According to J=K, only beliefs that qualify as knowledge are epistemically justified. Traditionalists about justification have objected to this view that it predicts that radically deceived subjects do not have justified beliefs, which they take to be counter-intuitive. In response, proponents of J=K have argued that traditionalists mistake being justified with being excused in the relevant cases. To make this response work, Timothy Williamson has offered a dispositional account of excuse which has recently been challenged by Jessica Brown. She has (...) presented cases in which Williamson’s account excuses subjects believing things in an epistemically reckless fashion. To steer clear of Brown’s counterexamples, I argue for a modification of Williamson’s account that employs a more fine-grained notion of the dispositions involved. (shrink)

This paper explores the consequences of applying two natural ideas from epistemology to decision theory: (1) that knowledge should guide our actions, and (2) that we know a lot of non-trivial things. In particular, we explore the consequences of these ideas as they are applied to standard decision theoretic puzzles such as the St. Petersburg Paradox. In doing so, we develop a “knowledge-first” decision theory and we will see how it can help us avoid fanaticism with regard to the St. (...) Petersburg puzzle and related puzzles. The result will be a decision theory that gives a novel, but well-motivated, reason for discounting small probabilities when making decisions. We examine the merits and demerits of such a decision theory. (shrink)

There’s a certain pleasure in fantasizing about possessing knowledge, especially possessing secret knowledge to which outsiders don’t have access. Such fantasies are typically a source of innocent entertainment. However, under the right conditions, fantasies of knowledge can become epistemically dangerous, because they can generate illusions of genuine knowledge. I argue that this phenomenon helps to explain why some people join and eventually adopt the beliefs of epistemic communities who endorse seemingly bizarre, outlandish claims, such as extreme cults and online conspiracy (...) theory groups. It can be difficult to grasp how members of such groups come to believe the theories they endorse. I argue that one route to such beliefs is via deep absorption in fantasies of knowledge, which can lead entire groups to become collectively detached from reality. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that there are epistemic norms on evidence-gathering and consider consequences for how to understand epistemic normativity. Though the view that there are such norms seems intuitive, it has found surprisingly little defense. Rather, many philosophers have argued that norms on evidence-gathering can only be practical or moral. On a prominent evidentialist version of this position, epistemic norms only apply to responding to the evidence one already has. Here we challenge the orthodoxy. First, we argue that (...) there is no significant normative difference between responding to evidence you have and gathering more evidence. Second, we argue that our practices of epistemically criticizing agents for their poor evidence-gathering indicate the existence of epistemic norms on evidence-gathering. Finally, we show that our thesis has important implications for recent debates about the relationship between epistemic norms and inquiry. (shrink)

Impurism says that practical factors encroach on knowledge. An important version of impurism is called ‘Threshold-Impurism,’ which says that practical factors encroach on the threshold that rational credence must pass in order for one to have knowledge. A prominent kind of argument for Threshold-Impurism is the so-called ‘principle-based argument,’ which relies on a principle of fallibilism and a knowledge-action principle. This paper offers a new challenge against Threshold-Impurism. I attempt to show that the two principles Threshold-Impurists are committed to—KJ and (...) Fallibilism—are jointly in tension with a widely-held principle of credence that’s called ‘Truth-Directedness,’ in the sense that the former two principles cannot both apply to those who know the third. This tension constitutes a serious challenge to Threshold-Impurists, because it leaves them two options, both of which are undesirable: denying Truth-Directedness, or accepting Truth-Directedness and accepting that whether KJ and Fallibilism apply to a person depends on whether she knows Truth-Directedness. (shrink)

The aim of the present article is to accomplish two things. The first is to show that given some further plausible assumptions, existing challenges to the indispensability of knowledge in causal explanation of action fail. The second is to elaborate an overlooked and distinct argument in favor of the causal efficacy of knowledge. In short, even if knowledge were dispensable in causal explanation of action, it is still indispensable in causal explanation of other mental attitudes and, in particular, some reactive (...) attitudes and factive emotions. Taking into account this sort of causal efficacy in determining which mental states are genuine mental states opens up new perspectives for defending the view that knowledge is the most general factive and genuine mental state. (shrink)

