It is natural to think that rationality imposes some relationship between what a person believes, and what she believes about what she’s rational to believe. Epistemic akrasia—for example, believing P while believing that P is not rational to believe in your situation—is often seen as intrinsically irrational. This paper argues otherwise. In certain cases, akrasia is intuitively rational. Understanding why akratic beliefs in those case are indeed rational provides a deeper explanation how typical akratic beliefs are irrational—an explanation that does (...) not flow from akrasia per se. This understanding also allows us to diagnose where general anti-akratic arguments go wrong. We can then see why even principles designed to allow only moderate akrasia fail, and also why recognizing the possibility of rational akratic beliefs does not call for finding some other epistemic defect in agents who believe akratically. Believing akratically, in itself, is nothing to apologize for. (shrink)

Some claim that moral factors affect the epistemic status of our beliefs. Call this the moral encroachment thesis. It’s been argued that the moral encroachment thesis can explain at least part of the wrongness of racial profiling. The thesis predicts that the high moral stakes in cases of racial profiling make it more difficult for these racist beliefs to be justified or to constitute knowledge. This paper considers a class of racial generalizations that seem to do just the opposite of (...) this. The high moral stakes of the beliefs we infer from these generalizations make it easier rather than harder for these beliefs to be justified or to constitute knowledge. I argue that the existence of this class of cases—cases of “positive profiling”—give us reason to expand our account of moral encroachment in a way that brings it closer to the ideal of pragmatic encroachment that motivates it in the first place. (shrink)

According to evidentialism, what is epistemically rational to believe is determined by evidence alone. So, assuming that prejudiced beliefs are irrational, evidentialism entails that they must not be properly based on the evidence. Recently, philosophers have been interested in cases of beliefs that seem to undermine evidentialism: these are beliefs that seem both prejudiced (and, thus, irrational) and properly based on the evidence (and, thus, rational). In these cases, a believer has strong statistical evidence that most members of a social (...) group have some property and then comes to believe that an individual member of that social group will likely have that property. For example, a server at a restaurant has statistical evidence that most Black diners tip less than average and then comes to believe that a particular Black diner will likely tip less than average. The goal of this paper is to defend evidentialism from the challenge posed to it by beliefs like the server’s by developing a plausible evidentialist account that explains away these conflicting intuitions. (shrink)

Several authors have recently suggested that moral factors and norms `encroach' on the epistemic, and because of salient parallels to pragmatic encroachment views in epistemology, these suggestions have been dubbed `moral encroachment views'. This paper distinguishes between variants of the moral encroachment thesis, pointing out how they address different problems, are motivated by different considerations, and are not all subject to the same objections. It also explores how the family of moral encroachment views compare to classical pragmatic encroachment accounts.

A popular informal argument suggests that statistics about the preponderance of criminal involvement among particular demographic groups partially justify others in making defensive mistakes against members of the group. One could worry that evidence-relative accounts of moral rights vindicate this argument. After constructing the strongest form of this objection, I offer several replies: most demographic statistics face an unmet challenge from reference class problems, even those that meet it fail to ground non-negligible conditional probabilities, even if they did, they introduce (...) new costs likely to cancel out any justificatory contribution of the statistic, but even if they didn’t, demographic facts are the wrong sort to make a moral difference to agents’ negative rights. I conclude that the popular argument should be rejected, and evidence-relative theories do not have the worrisome implication. (shrink)

According to the relational egalitarian theory of justice, justice requires that people relate as equals. To relate as equals, many relational egalitarians argue, people must (i) regard each other as equals, and (ii) treat each other as equals. In this paper, we argue that, under conditions of background injustice, such relational egalitarians should endorse affirmative action in the ways in which (dis)esteem is attributed to people as part of the regard-requirement for relating as equals.

1. The book is designed to fulfill two purposes: first and foremost, it offers a sustained inquiry into the epistemology of prejudice, paying special attention to its psychological provenance, the...

