[Significantly updated in Chapter 6 of Awareness and the Substructure of Knowledge] In order for a reason to justify an action or attitude it must be one that is possessed by an agent. Knowledge-centric views of possession ground our possession of reasons, at least partially, either in our knowledge of them or in our being in a position to know them. On virtually all accounts, knowing P is some kind of non-accidental true belief that P. This entails that knowing P (...) is a kind of non-accidental true representation that P. I outline a novel theory of the epistemic requirement on possession in terms of this more general state of non-accidental true representation. It is just as well placed to explain the motivations behind knowledge-centric views of possession, and it is also better placed to explain the extent of the reasons we possess in certain cases of deductive belief-updates and cases involving environmental luck. I conclude with three reflections. First, I indicate how my arguments generate a dilemma for Errol Lord’s view that possessing reasons is just a matter of being in a position to manifest one’s knowledge how to use them. Second, I explain how my view can simultaneously manage cases of environmental luck without falling prey to lottery cases. Finally, I sketch the direction for a further range of counterexamples to knowledge-centric theories of possession. (shrink)

Epistemological disjunctivists make two strong claims about perceptual experience's epistemic value: experience guarantees the knowledgeable character of perceptual beliefs; experience's epistemic value is “reflectively accessible”. In this paper I develop a form of disjunctivism grounded in a presentational view of experience, on which the epistemic benefits of experience consist in the way perception presents the subject with aspects of her environment. I show that presentational disjunctivism has both dialectical and philosophically fundamental advantages over more traditional expositions. Dialectically, presentational disjunctivism resolves (...) a puzzle disjunctivists face in their posture vis-à-vis skeptical scenarios. More systematically, presentational disjunctivism provides an especially compelling view of disjunctivism as an internalist view of perceptual consciousness by explaining the way perceptual presence manifests the subject's rationality in a distinct way. (shrink)

I argue that we can achieve certainty about some empirical propositions. When someone is having a migraine and attending to it, she can be certain that she is in pain. I show that examples intended to undermine claims of certainty or to raise doubts about the reliability of introspection do not touch such cases. Traditional foundationalists have held that epistemically certain beliefs can serve as the basis for all one’s other justified beliefs. This is not so, because those beliefs that (...) are certain are spread too thinly to serve as broad justificatory foundations. Certainty has a different role. The best explanation for the existence of epistemically certain empirical beliefs is experientialism, the view that nondoxastic sensory experiences can justify beliefs. Experientialism then offers a framework for showing how the stream of sensory experiences can provide an adequate basis for the justification of our ordinary beliefs about the external world. (shrink)

Should you always be certain about what you should believe? In other words, does rationality demand higher-order certainty? First answer: Yes! Higher-order uncertainty can’t be rational, since it breeds at least a mild form of epistemic akrasia. Second answer: No! Higher-order certainty can’t be rational, since it licenses a dogmatic kind of insensitivity to higher-order evidence. Which answer wins out? The first, I argue. Once we get clearer about what higher-order certainty is, a view emerges on which higher-order certainty does (...) not, in fact, license any kind of insensitivity to higher-order evidence. The view as I will describe it has plenty of intuitive appeal. But it is not without substantive commitments: it implies a strong form of internalism about epistemic rationality, and forces us to reconsider standard ways of thinking about the nature of evidential support. Yet, the view put forth promises a simple and elegant solution to a surprisingly difficult problem in our understanding of rational belief. (shrink)

Perception of a property (e.g. a colour, a shape, a size) can enable thought about the property, while at the same time misleading the subject as to what the property is like. This long-overlooked claim parallels a more familiar observation concerning perception-based thought about objects, namely that perception can enable a subject to think about an object while at the same time misleading her as to what the object is like. I defend the overlooked claim, and then use it to (...) generate a challenge for a standard way of thinking about the relationship between visual experience and rational belief formation. Put informally, that view holds that just as we can mislead others by saying something false, illusory experience misleads by misrepresenting how things stand in the world. I argue that we ought to abandon this view in favour of some radical alternative account of the relationship between visual experience and rational belief formation. (shrink)

Richard Feldman’s “Reasonable Religious Disagreements” launched debates about the epistemic significance of disagreement that have been a dominant point of discussion in epistemology as of late. While most of these debates have been concerned with disagreement more generally, Feldman’s original focus was religious disagreement, and John Pittard returns the focus to religious disagreement in Disagreement, Deference, and Religious Commitment. Pittard’s book delves deeply into debates about the significance of disagreement with a foot in both epistemology and philosophy of religion. It (...) is the first book to look at these issues as they are being addressed within each of these sub-disciplines and is sure to be a significant contribution to the debates in both sub-fields. (shrink)

Nearly everyone agrees that perception gives us justification and knowledge, and a great number of epistemologists endorse a particular two-part view about how this happens. The view is that perceptual beliefs get their justification from perceptual experiences, and that they do so by being based on them. Despite the ubiquity of these two views, I think that neither has very much going for it; on the contrary, there’s good reason not to believe either one of them.

