Epistemic paternalism is the practice of interfering with someone’s inquiry, without their consent, for their own epistemic good. In this chapter, I explore the relationship between epistemic paternalism and two other epistemological theses: epistemic permissivism and standpoint epistemology. I argue that examining this relationship is fruitful because it sheds light on a series of cases in which epistemic paternalism is unjustified and brings out notable similarities between epistemic permissivism and standpoint epistemology.

Whether in the form of testimonial injustice, hermeneutical injustice, or contributory injustice, epistemic injustice is characterised an injustice rather than simply an epistemic harm because it is often motivated by an identity prejudice and exacerbates existing social disadvantages and inequalities. I argue that epistemic injustice can also be utlised against some members of privileged social identity groups in order to preserve the dominant status of the group as a whole. As a case-study, I analyze how the harms to male victims (...) of sexual violence is exacerbated by the failure of the law to recognise the rape of men as a crime and the failure of other people to recognise the testimony of male rape victims as credible. Analyzing shifts in the legal concept of rape and examples from Project Unbreakable, I uncover how these failures of recognition undermine the victims’ status as legal, moral, and epistemic subjects and inflict epistemic injustice against them. (shrink)

This essay concerns the question of how we make genuine epistemic progress through conceptual analysis. Our way into this issue will be through consideration of the paradox of analysis. The paradox challenges us to explain how a given statement can make a substantive contribution to our knowledge, even while it purports merely to make explicit what one’s grasp of the concept under scrutiny consists in. The paradox is often treated primarily as a semantic puzzle. However, in “Sect. 1” I argue (...) that the paradox raises a more fundamental epistemic problem, and in “Sects.1 and 2” I argue that semantic proposals—even ones designed to capture the Fregean link between meaning and epistemic significance—fail to resolve that problem. Seeing our way towards a real solution to the paradox requires more than semantics; we also need to understand how the process of analysis can yield justification for accepting a candidate conceptual analysis. I present an account of this process, and explain how it resolves the paradox, in “Sect. 3”. I conclude in “Sect. 4” by considering the implications for the present account concerning the goal of conceptual analysis, and by arguing that the apparent scarcity of short and finite illuminating analyses in philosophically interesting cases provides no grounds for pessimism concerning the possibility of philosophical progress through conceptual analysis. (shrink)

Juhani Yli-Vakkuri and John Hawthorne have recently presented a thought experiment—Mirror Man—designed to refute internalist theories of belief and content. We distinguish five ways in which the case can be interpreted and argue that on none does it refute internalism.

The mechanistic concept of the body, as inherited from René Descartes, has generated considerable trouble in philosophy—including, at least in part, the mind-body problem itself. Still, the corps mécanique remains perhaps the most prevalent though least examined assumption in recent philosophy of mind. I discuss two notable exceptions. Gilbert Ryle and Maurice Merleau-Ponty rejected this assumption for surprisingly similar reasons. Writing at about the same time, though in different languages and in very different circles, they each attempted to articulate a (...) non-mechanistic concept of the body by stressing the importance of skill: skillful behavior constituting cognition in Ryle’s case, and the skill body constituting perception in Merleau-Ponty’s case. In this article, I turn to their cautions and insights. By drawing out the relation between these two seemingly unrelated theorists, I hope to show that together Ryle and Merleau-Ponty have much to offer philosophy today. (shrink)

I explore how rational belief and rational credence relate to evidence. I begin by looking at three cases where rational belief and credence seem to respond differently to evidence: cases of naked statistical evidence, lotteries, and hedged assertions. I consider an explanation for these cases, namely, that one ought not form beliefs on the basis of statistical evidence alone, and raise worries for this view. Then, I suggest another view that explains how belief and credence relate to (...) evidence. My view focuses on the possibilities that the evidence makes salient. I argue that this makes better sense of the difference between rational credence and rational belief than other accounts. (shrink)

Belief-credence dualism is the view that we have both beliefs and credences and neither attitude is reducible to the other. Pragmatic encroachment is the view that practical stakes can affect the epistemic rationality of states like knowledge or justified belief. In this paper, I argue that dualism offers a unique explanation of pragmatic encroachment cases. First, I explain pragmatic encroachment and what motivates it. Then, I explain dualism and outline a particular argument for dualism. Finally, I show how dualism (...) can explain the intuitions that underlie pragmatic encroachment. My basic proposal is that in high-stakes cases, it is not that one cannot rationally believe that p; instead, one ought not to rely on one's belief that p. One should rather rely on one's credence in p. I conclude that we need not commit ourselves to pragmatic encroachment in order to explain the intuitiveness of the cases that motivate it. (shrink)

