North American Philosophical Publications

THE PROBLEM OF THE CRITERION AND HEGEL'S MODEL FOR EPISTEMIC INFINITISM
Author(s): Scott F. Aikin
Source: History of Philosophy Quarterly, Vol. 27, No. 4 (OCTOBER 2010), pp. 379-388
Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of North American Philosophical
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 History of Philosophy Quarterly
Volume 27, Number 4, October 2010

THE PROBLEM OF THE CRITERION

AND HEGEL'SMODEL FOR
EPISTEMIC INFINITISM

Scott F. Aikin

I
W. F. Hegel has been an inspiration for nonfoundationalist epis
G. temology.1 This essay is an extension of that broadly Hegelian
tradition. I will argue here that Hegel's epistemology, because it is cir
cular and historicist, is a form of epistemic infinitism. My core argument
is a series of conditionals about Hegel's epistemology:

1. Ifwe are to solve the problem of the criterion, the criterion

must come from within cognition.

2. If a criterion is from cognition, itmust be in terms of cogni

tion's historically situated satisfactions.
3. Cognition is satisfied only ifknowledge is complete.
4. Knowledge is complete only if it is systematic.
5. Knowledge is systematic only if it ismade explicit by philoso
phy
6. If a system ismade explicit by philosophy,both the system and
the articulation must be circular and ongoing.

7. If philosophy's articulations are circular and ongoing, then

they are procedurally infinite.

8. Ifphilosophy is to be procedurally infinite,itmust be practiced

in a cultural-political climate of an open society with a state

protecting freedoms.

My main conclusion is that Hegel has presented a unique form of

epistemic infinitism, where infinite series of inferences provide justi
fication but the infinite series of inferences are over a finite circular

379

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380 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY QUARTERLY

system. My subsidiary conclusion is that Hegel's system demonstrates

the interdependence of epistemology and politics.

II

To some, Hegelian epistemology is an oxymoron. J. B. Baillie writes that,

"there was ... no initial
problem regarding knowledge."2 The question
of knowledge Hegel "never seems to have considered, at any rate, never
discussed at length" (42). However, this take on Hegel's objectives is un
justified.Both thePhenomenology ofSpirit (PS) and Hegel's reflections
on it inThe Encyclopedia ofPhilosophical Sciences (E) are motivated
by epistemological concerns. Hegel's introduction to the Phenomenology
is a consideration of the problem of the criterion and a proposal as to
how to address
it.3He motivates the dialectical consideration of finite
states as failed answers
of consciousness to the problem. Additionally,
both the Phenomenology and the Encyclopedia close with considerations
ofAbsolute Knowledge as answering the problem of the criterion.

The confusion is that only the Phenomenology's opening and close

are explicitly epistemological. Most of the work ranges from Hellenistic
ethics to a theory of art and revelation. The challenge of an interpreta
tion ofHegel's epistemology is to provide a theory of knowledge wherein
those disparate political, aesthetic, and religious issues contribute to
knowledge generally.4 What follows are forms of historicism and holism
for Hegel's epistemology. Historicism follows because the progression
of consciousness, reason, and ultimately Spirit from the problem of
knowledge to an account ofAbsolute Knowledge is one that is played out
over time, with each successive state appropriate but also unsatisfying
for its circumstances. Holism follows because all applications of human
cognitive life are relevant to the clarification of knowledge, as they all,
according to the dialectic, grew out of the problem of knowledge and each
contribute to its solution both in the satisfactions and dissatisfactions
theyyield.
The problem of the criterionmotivating thePhenomenology is the
question as to how one knows when one knows. If one uses a criterion
that distinguishes true knowledge fromonly apparent knowledge, one
must knowit is a reliable criterion. But one can know the criterion is
reliable in sorting cases of knowledge only if one already knows what
purported cases of knowledge truly are cases of knowledge. Consequently,
the critical questioning of cognition, even if itwere to possess the right
criterion, makes the responsible use of it problematic. The dilemma is
that cognition, if an instrument of revealing truth, "reshapes it and
alters it," and if only a medium by which truths come to us, the truth
we receive is "only as it exists through and in this medium" (PS ?73).5

