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  1. Reliabilism and Brains in Vats.Jon Altschul - 2011 - Acta Analytica 26 (3):257-272.
    According to epistemic internalism, the only facts that determine the justificational status of a belief are facts about the subject’s own mental states, like beliefs and experiences. Externalists instead hold that certain external facts, such as facts about the world or the reliability of a belief-producing mechanism, affect a belief’s justificational status. Some internalists argue that considerations about evil demon victims and brains in vats provide excellent reason to reject externalism: because these subjects are placed in epistemically unfavorable settings, externalism (...)
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  • Normativity and the Metaphysics of Mind.Nick Zangwill - 2010 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 88 (1):1–19.
    I consider the metaphysical consequences of the view that propositional attitudes have essential normative properties. I argue that realism should take a weak rather than a strong form. I argue that expressivism cannot get off the ground. And I argue that eliminativism is self-refuting.
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  • Why the generality problem is everybody’s problem.Michael A. Bishop - 2010 - Philosophical Studies 151 (2):285 - 298.
    The generality problem is widely considered to be a devastating objection to reliabilist theories of justification. My goal in this paper is to argue that a version of the generality problem applies to all plausible theories of justification. Assume that any plausible theory must allow for the possibility of reflective justification—S's belief, B, is justified on the basis of S's knowledge that she arrived at B as a result of a highly (but not perfectly) reliable way of reasoning, R. The (...)
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  • Bursting Bealer’s Bubble: How the Starting Points Argument Begs the Question of Foundationalism Against Quine.Michael J. Shaffer & Jason A. Warnick - 2004 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 34 (1):87-106.
    In his 1993 article George Bealer offers three separate arguments that are directed against the internal coherence of empiricism, specifically against Quine’s version of empiricism. One of these arguments is the starting points argument (SPA) and it is supposed to show that Quinean empiricism is incoherent. We argue here that this argument is deeply flawed, and we demonstrate how a Quinean may successfully defend his views against Bealer’s SPA. Our defense of Quinean empiricism against the SPA depends on showing (1) (...)
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  • Reliabilism and the Value of Knowledge.Alvin I. Goldman & Erik J. Olsson - 2009 - In Adrian Haddock, Alan Millar & Duncan Pritchard (eds.), Epistemic value. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 19-41.
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  • In defence of gullibility: The epistemology of testimony and the psychology of deception detection.Kourken Michaelian - 2010 - Synthese 176 (3):399-427.
    Research in the psychology of deception detection implies that Fricker, in making her case for reductionism in the epistemology of testimony, overestimates both the epistemic demerits of the antireductionist policy of trusting speakers blindly and the epistemic merits of the reductionist policy of monitoring speakers for trustworthiness: folk psychological prejudices to the contrary notwithstanding, it turns out that monitoring is on a par (in terms both of the reliability of the process and of the sensitivity of the beliefs that it (...)
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  • On Husserl’s Remark that “[s]elbst eine sich als apodiktisch ausgebende Evidenz kann sich als Täuschung enthüllen …” : Does the Phenomenological Method Yield Any Epistemic Infallibility? [REVIEW]George Heffernan - 2009 - Husserl Studies 25 (1):15-43.
    Addressing Walter Hopp’s original application of the distinction between agent-fallibility and method-fallibility to phenomenological inquiry concerning epistemic justification, I question whether these are the only two forms of fallibility that are useful or whether there are not also others that are needed. In doing so, I draw my inspiration from Husserl, who in the beginnings of his phenomenological investigations struggled with the distinction between noetic and noematic analyses. For example, in the Preface to the Second Edition of the Logical Investigations (...)
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  • Immediate justification and process reliabilism.Alvin I. Goldman - 2008 - In Quentin Smith (ed.), Epistemology: new essays. New York : Oxford University Press,: Oxford University Press. pp. 63-82.
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  • The multiplicity of experimental protocols: A challenge to reductionist and non-reductionist models of the unity of neuroscience.Jacqueline A. Sullivan - 2009 - Synthese 167 (3):511-539.
    Descriptive accounts of the nature of explanation in neuroscience and the global goals of such explanation have recently proliferated in the philosophy of neuroscience and with them new understandings of the experimental practices of neuroscientists have emerged. In this paper, I consider two models of such practices; one that takes them to be reductive; another that takes them to be integrative. I investigate those areas of the neuroscience of learning and memory from which the examples used to substantiate these models (...)
