Recent knowledge first epistemology features a number of different accounts of justified belief, including a knowledge first reductionism according to which to believe justifiably is to know Sutton, Littlejohn, Williamson, a knowledge first version of accessibilism Millar and a knowledge first version of mentalism Bird. This paper offers a knowledge first version of virtue epistemology and argues that it is preferable to its knowledge first epistemological rivals: only knowledge first virtue epistemology manages to steer clear of a number of problems (...) that its competition encounters. (shrink)

Philosophical Issues, Volume 30, Issue 1, Page 192-204, October 2020.

Virtue epistemology is the view that beliefs are attempts at truth (or perhaps knowledge) and, as a result, can be assessed as successful, competent, and apt. Moreover, virtue epistemology identifies central epistemic properties with normative properties of beliefs as attempts. In particular, knowledge is apt belief and justified belief is competent belief. This paper develops a systematic virtue epistemological account of defeat (of justification/competence). I provide reason to think that defeat occurs not only for beliefs but for attempts more general. (...) The key constructive idea is that defeaters are evidence that attempting (in a certain way) isn't successful and that defeaters defeat the competence of an attempt when one stands in a certain normative relation to the defeater. I argue that while this account handles paradigm cases of defeat both within epistemology and beyond nicely, cases of external (sometimes also ‘normative’ or ‘propositional’) defeat continue to cause trouble. To handle these cases, I develop a distinctively functionalist version of virtue epistemology. This functionalist version of virtue epistemology allows me to countenance proficiencies, that is, roughly, abilities that have the function to produce successes under certain conditions. It is the normative import of proficiencies that delivers the normative relation that serves to explain defeat in cases of external defeat. In this way, the functionalist version of virtue epistemology ushers the way towards a satisfactory account even of external defeat. (shrink)

Chisholm refuted phenomenalism as a theory of the justification of perceptual beliefs. He argued, following Thomas Reid, that some perceptual beliefs were justified in themselves, which provided a foundation for empirical knowledge. The question that remains is whether the foundational justification provided offers an adequate explanation of how justification is connected with truth. The search for a truth connection led me from foundationalism to a coherence theory of justification that, contrary to my intentions, was inspired by an observation of Chisholm (...) himself. (shrink)

The paper focuses on knowledge generation, a topic frequently overlooked in the traditional debates in epistemology and philosophy of science. We focus on investigation as the primary process generating knowledge and its products. Investigation is taken as a generalization of the research process that includes similar knowledge-generating practices in aboriginal communities. To characterize the complexity of investigation processes and their products we go beyond traditional epistemological characterization of knowledge in terms of mental states and turn to the concept of routine. (...) Investigation processes share a common symbolic representation form which we call here a knowledge thread. The dynamics of the knowledge thread may be characterized by two intertwined tiers: cognitive and institutional. Using examples from our previous studies, especially on the recent discovery of microRNAs in molecular biology, we illustrate the dynamics of threads and claim that it is susceptible to the social network analysis which, however, requires insightful applications and sound interpretation of the results. Such an interpretation, as we suggest, may further be elaborated on the grounds of anthropological theories of distributed agency and distributed cognition. (shrink)

A popular form of virtue epistemology—defended by such figures as Ernest Sosa, Linda Zagzebski and John Greco—holds that knowledge can be exclusively understood in virtue-theoretic terms. In particular, it holds that there isn't any need for an additional epistemic condition to deal with the problem posed by knowledge-undermining epistemic luck. It is argued that the sustainability of such a proposal is called into question by the possibility of epistemic twin earth cases. In particular, it is argued that such cases demonstrate (...) the need for virtue-theoretic accounts of knowledge to appeal to an independent epistemic condition which excludes knowledge-undermining epistemic luck. (shrink)

This essay seeks to clarify the meaning and nature of normativity in metaethics and offers reasons why comparative religious ethics (CRE) must properly address questions about normativity. Though many comparative religious ethicists take CRE to be a normative discipline, what they say about normativity is often unclear and confusing. I argue that the third‐wave scholars face serious questions with respect to not only the justification of moral belief but also the rationality of moral belief and action. These scholars tend to (...) view the justification of moral belief to be a matter of process (that is, discursive social practice) rather than evidence‐possession, thus overlooking crucial differences between the two. They also run the risk of confusing motivating and explanatory reasons with normative reasons for moral belief and action. Consequently, their account of normativity would be insufficient for determining the rationality of moral beliefs and actions as well as for justifying moral beliefs. (shrink)

