Results for 'Irrational'

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Bibliography: Irrationality in Epistemology
  1. (1 other version)Irrational methods suggest indecomposability and emergence.Hamed Tabatabaei Ghomi - 2023 - European Journal for Philosophy of Science 13 (1):1-21.
    This paper offers a practical argument for metaphysical emergence. The main message is that the growing reliance on so-called irrational scientific methods provides evidence that objects of science are indecomposable and as such, are better described by metaphysical emergence as opposed to the prevalent reductionistic metaphysics. I show that a potential counterargument that science will eventually reduce everything to physics has little weight given where science is heading with its current methodological trend. I substantiate my arguments by detailed examples (...)
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  2. Irrational Intentionality.Benjamin L. S. Nelson - manuscript
    There at least three ways of thinking about rationality: instrumental, substantive, and intentional. By far, the instrumental account is most influential. This essay proposes that intentional rationality can provide substantive accounts with room to breathe, and in a way that is facially distinct from instrumental accounts. I suggest that the intentionality of a judgment is made up of what it is about and the orientation through which it is judged, while irrationality is the subversion of a strict supporting connection between (...)
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  3. Irrational desires.Donald C. Hubin - 1991 - Philosophical Studies 62 (1):23 - 44.
    Many believe that the rational evaluation of actions depends on the rational evaluation of even basic desires. Hume, though, viewed desires as "original existences" which cannot be contrary to either truth or reason. Contemporary critics of Hume, including Norman, Brandt and Parfit, have sought a basis for the rational evaluation of desires that would deny some basic desires reason-giving force. I side with Hume against these modern critics. Hume's concept of rational evaluation is admittedly too narrow; even basic desires are, (...)
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  4. Reasoning with the Irrational.Rachel Singpurwalla - 2006 - Ancient Philosophy 26 (2):243-258.
    It is widely held by commentators that in the Protagoras, Socrates attempts to explain the experience of mental conflict and weakness of the will without positing the existence of irrational desires, or desires that arise independently of, and so can conflict with, our reasoned conception of the good. In this essay, I challenge this commonly held line of thought. I argue that Socrates has a unique conception of an irrational desire, one which allows him to explain the experience (...)
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  5. The Irrational Project: Toward a Different Understanding of Self-Deception.Amber Leigh Griffioen - 2010 - Iowa Research Online.
    This dissertation focuses on questions regarding the metaphysical and psychological possibility of self-deception and attempts to show that self-deception is a phenomenon best characterized as both motivated and intentional, such that self-deceivers can be held responsible for their deceptions in a stronger sense than that of being merely epistemically negligent. -/- In Chapter One, I introduce the paradoxes of self-deception, which arise when one attempts to draw a close analogy between self- and other-deception, and I discuss the various ways in (...)
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  6. Epistemic Akrasia: Irrational or Worse.Eyal Tal - manuscript
    Epistemically akratic agents believe both p and that believing p is irrational for them. Some of the costs of thinking that epistemic akrasia can be rational are clear. It is hypocritical, and outright weird, to have beliefs that we consider irrational, let alone to reason with or act on those beliefs. However, as Maria Lasonen-Aarnio (2020) and Brian Weatherson (2019) have argued, the weirdness of akrasia does not obviously tell against its rationality. Here I argue that views permitting (...)
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  7. Are there irrational perceptual experiences?Kristjan Laasik - 2022 - Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences:1-17.
    I argue that there are no irrational visual experiences, if we mean just the experiences that one is having now, but there are irrational visual experiences, if we mean also the experiences that one has had in the past. In other words, I will be arguing that perceptual irrationality is a retrospective phenomenon. So as to further support the first conjunct of my thesis, and to contextualize it among contemporary discussions, I also critique Susanna Siegel’s proposal that one (...)
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  8. Is risk aversion irrational? Examining the “fallacy” of large numbers.H. Orri Stefánsson - 2020 - Synthese 197 (10):4425-4437.
