The aim of this paper is threefold. Firstly, §1 and §2 introduce the novel concept logical akrasia by analogy to epistemic akrasia. If successful, the initial sections will draw attention to an interesting akratic phenomenon which has not received much attention in the literature on akrasia (although it has been discussed by logicians in different terms). Secondly, §3 and §4 present a dilemma related to logical akrasia. From a case involving the consistency of Peano Arithmetic and Gödel’s Second Incompleteness Theorem (...) it’s shown that either we must be agnostic about the consistency of Peano Arithmetic or akratic in our arithmetical theorizing. If successful, these sections will underscore the pertinence and persistence of akrasia in arithmetic (by appeal to Gödel’s seminal work). Thirdly, §5 concludes by suggesting a way of translating the dilemma of arithmetical akrasia into a case of regular epistemic akrasia; and further how one might try to escape the dilemma when it’s framed this way. (shrink)

While the epistemic significance of disagreement has been a popular topic in epistemology for at least a decade, little attention has been paid to logical disagreement. This monograph is meant as a remedy. The text starts with an extensive literature review of the epistemology of (peer) disagreement and sets the stage for an epistemological study of logical disagreement. The guiding thread for the rest of the work is then three distinct readings of the ambiguous term ‘logical disagreement’. Chapters 1 and (...) 2 focus on the Ad Hoc Reading according to which logical disagreements occur when two subjects take incompatible doxastic attitudes toward a specific proposition in or about logic. Chapter 2 presents a new counterexample to the widely discussed Uniqueness Thesis. Chapters 3 and 4 focus on the Theory Choice Reading of ‘logical disagreement’. According to this interpretation, logical disagreements occur at the level of entire logical theories rather than individual entailment-claims. Chapter 4 concerns a key question from the philosophy of logic, viz., how we have epistemic justification for claims about logical consequence. In Chapters 5 and 6 we turn to the Akrasia Reading. On this reading, logical disagreements occur when there is a mismatch between the deductive strength of one’s background logic and the logical theory one prefers (officially). Chapter 6 introduces logical akrasia by analogy to epistemic akrasia and presents a novel dilemma. Chapter 7 revisits the epistemology of peer disagreement and argues that the epistemic significance of central principles from the literature are at best deflated in the context of logical disagreement. The chapter also develops a simple formal model of deep disagreement in Default Logic, relating this to our general discussion of logical disagreement. The monograph ends in an epilogue with some reflections on the potential epistemic significance of convergence in logical theorizing. (shrink)

This entry is composed of three sections. In §1, we survey debates about what structural rationality is, including the emergence of the concept in the contemporary literature, its key characteristics, its relationship to substantive rationality, its paradigm instances, and the questions of whether these instances are unified and, if so, how. In §2, we turn to the debate about structural requirements of rationality – including controversies about whether they are “wide-scope” or “narrow-scope”, synchronic or diachronic, and whether they govern processes (...) or states; as well as examining various forms of skepticism about structural requirements of rationality. In §3, we turn to the debate about the normative significance of structural rationality, surveying central challenges for the view that structural rationality is normatively significant and the theoretical options that arise in light of these challenges. (shrink)

Epistemic trespassing, science denial, refusal to guard against bias, mishandling higher-order evidence, and the development of vice are troubling intellectual behaviors. In this paper, I advance work done by psychologists on moral self-licensing to show how all of these behaviors can be explained in terms of a parallel phenomenon of epistemic self-licensing. The paper situates this discussion at the intersection of three major epistemological projects: epistemic explanation and intervention (the project of explaining troubling intellectual phenomena in the hopes of deriving (...) ameliorative strategies), hostile epistemology (the study of how intellectual vulnerabilities might be exploited), and the promise of higher- order evidence (the hope that higher-order evidence leads to epistemic improvement). Analyzing epistemic licensing allows us to explain and offer modest interventions aimed at mitigating these behaviors, while illuminating exploitable vulnerabilities and tempering optimism about the promise of higher-order evidence. -/- . (shrink)

Philosophical Perspectives, Volume 35, Issue 1, Page 23-49, December 2021.

We debate whether permissivism is true. We start off by assuming an accuracy-oriented framework, and then discuss metaepistemological questions about how our epistemic evaluations promote accuracy.