The pragmatic character of the Dutch book argument makes it unsuitable as an "epistemic" justification for the fundamental probabilist dogma that rational partial beliefs must conform to the axioms of probability. To secure an appropriately epistemic justification for this conclusion, one must explain what it means for a system of partial beliefs to accurately represent the state of the world, and then show that partial beliefs that violate the laws of probability are invariably less accurate than they could be otherwise. (...) The first task can be accomplished once we realize that the accuracy of systems of partial beliefs can be measured on a gradational scale that satisfies a small set of formal constraints, each of which has a sound epistemic motivation. When accuracy is measured in this way it can be shown that any system of degrees of belief that violates the axioms of probability can be replaced by an alternative system that obeys the axioms and yet is more accurate in every possible world. Since epistemically rational agents must strive to hold accurate beliefs, this establishes conformity with the axioms of probability as a norm of epistemic rationality whatever its prudential merits or defects might be. (shrink)

This article accomplishes two closely connected things. First, it refutes an influential view about the relationship between perception and knowledge. In particular, it demonstrates that perceiving does not entail knowing. Second, it leverages that refutation to demonstrate that knowledge is not the most general factive propositional attitude.

According to a traditional picture, perception and belief have starkly different epistemic roles. Beliefs have epistemic statuses as justified or unjustified, depending on how they are formed and maintained. In contrast, perceptions are “unjustified justifiers.” Core cognition is a set of mental systems that stand at the border of perception and belief, and has been extensively studied in developmental psychology. Core cognition's borderline states do not fit neatly into the traditional epistemic picture. What is the epistemic role of these states? (...) Focusing on the core object system, the author argues that core object representations have epistemic statuses like beliefs do, despite their many prototypically perceptual features. First, the author argues that it is a sufficient condition on a mental state's having an epistemic status as justified or unjustified that the state is based on reasons. Then the author argues that core object representations are based on reasons, through an examination of both experimental results and key markers of the basing relation. The scope of mental states that are subject to epistemic evaluation as justified or unjustified is not restricted to beliefs. (shrink)

This paper introduces and defends the paradigm response to external world skepticism. To understand it, consider an analogy. One of the hallmarks of being a bird is an ability to fly. A penguin lacks this hallmark and thus fails to be a paradigm bird. Likewise, there are various hallmarks of knowledge. Some of your external world beliefs lack some of these hallmarks, and thus fail to be paradigm cases of knowledge. Just as the inability of penguins to fly doesn’t prevent (...) them from being birds, likewise the lack of these hallmarks doesn’t prevent your beliefs from being knowledge. It just prevents them from being paradigm cases thereof. (shrink)

Hyman (1999, 2006) argues that knowledge is best conceived as a kind of ability: S knows that p iff S can φ for the reason that p. Hyman motivates this thesis by appealing to Gettier cases. I argue that it is counterexampled by a certain kind of Gettier case where the fact that p is a cause of the subject’s belief that p. One can φ for the reason that p even if one does not know that p. So knowledge (...) is not best conceived as an ability of this kind. (shrink)

Williamson (2000) appeals to considerations about when it is natural to say that a hypothesis is consistent with one’s evidence in order to motivate the claim that all and only knowledge is evidence. It is argued here that the relevant considerations do not support this claim, and in fact conflict with it.

Roderick Chisholm had a profound effect on the shape of American epistemology. In this article, I not only give an account of the large‐scale structure of Chisholm's views but also say something about the place of Chisholmian themes in contemporary work. I thus present an understanding and an appreciation of Chisholm's contribution to epistemology by exhibiting a number of alternative developments of Chisholmian ideas that are currently under discussion.

In the sixth chapter of his Theory of Knowledge Roderick Chisholm refers to an example suggested by Alexius Meinong in order to show that the traditional definition of knowledge is in need of some modification. In this paper I should like to show that Chisholm's argument rests on a mistaken assumption as to what an individual's doxastic responsibilities are.

This paper concerns would-be necessary connections between doxastic attitudes about the epistemic statuses of your doxastic attitudes, or ‘higher-order epistemic attitudes’, and the epistemic statuses of those doxastic attitudes. I will argue that, in some situations, it can be reasonable for a person to believe p and to suspend judgment about whether believing p is reasonable for her. This will set the stage for an account of the virtue of intellectual humility, on which humility is a matter of your higher-order (...) epistemic attitudes. Recent discussions in the epistemology of disagreement have assumed that the question of the proper response to disagreement about p concerns whether you ought to change your doxastic attitude towards p. My conclusion here suggests an alternative approach, on which the question of the proper response to disagreement about p concerns the proper doxastic attitude to adopt concerning the epistemic status of your doxastic attitude towards p.Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.HIGHER-ORDER EPISTEMIC ATTITUDES AND INTELLECTUAL HUMILITYVolume 9, Issue 3Allan HazlettDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2012.11Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. HIGHER-ORDER EPISTEMIC ATTITUDES AND INTELLECTUAL HUMILITYVolume 9, Issue 3Allan HazlettDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2012.11Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. HIGHER-ORDER EPISTEMIC ATTITUDES AND INTELLECTUAL HUMILITYVolume 9, Issue 3Allan HazlettDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2012.11Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

Descartes analysed the mind into various faculties or powers, including pure intellect, imagination, senses, and will. This article focuses on his account of the sensory power, in relation to its Aristotelian background. Descartes accepted from the Aristotelians that the senses serve to preserve the body by detecting benefits and harms. He rejected the scholastic Aristotelian sensory ontology of resembling species, or ‘forms without matter’. For the visual sense, Descartes offered a mechanistic ontology and a partially mechanized account of sensory processes, (...) including some previously ascribed to judgement. He did this in the context of his theory of brain signs that prompt sensations. The article contends that Descartes’s use of the sign-relation was modelled on standard discussions of non-resembling signs in commentaries on Aristotle’s De interpretatione. It follows three uses of the sign-relation: brain states that cause colour sensations; brain states that cause experiences of spatialized contents, such as shapes; and brain states that realize a ‘natural geometry’. It argues that Descartes’s natural geometry does not involve mental operations but physiological mechanisms that co-vary with the distance to seen objects. While retaining the language of sensory powers, Descartes offered a partial mechanization of those powers. (shrink)

In this article, I reply to comments on my book by Georgi Gardiner and Joshua DiPaolo. I will first reply to Gardiner's comments, focusing primarily on her doubts about the adjudicative power of function-first epistemology. I will then reply to DiPaolo, who argues that I have misidentified that primary function of the concept of knowledge.

If we agree, along with Arnauld, Berkeley, Descartes, Hume, Leibniz, and others that our occurrent phenomenal states serve as sources of epistemic certainty for us, we need some explanation of this fact. Many contemporary writers, most notably Roderick Chisholm, maintain that there is something special about the phenomenal states themselves that allows our certain knowledge of them. I argue that Chisholm's view is both wrong and irreparable, and that the capacity of humans to know these states with certainty has to (...) do with the contingent cognitive capacities and abilities people have. (shrink)

The sort of knowledge we have with regard to the nature and kind of our own phenomenal states has enjoyed considerable prestige in the history of philosophy. Hume claims that ‘The only existences, of which we are certain, are perceptions, which being immediately present to us by consciousness, command our strongest assent, and are the first foundation of all our conclusions’. In the New Essays, Leibniz remarks that ‘if the immediate inner experience is not certain, we cannot be sure of (...) any truth of fact.’. (shrink)

Is knowledge definable as justified true belief? We argue that one can legitimately answer positively or negatively, depending on whether or not one’s true belief is justified by what we call adequate reasons. To facilitate our argument we introduce a simple propositional logic of reason-based belief, and give an axiomatic characterization of the notion of adequacy for reasons. We show that this logic is sufficiently flexible to accommodate various useful features, including quantification over reasons. We use our framework to contrast (...) two notions of JTB: one internalist, the other externalist. We argue that Gettier cases essentially challenge the internalist notion but not the externalist one. Our approach commits us to a form of infallibilism about knowledge, but it also leaves us with a puzzle, namely whether knowledge involves the possession of only adequate reasons, or leaves room for some inadequate reasons. We favor the latter position, which reflects a milder and more realistic version of infallibilism. (shrink)

