Kevin McCain’s Evidentialism and Epistemic Justification is the most thorough defense of evidentialism to date. In this work, McCain proposes insightful new theses to fill in underdeveloped parts of evidentialism. One of these new theses is an explanationist account of evidential fit that appeals to dispositional properties. We argue that this explanationist account faces counterexamples, and that, more generally, explanationists should not understand evidential fit in terms of dispositional properties.

The present article examines two important challenges raised by Steup for explanationist accounts of evidential fit. The first challenge targets the notion of available explanation which is key to any explanationist account of evidential fit. According to Steup, any plausible construal of the notion of available explanation already presupposes the notion of evidential fit. In response to that challenge, an alternative conception of what it takes for an explanation to be available to a subject is offered and (...) shown to be able to shed better light on the specific role played by that notion in explanationist accounts of evidential fit. The second challenge relies on the claim that the explanatory goodness of competing explanations is determined by their evidential fit, rather than the other way around. In response to that challenge, it is argued that explanationists can concede that the relative explanatory goodness of an explanation is in part dependent on that explanation’s likeliness on the overall evidence possessed by the subject without thereby conceding that Explanationism about justification is circular. (shrink)

This paper aims to neutralize Draper-style evidential arguments from evil by defending five theses: (1) that, when those who advance these arguments use the word “evil,” they are referring, at least in large part, to ill-being; (2) that well-being and ill-being come as a pair (i.e., are essentially related); (3) that well-being and ill-being are best understood in an at least partly objectivist way; (4) that (even partial) objectivism about well-being and ill-being is best understood as implying non-naturalism about (...) well-being and ill-being; and (5) that the truth of non-naturalism about well-being and ill-being does not fit cleanly with naturalism and, in fact, fits at least as well with theism as it does with naturalism. (shrink)

According to evidentialism, a belief is propositionally justified just in case it fits one’s evidence. A fully developed evidentialist theory of justification will require an account of the evidential fit relation. Some evidentialists have embraced an explanationist account of this relation. Some of these accounts, such as Kevin McCain’s, place an awareness requirement on evidential fit. That is, they claim that a proposition, p, fits a subject’s evidence, e, only if the subject is aware of the explanatory connection (...) between p and e. I argue by way of example that this version of explanationism fails. As a result, I suggest a friendly revision of explanationism that excludes an awareness condition. Finally, I field some objections to my version of explanationism. (shrink)

Evidentialism has shown itself to be an important research program in contemporary epistemology, with evidentialists giving theories of virtually every important topic in epistemology. Nevertheless, at the heart of evidentialism is a handful of concepts, namely evidence, evidence possession, and evidential fit. If evidentialists cannot give us a plausible account of these concepts, then their research program, with all its various theories, will be in serious trouble. In this paper, I argue that evidentialists has yet to give a plausible (...) account of evidence possession and the prospects for doing so are dim. (shrink)

Goldman, though still a reliabilist, has made some recent concessions to evidentialist epistemologies. I agree that reliabilism is most plausible when it incorporates certain evidentialist elements, but I try to minimize the evidentialist component. I argue that fewer beliefs require evidence than Goldman thinks, that Goldman should construe evidential fit in process reliabilist terms, rather than the way he does, and that this process reliabilist understanding of evidence illuminates such important epistemological concepts as propositional justification, ex ante justification, and (...) defeat. (shrink)

Many epistemologists are enamored with a defeat condition on knowledge. In this paper we present some implementation problems for defeatism, understood along either internalist or externalist lines. We then propose that one who accepts a knowledge norm of belief, according to which one ought to believe only what one knows, can explain away much of the motivation for defeatism. This is an important result, because on the one hand it respects the plausibility of the intuitions about defeat shared by many (...) in epistemology; but on the other hand, it obviates the need to provide a unified account of defeat which plays well with the most plausible views of how knowledge fits with evidential probability. (shrink)

Susanna Rinard has recently offered a new argument for pragmatism and against evidentialism. According to Rinard, evidentialists must hold that the rationality of belief is determined in a way that is different from how the rationality of other states is determined. She argues that we should instead endorse a view she calls Equal Treatment, according to which the rationality of all states is determined in the same way. In this paper, I show that Rinard’s claims are mistaken, and that evidentialism (...) is more theoretically virtuous than its opponents sometimes give it credit for. Not only does evidentialism not make an exception for belief, but it fits naturally into a unified, explanatorily powerful account of the rationality of intentional mental states. According to such an account, the rationality of all intentional mental states, including belief, is determined by the right kind of reasons for those states. Since the right kind of reasons for belief just are evidential considerations, this unified account entails evidentialism. I conclude, contra Rinard, that evidentialism can be situated within a general account of rationality that is at least as theoretically virtuous as pragmatism, if not more so. (shrink)

