Several epistemologists have advanced the idea that a subject’s epistemic status can be weakened by evidence she does not possess but should have possessed, or, alternatively, by beliefs or doubts she should have had under her evidential circumstances but does not have. This alleged phenomenon is known as normative defeat and its adherents have typically reported intuitions that it obtains under mundane circumstances. Some epistemologists have analyzed normative defeat in terms of breached epistemic obligations, while others have preferred an analysis (...) in terms of cognitive malfunctioning. No matter which analysis one prefers, I here argue that - given plausible psychological and epistemological assumptions - if the normative defeat phenomenon were real it would be more bizarre than is generally recognized. I conclude that alleged cases of normatively defeated knowledge or epistemic justification are better analyzed as cases of lucky or undeserved knowledge or epistemic justification. (shrink)

Elsewhere I and others have argued that evidence one should have had can bear on the justification of one's belief, in the form of defeating one's justification. In this paper, I am interested in knowing how evidence one should have had (on the one hand) and one's higher-order evidence (on the other) interact in determinations of the justification of belief. In doing so I aim to address two types of scenario that previous discussions have left open. In one type of (...) scenario, there is a clash between a subject's higher-order evidence and the evidence she should have had: S's higher-order evidence is misleading as to the existence or likely epistemic bearing of further evidence she should have. In the other, while there is further evidence S should have had, this evidence would only have offered additional support for S's belief that p. The picture I offer derives from two “epistemic ceiling” principles linking evidence to justification: one's justification for the belief that p can be no higher than it is on one's total evidence, nor can it be higher than what it would have been had one had all of the evidence one should have had. Together, these two principles entail what I call the doctrine of Epistemic Strict Liability: insofar as one fails to have evidence one should have had, one is epistemically answerable to that evidence whatever reasons one happened to have regarding the likely epistemic bearing of that evidence. I suggest that such a position can account for the battery of intuitions elicited in the full range of cases I will be considering. (shrink)

This chapter addresses the question of what makes expressions meaningful according to the conception of meaning offered by Donald Davidson. It addresses this question by reflecting on Kathrin Glüer’s recent response to it. It argues that Glüer misconstrues both the evidence for meaning that the radical interpreter must rely on and the way in which the principle of charity must be deployed. The articulation of the correct construal of the evidence and the principle reveals the thoroughly non-reductionist aspect of Davidson’s (...) conception of meaning. This aspect becomes even clearer in his later work, through the articulation of the triangulation argument. I try to show how this argument, which is reconstructed in accordance with Claudine Verheggen’s interpretation of it, helps answer the initial question. The question whether the conception has the resources to account for the objectivity of meaning is briefly discussed. (shrink)

In a Normal Case, a subject has a justified true belief that P and also knows that P. In a Gettier Case, a subject has a justified true belief that P but does not know that P. The received view (endorsed by Lycan and others) is that if one is in a Normal Case then one cannot know that he is not in a Gettier case. I argue that the received view is mistaken and I discuss the implications this has (...) on some other epistemological issues. (shrink)

This article argues for the thesis that the distinction between propositional and doxastic justification should be extended to knowledge. A consequence of this thesis is that there is a type of knowledge that requires belief and a type that does not. A familiar example strikingly similar to the sort of example used to introduce the propositional/doxastic justification makes a prima facie case. Additional theoretical advantages are revealed when the distinction is applied within the context of some recent epistemological debates. These (...) include debates over the knowledge account of assertion, testimonial knowledge, self-deception, and the question of whether knowledge can be essentially based on falsehood. It is contended that the sort of distinction offered here provides a way to settle these debates and, at the same time, acknowledge what is correct in the opposing positions. (shrink)

This paper is intended to show how epistemologists can profit from the study of ways in which 'know' is vague. Topics include the kk thesis, Incorrigibility of sense data, A resemblance between infinity and vagueness, Common knowledge, Naive holism, Question-Begging, Epistemic universalizability, The prediction paradox, The completability of epistemology, And harman's social knowledge cases.

