This article explores whether perspective taking has an impact on the ascription of epistemic states. To do so, a new method is introduced which incites participants to imagine themselves in the position of the protagonist of a short vignette and to judge from her perspective. In a series of experiments, perspective proves to have a significant impact on belief ascriptions, but not on knowledge ascriptions. For belief, perspective is further found to moderate the epistemic side-effect effect significantly. It is hypothesized (...) that the surprising findings are driven by the special epistemic authority we enjoy in assessing our own belief states, which does not extend to the assessment of our own knowledge states. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that Cartesian skepticism about the external world is self-defeating. The Cartesian skeptic holds that we are not justified in believing claims about the external world on the grounds that we cannot rule out the possibility of our being in a radical skeptical scenario. My argument against this position builds upon a critique of Wilson in Analysis, 72, 668–673. Wilson argues that the Cartesian’s skeptical reasoning commits him to mental state skepticism and that this undermines his (...) ability to claim that he is truly skeptical about the external world. I show that Wilson’s argument does not succeed. She is correct that the Cartesian is committed to mental state skepticism. However, she is mistaken in thinking that there is anything incoherent about combining the Cartesian position that one ought to doubt external world claims with doubt about whether one is in fact such a skeptic. I propose an alternative explanation as to why mental state skepticism proves to be the Cartesian’s undoing. I suggest that mental state skepticism leads to epistemic skepticism and that this undermines the Cartesian’s position that belief about the external world is unjustified. (shrink)

According to process reliabilism, a belief produced by a reliable belief-forming process is justified. I introduce problems for this theory on any account of reliability. Does the performance of a process in some domain of worlds settle its reliability? The theories that answer “Yes” typically fail to state the temporal parameters of this performance. I argue that any theory paired with any plausible parameters has implausible implications. The theories that answer “No,” I argue, thereby lack essential support and exacerbate familiar (...) problems. There are new reasons to avoid any reliability conditions on justification. (shrink)

Philosophical discussions on causal inference in medicine are stuck in dyadic camps, each defending one kind of evidence or method rather than another as best support for causal hypotheses. Whereas Evidence Based Medicine advocates the use of Randomised Controlled Trials and systematic reviews of RCTs as gold standard, philosophers of science emphasise the importance of mechanisms and their distinctive informational contribution to causal inference and assessment. Some have suggested the adoption of a pluralistic approach to causal inference, and an inductive (...) rather than hypothetico-deductive inferential paradigm. However, these proposals deliver no clear guidelines about how such plurality of evidence sources should jointly justify hypotheses of causal associations. We here develop such guidelines by first giving a philosophical analysis of the underpinnings of Hill’s viewpoints on causality. We then put forward an evidence-amalgamation framework adopting a Bayesian net approach to model causal inference in pharmacology for the assessment of harms. Our framework accommodates a number of intuitions already expressed in the literature concerning the EBM vs. pluralist debate on causal inference, evidence hierarchies, causal holism, relevance, and reliability. (shrink)

Ever since John Locke, philosophers have discussed the possibility of a normative epistemology: are there epistemic obligations binding the cognitive economy of belief and disbelief? Locke's influential answer was evidentialist: we have an epistemic obligation to believe in accordance with our evidence. In this dissertation, I place the contemporary literature on agency and reasons at the service of some such normative epistemology. I discuss the semantics of obligations, the connection between obligations and reasons to believe, the implausibility of Lockean evidentialism, (...) and some of the alleged connections between agency and justification. (shrink)

Radical skepticism relies on the hypothesis that one could be completely cut off from the external world. In this paper, I argue that this hypothesis can be rationally motivated by means of a conceivability argument. Subsequently, I submit that this conceivability argument does not furnish a good reason to believe that one could be completely cut off from the external world. To this end, I show that we cannot adequately conceive scenarios that verify the radical skeptical hypothesis. Attempts to do (...) so fall prey to one or another of three pitfalls: they end up incomplete, reveal a deep contradiction or recreate a non-skeptical hypothesis. I use these results to improve upon Pritchard’s recent attempt at undercutting radical skepticism. (shrink)

