Epilogue

The book contains a theory of knowledge, self-trust, autonomy, and consciousness. It takes an explanatory system, a theory, to solve philosophical problems, whatever the risk of error. The theory is a coherence theory of knowledge, a defensibility theory of knowledge. The defensibility is an internal capacity supplied by an evaluation system to defend the target claim. Defense or justification that is sustained by truth in the background system is defensible knowledge. Exemplar representation of conscious experience, exemplarization, connects the system with truth by making experience self-representational. The truth-maker and the representation of it are one. The exemplarized experiences also become exhibits of what it is like to experience external entities radiating to represent them. In this way, the accepted premises of our experience, our exemplar representations, become part of the justification and defense of target knowledge claims within our evaluation system.

Perceptual Knowledge of the External World

This chapter explains how exemplarization of experience can provide representational evidence for perceptual claims. The perceptual subject experiences a smell of the spray of a skunk and knows what the sensation is like before he learns the origin of it. To know what the sensation is like in itself requires the subject has some conception or representation of what it is like. The representation of the experience is the result of using the experience as a reflexive exemplar representation of a kind of sensation of which it is an instance. As the subject learns that the exemplar sensation is the odor of the spray of a skunk, it becomes part of the meaning and, consequently, evidence for external object description by exhibiting what the objects are like for us. The evidence of truth is fallible but when not defeated by error it provides defensible knowledge of external things.

Defensible Knowledge and Exemplars Representation

This chapter articulates a form of knowledge that requires the capacity to justify and defend our claims to knowledge in terms of a background system by appeal to a special form of representation of experience called exemplarization. Personal justification of a target claim to knowledge consists of defensibility against objections in terms of a background evaluation system of the person. The justification must not depend on error, as the Gettier problem showed, so the defense of the target claim must be sustained when the errors are deleted from the evaluation system in the ultrasystem of the subject. The result is justification that is undefeated or irrefutable by background error. The chapter ends with an account of exemplar representation of experience of the world that connects acceptance with truth security in the representation of experience.

Intuition and Coherence in the Keystone Loop

Is knowledge and justification a matter of isolated intuition or coherence with a background system? One intuitionist, Thomas Reid, failed to acknowledge the controversy. He argued that knowledge was a matter of first principles, which drive intuition, but also claimed that the first principles depended on each other like links in a chain, as a coherentist might. Wilfrid Sellars, a famous coherentist, argued that all knowledge was explained by coherence with a background system, but, on the other hand, conceded that some knowledge claims were justified noninferentially, as an intuitionist might. This book suggests a resolution to the conflict in terms of a kind of knowledge requiring the knower be able to defend the target knowledge claim. The defense rests on exemplar representation of experience, yielding intuition, tied together in a keystone loop within a system to defend that representation, yielding coherence.

Exemplars, Truth, and Scientific Revolution

This chapter connects exemplar representation with truth and knowledge. It explains the way in which exemplar representation provides the empirical connection of undefeated and irrefutable defensibility. The exemplar can stand in for a predicate yielding exemplar predication exhibiting what the subject is like. The exemplar predicate may be attached to the meaning of words functioning to provide a stochastic connection with how the word is applied and how it is inferentially connected with other words. How exemplars of experience are attached or detached to the use of theoretical words in scientific use is an autonomous choice. Scientific change as well as the delegation of authority is explained by the reflexive exemplar representation of experience onto itself. Evidence and truth lead to empirical knowledge, based on our trustworthiness as we represent the world in terms of exemplarized experience.

Introduction

A review of Keith Lehrer’s work over more than half a century suggested a system that motivated the present manuscript. He has written about knowledge, autonomy, self-trust, and consciousness. Many books and volumes of journals have collected deeply insightful articles about his work, including Bogdan (1980); Bender (1989); Brandl, Gombocz, and Pillar (1991); Olsson (2003); and Fürst and Melchior (2012). This posed the question of how it could all fit together into one system. Science, art, and practice challenge us to evaluate and reconsider what we desire, what we believe, and how we represent the world, ourselves in the world, and the world in ourselves. We must make ourselves worthy of our trust and the trust of others in our defensible and autonomous quest for truth and evidence. We embody that defensible system of truth, evidence, theory, meaning, and science. The book is the articulation of the Lehrer’s system.

Knowledge, Autonomy, and Exemplars

This chapter explores the connection between epistemology and autonomy in representation and knowledge. To proceed from acceptance to justification and knowledge, what we accept must be more reasonable than the objections to it. The source of reasonableness is our trustworthiness in what we accept in pursuit of the goals of reason. The reasonableness of trustworthiness loops back to explain itself but depends on our choice and our freedom or autonomy in what we prefer to accept. The keystone in the life of reason is a pair of explanatory loops of trustworthiness and autonomy. Autonomy extends exemplar representation of experience to the world of qualities and objects we perceive and those we postulate in science. Our trustworthy and autonomous choice of how we represent the world in terms of exemplars of experience sustains itself in an explanatory loop that ties knowledge and autonomy up, down, and together in our world.