In Brazil, the social demand for veterinary expertise is growing. However, there is still a shortage of professionals trained in this area to apply specific knowledge to each case. Studies and research into forensic veterinary medicine are necessary for veterinary experts to assist in investigations and legal proceedings. Veterinary medicine has subjects on its curriculum that cover the knowledge needed to apply in the fields of animal health, public health and the environment. The interaction between human and veterinary medicine, as (...) well as other areas of health, is of great importance in the prevention and control of various diseases, both in animals and humans. Some cases of infectious bovine abortion have a major impact not only on cattle farming and animal health, but also on public and environmental health. The concept of "One Health" integrates human medicine and health professionals. In this context, knowledge of infectious abortive diseases that affect animal, human and environmental health is fundamental. Cattle are affected by specific infectious abortive diseases, caused by pathogens with different forms of presentation and transmission mechanisms. These include brucellosis, leptospirosis and listeriosis, which are potentially zoonotic diseases. Controlling these diseases can contribute to effective public health actions and reduce global health risks. In order to establish the diagnosis of these diseases, it is essential to properly collect specimens from live or dead animals under biosafety and biosecurity conditions, following the chain of custody for each case. These procedures allow for greater success in diagnosing the suspected agent and facilitate the investigation of other causes. Animal health standards for the prophylaxis and control of these diseases are established by specific legislation, including those of the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Supply (MALS). This literature review was based on current knowledge on the Pubmed platform, Google Scholar, articles and textbooks. The aim of this article is to identify, understand and discuss the main infectious abortive diseases of cattle in the legal and forensic context, which have an impact on cattle farming, animal health, food safety, public and environmental health. -/- Referências bibliográficas Abdullah, N. M., Mohammad, W. M. Z. W., Shafei, M. N., Sukeri, S., Idris, Z., Arifin, W. N., Nozmi, N., Saudi, S. N. S., Samsudin, S., & Zainudin, A.-W. (2019). Leptospirosis and its prevention: knowledge, attitude and practice of urban community in Selangor, Malaysia. BMC Public Health, 19(1), 1–8. Agrimani, D. S. R., Rui, B. R., Cruz, I. V, Romano, R. M., & Lopes, H. C. (2011). 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Leptospirose: Características da enfermidade em humanos e principais técnicas de diagnóstico laboratorial. Revista Brasileira de Análises Clínicas, 53(3), 211–218. Ribeiro, A. C. A., Araújo, R. V., Rosa, A. S. M., Silva, P. N., Moraes, S. C., & Katagiri, S. (2020). Zoonoses e educação em saúde: Conhecer, compartilhar e multiplicar. Brazilian Journal of Health Review, 3(5), 12785–12801. Rocha, C. F., Mol, J. P. S., Garcia, L. N. N., Costa, L. F., Santos, R. L., & Paixão, T. A. (2017). Comparative experimental infection of Listeria monocytogenes and Listeria ivanovii in bovine trophoblasts. Plos One, 12, 1–13. Rocha, N. S. (2017). Corpo de delito e processos por erro médico veterinário. In R. A. Tostes, S. T. J. Reis, & V. V Castilho (Eds.), Tratado de medicina veterinária legal. Medvep. Rossi, M., Paiva, A., Tornese, M., Chianelli, S., & Troncoso, A. (2008). Brotes de infección por Listeria monocytogenes: Una revisión de las vias que llevan a su aparición. Revista Ciencia y Tecnologia, Escuela de Postgrado, 25, 328–335. Sá, M. I., & Ferreira, C. (2007). Importância das zoonoses na segurança alimentar. Infoqualidade, 11, 14–17. Sakate, R. I., Aragon, L. C., Raghiante, F., Landgraf, M., Franco, B. D. G. M., & Destro, M. T. (2003). Quantificação de Listeria monocytogenes em salames fatiados embalados a vácuo. Archivos Latinoamericanos de Nutrición, 53, 1–5. Salmanov, A. G., Kotsyumbas, I. Y. А., & Trokhymchuk, V. V. (2018). One World — One Health. International Journal of Antibiotics and Probiotics, 2(1), 8–17. Santana, L., Novelli, M., Vidal, A., Pereira, S., Gasparinni, L., Alvarenga, A. M. O., & Motta, O. J. R. (2020). Brucelose: atualização para a prática clínica. Saúde Dinâmica, 5(3), 1–14. Santos-Filho, A. M. P., & Mayrink, R. R. (2017). Medicina Veterinária Forense. In J. A. Velho, G. C. Geiser, & A. Espíndula. (Eds.), Ciências Forenses, uma introdução às principais áreas da criminalística moderna. Millennium. Schmitt, C. I., Krug, F. D. M., Cereser, N. D., & Pinto, F. R. (2017). Brucelose: uma questão de saúde pública. REDVET. Revista Electrónica de Veterinária, 18(9), 1–17. Silva, H. R., Gianoglou, F. M., Campos, M. F., Graciano, E. M. A., & Toledo, R. C. C. (2016). Listeriose: Uma doença de origem alimentar pouco conhecida no Brasil. Higiene Alimentar, 30, 17– 20. Simões, L. S., Sasahara, T. H. C., Favaron, P. O., & Miglino, M. A. (2016). Leptospirose–Revisão. PUBVET, 10, 111–189. Slowinski, K., Tremori, T. M., Massad, M. R. R., Tasaka, A. C., & Rocha, N. S. (2016). Responsabilidade ética e civil do médico-veterinário no ambiente hospitalar. Revista de Educação Continuada em Medicina Veterinária e Zootecnia Do CRMV-SP, 14(2), 30–37. Snak, A., & Osaki, S. C. (2019). Uma revisão sobre três importantes agentes causadores de aborto em bovinos: Neospora caninum, Leptospira sp. e Trypanosoma vivax. Revista de Ciência Veterinária e Saúde Pública, 6(1), 160–195. Sobrinho, O. P. L., Véras, G. M. C., Silva, L. F. B., Oliveira, L. S., Xavier, R. S., Alvim, J. F., Costa, D. A. S., Pereira, Á. I. S., Carlos, M. A. S., Cantanhede, E. K. P., & Santos, M. L. C. (2018). Brucelose bovina: Situação epidemiológica em rebanhos no município de Codó-MA. PUBVET, 12(12), 1–4. Souza, A. O. (2010). Listeriose na gravidez. Revista Médica de Minas Gerais, 20, 433–434. Suárez, Á. C. A., & Parra, C. A. B. (2017). Actualización de la leptospirosis bovina en Colombia. Conexión Agropecuaria JDC, 7(1), 57–77. Tonin, A. A., Azevedo, M. I., Escobar, T. P., Casassola, I., Santos, L. G., Cocco, M., Martins, J. L. R., Schaefe, P. C., & Badke, M. R. T. (2010). Leptospirose bovina: aumento na incidência da Leptospira interrogans sorovar butembo no rebanho do Estado de Santa Catarina, Brasil. Acta Veterinaria Brasilica, 4(4), 294–297. Topazio, J., Tonin, A. A., Machado, G., Noll, J. C. G., Ribeiro, A., Moura, A. B., Carmo, G. M., Grosskopf, H. M., Martins, J. L. R., & Badke, M. R. T. (2015). Antibodies to Leptospira interrogans in goats and risk factors of the disease in Santa Catarina (West side), Brazil. Research in Veterinary Science, 99, 53–57. Tremori, T. M., & Rocha, N. S. (2013). Exame do corpo de delito na Perícia Veterinária (ensaio). Revista de Educação Continuada em Medicina Veterinária e Zootecnia do CRMV-SP, 11(3), 30–35. Urzêda, M., Ribeiro, P. G. M., Nascente, E. P., Espíndola, W. R., Teodoro, J. V. S., Gonçalves, G. B., Carneiro, Y. F., & Souza, W. J. (2020). Soroprevalência de leptospirose em fêmeas bovinas na microrregião do Vale Do Rio Dos Bois, Goiás, Brasil. Brazilian Journal of Development, 6(9), 69614–69622. Vallim, D. C., Barroso Hofer, C., Lisbôa, R. de C., Barbosa, A. V., Rusak, L. A., Reis, C. M. F., & Hofer, E. (2015). Twenty years of Listeria in Brazil: Occurrence of Listeria species and Listeria monocytogenes serovars in food samples in Brazil between 1990 and 2012. BioMed Research International, 2015. Vasconcelos, C. H., Fonseca, F. R., Lise, M. L. Z., & Arsky, M. (2012). Fatores ambientais e socioeconômicos relacionados à distribuição de casos de leptospirose no Estado de Pernambuco, Brasil, 2001-2009. Caderno de Saúde Coletiva, 20(1), 49–56. Viana, K. F., & Zanini, M. S. (2009). Perfil de produtores frente à vacinação contra doenças infecciosas abortivas em rebanhos bovinos do município de Alegre/ES. Archives of Veterinary Science, 14(2), 103–108. Vitas, A. I., & Garcia-Jalon, V. A. E. I. (2004). Occurrence of Listeria monocytogenes in fresh and processed foods in Navarra (Spain). International Journal of Food Microbiology, 90(3), 349–356. (shrink)