Michael Bergmann (2006) has argued that an internalistic view of justification faces a dilemma. Assuming as internalism does that to have a justified belief, subjects must be aware of the justifiers of the belief and of their relevance to the truth of the belief, Bergmann notes that one is either aware of this relevance conceptually or not. But, says Bergmann, if the required awareness is conceptual, internalism is encumbered with an infinite regress. If it is not-if it is only "weak (...) awareness"—then internalism lacks any dialectical advantage over externalism. In this paper, I explore DePoe's (2012) defense of the dialectical advantage of weak awareness, and show how the case for its ability to account for awareness of the relevance of the justifiers can be improved by supplementation from a direct realist theory of perception and a theory of concept-formation and application informed by that theory of perception. (shrink)

Deontological internalism is the family of views where justification is a positive deontological appraisal of someone's epistemic agency: S is justified, that is, when S is blameless, praiseworthy, or responsible in believing that p. Brian Weatherson discusses very briefly how a plausible principle of ampliative transmission reveals a worry for versions of deontological internalism formulated in terms of epistemic blame. Weatherson denies, however, that similar principles reveal similar worries for other versions. I disagree. In this article, I argue that plausible (...) principles of ampliative transmission reveal a worry for deontological internalism in general. (shrink)

Many philosophers claim that interesting forms of epistemic evaluation are insensitive to truth in a very specific way. Suppose that two possible agents believe the same proposition based on the same evidence. Either both are justified or neither is; either both have good evidence for holding the belief or neither does. This does not change if, on this particular occasion, it turns out that only one of the two agents has a true belief. Epitomizing this line of thought are thought (...) experiments about radically deceived “brains in vats.” It is widely and uncritically assumed that such a brain is equally justified as its normally embodied human “twin.” This “parity” intuition is the heart of truth-insensitive theories of core epistemological properties such as justification and rationality. Rejecting the parity intuition is considered radical and revisionist. In this paper, I show that exactly the opposite is true. The parity intuition is idiosyncratic and widely rejected. A brain in a vat is not justified and has worse evidence than its normally embodied counterpart. On nearly every ordinary way of evaluating beliefs, a false belief is significantly inferior to a true belief. Of all the evaluations studied here, only blamelessness is truth-insensitive. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophers nearly unanimously endorse knowledge reliabilism, the view that knowledge must be reliably produced. Leading reliabilists have suggested that reliabilism draws support from patterns in ordinary judgments and intuitions about knowledge, luck, reliability, and counterfactuals. That is, they have suggested a proto-reliabilist hypothesis about “commonsense” or “folk” epistemology. This paper reports nine experimental studies (N = 1262) that test the proto-reliabilist hypothesis by testing four of its principal implications. The main findings are that (a) commonsense fully embraces the possibility (...) of unreliable knowledge, (b) knowledge judgments are surprisingly insensitive to information about reliability, (c) “anti-luck” intuitions about knowledge have nothing to do with reliability specifically, and (d) reliabilists have mischaracterized the intuitive counterfactual properties of knowledge and their relation to reliability. When combined with the weakness of existing arguments for reliabilism and the recent emergence of well supported alternative views that predict the widespread existence of unreliable knowledge, the present findings are the final exhibit in a conclusive case for abandoning reliabilism in epistemology. I introduce an alternative theory of knowledge, abilism, which out-performs reliabilism and well explains all the available evidence. (shrink)

Centuries ago, Descartes and Locke initiated a foundational debate in epistemology over the relationship between knowledge, on the one hand, and practical factors, on the other. Descartes claimed that knowledge and practice are fundamentally separate. Locke claimed that knowledge and practice are fundamentally united. After a period of dormancy, their disagreement has reignited on the contemporary scene. Latter-day Lockeans claim that knowledge itself is essentially connected to, and perhaps even constituted by, practical factors such as how much is at stake, (...) how important the situation is, or how one should act. Latter-day Cartesians claim, by contrast, that knowledge is entirely constituted by truth-related factors such as truth, belief, and evidence. Each side has supported its case with claims about patterns in ordinary behavior and knowledge judgments. Lockeans argue that these patterns are best explained by positing a fundamental and direct link between knowledge and practical factors. Cartesians argue that the patterns can be equally well explained by positing an indirect link, entirely mediated by the traditional factors of truth, belief, and evidence, thereby rendering the Lockean hypothesis unnecessary. We argue that Cartesians are right about some practical factors, in particular stakes and how important a situation is, which have, at best, a modest indirect relationship to knowledge. However, Lockeans are right about actionability: whether a person should pursue a course of action is unquestionably very powerfully and directly connected to knowledge. (shrink)

