The most widespread models of rational reasoners (the model based on modal epistemic logic and the model based on probability theory) exhibit the problem of logical omniscience. The most common strategy for avoiding this problem is to interpret the models as describing the explicit beliefs of an ideal reasoner, but only the implicit beliefs of a real reasoner. I argue that this strategy faces serious normative issues. In this paper, I present the more fundamental problem of logical omnipotence, which highlights (...) the normative content of the problem of logical omniscience. I introduce two developments of the notion of implicit belief (accessible and stable belief ) and use them in two versions of the most common strategy applied to the problem of logical omnipotence. (shrink)

The philosophical interest in the nature, value, and varieties of human understanding has swelled in recent years. This article will provide an overview of new research in the epistemology of understanding, with a particular focus on the following questions: What is understanding and why should we care about it? Is understanding reducible to knowledge? Does it require truth, belief, or justification? Can there be lucky understanding? Does it require ‘grasping’ or some kind of ‘know-how’? This cluster of questions has largely (...) set the research agenda for the study of understanding in epistemology. This article will conclude by discussing some varieties of understanding and highlight directions for future research. (shrink)

O presente volume se trata de uma coletânea de artigos que reúne alguns dos trabalhos propostos para o evento “III International Colloquium of Analytic Epistemology and VII Conference of Social Epistemology”, realizado entre os dias 27 e 30 de Novembro de 2018, na Universidade Federal de Santa Maria. O “III International Colloquium of Analytic Epistemology and VII Conference of Social Epistemology” é um dos principais eventos de Epistemologia analítica da América Latina e reúne especialistas do Brasil e do exterior para (...) promover debates de alto nível sobre temas que fazem parte da agenda contemporânea no que se refere ao debate analítico contemporâneo acerca da Epistemologia. (shrink)

Knowledge is widely regarded as being incompatible with epistemic luck, but according to several philosophers, the same does not hold for understanding. This paper examines to what extent understanding is vulnerable to epistemic luck. After discussing the weaknesses of some of the cases that have been offered to support the conclusion that understanding tolerates environmental epistemic luck, I turn to a more recent one offered in favour of the opposite conclusion. I argue that this case does not manage to establish (...) that understanding is vulnerable to environmental luck; this even if the fact that understanding comes in degrees is taken into account. Finally, I examine the vulnerability of understanding to intervening luck – the type of luck present in classical Gettier cases – and conclude that when such luck is present, one's understanding is necessarily sub-optimal; a conclusion that does not hold, according to what I argue, when it comes to environmental luck. (shrink)

The present paper examines a type of sceptical hypothesis put forward by Adam Carter that specifically targets understanding—the Confusion Hypothesis. After clarifying the nature and scope of that hypothesis, it discusses Carter’s favoured virtue perspectivist answer to the challenge it raises. It is argued that this answer is ultimately unsatisfying as it is unable to explain how a subject can obtain assurance that her grasp of a given body of information actually results from the competences she comes to appreciate as (...) being reliable. A different answer that relies on the practical dimension of the specific grasp involved in understanding is then offered and is shown to avoid the problems faced by Virtue Perspectivism. (shrink)