I show that the Lottery Paradox is just a version of the Sorites, and argue that this should modify our way of looking at the Paradox itself. In particular, I focus on what I call “the Cut-off Point Problem” and contend that this problem, well known by Sorites scholars, ought to play a key role in the debate on Kyburg’s puzzle. Very briefly, I show that, in the Lottery Paradox, the premises “ticket n°1 will lose”, “ticket n°2 will lose”… “ticket (...) n°1000 will lose” are equivalent to soritical premises of the form “~(the winning ticket is in {…, (tn)}) ⊃ ~(the winning ticket is in {…, tn, (tn + 1)})” (where “⊃” is the material conditional, “~” is the negation symbol, “tn” and “tn + 1” are “ticket n°n” and “ticket n°n + 1” respectively, and “{}” identify the elements of the lottery tickets’ set. The brackets in “(tn)” and “(tn + 1)” are meant to point out that in the antecedent of the conditional we do not always have a “tn” (and, as a result, a “tn + 1” in the consequent): consider the conditional “~(the winning ticket is in {}) ⊃ ~(the winning ticket is in {t1})”). As a result, failing to believe, for some ticket, that it will lose comes down to introducing a cut-off point in a chain of soritical premises. In this paper I explore the consequences of the different ways of blocking the Lottery Paradox with respect to the Cut-off Point Problem. A heap variant of the Lottery Paradox is especially relevant for evaluating the different solutions. One important result is that the most popular way out of the puzzle, i.e., denying the Lockean Thesis, becomes less attractive. Moreover, I show that, along with the debate on whether rational belief is closed under classical logic, the debate on the validity of modus ponens should play an important role in discussions on the Lottery Paradox. -/- . (shrink)

Recent work in the cognitive sciences has argued that beliefs sometimes acquire signaling functions in virtue of their ability to reveal information that manipulates “mindreaders.” This paper sketches some of the evolutionary and design considerations that could take agents from solipsistic goal pursuit to beliefs that serve as social signals. Such beliefs will be governed by norms besides just the traditional norms of epistemology. As agents become better at detecting the agency of others, either through evolutionary history or individual learning, (...) the candidate pool for signaling expands. This logic holds for natural and artificial agents that find themselves in recurring social situations that reward the sharing of one’s thoughts. (shrink)

This paper develops a novel, functionalist, unified account of the epistemic normativity of reasoning. On this view, epistemic norms drop out of epistemic functions. I argue that practical reasoning serves a prudential function of generating prudentially permissible action, and the epistemic function of generating knowledge of what one ought to do. This picture, if right, goes a long way towards normatively divorcing action and practical reasoning. At the same time, it unifies reasoning epistemically: practical and theoretical reasoning will turn out (...) to be governed by the same epistemic norm—knowledge—in virtue of serving the same epistemic function: generating knowledge of the conclusion. (shrink)

According to a suggestion by Williamson, outright belief comes in degrees: one has a high/low degree of belief iff one is willing to rely on the content of one’s belief in high/low-stakes practical reasoning. This paper develops an epistemic norm for degrees of outright belief so construed. Starting from the assumption that outright belief aims at knowledge, it is argued that degrees of belief aim at various levels of strong knowledge, that is, knowledge which satisfies particularly high epistemic standards. This (...) account is contrasted with and shown to be superior to an alternative proposal according to which higher degrees of outright belief aim at higher-order knowledge. In an “Appendix”, it is indicated that the logic of degrees of outright belief is closely linked to ranking theory. (shrink)

What does logic tells us how about we ought to reason? If P entails Q, and I believe P, should I believe Q? I will argue that we should embed the issue in an independently motivated contextualist semantics for ‘ought’, with parameters for a standard and set of propositions. With the contextualist machinery in hand, we can defend a strong principle expressing how agents ought to reason while accommodating conflicting intuitions. I then show how our judgments about blame and guidance (...) can be handled by this machinery. (shrink)

