In this paper, I show the complementarity of foundationalism and coherentism with respect to any efficient system of beliefs by means of a distinction between two types of proposition drawn from an analogy with an axiomatic system. This distinction is based on the way a given proposition is acknowledged as true, either by declaration (F-proposition) or by preservation (C-proposition). Within such a perspective, i.e., epistemological complementarism, not only can one see how the usual opposition between foundationalism and coherentism is irrelevant, (...) but furthermore one can appreciate the reciprocal relation between these two theories as they refer to two separate epistemological functions involved in the dynamics of constituting and expanding an epistemic system. (shrink)

I argue in this paper that the work of Keith Lehrer, especially in his book Self-Trust has applications to feminist ethics; specifically care ethics, which has become the leading form of normative sentimentalist ethics. I extend Lehrer's ideas concerning reason and justification of belief beyond what he says by applying the notion of evaluation central to his account of acceptance to the need for evaluation of emotions. The inability to evaluate and attain justification of one's emotions is an epistemic failure (...) that leads one not to act on one's own aspirations and desires and treat those desires as if they did not exist. I argue that this is a common condition among women in patriarchal societies because patriarchy can cause women to believe that they are not worthy of their trust concerning what they accept, specifically acceptance of their anger over their own mistreatment. As a result, many women are unable to realize the self-protective role of their anger. All of this reflects a lack of what I shall call epistemic personhood, a concept based on Lehrer's theory concerning the keystone role of self-trust in the epistemic arch of rationality, justification and knowledge. Lastly, I use this concept of epistemic personhood to develop a care ethical account of self-respect that counters the Kantian account. (shrink)

This article aims to show that Williamson's anti-luminosity argument does not succeed if we presuppose a constitutive connection between the phenomenal and the doxastic. In contrast to other luminists, however, my strategy is not to critically focus on the refined safety condition in terms of degrees of confidence that anti-luminists typically use in this context. Instead, I will argue that, given a certain conception of what Chalmers calls ‘direct phenomenal concepts,’ luminosity is guaranteed even if the refined safety condition in (...) terms of degrees of confidence is taken for granted. (shrink)

In recent literature, there is a strong tendency to endorse the following argument: There are particular judgments about one's current phenomenal experiences that are infallible; if there are particular judgments about one's current phenomenal experiences that are infallible, then the infallibility of those judgments is due to the relation of acquaintance; therefore, acquaintance explains why those particular judgments about one's current phenomenal experiences are infallible. The aim of this paper is to examine critically both the first and the second premise (...) of this argument. It will emerge that there might be a small class of judgments about one's current phenomenal experiences that are infallible, namely judgments involving direct phenomenal concepts. However, as I will try to show, the infallibility of such judgments, if existent at all, is not due to the relation of acquaintance. (shrink)

In the age of the Internet, people have increased access to information along multiple dimensions. It might seem that we are on our way to an epistemic utopia in which we spend less time and effort on basic cognitive tasks while devoting more time and effort to complex deliberation. However, though there are many accurate sources on the Internet, they must be sifted from the spammers, concern trolls, practical jokers, conspiracy theorists, counterintelligence sock-puppets, and outright liars who also proliferate online. (...) We can approach this problem via the individual or via the network, asking two questions. First, holding the topology of the network constant, which moral and epistemic dispositions are conducive to successful inquiry by nodes at different positions within it? Second, holding the distribution of people’s epistemic dispositions constant, which network topologies are more likely to produce epistemic goods and avoid epistemic ills? To answer these questions, we need to combine virtue-theoretic reflection on individual dispositions with a nuanced understanding of the dynamics of networks. In this paper, I highlight and explore some important properties of such networks and connect those properties with dispositions that make someone an excellent member of an epistemic network. (shrink)

Controversy over the epistemology of disagreement endures because there is an unnoticed factor at work: the intrinsic value we give to self-trust. Even if there are many instances of disagreement where, from a strictly epistemic or rational point of view, we ought to suspend belief, there are other values at work that influence our all-things considered judgments about what we ought to believe. Hence those who would give equal-weight to both sides in many cases of disagreement may be right, from (...) the perspective of pure rationality. But their critics are right too, in seeing something undesirable in the consequences of giving equal weight. Among epistemologists, there is a tendency to set aside trust and other such non-epistemic factors, on the grounds that these are not germane to their topic. But ultimately, the value of self-trust shows signs of encroaching on the strictly epistemic question of when our beliefs may be said to be justified. Hence again, even if the equal-weighters are right about what is rational, they may be wrong about what knowledge requires. (shrink)