Metacognitive mental states are mental states about mental states. For example, I may be uncertain whether my belief is correct. In social discourse, an interlocutor’s metacognitive certainty may constitute evidence about the reliability of their testimony. For example, if a speaker is certain that their belief is correct, then we may take this as evidence in favour of their belief, or its content. This paper argues that, if metacognitive certainty is genuine evidence, then it is disproportionate evidence for extreme beliefs. (...) In support of the argument, we report findings from five studies with different participant samples, designs, and measures. These studies show that, the more extreme an agent’s belief (positive or negative), the more certain they are about it, and vice versa. This relationship might contribute to moralism, virtue signalling, and polarisation, which in turn may be epistemically and morally problematic. Therefore, we caution against taking metacognitive certainty as genuine evidence. (shrink)

An influential account or group belief analyzes it as a form of joint commitment by group members. In spite of its popularity, the account faces daunting objections. I consider and reply to two of them. The first, due to Jennifer Lackey, is that the joint commitment account fails as an account of group belief since it cannot distinguish group beliefs from group lies and bullshit. The second is that the joint commitment account fails because it makes group belief voluntary, whereas (...) genuine belief is involuntary. I propose an amendment to the basic joint commitment account which offers a unified reply to both objections. Although my novel account of group belief departs from the basic joint commitment account, it retains its spirit. The account entails that genuine group belief is much rarer than proponents of the joint commitment account have hitherto realized. (shrink)

Vindicating the claim that agents ought to be consistent has proved to be a difficult task. Recently, some have argued that we can use accuracy-dominance arguments to vindicate the normativity of such requirements. But what do these arguments prove, exactly? In this paper, I argue that we can make a distinction between two theses on the normativity of consistency: the view that one ought to be consistent and the view that one ought to avoid being inconsistent. I argue that accuracy-dominance (...) arguments for consistency support the latter view, but not necessarily the former. I also argue that the distinction between these two theses matters in the debate on the normativity of epistemic rationality. Specifically, the distinction suggests that there are interesting alternatives to vindicating the strong claim that one ought to be consistent. (shrink)

I will argue that internalism about justification entails the apparently absurd conclusion that it is possible to know specific facts about the external world—for example, that there is a tree in the quad—on the basis of introspection and a priori reflection. After a brief characterization of internalism (§1), I will set out the problem (§2). I will then discuss three replies: one that denies the form of doxastic voluntarism involved in the problem (§3), one that denies that knowledge of higher-order (...) facts about justification can justify corresponding first-order beliefs (§4), and, finally, one that involves biting the bullet (§5). I will argue that each reply fails. (shrink)

Is it ever rational to suspend judgment about whether a particular doxastic attitude of ours is rational? An agent who suspends about whether her attitude is rational has serious doubts that it is. These doubts place a special burden on the agent, namely, to justify maintaining her chosen attitude over others. A dilemma arises. Providing justification for maintaining the chosen attitude would commit the agent to considering the attitude rational—contrary to her suspension on the matter. Alternatively, in the absence of (...) such justification, the attitude would be arbitrary by the agent's own lights, and therefore irrational from the agent's own perspective. So, suspending about whether an attitude of ours is rational does not cohere with considering it rationally preferable to other attitudes, and leads to a more familiar form of epistemic akrasia otherwise. (shrink)

Is self-knowledge a requirement of rationality, like consistency, or means-ends coherence? Many claim so, citing the evident impropriety of asserting, and the alleged irrationality of believing, Moore-paradoxical propositions of the form < p, but I don't believe that p>. If there were nothing irrational about failing to know one's own beliefs, they claim, then there would be nothing irrational about Moore-paradoxical assertions or beliefs. This article considers a few ways the data surrounding Moore's paradox might be marshaled to support rational (...) requirements to know one's beliefs, and finds that none succeed. (shrink)

Epistemic akrasia can be rational. I consider a lonely pragmatist who believes that her imaginary friend doesn’t exist, and also believes on pragmatic grounds that she should believe in him. She rationally believes that her imaginary friend doesn’t exist, rationally follows various sources of evidence to the view that she should believe in him to end her loneliness, and rationally holds these attitudes simultaneously. Evidentialism suggests that her ambivalent epistemic state is rational, as considerations grounded in the value of truth (...) justify her beliefs. (shrink)

