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Jeffrey Dunn [16]Jeff Dunn [4]Jeffrey S. Dunn [1]
  1. Epistemic Consequentialism.Kristoffer Ahlstrom-Vij & Jeff Dunn (eds.) - 2018 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    An important issue in epistemology concerns the source of epistemic normativity. Epistemic consequentialism maintains that epistemic norms are genuine norms in virtue of the way in which they are conducive to epistemic value, whatever epistemic value may be. So, for example, the epistemic consequentialist might say that it is a norm that beliefs should be consistent, in that holding consistent beliefs is the best way to achieve the epistemic value of accuracy. Thus epistemic consequentialism is structurally similar to the family (...)
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  2. (1 other version)A Defence of Epistemic Consequentialism.Kristoffer Ahlstrom-Vij & Jeffrey Dunn - 2014 - Philosophical Quarterly 64 (257):541-551.
    Epistemic consequentialists maintain that the epistemically right (e.g., the justified) is to be understood in terms of conduciveness to the epistemic good (e.g., true belief). Given the wide variety of epistemological approaches that assume some form of epistemic consequentialism, and the controversies surrounding consequentialism in ethics, it is surprising that epistemic consequentialism remains largely uncontested. However, in a recent paper, Selim Berker has provided arguments that allegedly lead to a ‘rejection’ of epistemic consequentialism. In the present paper, it is shown (...)
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  3. Reliability for degrees of belief.Jeff Dunn - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (7):1929-1952.
    We often evaluate belief-forming processes, agents, or entire belief states for reliability. This is normally done with the assumption that beliefs are all-or-nothing. How does such evaluation go when we’re considering beliefs that come in degrees? I consider a natural answer to this question that focuses on the degree of truth-possession had by a set of beliefs. I argue that this natural proposal is inadequate, but for an interesting reason. When we are dealing with all-or-nothing belief, high reliability leads to (...)
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  4. Is reliabilism a form of consequentialism?Jeffrey Dunn & Kristoffer Ahlstrom-Vij - 2017 - American Philosophical Quarterly 54 (2):183-194.
    Reliabilism—the view that a belief is justified iff it is produced by a reliable process—is often characterized as a form of consequentialism. Recently, critics of reliabilism have suggested that since it is a form of consequentialism, reliabilism condones a variety of problematic trade-offs involving cases where someone forms an epistemically deficient belief now that will lead her to more epistemic value later. In the present paper, we argue that the relevant argument against reliabilism fails because it equivocates. While there is (...)
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  5. Epistemic Consequentialism.Jeffrey Dunn - 2015 - Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    Epistemic Consequentialism Consequentialism is the view that, in some sense, rightness is to be understood in terms conducive to goodness. Much of the philosophical discussion concerning consequentialism has focused on moral rightness or obligation or normativity. But there is plausibly also epistemic rightness, epistemic obligation, and epistemic normativity. Epistemic rightness is often denoted with talk … Continue reading Consequentialism Epistemic →.
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    Reliable group belief.Jeffrey Dunn - 2019 - Synthese 198 (S23):5653-5677.
    Many now countenance the idea that certain groups can have beliefs, or at least belief-like states. If groups can have beliefs like these, the question of whether such beliefs are justified immediately arises. Recently, Goldman Essays in collective epistemology, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014) has considered what a reliability-based account of justified group belief might look like. In this paper I consider his account and find it wanting, and so propose a modified reliability-based account of justified group belief. Lackey :341–396, (...)
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  7. Accuracy, Verisimilitude, and Scoring Rules.Jeffrey Dunn - 2019 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 97 (1):151-166.
    Suppose that beliefs come in degrees. How should we then measure the accuracy of these degrees of belief? Scoring rules are usually thought to be the mathematical tool appropriate for this job. But there are many scoring rules, which lead to different ordinal accuracy rankings. Recently, Fallis and Lewis [2016] have given an argument that, if sound, rules out many popular scoring rules, including the Brier score, as genuine measures of accuracy. I respond to this argument, in part by noting (...)
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  8. Fried Eggs, Thermodynamics, and the Special Sciences.Jeffrey Dunn - 2011 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 62 (1):71-98.
    David Lewis ([1986b]) gives an attractive and familiar account of counterfactual dependence in the standard context. This account has recently been subject to a counterexample from Adam Elga ([2000]). In this article, I formulate a Lewisian response to Elga’s counterexample. The strategy is to add an extra criterion to Lewis’s similarity metric, which determines the comparative similarity of worlds. This extra criterion instructs us to take special science laws into consideration as well as fundamental laws. I argue that the Second (...)
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  9. Virtual worlds and moral evaluation.Jeff Dunn - 2012 - Ethics and Information Technology 14 (4):255-265.
    Consider the multi-user virtual worlds of online games such as EVE and World of Warcraft, or the multi-user virtual world of Second Life. Suppose a player performs an action in one of these worlds, via his or her virtual character, which would be wrong, if the virtual world were real. What is the moral status of this virtual action? In this paper I consider arguments for and against the Asymmetry Thesis: the thesis that such virtual actions are never wrong. I (...)
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  10. Inferential Evidence.Jeffrey Dunn - 2014 - American Philosophical Quarterly 51 (3):203-213.