According to factive accounts of the norm of belief and decision-making, you should not believe or base decisions on a falsehood. Even when the evidence misleadingly suggests that a false proposition is true, you should not believe it or base decisions on it. Critics claim that factive accounts are counterintuitive and badly mischaracterize our ordinary practice of evaluating beliefs and decisions. This paper reports four experiments that rigorously test the critic’s accusations and the viability of factive accounts. The results undermine (...) the accusations and provide the best evidence yet of factive norms of belief and decision-making. The results also help discriminate between two leading candidates for a factive norm: truth and knowledge. Knowledge is the superior candidate. (shrink)

Can a belief source confer justification when we lack antecedent justification for believing that it’s reliable? A negative answer quickly leads to skepticism. A positive answer, however, seems to commit one to allowing pernicious reasoning known as “epistemic bootstrapping.” Puzzles surrounding bootstrapping arise because we illicitly assume either that justification requires doxastic awareness of a source’s epistemic credentials or that there is no requirement that a subject be aware of these credentials. We can resolve the puzzle by splitting the horns (...) and requiring a non-conceptual awareness of, or direct acquaintance with, a source’s legitimacy. Requiring non-conceptual as opposed to doxastic awareness halts the regress and avoids the skeptical results. On the other hand, requiring non-conceptual awareness also guarantees that we are aware of evidence for a source’s reliability prior to using that source to form justified beliefs; we thereby avoid the problem of allowing epistemic bootstrapping to generate the illicit gains in justification. (shrink)

This thesis studies whether there is a tenable distinction between a priori justification and a posteriori justification. My research considers three possible conceptions of a priori: Justification Independent of Experience, Mere Meaning Based Justification and Justification by Rational Insight, and examines whether they can provide a sound and significant distinction between a priori and a posteriori. This thesis contains five chapters. Chapter 1 introduces the background knowledge of the a priori/a posteriori distinction. Chapter 2 analyzes the traditional conception of a (...) priori, i.e. justification independent of experience, and considers whether the distinction based on it is tenable. Five approaches for defining “experience” are examined, but none of them succeed in providing a distinction between a priori and a posteriori. Chapter 3 focuses on the empiricist conception of the a priori, i.e. a priori as mere meaning based justification, and argues that the distinction based on it has a problem of classification. Chapter 4 concerns the rationalist conception of the a priori, i.e. a priori as justification by rational insight, and argues that neither the idea of justification by rational insight itself nor the distinctive features of rational insight could provide a distinction between a priori and a posteriori. Given that none of the current major accounts seem to work, we should not be optimistic about the potential for success in accounting for the distinction between a priori and a posteriori. In the last chapter, I will conclude the thesis and point out the implication of abandoning the a priori/a posteriori distinction: a need to reform our understanding of the nature of different sources of justification and knowledge. (shrink)

Much of the intuitive appeal of evidentialism results from conflating two importantly different conceptions of evidence. This is most clear in the case of perceptual justification, where experience is able to provide evidence in one sense of the term, although not in the sense that the evidentialist requires. I argue this, in part, by relying on a reading of the Sellarsian dilemma that differs from the version standardly encountered in contemporary epistemology, one that is aimed initially at the epistemology of (...) introspection but which generalizes to theories of perceptual justification as well. (shrink)

There is a virtual consensus in contemporary epistemology that knowledge must be reliably produced. Everyone, it seems, is a reliabilist about knowledge in that sense. I present and defend two arguments that unreliable knowledge is possible. My first argument proceeds from an observation about the nature of achievements, namely, that achievements can proceed from unreliable abilities. My second argument proceeds from an observation about the epistemic efficacy of explanatory inference, namely, that inference to the best explanation seems to produce knowledge, (...) even if it isn't reliable. I also propose a successor to standard versions of reliabilism, which I call ‘ecumenical reliabilism’. Ecumenical reliabilism is consistent with unreliably produced knowledge and helps explain why unreliably produced knowledge is possible. (shrink)

I lay out the framework for my theory of sensory imagination in “Imagining as a guide to possibility.” Sensory imagining involves mental imagery , and crucially, in describing the content of imagining, I distinguish between qualitative content and assigned content. Qualitative content derives from the mental image itself; for visual imaginings, it is what is “pictured.” For example, visually imagine the Philadelphia Eagles defeating the Pittsburgh Steelers to win their first Super Bowl. You picture the greenness of the field and (...) the football’s brown oblong shape. Some of what you imagine isn’t explicitly pictured, however. That it is Sunday, that it is the Super Bowl: these facts are assigned. (shrink)

