In the course of remarking on the “parodic” nature of Nietzsche’s “doctrine” of Eternal Return, Klossowski writes of “laughter, this infallible assassin.” (Amir 2021, 272) The laughter of homo risibilis does not err in its elimination of human despair, nor does it errantly dispose of any other portion of human existence. A question that I will develop over the course of these remarks is the question of this assassination by laughter: what, precisely, is assassinated? and, what might be lost in (...) such an assassination? In pursuing this question, I want to explore the temporal overlap between the academic acceptance of Nietzsche in France in the early 1960s and the discussion of Spinoza in France at the same time—a discussion that was closely linked to the Holocaust—in order to raise the question of the relation of humor and history. -/- My question to Prof. Amir is: do laughter and humor have a role to play even in the face of world-shattering wrongs? In her account of homo risibilis and in her account of Nietzsche’s philosophy of laughter and its French inheritors, the focus seems squarely on the present and the future. Deleuze’s laughter is that of the human being who has embraced fate but also of the individual who, with their laughter, would overturn norms and conventions. Prof. Amir writes that “Deleuze … focuses on the iconoclastic force of humor, its capacity to break any boundary or law.” (Amir 2021, 282) But is such a focus recalcitrant to ethical efforts to reckon with past evils and injustices? In the overcoming of the tragic by the comic, is there room for remembrance? Is there room for honor to be paid to history? Or, are laughter and humor a-historical forces—is laughter, after all, in Klossowski’s words, an infallible assassin? Is no historical event secure from its transformative and iconoclastic work? -/- . (shrink)

On rationalist infallibilism, a wide range of both (i) analytic and (ii) synthetic a priori propositions can be infallibly justified, i.e., justified in a way that is truth-entailing. In this paper, I examine the second thesis of rationalist infallibilism, what might be called ‘synthetic a priori infallibilism’. Exploring the seemingly only potentially plausible species of synthetic a priori infallibility, I reject the infallible justification of so-called self-justifying propositions.

It is not uncommon to think that the existence of exhaustive and infallible divine foreknowledge uniquely threatens the existence of human freedom. This paper shows that this cannot be so. For, to uniquely threaten human freedom, infallible divine foreknowledge would have to make an essential contribution to an explanation for why our actions are not up to us. And infallible divine foreknowledge cannot do this. There remains, however, an important question about the compatibility of freedom and foreknowledge. It is a (...) question not about the existence of foreknowledge, but about its mechanics. (shrink)

Alan Sidelle has offered an argument to show that internalism about justification implies us to have a certain sort of infallibility concerning some internal facts. This is true but harmless to internalism.

Eleonore Stump argues in her article in this volume that Aquinas’s theory of knowledge is not classical foundationalism, as it has sometimes seemed to be, but, instead, a version of reliabilism. I'm convinced that her thesis is important and well-supported, and it has led me to begin a re-examination of one aspect of Aquinas’s theory of knowledge from the new viewpoint Stump’s work provides. I think the results tend to confirm her account while revealing further details of Aquinas’s reliabilism.My topic (...) is not reliabilism itself. Instead, I am focusing on Aquinas’s account of the reliability of the fundamental operations of the two human cognitive faculties, sense and intellect. Accounts of cognitive reliability have a place in most theories about the justification of belief, of course, and so they are found in more than one sort of epistemology; but reliabilism might be said to need them most. (shrink)

It may be true that we are epistemically in the dark about various things. Does this fact ground the truth of fallibilism? No. Still, even the most zealous skeptic will probably grant that it is not clear that one can be incognizant of their own occurrent phenomenal conscious mental goings-on. Even so, this does not entail infallibilism. Philosophers who argue that occurrent conscious experiences play an important epistemic role in the justification of introspective knowledge assume that there are occurrent beliefs. (...) But this assumption is false. This paper argues that there are no occurrent beliefs. And it considers the epistemic consequences this result has for views that attempt to show that at least some phenomenal beliefs are infallible. (shrink)

