A quasi-sequel to "Epistemic Teleology and the Separateness of Propositions." Covers some of the same ground, but also extends the basic argument in an important way.

When it comes to epistemic normativity, should we take the good to be prior to the right? That is, should we ground facts about what we ought and ought not believe on a given occasion in facts about the value of being in certain cognitive states (such as, for example, the value of having true beliefs)? The overwhelming answer among contemporary epistemologists is “Yes, we should.” This essay argues to the contrary. Just as taking the good to be prior to (...) the right in ethics often leads one to sanction implausible trade-offs when determining what an agent should do, so too, this essay argues, taking the good to be prior to the right in epistemology leads one to sanction implausible trade-offs when determining what a subject should believe. Epistemic value—and, by extension, epistemic goals—are not the explanatory foundation upon which all other normative notions in epistemology rest. (shrink)

Judith Jarvis Thomson; Killing, Letting Die, and The Trolley Problem, The Monist, Volume 59, Issue 2, 1 April 1976, Pages 204–217, https://doi.org/10.5840/monis.

According to a simple version of the reliability theory of epistemic justification, a belief is justified if and only if the process leading to that belief is reliable. The idea behind this theory is simple and attractive. There are a variety of mental or cognitive processes that result in beliefs. Some of these processes are reliable—they generally yield true beliefs—and the beliefs they produce are justified. Other processes are unreliable and the beliefs they produce are unjustified. So, for example, reliable (...) processes such as perception and memory yield justified beliefs while an unreliable process such as wishful thinking—believing something as a result of wishing that it is true—yields unjustified beliefs. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to sketch a theory of justified belief. What I have in mind is an explanatory theory, one that explains in a general way why certain beliefs are counted as justified and others as unjustified. Unlike some traditional approaches, I do not try to prescribe standards for justification that differ from, or improve upon, our ordinary standards. I merely try to explicate the ordinary standards, which are, I believe, quite different from those of many classical, (...) e. g., ‘Cartesian’, accounts. (shrink)

Virtue Epistemology is a new movement receiving the bulk of recent attention from top epistemologists and ethicists; this volume reflects the best work in that vein. Included are unpublished articles by such eminent philosophers as Robert Audi, Simon Blackburn, Alvin Goldman, Christopher Hookway, Keith Lehrer, and Ernest Sosa.

A conception of social epistemology is articulated with links to studies of science and opinion in such disciplines as history, sociology, and political science. The conception is evaluative, though, rather than purely descriptive. Three types of evaluative approaches are examined but rejected: relativism, consensualism, and expertism. A fourth, truth-linked, approach to intellectual evaluation is then advocated: social procedures should be appraised by their propensity to foster true belief. Standards of evaluation in social epistemics would be much the same as those (...) in individual epistemics, only the objects of evaluation would be interpersonal patterns of judgment and communication, and institutional practices that bear on opinion formation. (shrink)

An epistemic virtue is a personal quality conducive to the discovery of truth, the avoidance of error, or some other intellectually valuable goal. Current work in epistemology is increasingly value-driven, but this volume presents the first collection of essays to explore whether virtue epistemology can also be naturalistic, in the philosophical definition meaning 'methodologically continuous with science'. The essays examine the empirical research in psychology on cognitive abilities and personal dispositions, meta-epistemic semantic accounts of virtue theoretic norms, the role of (...) emotion in knowledge, 'ought-implies can' constraints, empirically and metaphysically grounded accounts of 'proper functioning', and even applied virtue epistemology in relation to education. Naturalizing Epistemic Virtue addresses many core issues in contemporary epistemology, presents new opportunities for work on epistemic abilities, epistemic virtues and cognitive character, and will be of great interest to those studying virtue ethics and epistemology. (shrink)

It is common in recent epistemology to distinguish different senses, or conceptions, of epistemic justification. The proposed oppositions include the objective/subjective, internalist/externalist, regulative/nonregulative, resource-relative/resource-independent, personal/verific, and deontological/evaluative conceptions of justification. In some of these cases, writers regard both members of the contrasting pair as legitimate; in other cases only one member. In this paper I want to propose another contrasting pair of conceptions of justification, and hold that both are defensible and legitimate. The contrast will then be used to construct (...) a modified version of reliabilism, one which handles certain problem cases more naturally than my previous versions of reliabilism. (shrink)

Guided by the work of William Alston, Jonathan Adler and Michael Levin propose a solution to the generality problem for reliabilism. In some respects their proposal improves on those we have discussed. We argue that the problem remains unsolved.

Roderick Firth's writings on epistemology amount to an exceptionally careful and cogent defense of an account of perceptual knowledge in the tradition Firth called 'radical empiricism.' This important book collects all of Firth's major works on epistemology; it also contains his only publication in ethics, the extremely influential essay on 'Ethical Absolutism and the Ideal Observer.' In addition, the book includes a number of important previously unpublished essays. Together, these writings constitute the most finished and compelling version of traditional empiricist (...) epistemology. This book will be of value to students and scholars of epistemology, phenomenalism, and ethics. (shrink)

In “Why the generality problem is everybody’s problem,” Michael Bishop argues that every theory of justification needs a solution to the generality problem. He contends that a solution is needed in order for any theory to be used in giving an acceptable account of the justificatory status of beliefs in certain examples. In response, first I will describe the generality problem that is specific to process reliabilism and two other sorts of problems that are essentially the same. Then I will (...) argue that the examples that Bishop presents pose no such problem for some theories. I will illustrate the exempt theories by describing how an evidentialist view can account for the justification in the examples without having any similar problem. It will be clear that other views about justification are likewise unaffected by anything like the generality problem. (shrink)

Epistemology has recently witnessed a number of efforts to rehabilitate rationalism, to defend the existence and importance of a priori knowledge or warrant construed as the product of rational insight or apprehension (Bealer 1987; Bigelow 1992; BonJour 1992, 1998; Burge 1998; Butchvarov 1970; Katz 1998; Plantinga 1993). This effort has sometimes been coupled with an attack on naturalistic epistemology, especially in BonJour 1994 and Katz 1998. Such coupling is not surprising, because naturalistic epistemology is often associated with thoroughgoing empiricism and (...) the rejection of the a priori. In this paper, however, I shall present a conception of naturalistic epistemology that is entirely compatible with a priori justification or knowledge. The resulting conception, I claim, gives us a better appreciation of the respective merits of the rational and the empirical, as well as a better understanding of how moderate epistemological naturalism comports, at least in principle, with moderate rationalism. This paper defends moderate rationalism; but it does not defend everything rationalists have often wanted, only what it is reasonable to grant them. (shrink)