I seem to know that I won't experience spaceflight but also that if I win the lottery, then I will take a flight into space. Suppose I competently deduce from these propositions that I won't win the lottery. Competent deduction from known premises seems to yield knowledge of the deduced conclusion. So it seems that I know that I won't win the lottery; but it also seems clear that I don't know this, despite the minuscule probability of my winning (if (...) I have a lottery ticket). So we have a puzzle. It seems to generalize, for analogues of the lottery-proposition threaten almost all ordinary knowledge attributions. For example, my apparent knowledge that my bike is parked outside seems threatened by the possibility that it's been stolen since I parked it, a proposition with a low but non-zero probability; and it seems that I don't know this proposition to be false. Familiar solutions to this family of puzzles incur unacceptable costs—either by rejecting deductive closure for knowledge, or by yielding untenable consequences for ordinary attributions of knowledge or of ignorance. After canvassing and criticizing these solutions, I offer a new solution free of these costs. Knowledge that p requires an explanatory link between the fact that p and the belief that p. This necessary but insufficient condition on knowledge distinguishes actual lottery cases from typical, apparently analogous ‘quasi-lottery’ cases. It does yield scepticism about my not winning the lottery and not experiencing spaceflight, but the scepticism doesn't generalize to quasi-lottery cases such as that involving my bike. (shrink)

Abolitionism is the view that if no one is responsible, then we ought to abandon the reactive attitudes. Proponents suggest that reactive attitudes can be replaced in our emotional repertoire by non-reactive analogues. In this paper, I dispute and reject a common challenge to abolitionism according to which the reactive attitudes are necessary for protesting unfairness and maintaining social harmony. While other abolitionists dispute the empirical basis of this objection, I focus on its implications. I argue that even if non-reactive (...) analogues cannot perform the interpersonal and social functions of reactive attitudes, it does not follow that the losses of abandoning them outweigh the gains of retaining them. The force of the challenge rests on a mistake, identified by John Stuart Mill among others, that is common when evaluating entrenched social practices. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to consider Joshua Gert’s novel view of subjective practical rationality in his book Brute Rationality. After briefly outlining the account, I present two objections to his view and then consider his own objections to a rival approach to understanding subjective rationality which I take to be much more plausible.

This paper aims to argue in support of the neo-Moorean attempt to solve a skeptical paradox. It defends the thesis that neo-Mooreans retain advantages and avoid disadvantages of rival anti-skeptical strategies – namely epistemic contextualism. The puzzle that a radical skeptic poses is exemplified by Nozick’s famous Brain in a Vat thought experiment, which enables construing valid arguments consisting of jointly inconsistent but independently plausible premises. The first and the second part of the paper are devoted to Nozick’s conditional analysis (...) of knowledge and De Rose’s epistemic contextualism, both based on the sensitivity principle. Referring to De Roses’ contextualist theory, we demonstrate that the failure of Nozick’s conditional analysis of knowledge to provide a satisfactory answer to a skeptical paradox does not concern the sensitivity principle but rather closure denial and embracing the so-called “abominable conjunction”. In the third part, we point out the weaknesses of the presumably most successful, contextualist response to the paradox. We explain that even though DeRose’s anti-skeptical strategy is built upon Nozick’s theory, he successfully surmounts its difficulties. Yet it seems that as a contextualist, he necessarily makes some concessions to a radical skeptic. Eventually, the article introduces Black’s neo-Moorean anti-skeptical theory based on the sensitivity principle as a strategy that makes neither concessions, nor counterintuitive proposals. (shrink)

The paper seeks to contribute to the transitional justice literature by overcoming the Democracy v. Justice debate. This debate is normatively implausible and prudentially self-defeating. Normatively, transitional justice will be conceptualised as an imperative of democratic equal concern. Prudentially, it can prevent further violence and provide an opportunity for initiating processes of democratic emotional socialisation. The resentment and indignation animating transitions should be acknowledged as markers of a sense of justice. As such, they can help the reproduction of democracy. However, (...) their public expression must be institutionally filtered through democratic norms. The consistent institutional instantiation of equal respect can educate and recuperate negative emotions for democracy. (shrink)