I focus on a key argument for global external world scepticism resting on the underdetermination thesis: the argument according to which we cannot know any proposition about our physical environment because sense evidence for it equally justifies some sceptical alternative (e.g. the Cartesian demon conjecture). I contend that the underdetermination argument can go through only if the controversial thesis that conceivability is per se a source of evidence for metaphysical possibility is true. I also suggest a reason to doubt that (...) conceivability is per se a source of evidence for metaphysical possibility, and thus to doubt the underdetermination argument. (shrink)

It is almost universally presumed that knowledge is factive: in order to know that p it must be the case that p is true. This idea is often justified by appealing to knowledge ascriptions and related linguistic phenomena; i.e., an utterance of the form ‘S knows that p, but not-p’ sounds contradictory. In a recent article, Allan Hazlett argues that our ordinary concept of knowledge is not factive. From this it seems to follow that epistemologists cannot appeal to ordinary language (...) to justify the truth condition of knowledge. More significantly, Hazlett claims that epistemologists theorizing about knowledge should not concern themselves with the ordinary concept of knowledge as revealed by knowledge ascriptions and related linguistic phenomena. My paper has two goals: first, to defend the orthodox view that the ordinary concept of knowledge is factive; second, to undermine Hazlett’s claim that epistemologists should not theorize about knowledge on the basis of how ‘knows’ is used in everyday speech. (shrink)

In “The Myth of Factive Verbs” (Hazlett 2010), I had four closely related goals. The first (pp. 497-99, p. 522) was to criticize appeals to ordinary language in epistemology. The second (p. 499) was to criticize the argument that truth is a necessary condition on knowledge because “knows” is factive. The third (pp. 507-19) – which was the intended means of achieving the first two – was to defend a semantics for “knows” on which <S knows p> can be true (...) even if p isn’t true. The fourth (Ibid.) – which seemed necessary for the success of the third – was to defend a pragmatic account of the fact that utterances of <S knows p> typically imply p, on which the implication in those cases is down to conversational implicature. In this paper I’ll go after these goals again, with an emphasis on the second. Our topic will be whether the factivity of “knows” (whatever this amounts to) supports the truth condition on knowledge. A new goal will be to defend my argument against some criticisms from John Turri (2011) and Savas Tsohatzidis (forthcoming). We’ll first look at the truth condition (§1) and factive presupposition (§§2 – 3), before turning to replies to Turri and Tsohatzidis (§§4 – 7). (shrink)

The basic aim of Alvin Goldman’s approach to epistemology, and the tradition it represents, is naturalistic; that is, epistemological theories in this tradition aim to identify the naturalistic, nonnormative criteria on which justified belief supervenes (Goldman, 1986; Markie, 1997). The basic method of Goldman’s epistemology, and the tradition it represents, is the reflective equilibrium test; that is, epistemological theories in this tradition are tested against our intuitions about cases of justified and unjustified belief (Goldman, 1986; Markie, 1997). I will argue (...) that the prospect of having to reject their standard methodology is one epistemologists have to take very seriously; and I will do this by arguing that some current rival theories of epistemic justification are in fact in reflective equilibrium with our intuitions about cases of justified and unjustified belief. That is, I will argue that intuition underdetermines theory choice in epistemology, in much the way that observation underdetermines theory choices in empirical sciences. If reflective equilibrium leads to the underdetermination problem I say it leads to, then it cannot satisfy the aims of contemporary epistemology, and so cannot serve as its standard methodology. (shrink)

Defined narrowly, epistemology is the study of knowledge and justified belief. As the study of knowledge, epistemology is concerned with the following questions: What are the necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge? What are its sources? What is its structure, and what are its limits? As the study of justified belief, epistemology aims to answer questions such as: How we are to understand the concept of justification? What makes justified beliefs justified? Is justification internal or external to one's own mind? (...) Understood more broadly, epistemology is about issues having to do with the creation and dissemination of knowledge in particular areas of inquiry. This article will provide a systematic overview of the problems that the questions above raise and focus in some depth on issues relating to the structure and the limits of knowledge and justification. (shrink)