This paper is about an overlooked aspect—the cognitive or epistemic aspect—of the moral demand we place on one another to be treated well. We care not only how people act towards us and what they say of us, but also what they believe of us. That we can feel hurt by what others believe of us suggests both that beliefs can wrong and that there is something we epistemically owe to each other. This proposal, however, surprises many theorists who claim (...) it lacks both intuitive and theoretical support. This paper argues that the proposal has intuitive support and is not at odds with much contemporary theorizing about what we owe to each other. (shrink)

Historical patterns of discrimination seem to present us with conflicts between what morality requires and what we epistemically ought to believe. I will argue that these cases lend support to the following nagging suspicion: that the epistemic standards governing belief are not independent of moral considerations. We can resolve these seeming conflicts by adopting a framework wherein standards of evidence for our beliefs to count as justified can shift according to the moral stakes. On this account, believing a paradigmatically racist (...) belief reflects a failure to not only attend to the epistemic risk of being wrong, but also a failure to attend to the distinctively moral risk of wronging others given what we believe. (shrink)

In this paper I explore three challenges to the morality of belief. First, whether we have the necessary control over our beliefs to be held responsible for them, i.e., the challenge of doxastic involuntarism. Second, the question of whether belief is really the attitude that we care about in the cases used to motivate the morality of belief. Third, whether attitudes weaker than belief, such as credence, can wrong, I then end by turning to how answers to the previous challenges (...) suggest a way of extending the morality of belief to encompass a way of thinking of the moral mind more generally. (shrink)

Surprises are important in our everyday lives as well as in our scientific and philosophical theorizing—in psychology, information theory, cognitive-neuroscience, philosophy of science, and confirmation theory. Nevertheless, there is no satisfactory theory of what makes something surprising. It has long been acknowledged that not everything unexpected is surprising. The reader had no reason to expect that there will be exactly 190 words in this abstract and yet there is nothing surprising about this fact. We offer a novel theory that explains (...) when and why an unexpected fact is surprising. We distinguish between descriptive and normative notions of what is surprising; clarify the sense in which surprising facts are unexpected; and, finally, develop and defend the significance account of surprise, according to which a fact is surprising to an agent if and to the extent that it is both unexpected and significant to the agent. Since a surprising fact can be significant to an agent in various ways—personal, moral, epistemic, and aesthetic—surprise is not merely or primarily epistemic. Fitting surprise reflects more than a person’s view of what is; it reflects a person’s view of what is significant. (shrink)

What does it mean to listen to someone respectfully, that is, insofar as they are due recognition respect? This paper addresses that question and gives the following answer: it is to listen in such a way that you are open to being surprised. A specific interpretation of this openness to surprise is then defended.

Are extremists (incels, neo-nazis, and the like) characteristically answerable for their moral and political convictions? Is it necessary to offer them reasoned arguments against their views, or is it instead appropriate to bypass that kind of engagement? Discussion of these questions has centered around the putative epistemic autonomy of extremists. The parties to this discussion have assumed that epistemic autonomy is solely (or at least primarily) a matter of epistemic independence, of believing based on epistemic reasons one has assessed for (...) oneself. Here, though, I make the case for shifting the terms of the debate. Epistemic independence is not sufficient to make one answerable for one’s beliefs. Epistemic autonomy, in the sense that matters for answerability, is also a matter of what I call epistemic receptivity. Extremists may be fiercely epistemic independent, but that commitment is characteristically paired with severe deficiencies in empathic orientation. Severe deficiencies in empathic orientation undermine extremists’ ability to adequately engage with competing evaluative perspectives, and thus compromise extremists’ epistemic autonomy. I consider how this conclusion should inform our thinking about what we owe to extremists. (shrink)

Rinard (2019) brings to our attention the fact that, typically, the questions What should I believe? and What should I do? are treated differently. A typical answer to the first question is Believe according to the evidence, and a typical answer to the second question is Do what is right. But Rinard rejects this dichotomy. In its place, she argues for a view which she calls “Equal Treatment” in which one should believe according to the same considerations that govern what (...) one should do. Christensen (forthcoming) aptly situates Equal Treatment as a limit case of a recent movement towards taking pragmatic factors as partly determining what one should believe, in that Equal Treatment is a purely pragmatic view. Does Rinard’s case for a purely pragmatic view succeed? This paper argues that the answer is no. Three objections that target key parts of Rinard’s case for Equal Treatment are presented. The upshot is that the dichotomy between the answers to What should I believe? and What should I do? seems robust against strong attempts to dismantle it. (shrink)