This article presents a novel challenge to epistemic internalism. The challenge rests on a set of cases which feature subjects forming beliefs under conditions of “bad ideology”—that is, conditions in which pervasively false beliefs have the function of sustaining, and are sustained by, systems of social oppression. In such cases, the article suggests, the externalistic view that justification is in part a matter of worldly relations, rather than the internalistic view that justification is solely a matter of how things stand (...) from the agent’s individual perspective, becomes the more intuitively attractive theory. But these “bad ideology” cases do not merely yield intuitive verdicts that favor externalism over internalism. These cases are, moreover, analogous to precisely those canonical cases widely taken to be counterexamples to externalism: cases featuring brains-in-vats, clairvoyants, and dogmatists. That is, such “bad ideology” cases are, in all relevant respects, just like cases that are thought to count against externalism—except that they intuitively favor externalism. This, the author argues, is a serious worry for internalism. What is more, it bears on the debate over whether externalism is a genuinely “normative” epistemology. (shrink)

Abstract: Theories of epistemic rationality that take disagreement (or other higher-order evidence) seriously tend to be “modest” in a certain sense: they say that there are circumstances in which it is rational to doubt their correctness. Modest views have been criticized on the grounds that they undermine themselves—they’re self-defeating. The standard Self-Defeat Objections depend on principles forbidding epistemically akratic beliefs; but there are good reasons to doubt these principles—even New Rational Reflection, which was designed to allow for certain special cases (...) that are intuitively akratic. On the other hand, if we construct a Self-Defeat Objection without relying on anti-akratic principles, modest principles turn out not to undermine themselves. In the end, modesty should not be seen as a defect in a theory of rational belief. (shrink)

Epistemically immodest agents take their own epistemic standards to be among the most truth-conducive ones available to them. Many philosophers have argued that immodesty is epistemically required of agents, notably because being modest entails a problematic kind of incoherence or self-distrust. In this paper, I argue that modesty is epistemically permitted in some social contexts. I focus on social contexts where agents with limited cognitive capacities cooperate with each other (like juries).

A critical survey of recent work in epistemology on higher-order evidence. It discusses the nature of higher-order evidence, some puzzles it raises, responses to those puzzles, and problems facing them. It concludes by indicating connections between debates concerning higher-order evidence in epistemology and parallel debates in ethics and aesthetics.

Should you always be certain about what you should believe? In other words, does rationality demand higher-order certainty? First answer: Yes! Higher-order uncertainty can’t be rational, since it breeds at least a mild form of epistemic akrasia. Second answer: No! Higher-order certainty can’t be rational, since it licenses a dogmatic kind of insensitivity to higher-order evidence. Which answer wins out? The first, I argue. Once we get clearer about what higher-order certainty is, a view emerges on which higher-order certainty does (...) not, in fact, license any kind of insensitivity to higher-order evidence. The view as I will describe it has plenty of intuitive appeal. But it is not without substantive commitments: it implies a strong form of internalism about epistemic rationality, and forces us to reconsider standard ways of thinking about the nature of evidential support. Yet, the view put forth promises a simple and elegant solution to a surprisingly difficult problem in our understanding of rational belief. (shrink)

On at least one of its uses, ‘higher-order evidence’ refers to evidence about what opinions are rationalized by your evidence. This chapter surveys the foundational epistemological questions raised by such evidence, the methods that have proven useful for answering them, and the potential consequences and applications of such answers.

Sometimes we make mistakes, even when we try to do our best. When those mistakes are about normative matters, such as what is required, this leads to a puzzle. This puzzle arises from the possibility of misleading evidence about what rationality requires. I argue that the best way to solve this puzzle is to distinguish between two kinds of evaluation: requirement and appraisal. The strategy I defend connects three distinct debates in epistemology, ethics, and normativity: the debate over how our (...) theories of epistemic rationality should accommodate misleading evidence, the debate over the relationship between complying with requirements and deserving particular appraisals, and the debate over whether normative ignorance can excuse. Part 1 shows how three apparently plausible claims about epistemic rationality generate a puzzle when agents have misleading evidence about what rationality requires. Part 2 solves this puzzle by distinguishing between evaluations of requirement and appraisal and rejecting the idea that one is required to conform to the Enkratic Principle. I argue instead that complying with the Enkratic Principle provides defeasible evidence that the agent should be positively appraised. One of the consequences of this solution is that false normative beliefs can sometimes excuse agents from negative appraisal they would otherwise deserve for violating requirements. Part 3 defends the view that false normative belief can sometimes excuse against the rival views that false normative belief always excuses, and that false normative belief never excuses. I argue that false normative belief can sometimes excuse violations of requirements, when it is the case that the agent has done what it is reasonable to expect of her. (shrink)

