This article addresses important epistemological issues raised by Barry Hallen and J. Olubi Sodipo’s pioneering philosophical fieldwork among Yoruba herbalists or masters of medicine (onisegun). More precisely, I shall primarily investigate, as well as object to, the unduly restrictive view they take on testimony in Yoruba epistemic practice. With this criticism as the starting point, but still based on the cases Hallen and Sodipo provide, I explore different ways in which an “oral culture” like Yoruba (as traditionally depicted) can rely (...) on testimony as a source of justification without succumbing to the gullible and uncritical attitude towards tradition such societies have been charged with. To this purpose, I put to use relevant developments in analytic epistemology taking place after Hallen and Sodipo published their work. (shrink)

This paper proposes a new externalist account of defeaters, in terms of reliable indicators, as an integral part of a unified externalist account of warrant and defeat. It is argued that posing externalist conditions on warrant, but internalist conditions on defeat lead to undesirable tensions. The proposal is contrasted to some rival accounts and then tested on some widely discussed cases, like the airport case. Misleading defeaters, where Laurence BonJour’s reliable clairvoyants serve as examples, also receive treatment, partly because they (...) illustrate how internalist constraints are inserted into the set up of the problem and therefore unduly constrain the domain of satisfactory solutions. Lastly, the proposal is defended against some objections. Firstly, that by posing externalist conditions on defeat, the account becomes too open. Secondly, that an externalist account fails to take into account the epistemic assessments of our fellows in the epistemic practice of forming beliefs and making epistemic claims, which can be based on accessible warrant only. (shrink)

Understanding has received growing interest from epistemologists in recent years, but no consensus regarding its epistemic properties has yet been reached. This paper extracts, but also rejects, candidates of epistemic properties for construing an epistemological model of understanding from the writings of epistemologists participating in the current discussion surrounding that state. On the basis of these results, a suggestion is put forward according to which understanding is a non-basic epistemic state of warrant rather than knowledge. It is argued that this (...) move provides a satisfactory conciliatory answer to the central question whether understanding is a factive epistemic state. Some differences between understanding and knowledge are recorded along the way: for instance, that in contrast to knowledge, understanding does not require belief and that, even though neither knowledge nor understanding iterates, so that a subject can both know without knowing that she knows, as well as understanding without understanding that she understands, the reasons for the failure is different. (shrink)

In this paper a candidate for a rational reconstruction of skeptical arguments is presented and defended against a competitor called ‘The Argument from Ignorance’. On the basis of this defense, Michael Williams’ claims that foundationalism and epistemological realism serve as presuppositions for skepticism are criticized. It is argued that rejecting these two theses, as his version of contextualism does, is not sufficient for answering the skeptical challenge.

In the current discussion on epistemic value, several philosophers argue that understanding enjoys higher epistemological significance and epistemic value than knowledge—the epistemic state the epistemological tradition has been preoccupied with. By noting a tension between the necessary conditions for understanding in the perhaps most prominent of these philosophers, Jonathan Kvanvig, this paper disputes the higher epistemological relevance of understanding. At the end, on the basis of the results of the previous sections, some alternative comparative contrasts between knowledge and understanding are (...) briefly explored, including one in which an analogue to the KK-principle for knowledge, the “UU-principle”, does not hold for a different reason than that for which the former principle fails. (shrink)

This chapter proposes a version of epistemic contextualism, called inferentialist contextualism, as a promising research program within African epistemology. My suggestion should be seen against the background of the earlier debate between the seemingly incompatible positions of universalism and particularism. Whilst universalism has been charged with not allowing for diversity, of forcing African culture into the Procrustean bed of Western thought, particularism seems to block cross-cultural dialogue. A compromise is therefore called for. I argue that inferentialist contextualism can fill this (...) need. One promising feature is that whilst traditional epistemology always places the burden of justification on the subject of knowledge, inferentialist contextualism distinguishes between three different contexts: except for the traditional one, a second where the burden of proof is shared by both the subject and any fellow who might challenge the belief and a third context where the burden lies solely on the inquiring fellow. The notion of default entitlement depicts beliefs falling within this third context and will be elaborated in some detail here. I argue that inferential contextualism permits greater contextual variety than traditional epistemology without collapsing into relativism. (shrink)

This paper investigates some epistemic properties that distinguish understanding from knowledge. In particular, the focus is on how to spell out the notion of grasping the relationships between propositions that constitute objectual understanding: what kind of epistemic access is required for grasping to occur and to what extent is the act of grasping voluntary? A modest form of access is suggested as an answer to the first question and a largely negative answer to the second. The worry that my suggestion (...) is too permissive in crediting subjects with understanding is addressed. The results are then finally briefly contrasted to Ernest Sosa’s notion of knowing full well where one contrast precisely concerns the voluntary character of the respective epistemic states. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to strike a blow for the relevance of the debasing demon originally summoned by Jonathan Schaffer. I do so by, first, defending this skeptical hypothesis against critics and, second, by noting important similarities between the workings of this demon and implicit bias. Along the way, I elucidate the structure of this skeptical argument by comparing it to other better-known skeptical arguments. I also clarify the kinds of access the debasing skeptical scenario, as well as (...) some of the replies, operate with. Apart from being interesting in its own right as a different skeptical challenge, the debasing demon raises important issues regarding bias, as I will show by using an example from epistemic decolonialization. (shrink)