Our epistemology can shape the way we think about perception and experience. Speaking as an epistemologist, I should say that I don’t necessarily think that this is a good thing. If we think that we need perceptual evidence to have perceptual knowledge or perceptual justification, we will naturally feel some pressure to think of experience as a source of reasons or evidence. In trying to explain how experience can provide us with evidence, we run the risk of either adopting a (...) conception of evidence according to which our evidence isn’t very much like the objects of our beliefs that figure in reasoning (e.g., by identifying our evidence with experiences or sensations) or the risk of accepting a picture of experience according to which our perceptions and perceptual experiences are quite similar to beliefs in terms of their objects and their representational powers. But I think we have good independent reasons to resist identifying our evidence with things that don’t figure in our reasoning as premises and I think we have good independent reason to doubt that experience is sufficiently belief-like to provide us with something premise-like that can figure in reasoning. We should press pause. We shouldn’t let questionable epistemological assumptions tell us how to do philosophy of mind. I don’t think that we have good reason to think that we need the evidence of the senses to explain how perceptual justification or knowledge is possible. Part of my scepticism derives from the fact that I think we can have kinds of knowledge where the relevant knowledge is not evidentially grounded. Part of my scepticism derives from the fact that there don’t seem to be many direct arguments for thinking that justification and knowledge always requires evidential support. In this paper, I shall consider the three arguments I’ve found for thinking that justification and knowledge do always require evidential support and explain why I don’t find them convincing. I think that we can explain perceptual justification, rationality, and defeat without assuming that our experiences provide us with evidence. In the end, I think we can partially vindicate Davidson’s (notorious) suggestion that our beliefs, not experiences, provide us with reasons for forming further beliefs. This idea turns out to be compatible with foundationalism once we understand that foundational status can come from something other than evidential support. (shrink)

In this paper I will present a puzzle about visual appearance. There are certain necessary constraints on how things can visually appear. The puzzle is about how to explain them. I have no satisfying solution. My main thesis is simply that the puzzle is a puzzle. I will develop the puzzle as it arises for representationalism about experience because it is currently the most popular theory of experience and I think it is along the right lines. However, everyone faces a (...) form of the puzzle, including the naïve realist. In §1 I explain representationalism about experience. In §§2-3 I develop the puzzle and criticize a response due to Ned Block and Jeff Speaks and another response based on a novel form of representationalism (“sensa representationalism”). In §4 I argue that defenders of “perceptual confidence” (Morrison, Munton, my earlier self) face an instance of the puzzle. In §5 I suggest that everyone faces a form of the puzzle. (shrink)

There are many important dimensions of epistemic evaluation, one of which is justification. We don’t just evaluate beliefs for truth, reliability, accuracy, and knowledge, but also for justification. However, in the epistemological literature, there is much disagreement about the nature of justification and how it should be understood. One of the controversies that has separated the contemporary epistemological discourse into two opposing camps has to do with the internalism-externalism distinction. Whereas internalists defend certain core assumptions about justification from the pre-Gettier (...) tradition, externalists generally think that the traditional conception is untenable and should be replaced. In this compilation thesis, I argue for, defend, and develop a particular brand of internalism, both in general and with respect to specific sources of justification. In papers 1 and 2, I defend a couple of well-known arguments for mentalism and accessibilism. Moreover, I also point out how prominent versions of these theses are vulnerable to serious problems (e.g., about over-intellectualization and vicious regresses). Part of my goal in the first couple of papers is to figure out what commitments the internalist should take on in order to avoid the externalist's objections, while at the same time receiving support from considerations that have motivated internalism in the past. In papers 3 and 4, I start from the assumption that mentalism is true and attempt to answer the following questions: 1) which non-factive mental states can play a justification-conferring role with respect to empirical belief? And 2) why does this set of states play the epistemic role it does? In response to question 1, I argue that all and only one's beliefs and perceptual experiences have justificatory relevance. In response to question 2, I argue that one's beliefs and perceptual experiences are one's strongly representational states, and that strongly representational states necessarily provide support to certain empirical propositions. Having done so, I then defend mentalism about scientific evidence from a couple of prominent objections in the recent literature. Lastly, in papers 5 and 6, I argue for a particular brand of internalism about testimonial and memorial justification and show how that position has a dialectical advantage over its main competitors. (shrink)