This paper provides a thorough analysis of two often informally stated claims. First, successful argumentation in the sense of persuasive argumentation requires agreement between the interlocutors about the rationality of arguments. Second, a general agreement about rationality of arguments cannot itself be established via argumentation, since such an attempt leads to an infinite meta‐regress. Hence, agreement about the rationality of arguments is a precondition for successful argumentation. As the paper argues, these plausible claims hold under the assumption that interlocutors are (...) subjectively rational and follow their own standards of rationality when engaging in argumentation. (shrink)

Nietzsche talks about trust [vertraue*] and mistrust [misstrau*] in all of his published and authorized works, from The Birth of Tragedy to Ecce Homo. He refers to trust in 90 passages and mistrust in 101 – approximately ten times as often as he refers to resentment/ressentiment. Yet the scholarly literature on Nietzsche and trust includes just a handful of publications. Worse still, I have been unable to find a single publication devoted to Nietzsche and mistrust. This chapter aims to fill (...) the gap in the secondary literature by using digital humanities methods to systematically investigate the functions of trust and mistrust in Nietzsche’s writings. I argue that Nietzsche offers three main insights into trust and an additional two into mistrust. When it comes to trust, in his free spirit works, he reflects on the development of interpersonal trust, with an eye to situations in which trust is or is not reciprocated. He also criticizes some of the heuristics people use to identify trustworthy partners, especially the notion that all and only people with stable character are trustworthy. And perhaps Nietzsche’s most interesting thoughts about trust relate to self-trust, which he thinks is often unjustifiably undermined. When it comes to mistrust, although he regards generalized mistrust as a sign of bad character, he also thinks that harnessing mistrust can be valuable in at least two domains. One is morality, where we are disposed to accept traditional pieties and would benefit from turning a suspicious eye towards these pieties. The other is science, which systematizes both trust and mistrust in pursuit of the truth. (shrink)

When I take a sip from the coffee in my cup, I can taste that it is sweet. When I hold the cup with my hands, I can feel that it is hot. Why does the experience of feeling that the cup is hot give me justification for believing that the cup is hot?And why does the experience of tasting that the coffee is sweet give me justification for believing that the coffee is sweet?In general terms: Why is it that (...) a sense experience that P is a source of justification—a reason—for believing that P? Call this the Question. I will discuss various answers to the Question, and defend the one I myself favor. (shrink)

There are concepts of freedom of mind and freedom of belief which do not depend on the freedom of agency. After discussing some impediments to such freedom of mind, the paper explores some arguments of Dennett, Michael Smith and Philip Pettit, and Josefa Toribio. Borrowing ideas from Schiller, the paper concludes that such freedom has an emotional or aesthetic dimension.

The concept of the art of healing is intrinsically connected with the idea of healing powers. There are at least three possible approaches to that idea and all of them have different implications for the problem of medical wisdom. These are: the idea of the healing powers of nature, the idea of the healing powers of science, and the idea of the healing powers of physician's personality. Having critically discussed those ideas I sketch an ideal of a wise physician as (...) someone who has a particular kind of knowledge, good judgement, and self-trust. Medical knowledge is certainly a necessary condition of being a wise doctor but it is not the sufficient one. And this is why patients generally prefer to seek help of “naturally wise physicians”. (shrink)

The debate on whether and why misinformation is bad primarily focuses on the spread of false beliefs as its main harm. From the assumption that misinformation primarily causes harm through the spread of false beliefs as a starting point, it has been contended that the problem of misinformation has been exaggerated. Its tendency to generate false beliefs appears to be limited. However, the near-exclusive focus on whether or not misinformation dupes people with false beliefs neglects other epistemic harms associated with (...) it. Specifically, I show that misinformation also causes trouble for the epistemic goods of truth attainment, intellectual autonomy and debate pluriformity. Moreover, for each of these goods, I argue that emphasizing error-avoidance exacerbates, rather than mitigates, the harms caused by misinformation. These oversights and dilemmas show that prioritizing error-avoidance in the fight against misinformation is not a neutral default policy or necessarily a net positive. A shift in focus away from the spread of false beliefs as the main harm of misinformation is needed to better understand and counter its negative effects. (shrink)