There was a time when Greco-Roman culture recognized faith as an indispensable social good. More recently, however, the value of faith has been called into question, particularly in connection with religious commitment. What, if anything, is valuable about faith—in the context of ordinary human relations or as a distinctive stance people might take in relation to God? I approach this question by examining the role that faith talk played both in ancient Jewish and Christian communities and in the larger Greco-Roman (...) culture in which Christian faith talk evolved. I locate the value of faith and faithfulness in the context of relationships involving trust and loyalty and argue that what is most distinctively valuable about faith is the function it plays in sustaining relationships through various kinds of challenges, including through evidentially unfavorable circumstances and significant periods of doubt. In light of this discussion, I set out a view of relational faith and, taking Mother Teresa as an exemplar, argue for two further conclusions. First, faith can play the valuable role that it plays in sustaining relationships even without belief of the salient propositions. Second, in at least some circumstances, in order for faith to play this valuable role in a way that does not require epistemic opinions that fail to fit one’s evidence, it is important that faith does not require such belief. (shrink)

The paper addresses the nature of seemings in light of their role in inquiry. Seemings are mental states or events with propositional content that have a specific phenomenology often referred to as “felt truth”. In epistemology, seemings are mainly discussed as possible (non-inferential) justifications for belief. Yet, epistemology has recently taken a zetetic turn, that is, a turn toward the study of inquiry. I will argue that the role of seemings in epistemology should be re-assessed from the perspective of inquiry (...) and deliberation. Seemings may fall short of justifying beliefs, but there is an important role for seemings in the zetetic realm, which may also explain why seemings lack direct justificatory force for beliefs. Seemings, so I will suggest, can provide normative reasons for performing certain zetetic tasks, but they cannot provide normative reasons for making up one’s mind about the inquired question. In this sense, the zetetic role of seemings can be described as guiding rational inquiry. I will suggest that a modified version of the so-called Taking Evidence View about the nature of seemings is best fitted to accommodate their zetetic role. Yet, contra existing versions of the Taking Evidence View, my modified account acknowledges that seemings are genuine experiences (of one’s evidential standing during inquiry) that are accompanied by the characteristic phenomenology of what is called a “feeling of truth”. By doing so, my modified version of the Taking Evidence View incorporates the (as I take it) most important feature of the rival Experience View of seemings. (shrink)

It is commonly argued that values “fill the logical gap” of underdetermination of theory by evidence, namely, values affect our choice between two or more theories that fit the same evidence. The underdetermination model, however, does not exhaust the roles values play in evidential reasoning. I introduce WAVE – a novel account of the logical relations between values and evidence. WAVE states that values influence evidential reasoning by adjusting evidential weights. I argue that the weight-adjusting role of (...) values is distinct from their underdetermination gap-filling role. Values adjust weights in three ways. First, values affect our trust in the testimony of others. Second, values influence the evidential thresholds required for justified epistemic judgments. Third, values influence the relative weight of a certain type of evidence within a body of multimodal discordant evidence. WAVE explains, from an epistemic perspective, rather than psychological, how smokers, for example, can find the same evidence about the dangers of smoking less persuasive than non-smokers. WAVE allows for a wider effect of values on our accepted scientific theories and beliefs than the effect for which the underdetermination model allows alone; therefore, science studies scholars must consider WAVE in their research and analysis of evidential case studies. (shrink)

Suppose that disgust can provide evidence of moral wrongdoing. What account of disgust might make sense of this? A recent and promising theory is the social contagion view, proposed by Alexandra Plakias. After criticizing both its descriptive and normative claims, I draw two conclusions. First, we should question the wisdom of drawing so straight a line from biological poisons and pathogens to social counterparts. Second, we don’t need to explain the evidential value of disgust by appealing to what the (...) response tracks. These lessons point toward an alternative: namely, that disgust is a moral heuristic. On the heuristic view, disgust is a trigger for the subconscious use of a particular rule: I show how this view fits with a plausible hypothesis about the social function of disgust, and then apply it to Leon Kass’s famous use of repugnance to criticize cloning. (shrink)

