What exactly is the social value of knowledge ?

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1. We began by presenting a "pragmaticist" model of knowledge as inquiry and having knowledge as its aim or ideal (Tiercelin, 2005), according to the following general scheme, which proposes, this time, not necessary and sufficient conditions (too strong a requirement in our view) but constraints on knowledge:

(K) S knows that P if :

a) S believes that P (belief being less an internal mental state than a disposition to action) ;

b) P is true (truth being itself conceived in the mode of assertability guaranteed at the ideal limit of inquiry (Peirce, Dewey, Ramsey), or in a purely redundant mode (Ramsey): truth in itself is metaphysically neutral, what counts is what goes with it (our assertions, our investigations);

c) S is most often (because of the ever-present risk of fallibilism) justified in believing that P, i.e., essentially :

1) "S would believe that P if and only if P were true (Sosa's safety principle; but also common sense, Reidian, Peircian, Moorean principle) ;

2) If P were not true in relevant circumstances, S would not believe P (principle of "sensitivity" rather than certainty); should our hitherto well-established beliefs meet with the shock of "recalcitrant" experiences, then we should stand ready to "throw away the whole cartload of our beliefs" (along the lines of Peirce's critical common sense).

3) If in other relevant circumstances, P were always true, S would always believe that P ("counterfactual" conditions formulated by Nozick), translatable into the lessons to be learned from the pragmatist maxim according to a subjunctive reading of the conditional. To determine the meaning of the diamond's hardness, we can always translate the statement into a set of conditionals: "If we pressed the diamond, it would not break" ( would-be reality or disposition).

4) S is justified in believing that P by an appropriate reliable causal process (cf. A. Goldman: irrelevant counterfactual situations are thus excluded), the reliability of the process itself being the object of atrust on our part in our cognitive faculties (intellective and active) (cf. Reid, Peirce, Sosa and Greco) and in certain principles (credulity, the value of testimony, but also the transparency of epistemic norms of truth or knowledge as the norm of assertion and not the other way round).

To these constraints, we must add two other more specifically pragmatic principles:

1) The refusal of the principle of radical generality that goes hand in hand with the skeptical argument: consequently, a) we must demand an analysis of the conditions of possibility of doubt itself (and not just of knowledge (cf. Reid, Peirce and Wittgenstein): find a way to distinguish between paper (or cabinet) doubt and the real reasons for doubt; rely either on certain rules or norms (Wittgensteinian-style pivotal propositions) or on principles (closer to common sense), but constantly subjecting these principles (which are, moreover, evolving) to criticism; and show that skeptical objections most often only have force because they refuse all contextualization. To invoke contextualism, however, is not to maintain that the epistemic status of a proposition is susceptible to variation according to strictly conversational, cultural, social (or other) variable factors: it is to maintain that, independently of all these influences, a proposition has no kind of epistemic status. Stated in this way, contextualism implies a form of externalism, for although appropriate contextual constraints will have to be satisfied for such and such a proposition to claim to express knowledge, it is not necessary for us to know these constraints, or even to believe them , even though a minimal sensitivity to these constraints (by virtue of their causal impact) is inevitable (cf. T. Williamson). In particular, not accepting the principle of privileged access to our mental states (access internalism) does not mean that we cannot (and indeed must) exercise critical reflexive control over our beliefs, so as to educate our sense of rationality and turn our dispositions into virtues. Similarly, not accepting the principle of an independent reality, completely external to our beliefs (metaphysical realism) does not imply that it is impossible to maintain the causal force of reality on these beliefs (cf. according to the model of abductive semiotic realism).

2) The principle of fallibilism, which goes hand in hand with the presumption of the possibility of knowledge, but also with a necessarily non-dogmatic definition of knowledge, and with radical epistemic (even ontological) indeterminism. But it is a fallibilism that is itself open to challenge, and permanently subject to the rules of scientific method and the constraints of inquiry. It should be noted that this fallibilism is what constitutes the ever-present risk of skeptical drift (pragmatists often verge on skepticism, in a neo-Pyrrhic or dogmatic form). It is therefore advisable to bet on a certain form of weak foundationalism, which we propose to seek in the concept of perceptualentitlement: our perceptions do not give us guarantees or justifications, but they do give us epistemic authorizations or prima facie justifications (on the model of perception as abduction rather than judgment) to believe what we believe.

2. There are several advantages to this new model of knowledge.

Firstly, it offers a better response to the skeptical challenge, not only epistemic, but also metaphysical and, even more so, moral. After a brief reminder of the three aspects of the skeptical challenge, and in particular the acuteness of the moral challenge, the pragmaticist model has the merit of showing that "what applies to investigation in general applies to ethical investigation in particular" (cf. Putnam). In this way, we arrive at an original response in the model: firstly, knowledge remains the constitutive norm of inquiry and its aim; secondly, inquiry is not a simple communicative and deliberative process of questions and answers, but a scientific and realistic method of investigating reality, aiming to establish true beliefs. This method is subject to external constraints (sometimes rendering doubt itself impossible) and to norms that are not individualistic but common, forcing us to constantly educate ourselves rationally and sentimentally about our dispositions-habits or critical common sense, and thus rooting knowledge in the social principle.

A second advantage of this approach is that it provides a more satisfactory answer to the problem of the value of knowledge. Why should knowledge be more valuable? Because it aims for the true, the good? Because we have arrived at knowledge by following a reliable method? Because knowledge presupposes certain virtues on the part of the intellectual agent, certain performances that can be credited to him or her? We recalled the aporias of the classical model (Plato-Gettier), but also of reliability and the virtue epistemology model. How, then, to integrate the social aspect of knowledge? We briefly mentioned the double failure of 1) the revolutionary model (social constructivism, sociological eliminativist model - Stich; Shapin) and its relativist consequences; 2) the partial failure of the "reformist" model (as proposed, in different ways, by M. Fricker, and A. Goldman). None of these models really allows us to escape the following dilemma: either they preserve epistemology, but obscure its social dimension, or they insist on this dimension, but epistemology itself becomes untraceable.

If the proposed model is correct, it certainly casts doubt on an overly "veritist" or "purist" approach to knowledge, which would remain deaf to the links that knowledge must have with the common good and action. But it also makes any constructivist, neo-pragmatist or sociological drift in knowledge equally dubious, if not profoundly anti-democratic and contrary to the spirit of the Enlightenment. Being practically on board, engaged orconcerned(which is an obligation if we are betting on rationality and social justice) is very different from simple empathetic or fusional concern(care) for others. On the other hand, it gives a very concrete meaning to the idea that we can say - if we at least consider that the problem of the value of knowledge is indeed one (after all, everyone is free to burn all books and prefer, like the skeptic Hume, to play backgammon) - that this value is, in fact, intrinsically, a social value.