This contribution to the topical collection presents an overview of my previous work in epistemology. Specifically, I review arguments for the claim that important skeptical arguments in the history of philosophy motivate externalism in epistemology. In effect, only externalist epistemologies can be anti-skeptical epistemologies. I also review motivations for adopting a virtue-theoretic account of epistemic normativity. Such an account, I argue, has considerable explanatory power regarding the nature, value and scope of knowledge. In addition, a virtue-theoretic account is tailor made (...) for externalism. In effect, it shows how externalist epistemologies can also be normative epistemologies. Finally, I review arguments in favor of a general framework for understanding the epistemology of testimony, and, in particular, the transmission of knowledge. The framework motivates anti-reductionism in the epistemology of testimony, as well as the common anti-reductionist theme that trust can be epistemically significant, as opposed to merely practically significant. The framework, I argue, also weds nicely to a virtue-theoretic account of epistemic normativity, and in doing so answers an important objection to virtue epistemology—that the view is overly individualistic. (shrink)

Externalism1 is the thesis that some propositional attitudes depend for their individuation on features of the thinker’s (social and/or physical) environment. The doctrine of self-knowledge of thoughts is the thesis that for all thinkers S and occurrent thoughts that p, S has authoritative and non-empirical knowledge of her thought that p. A much-discussed question in the literature is whether these two doctrines are compatible. In this paper I attempt to respond to one argument for an incompatibilist conclusion, Boghossian’s 1989 ‘Memory (...) Argument.’. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between dynamic and truth conditional semantics for epistemic modals. It provides a generalization of a standard dynamic update semantics for modals. This new semantics derives a Kripke semantics for modals and a standard dynamic semantics for modals as special cases. The semantics allows for new characterizations of a variety of principles in modal logic, including the inconsistency of ‘p and might not p’. Finally, the semantics provides a construction procedure for transforming any truth conditional semantics (...) for modals into a dynamic semantics for modals with similar properties. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to defend a novel characterization of epistemic luck. Helping myself to the notions of epistemic entitlement and adequate explanation, I propose that a true belief suffers from epistemic luck iff an adequate explanation of the fact that the belief acquired is true must appeal to propositions to which the subject herself is not epistemically entitled. The burden of the argument is to show that there is a plausible construal of the notions of epistemic entitlement (...) and adequate explanation on which the resulting characterization of epistemic luck, though admittedly programmatic, has several important virtues. It avoids difficulties which plague modal accounts of epistemic luck; it can explain the conflicting temptations one can feel in certain alleged cases of epistemic luck; it offers a novel account of the value of knowledge, without committing itself to any particular analysis of knowledge; and it illuminates the significance for epistemology of the phenomenon of epistemic luck itself. (shrink)

This paper investigates ‘authoritative knowledge’, a neglected species of practical knowledge gained on the basis of exercising practical authority. I argue that, like perceptual knowledge, authoritative knowledge is non-inferential. I then present a broadly reliabilist account of the process by which authority yields knowledge, and use this account to address certain objections.

This paper argues for externalism about justification on the basis of thought experiments. I present cases in which two individuals are intrinsically and introspectively indistinguishable and in which intuitively, one is justified in believing that p while the other is not. I also examine an argument for internalism based on the ideas that we have privileged access to whether or not our own beliefs are justified and that only internalism is compatible with this privilege. I isolate what I take to (...) be the most plausible form of privileged access to justification and show that it is compatible with externalism. (shrink)

How should we understand the epistemic role of perception? According to epistemological disjunctivism (ED), a subject’s perceptual knowledge that p is to be explained in terms of the subject believing that p for a factive and reflectively accessible reason. I argue that ED raises far-reaching questions for rationality and deliberation; I illustrate those questions by setting up a puzzle about belief-suspension, and I argue that ED does not have the resources to make sense of the rationality of belief-suspension in cases (...) in which suspending is clearly rational. The conclusion that I draw from the puzzle is mainly negative: the epistemic contribution of perception cannot be explained in terms of a warrant-conferring relation between perception and belief. However, toward the end, I sketch a positive picture of the epistemic role of perception in terms of a direct explanatory relation between perception and knowledge. (shrink)

