon will be

16 R. F. HOLLAND
sick. So we have three idiotic babblers without an operative

belief among them.
To be saddled with the awful kind of idiocy Kirkham gestures
at would be like living with an unremitting bamboozler inside
you. Although not a genuine case of justified true belief, the
example does represent one of the extreme points along the line
of disruption to an epistemic subject's relationship with reality
which hidden complication can bring about.
However, it is not particularly the fact that the true-belief-
plus theory tries to make deductions about the general nature of
knowledge from internally unsatisfactory examples like
Kirkham's, or like Nozick's example of the person floating
obliviously in a tank, that makes this contemporary 'analysis' of
knowledge an object lesson in how not to do epistemology, but
rather the way in which, by cultivating a spurious rigour, it
misunderstands and mistreats the phenomenon of hidden
complication altogether.


Hidden Complication and True Belief

Uploaded by

Document Information

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Hidden Complication and True Belief

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

The Inaugural Address: Hidden Complication and True Belief

This content downloaded from 137.73.70.204 on Wed, 3 Apr 2013 11:24:19 AM