In virtue of what are we responsible for our beliefs? I argue that doxastic responsibility has a crucial social component: part of being responsible for our beliefs is being responsible to others. I suggest that this responsibility is a form of answerability with two distinct dimensions: an individual and an interpersonal dimension. While most views hold that the individual dimension is grounded in some form of control that we can exercise over our beliefs, I contend that we are answerable for (...) our beliefs as long as they reflect our evaluative commitments and dispositions, or are products of our reasoning, where this does not amount to a form of control. I next argue that answerability has a second, largely neglected dimension: the interpersonal dimension, which is grounded in what I call our relations of doxastic dependence. As social creatures, we depend on one another in our capacity as believers. We depend on one another as believers not only in epistemic ways, but also in practical ways, because our beliefs inform and motivate our actions, and allow us to participate in shared practical goals. Depending on one another in these ways is an unavoidable part of cooperating in the shared project of pursuing epistemic and practical success, and it makes us vulnerable to both epistemic and moral harm. It is because of this, I argue, that answerability has interpersonal normative force upon us: we are subject to legitimate expectations associated with participating in relations of doxastic dependence. (shrink)

In virtue of what are we responsible for our beliefs? I argue that doxastic responsibility has a crucial social component: part of being responsible for our beliefs is being responsible to others. I suggest that this responsibility is a form of answerability with two distinct dimensions: an individual and an interpersonal dimension. While most views hold that the individual dimension is grounded in some form of control that we can exercise over our beliefs, I contend that we are answerable for (...) our beliefs as long as they reflect our evaluative commitments and dispositions, or are products of our reasoning, where this does not amount to a form of control. I next argue that answerability has a second, largely neglected dimension: the interpersonal dimension, which is grounded in what I call our relations of doxastic dependence. As social creatures, we depend on one another in our capacity as believers. We depend on one another as believers not only in epistemic ways, but also in practical ways, because our beliefs inform and motivate our actions, and allow us to participate in shared practical goals. Depending on one another in these ways is an unavoidable part of cooperating in the shared project of pursuing epistemic and practical success, and it makes us vulnerable to both epistemic and moral harm. It is because of this, I argue, that answerability has interpersonal normative force upon us: we are subject to legitimate expectations associated with participating in relations of doxastic dependence. (shrink)

An increasingly popular view in contemporary epistemology holds that the most fundamental norm governing belief is knowledge. According to this norm one shouldn’t believe what one doesn’t know. A prominent argument for the knowledge norm appeals to the claim that knowledge is the most general condition of epistemic assessment of belief, one entailing all other conditions under which we epistemically assess beliefs. This norm would provide an easy and straightforward explanation of why we assess beliefs along all these various epistemic (...) dimensions. This article argues that this line of argument is ultimately unsuccessful. I show that the main premise of the argument actually supports the opposite conclusion: the norm of belief requires a condition weaker than knowledge. Furthermore, I argue that if we hold on to the assumption that knowledge is the most general condition of belief’s epistemic assessment, the fundamental norm of belief is factive: one is not permitted to believe a proposition p if it is not true that p. (shrink)

According to a leading view, emotions such as admiration, contempt, pride, and shame are important vehicles of agential development. Through admiration and contempt, we establish models and countermodels against which to shape our character; through pride and shame, we get a sense of how we measure up to them. Critics of this view object that these emotions always deliver uncompromising evaluations: admiration casts people in a completely positive light, while contempt casts aspersion on them. Therefore, insofar as they lack the (...) capacity for nuance, these emotions are systematically unfitting and misleading. This paper discusses this objection as originally formulated by John Doris as well as Macalester Bell’s response. Drawing from research on emotional intentionality, it will be argued that Doris’ and Bell’s accounts are respectively misguided criticisms and inadequate defences of these emotions. Their mistake lies in an invalid transition from the claim that these emotions are intentionally directed towards persons to the claim that they deliver global evaluations of those towards whom they are directed. By rejecting this inference, it will be shown that these emotions can deliver nuanced and fitting evaluations in a way Doris’ objection overlooks and Bell’s response precludes us from articulating. (shrink)

In recent work, Jane Friedman has argued that commonly accepted epistemic norms conflict with a basic instrumental principle of inquiry, according to which one ought to take the necessary means to resolving one’s inquiry. According to Friedman, we ought to reject the epistemic norms in question and accept instead that the only genuine epistemic norms are zetetic norms—norms that govern inquiry. I argue that there is a more attractive way out of the conflict, one which reconciles the epistemic and the (...) zetetic. (shrink)

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.

