The cross-cultural differences in epistemic intuitions reported by Weinberg, Nichols and Stich (2001; hereafter: WNS) laid the ground for the negative program of experimental philosophy. However, most of WNS’s findings were not corroborated in further studies. The exception here is the study concerning purported differences between Westerners and Indians in knowledge ascriptions concerning the Zebra Case, which was never properly replicated. Our study replicates the above-mentioned experiment on a considerably larger sample of Westerners (n = 211) and Indians (n = (...) 204). The analysis found a significant difference between the ethnic groups in question in the predicted direction: Indians were more likely to attribute knowledge in the Zebra Case than Westerners. In this paper, we offer an explanation of our result that takes into account the fact that replications of WNS’s other experiments did not find any cross-cultural differences. We argue that the Zebra Case is unique among the vignettes tested by WNS since it should not be regarded as a Gettier case but rather as a scenario exhibiting skeptical pressure concerning the reliability of sense-perception. We argue that skepticism towards perception as a means of gaining knowledge is a trope that is deeply rooted in Western epistemology but is very much absent from Classical Indian philosophical inquiry. This line of reasoning is based on a thorough examination of the skeptical scenarios discussed by philosophers of the Indian Nyaya tradition and their adversaries. (shrink)

In the paper I introduce and discuss the interpretative procedure; a stage of thought experiments’ investigation in which it is determined which states of affairs are genuine realizations of the described story. I show how incorporating the interpretative procedure to the reconstruction a certain kind of thought experiments, i.e. the method of cases, provides a solution to the so-called problem of deviant realizations. According to this problem it is hard to formulate the logical structure of the method of cases that (...) excludes far-fetched interpretations of a particular thought experiment’s description that are inconsistent with the expected conclusion of the experiment. As I show, if we agree that the interpretative procedure precedes the act of establishing whether the thing which is at issue (e.g., knowledge) appears within a certain state of affairs, deviant realizations could be ruled out, since within interpretative procedure we establish the set of states of affairs that are compatible with the intentions of the author of the thought experiment. In the paper I provide a general explanation of how this task could be fulfilled by semantic intuitions and discuss their contextual dependence. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to determine the role of intuitions in Gettier cases. Critics of the Method of Cases argue that arguments developed within this method contains a premise that is justified by its intuitiveness; they also argue that intuitions are unreliable source of evidence. By contrast, Max Deutsch argues that this critique is unsound since intuitions do not serve as evidence for premises. In Gettier cases, an intuitive premise is justified by other arguments called G-Grounds. I propose (...) a different view on the role of intuition in Gettier cases. I introduce a distinction between concept-revision arguments and concept-application arguments. On the basis of this distinction and Craig’s and Spicer’s distinction between intuitions of intension and intuitions of extension, I show that (1) intuitions of extension do not serve as evidence for any G-Grounds; (2) intuitions of intension do play an evidential role for all G-Grounds, but (3) in the case of G-Grounds which are used as concept-application arguments, they are a poor source of evidence, while (4) in the case of G-Grounds used as concept-revision arguments, they could be a reliable source of evidence if they are intuitions of intension of a speaker immersed in philosophical discourse. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop a serious new dilemma involving necessary truths for safety-based theories of knowledge, a dilemma that I argue safety theorists cannot resolve or avoid by relativizing safety to either the subject’s basis or method of belief formation in close worlds or to a set of related or sufficiently similar propositions. I develop this dilemma primarily in conversation with Duncan Pritchard’s well-known, oft-modeled safety-based theories of knowledge. I show that Pritchard’s well-regarded anti-luck virtue theory of knowledge and (...) his recently proposed (allegedly superior) anti-risk virtue theory of knowledge clearly succumb to the dilemma, and so they are inadequate as they stand. If Pritchard’s safety-based theories of knowledge are shown to be inadequate by the dilemma that is developed in this paper, then a number of other safety-based theories of knowledge (e.g., Beddor and Pavese’s, Luper’s, Dutant’s, early Pritchard’s, and others) look to be in jeopardy in this connection as well. (shrink)

This paper has two aims. The first is critical: I identify a set of normative desiderata for accounts of justified belief and I argue that prominent knowledge first views have difficulties meeting them. Second, I argue that my preferred account, knowledge first functionalism, is preferable to its extant competitors on normative grounds. This account takes epistemically justified belief to be belief generated by properly functioning cognitive processes that have generating knowledge as their epistemic function.