Hilde Lindemann argues that personhood is the shared practice of recognizing and responding to one another. She calls this practice holding. Holding, however, can fail. Holding failure, by stereotyping for example, can inhibit others’ epistemic confidence and ability to recall true beliefs as well as create an environment of racism or sexism. How might we avoid holding failure? Holding failure, I argue, has many epistemic dimensions, so I argue that moral encroachment has the theoretical tools available to avoid holding failures. (...) The goal of this paper, therefore, is to articulate and understand the epistemology of holding in an attempt to remedy holding failure. I show that the virtue of wokeness emerges from an epistemic environment tainted with moral encroachment. I argue that as long as an individual is woke, she will have a tendency to avoid holding failures. Wokeness and moral encroachment, consequently, are fundamental to the epistemology of holding and consistent proper holding. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Rima Basu and I have offered separate accounts of wokeness as an anti-racist ethical concept. Our accounts endorse controversial doctrines in epistemology: doxastic wronging, doxastic voluntarism, and moral encroachment. Many philosophers deny these three views, favoring instead some ordinary standards for epistemic justification. I call this denial the standard view. In this paper, I offer an account of wokeness that is consistent with the standard view. I argue that wokeness is best understood as ‘group epistemic partiality’. The woke person (...) does extra epistemic work before forming a negative belief about a member of an oppressed social group. Just as we do extra epistemic work when forming belief about our friends, so the woke person does for members of oppressed social groups. I first outline the account. I then raise questions about the scope of wokeness and belief formation. After this, I demonstrate that the group partiality view is consistent with the standard view in epistemology. The partiality view, therefore, should appeal to epistemologists who have adopted the standard view because it is consistent with ordinary standards of justification. I conclude that wokeness as a concept in epistemology should not be controversial for those who endorse the standard view. (shrink)

What is the epistemological significance of deep disagreement? Part I explored the nature of deep disagreement, while Part II considers its epistemological significance. It focuses on two core problems: the incommensurability and the rational resolvability problems. We critically survey key responses to these challenges, before raising worries for a variety of responses to them, including skeptical, relativist, and absolutist responses to the incommensurability problem, and to certain steadfast and conciliatory responses to the rational resolvability problem. We then pivot to the (...) ethical and political dimensions of deep disagreement. We focus on whether an unwillingness to engage with positions one considers to be immoral or repugnant might be good, and conclude with some reflections on the moral risks of engagement. (shrink)

Do epistemic and aesthetic values ever conflict? The answer might appear to be no, given that background knowledge generally enhances aesthetic experience, and aesthetic experience in turn generates new knowledge. As Keats writes, ‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty’ (Keats, 1996). Contra this line of thought, I argue that epistemic and aesthetic values can conflict when we over-rely on aesthetically enhancing background beliefs. The true and the beautiful can pull in different directions, forcing us to choose between flavours of normativity.

A groundbreaking examination of Michel Foucault's history of truth. Many blame Michel Foucault for our post-truth and conspiracy-laden society. In this provocative work, Daniele Lorenzini argues that such criticism fundamentally misunderstands the philosopher’s project. Foucault did not question truth itself but what Lorenzini calls “the force of truth,” or how some truth claims are given the power to govern our conduct while others are not. This interest, Lorenzini shows, drove Foucault to articulate a new ethics and politics of truth-telling precisely (...) in order to evade the threat of relativism. The Force of Truth explores this neglected dimension of Foucault’s project by putting his writings on regimes of truth and parrhesia in conversation with early analytic philosophy and by drawing out the “possibilizing” elements of Foucault’s genealogies that remain vital for practicing critique today. (shrink)

