O problema do conhecimento fácil tem sido definido na literatura epistemológica contemporânea com um problema que nasce de duas formas distintas. O propósito deste ensaio é mostrar que essas supostas maneiras diferentes de gerar o mesmo problema em verdade originam dois problemas distintos, que requerem respostas distintas. Um deles está relacionado à aquisição fácil (inaceitável) de conhecimento de primeira-ordem e o outro à aquisição fácil (inaceitável) de conhecimento de segunda-ordem. Além disso, é apresentada a maneira como o infinitismo, a teoria (...) epistêmica segundo a qual as razões que justificam uma opinião devem ser infinitas em número e não-repetidas, pode lidar com cada um desses problemas. (shrink)

The problem of the criterion says that we can know a proposition only if we first know a criterion of truth and vice versa, hence, we cannot know any proposition or any criterion of truth. The epistemic levels response says that since knowledge does not require knowledge about knowledge, we can know a proposition without knowing a criterion of truth. This response (advocated by Chisholm and Van Cleve) presupposes that criteria of truth are epistemic principles. In general, (...) however, criteria of truth are not epistemic principles, so the epistemic levels response to the problem of the criterion fails. (shrink)

How should we understand validity? A standard way to characterize validity is in terms of the preservation of truth (or truth in a model). But there are several problems facing such characterizations. An alternative approach is to characterize validity epistemically, for instance in terms of the preservation of an epistemic status. In this paper, I raise a problem for such views. First, I argue that if the relevant epistemic status is factive, such as being in a position to (...) know or having conclusive evidence for, then the account runs into trouble if we endorse certain familiar logical principles. Second, I argue that if the relevant epistemic status is non-factive, such as is rationally committed to or has justification for believing, then a similar problem arises if we endorse the logical principles as well as a sufficiently strong epistemic “level-bridging” principle. Finally, I argue that an analogous problem arises for the most natural characterization of validity in terms of rational credence. (shrink)

Harry Brighouse and Adam Swift argue that education is a positional good; this, they hold, implies that there is a qualified case for leveling down educational provision. In this essay, Ben Kotzee discusses Brighouse and Swift's argument for leveling down. He holds that the argument fails in its own terms and that, in presenting the problem of educational justice as one of balancing education's positional and nonpositional benefits, Brighouse and Swift lose sight of what a consideration of the nonpositional benefits (...) by itself can reveal. Instead of focusing on education's positional benefits, Kotzee investigates what emphasizing education's nonpositional benefits would imply for educational justice. Drawing on recent work in social epistemology, Kotzee holds that theories of educational justice would benefit from a consideration of the virtue of epistemic justice, and he outlines solutions to a number of problems in the area from this perspective. (shrink)

Many views rely on the idea that it can never be rational to have high confidence in something like, “P, but my evidence doesn’t support P.” Call this idea the “Non-Akrasia Constraint”. Just as an akratic agent acts in a way she believes she ought not act, an epistemically akratic agent believes something that she believes is unsupported by her evidence. The Non-Akrasia Constraint says that ideally rational agents will never be epistemically akratic. In a number of recent papers, the (...) Non-Akrasia Constraint has been called into question. The goal of this paper is to defend it... for the most part. (shrink)

In Epistemic injustice, Miranda Fricker makes a tremendous contribution to theorizing the intersection of social epistemology with theories of justice. Theories of justice often take as their object of assessment either interpersonal transactions (specific exchanges between persons) or particular institutions. They may also take a more comprehensive perspective in assessing systems of institutions. This systemic perspective may enable control of the cumulative effects of millions of individual transactions that cannot be controlled at the individual or institutional levels. This (...) is true not only with respect to the overall distribution of such goods as income and wealth, but also with respect to the goods of testimonial and hermeneutical justice. Cognitive biases that may be difficult for even epistemically virtuous individuals to correct on their own may be more susceptible to correction if we focus on the principles that should govern our systems of testimonial gathering and assessment. Hence, while Fricker’s focus on individual epistemic virtue is important, we also need to consider what epistemic justice as a virtue of social systems would require. My paper will indicate some directions forward on this front, focusing on the need for integration of diverse institutions and persons engaged in inquiry. (shrink)

Why are mistaken beliefs about COVID-19 so prevalent? Political identity, education and other demographic variables explain only part of the differences between people in their susceptibility to COVID-19 misinformation. This paper focuses on another explanation: epistemic vice. Epistemic vices are character traits that interfere with acquiring, maintaining, and transmitting knowledge. If the basic assumption of vice epistemology is right, then people with epistemic vices such as indifference to the truth or rigidity in their belief structures will tend (...) to be more susceptible to believing COVID-19 misinformation. We carried out an observational study (US adult sample, n = 998) in which we measured the level of epistemic vice of participants using a novel Epistemic Vice Scale that captures features of the current competing analyses of epistemic vice in the literature. We also asked participants questions eliciting the extent to which they subscribe to myths and misinformation about COVID-19. We find overwhelming evidence to the effect that epistemic vice is associated with susceptibility to COVID-19 misinformation. In fact, the association turns out to be stronger than with political identity, educational attainment, scores on the Cognitive Reflection Test, personality, dogmatism, and need for closure. We conclude that this offers evidence in favor of the empirical presuppositions of vice epistemology. (shrink)

Do we apply higher epistemic standards to subjects with high stakes? This paper argues that we expect different outward behavior from high-stakes subjects—for example, we expect them to collect more evidence than their low-stakes counterparts—but not because of any change in epistemic standards. Rather, we naturally expect subjects in any condition to think in a roughly adaptive manner, balancing the expected costs of additional evidence collection against the expected value of gains in accuracy. The paper reviews a body (...) of empirical work on the automatic regulation of cognitive effort in response to stakes, and argues that we naturally see high- and low-stakes subjects as experiencing different levels of ‘epistemic anxiety’, and anticipate different levels of cognitive effort from them for this reason. If unresolved epistemic anxiety always bars an ascription of knowledge, then we can explain our responses to cases involving shifting stakes without positing any variation in the standards of intuitive knowledge ascription. (shrink)