This research explores the incorporation of narrative perspectives in economics as a social science and its implications for rethinking epistemology. By examining the role of narratives in economic analysis, the study highlights the advantages of narratives in providing contextualized accounts of human experiences, connecting economic concepts to real-world phenomena, and exploring diverse perspectives. It emphasizes the importance of interdisciplinary collaboration between philosophers, economists, and social scientists to gain a comprehensive understanding of narratives' influence on economic decision-making, market dynamics, and consumer (...) behaviour. The research suggests that narratives offer a means to challenge the notion of a single, objective truth and contribute to a more inclusive and robust framework for analyzing economic phenomena. The implications extend beyond economics, urging a broader perspective on epistemology by embracing narrative perspectives and engaging in interdisciplinary collaboration across disciplines. Overall, this research calls for a rethinking of epistemology, recognising the significance of narratives and their role in knowledge production. (shrink)

Reasons rationalize beliefs. Reasons, when all goes well, turn true beliefs into knowledge. I am interested in the relationship between these aspects of reasons. Without a proper understanding of their relationship, the theory of knowledge will be less illuminating than it ought to be. I hope to show that previous accounts have failed to account for this relationship. This has resulted in a tendency to focus on justification rather than knowledge. It has also resulted in many becoming skeptical about the (...) prospects for an analysis of knowledge. The skepticism is misplaced and the tendency can be fixed without sacrificing any insights. The solution is to see how good reasons (in a sense to be articulated) are apparent (in a sense to be articulated) to the knowing subject. Once this claim is unpacked, we see that it is an illuminating analysis of knowledge in terms of distinct but intimately related aspects of epistemic assessment. It helps us see the value of knowledge (over and above true belief) and it affords us a unified, “reasons-first” metaepistemology. The resulting picture is neither a familiar kind of internalism or externalism. (shrink)

Many philosophers accept an ‘Authority Thesis’ according to which self-ascriptions of one’s current mental states ordinarily are or ought to be met with a distinctive presumption of truth. Recently, however, Wolfgang Barz (2018) has argued that there is no adequately specified Authority Thesis. This, he argues, is because available specifications are either (1) philosophically puzzling but implausible, or (2) plausible but philosophically unpuzzling. I argue that there are several plausible and philosophically puzzling specifications of the Authority Thesis.

Has the theory of rationality as ‘openness to criticism’ solved the problem of ‘rational belief in reason’? This is the main question the present article intends to address. I respond to this question by arguing that the justified true belief account of knowledge has prevented Karl Popper’s critical and William Bartley’s pan-critical rationalism from solving the problem of rational belief in reason. To elaborate this response, the article presents its arguments in three stages: First, it argues that the idea of (...) objective knowledge as justified true belief leads to the equation of objective knowledge with justification. Hence, if we base the theory of critical rationalism, as openness to criticism, upon such a conception of knowledge, our theory of rationality involves in infinite regress of proofs. Second, it argues that Popper describes critical rationalism as an ‘irrational attitude’ of openness to criticism because the rationalist cannot justify his belief in reason by argument or experience. Thus, since Popper assumes that ‘a belief in reason’ must be justified in order to be ‘rational’ he cannot lead to a solution for the problem of rational belief in reason. Third, it argues that, like Popper’s critical rationalism, Bartley’s pan-critical rationalism originates in the justified true belief account of knowledge, however, not because Bartley defines critical rationalism as irrational faith in reason, but because his theory does not tell us how an ‘open’ belief in reason is to be refuted logically. The reason for this failure is that Bartley uses Popper’s epistemology of science to define the conception of criticism. While Popper and Bartley are recognized as the non-justificationist philosophers of science and rationality, this article tries to reveal that the idea of objective knowledge as justified true belief has prevented them from showing how ‘a rational belief in reason’ can be defended by argument. The article also briefly shows the consequence of this study for a notable change in the logical foundations of science. (shrink)

Modal metaphysics consumed much of the philosophical discussion at the turn of the century, yielding a number of epistemological insights. Modal analyses were applied within epistemology, yielding sensitivity and safety theories of knowledge as well as counterfactual accounts of the basing relation. The contemporary conversation has now turned to a new metaphysical notion – grounding – opening the way to a fresh wave of insights by bringing grounding into epistemology. In this paper, I attempt one such application, making sense of (...) the epistemic regress problem in terms of grounding. I argue that the relation that generates the epistemic regress is a grounding relation, showing that grounding can make sense of proposals by epistemic foundationalists and charting the course for similar applications to epistemic coherentism and epistemic infinitism. If it is right that grounding is involved in the epistemic regress, this points the way forward both for epistemologists and metaphysicians, revealing the prospects of solutions to the epistemic regress problem while providing grounding advocates with yet another example of grounding with which to theorize. (shrink)

Reliabilism says that knowledge must be produced by reliable abilities. Abilism disagrees and allows that knowledge is produced by unreliable abilities. Previous research strongly supports the conclusion that abilism better describes how knowledge is actually defined in commonsense and science. In this paper, I provide a novel argument that abilism is ethically superior to reliabilism. Whereas reliabilism unethically discriminates against agents by excluding them from knowing, abilism virtuously includes them.