In this paper I undertake to resolve a main pragmatic puzzle triggered by Bank-type cases. After accepting ‘sanitized’ intuitions about Truth-Values, as reflected in x-phi experiments, the pragmatic puzzle about whether the husband is inconsistent remains, and if he isn’t, which intuitively is the case, how are we to explain it. The context in such cases is pragmatic, with awareness of high risks, and the treatment I propose is pragmatic as well, but not Gricean. I offer a new Pragmatics whose (...) main tools are Steering Thrust and Posting. It focuses on what I call Action-Directed Pragmatics. An overall view of Pragmatics centers on the primary resort to Sayability rather than to Truth-Values, and to the Pragmatic phenomenon of co-present operative norm-types, which can conflict in some cases vis-à-vis particular actions and about what subjects can say. The very satisfactory explanation of the above puzzle that I offer is in such terms. In particular, attention is focused on the phenomenon of Negative-Polarity Pragmatic Functors. (shrink)

Communication can be risky. Like other kinds of actions, it comes with potential costs. For instance, an utterance can be embarrassing, offensive, or downright illegal. In the face of such risks, speakers tend to act strategically and seek ‘plausible deniability’. In this paper, we propose an account of the notion of deniability at issue. On our account, deniability is an epistemic phenomenon. A speaker has deniability if she can make it epistemically irrational for her audience to reason in certain ways. (...) To avoid predictable confusion, we distinguish deniability from a practical correlate we call ‘untouchability’. Roughly, a speaker has untouchability if she can make it practically irrational for her audience to act in certain ways. These accounts shed light on the nature of strategic speech and suggest countermeasures against strategic speech. (shrink)

Many agree that one cannot consciously form a belief just because one wants to. And many also agree this is a puzzling component of our conscious belief-forming processes. I will look at three views on how to make sense of this puzzle and show that they all fail in some way. I then offer a simpler explanation that avoids all the pitfalls of those views, which is based instead on an analysis of our conscious reasoning combined with a commonly accepted (...) account of the concept of belief. I conclude that no epistemic norm or aim is actually needed to explain why we cannot deliberatively believe whatever we want. (shrink)

The threshold view says that a person forms an outright belief P if and only if her credence for P reaches a certain threshold. Using computer simulations, I compare different versions of the threshold view to understand how they perform under time pressure in decision problems. The results illuminate the strengths and weaknesses of the various cognitive strategies in different decision contexts. A threshold view that performs well across diverse contexts is likely to be a cognitively flexible and context-dependent fusion (...) of several of the existing theories. The results of the simulations also cast doubts on the possibility of a threshold view that is both simple enough to streamline our reasoning while also allowing us to form good action-guiding beliefs. (shrink)

A prominent question in social epistemology concerns the epistemic profile of groups. While inflationists and deflationists agree that groups are fit to constitute knowers, they disagree about whether group knowledge is reducible to knowledge of their individual members. This paper develops and defends a weak inflationist view according to which some, but not all, group knowledge is over and above any knowledge of their members. This view sits between the deflationist view that all group knowledge is reducible to individual knowledge, (...) and the strong inflationist view that some such knowledge even fails to supervene on features of individuals. Thus, some group knowledge is irreducible, but all such knowledge is anchored in, and so doesn't float freely from, individual features. (shrink)

A widespread assumption in debates about trust and trustworthiness is that the evaluative norms of principal interest on the trustor’s side of a cooperative exchange regulate trusting attitudes and performances whereas those on the trustee’s side regulate dispositions to respond to trust. The aim here will be to highlight some unnoticed problems with this asymmetrical picture – and in particular, how it elides certain key evaluative norms on both the trustor’s and trustee’s side the satisfaction of which are critical to (...) successful cooperative exchanges – and to show that a symmetrical, ‘achievement-first’ approach to theorising about trust and trustworthiness (and their relation to each other) has important advantages by comparison. The view I develop is guided by a structural analogy with practical reasoning. Just as practical reasoning is working as it should only when there is realisation (knowledge and action) of states (belief and intention) with reverse directions of fits (mind-to-world and world-to-mind), likewise, cooperation between trustor and trustee is functioning as it should only when there is an analogous kind of realisation on both sides of the cooperative exchange – viz., when the trustor ‘matches’ her achievement in trusting (an achievement in fitting reliance to reciprocity) with the trustee’s achievement in responding to trust (an achievement in fitting reciprocity to reliance). An upshot of viewing cooperation between trustor and trustee as exhibiting achievement-theoretic structure is that we will be better positioned to subsume trustworthiness (and its cognates on the trustee’s side), like trust, under a wider suite of evaluative norms that regulate attempts, dispositions, and achievements symmetrically on both sides of a cooperative exchange, with ‘matching achievements’ as the gold standard. (shrink)