Epistemologists who have studied disagreement have started to devote attention to the notion of epistemic standing. One feature of epistemic standing they have not drawn attention to is a distinction between what I call “broad” and “narrow” epistemic standing. Someone who is, say, your broad epistemic peer with respect to some topic is someone who is generally as familiar with and good at handling the evidence as you are. But someone who is your narrow epistemic peer with respect to that (...) topic is someone who is familiar with the evidence and as good at handling it as you are on that particular occasion. Thus, it’s possible for you to be my broad peer while also being my narrow inferior or superior. Attending to this distinction elicits different intuitions about some of the well-known cases in the epistemology of disagreement. Focusing on broad epistemic standing, which epistemologists have done, tends to yield conciliationist responses. But focusing on narrow epistemic standing, which epistemologists have not done, yields steadfast responses. The reason for this difference has to do with how we figure out someone’s broad or narrow epistemic standing: to determine her broad epistemic standing, you need to look at her epistemic traits and her familiarity with the evidence rather than to examine the evidence she gives. But to determine her narrow epistemic standing, you have to focus on her disclosed evidence rather than her epistemic traits or familiarity with the evidence. (shrink)

This article lays the groundwork for a defense of rational intuitions by first arguing against a prevalent view according to which intuition is a distinctive psychological state, an “intellectual seeming” that p, that then constitutes evidence that p. An alternative account is then offered, according to which an intuition that p constitutes non-inferential a priori knowledge that p in virtue of the concepts exercised in judging that p. This account of rational intuition as the exercise of conceptual capacities in a (...) priori judgment is then distinguished from the dogmatic, entitlement and reliabilist accounts of intuition’s justificatory force. The article concludes by considering three implications of the proposed view for the Experimental Philosophy movement. (shrink)

It is generally agreed that consciousness is a somewhat slippery term. However, more narrowly defined as 'phenomenal consciousness' it captures at least three essential features or aspects: subjective experience (the notion that what we are primarily conscious of are experiences), subjective knowledge (that feature of our awareness that gives consciousness its distinctive reflexive character), and phenomenal contrast (the phenomenality of awareness, absence of which makes consciousness intractable) (cf. Siewert 1998). If Buddhist accounts of consciousness are built, as it is claimed, (...) on phenomenological (thus descriptive) rather than metaphysical grounds, the obvious question arises: is there such a place or locus for conscious experience? And if there is, does it have the sort of character that is amenable to phenomenological analysis? A positive answer would suggest that conscious experience is such that at a minimum, the 'sense of self' must be an ineliminable structural feature of cognitive awareness. This paper pursues the question of precisely what conception of self-consciousness can be supported on experiential grounds given the Buddhist no-self view, and whether such conception is sufficient to account for the ineliminable features of phenomenal consciousness. (shrink)

Barnett provides an interesting new challenge for Dogmatist accounts of perceptual justification. The challenge is that such accounts, by accepting that a perceptual experience can provide a distinctive kind of boost to one’s credences, would lead to a form of diachronic irrationality in cases where one has already learnt in advance that one will have such an experience. I show that this challenge rests on a misleading feature of using the 0–1 interval to express probabilities and show that if we (...) switch to using Odds or Log-Odds, the misleading appearance that there is only ‘a little room’ for one’s credences to increase evaporates. Moreover, there are familiar, independent reasons for taking the Log-Odds scale to provide a clearer picture of the confirmatory effect of evidence. Thus the Dogmatist can after all escape the charge of diachronic irrationality. (shrink)