Several studies have found a robust effect of truth on epistemic evaluation of belief, decision, action and assertion. Thus, truth has a significant effect on normative participant evaluations. Some theorists take this truth effect to motivate factive epistemic norms of belief, action, assertion etc. In contrast, I argue that the truth effect is best understood as an epistemic instance of the familiar and ubiquitous phenomenon of outcome bias. I support this diagnosis from three interrelating perspectives: (1) by epistemological theorizing, (2) (...) by considerations from cognitive psychology and (3) by methodological reflections on the relationship between folk epistemology and epistemological theorizing. (shrink)

This critical study of Sanford Goldberg's Relying on Others focuses on the book's central claim, the extendedness hypothesis, according to which the processes relevant for assessing the reliability of a hearer's testimonial belief include the cognitive processes involved in the production of the testimony.Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon (...) account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.CRITICAL STUDY OF GOLDBERG'S RELYING ON OTHERSVolume 9, Issue 1Mikkel GerkenDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2011.6Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. CRITICAL STUDY OF GOLDBERG'S RELYING ON OTHERSVolume 9, Issue 1Mikkel GerkenDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2011.6Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. CRITICAL STUDY OF GOLDBERG'S RELYING ON OTHERSVolume 9, Issue 1Mikkel GerkenDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2011.6Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

In recent years, many philosophers have supposed that perceptual representations have propositional content. A prominent rationale for this supposition is the assumption that perceptions may justify beliefs, but this rationale can be doubted. This rationale may be doubted on the grounds that there do not seem to be any viable characterizations of the belief-justifying propositional contents of perceptions. An alternative is to model perceptual representations as marks in a perceptual similarity space. A mapping can be defined between points in perceptual (...) similarity space and points in an objective quality space. The correctness of perceptual representation can then be defined as a kind of accuracy of mapping rather than as the truth of a proposition. The phenomenon of seeing-as can be accounted for as a matter of the location of marks in perceptual similarity space relative to other marks in perceptual similarity space. Perceptual representations, on this account, will not justify beliefs, but they may nonetheless guide judgment. (shrink)

One main argument that has been offered in support of the Knowledge Account of Assertion is that it successfully makes sense of a variety of Moorean-paradoxical claims. David Sosa has objected to the Knowledge Account by arguing that it does not generalize satisfactorily to make sense of the oddity of iterated conjunctions of the form “p but I don’t know whether I know that p”. Recently, Martin Montminy has offered a defense of the Knowledge Account. In this paper, I show (...) that both Montminy’s and Sosa’s arguments fail. First, I argue that Montminy does not offer a good reply to Sosa; then I show that Sosa’s objection actually does not constitute a real threat to the Knowledge Account. (shrink)

Let’s define epistemological direct realism as the view that we have noninferentially justified beliefs in at least some contingent propositions describing the external physical world. I add the adjective “external” here so as to leave open the question of whether sensations and other mental phenomena are themselves physical. I take it that an indirect realist can consistently maintain both that all knowledge of external physical reality must be inferred from knowledge of subjective sensations and also conclude that subjective sensations are, (...) for example, brain states. It’s a bit awkward, however, to use the cumbersome expression “external physical reality” and so for ease of exposition I shall often omit the adjective “external.” I shall say that a proposition describes the physical world only if its truth entails a proposition which attributes to some object those properties in virtue of which the thing is physical. So, for example, I might be able to know that the F exists, where the F is, in fact, a physical object. But if the proposition that the F exists does not entail that the F is physical, the proposition that the F exists is not, in this sense, a proposition describing the physical world. Berkeley, for example, sometimes posed as an epistemological direct realist when he claimed both that we can know unproblematically that certain ideas exist and that a physical object is nothing but a bundle of ideas. But when he was being careful he made clear that the ideas we know directly are never by themselves constitutive of a physical object—at best they are logical “parts” of objects. On his more sophisticated view, knowledge that a given physical object exists would always require inference—complex inference at that. Berkeley was no epistemological direct realist. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that suspension of judgment is intimately tied to inquiry and in particular that one is suspending judgment about some question if and only if one is inquiring into that question.

