June 25, 2009
I haven’t written in a while and for those that follow by blog: I am sorry. But here is something new and something that I invite you to comment on.
So, I would like to initiate a conversation on what I have heard folks refer to as ‘Lordship Salvation’. I am not sure how to define this position. However, I am familiar with several of the desiderata of this position. One desideratum is that a person is saved only if they accept Jesus as Lord (thus the title). Another is that if one is saved, their life will bear (in some undefined quantity) the fruits of the Spirit. And, a third desideratum of this position is that those who accept it (at least the ones I am familiar with) reject a works based salvation; i.e. they believe that one is saved by grace alone, through faith alone and not of themselves or anything that they do.
I have heard this position contrasted with another position pejoratively labeled ‘Cheap Grace’. (As an aside, grace, by definition, is free. So, I am not sure how much cheaper it can get.) While I may not be sure how to explicate this position exactly, I have heard it explained in the following terms: the position of ‘Cheap Grace’ is characterized by the belief that one’s mere intellectual assent to some set of propositions is sufficient for their salvation.
Now here is my proposal. I think that if what is called ‘Lordship Salvation’ does not collapse into a position of ‘Cheap Grace’, then ‘Lordship Salvation’ must, for consistency’s sake, reject one of their desideratum; namely, that one is saved through faith alone.
Here is why I think this. First, some preliminaries. I think that “belief” as it shows up in natural language is univocal. Also, I think that whatever belief is, it is not a complex property; i.e. one that is reducible to a set of lower-level properties. Belief is just belief. For example, the belief that p (where “p” stands for some sentence type or proposition like “snow is white”) does not = intellectual assent that p + trust that p. Belief is rock bottom. We may have other words that mean the same thing as “belief,” words that we could substitute in for “belief” or “believe” in any context; however, when these words mean the same thing as belief, we should take them as referring to something that is rock bottom as well.
Another property of belief, one that I think is obvious, is that belief is not a degreed property. (I am aware that this position is not ubiquitous and invite conversation about this as well, especially any reason to think that it is true.) David Hume may have introduced this opinion (in his “On Miracles”) but I see no reason to think that it fits with reality. We can believe that there is a 90% chance of rain tomorrow. However, we cannot believe 90%-ly that it is going to rain tomorrow. This just isn’t how belief works (at least mine). As another aside, I think that this view of belief (that belief can be degreed) is one of the main roots of skepticism. And, I do not think that one’s belief that p is compatible with their doubt that p, period.
Now, if belief isn’t degreed and belief isn’t some complex property such that someone can believe that p yet lack some necessary condition for having faith that p, then my question for the ‘Lordship’ defender is this: let some person, we’ll call them “Bob”, believe the following set of propositions: {that Jesus is the Son of God, that Jesus died for their sins, that they are saved by grace through faith, that Jesus rose from the grave after 3 days, (add whatever else you think is necessary)}. Now, we ask the question: What else must Bob do to be saved?
The ‘Lordship’ defender may think that Bob needs to accept that Jesus is Lord. Okay. Add this proposition to the previous set. Now, again we ask: What else must Bob do to be saved? Here’s the dilemma: either Bob must do nothing else or Bob must do something else. If Bob must do nothing else, then the ‘Lordship’ position collapses into what they might, pejoratively, call ‘Cheap Grace’. However, if Bob must do something else to be saved (it can’t be believe something that he hasn’t yet because we can just stipulate that that proposition is a member of the original set), then it must be works based and the ‘Lordship’ defender must give up that one is saved by grace alone through faith alone.
Now, a few points before the replies begin. Some of you may doubt that “belief” is univocal or think that belief is a complex property reducible to a set of lower-order properties. And, based on this you may think that someone can think or believe that p but be lacking in some further epistemic state that would make their overall epistemic attitude toward Christ insufficient for salvation. For example, you may think that Bob could believe that Jesus is The Way, The Truth and The Life yet not TRUST that Jesus is The Way, The Truth and The Life. And, by Bob’s lacking this epistemic attitude (viz., trust) to this proposition, you may believe that Bob doesn’t have faith (“Biblical faith”) in Christ, exactly that which is sufficient to save someone. In response, for whatever other epistemic attitudes (like trust) that you think are necessary for one to acquire faith, add these propositions to the original set of propositions under the new heading “propositions that Bob believes and trusts and…(fill in the blank)”. Again, I ask: if Bob believes and trusts and (fill in the blank) these propositions, what else must Bob do to be saved? I do not think that this changes the dilemma whatsoever. Unless you can give some good reason to think that this new epistemic attitude (like trust) is sufficiently different from belief, I will consider them to be the same.