Both John Henry Newman and Vincent Gasser offered influential interpretations of the First Vatican Council’s teaching on infallibility. In contrast to many of theircontemporaries, Gasser and Newman placed papal infallibility alongside episcopal infallibility and the infallibility of the Catholic faithful. After exploring the views of Gasser and Newman, this essay compares their views to the Second Vatican Council’s teaching on infallibility in Lumen Gentium and concludes that even though Lumen Gentium cited Gasser, its theology is (...) closer to Newman’s. (shrink)

John Stuart Mill’s defense of free discussion in On Liberty includes the claim that silencing discussion implies an “assumption of infallibility.” This claim is often dismissed as absurd on the ground that a censor might attempt to silence an opinion he believes to be true but pernicious, or because rational assurance short of infallibility is obviously sufficient to justify censorship. This paper argues that Mill is concerned about the epistemic position one assumes with regard to future persons and (...) circumstances as a result of attempting to settle some matter irremediably. The irrationality of this "assumption" sets an important authority-limiting constraint on both social authority and individuals in matters that otherwise would fall under their rightful control. For individuals, in particular, it explains Mill's restriction on selling oneself into irrevocable slavery. (shrink)

Whereas it is well established that Aristotle allowed the possibility of error in some observations, it is often held that he was an infallibilist with respect to normal observational beliefs. We shall argue against this interpretation of Aristotle, and in particular show that it is not implicit in his view that observation is the ‘ultimate arbiter of truth’.

Most contemporary internalists are fallibilists, denying that there need be anything about which we are infallible for us to have knowledge or justified beliefs. At the same time, internalists standardly appeal to ‘internal twins’ in arguing against externalism and motivating internalism---a Cartesian demon can ruin the ‘external’ relations we have to the world, but one is equally well justified in one’s beliefs whether or not one is subject to such deception. Even if one doesn’t motivate one’s internalism by appeal to (...) internal twins, any internalist must agree that internal twins are equally well justified in their beliefs. I argue that the internal twins argument for, or commitment of internalism, commits one to the claim that the conditions in virtue of which one is justified must be ones about which a believer is infallible. The basic argument is that for anything about which one can be mistaken, one has an internal twin who is mistaken, but is equally well justified---and so, not in virtue of that about which one can be mistaken. If the argument can be resisted, this should tell us something useful about how to properly understand both internalism in general, and the idea of internal twins in particular. (shrink)

Antoine Arnauld is well known as a passionate defender of Jansenism, specifically Jansen’s view on the relation between freedom and grace. Jansen and, early in his career Arnauld, advance compatibilist views of human freedom. The heart of their theories is that salvation depends on both the irresistible grace of God and the free acts of created things. Yet, in Arnauld’s mature writings, his position on freedom seems to undergo a significant shift. And, by 1689, his account of freedom no longer (...) seems Jansenist. In this paper, we offer an interpretation of Arnauld’s mature view on freedom, with a focus on his claim that freedom requires a “power to the opposite.” In order to see what he means by this, we look to several under-examined texts in his corpus for clues about how he understands the related topics of “infallible determination,” habit, and primo-primi motus. We argue that Arnauld’s mature view on freedom should be understood as libertarian. (shrink)

Name der Zeitschrift: Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie Jahrgang: 101 Heft: 1 Seiten: 92-134.