In the human quest for meaning, work occupies a central position. Most adults spend the majority of their waking hours at work, which often serves as a primary source of purpose, belongingness, and identity. In light of these benefits to employees and their organizations, organizational scholars are increasingly interested in understanding the factors that contribute to meaningful work, such as the design of jobs, interpersonal relationships, and organizational missions and cultures. In a separate line of inquiry, scholars of business ethics (...) have examined meaningful work as a moral issue concerning the management of others and ourselves, exploring whether there are definable characteristics of meaningful work to which we have moral rights, and whether there are moral duties to ourselves and others to fulfill those rights. In this article, we examine contemporary developments in both disciplines about the nature, causes, and consequences of meaningful work; we explore linkages between these disciplines; and we offer conclusions and research opportunities regarding the interface of ethical and organizational perspectives on performing and providing meaningful work. (shrink)

Research in the psychology of deception detection implies that Fricker, in making her case for reductionism in the epistemology of testimony, overestimates both the epistemic demerits of the antireductionist policy of trusting speakers blindly and the epistemic merits of the reductionist policy of monitoring speakers for trustworthiness: folk psychological prejudices to the contrary notwithstanding, it turns out that monitoring is on a par (in terms both of the reliability of the process and of the sensitivity of the beliefs that it (...) produces) with blind trust. The consequence is that while (a version of) Fricker’s argument for the necessity of a reduction succeeds, her argument for the availability of reductions fails. This does not, however, condemn us to endorse standard pessimistic reductionism, according to which there is no testimonial knowledge, for recent research concerning the methods used by subjects to discover deception in non-laboratory settings suggests that only a more moderate form of pessimism is in order. (shrink)

Perception purports to help you gain knowledge of the world even if the world is not the way you expected it to be. Perception also purports to be an independent tribunal against which you can test your beliefs. It is natural to think that in order to serve these and other central functions, perceptual representations must not causally depend on your prior beliefs and expectations. In this paper, I clarify and then argue against the natural thought above. All perceptual systems (...) must solve an under-determination problem: the sensory data they receive could be caused by indefinitely many arrangements of distal objects and properties. Using a Bayesian approach to perceptual processing, I argue that in order to solve the under-determination problem, perceptual capacities must rely on prior beliefs or expectations of some kind. I then argue that perceptual states or processes can help ground knowledge of the world whether the ‘beliefs’ necessary for perceptual processing are encoded as sub-personal states within a perceptual system or cognitive states, such as person-level beliefs. My argument has two main parts. First, I give a preliminary argument that cognitive influence on perception can be appropriate, and I respond to three lines of objection. Second, I argue that cognitively influenced perceptual states can be instances of seeing that p, which makes the relevant states well suited to help ground knowledge that p. I conclude that a cognitively penetrated perceptual state or process can help ground knowledge under some circumstances. (shrink)

In this article I survey philosophical literature on the topic of what, if anything, makes a person’s life meaningful, focusing on systematic texts that are written in English and that have appeared in the last five years (2002-2007). My aims are to present overviews of the most important, fresh, Anglo-American positions on meaning in life and to raise critical questions about them worth answering in future work.

