deontologism, epistemic See EPISTEMIC DEONTOLO-. GIS. dependence, in philosophy, a relation of one of three main types: epistemic dependence, or dependence in the order of knowing; conceptual dependence, or dependence in the order of understanding; and ontological dependence, or dependence in the order of being. When a relation of dependence runs in one direction only, we have a relation of priority. For example, if wholes are ontologically dependent on their parts, but the latter in turn are not ontologically dependent on the former, one may say that parts are ontologically prior to wholes. The phrase ‘logical priority’ usually refers to priority of one of the three varieties to be discussed here.
Epistemic dependence. To say that the facts in some class B are epistemically dependent on the facts in some other class A is to say this: one cannot know any fact in B unless one knows some fact in A that serves as one’s evidence for the fact in B. For example, it might be held that to know any fact about one’s physical environment (e.g., that there is a fire in the stove), one must know (as evidence) some facts about the character of one’s own sensory experience (e.g., that one is feeling warm and seeing flames). This would be to maintain that facts about the physical world are epistemically dependent on facts about sensory experience. If one held in addition that the dependence is not reciprocal – that one can know facts about one’s sensory experience without knowing as evidence any facts about the physical world – one would be maintaining that the former facts are epistemically prior to the latter facts. Other plausible (though sometimes disputed) examples of epistemic priority are the following: facts about the behavior of others are epistemically prior to facts about their mental states; facts about observable objects are epistemically prior to facts about the invisible particles postulated by physics; and singular facts (e.g., this crow is black) are epistemically prior to general facts (e.g., all crows are black). Is there a class of facts on which all others epistemically depend and that depend on no further facts in turn – a bottom story in the edifice of knowledge? Some foundationalists say yes, positing a level of basic or foundational facts that are epistemically prior to all others. Empiricists are usually foundationalists who maintain that the basic level consists of facts about immediate sensory experience. Coherentists deny the need for a privileged stratum of facts to ground the knowledge of all others; in effect, they deny that any facts are epistemically prior to any others. Instead, all facts are on a par, and each is known in virtue of the way in which it fits in with all the rest. Sometimes it appears that two propositions or classes of them each epistemically depend on the other in a vicious way – to know A, you must first know B, and to know B, you must first know A. Whenever this is genuinely the case, we are in a skeptical predicament and cannot know either proposition. For example, Descartes believed that he could not be assured of the reliability of his own cognitions until he knew that God exists and is not a deceiver; yet how could he ever come to know anything about God except by relying on his own cognitions? This is the famous problem of the Cartesian circle. Another example is the problem of induction as set forth by Hume: to know that induction is a legitimate mode of inference, one would first have to know that the future will resemble the past; but since the latter fact is establishable only by induction, one could know it only if one already knew that induction is legitimate. Solutions to these problems must show that contrary to first appearances, there is a way of knowing one of the problematic propositions independently of the other. Conceptual dependence. To say that B’s are conceptually dependent on A’s means that to understand what a B is, you must understand what an A is, or that the concept of a B can be explained or understood only through the concept of an A. For example, it could plausibly be claimed that the concept uncle can be understood only in terms of the concept male. Empiricists typically maintain that we understand what an external thing like a tree or a table is only by knowing what experiences it would induce in us, so that the concepts we apply to physical things depend on the concepts we apply to our experiences. They typically also maintain that this dependence is not reciprocal, so that experiential concepts are conceptually prior to physical concepts.
Some empiricists argue from the thesis of conceptual priority just cited to the corresponding thesis of epistemic priority – that facts about experiences are epistemically prior to facts about external objects. Turning the tables, some foes of empiricism maintain that the conceptual priority is the other way about: that we can describe and understand what kind of experience we are undergoing only by specifying what kind of object typically causes it (‘it’s a smell like that of pine mulch’). Sometimes they offer this as a reason for denying that facts about experiences are epistemically prior to facts about physical objects. Both sides in this dispute assume that a relation of conceptual priority in one direction excludes a relation of epistemic priority in the opposite direction. But why couldn’t it be the case both that facts about experiences are epistemically prior to facts about physical objects and that concepts of physical objects are conceptually prior to concepts of experiences? How the various kinds of priority and dependence are connected (e.g., whether conceptual priority implies epistemic priority) is a matter in need of further study.
Ontological dependence. To say that entities of one sort (the B’s) are ontologically dependent on entities of another sort (the A’s) means this: no B can exist unless some A exists; i.e., it is logically or metaphysically necessary that if any B exists, some A also exists. Ontological dependence may be either specific (the existence of any B depending on the existence of a particular A) or generic (the existence of any B depending merely on the existence of some A or other). If B’s are ontologically dependent on A’s, but not conversely, we may say that A’s are ontologically prior to B’s. The traditional notion of substance is often defined in terms of ontological priority – substances can exist without other things, as Aristotle said, but the others cannot exist without them.
Leibniz believed that composite entities are ontologically dependent on simple (i.e., partless) entities – that any composite object exists only because it has certain simple elements that are arranged in a certain way. Berkeley, J. S. Mill, and other phenomenalists have believed that physical objects are ontologically dependent on sensory experiences – that the existence of a table or a tree consists in the occurrence of sensory experiences in certain orderly patterns. Spinoza believed that all finite beings are ontologically dependent on God and that God is ontologically dependent on nothing further; thus God, being ontologically prior to everything else, is in Spinoza’s view the only substance. Sometimes there are disputes about the direction in which a relationship of ontological priority runs. Some philosophers hold that extensionless points are prior to extended solids, others that solids are prior to points; some say that things are prior to events, others that events are prior to things. In the face of such disagreement, still other philosophers (such as Goodman) have suggested that nothing is inherently or absolutely prior to anything else: A’s may be prior to B’s in one conceptual scheme, B’s to A’s in another, and there may be no saying which scheme is correct. Whether relationships of priority hold absolutely or only relative to conceptual schemes is one issue dividing realists and anti-realists. See also FOUNDATIONALISM , IDEALISM, METAPHYSICAL REALISM , PHENOMENALISM , SUBSTANCE , SUPERVENIENC. J.V.C.