What should a person do when, through no fault of her own, she ends up believing a false moral theory? Some suggest that she should act against what the false theory recommends; others argue that she should follow her rationally held moral beliefs. While the former view better accords with intuitions about cases, the latter one seems to enjoy a critical advantage: It seems better able to render moral requirements ‘followable’ or ‘action-guiding.’ But this tempting thought proves difficult to justify. (...) Indeed, whether it can be justified turns out to depend importantly on the rational status of epistemic akrasia. Furthermore, it can be argued, from premises all parties to the moral ignorance debate should accept, that rational epistemic akrasia is possible. If the argument proves successful, it follows that a person should sometimes act against her rationally held moral convictions. (shrink)

Graham Hubbs | : Philosophical accounts of self-deception have tended to focus on what is necessary for one to be in a state of self-deception or how one might arrive at such a state. Less attention has been paid to explaining why, so often, self-deceived individuals resist the proper explanation of their condition. This resistance may not be necessary for self-deception, but it is common enough to be a proper explanandum of any adequate account of the phenomenon. The goals of (...) this essay are to analyze this resistance, to argue for its importance to theories of self-deception, and to offer a view of self-deception that adequately accounts for it. The view’s key idea is that, in at least some familiar cases, self-deceived individuals maintain their condition by confusing a nonepistemic satisfaction they take in their self-deceived beliefs for the epistemic satisfaction that is characteristic of warranted beliefs. Appealing to this confusion can explain both why these self-deceived individuals maintain their unwarranted belief and why they resist the proper explanation of their condition. If successful, the essay will illuminate the nature of belief by examining the limits of the believable. | : Les explications philosophiques de l’auto-illusion ont eu tendance à mettre l’accent sur ce qui est nécessaire pour que quelqu’un soit considéré comme étant sous l’emprise de l’auto-illusion ou encore sur la façon dont quelqu’un parvient à un tel état. Moins d’efforts ont été dirigés vers les raisons pour lesquelles, si souvent, les individus sous l’emprise de l’auto-illusion opposent une résistance à l’explication véritable de leur condition. Cette résistance n’est peut-être pas essentielle à l’auto-illusion, mais elle est suffisamment courante pour constituer un explicandum approprié pour tout traitement adéquat du phénomène. Cet essai a pour buts d’analyser cette résistance, de défendre son importance pour les théories de l’auto-illusion, et de proposer une conception de l’auto-illusion qui en rend compte de manière adéquate. Cette conception repose sur l’idée suivante : au moins dans certains cas connus, les individus sous l’emprise de l’auto-illusion maintiennent leur condition en prenant la satisfaction non-épistémique qu’ils retirent de leurs croyances illusoires pour la satisfaction épistémique qui caractérise les croyances justifiées. C’est en faisant appel à cette confusion que l’on peut expliquer à la fois pourquoi ces individus conservent leur croyance infondée et pourquoi ils opposent une résistance à l’explication adéquate de leur condition. Si tant est qu’il y parvienne, cet essai éclairera la nature de la croyance en examinant les limites du croyable. (shrink)

There are at least two threads in our thought and talk about rationality, both practical and theoretical. In one sense, to be rational is to respond correctly to the reasons one has. Call this substantive rationality. In another sense, to be rational is to be coherent, or to have the right structural relations hold between one’s mental states, independently of whether those attitudes are justified. Call this structural rationality. According to the standard view, structural rationality is associated with a distinctive (...) set of requirements that mandate or prohibit certain combinations of attitudes, and it’s in virtue of violating these requirements that incoherent agents are irrational. I think the standard view is mistaken. The goal of this paper is to explain why, and to motivate an alternative account: rather than corresponding to a set of law-like requirements, structural rationality should be seen as corresponding to a distinctive kind of pro tanto rational pressure—i.e. something that comes in degrees, having both magnitude and direction. Something similar is standardly assumed to be true of substantive rationality. On the resulting picture, each dimension of rational evaluation is associated with a distinct kind of rational pressure—substantive rationality with (what I call) justificatory pressure and structural rationality with attitudinal pressure. The former is generated by one’s reasons while the latter is generated by one’s attitudes. Requirements turn out to be at best a footnote in the theory of rationality. (shrink)