What is the connection between justification and truth in moral epistemology? The primary goal of this paper is to argue that you cannot have justified false beliefs about your own moral obligations. The secondary goal is to explain why not. Some epistemologists embrace a global truth-connection in epistemology, according to which epistemic justification is always factive. In contrast, I endorse a local truth-connection in moral epistemology, which says that epistemic justification is factive when it concerns your own moral obligations. To (...) explain this, I appeal to a version of moral rationalism, which says there are necessary truths about morality that everyone has a priori justification to believe. (shrink)

Can you rationally double-check what you already know? In this paper, I argue that you can. Agents can know that something is true and rationally double-check it at the very same time. I defend my position by considering a wide variety of cases where agents double-check their beliefs to gain epistemic improvements beyond knowledge. These include certainty, epistemic resilience, and sensitivity to error. Although this phenomenon is widespread, my proposal faces two types of challenges. First, some have defended ignorance norms, (...) on which agents are only allowed to inquire about things they don’t already know. Second—motivated by strong conceptions of belief or pragmatic encroachment—some have argued that doublechecking destroys knowledge. I argue that these competing views fail to capture both the epistemic value of double-checking and the many reasons why agents might double-check. Moreover, they rely on overly strong assumptions about what inquiry, knowledge, or belief requires. Finally, I marshal linguistic data in favor of the compatibility of knowledge and doublechecking. (shrink)

We are often justified in acting on the basis of evidential confirmation. I argue that such evidence supports belief in non-quantificational generic generalizations, rather than universally quantified generalizations. I show how this account supports, rather than undermines, a Bayesian account of confirmation. Induction from confirming instances of a generalization to belief in the corresponding generic is part of a reasoning instinct that is typically (but not always) correct, and allows us to approximate the predictions that formal epistemology would make.

According to a prominent thought, in one’s practical reasoning one should rely only on what one knows. Yet for many choices, the relevant information is uncertain. This has led Schiffer to the following objection: oftentimes, we are fully rational in reasoning from uncertain premises which we do not know. For example, we may decide to take an umbrella based on a 0.4 credence that it will rain. There are various ways proponents of a knowledge norm for practical reasoning can respond. (...) One option is to say that the right way of dealing with uncertain information requires knowledge of probabilities. Another option is to say that credences can be knowledge because they really are beliefs with an unusual kind of content that consists of a set of probability spaces. Mixed accounts are possible as well. On neither of the accounts in the literature, however, can reasoning from uncertain premises be taken as reasoning based on a graded attitude, a credence, toward an ordinary proposition. To make room for this possibility, I argue that reliance comes in degrees. The knowledge norm is only plausible when taken to be concerned with full reliance.Partial reliance, on the other hand, goes hand in hand with credence. (shrink)

Users of sociotechnical systems often have no way to independently verify whether the system output which they use to make decisions is correct; they are epistemically dependent on the system. We argue that this leads to problems when the system is wrong, namely to bad decisions and violations of the norm of practical reasoning. To prevent this from occurring we suggest the implementation of defeaters: information that a system is unreliable in a specific case (undercutting defeat) or independent information that (...) the output is wrong (rebutting defeat). Practically, we suggest to design defeaters based on the different ways in which a system might produce erroneous outputs, and analyse this suggestion with a case study of the risk classification algorithm used by the Dutch tax agency. (shrink)

Asserting is the act of claiming that something is the case—for instance, that oranges are citruses, or that there is a traffic congestion on Brooklyn Bridge (at some time). We make assertions to share information, coordinate our actions, defend arguments, and communicate our beliefs and desires. Because of its central role in communication, assertion has been investigated in several disciplines. Linguists, philosophers of language, and logicians rely heavily on the notion of assertion in theorizing about meaning, truth and inference. -/- (...) The nature of assertion and its relation to other speech acts and linguistic phenomena (implicatures, presuppositions, etc.) have been subject to much controversy. This entry will situate assertion within speech act theory and pragmatics more generally, and then go on to present the current main accounts of assertion. (shrink)

Philosophical Issues, Volume 31, Issue 1, Page 188-209, October 2021.