Why are mistaken beliefs about Covid-19 so prevalent? Political identity, education and other demographic variables explain only a part of individual differences in the susceptibility to Covid-19 misinformation. This paper focuses on another explanation: epistemic vice. Epistemic vices are character traits that interfere with acquiring, maintaining, and transmitting knowledge. If the basic assumption of vice epistemology is right, then people with epistemic vices such as indifference to the truth or rigidity in their belief structures will tend to (...) be more susceptible to believing Covid-19 misinformation. We carried out an observational study (US sample, n = 998) in which we measured the level of epistemic vice of participants using a novel Epistemic Vice Scale. We also asked participants questions eliciting the extent to which they subscribe to myths and misinformation about Covid-19. We find overwhelming evidence to the effect that epistemic vice is associated with susceptibility to Covid-19 misinformation. In fact, the association turns out to be stronger than with political identity, educational attainment, scores on the Cognitive Reflection Test, personality, dogmatism, and need for closure. We conclude that this offers evidence in favor of the empirical presuppositions of vice epistemology. (shrink)

Because of its complexity, contemporary scientific research is almost always tackled by groups of scientists, each of which works in a different part of a given research domain. We believe that understanding scientific progress thus requires understanding this division of cognitive labor. To this end, we present a novel agent-based model of scientific research in which scientists divide their labor to explore an unknown epistemic landscape. Scientists aim to climb uphill in this landscape, where elevation represents the significance of (...) the results discovered by employing a research approach. We consider three different search strategies scientists can adopt for exploring the landscape. In the first, scientists work alone and do not let the discoveries of the community as a whole influence their actions. This is compared with two social research strategies, which we call the follower and maverick strategies. Followers are biased towards what others have already discovered, and we find that pure populations of these scientists do less well than scientists acting independently. However, pure populations of mavericks, who try to avoid research approaches that have already been taken, vastly outperform both of the other strategies. Finally, we show that in mixed populations, mavericks stimulate followers to greater levels of epistemic production, making polymorphic populations of mavericks and followers ideal in many research domains. (shrink)

We present an epistemic default logic, based on the metaphore of a meta-level architecture. Upward reflection is formalized by a nonmonotonic entailment relation, based on the objective facts that are either known or unknown at the object level. Then, the meta (monotonic) reasoning process generates a number of default-beliefs of object-level formulas. We extend this framework by proposing a mechanism to reflect these defaults down. Such a reflection is seen as essentially having a temporal flavour: defaults derived at the (...) meta-level are projected as facts in a next object level state. In this way, we obtain temporal models for default reasoning in meta-level formalisms which can be conceived as labeled branching trees. Thus, descending the tree corresponds to shifts in time that model downward reflection, whereas the branching of the tree corresponds to ways of combining possible defaults. All together, this yields an operational or procedural semantics of reasoning by default, which admits one to reason about it by means of branching-time temporal logic. Finally, we define sceptical and credulous entailment relations based on these temporal models and we characterize Reiter extensions in our semantics. (shrink)

There is a widely accepted distinction between being directly responsible for a wrongdoing versus being somehow indirectly or vicariously responsible for the wrongdoing of another person or collective. Often this is couched in analyses of complicity, and complicity’s role in the relationship between individual and collective wrongdoing. Complicity is important because, inter alia, it allows us to make sense of individuals who may be blameless or blameworthy to a relatively low degree for their immediate conduct, but are nevertheless blameworthy to (...) a higher degree for their implication in some larger (or another person’s) wrongdoing. In this paper, I argue that there is a distinctively epistemic kind of complicity. First, I motivate the distinction between direct and vicarious responsibility with three interlocking arguments, respectively appealing to: i) the structure of rational agency; ii) linguistic considerations; iii) the role of “principal vs. accomplice” in legal doctrine. I show how these arguments naturally extend to the epistemic domain, motivating an epistemic form of vicarious responsibility. I then examine complicity as a mechanism of vicarious epistemic responsibility. To fill this out, I engage with an epistemic analogue of the debate about the role of intention versus causal contribution in complicity. I propose a Casual Account of Epistemic Complicity, arguing that it accommodates a wide range of cases, and enables fine-grained explanations of degrees of culpability for epistemic complicity. With an adequate account of epistemic complicity on hand, we can explain what is objectionable about an important class of epistemic agent who, on an individual level, may be epistemically blameless or blameworthy to a relatively low degree, but whose relation to other individuals or collectives nevertheless makes them epistemically blameworthy to a higher degree. I explore some broader implications of this result. (shrink)

A vexing problem in contemporary epistemology—one with origins in Plato’s Meno—concerns the value of knowledge, and in particular, whether and how the value of knowledge exceeds the value of mere true opinion. The recent literature is deeply divided on the matter of how best to address the problem. One point, however, remains unquestioned: that if a solution is to be found, it will be at the personal level, the level at which states of subjects or agents, as such, appear. We (...) take exception to this orthodoxy, or at least to its unquestioned status. We argue that subpersonal states play a significant—arguably, primary—role in much epistemically relevant cognition and thus constitute a domain in which we might reasonably expect to locate the “missing source” of epistemic value, beyond the value attached to mere true belief. (shrink)

To lead an environmentally virtuous life requires information—about morality, environmental issues, the impacts of our actions and commitments, our options for alternatives, and so on. On the other hand, we are finite beings with limited time and resources. We cannot feasibly investigate all of our options, and all environmental issues (let alone moral issues, more broadly). In this paper I attempt to provide initial steps towards addressing the epistemic demands of environmental virtue. In the first half of the paper (...) I provide rules of thumb with respect to (1) how to prioritize our investigations into various issues, and (2) what kinds of information we should seek with respect to these issues, and the levels of epistemic justification we ought to attain. In the second half of the paper, I turn to a modified virtue ethics, appealing to the attitudes of virtuous ideal observers to provide characterizations of morally justified and morally non-culpable actions. I then apply these latter concepts in assessing agents, their actions and projects (with respect to environmental virtue), in light of their investigative efforts, and given their particular circumstances. (shrink)