    A moderately risk averse person may turn down a 50/50 gamble that either results in her winning $200 or losing $100. Such behaviour seems rational if, for instance, the pain of losing $100 is felt more strongly than the joy of winning $200. The aim of this paper is to examine an influential argument that some have interpreted as showing that such moderate risk aversion is irrational. After presenting an axiomatic argument that I take to be the strongest case (...)
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  9. A Minimalist Threshold for Epistemically Irrational Beliefs.Marianna Bergamaschi Ganapini - forthcoming - In Eric Schwitzgebel & Jonathan Jong (eds.), What is Belief? Oxford University Press.
    This paper aims to shed light on the nature of belief and provide support to the view that I call ‘Minimalism’. It shows that Minimalism is better equipped than the traditional approach to separating belief from imagination and addressing cases of belief’s evidence- resistance. The key claim of the paper is that no matter how epistemically irrational humans’ beliefs are, they always retain a minimal level of rationality.
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  10. Must Depression be Irrational?Dan Cavedon-Taylor - 2024 - Synthese 204 (79):1-26.
    The received view about depression in the philosophical literature is that it is defined, in part, by epistemic irrationality. This status is undeserved. The received view does not fully reflect current clinical thinking and is motivated by an overly simplistic, if not false, account of depression’s phenomenal character. Equally attractive, if not more so, is a view that says depression can be instantiated either rationally or irrationally. This rival view faces challenges of its own: it appears to entail that there (...)
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  11. Uncertainty, ‘irrational exuberance’ and the psychology of bubbles: an argument over the legitimacy of financial regulation for bounded rational agents.Ramiro Ávila Peres - 2019
    One of the explanations for the Great Crisis of 2007-2008 was that financial authorities should have issued stricter regulations to prevent the housing bubble. However, according to Alan Greenspan, President of the Federal Reserve System (FED) from 1987 to 2006, this is to judge with hindsight. No one can guess when a “bubble” begins, nor when it ends; they happen because of the “irrational exuberance” in investors’ behavior, which causes boom and bust cycles. Regulators are not in a better (...)
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  12. Is OCD Epistemically Irrational?Pablo Hubacher Haerle - 2023 - Philosophy, Psychiatry, and Psychology 30 (2):133-146.
    It’s a common assumption in psychiatry and psychotherapy that mental health conditions are marked out by some form of epistemic irrationality. With respect to obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), the mainstream view is that OCD causes irrational beliefs. Recently, however, this ‘doxastic view’ has been criticized from a theoretical and empirical perspective. Instead a more promising ‘zetetic view’ has been proposed which locates the epistemic irrationality of OCD not in irrational beliefs, but in the senseless inquiries it prompts. Yet, in (...)
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  13. A Representation Theorem for Frequently Irrational Agents.Edward Elliott - 2017 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 46 (5):467-506.
    The standard representation theorem for expected utility theory tells us that if a subject’s preferences conform to certain axioms, then she can be represented as maximising her expected utility given a particular set of credences and utilities—and, moreover, that having those credences and utilities is the only way that she could be maximising her expected utility. However, the kinds of agents these theorems seem apt to tell us anything about are highly idealised, being always probabilistically coherent with infinitely precise degrees (...)
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  14.  94
    (1 other version)The Irrational Game: why there’s no perfect system.Robert Northcott - 2006 - In Eric Bronson (ed.), Poker and Philosophy: Pocket Rockets and Philosopher Kings. Open Court Press. pp. 105-115.
    This is a chapter written for a popular audience, in which I use poker as a convenient illustration of probability, determinism and counterfactuals. More originally, I also discuss the roles of rationality versus psychological hunches, and explain why even in principle game theory cannot provide us the panacea of a perfect winning srategy. (N.B. The document I have uploaded here is slightly longer than the abbreviated version that appears in the book, and also differs in a few other minor details.) (...)
