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  1. Doxastic justification through dispositions to cause.Julius Schönherr - 2022 - Synthese 200 (4):1-18.
    According to the standard view, a belief is based on a reason and doxastically justified—i.e., permissibly held—only if a causal relation obtains between a reason and the belief. In this paper, I argue that a belief can be doxastically justified by a reason’s mere disposition to sustain it. Such a disposition, however, wouldn’t establish a causal connection unless it were manifested. My argument is that, in the cases I have in mind, the manifestation of this disposition would add no positive (...)
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  • Coherence and correspondence in the network dynamics of belief suites.Patrick Grim, Andrew Modell, Nicholas Breslin, Jasmine Mcnenny, Irina Mondescu, Kyle Finnegan, Robert Olsen, Chanyu An & Alexander Fedder - 2017 - Episteme 14 (2):233-253.
    Coherence and correspondence are classical contenders as theories of truth. In this paper we examine them instead as interacting factors in the dynamics of belief across epistemic networks. We construct an agent-based model of network contact in which agents are characterized not in terms of single beliefs but in terms of internal belief suites. Individuals update elements of their belief suites on input from other agents in order both to maximize internal belief coherence and to incorporate ‘trickled in’ elements of (...)
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  • In Defense of the Explanationist Response to Skepticism.Kevin McCain - 2019 - International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 9 (1):38-50.
    _ Source: _Page Count 13 A promising response to the threat of external world skepticism involves arguing that our commonsense view of the world best explains the sensory experiences that we have. Since our commonsense view of the world best explains our evidence, we are justified in accepting this commonsense view of the world. Despite the plausibility of this Explanationist Response, it has recently come under attack. James Beebe has argued that only a version of the Explanationist Response that provides (...)
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  • The heuristic conception of inference to the best explanation.Finnur Dellsén - 2017 - Philosophical Studies 175 (7):1745-1766.
    An influential suggestion about the relationship between Bayesianism and inference to the best explanation holds that IBE functions as a heuristic to approximate Bayesian reasoning. While this view promises to unify Bayesianism and IBE in a very attractive manner, important elements of the view have not yet been spelled out in detail. I present and argue for a heuristic conception of IBE on which IBE serves primarily to locate the most probable available explanatory hypothesis to serve as a working hypothesis (...)
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  • Coherence and probability: A probabilistic account of coherence.Roche William - 2013 - In Michal Araszkiewicz & Jaromír Šavelka (eds.), Coherence: Insights from Philosophy, Jurisprudence and Artificial Intelligence. Springer. pp. 59-91.
    I develop a probabilistic account of coherence, and argue that at least in certain respects it is preferable to (at least some of) the main extant probabilistic accounts of coherence: (i) Igor Douven and Wouter Meijs’s account, (ii) Branden Fitelson’s account, (iii) Erik Olsson’s account, and (iv) Tomoji Shogenji’s account. Further, I relate the account to an important, but little discussed, problem for standard varieties of coherentism, viz., the “Problem of Justified Inconsistent Beliefs.”.
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  • Reflective Equilibrium.Yuri Cath - 2016 - In Herman Cappelen, Tamar Gendler & John Hawthorne (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Methodology. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. pp. 213-230.
    This article examines the method of reflective equilibrium (RE) and its role in philosophical inquiry. It begins with an overview of RE before discussing some of the subtleties involved in its interpretation, including challenges to the standard assumption that RE is a form of coherentism. It then evaluates some of the main objections to RE, in particular, the criticism that this method generates unreasonable beliefs. It concludes by considering how RE relates to recent debates about the role of intuitions in (...)
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  • The Oxford Handbook of Philosophical Methodology.Herman Cappelen, Tamar Gendler & John Hawthorne (eds.) - 2016 - Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.
    This is the most comprehensive book ever published on philosophical methodology. A team of thirty-eight of the world's leading philosophers present original essays on various aspects of how philosophy should be and is done. The first part is devoted to broad traditions and approaches to philosophical methodology. The entries in the second part address topics in philosophical methodology, such as intuitions, conceptual analysis, and transcendental arguments. The third part of the book is devoted to essays about the interconnections between philosophy (...)
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  • Coherentism via Graphs.Selim Berker - 2015 - Philosophical Issues 25 (1):322-352.
    Once upon a time, coherentism was the dominant response to the regress problem in epistemology, but in recent decades the view has fallen into disrepute: now almost everyone is a foundationalist (with a few infinitists sprinkled here and there). In this paper, I sketch a new way of thinking about coherentism, and show how it avoids many of the problems often thought fatal for the view, including the isolation objection, worries over circularity, and concerns that the concept of coherence is (...)
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  • On the Truth-Conduciveness of Coherence.William Roche - 2014 - Erkenntnis 79 (3):647-665.
