In this article I argue that the prevalence of intersubjective disagreement in epistemology poses a serious problem for Epistemic Externalism. I put the problem in the form of a dilemma: either Epistemic Externalism is not a complete account of epistemic justification or it's implausible to claim that the belief that Epistemic Externalism is true is itself an externalistically justified belief.

Evidentialism says that a subject S’s justification is entirely determined by S’s evidence. The plausibility of evidentialism depends on what kind of entities constitute a subject S’s evidence and what one takes the support relation to consist in. Conee and Feldman’s mainstream evidentialism incorporates a psychologist answer to and an explanationist answer to. ME naturally accommodates perceptual justification. However, it does not accommodate intuitive cases of inferential justification. In the second part of the paper, I consider and reject a reply (...) based on a refined explanationist theory of the support relation proposed by K McCain. (shrink)

Recently there has been a surge of interest in the intersection between epistemology and action theory, especially in principles linking rationality in thought and rationality in action. Recently there has also been a surge of interest in the epistemic significance of perceived peer disagreement: what, epistemically speaking, is the rational response in light of disagreement with someone whom one regards as an epistemic peer? The objective of this paper is to explore these two issues—separately, but also in connection with one (...) another. I turn first to the idea that the normative standing of our actions depends on the normative standing of our beliefs. I endorse this idea. More precisely, I endorse a principle according to which sufficiently high credence in success conditions for a given goal-directed action is a necessary condition on rational execution of that action. I then turn to the debate concerning the epistemic significance of perceived peer disagreement. The basic issue is whether such disagreement is always epistemically significant in the sense of serving as a defeater of the initial credences of the disagreeing parties. Conformists argue that this is so while non-conformists deny it. I present a new argument against a brand of non-conformism that I call “strong non-conformism”. The key premise is the principle that sufficiently high credence in success conditions for a given goal-directed action is a necessary condition on rational execution of that action. I argue that, given this principle, strong non-conformism fails to yield the verdict that the epistemic requirement on rational action is violated in a case where, intuitively, it is violated. This is because strong non-conformism has it that disagreement with a perceived peer does not act as a defeater in the relevant case. Conformism fares better. (shrink)

This paper argues that several leading theories of subjunctive conditionals are incompatible with ordinary intuitions about what credences we ought to have in subjunctive conditionals. In short, our theory of subjunctives should intuitively display semantic humility, i.e. our semantic theory should deliver the truth conditions of sentences without pronouncing on whether those conditions actually obtain. In addition to describing intuitions about subjunctive conditionals, I argue that we can derive these ordinary intuitions from justified premises, and I answer a possible worry (...) for my derivation by refuting a subjunctive triviality result modeled on (Lewis 1976). I conclude that the debate over the correct theory of subjunctive conditionals requires settling meta-philosophical questions about the relative value of various virtues of first-order theories of subjunctive conditionals. (shrink)

This paper argues that just as full beliefs can constitute knowledge, so can properties of your credence distribution. The resulting notion of probabilistic knowledge helps us give a natural account of knowledge ascriptions embedding language of subjective uncertainty, and a simple diagnosis of probabilistic analogs of Gettier cases. Just like propositional knowledge, probabilistic knowledge is factive, safe, and sensitive. And it helps us build knowledge-based norms of action without accepting implausible semantic assumptions or endorsing the claim that knowledge is interest-relative.