The view (held, e.g., by Davidson) that the having of beliefs and desires presupposes the having of reflective capacities is sometimes supported by appealing to the idea that the concept of belief is a concept of a mental state which involves a normative aspect: beliefs can be “successful” or “unsuccessful” from the perspective of their possessors, and sometimes discarded in light of their “failure.” This naturally invites the idea that believers must be capable of reflecting on their beliefs. Desires presuppose (...) reflectivity if only in virtue of their essential linkage with beliefs. This paper suggests a sense in which mental states—including those of non-reflective creatures—can have such a normative aspect. On this suggestion, the intelligible relations that obtain between cognitive states and conative states open the door for the possibility of normativity without reflectivity. Due to these relations, a creature's beliefs can be successful or unsuccessful from its own perspective even without its conceiving of them. (shrink)

I formulate a resilient paradox about epistemic rationality, discuss and reject various solutions, and sketch a way out. The paradox exemplifies a tension between a wide range of views of epistemic justification, on the one hand, and enkratic requirements on rationality, on the other. According to the enkratic requirements, certain mismatched doxastic states are irrational, such as believing p, while believing that it is irrational for one to believe p. I focus on an evidentialist view of justification on which a (...) doxastic state regarding a proposition p is epistemically rational or justified just in case it tracks the degree to which one’s evidence supports p. If it is possible to have certain kinds of misleading evidence, then evidentialism and the enkratic requirements come into conflict. Yet, both have been defended as platitudinous. After discussing and rejecting three solutions, I sketch an account that rejects the enkratic requirements, while nevertheless explaining our sense that epistemic akrasia is a distinct kind of epistemic failure. Central to the account is distinguishing between two evaluative perspectives, one having to do with the relevant kind of success, the other having to do with manifesting good dispositions. The problem with akratic subjects, I argue, is that they manifest dispositions to fail to correctly respond to a special class of conclusive and conspicuous reasons. (shrink)

Recent authors have drawn attention to a new kind of defeating evidence commonly referred to as higher-order evidence. Such evidence works by inducing doubts that one’s doxastic state is the result of a flawed process – for instance, a process brought about by a reason-distorting drug. I argue that accommodating defeat by higher-order evidence requires a two-tiered theory of justification, and that the phenomenon gives rise to a puzzle. The puzzle is that at least in some situations involving higher-order defeaters (...) the correct epistemic rules issue conflicting recommendations. For instance, a subject ought to believe p, but she ought also to suspend judgment in p. I discuss three responses. The first resists the puzzle by arguing that there is only one correct epistemic rule, an Über-rule. The second accepts that there are genuine epistemic dilemmas. The third appeals to a hierarchy or ordering of correct epistemic rules. I spell out problems for all of these responses. I conclude that the right lesson to draw from the puzzle is that a state can be epistemically rational or justified even if one has what looks to be strong evidence to think that it is not. As such, the considerations put forth constitute a non question-begging argument for a kind of externalism. (shrink)

A recent debate in the literature on delusions centers on the question of whether delusions are beliefs or not. In this paper, an overlooked distinction between egocentric and encyclopedic doxastic states is introduced and brought to bear on this debate, in particular with regard to delusions of misidentification. The result is that a more accurate characterization of the delusional subject’s doxastic point of view is made available. The patient has a genuine egocentric belief (“This man is not my father”), but (...) fails to have the commonly attributed encyclopedic belief (“My father has been replaced by an impostor”). (shrink)

Adherents as well as detractors of the normativity of mental content agree that its assessment crucially depends on the assessment of a principle for believing what is true. In this paper, I present an alternative principle, which is based on possession conditions for pure thinking or mere entertaining. I argue that the alternative approach has not been sufficiently emphasised in the literature and has two important merits. First, it yields a direct analysis of the normativity of mental content, which is, (...) furthermore, independent of arguably non-normative notions such as truth. Second, the approach suggests new and challenging lines of response to central non-normativist objections. (shrink)

Most epistemologists maintain that true beliefs are of final epistemic value. However, Richard Feldman is a rare philosopher who is skeptical that true beliefs are of final epistemic value. The aim of this paper is to evaluate Feldman’s criticisms. I’ll argue that Feldman’s arguments ultimately turn on a view about the relation between epistemic duties and epistemic value that is implausible and underdeveloped.

