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Daniel Dohrn 29 Firstly, a means is specified to know that someone else is angry. We directly perceive her anger. Then obstacles are removed which threaten the successful use of this measure. This lesson can also be drawn from Cassam´s Eurostar-example. The question how it is possible to get in three hours from Paris to London is answered by naming a means: Take the Eurostar (Cassam 2007, 47f.). No obstacle is mentioned. If level I and level II are related in this way, knowing a means of acquiring knowledge may be a prerequisite to overcoming an obstacle. For the obstacle arises with regard to the means. 26 This reading of the above quote suggests that how-possible questions are not driven by salient obstacles but rather by the quest for means of acquiring a certain knowledge. When these means are specified, obstacles arise. Yet if how-possible questions are not devoted to removing salient obstacles but to exhibit means to acquire a certain knowledge, the function of level II becomes dubious. Should we have an interest in obstacles as such or merely with regard to completing the exploration of means? In the latter case, why is this exploration incomplete unless obstacles are tackled? Now removing eventual salient obstacles which happen to arise from specifying a certain pathway to knowledge surely is an important task of epistemological reflection. Thus level I and level II might have autonomous functions. But if these functions are completely autonomous, the question is how they interact so that Cassam is right to claim that both levels are necessary in order to answer how- possible questions. What if no obstacle is identified? In the Eurostar-example there are no obstacles. Is it sufficient to answer the how-possible question at level I? This objection could be countered by maintaining that level-II arguments sort of check the eventuality of obstacles. But why should such a check be necessary? The principled problem of an interpretation which does not start from an obstacle that has been identified before is to motivate a how-possible question and the reaction of specifying a means. In the case of the threat posed by identifying an obstacle, the motivation is clear. The challenge is to be answered, one is to react to the threat. But what is the purpose of naming a means when a certain knowledge is already given? We are interested in means to acquire knowledge when we do not already know how this knowledge can be acquired. For example, it is an interesting task for Kant to figure out how philosophical a priori knowledge can be acquired. When we already 26 However, as we have seen it is not always indispensable to know the means in order to remove the obstacle.
Comments on The Possibility of Knowledge have knowledge, naming means seems idle and trivial. For we usually know the means. However, I already indicated that epistemological reflection might prove worthwhile or mandatory albeit no obstacles are identified. Yet it is questionable whether Cassam would share this strong requirement. None of the two interpretations provides a sufficient motivation of the ML approach with its two necessary levels. Now we must take into account that the approach is not so much motivated by a certain problem but by a basic philosophical issue. What is at stake is to explain what knowledge is. This claim, however, faces its own difficulties. In the first interpretation outlined above, how-possible questions are obstacle-oriented. Why should the general question what knowledge is depend on an obstacle becoming salient? Why should it be answered by what is necessary to deal with the obstacle? The same questions arise with regard to the means-oriented interpretation. Why should specifying a means of acquiring a certain knowledge tell something about what knowledge is? While the definitional task aims at knowledge as such, at explaining the significance and meaning of knowledge, Cassam´s project does not live up to this sort of explanation as it does not tell anything about the aim and structure of knowledge but only something about how knowledge can be acquired. 27 It remains open in how far Cassam´s program which does not envisage completeness of means specified at level I or -as the Cartesian method of doubt- of obstacles discussed at level II, not even of salient obstacles, can achieve more than naming certain ways and removing certain inhibiting factors for some cases of knowledge. These shortcomings are aggravated by Cassam´s being rather unspecific about what means and obstacles are. Does a mathematician by developing a new proof articulate a means of acquiring knowledge and remove an obstacle which consists in there being no way of establishing the conclusion of the proof? Surely not. But why not? How does Cassam´s notion of means and obstacles rule out this case? Furthermore, Cassam does not indicate how concrete our specification of means must be. Is it sufficient for naming a means of knowing the external world to say “by sense perception”? It might be interesting to name means of acquiring knowledge. It might be of the utmost importance to remove obstacles which could interfere with the acquisition of 27 This criticism is reminiscient of Dummett´s criticism of truth-conditional semantics which does not specify the aim of using language, attaining truth. (Dummett 1978, 2). As the debate about the value of knowledge shows, the definitional approach, too, may leave some issues regarding our epistemic aims unsolved (cf. the discussion in Zagzebski and Fairweather 2001). 30
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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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