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Kurt Sylvan [43]Kurt L. Sylvan [4]
  1. An Epistemic Non-Consequentialism.Kurt L. Sylvan - 2020 - The Philosophical Review 129 (1):1-51.
    Despite the recent backlash against epistemic consequentialism, an explicit systematic alternative has yet to emerge. This paper articulates and defends a novel alternative, Epistemic Kantianism, which rests on a requirement of respect for the truth. §1 tackles some preliminaries concerning the proper formulation of the epistemic consequentialism / non-consequentialism divide, explains where Epistemic Kantianism falls in the dialectical landscape, and shows how it can capture what seems attractive about epistemic consequentialism while yielding predictions that are harder for the latter to (...)
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  2. What apparent reasons appear to be.Kurt Sylvan - 2015 - Philosophical Studies 172 (3):587-606.
    Many meta-ethicists have thought that rationality requires us to heed apparent normative reasons, not objective normative reasons. But what are apparent reasons? There are two kinds of standard answers. On de dicto views, R is an apparent reason for S to \ when it appears to S that R is an objective reason to \ . On de re views, R is an apparent reason for S to \ when R’s truth would constitute an objective reason for S to \ (...)
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  3. Suspension, Higher-Order Evidence, and Defeat.Errol Lord & Kurt Sylvan - 2021 - In Jessica Brown & Mona Simion (eds.), Reasons, Justification, and Defeat. Oxford Oxford: Oxford University Press.
  4. Veritism Unswamped.Kurt Sylvan - 2018 - Mind 127 (506):381-435.
    According to Veritism, true belief is the sole fundamental epistemic value. Epistemologists often take Veritism to entail that all other epistemic items can only have value by standing in certain instrumental relations—namely, by tending to produce a high ratio of true to false beliefs or by being products of sources with this tendency. Yet many value theorists outside epistemology deny that all derivative value is grounded in instrumental relations to fundamental value. Veritists, I believe, can and should follow suit. After (...)
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  5. The place of reasons in epistemology.Kurt Sylvan & Ernest Sosa - 2018 - In Daniel Star (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Reasons and Normativity. New York, NY, United States of America: Oxford University Press.
    This paper considers the place of reasons in the metaphysics of epistemic normativity and defends a middle ground between two popular extremes in the literature. Against members of the ‘reasons first’ movement, we argue that reasons are not the sole fundamental constituents of epistemic normativity. We suggest instead that the virtue-theoretic property of competence is the key building block. To support this approach, we note that reasons must be possessed to play a role in the analysis of central epistemically normative (...)
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  6. Knowledge as a Non‐Normative Relation.Kurt Sylvan - 2018 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 97 (1):190-222.
    According to a view I’ll call Epistemic Normativism, knowledge is normative in the same sense in which paradigmatically normative properties like justification are normative. This paper argues against EN in two stages and defends a positive non-normativist alternative. After clarifying the target in §1, I consider in §2 some arguments for EN from the premise that knowledge entails justification. I first raise some worries about inferring constitution from entailment. I then rehearse the reasons why some epistemologists reject the Entailment Thesis (...)
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  7. Prime Time (for the Basing Relation).Kurt Sylvan & Errol Lord - 2019 - In Joseph Adam Carter & Patrick Bondy (eds.), Well Founded Belief: New Essays on the Epistemic Basing Relation. New York: Routledge.
    It is often assumed that believing that p for a normative reason consists in nothing more than (i) believing that p for a reason and (ii) that reason’s corresponding to a normative reason to believe that p, where (i) and (ii) are independent factors. This is the Composite View. In this paper, we argue against the Composite View on extensional and theoretical grounds. We advocate an alternative that we call the Prime View. On this view, believing for a normative reason (...)
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  8. Epistemic Reasons I: Normativity.Kurt Sylvan - 2016 - Philosophy Compass 11 (7):364-376.
    This paper is an opinionated guide to the literature on normative epistemic reasons. After making some distinctions in §1, I begin in §2 by discussing the ontology of normative epistemic reasons, assessing arguments for and against the view that they are mental states, and concluding that they are not mental states. In §3, I examine the distinction between normative epistemic reasons there are and normative epistemic reasons we possess. I offer a novel account of this distinction and argue that we (...)
