William Alston’s argument against epistemological deontologism rests upon two key premises: first, that we lack a suitable amount of voluntary control with respect to our beliefs, and, second, the principle that “ought” implies “can.” While several responses to Alston have concerned rejecting either of these two premises, I argue that even on the assumption that both premises are true, there is room to be made for deontologism in epistemology. I begin by offering a criticism of Richard Feldman’s invaluable (...) work on ‘role-oughts’, whereupon I development my own positive view in light of Feldman’s shortcomings. The upshot is that while we as epistemic agents are not responsible for the beliefs we form, we are nonetheless responsible for the various bodily or mental activities that typically bear a causal influence on belief formation. (shrink)

The epistemic poverty objection is commonly levelled by externalists against deontological conceptions of epistemic justification. This is that an “oughts” based account of epistemic justification together with “ought” implies “can” must lead us to hold to be justified, epistemic agents who are objectively not truth-conducive cognizers. The epistemic poverty objection has led to a common response from deontologists, namely to embrace accounts of bounded rationality—subjective, practical or regulative accounts rather than objective, absolute or theoretical accounts. (...) But the bounds deontological epistemologists and their opponents entertain rarely include cultural limitations. This paper considers neo-Vygotskian arguments that we must consider such cultural limits in defending deontologism, and thus that any deontologically motivated perspectivism must be in part a cultural perspectivism. The dangers of strong relativism are flagged and an attempt is made to steer a.. (shrink)

I here respond to four SERRC commentators on my paper ‘Perspectivism, Deontologism and Epistemic Poverty’: Shira Elqayam, Nikolaj Nottelmann, Rik Peels and Hamid Vahid. I maintain that all accounts of epistemic justification must be constrained by two limit positions which have to be avoided. One is Conceptual Limit Panglossianism (an excessively subjective, ‘emic’, ‘bounded’ and ‘grounded’, relativistic perspectivism, whereby anything the epistemic agent takes to be justified, is). The other is Conceptual Limit meliorism (an excessively objective, (...) ‘etic’, ‘unbounded’, ‘ungrounded’, absolutism, whereby the fundamental normative-epistemic notion of justification is wholly divorced from regulative, human, capacities). Within these bounds one may offer an account of rationality or epistemic justification that is closer to Meliorism or Panglossianism. Remarked upon are my respondents’ considerations on Alston, on suggestions for a separation between a more-subjective epistemic justification and a more-objective rationality, and objections to my position based on the assumption that we must embrace a very objective and truth-conducive concept of epistemic justification. (shrink)

Recent empirical work on non-philosophers’ intuitions about epistemic normativity reveals patterns that cannot be fully accounted for by direct epistemic consequentialism. On the basis of these results, one might picture participants as “epistemic deontologists.” We present the results of two new experiments that support a more nuanced picture. We examine intuitions about guesses and hypotheses, and about beliefs. Our results suggest a two-factor model of intuitions, wherein both consequentialist and non-consequentialist considerations affect participants’ judgments about epistemic (...) permissibility. (shrink)

Arguably, the original conception of epistemic justification comes from Descartes and Locke, who thought of justification deontologically. Moreover, their deontological conception was especially strict: there are no excuses for unjustified beliefs. Call this the “classical deontologist” conception of justification. As the original conception, we ought to accept it unless proven untenable. Nowadays, however, most have abandoned classical deontologism as precisely that—untenable. It stands accused of requiring doxastic voluntarism and normative transparency. My goal is to rescue classical deontologism (...) from these accusations. I show how, given a specific form of internalism coupled with a plausible theory of epistemic blame, we can be blameworthy for all of our (non-exempt) unjustified beliefs without transparency or voluntarism. The result is that the classical deontological conception of justification should regain its privileged status. (shrink)

This article presents Alvin Plantinga’s views on epistemic justification. The first part situates Plantinga’s epistemological views in the context of his epistemology of religion and debates of general epistemology. The second part discusses Plantinga’s argument that the internalism of 20th century epistemology stems from deontologism and that the views on the epistemic justification of analytic philosophers reflect the relationship between classical deontologism and classical internalism. The last part points to the objections with which the Plantinga’s conception (...) met and tries to balance the depth and weakness of its position. (shrink)