A challenge we face in a world that has been shaped by, and continues to be shaped by, racist attitudes and institutions is that the evidence is often stacked in favor of racist beliefs. As a result, we may find ourselves facing the following conflict: what if the evidence we have supports something we morally shouldn’t believe? For example, it is morally wrong to assume, solely on the basis of someone’s skin color, that they’re a staff member. But, what if (...) you’re in a context where, because of historical patterns of discrimination, someone’s skin color is a very good indicator that they’re a staff member? When this sort of normative conflict looms, a conflict between moral considerations on the one hand and what you epistemically ought to believe given the evidence on the other, what should we do? It might be unfair to assume that they’re a staff member, but to ignore the evidence would mean risking inaccurate beliefs. Some, notably Tamar Gendler (2011), have suggested that we simply face a tragic irresolvable dilemma. In this chapter, I consider how these cases of conflict arise and I canvass the viability of suggested resolutions of the conflict. In the end, I argue that there’s actually no conflict here. Moral considerations can change how we epistemically should respond to the evidence. (shrink)

This chapter is a survey of the ethics of belief. It begins with the debate as it first emerges in the foundational dispute between W. K. Clifford and William James. Then it surveys how the disagreements between Clifford and James have shaped the work of contemporary theorists, touching on topics such as pragmatism, whether we should believe against the evidence, pragmatic and moral encroachment, doxastic partiality, and doxastic wronging.

This paper offers an alternate explanation of cases from the doxastic wronging literature. These cases violate what I call the degree of inquiry right—a novel account of zetetic obligations to inquire when interests are at stake. The degree of inquiry right is a moral right against other epistemic agents to inquire to a certain threshold when a belief undermines one’s interests. Thus, the agents are sometimes obligated to leave inquiry open. I argue that we have relevant interests in reputation, relationships, (...) and the well-being of our social groups. These interests generate obligations against others to “do their homework” before closing inquiry. This alternate account makes better sense of puzzles that accounts of doxastic wronging fall prey to. (shrink)

This essay is an accessible introduction to the proof paradox in legal epistemology. -/- In 1902 the Supreme Judicial Court of Maine filed an influential legal verdict. The judge claimed that in order to find a defendant culpable, the plaintiff “must adduce evidence other than a majority of chances”. The judge thereby claimed that bare statistical evidence does not suffice for legal proof. -/- In this essay I first motivate the claim that bare statistical evidence does not suffice for legal (...) proof. I then introduce and motivate a knowledge-centred explanation of this fact. The knowledge-centred explanation rests on two premises. The first is that legal proof requires knowledge of culpability. The second is that one cannot attain knowledge that p from bare statistical evidence that p. To motivate the second premise, I suggest that beliefs based on bare statistical evidence fail to be safe—they could easily be wrong—and bare statistical evidence cannot eliminate relevant alternatives. -/- I then cast doubt on the first premise; I argue that legal proof does not require knowledge. I thereby dispute the knowledge-centred explanation of the inadequacy of bare statistical evidence for legal proof. Instead of appealing to the nature of knowledge, I suggest we should seek a more direct explanation by appealing to those more foundational epistemic properties, such as safety or eliminating relevant alternatives. (shrink)

In this chapter, we identify and present predominant debates at the intersection of ethics and imagination. We begin by examining issues on whether our imagination can be constrained by ethical considerations, such as the moral evaluation of imagination, the potential for morality’s constraining our imaginative abilities, and the possibility of moral norms’ governing our imaginings. Then, we present accounts that posit imagination’s integral role in cultivating ethical lives, both through engagements with narrative artworks and in reality. Our final topic of (...) consideration focuses on the possibility of imagination constituting or constructing new ethical or political frameworks. (shrink)

An intuitive conception of objectivity involves an ideal of neutrality—if we’re to engage in objective inquiry, we must try to sideline our prejudices, values, and politics, lest these factors taint inquiry and unduly influence our results. This intuition underlies various “purist” epistemological frameworks, which grant epistemic significance only to “epistemic factors” like evidence or the truth of a belief. Feminist epistemologists typically condemn purist frameworks as inimical to feminist aims. They argue that purist epistemology is divorced from the ineliminably social (...) and value-laden nature of our epistemic practices, and, moreover, that it abstracts away precisely those features that are needed to explain how power shapes knowledge. As they see it, purist frameworks simply lack the conceptual space needed to ask the right kinds of questions. Thus, they go in for “impurist” frameworks, which grant epistemic significance to “non-epistemic” factors, and so shed the confining constraints of purism. I turn the tables on the impurists—where they have connected purist norms with perniciously disengaged epistemology, I connect impurist norms with a creeping anxiety that is diminishing feminist epistemology’s political possibilities. First, I demonstrate that it’s increasingly common for impurist epistemologists to use moral considerations as a means to bypass the evidence, which betrays a lack of faith that the evidence will bear out feminist commitments. Second, I demonstrate that there is needless pessimism about our capacity to understand, as evidenced by the increasingly widespread idea that privileged social positions place robust limits on what people can know about oppression that they don’t personally experience. In both cases, moral and political considerations are invoked to give the illusion of being socially engaged, while in fact they allow people to give up on the difficult project of figuring things out. An extended case study on rape culture illustrates the stakes of doing inquiry that is only superficially socially engaged; I show that the two anxious traps I’ve identified have prevented contemporary feminist theorists from detecting and rooting out racist distortion in their accounts of rape culture because both traps interfere with a genuinely intersectional approach to feminist theorizing. (shrink)