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  9. Reasons: Wrong, Right, Normative, Fundamental.Kurt Sylvan & Errol Lord - 2019 - Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 15 (1).
    Reasons fundamentalists maintain that we can analyze all derivative normative properties in terms of normative reasons. These theorists famously encounter the Wrong Kind of Reasons problem, since not all reasons for reactions seem relevant for reasons-based analyses. Some have argued that this problem is a general one for many theorists, and claim that this lightens the burden for reasons fundamentalists. We argue in this paper that the reverse is true: the generality of the problem makes life harder for reasons fundamentalists. (...)
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  10. Respect and the reality of apparent reasons.Kurt Sylvan - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 178 (10):3129-3156.
    Rationality requires us to respond to apparent normative reasons. Given the independence of appearance and reality, why think that apparent normative reasons necessarily provide real normative reasons? And if they do not, why think that mistakes of rationality are necessarily real mistakes? This paper gives a novel answer to these questions. I argue first that in the moral domain, there are objective duties of respect that we violate whenever we do what appears to violate our first-order duties. The existence of (...)
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  11. Epistemic Reasons II: Basing.Kurt Sylvan - 2016 - Philosophy Compass 11 (7):377-389.
    The paper is an opinionated tour of the literature on the reasons for which we hold beliefs and other doxastic attitudes, which I call ‘operative epistemic reasons’. After drawing some distinctions in §1, I begin in §2 by discussing the ontology of operative epistemic reasons, assessing arguments for and against the view that they are mental states. I recommend a pluralist non-mentalist view that takes seriously the variety of operative epistemic reasons ascriptions and allows these reasons to be both propositions (...)
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  12. Reliabilism without Epistemic Consequentialism.Kurt L. Sylvan - 2018 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research (3):525-555.
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, EarlyView.
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  13. The illusion of discretion.Kurt Sylvan - 2016 - Synthese 193 (6):1635-1665.
    Having direct doxastic control would not be particularly desirable if exercising it required a failure of epistemic rationality. With that thought in mind, recent writers have invoked the view that epistemic rationality gives us options to defend the possibility of a significant form of direct doxastic control. Specifically, they suggest that when the evidence for p is sufficient but not conclusive, it would be epistemically rational either to believe p or to be agnostic on p, and they argue that we (...)
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  14. Beginning in Wonder: Suspensive Attitudes and Epistemic Dilemmas.Kurt Sylvan & Errol Lord - 2021 - In Nick Hughes (ed.), Epistemic Dilemmas. Oxford University Press.
    We argue that we can avoid epistemic dilemmas by properly understanding the nature and epistemology of the suspension of judgment, with a particular focus on conflicts between higher-order evidence and first-order evidence.
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  15. On the Normativity of Epistemic Rationality.Kurt Sylvan - 2014 - Dissertation, New Brunswick Rutgers
  16. On Suspending Properly.Kurt Sylvan & Errol Lord - 2022 - In Paul Silva & Luis R. G. Oliveira (eds.), Propositional and Doxastic Justification: New Essays on their Nature and Significance. New York: Routledge.
    We argue for a novel view of suspending judgment properly--i.e., suspending judgment in an ex post justified way. In so doing we argue for a Kantian virtue-theoretic view of epistemic normativity and against teleological virtue-theoretic accounts.
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  17. Truth monism without teleology.Kurt Sylvan - 2012 - Thought: A Journal of Philosophy 1 (3):161-163.
    Some say the swamping problem confronts all who believe that true belief is the sole fundamental epistemic value. This, I say, is mistaken. The problem only confronts T-Monists if they grant two teleological claims: that all derived epistemic value is instrumental, and that it is the state of believing truly rather than the standard of truth in belief that is fundamentally epistemically valuable. T-Monists should reject and, and appeal to a non-teleological form of value derivation I call Fitting Response Derivation (...)
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  18. (1 other version)Contextualism about Epistemic Reasons.Daniel Fogal & Kurt Sylvan - 2017 - In Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa (ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Contextualism. New York: Routledge.
    This paper surveys some ways in which epistemic reasons ascriptions (or ERAs) appear to be context-sensitive, and outlines a framework for thinking about the nature of this context-sensitivity that is intimately related to ERAs' explanatory function.
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  19. The Eclipse of Instrumental Rationality.Kurt Sylvan - 2020 - In Ruth Chang & Kurt Sylvan (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Practical Reason. New York, NY: Routledge.