In this article I critically discuss English-speaking philosophical literature addressing the question of what it essentially means to speak of 'life’s meaning'. Instead of considering what might in fact confer meaning on life, I make two claims about the more abstract, meta-ethical question of how to understand what by definition is involved in making that sort enquiry. One of my claims is that over the past five years there has been a noticeable trend among philosophers to try to change our (...) understanding of what talk of 'life’s meaning' connotes. For example, whereas most philosophers for a long while had held that such talk is about a kind of value possible in the life of human beings, recently some have argued that certain non-human parts of nature can exhibit meaningfulness, which, furthermore, is not necessarily something valuable. The second claim I advance is that there is strong reason to reject this trend, and instead for philosophers to retain the long-standing approach. (shrink)

Characteristic of the contemporary field of life's meaning has been the combination of monism in method and naturalism in substance. That is, much of the field has sought to reduce enquiry into life's meaning to one question and to offer a single principle as an answer to it, with this principle typically focusing on ways of living in the physical world as best known by the scientific method. T. J. Mawson's new book, God and the Meanings of Life, provides fresh (...) reason to doubt both this form and this content and also develops positive alternatives to them. In this critical notice of Mawson's book, I consider several of the central arguments that he gives for a pluralist supernaturalism, explaining why I remain unconvinced. (shrink)

In this critical notice of Guy Bennett-Hunter’s book _Ineffability and Religious Experience_, I focus on claims he makes about what makes a life meaningful. According to Bennett-Hunter, for human life to be meaningful it must obtain its meaning from what is beyond the human and is ineffable, which constitutes an ultimate kind of meaning. I spell out Bennett-Hunter’s rationale for making this claim, raise some objections to it, and in their wake articulate an alternative conception of ultimate meaning.

In this article, I expound and assess two theories of meaning in life informed by the indigenous sub-Saharan African philosophical tradition. According to one principle, a life is more meaningful, the more it promotes community with other human persons. According to the other principle, a life is more meaningful, the more it promotes vitality in oneself and others. I argue that, at least upon some refinement, both of these African conceptions of meaning merit global consideration from philosophers, but that the (...) vitality approach is more promising than the community one for capturing a wider array of intuitions about what confers meaning on a life. I further argue, however, that there are objections that apply with comparable force to both theories; neither one does a good job of entailing that and explaining why certain types of reason and progress can make a life more meaningful. Although these objections are characteristic of a ‘modern’ western outlook, I maintain that they are difficult for contemporary African philosophers to ignore and consider some ways they might respond to the objections. (shrink)

Offering a solution to the skeptical puzzle is a central aim of Nozick's sensitivity account of knowledge. It is well-known that this account faces serious problems. However, because of its simplicity and its explanatory power, the sensitivity principle has remained attractive and has been subject to numerous modifications, leading to a of sensitivity accounts. I will object to these accounts, arguing that sensitivity accounts of knowledge face two problems. First, they deliver a far too heterogeneous picture of higher-level beliefs about (...) the truth or falsity of one's own beliefs. Second, this problem carries over to bootstrapping and Moorean reasoning. Some beliefs formed via bootstrapping or Moorean reasoning are insensitive, but some closely related beliefs in even stronger propositions are sensitive. These heterogeneous results regarding sensitivity do not fit with our intuitions about bootstrapping and Moorean reasoning. Thus, neither Nozick's sensitivity account of knowledge nor any of its modified versions can provide the basis for an argument that bootstrapping and Moorean reasoning are flawed or for an explanation why they seem to be flawed. (shrink)