Addressing Walter Hopp’s original application of the distinction between agent-fallibility and method-fallibility to phenomenological inquiry concerning epistemic justification, I question whether these are the only two forms of fallibility that are useful or whether there are not also others that are needed. In doing so, I draw my inspiration from Husserl, who in the beginnings of his phenomenological investigations struggled with the distinction between noetic and noematic analyses. For example, in the Preface to the Second Edition of the Logical Investigations (...) he criticizes the First Investigation as having been “one-sidedly” noetically directed and as having thus neglected the noematic aspects of meaning (XVIII 13–14). Also, in an addendum to the Fifth Investigation he notes that in the transition from the First Edition to the Second he has learned to broaden the concept of “phenomenological content” to include not only the “real” ( reell ) contents (noetic, subjective) of consciousness but also the “intentional” (noematic, objective) (XIX/1 411). The fact that, in gradually moving from consciousness (noesis) to what consciousness is of (noema), Husserl struggled with this distinction is an indication of the immensity of the perplexing problems and potential solutions that Hopp has led the phenomenology of knowledge into by introducing his useful notions of agent-fallibility and method-fallibility. Like Husserl, he has focused mainly and mostly on the noetic issues; like Husserl as well, I will try to move step by step from the noetic area into the noematic. I conclude that Hopp’s approach has the potential to become seminal. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Scottish Philosophy after the Enlightenment by Gordon GrahamDeborah BoyleGRAHAM, Gordon. Scottish Philosophy after the Enlightenment. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2022. xvii + 254 pp. Cloth, $110.00Histories of Scottish philosophy typically focus on the school of "common sense" from the eighteenth century, beginning with Francis Hutcheson and ending with Dugald Stewart. As Gordon Graham notes in the preface to this volume, nineteenth-century Scottish philosophy is (...) "an area of the history of philosophy that has generally gone almost entirely unexplored." His collection of eleven standalone essays (only one of which has been previously published) argues that something recognizable as "Scottish philosophy" continued into the nineteenth century—although Graham thinks it ended, then, too—and suggests conceptions of Scottish philosophy that go beyond the old trope of "common sense."Unusually for a work in the history of philosophy, the first chapter is autobiographical. Graham recalls that as an undergraduate studying moral philosophy at St. Andrews in 1968, the only Scottish philosopher he was assigned to read was Hume, whose work was taught in the ahistorical manner that dominated philosophy at that time, and that upon his appointment to the Regius Chair of Moral Philosophy at Aberdeen in 1995 he found little appreciation for the university's most famous former professor, Thomas Reid. Thus began Graham's establishment of the Reid Project at the University of Aberdeen (later the Centre for the Study of Scottish Philosophy and now the Institute for the Study of Scottish Philosophy), the founding of the Journal of Scottish Philosophy, and his editorship of several book series on Scottish philosophy. The story of Graham's scholarship over the years is really the story of the recovery of the history of Scottish philosophy after its near-total neglect in the twentieth century.Graham seems wary of the contextualist turn that historians of philosophy have embraced since around the 1980s, which he likens to "antiquarianism," but at the same time he notes that our current philosophical interests are "not an infallible or even an especially reliable guide to what is intellectually significant" from the past. His solution is to look for intellectual "trajectories" in the history of philosophy—although not with the Whiggish view that these culminate in the present—and to locate particular figures within those trajectories. Thus he is especially interested in identifying the various themes—not just "common sense"— [End Page 551] that can unite the work of different philosophers born and working in Scotland in order to provide a more expansive account of Scottish philosophy.Scottish Philosophy after the Enlightenment provides a close look at the lives and work of major figures of this period, with a chapter devoted to each: William Hamilton (chapter 2), James Frederick Ferrier (chapter 3), Alexander Bain (chapter 4), Thomas Carlyle (chapter 5), Alexander Campbell Fraser (chapter 9), and Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison (chapter 10). Although Graham argues that Pringle-Pattison's work marks the culmination and end of distinctively Scottish philosophy, he devotes the final chapter to the work of twentieth-century philosopher John McMurray on the grounds that McMurray's conception of human agency is rooted in Scottish debates from the previous two centuries over realism and idealism (chapter 11). Along the way, the book helpfully introduces other thinkers currently much less well known, such as Edward Caird, Henry Calderwood, Henry Jones, James Hutchison Stirling, John Tulloch, and John Veitch.Instead of thinking of Scottish philosophy as simply equivalent to common sense philosophy, Graham offers various alternative conceptions of Scottish philosophy, characterized as various "trajectories" that can be seen as originating in the eighteenth century and developing through the nineteenth: as a concern with realism and idealism that developed in the nineteenth century into responses (whether critical or favorable) to Hegelianism (chapter 6); as a prolonged conversation about the relationship between science and philosophy and the possibility of progress in the scientific study of the mind (chapter 7); and as the continuation of eighteenth-century post-Humean Scottish philosophers' aim of defending theism, even in the face of Darwin's findings (chapters 8 and 9). Presenting Scottish philosophy through these different lenses is highly illuminating and makes a persuasive case for the need for further... (shrink)

Bacon's scientific method is commonly thought to proceed mechanically to its infallible end. In this book however, Urbach presents Bacon's philosophy in an alternative light which acquits him of several errors. Urbach describes Bacon as an experimental scientist and examines the criticisms made against him, one of which was that he did not understand the roles of mathematics and science. Bacon was not a traditional metaphysician and was alarmed at the lack of progress in science since ancient times, especially (...) the lack of practical results. He attempted to open up a middle path between practical experience and unsupported theorizing. The author intends to clarify rather than defend Bacon's work. (shrink)

Fallibilism is a precondition for the conversation between culturally distinct philosophies that comparative philosophy tries to bring about. Without an acknowledgement that our own tradition’s claims may be incomplete or mistaken, we would have no reason to engage members of other communities. Were the early Confucians fallibilists? While some contemporary commentators have seen fallibilism as an essential characteristic of the Confucian tradition, others have argued that the tradition is characterized instead by an “epistemological optimism,” and must be substantially revised (...) if it is to meet the challenges of the modern world. What both sets of commentators have in common is that they see fallibilism as a kind of intellectual virtue. If, to adapt a statement from Peirce, fallibilism’s consequences are antagonistic to Confucianism, then so much the worse for Confucianism. In this paper, I want to look at the issue of fallibilism in the central text of Confucianism, the Analects. At the heart of this text I find a puzzle that complicates both of the above-mentioned views. Confucius’ teachings advocate personal humility, flexibility, and listening to others, on the one hand, while at the same time considering the central teachings themselves to be infallible. In the first half of the paper I look at some textual evidence that shows that Confucius advocates a fallibility of persons but not a full-fledged epistemic one, and in the second half I give an explanation of why this is the case. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to apply Charles S. Peirce's pragmatic method to establishing if proponents of transcendental arguments could hold the conclusions of their arguments to be fallibly known. I will thus propose a pragmatic clarification of the concepts of a priority, necessity, and infallibility in order to ascertain if these concepts are unavoidably related or not. I will argue that an a priori knowable necessary proposition is not in principle indubitable, whereas a proposition infallibly known is (...) so. Finally, I will apply these reflections to transcendental philosophy. (shrink)

My argument has three parts. In the first, I shall explain some key Thomist distinctions concerning necessity and premotion. In the second, I shall argue that many philosophers who object to the Thomist position misconstrue the relevant understanding of necessity and contingency. In the third, I shall focus directly on their denial that the doctrine of premotion is helpful for discussions of how God moves the human will. The first two sections illustrate that the Thomists think plausibly that our understanding (...) of necessity is connected either with a logical necessity or secondary causality. Consequently, in order to show that the will is free, they argue that human actions are necessitated neither logically nor by secondary causes. In the third section, I argue that Thomists do not simply beg the question by asserting that God’s predetermining decrees are compatible with human freedom. They have an understanding of God’s causation which allows both for God’s infallible motion and the contingency of many created events, among which are free human actions. (shrink)