Epistemologists have profited from studies of the ways in which ‘know’ is ambiguous. We can also profit by studying the ways in which ‘know’ is vague. After classifying sources of vagueness for ‘know,’ I spend the second section examining theories of vagueness. With the exception of the theory that vague predicates are incoherent, which I try to refute, we need not take a stand on a particular theory to show that the vagueness of knowledge has substantive epistemological implications. The third (...) section supports the thesis through a survey of ways in which appeals to vagueness can be applied to the field's issues. First, I show how higher order vagueness is evidence against the KK thesis, the incorrigibility of sense data, and the completability of epistemology. An interesting resemblance between infinity and vagueness provides the point of departure for the next type of application. For this resemblance suggests a new way of handling apparently infinite belief structures. The approach is illustrated with an analysis of common knowledge. The third type of application concerns the ways in which disguised sorites creep into our thinking about knowledge. In addition to brief illustrations concerning naive holism, question begging, and an objection to incorrigibilism, I provide more detailed illustrations involving Jonathan Adler's sceptical appeal to epistemic universalizability, the prediction paradox, and William Lycan's objection to Gilbert Harman's social knowledge cases. I conclude with some general remarks on the lessons to be learned from the vagueness of knowledge. (shrink)

Citing some recent experimental findings, I argue for the surprising claim that in some cases the less time you have the more you know. More specifically, I present some evidence to suggest that our ordinary knowledge ascriptions are sometimes sensitive to facts about an epistemic subject's truth-irrelevant time constraints such that less is more. If knowledge ascriptions are sensitive in this manner, then this is some evidence of pragmatic encroachment. Along the way, I consider comments made by Jonathan Schaffer and (...) Jennifer Nagel to construe a purist contextualist and a strict invariantist explanation of the data respectively, before giving reasons to resist them in favor of an account that indicates pragmatic encroachment. If successful, this may suggest a new way to argue for the controversial thesis that there is pragmatic encroachment on knowledge. (shrink)

This paper replies to commentary on my On Evidence in Philosophy, offered by critics Michael Bergmann and Earl Conee. It addresses their concerns regarding (1) whether my explanatory coherentism can explain the justification of introspective beliefs; (2) whether my epistemology is really coherentist rather than foundationalist; (3) my Principle of Humility; (4) my defense of free-will compatibilism; (5) whether question-begging is always unacceptable; and (6) whether intuitions qualify as evidence.

Experimental restrictionists have challenged philosophers’ reliance on intuitions about thought experiment cases based on experimental findings. According to the expertise defense, only the intuitions of philosophical experts count—yet the bulk of experimental philosophy consists in studies with lay people. In this paper, we argue that direct strategies for assessing the expertise defense are preferable to indirect strategies. A direct argument in support of the expertise defense would have to show: first, that there is a significant difference between expert and lay (...) intuitions; second, that expert intuitions are superior to lay intuitions; and third, that expert intuitions accord with the relevant philosophical consensus. At present, there is only little experimental evidence that bears on these issues. To advance the debate, we conducted two new experiments on intuitions about knowledge with experts and lay people. Our results suggest that the intuitions of epistemological experts are superior in some respects, but they also pose an unexpected challenge to the expertise defense. Most strikingly, we found that even epistemological experts tend to ascribe knowledge in fake-barn-style cases. This suggests that philosophy, as a discipline, might fail to adequately map the intuitions of its expert practitioners onto a disciplinary consensus. (shrink)

I’m going to argue for a set of restricted skeptical results: roughly put, we don’t know that fire engines are red, we don’t know that we sometimes have pains in our lower backs, we don’t know that John Rawls was kind, and we don’t even know that we believe any of those truths. However, people unfamiliar with philosophy and cognitive science do know all those things. The skeptical argument is traditional in form: here’s a skeptical hypothesis; you can’t epistemically neutralize (...) it, you have to be able to neutralize it to know P; so you don’t know P. But the skeptical hypotheses I plug into it are “real, live” scientific-philosophical hypotheses often thought to be actually true, unlike any of the outrageous traditional skeptical hypotheses (e.g., ‘You’re a brain in a vat’). So I call the resulting skepticism Live Skepticism. Notably, the Live Skeptic’s argument goes through even if we adopt the clever anti-skeptical fixes thought up in recent years such as reliabilism, relevant alternatives theory, contextualism, and the rejection of epistemic closure. Furthermore, the scope of Live Skepticism is bizarre: although we don’t know the simple facts noted above, many of us do know that there are black holes and other amazing facts. (shrink)