Can we make mistakes about what rationality requires? A natural answer is that we can, since it is a platitude that rational belief does not require truth; it is possible for a belief to be rational and mistaken, and this holds for any subject matter at all. However, the platitude causes trouble when applied to rationality itself. The possibility of rational mistakes about what rationality requires generates a puzzle. When combined with two further plausible claims – the enkratic principle, and (...) the claim that rational requirements apply universally – we get the result that rationality generates inconsistent requirements. One popular and attractive solution to the puzzle denies that it is possible to make rational mistakes about what rationality requires. I show why (contra Titelbaum (2015b), and Littlejohn (2015)) this solution is doomed to fail. (shrink)

The paper offers an account of inference. The account underwrites the idea that inference requires that the reasoner takes her premises to support her conclusion. I reject views according to which such ‘takings’ are intuitions or beliefs. I sketch an alternative view on which inferring consists in attaching what I call ‘inferential force’ to a structured collection of contents.

It’s widely accepted that higher-order defeaters, i.e., evidence that one’s belief is formed in an epistemically defective way, can defeat doxastic justification. However, it’s yet unclear how exactly such kind of defeat happens. Given that many theories of doxastic justification can be understood as fitting the schema of proper basing on propositional justifiers, we might attempt to explain the defeat either by arguing that a higher-order defeater defeats propositional justification or by arguing that it defeats proper basing. It has been (...) argued that the first attempt is unpromising because a variety of prominent theories of propositional justification don’t imply that we lose propositional justification when gaining higher-order defeaters. This leads some scholars to take the second attempt. In this paper, I criticize this second attempt, and I defend the first attempt by arguing that a theory of propositional justification that requires intellectual responsibility can nicely account for higher-order defeat. My proposal is that we lose doxastic justification when we gain higher-order defeaters because there is no intellectually responsible way for us to maintain our original beliefs due to the defeaters. (shrink)

Assume that it is your evidence that determines what opinions you should have. I argue that since you should take peer disagreement seriously, evidence must have two features. (1) It must sometimes warrant being modest: uncertain what your evidence warrants, and (thus) uncertain whether you’re rational. (2) But it must always warrant being guided: disposed to treat your evidence as a guide. Surprisingly, it is very difficult to vindicate both (1) and (2). But diagnosing why this is so leads to (...) a proposal—Trust—that is weak enough to allow modesty but strong enough to yield many guiding features. In fact, I claim that Trust is the Goldilocks principle—for it is necessary and sufficient to vindicate the claim that you should always prefer to use free evidence. Upshot: Trust lays the foundations for a theory of disagreement and, more generally, an epistemology that permits self-doubt—a modest epistemology. (shrink)

Is epistemic inconsistency a mere symptom of having violated other requirements of rationality—notably, reasons-responsiveness requirements? Or is inconsistency irrational on its own? This question has important implications for the debate on the normativity of epistemic rationality. In this paper, I defend a new account of the explanatory role of the requirement of epistemic consistency. Roughly, I will argue that, in cases where an epistemically rational agent is permitted to believe P and also permitted to disbelieve P, the consistency requirement plays (...) a distinct explanatory role. I will also argue that such a type of permissiveness is a live possibility when it comes to rational epistemic standards. (shrink)

Evidentialism is the thesis, roughly, that one’s beliefs should fit one’s evidence. The enkratic principle is the thesis, roughly, that one’s beliefs should "line up" with one’s beliefs about which beliefs one ought to have. While both theses have seemed attractive to many, they jointly entail the controversial thesis that self-misleading evidence is impossible. That is to say, if evidentialism and the enkratic principle are both true, one’s evidence cannot support certain false beliefs about which beliefs one’s evidence supports. Recently, (...) a number of epistemologists have challenged the thesis that self-misleading evidence is impossible on the grounds that misleading higher-order evidence does not have the kind of strong and systematic defeating force that would be needed to rule out the possibility of such self-misleading evidence. Here I respond to this challenge by proposing an account of higher-order defeat that does, indeed, render self-misleading evidence impossible. Central to the proposal is the idea that higher-order evidence acquires its normative force by influencing which conditional beliefs it is rational to have. What emerges, I argue, is an independently plausible view of higher-order evidence, which has the additional benefit of allowing us to reconcile evidentialism with the enkratic principle. (shrink)