    Consider: -/- The Evidence Question: When, and under what conditions does an agent have proposition E as evidence (at t)? -/- Timothy Williamson's (2000) answer to this question is the well-known E = K thesis: -/- E = K: E is a member of S's evidence set at t iff S knows E at t. -/- I will argue that this answer is inconsistent with the version of Bayesianism that Williamson advocates. This is because E = K allows an agent (...)
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  11. Why No True Reliabilist Should Endorse Reliabilism.Kristoffer Ahlstrom-Vij & Jeffrey S. Dunn - 2020 - Episteme (1):1-18.
    Critics have recently argued that reliabilists face trade-off problems, forcing them to condone intuitively unjustified beliefs when they generate lots of true belief further downstream. What these critics overlook is that reliabilism entails that there areside-constraintson belief-formation, on account of which there are some things you should not believe, even if doing so would have very good epistemic consequences. However, we argue that by embracing side-constraints the reliabilist faces a dilemma: she can either hold on to reliabilism, and with it (...)
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  12. The obscure act of perception.Jeffrey Dunn - 2008 - Philosophical Studies 139 (3):367-393.
    Finding disjunctivist versions of direct realism unexplanatory, Mark Johnston [(2004). Philosophical Studies, 120, 113–183] offers a non-disjunctive version of direct realism in its place and gives a defense of this view from the problem of hallucination. I will attempt to clarify the view that he presents and then argue that, once clarified, it either does not escape the problem of hallucination or does not look much like direct realism.
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  13. Evidential externalism.Jeffrey Dunn - 2012 - Philosophical Studies 158 (3):435-455.
    Consider the Evidence Question: When and under what conditions is proposition P evidence for some agent S? Silins (Philos Perspect 19:375–404, 2005) has recently offered a partial answer to the Evidence Question. In particular, Silins argues for Evidential Internalism (EI), which holds that necessarily, if A and B are internal twins, then A and B have the same evidence. In this paper I consider Silins’s argument, and offer two response on behalf of Evidential Externalism (EE), which is the denial of (...)
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  14. Bayesian Epistemology and Having Evidence.Jeffrey Dunn - 2010 - Dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
    Bayesian Epistemology is a general framework for thinking about agents who have beliefs that come in degrees. Theories in this framework give accounts of rational belief and rational belief change, which share two key features: (i) rational belief states are represented with probability functions, and (ii) rational belief change results from the acquisition of evidence. This dissertation focuses specifically on the second feature. I pose the Evidence Question: What is it to have evidence? Before addressing this question we must have (...)
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    A solution, and a problem, for veritism.Jeffrey Dunn - 2023 - Philosophical Studies 180 (10):3057-3072.
    Veritists maintain that true belief and only true belief is of fundamental epistemic value. They very often go on to derive epistemic norms based on considerations about what promotes this value. A standard objection is that many truths are pointless: there is no value in believing them. In response, veritists often distinguish between significant and insignificant truths, holding that the former are much more valuable (perhaps even incomparably more valuable) than the latter. But critics cry foul: veritists who say this (...)
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    Reliabilism: Holistic or simple?Jeffrey Dunn - 2012 - Episteme 9 (3):225-233.
    Simple versions of Reliabilism about justification say that S's believing that p is justified if and only if the belief was produced by a belief-forming process that is reliable above some high threshold. Alvin Goldman, in Epistemology and Cognition, argues for a more complex version of the view according to which it is total epistemic systems that are assessed for reliability, rather than individual processes. Why prefer this more complex version of Reliabilism? Two reasons suggest themselves. First, it seems that (...)
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    Group epistemic value.Jeffrey Dunn - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 179 (1):65-92.
    Sometimes we are interested in how groups are doing epistemically in aggregate. For instance, we may want to know the epistemic impact of a change in school curriculum or the epistemic impact of abolishing peer review in the sciences. Being able to say something about how groups are doing epistemically is especially important if one is interested in pursuing a consequentialist approach to social epistemology of the sort championed by Goldman. According to this approach we evaluate social practices and institutions (...)
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    Epistemic consequentialism.Kristoffer Ahlström & Jeffrey Dunn (eds.) - 2018 - New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
    An important issue in epistemology concerns the source of epistemic normativity. Epistemic consequentialism maintains that epistemic norms are genuine norms that are conducive to epistemic value. This volume presents the latest work on epistemic consequentialism by authors that are sympathetic to the view and those who are critical of it.
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  19. Consequentialism Epistemic.Jeffrey Dunn - 2015
    Epistemic Consequentialism Consequentialism is the view that, in some sense, rightness is to be understood in terms of conduciveness to goodness. Much of the philosophical discussion concerning consequentialism has focused on moral rightness or obligation or normativity. But there is plausibly also epistemic rightness, epistemic obligation, and epistemic normativity. Epistemic rightness is often denoted with … Continue reading Consequentialism Epistemic →.
     
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    A Theory of Knowledge and Belief Change: Formal and Experimental Perspectives, by Masaharu Mizumoto: Japan: Hokkaido University Press, 2011, pp. v + 298, ¥7500.Jeff Dunn - 2013 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 91 (2):413-415.
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