There is a virtual consensus in contemporary epistemology that knowledge must be reliably produced. Everyone, it seems, is a reliabilist about knowledge in that sense. I present and defend two arguments that unreliable knowledge is possible. My first argument proceeds from an observation about the nature of achievements, namely, that achievements can proceed from unreliable abilities. My second argument proceeds from an observation about the epistemic efficacy of explanatory inference, namely, that inference to the best explanation seems to produce knowledge, (...) even if it isn't reliable. I also propose a successor to standard versions of reliabilism, which I call ‘ecumenical reliabilism’. Ecumenical reliabilism is consistent with unreliably produced knowledge and helps explain why unreliably produced knowledge is possible. (shrink)

In this paper the problem of the relation between belief and acceptance is discussed in view of recent literature on the topic. Belief and acceptance are characterized in terms of a number of properties, which show both the similarities and the dissimilarities between these notions. In particular it is claimed - contrary to some recently expressed views - that acceptance need not be intentional action and that the differences between belief and acceptance do not boil down to the simple view (...) that acceptance, contrary to belief, is based on the agent's direct exercise of his will. Acceptance which is not based on intentional action is shown in the paper to be especially closely related to belief, especially to linguistic belief. Thus if a person is in a non-intentional-ly acquired and held state of acceptance that something p, he also believes that p. Another general difference is that acceptance is language-dependent while there can be non-linguistic belief. Collective beliefs and acceptances are also briefly discussed in the paper Among other things, it is noted that the notion of wide as contrasted with truth-oriented, narrow acceptance is central in the collective case. (shrink)

This paper tries to explain against the backdrop of the history of German criminal theory why and in which way the fault elements are seen differently in Germany and in Anglo-American countries. It shows how Feuerbach’s psychological model of guilt convinced Feuerbach’s German contemporaries in the 19th century that the suppression of the actual will to violate a criminal prohibition must be the reason for punishment. For such deterrence theory, direct intention is the central criterion of imputation. There is no (...) room for extensions like indirect intention. The resulting gap was filled by representatives of the will theory who created dolus eventualis as a criterion of imputation. The paper then concentrates on the gradual change which dolus eventualis has undergone due to the development of a ‘normative’ concept of guilt, i.e. a perception of guilt as a failure to live up to certain expected standards. It is outlined how the normative concept of guilt has facilitated Welzel’s decision to transplant dolus from the guilt level to the level of definitional elements. Transferring dolus to the definitional level led to a further change from a primarily voluntative to a cognitive content of the notion. It became appropriate to view dolus eventualis as acceptance of the prohibited state of affairs. For reasons of clarification the terms dolus eventualis and recklessness are compared in an annex to the paper. (shrink)

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 (...) still out, there is now a substantial body of evidence suggesting that some of those empirical hypotheses are true. Much of this evidence derives from an ongoing series of experimental studies of epistemic intuitions that we have been conducting. A preliminary report on these studies will be presented in Section 3. In light of these studies, we think it is incumbent on those who pursue the epistemological projects in question to either explain why the truth of the hypotheses does not undermine their projects, or to say why, in light of the evidence we will present, they nonetheless assume that the hypotheses are false. In Section 4, which is devoted to Objections and Replies, we’ll consider some of the ways in which defenders of the projects we are criticizing might reply to our challenge. Our goal, in all of this, is not to offer a conclusive argument demonstrating that the epistemological projects we will be criticizing are untenable. Rather, our aim is to shift the burden of argument. (shrink)

The cognitive critique of the goals and desires that are input into the implicit calculations that result in instrumental rationality is one aspect of what has been termed broad rationality (Elster, 1983). This cognitive critique involves, among other things, the search for rational integration (Nozick, 1993)—that is, consistency between first-order and second-order preferences. Forming a second-order preference involves metarepresentational abilities made possible by mental decoupling operations. However, these decoupling abilities are separable from the motive that initiates the cognitive critique itself. (...) I argue that Velleman (1992) has identified that motive (“the desire to act in accordance with reasons”), and that it might be operationalisable as a thinking disposition at a very superordinate cognitive level. This thinking disposition, the Master Rationality Motive, is likely to be of particular importance in explaining individual differences in the tendency to seek rational integration. Preliminary research on related constructs suggests that this construct is measurable. (shrink)