According to infinitism, all justification comes from an infinite series of reasons. Peter Klein defends infinitism as the correct solution to the regress problem by rejecting two alternative solutions: foundationalism and coherentism. I focus on Klein's argument against foundationalism, which relies on the premise that there is no justification without meta-justification. This premise is incompatible with dogmatic foundationalism as defended by Michael Huemer and Time Pryor. It does not, however, conflict with non-dogmatic foundationalism. Whereas dogmatic foundationalism rejects the need for (...) any form of meta-justification, non-dogmatic foundationalism merely rejects Laurence BonJour's claim that meta-justification must come from beliefs. Unlike its dogmatic counterpart, non-dogmatic foundationalism can allow for basic beliefs to receive meta-justification from non-doxastic sources such as experiences and memories. Construed thus, non-dogmatic foundationalism is compatible with Klein's principle that there is no justification without meta-justification. I conclude that Klein's rejection of foundationalism. fails. Nevertheless, I agree with Klein that when in response to a skeptical challenge we engage in the activity of defending our beliefs, the number of reasons we can give is at least in principle infinite. I argue that this type of infinity is benign because, when we continue to give reasons, we will eventually merely repeat previously stated reasons. Consequently, I reject Klein's claim that the more reasons we give the more we increase the justification of our beliefs. (shrink)

This is the introductory essay to the collection of essays: 'Acquaintance: New Essays' (eds. Knowles & Raleigh, forthcoming, OUP). In this essay I provide some historical background to the concept of acquaintance. I examine various Russellian theses about acquaintance that contemporary acquaintance theorists may wish to reject. I consider a number of questions that acquaintance theorists face. I provide a survey of current debates in philosophy where acquaintance has recently been invoked. And I also provide brief summaries of the other (...) essays in this volume. (shrink)

This paper develops a new challenge for moral noncognitivism. In brief, the challenge is this: Beliefs — both moral and non-moral — are epistemically evaluable, whereas desires are not. It is tempting to explain this difference in terms of differences in the functional roles of beliefs and desires. However, this explanation stands in tension with noncognitivism, which maintains that moral beliefs have a desire-like functional role. After critically reviewing some initial responses to the challenge, I suggest a solution, which involves (...) rethinking the functional relationship between desire and belief. (shrink)

O ceticismo é por vezes descartado como uma doutrina absurda e merecedora do seu lugar distante na antiguidade. Nada poderia ser menos correto. O ceticismo continua extremamente relevante para o pensamento filosófico e científico de hoje, servindo como um lembrete de que a sabedoria não é barata nem segura. Nesse texto, o meu objetivo principal é reproduzir o raciocínio das discussões clássicas sobre o ceticismo, mas de uma maneira coloquial e contemporânea. Após seguir as linhas de pensamento de Sexto Empírico, (...) René Descartes, e David Hume, eu vou extrair e identificar claramente as teses centrais que marcam as suas ideias. A minha intenção, porém, não é a de sugerir que as suas teses são auto-evidentes, ou incontestáveis, ou até hoje ainda incontestadas. Muito pelo contrário. A minha intenção é produzir um aperitivo ao debate e um convite a discussão. (shrink)

It can be easy to assume that since the “theist in the street” is unaware of any of the traditional arguments for theism, he or she is not in position to offer independent rational support for believing that God exists. I argue that that is false if we accept with William Alston that “manifestation beliefs” can enjoy rational support on the basis of suitable religious experiences. I make my case by defending the viability of a Moorean-style proof for theism—a proof (...) for the existence of God that parallels in structure G. E. Moore’s famous proof for the existence of the external world. I argue that this shows that even if the theist in the street has nothing to offer for helping to convince the religious sceptic, this needn’t entail that she cannot offer independent rational support in defense of her theistic belief. (shrink)

A subject S's belief that Q is well-grounded if and only if it is based on a reason of S that gives S propositional justification for Q. Depending on the nature of S's reason, the process whereby S bases her belief that Q on it can vary. If S's reason is non-doxastic––like an experience that Q or a testimony that Q––S will need to form the belief that Q as a spontaneous and immediate response to that reason. If S's reason (...) is doxastic––like a belief that P––S will need to infer her belief that Q from it. The distinction between these two ways in which S's beliefs can be based on S's reasons is widely presupposed in current epistemology but––we argue in this paper––is not exhaustive. We give examples of quite ordinary situations in which a well-grounded belief of S appears to be based on S's reasons in neither of the ways described above. To accommodate these recalcitrant cases, we introduce the notion of enthymematic inference and defend the thesis that S can base a belief that Q on doxastic reasons P1, P2, …, Pn via inferring enthymematically Q from P1, P2, …, Pn. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper argues that confabulation is motivated by the desire to have fulfilled a rational obligation to knowledgeably explain our attitudes by reference to motivating reasons. This account better explains confabulation than alternatives. My conclusion impacts two discussions. Primarily, it tells us something about confabulation – how it is brought about, which engenders lively debate in and of itself. A further upshot concerns self-knowledge. Contrary to popular assumption, confabulation cases give us reason to think we have distinctive access to why (...) we have our attitudes. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to bring together work on disagreement in both epistemology and argumentation theory in a way that will advance the relevant debates. While these literatures can intersect in many ways, I will explore how some of views pertaining to deep disagreements in argumentation theory can act as an objection to a prominent view of the epistemology of disagreement—the Equal Weight View. To do so, I will explain the Equal Weight View of peer disagreement and show (...) how it entails that deep disagreements between epistemic peers are rationally resolvable. I will then examine a challenge to the Equal Weight View that claims that this consequence is untenable. Having motivated the challenge, I show that there is a viable response to make on behalf of the Equal Weight View. I conclude by considering and responding to several objections to this response. (shrink)