‘How, then, she had asked herself, did one know one thing or another thing about people, sealed as they were?’ So asks Lily Briscoe in To the Lighthouse. It is this question, rather than any concern about pretence or deception, which forms the basis for the philosophical problem of other minds. Responses to this problem have tended to cluster around two solutions: either we know others’ minds through perception; or we know others’ minds through a form of inference. In the (...) first part of this paper I argue that this debate is best understood as concerning the question of whether our knowledge of others’ minds is based on perception or based on evidence. In the second part of the paper I suggest that our ordinary ways of thinking take our knowledge of others’ minds to be both non- evidential and non-perceptual. A satisfactory resolution to the philosophical problem of other minds thus requires us to take seriously the idea that we have a way of knowing about others’ minds which is both non-evidential and non-perceptual. I suggest that our knowledge of others’ minds which is based on their expressions – our expressive knowledge - may fit this bill. (shrink)

Our interest in understanding belief stems partly from our being creatures who think. However, the term ‘belief’ is used to refer to many states: from the fully conscious rational state that partly constitutes knowledge to the fanciful states of alarm clocks. Which of the many ‘belief’ states must a theory of belief be answerable to? This is the scope question. I begin my answer with a reply to a recent argument that belief is invariably weak, i.e., that the evidential (...) standards that are required for belief are low. Although one state we refer to using the term ‘belief’ fits this profile, other ‘belief’ states do not. Crucially, when ‘belief’ is heard in a weak sense, it attributes a state that only a rational creature can be in. I will use this observation as a starting point for an argument that the study of (our) belief should not be constrained by the requirement that the illuminated state be held in common with any non-rational being. This lends support to the Transformative Theory of Rationality, according to which rationality does not merely add powers or complexity to the animal mind, but transforms it into a different kind of mind altogether. (shrink)

When a major engineering product failed, a failure investigation is often conducted to prevent similar failures in the future. In this dissertation, I propose an account of the epistemology and methodology of engineering failure investigations, based on a close examination of the documentations on five major plane crash investigations conducted by the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB). -/- The dissertation is divided into three parts. The first part consists of the five case studies arranged in chronological order: the American Airlines (...) Flight 191 accident in 1979; the United Flight 232 accident in 1989; the United Flight 585 accident in 1991; the USAir Flight 427 accident in 1994; and the TWA Flight 800 accident in 1996. In each case study, I summarize the entire investigation process, focusing on articulating the questions that arise and the evidential reasoning that helped resolve each question. -/- The second part of the dissertation examines how the investigators infer causes of failure events. The type of causal inference used in failure investigations typically proceeds from effects to causes, hence it is called reverse causal inference. This is in contrast with forward causal inference, where researchers start with an intervention and infer the effects of that intervention. I identify three types of reverse causal inference in engineering failure investigations: feature dependence, additional outcomes, and process tracing. -/- The third part of the dissertation examines how the investigators construct narratives of failure events. At the end of each failure investigation, the investigators come up with a narrative detailing the sequence of events leading to the outcome. This part of the dissertation examines how the investigators construct such narratives and support them with evidence. I argue that both the construction and the justification of a narrative of a failure event depend on the question-and-answer process in the investigation, which I call the question dynamics of the investigation. I examine three main components of the question dynamics: the resolution of questions, the significance of questions, and the arising of questions. I conclude the dissertation with an account of the coherence of narratives, which is a measure of the evidential status of narratives. My account of coherence relies on the question dynamics, and it captures the intuitive idea that the pieces of a coherent narrative “fit together” very well. (shrink)

Progress in philosophy is difficult to achieve because our methods are evidentially and rhetorically weak. In the last two decades, experimental philosophers have begun to employ the methods of the social sciences to address philosophical questions. However, the adequacy of these methods has been called into question by repeated failures of replication. Experimental philosophers need to incorporate more robust methods to achieve a multi-modal perspective. In this chapter, we describe and showcase cutting-edge methods for data-mining and visualization. Big data is (...) a useful investigatory tool for moral psychology, and it fits well with the Ramsification method the first author advances in a series of recent papers. The guiding insight of these papers is that we can infer the meaning and structure of concepts from patterns of assertions and inferential associations in natural language. (shrink)

This work investigates intuitions' nature, demonstrating how philosophers can best use them in epistemology. First, the author considers several paradigmatic thought experiments in epistemology that depict the appeal to intuition. He then argues that the nature of thought experiment-generated intuitions is not best explained by an a priori Platonism. Second, the book instead develops and argues for a thin conception of epistemic intuitions. The account maintains that intuition is neither a priori nor a posteriori but multi-dimensional. It is an intentional (...) but non-propositional mental state that is also non-conceptual and non-phenomenal in nature. Moreover, this state is individuated by its progenitor, namely, the relevant thought experiment. Third, the author provides an argument for the evidential status of intuitions based on the correct account of the nature of epistemic intuition. The suggestion is the fitting-ness approach: intuition alone has no epistemic status. Rather, intuition has evidentiary value as long as it fits well with other pieces into a whole, namely, the pertinent thought experiment. Finally, the book addresses the key challenges raised by supporters of anti-centrality, according to which philosophers do not regard intuition as central evidence in philosophy. To that end, the author responds to them, showing that they fail to affect the account of intuition developed in this book. This text appeals to students and researchers working in epistemology. (shrink)

