Is Attention Sufficient for Knowledge?

Introduction

Smith dreams that he’s flying like a bird. He attends to the experience, noticing the feeling of wind, the sensation of gliding, and the view of the ground below. Does he know that he’s flying? How could he? He’s asleep on the couch. This case raises questions of philosophical interest. He was paying attention. He wasn’t distracted. He carefully noted various sensations. Yet he lacks knowledge. Why doesn’t attention entail knowledge? Or does it, if done properly?

It seems that attention is inseparable from knowledge. When distracted, it is difficult to understand or come to know things; when attentive, we can comprehend objects of focus. Critical thinking requires disciplined attention. But is such attention sufficient for knowledge?

The nature of knowledge is a key problem of epistemology (the philosophical study of knowledge). Consider an intriguing thesis inspired by the fifth-century philosopher Buddhaghosa. According to this position, having an adequately attentive perspective on some state of affairs is sufficient for possessing propositional knowledge concerning that state.^[1] On this view, adequately attending to a state of affairs S is enough to know that S is the case. In other words, if Socrates is attentive to S, then Socrates knows the proposition ‘S is the case.’ Let’s call this view Attentive Perspectivalism (AP).^[2] In what follows, I will examine AP, neither endorsing nor rejecting it, but instead considering its efficacy as a thesis on the nature of knowledge.

Two Objections

AP gets something right that is crucial in epistemology and the philosophy of mind: there is a significant link between knowledge and attention or awareness. But concerns arise about AP.

First, there is a factivity problem. One can be attentive to a situation and yet fail to obtain the truth about it. For example, someone in the ancient world (call her Octavia) might attend carefully to the position and apparent motion of the Sun, which appears to move around the Earth. Octavia might know that it seems to her that the Sun orbits Earth. But it is false that the Sun orbits Earth. According to AP, Octavia knows that the Sun orbits Earth. But she can’t know such a proposition, since it is false.

Suppose that Neo is a brain-in-a-vat. There is no high-rise office building where he works as a software engineer; there are only office-like experiences in the Matrix. Neo attends carefully to one of these experiences. Does Neo know that he works in the office? He cannot know this, because there is no office, although perhaps he can know that it seems to him that there is an office.

Now, it is (relatively) uncontroversial among epistemologists that knowledge is factive.^[3] In other words, truth is a necessary condition for knowledge; if one knows that p, then p is true. Hence, one can pose the following reductio ad absurdum^[4]:

1. Knowledge is factive. (Consensus)
2. AP is true. (Assumption for reductio)
3. If AP is true, then knowledge is not factive.
4. Thus, knowledge is not factive.
5. Hence, knowledge is factive and knowledge is not factive, which is a contradiction.
6. Therefore, AP is not true.

The supporter of AP can respond that Octavia is not sufficiently attentive to the position of the Sun. Were she to be equipped with the technology and astronomical resources that enable sufficient attention to such matters, she would know that the Sun does not orbit Earth. Adequate attentiveness about a state of affairs entails possessing the truth about that state. Hence, (3) is false. AP does not entail the non-factivity of knowledge.

The objector can reply that “attentiveness” is unclear. What is it? Does it come in degrees? How attentive does one need to be to obtain knowledge? For instance, must one’s level of attentiveness be sufficient to guarantee the truth of the object of one’s attention? If so, this would prompt an argument that attentiveness entails epistemic certainty.^[5] In other words, on AP, it seems that attention entails both knowledge and epistemic certainty. Is attention also necessary for knowledge?^[6] If this is the case, attention is both necessary and sufficient for knowing, and it hence seems that knowledge is unattainable for us in many areas of inquiry in which epistemic certainty is impossible, such as the empirical sciences, history, philosophy, and common knowledge claims such as “There is a tree in the yard.”

The supporter of strong AP might accept this skeptical claim by granting that knowledge is unattainable for us in such areas. As such, we lack knowledge in those domains. This would be a form of epistemic skepticism which holds that we are ignorant in many (but not all) domains. We might call this local epistemic skepticism (as opposed to global epistemic skepticism.)

However, the supporter of weak AP might deny that adequate attention is necessary for knowledge. Rather, on weak AP, attention is sufficient for knowledge, but there are other ways to attain knowledge that do not require the sort of attention that we have been discussing.