I will stop here. I look forward to engaging and learning from those who are interested enough to respond.
Posted in Christian Perspective, Apologetics, Theology 
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January 23, 2009
4.0 A More Appealing Solution?
In the previous section, I left the question open whether there is anything valuable we can learn from watching others respond to ‘the wheel’. To respond, I think the answer is, yes. Two things I think we can learn are: (i) There is nothing of value to gain by being on the wheel and (ii) if (i) is the case, then perhaps ‘jumping off’ or ‘refusing to get on’ doesn’t entail what the skeptic thinks it does, especially since what they conclude is obviously false. Additionally, at the end of section 2, I left the question open whether Dr. X has any other solutions available to her, besides particularism, methodism and skepticism, for dealing with the POTC as it relates to distinguishing the gender of newborns. I will now provide this other solution.
4.1 A Reductionist Solution to the POTC
My reasoning for thinking that the POTC is not a real problem for Dr. X is to be explained by a hypothetical story that goes something like the following. At some point, probably a long time ago, someone realized, perhaps immediately, that the world is full of differences. They noticed that while many things are alike, a many other things are different. Concerning this situation, we might imagine a conversation about these differences going something like this:
Eve: You know, Adam, nature seems to be jointed.
Adam: How so, Bones of My Bones and Flesh of My Flesh?
Eve: Well, while what it takes for a thing to be, e.g., a wheel, a plow, or a bed seems to be vague and subjective, this does not seem to be the case for other things like saber-tooth tigers, woolly mammoths, males and females.
Adam: Fair enough. But, what do you think is the significance of this?
Eve: Well, let me run my suggestion by you and then I think the significance will become clear. Whenever things created or uncreated, natural or unnatural seem to have common features, I suggest that we identify those common features as some particular kind. Sure, some of our identifications will probably fail to carve the world at its joints. However, if the world does have natural joints, or natural kinds, then there is a good chance that some, if not many, of our identifications will have a deep correspondence with the world. And, in those cases, our identifications will carve the world at its joints.
Adam: Hey! I didn’t think of it before but what you’re suggesting is pretty much what I was doing when I came up with and applied the names ‘saber-tooth tiger’ and ‘wholly mammoth’ to some animals in the beginning. Cool. So, does my idea have any other benefits?
Eve: As a matter of fact it does. One major benefit of my suggestion is that it allows us to avoid the pesky POTC.
Adam: How so?
Eve: Well, instead of thinking we first need to answer an (A) or (B) sort of question (see section 1.0 and 2.0) in order to distinguish between kinds, we can introduce a (C) sort of question which, we will say, must be answered prior to both (A) or (B) sorts of questions.
Adam: First, what do you suggest as a (C) sort of question. And, secondly, how do you think an answer to this sort of question avoids the POTC?
Eve: Regarding your first question, I had in mind something like this: Fill in the blanks: Being (a(n)) (1) just is (2) .” Here, blank (1) should be filled in with a kind term (making appropriate syntactic adjustments depending on whether the kind term is a count noun) while blank (2) should be filled in with a feature or some conjunction thereof (making appropriate adjustments keeping with the previous suggestion). And, regarding your second question, here is how I think this move avoids the POTC. If we had a precise answer to a (C) sort of question, then (i) an answer to this sort of question would simultaneously entail an answer to both (A) and (B) sorts of questions; so, (ii) we won’t need to answer (A) and (B) sorts of questions in any particular order, for we will have a readily available answer to either whenever we like. And, therefore, (iii) if it doesn’t matter which of these two questions we answer first, then it seems that we can avoid getting caught in “wheels” and infinite regresses all together.
Adam: So, how about an example. You know I like examples. Suppose it was the case that correct answers to two (C) sorts of questions were as follows: “Being a male just is having external sex organs” and “Being a female just is having internal sex organs.” How would these facts avoid the POTC?
Eve: Like this. If you’ll notice, the only times we find ourselves in “the wheel” or an infinite regress from the POTC is when the criteria for distinguishing a thing aren’t built right into our understanding of it. However, if a kind is identical with what we take to be its distinguishing criteria, then we shouldn’t worry about circularity because every identity relation is circular, or perhaps I should say reflexive.