In this paper, I’ll survey a number of closure principles of epistemic justification and find them all wanting. However, it’ll be my contention that there’s a novel closure principle of epistemic justification that has the virtues of its close cousin closure principles, without their vices. This closure principle of epistemic justification can be happily thought of as a multi-premise closure principle and it cannot be used in Cartesian skeptical arguments that employ a closure principle of epistemic justification. In this way, (...) then, it represents marked improvement over other contemporary closure principles of epistemic justification that require both sacrificing multi-premise closure and forcing anti-Cartesian skeptics who reject the closure principle employed in certain Cartesian skeptical arguments to cast aside justification closure. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper discusses the permissibility of exclusively relying on a procedural objectivity model for news reporting, from the perspective of the normativity of informative speech acts. It is argued that, with the exception of urgency situations, the paradigmatic application of procedural objectivity is in breach of the relevant norms.

I set out the standard view about alleged examples of failure of transmission of warrant, respond to two cases for the view, and argue that the view is false. The first argument for the view neglects the distinction between believing a proposition on the basis of a justification and merely having a justification to believe a proposition. The second argument for the view neglects the position that one's justification for believing a conclusion can be one's premise for the conclusion, rather (...) than simply one's justification for the premise. Finally, the view is false since it is inconsistent with the closure of knowledge as closure is properly understood. (shrink)

[Significantly updated in Chapter 7 of Awareness and the Substructure of Knowledge] Many have found it plausible that knowledge is a constitutively normative state, i.e. a state that is grounded in the possession of reasons. Many have also found it plausible that certain cases of proprioceptive knowledge, memorial knowledge, and self-evident knowledge are cases of knowledge that are not grounded in the possession of reasons. I refer to these as cases of basic knowledge. The existence of basic knowledge forms a (...) primary objection to the idea that knowledge is a constitutively normative state. In what follows I offer a way through the apparent dilemma of having to choose between either basic knowledge or the normativity of knowledge. The solution involves homing in on a state of awareness (≈non-accidental true representation) that is distinct from knowledge and which in turn grounds the normativity of knowledge in a way that is fully consistent with the existence of basic knowledge. An upshot of this is that externalist theories of knowledge turn out to be fully compatible with the thesis that knowledgeable beliefs are always beliefs that are justified by the reasons one possesses. (shrink)

Virtue epistemology is one of the most popular approaches to epistemological research in Anglophone philosophy. However, it is little known in Ukraine. The article aims to familiarize its readers with the making of virtue epistemology, presenting parallels with virtue ethics. The au- thor makes an attempt to determine the place that virtue epistemology holds in modern philo- sophical discourse. The article provides a brief overview of the main research topics, the biggest controversies within the field, and the systematisation of classification (...) types within the field. The author considers responsibilist and reliabilist approaches to the definition of intellectual virtue. Furthermore, she demonstrates the importance of the Gettier problem for the formation and development of virtue epistemology theories. The article serves as a preliminary sketch of the current state of the Anglophone epistemo- logical discussion presenting research in the field of virtue epistemology from its appearance to the present day. The overview nature of the article is used to test proposed translations of modern epistemological terminology in Ukrainian. The primary goal of the article is to introduce virtue epistemology to the Ukrainian philosophical discourse. (shrink)

While logical theories of information attitudes, such as knowledge, certainty and belief, have flourished in the past two decades, formalization of other facets of rational behavior have lagged behind significantly. One intriguing line of research concerns the concept of intention. I will discuss one approach to tackling the notion within a logical framework, based on a database perspective.

This paper critically explores Timothy Williamson’s view of evidence, and it does so in light of the problem of epistemic luck. Williamson’s view of evidence is, of course, a crucially important aspect of his novel and influential “knowledge-first” epistemological project. Notoriously, one crucial thesis of this project is that one’s evidence is equivalent to what one knows. This has come to be known as the E = K thesis. This paper specifically addresses Williamson’s knowledge-first epistemology and the E = K (...) thesis in the context of anti-luck epistemology and the idea that knowledge is factive. Williamson’s views on these matters are worth investigating in some detail because he subscribes to a well-worked out anti-luck view of knowledge that incorporates what is perhaps the most common anti-luck condition. But this paper is also of more general importance because the critique of Williamson’s views on these matters reveals some important things about the nature of evidence and evidence is one of the most fundamental concepts in epistemology. (shrink)

