The perennial question of the nature of natural-language understanding has received renewed attention in recent years. Two kinds of natural-language understanding, in particular, have captivated the interest of philosophers: linguistic understanding and utterance understanding. While the literature is rife with discussions of linguistic understanding and utterance understanding, the question of how the two types of understanding explanatorily depend on each other has received relatively scant attention. Exceptions include the linguistic ability/know-how views of linguistic understanding proposed by Dean Pettit and Brendan (...) Balcerak Jackson. On these views, to tacitly linguistically understand a sentence just is to possess the linguistic ability/knowledge-how needed to derive/infer what is said by different utterances of the sentence. Despite their focus on linguistic understanding, both views can straightforwardly explain utterance understanding as the output of a derivation/inference from a representation of the sentence uttered. Here, I take issue with these approaches to utterance understanding and then develop an alternative. More specifically, I distinguish two kinds of utterance understanding, experiential and doxastic, and then argue that experiences of what is said by utterances play distinct rational roles in the two kinds of utterance understanding. I conclude by addressing a recent challenge to my proposal. (shrink)

Traditionally, philosophers have been skeptical that the imagination can justify beliefs about the actual world. After all, how could merely imagining something give you any reason to believe that it is true? However, within the past decade or so, a lively debate has emerged over whether the imagination can justify empirical belief and, if so, how. This paper provides a critical overview of the recent literature on the epistemology of imagination and points to avenues for future research.

I argue for the existence of imaginative beliefs: mental states that are imaginative in format and doxastic in attitude. I advance two arguments for this thesis. First, there are imaginings that play the functional roles of belief. Second, there are imaginings that play the epistemic roles of belief. These arguments supply both descriptive and normative grounds for positing imaginative beliefs. I also argue that this view fares better than alternatives that posit distinct imaginative and doxastic states to account for the (...) same phenomena. Along the way, I demonstrate the theoretical significance of imaginative beliefs by showing how they pose a challenge for standard taxonomies of the mind, clarify the sense in which imagination is occurrent and voluntary, explain the justificatory role of the imagination, and point to a deep but underappreciated symmetry between imagistic and non-imagistic thought. (shrink)

The vividness of mental imagery is epistemically relevant. Intuitively, vivid and intense memories are epistemically better than weak and hazy memories, and using a clear and precise mental image in the service of spatial reasoning is epistemically better than using a blurry and imprecise mental image. But how is vividness epistemically relevant? I argue that vividness is higher-order evidence about one’s epistemic state, rather than first-order evidence about the world. More specifically, the vividness of a mental image is higher-order evidence (...) about the amount of first-order information one has about its subject matter. When vividness is sufficiently low, it can give one reason to doubt the epistemic basis of the mental image and thereby act as a defeater. This account has important implications for theorizing about the epistemic roles of memory, imagination, mental imagery, and phenomenal consciousness. (shrink)

Plantinga develops an ambitious theistic religious epistemology on which theists can have non-inferential knowledge of God. Central to his epistemology is the idea that human beings have a “sensus divinitatis” that produces such knowledge. Recently, several authors have urged an appropriation of the sensus divinitatis that is more friendly to internalist views, such as Phenomenal Conservativism. I argue that this appropriation is too timid and tepid in a variety of ways. It applies only to a small fraction of theistic beliefs; (...) it fails to play the theological role Plantinga intended the sensus divinitatis to play; it fails to imply that most theistic beliefs, most of the time, are justified; when combined with a standard form of Evidentialism, it actually implies that most theistic beliefs are, if justified, inferentially justified; and it is consistent with substantive criticisms of theistic belief originating in work from the Cognitive Science of Religion. (shrink)

Phenomenal conservatives claim that seemings are sui generis mental states and can thus provide foundational non-doxastic justification for beliefs. Many of their critics deny this, claiming, instead, that seemings can be reductively analyzed in terms of other mental states—either beliefs, inclinations to believe, or beliefs about one’s evidence—that cannot provide foundational non-doxastic justification. In this paper, I argue that no tenable semantic reduction of ‘seems’ can be formulated in terms of the three reductive analyses that have been proposed by critics (...) of phenomenal conservatism. This is because Moore-paradoxical statements are generated when each of the reductive analyses is substituted for ‘seems’ in statements like ‘The stick is straight, but it does not seem to me that it’s straight.’ Since the latter statement is not Moore-paradoxical, the three proposed reductive analyses of ‘seems’ are unsuccessful. Absent a successful semantic reduction, however, there is no good reason to think a successful metaphysical reduction of seemings is forthcoming. Thus, there is an additional reason, unnoticed in the existing literature, to think that seemings are sui generis mental states. (shrink)