Cartesian skepticism has its roots in classical skepticism and is geared to undermine our confidence even in immediate perceptual statements as `I see things in front of me'. We investigate with some assumptions which have as consequence that Cartesian skepticism is avoided in some contexts. I assume that Gettier style difficulties are not engendered by immediate perceptual statements, and I invoke things in general to not make assumptions in the metaphysics of objects. As Gettier issues are side stepped for such (...) statements as mentioned we have that I know that I see things in front of me if, and only if it is true that I see things in front of me, I am justified in believing that I see things in front of me and I believe that I see things in front of me. We assume epistemological deontologism, so that I am justified in believing something iff I am permitted to believe it. We assume Kant’s Law so that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’. As a matter of fact it is impossible for me to not believe that I see things in front of me; it follows by Kant’s Law that it is not the case that it ought to be the case that I do not believe that I see things in front of me; so I am permitted to believe that I see things in front of me, thence by epistemic deontologism I am justified in believing that I see things in front of me. Even the skeptic may not reasonably deny that it is true that I see things in front of me, and the skeptic does also not deny that I believe that I see things in front of me. Given our assumption that Gettier style difficulties do not apply for immediate perceptual statements it follows that I know that I see things in front of me. Needless to say, but one may challenge some of the assumptions we made to reach an anti skeptical conclusion. One may also explore the viability of extending the approach we have put forth here, and it can be of interest to explore further consequences for epistemology in general. The deontological conception of epistemic justification, e.g. in the version according to which a person is justified in holding p just in the case she is in some sense, normatively permitted to believe that p, has come under attack. According to William Alston, the major defect of epistemic deontologism is that it presupposes doxastic voluntarism, i.e. the view that we have direct voluntary control over whether to believe something or not. But Alston thinks that we have no such direct voluntary control, or rather that we only quite rarely have such control. And given this alleged failure of the prevalence of voluntary control, Alston maintains that "it is futile to discuss whether I am permitted to believe that p at t or whether I would be irresponsible in choosing to believe that p at t.". (shrink)

Recent years have seen increasing attacks on the "deontological" conception (or as we call it, the guidance conception) of epistemic justification, the view that epistemology offers advice to knowers in forming beliefs responsibly. Critics challenge an important presupposition of the guidance conception: doxastic voluntarism, the view that we choose our beliefs. We assume that epistemic guidance is indispensable, and seek to answer objections to doxastic voluntarism, most prominently William Alston's. We contend that Alston falsely assumes that choice of (...) belief requires the assent to a specific propositional content. We argue that beliefs can be chosen under descriptions which do not specify their propositional content, but instead specify the mental actions by which they are formed and maintained. We argue that these actions partially constitute the beliefs and that is it in virtue of resulting from and being partially constituted by such actions that the beliefs are subject to epistemic appraisal,. (shrink)

A type of transcendental argument for libertarian free will maintains that if acting freely requires the availability of alternative possibilities, and determinism holds, then one is not justified in asserting that there is no free will. More precisely: if an agent A is to be justified in asserting a proposition P (e.g. "there is no free will"), then A must also be able to assert not-P. Thus, if A is unable to assert not-P, due to determinism, then A is not (...) justified in asserting P. While such arguments often appeal to principles with wide appeal, such as the principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘can’, they also require a commitment to principles that seem far less compelling, e.g. the principle that ‘ought’ implies ‘able not to’ or the principle that having an obligation entails being responsible. It is argued here that these further principles are dubious, and that it will be difficult to construct a valid transcendental argument without them. (shrink)

A term expresses a thick concept if it expresses a specific evaluative concept that is also substantially descriptive. It is a matter of debate how this rough account should be unpacked, but examples can help to convey the basic idea. Thick concepts are often illustrated with virtue concepts like courageous and generous, action concepts like murder and betray, epistemic concepts like dogmatic and wise, and aesthetic concepts like gaudy and brilliant. These concepts seem to be evaluative, unlike purely descriptive (...) concepts such as red and water. But they also seem different from general evaluative concepts. In particular, thick concepts are typically contrasted with thin concepts like good, wrong, permissible, and ought, which are general evaluative concepts that do not seem substantially descriptive. When Jane says that Max is good, she appears to be evaluating him without providing much description, if any. Thick concepts, on the other hand, are evaluative and substantially descriptive at the same time. For instance, when Max says that Jane is courageous, he seems to be doing two things: evaluating her positively and describing her as willing to face risk. Because of their descriptiveness, thick concepts are especially good candidates for evaluative concepts that pick out properties in the world. Thus they provide an avenue for thinking about ethical claims as being about the world in the same way as descriptive claims. -/- Thick concepts became a focal point in ethics during the second half of the twentieth century. At that time, discussions of thick concepts began to emerge in response to certain disagreements about thin concepts. For example, in twentieth-century ethics, consequentialists and deontologists hotly debated various accounts of good and right. It was also claimed by non-cognitivists and error-theorists that these thin concepts do not correspond to any properties in the world. Dissatisfaction with these viewpoints prompted many ethicists to consider the implications of thick concepts. The notion of a thick concept was thought to provide insight into meta-ethical questions such as whether there is a fact-value distinction, whether there are ethical truths, and, if there are such truths, whether these truths are objective. Some ethicists also theorized about the role that thick concepts can play in normative ethics, such as in virtue theory. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, the interest in thick concepts had spread to other philosophical disciplines such as epistemology, aesthetics, metaphysics, moral psychology, and the philosophy of law. -/- Nevertheless, the emerging interest in thick concepts has sparked debates over many questions: How exactly are thick concepts evaluative? How do they combine evaluation and description? How are thick concepts related to thin concepts? And do thick concepts have the sort of significance commonly attributed to them? This article surveys various attempts at answering these questions. (shrink)