Keith DeRose’s solution to the skeptical problem is based on his indirect sensitivity account. Sensitivity is not a necessary condition for any kind of knowledge, as direct sensitivity accounts claim, but the insensitivity of our beliefs that the skeptical hypotheses are false explains why we tend to judge that we do not know them. The orthodox objection line against any kind of sensitivity account of knowledge is to present instances of insensitive beliefs that we still judge to constitute knowledge. This (...) objection line offers counter-examples against the claim of direct sensitivity accounts that sensitivity is necessary for any kind of knowledge. These examples raise an easy problem for indirect sensitivity accounts that claim that there is only a tendency to judge that insensitive beliefs do not constitute knowledge, which still applies to our beliefs that the skeptical hypotheses are false. However, a careful analysis reveals that some of our beliefs that the skeptical hypotheses are false are sensitive; nevertheless, we still judge that we do not know them. Therefore, the fact that some of our beliefs that the skeptical hypotheses are false are insensitive cannot explain why we tend to judge that we do not know them. Hence, indirect sensitivity accounts cannot fulfill their purpose of explaining our intuitions about skepticism. This is the hard problem for indirect sensitivity accounts. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend the heterogeneity problem for sensitivity accounts of knowledge against an objection that has been recently proposed by Wallbridge in Philosophia. I argue in, 479–496, 2015) that sensitivity accounts of knowledge face a heterogeneity problem when it comes to higher-level knowledge about the truth of one’s own beliefs. Beliefs in weaker higher-level propositions are insensitive, but beliefs in stronger higher-level propositions are sensitive. The resulting picture that we can know the stronger propositions without being in a (...) position to know the weaker propositions is too heterogeneous to be plausible. Wallbridge objects that there is no heterogeneity problem because beliefs in the weaker higher-level propositions are also sensitive. I argue against Wallbridge that the heterogeneity problem is not solved but only displaced. Only some beliefs in the weaker higher-level propositions are sensitive. I conclude that the heterogeneity problem is one of a family of instability problems that sensitivity accounts of knowledge face and that Wallbridge’s account raises a further problem of this kind. (shrink)

Discrimination is a central epistemic capacity but typically, theories of discrimination only use discrimination as a vehicle for analyzing knowledge. This paper aims at developing a self-contained theory of discrimination. Internalist theories of discrimination fail since there is no compelling correlation between discriminatory capacities and experiences. Moreover, statistical reliabilist theories are also flawed. Only a modal theory of discrimination is promising. Versions of sensitivity and adherence that take particular alternatives into account provide necessary and sufficient conditions on discrimination. Safety in (...) contrast is not sufficient for discrimination as there are cases of safety that are clearly instances of discrimination failure. The developed account of discrimination between objects will be extended to discrimination between kinds and between types. (shrink)

abstractBy appealing to the similarity between pre-vital and post-mortem nonexistence, Lucretius famously tried to show that our anxiety about death was irrational. His so-called Symmetry Argument has been attacked in various ways, but all of these strategies are themselves problematic. In this paper, I propose a new approach to undermining the argument: when Parfit’s distinction between identity and what matters is applied, not diachronically but across possible worlds, the alleged symmetry can be broken. Although the pre-vital and posthumous time spans (...) that we could have experienced are indeed analogous with respect to our identity, they are not analogous with respect to psychological continuity, which forms the basis of prudential concern. Lucretius even anticipated the Parfitian distinction. He did not, however, notice the significance that it has for his Symmetry Argument. (shrink)

We raise various puzzles about the relationship between God and the meaning of life. These difficulties suggest that, even if we assume that God exists, and even if God’s existence would entail that our lives have meaning, God is not and could not be the source of the meaning of life. We conclude by discussing implications of our arguments: these claims can be used in a novel argument for atheism; these claims undermine an extant argument for God’s existence; and they (...) suggest that atheism is consistent with our lives having meaning. (shrink)

This paper focuses on elements that are involved in a specific type of judgment, namely, those involving facts that, in virtue of contingent reasons, are out of our epistemic reach. Its goal is to propose a philosophical explanation about why we, in informal contexts, take some facts as contingently unknowable. In order to accomplish that goal, we develop a theory that defines contingently unknowable facts in a very specific way. We establish three clauses that are jointly necessary and sufficient — (...) so we argue — for taking an arbitrary fact as contingently unknowable. In a variety of contexts, this strategy has the potential of reducing efforts in an epistemological analysis of this particular type of unknowability. (shrink)