When thinking about designing social media platforms, we often focus on factors such as usability, functionality, aesthetics, ethics, and so forth. Epistemic considerations have rarely been given the same level of attention in design discussions. This paper aims to rectify this neglect. We begin by arguing that there are epistemic norms that govern environments, including social media environments. Next, we provide a framework for applying these norms to the question of platform design. We then apply this framework to (...) the real-world case of long-form informational content platforms. We argue that many current long-form informational content platforms are epistemically unhealthy. The good news? We provide concrete advice on how to take steps toward improving their health! Specifically, we argue that they should change how they verify and authenticate content creators and how this information is displayed to content consumers. We conclude by connecting this guidance to broader issues about the epistemic health of platforms. (shrink)

The notion of recognition is an ethically potent resource for understanding human relational needs; and its negative counterpart, misrecognition, an equally potent resource for critique. Axel Honneth’s rich account focuses our attention on recognition’s role in securing basic self-confidence, moral self-respect, and self-esteem. With these loci of recognition in place, we are enabled to raise the intriguing question whether each of these may be extended to apply specifically to the epistemic dimension of our agency and selfhood. Might we talk (...) intelligibly—while staying in tune with Honneth’s concepts and their Hegelian key—of a generic idea of epistemic recognition? Such an idea might itself be seen to apply at the same three levels to indicate: first, basic epistemic self-confidence; second, our status as epistemically responsible; and third, a certain epistemic self-esteem that reflects the epistemic esteem we receive from others. The papers in this volume surely sound a chord in the affirmative, and together they steer us towards a multifaceted conception of how epistemic injustice is related to epistemic misrecognition, and indeed how we might construe a positive relation of epistemic recognition. (shrink)

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 in fact ought to acknowledge a threefold distinction between objective, possessed, and apparent normative epistemic reasons. In §4, I discuss the question of which normative reasons for doxastic attitudes are the epistemic ones, evaluating reasons against a simple evidentialist answer. Finally, in §5, I look at the role of reasons in epistemology, considering challenges to viewing reasons as the building blocks of epistemic normativity and maintaining that the challenges recommend a novel bi-level epistemology rather than a marginalization of reasons in epistemology. (shrink)

Definition of the problem The umbrella term “explicability” refers to the reduction of opacity of artificial intelligence (AI) systems. These efforts are challenging for medical AI applications because higher accuracy often comes at the cost of increased opacity. This entails ethical tensions because physicians and patients desire to trace how results are produced without compromising the performance of AI systems. The centrality of explicability within the informed consent process for medical AI systems compels an ethical reflection on the trade-offs. Which (...) levels of explicability are needed to obtain informed consent when utilizing medical AI? Arguments We proceed in five steps: First, we map the terms commonly associated with explicability as described in the ethics and computer science literature, i.e., disclosure, intelligibility, interpretability, and explainability. Second, we conduct a conceptual analysis of the ethical requirements for explicability when it comes to informed consent. Third, we distinguish hurdles for explicability in terms of epistemic and explanatory opacity. Fourth, this then allows to conclude the level of explicability physicians must reach and what patients can expect. In a final step, we show how the identified levels of explicability can technically be met from the perspective of computer science. Throughout our work, we take diagnostic AI systems in radiology as an example. Conclusion We determined four levels of explicability that need to be distinguished for ethically defensible informed consent processes and showed how developers of medical AI can technically meet these requirements. (shrink)

When are you in a position to rely on p in practical reasoning? Existing accounts say that you must know that p, or be in a position to know that p, or be justified in believing that p, or be in a position to justifiably believe it, and so on. This paper argues that all of these proposals face important problems, which I call the Problems of Negative Bootstrapping and of Level Confusions. I offer a diagnosis of these problems, and (...) I argue that an adequate epistemic norm must be transparent in the following sense: According to the correct epistemic norm, a consideration counts in favor of (or against) relying on p in practical reasoning iff, and to the extent that, this consideration also counts in favor of (or against) p being true. I introduce a candidate epistemic norm that satisfies this condition. According to this norm, one should rely on p in practical reasoning only if it must be that p. If we adopt a non-factualist account of “must”, this amounts to a novel and attractive proposal, a proposal that satisfies the transparency condition. (shrink)

Epistemic injustice has undergone a steady growth in the medical ethics literature throughout the last decade as many ethicists have found it to be a powerful tool for describing and assessing morally problematic situations in healthcare. However, surprisingly scarce attention has been devoted to how epistemic injustice relates to physicians’ professional duties on a conceptual level. I argue that epistemic injustice, specifically testimonial, collides with physicians’ duty of nonmaleficence and should thus be actively fought against in healthcare (...) encounters on the ground of professional conduct. I do so by fleshing out how Fricker’s conception of testimonial injustice conflicts with the duty of nonmaleficence as defined in Beauchamp and Childress on theoretical grounds. From there, I argue that testimonial injustice produces two distinct types of harm, epistemic and non-epistemic. Epistemic harms are harms inflicted by the physician to the patient qua knower, whereas non-epistemic harms are inflicted to the patient qua patient. This latter case holds serious clinical implications and represent a failure of the process of due care on the part of the physician. I illustrate this through examples taken from the literature on fibromyalgia syndrome and show how testimonial injustice causes wrongful harm to patients, making it maleficent practice. Finally, I conclude on why nonmaleficence as a principle will not be normatively enough to fully address the problem of epistemic injustice in healthcare but nevertheless may serve as a good starting point in attempting to do so. (shrink)