In in this paper, I make use of an “doxastic planning model” of epistemic evaluation to argue for a form of epistemic internalism. In doing so, I begin by responding to a recent argument of Schoenfield’s against my previous attempt to develop such an argument. In doing so, I distinguish a variety of ways that argument might be understood, and discuss how both internalists and externalists might make use of the ideas within it. Then I argue that, despite these complexities, (...) the doxastic planning model continues to support a modest form of epistemic internalism. I conclude by showing that, far from conflicting with “anti-luminosity” arguments in epistemology, this form of internalism is best understood as a natural reaction to these arguments. (shrink)

This essay is an accessible introduction to the proof paradox in legal epistemology. -/- In 1902 the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine filed an influential legal verdict. The judge claimed that in order to find a defendant culpable, the plaintiff “must adduce evidence other than a majority of chances”. The judge thereby claimed that bare statistical evidence does not suffice for legal proof. -/- In this essay I first motivate the claim that bare statistical evidence does not suffice for legal (...) proof. I then introduce and motivate a knowledge-centred explanation of this fact. The knowledge-centred explanation rests on two premises. The first is that legal proof requires knowledge of culpability. The second is that one cannot attain knowledge that p from bare statistical evidence that p. To motivate the second premise, I suggest that beliefs based on bare statistical evidence fail to be safe—they could easily be wrong—and bare statistical evidence cannot eliminate relevant alternatives. -/- I then cast doubt on the first premise; I argue that legal proof does not require knowledge. I thereby dispute the knowledge-centred explanation of the inadequacy of bare statistical evidence for legal proof. Instead of appealing to the nature of knowledge, I suggest we should seek a more direct explanation by appealing to those more foundational epistemic properties, such as safety or eliminating relevant alternatives. (shrink)

What is the connection between having a phenomenal property and knowing that one has that property? A traditional view on the matter takes the connection to be quite intimate. Whenever one has a phenomenal property, one knows that one does. Recently most authors have denied this traditional view. The goal of this paper is to defend the traditional view. In fact, I will defend something much stronger: I will argue that what it is for a property to be phenomenal is (...) for it to be a property one must know oneself to have when on has it. As we will see, this theory has a number of surprising and welcome upshots, suggesting that the traditional view has been unjustly maligned. (shrink)

A plausible condition on having the standing to blame someone is that the target of blame's wrongdoing must in some sense be your “business”—the wrong must in some sense harm or affect you, or others close to you. This is known as the business condition on standing to blame. Many cases of epistemic blame discussed in the literature do not obviously involve examples of someone harming or affecting another. As such, not enough has been said about how an individual's epistemic (...) failing can really count as another person's business. In this paper, I deploy a relationship-based account of epistemic blame to clarify the conditions under which the business condition can be met in the epistemic domain. The basic idea is that one person's epistemic failing can be another's business in virtue of the way it impairs their epistemic relationship. (shrink)

Propositional temporalism is the view that there are temporary propositions: propositions that are true, but not always true. Factual futurism is the view that there are futurist facts: facts that obtain, but that will at some point not obtain. Most A-theoretic views in the philosophy of time are committed both to propositional temporalism and to factual futurism. Mark Richard, Jeffrey King and others have argued that temporary propositions are not fit to be the contents of propositional attitudes, or to be (...) the semantic values of natural language utterances. But these discussions have overlooked another role that the A-theorist’s posits struggle to play: the role of facts in explaining other facts. Focusing on the case of action explanation by reasons, this paper presents the challenge that explanation poses for factual futurism. It then brings that challenge to bear against propositional temporalism and the A-theory more generally. My argument saddles the factual futurist with surprising commitments concerning reasons, facts and explanation. The futurist might accept those commitments and pay the price. The alternative – which I prefer – is to reject factual futurism, and with it the A-theory. (shrink)

This paper develops a novel, functionalist, unified account of the epistemic normativity of reasoning. On this view, epistemic norms drop out of epistemic functions. I argue that practical reasoning serves a prudential function of generating prudentially permissible action, and the epistemic function of generating knowledge of what one ought to do. This picture, if right, goes a long way towards normatively divorcing action and practical reasoning. At the same time, it unifies reasoning epistemically: practical and theoretical reasoning will turn out (...) to be governed by the same epistemic norm—knowledge—in virtue of serving the same epistemic function: generating knowledge of the conclusion. (shrink)