Benjamin Kiesewetter has recently provided an argument to the effect that necessarily, if one has decisive reason to φ, then one has sufficient reason to believe that she herself has decisive reason to φ. If sound, this argument has important implications for several debates in contemporary normative philosophy. I argue that the main premise in the argument is problematic and should be rejected. According to this premise (PRR), necessarily, one can respond correctly to all the decisive reasons one has. I (...) show that PRR is confronted with counterexamples and presupposes an implausible commensurability of all kinds of reasons. If so, the conclusion in Kiesewetter’s argument doesn’t follow. I also discuss further implications of my objections to PRR for a specific family of ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ principles and ability constraints on reasons, and the consequences that these could have for a number of contemporary debates in normative philosophy. (shrink)

The externalist says that your evidence could fail to tell you what evidence you do or not do have. In that case, it could be rational for you to be uncertain about what your evidence is. This is a kind of uncertainty which orthodox Bayesian epistemology has difficulty modeling. For, if externalism is correct, then the orthodox Bayesian learning norms of conditionalization and reflection are inconsistent with each other. I recommend that an externalist Bayesian reject conditionalization. In its stead, I (...) provide a new theory of rational learning for the externalist. I defend this theory by arguing that its advice will be followed by anyone whose learning dispositions maximize expected accuracy. I then explore some of this theory’s consequences for the rationality of epistemic akrasia, peer disagreement, undercutting defeat, and uncertain evidence. (shrink)

I present an account of deterministic chance which builds upon the physico-mathematical approach to theorizing about deterministic chance known as 'the method of arbitrary functions'. This approach promisingly yields deterministic probabilities which align with what we take the chances to be---it tells us that there is approximately a 1/2 probability of a spun roulette wheel stopping on black, and approximately a 1/2 probability of a flipped coin landing heads up---but it requires some probabilistic materials to work with. I contend that (...) the right probabilistic materials are found in reasonable initial credence distributions. I note that, with some normative assumptions, the resulting account entails that deterministic chances obey a variant of Lewis's 'principal principle'. I additionally argue that deterministic chances, so understood, are capable of explaining long-run frequencies. (shrink)

The Fallibility Norm—the claim that we ought to take our fallibility into account when managing our beliefs—appears to conflict with several other compelling epistemic norms. To shed light on these apparent conflicts, I distinguish two kinds of norms: norms of perfection and norms of compensation. Roughly, norms of perfection tell us how agents ought to behave if they’re to be perfect; norms of compensation tell us how imperfect agents ought to behave in order to compensate for their imperfections. I argue (...) that the Fallibility Norm is a norm of compensation, and that thinking of it like this helps us make progress in debates surrounding disagreement, higher-order evidence, and coherence. (shrink)

Titelbaum Oxford studies in epistemology, 2015) has recently argued that the Enkratic Principle is incompatible with the view that rational belief is sensitive to higher-order defeat. That is to say, if it cannot be rational to have akratic beliefs of the form “p, but I shouldn’t believe that p,” then rational beliefs cannot be defeated by higher-order evidence, which indicates that they are irrational. In this paper, I distinguish two ways of understanding Titelbaum’s argument, and argue that neither version is (...) sound. The first version can be shown to rest on a subtle, but crucial, misconstrual of the Enkratic Principle. The second version can be resisted through careful consideration of cases of higher-order defeat. The upshot is that proponents of the Enkratic Principle are free to maintain that rational belief is sensitive to higher-order defeat. (shrink)

It seems that epistemically rational agents should avoid incoherent combinations of beliefs and should respond correctly to their epistemic reasons. However, some situations seem to indicate that such requirements cannot be simultaneously satisfied. In such contexts, assuming that there is no unsolvable dilemma of epistemic rationality, either (i) it could be rational that one’s higher-order attitudes do not align with one’s first-order attitudes or (ii) requirements such as responding correctly to epistemic reasons that agents have are not genuine rationality requirements. (...) This result doesn’t square well with plausible theoretical assumptions concerning epistemic rationality. So, how do we solve this puzzle? In this paper, I will suggest that an agent can always reason from infallible higher-order reasons. This provides a partial solution to the above puzzle. (shrink)

ABSTRACT It is plausible to think that we're rationally required to follow our total evidence. It is also plausible to think that there are coherence requirements on rationality. It is also plausible to think that higher order evidence can be misleading. Several epistemologists have recognized the puzzle these claims generate, and the puzzle seems to have only startling and unattractive solutions that involve the rejection of intuitive principles. Yet Alex Worsnip has recently argued that this puzzle has a tidy, attractive (...) and independently motivated solution that involves rejecting the claim that we're rationally required to follow our total evidence. In what follows I argue that this solution fails to solve the fundamental problem for rationality. (shrink)

