Some externalists have recently argued that the unity of theoretical and practical reason implies that epistemic justification is factive. It is argued that arguments for the factivity of epistemic justification either (i) equate two actions that are in fact different, or (ii) make the unwarranted assumption that the by-relation transmits justification. The unity of reason does not imply that epistemic justification is factive.

Among the epistemological ideas commonly associated with the Descartes of the Meditations, at any rate, is a knowledge-infallibilism. Such an idea was seemingly a vital element in Descartes’s search for truth within that investigative setting: only a true belief gained infallibly could be knowledge, as the Meditations conceived of this. Contemporary epistemologists are less likely than Descartes was to advocate our ever seeking knowledge-infallibility, if only because most are doubtful as to its ever being available. Still, they would agree—in a (...) seemingly Cartesian spirit—that if infallible knowledge was available then it would be a stronger link to truth than fallible knowledge ever manages to be. But this paper argues that infallible knowledge lacks that supposed advantage over fallible knowledge. Indeed, we will see why we should move even further away from the epistemological model at the heart of the Meditations: we should adopt knowledge-minimalism, by conceiving of a belief’s being true as always sufficient for its being knowledge—this, for any belief. (shrink)

Taking his conceptual cue from Ernest Sosa, John Turri has offered a putative conceptual solution to the Gettier problem: Knowledge is cognitively adept belief, and no Gettiered belief is cognitively adept. At the core of such adeptness is a relation of manifestation. Yet to require that relation within knowing is to reach for what amounts to an infallibilist conception of knowledge. And this clashes with the spirit behind the fallibilism articulated by Gettier when stating his challenge. So, Turri’s form of (...) response is irrelevant to that challenge, which was intended to pose a conceptual problem within fallibilist conceptions of knowledge. (And that failure on Turri’s part needs to be highlighted to remind epistemologists of the need to assess Gettier cases by a fallibilist standard. Although that need was described earlier by Robert Almeder, apparently his advice is being overlooked. This paper develops it anew, in a more general form.). (shrink)

One of contemporary epistemology's more important conceptual challenges is that of understanding the nature of fallibility. Part of why this matters is that it would contribute to our understanding the natures of fallible warrant and fallible knowledge. This article evaluates two candidates – and describes a shared form of failing. Each is concealedly infallibilist. This failing is all-too-representative of the difficulty of doing justice to the notion of fallibility within the notions of fallible warrant and fallible knowledge. The article ends (...) with a proposal for an improved form of conception of fallible warrant and fallible knowledge. (shrink)

Could the standard interpretation of Gettier cases reflect a fundamental confusion? Indeed so. How well can epistemologists argue for the truth of that standard interpretation? Not so well. A methodological mistake is allowing them not to notice how they are simply (and inappropriately) being infallibilists when regarding Gettiered beliefs as failing to be knowledge. There is no Gettier problem that we have not merely created for ourselves by unwittingly being infallibilists about knowledge.

We may usefully distinguish between one’s having fallible knowledge and having a fallibilist stance on some of one’s knowledge. A fallibilist stance could include a concessive knowledge-attribution. But it might also include a questioning knowledge-attribution. Attending to the idea of a QKA leads to a distinction between what we may call closed knowledge that p and open knowledge that p. All of this moves us beyond Elgin’s classic tale of the epistemic capacities of Holmes and of Watson, and towards a (...) way of resolving Kripke’s puzzle about dogmatism and knowing. (shrink)

Any knowledge-fallibilist needs to solve the conceptual problem posed by concessive knowledge-attributions (such as ‘I know that p, but possibly not-p’). These seem to challenge the coherence of knowledge-fallibilism. This paper defuses that challenge via a gradualist refinement of what Fantl and McGrath (2009) call weak epistemic fallibilism.