Does phenomenal force, the distinctive phenomenology attributed to perceptual experience, really form an integral part of the latter? If not, what implications does it have for perceptual justification? In this paper, I first argue for a metacognitive account, according to which phenomenal force constitutes a separate, metacognitive state. This account opens up a previously unexplored path for challenging phenomenal conservatism or dogmatism, which has been a prominent theory of perceptual justification over the past two decades. Moreover, I investigate several alternative (...) possibilities in which phenomenal force might still be deemed as significant, but ultimately demonstrate that its epistemic role remains marginal at best. (shrink)

Dogmatism holds that an experience or seeming that p can provide prima facie immediate justification for believing p in virtue of its phenomenology. Dogmatism about perceptual justification has appealed primarily to proponents of representational theories of perceptual experience. Call dogmatism that takes perceptual experience to be representational "representational phenomenal dogmatism." As we show, phenomenal seemings play a crucial role in dogmatism of this kind. Despite its conventional appeal to representational theorists, dogmatism is not by definition committed to any particular view (...) of perceptual experience. Naive realists and disjunctivists who hold that perceptual experience is a perceptual relation of direct acquaintance can also endorse dogmatism. Indeed, we argue that they ought to do so. Otherwise, they cannot maintain that relationalism about perceptual experience has an epistemic advantage compared to the representational view. We then show that even if we grant that relationalism has this advantage, only dogmatism that takes perceptual experience to be representational can be extended to account for non-deductive inferential justification. As an account of the latter is required to avoid succumbing to skepticism, relationalism, we argue, does not have the epistemic advantage its defenders claim it has. (shrink)

In a Jewish context, it seems, it is a naïve consensus view that in praying liturgically one aims to express to God, in the manner of ordinary, interpersonal conversation, those thoughts stated by the text. But on this ordinary conversation model (OCM), a problem of insincerity arises when, as commonly happens, the text states a claim the practitioner does not believe. The idea of redeeming one's prayer by reinterpretation is, I argue, incompatible with OCM. Another strategy, which finds some encouragement (...) in Jewish tradition, is to try inducing the missing belief. I further argue, however, that for one's expression of a belief to be proper, in the sense of being authentic, this belief must be corroborated by the evolving, diachronically largely‐coherent understanding distinctive of one's person—a requirement which an induced, otherwise‐missing belief cannot fulfill. This, I suggest, provides some reason to seek a model of liturgical prayer different from OCM. (shrink)

In ‘Knowing What Things Look Like,’ I argued against the immediacy of visual objectual knowledge, i.e. visual knowledge that a thing is F, for an object category F, such as avocado, tree, desk, etc. Joseph Shieber proposes a challenging dilemma in reply. Either knowing what Fs look like requires having concepts such as looks or it doesn’t. Either way my argument fails. If knowing what Fs look like doesn’t require having such concepts, then he claims we can give an immediacy-friendly (...) anti-intellectualist account of knowing what Fs look like, one that I neglected. If it does require having such concepts, then knowledge of what Fs look like plays no important role in ordinary cases of knowing things to be F by their looks. I argue for several claims. First, Shieber's anti-intellectualist proposal fails for independent reasons. Second, I give reasons for thinking that knowing what Fs look like doesn't require having a general concept of looks, which lessens worries about nonhuman animals having such knowledge. Finally, I consider the possibility, important to Shieber's argument, that nonhuman animals are simply incapable of knowing what Fs look like. I argue the implications for human knowledge are far from clear. (shrink)

This paper focuses on Schellenberg’s Capacitism about Phenomenal Evidence, according to which if one is in a phenomenal state constituted by employing perceptual capacities, then one is in a phenomenal state that provides phenomenal evidence. This view offers an attractive explanation of why perceptual experience provides phenomenal evidence, and avoids difficulties faced by its contemporary alternatives. However, in spite of the attractions of this view, it is subject to what I call “the alien experience problem”: some alien experiences (e.g. clairvoyant (...) experience) are constituted by employing perceptual capacities, but they do not provide phenomenal evidence. This point is illustrated by a counterexample which is similar to, but also different in some important respects from, Bonjour’s famous clairvoyant Norman example. At the end of the paper, I sketch a restricted version of Capacitism about Phenomenal Evidence by putting some etiological constraint on the perceptual capacities employed. (shrink)