There are norms on action and norms on assertion. That is, there are things we should and shouldn't do, and things we should and shouldn't say. How do these two kinds of norm relate? Are norms on assertion reducible to norms on action? Many philosophers think they are not. These philosophers claim there is a sui generis norm specific to assertion, a norm which is also often claimed to be constitutive of assertion. Both claims, I argue, should be rejected. The (...) phenomenon claimed to support them – the intuitive wrongness of certain assertions – does not in fact support them. Because assertion is an action, the wrongness of assertions can be explained purely by norms on action. And the specifically epistemic wrongness an assertion norm is typically supposed to explain can be explained by an uncontroversial norm on action: one shouldn't act on epistemically faulty beliefs. No additional sui generis norm on assertion is needed. (shrink)

I defend the thesis that friendship can constitutively require epistemic irrationality against a recent, forceful challenge, raised by proponents of moral and pragmatic encroachment. Defenders of the “encroachment strategy” argue that exemplary friends who are especially slow to believe that their friends have acted wrongly are simply sensitive to the high prudential or moral costs of falsely believing in their friends’ guilt. Drawing on psychological work on epistemic motivation (and in particular on the notion of “need for closure”), I propose (...) a different picture of what friendship requires in the doxastic realm. I argue that contrary to what the encroachment strategy suggests, exemplary friends’ belief formation ought not be guided by a concern with accuracy or error avoidance, but instead by a need to avoid a “specific closure” – namely, a need to avoid concluding in their friends’ guilt. I propose that exemplary friendship often generates a defeasible, doxastic obligation to exemplify such a need, despite its inherent corrupting effects on exemplary friends’ epistemic faculties. (shrink)

Not only is the common‐law standard of proof of mere likelihood in ordinary civil cases justifiable, but its justifiability supports the conclusion that there is no general norm that one must assert that p only if p is known. An argument by Voltaire is formalized to show that the mere likelihood standard is rational. It is also shown that no applicable norm preempts the common‐law rule. An objection that takes the pertinent knowledge‐norm to be honoured in the breach is rejected (...) by appeal to the absence of blameworthiness in alleged breaches of interest. An objection that takes civil verdicts to be manifestations of acceptance, rather than assertoric, is considered and rejected. (shrink)

The paper investigates what type of motivation can be given for adopting a knowledge-based decision theory. KBDT seems to have several advantages over competing theories of rationality. It is commonly argued that this theory would naturally fit with the intuitive idea that being rational is doing what we take to be best given what we know, an idea often supported by appeal to ordinary folk appraisals. Moreover, KBDT seems to strike a perfect balance between the problematic extremes of subjectivist and (...) objectivist decision theory. We argue that these alleged advantages do not stand up to a closer scrutiny: KBDT inherits the same kinds of problems as alternative decision theoretic frameworks but doesn’t retain any of the respective advantages. Moreover, differently from other knowledge-action principles advanced in the literature, KBDT cannot fully explain the intuitive connections between knowledge and rational action. We conclude that the most serious challenge for knowledge-based decision theorists is to provide a substantive rationale for the adoption of such a view. (shrink)

One very popular framework in contemporary epistemology is Bayesian. The central epistemic state is subjective confidence, or credence. Traditional epistemic states like belief and knowledge tend to be sidelined, or even dispensed with entirely. Credences are often introduced as familiar mental states, merely in need of a special label for the purposes of epistemology. But whether they are implicitly recognized by the folk or posits of a sophisticated scientific psychology, they do not appear to fit well with perception, as is (...) often noted. -/- This paper investigates the tension between probabilistic cognition and non-probabilistic perception. The tension is real, and the solution—to adapt a phrase from Quine and Goodman—is to renounce credences altogether. (shrink)

