Examining Attentive Perspectivalism
Consider a position in epistemology associated with the 5th Century Buddhist 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. In other words, if Jones is attentive to state of affairs S, then Jones knows that S is the case. I will call this view Attentive Perspectivalism (AP).
It seems to me that there are problems with AP. I’ll address two.
First, one can be attentive to a situation and nevertheless fail to obtain the truth about it. For example, 5th-century-Smith might attend carefully to the position and apparent motion of the Sun, which appears to move around the Earth. But it is false that the Sun orbits the Earth. It seems that, according to AP, 5th-century-Smith knows that the Sun orbits the Earth. Alternatively, 5th-century-Smith might be a brain-in-a-vat. There is no Sun; there are only Sun-like experiences in the Matrix, though Smith can take an attentive perspective about them. Does 5th-century-Smith nevertheless know that the Sun orbits the Earth?
Now, it seems obvious that knowledge is factive. I.e., truth is a necessary condition for knowledge; if one knows that p, then p is true. Moreover, nearly every epistemologist agrees that knowledge is factive. Hence, one can argue the following reductio:
If AP is true, then knowledge is not factive.
Knowledge is factive.
Thus, AP is not true.
The supporter of AP can respond that 5th-century-Smith is not sufficiently attentive to the position of the Sun. Were he to have sufficient attention, he would know that the Sun does not orbit the earth. Adequate attentiveness about a state of affairs entails possessing the truth about that state. Hence, (1) is false. AP does not entail the non-factivity of knowledge. The objector to AP can reply that “attentiveness” is unclear. How attentive does one need to be in order to obtain knowledge? I detect an argument for epistemic certainty here, but I will not pursue it now.
Second, Buddhaghosa seemed to adopt the anatta (no-self) position of Buddhism, which holds that there is no self or “I.” He held that the human body is empty, soulless, and undirected – like a robot. 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.” (The Path of Purification, 5th Edition, Kandy: Buddhist Publication Society, 1991, p. 594, xviii.31; cited in Jonardon Ganeri, “Attention to Greatness: Buddhaghosa” in What Makes a Philosopher Great? Ed. Stephen Herrington, New York: Routledge, 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 actor or agent. Another way to put the point is that there are epistemic events but no subject. This seems implausible.
The supporter of AP can appeal to an event ontology such that events are more fundamental than objects. The skeptic of AP can resist this appeal and instead claim that the hypothesis of a self or agent explains the relevant epistemic data more effectively. This claim would be consistent with an object-based or substance-based ontology of the broadly Aristotelian sort.
There is much more to be said about this interesting topic. But for now, practical duties demand my attention.