This article reexamines Sri Aurobindo’s multifaceted response to the problem of evil in The Life Divine. According to my reconstruction, his response has three key dimensions: first, a skeptical theist refutation of arguments from evil against God’s existence; second, a theodicy of “spiritual evolution,” according to which the experience of suffering is necessary for the soul’s spiritual growth; and third, a panentheistic conception of the Divine Saccidānanda as the sole reality which playfully manifests as everything and everyone in the universe. (...) While a number of scholars have already discussed Aurobindo’s theodicy, I highlight the significance of three aspects of his theodicy that have been largely neglected. First, I emphasize the crucial theodical role of the “psychic entity,” Aurobindo’s term for the evolving, reincarnating soul within each of us. Second, I elucidate the skeptical theist dimension of his theodicy, which previous scholars have overlooked. Third, I argue that Aurobindo’s approach to the problem of evil may have been shaped, in part, by the teachings of Śrī Rāmakṛṣṇa. Along the way, I also reconstruct the subtle chain of reasoning underlying Aurobindo’s various theodical arguments. In the concluding section, I suggest that there are conceptual resources within Aurobindo’s thought for responding to some of the most serious objections scholars have leveled against his theodicy. (shrink)

Many of us care about the existence of ethical facts because they appear crucial to making sense of our practical lives. On one tempting line of thought, this idea can also play a central role in justifying our belief in those facts. David Enoch has developed this thought into a formidable new proposal in moral epistemology: that the deliberative indispensability of ethical facts gives us epistemic justification for believing in such facts. This chapter argues that Enoch’s proposal fails because it (...) conflicts with a central fact about epistemic justification: that the norms of epistemic justification have the content that they do in part because of some positive connection between those norms and the truth of the beliefs that these norms govern. Alternatives to Enoch’s attempt to defend the idea that deliberative indispensability confers epistemic justification fail for parallel reasons. The chapter concludes that deliberative indispensability does not provide epistemic justification. (shrink)

Keith DeRose’s new book The Appearance of Ignorance is a welcome companion volume to his 2009 book The Case for Contextualism. Where latter focused on contextualism as a view in the philosophy of language, the former focuses on how contextualism contributes to our understanding of some perennial epistemological problems, with the skeptical problem being the main focus of six of the seven chapters. DeRose’s view is that a solution to the skeptical problem must do two things. First, it must explain (...) how it is that we can know lots of things, such as that we have hands. Second, it must explain how it can seem that we don’t know these things. In slogan form, DeRose’s argument is that a contextualist semantics for knowledge attributions is needed to account for the “appearance of ignorance”—the appearance that we don’t know that skeptical hypotheses fail to obtain. In my critical discussion, I will argue inter alia that we don’t need a contextualist semantics to account for the appearance of ignorance, and in any case that the “strength” of the appearance of ignorance is unclear, as is the need for a philosophical diagnosis of it. (shrink)

I argue that beliefs about what appears possible are justified in much the same way as beliefs about what appears actual. I do so by chisholming, and then modalizing, the epistemic principle associated with phenomenal conservatism. The principle is tested against a number of examples, and it gives the intuitively correct results. I conclude by considering how it can be used to defend two controversial modal arguments, a Cartesian argument for dualism and an ontological argument for the existence of God.

I argue that a version of the so-called KK principle is true for principled epistemic reasons; and that this does not entail access internalism, as is commonly supposed, but is consistent with a broad spectrum of epistemological views. The version of the principle I defend states that, given certain normal conditions, knowing p entails being in a position to know that you know p. My argument for the principle proceeds from reflection on what it would take to know that you (...) know something, rather than from reflection on the conditions for knowledge generally. Knowing that you know p, it emerges, is importantly similar to cases of psychological self-knowledge like knowing that you believe p: it does not require any grounds other than your grounds for believing p itself. In so arguing, I do not rely on any general account of knowledge, but only on certain plausible and widely accepted epistemological assumptions. (shrink)