_Self-Reflection for the Opaque Mind_ attempts to solve a grave problem about critical self-reflection. Psychological studies indicate not just that we are bad at detecting our own "ego-threatening" thoughts; they also suggest that we are ignorant of even our ordinary thoughts. However, self-reflection presupposes an ability to know one’s own thoughts. So if ignorance is the norm, why attempt self-reflection? While admitting the psychological data, this book argues that we are infallible in a limited range of self-discerning judgments—that in some (...) cases, these judgments are self-fulfilling or self-verifying. Even so, infallibility does not imply indubitability, and the author does not wish to provide a "foundation" for empirical knowledge. The point is rather to explain how self-reflection as a rational activity is possible. The book will be of interest to scholars working on the issue of self-reflection across a wide range of disciplines, including philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science. (shrink)

Whatever the original intent, the introduction of the term 'thought experiment' has proved to be one of the great public relations coups of science writing, For generations of readers of scientific literature, the term has planted the seed of hope that the fragment of text they have just read is more than mundane. Because it was a thought experiment, does it not tap into that infallible font of all wisdom in empiricist science, the experiment? And because it was conducted in (...) thought, does it not miraculously escape the need for the elaborate laboratories and bloated budgets of experimental science? These questions in effect pose the epistemological problem of thought experiments in the sciences: Thought experiments are supposed to give us information about our physical world. From where can this information come? One enticing response to the problem is to imagine that thought experiments draw from some special source of knowledge of the world that transcends our ordinary epistemic resources. My purpose in this paper. (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to offer a specific perspective on Puritan philosophy. Most of the early American philosophy of the Puritans dealt with theological issues, the main topics of philosophical speculation were the ideas of God, salvation, freedom, and others. However, there were some ideas, the presence of which is an important factor, which until now has been little taken into account. This factor is the genuine interest of the Puritans in the natural sciences. Both in (...) England and in America, there were favorable conditions for the new natural philosophy proclaimed by Francis Bacon, this natural philosophy offered a new type of thought. The English philosopher struggled with obstacles in the way of research, one of which was infallible authority, for example, the authority of Aristotle. One of the most curious facts about the colonial life of American settlers is the construction of Harvard College, which from the first days, preserved and increased knowledge. Among the sciences taught was astronomy, which indicates the interest of the Puritans in the study of space. The most important change in the scientific worldview of the times of the first colonies in North America was the adoption of the heliocentric system of Nicolaus Copernicus to replace the geocentric system of Ptolemy, which had existed for many centuries. Among the first books printed in the colonies were mainly religious texts, but there were also scientific ones, for example, astronomical almanacs and catalogs appeared. The information in these books helped in observing the heavenly bodies, for which the first optical instruments, telescopes, were used. Several decades after the first settlers in Plymouth, the first telescope appeared in America thanks to John Winthrop Jr. Taken together, these facts show that in addition to religious reflections, American Puritan thinkers were also interested in cosmological problems. (shrink)

Sovereigns, students and common people have been suggested as the intended audiences of Leviathan. No one of these groups can be singled out. Rather, Hobbes sought an audience beyond even that of his printed words. This reflects Hobbes's growing concern with the ‘corruption’ of the people, a concern which was spurred on by the events of the Civil War. While his attempt to undo or forestall corruption does not undermine his claims to having developed the ‘science of just and unjust’, (...) it does suggest that Hobbes's science is more than ‘infallible rules and the true science of equity and justice’. (shrink)

Taking Thomas Aquinas's interpretation of the prologue of St John's gospel (in his Lectura super loannem Evangelium) as example, I first discuss eight differences between medieval biblical interpretation and modern exegesis, especially Aquinas's frequent use of philosophical opinions in interpreting the Bible, taken mostly from Aristotle. Second, I account for these differences by reconstructing Aquinas's hermeneutics, hinging, as is shown, upon the assumption that scripture was authored by God infallible and, therefore, only contains true statements. From this starting point Aquinas (...) is lead to a holistic hermeneutics: The interpretation of a biblical statement can be judged on only within the context of an entire theory of God, the world, and of the interpretation of the other biblical statements. Thirdly, this view is discussed systematically and critically. (shrink)