This paper develops a new class of justification logic, the logic of epistemic entitlement. The logic of epistemic entitlement invokes the notion of epistemic entitlement in epistemology, and interprets a justification formula in the form of???? ∶???? as follows: the warrant???? entitles the agent to believe????. In the logic of epistemic entitlement, the formula???? ∶???? is true if and only if???? is true in all possible worlds entitled to be conceived by????. In contrast to the standard epistemic semantics of justification (...) logic, the formula???? ∶???? in Fitting’s model is true if and only if???? is true in all possible worlds that can be conceived of and satisfies the evidential condition: the epistemic state???? ∈ ℰ(????,????) that the epistemic agent is in. Thus, if???? is not a dead point in the model, the point model of???? cannot satisfy both formulas of the form???? ∶???? and????′∶ ¬????. Thus standard justification logic cannot characterize the conflicting beliefs of agents for different warrants. Instead, the logic of epistemic entitlement solves this problem by entitling agents to believe???? and ¬???? on two disjoint sets of possible worlds on????,???? and????′, respectively. ℳ,???? ⊩???? ∶???? if and only if ℳ,???? ⊩???? for every???? ∈????????????(????,????) with????????????. Such an epistemic entitlement in the paper is axiomatized into the logic J_???????????? and the validity of its axioms is verified. And a canonical model of J_???????????? is established to prove its completeness. Finally, extensions of J_???????????? are attempted to explore the logic of entitlement of belief J_EntD4 and logic of entitlement of knowledge J_EntT4. (shrink)

Evidential Pluralism maintains that in order to establish a causal claim one normally needs to establish the existence of an appropriate conditional correlation and the existence of an appropriate mechanism complex, so when assessing a causal claim one ought to consider both association studies and mechanistic studies. Hitherto, Evidential Pluralism has been applied to medicine, leading to the EBM+ programme, which recommends that evidence-based medicine should systematically evaluate mechanistic studies alongside clinical studies. This paper argues that Evidential (...) Pluralism can also be fruitfully applied to the social sciences. In particular, Evidential Pluralism provides (i) a new approach to evidence-based policy; (ii) an account of the evidential relationships in more theoretical research; and (iii) new philosophical motivation for mixed methods research. The application of Evidential Pluralism to the social sciences is also defended against two objections. (shrink)

Evidential Decision Theory is flawed, but its flaws are not fully understood. David Lewis (1981) famously charged that EDT recommends an irrational policy of managing the news and “commends the ostrich as rational”. Lewis was right, but the case he appealed to—Newcomb’s Problem—does not demonstrate his conclusion. Indeed, decision theories other than EDT, such as Committal Decision Theory and Functional Decision Theory, agree with EDT's verdicts in Newcomb’s Problem, but their flaws, whatever they may be, do not stem from (...) any ostrich-like recommendations. We offer a new case which shows that EDT mismanages the news, thus vindicating Lewis’s original charge. We argue that this case reveals a flaw in the “Why ain’cha rich?” defense of EDT. We argue further that this case is an advance on extant putative counterexamples to EDT. (shrink)

This paper outlines an account of conditionals, the evidential account, which rests on the idea that a conditional is true just in case its antecedent supports its consequent. As we will show, the evidential account exhibits some distinctive logical features that deserve careful consideration. On the one hand, it departs from the material reading of ‘if then’ exactly in the way we would like it to depart from that reading. On the other, it significantly differs from the non-material (...) accounts which hinge on the Ramsey Test, advocated by Adams, Stalnaker, Lewis, and others. (shrink)

Is evidential support transitive? The answer is negative when evidential support is understood as confirmation so that X evidentially supports Y if and only if p(Y | X) > p(Y). I call evidential support so understood “support” (for short) and set out three alternative ways of understanding evidential support: support-t (support plus a sufficiently high probability), support-t* (support plus a substantial degree of support), and support-tt* (support plus both a sufficiently high probability and a substantial degree (...) of support). I also set out two screening-off conditions (under which support is transitive): SOC1 and SOC2. It has already been shown that support-t is non-transitive in the general case (where it is not required that SOC1 holds and it is not required that SOC2 holds), in the special case where SOC1 holds, and in the special case where SOC2 holds. I introduce two rather weak adequacy conditions on support measures and argue that on any support measure meeting those conditions it follows that neither support-t* nor support-tt* is transitive in the general case, in the special case where SOC1 holds, or in the special case where SOC2 holds. I then relate some of the results to Douven’s evidential support theory of conditionals along with a few rival theories. (shrink)