While it is commonly accepted that justified beliefs must be strongly supported by evidence and that support comes in degrees, the question of how much evidential support one needs in order to have a justified belief remains. In this paper, I consider how the question about degrees of evidential support connects with recent debates between consequentialist and deontological explanations of epistemic norms. I argue that explaining why strong, but not conclusive, evidential support is required for justification should be one explanandum (...) that such theories seek to explain. Furthermore, I argue that foundational theories that appeal to the promotion of epistemic value (especially consequentialism, but perhaps also some versions of epistemic deontology) are better suited to provide such an explanation. (shrink)

According to the non-factive hypothesis, espoused by contemporary epistemologists, our ordinary practice of evaluating belief is insensitive to the truth. In other words, on the ordinary view, there is no evaluative connection between what someone should believe and whether their belief would be true. Contrary to that, the factive hypothesis holds that our ordinary practice of evaluating belief is sensitive to the truth. Results from recent behavioral studies strongly support the factive hypothesis, but this evidence was recently subjected to three (...) new objections (Weissglass in Synthese, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-020-02584-5). This paper summarizes and responds to these objections. (shrink)

Most people believe some moral propositions are true. Most people would say that they know that rape is wrong, torturing people is wrong, and so on. But despite decades of intense epistemological study, philosophers cannot even provide a rudimentary sketch of moral knowledge. In my view, the fact that we have very strong epistemic confidence in some fundamental moral propositions and the fact that it is extremely difficult for us to provide even the basics of an account of moral knowledge (...) gives us an important clue. Both of these facts stem from the very nature of moral knowledge. In this paper I provide an intuitionist account of moral knowledge. I try to remove misunderstanding and add to our understanding of the contemporary account of self-evident moral propositions. For a theory of moral knowledge to be acceptable it must explain both the moral knowledge we have and why it is so very difficult for us to explain. My theory meets both requirements. (shrink)

This paper attempts to revisit how ‘acquaintance’ could bring about belief and how belief becomes knowledge in our language system due to the credential undertaking of truth, justification, evidence, and causal or conceptual preservation. My quest in this paper is to interrogate belief and the cessation of belief (I call this the ‘death of belief’) from the perspective of the doxastic approach of externalism and internalism in the philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. I will attempt to make sense (...) of the nominal appeal (an approach that conserves the process of continuing belief through evidence and conceptualization) to both of these ideas in a sophisticated manner. The linguistic form of using words seems allied to the context sensitivity of the speakers involved in social practices. A tripartite structure pivots the model of linguistic belief, where minds are causally entrenched in a world that stimulates conceptual or internal states, representing how objectivity works. The entanglements of concepts with pictures hinge on conceptual prerequisites to impact the world. (shrink)

If political decision-making aims at getting a particular result, like identifying just laws or policies that truly promote the common good, then political institutions can also be evaluated in terms of how often they achieve these results. Epistemic defenses of democracy argue that democracies have the upper hand when it comes to truth, identifying the laws and policies that are truly just or conducive to the common good. A number of epistemic democrats claim that democracies have this beneficial connection to (...) truth because of the type of deliberative environment created by democratic political institutions. Democratic political cultures make it easier to exchange and give reasons, ultimately improving the justification that citizens have for their political beliefs. With this improved justification comes a better chance at truth, or so the story goes. In this paper, I show that attempts to forge a connection between justification and truth in epistemology have encountered numerous difficulties, making the case that this causes trouble for deliberative epistemic defenses of democracy as well. If there is no well-defined connection between truth and justification, then increasing the justification that citizens have for their beliefs may not also increase the likelihood that those beliefs are true, revealing a serious flaw in charting a connection between political justification and political truth. (shrink)