In a seminal book, Alvin I. Goldman outlines a theory for how to evaluate social practices with respect to their “veritistic value”, i.e., their tendency to promote the acquisition of true beliefs in society. In the same work, Goldman raises a number of serious worries for his account. Two of them concern the possibility of determining the veritistic value of a practice in a concrete case because we often don't know what beliefs are actually true, and even if we did, (...) the task of determining the veritistic value would be computationally extremely difficult. Neither problem is specific to Goldman's theory and both can be expected to arise for just about any account of veritistic value. It is argued here that the first problem does not pose a serious threat to large classes of interesting practices. The bulk of the paper is devoted to the computational problem, which, it is submitted, can be addressed in promising terms by means of computer simulation. In an attempt to add vividness to this proposal, an up-and-running simulation environment is presented and put to some preliminary tests. (shrink)

In this essay, I provide an introduction to the so-called 'theological turn' in recent French, 'new' phenomenology. I begin by articulating the stakes of excluding God from phenomenology (as advocated by Edmund Husserl and Martin Heidegger) and then move on to a brief consideration of why Dominique Janicaud contends that, by inquiring into the 'inapparent', new phenomenology is no longer phenomenological. I then consider the general trajectories of this recent movement and argue that there are five main themes that unite (...) the work of such varied thinkers as Levinas, Derrida, Marion, Henry, Chrétien, Lacoste, and Ricœur. I conclude by outlining points of overlap between new phenomenology and contemporary analytic philosophy of religion and suggest that the two stand as important resources for each other. (shrink)

I argue that a necessary condition for being wise is: understanding how to live well. The condition, by requiring understanding rather than a wide variety of justified beliefs or knowledge, as Ryan and Whitcomb respectively require, yields the desirable result that being wise is compatible with having some false beliefs but not just any false beliefs about how to live well—regardless of whether those beliefs are justified or not. In arguing for understanding how to live well as a necessary condition (...) for wisdom, I reject the view, proposed by both Ryan and Whitcomb, that subjects such as chemistry lies within the domain of wisdom. I show that the argued for condition yields the desirable result that being wise is not a common achievement, but that it is not something that can only plausibly be achieved in the modern era. (shrink)

Legal doctrine is a kind of legal research, occupying the central position in professional legal writing, e.g., handbooks, monographs, commentaries and legal textbooks etc. It consists of a description of the literal sense of legal statutes, precedents etc., intertwined with many moral and other substantive reasons. Legal doctrine has normative components, and produces coherence in the law in many aspects. It also produces some justice. However, legal doctrine has faced repeated criticism, not least from minimalist philosophers.The author proposes a “Copernican (...) revolution” as regards the relation of legal theory to philosophy. Instead of attempting to make legal theory follow one of the notoriously controversial moral theories, he tries to adjust philosophy to legal theory. In the search for philosophy adjusted to legal doctrine, he prefers cautious (weak) philosophical positions to courageous (strong) ones. He also assumes a society‐centered theory of normativity, a coherentist theory of legal knowledge and a coherentist theory of justice.However, a law theorist has no chance to elaborate such theories in detail. Hence, the author poses the following questions to philosophers: How can a law theorist assume society‐centered normativity without being forced to enter the controversies around collectivism? How can a law theorist assume the common core of morality for society without being forced to enter technical controversies in political philosophy? How can the law theorist base his thinking on the coherence theory of law without being forced to enter technical controversies around the concept of coherence? How can the law theorist avoid hopeless ontological controversies? (shrink)

I argue that the analysis most capable of systematising our intuitions about coherence as a relation is one according to which a set of beliefs, A, coheres with another set, B, if and only if the set-theoretical union of A and B is a coherent set. The second problem I consider is the role of coherence in epistemic justification. I submit that there are severe problems pertaining to the idea, defended most prominently by Keith Lehrer, that justification amounts to coherence (...) with an acceptance system. Instead I advance a more dynamic approach according to which the problem of justification is the problem of how to merge new information with old coherently, a process which is seen to be closely connected with relational coherence. (shrink)

