In this paper I present a criticism of Sarah Moss‘ recent proposal to use scoring rules as a means of reaching epistemic compromise in disagreements between epistemic peers that have encountered conflict. The problem I have with Moss‘ proposal is twofold. Firstly, it appears to involve a double counting of epistemic value. Secondly, it isn‘t clear whether the notion of epistemic value that Moss appeals to actually involves the type of value that would be acceptable and unproblematic to regard as (...) epistemic. (shrink)

The “ ethics of belief” refers to a cluster of questions at the intersection of epistemology, philosophy of mind, psychology, and ethics. The central question in the debate is whether there are norms of some sort governing our habits of belief formation, belief maintenance, and belief relinquishment. Is it ever or always morally wrong to hold a belief on insufficient evidence? Is it ever or always morally right to believe on the basis of sufficient evidence, or to withhold belief in (...) the perceived absence of it? Is it ever or always obligatory to seek out all available epistemic evidence for a belief? Are there some ways of obtaining evidence that are themselves immoral or imprudent? -/-. (shrink)

Epistemic invariantism, or invariantism for short, is the position that the proposition expressed by knowledge sentences does not vary with the epistemic standard of the context in which these sentences can be used. At least one of the major challenges for invariantism is to explain our intuitions about scenarios such as the so-called bank cases. These cases elicit intuitions to the effect that the truth-value of knowledge sentences varies with the epistemic standard of the context in which these sentences can (...) be used. In this paper, I will defend invariantism against this challenge by advocating the following, somewhat deflationary account of the bank case intuitions: Readers of the bank cases assign different truth-values to the knowledge claims in the bank cases because they interpret these scenarios such that the epistemic position of the subject in question differs between the high and the low standards case. To substantiate this account, I will argue, first, that the bank cases are underspecified even with respect to features that should uncontroversially be relevant for the epistemic position of the subject in question. Second, I will argue that readers of the bank cases will fill in these features differently in the low and the high standards case. In particular, I will argue that there is a variety of reasons to think that the fact that an error-possibility is mentioned in the high standards case will lead readers to assume that this error-possibility is supposed to be likely in the high standards case. (shrink)

According to a popular objection against epistemic contextualism, contextualists who endorse the factivity of knowledge, the principle of epistemic closure and the knowledge norm of assertion cannot coherently defend their theory without abandoning their response to skepticism. After examining and criticizing three responses to this objection, we offer our own solution. First, we question the assumption that contextualists ought to be interpreted asassertingthe content of their theory. Second, we argue that contextualists need not hold that high epistemic standards govern contexts (...) in which they defend their theory. (shrink)

Nearly all philosophers agree that only true things can be known. But does this principle reflect actual patterns of ordinary usage? Several examples in ordinary language seem to show that ‘know’ is literally used non-factively. By contrast, this paper reports five experiments utilizing explicit paraphrasing tasks, which suggest that non-factive uses are actually not literal. Instead, they are better explained by a phenomenon known as protagonist projection. It is argued that armchair philosophical orthodoxy regarding the truth requirement for knowledge withstands (...) current empirical scrutiny. (shrink)

Conciliatory views of peer disagreement hold that when an agent encounters peer disagreement she should conciliate by adjusting her doxastic attitude towards that of her peer. In this paper I distinguish different ways conciliation can be understood and argue that the way conciliationism is typically understood violates the principle of commutativity of evidence. Commutativity of evidence holds that the order in which evidence is acquired should not influence what it is reasonable to believe based on that evidence. I argue that (...) when an agent encounters more than one peer, and applies the process of conciliation serially, the order she encounters the peers influences the resulting credence. I argue this is a problem for conciliatory views of disagreement, and suggest some responses available to advocates of conciliation. (shrink)