According to Jim Pryor’s dogmatism, when you have an experience with content p, you often have prima facie justification for believing p that doesn’t rest on your independent justification for believing any proposition. Although dogmatism has an intuitive appeal and seems to have an antisceptical bite, it has been targeted by various objections. This paper principally aims to answer the objections by Roger White according to which dogmatism is inconsistent with the Bayesian account of how evidence affects our rational credences. (...) If this were true, the rational acceptability of dogmatism would be seriously questionable. I respond that these objections don’t get off the ground because they assume that our experiences and our introspective beliefs that we have experiences have the same evidential force, whereas the dogmatist is uncommitted to this assumption. I also consider the question whether dogmatism has an antisceptical bite. I suggest that the answer turns on whether or not the Bayesian can determine the priors of hypotheses and conjectures on the grounds of their extra-empirical virtues. If the Bayesian can do so, the thesis that dogmatism has an antisceptical bite is probably false. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that, just as the problem of unconceived alternatives provides a basis for a New Induction on the History of Science to the effect that a realist view of science is unwarranted, the problem of unconceived objections provides a basis for a New Induction on the History of Philosophy to the effect that a realist view of philosophy is unwarranted. I raise this problem not only for skepticism’s sake but also for the sake of making a (...) point about philosophical argumentation, namely, that anticipating objections to one’s claim is not the same as supporting one’s claim. In other words, defending p from objections does not amount to support or evidence for p. This, in turn, presents dialectical and pragma-dialectical approaches to argumentation with the following question: does proper argumentation require that arguers anticipate and respond to unconceived objections? (shrink)

In this paper, I sketch an argument for the view that we cannot know (or have good reasons to believe) that God exists. Some call this view “strong agnosticism” but I prefer the term “skeptheism” in order to clearly distinguish between two distinct epistemic attitudes with respect to the existence of God, namely, agnosticism and skepticism. For the skeptheist, we cannot know (or have good reasons to believe) that God exists, since there can be neither conceptual (a priori) nor empirical (...) (a posteriori) evidence for the existence of God. (shrink)

Husserl and Sartre’s analyses of mental imagery and some of the latest cognitive research on vision provide a framework for understanding a number of films by Hitchcock (Psycho and Rear Window) and Buñuel (Un Chien Andalou), films which similarly probe the subtleties and uses of mental imagery. One of the many ways to enjoy these films is to see them as explorations of visual phenomenology; they allow us to enact, as well as reflect upon, mental images as part of the (...) film experience.<br><br><br><br><br><br>. (shrink)

ABSTRACTRational agents have consistent beliefs. Bayesianism is a theory of consistency for partial belief states. Rational agents also respond appropriately to experience. Dogmatism is a theory of how to respond appropriately to experience. Hence, Dogmatism and Bayesianism are theories of two very different aspects of rationality. It's surprising, then, that in recent years it has become common to claim that Dogmatism and Bayesianism are jointly inconsistent: how can two independently consistent theories with distinct subject matter be jointly inconsistent? In this (...) essay I argue that Bayesianism and Dogmatism are inconsistent only with the addition of a specific hypothesis about how the appropriate responses to perceptual experience are to be incorporated into the formal models of the Bayesian. That hypothesis isn't essential either to Bayesianism or to Dogmatism, and so Bayesianism and Dogmatism are jointly consistent. That leaves the matter of how experiences and credences are related, a... (shrink)

Although David Hume is no match for Immanuel Kant in terms of opaque writing, his overall philosophy is not without interpretive difficulties. Earlier this century, many philosophers read Hume as the precursor to logical positivism. Of course, the concluding words of his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding added fuel to these flames; but with the downfall of positivism, this reading of Hume has virtually disappeared. Today, interpretations of Hume fall into two main camps: the naturalistic camp and the sceptical camp. Roughly (...) speaking, naturalistic interpreters of Hume see him as attempting to employ the methods of the natural sciences in studying human subjects while sceptical interpreters read Hume as denying that we have any knowledge. In this article I want to shed some light on this controversy in an indirect way: namely, by trying to classify Hume’s epistemology as internalist or externalist. Although this internalism/externalism debate has erupted only recently in epistemology, it should be constructive in carving up the logical space of certain epistemological positions. With this background in place, we can not only see how to categorize Hume, but also discern some of the ramifications for Hume’s epistemology when he affirms theses that place him in these categories. To anticipate a bit, I will argue that the internalist aspects of Hume’s epistemology lend great credence to the sceptical interpretation. (shrink)

widely held commitments: to phenomenal realism and to naturalism. Phenomenal realism is the view that we are phenomenally consciousness, and that there is no a priori or armchair sufficient condition for phenomenal consciousness that can be stated in nonphenomenal terms . 1,2 Block points out that while phenomenal realists reject.