In a seminal book, Alvin I. Goldman outlines a theory for how to evaluate social practices with respect to their , i.e., their tendency to promote the acquisition of true beliefs (and impede the acquisition of false beliefs) in society. In the same work, Goldman raises a number of serious worries for his account. Two of them concern the possibility of determining the veritistic value of a practice in a concrete case because (1) we often don't know what beliefs are (...) actually true, and (2) even if we did, the task of determining the veritistic value would be computationally extremely difficult. Neither problem is specific to Goldman's theory and both can be expected to arise for just about any account of veritistic value. It is argued here that the first problem does not pose a serious threat to large classes of interesting practices. The bulk of the paper is devoted to the computational problem, which, it is submitted, can be addressed in promising terms by means of computer simulation. In an attempt to add vividness to this proposal, an up-and-running simulation environment (Laputa) is presented and put to some preliminary tests. (shrink)

Reaching understanding is one of our central epistemic goals, dictated by our important motivational epistemic virtue, namely inquisitiveness about the way things hang together. Understanding of humanly important causal dependencies is also the basic factual-theoretic ingredient of wisdom on the anthropocentric view proposed in the article. It appears at two levels. At the first level of immediate, spontaneous wisdom, it is paired with practical knowledge and motivation ( phronesis ), and encompasses understanding of oneself (a distinct level of self-knowledge having (...) to do with one’s dispositions capacities, vulnerabilities, and ways of reacting), of other people, of possibilities of meaningful life, and of relevant courses of events. It is partly resistant to skeptical scenarios, but not completely. On the second and reflective level, understanding helps fuller holistic integration of one’s first order practical and factual-theoretic knowledge and motivation, thus minimizing potential and actual conflicts between all these components. It also participates in the reflective control whose exercise is needed for full reflective wisdom, the crucial epistemic-practical virtue or human excellence. (shrink)

The paper discusses Lehrer's pioneering approach to the topic of wisdom. His pithy proposal, that wisdom is preference of merit justified by an evaluation system and undefeated by error, fits well within the grand philosophical tradition of thinking about wisdom, offering a very clear and original formulation of its target. The first part of the paper puts it on a map of philosophical options concerning wisdom (anthropo-, theo- and cosmo-centric ones) and then raises questions about it: does preference have to (...) motivate, what is the relation between factual and evaluative knowledge in the evaluation system, and how is the objectivity of merit secured? The second part briefly develops an alternative proposal inspired by Lehrer's work. It is a two-level picture. Wisdom combines the virtues of the first-order production of decision and action (reliability and practical validity) with second-order reflective endorsement of the first-order picture. The first-order production yields phronesis-generated action-guiding desires which constitute practical wisdom in the narrow sense, and the second level the more refined and sophisticated wisdom of philosophers and their kin. (shrink)

Thomas Reid has a theory of consciousness that is central to his philosophy of mind but which raises a regress problem. I have two tasks in this paper. The first is to give an account of Reid's views on consciousness and the avoidance of the regress based on textual analysis. The second is to expand the theory of consciousness Reid gives to offer a deeper explanation of how the regress is avoided that is based on Reid's philosophy of mind but (...) goes beyond any text from Reid that I know. The distinction is important. Philosophers are inclined to attribute to a philosopher views that they have invented by studying the philosopher. Both textual analysis and invention based on a philosopher's writings are legitimate uses of the history of philosophy. When they are confused, however, arguments about what the philosopher held generate confusion. If you invent something from his or her philosophy, even something implied by it, that is your philosophy, not the philosopher's. The distinction is important for avoiding useless disputes. This first part of my paper is an attempt to remain true to the texts of Reid. The second part goes beyond the text, though it is what I extrapolate from Reid. (shrink)

Judgements concerning proper or appropriate educational endeavour, methods of investigation and philosophising about education necessarily implicate perspectives, values, assumptions and beliefs. In recent years ideas from the complexity sciences have been utilised in many domains including psychology, economics, architecture, social science and education. This paper addresses questions concerning the appropriateness of utilising complexity science in educational research as well as issues relating to the ways in which complexity might be engaged. I suggest that, just like all human endeavour, approaches to (...) research emerge out of discursive communities and can be understood as self‐organising, dynamic and emergent over time. In this formulation, complexity represents one such newly emergent approach. I argue that it is important that researchers partake in critical and reflective discourse about the nature of education and conceptual frameworks, as well as about impacts and legacies of utilising complexity, so as to participate in and influence the ongoing emergence of educational endeavour. I conclude by suggesting a series of caveats for researchers considering using complexity in educational research. (shrink)