Social scientists often draw on a variety of evidence for their causal inferences. There is also a call to use a greater variety of evidence in social science research. This topical collection examines the philosophical foundations and implications of evidential diversity in the social sciences. It assesses the application of Evidential Pluralism in the context of the social sciences, especially its application to economics and political science. It also discusses the concept of causation in cognitive science and the (...) implications of evidential diversity for the social sciences. (shrink)

According to the ‘Evidential Internalists’, one’s evidence supervenes on one’s non-factive mental states. ‘Evidential Externalists’ deny that, and allow for external factors to determine what evidence one has. After clarifying what Evidential Internalism and Evidential Externalism entail, and what they are silent on, this chapter provides an opinionated overview of the main arguments and motivations behind Evidential Internalism and Evidential Externalism. It concludes that Evidential Externalism is a more promising view.

The setting of evidential standards is a core practice of scientific assessment for policy. Persuaded by considerations of inductive risk, philosophers generally agree that the justification of evidential standards must appeal to non-epistemic values but debate whether the balance of non-epistemic reasons favours varying evidential standards versus maintaining fixed high evidential standards in assessment, as both sets of standards promote different and important political virtues of advisory institutions. In this paper, I adjudicate the evidential standards (...) debate by developing a novel argument from justice, drawing on the IPCC’s assessment of climate impacts as a case study. I argue that in assessments marked by background evidential inequality, maintaining fixed high evidential standards results in an unequal distribution of ‘epistemic power’ among stakeholders, producing a ‘powerful assessment’ for the data-rich (a high rate of findings) and a ‘weak assessment’ for the data-poor (a low rate of findings). Where such inequalities of epistemic power disadvantage those in data-poor regions with respect to fundamental interests, such as basic human rights, we have decisive reasons of justice to vary evidential standards. (shrink)

Once upon a time, some thought that indicative conditionals could be effectively analyzed as material conditionals. Later on, an alternative theoretical construct has prevailed and received wide acceptance, namely, the conditional probability of the consequent given the antecedent. Partly following critical remarks recently ap- peared in the literature, we suggest that evidential support—rather than conditional probability alone—is key to understand indicative conditionals. There have been motivated concerns that a theory of evidential conditionals (unlike their more tra- ditional counterparts) (...) cannot generate a sufficiently interesting logical system. Here, we will describe results dispelling these worries. Happily, and perhaps surprisingly, appropriate technical variations of Ernst Adams’s classical approach allow for the construction of a logic of evidential conditionals with distinctive fea- tures, which is also well-behaved and reasonably strong. (shrink)

Enjoying great popularity in decision theory, epistemology, and philosophy of science, Bayesianism as understood here is fundamentally concerned with epistemically ideal rationality. It assumes a tight connection between evidential probability and ideally rational credence, and usually interprets evidential probability in terms of such credence. Timothy Williamson challenges Bayesianism by arguing that evidential probabilities cannot be adequately interpreted as the credences of an ideal agent. From this and his assumption that evidential probabilities cannot be interpreted as the (...) actual credences of human agents either, he concludes that no interpretation of evidential probabilities in terms of credence is adequate. I argue to the contrary. My overarching aim is to show on behalf of Bayesians how one can still interpret evidential probabilities in terms of ideally rational credence and how one can maintain a tight connection between evidential probabilities and ideally rational credence even if the former cannot be interpreted in terms of the latter. By achieving this aim I illuminate the limits and prospects of Bayesianism. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Rowe's Evidential Argument from Evil Draper's Evidential Argument from Evil Concluding Remarks Works cited.