Perceptual experiences justify beliefs. A perceptual experience of a dog justifies the belief that there is a dog present. But there is much evidence that perceptual states can occur without being conscious, as in experiments involving masked priming. Do unconscious perceptual states provide justification as well? The answer depends on one’s theory of justification. While most varieties of externalism seem compatible with unconscious perceptual justification, several theories have recently afforded to consciousness a special role in perceptual justification. We argue that (...) such views face a dilemma: either consciousness should be understood in functionalist terms, in which case our best current theories of consciousness do not seem to imbue consciousness with any special epistemic features, or it should not, in which case it is mysterious why only conscious states are justificatory. We conclude that unconscious perceptual justification is quite plausible. (shrink)

What accounts for the capacity of ordinary speakers to comprehend utterances of their language? The phenomenology of hearing speech in one’s own language makes it tempting to many epistemologists to look to perception for an answer to this question. That is, just as a visual experience as of a red square is often taken to give the perceiver immediate justification for believing that there is a red square in front of her, perhaps an auditory experience as of the speaker asserting (...) that p gives the competent hearer immediate justification for believing that the speaker has asserted that p. My aim here is to offer reasons for resisting this temptation. I argue that the perceptual model cannot adequately account for the hearer’s justification in many cases. The arguments here also allow us to draw certain further morals about the role of phenomenology in the epistemology of perception. (shrink)

This paper explains what’s wrong with a Hume-inspired argument for skepticism about induction. Hume’s argument takes as a premise that inductive reasoning presupposes that the future will resemble the past. I explain why that claim is not plausible. The most plausible premise in the vicinity is that inductive reasoning from E to H presupposes that if E then H. I formulate and then refute a skeptical argument based on that premise. Central to my response is a psychological explanation for how (...) people judge that if E then H without realizing that they thereby settled the matter rationally. (shrink)

Evolutionary Debunking Arguments purport to show that our moral beliefs do not amount to knowledge because these beliefs are “debunked” by the fact that our moral beliefs are, in some way, the product of evolutionary forces. But there is a substantial gap in this argument between its main evolutionary premise and the skeptical conclusion. What is it, exactly, about the evolutionary origins of moral beliefs that would create problems for realist views in metaethics? I argue that evolutionary debunking arguments are (...) best understood as offering up defeaters for our moral beliefs. Moreover, the defeater in question is a paradigmatic instance of undercutting defeat. If anything is an undercutting defeater, then learning about the evolutionary origins of our moral beliefs is a defeater for those beliefs. (shrink)

This paper explores a few of the ways that the Zhuang-Zi can inform contemporary analytic epistemology. I begin, in section 1, by briefly outlining and summarizing the case for my fictionalist interpretation of the text. In section 2, I discuss how the Zhuang-Zi can be brought into productive dialogue with the question of how we should respond to skeptical arguments. Specifically, I argue that the Zhuang-Zi can be reasonably interpreted as exemplifying an approach that is different from dominant contemporary responses (...) to skeptical arguments in three ways: it is fictionalist; it motivates a skeptical perspective rather than a claim; and it accomplishes its aims in an atypical, but nonetheless contextually appropriate, way. However, the Zhuang-Zi is relevant to contemporary debates about skeptical arguments because it can be used: to respond to the same sorts of skeptical arguments that occupy contemporary commentators; to address a number of questions that arise in connection with such arguments; and to suggest important new questions for epistemologists to pursue. (shrink)