Judgements concerning proper or appropriate educational endeavour, methods of investigation and philosophising about education necessarily implicate perspectives, values, assumptions and beliefs. In recent years ideas from the complexity sciences have been utilised in many domains including psychology, economics, architecture, social science and education. This paper addresses questions concerning the appropriateness of utilising complexity science in educational research as well as issues relating to the ways in which complexity might be engaged. I suggest that, just like all human endeavour, approaches to (...) research emerge out of discursive communities and can be understood as self‐organising, dynamic and emergent over time. In this formulation, complexity represents one such newly emergent approach. I argue that it is important that researchers partake in critical and reflective discourse about the nature of education and conceptual frameworks, as well as about impacts and legacies of utilising complexity, so as to participate in and influence the ongoing emergence of educational endeavour. I conclude by suggesting a series of caveats for researchers considering using complexity in educational research. (shrink)

The paper discusses Bernard Bolzano’s epistemological approach to believing and knowing with regard to the epistemic requirements of an axiomatic model of science. It relates Bolzano’s notions of believing, knowing and evaluation to notions of infallibility, immediacy and foundational truth. If axiomatic systems require their foundational truths to be infallibly known, this knowledge involves both evaluation of the infallibility of the asserted truth and evaluation of its being foundational. The twofold attempt to examine one’s assertions and to do so by (...) searching for the objective grounds of the truths asserted lies at the heart of Bolzano’s notion of knowledge. However, the explanatory task of searching for grounds requires methods that cannot warrant infallibility. Hence, its constitutive role in a conception of knowledge seems to imply the fallibility of such knowledge. I argue that the explanatory task contained in Bolzanian knowing involves a high degree of epistemic virtues, and that it is only through some salient virtue that the credit of infallibility can distinguish Bolzanian knowing from a high degree of Bolzanian believing. (shrink)

This is an essay on G. E. Moore’s argument in defense of common sense against David Hume’s theory. However, the burden of essay is to show that, though Moore derived has argument from Thomas Reid, it was the latter who noted that the defense of common sense required more than showing that Hume’s theory conflicted with common sense. It required supplying a better theory than that of Hume’s of the operations of the human mind, and especially, a better theory of (...) the evidence and justification of common sense beliefs. The essay is a formulation and defense of Reid’s theory of conception, conviction and evidence. (shrink)

Traditional epistemology has, in the main, presupposed that the primary task is to give a complete account of the concept knowledge and to state under what conditions it is possible to have it. In so doing, most accounts have been hierarchical, and all assume an idealized knower. The assumption of an idealized knower is essential for the traditional goal of generating an unassailable account of knowledge acquisition. Yet we, as individuals, fail to reach the ideal. Perhaps more important, we have (...) epistemic goals not addressed in the traditional approach – among them, the ability to reach understanding in areas we deem important for our lives. Understanding is an epistemic concept. But how we obtain it has not traditionally been a focus. Developing an epistemic account that starts from a set of assumptions that differ from the traditional starting points will allow a different sort of epistemic theory, one on which generating understanding is a central goal and the idealized knower is replaced with an inquirer who is not merely fallible but working from a particular context with particular goals. Insight into how an epistemic account can include the particular concerns of an embedded inquirer can be found by examining the parallels between ethics and epistemology and, in particular, by examining the structure and starting points of virtue accounts. Here I develop several interrelated issues that contrast the goals and evaluative concepts that form the structure of both standard, traditional epistemological and ethical theories and virtue–centered theories. In the end, I sketch a virtue–centered epistemology that accords with who we are and how we gain understanding. (shrink)

Just as testimony is affected by unjust social relations, so too is intellectual self-trust. I defend an account of intellectual self-trust that explains both why it is properly thought of as trust and why it is directed at the self, and explore its relationship to social power. Intellectual self-trust is neither a matter of having dispositions to rely on one?s epistemic methods and mechanisms, nor having a set of beliefs about which ones are reliable. Instead, it is a stance that (...) an agent takes towards her own cognitive methods and mechanisms, comprising both cognitive and affective elements. Our intellectual self-trust is created and sustained socially and is thus porous to social power. Unjust social relations cause epistemic injustice, which undermines self-trust among the underprivileged; unjust social relations cause excessive self-trust among the privileged, which perpetuates epistemic injustice, which further undermines the self-trust of the disadvantaged in a vicious feedback loop. I conclude by exploring ways in which socially distorted intellectual self-trust can become better calibrated. (shrink)