In this paper, I respond to Frank Hofmann’s reply to my (2022) argument against “evidential minimalism” (EM). According to defenders of EM, there is a close connection between evidence and normative reasons for belief: evidence is either itself, or (under certain “minimal” conditions) gives rise to, a normative reason for belief. In my (2022), I argued against EM by showing that there are cases where: (i) S possesses strong evidence E for the truth of p at time t, (ii) (...) all minimal conditions for the normativity of E are met at t, (iii) S doesn’t believe p at t, yet (iv) S isn’t criticizable on account of (i)-(iii) at t. I then appealed to a linking claim connecting criticizability with the existence of normative reasons for belief. Hofmann’s reply invokes a distinction between two different kinds of epistemic criticism: a strong and a weak form. I will argue that Hofmann’s distinction fails to save EM from my argument. (shrink)

Material traces of the past are notoriously inscrutable; they rarely speak with one voice, and what they say is never unmediated. They stand as evidence only given a rich scaffolding of interpretation which is, itself, always open to challenge and revision. And yet archaeological evidence has dramatically expanded what we know of the cultural past, sometimes demonstrating a striking capacity to disrupt settled assumptions. The questions we address in Evidential Reasoning are: How are these successes realized? What gives us (...) confidence in the credibility and robustness, the trustworthiness, of the evidential claims based on archaeological data? And, what constitute best practices in building evidential claims, critically scrutinizing them and putting them to work in archaeological contexts? Rather than retreat to abstractions about how how science operates in the ideal, we approach this question by interrogating a number of close-to-the-ground case studies with the aim of teasing out the wisdom embodied in archaeological practice. The cases we consider – of fieldwork, strategies for working with old evidence, and the role of external resources – illuminate the role of various types of inferential scaffolding and bring into focus practice-grounded epistemic norms that we believe serve archaeologists better than the all-or-nothing ideals of truth and objectivity that dominate programmatic debate. (shrink)

It is a noteworthy disanalogy between contemporary ethics and aesthetics that the fitting-attitude account of value, so prominent in contemporary ethics, sees comparatively little play in aesthetics. The aim of this paper is to articulate what a systematic fitting-attitude-style framework for understanding aesthetic value might look like. In the bulk of the paper, I sketch possible fitting-attitude-style accounts of three central aesthetic values – the beautiful, the sublime, and the powerful – so that the general form of the framework come (...) through. (shrink)

The _Principle of Indifference_ was once regarded as a linchpin of probabilistic reasoning, but has now fallen into disrepute as a result of the so-called _problem of multiple of partitions_. In ‘Evidential symmetry and mushy credence’ Roger White suggests that we have been too quick to jettison this principle and argues that the problem of multiple partitions rests on a mistake. In this paper I will criticise White’s attempt to revive POI. In so doing, I will argue that what (...) underlies the problem of multiple partitions is a fundamental tension between POI and the very idea of _evidential incomparability_. (shrink)

Michael Scriven’s (1959) example of identical twins (who are said to be equal in fitness but unequal in their reproductive success) has been used by many philosophers of biology to discuss how fitness should be defined, how selection should be distinguished from drift, and how the environment in which a selection process occurs should be conceptualized. Here it is argued that evolutionary theory has no commitment, one way or the other, as to whether the twins are equally fit. This is (...) because the theory of natural selection is fundamentally about the fitnesses of traits, not the fitnesses of token individuals. A plausible philosophical thesis about supervenience entails that the twins are equally fit if they live in identical environments, but evolutionary biology is not committed to the thesis that the twins live in identical environments. Evolutionary theory is right to focus on traits, rather than on token individuals, because the fitnesses of token organisms (as opposed to their actual survivorship and degree of reproductive success) are almost always unknowable. This point has ramifications for the question of how Darwin’s theory of evolution and R. A. Fisher’s are conceptually different. (shrink)

In current philosophical discussions on evidence in the medical sciences, epidemiology has been used to exemplify a specific version of evidential pluralism. According to this view, known as the Russo–Williamson Thesis, evidence of both difference-making and mechanisms is produced to make causal claims in the health sciences. In this paper, I present an analysis of data and evidence in epidemiological practice, with a special focus on research on the exposome, and I cast doubt on the extent to which (...) class='Hi'>evidential pluralism holds in this case. I start by focusing on the claim that molecular data allows for the production of mechanistic evidence. On the basis of a close look at the ways in which molecular data is used in exposome research, I caution against interpretations in terms of mechanistic evidence. Secondly, I expand my critical remarks on the thesis by addressing the conditions under which data is categorised as evidence in exposome research. I argue that these show that the classification of a dataset as a type of evidence is dependent on the ways in which the data is used. This is in contrast with the approach of evidential pluralism, where evidence is classified in different types on the basis of its intrinsic properties. Finally, I come back to what I consider the core of the thesis and suggest that the epidemiological research analysed in the paper indicates different interpretations of evidential pluralism and its applicability in the health sciences. (shrink)