A background assumption of this paper is that the repertoire of inference schemes available to humanity is not fixed, but subject to change as new schemes are invented or refined and as old ones are obsolesced or abandoned. This is particularly visible in areas like health and environmental sciences, where enormous societal investment has been made in finding ways to reach more dependable conclusions. Computational modeling of argumentation, at least for the discourse in expert fields, will require the possibility of (...) modeling change in a stock of schemes that may be applied to generate conclusions from data. We examine Randomized Clinical Trial, an inference scheme established within medical science in the mid-20th Century, and show that its successful defense by means of practical reasoning allowed for its black-boxing as an inference scheme that generates (and warrants belief in) conclusions about the effects of medical treatments. Modeling the use of a scheme is well-understood; here we focus on modeling how the scheme comes to be established so that it is available for use. (shrink)

Sometimes epistemologists theorize about belief, a tripartite attitude on which one can believe, withhold belief, or disbelieve a proposition. In other cases, epistemologists theorize about credence, a fine-grained attitude that represents one’s subjective probability or confidence level toward a proposition. How do these two attitudes relate to each other? This article explores the relationship between belief and credence in two categories: descriptive and normative. It then explains the broader significance of the belief-credence connection and concludes with general lessons from (...) the debate thus far. (shrink)

We call attention to certain cases of epistemic akrasia, arguing that they support belief-credence dualism. Belief-credence dualism is the view that belief and credence are irreducible, equally fundamental attitudes. Consider the case of an agent who believes p, has low credence in p, and thus believes that they shouldn’t believe p. We argue that dualists, as opposed to belief-firsters (who say credence reduces to belief) and credence-firsters (who say belief reduces to credence) can best explain features of akratic (...) class='Hi'>cases, including the observation that akratic beliefs seem to be held despite possessing a defeater for those beliefs, and that, in akratic cases, one can simultaneously believe and have low confidence in the very same proposition. (shrink)