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  • A priori warrant and naturalistic epistemology: The seventh Philosophical Perspectives lecture.Alvin I. Goldman - 1999 - Philosophical Perspectives 13:1-28.
    Epistemology has recently witnessed a number of efforts to rehabilitate rationalism, to defend the existence and importance of a priori knowledge or warrant construed as the product of rational insight or apprehension (Bealer 1987; Bigelow 1992; BonJour 1992, 1998; Burge 1998; Butchvarov 1970; Katz 1998; Plantinga 1993). This effort has sometimes been coupled with an attack on naturalistic epistemology, especially in BonJour 1994 and Katz 1998. Such coupling is not surprising, because naturalistic epistemology is often associated with thoroughgoing empiricism and (...)
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  • (2 other versions)Normativity and epistemic intuitions.Jonathan M. Weinberg, Shaun Nichols & Stephen Stich - 2001 - Philosophical Topics, 29 (1-2):429-460.
    In this paper we propose to argue for two claims. The first is that a sizeable group of epistemological projects – a group which includes much of what has been done in epistemology in the analytic tradition – would be seriously undermined if one or more of a cluster of empirical hypotheses about epistemic intuitions turns out to be true. The basis for this claim will be set out in Section 2. The second claim is that, while the jury is (...)
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  • Reason and rationality.Richard Samuels, Stephen Stich & Luc Faucher - 2004 - In Ilkka Niiniluoto, Matti Sintonen & Jan Woleński (eds.), Handbook of Epistemology. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic. pp. 1-50.
    Over the past few decades, reasoning and rationality have been the focus of enormous interdisciplinary attention, attracting interest from philosophers, psychologists, economists, statisticians and anthropologists, among others. The widespread interest in the topic reflects the central status of reasoning in human affairs. But it also suggests that there are many different though related projects and tasks which need to be addressed if we are to attain a comprehensive understanding of reasoning.
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  • Methodological pluralism, normative naturalism and the realist aim of science.Howard Sankey - 2000 - In Robert Nola & Howard Sankey (eds.), After Popper, Kuhn and Feyerabend: Recent Issues in Theories of Scientific Method. Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers. pp. 211-229.
    There are two chief tasks which confront the philosophy of scientific method. The first task is to specify the methodology which serves as the objective ground for scientific theory appraisal and acceptance. The second task is to explain how application of this methodology leads to advance toward the aim(s) of science. In other words, the goal of the theory of method is to provide an integrated explanation of both rational scientific theory choice and scientific progress.
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  • Belief-desire coherence.Steve Petersen - 2003 - Dissertation, University of Michigan
    Tradition compels me to write dissertation acknowledgements that are long, effusive, and unprofessional. Fortunately for me, I heartily endorse that tradition.
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  • Word and Action: Reconciling Rules and Know-How in Moral Cognition.Andy Clark - 2000 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 30 (sup1):267-289.
    Recent work in cognitive science highlights the importance of exem- plar-based know-how in supporting human expertise. Influenced by this model, certain accounts of moral knowledge now stress exemplar- based, non-sentential know-how at the expense of rule-and-principle based accounts. I shall argue, however, that moral thought and reason cannot be understood by reference to either of these roles alone. Moral cognition – like other forms of ‘advanced’ cognition – depends crucially on the subtle interplay and interaction of multiple factors and forces (...)
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  • The unreliability of naive introspection.Eric Schwitzgebel - 2006 - Philosophical Review 117 (2):245-273.
    We are prone to gross error, even in favorable circumstances of extended reflection, about our own ongoing conscious experience, our current phenomenology. Even in this apparently privileged domain, our self-knowledge is faulty and untrustworthy. We are not simply fallible at the margins but broadly inept. Examples highlighted in this essay include: emotional experience (for example, is it entirely bodily; does joy have a common, distinctive phenomenological core?), peripheral vision (how broad and stable is the region of visual clarity?), and the (...)
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  • How Are Basic Belief-Forming Methods Justified?David Enoch & Joshua Schechter - 2008 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 76 (3):547–579.
    In this paper, we develop an account of the justification thinkers have for employing certain basic belief-forming methods. The guiding idea is inspired by Reichenbach's work on induction. There are certain projects in which thinkers are rationally required to engage. Thinkers are epistemically justified in employing any belief-forming method such that "if it doesn't work, nothing will" for successfully engaging in such a project. We present a detailed account based on this intuitive thought and address objections to it. We conclude (...)