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 THE PROBLEM OF THE CRITERION 381

Neither option is appealing. Hegel's third option is that "the essence of

the criterion would lie within ourselves" (PS ?83), namely, that in in
quiring into truth, "consciousness provides its own criterion from within
itself, so that the investigation becomes a comparison of consciousness
with itself" (PS ?84). Hegel reasons that knowledge, if it is to be "our
knowledge," must be "/or hs." Our knowledge must be something that
satisfies us insofar as we are content over time with our answers (PS
?83). Tom Rockmore glosses Hegel's thought: "Consciousness is equipped
with its own criterion of knowledge, which consists in comparing what
it expects, or the theory, and the object as experienced, both of which
are located in consciousness."6 We know when we can answer questions
from all quarters and no longer feel the doubts gather. Knowledge for
us is when thought rests satisfied.

Foundationalism was originally a solution to a structurally similar

problem, that of the regress. The regress problem and that of the criterion
are posited on the same two epistemic principles, namely, that (i) in order
to know, one must have a reason and (ii) in order to have a reason as a
reason, one must be able to account for how it is a reason.7 These two
requirements, ifwe ever take ourselves to know, quickly put us on the
road to regress. In the case of the problem of the criterion, it is the endless
switching back and forth between criteria for and cases of knowledge,
and with the regress, it is the series of iterated reason-introductions
one must make in order to introduce any reason as a reason. With both
problems, foundationalism is the view that there are primitives for
knowledge.8 With the problem of the criterion, foundationalism runs
that there are paradigm cases of knowledge one must start with. With
the regress problem, there are reasons for which one needs no further
reasons. Sense certainty is a view that purports to satisfy both objectives,
and Hegel, following Immanuel Kant, criticized the strategy by showing
that our sensory awareness is mediated by our application of concepts
(PS ? 108-110). Hegel's model for non-foundationalist epistemology is
posited on this requirement of concept-mediation.

The mediation of concepts, especially given the breadth of the con

cepts on offer in the dialectic's progression, requires a wide scope of
relevance for Hegel's holism. In fact, for an application of a concept to
be satisfactory, itmust not be in tension with any other, and itmust
fit systematically with the rest of our concept-applications. Each of the
finite states of consciousness find its situated historical satisfactions
in its applications yet also uncover consequent dissatisfactions, which
in each state's unique way yield expanded and more developed ways of
coping with reality. As each instantiation is reformulated, consciousness
strives for more complete satisfaction. If the criterion for knowing is
consciousness's satisfactions, then knowledge, to address the breadth

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 382 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY QUARTERLY

of consciousness's needs, must be progressively more complete. Conse

quently,forknowledge tobe fullysatisfying,itmust be wholly complete.
And for knowledge to be complete as such, it must be systematic for
inquiring consciousness?the cases of knowledge have relevance to each
other as a system of explicit logical relations. Knowledge, as required
by the system of these relations, is coordinate with truth. Hegel's model
for this system is a series of questions and answers that form a circle:

The whole becomes systematically articulate ... as a circle

of circles
of which each is a necessary moment of the whole moment. ... The
Truth can only exist as a totality systematically developed: only the
whole is the true (E ?6-7).

Ifcognitionprovides itsown criterionforknowledge and ifthat criterion

is cognition's satisfaction with its answers, then all sources of occur
rent concern or dissatisfaction must be addressed, which implies that
all our endeavors bear on our concerns for knowledge. If knowledge is
relevant to our lives, then the relevance must be reciprocal. The width
and breadth of human concern are relevant to and a criterion for our
disparate knowledge claims. The perfection of knowledge, Wissenschaft,
is the sum total of knowledge, interconnected, developed, and disciplined
as a totality, not as a mere aggregation of known facts but as a system
atic view of things.9

For knowledge to be satisfying, itmust not only be complete, but it

must be explicitly systematic to the knowers who possess it. Philosophi
cal explicitness, then, as the recognition of the systematic completeness
of truth, is a necessary condition for the completeness of knowledge:

Philosophy is the Science ofComprehensiveness wherein the totality of

Being becomes aware of itself.... Only in philosophy is comprehension
at home with itself, comprehending also contingencies, natural pres
sures, and all sorts of relations to externality within itself (E ?5).