필자는 본 논문에서 귀납의 문제와 관련하여 흄이 『인성론』 1권에서 이성을 통하여서는 이를 정당화 할 수 없다고 주장한 것으로 해석하는 기존의 회의주의적 해석을 비판적으로 검토한다. 필자의 견해에 따르면, 흄이 『인성론』 1권에서 비판의 대상으로 삼고 있는 것은 인과 추론의 정당성 문제 그 자체가 아니라, 무비판적으로 받아들여져 온 무오류적 이성 개념이다. 흄은 이 무오류적 이성 개념을 부정하고, 이성을 넓은 의미에서의 상상력 아래로 포섭 시킨 후, 그 안에서 무작위로 작동하는 좁은 의미에서의 상상력과 개연성의 논리에 따라 작동하는 이성을 구분함으로써, 인과 추론을 정당화하는 새로운 길을 열고 (...) 있다. 따라서, 흄은 『인성론』 1권에서 인과 추론의 정당성을 부정하고 더 나아가 총체적 회의주의로 빠져드는 것이 아니라, 이성 개념을 새롭게 정립함으로써 오히려 총체적 회의 주의로 빠지지 않고 새로운 방식으로 인과 추론의 정당성을 확보하는 시도를 하고 있는 것이다. 이와 같은 필자의 해석은 『인성론』 1권과 『인성론』 2권, 3권을 단절적으로 해석하지 않고, 오히려 『인성론』 1권에서의 논의가 『인성론』 2권과 3권의 초석이 되어줌을 잘 드러내 보여준다. 다시 말해, 흄이 『인성론』 1권에서 주장하는 바, “우리의 감각들을 넘어서서 추적될 수 있고, 우리가 볼 수 없고 느낄 수 없는 존재들과 대상들을 우리들에게 알려주는 유일한 것은 인과이다”라고 하는 흄의 언명이 『인성론』 2권과 3권에서의 대상 세계에 대한 논의의 출발점이 되어주는 것이다. -/- This paper argues against the common interpretation that, in Book I of the Treatise, Hume attempts to show that inductive arguments concerning matters of fact cannot be justified by reason. It is true that he argues that inductive arguments cannot be justified by the traditional concept of infallible reason. However, it is important to note that contra to the traditional understanding of reason as infallible, he takes it to be open to errors by classifying it under the category of imagination in a broad sense. He then makes a distinction between reason as “the general and more establish’d properties of the imagination” and imagination as a narrow sense. From this, the paper concludes he attempts to justify inductive arguments concerning matters of fact by redefining reason as open to errors. That is, although inductive arguments cannot be justified by probable reasoning in terms of the traditional concept of infallible reason, the former can be justified by the logic of probability, which he calls “general rules” in terms of Hume’s concept of error-prone reason. (shrink)

Spiritual belief is, in Weaver's view, a personal matter, not to be imposed doctrinally, and religion is a social construct with the critical role of providing structures within which communities can prosper. We need religion to survive in order to fulfil its true purpose of providing a social structure and rules for communal behaviour, he argues, but this will only happen if the existing religious claims to infallibility and exclusivity are eliminated. Many millions of people who no longer believe (...) in a spiritually ordered life are rejecting religion without recognising its intrinsic value as the guardian of our communal values and the rightful authority for the maintenance of social order. The one thing that religion is not, Weaver believes, is the owner of our spiritual beliefs."--Back cover. (shrink)

The paper discusses notions of intuition and insight. The most typical features attributed to intuition in the history of philosophy – receptiveness, passivity, immediateness, directness, self-evidence, infallibility, and indubitability – are analyzed. A variability of the notion of intuition is shown, taking as its example the category of insight, central for the epistemology of Bernard J.F. Lonergan (1904–1984), the twentieth-century philosopher locating between phenomenology, Thomism and hermeneutics. Insight is still in some respects a kind of intuition although it (...) is creative, active, mediated, indirect, fallible and open to revision. (shrink)