Philosophical progress is one of the most controversial topics in metaphilosophy. It has been widely debated whether philosophy makes any progress in history. This paper revisits the concept of philosophical progress. It first identifies two criteria of an ideal concept of philosophical progress. It then argues that our accounts of philosophical progress fail to provide such an ideal concept. Finally, it argues that not only do we not have a good concept of philosophical progress, we also do not need a (...) concept of philosophical progress in order to arrive at a good understanding of the history of philosophy. (shrink)

In saying that it was up to someone whether or not she acted as she did, we are attributing a distinctive sort of power to her. Understanding such power attributions is of broad importance for contemporary discussions of free will. Yet the ‘is up to…whether’ locution and its cognates have largely escaped close examination. This article aims to elucidate one of its unnoticed features, namely that such power attributions introduce intensional contexts, something that is easily overlooked because the sentences that (...) express these attributions admit of both intensional and extensional readings. I argue that this kind of power attribution should inform discussions of Frankfurt’s counterexample strategy, in that an alternative possibility should not be considered robust unless it’s up to the agent whether or not it’s realized. I argue, as well, that understanding robust alternatives in this way sheds light on the relationship between the Frankfurt literature and the Luck Objection to libertarianism. (shrink)

Recently Timothy Williamson (2007) has argued that characterizations of the standard (i.e. intuition-based) philosophical practice of philosophical analysis are misguided because of the erroneous manner in which this practice has been understood. In doing so he implies that experimental critiques of the reliability of intuition are based on this misunderstanding of philosophical methodology and so have little or no bearing on actual philosophical practice or results. His main point is that the orthodox understanding of philosophical methodology is incorrect in that (...) it treats philosophical thought experiments in such a way that they can be “filled in” in various ways that undermines their use as counter-examples and that intuition plays no substantial role in philosophical practice when we properly understand that methodology as a result of the possibility of such filling in. In this paper Williamson’s claim that philosophical thought experiments cases can be legitimately filled in this way will be challenged and it will be shown that the experimental critique of the intuition-based methods involved a serious issue. (shrink)

This is an editorial introduction to a special issue of Acta Analytica on epistemic luck.

The paper argues that knowledge is not closed under logical inference. The argument proceeds from the openness of evidential support and the dependence of empirical knowledge on evidence, to the conclusion that knowledge is open. Without attempting to provide a full-fledged theory of evidence, we show that on the modest assumption that evidence cannot support both a proposition and its negation, or, alternatively, that information that reduces the probability of a proposition cannot constitute evidence for its truth, the relation of (...) evidential support is not closed under known entailment. Therefore the evidence-for relation is deductively open regardless of whether evidence is probabilistic or not. Given even a weak dependence of empirical knowledge on evidence, we argue that empirical knowledge is also open. On this basis, we also respond to the strongest argument in support of knowledge closure. Finally, we present a number of significant benefits of our position, namely, offering a unified explanation for a range of epistemological puzzles. (shrink)

Harman and Lewis credit Kripke with having formulated a puzzle that seems to show that knowledge entails dogmatism. The puzzle is widely regarded as having been solved. In this paper we argue that this standard solution, in its various versions, addresses only a limited aspect of the puzzle and holds no promise of fully resolving it. Analyzing this failure and the proper rendering of the puzzle, it is suggested that it poses a significant challenge for the defense of epistemic closure.

The ambivalence of human-animal-relationships culminates in our eating habits; most people disapprove of factory farming, but most animal products that are consumed come from factory farming. While psychology and sociology offer several theoretical explanations for this phenomenon our study presents an experimental approach: an attempt to challenge people’s attitude by confronting them with the animals’ perspective of the consumption process. We confronted our participants with a fictional scenario that could result in them being turned into an animal. In the scenario, (...) a wicked fairy forces them to choose a ticket. Depending on their choice of ticket they have equal chances of becoming a human being with a certain consumption behaviour (meat eater, organic eater, vegetarian, vegan) or, correspondingly, becoming a certain kind of animal (factory farmed meat animal, organically farmed meat animal, animal for dairy/egg production, free living animal). Our results indicate a strong discrepancy between people’s actual consumption habits (mostly regular meat eaters) and their choices in the experiment (strong preferences for the organic or vegan life style). The data reveal a broad spectrum of explanations for people’s decisions in the experiment. We investigated the influence of four different factors on the participant’s choices in addition to reasons they gave as open-ended answers. Correspondingly, different coping strategies to overcome the tension (cognitive dissonance) between real-life consumption choices and attitudes towards nonhuman animals could be detected. Furthermore, many participants indicated a lack of knowledge concerning living conditions in farming but also concerning capacities and properties of nonhuman animals. (shrink)

