Why did such highly abstract ideas as truth, knowledge, or justice become so important to us? What was the point of coming to think in these terms? This book presents a philosophical method designed to answer such questions: the method of pragmatic genealogy. Pragmatic genealogies are partly fictional, partly historical narratives exploring what might have driven us to develop certain ideas in order to discover what these do for us. The book uncovers an under-appreciated tradition of pragmatic genealogy which cuts (...) across the analytic-continental divide, running from the state-of-nature stories of David Hume and the early genealogies of Friedrich Nietzsche to recent work in analytic philosophy by Edward Craig, Bernard Williams, and Miranda Fricker. However, these genealogies combine fictionalizing and historicizing in ways that even philosophers sympathetic to the use of state-of-nature fictions or real history have found puzzling. To make sense of why both fictionalizing and historicizing are called for, the book offers a systematic account of pragmatic genealogies as dynamic models serving to reverse-engineer the points of ideas in relation not only to near-universal human needs, but also to socio-historically situated needs. This allows the method to offer us explanation without reduction and to help us understand what led our ideas to shed the traces of their practical origins. Far from being normatively inert, moreover, pragmatic genealogy can affect the space of reasons, guiding attempts to improve our conceptual repertoire by helping us determine whether and when our ideas are worth having. (shrink)

This paper examines three reasons to think that Craig's genealogy of the concept of knowledge is incompatible with knowledge-first epistemology and finds that far from being incompatible with it, the genealogy lends succour to it. This reconciliation turns on two ideas. First, the genealogy is not history, but a dynamic model of needs. Secondly, by recognizing the continuity of Craig's genealogy with Williams's genealogy of truthfulness, we can see that while both genealogies start out from specific needs explaining what drives (...) the development of certain concepts rather than others, they then factor in less specific needs which in reality do not come later at all, and which have also left their mark on these concepts. These genealogies thereby reveal widespread functional dynamics driving what I call the de-instrumentalization of concepts, the recognition of which adds to the plausibility of such instrumentalist approaches to concepts. (shrink)

In this paper, I identify the hard problem of access for epistemological disjunctivism (ED): given that perceptual experience E is opaque with respect to its own epistemic properties, subject S is not in a position to know epistemic proposition (i) (that E is factive with respect to empirical proposition p) just by having E and/or reflecting on E. This is the case even if (i) is true. I first motivate the hard problem of access (Section 2) and then reconstruct and (...) analyze three of the ways in which EDists have argued for the internal accessibility of the factive character of perceptual experience. These arguments explain internal access in terms of the unity of perceptual and rational capacities (Section 3), favoring support (Section 4), and the outward-looking model of self-knowledge (Section 5). My conclusion (Section 6) is that none of these responses works. I then suggest how ED might be modified to succeed as an access internalist epistemology. (shrink)

This article aims to contribute to the elucidation of the nature of inquiry. I start with some common desiderata for any theory of inquiry. I then categorize inquiry as a structured process. By focusing on its essential components, I advance a new characterization of inquiry as a combination of questioning attitudes guiding actions. Finally, I turn to the recent objection that questioning attitudes are not necessary for inquiry. I argue that inquiry is a structured process essentially constituted by questioning attitudes (...) having two precise functional roles, initiating and guiding the deployment of cognitive capacities towards an epistemic goal. (shrink)

Knowledge, like other things of value, can be faked. According to Hawley (2011), know-how is harder to fake than knowledge-that, given that merely apparent propositional knowledge is in general more resilient to our attempts at successful detection than are corresponding attempts to fake know-how. While Hawley’s reasoning for a kind of detection resilience asymmetry between know-how and know-that looks initially plausible, it should ultimately be resisted. In showing why, we outline different ways in which know-how can be faked even when (...) a given performance is successful; and in doing so, we distinguish how know-how can be faked (no less than know-that) via upstream and downstream indicators of its presence, and within each of these categories, we’ll distinguish (in connection with detection resilience) both faking symptoms and (various kinds of) criteria. The unappreciated resilience of faked knowledge-how to successful detection highlights a largely overlooked dimension of social-epistemic risk – risk we face not just in our capacity as recipients of testimony, but in our capacity as both (would-be) apprentices and clients of knowledge-how. (shrink)

Knowledge-first theories of justification are theories of justification that give knowledge priority when it comes to explaining when and why someone has justification for an attitude or an action. The emphasis of this article is on knowledge-first theories of justification for belief. As it turns out, there are a number of ways of giving knowledge priority when theorizing about justification, and what follows is a survey of more than a dozen existing options that have emerged in the early 21st century (...) since the publication of Timothy Williamson’s *Knowledge and Its Limits*. This article traces several of the general theoretical motivations that have been offered for putting knowledge first in the theory of justification. This is followed by an examination of existing knowledge-first theories of justification and their standing objections. These objections are largely, but not exclusively, concerned with the extensional adequacy of knowledge-first theories of justification. There are doubtless more ways to give knowledge priority in the theory of justified belief than are covered here, but the survey is instructive because it highlights potential shortcomings that would-be knowledge-first theorists of justification may wish either to avoid or else to be prepared with a suitable error theory. This entry concludes with a reflection about the extent to which the short history of, arguably, failed attempts to secure an unproblematic knowledge-first account of justified belief has begun to resemble the older Gettier dialectic. (shrink)