Jennifer Hornsby has defended the Reasons-Knowledge Thesis : the claim that \-ing because p requires knowing that p, where the ‘because’ at issue is a rationalising ‘because’. She defends by appeal to the thought that it provides the best explanation of why the subject in a certain sort of Gettier case fails to be in a position to \ because p. Dustin Locke and, separately, Nick Hughes, present some modified barn-façade cases which seem to constitute counterexamples to and undermine Hornsby’s (...) way of motivating it by rendering their alternative Reasons-Explanation Thesis a better explanation of Hornsby’s datum. This paper defends and Hornsby’s argument for it against those objections. First, I point out that their supposedly intuitive verdict about the relevant barn-façade cases is not as intuitive as they think. Second, I point out that even if we share the intuition: we have strong reason to doubt the verdict anyway. And finally, I point out that since is independently implausible, the two problems can be tackled anyway. (shrink)

When is a person justified in believing a proposition? In this paper, I defend a view according to which a person is justified in believing a proposition just in case the person’s evidence sufficiently supports the proposition and the person responsibly acquired and sustained the evidence that supports the proposition. This view overcomes a deficiency in a prominent theory of epistemic justification. As championed by Earl Conee and Richard Feldman, Evidentialism is a theory subject to counterexamples at the hands of (...) cases involving epistemic irresponsibility. I critically discuss such a case as put forward by Jason Baehr. After providing an argument that clarifies why the case is problematic for Evidentialism, I defend my argument from a response by Earl Conee. Then I develop a theory of epistemic justification capable of handling cases involving epistemic irresponsibility, and I defend this theory from evidentialist objections. (shrink)

That in Gettier's alleged counterexamples to the traditional analysis of knowledge as justified true belief the belief condition is satisfied has rarely been questioned. Yet there is reason to doubt that a rational person would come to believe what Gettier's protagonists are said to believe in the way they are said to have come to believe it. If they would not, the examples are not counter-examples to the traditional analysis. I go on to discuss a number of examples inspired by (...) Gettier's and argue that they, too, fail to be counter-examples either for reasons similar to those I have urged or because it is not clear that their subject does not know. (shrink)

This paper argues that for someone to know proposition p inferentially it is not enough that his belief in p and his justification for believing p covary with the truth of p through a sphere of possibilities. A further condition on inferential knowledge is that p's truth-maker is identical with, or causally related to, the state of affairs the justification is grounded in. This position is dubbed ‘identificationism.’.

Obligations to provide evidence to others arise in many contexts. This paper develops a framework within which to understand what it is to provide evidence to someone. I argue that an initially plausible connection between evidence-providing and evidence-possession fails: it is not the case that in order to count as providing evidence to someone, the intended recipient must have the evidence. I further argue that the following is possible: evidence is provided to an agent, the agent does not have the (...) evidence, but it is not the case that the agent is culpably ignorant of the evidence. (shrink)

Epistemic luck is a generic notion used to describe any of a number of ways in which it can be accidental, coincidental, or fortuitous that a person has a true belief. For example, one can form a true belief as a result of a lucky guess, as when one believes through guesswork that “C” is the right answer to a multiple-choice question and one’s belief just happens to be correct. One can form a true belief via wishful thinking; for example, (...) an optimist’s belief that it will not rain may luckily turn out to be correct, despite forecasts for heavy rain all day. One can reason from false premises to a belief that coincidentally happens to be true. One can accidentally arrive at a true belief through invalid or fallacious reasoning. And one can fortuitously arrive at a true belief from testimony that was intended to mislead but unwittingly reported the truth. In all of these cases, it is just a matter of luck that the person has a true belief. -/- Until the twenty-first century, there was nearly universal agreement among epistemologists that epistemic luck is incompatible with knowledge. Call this view “the incompatibility thesis.” In light of the incompatibility thesis, epistemic luck presents epistemologists with three distinct but related challenges. The first is that of providing an accurate analysis of knowledge (in terms of individually necessary and jointly sufficient conditions for “S knows that p,” where ‘S’ represents the knower and ‘p’ represents the proposition known). An adequate analysis of knowledge must succeed in specifying conditions that rule out all instances of knowledge-destroying epistemic luck. The second challenge is to resolve the skeptical paradox that the ubiquity of epistemic luck generates: As will become clear in section 2c, epistemic luck is an all-pervasive phenomenon. Coupling this fact with the incompatibility thesis entails that we have no propositional knowledge. The non-skeptical epistemologist must somehow reconcile the strong intuition that epistemic luck is not compatible with knowledge with the equally evident observation that it must be. The third challenge concerns the special skeptical threat that epistemic luck seems to pose for more reflective forms of knowledge, such as knowing that one knows. Each of these challenges will be explored in the present article. (shrink)

When we get evidence that tells us our belief-forming mechanisms may not be reliable this presents a thorny set of questions about whether and how to revise our original belief. This article analyzes aspects of the problem and a variety of approaches to its solution.