This paper, at the crossroads of practical and epistemological questions, puts forward a non-standard approach to the study of a set of trust phenomena (trust, trustworthiness, distrust, self-trust, self-distrust…) and their interconnectedness. Two paradigmatic approaches to trust – harmonic and disharmonic – are unpacked and shown to be complementary. In contexts where the harmonic view applies, trust phenomena are mutually reinforcing. When the disharmonic view is appropriate, instead, they counterbalance one another. An analysis of Augustine’s De fide rerum quae non (...) videntur helps introducing the former. Each view carries its own conception of the role of institutions in trust. For the harmonic approach, institutions are contexts that reinforce trust silently, whereas for the disharmonic view they are salient objects of trust. The need for an over-arching articulation of these limited views is further highlighted by appeal to another distinction, between background and decision-based forms of trust. This paves the way to what is here termed a metaharmonic theory of trust, a theory sensitive to the difference between the contexts where trust phenomena reinforce or counterbalance one another. (shrink)

For most of the major philosophers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, human cognition was understood as involving the mind’s reflexive grasp of its own contents. But other important figures have described the very idea of a reflexive thought as incoherent. Ryle notably likened the idea of a reflexive thought to an arm that grasps itself. Recent work in philosophy, psychology, and the cognitive sciences has greatly clarified the special epistemic and semantic properties of reflexive thought. This article is an (...) attempt to give an explicit characterization of the structure of reflexive thoughts that explains those properties and avoids the complaints of its critics. (shrink)

In this essay, I assess Keith Lehrer's case against Foundationalism, which consists of variations on three objections: The Independent Information or Belief Objection, The Risk of Error Objection, and the Hidden Argument Objection. I conclude that each objection fails for reasons that can be endorsed – indeed, I would say for reasons that should be endorsed – by antifoundationalists and foundationalists alike.

Where most discussions of trust focus on the rationality of trust, in this paper I explore the doxastic justification of beliefs formed through trust. I examine two forms of trust: the self-trust that is involved when one trusts one’s own basic cognitive faculties, and the interpersonal trust that is involved when one trusts another speaker. Both cases involve regarding a source of information as dependable for the truth. In thinking about the epistemic significance regarding a source in this way, I (...) call upon Process Reliabilism (PR). With its core idea that the epistemic goodness of a belief tracks the reliability of the process through which the belief was formed, PR suggests one way to think about the (potential) epistemic benefits and risks of trust: in cases of trust the process through which belief is formed includes reliance on an information source, where the reliability with which the source produced its information is the main determinant of the epistemic status of the beliefs formed through trusting that source. While it is much more common to find something like this picture endorsed in connection with cases of self-trust, I argue that it ought to be endorsed for cases of interpersonal trust as well. The failure to do so, I submit, reflects a commitment to an individualistic orientation that proponents of PR need not, and should not, endorse. (shrink)

Aristotle’s account of epistēmē is foundationalist. In contrast, the web of dialectical argumentation that constitutes justification for scientific principles is coherentist. Aristotle’s account of explanation is structurally parallel to the argument for a foundationalist account of justification. He accepts the first argument but his coherentist accounts of justification indicate that he would not accept the second. Where is the disanalogy? For Aristotle, the intelligibility of a demonstrative premise is the cause of the intelligibility of a demonstrated conclusion and causation is (...) asymmetric. Within the Posterior Analytics itself, Aristotle does not account for this, but elsewhere he develops the resources for doing so: the cause is what acts on a substrate to actualize a potential in that substrate, resulting in the effect. On the other hand, it may well happen that two propositions entail each other, in which case one may as well justify the one on the basis of the other as vice versa. (shrink)

Our understanding of social experiences is central to our social understanding more generally. But this sphere of epistemic practice can be structurally prejudiced by unequal relations of power, so that some groups suffer a distinctive kind of epistemic injustice—hermeneutical injustice. I aim to achieve a clear conception of this epistemicethical phenomenon, so that we have a workable definition and a proper understanding of the wrong that it inflicts.