There is a felt difference between following an argument to its conclusion and keeping up with an argument in your judgments while failing to see how its conclusion follows from its premises. In the first case there’s what I’m calling an inferential seeming, in the second case there isn’t. Inferential seemings exhibit a cluster of functional and normative characteristics whose integration in one mental state is puzzling. Several recent accounts of inferring suggest inferential seemings play a significant role in the (...) process, but none provides a fully satisfactory understanding of inferential seemings themselves. In this paper I critically examine theoretical options on offer in the existing literature, then develop an alternative view. I discuss implications for recent debates about general principles governing inference, such as Fumerton’s Principle of Inferential Justification and Boghossian’s Taking Condition. (shrink)

It is commonly thought that we depend fundamentally on the “evidence of the senses” for our empicial beliefs, including and most directly, our beliefs about our local environment, the spatial world around us. The ultimate evidence we have for our perceptual beliefs is provided in some way by perception or perceptual experience. But what is this evidence? There seem to be three main options: external factualism allows that the evidence include facts about the external world; internal factualism takes facts that (...) involve only the internal, mental world—like facts about one’s perceptual experiences or appearances—to count as one’s perceptual evidence; and non-factualism takes propositions, including false ones, to count as evidence—for example, propositional contents of appearances or seemings. We shall see that all these options face significant challenges. Some might conclude that perceptual beliefs can be justified without depending on evidence. Others might choose to accept skepticism: our perceptual beliefs are not justified. I shall end, however, by tentatively suggesting that there is a sort of internal fact that is a plausible candidate for perceptual evidence that has been overlooked. (shrink)

Many epistemologists endorse a view I call “evidence essentialism:” if e is evidence of h, for some agent at some time, then necessarily, e is evidence of h, for any agent at any time. I argue that such a view is only plausible if we ignore cognitive diversity among epistemic agents, i.e., the fact that different agents have different—sometimes radically different—cognitive skills, abilities, and proclivities. Instead, cognitive diversity shows that evidential relations are contingent and relative to cognizers. This is especially (...) obvious in extreme cases and in connection with epistemic defeat, but it is also very plausibly true of ordinary agents, and regarding prima facie justification. (shrink)

This thesis develops a novel framework for explaining delusions. In Chapter 1, I introduce the two fundamental challenges posed by delusions: the evidence challenge lies in explaining the flagrant ways delusions flout evidence; and the specificity challenge lies in explaining the fact that patients’ delusions are often about a few specific themes, and patients rarely have a wide range of delusional or odd beliefs. In Chapter 2, I discuss the strengths and weaknesses of current theories of delusions, which typically appeal (...) to one or both of two factors: anomalous experience and reasoning abnormality. I argue that anomalous experience can help explain the specificity of delusions, but has difficulties in addressing the evidence challenge; reasoning abnormality can help address the evidence challenge, but has difficulties in explaining the specificity of delusions. This suggests that there may be an important factor that has not been captured by current theories of delusions. To search for this missing factor, in Chapter 3, I turn to normal believing. Inspired by the literature on Cartesian clarity and phenomenal dogmatism, I develop a dual-force framework of believing, according to which beliefs can be understood as the results of the interaction between the justificatory force and causal force of evidence and the justificatory force and causal force of clear experience, in which something clearly seems to be so to the subject. This framework suggests that the missing factor may be the clear experience with its distinctive phenomenal clarity that compels assent. In Chapter 4, I return to delusions, and argue that the dualforce framework can help us to get a better grip on some personal descriptions of delusions; make progress in addressing the evidence and specificity challenges of delusions; and shed new light on the underpinnings of delusions. In the end, I conclude with some remaining questions for future study. (shrink)