We present data and argument to show that in Tetris - a real-time interactive video game - certain cognitive and perceptual problems are more quickly, easily, and reliably solved by performing actions in the world rather than by performing computational actions in the head alone. We have found that some translations and rotations are best understood as using the world to improve cognition. These actions are not used to implement a plan, or to implement a reaction; they are used to (...) change the world in order to simplify the problem-solving task. Thus, we distinguish pragmatic actions ñ actions performed to bring one physically closer to a goal - from epistemic actions - actions performed to uncover information that is hidden or hard to compute mentally. To illustrate the need for epistemic actions, we first develop a standard information-processing model of Tetris-cognition, and show that it cannot explain performance data from human players of the game - even when we relax the assumption of fully sequential processing. Standard models disregard many actions taken by players because they appear unmotivated or superfluous. However, we describe many such actions that are actually taken by players that are far from superfluous, and that play valuable roles in improving human performance. We argue that traditional accounts are limited because they regard action as having a single function: to change the world. By recognizing a second function of action - an epistemic function - we can explain many of the actions that a traditional model cannot. Although, our argument is supported by numerous examples specifically from Tetris, we outline how the one category of epistemic action can be incorporated into theories of action more generally. (shrink)

This paper examines how radical realism, a form of ideology critique grounded in epistemic rather than moral normativity, can illuminate the relationship between ideology and political power. The paper argues that radical realism can has both an evaluative and a diagnostic function. Drawing on reliabilist epistemology, the evaluative function shows how beliefs shaped by power differentials are often epistemically unwarranted, e.g. due to the influence of motivated reasoning and the suppression of critical scrutiny. The paper clarifies those mechanisms in (...) order to address some recent critiques of radical realism. The paper then builds on those clarifications to explore the how tracing the genealogy of legitimation stories can diagnose the distribution of power in society, even if ideology does not play a direct stabilising role. This diagnostic function creates a third position in the debate on ideology between culturalists and classical Marxists, and it can help reconciling aspects of structural and relational theories of power. (shrink)

We explore some possibilities for developing epistemic logic using truthmaker semantics. We identify three possible targets of analysis for the epistemic logician. We then list some candidate epistemic principles and review the arguments that render some controversial. We then present the classic Hintikkan approach to epistemic logic and note—as per the ‘problem of logical omniscience’—that it validates all of the aforementioned principles, controversial or otherwise. We then lay out a truthmaker framework in the style of Kit (...) Fine and present six different ways of extending this semantics with a conditional knowledge operator, drawing on notions of implication and content that are prominent in Fine’s work. We demonstrate that different logics are thereby generated, bearing on the aforementioned epistemic principles. Finally, we offer preliminary observations about the prospects for each logic. (shrink)

Epistemic analyses of stereotyping describe how they lead to misperceptions and misunderstandings of social actors and events. The analyses have tended so far to focus on how people acquire stereotypes and/or how the stereotypes lead to distorted perceptions of the evidence that is available about individuals. In this chapter, I focus instead on how the stereotypes can generate misleading evidence by influencing the policy preferences of people who harbour the biases. My case study is stereotypes that relate to people (...) living in poverty. I show how these stereotypes influence policy choices in ways that generate misleading evidence about people living in poverty. I argue that the stereotypes generate the misleading evidence by supporting policies that restrict the agency of the people in poverty. In generating this misleading evidence, the stereotypes place additional constraints on the epistemic agency of everyone, making it harder for anyone, including those who do and those who do not endorse the stereotypes, to gain true beliefs about people living in poverty. Going forward, I conclude, adequate epistemic analyses of stereotyping ought to be more expansive, acknowledging both the way that stereotypes generate misleading evidence by constraining the agency of those stereotyped, and how we can all thereby be epistemically constrained by the stereotypes harboured by others. (shrink)

In order to make sense of collective doxastic reasons we need an account of group belief. Once we arrive at a more nuanced understanding of group belief it turns out that for some group beliefs we need not invoke collective epistemic reasons. However, we do need them for better understanding how and why different social identity groups will hold beliefs whose evidence-base is irreducibly social and tied to them being that kind of group. This short article is a commentary (...) on Veli Mitova's 2022 article "The collective epistemic reasons of social-identity groups". (shrink)

One of metaepistemology’s most central debates revolves around the question of what the source of epistemic normativity is. Epistemic instrumentalism claims that epistemic normativity is a species of means-ends normativity. One of the most prominent objections against epistemic instrumentalism features cases of epistemic indifference: Cases where there’s evidence that p yet believing that p wouldn’t promote any of the agent’s aims, wants, or needs. Still, there’s an epistemic reason for the agent to believe that (...) p and thus epistemic instrumentalism is false. In response, instrumentalists have modified their views in various ways, with new contributions still forthcoming. Here, we investigate a neglected aspect of this debate: Laypeople’s judgments on cases of epistemic indifference. In two studies, we investigated whether laypeople agree with the verdict in cases of epistemic indifference as well as the key ideas behind the more recent instrumentalist replies. Our findings indicate that a significant amount of participants found it hard to “buy into” the cases of epistemic indifference as Kelly has constructed them. Participants did generally share Kelly’s judgment in cases of epistemic indifference. Lastly, some instrumentalist replies are well suited to explain participants’ judgments that agents ought to believe in cases of epistemic indifference. (shrink)