This paper brings together two lines of thought. The first is the broadly contextualist idea that what is takes to satisfy central epistemic concepts such as the concept of knowledge or that of objectively justified belief may vary with the stakes faced in settings or contexts. Attributions of knowledge, for example, certify an agent to those who might treat them as a source on which to rely. Henderson and Horgan write of gate-keeping for an epistemic community. The second line of (...) thought turns on the idea that such central epistemic concepts are keyed to the conformity with epistemic norms for the fitting fixation of belief—and that the epistemic norms function in important ways as social norms by which folk regulate their epistemic lives as members of communities of interdependent agents. The two lines of thought are practically made for one another! I develop the connections and show how the results both vindicate and reinforce a form of contextualist epistemology, but refine and limit the range of contextual variation one should envision. (shrink)

This article argues for the view that statements about normative reasons are context-sensitive. Specifically, they are sensitive to a contextual parameter specifying a relevant person's or group's body of information. The argument for normative reasons contextualism starts from the context-sensitivity of the normative “ought” and the further premise that reasons must be aligned with oughts. It is incoherent, I maintain, to suppose that someone normatively ought to φ but has most reason not to φ. So given that oughts depend on (...) context, a parallel view about normative reasons is needed. It is shown that the resulting view solves notorious puzzles involving apparently conflicting but equally plausible claims about reasons. These puzzles arise especially in cases where agents have limited information or false beliefs. In these cases, we feel torn between reasons claims that take into account the limitations of the agent's perspective and apparently conflicting claims that are made from a more objective point of view. The contextualist account developed here accommodates both objectivist and subjectivist intuitions. It shows that all of the claims in question can be true, provided that they are relativized to different values of the relevant information parameter. Also, contextualism yields a fruitful approach to the debate about having reasons and the alleged failure of the so-called “factoring account”. (shrink)

There is, I shall assume, such a thing as moral evil (more on which below). My question is whether is also such a thing as non-moral evil, and in particular whether there are such things as aesthetic evil and epistemic evil. More exactly, my question is whether there is such a thing as moral evil but not such a thing as non-moral evil, in some sense that reveals something special about the moral, as opposed to such would-be non-moral domains as (...) the aesthetic and the epistemic. The philosophical issue at stake here is that of the nature of these different normative domains, and the nature and extent of their difference. (shrink)

I argue that desire sometimes amounts to knowledge, in the same sense that belief sometimes amounts to knowledge. The argument rests on two assumptions: that goodness is the correctness condition for desire and that knowledge is apt mental representation. Desire that amounts to knowledge—or ‘conative knowledge’—is illustrated by cases in which someone knows the goodness of something despite not believing that it is good.

Claims of the form 'I know P and it might be that not-P' tend to sound odd. One natural explanation of this oddity is that the conjuncts are semantically incompatible: in its core epistemic use, 'Might P' is true in a speaker's mouth only if the speaker does not know that not-P. In this paper I defend this view against an alternative proposal that has been advocated by Trent Dougherty and Patrick Rysiew and elaborated upon in Jeremy Fantl and Matthew (...) McGrath's recent Knowledge in an Uncertain World. (shrink)

Two of the most orthodox ideas in epistemology are fallibilism and purism. According to the fallibilist, one can know that a particular claim is true even though one’s justification for that claim is less than fully conclusive. According to the purist, knowledge does not depend on practical factors. Fallibilism and purism are widely assumed to be compatible; in fact, the combination of these views has been called the ‘ho-hum,’ obvious, traditional view of knowledge. But I will argue that fallibilism and (...) purism are incompatible. The best explanation for fallibilism requires one to reject purism, while maintaining purism should lead one to reject fallibilism. It follows that the orthodox view of knowledge is deeply mistaken. (shrink)

Knowledge ascriptions of the form ‘S knows that p’ are a central area of research in philosophy. But why do humans think and talk about knowledge? What are knowledge ascriptions for? This article surveys a variety of proposals about the role of knowledge ascriptions and attempts to provide a unified account of these seemingly distinct views.

If epistemic contextualism is correct, then knowledge attributions do not have stable truth-conditions across different contexts. John Hawthorne, Timothy Williamson, and Patrick Rysiew argue that this unstable picture of knowledge attributions undermines the role that knowledge reports play in storing, retrieving, and transmitting useful information. Contrary to this view, I argue that the truth-conditions of knowledge attributions are more stable than critics have claimed, and that contextualism is compatible with the role knowledge attributions play in storing, retrieving, and transmitting information (...) across contexts. In particular, I discuss a social dimension of ‘knowledge’ that limits contextual variability. This indicates a new way of characterizing contextualism. (shrink)