Congdon (2017), Giladi (2018), and McConkey (2004) challenge feminist epistemologists and recognition theorists to come together to analyze epistemic injustice. I take up this challenge by highlighting the failure of recognition in cases of testimonial and hermeneutical injustice experienced by victims of sexual harassment and sexual assault. I offer the #MeToo movement as a case study to demonstrate how the process of mutual recognition makes visible and helps overcome the epistemic injustice suffered by victims of sexual harassment and sexual (...) assault. I argue that in declaring “me too,” the epistemic subject emerges in the context of a polyphonic symphony of victims claiming their status as agents who are able to make sense of their own social experiences and able to convey their knowledge to others. (shrink)

I develop an interpretation of Maurice Merleau-Ponty's concept of motor intentionality, one that emerges out of a reading of his presentation of a now classic case study in neuropathology—patient Johann Schneider—in Phenomenology of Perception. I begin with Merleau-Ponty's prescriptions for how we should use the pathological as a guide to the normal, a method I call triangulation. I then turn to his presentation of Schneider's unusual case. I argue that we should treat all of Schneider's behaviors as pathological, not only (...) his abstract movements, as is commonly acknowledged in the secondary literature, but also crucially his concrete movements. Using these facts of Schneider's illness, I reconstruct a ‘fundamental function’ of consciousness, as Merleau-Ponty called it, in which there are two kinds of bodily agency: the power of the body to be solicited by a situation and the power of the body to project a situation. I propose that these powers became dissociated in Schneider's case, as evidenced by his abstract and concrete movements, while in the normal case, these powers comprise a dynamic unity, enacted as motor intentionality. I also discuss how my interpretation complements Merleau-Ponty's assertion that motor intentions exist between mind and matter. (shrink)

I argue that John Dewey’s analysis of imagination enables an account of learning from imaginary cases consistent with Jonathan Dancy’s moral particularism. Moreover, this account provides a more robust account of learning from cases than Dancy’s own. Particularism is the position that there are no, or at most few, true moral principles, and that competent reasoning and judgment do not require them. On a particularist framework, one cannot infer from an imaginary case that because a feature has a (...) particular moral importance there, that it must have that import in an actual case. Instead, for Dancy, cases can yield “reminders,” and a person with a lot of experience (real or imagined) brings a “checklist” of features that can matter to a situation. Using the Nathan-David exchange from 2 Samuel and Martha Nussbaum’s “Steerforth’s Arm” from Love’s Knowledge, I show that this account does not explain all instances of learning from cases. Drawing on recent work on cases, I argue that cases can be educative by serving an exploratory function, probing what one takes to be known and provoking change in the background one uses in evaluating a situation. I then argue that Dewey’s work on imagination in his comments on sympathy and in A Common Faith and Art as Experience enables such a role for cases on a particularist framework. Mark Johnson’s recent work on metaphor further illuminates how Dewey’s account of art can be exploratory. I contend that this account affords an exploratory role for cases consistent with Dancy’s particularism. (shrink)

Belief is a familiar attitude: taking something to be the case or regarding it as true. But we are more confident in some of our beliefs than in others. For this reason, many epistemologists appeal to a second attitude, called credence, similar to a degree of confidence. This raises the question: how do belief and credence relate to each other? On a belief-first view, beliefs are more fundamental and credences are a species of beliefs, e.g. beliefs about probabilities. On a (...) credence-first view, credences are more fundamental and beliefs are a species of credence, e.g. credence above some threshold. In this thesis, I develop and defend a third view that I call belief-credence dualism. On this view, belief and credence are independent, equally fundamental attitudes, and neither reduces to the other. I begin by motivating the project: why should we care about the relationship between belief and credence? I argue it has broad implications for many debates in epistemology and beyond. Then, I defend dualism, arguing that it can explain features of our mental lives that a credence-first view and a belief-first view cannot. I also argue that dualism has attractive, interesting implications when applied to the pragmatic encroachment debate. Finally, I explore implications of dualism, both for the nature of evidence and how faith might go beyond the evidence but nonetheless be epistemically rational. I conclude that the human mind is, in some ways, complex, but we should be happy with this conclusion also long as each mental state we posit has a clear role to play. (shrink)

Contemporary reasoning about health is infused with the work products of experts, and expert reasoning about health itself is an active site for invention and design. Building on Toulmin’s largely undeveloped ideas on field-dependence, we argue that expert fields can develop new inference rules that, together with the backing they require, become accepted ways of drawing and defending conclusions. The new inference rules themselves function as warrants, and we introduce the term “warranting device” to refer to an assembly of the (...) rule plus whatever material, procedural, and institutional resources are required to assure its dependability. We present a case study on the Cochrane Review, a new method for synthesizing evidence across large numbers of scientific studies. After reviewing the evolution and current structure of the device, we discuss the distinctive kinds of critical questions that may be raised around Cochrane Reviews, both within the expert field and beyond. Although Toulmin’s theory of field-dependence is often criticized for its relativism, we find that, as a matter of practical fact, field-specific warrants do not enjoy immunity from external critique. On the contrary, they can be opened to evaluation and critique from any interested perspective. (shrink)

