In Knowledge in a Social World, Alvin Goldman presents a framework to quantify the epistemic effects that various policies, procedures, and behaviors can have on a group of agents. In this essay, I show that the framework requires some modifications when applied to agents with credences. The required modifications carry with them an interesting consequence, namely, that any group whose members disagree can become more accurate by forming a consensus through averaging their credences. I sketch a way that this result (...) can be used to show that individual norms of rationality and group norms of rationality can dictate conflicting behaviors for the members of some groups. I conclude by discussing how some of the assumptions used to generate the consensus result might be loosened.Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.WE OUGHT TO AGREE: A CONSEQUENCE OF REPAIRING GOLDMAN'S GROUP SCORING RULEVolume 9, Issue 2Matthew KopecDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2012.3Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. WE OUGHT TO AGREE: A CONSEQUENCE OF REPAIRING GOLDMAN'S GROUP SCORING RULEVolume 9, Issue 2Matthew KopecDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2012.3Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. WE OUGHT TO AGREE: A CONSEQUENCE OF REPAIRING GOLDMAN'S GROUP SCORING RULEVolume 9, Issue 2Matthew KopecDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2012.3Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

Defenders of pragmatic encroachment in epistemology (or what I call practicalism) need to address two main problems. First, the view seems to imply, absurdly, that knowledge can come and go quite easily—in particular, that it might come and go along with our variable practical interests. We can call this the stability problem. Second, there seems to be no fully satisfying way of explaining whose practical interests matter. We can call this the “whose stakes?” problem. I argue that both problems can (...) be addressed in roughly the same terms. More exactly, I argue that by first clarifying the whose stakes? problem an answer to the stability problem naturally falls out. (shrink)

When it comes to epistemic normativity, should we take the good to be prior to the right? That is, should we ground facts about what we ought and ought not believe on a given occasion in facts about the value of being in certain cognitive states (such as, for example, the value of having true beliefs)? The overwhelming answer among contemporary epistemologists is “Yes, we should.” This essay argues to the contrary. Just as taking the good to be prior to (...) the right in ethics often leads one to sanction implausible trade-offs when determining what an agent should do, so too, this essay argues, taking the good to be prior to the right in epistemology leads one to sanction implausible trade-offs when determining what a subject should believe. Epistemic value—and, by extension, epistemic goals—are not the explanatory foundation upon which all other normative notions in epistemology rest. (shrink)

The following four assumptions plausibly describe the ideal rational agent. (1) She knows what her beliefs are. (2) She desires to believe only truths. (3) Whenever she desires that P → Q and knows that P, she desires that Q. (4) She does not both desire that P and desire that ~P, for any P. Although the assumptions are plausible, they have an implausible consequence. They imply that the ideal rational agent does not believe and desire contradictory propositions. She neither (...) desires the world to be any different than she thinks it is, nor thinks it is any different than she desires it to be. The problem of preserving our intuitions about desire, without embracing the implausible conclusion, is what I call “the Wishful Thinking Puzzle.” In this paper, I examine how this puzzle arises, and I argue that it is surprisingly difficult to solve. Even the decision theoretic conception of desire is not immune to the puzzle. One approach, the contrastive conception of desire, does avoid the puzzle without being ad hoc, but it remains too inchoate to win our full confidence. (shrink)

Abstract In this paper I argue that to understand the ethics of belief we need to put it in a context of what we care about. Epistemic values always arise from something we care about and they arise only from something we care about. It is caring that gives rise to the demand to be epistemically conscientious. The reason morality puts epistemic demands on us is that we care about morality. But there may be a (small) class of beliefs which (...) it is not wrong to hold unconscientiously. I also argue that epistemic values enjoy a privileged place in the panorama of what we care about because they are entailed by anything we care about. That means that when there is a conflict between caring about knowledge or true belief and caring about something else, that conflict cannot be resolved simply by following the one we care about the most because caring about knowledge in any domain is entailed by caring about that domain. Finally, I argue that whereas caring demands different degrees of conscientiousness in different contexts, contextualism about knowledge is less plausible. (shrink)

Naturalists seek continuity between epistemology and science. Critics argue this illegitimately expands science into epistemology and commits the fallacy of scientism. Must naturalists commit this fallacy? I defend a conception of naturalized epistemology which upholds the non-identity of epistemic ends, norms, and concepts with scientific evidential ends, norms, and concepts. I argue it enables naturalists to avoid three leading scientistic fallacies: dogmatism, one dimensionalism, and granting science an epistemic monopoly.

