Updating for Externalists

Noûs 55 (3):487-516 (2021)
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Abstract

The externalist says that your evidence could fail to tell you what evidence you do or not do have. In that case, it could be rational for you to be uncertain about what your evidence is. This is a kind of uncertainty which orthodox Bayesian epistemology has difficulty modeling. For, if externalism is correct, then the orthodox Bayesian learning norms of conditionalization and reflection are inconsistent with each other. I recommend that an externalist Bayesian reject conditionalization. In its stead, I provide a new theory of rational learning for the externalist. I defend this theory by arguing that its advice will be followed by anyone whose learning dispositions maximize expected accuracy. I then explore some of this theory’s consequences for the rationality of epistemic akrasia, peer disagreement, undercutting defeat, and uncertain evidence.

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Author's Profile

J. Dmitri Gallow
Australian Catholic University

Citations of this work

Rational Polarization.Kevin Dorst - forthcoming - The Philosophical Review.
Accuracy-dominance and conditionalization.Michael Nielsen - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 178 (10):3217-3236.
Higher-Order Evidence.Kevin Dorst - forthcoming - In Maria Lasonen-Aarnio & Clayton Littlejohn (eds.), The Routledge Handbook for the Philosophy of Evidence. Routledge.

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Knowledge and its limits.Timothy Williamson - 2000 - New York: Oxford University Press.
The Logic of Decision.Richard C. Jeffrey - 1965 - New York, NY, USA: University of Chicago Press.
Elusive knowledge.David K. Lewis - 1996 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 74 (4):549 – 567.
Knowledge and Its Limits.Timothy Williamson - 2000 - Philosophy 76 (297):460-464.
Knowledge and its Limits.Timothy Williamson - 2000 - Tijdschrift Voor Filosofie 64 (1):200-201.

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