This thesis is set out as a collection of self-standing essays. Throughout these essays, I try to illuminate a number of controversies surrounding the way in which delusions are formed, and relatedly, their nature and epistemic standing. In Chapter 2, after an introductory chapter, I flesh out a new ‘endorsement’ approach to the Capgras delusion, the main idea being that the delusion is formed by endorsing the content of a metaphorical-perceptual state in which a loved one is represented metaphorically as (...) an imposter. In Chapter 3, I take issue with the idea, prevalent in the literature, that Bayesian accounts of inference in delusions are best characterised as versions of ‘explanationism’. Taking one such influential account as a test case, I argue that it is no more or less compatible with the endorsement alternative, which says delusions are acquired non-inferentially from experience. In Chapter 4, I examine a recent critique of predictive processing theories of delusions, according to which such theories suffer two limitations: they fail to explain why an agent believes something delusional as opposed to nothing at all or something else; they fail to explain how delusional hypotheses are generated in the first place. I suggest ways in which these concerns might be addressed. In Chapter 5, I consider how the Spinozan theory of belief fixation can improve the prospects of doxasticism about delusions. Doxasticism has been criticised on the grounds that delusions typically do not abide by rational standards which we expect beliefs to conform to. If belief fixation is Spinozan, I argue, these deviations from rationality are not just compatible with, but supportive of, their status as beliefs. In Chapter 6, I ask whether misidentification delusions formed via endorsement processes have any measure of perceptual justification. To give the best chance of getting a ‘yes’ answer, I address the question from the perspective of perceptual dogmatism, as this appears the best option if we are to grant at least defeasible justifiedness to MDs. I argue that, even so, MDs are completely unjustified. (shrink)

Skeptical theism is a family of responses to arguments from evil. One important member of that family is Stephen Wykstra’s CORNEA-based criticism of William Rowe’s arguments from evil. A cornerstone of Wykstra’s approach is his CORNEA principle. However, a number of authors have criticized CORNEA on various grounds, including that it has odd results, it cannot do the work it was meant to, and it problematically conflicts with the so-called common sense epistemology. In this paper, I explicate and defend a (...) CORNEA principle. After sketching a brief argument for it, I show how it can be acquitted of these recent charges. (shrink)

In this paper I lay out, argue for, and defend ethical Mooreanism. In essence, the view says that some moral propositions are Moorean propositions and thus are epistemically superior to the conjunctions of the premises of skeptical arguments to the contrary. In Sect. 1 I explain Mooreanism and then ethical Mooreanism. In Sect. 2 I argue for ethical Mooreanism by noting a number of important epistemic parities that hold between certain moral truths and standard Moorean facts. In Sect. 3 I (...) defend ethical Mooreanism against the objection that moral propositions are too epistemically dissimilar to standard Moorean facts to count as Moorean truths. (shrink)

My thesis centres on the question of whether imaginative states can give rise to knowledge - including whether, and the extent to which, imaginative states can justify beliefs. Across seven chapters, I answer that imaginative states can indeed give rise to knowledge. The first and final chapters introduce and summarise the thesis. In the second chapter, I ask both what different cases of imagining have in common and what sets them apart from other kinds of mental states. In the third (...) chapter, I set out two key challenges that any theory of knowledge by imagination should respond to. The voluntarism challenge asks how imagination can play an evidential role since its content can be voluntarily controlled. The reliability challenge asks whether imaginative states are reliable enough to produce knowledge. I explain what these challenges involve and why they are distinctive, and assess how existing theories of knowledge by imagination could respond to them. I then evaluate the effectiveness of each response. In Chapter 4, I focus on a particular theory of justification - Phenomenal Conservatism, which says that what we are justified in believing is what seems to us to be the case. On the face of it, such a theory appears to exclude imagination as a source of justification. However, I will show how an advocate of Phenomenal Conservatism can include justification by imagination in their model after all. Thereafter in Chapter 5, I ask whether imaginative states can give rise to a particular kind of knowledge: self-knowledge. I look at inward-looking, outward-looking and expressivist theories of self-knowledge. I close Chapter 5 by concluding that all three of these theories can explain how imaginative states can help us acquire self-knowledge. Then in Chapter 6, I turn to see how the Imagination Model of Dreams, which states that dreaming is a kind of imagining, faces a certain challenge if imagination can give rise to knowledge. However, I will show how the imagination model of dreams can be made compatible with justification by imagination, such that we do not have to choose between giving up on justification by imagination or giving in to the sceptic, thus also rescuing the safety of our everyday knowledge. (shrink)

This chapter argues that epistemic uses of the imagination are a sui generis form of reasoning. The argument proceeds in two steps. First, there are imaginings which instantiate the epistemic structure of reasoning. Second, reasoning with imagination is not reducible to reasoning with doxastic states. Thus, the epistemic role of the imagination is that it is a distinctive way of reasoning out what follows from our prior evidence. This view has a number of important implications for the epistemology of the (...) imagination. For one thing, it clarifies the epistemic role of widely invoked “constraints” on the imagination. For another, it highlights important and underappreciated disanalogies between how perceptual experiences and imaginings justify beliefs. Ultimately, the view that we can reason with imagination offers an illuminating and theoretically fruitful framework through which to understand the epistemic structure of the imagination. (shrink)

Philosophical Issues, Volume 30, Issue 1, Page 192-204, October 2020.