This paper argues that reliabilism can handle Gettier cases once it restricts knowledge producing reliable processes to those that involve a suitable causal link between the subject’s belief and the fact it references. Causal tracking reliabilism (as this version of reliabilism is called) also avoids the problems that refuted the causal theory of knowledge, along with problems besetting more contemporary theories (such as virtue reliabilism and the “safety” account of knowledge). Finally, causal tracking reliabilism allows for a response to Linda (...) Zagzebski’s challenge that no theory of knowledge can both eliminate the possibility of Gettier cases while also allowing fully warranted but false beliefs. (shrink)

The Generality Problem for process reliabilism is to outline a procedure for determining when two beliefs are produced by the same process, in such a way as to avoid, on the one hand, individuating process types so narrowly that each type is instantiated only once, or, on the other hand, individuating them so broadly that beliefs that have different epistemic statuses are subsumed under the same process type. In this paper, I offer a solution to the problem which takes belief‐independent (...) processes to be functions that take as inputs information about distal states of affairs, and produce beliefs as outputs. Processes are individuated narrowly, so as to avoid the latter aspect of the Generality problem, but, by holding process tokens to be of the same type when they take perceptually equivalent scenes as inputs, and produce beliefs of the same kind as outputs, the former aspect of the problem is avoided too. Having argued that this method of typing process tokens solves the Generality Problem, I then argue that my solution does not fall prey to objections that have been, or might be, raised for similar proposals. (shrink)

I aim to offer a practical response to skepticism. I begin by surveying a family of responses to skepticism that I term “dogmatic” and argue that they are problematically evasive; they do not address what I take to be a question that is central to many skeptics: Why am I justified in maintaining some beliefs that fail to meet ordinary standards of doxastic evaluation? I then turn to a discussion of these standards of evaluation and to the different kinds of (...) doxastic value to which they appeal. While there is something good about having a true belief and something bad about having a false one, I argue the value of true beliefs is not intrinsic or final. Truth and knowledge are valuable because they contribute to both individual and collective flourishing. But if contributing to flourishing is what ultimately provides truth with its value, then we have discovered another doxastic value. I call this kind of doxastic value “practical.” The practical response addresses the skeptic’s question by claiming that some beliefs can be justified by appealing to their practical, rather than alethic, value. In fleshing out this practical response I contrast it both with dogmatic responses as well as some seemingly similar “practical” alternatives, namely Crispin Wright’s appeals to entitlements and Susanna Rinard’s “pragmatic skepticism.” I end by addressing some objections. (shrink)

The first step in responding to the challenge of external world skepticism is to get clear on the structure of the skeptic’s argument. The most prominent varieties of skeptical arguments either rely on closure principles or underdetermination principles. The relationship between these two sorts of arguments is contentious. Some argue that these arguments can independently motivate skepticism. Others argue that they are really equivalent. I argue that although these two arguments are distinct, their independence is not as obvious as some (...) have thought. The fact that these arguments are not equivalent is important because skeptical arguments that appeal to underdetermination principles cannot be refuted by simply denying closure. So, the strategy for responding to skepticism offered by Nozick/Dretske does not seem an adequate solution. (shrink)

The aim of the paper is to prove the consistency of libertarianism. We examine the example of Jane, who deliberates at length over whether to vacation in Colorado (C) or Hawaii (H), weighing the costs and benefits, consulting travel brochures, etc. Underlying phenomenological deliberation is an indeterministic neural process in which nonactual motor neural states n(C) and n(H) corresponding to alternatives C and H remain physically possible up until the moment of decision. The neurophysiological probabilities pr(n(C)) and pr(n(H)) evolve continuously (...) according to the different weights Jane's judgement attaches to C and H at different times during the deliberation. The overall process is indeterministic, since Jane's exact judgemental weighting would vary slightly were the process to be repeated from the same initial conditions. The weighting is however rational, and entirely under Jane's control. This controlled, rational, indeterministic process shows that libertarianism is a consistent philosophical thesis. (shrink)