Impurism says that practical factors encroach on knowledge. An important version of impurism is called ‘Threshold-Impurism,’ which says that practical factors encroach on the threshold that rational credence must pass in order for one to have knowledge. A prominent kind of argument for Threshold-Impurism is the so-called ‘principle-based argument,’ which relies on a principle of fallibilism and a knowledge-action principle. This paper offers a new challenge against Threshold-Impurism. I attempt to show that the two principles Threshold-Impurists are committed to—KJ and (...) Fallibilism—are jointly in tension with a widely-held principle of credence that’s called ‘Truth-Directedness,’ in the sense that the former two principles cannot both apply to those who know the third. This tension constitutes a serious challenge to Threshold-Impurists, because it leaves them two options, both of which are undesirable: denying Truth-Directedness, or accepting Truth-Directedness and accepting that whether KJ and Fallibilism apply to a person depends on whether she knows Truth-Directedness. (shrink)

Impurism says that practical factors encroach on knowledge. An important version of impurism is called ‘Threshold-Impurism,’ which says that practical factors encroach on the threshold that rational credence must pass in order for one to have knowledge. A prominent kind of argument for Threshold-Impurism is the so-called ‘principle-based argument,’ which relies on a principle of fallibilism and a knowledge-action principle. This paper offers a new challenge against Threshold-Impur- ism. I attempt to show that the two principles Threshold-Impurists are committed to—KJ (...) and Fallibilism—are jointly in tension with a widely-held principle of credence that’s called ‘Truth-Directedness,’ in the sense that the former two principles cannot both apply to those who know the third. This tension constitutes a serious challenge to Threshold-Impurists, because it leaves them two options, both of which are undesirable: denying Truth-Directedness, or accepting Truth-Directedness and accepting that whether KJ and Fallibilism apply to a person depends on whether she knows Truth-Directedness. (shrink)

In discussions of whether and how pragmatic considerations can make a difference to what one ought to believe, two sets of cases feature. The first set, which dominates the debate about pragmatic reasons for belief, is exemplified by cases of being financially bribed to believe (or withhold from believing) something. The second set, which dominates the debate about pragmatic encroachment on epistemic justification, is exemplified by cases where acting on a belief rashly risks some disastrous outcome if the belief turns (...) out to be false. Call those who think that pragmatic considerations make a difference to what one ought to believe in the second kind of case, but not in the first, ‘moderate pragmatists’. Many philosophers – in particular, most advocates of pragmatic and moral encroachment – are moderate pragmatists. But moderate pragmatists owe us an explanation of exactly why the second kind of pragmatic consideration makes a difference, but the first kind doesn’t. I argue that the most promising of these explanations all fail: they are either theoretically undermotivated, or get key cases wrong, or both. Moderate pragmatism may be an unstable stopping point between a more extreme pragmatism, on one hand, and an uncompromising anti-pragmatism on the other. (shrink)

It is widely held that our beliefs can be epistemically faultless despite being morally flawed. Theories of moral encroachment challenge this, holding that moral considerations bear on the epistemic status of our attitudes. According to attitude-based theories of moral encroachment, morality encroaches upon the epistemic standing of our attitudes on the grounds that we can morally injure others with our epistemic practices. In this paper, I aim to show that current attitude-based theories have asymmetric mechanisms: moral features only make it (...) harder for attitudes to secure epistemic merits. I argue that, if attitudes can incur moral injury, failure to form attitudes can too. To make sense of this, I contend, attitude-based accounts require symmetric mechanisms, allowing that moral considerations make it both harder and easier for attitudes to attain epistemic merits. I maintain that, once we recognize this, attitude-based encroachment views must soon concede that they sometimes demand we believe against the evidence. (shrink)