Many philosophers take experience to be an essential aspect of perceptual justification. I argue against a specific variety of such an experientialist view, namely, the Looks View of perceptual justification, according to which our visual beliefs are mediately justified by beliefs about the way things look. I describe three types of cases that put pressure on the idea that perceptual justification is always related to looks-related reasons: unsophisticated cognizers, multimodal identification, and amodal completion. I then provide a tentative diagnosis of (...) what goes wrong in the Looks View: it ascribes a specific epistemic role to beliefs about looks that is actually fulfilled by subpersonal perceptual processes. (shrink)

It is often assumed that perceptual experience provides evidence about the external world. But much perception can occur unconsciously, as in cases of masked priming or blindsight. Does unconscious perception provide evidence as well? Many theorists maintain that it cannot, holding that perceptual experience provides evidence in virtue of its conscious character. Against such views, I challenge here both the necessity and, perhaps more controversially, the sufficiency of consciousness for perception to provide evidence about the external world. In addition to (...) motivating and defending the idea that unconscious perception can and does often provide evidence, I observe that whether or not perceptual phenomenology is relevant to the evidentiary status of perception depends on the nature of consciousness. And I argue that a well-supported theory of consciousness—higher-order thought theory—invites a striking conclusion: that perceptual phenomenology is not on its own sufficient to provide for evidence of the external world. (shrink)

[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)

[Significantly updated in Chapter 7 of Awareness and the Substructure of Knowledge] Many have found it plausible that knowledge is a constitutively normative state, i.e. a state that is grounded in the possession of reasons. Many have also found it plausible that certain cases of proprioceptive knowledge, memorial knowledge, and self-evident knowledge are cases of knowledge that are not grounded in the possession of reasons. I refer to these as cases of basic knowledge. The existence of basic knowledge forms a (...) primary objection to the idea that knowledge is a constitutively normative state. In what follows I offer a way through the apparent dilemma of having to choose between either basic knowledge or the normativity of knowledge. The solution involves homing in on a state of awareness (≈non-accidental true representation) that is distinct from knowledge and which in turn grounds the normativity of knowledge in a way that is fully consistent with the existence of basic knowledge. An upshot of this is that externalist theories of knowledge turn out to be fully compatible with the thesis that knowledgeable beliefs are always beliefs that are justified by the reasons one possesses. (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 explore the view that metaphysics is essentially imaginative. I argue that the central goal of metaphysics on this view is understanding, not truth. Metaphysics-as-essentially-imaginative provides novel answers to challenges to both the value and epistemic status of metaphysics.

Our main aims in this paper is to discuss and criticise the core thesis of a position that has become known as phenomenal conservatism. According to this thesis, its seeming to one that p provides enough justification for a belief in p to be prima facie justified (a thesis we label Standard Phenomenal Conservatism). This thesis captures the special kind of epistemic import that seemings are claimed to have. To get clearer on this thesis, we embed it, first, in a (...) probabilistic framework in which updating on new evidence happens by Bayesian conditionalization, and second, a framework in which updating happens by Jeffrey conditionalization. We spell out problems for both views, and then generalize some of these to non-probabilistic frameworks. The main theme of our discussion is that the epistemic import of a seeming (or experience) should depend on its content in a plethora of ways that phenomenal conservatism is insensitive to. (shrink)

Epistemic Value Monism is the view that there is only one kind of thing of basic, final epistemic value. Perhaps the most plausible version of Epistemic Value Monism is Truth Value Monism, the view that only true beliefs are of basic, final epistemic value. Several authors—notably Jonathan Kvanvig and Michael DePaul—have criticized Truth Value Monism by appealing to the epistemic value of things other than knowledge. Such arguments, if successful, would establish Epistemic Value Pluralism is true and Epistemic Value Monism (...) is false. This paper critically examines those arguments, finding them wanting. However, I develop an argument for Epistemic Value Pluralism that succeeds which turns on general reflection on the nature of value. (shrink)

In this chapter, we argue for a phenomenal conservative perspective on religious epistemology and attempt to answer some common criticisms of this perspective.