The New Demon World Objection claims that reliabilist accounts of justification are mistaken because there are justified empirical beliefs at demon worlds— worlds at which the subjects are systematically deceived by a Cartesian demon. In this paper, I defend strongly verific (but not necessarily reliabilist) accounts of justification by claiming that there are two ways to construct a theory of justification: by analyzing our ordinary concept of justification or by taking justification to be a theoretic term defined by its role (...) in the theory of knowledge. The former route is not promising because of the splintered nature of our ordinary concept of justification—or perhaps because there is no single such concept. On the other hand, if justification is defined by the role it plays in the theory of knowledge, then there is good reason to think that justification must be strongly truth-conductive since the term was introduced by Edmund Gettier to play the primary role in converting true belief into knowledge. And if that is right, then there will be no justified empirical belief at demon worlds. The real lesson of the demon world is then turned on its head: justification does not supervene on what one shares with one’s deceived doppelganger. (shrink)

The litmus test for the development of a metarepresentational Theory of Mind is the false belief task in which children have to represent how another agent misrepresents the world. Children typically start mastering this task around age four. Recently, however, a puzzling finding has emerged: Once children master the FB task, they begin to fail true belief control tasks. Pragmatic accounts assume that the TB task is pragmatically confusing because it poses a trivial academic test question about a rational agent’s (...) perspective; and we do not normally engage in such discourse about subjective mental perspectives unless there is at least the possibility of error or deviance. The lack of such an obvious possibility in the TB task implicates that there might be some hidden perspective difference and thus makes the task confusing. In the present study, we test the pragmatic account by administering to 3- to 6-year-olds TB and FB tasks and structurally analogous true and false sign tasks. The belief and sign tasks are matched in terms of representational and metarepresentational complexity; the crucial difference is that TS tasks do not implicate an alternative non-mental perspective and should thus be less pragmatically confusing than TB tasks. The results show parallel and correlated development in FB and FS tasks, replicate the puzzling performance pattern in TB tasks, but show no trace of this in TS tasks. Taken together, these results speak in favor of the pragmatic performance account. (shrink)

A growing number of authors defend putative examples of knowledge from falsehood (KFF), inferential knowledge based in a critical or essential way on false premises, and they argue that KFF has important implications for many areas of epistemology (whether evidence can be false, the Gettier debate, defeasibility theories of knowledge, etc.). I argue, however, that there is no KFF, because in any supposed example either the falsehood does not contribute to the knowledge or the subject lacks knowledge. In particular, I (...) show that if the subject actually has knowledge in putative KFF cases, then there is always a veridical evidential path meeting the basing conditions that accounts for her knowledge; if there is no such path, then the subject is in a type of Gettier case. All the recent arguments that rely on KFF are therefore based on a mistake. (shrink)

This paper starts with an examination of the major problems of foundation-oriented epistemology in Sect. 2. Then, in Sects. 3–4, it is argued that the externalistic re-definition of knowledge deprives this concept from useful applications to human’s epistemic practice. From the viewpoint of cultural evolution, the condition of justification is the most important ingredient of knowledge. An alternative foundation-oriented conception of knowledge called third-person internalism is developed in Sect. 2 and Sect. 5. It combines insights of externalism with the requirement (...) of second-order justification. The application of third-person internalism to contextualistic positions leads to an important constraint on contextualism (Sect. 6). The final section (Sect. 7) sketches new prospects for a foundation-oriented epistemology which are based on epistemic optimality arguments. (shrink)

Reasons, it is often said, are king in contemporary normative theory. Some philosophers say not only that the vocabulary of reasons is useful, but that reasons play a fundamental explanatory role in normative theory—that many, most, or even all, other normative facts are grounded in facts about reasons. Even if reasons fundamentalism, the strongest version of this view, has only been wholeheartedly endorsed by a few philosophers, it has a kind of prominence in contemporary normative theory that suits it to (...) be described as orthodoxy by its critics. It is the purpose of this paper to make progress toward understanding what appeal Reasons Fundamentalism should have, and whether that appeal is deserved. I will do so by exploring and comparing two central motivations for Reasons Fundamentalism. (shrink)