Adam: So, does this mean the skeptic was right after all?
Eve: I’ll put it this way, I think the skeptic was in the best position to discover a solution to the POTC; he just got lazy.
Adam: How so?
Eve: Well, since the skeptic was right to judge that if we need an answer to (A) sorts of questions before we can get an answer to (B) sorts of questions and if we need an answer to (B) sorts of questions before we can get an answer to (A) sorts (which does seem to me to be the case), then we can answer neither and, therefore, if we can answer neither then it will be impossible to distinguish any two things. However, he should have realized by the sheer absurdity of his conclusion that there must be an answer to the POTC somewhere. It should have occurred to him that since we are able to distinguish things, and since his reasoning seems both valid and sound, maybe the way to avoid the problems of priority concerning questions of the (A) and (B) sort, is that we need to answer them simultaneously, which means we must first answer a question of a different sort all together; viz., one like I propose: a (C) sort.
Adam: Well, My Little Riblet, as usual, you make a pretty convincing case. And, as usual, I find myself one hundred percent on board with whatever you suggest.
In this hypothetical dialogue, I (as Eve) present a different solution to the POTC, one in opposition to particularism, methodism and skepticism: a reductionist solution. And, I suggest that a solution along these lines; viz., a reduction of a thing’s kind to its criteria for distinction, is a common method for making all sorts of distinctions, one I think Dr. X would be wise in endorsing. Though, in the aforementioned examples I have not applied this solution to the POTC, as it pertains to ‘knowing whether we know’, I will now attempt to do so.
4.2 Applying the reductionist solution to the POTC, as it arises from a decisive question.
To begin, we can provide the reductionist’s response to a decisive question just as we did for the particularist and methodist.
Skeptic: For any one of your beliefs, B, how do you know whether you know B?
Reductionist: Well, that depends on what you mean by “know”?
Skeptic: Someone, S, knows a proposition, p, iff p is a case of knowledge for S.
Reductionist: That’s very insightful but what do you take knowledge to be?
Skeptic: Hey! I’m the one asking the questions here. Just use whatever you take knowledge to be.
Reductionist: Fine. Since (i) I, personally, take knowledge to be true belief, and (ii) since I take ‘know’ to be the verb form of the kind-noun ‘knowledge’, I take ‘knows’ to mean believe truly. So, if B is a true belief and I truly believe that I believe B, then I know that I know B.
There are, now, several points I want to make about the reductionist solution I offer. For one, though in the previous dialogue I identified knowledge as mere true belief, my particular identification is not inherent in the reductionist methodology. According to reductionism, we identify collections of common features as kinds. Moreover, some of these collections of common features will be natural kinds, while others won’t. Concerning epistemic mental states, we have at least three different collections of common features that immediately present themselves as decent candidates to identify as the kind, knowledge: (a) mere true belief, (b) true belief + C and (c) that which we are certain about. Now, we have several problems. One problem is whether the English speaker’s use of ‘knowledge’ and its derivatives (‘know’, ‘knows’, ‘knowing’, ‘knew’, ‘knowable’, etc.) consistently refers to the same kind, i.e. the same collection of common epistemic features. If not, then, while (a), (b) and (c) may be natural epistemic kinds (though I doubt this is the case), there will be no fact of the matter which one objectively is ‘knowledge’. And, if there is no fact of the matter concerning which collection of common epistemic features just is ‘knowledge’, then one’s activity of responding to a decisive question without first identifying exactly which common epistemic features ‘know’ is suppose to pick out is certainly a strange practice. I think this practice is analogous to someone responding to the question “How do you schmow whether you schmow?” without requiring of their inquirer a definition of schmowledge.
4.3 How reductionism differs from particularism and methodism
Another point I want to make regards how reductionism differs from both particularism and methodism. Regarding particularism, someone might say, “In as much as the reductionist extrapolates the common features of a kind from particular cases, the reductionist is really just a particularist.” In response, the way the reductionist discovers features that are or could be common to multiple particulars is inconsequential. For the reductionist need never have experienced a particular that exemplifies the collection of common features that they identify as a kind. For example, a reductionist who stringently identifies the kind ‘knowledge’ as ‘certainty’ need never have experienced a particular case of certainty to make this reduction. I think this is analogous to our ability to identify the kind unicorn with the features we would use to identify it without ever having experienced a particular instance of this kind.