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  • Rorty's critique of foundationalism.Timm Triplett - 1987 - Philosophical Studies 52 (1):115 - 129.
    Rorty's critique concentrates on one aspect of foundationalism: the claim that nonpropositional sensory awareness serves as the basis for propositional justification. This claim is an essential component of classical foundationalism, though not necessarily of the more moderate versions of foundationalism that have been proposed. Thus even if it were a successful critique it would tell against only one type of foundationalism. But nothing in Rorty's argument provides any reason to doubt the plausibility of a classical foundationalist explanation of why sensory (...)
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  • Two principles of bayesian epistemology.William Talbott - 1991 - Philosophical Studies 62 (2):135-150.
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  • Against explanationist skepticism regarding philosophical intuitions.Joel Pust - 2001 - Philosophical Studies 106 (3):227 - 258.
    Though most of analytic philosophy is based upon intuitions, some philosophers are beginning to question whether intuitions are an appropriate basis for philosophical theory. This paper responds to the arguments of some contemporary philosophers who hold that intuitions should not be treated as evidence for anything other than our contingent psychological constitution. It begins with a demonstration that skeptical arguments by Gilbert Harman and Alvin Goldman are variations on an argument with the potential to undermine the use of intuitions in (...)
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  • Moral realism, normative reasons, and rational intelligibility.Hallvard Lillehammer - 2002 - Erkenntnis 57 (1):47-69.
    This paper concerns a prima facie tension between the claims that (a) agents have normative reasons obtaining in virtue of the nature of the options that confront them, and (b) there is a non-trivial connection between the grounds of normative reasons and the upshots of sound practical reasoning. Joint commitment to these claims is shown to give rise to a dilemma. I argue that the dilemma is avoidable on a response dependent account of normative reasons accommodating both (a) and (b) (...)
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  • Epistemic rationality as instrumental rationality: A critique.Thomas Kelly - 2003 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 66 (3):612–640.
    In this paper, I explore the relationship between epistemic rationality and instrumental rationality, and I attempt to delineate their respective roles in typical instances of theoretical reasoning. My primary concern is with the instrumentalist conception of epistemic rationality: the view that epistemic rationality is simply a species of instrumental rationality, viz. instrumental rationality in the service of one's cognitive or epistemic goals. After sketching the relevance of the instrumentalist conception to debates over naturalism and 'the ethics of belief', I argue (...)
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  • Practicing safe epistemology.David Henderson & Terence E. Horgan - 2001 - Philosophical Studies 102 (3):227 - 258.
    Reliablists have argued that the important evaluative epistemic concept of being justified in holding a belief, at least to the extent that that concept is associated with knowledge, is best understood as concerned with the objective appropriateness of the processes by which a given belief is generated and sustained. In particular, they hold that a belief is justified only when it is fostered by processes that are reliable (at least minimally so) in the believer’s actual world.[1] Of course, reliablists typically (...)
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  • Minimalism, Psychological Reality, Meaning and Use.Henry Jackman - 2007 - In G. Preyer (ed.), Context-Sensitivity and Semantic Minimalism: New Essays on Semantics and Pragmatics. New York: Oxford University Press.
    A growing number of philosophers and linguists have argued that many, if not most, terms in our language should be understood as semantically context sensitive. In opposition to this trend, Herman Cappelen and Ernie Lepore defend a view they call "Semantic Minimalism", which holds that there are virtually no semantically context sensitive expressions in English once you get past the standard list of indexicals and demonstratives such as "I", "you", "this", and "that". While minimalism strikes many as obviously false, it (...)
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  • The universality of logic: On the connection between rationality and logical ability.Simon J. Evnine - 2001 - Mind 110 (438):335-367.
    I argue for the thesis (UL) that there are certain logical abilities that any rational creature must have. Opposition to UL comes from naturalized epistemologists who hold that it is a purely empirical question which logical abilities a rational creature has. I provide arguments that any creatures meeting certain conditions—plausible necessary conditions on rationality—must have certain specific logical concepts and be able to use them in certain specific ways. For example, I argue that any creature able to grasp theories must (...)
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  • Naturalized philosophy of science with a plurality of methods.David Stump - 1992 - Philosophy of Science 59 (3):456-460.