The internalism/externalism controversy has various expanding features in contemporary epistemology. In this article we try to show capabilities of philosophy of Sadra for interfering in this debate. The main goal is to rely on principles of Sadra and defend a kind of internalism that consider cognitive access to factors needed for a belief to be epistemically justified as a pivotal condition. It will be proved that for defense of any knowledge, we should accept immediate and direct knowledge to states of (...) mind and this knowledge is superior from threefold propositional knowledge and merely with reliance on division knowledge to present knowledge and propositional knowledge internalism is defensible. Indeed, some ambiguities in internalism/ externalism controversy is due to inattention properties of present knowledge and its separation from propositional knowledge. After that as respects to those properties and also reliance on division knowledge to simple and compound we answer three main difficulties internalism face and display solution for internalist´s contra examples. (shrink)

We intend to put certain aspects of pascalian speculation within an epistemological background. We will frame them, in more detail, within the so-called tradition of Epistemic Foundationalism. The main intention will be to show the genesis of the first principles, essential for the epistemological framework in this tradition, and the consequences arising therefrom. For this purpose, we will compare the pascalian developments to the cartesian on this theme. We hope, at the end of the paper, to have demonstrated the strength (...) and novelty of the pascalian solution and the moral desideratum to which it can lead us. (shrink)

This chapter has two aims. First, I distinguish between two forms of testimonial injustice: identity-based testimonial injustice and content-based testimonial injustice. Second, I utilize this distinction to develop a partial explanation for the persistent lack of diverse practitioners in academic philosophy. Specifically, I argue that both identity-based and content-based testimonial injustice are prevalent in philosophical discourse and that this prevalence introduces barriers to participation for those targeted. As I show, the dual and compounding effects of identity-based and content-based testimonial injustice (...) in philosophy plausibly contribute to a lack of diversity in the social identities of practitioners and the discourses in which practitioners are engaged. (shrink)

Memory skepticism denies our memory beliefs could have any notable epistemic good. One route to memory skepticism is to challenge memory’s epistemic trustworthiness, that is, its functioning in a way necessary for it to provide epistemic justification. In this paper we develop and respond to this challenge. It could threaten memory in such a way that we altogether lack doxastic attitudes. If it threatens memory in this way, then the challenge is importantly self-defeating. If it does not threaten memory in (...) this way, then the challenge leaves a foundation for an inference to the best explanation response, one we articulate and support. (shrink)

A critical review of “Gettier” cases and theoretical attempts to solve “the” "Gettier" "problem".

“Gettier cases” have played a major role in Anglo-American analytic epistemology over the past fifty years. Philosophers have grouped a bewildering array of examples under the heading “Gettier case.” Philosophers claim that these cases are obvious counterexamples to the “traditional” analysis of knowledge as justified true belief, and they treat correctly classifying the cases as a criterion for judging proposed theories of knowledge. Cognitive scientists recently began testing whether philosophers are right about these cases. It turns out that philosophers were (...) partly right and partly wrong. Some “Gettier cases” are obvious examples of ignorance, but others are obvious examples of knowledge. It also turns out that much research in this area of philosophy is marred by experimenter bias, invented historical claims, dysfunctional categorization of examples, and mischaracterization by philosophers of their own intuitive judgments about particular cases. Despite these shortcomings, lessons learned from studying “Gettier cases” are leading to important insights about knowledge and knowledge attributions, which are central components of social cognition. (shrink)

A standard view in philosophy is that knowledge entails justification. Yet recent research suggests otherwise. We argue that this admirable and striking research suffers from an important limitation: participants were asked about knowledge but not justification. Thus it is possible that people attributed knowledge partly because they thought the belief was justified. Perhaps though, if given the opportunity, people would deny justification while still attributing knowledge. It is also possible that earlier findings were due to perspective taking. This paper reports (...) further research that directly addresses these questions. Our findings support the hypothesis that knowledge entails justification on the ordinary view. (shrink)

A strength of liberal political institutions is their ability to accommodate pluralism, both allowing divergent comprehensive doctrines as well as constructing the common ground necessary for diverse people to live together. A pressing question is how far such pluralism extends. Which comprehensive doctrines are simply beyond the pale and need not be accommodated by a political consensus? Rawls attempted to keep the boundaries of reasonable disagreement quite broad by infamously denying that political liberalism need make reference to the concept of (...) truth, a claim that has been criticized by Joseph Raz, Joshua Cohen, and David Estlund. In this paper, we argue that these criticisms fail due to the fact that political liberalism can remain non-committal on the nature of truth, leaving the concept of truth in the domain of comprehensive doctrines while still avoiding the issues raised by Raz, Cohen, and Estlund. Further substantiating this point is the fact that Rawls would, and should, include parties in the overlapping consensus whose views on truth may be incoherent. Once it is seen that political liberalism allows such incoherence to reasonable parties, it is clear that the inclusion of truth and the requirement of coherence urged by Raz, Cohen, and Estlund requires more of reasonable people than is necessary for a political consensus. (shrink)

