Recent empirical work on non-philosophers’ intuitions about epistemic normativity reveals patterns that cannot be fully accounted for by direct epistemic consequentialism. On the basis of these results, one might picture participants as “epistemic deontologists.” We present the results of two new experiments that support a more nuanced picture. We examine intuitions about guesses and hypotheses, and about beliefs. Our results suggest a two-factor model of intuitions, wherein both consequentialist and non-consequentialist considerations affect participants’ judgments about epistemic permissibility.

This paper connects veritistic teleological epistemology, VTE, with the epistemological dimension of the scientific realism debate. VTE sees our epistemic activities as a tradeoff between believing truths and avoiding error. I argue that van Fraassen’s epistemology is not suited to give a justification for a crucial presupposition of his Bad Lot objection to inference to the best explanation (IBE), the presupposition that believing that p is linked to p being more likely to be true. This makes him vulnerable to a (...) counterargument, tailored after Musgrave’s defense of IBE, which would result in a stalemate between them about presuppositions of rationality. I will, however, show that switching to VTE can justify van Fraassen’s presupposition. This leads to a dismissal of common IBE arguments for realism as presented by Boyd and Musgrave, but I also argue that a more cautious version of realism can be rescued from the Bad Lot objection. Finally, I raise some worries about epistemic risk-attitude consistency for constructive empiricists and develop an alternative anti-realist position.1. (shrink)

There is now a significant body of literature on consequentialist ethics that propose satisficing instead of maximizing accounts. Even though epistemology recently witnessed a widespread discussion of teleological and consequentialist theories, a satisficing account is surprisingly not developed yet. The aim of this paper is to do just that. The rough idea is that epistemic rules are justified if and only if they satisfice the epistemic good, i.e., reach some threshold of epistemic value (which varies with practical context), and believing (...) is justified if and only if it follows said rules.I argue that this alternative to the implicitly established way of thinking in maximizing terms has significant advantages. First, maximizing epistemic value can be unreasonably demanding; second, a satisficing theory can make finding reasonable rules for belief formation and sustenance much more accessible; and third, a satisficing approach is a better alternative to both general subjectivist and maximizing objectivist attempts to spell out epistemic blame. (shrink)

The value and function of theoretical knowledge is an important and disputed issue, which has received surprisingly little scholarly attention. I attempt to clarify the notion of theoretical knowledge and examine its general relationship to learning. Theoretical knowledge is not necessarily distinguished by any particular content; the adjective “theoretical” can just as well signify a particular methodological approach or a way of dealing with a topic, including the way it is conceptualized. I further argue that theoretical knowledge can be merely (...) implicit and non-propositional. Though I reject a radical constructivist view, according to which knowledge acquisition consists in socialization, it must be admitted that socialization and the acquisition of theoretical knowledge do turn out to go closely hand in hand, inasmuch as theoretical knowledge is often a precondition of successful socialization. Concepts, principles, models and symbolic systems support the acquisition of both theoretical and other kinds of knowledge, but also help the learner to find her way about in an environment that is already formed by theories and conceptual understandings. Theoretical knowledge is both a learning instrument and a tool for navigation. (shrink)

In this article we discuss what we call the deliberative division of epistemic labor. We present evidence that the human tendency to engage in motivated reasoning in defense of our beliefs can facilitate the occurrence of divisions of epistemic labor in deliberations among people who disagree. We further present evidence that these divisions of epistemic labor tend to promote beliefs that are better supported by the evidence. We show that promotion of these epistemic benefits stands in tension with what extant (...) theories in epistemology take rationality to require in cases of disagreement. We argue that the epistemic benefits that result from the deliberative division of epistemic labor can provide epistemic reason to maintain confidence in cases of disagreement. We then show that the deliberative division of epistemic labor constitutes a distinct kind of epistemic dependence. (shrink)

Fabian Wendt argues that political realism is not capable of explaining how the state’s moral right to rule over its subjects is generated. I believe that Wendt’s criticism is not sound because his position relies on the false implicit assumption that realism and moralism ask the same philosophical questions on state authority. I contend that it is fallacious to evaluate the realist account of legitimacy by the standards of moralism, and vice versa, as these two accounts arrive at different conceptions (...) of legitimacy by raising different sets of philosophical questions. The two sets of philosophical questions are not reducible to each other. The realist account of legitimacy does not aim to explain what the moralist account of legitimacy aims to explain. (shrink)