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  15. It Can Be Irrational to Knowingly Choose the Best.J. Dmitri Gallow - forthcoming - Australasian Journal of Philosophy.
    Jack Spencer argues we should reject a decision rule called MaxRat because it's incompatible with this principle: If you know that you will choose an option, x, and you know that x is better than every other option available to you, then it is permissible for you to choose x. I agree with Spencer that defenders of MaxRat should reject this principle. However, I disagree insofar as he suggests that he and orthodox causalists are in a position to accept it. (...)
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  16. Is Epistocracy Irrational?Adam F. Gibbons - 2022 - Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 21 (2).
    Proponents of epistocracy worry that high levels of voter ignorance can harm democracies. To combat such ignorance, they recommend allocating comparatively more political power to more politically knowledgeable citizens. In response, some recent critics of epistocracy contend that epistocratic institutions risk causing even more harm, since much evidence from political psychology indicates that more politically knowledgeable citizens are typically more biased, less open-minded, and more prone to motivated reasoning about political matters than their less knowledgeable counterparts. If so, perhaps epistocratic (...)
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  17. Is Pacifism Irrational?Kevin C. Klement - 1999 - Peace Review 11 (1):65-70.
    In this paper, I counter arguments to the effect that pacifism must be irrational which cite hypothetical situations in which violence is necessary to prevent a far greater evil. I argue that for persons similar to myself, for whom such scenarios are extremely unlikely, promoting in oneself the disposition to avoid violence in any circumstances is more likely to lead to better results than not cultivating such a disposition just for the sake of such unlikely eventualities.
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  18. Wittgenstein on Pseudo-Irrationals, Diagonal Numbers and Decidability.Timm Lampert - 2008 - In Lampert Timm (ed.), The Logica Yearbook 2008. pp. 95-111.
    In his early philosophy as well as in his middle period, Wittgenstein holds a purely syntactic view of logic and mathematics. However, his syntactic foundation of logic and mathematics is opposed to the axiomatic approach of modern mathematical logic. The object of Wittgenstein’s approach is not the representation of mathematical properties within a logical axiomatic system, but their representation by a symbolism that identifies the properties in question by its syntactic features. It rests on his distinction of descriptions and operations; (...)
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  19. Warum intellektuelle Toleranz nicht irrational ist.Dominik Balg - 2020 - Kriterion - Journal of Philosophy 34 (3):51-78.
    When it comes to disagreements about religious, moral or political questions, many people consider a tolerant ‘live-and-let-live’ attitude to be the best reaction toward conflicting opinions. However, many epistemologists are rather skeptical about the epistemic acceptability of such a tolerant attitude. More specifically, the worry is that a tolerant reaction toward recognized disagreement is necessarily epistemically irrational. After setting out this worry in a little more detail, I will present and discuss three different arguments for the epistemic irrationality of (...)
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  20. Climate Change and the Irrational Society.Larry Alan Busk & Iaan Reynolds - 2023 - Theory and Event 26 (3):559-575.
    This essay considers the catastrophe of anthropogenic climate change in relation to two possible critical-theoretic dispositions. The first, represented by an emblematic passage from Adorno, retains the hope for the realization of a “rational society.” The second, represented by a complementary passage from Foucault, enjoins critical theory to abandon any ambition toward criticizing or transforming society at a totalizing level. We argue that the unfolding climate catastrophe demands a conception of critical theory more in line with the first disposition, and (...)
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  21. Delusions and Other Irrational Beliefs. [REVIEW]Emily Barrett & Cory Wright - 2015 - Philosophical Quarterly 65 (260):600–603.
    Lisa Bortolotti (2010), Delusions and Other Irrational Beliefs. Oxford University Press. (Pp. xvii 299. Price L41.99).
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  22. Can It Be Irrational to Knowingly Choose the Best?Jack Spencer - 2023 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 101 (1):128-139.