Second, there is a no-self problem. Buddhaghosa seemed to adopt the anatta (no-self) position of Buddhism, which holds that there is no self or “I.”^[7] He held that the human body is empty, soulless, and undirected – like a robot. Fundamentally, there is no person present. He writes:

“Just as a mechanical doll is empty, soulless, and undirected, and while it walks and stands merely through the combination of strings and wood, yet it seems as if it had direction and occupation; so too, this minded body is empty, soulless, and undirected, and while it walks and stands merely through the combination of the two together, yet it seems as if it had direction and occupation.” (cited in Ganeri, 2018)

According to the conjunction of AP and the anatta doctrine, there is knowledge without a knower, attentiveness without an attender, memory without a rememberer, awareness without a subject, and more broadly speaking, epistemic activity without an epistemic agent. Another way to put the point is that there are epistemic events but ultimately no subject to experience them. This all seems implausible.

The supporter of AP can appeal to an event ontology such that events are more fundamental than objects. Epistemic life is explained by events that are experienced even though there is, at bottom, no self who does the experiencing. The objector can resist this appeal and instead claim that the hypothesis of a self or conscious agent explains the relevant epistemic data more effectively. The self is the one who has the experience. This claim would be consistent with a substance-based ontology of the broadly Aristotelian sort.^[8]

However, the supporter need not hold the anatta doctrine and hence need not accept the conjunction of that doctrine with AP. Rather, the supporter might maintain the conjunction of AP and the hypothesis of a self. AP thus seems to withstand the two objections raised above, although additional scrutiny is needed, both regarding strong and weak AP.

There is another point to consider. Perhaps AP is better construed as a thesis about knowledge by acquaintance. That is, having an attentive perspective on something is sufficient for possessing knowledge by acquaintance of that thing. A question arises about this thesis. In at least some cases, having knowledge by acquaintance of something entails having propositional knowledge about it. For example, if one has knowledge by acquaintance of a pain in one’s knee (i.e., direct experience of the pain, feeling it), it seems that one also knows (propositionally) that there is a pain in one’s knee. Both types of knowledge about knee-pain seem sufficient for epistemic certainty. Does knowledge by acquaintance always entail propositional knowledge? Is AP indirectly a thesis about propositional knowledge?

Practical Considerations

Why is this topic important, practically speaking? First, it is common for people to make knowledge claims. Sometimes, they mean to say that they are epistemically certain. Other times, they only mean that they are subjectively certain. And other times, they just strongly want their claim to be true. And still other times, they have a reasonable belief that falls short of knowledge, or an unreasonable belief, or a mere hunch or feeling. AP highlights the role of careful attention in such matters. The knowledge claims of those who have attended responsibly to what they assert to know seem more likely to be true than the knowledge claims of those who have not given sufficient attention.

Second, consider Grice’s maxims of conversation: (i) quantity, (ii) quality, (iii) relation/relevance, and (iv) manner. According to (i), when conversing, one should provide the right amount of information: not too much; not too little. This is a “goldilocks” maxim. According to (ii), one should say what one believes to be true. One should not assert what one believes to be false or lacks evidence to support. According to (iii), one ought to say only what is germane to the conversation. One should not change the subject without good reason. According to (iv), one should be clear, brief, and orderly in speech. One should try to avoid ambiguity, obscurity, unclear expression, and disjointed articulation. Consider (ii): one should be concerned with truth and justification. What is required for justification? That is a difficult question debated by philosophers. According to AP, justification concerns paying proper attention from one’s perspective, and such attention seems to guarantee the possession of a true belief. AP thus suggests that attention is central to what counts as a JTB.

Third, in the ethics of belief, it has been claimed that one ought to hold one’s beliefs for adequate reasons. Perhaps there are exceptions to this rule, but in general, it is plausible that we should be cautious and responsible about our beliefs and claims, holding them on sufficient grounds. AP focuses the discussion of “adequate reasons” on the nature of attention, thereby suggesting that epistemic responsibility concerns one’s quality of attention, that is, how dutifully one interacts (cognitively) with the world. AP has moral as well as epistemological implications.

Conclusion

AP is a claim about the nature of propositional knowledge. Since Gettier, this topic has been a source of debate. There is no consensus about precisely what propositional knowledge is. As Hetherington (2019, Preface) notes, we are waiting for a definitive reply to Gettier. AP provides an interesting contribution to the dialectic. Whether it succeeds as a “definitive reply” depends on how we examine matters of attention, truth, justification, and the role of the self in consciousness and epistemic life. But this much seems clear: attentiveness is meaningfully relevant to our knowledge assertions, duties of conversation, and doxastic responsibilities. In a time of distraction, information glut, and misinformation, the topic of attention requires our attention.