If it is ethically wrong to hold some beliefs, there may be a conflict between the demands of morality and the demands of rationality. A recent theory holds that no such conflict exists: any morally wrong belief is also irrational to hold, made irrational through a phenomenon of radical moral encroachment. In this paper, I argue that radical moral encroachment fails to coordinate ethical and epistemic norms, given plausible epistemological principles and various substantive accounts of which beliefs are morally wrong, (...) including those endorsed by radical moral encroachment theorists themselves. (shrink)

Is it ever rational to suspend judgment about whether a particular doxastic attitude of ours is rational? An agent who suspends about whether her attitude is rational has serious doubts that it is. These doubts place a special burden on the agent, namely, to justify maintaining her chosen attitude over others. A dilemma arises. Providing justification for maintaining the chosen attitude would commit the agent to considering the attitude rational—contrary to her suspension on the matter. Alternatively, in the absence of (...) such justification, the attitude would be arbitrary by the agent's own lights, and therefore irrational from the agent's own perspective. So, suspending about whether an attitude of ours is rational does not cohere with considering it rationally preferable to other attitudes, and leads to a more familiar form of epistemic akrasia otherwise. (shrink)

Public reason liberalism holds that laws and policies must be justifiable to all reasonable citizens. Recently, David Enoch has offered an impressive and influential argument against the epistemological commitments of public reason liberalism on the grounds that they are ‘highly controversial’. After setting out this argument (Sections I and II), I show how its central claim is ambiguous between two senses of ‘controversial’. This gives rise to a dilemma: either Enoch's claim is that the relevant epistemological commitments are controversial in (...) the sense of being subject to controversy amongst actual people, in which case this is true but not troubling for public reason theorists; or the claim is that the relevant commitments are controversial in the sense of being subject to controversy amongst reasonable people, in which case this simply begs the question against public reason theorists (Section III). I then defend each horn of the dilemma against objections (Sections IV and V). I conclude by generalizing this dilemma, showing how it defuses not just Enoch's argument but also a number of other arguments frequently made in the literature on public reason liberalism (Section VI). (shrink)

In this short piece belonging to a book symposium on my book How Propaganda Works (Oxford University Press, 2015), I reply to the objections, comments and suggestions provided by the contributors: Bianca Cepollaro and Giuliano Torrengo, Olúfémi O. Táíwò, and Maria Cristina Amoretti. I show how some of the objections can be accommodated by the framework adopted in the book, but also how various comments and suggestions have contributed to the development, in future work, of several threads pertaining to the (...) general view put forward in How Propaganda Works. (shrink)

In this paper, I provide an argument for rejecting Sarah Moss's recent account of legal proof. Moss's account is attractive in a number of ways. It provides a new version of a knowledge-based theory of legal proof that elegantly resolves a number of puzzles about mere statistical evidence in the law. Moreover, the account promises to have attractive implications for social and moral philosophy, in particular about the impermissibility of racial profiling and other harmful kinds of statistical generalisation. In this (...) paper, I show that Moss's account of legal proof crucially depends on a moral norm called the rule of consideration. I argue that we have a number of reasons to be sceptical of this rule. Once we reject the rule, it is not clear that Moss's account of legal proof is either plausible or attractive. (shrink)

It is one thing to hold that merely statistical evidence is _sometimes_ insufficient for rational belief, as in typical lottery and profiling cases. It is another thing to hold that merely statistical evidence is _always_ insufficient for rational belief. Indeed, there are cases where statistical evidence plainly does justify belief. This project develops a dispositional account of the normativity of statistical evidence, where the dispositions that ground justifying statistical evidence are connected to the goals (= proper function) of objects. There (...) are strong intuitive motivations for doing this. For we can turn almost any case of _non-justifying_ merely statistical evidence into a case of _justifying_ merely statistical evidence by adding information about the dispositions and goals of the objects involved. The resulting view not only helps us understand when and why merely statistical evidence is normatively significant, but it also helps us understand how statistical evidence relates to more standard forms of evidence (perceptual, testimonial). The emerging view also has surprising applications, as it imposes limitations on the epistemic value of fine-tuning arguments for theism as well as undermines a standard class of case-based arguments for moral encroachment. (shrink)

