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Against Hanna on Phenomenal Conservatism

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Notes

  1. Huemer (2001) argues that PC offers a response to external world skepticism, Huemer (2005) utilizes PC in developing and supporting an account of ethical intuitionism, and Tucker (2010) argues that PC solves various puzzles about non-inferential justification including the speckled hen problem.

  2. All references to Hanna’s argument are from this work.

  3. There have been various formulations of epistemic conservatism, e.g., Chisholm (1980), McGrath (2007), and McCain (2008). Although there are important differences between the various formulations of epistemic conservatism, they share the general intuition that S’s believing that p can confer some positive epistemic status on p for S.

  4. See Foley (1983) for his example and how he thinks it refutes epistemic conservatism. McCain (2008) argues that Foley’s example does not pose a problem for some forms of epistemic conservatism.

  5. It is plausible that for the purposes of Hanna's argument the consequent of this premise does not need to be entailed by PC. That is to say, one might think that even if the truth of premise four is not entailed by the truth of PC, it can still do the work that Hanna needs. Although it is true that premise four could still do the work that Hanna needs without being entailed by PC, if it is not entailed by PC, reasons need to be given for thinking that it is true. Since Hanna has provided no such reasons and it is not obvious what these reasons would be, it is best to understand premise four as following directly from the truth of PC; otherwise this premise is unsupported. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pointing this out.

  6. It is worth noting that Huemer (2007) uses ‘seeming’ and ‘appearance’ interchangeably. I follow Huemer in using the terms this way.

  7. Siegel (Forthcoming) suggests something similar by claiming that beliefs can be rational/irrational, but experiences cannot be.

  8. See Siegel (Forthcoming) for support of this claim as well.

  9. See McCain (Forthcoming) for more on the nature of the epistemic basing relation.

  10. See DeRose (2000) for discussion of the impact of irresponsible evidence gathering on the normative status of one’s beliefs.

  11. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pressing this worry.

  12. See Cullison (2010) for a partial analysis of appearances.

  13. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for raising this worry.

  14. See Siegel (Forthcoming) for discussion of cognitive penetration and arguments concerning its impact on one’s justification.

  15. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for pointing out that one might have this sort of worry because of consideration of issues pertaining to cognitive penetration.

  16. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for helping me to clarify the discussion of Indistinguishable.

  17. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for suggesting this point and the previous point about foundational justification.

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Acknowledgements

Thanks to Earl Conee, Andrew Moon, Bill Rowley, and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments and discussion of earlier drafts.

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  1. Department of Philosophy, University of Rochester, Box 270078, Rochester, NY, 14627-0078, USA

    Kevin McCain

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McCain, K. Against Hanna on Phenomenal Conservatism. Acta Anal 27, 45–54 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12136-012-0148-2

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