There is an important disagreement in contemporary epistemology over the possibility of non-epistemic reasons for belief. Many epistemologists argue that non-epistemic reasons cannot be good or normative reasons for holding beliefs: non-epistemic reasons might be good reasons for a subject to bring herself to hold a belief, the argument goes, but they do not offer any normative support for the belief itself. Non-epistemic reasons, as they say, are just the wrong kind of reason for belief. Other (...) epistemologists, however, argue that there can be cases where non-epistemic reasons directly offer normative support for the beliefs a subject holds. -/- My aim in this paper is to remove an apparent obstacle for the view that there can be non-epistemic normative reasons for belief, by showing that the existence of non-epistemic reasons for belief does not conflict with epistemic standards for the assessment of inference. More specifically, I aim to show that the following principles are compatible: -/- Epistemic Norm of Inference (ENI): Necessarily, for all subjects, S, and inferences, I: I is a good inference for S only if S can gain a (doxastically) epistemically justified belief in I’s conclusion on the basis of I’s premises. -/- Non-Epistemic Reasons for Belief (NERB): Possibly, for some subject, S, reason, R, and belief, B: R is a good (i.e., normative) reason for S to hold B, and R is not an epistemic reason for B. -/- Guidance: For all subjects S, potential reasons R, and beliefs/actions φ: In order for R to count as a normative reason for S to φ, it must be possible for S to take R into account as relevant to the determination of whether S ought to φ. -/- One might naturally think that these principles conflict, for if there are non-epistemic reasons for belief, then they must guide deliberation, and in guiding deliberation, they would violate epistemic standards. The aim of this paper is to show that no such conflict need arise. -/- Section 2 of the paper proceeds to set out the concept of an inference, and to sketch an epistemic framework for the assessment of inferences and arguments. Section 3 sets out the distinction between normative and motivating reasons, and briefly defends the view that there can be non-epistemic reasons for beliefs. Section 4 shows that non-epistemic reasons for belief are compatible with epistemic standards for inference, because any time a reason R is a good non-epistemic reason for a subject S to hold a belief B, there is an epistemically good inference available to S which takes R as a premise and which concludes with the meta-belief that S ought to hold B. So the paper employs a level-connecting principle between normative reasons for φ-ing and epistemic reasons for believing that one ought to φ. The paper ends with clarifications of that level-connecting principle, and responses to three objections. (shrink)

A number of philosophers argue that because of its history of systematic disagreement, philosophy has made little to no epistemic progress – especially in comparison to the hard sciences. One argument for this conclusion contends that the best explanation for systematic disagreement in philosophy is that at least some, potentially all, philosophers are unreliable. Since we do not know who is reliable, we have reason to conclude that we ourselves are probably unreliable. Evidence of one’s potential unreliability in a (...) domain purportedly defeats any first-order support one has for any judgments in that domain. This paper defends philosophy. First, accepting that science is rightfully treated as the benchmark of epistemic progress, I contend that a proper conception of epistemic progress highlights that philosophy and science are relevantly similar in terms of such progress. Secondly, even granting that systematic disagreement is a mark of unreliability and that it does characterize philosophy, this paper further argues that evidence of unreliability is insufficient for meta-level, domain-wide, defeat of philosophical judgments more generally. (shrink)

Can epistemic paternalistic practices make us better epistemic agents? While a satisfying answer to this question will ultimately rest at least partly on empirical findings, considering the epistemological discussion on evidence, knowledge, and epistemic virtues can be insightful. In this paper, Giada Fratantonio argues that we have theoretical reasons to believe that strong epistemic paternalistic practices may be effective at mitigating some evidential mistakes, in fostering true belief, and even for allowing the subject of the intervention (...) to gain knowledge. However, we have reasons to expect that these practices will not be able to make the subject of the intervention an overall better epistemic agent at the dispositional level. She then considers weak epistemic paternalistic practices, e.g., epistemic nudging, and provides some reasons for optimism. Finally, Fratantonio considers the implications that these theoretical considerations have for education. (shrink)

Vice epistemology studies the qualities of individuals and collectives that undermine the creation, sharing, and storing of knowledge. There is no settled understanding of which epistemic vices exist at the collective level. Yet understanding which collective epistemic vices exist is important, both to facilitate research on the antecedents and effects of collective epistemic vice, and to advance philosophical discussions such as whether some collective epistemic vices are genuinely collective. I propose an empirical approach to identifying (...) class='Hi'>epistemic vices in corporations, analyzing a large dataset of online employee reviews. The approach has parallels to the methodology for identifying the big-five personality traits. It surfaces epistemic vices that are attributed to corporations by its own members and reduces the number of vices to the minimum required to describe differences between corporations. This approach yields a new taxonomy of epistemic vices for corporations. While two vices identified have close correlates in the existing literature, four others have not been identified at all or only in aspects. Two of these vices are ‘genuinely’ collective in the sense that they can only be attributed to collectives. (shrink)

Our paper consists of four parts. In the first part, we describe the challenge of the pervasive and permanent philosophical disagreement over philosophers’ epistemic self-esteem. In the second part, we investigate the attitude of philosophers who have high epistemic self-esteem even in the face of philosophical disagreement and who believe they have well-grounded philosophical knowledge. In the third section, we focus on the attitude of philosophers who maintain a moderate level of epistemic self-esteem because they do not (...) attribute substantive philosophical knowledge to themselves but still believe that they have epistemic right to defend substantive philosophical beliefs. In the fourth section, we analyse the attitude of philosophers who have a low level of epistemic self-esteem in relation to substantive philosophical beliefs and make no attempt to defend those beliefs. We argue that when faced with philosophical disagreement philosophers either have to deny that the dissenting philosophers are their epistemic peers or have to admit that doing philosophy is less meaningful than it seemed before. In this second case, philosophical activity and performance should not contribute to the philosophers’ overall epistemic self-esteem to any significant extent. (shrink)

I argue that, on Husserl's account, affectivity, along with the closely related phenomenon of association, follows a form of sui generis lawfulness belonging to the domain of what Husserl calls motivation, which must be distinguished both (1) from the causal structures through which we understand the body third-personally, as a material thing; and also (2) from the rational or inferential structures at the level of deliberative judgment traditionally understood to be the domain of epistemic import. In effect, in addition (...) to recognizing a “space of causes” and a “space of reasons,” Husserl’s account of affectivity and the epistemology of passive synthesis in which it is situated suggest that we should recognize a separate “space of motivations.” Within this space, on Husserl’s phenomenological picture, we can isolate two different sorts of epistemic import, one belonging directly to the passive-synthetic content of experience, as explained in Husserl’s account of association and his closely aligned notion of nonlinguistic sense, and a second—my primary focus—affectivity, which is still relevant for that content, albeit indirectly, and holds epistemic import in its determination not of what that content is but of how it comes to matter for us. (shrink)