We are naturally inclined to judge that it is better to know that p than to merely truly believe that p. How to account for this intuition? In this paper, I examine Williamson, Goldman and Olsson, and Pritchard's answers, and agree with Pritchard that it cannot be consistently claimed that knowledge is epistemically superior to mere true belief, and that truth is the only finally valuable epistemic good. Contrary to Pritchard, I argue that the latter claim is deeply mistaken. I (...) do so by showing that mere true beliefs have no epistemic value at all. I sketch the consequences of this point concerning the epistemic value of knowledge, and answer some objections to the thesis that mere true beliefs do not possess epistemic value. (shrink)

This book concerns the foundations of epistemic modality and hyperintensionality and their applications to the philosophy of mathematics. I examine the nature of epistemic modality, when the modal operator is interpreted as concerning both apriority and conceivability, as well as states of knowledge and belief. The book demonstrates how epistemic modality and hyperintensionality relate to the computational theory of mind; metaphysical modality and hyperintensionality; the types of mathematical modality and hyperintensionality; to the epistemic status of large cardinal axioms, undecidable propositions, (...) and abstraction principles in the philosophy of mathematics; to the modal and hyperintensional profiles of the logic of rational intuition; and to the types of intention, when the latter is interpreted as a hyperintensional mental state. Chapter \textbf{2} argues for a novel type of expressivism based on the duality between the categories of coalgebras and algebras, and argues that the duality permits of the reconciliation between modal cognitivism and modal expressivism. I also develop a novel topic-sensitive truthmaker semantics for dynamic epistemic logic, and develop a novel dynamic two-dimensional semantics. Chapter \textbf{3} provides an abstraction principle for epistemic (hyper-)intensions. Chapter \textbf{4} advances a topic-sensitive two-dimensional truthmaker semantics, and provides three novel interpretations of the framework along with the epistemic and metasemantic. Chapter \textbf{5} applies the fixed points of the modal $\mu$-calculus in order to account for the iteration of epistemic states in a single agent, by contrast to availing of modal axiom 4 (i.e. the KK principle). The fixed point operators in the modal $\mu$-calculus are rendered hyperintensional, which yields the first hyperintensional construal of the modal $\mu$-calculus in the literature and the first application of the calculus to the iteration of epistemic states in a single agent instead of the common knowledge of a group of agents. Chapter \textbf{6} advances a solution to the Julius Caesar problem based on Fine's `criterial' identity conditions which incorporate conditions on essentiality and grounding. Chapter \textbf{7} provides a ground-theoretic regimentation of the proposals in the metaphysics of consciousness and examines its bearing on the two-dimensional conceivability argument against physicalism. The topic-sensitive epistemic two-dimensional truthmaker semantics developed in chapters \textbf{2} and \textbf{4} are availed of in order for epistemic states to be a guide to metaphysical states in the hyperintensional setting. -/- Chapters \textbf{8-12} provide cases demonstrating how the two-dimensional hyperintensions of hyperintensional, i.e. topic-sensitive epistemic two-dimensional truthmaker, semantics, solve the access problem in the epistemology of mathematics. Chapter \textbf{8} examines the interaction between my hyperintensional semantics and the axioms of epistemic set theory, large cardinal axioms, the Epistemic Church-Turing Thesis, the modal axioms governing the modal profile of $\Omega$-logic, Orey sentences such as the Generalized Continuum Hypothesis, and absolute decidability. These results yield inter alia the first hyperintensional Epistemic Church-Turing Thesis and hyperintensional epistemic set theories in the literature. Chapter \textbf{9} examines the modal and hyperintensional commitments of abstractionism, in particular necessitism, and epistemic hyperintensionality, epistemic utility theory, and the epistemology of abstraction. I countenance a hyperintensional semantics for novel epistemic abstractionist modalities. I suggest, too, that observational type theory can be applied to first-order abstraction principles in order to make first-order abstraction principles recursively enumerable, i.e. Turing machine computable, and that the truth of the first-order abstraction principle for hyperintensions is grounded in its being possibly recursively enumerable and the machine being physically implementable. Chapter \textbf{10} examines the philosophical significance of hyperintensional $\Omega$-logic in set theory and discusses the hyperintensionality of metamathematics. Chapter \textbf{11} provides a modal logic for rational intuition and provides a hyperintensional semantics. Chapter \textbf{12} avails of modal coalgebras to interpret the defining properties of indefinite extensibility, and avails of hyperintensional epistemic two-dimensional semantics in order to account for the interaction between the interpretational and objective modalities and truthmakers thereof. This yields the first hyperintensional category theory in the literature. I invent a new mathematical trick in which first order structures are treated as categories, and Vopenka's principle can be satisfied because of the elementary embeddings between the categories and generate Vopenka cardinals while bypassing the category of Set in category theory. Chapter \textbf{13} examines modal responses to the alethic paradoxes. Chapter \textbf{14} examines, finally, the modal and hyperintensional semantics for the different types of intention and the relation of the latter to evidential decision theory. (shrink)