I argue that explanations of doxastic transparency which go via an appeal to an aim or norm of belief are problematic. I offer a new explanation which appeals to a biological function of our mechanisms for belief production. I begin by characterizing the phenomenon, and then move to the teleological and normative accounts of belief, advertised by their proponents as able to give an explanation of it. I argue that, at the very least, both accounts face serious difficulties in this (...) endeavour. These difficulties are a function of seeking an explanation of transparency at the agential level, either with the subject aiming at truth, or being guided by a norm of truth. I adopt a motivational account of belief, one which severs the connection between belief and truth, and supplement this with an account of actual world beliefs. My alternative explanation is found at the sub-intentional, non-agential level, secured by biology. This explanation casts transparency not as related to the nature of deliberation over what to believe, but rather as contingently characterizing the beliefs of some believers, namely those with a particular biological history. My explanation thus parts company with what has come before along two dimensions: it moves away from transparency being something related to the agent’s aims or commitments, and it understands it as a contingent phenomenon. I close by considering an objection to my view—that transparency must not be understood as a contingent phenomenon—and a nearby alternative position which avoids this consequence. I respond to this objection and give reasons not to endorse the nearby alternative. I conclude that my explanation does not face the difficulties of those offered by teleologists and normativists, and, that by moving away from agential explanations, and casting transparency as contingent, we can provide a successful explanation of it. (shrink)

It has been argued recently that knowledge is the norm of practical reasoning. This norm can be formulated as a bi-conditional: it is appropriate to treat p as a reason for acting if and only if you know that p. Other proposals replace knowledge with warranted or justified belief. This paper gives counter-examples of both directions of any such bi-conditional. To the left-to-right direction: scientists can appropriately treat as reasons for action propositions of a theory they believe to be false (...) but good approximations to the truth for present purposes. Cases based on a variant of Pascal’s Wager and actions performed by a skeptic also illustrate the point. To the right-to-left direction: in certain circumstances, it can be unreasonable for a scientist to reason from propositions of a theory she knows to be true. (shrink)

The peculiar case of Lehrer’s lawyer purports to describe a scenario in which a subject has a justified belief, indeed knowledge, despite the fact that their belief is not causally or counterfactually sustained by any good reasons for it. The case has proven controversial. While some agree with Lehrer’s assessment of the case, others disagree, leading to a schism among accounts of the basing relation. In this paper I aim to reconcile these camps and put simple causal and counterfactual accounts (...) of the basing relation back on the table, by arguing that Lehrer’s case is probably metaphysically impossible, but even if it isn’t, it is ambiguous between a psychologically implausible and a psychologically plausible reading, and this can account for the diverging intuitions that it generates. (shrink)

According to epistemic instrumentalists the normativity of evidence for belief is best explained in terms of the practical utility of forming evidentially supported beliefs. Traditional arguments for instrumentalism—arguments based on naturalism and motivation—lack suasive force against opponents. A new argument for the view—the Argument from Coincidence—is presented. The argument shows that only instrumentalists can avoid positing an embarrassing coincidence between the practical value of believing in accordance with one’s evidence, and the existence of reasons so to believe. Responses are considered (...) and shown to be inadequate. (shrink)

What is a normative reason for acting? In this paper, I introduce and defend a novel answer to this question. The starting-point is the view that reasons are right-makers. By exploring difficulties facing it, I arrive at an alternative, according to which reasons are evidence of respects in which it is right to perform an act, for example, that it keeps a promise. This is similar to the proposal that reasons for a person to act are evidence that she ought (...) to do so; however, as I explain, it differs from that proposal in two significant ways. As a result, I argue, the evidence-based account of reasons I advance shares the advantages of its predecessor while avoiding many of the difficulties facing it. (shrink)