Moreover, though I think a reductionist could beg the question in responding to questions about whether they have knowledge, their doing so is not a necessary result of the reductionist’s methodology, unlike the particularist. For example, a reductionist, who identifies knowledge as true belief, would beg the question if, upon being asked “Do you have knowledge?”, they non-conditionally affirmed that they do. The non-question begging response is: “I have knowledge if at least one of my beliefs is true.” I should note again, however, that the necessity of this conditional response does not entail that the reductionist cannot know whether they know.
Regarding methodism, it might be asked, “In as much as the reductionist responds to a decisive question with criteria for knowledge, the reductionist is really just a methodist.” As I mentioned in the Adam and Eve dialogue, however, the reductionist’s claim to have answers to (B) sorts of questions is not a starting point. Rather, the reductionist’s answer to both (A) and (B) sorts of questions results from their first answering a (C) sort of question. So, while the reductionist’s response to the POTC may sound like a methodist’s response, the main difference is that, since, for the reductionist, a kind’s distinguishing criteria just is that kind, the reductionist’s is able to avoid vicious explanatory regresses that the methodist cannot.
4.4 Any other benefits of reductionism?
While the reductionist may be accused of being a particularist or a methodist, I believe just the contrary is more likely. In as much as the particularist or the methodist ever gives a response to the question, “What is knowledge?” they have adopted reductionism. This is noteworthy, as not only is reductionism able to avoid the pitfalls of the POTC, it is the only methodology that is able to answer one of the most central questions of epistemology. The reason for this is simple. If knowledge is not taken to be identical with its distinguishing criteria, as the reductionist says, then the best the particularist and methodist can shoot for is an analysis of what every case of knowledge has in common. However, even if the particularist or methodist achieved this noteworthy goal, being able to tell us what the necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge are is not to tell us what knowledge is. Only the reductionist can do this.
IV. Conclusion
To conclude, Chisholm’s conclusion is partially right, namely, that “in the end” “each of the possible solutions” to the POTC is “unappealing.” I think Chisholm was correct to judge that particularism, methodism and skepticism are unappealing. However, if Chisholm took these three solutions to exhaust the solutions to the POTC, then I think Chisholm was wrong. Not only is reductionism able to avoid the unappealing features of particularism, methodism and skepticism in regards to the POTC, it is the only methodology that is able to answer the question, “What is knowledge?”
Posted in Epistemology, Philosophy 1 Comment »
January 19, 2009
3.0 What’s So “Unappealing” About Particularism, Methodism & Skepticism
Before, providing a different solution to the POTC, which I will do in section 4, I want to evaluate just how influential the POTC ought to be for one’s epistemology. The answer to this question, I contend, will depend on two factors: (i) how significant is the POTC and (ii) how unappealing is one’s response to it. In the previous section, I showed that the POTC is quite significant, as it shows up, most likely, wherever criteria do. In this section, therefore, I will attempt to identify which features of particularism, methodism and skepticism are unappealing and why this is so.
3.1 What’s so bad about ‘the wheel’?
When I think about ‘the wheel’, I picture the following: (i) something like a giant hamster wheel spinning just a bit faster than anyone could keep up; (ii) an envelope on which it is written “THE KEYS TO KNOWLEDGE” somehow suspended inside the wheel just out of reach from outside the wheel; (iii) one person, an eager and excited neophyte, desiring to be ‘a knower of things’, trying to get his timing down so that he can make a successful jump onto the wheel and obtain THE KEYS TO KNOWLEDGE; (iv) another person, someone already on the wheel, tumbling uncontrollably end over end; and (v) the devious skeptic who is hiding nearby, controlling the height of the envelope and enjoying the show.
Now, I think it is easy to see, especially according to this imagery, what is so bad about the wheel. There is nothing to be gained by being on ‘the wheel’. For one, if the skeptic is in control of the envelope that reads “THE KEYS TO KNOWLEDGE”, then it is a safe bet that there is nothing of value in the envelope. Second, even if this envelope did contain the keys to knowledge, the best approach would still be to try to get this envelope without getting on the wheel. With this imagery in mind, I want to look at two questions: (1) if one finds themselves on the wheel what options are available to them? And, (2) is there anything valuable we can learn from the skeptic’s or the neophyte’s position, i.e. is there anything we can learn from the POTC without having to get on the wheel?