This book concerns the foundations of epistemic modality and hyperintensionality and their applications to the philosophy of mathematics. I examine the nature of epistemic modality, when the modal operator is interpreted as concerning both apriority and conceivability, as well as states of knowledge and belief. The book demonstrates how epistemic modality and hyperintensionality relate to the computational theory of mind; metaphysical modality and hyperintensionality; the types of mathematical modality and hyperintensionality; to the epistemic status of large cardinal axioms, undecidable propositions, (...) and abstraction principles in the philosophy of mathematics; to the modal and hyperintensional profiles of the logic of rational intuition; and to the types of intention, when the latter is interpreted as a hyperintensional mental state. Chapter \textbf{2} argues for a novel type of expressivism based on the duality between the categories of coalgebras and algebras, and argues that the duality permits of the reconciliation between modal cognitivism and modal expressivism. I also develop a novel topic-sensitive truthmaker semantics for dynamic epistemic logic, and develop a novel dynamic two-dimensional semantics. Chapter \textbf{3} provides an abstraction principle for epistemic (hyper-)intensions. Chapter \textbf{4} advances a topic-sensitive two-dimensional truthmaker semantics, and provides three novel interpretations of the framework along with the epistemic and metasemantic. Chapter \textbf{5} applies the fixed points of the modal $\mu$-calculus in order to account for the iteration of epistemic states in a single agent, by contrast to availing of modal axiom 4 (i.e. the KK principle). The fixed point operators in the modal $\mu$-calculus are rendered hyperintensional, which yields the first hyperintensional construal of the modal $\mu$-calculus in the literature and the first application of the calculus to the iteration of epistemic states in a single agent instead of the common knowledge of a group of agents. Chapter \textbf{6} advances a solution to the Julius Caesar problem based on Fine's `criterial' identity conditions which incorporate conditions on essentiality and grounding. Chapter \textbf{7} provides a ground-theoretic regimentation of the proposals in the metaphysics of consciousness and examines its bearing on the two-dimensional conceivability argument against physicalism. The topic-sensitive epistemic two-dimensional truthmaker semantics developed in chapters \textbf{2} and \textbf{4} are availed of in order for epistemic states to be a guide to metaphysical states in the hyperintensional setting. -/- Chapters \textbf{8-12} provide cases demonstrating how the two-dimensional hyperintensions of hyperintensional, i.e. topic-sensitive epistemic two-dimensional truthmaker, semantics, solve the access problem in the epistemology of mathematics. Chapter \textbf{8} examines the interaction between my hyperintensional semantics and the axioms of epistemic set theory, large cardinal axioms, the Epistemic Church-Turing Thesis, the modal axioms governing the modal profile of $\Omega$-logic, Orey sentences such as the Generalized Continuum Hypothesis, and absolute decidability. These results yield inter alia the first hyperintensional Epistemic Church-Turing Thesis and hyperintensional epistemic set theories in the literature. Chapter \textbf{9} examines the modal and hyperintensional commitments of abstractionism, in particular necessitism, and epistemic hyperintensionality, epistemic utility theory, and the epistemology of abstraction. I countenance a hyperintensional semantics for novel epistemic abstractionist modalities. I suggest, too, that observational type theory can be applied to first-order abstraction principles in order to make first-order abstraction principles recursively enumerable, i.e. Turing machine computable, and that the truth of the first-order abstraction principle for hyperintensions is grounded in its being possibly recursively enumerable and the machine being physically implementable. Chapter \textbf{10} examines the philosophical significance of hyperintensional $\Omega$-logic in set theory and discusses the hyperintensionality of metamathematics. Chapter \textbf{11} provides a modal logic for rational intuition and provides a hyperintensional semantics. Chapter \textbf{12} avails of modal coalgebras to interpret the defining properties of indefinite extensibility, and avails of hyperintensional epistemic two-dimensional semantics in order to account for the interaction between the interpretational and objective modalities and truthmakers thereof. This yields the first hyperintensional category theory in the literature. I invent a new mathematical trick in which first order structures are treated as categories, and Vopenka's principle can be satisfied because of the elementary embeddings between the categories and generate Vopenka cardinals while bypassing the category of Set in category theory. Chapter \textbf{13} examines modal responses to the alethic paradoxes. Chapter \textbf{14} examines, finally, the modal and hyperintensional semantics for the different types of intention and the relation of the latter to evidential decision theory. (shrink)

Certain puzzling cases have been discussed in the literature recently which appear to support the thought that knowledge can be obtained by way of deduction from a falsehood; moreover, these cases put pressure, prima facie, on the thesis of counter closure for knowledge. We argue that the cases do not involve knowledge from falsehood; despite appearances, the false beliefs in the cases in question are causally, and therefore epistemologically, incidental, and knowledge is achieved despite falsehood. We also show that the (...) principle of counter closure, and the concomitant denial of knowledge from falsehood, is well motivated by considerations in epistemological theory--in particular, by the view that knowledge is first in the epistemological order of things. (shrink)