We are bombarded with epistemic norms. Respect your evidence. Don’t believe in contradictions. Don’t arbitrarily change beliefs. But how do such norms get their normative force? Why should we respect our evidence, for example? In this paper I offer a familiar type of answer, epistemic instrumentalism. Epistemic instrumentalism holds that epistemic norms get their normative force by being useful. You should respect your evidence because it will help you achieve some valuable ends. This answer, while familiar, is not very popular. (...) There is a widely accepted objection to epistemic instrumentalism, the too few reasons objection. The objection looms so large that standard developments of instrumentalism have become bloated with philosophical machinery to respond to it. This does a disservice to epistemic instrumentalism. Rather than focusing completely on the objection, I focus on describing a simple model for how conforming to the epistemic norms is broadly useful. Once I describe the simple model, the too few reasons objection becomes much easier to answer. This strategy results in a well-motivated philosophical theory based on uncontroversial facts that has many advantages over rival theories. (shrink)

My starting point is what I call the Normative Authority Conception of justification, where S is justified in their belief that p at t (to some degree n) if and only if their believing that p at t is not ruled out by epistemic norms that have normative authority over S at t. With this in mind, this paper develops an account of doxastic justification by first developing an account of the normative authority of epistemic norms. Drawing from work in (...) political philosophy, I argue that (a) the cognitive and evaluative commitments and concerns behind our actual practices of holding each other and ourselves accountable for our beliefs reveal which epistemic norms we have consented to be under, and that (b) it is because we have consented to be under the authority of these norms – by actually holding ourselves and others accountable to them – that they in turn have normative authority over us. By connecting the authority of epistemic norms to the authority we have over ourselves in this way, the resulting account of doxastic justification (i) explains why it can be appropriate to criticize, resent, or sanction someone for having unjustified beliefs, (ii) avoids the phenomena of normative alienation and normative parochialism, and (iii) respects the social and collective nature of epistemic justification. (shrink)

This work represents an interdisciplinary attempt at the development of a-- scientific theory of norms and normativity. Normativity, understood in its most general interpretation as value determinations and prescriptions, has traditionally been troublesome to account by science and difficult to “place” within a scientific worldview. Such an accomplishment is attempted by the joining in conversation of two bodies of literature. The first of these is Steve Fuller’s naturalist epistemology and the second corresponds to the situated study of cognition, along with (...) the epistemologies that have resulted from their findings. These two bodies of literature constitute the most radically naturalist attempts at developing a viable frame of epistemological and/or normative reference within their respective fields. (shrink)

n the analytic tradition, the appeal to intuition has been a common philosophical practice that supposedly provides us with epistemic standards. The authoress argues that the high epistemological standards of traditional analytic philosophy cannot be pursued by this method. Perhaps within a naturalistic, reliable frame intuitions can be evoked more coherently. Philosophers can use intuition as scientists do, in hypothesis- construction or data- collection. This is an ironic conclusion: Traditional analytic epistemologists rely on the appeal to intuition, but cannot justify (...) it. Naturalists, on the other hand, are not those who need such a method; yet they can better accommodate it within their view. (shrink)

We argue that the value of authenticity does not explain the value of self-knowledge. There are a plurality of species of authenticity; in this paper we consider four species: avoiding pretense (section 2), Frankfurtian wholeheartedness (section 3), existential self-knowledge (section 4), and spontaneity (section 5). Our thesis is that, for each of these species, the value of (that species of) authenticity does not (partially) explain the value of self-knowledge. Moreover, when it comes to spontaneity, the value of (that species of) (...) authenticity conflicts with the value of self-knowledge. (shrink)

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

The Linda paradox is a key topic in current debates on the rationality of human reasoning and its limitations. We present a novel analysis of this paradox, based on the notion of verisimilitude as studied in the philosophy of science. The comparison with an alternative analysis based on probabilistic confirmation suggests how to overcome some problems of our account by introducing an adequately defined notion of verisimilitudinarian confirmation.

I argue that the claim that epistemic ought is incommensurable is self-defeating. My argument, however, depends on the truth of the premise that there can be not only epistemic reasons for belief, but also non-epistemic reasons for belief. So I also provide some support for that claim.

The overwhelmingly dominant view of epistemic normativity has been an extreme form of deontology. I argue that although the pull towards deontology is quite understandable, given the traditional concerns of epistemology, there is no good reason for not also adopting a complementary consequentialist notion of epistemic normativity, which can be put to use in applied epistemology. I further argue that this consequentialist notion is not, despite appearances and popular sentiment to the contrary, any less genuinely epistemic than the deontological notion (...) and that it may even be considered more genuinely normative. (shrink)

in American Philosophical Quarterly 44 (3), July 2007, pp. 259-72. Argues that epistemically normative claims are made true by the same facts as, but do not mean the same as, certain natural-sounding claims.