Philosophy's structure, in articulating the whole and its comprehen

siveness, itself must mirror such systematicity. Thus, it, too, must be
circular; hence both what Rockmore calls "self-justifying" (On Hegel's
Epistemology, 24) and what Westphal calls "self-critical" (Hegel's Epis
temology, 39).10

Ill
The question that dogs circular epistemology is how it is not mere
closed-off dogmatism that, once the circle of reasons is closed, one is not
caught within the circle.
The crucial element toHegel's epistemology is not simply its synchron
ic view of the structure of reasons (that of a circle) but the diachronic

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 THE PROBLEM OF THE CRITERION 383

management of that system of beliefs. One's beliefs are justified not

because of how one has arranged them as a series but how one manages
them over time. Hegel describes this diachronic element to knowledge
"indicated only in its process of coming-to-be, or in the moments of that
aspect of itwhich belongs to consciousness as such" (PS ?789). The dif
ference between virtuous and vicious circles is their output and control.
Hegel's account of circularity is designed to address this difference, and
his account, as I take it, is that the circle must be continually running
and continually being revised in terms of cognition's developing needs
and dissatisfactions.

The regress problem, again, was that, since each justifying reason
must itself be justified, we may either go in a circle or on to infinity.
But these two options are not exclusive?that one has closed a circle of
reasons does not mean that one's reasoning has ended. There may be
a finite number of reasons to traverse, but the reasoning required for
justification itself may be infinite. Consequently, the finite structure of
a circularist epistemology underdetermines the demands of the reason
ing required to run it responsibly. Hegel's circular epistemology is set
directly to embody this aspiration, as he takes it that philosophy's task
is ofmaking knowledge explicit in its totality,and this task requires
that no piece of knowledge be presupposed:

When philosophy reaches logical maturity it is a Science. It requires

abandoning all dogmatic assumptions, subjective presupposition, and
one-sided standpoints_Philosophy as science contains all assump
tions with itself but also shows why it cannot rest satisfied with any
one of them (E ?35-36).

Philosophy's task is to "think through" the warrant for and consequences

of all contents of thought, to subject all the interconnected cases of
knowledge to critical scrutiny (E ?36). Closing a circle of reasons does
not close an issue. Therefore, Hegel's epistemology is structurally circular
but procedurally infinite.

The ongoing nature of philosophy requires perpetual revisiting of

questions. Because philosophy must be presuppositionless but also

systematic,the justification ofknowledge claims is emergentfrom the

critical scrutiny of inquirers. The dialectic progresses by criticism, rejec
tion, and reformulation. Dialectic, like all fallibilisms, is a close cousin
to skepticism,but the progression of failed formsofknowledge should
not yield skeptical equipollence and intellectual paralysis but, rather,
furtherinquiry.11Hegel notes that dialectical testingdistinguishes the
task of absolute knowing from skeptical equipollence:

The movement might also be presented as a total skepticism inwhich

all finite forms of cognition meet their doom_The decision to think

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 384 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY QUARTERLY

radically, to call everything into question ... is both complete doubt

and desperation as well as a complete freedom. (E ?36)