I consider here the issue of whether and to what extent moral truths are absolute. My aim is to raise some new considerations in favor of moral relativism: the thesis that some moral statements can vary in truth-value depending on the moral standards at issue.1 2 This paper has three major components. First, I describe a new puzzle concerning the possibility of moral knowledge in light of expert disagreement. I argue that the best solution to this puzzle requires moral relativism. (...) Second, I develop a notion of a moral standard that incorporates recent developments in moral psychology, including work by.. (shrink)

Traditional accounts of justification can be characterized as trying to analyze justification in such a way that having a justified belief brings with it assurance of truth. The internalist offers a demanding requirement on justification: one's having a justified belief requires that one see what the belief has going for it. Externalists worry that the internalist's narrow conception of justification will lead to unacceptably radical and implausible skepticism. According to the externalist, one need not know what a belief has going (...) for it in order for that belief to be justified. Externalism, though, comes with its own problems. Ernest Sosa has attempted to bridge the divide between internalism and externalism by pairing the strengths of internalism with the strengths of externalism. Sosa distinguishes two kinds of knowledge: animal knowledge that is essentially externalist in character and reflective knowledge that is intended to capture our best intellectual procedure in regards to knowledge. On Sosa's view, one gains reflective knowledge by building upon animal knowledge. As a result, Sosa's view seems to illustrate a bottom-up approach to the analysis of knowledge : reflective knowledge is the result of animal knowledge and some other epistemic factor. My project, in contrast to Sosa's, is to argue that one should start with an account of ideal justification and then proceed by loosening the standards on ideal justification in an effort to develop the possibility of non- ideal kinds of justification. The view that I will develop will adopt Sosa's strategy of distinguishing kinds of knowledge, but will result in a top-down approach to the analysis of justification. Instead of starting with an undemanding standard and layer levels on top, I will start with an ideal standard and strip layers away. I will also argue that my view has some important advantages over Sosa's. Not only does Sosa's view seem to run into many of the problems that threaten externalism, but his view is incapable of offering the kind of assurance that the internalist is after. The view I develop will maintain the internalist's interest in assurance while also providing a response to some of the skeptical problems that have plagued internalists. If my project is successful, then, even if the justification that results in many of the cases I will be exploring is not ideal, we can use these conceptions of justification to help explicate how one might have justified beliefs about a great number of things. The essentially internalist account that I have offered will not only illustrate a serious approach to dealing with skepticism, but it will also capture how many of our commonsensically justified beliefs are in fact justified. (shrink)

Chapter I. The tenets essential to any foundationalist theory are stated. These tenets make reference to the concept of a basic proposition. Literature discussing and attempting to define this concept is surveyed and assessed. ;Chapter II. The definitions surveyed are seen to make use of the concept of epistemic justification. Two senses of justification--external and internal--are distinguished and discussed. A definition of basic propositions is offered using the external sense of justification. ;Chapter III. A variety of theories, all satisfying the (...) essential tenets of foundationalism, are distinguished. Special attention is given to Cartesian foundationalism and its relation to the other theories distinguished. Something is said about the motivation for accepting Cartesian foundationalism. ;Chapter IV. A variety of criticisms of foundationalism are assessed from the point of view of determining whether they are successful against Cartesian foundationalism. It is shown that many criticisms are directed against tenets associated with but not essential to Cartesian foundationalism. Other criticisms attack Cartesian foundationalism more directly, but are shown to be unsuccessful. ;Chapter V. Critics allege that Cartesian foundationalism requires the existence of "the given" and that either the given does not exist or it cannot provide the foundation for knowledge that the Cartesian foundationalist requires of it. The arguments of these critics are assessed. It is concluded that they too are unsuccessful. ;Chapter VI. Chisholm's version of Cartesian foundationalism is assessed. It is found to be unsatisfactory in its attempt to establish a bridging principle that would state the conditions under which a basic proposition justifies a nonbasic proposition. ;Chapter VII. After considering some criticisms by Pollack pertinent to establishing foundational principles, a revision of one of Chisholm's bridging principles is formulated and discussed. It is concluded that the revised principle can serve as a plausible component of a Cartesian foundationalist theory. No complete theory is developed, but directions are suggested for future work. (shrink)