In Probabilistic Knowledge Sarah Moss proposes that our credences and subjective probability judgments (SPJs) can constitute knowledge. Mossean probabilistic knowledge is grounded in probabilistic beliefs that are justified, true, and unGettiered. In this paper I aim to address and solve two challenges that arise in the vicinity of the factivity condition for probabilistic knowledge: the factivity challenge and the challenge from probabilistic arguments from ignorance (probabilistic AIs). I argue that while Moss's deflationary solution to the factivity challenge formally works, it (...) leaves us ill-equipped to handle probabilistic AIs. An account of probabilistic knowledge that cannot overcome probabilistic AIs makes knowledge of thoroughly probabilistic contents a rare and unstable phenomenon, at best, or, at worst, impossible. I hold that establishing a metaphysically enriched account of probabilistic truth is therefore mandatory. I go on to develop a truth-conditional approach on probabilistic factivity that is relativistic in its nature and centers on objective chances. I show that while the approach is still compatible with Moss's overall semantics for probabilistic knowledge, it provides us with a simple but forceful answer to probabilistic AIs. (shrink)

This paper defends the claim that pragmatic encroachment—the idea that knowledge is sensitive to the practical stakes of believing—can explain a distinctive kind of epistemic injustice: the injustice that occurs when prejudice causes someone to know less than they otherwise would. This encroachment injustice, as we call it, occurs when the threat of being met with prejudice raises the stakes for someone to rely on her belief when acting, by raising the level of evidential support required for knowledge. We explain (...) this notion of encroachment injustice, connect it to the empirical literature on implicit bias, and defend it against important objections. (shrink)

In discussing the ways in which we hold each other accountable for immoral conduct, philosophers have often focused on blame, aiming to specify adequate responses to wrongdoing. In contrast, theorizing about the ways we can appropriately respond to minor moral mistakes – i.e., criticizable conduct that is bad but not wrong – has largely been neglected. My first goal in this paper is, thus, to draw attention to this blind spot and argue that a separate account of blameless moral criticism (...) is desirable. My second goal is to propose one way to explicate the contrast between blaming and blameless moral criticism in terms of the contrast between moral anger and moral disappointment: while moral anger, as many argue, is an appropriate response to moral wrongdoing, moral disappointment, but not moral anger, is an appropriate response to these minor moral mistakes. (shrink)

I argue that traditional views on which beliefs are subject only to purely epistemic assessment can reject demographic profiling, even when based on seemingly robust evidence. This is because the moral failures involved in demographic profiling can be located in the decision not to suspend judgment, rather than supposing that beliefs themselves are a locus of moral evaluation. A key moral reason to suspend judgment when faced with adverse demographic evidence is to promote social equality—this explains why positive profiling is (...) dubious, along with more familiar cases of negative profiling, and why profiling is suspect even when no particular action is at stake. My suspension-based view, while compatible with revisionary normative positions, does not presuppose them. Philosophers of all stripes can reject demographic profiling both in thought and deed. (shrink)

This article explores the affective dimension of resilient epistemological systems. Specifically, I argue that responsible epistemic practice requires affective engagement with nondominant experiences. To begin, I outline Kristie Dotson's account of epistemological resilience whereby an epistemological system remains stable despite counterevidence or attempts to alter it. Then, I develop an account of affective numbness. As I argue, affective numbness can promote epistemological resilience in at least two ways. First, it can reinforce harmful stereotypes even after these stereotypes have been rationally (...) demystified. To illustrate, I examine the stereotype of Black criminality as it relates to false confessions. Second, it can encourage “epistemic appropriation”, which I demonstrate by examining the appropriation of “intersectionality” and #MeToo by white culture. Finally, I conclude that resisting harmful resilience requires affective resistance, or efforts that target numbness via different kinds of affective engagement. I consider Kantian “disinterestedness” as a candidate. (shrink)