This paper is a companion piece to my earlier paper “Fallibilism and Concessive Knowledge Attributions”. There are two intuitive charges against fallibilism. One is that it countenances the truth (and presumably acceptability) of utterances of sentences such as “I know that Bush is a Republican, though it might be that he is not a Republican”. The second is that it countenances the truth (and presumably acceptability) of utterances of sentences such as “I know that Bush is a Republican, even though (...) I’m not certain that he is”, or “I know that Bush it a Republican, even though it isn’t certain that he is.” In “Fallibilism and Concessive Knowledge Attributions”, I argue that fallibilism in epistemology does not countenance the truth of utterances of sentences such as “I know that Bush is a Republican, though it might be that he is not a Republican”. In this paper, I argue that there are independent reasons for thinking that utterances of sentences such as “I know that Bush is a Republican, though I’m not certain that he is” and “I know that Bush is a Republican, though it’s not certain that he is” are unassertible. More specifically, I argue that these are simply instances of Moore’s Paradox, such as “Dogs bark, but I don’t know that they do.” The right account of Moore’s Paradox does not involve the falsehood of the semantic content of the relevant utterances, but rather their pragmatic unacceptability. So the anti-fallibilist intuitions turn out to have pragmatic, rather than semantic import, and therefore do not tell against the truth of fallibilism. Fallibilism in epistemology is often thought to be theoretically desirable, but intuitively problematic. My purpose with these two papers is to show that fallibilism is not intuitively problematic. (shrink)

Some externalists have recently argued that the unity of theoretical and practical reason implies that epistemic justification is factive. It is argued that arguments for the factivity of epistemic justification either (i) equate two actions that are in fact different, or (ii) make the unwarranted assumption that the by-relation transmits justification. The unity of reason does not imply that epistemic justification is factive.

Perceptual experiences justify beliefs—that much seems obvious. As Brewer puts it, “sense experiential states provide reasons for empirical beliefs” (this volume, xx). In Mind and World McDowell argues that we can get from this apparent platitude to the controversial claim that perceptual experiences have conceptual content: [W]e can coherently credit experiences with rational relations to judgement and belief, but only if we take it that spontaneity is already implicated in receptivity; that is, only if we take it that experiences have (...) conceptual content. (1994, 162) Brewer agrees. Their view is sometimes called conceptualism; nonconceptualism is the rival position, that experiences have nonconceptual content. One initial obstacle is understanding what the issue is. What is conceptual content, and how is it different from nonconceptual content? Section 1 of this paper explains two versions of each of the rival positions: state (non)conceptualism and content (non)conceptualism; the latter pair is the locus of the relevant dispute. Two prominent arguments for content nonconceptualism—the richness argument and the continuity argument—both fail (section 2). McDowell’s and Brewer’s epistemological defenses of content conceptualism are also faulty (section 3). Section 4 gives a more simple-minded case for conceptualism; finally, some reasons are given for rejecting the claim—on one natural interpretation—that experiences justify beliefs. (shrink)

This paper argues that there is a problem for the justificatory significance of perceptions that has been overlooked thus far. Assuming that perceptual experiences are propositional attitudes and that only propositional attitudes which assertively represent the world can function as justifiers, the problem consists in specifying what it means for a propositional attitude to assertively represent the world without losing the justificatory significance of perceptions—a challenge that is harder to meet than might first be thought. That there is such a (...) problem can be seen by reconsidering and modifying a well-known argument to the conclusion that beliefs cannot be justified by perceptions but only by other beliefs. Nevertheless, the aim of the paper is not to conclude that perceptions are actually incapable of justifying our beliefs but rather to highlight an overlooked problem that needs to be solved in order to properly understand the justificatory relationship between perceptions and beliefs. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that there are epistemic norms on evidence-gathering and consider consequences for how to understand epistemic normativity. Though the view that there are such norms seems intuitive, it has found surprisingly little defense. Rather, many philosophers have argued that norms on evidence-gathering can only be practical or moral. On a prominent evidentialist version of this position, epistemic norms only apply to responding to the evidence one already has. Here we challenge the orthodoxy. First, we argue that (...) there is no significant normative difference between responding to evidence you have and gathering more evidence. Second, we argue that our practices of epistemically criticizing agents for their poor evidence-gathering indicate the existence of epistemic norms on evidence-gathering. Finally, we show that our thesis has important implications for recent debates about the relationship between epistemic norms and inquiry. (shrink)

This paper aims to contribute to the analysis of the nature of mathematical modality and hyperintensionality, and to the applications of the latter to absolute decidability. Rather than countenancing the interpretational type of mathematical modality as a primitive, I argue that the interpretational type of mathematical modality is a species of epistemic modality. I argue, then, that the framework of two-dimensional semantics ought to be applied to the mathematical setting. The framework permits of a formally precise account of the priority (...) and relation between epistemic mathematical modality and metaphysical mathematical modality. The discrepancy between the modal systems governing the parameters in the two-dimensional intensional setting provides an explanation of the difference between the metaphysical possibility of absolute decidability and our knowledge thereof. I also advance a topic-sensitive epistemic two-dimensional truthmaker semantics, if hyperintensional approaches are to be preferred to possible worlds semantics. I examine the relation between two-dimensional hyperintensional states and epistemic set theory, providing two-dimensional hyperintensional formalizations of the modal logic of ZFC, large cardinal axioms, $\Omega$-logic, and the Epistemic Church-Turing Thesis. (shrink)