My thesis, which I call the phenomenal basing thesis, is that the evidential basing relation obtains between someone’s belief and evidence E only if the mental state associated with E has phenomenal character. In §2, I explain the thesis and provide background. In §3–§6, I show that the phenomenal basing thesis holds for simple basic beliefs, inferential beliefs, and complex basic beliefs, both when the beliefs are being formed and when they are being sustained.

Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology is first and foremost a science of the structures of consciousness. Since it is intended to yield eidetic, i. e., a priori insights, it is often assumed that transcendental phenomenology and the natural sciences are totally detached from each other such that phenomenological investigations cannot possibly benefit from empirical evidence. The aim of this paper is to show that a beneficial relationship is possible. To be more precise, I will show how Husserl’s a priori investigations on consciousness (...) can be supplemented by research in experimental psychology in order to tackle fundamental questions in epistemology. Our result will be a phenomenological conception of experiential justification that is in accordance with and supported by empirical phenomena such as perceptual learning and the phenomenon of blindsight. Finally, I shall shed light on the systematic limits of empirical research. (shrink)

According to externalist reliabilism and dogmatic foundationalism, it's possible to gain knowledge through a perceptual experience without being in a position to know that the experience is reliable. As a result, both of these views face the problem of making knowledge of perceptual reliability too easy, for they permit deducing perceptual reliability from particular perceptual experience without already knowing that these experiences are trustworthy. Ernest Sosa advocates a two-stage solution to the problem. At the first stage, a rich body of (...) perceptual animal knowledge is acquired. At the second stage, perceptual knowledge becomes reflective after deducing perceptual reliability from the initial body of perceptual animal knowledge. I defend the alternative approach of rejecting both externalist reliabilism and dogmatic foundationalism. According to the alternative view, perceptual knowledge and knowledge of perceptual reliability require each other. Such a cognitive structure seems viciously circular. I propose that the appearance of vicious circularity dissipates when the relationship in question is viewed, not as one of temporal priority, but instead as synchronic mutual dependence. At a given time, one cannot have perceptual knowledge without knowledge of perceptual reliability, and vice versa. Such mutual dependence, I argue, is benign. (shrink)

The notion of presentational phenomenology has powerful epistemological implications. According to Elijah Chudnoff, an experience has presentational phenomenology with respect to p insofar as that experience makes it seem to you that p, and makes it seem as if you are aware of a truth-maker for p. Chudnoff argues that only experiences that have presentational phenomenology with respect to p provide immediate prima facie justification to the belief that p. That is, my visual experience of the orange provides me with (...) defeasible justificatory grounds for believing that there is an orange by virtue of that experience possessing presentational phenomenology. Call this epistemological thesis presentationalism. The central purpose of this paper is to provide a novel analysis of presentational phenomenology, and determine whether it is capable of delivering the epistemic yield detailed above. Here, I endeavour to show the following: presentational phenomenology is neither sufficient nor necessary for immediate prima facie justification, and ambiguity in Chudnoff’s analysis of presentational phenomenology leads the account to a troubling dilemma. Seemings and seeming awareness of truth-makers are not plausible candidates for justification-conferring states. (shrink)

I begin with by discussing cases that seem to show that a range of norms – norms like Choose the best!, Believe the truth!, and even Keep your promises! – fail to map out an important part of normative space. At the core of the problem is the observation that in some cases we can only conform to these norms by luck, in a way that is not creditable to us. I outline a prevalent diagnosis of the problem of luck, (...) which I label perspectivist. According to this diagnosis, the problem with a range of objectivist norms is that they make reference to facts that may lie outside our perspectives, not being present to our minds. An agent’s perspective is a kind of representation of the world: her evidence, knowledge, beliefs, experiences, etc. The first aim of this paper is to argue that the perspectivist diagnosis of the problem of luck is not ultimately correct. The correct diagnosis, I argue, is feasibilist: in some situations it is not feasible to choose, act, or believe in ways that conformity to objectivist norms robustly depends on. That is, it is sometimes not feasible to manifest dispositions that robustly enough track what one ought to do or believe, according to norms like those listed above. The same, I argue, is true of perspectivist norms: sometimes it is not feasible to track facts about our own perspectives. This shift in focus from the limits of our perspectives to limits on what dispositions it is feasible to manifest has, I argue, deep ramifications for normative theory. My second aim is to sketch an alternative, feasibilist way of thinking about a more subject-directed kind of normativity, one that takes into account our limitations as human agents. The result is a normative picture that unifies the practical and theoretical domains. (shrink)