Evidence is often taken to be “normative” for doxastic agents. What accounts for the normativity of evidence? According to the view that I'll call “evidential minimalism”, there is a close connection between strong evidence for the truth of p and a normative reason to believe p: evidence is either itself a normative reason for belief, or evidence gives rise to such a reason when certain other minimal conditions are met. In this paper, I argue against evidential minimalism. I (...) will argue that there are cases where: (i) an individual S possesses strong evidence E for the truth of p at time t, (ii) all other minimal conditions for the normativity of E are met at t, (iii) S doesn't believe p at t, yet (iv) S isn't open to any form of criticism on account of (i)–(iii) at t. I will then formulate a plausible linking claim connecting openness to criticism and the existence of normative reasons for belief. The minimalist can either accept or reject this linking claim. I will argue that, either way, the minimalist view falters. (shrink)

Most agree that, in some special scenarios, prudence can speak against feeling a fitting emotion. Some go further, arguing that the tension between fittingness and prudence afflicts some emotions in a fairly general way. This paper goes even further: it argues that, when it comes to anxiety, the tension between fittingness and prudence is nearly inescapable. On any plausible theory, an enormous array of possible outcomes are both bad and epistemically uncertain in the right way to ground fitting anxiety. What’s (...) more, the fittingness of an emotion is a demanding, not a permissive, normative status. So the norms of fitting emotion demand a great deal of anxiety. For almost any realistic agent, it would be deeply imprudent to feel anxiety in a way that meets the demands set by norms of fitting emotion. (shrink)

A number of authors have developed evidential arguments from evil in the past thirty years. Perhaps the best known evidential arguments from evil are those presented in Rowe (1979) and Draper (1989). We shall spend most of this chapter examining these two arguments.

Policy-makers sometimes aim to improve well-being as a policy goal, but to do this they need some way to measure well-being. Instead of relying on potentially problematic theories of well-being to justify their choice of well-being measure, Daniel Hausman proposes that policy-makers can sometimes rely on preference-based measures as evidence for well-being. I claim that Hausman’s evidential account does not justify the use of any one measure more than it justifies the use of any other measure. This leaves us (...) at a loss as to which policy should be chosen in the non-trivial cases for which there is substantial disagreement between the different measures in their assessment of policy. (shrink)

Evidential support is often equated with confirmation, where evidence supports hypothesis H if and only if it increases the probability of H. This article argues against this received view. As the author shows, support is a comparative notion in the sense that increase-in-probability is not. A piece of evidence can confirm H, but it can confirm alternatives to H to the same or greater degree; and in such cases, it is at best misleading to conclude that the evidence supports (...) H. The author puts forward an alternative view that defines support in terms of measures of degree of confirmation. The proposed view is both sufficiently comparative and able to accommodate the increase-in-probability aspect of support. The author concludes that the proposed measure-theoretic approach to support provides a superior alternative to the standard confirmatory approach. (shrink)

Paul Draper argues that given theism we should not expect the amount of pain and suffering we observe in the world. And since the prevalence of such evils is not surprising from a non-theistic perspective, we should reject the theistic hypothesis. But not all surprising observations are necessarily a demerit when it comes to the assessment of a given theoretical perspective. I propose that on Christian theism the prevalence of evil is a surprising feature that contributes to the overall aesthetic (...) merit of the theistic hypothesis. This element of surprise in the world, when considered as a divine drama, sets the stage for an even more surprising dramatic upswing where the work of God solves the central narrative riddle of human history, namely evil and how it can be conquered. (shrink)

Evidential holism begins with something like the claim that “it is only jointly as a theory that scientific statements imply their observable consequences.” This is the holistic claim that Elliott Sober tells us is an “unexceptional observation”. But variations on this “unexceptional” claim feature as a premise in a series of controversial arguments for radical conclusions, such as that there is no analytic or synthetic distinction that the meaning of a sentence cannot be understood without understanding the whole language (...) of which it is a part and that all knowledge is empirical knowledge. This paper is a survey of what evidential holism is, how plausible it is, and what consequences it has. Section 1 will distinguish a range of different holistic claims, Sections 2 and 3 explore how well motivated they are and how they relate to one another, and Section 4 returns to the arguments listed above and uses the distinctions from the previous sections to identify holism's role in each case. (shrink)

My thesis, which I call the phenomenal basing thesis, is that the evidential basing relation obtains between someone’s belief and evidence E only if the mental state associated with E has phenomenal character. In §2, I explain the thesis and provide background. In §3–§6, I show that the phenomenal basing thesis holds for simple basic beliefs, inferential beliefs, and complex basic beliefs, both when the beliefs are being formed and when they are being sustained.