The task of absolute knowing is perpetual reopening of issues, demon

strating the limits of the various perspectives and explicitly recognizing
the limitlessness of the task. The absoluteness of the knowing is that
the process of knowing becomes entirely independent of anything but
itself,but it is not by having knowledge retreat fromtheworld, but by
making all enterprise and all interest relevant to knowledge. But this
expansion, inmaking knowledge more relevant, makes it that much more
incomplete from the perspective of finite consciousness. Such acknowl
edgmentsmay yield doubt and desperation, but tobe true to the project
of philosophy, the proper response is resolution because the essence of
life itself is "the pure movement of axial rotation, its self repose being
an absolutely restless infinity"(PS ? 169).12
The task is infinite,and this task is one that risks the bad infinites
Hegel assesses of the Kantian dialectic. The bad infinites are ones de
termined by negations of boundaries?the bad infinite is represented
by extended nonrepeating series with successors beyond our ken at
some limit. Kant's undetermined was such a bad infinite by Hegel's
lights because Kant had set limits to reason but nevertheless ventured
beyond those limits to reason about it.13The reasoning, no matter how
oblique, undermines its absoluteness as infinite?because it determines
the undetermined by its not being finite. "The finite reappears in it as
its other, since the infinite only is infinite in relation to what is finite"
(PS ? 164). The proper infiniteis the continuous functioningofa finite
system, one determined as infinite (and absolute) not by relation to an
"other" that must be negated but by its relation to itself.14 Knowledge,
then, is emergent as absolute from this ongoing process of critique and
reformation, doubt and resolution (cf.Rockmore, "Hegel and Epistemo
logical Constructivism," 187).

Contemporary epistemic infinitismsare posited on the thought that

the requisite condition for justification is an infinite series of nonre
peating reasons. Peter Klein, Jeremy Fantl, myself, and John Turri,
despite our differences as to what constitutes virtuous as opposed to
vicious infinite series of reasons, all are committed to this thought that
infinite series of reasonsrequired to answer the regress problem must
be serial and nonrepeating.15 This is clearly because we hold infinitism
to be an alternative to coherentism and other versions of circularism.
However, it is clear that infinitism need not be construed as exclusive
of circularity as an answer to the regress problem. a
Consequently,
Hegelian model for infinitismoccupies a unique position in the logical
landscape on the issue.

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 THE PROBLEM OF THE CRITERION 385

Additionally, Hegel's infinitism has a distinct advantage over the

current versions of infinitism because the set of beliefs in the system is
finite.A regular objection to epistemic infinitismis that human minds
do not have infinite beliefs and, consequently, cannot possibly have the
requisite commitments to fulfill the demand that, in order to be justified,
one must have an infinite number of reasons. Skepticism, then, ensues,
and as a consequence, infinitism is rendered absurd.16 Because the circle
is closed around a finite number of commitments, each being refined
over time, Hegel's system is one that is inhabitable by finite minds, ones
capable of traversing the reasoning to the system and autonomously en
dorsing it. Consequently, Hegel's model avoids the difficulties attendant
on contemporary forms of infinitism.

A secondadvantage a Hegelian model for infinitism has over con

temporary versions is its systematicity. For contemporary infinitists, an
infinite series of reasons must be available for a subject for that subject
to be justified in each and every commitment. The regress problem can
be posed forany belief,and if infinitismis the solution to the problem,
there must be infinite series of reasons for each of those beliefs. This
requirement compounds the earlier problem of finite minds for infinitism.
However, on this Hegelian model, there is one infinite series of reason
ings (but a finite set of reasons to traverse). The interconnectedness of
knowledge, on Hegel's model, is what makes inquiry without limit pos
sible for finite creatures.

IV

The conditions for the breadth of critical cognition are themselves

broad. Philosophy, for its practitioners to cast their nets as widely as
they can for issues to investigate and for them to investigate until they
are satisfied, must be practiced under circumstances that allow such
questioning. And this is a significant feature ofHegel's phenomenologi
cal method and its attendant holism?epistemology and politics are
mutually dependant. For knowledge to be complete, those who pursue
itmust be free to inquirewhere their questions lead them, and such
inquiry is possible only in a freecivil societyprotectedby a well-ordered
state.And not onlymust those inquirers be freewithin that state, they
must be free to subject that state to inquiry.17Hegel, inpresenting this
theory of absolute knowing and the end ofhistory only appears to be
producing theological eschatology. The eschatology and its ground
ing metaphysics are only in the service of encouraging our pursuit of
the axiological conclusions. As Pinkard notes, Hegel has argued that,
"insofar as the conception of freedom is concerned, European modern
lifehas reached a pointwhere there seems to be nothing in principle