The principle of epistemic closure is the claim that what is known to follow from knowledge is known to be true. This intuitively plausible idea is endorsed by a vast majority of knowledge theorists. There are significant problems, however, that have to be addressed if epistemic closure – closed knowledge – is endorsed. The present essay locates the problem for closed knowledge in the separation it imposes between knowledge and evidence. Although it might appear that all that stands between knowing (...) the truth of the premises of a valid inference and knowledge of its conclusion is inferring it from the premises, the evidence for each of the premises may jointly count against the conclusion. The intuitive view regarding inferred knowledge says one thing, the evidence says another. One epistemological framework that seems to have the resources to resolve this tension endorses the view that knowledge always requires conclusive evidence. A second framework resolves the tension by limiting the scope of the closure principle. Only inferences drawn directly from propositions contained in the scope of a single knowledge operator are considered closed. The aim of the present essay is to revive the unpopular third option, the idea that knowledge is open. The essay proceeds by arguing that in different ways the two former frameworks only succeed in relocating the problem, not in resolving it. The first framework, the infallibilist view, relocates the problem to a sharp separation between knowledge of the occurrences of events from knowledge of their chance of occurring, a separation leading to several significant additional problems. The fallibilist view, the second framework, in endorsing closure neglects to take into full account the ways in which evidence fails to be transitive. For instance, evidence can count in favor of a conjunction while counting against each of its conjuncts. This fact, which is argued for in the essay on probabilistic as well as non-probabilistic grounds, is used as the foundation of an argument against closed knowledge that can be used as a way to understand several of the most fundamental challenges of epistemology. Not only can an open knowledge view that is based on open evidence resolve all these problems in a simple and natural way, it can also respond to formidable challenges that significantly hinder other open knowledge views. There are good reasons, then, to view both knowledge and evidence as open. (shrink)

A question of recent interest in epistemology and philosophy of mind is how belief and credence relate to each other. A number of philosophers argue for a belief-first view of the relationship between belief and credence. On the belief-first view, what it is to have a credence just is to have a particular kind of belief, that is, a belief whose content involves probabilities or epistemic modals. Here, I argue against the belief-first view: specifically, I argue that it cannot account (...) for agents who have credences in propositions they barely comprehend. I conclude that, however credences differ from beliefs, they do not differ in virtue of adding additional content to the believed proposition. (shrink)

This chapter has four central aims. First, in §1, I distinguish two ideas within epistemology that sometimes travel under the name ‘contextualism’ — the ‘situational contextualist’ idea that an individual’s context, especially their social context, can make for a difference in what they know, and the ‘linguistic contextualist’ idea that discourse using the word ‘knows’ and its cognates is context-sensitive, expressing dif- ferent contents in different conversational contexts. -/- Second, in §2, I situate contextualism with respect to several influential ideas (...) in feminist epistemology. These ideas are thoroughgoingly contextualist in the situational sense; I’ll explore the prospects for linguistic contextualist analogues or implementations of them. Simple connections between these feminist ideas and linguistic contextualism will prove elusive, but more subtle ones are possible, and sometimes attractive. -/- §3 considers the degree to which contextual epistemic parameters are determined interpersonally, as opposed to individualistically. Should contextualists hold that speakers can individually determine the contextual parameters that influence the truth- conditions of their utterances? Or are they fixed at a broader social level? I’ll rehearse some influential reasons to opt for the latter, more social, form of contextualism. -/- In §4 I discuss the practical and moral significance of speakers’ choices of epistemic parameters, given contextualism. For example, I’ll consider how standards-raising can be used to discredit evidential sources, with an eye towards the social and moral consequences of such moves. (shrink)

This essay provides a novel argument for impurism, the view that certain non-truth-relevant factors can make a difference to a belief's epistemic standing. I argue that purists, unlike impurists, are forced to claim that certain ‘high-stakes’ cases rationally require agents to be akratic. Akrasia is one of the paradigmatic forms of irrationality. So purists, in virtue of calling akrasia rationally mandatory in a range of cases with no obvious precedent, take on a serious theoretical cost. By focusing on akrasia, and (...) on the nature of the normative judgments involved therein, impurists gain a powerful new way to frame a core challenge for purism. They also gain insight about the way in which impurism is true: my argument motivates the claim that there is moral encroachment in epistemology. (shrink)

Radical moral encroachment is the view that belief itself is morally evaluable, and that some moral properties of belief itself make a difference to epistemic rationality. To date, almost all proponents of radical moral encroachment hold to an asymmetry thesis: the moral encroaches on rational belief, but not on rational credence. In this paper, we argue against the asymmetry thesis; we show that, insofar as one accepts the most prominent arguments for radical moral encroachment on belief, one should likewise accept (...) radical moral encroachment on credence. We outline and reject potential attempts to establish a basis for asymmetry between the attitude types. Then, we explore the merits and demerits of the two available responses to our symmetry claim: (i) embracing moral encroachment on credence and (ii) denying moral encroachment on belief. (shrink)