This paper begins by applying a version of Timothy Williamson’s anti-luminosity argument to normative properties. This argument suggests that there must be at least some unknowable normative facts in normative Sorites sequences, or otherwise we get a contradiction given certain plausible assumptions concerning safety requirements on knowledge and our doxastic dispositions. This paper then focuses on the question of how the defenders of different forms of metaethical anti-realism (namely, error theorists, subjectivists, relativists, contextualists, expressivists, response dependence theorists, and constructivists) could (...) respond to the explanatory challenge created by the previous argument. It argues that, with two exceptions, the metaethical anti-realists need not challenge the argument itself, but rather they can find ways to explain how the unknowable normative facts can obtain. These explanations are based on the idea that our own attitudes on which the normative facts are grounded need not be transparent to us either. Reaching this conclusion also illuminates how metaethical anti-realists can make sense of instances of normative vagueness more generally. (shrink)

In this paper we intend to offer a first approach to the incorporation of certain formal tools in the elucidation of some issues discussed in epistemological contexts. The aim is not to offer an exhaustive resolution of these problems but merely to point out the usefulness of modal semantics when applied to different fields. Here we will show how a series of skeptical arguments eventually involve a modal (counterfactual) structure, which we will try to generalise into a useful scheme. -/- (...) . (shrink)

The debate over rival conceptions of political legitimacy tends to focus on first-order considerations—for example, on the relative importance of procedural and substantive values. In this essay, I argue that there is an important, but often overlooked, distinction among rival conceptions of political legitimacy that originates at the meta-normative level. This distinction, which cuts across the distinctions drawn at the first-order level, concerns the source of the normativity of political legitimacy, or, as I refer to it here, the grounds of (...) political legitimacy. If we focus on the grounds of political legitimacy, there are three main conceptions of political legitimacy: will-based, belief-based, and fact-based conceptions. I present an objection to each of those main conceptions and defend a hybrid account of the grounds of political legitimacy. (shrink)

This essay aims to provide a modal logic for rational intuition. Similarly to treatments of the property of knowledge in epistemic logic, I argue that rational intuition can be codified by a modal operator governed by the modal $\mu$-calculus. Via correspondence results between fixed point modal propositional logic and the bisimulation-invariant fragment of monadic second-order logic, a precise translation can then be provided between the notion of 'intuition-of', i.e., the cognitive phenomenal properties of thoughts, and the modal operators regimenting the (...) notion of 'intuition-that'. I argue that intuition-that can further be shown to entrain conceptual elucidation, by way of figuring as a dynamic-interpretational modality which induces the reinterpretation of both domains of quantification and the intensions and hyperintensions of mathematical concepts that are formalizable in monadic first- and second-order formal languages. Hyperintensionality is countenanced via a topic-sensitive epistemic two-dimensional truthmaker semantics. (shrink)

In this paper we use proof-theoretic methods, specifically sequent calculi, admissibility of cut within them and the resultant subformula property, to examine a range of philosophically-motivated deontic logics. We show that for all of those logics it is a (meta)theorem that the Special Hume Thesis holds, namely that no purely normative conclusion follows non-trivially from purely descriptive premises (nor vice versa). In addition to its interest on its own, this also illustrates one way in which proof theory sheds light on (...) philosophically substantial questions. (shrink)

Our decision-theoretic states are not luminous. We are imperfectly reliable at identifying our own credences, utilities and available acts, and thus can never be more than imperfectly reliable at identifying the prescriptions of decision theory. The lack of luminosity affords decision theory a remarkable opportunity — to issue guidance on the basis of epistemically inaccessible facts. We show how a decision theory can guarantee action in accordance with contingent truths about which an agent is arbitrarily uncertain. It may seem that (...) such advantages would require dubiously adverting to externalist facts that go beyond the internalism of traditional decision theory, but this is not so. Using only the standard repertoire of decision-theoretic tools, we show how to modify existing decision theories to take advantage of this opportunity. These improved decision theories require agents to maximize conditional expected utility — expected utility conditional upon an agent’s actual decision situation. We call such modified decision theories ‘self-confident’. These self-confident decision theories have a distinct advantage over standard decision theories: their prescriptions are better. (shrink)

In recent years, some defenders of traditional philosophical methodology have argued that certain critiques of armchair methods are mistaken in assuming that intuitions play central evidential roles in traditional philosophical methods. According to this kind of response, experimental philosophers attack a straw man; it doesn’t matter whether intuitions are reliable, because philosophers don’t use intuitions in the way assumed. Deutsch (2010), Williamson (2007), and Cappelen (2012) all defend traditional methods in something like this way. I also endorsed something like this (...) line in Ichikawa (2014a). -/- In this contribution, I will follow up on this sort of defence of traditional philosophical methods in three ways. In §1, I will rehearse and extend some of my reasons for challenging the idea that traditional methods depend on intuitions in an evidential role. (My reasons are very different from those discussed in (Cappelen, 2012).) I will also engage with some recent more sophisticated attempts to establish the idea that intuitions play evidential roles in philosophy, such as that of Chudnoff (2013). In §2, I will consider and argue against a dismissive response to such positions from experimental philosophers, who consider the question of philosophical reliance on intuitions to be irrelevant to the experimentalist critique. But in §3, I will argue that it would also be a mistake to conclude (as Herman Cappelen does) that the critique is rendered totally irrelevant by the denial of the evidential role of intuitions; I defend a more moderate view on which the bearing of experimental studies of philosophical intuitions is relevant for philosophical methodology, but only in a relatively limited way. (shrink)