By “epistemic pragmatism” in general I will understand the claim that whether propositions instantiate certain key epistemic properties (such as being known or being justifiably believed) depends not just on factors traditionally recognized as epistemic, but also on pragmatic factors, such as how costly it would be to the subject if the proposition were false. In what follows I consider two varieties of epistemic pragmatism. According to what I shall call moderate epistemic pragmatism, how much (...) evidence we need in favor of a proposition in order to know that the proposition is true depends on our preferences. According to what I shall call extreme epistemic pragmatism, on the other hand, our preferences influence our epistemic position at a more basic level, because they help determine how much justification we actually have in favor of the proposition in question. Simplifying brutally, moderate epistemic pragmatism has it that the more worried we are about a proposition’s being false, the more justification we need in order to know it, whereas extreme epistemic pragmatism has it that the more worried we are about a proposition’s being false, the less justification we have for it. Recently, Fantl and McGrath have presented an interesting argument for moderate epistemic pragmatism, an argument which relies on the principle that (roughly) knowledge is sufficient for action (KA). In this paper I argue that KA, together with a plausible principle about second-order evidence, entails extreme epistemic pragmatism. (shrink)

We expand on Della Croce’s ambition to interpret “epistemic injustice” as a specification of non-maleficence in the use of the influential four-principle framework. This is an alluring line of thought for conceptual, moral, and heuristic reasons. Although it is commendable, Della Croce’s attempt remains tentative. So does our critique of it. Yet, we take on the challenge to critically address two interrelated points. First, we broaden the analysis to include deliberations about hermeneutical injustice. We argue that, if due consideration (...) of epistemic injustice is to require more than negative ethical obligations in medicine, dimensions of hermeneutical injustice should be explored as an avenue to arrive at such positive duties. Second, and relatedly, we argue that this may encompass moral responsibilities beyond the individual level, that is: positive obligations to take action on a structural level. Building on Dotson’s concept of “contributory injustice” and Scheman’s concept of “perceptual autonomy,” we suggest that the virtues of testimonial and hermeneutical justice may provide additional content not only to negative prohibitions of action (i.e. non-maleficence) but also to positive requirements of action, like respecting patient autonomy. (shrink)

Talk of levels is everywhere in cognitive science. Whether it is in terms of adjudicating longstanding debates or motivating foundational concepts, one cannot go far without hearing about the need to talk at different ‘levels’. Yet in spite of its widespread application and use, the concept of levels has received little sustained attention within cognitive science. This paper provides an analysis of the various ways the notion of levels has been deployed within cognitive science. The paper (...) begins by introducing and motivating discussion via four representative accounts of levels. It then turns to outlining and relating the four accounts using two dimensions of comparison. The result is the creation of a conceptual framework that maps the logical space of levels talk, which offers an important step toward making sense of levels talk within cognitive science. (shrink)

Sometimes ordinary disagreements become deep as a result of epistemic injustice. The paper explores a hitherto unnoticed connection between two phenomena that have received ample attention in recent social epistemology: deep disagreement and epistemic injustice. When epistemic injustice comes into play in a regular disagreement, this can lead to higher-order disagreement about what counts as evidence concerning the original disagreement, which deepens the disagreement. After considering a common definition of deep disagreement, it is proposed that the depth (...) of disagreements is best understood as a matter of degree. Then, a case study of real-life disagreement is introduced: the disagreement about whether racism is a significant issue in the Netherlands, illustrated by the tradition of ‘Black Pete’. It is argued that there is disagreement about what counts as evidence in the case study because of two forms of epistemic injustice: testimonial and hermeneutical injustice. Specifically, there is disagreement about epistemic principles concerning whether private first-personal experience of racism is a weighty source of evidence in this domain, whether victims of racism count as important testifiers in this domain, and how to assess testimony that is not intelligible to you because it employs concepts and terminology you are unfamiliar with. By dismissing the relevant testimony and epistemic resources, the disagreement boils down to disagreement on the level of epistemic principles concerning,, and. Introducinginjustice-based deep disagreementhighlights moral and political aspects of disagreements that might seem factual. (shrink)

We carry out most of our epistemic projects as groups. Networks of individuals work together to identify questions, accumulate evidence, and settle on answers that lie beyond the ken of individual knowers. This is particularly important for controversial issues. And when it comes to ideologically contested issues, groups that are ideologically diverse in their membership are epistemically superior to groups that are ideologically homogenous. That’s because ideologically diverse groups are better at (a) identifying a representative sample of important questions, (...) (b) developing a wider range of potential answers, and (c) evaluating the evidence for and against each option. Awareness of this point produces a competence defeater for the relevant outputs of ideologically homogenous groups: they don’t deserve the high level of trust we often grant them. That, among other things, goes a long way towards justifying the public’s decreased trust in institutions like social networks, journalism, and universities. (shrink)

The rise of East Asian Confucian heritage societies (China, South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam and Singapore) has inspired an enormous amount of new empirical research. At the political level, one...

I argue that, in order for us to be justified in believing that two theories are metaphysically equivalent, we must be able to conceive of them as unified into a single theory, which says nothing over and above either of them. I propose one natural way of precisifying this condition, and show that the quantifier variantist cannot meet it. I suggest that the quantifier variantist cannot meet the more general condition either, and argue that this gives the metaphysical realist a (...) way to rule out theses like quantifier variance without appealing to fundamentality, grounding, or "levels" of reality. (shrink)

Replicability is widely regarded as one of the defining features of science and its pursuit is one of the main postulates of meta-research, a discipline emerging in response to the replicability crisis. At the same time, replicability is typically treated with caution by philosophers of science. In this paper, we reassess the value of replicability from an epistemic perspective. We defend the orthodox view, according to which replications are always epistemically useful, against the more prudent view that claims that (...) it is useful in very limited circumstances. Additionally, we argue that we can learn more about the original experiment and the limits of the discovered effect from replications at different levels. We hold that replicability is a crucial feature of experimental results and scientists should continue to strive to secure it. (shrink)