This chapter discusses how we should think about experiences that threaten to radically transform our understanding of the world. While it can be rational to treat the “doxastically transformative” potential of an experience as a reason to choose against it, such a decision must be based in something more than the fact that this experience would alter one’s current beliefs. It only in light of knowledge of how things are that a person can choose rationally against transformative processes that would (...) destroy this knowledge. (shrink)

This chapter provides a critical overview of several influential proposals about the epistemic function of higher-order evidence. I start by criticizing accounts of higher-order evidence that appeal to evidential defeat (§1), epistemic conflicts (§2), and unreasonable knowledge (§3). Next, I propose an alternative account that appeals to a combination of improper basing (§4) and non-ideal rationality (§5). Finally, I conclude by summarizing my reasons for preferring this account of higher-order evidence to the alternatives (§6).

A characterization of epistemic rationality, or epistemic justification, is typically taken to require a process of conceptual clarification, and is seen as comprising the core of a theory of (epistemic) rationality. I propose to explicate the concept of rationality. -/- It is essential, I argue, that the normativity of rationality, and the purpose, or goal, for which the particular theory of rationality is being proposed, is taken into account when explicating the concept of rationality. My position thus amounts to an (...) instrumentalist position about theories of epistemic rationality. Since there are different purposes, or goals, for which theories of rationality are proposed, the method of explication leaves room for different characterizations of rationality. I focus on two such (kinds of) purposes: first, the purpose of guiding the formation (or maintenance) of doxastic states and, second, the purpose of assessing (the formation or maintenance of) doxastic states. I conclude by outlining a pluralistic picture concerning rationality. (shrink)

This guide accompanies the following article(s): Jackson, E., Philosophy Compass 15/6 (2020) pp. 1-13 10.1111/phc3.12668.x.

The epistemology of risk examines how risks bear on epistemic properties. A common framework for examining the epistemology of risk holds that strength of evidential support is best modelled as numerical probability given the available evidence. In this essay I develop and motivate a rival ‘relevant alternatives’ framework for theorising about the epistemology of risk. I describe three loci for thinking about the epistemology of risk. The first locus concerns consequences of relying on a belief for action, where those consequences (...) are significant if the belief is false. The second locus concerns whether beliefs themselves—regardless of action—can be risky, costly, or harmful. The third locus concerns epistemic risks we confront as social epistemic agents. I aim to motivate the relevant alternatives framework as a fruitful approach to the epistemology of risk. I first articulate a ‘relevant alternatives’ model of the relationship between stakes, evidence, and action. I then employ the relevant alternatives framework to undermine the motivation for moral encroachment. Finally, I argue the relevant alternatives framework illuminates epistemic phenomena such as gaslighting, conspiracy theories, and crying wolf, and I draw on the framework to diagnose the undue skepticism endemic to rape accusations. (shrink)

In the literature on assertion, there is a common assumption that having the knowledge that p is a sufficient condition for having the epistemic right to assert that p – call this the Knowledge is Sufficient for Assertion Principle, or KSA. Jennifer Lackey has challenged KSA based on several counterexamples that all, roughly, involve isolated secondhand knowledge. In this article, I argue that Lackey’s counterexamples fail to be convincing because her intuition that the agent in her counterexamples both has knowledge (...) and do not have the epistemic right to assert is wrong. The article will progress as follows: In section 1, I present Lackey’s argument. In section 2, I suggest some more general reasons for doubting that the agent in her counterexamples actually has knowledge. I then show that from a virtue theoretic and Edward Craig’s practical explication of knowledge perspectives the agent in Lackey’s counterexamples does not know. Since the agent in Lackey’s counterexamples does not have knowledge, she has failed to convincingly prove that KSA is false. In section 3, I conclude by suggesting that, at most, what Lackey’s counterexamples demonstrate is a problem with a simplistic evidentialist and/or process reliabilist epistemology. (shrink)

Several authors have recently suggested that moral factors and norms `encroach' on the epistemic, and because of salient parallels to pragmatic encroachment views in epistemology, these suggestions have been dubbed `moral encroachment views'. This paper distinguishes between variants of the moral encroachment thesis, pointing out how they address different problems, are motivated by different considerations, and are not all subject to the same objections. It also explores how the family of moral encroachment views compare to classical pragmatic encroachment accounts.