A recent view in contemporary epistemology holds that practical reasoning is governed by an epistemic norm. Evidence for the existence of this norm is provided by the ways in which we assess our actions and reasoning on the basis of whether certain epistemic conditions are satisfied. Philosophers disagree on what this norm is—whether it is knowledge, justified belief or something else. Nobody however challenges the claim that practical reasoning is governed by such a norm. I argue that assuming the existence (...) of an epistemic norm of practical reasoning is neither the only nor the best way to accommodate the available data. I introduce and defend an alternative account that avoids the assumption. According to this account, the relevant epistemic assessments of action and reasoning are instrumental assessments relative to the regulation conditions of a non-epistemic norm. (shrink)

Sometimes a belief that p promotes having true beliefs, whether or not p is true. This gives reasons to believe that p, but most epistemologists would deny that it gives epistemic reasons, or that these reasons can epistemically justify the belief that p. Call these reasons to believe “truth promoting non-evidential reasons for belief.” This paper argues that three common views in epistemology, taken together, entail that reasons of this sort can epistemically justify beliefs. These three claims are: epistemic oughts (...) are normative, epistemic oughts have a source, and the source of epistemic oughts is an end that has true belief as a necessary component. These claims would be hard for many epistemologists to deny, but accepting them, and thus accepting that truth promoting non-evidential reasons can justify beliefs, has significant consequences for epistemology. The paper considers accounts of epistemic oughts that endorse these claims but might seem to avoid the consequence that truth promoting non-evidential reasons generate real epistemic oughts, and shows that none do. (shrink)

Abstract This paper discusses the semantic theory presented in Robert Brandom’s Making It Explicit . I argue that it is best understood as a special version of dynamic semantics, so that these semantics by themselves offer an interesting theoretical alternative to more standard truth-conditional theories. This reorientation also has implications for more foundational issues. I argue that it gives us the resources for a renewed argument for the normativity of meaning. The paper ends by critically assessing the view in both (...) its development and motivations. Content Type Journal Article Pages 1-22 DOI 10.1007/s11098-011-9768-4 Authors Bernhard Nickel, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA Journal Philosophical Studies Online ISSN 1573-0883 Print ISSN 0031-8116. (shrink)

Belief is generally thought to be the primary cognitive state representing the world as being a certain way, regulating our behavior and guiding us around the world. It is thus regarded as being constitutively linked with the truth of its content. This feature of belief has been famously captured in the thesis that believing is a purposive state aiming at truth. It has however proved to be notoriously difficult to explain what the thesis really involves. In this paper, I begin (...) by critically examining a number of recent attempts to unpack the metaphor. I shall then proceed to highlight an error that seems to cripple most of these attempts. This involves the confusion between, what I call, doxastic and epistemic goals. Finally, having offered my own positive account of the aim-of-belief thesis, I shall underline its deflationary nature by distinguishing between aiming at truth and hitting that target (truth). I end by comparing the account with certain prominent inflationary theories of the nature of belief. (shrink)

Sosa takes epistemic normativity to be kind of performance normativity: a belief is correct because a believer sets a positive value to truth as an aim and performs aptly and adroitly. I object to this teleological picture that beliefs are not performances, and that epistemic reasons or beliefs cannot be balanced against practical reasons. Although the picture fits the nature of inquiry, it does not fit the normative nature of believing, which has to be conceived along distinct lines.

This is a critical discussion of Part III of Peter Railton's recent book Facts, Values, and Norms: Essays Toward a Morality of Consequence (Cambridge University Press, 2003).