Some of the contemporary advocates of Islamic Philosophy believe that the view of the modern Islamic philosophers regarding knowledge by presence can solve some of the issues present in the theory of knowledge. The origins of this belief are probably two popular theories: Allama Tabatabai’s view that acquired knowledge comes back to knowledge by presence and Ayatollah Misbah Yazdi’s view regarding the reference of basic axioms to knowledge by presence. According to the first view, all acquired knowledge is rooted in (...) knowledge by presence. The main issue is regarding sensory beliefs and the circumstances of the justified relationship between sensory experience on one hand and sensory beliefs on the other; however, in this theory, no explanation has been provided regarding how knowledge by presence can be converted to acquire knowledge which has been derived from it. Therefore, this view does not help in solving that important issue. Similarly, according to Ayatollah Misbah’s view, the guarantee of the validity of basic axioms is because they are based on knowledge by presence. However, various reasons show knowledge by presence cannot provide the validity guarantee for basic axioms. (shrink)

We discuss the three dominant models of the phenomenological literature pertaining to temporal consciousness, namely the cinematic, the retentional, and the extensional model. This is first done by presenting the distinction between acts and contents of consciousness and the assumptions underlying the different models concerning both the extendedness and duration of these two components. Secondly, we elaborate on the consequences related to whether a perspective of direct or indirect realism about temporal perceptions is assumed. Finally, we review some relevant findings (...) from the psychology and neuroscience of temporality in order to decide which of the three models of time consciousness is better confirmed from an empirical viewpoint. Depending on the time scale, all three models of temporal consciousness might apply. We specifically argue in favor of an extensional model of time consciousness for the experienced present where the acts and contents of consciousness are both extended. The retentional model might apply to longer time intervals covered by working memory. In addition, a predictive component is highlighted as decisive for an understanding of temporality. (shrink)

This paper argues for extreme rational permissivism—the view that agents with identical evidence can rationally believe contradictory hypotheses—and a mild version of steadfastness. Agents can rationally come to different conclusions on the basis of the same evidence because their way of weighing the theoretic virtues may differ substantially. Nevertheless, in the face of disagreement, agents face considerable pressure to reduce their confidence. Indeed, I argue that agents often ought to reduce their confidence in the higher-order propositions that they know or (...) rationally believe disputed content. I argue, however, that when the subject matter is difficult, there is more flexibility for agents to simultaneously believe that p while withholding belief about whether such belief is rational or known. This allows for modest steadfastness on hard questions in, e.g., philosophy and religion. (shrink)

This paper argues that reading is a source of knowledge. Epistemologists have virtually ignored reading as a source of knowledge. This paper argues, first, that reading is not to be equated with attending to testimony, and second that it cannot be reduced to perception. Next an analysis of reading is offered and the source of knowledge that reading is further delineated. Finally it is argued that the source that reading is, can be both transmissive and generative, is non-basic, once was (...) a non-essential but has become essential for many people, and can be unique. (shrink)

Most philosophers agree that an argument's presentation is relevant to its philosophical merit. This paper explains why David Hume considered presentation philosophically important. On Hume's epistemology, presentation is closely connected with two principal aims of philosophical arguments: persuasion and epistemic justification. Hume's views imply that presentation is a factor determining an argument's persuasiveness and that, by philosophical standards of justification, presentation is also a factor determining the extent to which an argument's conclusion is justified.

According to Phenomenal Conservatism (PC), if it seems to a subject S that P, S thereby has some degree of (defeasible) justification for believing P. But what is it for P to seem true? Answering this question is vital for assessing what role (if any) such states can play. Many have appeared to adopt a kind of non-reductionism that construes seemings as intentional states which cannot be reduced to more familiar mental states like beliefs or sensations. In this paper I (...) aim to show that reductive accounts need to be taken more seriously by illustrating the plausibility of identifying seemings and conscious inclinations to form a belief. I briefly close the paper by considering the implications such an analysis might have for views such as PC. (shrink)