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Daniel Dohrn 27 3. Problems of the Approach How-Possible Questions and the Nature of Knowledge In what follows I want to discuss respects in which Cassam´s project does not live up to what we would expect from an epistemology which is devoted to answering the question “What is knowledge?” The claim that any how-possible question require level I and level II imposes strong constraints on the relationship of both levels. Both must be indispensable complements. What does this relationship precisely consist in? I want to present two interpretations of the program. The first is more faithful to Cassam´s programmatic statements. It relates to obstacles. We identify an obstacle which gives rise to the question how a certain kind of knowledge is possible. Then we identify means to achieve this knowledge. Finally we get rid of the obstacle with regard to using these means. How-possible questions arise from obstacles becoming salient. Not any eventuality that a certain necessary condition of knowledge is not fulfilled is appropriate to raise a how-possible question. Under what circumstances does an obstacle become salient? One possibility of naming salient obstacles is recurring to the sceptical threat. But Cassam insists that he is not in the business of refuting the sceptic. Another possibility is that obstacles result from epistemological debate. For instance, Cassam develops obstacles of a priori knowledge from combining realism and empiricism (Hume´s problem). How can we have a priori knowledge of an independent real world without perceptual contact (Cassam 2007, 192f.)? 25 However, Cassam in the same context requires an intuitive backing. Obstacles must be grounded by intuitions. A third way of obstacles becoming salient is that natural intuitions give rise to them, perhaps mediated by epistemological debate. Notwithstanding these possibilities, it remains unclear how we can be reliable in identifying relevant obstacles. The suspicion arises that they are simply ad hoc. If epistemological reflection depends on identifying obstacles, it seems to follow that knowledge which is not threatened by salient obstacles does not require epistemological reflection. This may be in tune with Kant restricting his critique to a certain kind of synthetic a priori knowledge, but not with descriptive 25 This question could also be formulated by recurring to the discussion in the philosophy of mathematics how we may grasp abstract objects without being in causal contact with them (cf. Benaceraff 1973).
Comments on The Possibility of Knowledge efforts in contemporary epistemology to understand knowledge without pursuing the task of removing obstacles. Furthermore the question is why level-I-questions must be answered at all. For in order to get rid of an obstacle, what happens at level II seems necessary and sufficient. Of course, in order to remove the obstacle, one may recur to means specified at level I. But there is another respect in which level II is independent of level I. The argument at level I explicitly is to merely provide a means of acquiring a certain knowledge. If there are several alternative means to acquire this knowledge, it is sufficient to specify one of them. An answer at level II may draw on means of acquiring knowledge which have not been specified at level I. Presumably Cassam has in mind a stronger relationship between level I and level II which involves that a salient obstacle threatens claims to knowledge. With regard to this obstacle means are specified to acquire the knowledge at stake. Then it is shown why the obstacle does not interfere with using these means. But how can Cassam exclude that obstacles are removed by an argument which exclusively focuses on the obstacles without taking further notice of means of acquiring the knowledge at stake? Perhaps I may be in a position to show that a certain objection to knowledge claims is self-defeating without having to take into account means by which the knowledge in question is acquired. How-possible questions which are focused on obstacles may be answered at level II without level I being necessary. If epistemology is oriented towards removing obstacles, exploring means does not seem to be interesting in its own right. Thus if we can do without exploring means, we do not need level I. Besides the obstacle-related interpretation just presented there is a means-related one. The how-possible question is posed independently in order to show at level I a possibility of acquiring a certain knowledge. At level II, eventual obstacles are removed. This interpretation can be drawn from Cassam´s presentation of the problem of other minds which he offers as a paradigm application of his method: At one level we have the idea that seeing that someone else is angry is a means of knowing that he is angry and therefore also a means of knowing that there are other minds. At the next level we have the attempt to remove the obstacles to literally seeing that someone else is angry. (Cassam 2007, 161) 28
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Page 12 and 13: Denis Bühler 9 A similar ambiguity
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References Comments on Possibility
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Abstracta SPECIAL ISSUE IV, pp. 85
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Simon Sauter 87 2. Consider the ope
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Simon Sauter 89 There can be no dou
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Simon Sauter 91 or that there is so
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Simon Sauter 99 References Cassam,
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