We argue that the interaction of biased media coverage and widespread employment of the recognition heuristic can produce epistemic injustices. First, we explain the recognition heuristic as studied by Gerd Gigerenzer and colleagues, highlighting how some of its components are largely external to, and outside the control of, the cognitive agent. We then connect the recognition heuristic with recent work on the hypotheses of embedded, extended, and scaffolded cognition, arguing that the recognition heuristic is best understood as an instance (...) of scaffolded cognition. In section three, we consider the double-edged sword of cognitive scaffolding. On the one hand, scaffolds can reduce the internal processing demands on cognitive agents while increasing their access to information. On the other hand, the use of scaffolding leaves cognitive agents increasingly vulnerable to forming false beliefs or failing to form beliefs at all about particular topics. With respect to the recognition heuristic, agents rely on third parties (such as the media) to report not just what’s true but also what’s important or valuable. This makes cognitive agents relying on these third parties vulnerable to two erroneous influences: 1) because they don’t recognize something, it isn’t important or valuable, and 2) because they do recognize something, it is important or valuable. Call the latter the Kardashian Inference and the former the Darfur Inference. In section four, we use Fricker’s (2007) concept of epistemic injustice to characterize the nature and harm of these false inferences, with special emphasis on the Darfur Inference. In section five, we use data-mining and an empirical study to show how Gigerenzer’s population estimation task is liable to produce Darfur Inferences. We conclude with some speculative remarks on more important Darfur Inferences, and how to avoid them by scaffolding better. One primary way to accomplish this it to shift the burden of embodying the virtue of epistemic justice from the hearer or consumer of media to the media themselves. (shrink)

While there is a steadily growing literature on epistemic injustice in healthcare, there are few discussions of the role that biomedical technologies play in harming patients in their capacity as knowers. Through an analysis of newborn and pediatric genetic and genomic sequencing technologies (GSTs), I argue that biomedical technologies can lead to epistemic injustice through two primary pathways: epistemic capture and value partitioning. I close by discussing the larger ethical and political context of critical analyses of GSTs (...) and their broader implications for just and equitable healthcare delivery. (shrink)

This paper explores the relationship between the questioning attitude of wondering and a class of attitudes I call 'epistemic desires'. Broadly, these are desires to improve one's epistemic position on some question. A common example is the attitude of wanting to know the answer to some question. I argue that one can have any kind of epistemic desire towards any question, Q, without necessarily wondering Q, but not conversely. That is, one cannot wonder Q without having at (...) least some epistemic desire directed towards Q. I defend this latter claim from apparent counterexamples due to Friedman (2013) and Drucker (2022), and finish with a proposal on which epistemic desires, particularly the desire for understanding, play an explanatory role in distinguishing wondering from other forms of question-directed thought. (shrink)

Defenders of deontological constraints in normative ethics face a challenge: how should an agent decide what to do when she is uncertain whether some course of action would violate a constraint? The most common response to this challenge has been to defend a threshold principle on which it is subjectively permissible to act iff the agent's credence that her action would be constraint-violating is below some threshold t. But the threshold approach seems arbitrary and unmotivated: what would possibly determine where (...) the threshold should be set, and why should there be any precise threshold at all? Threshold views also seem to violate ought agglomeration, since a pair of actions each of which is below the threshold for acceptable moral risk can, in combination, exceed that threshold. In this paper, I argue that stochastic dominance reasoning can vindicate and lend rigor to the threshold approach: given characteristically deontological assumptions about the moral value of acts, it turns out that morally safe options will stochastically dominate morally risky alternatives when and only when the likelihood that the risky option violates a moral constraint is greater than some precisely definable threshold (in the simplest case, .5). I also show how, in combination with the observation that deontological moral evaluation is relativized to particular choice situations, this approach can overcome the agglomeration problem. This allows the deontologist to give a precise and well-motivated response to the problem of uncertainty. (shrink)

Deference to experts is normal in many areas of inquiry, but suspicious in morality. This is puzzling if one thinks that morality is relevantly like those other areas of inquiry. We argue that this suspiciousness can be explained in terms of the suspiciousness of deferring to an epistemic peer. We then argue that this explanation is preferable to others in the literature, and explore some metaethical implications of this result.