Beebe and Buckwalter made the surprising discovery that people are more inclined to attribute knowledge when norms are violated than when they are conformed to. The epistemic side-effect effect is the analogue of the Knobe effect. ESEE was replicated in a number of experiments. It was also studied under various conditions. We have carried out a meta-analysis of research on ESEE. The results suggest that ESEE is a robust finding but its magnitude is highly variable. Two study-level covariates influence (...) its size: the subject of the knowledge attribution and the type of norm that is violated or complied with. The effect size is not influenced, however, by the manipulation of chances, by whether the story is about a side effect or not, by language or by question phrasing. The impact of the Gettierization of the story is marginally significant. (shrink)

Agents require a constant flow, and a high level of processing, of relevant semantic information, in order to interact successfully among themselves and with the environment in which they are embedded. Standard theories of information, however, are silent on the nature of epistemic relevance. In this paper, a subjectivist interpretation of epistemic relevance is developed and defended. It is based on a counterfactual and metatheoretical analysis of the degree of relevance of some semantic information i to an informee/agent (...) a, as a function of the accuracy of i understood as an answer to a query q, given the probability that q might be asked by a. This interpretation of epistemic relevance vindicates a strongly semantic theory of information, according to which semantic information encapsulates truth. It accounts satisfactorily for several important applications and interpretations of the concept of relevant information in a variety of philosophical areas. And it interfaces successfully with current philosophical interpretations of causal and logical relevance. (shrink)

The scientific realism debate has now reached an entirely new level of sophistication. Faced with increasingly focused challenges, epistemic scientific realists have appropriately revised their basic meta-hypothesis that successful scientific theories are approximately true: they have emphasized criteria that render realism far more selective and, so, plausible. As a framework for discussion, I use what I take to be the most influential current variant of selective epistemic realism, deployment realism. Toward the identification of new case studies that challenge (...) this form of realism, I break away from the standard list and look to the history of celestial mechanics, with an emphasis on twentieth century advances. I then articulate two purely deductive arguments that, I argue, properly capture the historical threat to realism. I contend that both the content and form of these novel challenges seriously threaten selective epistemic realism. I conclude on a positive note, however, arguing for selective realism at a higher level. Even in the face of threats to its epistemic tenet, scientific realism need not be rejected outright: concern with belief can be bracketed while nonetheless advocating core realist tenets. I show that, in contrast with epistemic deployment realism, a purely axiological scientific realism can account for key scientific practices made salient in my twentieth century case studies. And embracing the realists favored account of inference, inference to the best explanation, while pointing to a set of the most promising alternative selective realist meta-hypothesis, I show how testing the latter can be immensely valuable to our understanding of science. (shrink)

A number of authors, including me, have argued that the output of our most complex climate models, that is, of global climate models and Earth system models, should be assessed possibilistically. Worries about the viability of doing so have also been expressed. I examine the assessment of the output of relatively simple climate models in the context of discovery and point out that this assessment is of epistemic possibilities. At the same time, I show that the concept of (...) class='Hi'>epistemic possibility used in the relevant studies does not fit available analyses of this concept. Moreover, I provide an alternative analysis that does fit the studies and broad climate modelling practices as well as meshes with my existing view that climate model assessment should typically be of real possibilities. On my analysis, to assert that a proposition is epistemically possible is to assert that it is not known to be false and is consistent with at least approximate knowledge of the basic way things are. I, finally, consider some of the implications of my discussion for available possibilistic views of climate model assessment and for worries about such views. I conclude that my view helps to address worries about such assessment and permits using the full range of climate models in it. (shrink)