Reasoning is a certain kind of attitude-revision. What kind? The aim of this paper is to introduce and defend a new answer to this question, based on the idea that reasoning is a goodness-fixing kind. Our central claim is that reasoning is a functional kind: it has a constitutive point or aim that fixes the standards for good reasoning. We claim, further, that this aim is to get fitting attitudes. We start by considering recent accounts of reasoning due to Ralph (...) Wedgwood and John Broome, and argue that, while these accounts contain important insights, they are not satisfactory: Wedgwood’s rules out too much, and Broome’s too little. We then introduce and defend our alternative account, discuss some of its implications and attractions, and, finally, consider objections. (shrink)

Phenomenal conservatism is a popular theory of epistemic justification. Despite its popularity and the fact that some think that phenomenal conservatism can provide a complete account of justification, it faces several challenges. Among these challenges are the need to provide accounts of defeaters and inferential justification. Fortunately, there is hope for phenomenal conservatism. Explanationism, the view on which justification is a matter of explanatory considerations, can help phenomenal conservatism with both of these challenges. The resulting view is one that respects (...) the internalist character of phenomenal conservatism and its motivating intuitions while providing an intuitive and elegant account of both inferential justification and the justificatory impact of defeaters. (shrink)

Suppose one has a visual experience as of having hands, and then reasons as follows: I have hands, If I have hands an external world exists; An external world exists. Suppose one’s visual experience gives one defeasible perceptual warrant, or justification, to believe – that is, one’s experience makes it epistemically appropriate to believe . And suppose one comes to believe on the basis of this visual experience. The conditional premise is knowable a priori. And can be established by modus (...) ponens inference. If one reasons thus, say one’s engaged in -reasoning. What, if anything, is wrong with -reasoning? I consider two prominent responses to this question – the dogmatists’ and Crispin Wright’s. Each finds fault in -reasoning, but on different grounds. I argue Wright’s response faces a problem which is standardly only taken to be faced by dogmatists. (shrink)

It is commonly held that our intuitive judgements about imaginary problem cases are justified a priori, if and when they are justified at all. In this paper I defend this view — ‘rationalism’ — against a recent objection by Timothy Williamson. I argue that his objection fails on multiple grounds, but the reasons why it fails are instructive. Williamson argues from a claim about the semantics of intuitive judgements, to a claim about their psychological underpinnings, to the denial of rationalism. (...) I argue that the psychological claim — that a capacity for mental simulation explains our intuitive judgements — does not, even if true, provide reasons to reject rationalism. (More generally, a simulation hypothesis, about any category of judgements, is very limited in its epistemological implications: it is pitched at a level of explanation that is insensitive to central epistemic distinctions.) I also argue that Williamson’s semantic claim — that intuitive judgements are judgements of counterfactuals — is mistaken; rather, I propose, they are a certain kind of metaphysical possibility judgement. Several other competing proposals are also examined and criticized. (shrink)

Response to Horgan, Goldman, and Graham. Part of a book symposium on my _Perception and Basic Beliefs_.

Belief does aim at the truth. When our beliefs do not fit the facts, they cannot do what they are supposed to do, because they cannot provide us with reasons. We cannot plausibly deny that a truth norm is among the norms that govern belief. What we should not say is that the truth norm is the fundamental epistemic norm. In this paper, I shall argue that knowledge is the norm of belief and that the truth norm has a derivative (...) status. Only a knowledge‐first approach to epistemic normativity can explain why epistemic assessment has its inward‐looking focus. (shrink)

According to a historical claim oft-repeated by contemporary epistemologists, the ‘traditional’ conception of knowledge prevailed in Western philosophy prior to the publication in 1963 of Edmund’s Gettier’s famous three-page article ‘Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?’. On this conception, knowledge consists of justified true belief. In this article, I critically consider evidence for and against this historical claim, and conclude with a puzzle concerning its widespread acceptance.