Stewart Cohen argues that much contemporary epistemological theorizing is hampered by the fact that ‘epistemic justification’ is a term of art and one that is never given any serious explication in a non-tendentious, theory-neutral way. He suggests that epistemologists are therefore better off theorizing in terms of rationality, rather than in terms of ‘epistemic justification’. Against this, I argue that even if the term ‘epistemic justification’ is not broadly known, the concept it picks out is quite familiar, (...) and partly because it’s a term of art, justification talk is a better vehicle for philosophical theorizing. ‘Rational’ is too unclear for our philosophical purposes, and the fact that ‘epistemic justification’ gets fleshed out by appeal to substantive, controversial theses is no obstacle to its playing the needed role in epistemological theorizing. (shrink)

Is logic normative for belief? A standard approach to answering this question has been to investigate bridge principles relating claims of logical consequence to norms for belief. Although the question is naturally an epistemic one, bridge principles have typically been investigated in isolation from epistemic debates over the correct norms for belief. In this paper we tackle the question of whether logic is normative for belief by proposing a Kripkean model theory accounting for the interaction between logical, doxastic, (...) epistemic and deontic notions and using this model theory to show which bridge principles are implied by epistemic norms that we have independent reason to accept, for example, the knowledge norm and the truth norm. We propose a preliminary theory of the interaction between logical, doxastic, epistemic and deontic notions that has among its commitments bridge principles expressing how logic is normative for belief. We also show how our framework suggests that logic is exceptionally normative. (shrink)

In this discussion note, I put forth an argument from the factivity of knowledge for the conclusion that knowledge is epistemic certainty. If this argument is sound, then epistemologists who think that knowledge is factive are thereby also committed to the view that knowledge is epistemic certainty.

Sharon Street argues that realism about epistemic normativity is false. Realists believe there are truths about epistemic reasons that hold independently of the agent’s attitudes. Street argues by dilemma. Either the realist accepts a certain account of the nature of belief, or she does not. If she does, then she cannot consistently accept realism. If she does not, then she has no scientifically credible explanation of the fact that our epistemic behaviours or beliefs about epistemic reasons (...) align with independent normative truths. I argue that neither horn is very sharp for realists about epistemic normativity. (shrink)

This paper seeks to intervene in environmental ethics and social epistemology. Within a predominant strand of environmental ethics, one witnesses accounts based on nonhumans’ ability to suffer, and consequently, the passivity of nonhumans. On the other hand, social epistemology is often not social enough insofar as it does not include nonhumans. Seminal accounts of epistemic injustice often conceal or exclude the possibility that nonhumans can be subjects of knowledge and victims of epistemic injustice because of an anthropocentric bias (...) that maintains propositional language is a necessary condition for knowledge. By presenting a non-anthropocentric, corporeal epistemology, this paper reveals a more affirmative account of nonhumans as epistemic agents with tacit, embodied knowledge. To prevent epistemic depreciation turning into ethical indifference or wrongdoing, this paper focuses on whether it is possible to commit epistemic injustices against nonhumans. In particular, this paper argues that humans can commit fourth-order epistemic exclusion, testimonial injustice, and testimonial smothering against nonhumans. (shrink)

A particularly influential thesis about epistemic axiology is veritism: that true belief is the only basic, or fully non-derivative, epistemic value. One recent argument against veritism claims that the naturalness or joint-carvingness of beliefs is also a basic epistemic value. The basic epistemic value of naturalness is held to explain intuitions that true, natural beliefs have greater epistemic value than similar but unnatural beliefs. I argue that epistemic significance, rather than naturalness, can best explain (...) any variations in the value of natural versus unnatural beliefs. Against claims that significance itself undermines veritism, I defend an account of significance that explains why the epistemic value of significance derives entirely from the value of truth. The account also shows how significance can be grounded in multiple features, while still deriving all its value from that of truth. As a result, the epistemic value of natural beliefs offers little reason to abandon veritism, in the absence of stronger arguments favoring the basic epistemic value of naturalness. (shrink)

In forming groups—corporations, teams, academic departments, juries—humans gain new ways of acting in the world. Jennifer Lackey argues that groups need to be held responsible for their actions, and therefore need to be subject to epistemic evaluation. To criticize receptive or reckless behavior on the part of a corporation, for example, we need some account of what it is for a group to believe something, and for a group belief to be justified. In Lackey’s account, group epistemic states (...) are a function of the states of individual operative members. After raising some difficulties for her formulation of this function, this article raises questions about Lackey’s operative-member account can apply to new types of group agent, with a particular focus on the epistemic status of algorithmic systems that harvest human data. (shrink)

This essay aims to vindicate the thesis that cognitive computational properties are abstract objects implemented in physical systems. I avail of Voevodsky's Univalence Axiom and function type equivalence in Homotopy Type Theory, in order to specify an abstraction principle for epistemic (hyper-)intensions. The homotopic abstraction principle for epistemic (hyper-)intensions provides an epistemic conduit for our knowledge of (hyper-)intensions as abstract objects. Higher observational type theory might be one way to make first-order abstraction principles defined via inference rules, (...) although not higher-order abstraction principles, computable. The truth of my first-order abstraction principle for hyperintensions is grounded in its being possibly recursively enumerable i.e. Turing computable and the Turing machine being physically implementable. Epistemic modality and hyperintensionality can thus be shown to be both a compelling and a materially adequate candidate for the fundamental structure of mental representational states, comprising a fragment of the language of thought. (shrink)