How do we know what our intentions are? It is argued that work on self-knowledge has tended to neglect the attitude of intention, and that an epistemological account is needed that is attuned to the specific features of that state. Richard Moran’s Authorship view, on which we can acquire self-knowledge by making up our minds, offers a promising insight for such an account: we do not normally discover what we intend through introspection. However, his formulation of the Authorship view, developed (...) primarily with the attitude of belief in mind, is found wanting when applied to intention. An alternative account is proposed for knowledge of one’s own intentions that gives a central role to the mental act of deciding what to do. It is argued that we can come to know what we intend by making a decision about what to do and self-ascribing the content of that decision as our intended action. (shrink)

The idea that beliefs may be stake-sensitive is explored. This is the idea that the strength with which a single, persistent belief is held may vary and depend upon what the believer takes to be at stake. The stakes in question are tied to the truth of the belief—not, as in Pascal’s wager and other cases, to the belief’s presence. Categorical beliefs and degrees of belief are considered; both kinds of account typically exclude the idea and treat belief as stake-invariant (...) , though an exception is briefly described. The role of the assumption of stake-invariance in familiar accounts of degrees of belief is also discussed, and morals are drawn concerning finite and countable Dutch book arguments. (shrink)

The thesis that mental content is normative is ambiguous and has many forms. This article deals only with the thesis that normativity is connected to our mental attitudes rather than with the content of the attitudes, and more specifically with the view that it is connected to belief. A number of writers have proposed various versions of a ‘norm of truth’ attached to belief. I examine various versions of this claim, and defend it against recent criticisms according to which this (...) norm lacks normative force, that it violates the principle that ‘ought implies can,’ and that it is viciously circular. I defend the view that we should distinguish the statement of the objective norm and the way it is regulated, and that this distinction can answer most of the criticisms of the norm of truth for belief. (shrink)

It is often thought that the correct metaphysics and epistemology of reasons will be broadly unified across different kinds of reason: reasons for belief, and reasons for action. This approach is sometimes thought to be undermined by the contrasting natures of belief and of action: whereas belief appears to have the ‘constitutive aim’ of truth (or knowledge), action does not appear to have any such constitutive aim. I develop this disanalogy into a novel challenge to metanormative approaches by thinking about (...) disagreement. The constitutive aim of belief can play a role in adjudicating epistemic disagreements for which there is no analogue in practical disagreements. Consequently, we have more reason, all else being equal, to expect convergence in epistemic judgment than in practical judgment. This represents a prima facie challenge to the metanormative theorist because the extent of (suitably specified) disagreement in an area of thought is of prima facie significance for the metaphysics of that area of thought. (shrink)

A paradox is presented that the poses new problems for both the truth norm and the knowledge norm of belief.

The requirements of rationality are fundamental in practical and theoretical philosophy. Nonetheless, there exists no correct account of what constitutes rational requirements. This paper attempts to provide a correct constitutive account of ‘rationality requires’. I argue that rational requirements are grounded in ‘necessary explanations of subjective incoherence’, as I shall put it. Rationality requires of you to X if and only if your rational capacities, in conjunction with the fact that you not-X, explain necessarily why you have a non-maximal degree (...) of subjective coherence. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the puzzling situation of having beliefs that are resistant to one’s own critical reasoning. This phenomenon happens, for example, when an individual does not succeed in eliminating a belief by evaluating it as false. I argue that this situation involves a specific type of irrationality—not yet properly identified in the literature—which I call ‘critical doxastic resistance’. The aim of this paper is to characterize this type of irrationality. Understanding such a phenomenon sheds light on the type (...) of agency that we exercise when we reason critically. Moreover, it illustrates one relevant relationship between agential rational control of our beliefs and the rational functioning of beliefs as being responsive to reasons. I argue that critical doxastic resistance is characterized by a failure to meet the following rational norm: in critical reasoning, the results of evaluative reasoning should automatically transfer into, and be implemented by, the reasoning or beliefs under evaluation. (shrink)

Recent years have seen a Bayesian revolution in cognitive science. This should be of interest to metaphysicians of science, whose naturalist project involves working out the metaphysical implications of our leading scientific accounts, and in advancing our understanding of those accounts by drawing on the metaphysical frameworks developed by philosophers. Toward these ends, in this paper I develop a metaphysics of the Bayesian mind. My central claim is that the Bayesian approach supports a novel empirical argument for normativism, the thesis (...) that belief has a normative essence, with the norms in question being those of rationality. The argument I develop draws in part on the causal powers subset account of realization defended by Wilson and Shoemaker, with the link being that Bayesians often appeal to Marr’s framework of levels of analysis, which carries with it multiple realizability claims that can be understood in terms of the subset model. I then use the view developed, with its appeal to normativism and subset realization, to explain how Bayesians can accommodate empirical findings of irrationality that are sometimes thought to pose a problem for their view. (shrink)