 

 

References

Bricker, A. 2022. Knowingly False: the Non-factive Project. Acta Analytica, Volume 37. Available here: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12136-021-00471-3

Ganeri, J. 2018. “Attention to Greatness: Buddhaghosa” in What Makes a Philosopher Great? Ed. Stephen Hetherington. New York: Routledge.

Gettier. E. 1963. Is Justified True Belief Knowledge? Analysis 23.6. Available here: https://fitelson.org/proseminar/gettier.pdf

Grice, H. P. 1975. Logic and Conversation. Syntax and Semantics, Vol. 3, Speech Acts, Eds. Peter Cole and Jerry L. Morgan. New York: Academic Press. Available here: https://www.sfu.ca/~jeffpell/Cogs300/GriceLogicConvers75.pdf

Hetherington, S. (2019). The Gettier Problem. Cambridge University Press.

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^[1] Propositional knowledge is knowledge that something is the case. Philosophers have traditionally held that propositional knowledge is justified, true belief (JTB). In other words, to know that p, the following conditions are necessary: (a) one believes that p, (b) one possesses justification for that belief, and (c) p is true. For example, if Plato knows that the Academy is in Athens, then he believes it, he has adequate reason for believing it, and it is true. This view of knowledge goes back at least to Plato’s Theaetetus, in which Plato both presents and questions it. Gettier (1963) challenged the JTB analysis in a brief paper which demonstrated that one can possess JTB and yet lack knowledge, indicating that justification, truth, and belief are not collectively sufficient for knowledge, even if necessary. Epistemologists have also thought about other kinds of knowledge, such as knowledge by acquaintance (i.e., being immediately acquainted or familiar with something, such as the taste of chocolate or the sound of a friend’s voice) and know-how (i.e., knowing how or being able to perform some action, such as hitting a baseball or boiling water).

^[2] It is unclear whether or not Buddhaghosa accepted AP. I do not claim that he did. But AP is an intelligible and interesting view of knowledge. See Ganeri (2018, pp. 73-75) for a discussion of what he calls Attentionalism, which differs from AP as developed in this paper. Attentionalism is a philosophical stance or approach (in Van Fraasen’s sense) that helps us to think about the mind and its various functions, but not a proposition or thesis about the nature of knowledge, as AP is. As for Socrates, he famously claimed not to know anything, or at least not to know the solutions to substantive philosophical problems.

^[3] In philosophy, it is somewhat rare to find a matter of consensus. It is a longstanding consensus that knowledge is factive. However, some have argued that knowledge might not be factive, strictly speaking. For example, Bricker (2022).

^[4] A reductio ad absurdum is a kind of argument which involves granting a claim, showing that it leads to a contradiction or some other kind of absurdity, and concluding that the claim is false given its absurd entailment.

^[5] One is epistemically certain that p if and only if one cannot possibly be wrong that p. In other words, if one is epistemically certain that, say, Tallahassee is the capital of Florida, then one is infallible about that proposition, i.e., one cannot possibly be incorrect about it. The thesis that knowledge entails epistemic certainty is called ‘infallibilism.’ Epistemic certainty differs from subjective certainty (sometimes called ‘psychological certainty’). If one is subjectively certain that p, then one feels completely confident or fully convinced that p. One can be subjectively certain about something that is false (e.g., that leprechauns exist, that one left one’s keys in the kitchen although one actually left them in the living room). One cannot be epistemically certain about something that is false. Epistemic certainty that p entails that p is true, but subjective certainty about p does not entail that p is true.

^[6] We might distinguish between weak AP and strong AP. According to the former, adequate attention is sufficient for knowledge. According to the latter, such attention is both necessary and sufficient for knowledge.

^[7] The anatta doctrine is optional to the supporter of AP. So, the supporter faces the no-self problem only if the supporter combines AP with the no‑self doctrine. AP as such does not require this combination.

^[8] Roughly, according to event ontology, the world consists fundamentally of occurrences and processes. What we commonly take to be objects are ultimately explained in terms of events. According to substance ontology, the world is fundamentally composed of entities or substances (e.g., a man, a dog, a stone) and their properties, relations, etc. Events are what happens with respect to these things.