Among those who think that emotions can provide epistemic reasons for belief, there is disagreement about whether emotions provide foundational reasons (ones that are not based on further reasons) or non-foundational reasons (ones that are based on further reasons). I argue in this paper that considerations about evidence of emotional unreliability favour the non-foundational view of emotional reasons. The argument starts with a set of counterexamples to the claim that evidence of emotional unreliability always defeats emotional justification. I then (...) show why only the non-foundational picture of emotional reasons is compatible with this finding. The upshot is 2-fold: first, the commonly held assumption that evidence of emotional unreliability always defeats emotional justification is false; and, second, this gives us a reason for preferring a non-foundational picture of emotional reasons. (shrink)

Political polarization is one of the most discussed challenges facing contemporary democracies and is often associated with a broader epistemic crisis. While inspiring a large literature in political science, polarization’s epistemic problems also have significance for normative democratic theory, and this study develops a new approach aimed at understanding them. In contrast to prominent accounts from political psychology—group polarization theory and cultural cognition theory—which argue that polarization leads individuals to form unreliable political beliefs, this study focuses on system-level (...) diversity. It argues that polarization’s epistemic harms are best located in its tendency to reduce the diversity of perspectives utilized in a democratic system and in how this weakens the system’s ability to identify and address problems of public concern. Understanding such harms is also argued to require a greater consideration of the political dynamics of polarization and issues of elite discourse, alongside political psychology. (shrink)

This paper seeks to intervene in environmental ethics and social epistemology. Within a predominant strand of environmental ethics, one witnesses accounts based on nonhumans’ ability to suffer, and consequently, the passivity of nonhumans. On the other hand, social epistemology is often not social enough insofar as it does not include nonhumans. Seminal accounts of epistemic injustice often conceal or exclude the possibility that nonhumans can be subjects of knowledge and victims of epistemic injustice because of an anthropocentric bias (...) that maintains propositional language is a necessary condition for knowledge. By presenting a non-anthropocentric, corporeal epistemology, this paper reveals a more affirmative account of nonhumans as epistemic agents with tacit, embodied knowledge. To prevent epistemic depreciation turning into ethical indifference or wrongdoing, this paper focuses on whether it is possible to commit epistemic injustices against nonhumans. In particular, this paper argues that humans can commit fourth-order epistemic exclusion, testimonial injustice, and testimonial smothering against nonhumans. (shrink)

Many actions have instrumental aims, in which we move our bodies to achieve a physical outcome in the environment. However, we also perform actions with epistemic aims, in which we move our bodies to acquire information and learn about the world. A large literature on action recognition investigates how observers represent and understand the former class of actions; but what about the latter class? Can one person tell, just by observing another person’s movements, what they are trying to learn? (...) Here, 5 experiments explore epistemic action understanding. We filmed volunteers playing a ‘physics game’ consisting of two rounds: Players shook an opaque box and attempted to determine (i) the number of objects hidden inside, or (ii) the shape of the objects inside. Then, independent subjects watched these videos and were asked to determine which videos came from which round: Who was shaking for number and who was shaking for shape? Across several variations, observers successfully determined what an actor was trying to learn, based only on their actions (i.e., how they shook the box)—even when the box’s contents were identical across rounds. These results demonstrate that humans can infer epistemic intent from physical behaviors, adding a new dimension to research on action understanding. (shrink)

Philosophers and psychologists sometimes categorize emotions like surprise and curiosity as specifically epistemic. Is there some reasonably unified and interesting class of emotions here? If so, what unifies it? This paper proposes and defends an evaluative account of epistemic emotions: What it is to be an epistemic emotion is to have fittingness conditions that distinctively involve some epistemic evaluation. We argue that this view has significant advantages over alternative proposals and is a promising way to identify (...) a limited and interesting class of emotions. (shrink)

Chalmers and Hájek argue that on an epistemic reading of Ramsey’s test for the rational acceptability of conditionals, it is faulty. They claim that applying the test to each of a certain pair of conditionals requires one to think that one is omniscient or infallible, unless one forms irrational Moore-paradoxical beliefs. I show that this claim is false. The epistemic Ramsey test is indeed faulty. Applying it requires that one think of anyone as all-believing and if one is (...) rational, to think of anyone as infallible-if-rational. But this is not because of Moore-paradoxical beliefs. Rather it is because applying the test requires a certain supposition about conscious belief. It is important to understand the nature of this supposition. (shrink)

This article is an exercise in the virtue epistemology of the internet, an area of applied virtue epistemology that investigates how online environments impact the development of intellectual virtues, and how intellectual virtues manifest within online environments. I examine online echo chambers and epistemic bubbles (Nguyen 2020, Episteme 17(2), 141–61), exploring the conceptual relationship between these online environments and the virtue of open-mindedness (Battaly 2018b, Episteme 15(3), 261–82). The article answers two key individual-level, virtue epistemic questions: (Q1) How (...) does immersion in online echo chambers and epistemic bubbles affect the cultivation and preservation of open-mindedness, and (Q2) Is it always intellectually virtuous to exhibit open-mindedness in the context of online echo chambers and epistemic bubbles? In response to Q1, I contend that both online echo chambers and online epistemic bubbles threaten to undermine the cultivation and preservation of open-mindedness, albeit via different mechanisms and to different degrees. In response to Q2, I affirm that both a deficiency and an excess of open-mindedness can be virtuous in these online environments, depending on the epistemic orientation of the digital user. (shrink)