In this chapter I introduce and analyse the tenets of phenomenal conservatism, and discuss the problem of the nature of appearances. After that, I review the asserted epistemic merits phenomenal conservatism and the principal arguments adduced in support of it. Finally, I survey objections to phenomenal conservatism and responses by its advocates. Some of these objections will be scrutinised and appraised in the next chapters.

In this chapter I introduce the thesis that perceptual appearances are cognitively penetrable and analyse cases made against phenomenal conservatism hinging on this thesis. In particular, I focus on objections coming from the externalist reliabilist camp and the internalist inferentialist camp. I conclude that cognitive penetrability doesn’t yield lethal or substantive difficulties for phenomenal conservatism.

According to a posteriori ethical intuitionism, perceptual experiences can provide non-inferential justification for at least some moral beliefs. Moral epistemology, for the defender of AEI, is less like the epistemology of math and more like the epistemology of tables and chairs. One serious threat to AEI comes from the phenomenon of cognitive penetration. The worry is that even if evaluative properties could figure in the contents of experience, they would only be able to do so if prior cognitive states influence (...) perceptual experience. Such influences would undermine the non-inferential, foundationalist credentials of AEI. In this paper, I defend AEI against this objection. Rather than deny that cognitive penetration exists, I argue that some types of cognitive penetrability are actually compatible with AEI's foundationalist structure. This involves teasing apart the question of whether some particular perceptual process has justification-conferring features from the question of how it came to have those features in the first place. Once this distinction is made, it becomes clear that some kinds of cognitive penetration are compatible with the non-inferential status of moral perceptual experiences as the proponent of AEI claims. (shrink)

A novel solution is offered for how emotional experiences can function as sources of immediate prima facie justification for evaluative beliefs, and in such a way that suffices to halt a justificatory regress. Key to this solution is the recognition of two distinct kinds of emotional skill (what I call generative emotional skill and doxastic emotional skill) and how these must be working in tandem when emotional experience plays such a justificatory role. The paper has two main parts, the first (...) negative and the second positive. The negative part criticises the epistemic credentials of Epistemic Perceptualism (e.g., Tappolet 2012, 2016; Doring 2003, 2007; Elgin 2008; Roberts 2003), the view that emotional experience alone suffices to prima facie justify evaluative beliefs in a way that is analogous to how perceptual experience justifies our beliefs about the external world. The second part of the paper develops an account of emotional skill and uses this account to frame a revisionary form of Epistemic Perceptualism that succeeds where the traditional views could not. I conclude by considering some objections and replies. (shrink)

It is still a live question in epistemology and philosophy of science as to what exactly evidence is. In my view, evidence consists in experiences called “seemings.” This view is a version of the phenomenal conception of evidence, the position that evidence consists in nonfactive mental states with propositional content. This conception is opposed by sense-data theorists, disjunctivists, and those who think evidence consists in physical objects or publicly observable states of affairs—call it the courtroom conception of evidence. Thomas Kelly (...) has recently argued that the phenomenal conception cannot play all the roles evidence plays and is thus inadequate. Having first explained the nature of seemings, in this essay I utilize Kelly’s own understanding of the four major roles of evidence and argue that the phenomenal conception can play each one. Experience is a good candidate for evidence. (shrink)

Epistemic deontology maintains that our beliefs and degrees of belief are open to deontic evaluations—evaluations of what we ought to believe or may not believe. Some philosophers endorse strong internalist versions of epistemic deontology on which agents can always access what determines the deontic status of their beliefs and degrees of belief. This paper articulates a new challenge for strong internalist versions of epistemic deontology. Any version of epistemic deontology must face William Alston’s argument. Alston combined a broadly voluntarist conception (...) of responsibility, on which ought implies can, with doxastic involuntarism, the position that our beliefs are not under our control. Together, those views imply that epistemic deontology is false. A promising response to Alston’s argument is to embrace a compatibilist account of control—specifically a reason-responsive version of compatibilism—and use it to criticism his doxastic involuntarism. I argue that while reason-responsive compatibilism about control does undermine Alston’s argument, it comes at a cost. Specifically, it is inconsistent with strong internalist versions of epistemic deontology. The surprising upshot is that so long as we retain a voluntarist conception of responsibility, we have reason for rejecting strong internalist versions of epistemic deontology. (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)