This thesis mounts an attack against accounts of perceptual justification that attempt to analyze it in terms of evidential justifiers, and has defended the view that perceptual justification should rather be analyzed in terms of non-evidential justification. What matters most to perceptual justification is not a specific sort of evidence, be it experiential evidence or factive evidence, what matters is that the perceptual process from sensory input to belief output is reliable. I argue for this conclusion in the following way. (...) Chapter 1: The Arguments from HallucinationChapter 1 presents a skeptical argument from hallucination that starts from a premise about the alleged introspective indistinguishability of perception and hallucination, and concludes that perceptual knowledge is impossible. Underlying this argument are certain assumptions about the nature of perceptual justification, and different responses to the argument portray different views of perceptual justification. Evidentialism and dogmatism both reject the premise that appearances do not provide evidence sufficient for perceptual knowledge, although they disagree about the precise nature of the appearances. Epistemological disjunctivism rejects the premise that introspectively indistinguishable experiences provide the same evidence, while upholding the idea that some sort of evidence, namely factive evidence, is necessary for perceptual justification and knowledge. Process reliabilism rejects the premise that evidence is necessary for perceptual knowledge on the grounds that even perceptual justification can be obtained without evidence, as long as the cognitive process producing the belief is reliable.Chapter 2: EvidentialismChapter 2 starts by introducing some motivations for experientialist views of perceptual justification, such as evidentialism and dogmatism, which hold that conscious experiences evidentially justify perceptual beliefs. These motivations have to do with their ability to accommodate the New Evil Demon Intuition that demon-deceived subjects have justified perceptual beliefs and the Blindsight Intuition that blindsighters do not have justified perceptual beliefs. However, experientialist views are also faced with a Sellarsian dilemma: either experience is construed as non-propositional, but then the proposed evidential relation is unclear, or experience is construed as propositional, but then it is ad hoc to hold that they can evidentially justify without being justified themselves.Chapter 2 continues with a discussion of evidentialism, which grasps the first horn of this dilemma. I argue that evidentialism cannot adequately explain why a non-propositional experience constitutes evidence for this rather than that belief, and also does not provide any account of how to determine which belief fits an evidence-set which partly consists out of non-propositional experiences. Although a reliabilist version of evidentialism can provide a better account of these matters, it suffers from counter-intuitive predictions about justification and a conception of evidence that is so liberal that it could even include blindsighters and clairvoyants as having such evidence.Chapter 3: DogmatismChapter 3 focuses on variants of dogmatism, a theory of perceptual justification that grasps the second horn of the Sellarsian dilemma by holding that a perceptual experience with the content that p is sufficient for immediate prima facie justification of the belief that p. I first argue that dogmatism should identify perceptual experiences with high-level conscious states to accommodate the problem of novice vs. expert identification and the problem of the speckled hen. I then argue that this version of dogmatism still fails to meet a certain explanatory challenge which I dub the `Distinctiveness Problem'. Dogmatism should explain what is so distinctive about perceptual experience that enables it, in contrast with desire and imagination, to evidentially justify the belief that p without, in contrast with belief, being justified itself.Phenomenalist answers to this problem fail because they either do not provide a distinctive property of perceptual experience, or else provide a property that is reducible to or possibly caused by beliefs. In both cases, dogmatism would have the result that intuitively unjustifying experiences, such as imaginations, nevertheless become capable of justifying beliefs. Moreover, phenomenalists still need some explanation of why phenomenology is epistemically relevant at all.A new variant of the problem of the speckled hen is an intuitive illustration of this point against dogmatists. If a perceptual experience that p is not reliably connected to the fact that p or the belief that p, then beliefs based on this experience simply will not be intuitively justified. One possible response to this problem incorporates reliability into the content of experience in the sense that an experience cannot have the content that p if it is not reliably connected to both the fact that p and the belief that p. However, this will lose the motivation from the New Evil Demon Scenario, and will make large concessions towards reliabilism.Chapter 4: Epistemological DisjunctivismGiven these problems for experientialist views of perceptual justification, chapter 4 focuses on a different evidential account of justification: epistemological disjunctivism. According to the Justified True Belief version of Epistemological Disjunctivism, the fact that I see that p is the factive and reflectively accessible evidence in virtue of which I know that p. I argue that JTBED faces formidable problems: first, it cannot adequately deal with the basis problem, second, it cannot accommodate the New Evil Demon Intuition, third,it faces the problem of hyper-intellectualization, and fourth, it has no good account of reflective access.Knowledge First Epistemological Disjunctivism, in contrast, holds that seeing that p just is a way of knowing that p. The fact that I see that p constitutes my justification for believing that p, even though it is not necessary for my knowledge that p. Although this view solves most of the above problems, I argue that KFED still faces a challenge of its own: its notion of justification is so strong that justification entails knowledge but is not itself entailed by it. This means that it too faces a hyper-intellectualization objection because it cannot accommodate animal justification, and that it too will struggle to accommodate the New Evil Demon Intuition.Nevertheless, there is something to the epistemological disjunctivist idea that higher-order capabilities are important to perceptual justification. Specifically, higher-order capabilities provide one with a way of accommodating the Blindsight Intuition without appealing to the notion of experiential evidence: blindsighters are epistemically worse off than normal human perceivers because they lack higher-order beliefs about how they are gaining their information. If one holds that these higher-order beliefs provide a special sort of justification for perceptual beliefs, then blindsighters lack this type of justification. Chapter 5: Process ReliabilismAfter displaying the problems of several evidential accounts of perceptual justification, chapter 5 introduces a non-evidential account: process reliabilism. The classic version of this view holds that the reliability of a belief-forming process is necessary and sufficient for the prima facie justification of a specific set of beliefs, namely, those that arise out of belief-independent processes. Two classic major problems for this view consist of counterexamples to both the necessity and sufficiency of reliability for justification. Although the Generality Problem raises some difficulties for reliabilism, they do not appear to be insurmountable.The second part of chapter 5 focuses on a variety of process reliabilism, inferentialist reliabilism, that is explicitly aimed at responding to clairvoyance cases. According to inferentialist reliabilism, one should distinguish between basic and non-basic beliefs, where basic beliefs are those that result out of the non-inferential operation of an inferentially opaque cognitive system that developed in a natural way. Reliability is only sufficient for the justification of basic beliefs, while non-basic beliefs also require conditional reliability and justification of the beliefs on which they are based.This distinction between basic and non-basic beliefs is meant to answer the challenge arising out of clairvoyance cases because these are all supposedly cases in which the resulting beliefs arenon-basic. However, I argue that the beliefs in these cases come out as non-basic primarily because of the etiological constraint on cognitive systems, a constraint that is unfortunately undermotivated. It seems that beliefs can be justified even if they are produced by a cognitive system that developed by accident, or by a system that was artificially designed to produce those beliefs. So even though the inferentialist reliabilist might have a point in distinguishing between basic and non-basic beliefs, it is still in need of a different response to clairvoyance cases. Chapter 6: Rejoinders for ReliabilismChapter 6 improves on the inferentialist reliabilist account of justification by presenting a different way of dealing with the clairvoyance cases and New Evil Demon Scenario. I start from the empirically plausible idea that we know that we are perceiving when we are perceiving, not because of the use of experiential evidence, but rather, because of an unconscious source-monitoring mechanism. I then argue that the existence of such a source-monitoring mechanism could be used to explain why clairvoyance cases actually have to do with defeat rather than absence of prima facie justification: beliefs that pop up in our head should be recognized as stemming from untrustworthy sources, and so we acquire defeating higher-order beliefs about the first-order beliefs. I also argue that this defeat should be able to occur even if the higher-order beliefs are themselves unjustified. This defeater-account of clairvoyance is preferable to several externalist alternatives. Making reliability relative to a specific world seems rather ad hoc, and further requirements on justification, such as evidence-based belief, cognitively integrated belief, or properly produced belief, all appear unnecessary and are susceptible to adapted versions of the clairvoyance case.I further argue for an alternative inferentialist reliablist response to the New Evil Demon Intuition which treats it as mistaken rather than correct. The New Evil Demon Intuition might arise because of a mistaken view of actual perceptual justification as having to do with experiential evidence. This mistaken view could be explained by the fact that experience is actually reliably connected to belief and is often cited in response to a knowledge-challenge. If this is a correct analysis of the New Evil Demon Intuition, then there is an element of question-begging involved when this scenario is still pressed against inferentialist reliabilists who do not adhere to the experientialist assumption it presupposes.With the inferentialist reliabilist account in hand,we are able to see that many of the premises of the epistemological argument from hallucination are problematic. Evidence does not appear to be required for perceptual knowledge, as perceptual justification does not even require such evidence. Moreover, if we accept a reliabilist model of introspection, then we are often able to know on the basis of introspection that we are perceiving rather than hallucinating. Once one gets clear about the alternatives, it becomes apparent that the argument thrives on internalist assumptions about justification and knowledge that one need not accept. (shrink)