In this article, we advocate the use of “epistemic” ontologies, i.e., systems of categories representing our knowledge of the world, rather than the world directly. We first expose a metaphysical framework based on a dual mental and physical realism, which underpins the development of these epistemic ontologies. To this end, we refer to the theories of intentionality and representation established within the school of Franz Brentano at the turn of the 20th century and choose to rehabilitate the notion (...) of a ‘representation object’, as theorized by Kasimir Twardowski. We therefore propose that the categories of epistemic ontologies correspond to ‘general representation objects’. Secondly, we apply these proposals to the treatment of technical artefacts, material qualities of objects and events (notably as a continuation of our previous work on events). This leads us to sketch out a foundational epistemic ontology. (shrink)

The idea that appearances provide justifications for beliefs—the principle of phenomenal conservatism—is self-evidently true. In the case of cognitive penetration, however, it seems that certain irrational etiologies of a belief may influence the epistemic quality of that belief. Susanna Siegel argues that these etiologies lead to ‘epistemic downgrade.’ Instead of providing us with a decisive objection, cognitive penetration calls for us to clarify our epistemic framework by understanding the formative parts of appearances. In doing so, the two (...) different but inseparable ideas of sensation and intellection provide us with a basis of our appearances. These appearances, in turn, provide us with the objective evidence needed to test our judgements. Thus, the extra-sensory concepts of intellectual identification and the appearances they help form become an epistemic groundwork. (shrink)

The present study investigated whether humans are more likely to trust people who are coordinated with them. We examined a well-known type of linguistic coordination, lexical entrainment, typically involving the elaboration of “conceptual pacts,” or partner-specific agreements on how to conceptualize objects. In two experiments, we manipulated lexical entrainment in a referential communication task and measured the effect of this manipulation on epistemic and practical trust. Our results showed that participants were more likely to trust a coordinated partner than (...) an uncoordinated one, but only when the latter broke previously established conceptual pacts. (shrink)

Most interpretations of Aristotle’s Posterior Analytics believe that the term ‘ameson’ is used to describe the principles or foundations of a given system of justification or explanation as epistemically prior to or more fundamental than the other propositions in the system. Epistemic readings (as I shall call them) arguably constitute a majority in the secondary literature. This predominant view has been challenged by Robin Smith (1986) and Michael Ferejohn (1994; 2013), who propose interpretations that should be classified as non- (...) class='Hi'>epistemic according to the definition above. My aim in this article is purely negative. I intend to show that these non-epistemic interpretations are liable to serious objections and are in conflict with some important features of Aristotle’s theory of demonstration. (shrink)

Mindfulness exercises are presented as being compatible with almost any spiritual, religious or philosophical beliefs. In this paper, we argue that they in fact involve imagining and conceptualising rather striking and controversial claims about the self, and the self’s relationship to thoughts and feelings. For this reason, practising mindfulness exercises is likely to be in tension with many people’s core beliefs and values, a tension that should be treated as a downside of therapeutic interventions involving mindfulness exercises, not unlike a (...) side effect. Clients ought to be informed of these metaphysical aspects of the exercises, and mental health providers ought to take them into account in assessing which course of treatment to recommend. Given these concerns, the casual way in which mindfulness exercises are presently distributed by mental health providers to the general public is inappropriate. (shrink)

In this short paper, I critically examine Veli Mitova’s proposal that social-identity groups can have collective epistemic reasons. My primary focus is the role of privileged access in her account of how collective reasons become epistemic reasons for social-identity groups. I argue that there is a potentially worrying structural asymmetry in her account of two different types of cases. More specifically, the mechanisms at play in cases of “doxastic reasons” seem fundamentally different from those at play in cases (...) of “epistemic-conduct reasons”. The upshot is a need for further explanation of what unifies these dimensions of the account. (shrink)

Recognition is one of the most ambivalent concepts in political and social thought. While it is a condition for individual freedom, the subject’s demand for recognition can be exploited as an instrument for reproducing domination. Axel Honneth addresses this issue and offers the concept of ideological recognition: Recognition is ideological when the addressees accept it from their subjective point of view but is unjustified from an objective point of view. Using the examples of the recognition of femininity, I argue that (...) Honneth’s account fails not only to offer the objective normative standard that delineates between morally justified and unjustified recognition, but also to descriptively explain why the addressees of ideological recognition accept their identities as having positive qualities. To overcome these problems, I provide an alternative, epistemic structural account. First, my account offers the concept of epistemic trust and identifies the objective injustice that Honneth’s account cannot capture. Second, my account offers the concept of structural power and discusses the problem of internalization of problematic identities. Furthermore, I argue that epistemic structural account has theoretical and practical benefits for analyzing domination and advancing the task of critique by explaining the ideological recognition in the case of racial identity, for example. (shrink)