Going about our daily lives in an orderly manner requires us, once we are aware of them, to dismiss many metaphysical possibilities. We take it for granted that we are not brains in vats, or living in the Matrix, or in an extended dream. Call these things that we take for granted “anti-skeptical assumptions”. What should a reflective agent who believes these things think of these beliefs? For various reasons, it can seem that we do not have evidence for such (...) anti-skeptical assumptions. Are anti-skeptical assumptions, then, beliefs that one may rationally hold without evidence for them – indeed, even in the face of a positive judgment that one lacks evidence for them? I survey and criticize some prominent answers to this question, and then offer a positive view that blends externalism about evidence with a mild, qualified kind of pragmatism. The view I offer aims to do justice to the sense that anti-skeptical assumptions are evidentially groundless while also maintaining that one cannot rationally believe something that one judges oneself to lack sufficient evidence for. (shrink)

I argue in this paper that the debate over composition is factually empty; in other words, I argue that there’s no fact of the matter whether there are any composite objects like tables and rocks and cats. Moreover, at the end of the paper, I explain how my argument is suggestive of a much more general conclusion, namely, that there’s no fact of the matter whether there are any material objects at all. Roughly speaking, the paper proceeds by arguing that (...) if there were a fact of the matter about whether composite objects exist, then it would be either a necessary fact or a contingent fact, and both of these alternatives are implausible. (shrink)

The epistemic value of seemings is increasingly debated. Such debates are hindered, however, by a lack of consensus about the nature of seemings. There are four prominent conceptions in the literature, and the plausibility of principles such as phenomenal conservatism, which assign a prominent epistemic role to seemings, varies greatly from one conception to another. It is therefore crucial that we identify the correct conception of seemings. I argue that seemings are best understood as sui generis mental states with propositional (...) content and a distinct phenomenal character. Rival conceptions are shown to succumb to numerous difficulties. (shrink)

One of the hottest philosophical debates in recent years concerns the nature of the semantics/pragmatics divide. Some writers have expressed the reserve that this might be merely terminological, but in my view it ultimately concerns a substantive issue with empirical implications: the scope and limits of a serious scientific undertaking, formal semantics. In this critical note I discuss two arguments by Recanati: his main methodological argument --viz. that the contents posited by what he calls 'literalists' play no relevant role in (...) communication--, and some phenomenological considerations regarding the "Availability Principle" that he appeals to in order to buttress that main argument. /// Uno de los más encarnizados debates filosóficos recientes atañe a la naturaleza de la distinción entre semántica y pragmática. Aunque algunos autores han expresado reservas en el sentido de que èste pudiera ser sólo terminológico, en mi opinión tiene que ver con una cuestión sustantiva con implicaciones empíricas: el alcance y los límites de una empresa científica seria, la semántica formal. En este texto discuto dos argumentos de Recanati: su principal argumento metodológico, que los contenidos postulados por los autores que él denomina "literalistas" no desempeñan ningùn papel relevante en la comunicación, y, en segundo lugar, ciertas consideraciones fenomenológicas en torno a su "Principio de Accesibilidad", a las cuales apela para apoyar el argumento metodológico. (shrink)

Inference to the best explanation—or, IBE—tells us to infer from the available evidence to the hypothesis which would, if correct, best explain that evidence. As Peter Lipton puts it, the core idea driving IBE is that explanatory considerations are a guide to inference. But what is the epistemic status of IBE, itself? One issue of contemporary interest is whether it is possible to provide a justification for IBE itself which is non- objectionably circular. We aim to carve out some new (...) space in this debate. In particular, we suggest that the matter of whether a given rule-circular argument is objectionably circular itself depends crucially on some subtle distinctions which have been made in the recent literature on perceptual warrant. By bringing these debates together, a principled reason emerges for why some kinds of rule-circular justifications for IBE are considerably less objectionable than others. (shrink)

In this paper, I defend Moorean Dogmatism against a novel objection raised by Adam Leite. Leite locates the defectiveness of the Moorean reasoning explicitly not in the failure of the Moorean argument to transmit warrant from its premises to its conclusion but rather in the failure of an epistemic agent to satisfy certain epistemic responsibilities that arise in the course of conscious and deliberate reasoning. I will first show that there exist cases of Moorean reasoning that are not put into (...) jeopardy by the considerations that Leite presents. Second, I will argue that certain commitments of Leite’s concerning the notion of warrant are in tension with his verdict that the Moorean reasoning is defective. (shrink)