    Seeking a decision theory that can handle both the Newcomb problems that challenge evidential decision theory and the unstable problems that challenge causal decision theory, some philosophers recently have turned to ‘graded ratifiability’. However, the graded ratifiability approach to decision theory is, despite its virtues, unsatisfactory; for it conflicts with the platitude that it is always rationally permissible for an agent to knowingly choose their best option.
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  23.  89
    The Horror Versus L’Indagatore dell’Incubo. The Dionysian, Irrational, and Absurd in Dylan Dog’s Narrative.Marco Favaro - 2023 - In Subashish Bhattacharjee & Fernando Gabriel Pagnoni Berns (eds.), Horror and Philosophy. Essays on Their Intersection in Film, Television and Literature. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company. pp. 237-249.
    Dylan Dog, l’Indagatore dell’Incubo (the nightmare investigator), lives and works at 7 Craven Road in London. The comic book character is English, but he was created in Italy by Tiziano Sclavi in 1986, and it is still published today monthly. Dylan had enormous success, not only in Italy but worldwide. His job is to investigate, together with his assistant, Groucho, the paranormal, the irrational, the nightmare that can assume different forms and aspects. Dylan fights against all types of monsters: (...)
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  24.  43
    The Hypothetical Imperative as an Indicator of Irrational Will: The Case of the 2018 Toronto Van Attack.Kevin Michael Stevenson - 2023 - International Journal of Theology, Philosophy and Science 7 (13):13-23.
    The categorical imperative inherent in Kant’s ethics has had indubitable historical influence on societies worldwide whether in the form of laws, democracy or public deliberation. The Toronto Van Attack of 2018 and its subsequent legal trial is a case example that shows how the categorical imperative can be applied to assist in understanding the reasoning for the case’s guilty verdict. This paper will convey the applicability of the categorical imperative for examining criminal case studies by closing the gap between ethical (...)
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  25. Steven Pinker defends a damagingly irrational conception of reason: Steven, Pinker. 2021. Rationality: What it is, why it seems scarce, why it matters. London: Allen Lane, 2021, xvii + 412pp, £25 HB, ISBN: 978-0-241-38027-7.Nicholas Maxwell - 2022 - Metascience 31 (1):49-52.
    In the Preface to Rationality, Steven Pinker remarks that “we are smart enough to have … articulated the rules of reason that we so often flout” (p. xiv). Unfortunately, Pinker does not get the rules of reason right in this book. Pinker defends a damagingly irrational conception of reason. But despite this rather drastic failure, there is much of interest in this book, even if at a rather elementary level.
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  26. Paradoxes of Conviction: Are nurtured beliefs irrational?Martijn Boot - 2015 - Political Philosophy 18:14-37.
    Many religious, ideological and other beliefs are induced by upbringing. In ‘Paradoxes of Conviction’ G.A. Cohen asks why we persist in a belief, when we know we have this belief rather than a rival one, because we were brought up to believe it. Cohen adduces a syllogistic argument (named ‘the Argument’) that seems to demonstrate the irrationality of holding on to such a nurtured belief. If the Argument is right, it has far-reaching consequences because many nurtured religious and other beliefs (...)
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  27. Commentary on: Marcin Lewiński’s “‘You’re moving from irrelevant to irrational’—Critical Reactions in Internet Discussion Forums”.Gilbert Plumer - 2009 - In Juho Ritola (ed.), Argument Cultures. Proceedings of the 8th OSSA Conference [CD-ROM]. Ontario Society for the Study of Argumentation. pp. 1-3.
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  28. Human survival: evolution, religion and the irrational.Milton H. Saier & Jack T. Trevors - 2010 - Dialogues in Philosophy, Mental and Neuro Sciences 3 (1):17-20.
    Is there a possible biological explanation for religion? That is, is there a genetic basis for believing in mystical, supernatural beings when there is no scientifi c evidence for their existence? Can we explain why some people prefer to accept myth over science? Why do so many people still accept creation and refuse to embrace evolution? Is there an evolutionary basis for religious beliefs? It is certainly true that religions have been part of human civilization throughout most of its recent (...)