I distinguish two roles for a fitness concept in the context of explaining cumulative adaptive evolution: fitness as a predictor of gene frequency change, and fitness as a criterion for phenotypic improvement. Critics of inclusive fitness argue, correctly, that it is not an ideal fitness concept for the purpose of predicting gene-frequency change, since it relies on assumptions about the causal structure of social interaction that are unlikely to be exactly true in real populations, and that hold as approximations only (...) given a specific type of weak selection. However, Hamilton took this type of weak selection, on independent grounds, to be responsible for cumulative assembly of complex adaptations. In this special context, I argue that inclusive fitness is distinctively valuable as a criterion for improvement and a standard for optimality. Yet to call inclusive fitness a criterion for improvement and a standard for optimality is not to make any claim about the frequency with which inclusive fitness optimization actually occurs in nature. This is an empirical question that cannot be settled by theory alone. I close with some reflections on the place of inclusive fitness in the long running clash between ‘causalist’ and ‘statisticalist’ conceptions of fitness. (shrink)

Bayesians often assume, suppose, or conjecture that for any reasonable explication of the notion of simplicity a prior can be designed that will enforce a preference for hypotheses simpler in just that sense. But it is shown here that there are simplicity-driven approaches to curve-fitting problems that cannot be captured within the orthodox Bayesian framework.

This piece lays out the framework for a special issue on the topic of "Fits and Misfits," published as volume 7, issue 1 of Puncta: A Journal of Critical Phenomenology. We discuss the relationship between the concept of misfitting, coined by Rosemarie Garland-Thomson, and debility, coined by Jasbir Puar, in relationship to scholarship on Merleau-Ponty. We then introduce each of the eight articles in the special issue: Rosemarie Garland-Thomson's "What Misfitting Makes," Susan Bredlau's "Conversational Accessibility: Healthcare, Community, and the Ethics (...) of Everyday Encounters," Helen A. Fielding's "Being Touched by Wellness: Merleau-Ponty, Nancy, and the Intensive Care Unit," Ann Murphy's "The Spirited Interworld: Caregiving and the Liminal Phenomenology of Dementia," Rachel Elliott's "Sharing Time with Misfits: We-Experience across Bodily Difference," David Morris's "An-Archic Time: Melting the Clock as Hypernorm of the I Can -- and Philosophy," Rebecca Longtin's "Merleau-Ponty's Cézanne as Misfit Artist," and, finally, Laura McMahon's "The Politics of Vulnerability and the School for Peace: Insights from Butler, Merleau-Ponty, and Family Systems Theory.". (shrink)

Igor Douven establishes several new intransitivity results concerning evidential support. I add to Douven’s very instructive discussion by establishing two further intransitivity results and a transitivity result.

In some recent works, Crupi and Iacona have outlined an analysis of ‘if’ based on Chrysippus’ idea that a conditional holds whenever the negation of its consequent is incompatible with its antecedent. This paper presents a sound and complete system of conditional logic that accommodates their analysis. The soundness and completeness proofs that will be provided rely on a general method elaborated by Raidl, which applies to a wide range of systems of conditional logic.

Fitness plays many roles throughout evolutionary theory, from a measure of populations in the wild to a central element in abstract theoretical presentations of natural selection. It has thus been the subject of an extensive philosophical literature, which has primarily centered on the way to understand the relationship between fitness values and reproductive outcomes. If fitness is a probabilistic or statistical quantity, how is it to be defined in general theoretical contexts? How can it be measured? Can a single conceptual (...) model for fitness be offered that applies in all biological cases, or must fitness measures be case-specific? Philosophers have explored these questions over the last several decades, largely in the context of an influential definition of fitness proposed in the late 1970s: the propensity interpretation. This interpretation as first described undeniably suffers from significant difficulties, and debate regarding the tenability of amendments and alternatives to it remains unsettled. (shrink)

This chapter discusses the two most prominent recent evidential arguments from evil, due, respectively, to William Rowe and Paul Draper. I argue that neither of these evidential arguments from evil is successful, i.e. such that it ought to persuade anyone who believes in God to give up that belief. In my view, theists can rationally maintain that each of these evidential arguments from evil contains at least one false premise.

Evidentials indicate a source of evidence for a content, and sometimes do more. Depending on the language, they also express the speaker's belief in that content or its possibility. This paper is about how to explain the expression of belief. It argues that semantic explanations are better than illocutionary explanations in two ways. First, a general argument is provided that a semantic explanation is preferable. Second, a case study is given to the evidentials of Cuzco Quechua to argue that a (...) semantic explanation is preferable to the illocutionary explanation that has been proposed in great detail by Faller (2002, 2012, 2014). The upshot is that illocutionary explanations of how belief is expressed are dispensable for at least some languages with grammaticalized evidentials. (shrink)