Despite the prominence of doubt in philosophy since Descartes, the published philosophical literature includes no extended treatment of the nature of doubt. In this paper, I summarize the main contributions that have been made to the subject and then develop a commonsense functionalist account of doubt by specifying the functional role of doubt that something is the case. After adding two further wrinkles, I show how the resulting account can be used to address the questions of how doubt is related (...) to belief and whether suspension of judgment can be identified with doubt. Although the account is partisan, it should hold interest for those who favor other positions in the philosophy of mind, since much of the account can be taken on board by those in other camps, and the paper demonstrates how a sufficiently detailed account of doubt can be put to work addressing longstanding questions of interest across philosophical sub-disciplines. (shrink)

It is common orthodoxy among internalists and externalists alike that knowledge is lost or defeated in situations involving misleading evidence of a suitable kind. But making sense of defeat has seemed to present a particular challenge for those who reject an internalist justification condition on knowledge. My main aim here is to argue that externalists ought to take seriously a view on which knowledge can be retained even in the face of strong seemingly defeating evidence. As an instructive example, I (...) first discuss whether a theory on which knowledge is belief that is safe from error has the resources for accommodating defeat. I argue that beliefs retained in defeat cases need not be unsafe or true in some accidental way. I then discuss externalist strategies for explaining why we have incorrect intuitions about defeat. The notion of an epistemically reasonable subject plays a central role in my theory. Reasonable subjects adopt general strategies that are good for acquiring true belief and knowledge across a wide range of normal cases, but stubbornly retaining belief in the face of new evidence does not reflect such policies. I argue that though the methods employed by subjects who fail to adjust their beliefs in defeat cases may be perfectly good, they are not good methods to adopt, as their adoption is accompanied by bad dispositions. What emerges is a view on which a subject can know despite being unreasonable, and despite failing to manifest dispositions to know across normal cases. Unreasonable subjects are genuinely criticisable, but like almost anything, knowledge can sometimes be achieved in the absence of a good general strategy. (shrink)

According to the Dogmatism Puzzle, knowledge breeds dogmatism: if a subject knows a proposition h, then she is justified in disregarding any future evidence against h, for she knows that such evidence is misleading. The standard, widely accepted, solution to the puzzle appeals to the defeasibility of knowledge. I argue that the defeat solution leaves intact a residual dogmatist puzzle. Solving this puzzle requires proponents of defeat to deny a plausible principle that the original puzzle relies on called Entitlement, a (...) principle stating roughly that knowing that a piece of evidence is misleading entitles one to disregard it. The plausibility of Entitlement should cast doubt not only on the defeat solution, but on an assumption that has often been taken for granted: the falsity of the dogmatist conclusion of the original puzzle. I conclude that we face a dilemma between giving up Entitlement and living with dogmatism. (shrink)

It is a common intuition that at least in some cases disagreement has skeptical consequences: the participants are not justified in persisting in their beliefs. I will argue that the currently popular non-dialectical and individualistic accounts of justification, such as evidentialism and reliabilism, cannot explain this intuition and defend the dialectical conception of justification that can explain it. I will also argue that this sort of justification is a necessary condition of knowledge by relying on Craig's genealogy of the concept (...) of knowledge. I will then respond to the accusation that the dialectical conception leads to radical skepticism. My response is partly concessive. It does lead to skepticism in areas where controversy prevails, such as philosophy, politics and religion, but this sort of skepticism is quite intuitive. Finally, I deal with the objection that my defense of skepticism about philosophy is self-refuting. (shrink)