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

Several philosophers have proposed Knowledge-Based Decision Theories (KDTs)—theories that require agents to maximize expected utility as yielded by utility and probability functions that depend on the agent’s knowledge. Proponents of KDTs argue that such theories are motivated by Knowledge-Reasons norms that require agents to act only on reasons that they know. However, no formal derivation of KDTs from Knowledge-Reasons norms has been suggested, and it is not clear how such norms justify the particular ways in which KDTs relate knowledge and (...) rational action. In this paper, I suggest a new axiomatic method for justifying KDTs and providing them with stronger normative foundations. I argue that such theories may be derived from constraints on the relation between knowledge and preference, and that these constraints may be evaluated relative to intuitions regarding practical reasoning. To demonstrate this, I offer a representation theorem for a KDT proposed by Hawthorne and Stanley (2008) and briefly evaluate it through its underlying axioms. -/- In section 1, I present knowledge-based decision theories generally and the versions of such theories suggested in the literature. In section 2, I argue that KDTs and theories of practical reasoning conjoined with Knowledge-Reasons norms generate constraints on the same relation—the relation between knowledge and preference. In section 3, I present a formal framework in which constraints on this relation may be expressed and from which KDTs may be derived. In section 4, I present a representation theorem for a specific KDT. In section 5, I briefly evaluate the axioms of the theory, and in section 6, I conclude. (shrink)

A Benacerraf–Field challenge is an argument intended to show that common realist theories of a given domain are untenable: such theories make it impossible to explain how we’ve arrived at the truth in that domain, and insofar as a theory makes our reliability in a domain inexplicable, we must either reject that theory or give up the relevant beliefs. But there’s no consensus about what would count here as a satisfactory explanation of our reliability. It’s sometimes suggested that giving such (...) an explanation would involve showing that our beliefs meet some modal condition, but realists have claimed that this sort of modal interpretation of the challenge deprives it of any force: since the facts in question are metaphysically necessary and so obtain in all possible worlds, it’s trivially easy, even given realism, to show that our beliefs have the relevant modal features. Here I show that this claim is mistaken—what motivates a modal interpretation of the challenge in the first place also motivates an understanding of the relevant features in terms of epistemic possibilities rather than metaphysical possibilities, and there are indeed epistemically possible worlds where the facts in question don’t obtain. (shrink)

In "Mathematical Truth", Paul Benacerraf articulated an epistemological problem for mathematical realism. His formulation of the problem relied on a causal theory of knowledge which is now widely rejected. But it is generally agreed that Benacerraf was onto a genuine problem for mathematical realism nevertheless. Hartry Field describes it as the problem of explaining the reliability of our mathematical beliefs, realistically construed. In this paper, I argue that the Benacerraf Problem cannot be made out. There simply is no intelligible problem (...) that satisfies all of the constraints which have been placed on the Benacerraf Problem. The point generalizes to all arguments with the structure of the Benacerraf Problem aimed at realism about a domain meeting certain conditions. Such arguments include so-called "Evolutionary Debunking Arguments" aimed at moral realism. I conclude with some suggestions about the relationship between the Benacerraf Problem and the Gettier Problem. (shrink)

Unknown peers create a problem for those epistemologists who argue that we should be conciliatory in cases of peer disagreement. The standard interpretation of ‘being conciliatory’ has it that we should revise our opinions concerning a specific subject matter whenever we encounter someone who is as competent and well informed as we are concerning this subject matter (and thus is our peer) and holds a different opinion. As a consequence, peers whom we have never encountered and who are hence unknown (...) to us are not taken into account. This, however, appears odd; not only because it is an accidental matter which peers we happen to encounter and which not, but also because it would allow people to deliberately isolate themselves from any kind of intellectual exchange on the topic under consideration. The paper argues that we should take the problem of unknown peers seriously, and that disregarding the problem is an instance of the more general mistake of assuming that evidential quality and justified believability can be dealt with separately. Moreover, a solution to the problem of unknown peers is suggested. (shrink)

Reductive intellectualists hold that knowledge-how is a kind of knowledge-that. For this thesis to hold water, it is obviously important that knowledge-how and knowledge-that have the same epistemic properties. In particular, knowledge-how ought to be compatible with epistemic luck to the same extent as knowledge-that. It is argued, contra reductive intellectualism, that knowledge-how is compatible with a species of epistemic luck which is not compatible with knowledge-that, and thus it is claimed that knowledge-how and knowledge-that come apart.