This essay proposes an alternative way of studying video games: as thought experiments akin to the narrative thought experiments that are frequently used in philosophy. This perspective incorporates insights from the narratological and ludological perspectives in game studies and highlights the philosophical significance of games. Video game thought experiments are similar to narrative thought experiments in many respects and can perform the same functions. They also have distinctive advantages over narrative thought experiments, as they situate counterfactuals in more complex, developed (...) contexts and present them to players who are participants in game worlds, rather than simply observers. (shrink)

The so-called expertise defence against sceptical challenges from experimental philosophy has recently come under attack: there are several studies claiming to have found direct evidence that philosophers’ judgments in thought experiments are susceptible to erroneous effects. In this paper, we distinguish between the customary ‘immune experts’ version of the expertise defence and an ‘informed experts’ version. On the informed expertise defence, we argue, philosophers’ judgments in thought experiments could be preferable to those by the folk even if it were true (...) that philosophers’ judgments are no less immune to confounders than judgments by the folk are. We present results from an experimental study comparing philosophers and non-philosophers (n = 484), which support this version of the expertise defence. (shrink)

Metaphysical semantics is supposed to connect the nonfundamental to the fundamental in a distinctively “linguistic” way, explaining how nonfundamental truths can be grounded in fundamental facts , and so inducing a radically eliminative vision of the nonfundamental as mere talk. I wonder how the story goes when a single nonfundamental truth can be grounded in many different fundamental facts. For instance, the truth that Moore has hands can presumably be grounded in many different distributions of fields, arrangements of particles, vibrations (...) of strings, or whatnot. I am asking how metaphysical semantics can accommodate this sort of multiple realizability. (shrink)

Argues that there are two distinct senses in which knowledge is incompatible with accidental truth - each of which can be traced to a distinct role played by everyday knowledge attributions.

Recent semantic research has made increasing use of a principle, Maximize Presupposition, which requires that under certain circumstances the strongest possible presupposition be marked. This principle is generally taken to be irreducible to standard Gricean reasoning because the forms that are in competition have the same assertive content. We suggest, however, that Maximize Presupposition might be reducible to the theory of scalar implicatures. (i)First, we consider a special case: the speaker utters a sentence with a presupposition p which is not (...) initially taken for granted by the addressee, but the latter takes the speaker to be an authority on the matter. Signaling the presupposition provides new information to the addressee; but it also follows from the logic of presupposition qua common belief that the presupposition is thereby satisfied (Stalnaker, Ling Philos 25(5–6):701–721, 2002). (ii) Second, we generalize this solution to other cases. We assume that even when p is common belief, there is a very small chance that the addressee might forget it (‘Fallibility’); in such cases, marking a presupposition will turn out to generate new information by re-establishing part of the original context. We also adopt from Raj Singh (Nat Lang Semantics 19(2):149–168, 2011) the hypothesis that presupposition maximization is computed relative to local contexts—and we assume that these too are subject to Fallibility; this accounts for cases in which the information that justifies the presupposition is linguistically provided. (iii) Finally, we suggest that our assumptions have benefits in the domain of implicatures: they make it possible to reinterpret Magri’s ‘blind’ (i.e. context-insensitive) implicatures as context-sensitive implicatures which just happen to be misleading. (shrink)

In Republic V, Plato distinguishes two different cognitive powers, knowledge and belief, which operate differently on different types of object. I argue that in Republic VI Plato modifies this account, and claims that there is a single cognitive power, which under different circumstances behaves either as knowledge or as belief. I show that the circumstances which turn true belief into knowledge are the provision of an individuation account of the object of belief, which reveals the ontological status and the nature (...) of the object. Plato explores many alternative candidates of individuation accounts of objects of true belief, which he discards. I conclude with a Platonic sketch of a teleological account of individuation which would satisfy his requirements of turning true belief into knowledge. (shrink)