We report a series of experiments examining whether people ascribe knowledge for true beliefs based on probabilistic evidence. Participants were less likely to ascribe knowledge for beliefs based on probabilistic evidence than for beliefs based on perceptual evidence or testimony providing causal information. Denial of knowledge for beliefs based on probabilistic evidence did not arise because participants viewed such beliefs as unjustified, nor because such beliefs leave open the possibility of error. These findings rule out traditional philosophical accounts for why (...) probabilistic evidence does not produce knowledge. The experiments instead suggest that people deny knowledge because they distrust drawing conclusions about an individual based on reasoning about the population to which it belongs, a tendency previously identified by “judgment and decision making” researchers. Consistent with this, participants were more willing to ascribe knowledge for beliefs based on probabilistic evidence that is specific to a particular case. 2016 APA, all rights reserved). (shrink)

We consider the mind-dependence or independence of the "now," of "becoming," and of "time's arrow," by considering the various senses in which these notions might be mind-dependent or not. These matters cannot be sensibly discussed without taking a stand regarding criteria of "reality." Proceeding from a basically phenomenalist position we conclude that merely to differentiate between appearance and reality is implicitly to assume a directed flow of time. We discuss the relationship between phenomenological and physical time and their possible asymmetries. (...) We find that physical time acquires meaning only through phenomenological time, and that phenomenological time is fundamentally asymmetric. This still leaves room for the question: Is there anything in physical time which reflects the fact that it, to be meaningful, must be applied asymmetrically? The relevance of relativity theory to this question is discussed. (shrink)

Phenomenal conservatives claim that seemings are sui generis mental states and can thus provide foundational non-doxastic justification for beliefs. Many of their critics deny this, claiming, instead, that seemings can be reductively analyzed in terms of other mental states—either beliefs, inclinations to believe, or beliefs about one’s evidence—that cannot provide foundational non-doxastic justification. In this paper, I argue that no tenable semantic reduction of ‘seems’ can be formulated in terms of the three reductive analyses that have been proposed by critics (...) of phenomenal conservatism. This is because Moore-paradoxical statements are generated when each of the reductive analyses is substituted for ‘seems’ in statements like ‘The stick is straight, but it does not seem to me that it’s straight.’ Since the latter statement is not Moore-paradoxical, the three proposed reductive analyses of ‘seems’ are unsuccessful. Absent a successful semantic reduction, however, there is no good reason to think a successful metaphysical reduction of seemings is forthcoming. Thus, there is an additional reason, unnoticed in the existing literature, to think that seemings are sui generis mental states. (shrink)

Modest Infinitism -/- Jeremy Fantl -/- Abstract -/- Infinitism, a theory of justification most recently developed and defended by Peter Klein, is the view that justification is a matter of having an infinite series of non-repeating reasons for a proposition. I argue that infinitism is preferable to other theories (like foundationalism) in that only infinitism can plausibly account for two important features of justification: 1) that it admits of degrees and 2) that a concept of complete justification makes sense.

According to one prominent critique of mainstream epistemology, discoveries about what it takes to know or justifiedly believe that p can’t provide the right kind of intellectual guidance. As Mark Webb puts it, “the kinds of principles that are developed in this tradition are of no use in helping people in their ordinary epistemic practices.” In this paper I defend a certain form of traditional epistemology against this “regulative” critique. Traditional epistemology can provide—and, indeed, can be essential for—intellectual guidance. The (...) reason is that, in many cases, how you should proceed intellectually depends on what you already know or justifiedly believe: how you should treat counterevidence to your beliefs, for example, can depend on whether those beliefs count as knowledge. Therefore, to get guidance on how to proceed intellectually, it will often be essential to be able to figure out what you know or justifiedly believe. And to do that it will often be helpful to try to figure out what it takes to count as knowledge or justified belief in the first place. To do this is precisely to engage in mainstream epistemology. (shrink)

Given the personalist's latitudinarian conception of rationality, what is progress toward wisdom? An answer is in C. I. Lewis's concept of the "congruence" of propositions, propositions so related that the antecedent probability of any one of them will be increased if the remainder can be assumed. This effect can be modelled in the probability calculus with due attention to the temporal sequencing of our learning of contingent propositions without ever becoming certain of them, as Jeffrey proposes. A diachronic bootstrapping effect (...) is obtained for Ockham's razor and premises of arguments about a god's existence. As a theory's probability rises with increased evidence, the probability of our earlier evidence rises too. (shrink)