The distinction between propositional and doxastic justification is normally applied to belief. The goal of this paper is to apply the distinction to faith and hope. Before doing so, I discuss the nature of faith and hope, and how they contrast with belief—belief has no essential conative component, whereas faith and hope essentially involve the conative. I discuss implications this has for evaluating faith and hope, and apply this to the propositional/doxastic distinction. There are two key upshots. One, bringing in (...) faith and hope makes salient additional normative categories, including the way the distinction between epistemic and practical justification interacts with the distinction between propositional and doxastic justification. Two, a paradigm example of propositional without doxastic justification is a belief that is evidentially supported but based on wishful thinking. Surprisingly, parallel cases of faith and hope may actually enjoy both propositional and doxastic justification. I conclude by exploring what it might look like for faith and hope to have propositional justification without doxastic justification. (shrink)

John Dewey’s analyses of habit and tradition enable contemporary moral particularists to make sense of the possibility of moral education. Particularists deny that rules determine an act’s moral worth. Using Jonathan Dancy’s recent work, I present a particularist account of moral competence and call attention to a lacuna in particularism: an account of education. For Dancy, reasoning requires attunement to a situation’s salient features. Dewey’s account of habit explains how features can exhibit salience without appeal to rules, and I look (...) to habituation to outline the possibility of particularist education. Finally, though Dewey’s commitment that habituation occurs in traditions seems in tension with Dancy’s rejection of principles, I argue that this appeal is consistent with particularism. Thus, particularists like Dancy can strengthen the case for their view by situating it in a Deweyan framework. (shrink)

This article has provided a forum for analytical discourses pertaining to two philosophical and methodological concepts (Phronesis and Hermeneutics) in a bid to addressing the key objectives set out. Dscussions emanated from the work (more so from literature review carried out) clearly shows that, there is no crystal dichotomy between the two concepts, but more so the prevalence of inter-connectedness and interpretation of situations or even texts can also be based on an expression of positive biasness towards what one may (...) perceive as being humanely justifiable, closely linked to Hans-Georg Gadamer's hermeneutical philosophy. The methodological inquiry of the study’s reliance on literature review materials and other documentations has helped greatly in unravelling an open, but more critical discourses pertaining to the two case study countries selected (Sierra Leone and the United Kingdom). (shrink)

Betrayal is both a “people” problem and a philosopher’s problem. Philosophers should be able to clarify the concept of betrayal, compare and contrast it with other moral concepts, and critically assess betrayal situations. At the practical level people should be able to make honest sense of betrayal and also to temper its consequences: to handle it, not be assaulted by it. What we need is a conceptually clear account of betrayal that differentiates between genuine and merely perceived betrayal, and which (...) also provides systematic guidance for the assessment of alleged betrayal in real life. In what follows I offer an account of betrayal that attempts to meet the two requirements of conceptual clarity and contextual adequacy. There is a great temptation to use the events in Washington of the past few years as the case study for such an analysis, but I believe that, for a variety of reasons, including the difficulty of viewing events from “within,” this would only complicate matters rather than clarify them. Rather, I believe that betrayal in literature is fruitful ground for analysis. I have chosen Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility for examples of trust and betrayal, because Austen displays the needed complexity and subtlety of human relationships and because she recognizes that violations of trust come in a variety of shades and colors. This particular novel, moreover, not only supplies multiple instances of trusting relationships gone awry, but also a common, detailed, and intelligible landscape within which these relationships exist. Again, however, in order to illuminate betrayal and appropriately assess a purported betrayal, rich examples are not enough. We need a clear concept of betrayal. I will develop this concept by beginning with the related concept of trust. By starting with an explicit definition of trust and using this definition to analyze the various examples Austen provides, betrayal will emerge as but one of two types of violation of trust. This in turn will allow us to distinguish actual from merely “felt” betrayals. I will finally argue that understanding and being sensitive to the other form of violation of trust, which I call abandonment, may be even more significant to our moral life. (shrink)

Is normative uncertainty like factual uncertainty? Should it have the same effects on our actions? Some have thought not. Those who defend an asymmetry between normative and factual uncertainty typically do so as part of the claim that our moral beliefs in general are irrelevant to both the moral value and the moral worth of our actions. Here I use the consideration of Jackson cases to challenge this view, arguing that we can explain away the apparent asymmetries between (...) normative and factual uncertainty by considering the particular features of the cases in greater detail. Such consideration shows that, in fact, normative and factual uncertainty are equally relevant to moral assessment. (shrink)

Permissivism is the thesis that, for some body of evidence and a proposition p, there is more than one rational doxastic attitude any agent with that evidence can take toward p. Proponents of uniqueness deny permissivism, maintaining that every body of evidence always determines a single rational doxastic attitude. In this paper, we explore the debate between permissivism and uniqueness about evidence, outlining some of the major arguments on each side. We then consider how permissivism can be understood as an (...) underdetermination thesis, and show how this moves the debate forward in fruitful ways: in distinguishing between different types of permissivism, in dispelling classic objections to permissivism, and in shedding light on the relationship between permissivism and evidentialism. (shrink)