Alvin Plantinga theorizes the existence of a sensus divinitatis – a special cognitive faulty or mechanism dedicated to the production and non-inferential justification of theistic belief. Following Chris Tucker, we offer an evidentialist-friendly model of the sensus divinitatis whereon it produces theistic seemings that non-inferentially justify theistic belief. We suggest that the sensus divinitatis produces these seemings by tacitly grasping support relations between the content of ordinary experiences (in conjunction with our background evidence) and propositions about God. Our model offers (...) advantages such as eliminating the need for a sui generis religious faculty, harmonizing the sensus divinitatis with prominent theories in the cognitive science of religion, and providing a superior account of natural revelation. (shrink)

A number of philosophers, going back at least to Kierkegaard, argue that to have faith in something is, in part, to have a passion for that thing—to possess a lasting, formative disposition to feel certain positive patterns of emotion towards the object of faith. I propose that (at least some of) the intellectual dimensions of faith can be modeled in much the same way. Having faith in a person involves taking a certain perspective towards the object of faith—in possessing a (...) lasting, formative disposition for things to seem as though the object of faith is worthy of one’s trust. After developing the view, I briefly discuss its epistemic implications. I suggest that, by systematically reorienting how one experiences the world, faith can actually change one’s total body of evidence (or perhaps even how one weighs that evidence), thereby altering what one is justified in believing about the object of faith. (shrink)

The on-going debate over the ‘admissible contents of perceptual experience’ concerns the range of properties that human beings are directly acquainted with in perceptual experience. Regarding vision, it is relatively uncontroversial that the following properties can figure in the contents of visual experience: colour, shape, illumination, spatial relations, motion, and texture. The controversy begins when we ask whether any properties besides these figure in visual experience. We argue that ‘ensemble properties’ should be added to the list of visually admissible properties. (...) Ensemble properties are features that belong to a set of perceptible objects as a whole as opposed to the individuals that constitute that set. They include such features as the mean size of an array of shapes or the average emotional expression of an array of faces. Recent work in vision science has yielded compelling evidence that the visual system routinely encodes such properties. We argue that epistemological considerations provide strong reasons to think that these properties figure in visual experience. Judgements about ensemble properties are immediately warranted by our perceptual experience, and the only plausible way that a perceptual experience could confer this warrant is if it confers awareness of ensemble properties. (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)

Reflection on the possibility of cases in which experience is cognitively penetrated has suggested to many that an experience's etiology can reduce its capacity to provide prima facie justification for believing its content below a baseline. This is epistemic downgrade due to etiology, and its possibility is incompatible with phenomenal conservatism. I develop a view that explains the epistemic deficiency in certain possible cases of cognitive penetration but on which there is no epistemic downgrading below a baseline and on which (...) etiology plays no explanatory role. This view is not phenomenal conservatism exactly, but it does capture what’s right about phenomenal conservatism. (shrink)

Whether perceptual experience represents high-level properties like causation and natural-kind in virtue of its phenomenology is an open question in philosophy of mind. While the question of high-level properties has sparked disagreement, there is widespread agreement that the sensory phenomenology of perceptual experience presents us with low-level properties like shape and color. This paper argues that the relationship between the sensory character of experience and the low-level properties represented therein is more complex than most assume. Careful consideration of mundane examples, (...) like looking at a coin from an oblique angle, show that the low-level properties represented in experience do not necessarily figure in the sensory character of the experience. Furthermore, the sensible properties invoked when characterizing the sensory character of a perceptual experience are not necessarily included in the sensible properties represented in a perceptual experience. On this basis it is argued that perceptual experience has a disunified metaphysics, consisting in distinct sensory and cognitive components. The account is developed in relation to existing unified and disunified accounts, and discussed in terms of its implications for cognitive penetration, the reliability of introspection, the transparency of experience, and cognitive phenomenology. (shrink)