Metacognitive mental states are mental states about mental states. For example, I may be uncertain whether my belief is correct. In social discourse, an interlocutor’s metacognitive certainty may constitute evidence about the reliability of their testimony. For example, if a speaker is certain that their belief is correct, then we may take this as evidence in favour of their belief, or its content. This paper argues that, if metacognitive certainty is genuine evidence, then it is disproportionate evidence for extreme beliefs. (...) In support of the argument, we report findings from five studies with different participant samples, designs, and measures. These studies show that, the more extreme an agent’s belief (positive or negative), the more certain they are about it, and vice versa. This relationship might contribute to moralism, virtue signalling, and polarisation, which in turn may be epistemically and morally problematic. Therefore, we caution against taking metacognitive certainty as genuine evidence. (shrink)

P.F. Strawson argued that ‘mature sensible experience (in general) presents itself as … an immediate consciousness of the existence of things outside us’ (1979: 97). He began his defence of this very natural idea by asking how someone might typically give a description of their current visual experience, and offered this example of such a description: ‘I see the red light of the setting sun filtering through the black and thickly clustered branches of the elms; I see the dappled deer (...) grazing in groups on the vivid green grass…’ (1979: 97). In other words, in describing experience, we tend to describe the objects of experience – the things which we experience – and the ways they are when we are experiencing them. Some go further. According to Heidegger. (shrink)

Cognitive theorists routinely disagree about the evidence supporting claims in cognitive science. Here, we first argue that some disagreements about evidence in cognitive science are about the evidence available to be drawn upon by cognitive theorists. Then, we show that one’s explanation of why this first kind of disagreement obtains will cohere with one’s theory of evidence. We argue that the best explanation for why cognitive theorists disagree in this way is because their evidence is what they rationally grant. Finally, (...) we explain why our view does not lead to a pernicious kind of relativism in cognitive science. (shrink)

I argue that while admission of one's own fallibility rationally requires one's readiness to stand corrected in the light of future evidence, it need have no consequences for one's present degrees of belief. In particular, I argue that one's fallibility in a given area gives one no reason to forego assigning credence 1 to propositions belonging to that area. I can thus be seen to take issue with David Christensen's recent claim that our fallibility has far-reaching consequences for our account (...) of rational belief and epistemic rationality. My arguments inter alia rely on the idea that in basing one's beliefs on one's evidence, one trusts both that one's evidence has the right pedigree and that one gets its probative force right, where such trust can rationally be invested without the need of any further evidence. (shrink)

What distinguishes deception from manipulation? Cohen (Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 96, 483 and 2018) proposes a new answer and explores its ethical implications. Appealing to new cases of “non‐deceptive manipulation” that involve intentionally causing a false belief, he offers a new definition of deception in terms of communication that rules out these counterexamples to the traditional definition. And, he leverages this definition in support of the claim that deception “carries heavier moral weight” than manipulation. In this paper, I argue that (...) these cases of “non‐deceptive manipulation” are even more prevalent than Cohen suggests—especially in the digital world. Thus, if his moral claim were correct, a lot of what is happening on the internet these days would constitute moral improvement over old‐fashioned deception. Fortunately, we are not forced to accept this counterintuitive conclusion. Cohen's definition must be rejected because it incorrectly rules out clear instances of deception. In this paper, I defend a definition of deception in terms of evidence that does correctly distinguish between deception and non‐deceptive manipulation. Moreover, it does not support Cohen's claim that deception is morally worse than other forms of manipulation. (shrink)

Anscombe famously said that there are some act types that can only be done intentionally. We defend this claim: some act types are essentially intentional. We argue that Ving intentionally is itself essentially intentional: it is not possible to be non-intentionally Ving intentionally. And we show how this explains why various other act types—such as trying, lying, and thanking—are essentially intentional. Finally, building on Piñeros Glassock (2020) and Beddor & Pavese (2022), we explain how this makes trouble for the thesis (...) that if I am Ving intentionally, I know that I am Ving. (shrink)

I outline a number of parallels between trust and distrust, emphasising the significance of situations in which both trust and distrust would be an imposition upon the (dis)trustee. I develop an account of both trust and distrust in terms of commitment, and argue that this enables us to understand the nature of trustworthiness. Note that this article is available open access on the journal website.

The usefulness of machine learning algorithms has led to their widespread adoption prior to the development of a conceptual framework for making sense of them. One common response to this situation is to say that machine learning suffers from a “black box problem.” That is, machine learning algorithms are “opaque” to human users, failing to be “interpretable” or “explicable” in terms that would render categorization procedures “understandable.” The purpose of this paper is to challenge the widespread agreement about the existence (...) and importance of a black box problem. The first section argues that “interpretability” and cognates lack precise meanings when applied to algorithms. This makes the concepts difficult to use when trying to solve the problems that have motivated the call for interpretability. Furthermore, since there is no adequate account of the concepts themselves, it is not possible to assess whether particular technical features supply formal definitions of those concepts. The second section argues that there are ways of being a responsible user of these algorithms that do not require interpretability. In many cases in which a black box problem is cited, interpretability is a means to a further end such as justification or non-discrimination. Since addressing these problems need not involve something that looks like an “interpretation” of an algorithm, the focus on interpretability artificially constrains the solution space by characterizing one possible solution as the problem itself. Where possible, discussion should be reformulated in terms of the ends of interpretability. (shrink)

What is the scope of our conscious mental agency, and how do we acquire self-knowledge of it? Both questions are addressed through an investigation of what best explains our inability to form judgemental thoughts in direct response to practical reasons. Contrary to what Williams and others have argued, it cannot be their subjection to a truth norm, given that our failure to adhere to such a norm need not undermine their status as judgemental. Instead, it is argued that we cannot (...) form judgements at will because we subjectively experience them as responses to epistemic reasons, and because this is incompatible with our experiential awareness of direct mental actions, such as instances of imagining. However, this latter awareness does not extend to indirect agency, which relies on epistemic or causal processes as means. Judging may therefore still count as an indirect action - just like, say, breaking a window by throwing a stone. (shrink)

One leading account of justification comes from the evidentialist tradition. According to evidentialists, whether a doxastic attitude is justified depends on whether that attitude is supported by the believer’s evidence. This chapter assesses the prospects for evidentialism, focusing on the question of whether evidentialists can provide a satisfactory account of their key notions – evidence possession and evidential support – without helping themselves to the notion of justification.