One of the benefits of the 2D framework we looked at last week was that it explained how we could understand a sentence without knowing which proposition it expressed. And we could do this even if we give an account of understanding which is closely tied to the possible worlds semantics we use to analyse propositions. Really this can be done very easily, without appeal to any high-flying Kripkean cases. In “Analytic Metaphysics” Jackson discusses a very simple case (...) of it. I can understand an utterance of “I have a beard” without knowing which proposition it expresses. I know how the proposition is generated from context plus meaning, if X is the speaker then the sentence expresses the proposition X has a beard. And that is enough for understanding. But if I don’t know who said the sentence, so I don’t know who X is, I don’t know which proposition is expressed by that utterance. (shrink)

What attitude should philosophers take toward their favorite philosophical theories? I argue that the answer is belief and middling to low credence. I begin by discussing why disagreement has motivated the view that we cannot rationally believe our philosophical theories. Then, I show why considerations from disagreement actually better support my view. I provide two additional arguments for my view: the first concerns roles for belief and credence and the second explains why believing one’s philosophical theories is superior to accepting (...) them. I close by addressing objections, including implications my view has for the Lockean thesis, the view that there is a normative connection between belief and high credence. (shrink)

Traditional theistic arguments conclude that God exists. Pragmatic theistic arguments, by contrast, conclude that you ought to believe in God. The two most famous pragmatic theistic arguments are put forth by Blaise Pascal (1662) and William James (1896). Pragmatic arguments for theism can be summarized as follows: believing in God has significant benefits, and these benefits aren’t available for the unbeliever. Thus, you should believe in, or ‘wager on’, God. This article distinguishes between various kinds of theistic wagers, including finite (...) vs. infinite wagers, premortem vs. postmortem wagers, and doxastic vs. acceptance wagers. Then, we’ll turn to the epistemic-pragmatic distinction, and discusses the nuances of James’ argument, and how views like epistemic permissivism and epistemic consequentialism provide unique “hybrid” wagers. Finally, we’ll cover outstanding objections and responses. (shrink)

Credences are similar to levels of confidence, represented as a value on the [0,1] interval. This chapter sheds light on questions about credence, including its relationship to full belief, with an eye toward the empirical relevance of credence. First, I’ll provide a brief epistemological history of credence and lay out some of the main theories of the nature of credence. Then, I’ll provide an overview of the main views on how credences relate to full beliefs. Finally, I’ll turn to the (...) empirical, and suggest some ways that cognitive science does and could answer questions about credence, such as what credences one has, how credences relate to beliefs, and the extent to which we can control our credences. (shrink)

Gilbert Harman’s famous principle of Clutter Avoidance commands that “one should not clutter one’s mind with trivialities". Many epistemologists have been inclined to accept Harman’s principle, or something like it. This is significant because the principle appears to have robust implications for our overall picture of epistemic normativity. Jane Friedman (2018) has recently argued that one potential implication is that there are no genuine purely evidential norms on belief revision. In this paper, we present some new objections to a suitably (...) formulated version of the clutter principle qua norm on belief revision. Moreover, we argue that the clutter principle is best understood as a norm on non-doxastic stages of inquiry. In our view, it is a norm of asking and considering questions rather than a norm of settling on an answer to a question by forming a belief. (shrink)

On the phenomenal view of evidence, seemings are evidence. More precisely, if it seems to S that p, S has evidence for p. Here, I raise a worry for this view of evidence; namely, that it has the counterintuitive consequence that two people who disagree would rarely, if ever, share evidence. This is because almost all differences in beliefs would involve differences in seemings. However, many literatures in epistemology, including the disagreement literature and the permissivism literature, presuppose that people who (...) disagree often do share evidence. I conclude that this is a reason to question the phenomenal view of evidence. (shrink)

Mental explanations of behaviour are physical explanations of a special kind. Mental events are physical events. Mental explanations of physical behaviour are not mysterious, they designate events with physical causal powers. Mentalistic terms differ from physicalistic ones in the way they specify events: the former cite extrinsic properties, the latter intrinsic properties. The nature of explanation in general is discussed, and a naturalistic view of intentionality is proposed. The author shows why epistemological considerations rule out the elimination of "mentalistic talk" (...) from explanations of behaviour. (shrink)

This paper surveys the epistemology of two attitudes: faith and hope. First, I examine descriptive questions about faith and hope. Faith and hope are resilient attitudes with unique cognitive and conative components; while related, they are also distinct, notably in that hope’s cognitive component is weaker than faith’s. I then turn to faith and hope's epistemic (ir)rationality, and discuss various ways that faith and hope can be rational and irrational. Finally, I discuss the relationship between faith, hope, and knowledge: while (...) it’s controversial whether faith is compatible with knowledge, hope is not compatible with knowledge. (shrink)

This essay is a defense of the social construction of racialism. I follow a standard definition of “racialism” which is the belief that “there are heritable characteristics, possessed by members of our species, that allow us to divide them into a small set of races, in such a way that all the members of these races share certain traits and tendencies with each other that they do not share with other members of any other race”. In particular I want to (...) defend the “radical” social-constructive thesis that holds “the concept of race is exclusively the product of historical and cultural causes. It claims that humans do not tend to classify people into races when groups with different phenotypes meet, save for particular historical circumstances”. The quoted position is the consensus view among historians, sociologists, anthropologists, and other social scientists who study racialism but has recently been criticized by philosophical defenders of cognitive/evolutionary psychological approaches to racialism. Drawing on developmental studies as well as historical and contemporary cross-cultural research, CEP philosophers point to similarities of racialism across time and space. They hold that social constructionist approaches to racialism cannot explain these similarities. I hold that SC approaches do explain these similarities and that such similarities actually pose a significant challenge to the proposed CEP research program on racialism. (shrink)

What is faith? How is faith different than belief and hope? Is faith irrational? If not, how can faith go beyond the evidence? This chapter introduces the reader to philosophical questions involving faith and reason. First, we explore a four-part definition of faith. Then, we consider the question of how faith could be rational yet go beyond the evidence.