As an important view in the epistemology of perception, dogmatism proposes that for any experience, if it has a distinctive kind of phenomenal character, then it thereby provides us with immediate justification for beliefs about the external world. This paper rejects dogmatism by looking into the epistemology of imagining. In particular, this paper first appeals to some empirical studies on perceptual experiences and imaginings to show that it is possible for imaginings to have the distinctive phenomenal character dogmatists have in (...) mind. Then this paper argues that some of these imaginings fail to provide us with immediate justification for beliefs about the external world at least partly due to their inappropriate etiology. Such imaginings constitute counterexamples to dogmatism. (shrink)

Descartes’s Evil Demon argument has been the subject of many reconstructions in recent analytic debates. Some have proposed a reconstruction with a principle of Infallibility, others with a principle of Closure of Knowledge, others with more original principles. In this paper, I propose a new reconstruction, which relies on the combination of two principles, namely the Meta-Coherence principle and the principle of Closure of Justification. I argue that the argument construed in this way is the best interpretation of what is (...) really at play in the Evil Demon intuition, and also that this argument is dialectically much stronger than previous reconstructions. If this is right, then the “Closure plus Meta-Coherence” argument is what anti-sceptics should really be attacking. (shrink)

In previous work, I have suggested a doxastic account of perceptual experience according to which experiences form a kind of belief: Beliefs with what I have called “phenomenal” or “looks-content”. I have argued that this account can not only accommodate the intuitive reason providing role of experience, but also its justificatory role. I have also argued that, in general, construing experience and perceptual beliefs, i.e. the beliefs most directly based on experience, as having different contents best accounts for the defeasibility (...) of experiential reasons. In this paper, I shall have a closer look at the evidential or inferential relation between looks-propositions and the contents of perceptual beliefs and argue for a form of what I shall call “Pollockianism” about experiential reasons: such reasons are good unless defeated. Questions to be investigated include: Does the resulting picture of perceptual justification contain an externalist element? Is it compatible with Bayesianism? And how does it do with respect to problems that have been raised for other forms of Pollockianism such as dogmatism or phenomenal conservatism? (shrink)

Defeaters can prevent a perceptual belief from being justified. For example, when you know that red light is shining at the table before you, you would typically not be justified in believing that the table is red. However, can defeaters also destroy a perceptual experience as a source of justification? If the answer is ‘no’, the red light defeater blocks doxastic justification without destroying propositional justification. You have some-things-considered, but not all-things-considered, justification for believing that the table is red. If (...) the answer is ‘yes’, the red light defeater blocks doxastic justification by destroying propositional justification. You have neither all-things-considered nor some-things-considered justification for believing that the table is red. According to dogmatism, the justificational force of perceptual experiences is indestructible. According to conservatism about sense experience, a perceptual experience ceases to have justificational force if there is evidence against its reliability. Finally, according to meta-evidentialism, a perceptual experience is blocked from being a source of justification is there is no evidence of its reliability. I argue that, of these three theories, meta-evidentialism is the most plausible. (shrink)

Non-descriptivists in metaethics should say more about intuitions. For one popular theory has it that case-based intuitions are in the business of correctly categorizing or classifying merely by bringing to bear a semantic or conceptual competence. If so, then the fact that all normative predicates have case-based intuitions involving them shows that they too are in the business of categorizing or classifying things. This favors a descriptivist position in metaethics—normative predicates have descriptive content—and disfavors a purely non-descriptivist position, like pure (...) expressivism. However, we can say more. We can distinguish two different sorts of intuitional state, A-grade intuitions and B-grade intuitions, based on a cluster of properties that are distinctive of each. While a hypothesis about categorization best explains the cluster of properties enjoyed by A-grade intuitions, it does not best explain the cluster of properties enjoyed by B-grade intuitions. Indeed, a non-categorizational, attitude-expressive hypothesis about the relevant meanings best explains B-grade intuitions. And intuitions involving thin normative predicates are B-grade. So intuition theory supports non-descriptivism, not descriptivism, about thin normative predicates. (shrink)

This article aims to provide a structural analysis of the problems related to the easy knowledge problem. The easy knowledge problem is well known. If we accept that we can have basic knowledge via a source without having any prior knowledge about the reliability or accuracy of this source, then we can acquire knowledge about the reliability or accuracy of this source too easily via information delivered by the source. Rejecting any kind of basic knowledge, however, leads into an infinite (...) regress and, plausibly, to skepticism. The article argues that the third alternative, accepting basic knowledge but rejecting easy knowledge, entails closure failure. This is obviously the case for deductive bootstrapping, but, notably, the problem also arises for inductive bootstrapping. Hence, the set of problems related to the easy knowledge problem has the structure of a trilemma. We are forced to accept easy knowledge, closure failure, or skepticism. (shrink)