It is common orthodoxy among internalists and externalists alike that knowledge is lost or defeated in situations involving misleading evidence of a suitable kind. But making sense of defeat has seemed to present a particular challenge for those who reject an internalist justification condition on knowledge. My main aim here is to argue that externalists ought to take seriously a view on which knowledge can be retained even in the face of strong seemingly defeating evidence. As an instructive example, I (...) first discuss whether a theory on which knowledge is belief that is safe from error has the resources for accommodating defeat. I argue that beliefs retained in defeat cases need not be unsafe or true in some accidental way. I then discuss externalist strategies for explaining why we have incorrect intuitions about defeat. The notion of an epistemically reasonable subject plays a central role in my theory. Reasonable subjects adopt general strategies that are good for acquiring true belief and knowledge across a wide range of normal cases, but stubbornly retaining belief in the face of new evidence does not reflect such policies. I argue that though the methods employed by subjects who fail to adjust their beliefs in defeat cases may be perfectly good, they are not good methods to adopt, as their adoption is accompanied by bad dispositions. What emerges is a view on which a subject can know despite being unreasonable, and despite failing to manifest dispositions to know across normal cases. Unreasonable subjects are genuinely criticisable, but like almost anything, knowledge can sometimes be achieved in the absence of a good general strategy. (shrink)

A strong, strictly virtue- based , and at the same time truth-centered framework for virtue epistemology (VE) is proposed that bases VE upon a clearly motivating epistemic virtue, inquisitiveness or curiosity in a very wide sense, characterizes the purely executive capacities-virtues as a means for the truth-goal set by the former, and, finally, situates the remaining, partly motivating and partly executive virtues in relation to this central stock of virtues. Character-trait epistemic virtues are presented as hybrids, partly moral, partly purely (...) epistemic. In order to make the approach virtue- based , it is argued that the central virtue (inquisitiveness or curiosity) is responsible for the value of truth: truth is valuable to cognizers because they are inquisitive, and most other virtues are a means for satisfying inquisitiveness. On can usefully combine this virtue-based account of the motivation for acquiring knowledge with a Sosa-style analysis of the concept “knowledge”, which brings to the forefront virtues-capacities, in order to obtain a full-blooded, “strong” VE. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to challenge what is often called the “Uniqueness” thesis. According to this thesis, given one’s total evidence, there is a unique rational doxastic attitude that one can take to any proposition. It is sensible for defenders of Uniqueness to commit to an accompanying principle that: when some agent A has equal epistemic reason both to believe that p and to believe that not p, the unique epistemically rational doxastic attitude for A to adopt with (...) respect to whether p is the suspension of judgment. In this paper, I offer a case wherein the agent has equal epistemic reason both to believe that p and to believe that not p, but the agent is not epistemically required to suspend judgment about whether p. Furthermore, the case is such that there seems to be no uniquely rational attitude for the agent to adopt. (shrink)

For many epistemologists and normativity theorists, epistemic norms necessarily entail normative reasons. Why or in virtue of what do epistemic norms have this necessary normative authority? According to what I call epistemic constitutivism, it is ultimately because belief constitutively aims at truth. In this paper, I examine various versions of the aim of belief thesis and argue that none of them can plausibly ground the normative authority of epistemic norms. I conclude that epistemic constitutivism is not a promising strategy for (...) grounding epistemic normativity. (shrink)

According to the logical pluralism of Beall and Restall, there are several distinct relations of logical consequence. Some critics argue that logical pluralism suffers from what I call the collapse problem: that despite its intention to articulate a radically pluralistic doctrine about logic, the view unintentionally collapses into logical monism. In this paper, I propose a contextualist resolution of the collapse problem. This clarifies the mechanism responsible for a plurality of logics and handles the motivating data better than the original (...) view. It is a major improvement that should be embraced by all logical pluralists. (shrink)

John MacFarlane explores how we might make sense of the idea that truth is relative. He provides new, satisfying accounts of parts of our thought and talk that have resisted traditional methods of analysis, including what we mean when we talk about what is tasty, what we know, what will happen, what might be the case, and what we ought to do.