This book is devoted to applied ethics. We focus on six popular and controversial topics: abortion, the environment, animals, poverty, punishment, and disability. We cover three chapters per topic, and each chapter is devoted to a famous or influential argument on the topic. After we present an influential argument, we then consider objections to the argument, and replies to the objections. The book is impartial, and set up in order to equip the reader to make up her own mind about (...) the controversial topics covered. (shrink)

J.L. Schellenberg argues that divine hiddenness provides an argument for the conclusion that God does not exist, for if God existed he would not allow non-resistant non-belief to occur, but non-resistant non-belief does occur, so God does not exist. In this paper, I argue that the stakes involved in theistic considerations put pressure on Schellenberg’s premise that non-resistant non-belief occurs. First, I specify conditions for someone’s being a resistant non-believer. Then, I argue that many people fulfill these conditions because, given (...) some plausible assumptions, there is a very good pragmatic reason to be a theist rather than an atheist. I assume it is more likely that theists go to heaven than atheists, and I argue there is a non-zero probability that one can receive infinite utility and a method of comparing outcomes with infinite utilities in which the probability of each outcome affects the final expected values. Then, I show how this argument entails there is no good reason to think that there are very many non-resistant non-believers. (shrink)

In this paper I offer a comparative evaluation of two types of “fundamental hope”, drawn from the writing of Rebecca Solnit and Rowan Williams respectively. Arguments can be found in both, I argue, for the foundations of a dispositional existential hope. Examining and comparing the differences between these accounts, I focus on the consequences implied for hope’s freedom and stability. I focus specifically on how these two accounts differ in their claims about the relationship between hope and necessity. I argue (...) that both Solnit and Williams base their claims for warranted fundamental hope on a sense of how reality is structured, taking this structure to provide grounds for a basic existential orientation that absolute despair is never the final word. For Solnit this structure is one of unpredictability; for Williams it is one of excess. While this investigation finds both accounts of fundamental hope to be plausible and insightful, I argue that Williams’s account is ultimately more satisfying on the grounds that it offers a realistic way of thinking about a hope necessitated by what it is responsive to, and more substantial in responding to what is necessary. (shrink)

Friendship between professors and students have the potential for hurting those involved and can be hurtful to the larger society in which they occur. This paper examines what sort of boundary lines can be drawn for appropriate faculty-student relationships by considering three arguments against faculty-student friendships. After rejecting these arguments on the grounds that they rely upon a flawed conceptualization of friendship, the paper, drawing on William Rawlins’s theory of friendship, argues that faculty-student relationships are neither desirable nor undesirable per (...) se. However, if such relationships do arise, it is possible that they can be conducted in an ethically responsible and professionally appropriate way. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider the topic of racism in America, the Christian Church, and in Pentecostalism. Historically there has been a tepid response to racism by the Christian. Although many individuals who are Christian’s have voiced and demonstrated opposition to the practice of racism the Christian as a whole has not actively supported the rights of black people to be equal citizens in the United States. I examine the actions and words of whites from an historical and religious perspective (...) with a focus on Pentecostalism. My discussion shows that while Pentecostalism is not a movement that promotes racism some individuals from the Clergy to the pew who profess to be Pentecostals and recipients of the ‘second blessing’ embrace and practice racism. (shrink)

This paper explains and defends a belief-first view of the relationship between belief and credence. On this view, credences are a species of beliefs, and the degree of credence is determined by the content of what is believed. We begin by developing what we take to be the most plausible belief-first view. Then, we offer several arguments for it. Finally, we show how it can resist objections that have been raised to belief-first views. We conclude that the belief-first view is (...) more plausible than many have previously supposed. (shrink)

In The Matter of Consciousness, in the course of his extended discussion and defense of Frank Jackson’s famous knowledge argument, Torin Alter dismisses some objections on the grounds that they are cases of cheating. Though some opponents of the knowledge argument offer various scenarios in which Mary might come to know what seeing red is like while still in the room, Alter argues that the proposed scenarios are irrelevant. In his view, the Mary case is offered to defend (...) the claim that phenomenal facts cannot be a priori deduced from physical facts. Thus, a proposed scenario constitutes an objection to the knowledge argument only if it presents a case in which Mary’s learning inside the room comes about via a priori deduction from physical facts. Call this the deducibility standard. In what follows, I’ll explore a series of relevant cases in an effort to clarify this standard. Doing so enables us to better understand how cheating should be assessed in this context and thereby also to get clearer on the argumentative dialectic surrounding the Mary case. (shrink)