John Hawthorne has two forceful arguments in favour of:Single-Premise Closure Necessarily, if S knows p, competently deduces q from p, and thereby comes to believe q, while retaining knowledge of p throughout, then S knows q.Each of Hawthorne's arguments rests on an intuitively appealing principle which Hawthorne calls the Equivalence Principle. I show, however, that the opponents of SPC with whom he's engaging - namely Fred Dretske and Robert Nozick - have independent reason to reject this principle, and resultantly conclude (...) that Hawthorne's arguments in favour of SPC are not knock-down. (shrink)

Take the following principle (or schema) as the focus of the ensuing discussion (“P” and “Q” are placeholders for propositions): 1 (Closure) If one knows P and competently deduces Q from P, thereby coming to believe Q, while retaining one's knowledge that P, one comes to know that Q. My strategy in outline: first, I want to set out Fred Dretske's classic challenge to (Closure) – a challenge which began in 1970–1971. Then I want to consider a specific, recent counter‐challenge (...) to Dretske's challenge to (Closure) mounted by John Hawthorne, and to defend Dretske's challenge from Hawthorne's counter‐challenge. Doing this is not to invalidate (Closure). In this regard my conclusions are modest: Dretske's challenge to (Closure) is – or, better: can be made – sophisticated and, so far, unmet. (shrink)

Stewart Cohen considers a case where his son wants a red table for his room. Cohen and his son go to the furniture store. Cohen’s son is concerned that the table his father is considering purchasing, which appears red, may in fact be white with red lights shining on it. Cohen responds with the following reasoning: The table looks red. The table is red. If the table is red, then it is not white with red lights shining on it. The (...) table is not white with red lights shining on it. If one reasons thus, say one’s engaged in -reasoning. Cohen finds such a response unsatisfactory. It is not a way of coming to know —it is too easy. And structurally similar reasoning delivers the falsity of sceptical hypotheses concerning the external world, testimony, other minds etc. So the unsatisfactoriness threatens to generalise. I consider Martin Davies ’s attempt to diagnose this unsatisfactoriness and find it incomplete. I then attempt to remedy the incompleteness in Davies ’s attempt. (shrink)

Constitutivists about moral norms are often suspected of providing an overly “self-centered” account of morality which does not take seriously enough morality’s interpersonal nature. This worry see...

An ambitious project in epistemology is to show that we have justification for anti-skeptical beliefs such as the belief that we are not brains in vats. A much less ambitious project is to account for how perceptual experience justifies ordinary perceptual beliefs like the belief that there is a cat in front of me. One problem is that these two projects are entangled in such manner that the failure of the anti-skeptical project seems to entail the failure of the project (...) of accounting for the justification of ordinary perceptual beliefs. This paper offers a way to disentangle these two projects. (shrink)

What really matters fundamentally in survival? That question—the one on which I focus—is not about what should matter or about metaphysics. Rather, it is a factual question the answer to which can be determined, if at all, only empirically. I argue that the answer to it is that in the case of many people it is not one’s own persistence, but continuing in ways that may involve one’s own cessation that really matters fundamentally in survival. Call this the surprising result. (...) What are we to make of it? According to several philosophers, not much. I argue that these philosophers are wrong. What best explains the surprising result is that in the case of many people one’s special concern for oneself in the future is not fundamental, but derived. I explain what this means. Finally I explain why the task of explaining empirically what matters fundamentally in survival is in some ways more like a meditative quest than a traditional inquiry in western philosophy or social science and, as such, is best answered not by psychologists, but by philosophers. (shrink)

If we hold that perceiving is sufficient for knowing, we can raise a powerful objection to dreaming skepticism: Skeptics assume the implausible KK-principle, because they hold that if we don’t know whether we are dreaming or perceiving p, we don’t know whether p. The rejection of the KK-principle thus suggests an anti-skeptical strategy: We can sacrifice some of our self-knowledge—our second-order knowledge—and thereby save our knowledge of the external world. I call this strategy the Self-Knowledge Gambit. I argue that the (...) Self-Knowledge Gambit is not satisfactory, because the dreaming skeptic can avail herself of a normative counterpart to the KK-principle: When we lack second-order knowledge, we should suspend our first-order beliefs and thereby give up any first-order knowledge we might have had. The skeptical challenge is essentially a normative challenge, and one can raise it even if one rejects the KK-Principle. (shrink)