Two recent critics of Mill's qualitative hedonism, Michael Hauskeller and Kristin Schaupp, argue that Mill's distinction between higher and lower pleasures was largely unsuccessful. They allege that Mill failed to demonstrate that some pleasures are lexically preferred to others, and indeed that this can be shown false by the fact that most people would not renounce supposedly lower pleasures, such as chocolate or sex, even for greater amounts of higher pleasures, such as reading or opera. I respond that many of (...) these criticisms rest on uncharitable assumptions or interpretations of Mill's position. We need not suppose that Mill was even trying to do the things he supposedly failed to do. However, considering these objections may lead us to a more plausible interpretation of Mill's views, according to which the quality of pleasures, along with their quantity, contributes towards happiness. There is no need to suppose that ‘higher pleasures’ must be lexically preferred to lower ones, or even to be dogmatic about which pleasures are higher. (shrink)

One of the most controversial methods of philosophy is the use of thought experiments. If, on the one hand, philosophers usually agree that a hypothetical reasoning or an imaginative example can refute a previously well-supported theory or hypothesis, on the other there is a strong skepticism about the use of thought experiments in Philosophy. The skepticism is reinforced by the fact that scientific thought experiments are profoundly influenced by the expectation that the outcome of a thought experiment may reflect the (...) outcome of an actual experiment, whereas in Philosophy the use of this tool does not necessarily reflects what happens in the world. In other words, scientific thought experiments seem to have well delimited criteria, while philosophical thought experiments do not. In this work I will argue in favor of the thesis that not all thought experiments are disguised arguments, but that nevertheless they should not be considered as lacking in criteria of correction. (shrink)

The philosophical method of conceptual analysis has been criticised on the grounds that empirical psychological research has cast severe doubt on whether concepts exist in the form traditionally assumed, and that conceptual analysis therefore is doomed. This objection may be termed the Charge from Psychology. After a brief characterisation of conceptual analysis, I discuss the Charge from Psychology and argue that it is misdirected.

This work has as its main goal to discuss two different epistemic proposals, both under the reliabilist handle. The first one, developed by Alvin Goldman, has as its central goal to offer an adequate characterization of the justificational element present in the standard account of knowledge. Goldman's proposal has the initial challenge of properly explaining Gettier's demand presented some years earlier, but also to correct some more central problems that affect his own causal theory of knowledge. However, the externalist proposal (...) within Goldman's reliabilism faced some serious attacks directed to its notion of justification. Three of these attacks became well known in the recent literature: the generality problem, the meta-incoherence problem and the new evil genius problem. Each one in its own way has established challenges to the his reliabilist account. The second reliabilist theory we will discuss consists in a reformulation of Goldman's account, defended mainly by Ernest Sosa in a series of very important works in contemporary epistemology. In these works, Sosa was able to insert the notion of intellectual virtues in the epistemological debate, bringing to the center of the externalist debate an idea of a responsible belief formation, and at the same time trying to give a proper answer to the more central challenges faced by original reliabilism. In the first part of the paper I present the first of these theories, and after that I offer a treatment of Sosa's reformulation of reliabilism and a defense of this proposal as a more adequate theory to deal with some basic demands of a proper theory of justification. (shrink)

O tema deste artigo é o papel do autoconhecimento na vida cognitiva de um sujeito que mereça ser considerado possuidor de conhecimento. A ideia central é que é difícil alcançar o conhecimento de si, pois a introspecção é uma fonte de crenças pouco confiável, e a razão pode ser a fonte de formas extremas de autoengano. Apesar disso, a nossa situação é tal que um agente epistêmico responsável deve buscar constantemente uma melhor compreensão dos seus próprios traços de caráter e (...) crenças, sob o risco de pôr em perigo o seu status de sujeito possuidor de conhecimento. (shrink)