One common attitude toward abstract objects is a kind of platonism: a view on which those objects are mind-independent and causally inert. But there's an epistemological problem here: given any naturalistically respectable understanding of how our minds work, we can't be in any sort of contact with mind-independent, causally inert objects. So platonists, in order to avoid skepticism, tend to endorse epistemological theories on which knowledge is easy, in the sense that it requires no such contact—appeals to Boghossian’s notion of (...) epistemic analyticity are particularly common here, as are appeals to some broadly pragmatic account of the good standing of basic beliefs. I argue, though, that these appeals are hopeless: an argument adapted from the Benacerraf–Field challenge shows that, even if some such theory can deliver the verdict that our beliefs about abstract objects have some prima facie good standing, this good standing will inevitably be defeated. (shrink)

In moral and political philosophy, topics like the distributive inequities conferred via special partial relationships – family relationships, for example – have been frequently debated. However, the epistemic dimensions of such partiality are seldom discussed in the ethical context, and the topic of partial relationships rarely feature in the realm of social epistemology. My view is that the role of partial relationships is worth exploring to enrich our understanding of epistemic injustice and its transmission. I claim that (...) class='Hi'>epistemic features typical of partial relationships make phenomena like epistemic injustice easier to mask, more difficult to identify, and harder to correct. (shrink)

I argue that my non-dual epistemic-phenomenalist view is the one that best harmonises my interpretation of the Fourth Paralogism with the widely shared reading of the Refutation of Idealism that I sketched and defended above. The bottom line of my view is a clear distinction between the metaphysical and epistemological sides of Kantian idealism. Again, according to my non-dual-epistemic-phenomenalism, the mundus sensibilis and mundus intelligibilis are epistemologically distinct ways of considering the metaphysically identical outside world. Appearances are nothing (...) but the way the things in themselves appear or exist inside our sensible minds as mere representations. In this sense, I reject both the two-world view, the two-aspect view, and Allais’s deflationary anti- phenomenalist reading. (shrink)

This book defends a two-tiered account of epistemic representation--the sort of representation relation that holds between representations such as maps and scientific models and their targets. It defends a interpretational account of epistemic representation and a structural similarity account of overall faithful epistemic representation.

We discuss the role of practical costs in the epistemic justification of a novice choosing expert advice, taking as a case study the choice of an expert statistician by a lay politician. First, we refine Goldman’s criteria for the assessment of this choice, showing how the costs of not being impartial impinge on the epistemic justification of the different actors involved in the choice. Then, drawing on two case studies, we discuss in which institutional setting the costs of (...) partiality can play an epistemic role. This way we intend to show how the sociological explanation of the choice of experts can incorporate its epistemic justification. (shrink)

We propose a semantic analysis of the particles afinal (European Portuguese) and alla fine (Italian) in terms of the notion of truth unpersistence, which combines both epistemic modality and constraints on discourse structure. We argue that the felicitous use of these modal particles requires that the truth of a proposition p* fail to persist through a temporal succession of epistemic states, where p* is incompatible with the proposition modified by afinal/alla fine, and that the interlocutors share knowledge of (...) a previous epistemic attitude toward p*. We analyze two main cases, that of plan-related propositions and that of propositions without plans. We also discuss the connections between truth unpersistence and evidentiality. (shrink)

This paper aims to present a novel reading of Kantian idealism. In want of a better name, I call my interpretation “one-object-plus-epistemic phenomenalism.” I partially endorse Allison’s celebrated position, namely his rejection of metaphysical world-dualism. Yet, I reject Allison’s deflationary two-aspect view. I argue that Kantian idealism is also metaphysically committed to an ontological noumenalism (one-object), namely the claim that the ultimate nature of reality is made up of unknown things in themselves (substantia noumena). Natural sciences can only reveal (...) the relational/structural properties of things as they appear rather than the intrinsic properties of substantia noumena in the negative sense. My anti-deflationary reading is similar to Allais’s, and my agnostic monism to Hanna’s. However, against both, I hold that appearances are not the accusative objects of our sensible representations but rather, as Kant repeatedly states: “mere representations.” The accusative objects of our senses are substantia noumena in the negative sense. Moreover, my view is also similar to Langton’s. Again, against Langton, I hold that appearances are not merely relational properties of substantia noumena but the way that such substantia noumena exist inside our mind as “mere representations.” In this regard, I also partially endorse Guyer’s and Van Cleve’s phenomenalist reading because these substantia noumena in the negative sense can only be cognized mind-dependently, namely as appearances. However, against Guyer and Van Cleve, I hold that the phenomenalist side of Kantian idealism is purely epistemological rather than ontological: what Kant calls the necessary unity of representations according to categories is not a logical construction of objects out of representations, that is, an ontological reduction of noumena to appearances, but rather the way we sense-independently cognize mind-independent noumena. (shrink)