Deference principles are principles that describe when, and to what extent, it’s rational to defer to others. Recently, some authors have used such principles to argue for Evidential Uniqueness, the claim that for every batch of evidence, there’s a unique doxastic state that it’s permissible for subjects with that total evidence to have. This paper has two aims. The first aim is to assess these deference-based arguments for Evidential Uniqueness. I’ll show that these arguments only work given a particular kind (...) of deference principle, and I’ll argue that there are reasons to reject these kinds of principles. The second aim of this paper is to spell out what a plausible generalized deference principle looks like. I’ll start by offering a principled rationale for taking deference to constrain rational belief. Then I’ll flesh out the kind of deference principle suggested by this rationale. Finally, I’ll show that this principle is both more plausible and more general than the principles used in the deference-based arguments for Evidential Uniqueness. (shrink)

Norman forms the belief that the president is in New York by way of a clairvoyance faculty he doesn’t know he has. Many agree that his belief is unjustified but disagree about why it is unjustified. I argue that the lack of justification cannot be explained by a higher-level evidence requirement on justification, but it can be explained by a no-defeater requirement. I then explain how you can use cognitive faculties you don’t know you have. Lastly, I use lessons from (...) the foregoing to compare Norman’s belief, formed by clairvoyance, with Sally’s theistic belief, formed by a sensus divinitatis. (shrink)

We argue that philosophers ought to distinguish epistemic decision theory and epistemology, in just the way ordinary decision theory is distinguished from ethics. Once one does this, the internalist arguments that motivate much of epistemic decision theory make sense, given specific interpretations of the formalism. Making this distinction also causes trouble for the principle called Propriety, which says, roughly, that the only acceptable epistemic utility functions make probabilistically coherent credence functions immodest. We cast doubt on this requirement, but then argue (...) that epistemic decision theorists should never have wanted such a strong principle in any case. (shrink)

Many have argued that various features of moral disagreements create problems for cognitivism about moral judgment, but these arguments have been shown to fail. In this paper, I articulate a new problem for cognitivism that derives from features of our responses to moral disagreement. I argue that cognitivism entails that one of the following two claims is false: (1) a mental state is a belief only if it tracks changes in perceived evidence; (2) it is intelligible to make moral judgments (...) that do not track changes in perceived evidence. I explain that there is a good case that (1) holds such that we should prefer theories that do not entail the negation of (1). And I argue that the seeming intelligibility of entirely intransigent responses to peer disagreement about moral issues shows us that there is a good case that (2) holds. (shrink)

[This papers explores a novel case for the normativity of knowledge for belief – something that is compatible with the knowledge/factual awareness distinction I've explored elsewhere.] There are two different kinds of enkratic principles for belief: evidential enkratic principles and normative enkratic principles. It’s frequently taken for granted that there’s not an important difference between them. But evidential enkratic principles are undermined by considerations that gain no traction at all against their normative counterparts. The idea that such an asymmetry exists (...) between evidential and normative enkratic principles is surprising all on its own. It is also something that calls out for explanation. Similarly, the considerations that undermine evidential enkratic principles also undermine certain narrow-scope evidential principles. This too generates explanatory questions. I show how a knowledge-first view of rationality can easily address these explanatory questions. Thus we have one more reason to put knowledge first in [some areas of] epistemology. (shrink)

Intellectualists disagree with anti-intellectualists about the relationship between knowledge and truth. According to intellectualists, this relationship is intimate. Knowledge entails true belief, and in fact everything required for knowledge is somehow relevant to the probability that the belief in question is true. According to anti-intellectualists, this relationship isn’t intimate. Or, at least, it’s not as intimate as intellectualists think. Factors that aren’t in any way relevant to the probability that a belief is true can make a difference to whether it (...) counts as knowledge. In this paper, I give a new argument for anti-intellectualism and draw out consequences of this argument for the pragmatic encroachment debate. The standard purist objection to pragmatism is that pragmatism entails anti-intellectualism. As I show, anti-intellectualism follows from premises that are plausible even if purism is true, so the standard purist objection to pragmatism fails. (shrink)