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 386 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY QUARTERLY

left to be developed" (Hegel's Phenomenology, 336). A constitutional

state with accountable public institutions promoting an open market
ofgoods and ideas and protecting familial bonds yields the conditions
for nonalienated spirit and, hence, satisfied cognition.18 The culmina
tion of political history coincides with the culmination of epistemic
aspiration?a society promoting free and systematic inquiry. This is
precisely why the intervening chapters of the Phenomenology are about
art, politics, and ethics?they are the requisite background conditions
for the proper management of cognitive economy. Ifwe are to come to
know, we must not only have our beliefs in the proper order but we
must have ourselves in the proper order.19 We cannot be worried that
newspapers print only propaganda. We cannot have the worry that, if
we were to ask certain questions, we would be jailed. We cannot have
the thought that some conclusions will get us killed. Otherwise, we
are alienated from what we believe because we will assess ourselves
to believe what we do because
of those conditions. In those cases, we
cannot take those beliefs to be reflective of the truth; we cannot fully
and autonomously endorse them. We only see them as symptoms of
the political environment.

Questioning the institutionsthatmake knowledge possible is a task

of constant vigilance because the political order that makes inquiry
possible is fragile. It isnot fated that open societieswill win out. Such a
life can founder on some series of unfortunate circumstances?a nuclear
holocaust, a pandemic, a giant meteor. Political and epistemological
history has a teleology, but those ends are fragile, and were the order
to founder, future Hegelian-styled philosophers might look back on our
age in the same way Hegel himself looked upon the promises of Greek
life and art, as a form of life that offered much, but now is consigned to
near oblivion.20

Vanderbilt University

NOTES

1. For example, Wilfrid Sellars's criticism of the Given (Empiricism and

the Philosophy ofMind, 2d ed. [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press,
1997]), Richard Rorty's alternative to the Mirror ofNature (Philosophy and
theMirror ofNature [Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975]), Robert
Brandom on the sociality of reason (Making It Explicit [Cambridge,MA: Harvard
University Press, 1994]), and Tom Rockmore on epistemic constructivism (On
Constructivist Epistemology [Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2005]).

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 THE PROBLEM OF THE CRITERION 387

2. J. B. Baillie, The Origin and Significance ofHegel's Logic (1901; rprt.

New York: Garland Publishing, 1984), 43.
3. All quotations fromHegel are taken from the following two editions:

The Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A.V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University

Press, 1977); and.

Encyclopedia of Philosophy trans. G. E. Mueller (New York: Philosophical

Library, 1959).
4. Cf. Terry Pinkard, Hegel's Phenomenology: The Sociality ofReason (New
York: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 3-4).
5. William Maker calls this the "objectivity problem" that motivates the
Phenomenology (Philosophy without Foundations: Rethinking Hegel [Albany:
State University ofNew York Press, 1994], 222).
6. Tom Rockmore, "Hegel and Epistemological Constructivism," Idealistic
Studies 36, no. 3 (2006): 186.
7. See Andrew Cling's account of the structural similarity of the two
problems ("Reasons, Regresses, and Tragedy: The Epistemic Regress Problem
and the Problem of the Criterion" American Philosophical Quarterly 46, no. 4
[20091:333-46).
8. See, for example, the case made by Roderick Chisholm, The Problem of
the Criterion (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1973).
9. Cf. Tom Rockmore, On Hegel's Epistemology and Contemporary Philoso
phy (Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1996), 18.
10. Hegel's avowed debt toBaruch Spinoza is clear here, as the requirements
for thought to be adequate to its object are that it not only be continuous with
it but participate in its structure as a reciprocal relation between finite modes.
For discussion of the depth of this influence, cf.Moira Gatens and Genevive
Lloyd, Collective Imaginings: Spinoza, Past and Present (New York: Routledge,
1999), 69.
11. Michael Forster has argued that Hegel's epistemology demonstrates
that the only answer to skepticism is not to stand on any finite form of knowl
edge, because itwill reveal itself to be incomplete. Rather, he holds that the
answer to skepticism is the view of all the failures offinite forms ofknowledge,
which he holds is dialectic (Hegel and Skepticism [Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 1989], 133). The Phenomenology is a skeptical exercise of
acknowledging skeptical equipollence with knowledge claims, but to pursue
the truth in each finite case of knowledge's reconstructions. It is a processive
answer to skepticism?one cannot synchronically answer the skeptic, but can
do so diachronically.
12. Christopher Lauer interprets the continuousness of consciousness's
overcoming of its limits as the model for absolute knowing, which ultimately
demands Spirit's self-sacrifice ("Space, Time, and the Openness of Hegel's
Absolute Knowing," Idealistic Studies 36, no. 3 [2006]: 174-75). It in unclear