This essay raises new objections to the two dominant approaches to understanding the justification of group beliefs—_inflationary_ views, where groups are treated as entities that can float freely from the epistemic status of their members’ beliefs, and _deflationary_ views, where justified group belief is understood as nothing more than the aggregation of the justified beliefs of the group's members. If this essay is right, we need to look in an altogether different place for an adequate account of justified group belief. (...) From these objections emerges the skeleton of the positive view that this essay goes on to develop and defend, called the _group epistemic agent account_: groups are epistemic agents in their own right, with justified beliefs that respond to both evidence and normative requirements that arise only at the group level but that are nonetheless importantly constrained by the epistemic status of the beliefs of their individual members. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore whether there is a need for a multiplicity of norms governing belief due to differences in the objects of those beliefs, particularly the difference between persons and nonpersons. I call the view according to which there is a single epistemic norm governing belief monism, and the view that there is more than one such norm pluralism. I consider three different kinds of objections to monism that stem specifically from considerations unique to assessing the credibility of (...) persons, along with corresponding pluralist proposals. I argue not only that all of the criticisms of monism fail, but also that the proposed pluralist norms face significant problems of their own. In so doing, the aim of the paper is to clear the path for there being a single epistemic norm governing belief, despite there being important epistemic differences between how we ought to treat persons and nonpersons. (shrink)

Alan Millar's paper (2011) involves two parts, which I address in order, first taking up the issues concerning the goal of inquiry, and then the issues surrounding the appeal to reflective knowledge. I argue that the upshot of the considerations Millar raises count in favour of a more important role in value-driven epistemology for the notion of understanding and for the notion of epistemic justification, rather than for the notions of knowledge and reflective knowledge.

What is the role of sceptical scenarios—dreams, evil demons, brains in a vat—in scep- tical arguments? According to the error view, sceptical scenarios illustrate the possibil- ity of massive falsity in one’s beliefs, whereas according to the ignorance view, they illustrate the possibility of massive ignorance not necessarily due to falsity. In this paper, the ignorance view is defended by surveying the arguments in favour of it and by replying to two pressing objections against it. According to the first objection, (...) the ignorance view illicitly introduces the kk-principle into sceptical arguments. In reply I argue that kk is not less plausible than its main rival, the closure principle. According to the second objection, relying on veridical ignorance-possibilities contradicts the transparency of belief. In reply I introduce a version of transparency that is consistent with the ignorance view. (shrink)

The epistemic basing relation is the relation which must hold between a person's belief and the adequate reasons for holding that belief if the belief is to be epistemically justified by those reasons. Although the basing relation is a fundamental component of any adequate theory of epistemic justification, it has received scant attention in the literature. In this paper, I propose a novel causal analysis of the basing relation, one which helps to characterize an intemalist element which, I shall argue, (...) is required of any successful account of epistemic justification, and which confirms current trends away from coherentist and reliabilist theories of justification. (shrink)

Debunking arguments are arguments that seek to undermine a belief or doctrine by exposing its causal origins. Two prominent proponents of such arguments are the utilitarians Joshua Greene and Peter Singer. They draw on evidence from moral psychology, neuroscience, and evolutionary theory in an effort to show that there is something wrong with how deontological judgments are typically formed and with where our deontological intuitions come from. They offer debunking explanations of our emotion-driven deontological intuitions and dismiss complex deontological theories (...) as products of confabulatory post hoc rationalization. Through my discussion of Greene and Singer’s empirically informed debunking of deontology, I introduce the distinction between two different types of debunking arguments. The first type of debunking argument operates through regular undercutting defeat, whereas the second type relies on higher-order evidence. I argue that the latter type of debunking argument, of which the argument from confabulation is an example, is objectionably sloppy and therefore inadmissible in academic discussion. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the question of whether the expected consequences of holding a belief can affect the rationality of doing so. Special attention is given to various ways in which one might attempt to exert some measure of control over what one believes and the normative status of the beliefs that result from the successful execution of such projects. I argue that the lessons which emerge from thinking about the case ofbelief have important implications for the way we (...) should think about the rationality of a number of other propositional attitudes,such as regret, desire, and fear. Finally,I suggest that a lack of clarity with respect to the relevant issues has given rise to a number of rather serious philosophical mistakes. (shrink)

A Moorean fact, in the words of the late David Lewis, is ‘one of those things that we know better than we know the premises of any philosophical argument to the contrary’. Lewis opens his seminal paper ‘Elusive Knowledge’ with the following declaration.