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  29. A tragic coalition of the rational and irrational: a threat to collective responses to COVID-19.Marinus Ferreira, Marc Cheong, Colin Klein & Mark Alfano - 2022 - Philosophical Psychology (6).
    There is not as much resistance to COVID-19 mitigation as there seems, but there are structural features that make resistance seem worse than it is. Here we describe two ways that the problem seeming to be worse than it is can make it worse. First, visible hesitation to implement COVID-19 responses signals to the wider society that mitigation measures may not succeed, which undermines people’s conditional willingness to join in on those efforts. Second, our evaluations of others’ willingness to implement (...)
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  30.  80
    Logic, Knowledge, and Identity: An analysis evaluating the effects that the irrational logical basis for colonial epistemological knowledge, along with the discourses it espouses, have had upon the existential reality faced by Africans.Nyakallo M. Makgoba - manuscript
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  31. What Not to Make of Recalcitrant Emotions.Raamy Majeed - 2020 - Erkenntnis 87 (2):747-765.
    Recalcitrant emotions are emotions that conflict with your evaluative judgements, e.g. fearing flying despite judging it to be safe. Drawing on the work of Greenspan and Helm, Brady argues these emotions raise a challenge for a theory of emotion: for any such theory to be adequate, it must be capable of explaining the sense in which subjects that have them are being irrational. This paper aims to raise scepticism with this endeavour of using the irrationality shrouding recalcitrant episodes to (...)
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  32. Mindspongeconomics.Quy Khuc - manuscript
    Economics has evolved over time, and it helps to explain and shape the actors’ economic activities. Although economics is useful to humans’ lives, it is either failed or insufficient to justify many real-world cases, ranging from humans’ rapid and/or unpredictable progress in the information age to decision making-selecting mechanisms, optimization, gross domestic product (GDP) matter, and so on, raising concerns about contemporary economics’ significant limitations, inspiring us to rethink, redefine and reform it in new contexts. Fortunately, the mindsponge theory and (...)
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  33. On the untrustworthiness of axiomatic-founded science.Spyridon Kakos - 2020 - Harmonia Philosophica.
    The idea of science being the best – or the only – way to reach the truth about our cosmos has been a major belief of modern civilization. Yet, science has grown tall on fragile legs of clay. Every scientific theory uses axioms and assumptions that by definition cannot be proved. This poses a serious limitation to the use of science as a tool to find the truth. The only way to search for the latter is to redefine the former (...)
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  34. Utilitarian voting.Jonathan Baron - manuscript
    Self-interest voting is irrational when it has even a small cost, but it can be rational for those who care about others; its expected utility (EU) may exceed its cost. For cosmopolitan voters (those who care about outsiders), the EU of voting increases with the number of affected others. The EU of voting for the good of the world now and in the future can thus be large. In some cases, the EU of parochial voting (e.g., considering only one's (...)
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  35. Can AI Abstract the Architecture of Mathematics?Posina Rayudu - manuscript
    The irrational exuberance associated with contemporary artificial intelligence (AI) reminds me of Charles Dickens: "it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief" (cf. Nature Editorial, 2016; to get a feel for the vanity fair that is AI, see Mitchell and Krakauer, 2023; Stilgoe, 2023). It is particularly distressing—feels like yet another rerun of Seinfeld, which is all about nothing (pun intended); we have seen it in the 60s and again in the 90s. AI might have (...)
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  36. The Epistemic Innocence of Motivated Delusions.Lisa Bortolotti - 2015 - Consciousness and Cognition (33):490-499.