I bring together social ontology and social epistemology by consideringsocial entities (``epistemic unities'') that are constituted by the holdingof epistemic relations between their members. In particular, I focus onthe relation of taking someone as an expert. Among the types of structuresexamined are ones with a single expert and one or more non-experts whomay or may not know of each other's situation; and ones with more thanone expert, including cases in which the relation between the experts ishierarchical and cases in which (...) it is symmetrical. These structures modela variety of social situations which can thus be given a unified treatment.Among the cases I discuss are persons, which I argue are multiple-expertunities of persons at times. Taking a person as a social unity like this offersa clear sense in which some groups can also be person-like. (shrink)

En este ensayo exploramos una perspectiva epistemológica en la que el elemento social y colectivo del conocimiento juega un papel fundamental en la explicación de su producción y transmisión. Primero presentamos y criticamos una posición individualista que ha sido dominante en la epistemología contemporánea y cuyas raíces pueden trazarse, al menos, hasta Descartes. Posteriormente introducimos y defendemos nuestra propia mirada, una en la que el conocimiento es un proceso constituido por un conjunto de actividades y prácticas que tiene un carácter (...) material. (shrink)

This article examines Keith Lehrer's distinction between belief and acceptance and how it differs from other accounts of belief and of the family of doxastic attitudes. I sketch a different taxonomy of doxastic attitudes. Lehrer's notion of acceptance is mostly epistemic and at the service of his account of the "loop of reason", whereas for other writers acceptance is mostly a pragmatic attitude. I argue, however, that his account of acceptance underdetermines the role that the attitude of trust plays in (...) his analysis of reason. (shrink)

This collection brings together a selection of my recently published or forthcoming articles. What unites them is their common concern with one of the central ambitions of philosophy, namely to get clearer about our first-personal perspective onto the world and our minds. Three aspects of that perspective are of particular importance: consciousness, intentionality, and rationality. The collected essays address metaphysical and epistemological questions both concerning the nature of each of these aspects and concerning the various connections among them. More generally, (...) given that intentionality and ratio- nality are both normative phenomena, the main theme of the articles is the relationship between consciousness and normativity and the centrality of this relationship to our first-personal perspective. -/- This focus culminates in the defense of two specific views, experiential rationalism and experiential intentionalism. The first is, very roughly, the view that how our mental episodes are given in consciousness reflects their rational role in our mental lives: it is part of what our mental episodes subjectively are like that we phenomenally experience them as providing and/or responding to certain kinds of reasons. The central claim of the second view, on the other hand, is that the intentionality of our mental episodes is essentially linked to consciousness and involves a token-reflexive element: they intentionally present not only the world, but also themselves as being a certain way. -/- Some of the essays also deal with the contrast between our first- and our third-personal perspectives and the — to some extent related — division of labour between philosophy and the empirical sciences. Both perspectives have their limitations and sometimes conflict with each other, raising the question of what the consequences are for accounts of our first-personal knowledge and its internal or external objects. (shrink)

John Cook Wilson (1849–1915) was Wykeham Professor of Logic at New College, Oxford and the founder of ‘Oxford Realism’, a philosophical movement that flourished at Oxford during the first decades of the 20th century. Although trained as a classicist and a mathematician, his most important contribution was to the theory of knowledge, where he argued that knowledge is factive and not definable in terms of belief, and he criticized ‘hybrid’ and ‘externalist’ accounts. He also argued for direct realism in perception, (...) criticizing both empiricism and idealism, and argued for a moderate nominalist view of universals as being in rebus and only ‘apprehended’ by their particulars. His influence helped swaying Oxford away from idealism and, through figures such as H. A. Prichard, Gilbert Ryle, or J. L. Austin, his ideas were also to some extent at the origin of ‘moral intuitionism’ and ‘ordinary language philosophy’ which defined much of Oxford philosophy until the second half of the twentieth-century. Nevertheless, his name and legacy were all but forgotten for generations after World War II. Still, his views on knowledge are with us today, being in part at work in the writings of philosophers as diverse as John McDowell, Charles Travis, and Timothy Williamson. (shrink)

One of the promising approaches to the problem of consciousness has been the Higher-Order Monitoring Theory of Consciousness. According to the Higher-Order Monitoring Theory, a mental state M of a subject S is conscious iff S has another mental state, M*, such that M* is an appropriate representation of M. Recently, several philosophers have developed a Higher-Order Monitoring theory with a twist. The twist is that M and M* are construed as entertaining some kind of constitutive relation, rather than being (...) logically independent of each other. We may call this the Same-Order Monitoring Theory of Consciousness. In this paper, I discuss the nature of the Same-Order Monitoring Theory and argue for its superiority over the more traditional Higher-Order Monitoring Theory. (shrink)