Hot-cold empathy gaps are a pervasive phenomena wherein one’s predictions about others tend to skew ‘in the direction’ of one’s own current visceral states. For instance, when one predicts how hungry someone else is, one’s prediction will tend to reflect one’s own current hunger state. These gaps also obtain intrapersonally, when one attempts to predict what one oneself would do at a different time. In this paper, we do three things: We draw on empirical evidence to argue that so-called hot-cold (...) empathy gaps arise when one projects one’s own current state into a simulation about another. Second, we argue that this process does not typically confer knowledge, even when the predictions it produces happen to be accurate. Third, we suggest that these results can be used to develop a challenge for L.A. Paul's view that authentic action sometimes requires subjective knowledge of one’s own values and how these values relate to relevant outcomes. We then sketch an alternative view of the epistemic grounds of authenticity, one on which authenticity requires a kind of understanding. The relevant form of understanding can be achieved by subjective knowledge but can also be achieved elsewise, such as through testimony from a close friend about what one values. (shrink)

Recent literature features an increased interest in the sufficiency claim involved in the knowledge norm of assertion. This paper looks at two prominent objections to KNA-Suff, due to Jessica Brown and Jennifer Lackey, and argues that they miss their target due to value-theoretic inaccuracies. It is argued that the intuitive need for more than knowledge in Brown’s high-stakes contexts does not come from the epistemic norm governing assertion, but from further norms stepping in and raising the bar, and Lackey’s purported (...) quality-driven case against KNA-Suff boils down to a quantitative objection. If that is the case, Lackey’s argument will be vulnerable to the same objections as Brown’s. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper discusses the permissibility of exclusively relying on a procedural objectivity model for news reporting, from the perspective of the normativity of informative speech acts. It is argued that, with the exception of urgency situations, the paradigmatic application of procedural objectivity is in breach of the relevant norms.

A common presupposition in epistemology is that the processes contributing to the generation of knowledge do not extend beyond the knower's skin. This paper challenges this presupposition. I adduce a novel kind case that causes trouble for a number of even the most promising accounts of knowledge in current literature (virtue epistemological and modal accounts), at least so long as the presupposition is in place. I then look at a couple of recent accounts of knowledge that drop the presupposition and (...) expressly allow the relevant processes to extended beyond the knower's skin. While these accounts can handle the problem case, they encounter difficulties elsewhere: extension occurs too easily and so the accounts predict knowledge where they ought not. Finally, I offer a novel way of extending epistemology and argue that it can steer clear of the problems on both sides. (shrink)

Traditionally, epistemologists have held that only truth-related factors matter in the question of whether a subject can be said to know a proposition. Various philosophers have recently departed from this doctrine by claiming that the answer to this question also depends on practical concerns. They take this move to be warranted by the fact that people’s knowledge attributions appear sensitive to contextual variation, in particular variation due to differing stakes. This paper proposes an alternative explanation of the aforementioned fact, one (...) that allows us to stick to the orthodoxy. The alternative applies the conceptual spaces approach to the concept of knowledge. With knowledge conceived of spatially, the variability in knowledge attributions follows from recent work on identity, according to which our standards for judging things (including concepts) to be identical are context-dependent. On the proposal to be made, it depends on what is at stake in a context whether it is worth distinguishing between knowing and being at least close to knowing. (shrink)

Suppose you ask yourself whether your father's record collection includes a certain recording of The Trout and venture to find out. At that time, you embark on an inquiry into whether your father owns the relevant recording. Your inquiry is a project with a specific goal: finding out whether your father owns the recording. This fact about your inquiry generalizes: inquiry is a goal-directed enterprise. A specific inquiry can be individuated by the question it aims to answer and by who (...) aims to answer the question. Your inquiry into whether your father owns the recording differs from your inquiry into how many records your father owns because different questions are being asked. Your inquiry into whether your father owns the recording differs from my inquiry into whether he does because different people are inquiring. The goal of inquiry into a given question by an agent, α, can be characterized, neutrally, as α's having the answer to that question. I will here focus only on inquiries into whether questions and characterize the goal of inquiry into whether φ by α as α's having the answer to the question whether φ. (shrink)

Knowledge norms of action are sometimes said to be motivated by the fact that they align with natural assessments of action in ordinary language. Competent and rational speakers normally use ‘knowledge’ and its cognates when they assess action. In contrast, competing accounts in terms of evidence, warrant or reliability do not straightforwardly align with ordinary language assessments of action. In response to this line of reasoning, I argue that a warrant account of action may explain the prominence of ‘knowledge’ in (...) epistemic assessments better than the knowledge account. If this explanation is successful, it undermines a central rationale for the ‘knowledge first’ program in epistemology. Moreover, the explanation provides an insight into the social functions of knowledge ascriptions as well as a methodological lesson about the relationship between folk epistemology and epistemological theorizing. (shrink)