As an important step towards a comprehensive model of challenges and defeat- ers, it is here argued that securing a previously held epistemic status for a belief in the face of an overriding challenge does not require us to reach a higher epistemic standard than the one the belief originally reached. In the course of the investigation, criteria for when the epistemic status of beliefs are challenged and defeated are suggested. At the end of the paper, these results are then (...) more briefly applied to shed some light on the problem of misleading evidence. (shrink)

A common objection raised against naturalism is that a naturalized epistemology cannot account for the essential normative character of epistemology. Following an analysis of different ways in which this charge could be understood, it will be argued that either epistemology is not normative in the relevant sense, or if it is, then in a way which a naturalized epistemology can account for with an instrumental and hypothetical model of normativity. Naturalism is here captured by the two doctrines of empiricism and (...) gradualism. Epistemology is a descriptive discipline about what knowledge is and under what conditions a knowledge-claim is justified. However, we can choose to adopt a standard of justification and by doing so be evaluated by it. In this sense our epistemic practices have a normative character, but this is a form of normativity a naturalized epistemology can make room for. The normativity objection thus fails. However, in the course of this discussion, as yet another attempt to clarify the normativity objection, such a naturalistic model will be contrasted with Donald Davidson’s theory of interpretation. Even though this comparison will not improve upon the negative verdict upon the original objection, it will be argued that naturalism cannot accept Davidson’s theory since it contains at least one constitutive principle – the principle of charity – whose epistemic status is incompatible with the naturalistic doctrine of gradualism. So, if this principle has this role, then epistemology cannot be naturalized. (shrink)

The notion of entitlement plays an important role in some influential epistemologies. Often the epistemological motive for introducing the concept is to accommodate certain externalist intuitions within an internalist framework or, conversely, to incorporate internalist traits into an otherwise externalist position. In this paper two prominent philosophers will be used as examples: Tyler Burge as a representative of the first option and Fred Dretske as one of the second. However, even on the assumption that the concept of entitlement is sufficiently (...) clarified, accomplishing these results is easier said than done – especially if we also want to ascribe positive epistemic value to entitlement. It will be shown that the epistemic value of entitlement is either granted at the expense of the epistemic value of justification or the value ends up below the level of value at which the epistemologists employing the concept of entitlement are aiming. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to refute the widespread view that challenging a knowledge-claim always raises the original standards of justification–a view often associated with contextualism. To that purpose the distinction between undermining and overriding defeaters will be used. Three kinds of challenges will be considered that differ in their degree of specification. In all three kinds of challenges, the rising standards of justification model fails to capture the dialectic of justification in the case of undermining defeaters. At the (...) end, the skeptical challenge will more briefly be given a similar analysis. (shrink)

This paper outlines a default and challenge account of a priori warrant by unfolding the three stages of the epistemic dialectic in which such warrant comes to the fore. Among the virtues of this account is that it does not rely on controversial assumptions regarding non-experiential sources of warrant, like intellectual intuition, but instead relies on features of our epistemic practice, more precisely, its default and challenge structure. What distinguishes beliefs to which you are warranted a priori is not that (...) their source of warrant resides in some intellectual faculty, but rather the characteristic ways in which these beliefs can be successfully defended against challenges. The paper ends in a discussion of whether a priori warranted beliefs are empirically indefeasible, arguing that it is misguided to demand such indefeasibility of a priori warranted beliefs since that demand is not made for other sources of warrant. The question that rather should be posed is whether beliefs for which a priori warrant is provided qualify as knowledge on a consistent basis, and this question can be given an affirmative answer even in the face of empirical defeasibility. (shrink)

This paper is a critical examination of epistemological contextualism as a response to the skeptical challenge with focus upon Michael Williams’ version. Unclarities in his response are initially pointed out and various unsatisfactory ways of elaborating upon them discussed. Next, it is argued that Williams’ candidate epistemological realism with the priority thesis at its core does not provide the key to how traditional epistemology becomes exposed to skepticism. The thesis that knowledge-claims necessarily are justified with recourse to sensory experience and (...) the principle of underdetermination are instead advanced as the features that skepticism exploit. At last, a case is made that both these claims are accepted by contextualism, and that it therefore is as exposed to skepticism as traditional epistemology is. (shrink)

Hartry Field has recently presented an original and interesting approach to the a priori. Its main theses are, first, that certain rules are empirically indefeasible and, second, that the reasonableness of these rules are not based on any factual property. After an introduction, Field’s approach is presented in section II. Section III examines his claims concerning empirical indefeasibility. It will be argued that his general argument for empirical indefeasibility fails along with the particular examples of rules he gives. Alternative ways (...) of preserving empirical indefeasibility are suggested that are compatible with overdetermination under certain assumptions. In section IV, Field’s arguments for the nonfactuality of epistemological concepts, such as reasonableness, are found wanting. At the end, an alternative way of understanding the link between the epistemological concept in question and truth-conduciveness is proposed that preserves the factuality of the epistemological concept. (shrink)

In a recent and interesting paper “Experientially Defeasible A Priori Justification,” Joshua Thurow argues that many a priori justified beliefs are defeasible by experience. The argument takes the form of an objection against Albert Casullo’s recent book, A Priori Justification, where Casullo, according to Thurow, denies that if a justified belief is non-experientially defeasible, then that belief is also experientially defeasible. This paper critically examines Thurow’s two arguments in the first two sections I–II. In the last section, III, an alternative (...) line of argument for Thurow’s thesis is suggested that employs other parts of the framework that Casullo provides—especially the thesis of overdetermination of justification. It will be argued that the prospects for this suggestion are brighter than for bothof Thurow’s arguments. (shrink)