    I argue that coherence is truth-conducive in that coherence implies an increase in the probability of truth. Central to my argument is a certain principle for transitivity in probabilistic support. I then address a question concerning the truth-conduciveness of coherence as it relates to (something else I argue for) the truth-conduciveness of consistency, and consider how the truth-conduciveness of coherence bears on coherentist theories of justification.
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  • On Merely Modal Epistemic Peers: Challenging the Equal-Weight View.Jimmy Alfonso Licon - 2013 - Philosophia 41 (3):809-823.
    There is a controversy, within social epistemology, over how to handle disagreement among epistemic peers. Call this the problem of peer disagreement. There is a solution, i.e. the equal-weight view, which says that disagreement among epistemic peers is a reason for each peer to lower the credence they place in their respective positions. However, this solution is susceptible to a serious challenge. Call it the merely modal peers challenge. Throughout parts of modal space, which resemble the actual world almost completely, (...)
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  • A false dichotomy in denying explanatoriness any role in confirmation.Marc Lange - forthcoming - Noûs.
    Roche and Sober (2013; 2014; 2017; 2019) have offered an important new argument that explanatoriness lacks confirmatory significance. My aim in this paper is not only to contend that their argument fails to show that in confirmation ‘there is nothing special about explanatoriness’ (Roche & Sober, 2017: 589), but also to reveal what is special confirmationwise about explanatoriness. I will argue that much of the heavy work in Roche and Sober's argument is done by the dichotomy into which they carve (...)
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  • Evaluating epistemic virtues.Daniel Coren - 2019 - Synthese 198 (2):1569-1578.
    Epistemic conservatism says that an agent is in some measure justified in maintaining a belief simply in virtue of the fact that the agent has that belief. In his new book On Evidence in Philosophy, William Lycan argues that there is no special objection to EC that does not also impugn the other epistemic virtues. In a forthcoming Synthese piece, Daniel Coren argues that, for us as we are, EC cannot be evaluated. Coren does not discuss Lycan, and vice versa. (...)
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  • Epistemic conservatism and bare beliefs.Daniel Coren - 2018 - Synthese 198 (1):743-756.
    My subject is the kind of Epistemic Conservatism (EC) that says that an agent is in some measure justified in maintaining a belief simply in virtue of the fact that the agent has that belief. Quine’s alternative to positivist foundationalism, Chisholmian particularism, Rawls’s reflective equilibrium, and Bayesianism all seem to rely on EC. I argue that, in order to evaluate EC, we must consider an agent holding a bare belief, that is, a belief stripped of all personal memory and epistemic (...)
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  • Epistemic inconsistency and categorical coherence: a study of probabilistic measures of coherence.Michael Hughes - 2017 - Synthese 194 (8):3153-3185.
    Is logical consistency required for a set of beliefs or propositions to be categorically coherent? An affirmative answer is often assumed by mainstream epistemologists, and yet it is unclear why. Cases like the lottery and the preface call into question the assumption that beliefs must be consistent in order to be epistemically rational. And thus it is natural to wonder why all inconsistent sets of propositions are incoherent. On the other hand, Easwaran and Fitelson have shown that particular kinds of (...)
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  • Does Doxastic Justification Have a Basing Requirement?Paul Silva - 2015 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 93 (2):371-387.
    The distinction between propositional and doxastic justification is the distinction between having justification to believe P (= propositional justification) versus having a justified belief in P (= doxastic justification). The focus of this paper is on doxastic justification and on what conditions are necessary for having it. In particular, I challenge the basing demand on doxastic justification, i.e., the idea that one can have a doxastically justified belief only if one’s belief is based on an epistemically appropriate reason. This demand (...)
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  • Is foundational a priori justification indispensable?Ted Poston - 2013 - Episteme 10 (3):317-331.
    Laurence BonJour's (1985) coherence theory of empirical knowledge relies heavily on a traditional foundationalist theory of a priori knowledge. He argues that a foundationalist, rationalist theory of a priori justification is indispensable for a coherence theory. BonJour (1998) continues this theme, arguing that a traditional account of a priori justification is indispensable for the justification of putative a priori truths, the justification of any non-observational belief and the justification of reasoning itself. While BonJour's indispensability arguments have received some critical discussion (...)
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  • Explanation and the Nature of Scientific Knowledge.Kevin McCain - 2015 - Science & Education 24 (7-8):827-854.
    Explaining phenomena is a primary goal of science. Consequently, it is unsurprising that gaining a proper understanding of the nature of explanation is an important goal of science education. In order to properly understand explanation, however, it is not enough to simply consider theories of the nature of explanation. Properly understanding explanation requires grasping the relation between explanation and understanding, as well as how explanations can lead to scientific knowledge. This article examines the nature of explanation, its relation to understanding, (...)
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  • Coherentist theories of epistemic justification.Jonathan Kvanvig - 2008 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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