Philosophy long sought to set knowledge on a firm foundation, through derivation of indubitable truths by infallible rules. For want of such truths and rules, the enterprise foundered. Nevertheless, foundationalism's heirs continue their forbears' quest, seeking security against epistemic misfortune, while their detractors typically espouse unbridled coherentism or facile relativism. Maintaining that neither stance is tenable, Catherine Elgin devises a via media between the absolute and the arbitrary, reconceiving the nature, goals, and methods of epistemology. In Considered Judgment, she (...) argues for a reconception that takes reflective equilibrium as the standard of rational acceptability. A system of thought is in reflective equilibrium when its components are reasonable in light of one another, and the account they comprise is reasonable in light of our antecedent convictions about the subject it concerns. Many epistemologists now concede that certainty is a chimerical goal. But they continue to accept the traditional conception of epistemology's problematic. Elgin suggests that in abandoning the quest for certainty we gain opportunities for a broader epistemological purview--one that comprehends the arts and does justice to the sciences. She contends that metaphor, fiction, emotion, and exemplification often advance understanding in science as well as in art. The range of epistemology is broader and more variegated than is usually recognized. Tenable systems of thought are neither absolute nor arbitrary. Although they afford no guarantees, they are good in the way of belief. (shrink)

In his Contra Academicos, Augustine offers one of the most detailed responses to scepticism to have come down to us from antiquity. In this paper, I examine Augustine’s defence of the existence of infallible knowledge in Contra Academicos 3. I challenge a number of established views (including those of Myles Burnyeat, Gareth Matthews, and Christopher Kirwan) concerning the nature and merit of Augustine’s defence of knowledge and propose a new understanding of Augustine’s response to scepticism (including his semantic response to (...) external world scepticism) and several important elements of Augustine’s thought concerning signification, cognition, and object-directed thought. I argue that once we properly understand Augustine’s views about these issues, his arguments in defence of knowledge are more interesting and more successful than usually thought. (shrink)

Philosophy long sought to set knowledge on a firm foundation, through derivation of indubitable truths by infallible rules. For want of such truths and rules, the enterprise foundered. Nevertheless, foundationalism's heirs continue their forbears' quest, seeking security against epistemic misfortune, while their detractors typically espouse unbridled coherentism or facile relativism. Maintaining that neither stance is tenable, Catherine Elgin devises a via media between the absolute and the arbitrary, reconceiving the nature, goals, and methods of epistemology. In Considered Judgment, she (...) argues for a reconception that takes reflective equilibrium as the standard of rational acceptability. A system of thought is in reflective equilibrium when its components are reasonable in light of one another, and the account they comprise is reasonable in light of our antecedent convictions about the subject it concerns.Many epistemologists now concede that certainty is a chimerical goal. But they continue to accept the traditional conception of epistemology's problematic. Elgin suggests that in abandoning the quest for certainty we gain opportunities for a broader epistemological purview--one that comprehends the arts and does justice to the sciences. She contends that metaphor, fiction, emotion, and exemplification often advance understanding in science as well as in art. The range of epistemology is broader and more variegated than is usually recognized. Tenable systems of thought are neither absolute nor arbitrary. Although they afford no guarantees, they are good in the way of belief. (shrink)

In “Innocuous Infallibility,” Earl Conee argues that the infallibility to which I argue Internalism is committed, in “An Argument that Internalism Requires Infallibility,” is harmless and trivial. I maintain that this overlooks the fact that Internalism makes use of an intuitive notion of ‘epistemic twinhood’ to drive its position, rather than one antecedently defined with a filled‐out notion of ‘relevant epistemic circumstances’. Conee is correct that any theory requires, and trivially gets, some sort of infallibility‐but it (...) is not trivial that there is a coherent and univocal notion of the sort of relevant circumstances‐and so, twinhood and infallibility‐behind the Internalist strategy and motivation. (shrink)