3.2 Identifying the “unappealing” features
The skeptic might suggest that one clear option available for the person tumbling on ‘the wheel’ is to ‘jump off’. However, it seems that the particularist and the methodist think that to ‘jump off’ is to give up; i.e. it is to concede that the skeptic was right after all. So, without jumping from ‘the wheel’, both the particularist and the methodist seemingly try to make the best of a bad situation. How do they do this? Keeping with our previous analogy, we might imagine that the particularist and methodist after tumbling uncontrollably end over end for a while in the wheel eventually get their bearings and latch onto a fixed point of the wheel. Now, although still spinning around and around, they are at least stably doing so from fixed positions. And, to help complete the analogy, we might also imagine the particularist and the methodist boarding up the wheel so that they can no longer see out and, therefore, cannot get dizzy. So for the particularist and methodist, after stabilizing themselves and boarding up the holes, it becomes easy to simply ignore the fact that they are stuck on a wheel.
Now, if we were to think of premises 1, 2 and 3 (section 1.0) as different locations on the spinning wheel where someone stuck on it might latch on, then I think we can take the particularist as the one who takes hold of 3 (If we are to know whether our criterion succeeds in distinguishing what we know from what we don’t, then we must know whether we know), as the particularist believes 3’s consequent is often satisfied. Additionally, I think we can take the methodist as latching onto 1 (If we are to know whether we know, then we must have a criterion for distinguishing what we know from what we don’t), as, perhaps, they think this is the most intuitive option. And, lastly, to reiterate, we can think of the skeptic’s advice as, “There is nothing in the envelope that reads “THE KEYS TO KNOWLEDGE” and, therefore, there is nothing of value for one to find in the wheel, whether stabilized or tumbling out of control. Jump out!”
3.2.1 What’s so bad about the particularist’s decision to latch onto 3?
Ultimately, what the particularist does by latching onto 3 is they simply and openly beg the question against the methodist and skeptic. So, first, how does the particularist beg the question and, second, how problematic is this? First, as mentioned before, Chisholm says the POTC begins with the question: “How do I decide, in any particular case, whether I have a genuine item of knowledge?” We will call questions of this sort, for short, decisive questions. So, lets consider the particularist’s response to a decisive question.
Skeptic: For any one of your beliefs, B, how do you know whether you know B?
Particularist: Well, when I know B, I try not to ignore this fact. So, in those cases, I try to make a habit of deciding in favor of knowing B. Nor, when I don’t know B, do I try to ignore that fact. So, in those cases, I try to make a habit of deciding against knowing B.
Now, the skeptic is going to say that the particularist’s response begs the question. In other words, the skeptic is accusing the particularist of assuming, or initiating with, exactly what is in dispute: that we can just know whether we know. But so what? When one is accused of begging the question does this mean that their position is necessarily flawed or epistemically lacking in some way? Absolutely not. An argument that someone thinks begs the question is likely not going to be convincing to that person. However, if one’s goal of the ‘question-begging’ argument is not to convince their opponent but rather just to provide an answer to some question about their position, then the proponent of the ‘question-begging’ argument should not consider their argument’s lack of cogency a major liability of their position. So, overall, a position that begs the question against their opponent’s position isn’t necessarily flawed. However, what about a position that, by dint of its methodology, must beg the question?
The distinction I am making is this. Some philosophical positions endorse arguments that beg the question against their opponent’s position in order to prove some desired conclusion. However, when the opponents of these arguments point out that the presented argument begs the question against their position, the argument can potentially be re-worked so as to fix this minor setback. So, a philosophical position of this sort only contingently begs the question against its opponents. This, however, is not the particularist’s position. Rather, the particularist endorses a position that by dint of its methodology begs the question against its opponents. Question begging of this sort can be fixed only upon forfeit of the question-begging position. To be sure, even a position that begs the question against its opponents by dint of its methodology isn’t essentially flawed nor are its conclusions inevitably false. However, a position that does so—especially in the presence of formidable arguments against that position—might not be the most intellectually satisfying.
So, overall, the badness or unattractiveness of a position that begs the question against its opponents seems to be a subjective matter. And, according to my subjective perspective, a position, like particularism, that begs the question against its opponents by dint of its methodology is less reasonable, ceteris paribus, than a position that doesn’t. And, the persistent endorsement of a position like particularism in the face of formidable arguments against it is less intellectually satisfying, ceteris paribus, than a position that is open, methodologically, to critique. However, none of this is to say that the particularist’s conclusions are false. It is only to point out the liabilities of endorsing a position that begs the question against the skeptic and methodist by ‘latching onto 3’ and refusing to jump from the wheel.