Doxastic distinctions help us define the basis and biases in belief–formation. Empirical and extra-empirical justification play an important role in determining doxastic distinctions. When we distinguish the different types of beliefs, we understand that there are basically three kinds of beliefs, namely, verifiable, falsifiable, and unfalsifiable beliefs. Empirical justification provides the basis for establishing the veracity of verifiable and falsifiable beliefs. Extra-empirical justification provides the basis for establishing the veracity of unfalsifiable or irrefutable beliefs. Verifiable or falsifiable beliefs that are (...) reductive require the mandatory acceptance of their truth. However, unfalsifiable beliefs which are non-reductive require the volitional acceptance of their truth. Because there is both empirical and extra-empirical justification in belief-formation, we can accept beliefs with or without, against, or regardless of empirical evidence. Unfalsifiable beliefs do not mean that these beliefs are unjustifiable; it simply means that these beliefs are not empirically justifiable. Understanding the basis and biases of belief-formation is to be aware of how we come to know what we believe. As empirical basis allows us to hold beliefs based on either the principle of confirmation or falsification. Extra-empirical basis, namely phenomenological conjectures, allows us to hold beliefs founded on existential assertions. The intent of this paper is to present doxastic distinctions to help us understand the basis and biases associated with belief-formation. As long as epistemic claims are accepted, and their content is considered believable, the means used to arrive at those beliefs must also be respected. Every doxastic distinction not only provides the basis for belief-formation but also defines the role and limits of both empirical and extra-empirical justification in belief-formation. When we recognize the different types and different ways of justifying beliefs: we understand why we can accept beliefs with or without evidence; against or regardless of empirical justification, and know when to define beliefs as Plato argued as justified true belief and when to define beliefs as justified belief-decisions. Keywords: beliefs, justified true belief; justified belief-decisions, empirical and extra-empirical. (shrink)

RESUMO Ernest Sosa é um dos mais importantes filósofos da contemporaneidade. Em plena atividade há mais de cinco décadas, sua obra toma agora a forma de uma teoria da normatividade télica, com a qual Sosa pretende coroar sua procura por uma "knowledgefriendly epistemology". Pretendemos mostrar que esta nova forma teórica instala-se bem no conjunto de sua reflexão epistemológica, procurando Sosa agora, de modo ainda mais preciso, dar resposta, por exemplo, às questões decorrentes do problema de Gettier, da intencionalidade e das (...) modalidades epistêmicas. Entre as novidades de sua atual formulação, analisaremos de modo mais específico neste texto alguns problemas colocados pelo exemplo do arqueiro, ao transformar-se este em um modelo teórico ilustrativo da noção de normatividade télica, bem como alguns aspectos da singular taxonomia do conhecimento feita por Sosa. ABSTRACT Ernest Sosa is one of the most outstanding philosophers in our contemporaneity. Working intensively for over five decades, his work now takes the form of a theory of telic normativity with which he intends to crown his search for a "knowledge friendly epistemology". We intend to show that this new theoretical form is well settled in the whole of his epistemological reflection, being Sosa interested now in providing, more precisely, an answer, for instance, to questions derived from Gettier’s problem, from intentionality, and from epistemic modalities. Among the innovations of his present formulation, we shall analyze, more specifically in this text, some problems expressed through the archer’s example, when it turns to be an illustrative theoretical model of the telic normative notion, as well as some aspects of Sosa’s singular taxonomy of knowledge. (shrink)

Pierre Saint-Germier | : Nous discutons la thèse, acceptée par de nombreux théoriciens des intuitions rationnelles, selon laquelle ces dernières s’accompagnent d’une apparence de nécessité. L’existence d’intuitions rationnelles ayant pour objet des propositions contingentes jette un doute sur l’adéquation de cette thèse. Le problème peut trouver une solution dans le cadre d’une théorie faillibiliste des intuitions rationnelles, pourvu que l’on admette des illusions modales inéliminables. En nous appuyant sur une explication bidimensionnelle de l’a priori contingent, nous défendons une solution différente (...) consistant à reconsidérer le contenu des apparences associées aux intuitions rationnelles : ce que l’on pourrait prendre pour des apparences de nécessité n’est autre qu’une manifestation de leur caractère a priori. | : We discuss the view, accepted by many rational intuition theorists, that rational intuitions involve appearances of necessity. The fact that we can have rational intuitions of contingent propositions casts a doubt on the adequacy of this view. This fact can be accommodated by a fallibilist theory of rational intuitions, provided one accepts that these intuitions generate ineliminable modal illusions. Drawing on two-dimensional explanations of the contingent a priori, we defend an alternative view according to which the appearances involved in rational intuitions are not appearances of necessity but rather an expression of their a priori status. (shrink)

It has been pointed out that Gettier case scenarios have deviant realizations and that deviant realizations raise a difficulty for the logical analysis of thought experiments. Grundmann and Horvath have shown that it is possible to rule out deviant realizations by suitably modifying the scenario of a Gettier-style thought experiment. They hypothesize further that the enriched scenario corresponds to the way expert epistemologists implicitly interpret the original one. However, no precise account of this implicit enrichment is offered, which makes the (...) proposal somewhat ad hoc. Drawing on pragmatic theory, I argue that the content of Grundmann and Horvath’s modified scenario corresponds to the default interpretation of the original scenario and that epistemological expertise is not required to access the deviance-proof interpretation. This Default Interpretation proposal offers thus a more general and independently motivated solution to the Problem of Deviant Realizations. (shrink)