Cognitive science and evolutionary psychology show great potential as explanatory paradigms for a wide array of cultural products and activities, including literature. In some scholars’ minds these two fields are emerging as the cornerstones of a major ‘‘new interdisciplinarity’’ that may well displace the relativistic interpretive paradigms that have dominated the humanities for the last few decades. Through a review of a number of recently published works, I assess the situation of these two fields in relation to the specific, currently (...) reigning approaches to literary study as well as in relation to more general issues of academic literary interpretation.What do we have so far, and what can we possibly expect these essentially empirical-scientific disciplines to add to literary criticism? If cognitive science and evolutionary psychology are to become important in a truly interdisciplinary sense, then what kinds of claims will they need to make? Most important, how will the problematic but unavoidable distinction between nature and nurture be dealt with? Though the kinds of explanations offered in both fields can obviously enough be relevant to defining what literature is in relation to the human organism, how will the same kinds of explanations be involved in the actual interpretation of specific literary texts? For only an approach that provides new interpretive possibilities of actual texts can succeed on any broad level. After considering examples of current interdisciplinary work that, regardless of their other strengths, do not turn out to be significantly new and different from previous paradigms, I consider an example that, to my mind, most strongly illustrates in a general way what the new interdisciplinarity will have to look like if it is going to succeed. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that the relationship between belief and credence is a central question in epistemology. This is because the belief-credence relationship has significant implications for a number of current epistemological issues. I focus on five controversies: permissivism, disagreement, pragmatic encroachment, doxastic voluntarism, and the relationship between doxastic attitudes and prudential rationality. I argue that each debate is constrained in particular ways, depending on whether the relevant attitude is belief or credence. This means that epistemologists should pay attention (...) to whether they are framing questions in terms of belief or in terms of credence and the success or failure of a reductionist project in the belief-credence realm has significant implications for epistemology generally. (shrink)

Epistemic permissivism is the thesis that the evidence can rationally permit more than one attitude toward a proposition. Pascal’s wager is the idea that one ought to believe in God for practical reasons, because of what one can gain if theism is true and what one has to lose if theism is false. In this paper, I argue that if epistemic permissivism is true, then the defender of Pascal’s wager has powerful responses to two prominent objections. First, I argue that (...) if permissivism is true, then permissivism is true about theistic belief. Second, I show how epistemic permissivism about theistic belief dispels two objections to Pascal’s wager: the objection that wagering is impossible, and the objection that wagering is epistemically impermissible. (shrink)

A question of recent interest in epistemology and philosophy of mind is how belief and credence relate to each other. A number of philosophers argue for a belief-first view of the relationship between belief and credence. On the belief-first view, what it is to have a credence just is to have a particular kind of belief, that is, a belief whose content involves probabilities or epistemic modals. Here, I argue against the belief-first view: specifically, I argue that it cannot account (...) for agents who have credences in propositions they barely comprehend. I conclude that, however credences differ from beliefs, they do not differ in virtue of adding additional content to the believed proposition. (shrink)

Permissivism is the view that there are evidential situations that rationally permit more than one attitude toward a proposition. In this paper, I argue for Intrapersonal Belief Permissivism (IaBP): that there are evidential situations in which a single agent can rationally adopt more than one belief-attitude toward a proposition. I give two positive arguments for IaBP; the first involves epistemic supererogation and the second involves doubt. Then, I should how these arguments give intrapersonal permissivists a distinct response to the toggling (...) objection. I conclude that IaBP is a view that philosophers should take seriously. (shrink)

How ought we to go about forming and revising our beliefs, arguing and debating our reasons, and investigating our world? If those questions constitute normative epistemology, then I am interested here in normative metaepistemology: the investigation into how we ought to go about forming and revising our beliefs about how we ought to go about forming and revising our beliefs -- how we ought to argue about how we ought to argue. Such investigations have become urgent of late, for the (...) methodology of epistemology has reached something of a crisis. For analytic epistemology of the last half-century has relied overwhelmingly on intuitions,1 and a growing set of arguments and data has begun to call this reliance on intuition seriously into question (e.g., Weinberg, Nichols, and Stich 2001; Nichols, Stich, and Weinberg 2003; Cummins 1998). Although that method has not been entirely without defenders (BonJour 1998; Bealer 1996; Jackson 1998; Sosa forthcoming; Weatherson 2003), these defenses have not generally risen to the specific challenges leveled by the anti-intuitionist critics. In particular, the critics have attacked specific ways of deploying intuitions, and the defenders have overwhelmingly responded with in-principle defenses of the cogency of appealing to intuition. An analogy here would be someone’s responding to arguments alleging systematic.. (shrink)

Faith is a trusting commitment to someone or something. Faith helps us meet our goals, keeps our relationships secure, and enables us to retain our commitments over time. Faith is thus a central part of a flourishing life. -/- This article is about the philosophy of faith. There are many philosophical questions about faith, such as: What is faith? What are its main components or features? What are the different kinds of faith? What is the relationship between faith and other (...) similar states, such as belief, trust, knowledge, desire, doubt, and hope? Can faith be epistemically rational? Practically rational? Morally permissible? -/- This article addresses these questions. It is divided into three main parts. The first is about the nature of faith. This includes different kinds of faith and various features of faith. The second discusses the way that faith relates to other states. For example, what is the difference between faith and hope? Can someone have faith that something is true even if they do not believe it is true? The third discusses three ways we might evaluate faith: epistemically, practically, and morally. While faith is not always rational or permissible, this section covers when and how it can be. The idea of faith as a virtue is also discussed. (shrink)