    Delusions are defined as irrational beliefs that compromise good functioning. However, in the empirical literature, delusions have been found to have some psychological benefits. One proposal is that some delusions defuse negative emotions and protect one from low self-esteem by allowing motivational influences on belief formation. In this paper I focus on delusions that have been construed as playing a defensive function (motivated delusions) and argue that some of their psychological benefits can convert into epistemic ones. Notwithstanding their epistemic (...)
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  37. Irrationality and egoism in Hegel’s account of right.Charlotte Baumann - 2018 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 26 (6):1132-1152.
    Many interpreters argue that irrational acts of exchange can count as rational and civic-minded for Hegel—even though, admittedly, the persons who are exchanging their property are usually unaware of this fact. While I do not want to deny that property exchange can count as rational in terms of ‘mutual recognition’ as interpreters claim, this proposition raises an important question: What about the irrationality and arbitrariness that individuals as property owners and persons consciously enjoy? Are they mere vestiges of nature (...)
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  38. A Defense of Endorsement.Will Fleisher - forthcoming - In Sanford C. Goldberg & Mark Walker (eds.), Attitude in Philosophy. Oxford University Press.
    It is often irrational to believe philosophical claims because they are subject to systematic disagreement, under-determination, and pessimistic induction. Along with some other authors in this volume, I argue that many philosophers should (and do) have a different attitude to their own philosophical commitments. On my account, this attitude is a form of epistemic acceptance called endorsement. However, several objections have been raised to this view and others like it. One worry is that endorsement is spineless: that people who (...)
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  39. Enkrasia or evidentialism? Learning to love mismatch.Maria Lasonen-Aarnio - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 177 (3):597-632.
    I formulate a resilient paradox about epistemic rationality, discuss and reject various solutions, and sketch a way out. The paradox exemplifies a tension between a wide range of views of epistemic justification, on the one hand, and enkratic requirements on rationality, on the other. According to the enkratic requirements, certain mismatched doxastic states are irrational, such as believing p, while believing that it is irrational for one to believe p. I focus on an evidentialist view of justification on (...)
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  40. The number sense represents (rational) numbers.Sam Clarke & Jacob Beck - 2021 - Behavioral and Brain Sciences 44:1-57.
    On a now orthodox view, humans and many other animals possess a “number sense,” or approximate number system, that represents number. Recently, this orthodox view has been subject to numerous critiques that question whether the ANS genuinely represents number. We distinguish three lines of critique – the arguments from congruency, confounds, and imprecision – and show that none succeed. We then provide positive reasons to think that the ANS genuinely represents numbers, and not just non-numerical confounds or exotic substitutes for (...)
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  41. Delusions in Anorexia Nervosa.Stephen Gadsby - forthcoming - In Ema Sullivan Bissett (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Delusion. Routledge.
    Anorexia nervosa involves seemingly irrational beliefs about body size and the value of thinness. Historically, researchers and clinicians have avoided referring to such beliefs as delusions, instead opting for the label ‘overvalued ideas’. I discuss the relationship between the beliefs associated with anorexia nervosa and the distinction between delusions and overvalued ideas, as it is conceived in both European and American psychiatric traditions. In doing so, I question the benefit of applying the concepts of delusion and overvalued idea to (...)
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  42. Rational Polarization.Kevin Dorst - 2023 - Philosophical Review 132 (3):355-458.
    Predictable polarization is everywhere: we can often predict how people’s opinions, including our own, will shift over time. Extant theories either neglect the fact that we can predict our own polarization, or explain it through irrational mechanisms. They needn’t. Empirical studies suggest that polarization is predictable when evidence is ambiguous, that is, when the rational response is not obvious. I show how Bayesians should model such ambiguity and then prove that—assuming rational updates are those which obey the value of (...)
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  43. Philosophy Without Belief.Zach Barnett - 2019 - Mind 128 (509):109-138.
    Should we believe our controversial philosophical views? Recently, several authors have argued from broadly conciliationist premises that we should not. If they are right, we philosophers face a dilemma: If we believe our views, we are irrational. If we do not, we are not sincere in holding them. This paper offers a way out, proposing an attitude we can rationally take toward our views that can support sincerity of the appropriate sort. We should arrive at our views via a (...)