  20. Responsibilism out of character.Kurt Sylvan - 2017 - In Mark Alfano & Abrol Fairweather (eds.), Epistemic Situationism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    Recent writers claim that responsibilist virtue epistemology courts skepticism, owing to the fact that most of us lack the virtues it deems necessary for justified belief and knowledge. A powerful version of this objection is the challenge from situationist social psychology pressed by Alfano (2012, 2013) and Olin and Doris (2014). This paper develops a new version of responsibilism that is immune from this objection, and shows that this view has many advantages over other forms of virtue epistemology. My responsibilism (...)
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  21.  70
    Can performance epistemology explain higher epistemic value?Kurt L. Sylvan - 2017 - Synthese 197 (12):5335-5356.
    Judgment and Agency contains Sosa’s latest effort to explain how higher epistemic value of the sort missing from an unwitting clairvoyant’s beliefs might be a special case of performance normativity, with its superior value following from truisms about performance value. This paper argues that the new effort rests on mistaken assumptions about performance normativity. Once these mistaken assumptions are exposed, it becomes clear that higher epistemic value cannot be a mere special case of performance normativity, and its superiority cannot be (...)
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  22. On Divorcing the Rational and the Justified in Epistemology.Kurt Sylvan - manuscript
    Many epistemologists treat rationality and justification as the same thing. Those who don’t lack detailed accounts of the difference, leading their opponents to suspect that the distinction is an ad hoc attempt to safeguard their theories of justification. In this paper, I offer a new and detailed account of the distinction. The account is inspired by no particular views in epistemology, but rather by insights from the literature on reasons and rationality outside of epistemology. Specifically, it turns on a version (...)
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  23.  59
    Inference and the Presentational Conception of Knowing.Kurt Sylvan - forthcoming - In Lucy Campbell (ed.), Forms of Knowledge. Oxford.
    This paper argues that the historical conception of knowing as a presentational factive mental state (‘presentationalism’) is not best understood as an alternative to belief-based and knowledge-first epistemology, but rather as an account of epistemic architecture that is compatible with these paradigms. To defend this claim, the paper focuses on a challenge to presentationalism raised by inferential knowledge and argues that the problem can be solved only if presentationalism is understood as I suggest. The paper is structured as follows. §1 (...)
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  24. On the Autonomy of (Some) Knowledge.Kurt Sylvan - forthcoming - Analysis.
  25. Skorupski on spontaneity, apriority and normative truth.Kurt Sylvan - 2016 - Philosophical Quarterly 66 (264):617-628.
    This paper raises a dilemma for Skorupski’s meta-normative outlook in The Domain of Reasons and explores some escape routes, recommending a more thoroughgoing Kantianism as the best option. §1 argues that we cannot plausibly combine Skorupski’s spontaneity-based epistemology of normativity with his cognition-independent view of normative truth. §§2–4 consider whether we should keep the epistemology and revise the metaphysics, opting for constructivism. While Skorupski’s negative case for his spontaneity-based epistemology is found wanting, it is suggested that a better argument for (...)
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  26. (1 other version)Evidence and Virtue (and Beyond).Kurt Sylvan - forthcoming - In Maria Lasonen-Aarnio & Clayton Littlejohn (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Evidence. Routledge.
  27. How to be a redundant realist.Kurt L. Sylvan - 2012 - Episteme 9 (3):271-282.
    In Group Agency, List and Pettit defend ‘non-redundant realism’ about group agency, a view on which facts about group agents are not ‘readily reducible’ to facts about individuals, and the dependence of group agents on individuals is so holistic that one cannot predict facts about group agents on the basis of facts about their members. This paper undermines L&P's case in three stages. §1 shows that L&P's core argument is invalid. L&P infer and from two facts: that group agents must (...)
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  28. The Possibility of Internalist Epistemology.Kurt Sylvan - 2024 - In Blake Roeber, Ernest Sosa, Matthias Steup & John Turri (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Epistemology, 3rd edition. Wiley-Blackwell.