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 388 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY QUARTERLY

what this self-sacrifice of Spirit is, in the end, but the model, as he notes, is
procedurally infinite.

13. This charge, of course, is exceedingly contentious, as it casts Kant's

project of articulating limits for thought to be self-defeating.Whether this read
ing ofKant is itself correct is not something I think is important tomy thesis,
though I doubt it is correct.What is important is that the epistemic infinitism I
am here attributing toHegel not have a similar structure towhat Hegel rightly
orwrongly sees as a "bad" infinity.The point about Kant's Undetermined, then,
should be taken only as a heuristic.
14. There is certainly a Cartesian concern here, as on Rene Descartes's model
for infinity expressed inMeditation III, but this ismerely a form of indefinite
inquiry, not infinity (CSM II, 31).
15. See Peter Klein, Peter. 1999. "Human Knowledge and the InfiniteRegress
ofReasons," inPhilosophical Perspectives 13:Epistemology, ed. James Tomberlin,
279-325 (Maiden, MA: Blackwell); Jeremy Fantl, "Modest Infinitism," Cana
dian Journal ofPhilosophy 33, no. 4 (2003): 537-62; S. F. Aikin, "Who Is Afraid
of Epistemology's Regress Problem?" Philosophical Studies 126, no. 2 (2005):
191-217; and John Turri, "On the Regress Argument for Infinitism," Synthese
166, no. 1 (2009): 157-63.
16. Cf. Laurence BonJour, The Structure of Empirical Knowledge (Cam
bridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1985), 24; and Michael Bergmann, "Is
Klein and Infinitist about Doxastic Justification?" Philosophical Studies 134,
no. 1 (2007): 22.

17. See Kenneth Westphal's discussion ofHegel on Antigone, which runs

that, given the complexity of civil goods, all laws and institutions must be open
to public criticism (Hegel's Epistemology: A Philosophical Introduction to the
Phenomenology of Spirit [Indianapolis: Hackett, 2003], 23).
18. The state must be, as J.N. Findlay terms it, "well-ordered" so that Spirit
may not be alienated from its applications (Hegel:A Re-Examination [NewYork:
MacMillan. 1958], 332). And one of the crucial elements of thewell-ordered state
is its commitment to encouraging inquiry, not patriotism, since the latter limits
Spirit, restricts where itmay question. Rather, Absolute Spirit, as achieving
absolute knowledge must be free to pursue truth, while the necessities and
contingencies of nature and history may only function as conditions for its
revelation, not its content (PS ?552).
19. The conditions that assure what Robert Brandom, in commenting on
Hegel's account of freedom, calls "expressive freedom" must be preserved for
inquiry to be possible ("Freedom and Constraint by Norms," American Philo
sophical Quarterly 16, no. 3 [1979]: 194).
20. Thanks go to Jason Aleksander, Norman Fischer, Gregg Horowitz,
Jonathan Neufeld, Aaron Simmons, and JeffreyTlumak for helpful comments
on earlier drafts of this paper.

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