The epistemic poverty objection is commonly levelled by externalists against deontological conceptions of epistemic justification. This is that an “oughts” based account of epistemic justification together with “ought” implies “can” must lead us to hold to be justified, epistemic agents who are objectively not truth-conducive cognizers. The epistemic poverty objection has led to a common response from deontologists, namely to embrace accounts of bounded rationality—subjective, practical or regulative accounts rather than objective, absolute or theoretical accounts. (...) But the bounds deontological epistemologists and their opponents entertain rarely include cultural limitations. This paper considers neo-Vygotskian arguments that we must consider such cultural limits in defending deontologism, and thus that any deontologically motivated perspectivism must be in part a cultural perspectivism. The dangers of strong relativism are flagged and an attempt is made to steer a.. (shrink)

I examine how particular social arrangements and incentive structures encourage the honest reporting of experimental results and minimize fraudulent scientific work. In particular I investigate how epistemic communities can achieve this goal by promoting members to police the community. Using some basic tools from game theory, I explore a simple model in which scientists both conduct research and have the option of investigating the findings of their peers. I find that this system of peer policing can in many cases (...) ensure high levels of honesty. (shrink)

The article presents an in-depth analysis of epistemic cultures in conflict by exemplifying the epistemic conflict between high energy physics and astronomy which emerged after the discovery of “dark energy” and the accelerating expansion of the universe. It suggests a theoretical framework combining Knorr-Cetina’s concept of epistemic cultures with Whitley’s theory of dependencies in the sciences system, which explains that epistemic conflicts occur, if the strategic and functional dependency of two incommensurable epistemic cultures is suddenly (...) growing. The pre-history of the conflict is discussed on a micro-level for the two research groups involved in the breakthrough. The analysis of the consequent epistemic conflict on a macro-level reveals that it embraces the preferred epistemic strategy, the collaboration style, the instrumental concepts and the question how social legitimacy can be generated. (shrink)

What is the mission of epistemology, and what is its proper methodology? Such meta-epistemological questions have been prominent in recent years, especially with the emergence of various brands of "naturalistic" epistemology. In this paper, I shall reformulate and expand upon my own meta-epistemological conception (most fully articulated in Goldman, 1986), retaining many of its former ingredients while reconfiguring others. The discussion is by no means confined, though, to the meta-epistemological level. New substantive proposals will also be advanced and defended.

Two main theories about metacognition are reviewed, each of which claims to provide a better explanation of this phenomenon, while discrediting the other theory as inappropriate. The paper claims that in order to do justice to the complex phenomenon of metacognition, we must distinguish two levels of this capacity—each having a different structure, a different content and a different function within the cognitive architecture. It will be shown that each of the reviewed theories has been trying to explain only (...) one of the two levels and that, consequently, the conflict between them can be dissolved. The paper characterizes the high-level as a rationalizing level where the subject uses concepts and theories to interpret her own behavior and the low-level as a controlling level where the subject exploits epistemic feelings to adjust her cognitive activities. Finally, the paper explores three kinds of interaction between the levels. (shrink)

Contemporary analytic epistemology exhibits an individualistic bias. The standard analyses of knowledge found in current epistemological discussions assume that the only epistemic agents worthy of philosophical consideration are individual cognizers. The idea that collectives could be genuine knowers has received little, if any, serious consideration. This individualistic bias seems to be motivated by the view that epistemology is about things that go on inside the head. In this paper I challenge this type of epistemic individualism by arguing that (...) certain groups are intentional agents and that cognition occurs at the level of groups. In section I, I extend a plausible and well-defended account of individual intentionality to organizations. In section II, I appeal to research on distributed cognition in order to challenge the view that cognition occurs exclusively in the individual mind-brain. Having established that groups can be believers and cognizers, I turn to the issue of the justification of group belief. In section III, consider whether a reliabilist account of justification can be extended to groups. (shrink)

This expository paper presents a general framework for representing levels and inter-level relations. The framework is intended to capture both epistemic and ontological notions of levels and to clarify the sense in which levels of explanation might or might not be related to a levelled ontology. The framework also allows us to study and compare different kinds of inter-level relations, especially supervenience and reduction but also grounding and mereological constitution. This, in turn, enables us to explore (...) questions such as whether supervenience implies explanatory reducibility and whether there can be irreducible higher-level explanations or even “emergent” higher-level properties. The paper finally discusses some further philosophical applications: to the free-will debate, the determinism-indeterminism distinction, indexicality and consciousness, and the relationship between positive and normative facts. (shrink)

When I was eleven, my form teacher, Mr Howard, showed some of my class how to punch. We were waiting for the rest of the class to finish changing after gym, and he took a stance that I would now call shizentai yoi and snapped his right fist forward into a head-level straight punch, pulling his left back to his side at the same time. Then he punched with his left, pulling back on his right. We all lined up in (...) our ties and sensible shoes (this was England) and copied him—left, right, left, right—and afterwards he told us that if we practised in the air with sufficient devotion for three years, then we would be able to use our punches to kill a bull with one blow. I worshipped Mr Howard (though I would sooner have died than told him that) and so, as a skinny, eleven-year-old girl, I came to believe that if I practised, I would be able to kill a bull with one blow by the time I was fourteen. This essay is about epistemic viciousness in the martial arts, and this story is illustrates just that. Though the word ‘viciousness’ normally suggests deliberate cruelty and violence, I will be using it here with the more old-fashioned meaning, possessing of vices. Vices (such as avarice, alcoholism and nail-biting) are common, and most of us struggle with a few, but ‘epistemic’ means ‘having to do with knowledge and the justification of belief’ and so epistemic viciousness is the possession of vices that make one bad at acquiring true beliefs, or give one a tendency to form false ones. My eleven-year-old self possessed the epistemic vice of gullibility and hence showed a streak of epistemic viciousness, which led to the formation of a false belief. Other kinds of epistemic vice can lead to us failing to form true beliefs when we ought to. Consider the internet-surfing karate-sensei who stumbles upon an article claiming that chocolate milk is better than water or sports drinks for promoting recovery after strenuous exercise, and describing an experiment using stationary bikes performed at the University of Indiana, purporting to support this claim.. (shrink)