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  44. Status Quo Bias, Rationality, and Conservatism about Value.Jacob M. Nebel - 2015 - Ethics 125 (2):449-476.
    Many economists and philosophers assume that status quo bias is necessarily irrational. I argue that, in some cases, status quo bias is fully rational. I discuss the rationality of status quo bias on both subjective and objective theories of the rationality of preferences. I argue that subjective theories cannot plausibly condemn this bias as irrational. I then discuss one kind of objective theory, which holds that a conservative bias toward existing things of value is rational. This account can (...)
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  45. Imperative Inference and Practical Rationality.Daniel W. Harris - 2021 - Philosophical Studies (4):1065-1090.
    Some arguments include imperative clauses. For example: ‘Buy me a drink; you can’t buy me that drink unless you go to the bar; so, go to the bar!’ How should we build a logic that predicts which of these arguments are good? Because imperatives aren’t truth apt and so don’t stand in relations of truth preservation, this technical question gives rise to a foundational one: What would be the subject matter of this logic? I argue that declaratives are used to (...)
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  46. Permissivism and the Value of Rationality: A Challenge to the Uniqueness Thesis.Miriam Schoenfield - 2018 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 99 (2):286-297.
    In recent years, permissivism—the claim that a body of evidence can rationalize more than one response—has enjoyed somewhat of a revival. But it is once again being threatened, this time by a host of new and interesting arguments that, at their core, are challenging the permissivist to explain why rationality matters. A version of the challenge that I am especially interested in is this: if permissivism is true, why should we expect the rational credences to be more accurate than the (...)
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  47. Reconciling Enkrasia and Higher-Order Defeat.Mattias Skipper - 2019 - Erkenntnis 84 (6):1369-1386.
    Titelbaum Oxford studies in epistemology, 2015) has recently argued that the Enkratic Principle is incompatible with the view that rational belief is sensitive to higher-order defeat. That is to say, if it cannot be rational to have akratic beliefs of the form “p, but I shouldn’t believe that p,” then rational beliefs cannot be defeated by higher-order evidence, which indicates that they are irrational. In this paper, I distinguish two ways of understanding Titelbaum’s argument, and argue that neither version (...)
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  48. Phenomenal Conservatism and the Internalist Intuition.Michael Huemer - 2006 - American Philosophical Quarterly 43 (2):147-158.
    Externalist theories of justification create the possibility of cases in which everything appears to one relevantly similar with respect to two propositions, yet one proposition is justified while the other is not. Internalists find this difficult to accept, because it seems irrational in such a case to affirm one proposition and not the other. The underlying internalist intuition supports a specific internalist theory, Phenomenal Conservatism, on which epistemic justification is conferred by appearances.
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  49. Suspending is Believing.Thomas Raleigh - 2019 - Synthese (3):1-26.
    A good account of the agnostic attitude of Suspending Judgement should explain how it can be rendered more or less rational/justified according to the state of one's evidence – and one's relation to that evidence. I argue that the attitude of suspending judgement whether p constitutively involves having a belief; roughly, a belief that one cannot yet tell whether or not p. I show that a theory of suspending that treats it as a sui generis attitude, wholly distinct from belief, (...)
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  50. Diachronic Dutch Books and Evidential Import.J. Dmitri Gallow - 2019 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 99 (1):49-80.
    A handful of well-known arguments (the 'diachronic Dutch book arguments') rely upon theorems establishing that, in certain circumstances, you are immune from sure monetary loss (you are not 'diachronically Dutch bookable') if and only if you adopt the strategy of conditionalizing (or Jeffrey conditionalizing) on whatever evidence you happen to receive. These theorems require non-trivial assumptions about which evidence you might acquire---in the case of conditionalization, the assumption is that, if you might learn that e, then it is not the (...)
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