In two recent papers, I criticized Ronald N. Giere's and Larry Laudan's arguments for 'naturalizing' the philosophy of science (Siegel 1989, 1990). Both Giere and Laudan replied to my criticisms (Giere 1989, Laudan 1990b). The key issue arising in both interchanges is these naturalists' embrace of instrumental conceptions of rationality, and their concomitant rejection of non-instrumental conceptions of that key normative notion. In this reply I argue that their accounts of science's rationality as exclusively instrumental fail, and consequently that their (...) cases for 'normatively naturalizing' the philosophy of science fail as well. (shrink)

Beliefs should conform to some norms. Epistemic instrumentalism holds that your beliefs should conform to these epistemic norms just because conforming is useful. But there seems to be cases where conforming to the epistemic norms isn’t useful at all, as in so-called “too-few-reasons” cases. In response to these cases, universal epistemic instrumentalists argue that despite first appearances, it is always useful to conform to the epistemic norms. I argue that all current versions of this universalist response are objectionable. I conclude (...) with a conjecture about why no version of universalism will succeed. (shrink)

Are epistemic reasons merely a species of instrumental practical reasons, making epistemic rationality a specialized form of instrumental practical rationality? Or are epistemic reasons importantly different in kind? Despite the attractions of the former view, Kelly (2003) argues quite compellingly that epistemic rationality cannot be merely a matter of taking effective means to one’s epistemic ends. I argue here that Kelly’s objections can be sidestepped if we understand epistemic reasons as instrumental reasons that arise in light of the aims held (...) by social collectives of which we are members, rather than being fixed by our own individual goals. This social version of epistemic instrumentalism would not be subject to counterexamples that point to the failure of individual people to possess desires or goals that would account for all of the epistemic reasons we find it natural to attribute to them. I conclude by comparing the proposed view to the alternative version of instrumentalism defended by Kornblith (1993). I argue that the social view I sketch here has one noteworthy advantage. It better accounts for the intuitive distinctness of our practical and epistemic reasons for belief in cases where flouting epistemic norms would better help us to achieve our own individual goals. (shrink)

Pragmatic theories of epistemic normativity ground norms of belief formation in true belief’s instrumental value as a means to promoting our desires. I argue that advocates of this view face a dilemma: either they agree that epistemic norms prescribe truth-conducive procedures of belief formation, which is untenable against the backdrop of their theory, or they dismiss the truth-conduciveness criterion and thereby render themselves incapable of explaining an intuition that most of us share: in cases where false beliefs generate the same (...) pragmatic output as true ones, truth-conducive procedures of belief formation are still preferable to fallacious ones. After establishing this objection, I make a case for the position that regards the intrinsic value of true belief as the source of epistemic normativity by showing how it meets the challenge that pragmatism falls victim to. (shrink)

It is typically thought that some epistemic states are valuable—knowing, truly or accurately believing, understanding. These are states it’s thought good to be in and it’s also said that we aim or want to be in them. It is then sometimes claimed that these sorts of thoughts about epistemic goods or values ground or explain our epistemic norms. For instance, we think subjects should follow their evidence when they form their beliefs. But why should they? Why not believe against the (...) evidence or ignore it completely in deciding what to believe? Here’s a compelling sort of answer: because epistemic subjects are or ought to be trying to know more and following their evidence is a means to that end or to fulfilling that obligation. In this paper I argue that this compelling thought cannot be right. Subjects who are trying to know more will regularly fail to conform to some of our most familiar epistemic norms. (shrink)

According to epistemic instrumentalists the normativity of evidence for belief is best explained in terms of the practical utility of forming evidentially supported beliefs. Traditional arguments for instrumentalism—arguments based on naturalism and motivation—lack suasive force against opponents. A new argument for the view—the Argument from Coincidence—is presented. The argument shows that only instrumentalists can avoid positing an embarrassing coincidence between the practical value of believing in accordance with one’s evidence, and the existence of reasons so to believe. Responses are considered (...) and shown to be inadequate. (shrink)

In two recent papers, I criticized Ronald N. Giere's and Larry Laudan's arguments for 'naturalizing' the philosophy of science. Both Giere and Laudan replied to my criticisms. The key issue arising in both interchanges is these naturalists' embrace of instrumental conceptions of rationality, and their concomitant rejection of non-instrumental conceptions of that key normative notion. In this reply I argue that their accounts of science's rationality as exclusively instrumental fail, and consequently that their cases for 'normatively naturalizing' the philosophy of (...) science fail as well. (shrink)

This article explores the role of desires in the ethics of deception. The argument concentrates on intrinsic desires not to have false beliefs and on the resulting role of false beliefs as building-blocks, not just causes, of harm. If there is a duty of beneficence at all and desire fulfilment is at least a component of welfare, there is often a direct wrongness in causing a false belief.