This is a paper about the nature of snobbery and the undermining import of a charge of snobbery.

Theoria, Volume 87, Issue 5, Page 1050-1066, October 2021.

In a recent book entitled Free Will and Epistemology. A Defence of the Transcendental Argument for Freedom, Robert Lockie argues that the belief in determinism is self-defeating. Lockie’s argument hinges on the contention that we are bound to assess whether our beliefs are justified by relying on an internalist deontological conception of justification. However, the determinist denies the existence of the free will that is required in order to form justified beliefs according to such deontological conception of justification. As a (...) result, by the determinist’s own lights, the very belief in determinism cannot count as justified. On this ground Lockie argues that we are bound to act and believe on the presupposition that we are free. In this paper I discuss and reject Lockie’s transcendental argument for freedom. Lockie’s argument relies on the assumption that in judging that determinism is true the determinist is committed to take it that there are epistemic obligations – e.g., the obligation to believe that determinism is true, or the obligation to aim to believe the truth about determinism. I argue that this assumption rests on a wrong conception of the interplay between judgments and commitments. (shrink)

The subject matter of this paper is the view that it is correct, in an absolute sense, to believe a proposition just in case the proposition is true. I take issue with arguments in support of this view put forward by Nishi Shah and David Velleman.

It’s widely accepted that higher-order defeaters, i.e., evidence that one’s belief is formed in an epistemically defective way, can defeat doxastic justification. However, it’s yet unclear how exactly such kind of defeat happens. Given that many theories of doxastic justification can be understood as fitting the schema of proper basing on propositional justifiers, we might attempt to explain the defeat either by arguing that a higher-order defeater defeats propositional justification or by arguing that it defeats proper basing. It has been (...) argued that the first attempt is unpromising because a variety of prominent theories of propositional justification don’t imply that we lose propositional justification when gaining higher-order defeaters. This leads some scholars to take the second attempt. In this paper, I criticize this second attempt, and I defend the first attempt by arguing that a theory of propositional justification that requires intellectual responsibility can nicely account for higher-order defeat. My proposal is that we lose doxastic justification when we gain higher-order defeaters because there is no intellectually responsible way for us to maintain our original beliefs due to the defeaters. (shrink)

It is standard, both in the philosophical literature and in ordinary parlance, to assume that one can fall short of responding to all one’s moral reasons without being irrational. Yet when we turn to epistemic reasons, the situation could not be more different. Most epistemologists take it as axiomatic that for a belief to be rational is for it to be well-supported by epistemic reasons. We find ourselves with a striking asymmetry, then, between the moral and epistemic domains concerning what (...) is taken for granted about whether failures to respond to reasons are failures of rationality. My aim in this paper is to interrogate this asymmetry, and ultimately to argue that the asymmetry is groundless. Instead, I will offer an error theory to explain the asymmetry in intuitions. This error theory suggests that we should amend the conventional wisdom about the relationship between epistemic reasons and rationality. (shrink)

In this paper, I will present and advocate a view about what we are doing when we attribute delusion, namely, say that someone is delusional. It is an “expressivist” view, roughly analogous to expressivism in meta-ethics. Just as meta-ethical expressivism accounts for certain key features of moral discourse, so does this expressivism account for certain key features of delusion attribution. And just as meta-ethical expressivism undermines factualism about moral properties, so does this expressivism, if correct, show that certain attempts to (...) objectively define delusion are misguided. I proceed as follows. I start by examining different attempts at defining delusion, separating broadly psychiatric attempts from epistemic ones. I then present a change of approach, according to which we question whether the term “delusion” is in the business of (merely) describing reality. I then support this proposal, first, by borrowing standard lines of argument from meta-ethics (including ontological reluctance, intrinsic motivation, and deep disagreement) but also, by inference to the best explanation of some the features we see when we try to theorise about delusion (namely that it is hard to define, and that our delusion attributions are elicited by a plurality of norms). (shrink)