Suppose that one is at least a minimal realist about a given domain, in that one thinks that that domain contains truths that are not in any interesting sense of our own making. Given such an understanding, what can be said for and against the method of reflective equilibrium as a procedure for investigating the domain? One fact that lends this question some interest is that many philosophers do combine commitments to minimal realism and a reflective equilibrium methodology. Here, for (...) example, is David Lewis on philosophy: Our “intuitions” are simply opinions: our philosophical theories are the same. Some are commonsensical, some are sophisticated; some are particular; some general; some are more firmly held, some less. But they are all opinions, and a reasonable goal for a philosopher is to bring them into equilibrium. Our common task it to find out what equilibria there are that can withstand examination, but it remains for each of us to come to rest at one or another of them… Once the menu of well-worked out theories is before us, philosophy is a matter of opinion. Is that to say that there is no truth to be had? Or that the truth is of our own making, and different ones of us can make it differently? Not at all! If you say flatly that there is no god, and I say that there are countless gods but none of them are our worldmates, then it may be that neither of us is making any mistake of method. We may each be bringing our opinions to equilibrium in the most careful possible way, taking account of all the arguments, distinctions, and counterexamples. But one of us, at least, is making a mistake of fact. Which one is wrong depends on what there is (1983: x-xi). In addition to philosophy in general, the method of reflective equilibrium has also been endorsed as the appropriate procedure for investigating various other subject.. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the relationship between epistemic rationality and instrumental rationality, and I attempt to delineate their respective roles in typical instances of theoretical reasoning. My primary concern is with the instrumentalist conception of epistemic rationality: the view that epistemic rationality is simply a species of instrumental rationality, viz. instrumental rationality in the service of one's cognitive or epistemic goals. After sketching the relevance of the instrumentalist conception to debates over naturalism and 'the ethics of belief', I argue (...) that, despite enjoying considerable popularity among both epistemologists and philosophers of science, it is ultimately indefensible. Having thus argued for the distinctness of epistemic and instrumental rationality, I attempt to clarify the role played by each in typical instances of theoretical reasoning. I suggest that being theoretically rational--that is, being proficient with respect to theoretical reasoning--is best construed as a hybrid virtue, inasmuch as it involves manifesting sensitivity to two very different kinds of reasons. (shrink)

This paper sketches a general account of how to respond in an epistemically rational way to moral disagreement. Roughly, the account states that when two parties, A and B, disagree as to whether p, A says p while B says not-p, this is higher-order evidence that A has made a cognitive error on the first-order level of reasoning in coming to believe that p. If such higher-order evidence is not defeated, then one rationally ought to reduce one’s confidence with respect (...) to the proposition in question. We term this the higher-order evidence account, and present it as a superior to what we might call standard conciliationism, which holds that when agents A and B disagree about p, and are epistemic peers, they should both suspend judgement about p or adjust their confidence towards the mean of A and B’s prior credences in p. Many have suspected that standard conciliationism is implausible and may have skeptical implications. After presenting the HOE account, we put it to work by applying it to a range of cases of moral disagreement, including those that have feature in recent debates assuming standard conciliationism. We show that the HOE account support reasonable, non-skeptical verdicts in a range of cases. Note that this is a paper on moral disagreement, not on the HOE account, thus the account is merely stated here, while defended more fully elsewhere. (shrink)