Recently, evidentialists have argued that only they can explain transparency--the psychological phenomena wherein the question of doxastic deliberation of whether to believe p immediately gives way to the question of whether p--and thus that pragmatism about epistemic reasons is false. In this paper, we provide a defense of pragmatism. We depart from previous defenses of pragmatism which argue against the evidentialist explanation of transparency or the fact of transparency itself, by instead arguing that the pragmatist can provide a sound explanation (...) of transparency while maintaining her distinctive view of epistemic reasons. We do so by putting forth an evolutionary debunking explanation of doxastic deliberation. Since both the evidentialist and pragmatist have sound explanatory accounts of transparency, we argue that transparency should not be appealed to when trying to adjudicate the debate between evidentialists and pragmatists, but rather must be decided on other grounds. (shrink)

Naturalistic epistemology is accused of ruling out the normative element of epistemology. Different naturalistic responses are considered. It is argued that the content of attributions of knowledge is best understood in purely descriptive terms. So their normative force is merely hypothetical. Attributions of justified belief, on the other hand, do have intrinsic normativity. This derives from their role in our first-person deliberation of what to believe. It is suggested that the content of them is best captured in naturalistic terms by (...) accepting a dispositional analysis of justification that is a species of the generic dispositional conception of value. (shrink)

In developing her ethics of care, Eva Kittay discusses the vulnerability and voluntarism models of obligation. Kittay uses the vulnerability model to demonstrate that we have some obligations to ca...

In this paper, I argue that Imre Lakatos’s account on the relation between the history and the philosophy of science, if properly understood and also if properly modified, can be valuable for the philosophical comprehension of the relation between the history and the philosophy of science. The paper is divided into three main parts. In the first part, I provide a charitable exegesis of the Lakatosian conception of the history of science in order to show that Lakatos’s history cannot be (...) a caricature. In the second part, I describe what I believe are the real problems of Lakatos’s account on a metaphysical and on a methodological level. In order to address these problems, I take advantage of the recent critique of the so-called “confrontation model”. Finally, in the third part, I suggest that a proper modification of Lakatos’s perspective can resolve the aforementioned problems without distorting Lakatos’s central aspiration, which is that the philosophical theories of scientific rationality can be assessed with the help of the history of science without losing their normative content. (shrink)

We argue that the value of authenticity does not explain the value of self-knowledge. There are a plurality of species of authenticity; in this paper we consider four species: avoiding pretense (section 2), Frankfurtian wholeheartedness (section 3), existential self-knowledge (section 4), and spontaneity (section 5). Our thesis is that, for each of these species, the value of (that species of) authenticity does not (partially) explain the value of self-knowledge. Moreover, when it comes to spontaneity, the value of (that species of) (...) authenticity conflicts with the value of self-knowledge. (shrink)

(No abstract is available for this citation).

Pragmatic justifications of epistemic norms tell us to observe these norms as the best means to attaining the things we value. I argue that such justifications do not work, because they harbour an irresolvable tension: their non-alethic character intrinsically conflicts with the truth-aiming character of the epistemic norms they are justifying. We should abandon, then, either epistemic norms or pragmatic justifications of these norms. I therefore argue that we should abandon pragmatic justifications.

In this paper I look at three challenges to the very possibility of an ethics of belief and then show how they can be met. The first challenge, from Thomas Kelly, says that epistemic rationality is not a form of instrumental rationality. If this claim is true, then it will be difficult to develop an ethics of belief that does not run afoul of naturalism. The second challenge is the Non-Voluntarism Argument, which holds that because we cannot believe at will (...) and because ought implies can, there can be no ethics of belief. The third challenge comes from Richard Feldman, who claims that there is no such thing as ought all-things-considered. He says, for example, that moral oughts can be weighed against other moral oughts and that epistemic oughts can be compared to each other, but that there is no way to weigh moral oughts against epistemic oughts. If this is true, then norms about what one ought to believe are not nearly as important as one might have hoped or as philosophers have traditionally thought. In answering these three challenges, I try to show how and why the project of developing epistemic norms might be a promising avenue of research, despite claims to the contrary. (shrink)

We can address the issue of epistemic luck, the possibility that the world interferes with the activity of believing so as to keep that activity from achieving its aim, by rethinking the aim of that activity. So, if we give up truth, for example, as the aim of belief, and if we embrace a different aim—the aim of believing as my ideal self would have me believe—we can eliminate the possibility of luck and leave the world no room to interfere (...) in the affairs of the activity of believing. All this while at the same time preserving the epistemic’s responsiveness to the world. This way of seeing the epistemic is culled from the work of Kierkegaard’s pseudonyms. (shrink)