In this paper, I present a puzzle about epistemic rationality. It seems plausible that it should be rational to believe a proposition if you have sufficient evidential support for it. It seems plausible that it rationality requires you to conform to the categorical requirements of rationality. It also seems plausible that our first-order attitudes ought to mesh with our higher-order attitudes. It seems unfortunate that we cannot accept all three claims about rationality. I will present three ways of trying to (...) resolve this tension and argue that the best way to do this is to reject the idea that strong evidential support is the stuff rationality is made of. In the course of doing this, I shall argue that there is a special class of propositions about the requirements of rationality that we cannot make rational mistakes about and explain how this can be. (shrink)

Epistemic Permissivists face a special problem about the relationship between our first- and higher-order attitudes. They claim that rationality often permits a range of doxastic responses to the evidence. Given plausible assumptions about the relationship between your first- and higher-order attitudes, it can't be rational to adopt a credence on the edge of that range. But Permissivism says that, for some such range, any credence in that range is rational. Permissivism, in its traditional form, cannot be right. I consider some (...) new ways of developing Permissivism to avoid this argument, but each has problems of its own. (shrink)

While it is generally believed that justification is a fallible guide to the truth, there might be interesting exceptions to this general rule. In recent work on bridge-principles, an increasing number of authors have argued that truths about what a subject ought to do are truths we stand in some privileged epistemic relation to and that our justified normative beliefs are beliefs that will not lead us astray. If these bridge-principles hold, it suggests that justification might play an interesting role (...) in our normative theories. In turn, this might help us understand the value of justification, a value that's notoriously difficult to understand if we think of justification as but a fallible means to a desired end. We will argue that these bridge-principles will be incredibly difficult to defend. While we do not think that normative facts necessarily stand in any interesting relationship to our justified beliefs about them, there might well be a way of defending the idea that our justified beliefs about what to do won't lead us astray. In turn, this might help us understand the value of justification, but this way of thinking about justification and its value comes with costs few would be willing to pay. (shrink)

Sometimes it’s reasonable to reduce confidence in a proposition in response to gaining etiological information. Suppose, for example, a theist learns that her theism is ‘due to’ her religious upbringing. There is a clear range of cases where it would be reasonable for her to respond by slightly decreasing her confidence in God’s existence. So long as reasonability and justification are distinct, this reasonability claim would appear consistent with the thesis that this kind of etiological information cannot, all by itself, (...) affect one’s justification. In what follows, I argue that this is mistaken. For, even if reasonability and justification are distinct, the reasonability of decreasing confidence in response to etiological information must be explained in terms of a decrease in justification. The argument to follow threatens not only the stronger thesis that etiological information never defeats justification but the substantially weaker thesis, advocated by various authors, that justification is defeated by etiological information in only a limited range of circumstances. I go on to show how the arguments en route to this conclusion have much wider epistemological ramifications. (shrink)

There is a kind of objectivism in epistemology that involves the acceptance of objective epistemic norms. It is generally regarded as harmless. There is another kind of objectivism in epistemology that involves the acceptance of an objectivist account of justification, one that takes the justification of a belief to turn on its accuracy. It is generally regarded as hopeless. It is a strange and unfortunate sociological fact that these attitudes are so prevalent. Objectivism about norms and justification stand or fall (...) together. Justification is simply a matter of conforming to norms. In this essay, I shall make the case for objectivism about justification. (shrink)

Higher-order defeat occurs when one loses justification for one's beliefs as a result of receiving evidence that those beliefs resulted from a cognitive malfunction. Several philosophers have identified features of higher-order defeat that distinguish it from familiar types of defeat. If higher-order defeat has these features, they are data an account of rational belief must capture. In this article, I identify a new distinguishing feature of higher-order defeat, and I argue that on its own, and in conjunction with the other (...) distinguishing features, it favors an account of higher-order defeat grounded in non-evidential, ‘state-given reasons’ for belief. (shrink)

In this paper, we claim that, if you justifiably believe that you ought to perform some act, it follows that you ought to perform that act. In the first half, we argue for this claim by reflection on what makes for correct reasoning from beliefs about what you ought to do. In the second half, we consider a number of objections to this argument and its conclusion. In doing so, we arrive at another argument for the view that justified beliefs (...) about what you ought to do must be true, based in part on the idea that the epistemic and practical domains are uniform, in a sense we spell out. We conclude by sketching possible implications of our discussion for the debates over what is wrong with akrasia and pragmatic encroachment on justified belief and knowledge. (shrink)