The ascription of intentional states to the self involves knowledge, or at least claims to knowledge. Armed with the working definition of knowledge as 'the ability to do things, or refrain from doing things, or believe, or want, or doubt things, for reasons that are facts' [Hyman, J. Philos. Quart. 49:432—451], I sketch a simple competence model of acting and believing from knowledge and when knowledge is defeated by un-experienced changes of state. The model takes the form of three concentric (...) circles. The 'periphery' is analogous to Fodor's [(1983), The modularity of mind. MIT Press, Cambridge, MA] input systems. The 'core' contains copies of peripheral representations, and between these representations there is executive competition. At the 'nucleus', operations are performed on the core representations of, at least, negation and recursion. I argue that this provides a fruitful way in which to conceptualise why theory-of-mind tasks challenge pre-school children, how some degree of first-person authority is mental state attribution is possible, and how executive inhibition is achieved. (shrink)

Reply to Goldman I would like to thank Alvin for a spirited, and gentlemanly, debate we’ve had on these issues, which is extended further here. Alvin is exactly right that if we make his assumption about maximum specificity and deduceability (which I have doubts about), then on my view of knowledge Sphere Guy doesn’t know there’s a sphere in front of him. This may sound silly when we focus on his tactile access to the sphere in the actual world, but (...) if we take a broader view we see that there is more at stake than this. Contrary to Alvin’s impression, methods are not at all excised from my view of knowledge. My theory of how to judge whether someone knows requires us to consider everything (probable) that is and would be responsible for the fact that the person believes or not, whether these occur in his head or in the world, which the formulation in terms of probability helps to make very clear. (See Chapter 3.) Ironically, my refusal to relativize to method has us taking into consideration more facts about the subject’s method than Alvin’s criteria do, for my view takes into account, as appropriate, what process the person would have used and has a tendency to use, and not just the properties of the one he happened in fact to use. When the fact that a method was used by a subject in coming to belief in p is independent of the truth of p, which is actually most of the time in our lives, the conditions of application of the variation condition insure that we evaluate the subject by considering only what he would do and how he would fare in his beliefs were he to use that method he actually used. So, under that condition, my view agrees with Alvin, and Nozick also. But when whether a subject used that method is not independent of the truth value of p, then the variation condition in my view says we must consider in addition the subject’s resulting beliefs in all probable scenarios where he is such that he might well.. (shrink)

In Tracking Truth I undertook a broader project than is typical today toward questions about knowledge, evidence, and scientific realism. The range of knowledge phenomena is much wider than the kind of homely examples—such as ‘‘She has a bee in her bonnet’’—that are often the fare in discussions of knowledge. Scientists have knowledge gained in sophisticated and deliberate ways, and non-human animals have reflexive and rudimentary epistemic achievements that we can easily slip into calling ‘‘knowledge.’’ What is it about knowledge (...) that makes it natural for us to use the same word in cases that are so vastly different? How is it possible for knowledge to have evolved? What is it about knowledge that it should enhance our power over nature, as Francis Bacon observed? What is it about evidence and knowledge that makes you more likely to have the latter when you have the former? Specialization is necessary to progress, but the division of labor it requires has allowed such questions to fall through the gaps between discussions. These gaps are opportunities. Sometimes newly discovered problems can bring new and better answers even to old questions. The questions I have asked above are ‘‘Why?’’ questions expressed as (apparently) Socratic ‘‘What is?’’ questions, and that is the approach taken in the first five chapters of this book, to offer explanations of familiar phenomena on the basis of rigorous definitions of knowledge and evidence. One might object that this is an old, not a new, style of answer, and one that I ought to be educated enough to reject. Many have thought the project of giving necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge was in its death rattle long ago. The most common argument for this conclusion is an empirical one, that no such attempt has ever been successful in giving the right answer for all examples. And when one asks, as one must, what the ‘‘right’’ answer would be answering to anyway, the project can look even more depressing. But even if there is a clear.... (shrink)