    Naturalism implies unity of method--an application of the methods of science to the methodology of science itself and to value theory. Epistemological naturalists have tried to find a privileged discipline to be the methodological model of philosophy of science and epistemology. However, since science itself is not unitary, the use of one science as a model amounts to a reduction and distorts the philosophy of science just as badly as traditional philosophy of science distorted science, despite the fact that the (...)
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  • What's wrong with Moore's argument?James Pryor - 2004 - Philosophical Issues 14 (1):349–378.
    Something about this argument sounds funny. As we’ll see, though, it takes some care to identify exactly what Moore has done wrong. Iwill assume that Moore knows premise (2) to be true. One could inquire into how he knows it, and whether that knowledge can be defeated; but Iwon’t. I’ll focus instead on what epistemic relations Moore has to premise (1) and to his conclusion (3). It may matter which epistemic relations we choose to consider. Some philosophers will diagnose Moore’s (...)
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  • Knowledge, assumptions, lotteries.Gilbert Harman & Brett Sherman - 2004 - Philosophical Issues 14 (1):492–500.
    John Hawthorne’s marvelous book contains a wealth of arguments and insights based on an impressive knowledge and understanding of contemporary discussion. We can address only a small aspect of the topic. In particular, we will offer our own answers to two questions about knowledge that he discusses.
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  • Caveat emptor: Economics and contemporary philosophy of science.D. Wade Hands - 1997 - Philosophy of Science 64 (4):116.
    The relationship between economics and the philosophy of natural science has changed substantially during the last few years. What was once exclusively a one-way relationship from philosophy to economics now seems to be much closer to bilateral exchange. The purpose of this paper is to examine this new relationship. First, I document the change. Second, I examine the situation within contemporary philosophy of science in order to explain why economics might have its current appeal. Third, I consider some of the (...)
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  • Epistemology of visual thinking in elementary real analysis.Marcus Giaquinto - 1994 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 45 (3):789-813.
    Can visual thinking be a means of discovery in elementary analysis, as well as a means of illustration and a stimulus to discovery? The answer to the corresponding question for geometry and arithmetic seems to be ‘yes’ (Giaquinto [1992], [1993]), and so a positive answer might be expected for elementary analysis too. But I argue here that only in a severely restricted range of cases can visual thinking be a means of discovery in analysis. Examination of persuasive visual routes to (...)
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  • Rationality and psychology.Richard Samuels & Stephen Stich - 2004 - In Alfred R. Mele & Piers Rawling (eds.), The Oxford handbook of rationality. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 279-300.
    Samuels and Stich explore the debate over the extent to which ordinary human reasoning and decision making is rational. One prominent cluster of views, often associated with the heuristics and biases tradition in psychology, maintains that human reasoning is, in important respects, normatively problematic or irrational. Samuels and Stich start by sketching some key experimental findings from this tradition and describe a range of pessimistic claims about the rationality of ordinary people that these and related findings are sometimes taken to (...)
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  • Why nothing mental is just in the head.Justin C. Fisher - 2007 - Noûs 41 (2):318-334.
    Mental internalists hold that an individuals mental features at a given time supervene upon what is in that individuals head at that time. While many people reject mental internalism about content and justification, mental internalism is commonly accepted regarding such other mental features as rationality, emotion-types, propositional-attitude-types, moral character, and phenomenology. I construct a counter-example to mental internalism regarding all these features. My counter-example involves two creatures: a human and an alien from Pulse World. These creatures environments, behavioral dispositions and (...)
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  • The aim of belief.Ralph Wedgwood - 2002 - Philosophical Perspectives 16:267-97.
    It is often said, metaphorically, that belief "aims" at the truth. This paper proposes a normative interpretation of this metaphor. First, the notion of "epistemic norms" is clarified, and reasons are given for the view that epistemic norms articulate essential features of the beliefs that are subject to them. Then it is argued that all epistemic norms--including those that specify when beliefs count as rational, and when they count as knowledge--are explained by a fundamental norm of correct belief, which requires (...)
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  • Veritism and ways of deriving epistemic value.Ylwa Sjölin Wirling - 2022 - Philosophical Studies 179 (12):3617-3633.
    Veritists hold that only truth has fundamental epistemic value. They are committed to explaining all other instances of epistemic goodness as somehow deriving their value through a relation to truth, and in order to do so they arguably need a non-instrumental relation of epistemic value derivation. As is currently common in epistemology, many veritists assume that the epistemic is an insulated evaluative domain: claims about what has epistemic value are independent of claims about what has value simpliciter. This paper argues (...)
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  • Clear and Distinct Perception in the Stoics, Augustine, and William of Ockham.Tamer Nawar - 2022 - Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 96 (1):185-207.
    There is a long history of philosophers granting a privileged epistemic status to cognition of directly present objects. In this paper, I examine three important historic accounts which provide different models of this cognitive state and its connection with its objects: that of the Stoics, who are corporealists and think that ordinary perception may have an epistemically privileged status, but who seem to struggle to accommodate non-perceptual cognizance; that of Augustine, who thinks that incorporeal objects are directly present to us (...)
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  • A Disjunctive Account of Desire.Kael McCormack - 2022 - Dissertation, University of New South Wales
    This thesis motivates a novel account of desire as the best explanation of an intuitive datum. The intuitive datum is that often when an agent desires P she will immediately, outright know that she has a reason to bring P about. Existing explanations of the intuitive datum cannot simultaneously satisfy two desiderata. We want to explain how desires enable outright knowledge of reasons and also explain the fallibility of desires. Existing views satisfy the first desideratum at the expense of the (...)
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  • Pursuit and inquisitive reasons.Will Fleisher - 2022 - Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 94 (C):17-30.
    Sometimes inquirers may rationally pursue a theory even when the available evidence does not favor that theory over others. Features of a theory that favor pursuing it are known as considerations of promise or pursuitworthiness. Examples of such reasons include that a theory is testable, that it has a useful associated analogy, and that it suggests new research and experiments. These reasons need not be evidence in favor of the theory. This raises the question: what kinds of reasons are provided (...)
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  • Reliabilism Defended.Jeffrey Tolly - 2021 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 51 (8):619-635.
    Reliabilism about knowledge states that a belief-forming process generates knowledge only if its likelihood of generating true belief exceeds 50 percent. Despite the prominence of reliabilism today, there are very few if any explicit arguments for reliabilism in the literature. In this essay, I address this lacuna by formulating a new independent argument for reliabilism. As I explain, reliabilism can be derived from certain key knowledge-closure principles. Furthermore, I show how this argument can withstand John Turri’s two recent objections to (...)
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  • A new solution to the safety dilemma.Dario Mortini - 2022 - Synthese 200 (2):1-17.
    Despite the substantial appeal of the safety condition, Kelp (J Philos Res 34:21–31, 2009; Am Philos Q 53:27–37; Good Thinking. A Knowledge First Virtue Epistemology, Routledge, London, 2018) has raised a difficult challenge for safety-theoretic accounts of knowledge. By combining Gettier-style fake barn cases with epistemic Frankfurt cases, he concludes that no formulation of safety can be strong enough to predict ignorance in the former and weak enough to accommodate knowledge in the latter. In this note, my contribution is two-fold. (...)
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  • Reasoning and Presuppositions.Carlotta Pavese - 2021 - Philosophical Topics 49 (2):203-224.
    It is a platitude that when we reason, we often take things for granted, sometimes even justifiably so. The chemist might reason from the fact that a substance turns litmus paper red to that substance being an acid. In so doing, they take for granted, reasonably enough, that this test for acidity is valid. We ordinarily reason from things looking a certain way to their being that way. We take for granted, reasonably enough, that things are as they look Although (...)
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  • Illness Narratives and Epistemic Injustice: Toward Extended Empathic Knowledge.Seisuke Hayakawa - 2021 - In Karyn L. Lai (ed.), Knowers and Knowledge in East-West Philosophy: Epistemology Extended. Springer Nature. pp. 111-138.
    Socially extended knowledge has recently received much attention in mainstream epistemology. Knowledge here is not to be understood as wholly realised within a single individual who manipulates artefacts or tools but as collaboratively realised across plural agents. Because of its focus on the interpersonal dimension, socially extended epistemology appears to be a promising approach for investigating the deeply social nature of epistemic practices. I believe, however, that this line of inquiry could be made more fruitful if it is connected with (...)
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  • Non-uniformism and the Epistemology of Philosophically Interesting Modal Claims.Ylwa Sjölin Wirling - 2021 - Grazer Philosophische Studien 98 (4):629-656.
    Philosophers often make exotic-sounding modal claims, such as: “A timeless world is impossible”, “The laws of physics could have been different from what they are”, “There could have been an additional phenomenal colour”. Otherwise popular empiricist modal epistemologies in the contemporary literature cannot account for whatever epistemic justification we might have for making such modal claims. Those who do not, as a result of this, endorse scepticism with respect to their epistemic status typically suggest that they can be justified but (...)