In the literature on assertion, there is a common assumption that having the knowledge that p is a sufficient condition for having the epistemic right to assert that p—call this the Knowledge is Sufficient for Assertion Principle, or KSA. Jennifer Lackey has challenged KSA based on several counterexamples that all, roughly, involve isolated secondhand knowledge. In this article, I argue that Lackey’s counterexamples fail to be convincing because her intuition that the agent in her counterexamples both has knowledge and do (...) not have the epistemic right to assert is wrong. The article will progress as follows: In section 2, I present Lackey’s argument. In section 3, I suggest some more general reasons for doubting that the agent in her counterexamples actually has knowledge. I then show that from a virtue theoretic and Edward Craig’s practical explication of knowledge perspectives the agent in Lackey’ s counterexamples does not know. Since the agent in Lackey’s counterexamples does not have knowledge, she has failed to convincingly prove that KSA is false. In section 4, I conclude by suggesting that, at most, what Lackey’s counterexamples demonstrate is a problem with a simplistic evidentialist and/or process reliabilist epistemology. (shrink)

Plausibly, how much is at stake in some salient practical task can affect how generously people ascribe knowledge of task-relevant facts. There is a metaphysical puzzle about this phenomenon, and an empirical puzzle. Metaphysically: there are competing theories about when and how practical stakes affect whether it is correct to ascribe knowledge. Which of these theories is the right one? Empirically: experimental philosophy has struggled to find a stakes-effect on people’s knowledge ascriptions. Is the alleged phenomenon just a philosopher’s fantasy? (...) I propose a new psychological account of when and why people’s knowledge ascriptions are sensitive to stakes. My hypothesis is motivated by empirical research on how people’s judgements are sensitive to their social context. Specifically, people’s evaluations are sensitive to their ‘psychological distance’ from the scenarios they are considering. When using ‘fixed-evidence probes’, experimental philosophy has found that what’s at stake for a fictional character in a made-up scenario has little or no effect on how participants ascribe knowledge to them. My hypothesis predicts this finding: the scenarios are too ‘psychologically distant’ to participants. Our empirical puzzle is resolved: the stakes-effect often present in the wild won’t be present in vignette studies. (This illustrates a widespread problem with X-phi vignette studies: if people might judge differently in other social contexts, we can’t generalize from the results of these experiments. That is, vignette studies are of doubtful ‘external validity’.) The hypothesis also resolves our metaphysical puzzle. It predicts that people do not ascribe knowledge in a way deemed correct by any of the standard philosophical views, namely classical invariantism, interest-relative invariantism, and contextualism. Our knowledge ascriptions shift around in the way that’s most useful for social beings like us, and this pattern in our judgements can only be endorsed by a genuinely relativist metaphysics for knowledge. (shrink)

This chapter addresses concerns that pragmatic encroachers are committed to problematic knowledge variance. It first replies to Charity Anderson and John Hawthorne’s new putative problem cases, which purport to show that pragmatic encroachment is committed to problematic variations in knowledge depending on what choices are available to the potential knower. It argues that the new cases do not provide any new reasons to be concerned about the pragmatic encroacher’s commitment to knowledge-variance. The chapter further argues that concerns about knowledge-variance are (...) not limited to the pragmatic encroacher, but come up for traditional purist invariantism as well. (shrink)

Sometimes epistemologists theorize about belief, a tripartite attitude on which one can believe, withhold belief, or disbelieve a proposition. In other cases, epistemologists theorize about credence, a fine-grained attitude that represents one’s subjective probability or confidence level toward a proposition. How do these two attitudes relate to each other? This article explores the relationship between belief and credence in two categories: descriptive and normative. It then explains the broader significance of the belief-credence connection and concludes with general lessons from the (...) debate thus far. (shrink)

If there is pragmatic encroachment in epistemology, whether a person knows that p can vary with normative facts about her actions—including facts that do not bear on the truth or likelihood of p. This paper raises an underappreciated question for defenders of pragmatic encroachment: which of the many norms on action are distinctively connected to knowledge? To the extent that contemporary defenders of pragmatic encroachment address this question, they do so by citing norms of ‘practical rationality.’ I show that this (...) approach can only be made to work on the assumption that all immorality involves some form of incoherence. I then suggest a pluralist strategy for pragmatic encroachers who seek to answer my question without making this heavyweight metaethical assumption: they should agree that multiple distinct norms on action play a difference-making role in epistemology. I close the paper by sketching three ways in which pragmatic encroachers might pursue this strategy. (shrink)