I provide a novel knowledge-first account of justification that avoids the pitfalls of existing accounts while preserving the underlying insight of knowledge-first epistemologies: that knowledge comes first. The view I propose is, roughly, this: justification is grounded in our practical knowledge (know-how) concerning the acquisition of propositional knowledge (knowledge-that). I first refine my thesis in response to immediate objections. In subsequent sections I explain the various ways in which this thesis is theoretically superior to existing knowledge-first accounts of justification. The (...) upshot is a virtue-theoretic, knowledge-first view of justification that is internalist-friendly and able to explain more facts about justification than any other available view. (shrink)

I set out the standard view about alleged examples of failure of transmission of warrant, respond to two cases for the view, and argue that the view is false. The first argument for the view neglects the distinction between believing a proposition on the basis of a justification and merely having a justification to believe a proposition. The second argument for the view neglects the position that one's justification for believing a conclusion can be one's premise for the conclusion, rather (...) than simply one's justification for the premise. Finally, the view is false since it is inconsistent with the closure of knowledge as closure is properly understood. (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.

This paper explores religious belief in connection with epistemological disjunctivism. It applies recent advances in epistemological disjunctivism to the religious case for displaying an attractive model of specifically Christian religious belief. What results is a heretofore unoccupied position in religious epistemology—a view I call ‘religious epistemological disjunctivism’. My general argument is that RED furnishes superior explanations for the sort of ‘grasp of the truth’ which should undergird ‘matured Christian conviction’ of religious propositions. To this end I first display the more (...) familiar perceptual epistemological disjunctivism, contrasting it with both externalist and classically internalist views. This prepares the way for introducing RED with its own distinctive factive mental state operator—pneuming that p. In this second section I present the RED model, not failing to address a potential problem concerning religious disagreement. I also clarify RED’s distinctive internalist aspect, describing how it comports with contemporary internalist thinking in epistemology. I then move in section three to criticize externalist and classical internalist views, showing where they fail to make proper sense of the sort of knowing which should ground mature Christian conviction. Specifically, I highlight three intuitions which I think any theory of religious belief should capture: what I call the case-closed intuition, the good believer intuition, and the Plantingian platitude. This is all to set up for the final section where I argue that RED is superior for understanding proper religious believing—capturing the aforementioned intuitions. (shrink)

Direct realist versions of foundationalism have recently been advocated by Pryor, Huemer, Alston, and Plantinga. DRF can hold either that our foundational observation beliefs are about the simple perceptible qualities of objects, or that our foundational observation beliefs are more complex ones about objects in the world. I will show that whether our observational beliefs are simple or complex, the agent must possess other epistemically significant states in order for these observational beliefs to be justified. These other states are therefore (...) epistemically prior to observation belief, and prevent them from being epistemically foundational. (shrink)

This paper is an opinionated guide to the literature on normative epistemic reasons. After making some distinctions in §1, I begin in §2 by discussing the ontology of normative epistemic reasons, assessing arguments for and against the view that they are mental states, and concluding that they are not mental states. In §3, I examine the distinction between normative epistemic reasons there are and normative epistemic reasons we possess. I offer a novel account of this distinction and argue that we (...) in fact ought to acknowledge a threefold distinction between objective, possessed, and apparent normative epistemic reasons. In §4, I discuss the question of which normative reasons for doxastic attitudes are the epistemic ones, evaluating reasons against a simple evidentialist answer. Finally, in §5, I look at the role of reasons in epistemology, considering challenges to viewing reasons as the building blocks of epistemic normativity and maintaining that the challenges recommend a novel bi-level epistemology rather than a marginalization of reasons in epistemology. (shrink)

This book explores a question central to philosophy--namely, what does it take for a belief to be justified or rational? According to a widespread view, whether one has justification for believing a proposition is determined by how probable that proposition is, given one's evidence. In this book this view is rejected and replaced with another: in order for one to have justification for believing a proposition, one's evidence must normically support it--roughly, one's evidence must make the falsity of that proposition (...) abnormal in the sense of calling for special, independent explanation. This conception of justification bears upon a range of topics in epistemology and beyond. Ultimately, this way of looking at justification guides us to a new, unfamiliar picture of how we should respond to our evidence and manage our own fallibility. This picture is developed here. (shrink)