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  • Defeaters and the generality problem.Tim Loughrist - 2021 - Synthese 199 (5):13845-13860.
    Consider a simple form of process reliabilism: S is justified in believing that p if and only if S’s belief that p was formed through a reliable process. Such accounts are thought to face a counter-example in the form of defeaters. It seems possible that a belief might result from a reliable belief forming process and yet be unjustified because one possesses a defeater with respect to that belief. This counter-example is merely apparent. The problem of defeaters is just a (...)
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  • Epistemic Democracy and the Truth Connection.Wes Siscoe - forthcoming - Public Reason.
    If political decision-making aims at getting a particular result, like identifying just laws or policies that truly promote the common good, then political institutions can also be evaluated in terms of how often they achieve these results. Epistemic defenses of democracy argue that democracies have the upper hand when it comes to truth, identifying the laws and policies that are truly just or conducive to the common good. A number of epistemic democrats claim that democracies have this beneficial connection to (...)
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  • (1 other version)Knowledge is a mental state (at least sometimes).Adam Michael Bricker - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 179 (5):1461-1481.
    It is widely held in philosophy that knowing is not a state of mind. On this view, rather than knowledge itself constituting a mental state, when we know, we occupy a belief state that exhibits some additional non-mental characteristics. Fascinatingly, however, new empirical findings from cognitive neuroscience and experimental philosophy now offer direct, converging evidence that the brain can—and often does—treat knowledge as if it is a mental state in its own right. While some might be tempted to keep the (...)
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  • The Epistemology and Science of Justified Reason.Verdie Michael Dreyer - 2021 - Philosophia 50 (2):503-532.
    A theory of reasoned knowledge is presented by developing and demonstrating the methodology of a novel skeptical critique designed to extend the epistemological practice of belief justification to an epistemological practice of reason justification. Analyses of the reasoning found in the theorizations of certain seminal philosophers and leading scientists will reveal how the absence of the epistemic justification of reason defaults to the use of an unjustified form of reason that runs the play of an unrecognized and unchecked dialectic between (...)
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  • Justification as a loaded notion.Yuval Avnur - 2019 - Synthese 198 (5):4897-4916.
    The problem of skepticism is often understood as a paradox: a valid argument with plausible premises whose conclusion is that we lack justification for perceptual beliefs. Typically, this conclusion is deemed unacceptable, so a theory is offered that posits conditions for justification on which some premise is false. The theory defended here is more general, and explains why the paradox arises in the first place. Like Strawson’s (Introduction to logical theory, Wiley, New York, 1952) “ordinary language” approach to induction, the (...)
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  • Lucky Ignorance, Modality and Lack of Knowledge.Oscar A. Piedrahita - 2021 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly (3).
    I argue against the Standard View of ignorance, according to which ignorance is defined as equivalent to lack of knowledge, that cases of environmental epistemic luck, though entailing lack of knowledge, do not necessarily entail ignorance. In support of my argument, I contend that in cases of environmental luck an agent retains what I call epistemic access to the relevant fact by successfully exercising her epistemic agency and that ignorance and non-ignorance, contrary to what the Standard View predicts, are not (...)
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  • Embracing Incoherence.Claire Field - 2021 - In Nick Hughes (ed.), Epistemic Dilemmas. Oxford University Press. pp. 1-29.
    Incoherence is usually regarded as a bad thing. Incoherence suggests irrationality, confusion, paradox. Incoherentism disagrees: incoherence is not always a bad thing, sometimes we ought to be incoherent. If correct, Incoherentism has important and controversial implications. It implies that rationality does not always require coherence. Dilemmism and Incoherentism both embrace conflict in epistemology. After identifying some important differences between these two ways of embracing conflict, I offer some reasons to prefer Incoherentism over Dilemmism. Namely, that Incoherentism allows us to deliberate (...)
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  • On the epistemic rationality and significance of self-fulfilling beliefs.Chad Marxen - 2020 - Synthese 199 (1-2):4243-4260.
    Some propositions are not likely to be true overall, but are likely to be true if you believe them. Appealing to the platitude that belief aims at truth, it has become increasingly popular to defend the view that such propositions are epistemically rational to believe. However, I argue that this view runs into trouble when we consider the connection between what’s epistemically rational to believe and what’s practically rational to do. I conclude by discussing how rejecting the view bears on (...)
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