    Internalism holds that epistemic justification is determined by what is internal to the mind, not by facts about the mind-independent world. This paper introduces and defends a new kind of internalism that is rooted in rationalist ideas that have been neglected in recent epistemology, despite inspiring internalist projects in cognitive science. Ignoring rationalist insights has, I argue, damaged the prospects for internalism, by needlessly saddling internalists with empiricist burdens. Internalists can refuse these burdens by accepting a better philosophy of mind. (...)
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  29. Reasons in epistemology.Kurt Sylvan - 2014 - Oxford Bibliographies Online.
     
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  30.  88
    Epistemic Consequentialism and its Aftermath.Kurt Sylvan - 2019 - Analysis 79 (4):773-783.
    Epistemic Consequentialism represents a shooting-star movement nearing its zenith but already passing its peak of apparent solidarity, with clear fault-lines no.
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  31. Non‐epistemic perception as technology.Kurt Sylvan - 2020 - Philosophical Issues 30 (1):324-345.
    Some epistemologists and philosophers of mind hold that the non-epistemic perceptual relation of which feature-seeing and object-seeing are special cases is the foundation of perceptual knowledge. This paper argues that such relations are best understood as having only a technological role in explaining perceptual knowledge. After introducing the opposing view in §1, §2 considers why its defenders deny that some cases in which one has perceptual knowledge without the relevant acquaintance relations are counterexamples, detailing their case for lurking inferential epistemology. (...)
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  32.  31
    Realisms Interlinked: Objects, Subjects, and Other Subjects, by Arindam Chakrabarti.Kurt Sylvan - 2023 - Mind 132 (525):278-287.
    Realisms Interlinked is a sublime work. It reanimates theoretical philosophy with a distinctive synthesis of ideas and methods drawn from the common-sense metap.
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  33. 2012 Draft - 'The Foundations of Epistemic Kantianism'.Kurt Sylvan - manuscript
  34. (1 other version)Responsibilism within Reason.Kurt Sylvan - 2020 - In Christoph Kelp & John Greco (eds.), Virtue Theoretic Epistemology: New Methods and Approaches. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press.
    According to ambitious responsibilism (AR), the virtues that are constitutive of epistemic responsibility should play a central and fundamental role in traditional projects like the analysis of justification and knowledge. While AR enjoyed a shining moment in the mid-1990s, it has fallen on hard times. Part of the reason is that many epistemologists—including fellow responsibilists—think it paints an unreasonably demanding picture of knowledge and justification. I agree that such worries undermine AR's existing versions. But I think the curtains have been (...)
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  35.  66
    The Routledge Handbook of Practical Reason.Ruth Chang & Kurt Sylvan (eds.) - 2020 - New York, NY: Routledge.
    The Routledge Handbook of Practical Reasonis an outstanding reference source to this exciting and distinctive subject area. Comprising over thirty chapters by a team of international contributors the handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the field covering questions such as: What is the nature of the reasons for which we act and what is the nature of the faculty of practical reason? What are normative reasons for action? What is practical irrationality and what are the requirements, permissions, and powers that (...)
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  36.  29
    Knowing Better: Virtue, Deliberation, and Normative Ethics, written by Daniel Star.Kurt Sylvan - 2019 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 16 (1):97-100.
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  37. Late 2012 Draft - 'From Teleology to Rationality's Insignificance (and Back)'.Kurt Sylvan - manuscript
  38. Early 2013 Draft - 'Internalist Values and the Fundamental Epistemic Value'.Kurt Sylvan - manuscript
  39. Early 2012 Dissertation Draft - 'Respect for Truth and the Normativity of Epistemic Rationality'.Kurt Sylvan - 2012 - Dissertation,
  40. Why Practical Rationality Is Not Interestingly Belief-Relative.Kurt Sylvan - manuscript
  41. Critical Notice of Epistemic Consequentialism (eds. Ahlstrom-Vij and Dunn). [REVIEW]Kurt Sylvan - forthcoming - Analysis.
  42. Review of Realisms Interlinked by Arindam Chakrabarti. [REVIEW]Kurt Sylvan - forthcoming - Mind.
  43.  33
    Naturalizing Epistemic Virtue Edited By Abrol Fairweather and Owen Flanagan. [REVIEW]Kurt Sylvan - 2017 - Analysis 77 (3):663-667.
    _Naturalizing Epistemic Virtue_Edited By FairweatherAbrol and FlanaganOwenCambridge University Press, 2014. vi + 272 pp. £64.99.
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