This paper is about the ‘threshold problem’ for knowledge, namely, how do we determine what fixes the level of justification required for knowledge in a non-arbitrary way? One popular strategy for solving this problem is impurism, which is the view that the required level of justification is partly fixed by one’s practical reasoning situation. However, this strategy has been the target of several recent objections. My goal is to propose a new version of impurism that solves the threshold problem without (...) succumbing to these criticisms. (shrink)

Why is it useful to talk and think about knowledge-how? Using Edward Craig’s discussion of the function of the concepts of knowledge and knowledge-how as a jumping off point, this paper argues that considering this question can offer us new angles on the debate about knowledge-how. We consider two candidate functions for the concept of knowledge-how: pooling capacities, and mutual reliance. Craig makes the case for pooling capacities, which connects knowledge-how to our need to pool practical capacities. I argue that (...) the evidence is much more equivocal. My suggested diagnosis is that the concept of knowledge-how plays both functions, meaning that the concept of knowledge-how is inconsistent, and that the debate about knowledge-how is at least partly a metalinguistic negotiation. In closing, I suggest a way to revise the philosophical concept of knowledge how. (shrink)

It is a widely shared intuition that there is a close connection between knowledge-how and intentional action. In this paper, I explore one aspect of this connection: the normative connection between intending to do something and knowing how to do it. I argue for a norm connecting knowledge-how and intending in a way that parallels the knowledge norms of assertion, belief, and practical reasoning, which I call the knowledge-how norm of Intention. I argue that this norm can appeal to support (...) from arguments which parallel those for other epistemic norms, that it can deal with a number of prima facie problem cases, and that alternative conditions in a norm on intention are implausible. (shrink)

The existence of experts raises a host of interesting questions in social, legal, and political epistemology. This article introduces and discusses interested experts – people who are experts on some topic, but who also have a distinct set of values and preferences regarding that topic, so that they are not well-described as “disinterested” parties. Interested experts raise several distinct problems in social, legal, and political epistemology. Some general questions arise: can we rationally or justifiably form beliefs relying on interested expert (...) testimony? Do they constitute knowledge? Under what circumstances? This article focuses on a specific question in legal epistemology: should interested experts be allowed to serve on juries and, if so, should it be permissible for lawyers to strike them from the pool of potential jurors? My hope is that concentrating on this question will provide insight into the more general questions concerning the epistemology of testimony with respect to interested experts, while also providing concrete recommendations for jury reform to improve the epistemic performance of juries. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with identifying and accounting for cases where the epistemic standard is raised inappropriately. The first section is concerned with identifying a notion of a variable epistemic standard that is neutral regarding a range of theoretical issues. The second section argues that the possibility the epistemic standard could be raised in some epistemic inappropriate way warrants further investigation. The third section outlines and provides a partial explanation of such a case: one in which a climate change denier (...) attempts to raise the epistemic standard in order to shut down inquiry. (shrink)

What is it that makes someone wise, or one person wiser than another? I argue that wisdom consists in knowledge of how to live well, and that this knowledge of how to live well is constituted by various further kinds of knowledge. One concern for this view is that knowledge is not needed for wisdom but rather some state short of knowledge, such as having rational or justified beliefs about various topics. Another concern is that the emphasis on knowing how (...) to live well fails to do justice to the ancient tradition of ‘theoretical wisdom’. I address both of these concerns in filling out the account. (shrink)

Anti-reductionism in the epistemology of testimony is the thesis that testimonial knowledge is not reducible to knowledge of some other familiar kind, such as inductive knowledge. Interest relativism about knowledge attributions is the thesis that the standards for knowledge attributions are relative to practical contexts. This paper argues that anti-reductionism implies interest relativism. The notion of “implies” here is a fairly strong one: anti-reductionism, together with plausible assumptions, entails interest relativism. A second thesis of the paper is that anti-reductionism in (...) the epistemology of testimony creates significant pressure toward attributor contextualism. Even if anti-reductionism does not strictly entail attributor contextualism, the most powerful motivations for anti-reductionism also motivate attributor contextualism over alternative positions. (shrink)

While recent discussions of contextualism have mostly focused on other issues, some influential early statements of the view emphasized the possibility of its providing an alternative to both coherentism and traditional versions of foundationalism. In this essay, I will pick up on this strand of contextualist thought, and argue that contextualist versions of foundationalism promise to solve some problems that their non-contextualist cousins cannot. In particular, I will argue that adopting contextualist versions of foundationalism can let us reconcile Bayesian accounts (...) of belief updating with a version of the holist claim that all beliefs are defeasible. (shrink)

Higher‐order evidence can make an agent doubt the reliability of her reasoning. When this happens, it seems rational for the agent to adopt a cautious attitude towards her original conclusion, even in cases where the higher‐order evidence is misleading and the agent's original reasons were actually perfectly good. One may think that recoiling to a cautious attitude in the face of misleading self‐doubt involves a failure to properly respond to one's reasons. My aim is to show that this is not (...) so. My proposal is that (misleading) higher‐order evidence can undermine the agent's possession of her first‐order reasons, constituting what I call a dispossessing defeater. After acquiring the higher‐order evidence, the agent is no longer in a position to rely competently on the relevant first‐order considerations as reasons for her original conclusion, so that such reasons stop being available to her (even if they remain as strong as in the absence of the higher‐order evidence). In this way, an agent with misleading higher‐order evidence can adopt a cautious stance towards her original conclusion, while properly responding to the set of reasons that she possesses–a set that is reduced due to the acquisition of higher‐order dispossessing defeaters. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that defeasible inferences are occasion-sensitive: the inferential connections of a given claim depend on features of the circumstances surrounding the occasion of inference. More specifically, it is an occasion-sensitive matter which possible defeaters have to be considered explicitly by the premises of an inference and which possible defeaters may remain unconsidered, without making the inference enthymematic. As a result, a largely unexplored form of occasion-sensitivity arises in inferentialist theories of content that appeal to defeasible inferences.

A recent flurry of philosophical research on microaggression suggests that there are various practical and moral reasons why microaggression may be objectionable, including that it can be offensive, cause epistemic harms, express demeaning messages about certain members of our society, and help to reproduce an oppressive social order. Yet little attention has been given to the question of whether microaggression is also epistemically objectionable. This paper aims to further our understanding of microaggression by appealing to recent work on moral encroachment—the (...) idea that knowledge is sensitive to the moral stakes of believing—to argue that microaggression can be irrational in a distinctively epistemic sense, as it can involve relying on an epistemically unwarranted belief. This view suggests that the notion of epistemic justification may come apart from the notion of epistemic blame. (shrink)

In this paper I explore the epistemic significance of practical reasons to inquire. I have in mind the range of practical reasons one might have to do such things as collect (additional) evidence, consult with various sources, employ certain methods or techniques, double-check one’s answer to a question, etc. After expanding the diet of examples in which subjects have such reasons, I appeal to features of these sorts of reason in order to question the motivation for pragmatic encroachment in epistemology. (...) Once we reject pragmatic encroachment, it can seem that we are forced to treat practical reasons to inquire as having no distinctly epistemic significance. This is not so; I conclude by sketching an alternative account of what the epistemic significance of such reasons might be. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this paper I argue that there are possible cases in which the demands of justice and the norms of epistemology cannot be simultaneously satisfied. I will bring out these normative clashes in terms of the now-familiar phenomenon of testimonial injustice (Fricker 2007). While the resulting argument is very much in the spirit of two other sorts of argument that have received sustained attention recently – arguments alleging epistemic partiality in friendship, and arguments that motivate the hypothesis of moral (...) encroachment on the epistemic – I suggest how the argument from epistemic injustice differs from, and is stronger than, both of those arguments. The implications of the present argument are several: we must (i) reconceive the role of identity-prejudice in testimonial injustice, (ii) modify the way we think about how justice and epistemology bear on testimonial transactions, and (iii) understand the mutuality of speech exchanges in ways that do not privilege any particular participant’s epistemic perspective. (shrink)

Subject-sensitive invariantism (SSI), the view that whether a subject knows depends on the practical stakes, has been charged with ‘knowledge laundering’: together with widely held knowledge-transmission principles, SSI appears to allow improper knowledge acquisition. I argue that this objection fails because it depends on faulty versions of transmission principles that would raise problems for any view. When transmission principles are properly understood, they are shown to be compatible with SSI because they do not give rise to improper knowledge acquisition. The (...) upshot is a better understanding of the nature and structure of these transmission principles. (shrink)

