This paper examines the concept of coherence and its role in legal reasoning. First, it identifies some problem areas confronting coherence theories of legal reasoning about both disputed questions of fact and disputed questions of law. Second, with a view to solving these problems, it proposes a coherence model of legal reasoning. The main tenet of this coherence model is that a belief about the law and the facts under dispute is justified if it is “optimally coherent,” that is, if (...) it is such that an epistemically responsible legal decision-maker would have accepted it as justified by virtue of its coherence in like circumstances. Last, looking beyond the coherence theory, the paper explores the implications of the version of legal coherentism proposed for a general theory of legal reasoning and rationality. (shrink)

This article defends Cavell and Levinas’ view that anti-skeptical arguments cannot attain universal assent. In the first half of the article, I argue that Conant’s reading of Cavell is mistaken in two respects: he ignores Cavell’s inheritance of Kant as well as the differences Cavell emphasizes between external world and other minds skepticism. In the second half of the paper, I examine affinities between Cavell and Levinas’ thought, viz., acknowledging the facticity of the other and their remarks on skepticism. I (...) close the paper by noting three metaphysical and ethical truths that arise from Cavell’s way with skepticism. (shrink)

Testimony is a vital and ubiquitous source of knowledge. Were we to refrain from accepting the testimony of others, our lives would be impoverished in startling and debilitating ways. Despite the vital role that testimony occupies in our epistemic lives, traditional epistemological theories have focused primarily on other sources, such as sense perception, memory, and reason, with relatively little attention devoted specifically to testimony. In recent years, however, the epistemic significance of testimony has been more fully appreciated. I shall here (...) focus on two questions that have received the most attention in recent work in the epistemology of testimony. First, is testimonial knowledge acquired only by being transmitted from speaker to hearer? Second, must a hearer have positive reasons to justifiedly accept a speaker's testimony? (shrink)

This paper examines a lasting tension in pragmatism between broadly functionalist outlooks on meaning and a primacy placed on what can be revealed by direct experiential or practical encounters. Both the inferentialist and experiential emphases can be traced back to Peirce’s original pragmatic maxim. Here the tension is examined first in William James’s insightful views on intentionality and experience, followed by a diagnosis of the problem as it has arisen in neo­pragmatist debates concerning the nature of perceptual knowledge in Rorty (...) and Brandom and their critics. In the end the paper sketches the general form of a resolution of the tension that is consistent with both of these core emphases in the pragmatist tradition. (shrink)

Philosophical Issues, Volume 31, Issue 1, Page 188-209, October 2021.

In the criminal legal system, confessions have long been considered the ‘gold standard’ in evidence. An immediate problem arises for this gold standard, however, when the prevalence of false confessions is taken into account. In this paper, I take a close look at false confessions in connection with the phenomenon of testimonial injustice. I show that false confessions provide a unique and compelling challenge to the current conceptual tools used to understand this epistemic wrong. In particular, I argue that we (...) cannot make sense of the unjust ways in which false confessions function in our criminal legal system by focusing exclusively on speakers getting less credibility than they deserve. I conclude that the way we conceive of testimonial injustice requires a significant expansion to include what I call agential testimonial injustice – where an unwarranted credibility excess is afforded to speakers when their epistemic agency has been denied or subverted in the obtaining of their testimony. (shrink)

InMind and World,John McDowell claims that we need to steer our way between bald naturalism and rampant platonism as two ways to explain our capacity to use concepts. Performing this task requires an explanation of how concepts can be both socially charged and, at the same time, genuinely involving the world as it really is. I suggest that McDowell’s explanation is insufficient and that Wilfrid Sellars’s idea of sense impressions might be used to clarify the relationship between social practices and (...) conceptual knowledge without incurring too much damage to the overall architectonics of McDowell’s theory.DansMind and World, John McDowell affirme que nous devons nous éloigner du naturalisme dépouillé et du platonisme exubérant comme étant deux manières d’expliquer notre capacité à utiliser des concepts. Pour accomplir cette tâche, il est nécessaire d’expliquer comment les concepts peuvent être à la fois chargés socialement et réellement engagés avec le monde tel qu’il est. Je suggère que l’explication de McDowell est insuffisante et que l’idée de Wilfrid Sellars des impressions sensorielles peut être utilisée pour clarifier la relation entre les pratiques sociales et la connaissance conceptuelle, et ceci sans faire encourir trop de dégâts à l’architectonique générale de la théorie de McDowell. (shrink)

Taking its orientation from Peter Winch, this article critiques from a Wittgensteinian point of view some “theoreticist” tendencies within constructivism. At the heart of constructivism is the deeply Wittgensteinian idea that the world as we know and understand it is the product of human intelligence and interests. The usefulness of this idea can be vitiated by a failure to distinguish conceptual from empirical questions. I argue that such a failure characterises two influential constructivist theories, those of Ernst von Glasersfeld and (...) David Bloor. These are considered in turn. Both theories seek to give a general, causal account of knowledge: von Glasersfeld's in term of cognitive subjectivity, Bloor's in terms of social agreement. Ironically, given that both writers cite Wittgenstein as a source of theoretical inspiration, assumptions of both theories run counter to key Wittgensteinian arguments. To show that Wittgenstein's views offer no solace to the realist, the article closes with a brief consideration of John Searle's theory of knowledge. (shrink)