In the First Meditation, the Cartesian meditator temporarily concludes that he cannot know anything, because he cannot discriminate dreaming from waking while he is dreaming. To resist the meditator’s conclusion, one could deploy an asymmetry argument. Following Bernard Williams, one could argue that even if the meditator cannot discriminate dreaming from waking while dreaming, it does not follow that he cannot do it while awake. In general, asymmetry arguments seek to identify an asymmetry between a bad case that is entertained (...) as a ground for doubt and a good case in which one takes oneself to know something. My aim in this paper is to consider how effective asymmetry arguments are as an anti-skeptical strategy. I conclude that although asymmetry arguments provide an effective response to dreaming skepticism, they fail as a response to brains-in-a-vat skepticism. (shrink)

I develop an argument that believing in the survivability of a mind uploading procedure conveys value to its believers that is assessable independently of assessing the truth of the belief. Regardless of whether the first-order metaphysical belief is true, believing it conveys a kind of Darwinian fitness to the believer. Of course, a further question remains of whether having that Darwinian property can be a basis—in a rational sense of being a basis—for one’s holding the belief. I’ll also make some (...) remarks in the present article toward answering that latter question. (shrink)

Advocates of the strong programme in the sociology of knowledge contend that its four defining tenets entail the elimination and replacement tout court of epistemology by strong sociology of knowledge. I advance a naturalistic conception of both substantive and meta-level epistemological inquiry which fully complies with these four tenets and thereby shows that the strong programme neither entails nor even augurs the demise of epistemology.

If knowledge requires safety, then one might think that when the epistemic source of knowledge is testimony, that testimony must itself be safe. Otherwise, will not the lack of safety transfer from testimony to hearer, such that hearer will lack knowledge? Resisting this natural line of reasoning, Goldberg (2005; 2007) argues that testimonial knowledge through unsafe testimony is possible on the basis of two cases. Lackey (2008) and Pelling (2013) criticize Goldberg’s examples. But Pelling goes on to provide his own (...) example that attempts to show that Goldberg’s thesis is true: one can gain safe testimonial belief from unsafe testimony. If any of these counterexamples were correct, they would undermine the main reason to think that knowledge based on unsafe testimony is impossible. My aim in this paper is to critically assess these arguments, and to consider the possibility of knowledge through unsafe testimony. Drawing a general moral from the analysis of these cases, I shall contend that it is impossible to acquire safe belief solely on the basis of unsafe testimony. If so, then testimonial knowledge based solely on unsafe testimony is impossible. (shrink)

In general, epistemic internalists hold that an individual’s justification for a belief is exhausted by her reflectively accessible reasons for thinking that the contents of her beliefs are true. Applying this to the epistemology of testimony, a hearer’s justification for beliefs acquired through testimony is exhausted by her reflectively accessible reasons to think that the contents of the speaker’s testimony is true. A consequence of internalism is that subjects that are alike with respect to their reflectively accessible reasons are alike (...) with respect to what they have justification to believe. Testimony should be thought no different: hearers that are alike with respect to reflectively accessible reasons to think that a speaker’s testimony is true are alike with respect to their justification for beliefs based upon that testimony. But it has been recently argued that this view faces powerful counterexamples. So the central question is this: assuming that a hearer can acquire justification to believe a proposition through the testimony of a speaker, can epistemic internalism provide the resources to explain how such justification is possible? My aim in this paper is to address these counterexamples, and in so doing, defend epistemic internalist accounts of testimony. (shrink)