Knowledge norms of action are sometimes said to be motivated by the fact that they align with natural assessments of action in ordinary language. Competent and rational speakers normally use ‘knowledge’ and its cognates when they assess action. In contrast, competing accounts in terms of evidence, warrant or reliability do not straightforwardly align with ordinary language assessments of action. In response to this line of reasoning, I argue that a warrant account of action may explain the prominence of ‘knowledge’ in (...) epistemic assessments better than the knowledge account. If this explanation is successful, it undermines a central rationale for the ‘knowledge first’ program in epistemology. Moreover, the explanation provides an insight into the social functions of knowledge ascriptions as well as a methodological lesson about the relationship between folk epistemology and epistemological theorizing. (shrink)

What is the relationship between the epistemic norms of assertion and the epistemic norms of action/practical reasoning? Brown argues that the standards for practical reasoning and assertion are distinct (Brown 2012). In contrast, Montminy argues that practical reasoning and assertion must be governed by the same norm (Montminy 2012). Likewise, McKinnon has articulated an argument for a unified account from cases of isolated second-hand knowledge (McKinnon 2012). To clarify the issue, I articulate a distinction between Equivalence Commonality and Structural Commonality. (...) I then argue against the former by counterexamples that doubly dissociate the standards for assertion and action. Furthermore, I argue that such a double dissociation compromises knowledge accounts of both assertion and action/practical reasoning. To provide a more accurate diagnosis, I consider speech act theory and argue that principled differences between the norms of action and assertion compromise Equivalence Commonality. In contrast, a qualified version of Structural Commonality may be preserved. (shrink)

I discuss Lawlor’s Austinian account of knowledge ascriptions and argue that it is a brand of pragmatic encroachment. I then criticize the motivation for pragmatic encroachment theories that derives from assumptions about the functional role of knowledge ascriptions. I argue that this criticism also apply to contextualist followers of Craig. Finally, I suggest that the central lesson from reflection on the communicative functions of knowledge ascriptions is that they, upon reflection, motivate traditional invariantism.

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)

It has been argued recently that knowledge is the norm of practical reasoning. This norm can be formulated as a bi-conditional: it is appropriate to treat p as a reason for acting if and only if you know that p. Other proposals replace knowledge with warranted or justified belief. This paper gives counter-examples of both directions of any such bi-conditional. To the left-to-right direction: scientists can appropriately treat as reasons for action propositions of a theory they believe to be false (...) but good approximations to the truth for present purposes. Cases based on a variant of Pascal’s Wager and actions performed by a skeptic also illustrate the point. To the right-to-left direction: in certain circumstances, it can be unreasonable for a scientist to reason from propositions of a theory she knows to be true. (shrink)

Self-deception is typically considered epistemically irrational, for it involves holding certain doxastic attitudes against strong counter-evidence. Pragmatic encroachment about epistemic rationality says that whether it is epistemically rational to believe, withhold belief or disbelieve something can depend on perceived practical factors of one’s situation. In this paper I argue that some cases of self-deception satisfy what pragmatic encroachment considers sufficient conditions for epistemic rationality. As a result, we face the following dilemma: either we revise the received view about self-deception or (...) we deny pragmatic encroachment on epistemic rationality. I suggest that the dilemma can be solved if we pay close attention to the distinction between ideal and bounded rationality. I argue that the problematic cases fail to meet standards of ideal rationality but exemplify bounded rationality. The solution preserves pragmatic encroachment on bounded rationality, but denies it on ideal rationality. (shrink)

One challenge for moderate invariantists is to explain why we tend to deny knowledge to subjects in high stakes when the target propositions seem to be inappropriate premises for practical reasoning. According to an account suggested by Williamson, our intuitive judgments are erroneous due to an alleged failure to acknowledge the distinction between first-order and higher-order knowledge: the high-stakes subject lacks the latter but possesses the former. In this paper, I provide three objections to Williamson’s account: i) his account delivers (...) counterintuitive verdicts about what it is appropriate for a high-stakes subject to do; ii) the high-stakes subject doesn’t need iterated knowledge in order to be regarded as appropriately relying on the relevant proposition in practical reasoning; iii) Williamson’s account doesn’t provide a good explanation of why the high-stakes subject would be blameworthy if she were relying on the relevant proposition in her practical reasoning. (shrink)