3.2.2 What’s so bad about the methodist’s decision to ‘latch onto 1’?
That the methodist’s decision to ‘latch onto 1’ immediately runs them into a vicious explanatory regress is a notorious objection against methodism. So, first, how does this infinite explanatory regress arise and, second, how problematic is it? As we did with the particularist, lets consider the methodist’s response to a decisive question.
Skeptic: For any one of your beliefs, B, how do you know whether you know B?
Methodist: Well, if B meets such and such criteria, then I decide in favor of knowing B and if it doesn’t, then I decide against knowing B.
The skeptic will, of course, want to know how the methodist knows such and such criteria are the correct criteria for knowledge. Here the methodist has a couple of options: (i) They can claim not to know such and such criteria are the correct criteria for knowledge; (ii) They can abandon their methodism and respond as a particularist saying, “I just know such and such criteria are the correct criteria for knowledge”; Or, (iii) they can provide criteria for, what they take to be, the correct criteria for knowledge. It is this third response that triggers the vicious regress.
How bad is an infinite explanatory regress? Whether or not a regress is vicious is not always clear. However, in the methodist’s case, it is pretty clear that the regress their position admits is vicious. An analogy for why infinite explanatory regresses are so problematic is often told in terms of loaning something that must first be borrowed. According to this analogy, we might imagine asking our neighbor if we can borrow their lawnmower and our neighbor responding, “Well, I don’t have one. But, let me see if I can get you one.” We can then imagine our neighbor asking another neighbor if they can borrow their lawnmower and the second neighbor responding exactly as did the first. Thus, the infinite explanatory regress begins. According to this story, if every neighbor responds like the first, we would never get to borrow a lawnmower (and it wouldn’t be because it would take too long for the lawnmower to make its way to us). The problem is that if there is not, somewhere in our story, a neighbor who just has a lawnmower to loan, there might as well be no lawnmowers. And, the application for the methodist is: if there isn’t criteria that we can just know, then there might as well be no criteria.
The problem for the methodist is the conjunction of these two facts: (i) they claim to have a loaned lawnmower to mow with (i.e. they claim to have criteria for knowing whether we know) and (ii) the story how they must have gotten this lawnmower (these criteria) is just like our story. So, this is why methodism is suspect. If they claim to have some lower order criteria they received on loan from some higher order criteria, then either: (i) the goodness of their criteria is a bluff; they really don’t know the goodness of their criteria or (ii) they arrived at their criteria by means of a particularist move. Both options are fatal for methodism.
3.2.3 What’s so bad about ‘jumping out’?
Here, I want to distinguish the act of ‘jumping from the wheel’ from what one does after their ‘jump’. The skeptic suggests that once one ‘jumps form the wheel’ they ought to conclude that it is impossible for one to know whether they know. With the skeptic’s advice in mind, we can ask, “What is so bad about an obviously false conclusion to a problem?” The answer to this question, however, is clear. What is so bad about an obviously false conclusion just is its obvious falsity. Therefore, endorsing any philosophical position, like skepticism, that’s main thesis is obviously false, is obviously bad. For reasons along these lines, the skeptic’s conclusion: It is impossible for one to know whether one knows, is reason in and of itself to reject skepticism as a philosophical position. However, it does not seem to me that skepticism is usually endorsed as an end in and of itself. Rather, I believe, skepticism is usually endorsed as a means toward an end, namely, the end of possessing the most reasonable or correct perspective on the world.
So, while what is so bad about endorsing a philosophical position that is obviously false is clear, obviously false conclusions can be and often are very helpful. For, if the obviously false conclusion is validly derived from seemingly true premises one’s current philosophical position endorses, then, as long as they are not particularists, these false conclusions provide good reason to re-work their position or, perhaps, reject it altogether.
3.3 Preliminary conclusion: How influential should the POTC be in our epistemology?
To make some preliminary conclusions, the main question of this section was, “What kind of influence should the POTC have on our epistemology?” Now, having identified the unappealing features of particularism, methodism and skepticism, I think it is reasonable to conclude that the POTC is sufficiently prominent and the available solutions are sufficiently “unappealing” to warrant our taking the POTC very seriously in our epistemology.
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