I defend the thesis that friendship can constitutively require epistemic irrationality against a recent, forceful challenge, raised by proponents of moral and pragmatic encroachment. Defenders of the “encroachment strategy” argue that exemplary friends who are especially slow to believe that their friends have acted wrongly are simply sensitive to the high prudential or moral costs of falsely believing in their friends’ guilt. Drawing on psychological work on epistemic motivation (and in particular on the notion of “need for closure”), I propose (...) a different picture of what friendship requires in the doxastic realm. I argue that contrary to what the encroachment strategy suggests, exemplary friends’ belief formation ought not be guided by a concern with accuracy or error avoidance, but instead by a need to avoid a “specific closure” – namely, a need to avoid concluding in their friends’ guilt. I propose that exemplary friendship often generates a defeasible, doxastic obligation to exemplify such a need, despite its inherent corrupting effects on exemplary friends’ epistemic faculties. (shrink)

There are two problems with the logic of Cesario's argument for abandoning existing research on social bias. First, laboratory findings of decisional bias have social significance even if Cesario is right that the research strips away real-world context. Second, the argument makes overly skeptical demands of a research program seeking complex causal linkages between micro- and macro-scale phenomena.

In the flurry of recent exchanges between defenders of moral encroachment and their critics, some of the finer details of particular encroachment accounts have only begun to receive critical attention. This is especially true concerning accounts of the putative wrong-making features of the beliefs to which defenders of moral encroachment draw our attention. Here I attempt to help move this part of the discussion forward by critically engaging two leading accounts. These come from Mark Schroeder and Rima Basu, respectively. The (...) problem of explaining how the beliefs at issue have a morally significant impact on the people they are about will turn out to be difficult. However, this shouldn’t be taken to mean that the beliefs have no such significance. In any case, as I hope to show, there are resources available to the evidentialist for acknowledging that the beliefs at issue affect those they are about in morally relevant ways—indeed, that they harm the person in a way that results in a demand on even the most impeccably rational believer. This is not the demand that she abandon her belief, however. It is instead a demand for a substantial form of regret in relation to the belief, a doxastic analogue to Bernard Williams’ “agent-regret”. An evidentialism with space for this notion of regret shows promise for withstanding the moral encroachment challenge. (shrink)

Epistemic rationality seems to permit a more steadfast response to disagreements over our fundamental convictions than it does for our ordinary beliefs. Why is this? This essay explores three answers to this question: web-of-belief conservatism, moral encroachment, and hinge theories, and argues that hinge theories do a better job than the alternatives at vindicating the intuition that there is a rationally permissible asymmetry in our responses to disagreements over ordinary beliefs and fundamental convictions. The essay also shows how hinge theorists (...) can explain the existence of moral hinge propositions, which enables them to account for the rational permissibility of being steadfast in response to disagreements over fundamental moral convictions. (shrink)

What is the epistemological significance of deep disagreement? Part I explored the nature of deep disagreement, while Part II considers its epistemological significance. It focuses on two core problems: the incommensurability and the rational resolvability problems. We critically survey key responses to these challenges, before raising worries for a variety of responses to them, including skeptical, relativist, and absolutist responses to the incommensurability problem, and to certain steadfast and conciliatory responses to the rational resolvability problem. We then pivot to the (...) ethical and political dimensions of deep disagreement. We focus on whether an unwillingness to engage with positions one considers to be immoral or repugnant might be good, and conclude with some reflections on the moral risks of engagement. (shrink)

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

On the one hand, there seem to be compelling parallels to moral responsibility, blameworthiness, and praiseworthiness in domains other than the moral. For example, we often praise people for their aesthetic and epistemic achievements and blame them for their failures. On the other hand, it has been argued that there is something special about the moral domain, so that at least one robust kind of responsibility can only be found there. In this paper, I argue that we can adopt a (...) unifying framework for locating responsible agency across domains, thereby capturing and explaining more of our actual practices. The key, I argue, is to identify the right conditions for being morally accountable, which I take to be a matter of having an opportunity of a good enough quality to act well. With this account in hand, I argue that we can adopt a unifying framework that allows us to recognize parallels across domains, even as it points the way to important differences among them. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Volume 104, Issue 3, Page 728-746, May 2022.