Contextualism (the view that ‘knowledge’ and its variants are context-sensitive) has been supported in large part through appeal to intuitions about Keith DeRose’s Bank Cases. Recently, however, the contextualist construal of these cases has come under fire from Kent Bach and Jennifer Nagel who question whether the Bank Case subject’s confidence can remain constant in both low- and high-stakes cases. Having explained the Bank Cases and this challenge to them, I argue that DeRose has given a reasonable reply to this (...) initial challenge. However, I proceed to argue that the current stalemate can be broken. Seeking to extend the Bach-Nagel critique, I offer a novel interpretation of the Bank Cases according to which the subject’s evidence changes between low- and high-stakes cases. If I am correct, then, given the amount of support the Bank Cases have been thought to lend contextualism, the case for contextualism is seriously weakened. (shrink)

Subject-sensitive invariantism posits surprising connections between a person’s knowledge and features of her environment that are not paradigmatically epistemic features. But which features of a person’s environment have this distinctive connection to knowledge? Traditional defenses of subject-sensitive invariantism emphasize features that matter to the subject of the knowledge-attribution. Call this pragmatic encroachment. A more radical thesis usually goes ignored: knowledge is sensitive to moral facts, whether or not those moral facts matter to the subject. Call this moral encroachment. This paper (...) argues that, insofar as there are good arguments for pragmatic encroachment, there are also good arguments for moral encroachment. (shrink)

I introduce and defend an argument against the popular view that anything falling short of knowledge falls short in value. The nature of belief and cognitive psychological research on memory, I claim, support the argument. I also show that not even the most appealing mode of knowledge is distinctively valuable.

According to the view that there is moral encroachment in epistemology, whether a person has knowledge of p sometimes depends on moral considerations, including moral considerations that do not bear on the truth or likelihood of p. Defenders of moral encroachment face a central challenge: they must explain why the moral considerations they cite, unlike moral bribes for belief, are reasons of the right kind for belief (or withheld belief). This paper distinguishes between a moderate and a radical version of (...) moral encroachment. It shows that, while defenders of moderate moral encroachment are well-placed to meet the central challenge, defenders of radical moral encroachment are not. The problem for radical moral encroachment is that it cannot, without taking on unacceptable costs, forge the right sort of connection between the moral badness of a belief and that belief’s chance of being false. (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)

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)

This paper introduces a novel form of pragmatic encroachment: one that makes a difference to the status of emotion rather than the status of belief. I begin by isolating a distinctive standard in terms of which we can evaluate emotion – one sometimes called “subjective fittingness,” “epistemic justification,” or “warrant.” I then show how this standard for emotion could face a kind of pragmatic encroachment importantly similar to the more familiar encroachment on epistemic standards for belief. Encroachment on warranted emotion (...) is a striking proposal that deserves attention. In fact, there are good reasons to think that encroachment on warranted emotion deserves to be considered the default view for those who already accept pragmatic encroachment on the epistemic status of belief. I support this parity claim by arguing for a principle that establishes a limited coordination between the conditions that warrant emotion and the conditions that justify belief. (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)

I trace the relationship between the view that knowledge is stakes sensitive and Laurie Paul’s account of the epistemology of transformative experience. The view that knowledge is stakes sensitive comes in different flavours: one can go for subjective or objective conceptions of stakes, where subjective views of stakes take stakes to be a function of an agent’s non-factive mental states, and objective views of stakes do not. I argue that there is a tension between subjective accounts of stakes sensitivity and (...) Paul’s epistemology of transformative experience. (shrink)

Sometimes it is practically beneficial to believe what is epistemically unwarranted. Philosophers have taken these cases to raise the question are there practical reasons for belief? Evidentialists argue that there cannot be any such reasons. Putative practical reasons for belief are not reasons for belief, but reasons to manage our beliefs in a particular way. Pragmatists are not convinced. They accept that some reasons for belief are practical. The debate, it is widely thought, is at an impasse. But this debate (...) fails to address what is puzzling and interesting about the cases. By focusing on reasons for belief, the debate completely overlooks the role of action in relation to belief. We should be talking about the reasons for actions that shape our beliefs, which I will call belief management. I argue for three related theses: the interesting cases that motivate the debate are about belief management; Evidentialism is irrelevant to belief management; agents have practical reasons to manage their beliefs with the aim of forming true beliefs. These reasons are categorical in nature and result in the tension of conflict cases. (shrink)