Order:
  1. How to be a Normativist about the Nature of Belief.Kate Nolfi - 2015 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 96 (2):181-204.
    According to the normativist, it is built into the nature of belief itself that beliefs are subject to a certain set of norms. I argue here that only a normativist account can explain certain non‐normative facts about what it takes to have the capacity for belief. But this way of defending normativism places an explanatory burden on any normativist account that an account on which a truth norm is explanatorily fundamental simply cannot discharge. I develop an alternative account that can (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   29 citations  
  2. Which Mental States Are Rationally Evaluable, And Why?Kate Nolfi - 2015 - Philosophical Issues 25 (1):41-63.
    What makes certain mental states subject to evaluation with respect to norms of rationality and justification, and others arational? In this paper, I develop and defend an account that explains why belief is governed by, and so appropriately subject to, evaluation with respect to norms of rationality and justification, one that does justice to the complexity of our evaluative practice in this domain. Then, I sketch out a way of extending the account to explain when and why other kinds of (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   12 citations  
  3. Epistemic norms, all things considered.Kate Nolfi - 2019 - Synthese 198 (7):6717-6737.
    An action-oriented epistemology takes the idea that our capacity for belief subserves our capacity for action as the starting point for epistemological theorizing. This paper argues that an action-oriented epistemology is especially well-positioned to explain why it is that, at least for believers like us, whether or not conforming with the epistemic norms that govern belief-regulation would lead us to believe that p always bears on whether we have normative reasons to believe that p. If the arguments of this paper (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  4. Another kind of pragmatic encroachment.Kate Nolfi - 2018 - In Brian Kim & Matthew McGrath (eds.), Pragmatic Encroachment in Epistemology. New York: Routledge.
  5. Why is Epistemic Evaluation Prescriptive?Kate Nolfi - 2014 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 57 (1):97-121.
    Epistemic evaluation is often appropriately prescriptive in character because believers are often capable of exercising some kind of control—call it doxastic control—over the way in which they regulate their beliefs. An intuitively appealing and widely endorsed account of doxastic control—the immediate causal impact account—maintains that a believer exercises doxastic control when her judgments about how she ought to regulate her beliefs in a particular set of circumstances can cause the believer actually to regulate her beliefs in those circumstances as she (...)
    Direct download (3 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   12 citations  
  6.  81
    Epistemically flawless false beliefs.Kate Nolfi - 2020 - Synthese 198 (12):11291-11309.
    A starting point for the sort of alethic epistemological approach that dominates both historical and contemporary western philosophy is that epistemic norms, standards, or ideals are to be characterized by appeal to some kind of substantively normative relationship between belief and truth. Accordingly, the alethic epistemologist maintains that false beliefs are necessarily defective, imperfect, or flawed, at least from the epistemic perspective. In this paper, I develop an action-oriented alternative to the alethic approach, an alternative that is inspired by and (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  7.  87
    Moral Agency in Believing.Kate Nolfi - 2018 - Philosophical Topics 46 (1):53-74.
    Ordinary moral practice suggests that our beliefs, themselves, can wrong. But when one moral subject wrongs another, it must be something that the first subject, herself, does or brings about which constitutes the wronging: wronging involves exercising moral agency. So, if we can wrong others simply by believing, then believing involves an exercise or expression of moral agency. Unfortunately, it is not at all obvious how our beliefs could manifest our moral agency. After all, we are not capable of believing (...)
    No categories
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  8.  53
    Functional belief and judgmental belief.Kate Nolfi - 2017 - Synthese 197 (12):5301-5317.
    A division between functional belief, on the one hand, and judgmental belief, on the other, is central to Sosa’s two-tier virtue epistemology. For Sosa, mere functional belief is constituted by a first-order affirmation. In contrast, a judgmental belief is an intentional affirmation; a performance which is partially constituted by the believer’s endeavor to affirm truthfully, and reliably enough. If, qua performance, judgmental belief is like the hunter’s shot or the baseball player’s swing, mere functional belief is much more like a (...)
    No categories
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  9.  16
    A victory (of what sort) for strict purist invariantism? Some reflections on Gerken’s On folk epistemology: how we think and talk about knowledge.Kate Nolfi - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    Gerken's On Folk Epistemology: How we think and talk about knowledge develops and defends strict purist invariantism about knowledge. Along the way, Gerken argues that less-orthodox competitors to strict purist invariantism are plagued by certain heretofore unrecognized or underappreciated difficulties. Given Gerken's own explicit methodological commitments, this defensive component of the book's project is dialectically crucial. By Gerken's own lights, we ought to be persuaded to embrace strict purist invariantism only if it turns out that the strict purist invariantist is (...)
    Direct download (2 more)  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark