Many philosophers and psychologists hold that intuitions are, or reduce to, beliefs. The argument from intuition without beliefs threatens to undercut any such doxastic account: since there are clear cases of intuition without belief, intuitions cannot be beliefs. Advocates of the intellectual seeming account conclude that intuitions belong to the basic mental kind of intellectual seeming. I argue that rightly understood, apparent cases of intuition without belief are cases of someone having the inclination to believe that p whilst believing that (...) not-p. These can be accommodated by a disjunctive doxastic account holding that to have an intuition is to either have a belief, or to have an inclination to believe. I conclude that intuitions reduce to beliefs, and that there is no need to acknowledge intellectual seemings as basic states in our mental taxonomy. (shrink)

Self-knowledge is knowledge of one’s own states (or processes) in an indexical mode of presentation. The philosophical debate is concentrating on mental states (or processes). If we characterize self-knowledge by natural language sentences, the most adequate utterance has a structure like “I know that I am in mental state M”. This common sense characterization has to be developed into an adequate description. In this investigation we will tackle two questions: (i) What precisely is the phenomenon referred to by “self-knowledge” and (...) how can we adequately describe a form of self-knowledge which we might realistically enjoy? (ii) Can we have self-knowledge given the fact that the meaning of some words which we utter depends on the environment or the speech community? The theory we defend argues that we have to distinguish the public meaning of utterances, on the one hand, and the mental representations which are constituting a mental state of an individual, on the other. Self-knowledge should be characterized on the level of mental representations while the semantics of utterances self-attributing mental states should be treated separately. Externalism is only true for the public meaning of utterances but not for beliefs and other mental states including self-knowledge. (shrink)

A skeptic claims that I do not have knowledge of the external world. It has been thought that the skeptic reaches this conclusion because she employs unusually stringent standards for knowledge. But the skeptic does not employ unusually high standards for knowledge. Rather, she employs unusually restrictive standards of evidence. Thus, her claim that we lack knowledge of the external world is supported by considerations that would equally support the claim that we lack evidence for our beliefs about the external (...) world. These considerations do not threaten the truth of our ordinary attributions of evidence, however, for such attributions are context‐sensitive in their semantics.It is argued that this solution to the problem of the external world enjoys all of the benefits. and suffers none of the problems, of other solutions to the problem of the external world. (shrink)

Jim buys a ticket in a million-ticket lottery. He knows it is a fair lottery, but, given the odds, he believes he will lose. When the winning ticket is chosen, it is not his. Did he know his ticket would lose? It seems that he did not. After all, if he knew his ticket would lose, why would he have bought it? Further, if he knew his ticket would lose, then, given that his ticket is no different in its chances (...) of winning from any other ticket, it seems that by parity of reasoning he should also know that every other ticket would lose. But of course he doesn’t know that; in fact, he knows that not every ticket will lose. (shrink)

According to robust versions of virtue epistemology, the reason why knowledge is incompatible with certain kinds of luck is that justified true beliefs must be achieved by the agent . In a recent set of papers, Pritchard has challenged these sorts of views, advancing different arguments against them. I confront one of them here, which is constructed upon scenarios affected by environmental luck, such as the fake barn cases. My objection to Pritchard differs from those offered until now by Carter (...) , Jarvis or Littlejohn in that it is based on the claim that cognitive performances may not be properly considered as achievements beyond the scope of the agent’s intentional action—an idea that confers more explanatory power on my argument, and contributes to stregthening links between knowledge and agency. (shrink)

We are witnessing a certain tendency in epistemology to account for the anti-luck intuition in terms of risk. I.e., instead of the traditional anti-luck diagnosis of Gettier cases and fake barn cases, a new anti-risk diagnosis seems to be preferable by many. My goal in this paper is twofold: first, I contribute to motivate that drift; and second, I defend that we ought to partially resist it. An anti-risk diagnosis is valid and preferable for fake barn cases, but we still (...) need an anti-luck diagnosis for classic Gettier cases. The paper thus defends the Solomon-like result that we need both concepts—epistemic luck and epistemic risk—to deal with all the cases where knowledge is undermined. (shrink)

We are witnessing a certain tendency in epistemology to account for the anti-luck intuition in terms of risk. I.e., instead of the traditional anti-luck diagnosis of Gettier cases and fake barn cases, a new anti-risk diagnosis seems to be preferable by many. My goal in this paper is twofold: first, I contribute to motivate that drift; and second, I defend that we ought to partially resist it. An anti-risk diagnosis is valid and preferable for fake barn cases, but we still (...) need an anti-luck diagnosis for classic Gettier cases. The paper thus defends the Solomon-like result that we need both concepts—epistemic luck and epistemic risk—to deal with all the cases where knowledge is undermined. (shrink)

Ethical challenges to certain aspects of research on human subjects are not uncommon; examples include challenges to first-in-human trials (Chapman in J Clin Res Bioethics 2(4):1–8, 2011), certain placebo controlled trials (Anderson in J Med Philos 31:65–81, 2006; Anderson and Kimmelman in Kennedy Inst Ethics J 20(1):75–98, 2010) and “sham” surgery (Macklin in N Engl J Med 341:992–996, 1999). To date, however, there are few challenges to research when the subjects are competent and the research is more than minimal risk (...) with no promise of direct benefit. The principal reason given for allowing research that is more than minimal risk without benefit is that we should respect the autonomy of competent subjects. I argue that though the moral intuitions informing respect for autonomy are sound, there is another set of intuitions regarding what we take to be just treatment of another when one agent knowingly causes or allows suffering on another agent. I argue that concerns generated by commutative justice serve as limitations on permissible research. I highlight our intuitions informing this notion of justice by appealing to work done on theodicy; what counts as a morally sufficient reason for God to allow suffering in humans is applicable also to the researcher-subject relationship. I conclude that all human subjects who are exposed to more than minimal risk research should enjoy the same actual protections (e.g., subpart D) as those given subjects who cannot consent. (shrink)

Intuitively, there is a difference between knowledge and mere belief. Contemporary philosophical work on the nature of this difference has focused on scenarios known as “Gettier cases.” Designed as counterexamples to the classical theory that knowledge is justified true belief, these cases feature agents who arrive at true beliefs in ways which seem reasonable or justified, while nevertheless seeming to lack knowledge. Prior empirical investigation of these cases has raised questions about whether lay people generally share philosophers’ intuitions about these (...) cases, or whether lay intuitions vary depending on individual factors (e.g. ethnicity) or factors related to specific types of Gettier cases (e.g. cases that include apparent evidence). We report an experiment on lay attributions of knowledge and justification for a wide range of Gettier Cases and for a related class of controversial cases known as Skeptical Pressure cases, which are also thought by philosophers to elicit intuitive denials of knowledge. Although participants rated true beliefs in Gettier and Skeptical Pressure cases as being justified, they were significantly less likely to attribute knowledge for these cases than for matched true belief cases. This pattern of response was consistent across different variations of Gettier cases and did not vary by ethnicity or gender, although attributions of justification were found to be positively related to measures of empathy. These findings therefore suggest that across demographic groups, laypeople share similar epistemic concepts with philosophers, recognizing a difference between knowledge and justified true belief. (shrink)

Many epistemologists use intuitive responses to particular cases as evidence for their theories. Recently, experimental philosophers have challenged the evidential value of intuitions, suggesting that our responses to particular cases are unstable, inconsistent with the responses of the untrained, and swayed by factors such as ethnicity and gender. This paper presents evidence that neither gender nor ethnicity influence epistemic intuitions, and that the standard responses to Gettier cases and the like are widely shared. It argues that epistemic intuitions are produced (...) by the natural ‘mindreading’ capacity that underpins ordinary attributions of belief and knowledge in everyday social interaction. Although this capacity is fallible, its weaknesses are similar to the weaknesses of natural capacities such as sensory perception. Experimentalists who do not wish to be skeptical about ordinary empirical methods have no good reason to be skeptical about epistemic intuitions. (shrink)

We naturally evaluate the beliefs of others, sometimes by deliberate calculation, and sometimes in a more immediate fashion. Epistemic intuitions are immediate assessments arising when someone’s condition appears to fall on one side or the other of some significant divide in epistemology. After giving a rough sketch of several major features of epistemic intuitions, this article reviews the history of the current philosophical debate about them and describes the major positions in that debate. Linguists and psychologists also study epistemic assessments; (...) the last section of the paper discusses some of their research and its potential relevance to epistemology. (shrink)

Pa ul Boghos s i a n’ s ‘ Me mor y Ar gume nt ’ a l l ege dl y s hows , us i ng t he f ami l i a r s l ow-switching scenario, that externalism and authoritative self-knowledge are incompatible. The aim of this paper is to undermine the argument by examining..

Recent work in experimental philosophy has indicated that intuitions may be subject to several forms of bias, thereby casting doubt on the viability of intuition as an evidential source in philosophy. A common reply to these findings is the ‘expertise defense’ – the claim that although biases may be found in the intuitions of non-philosophers, persons with expertise in philosophy will be resistant to these biases. Much debate over the expertise defense has centered over the question of the burden of (...) proof; must defenders of expertise provide empirical evidence of its existence, or should we grant the existence of philosophical expertise as a ‘default’ assumption? Defenders have frequently appealed to analogy with other fields; since expertise clearly exists in, e.g., the sciences, we are entitled to assume its existence in philosophy. Recently, however, experimentalists have begun to provide empirical evidence that biases in intuition extend even to philosophers. Though these findings don't yet suffice to defeat the default assumption of expertise the analogy argument motivates, they do force any proponent of the analogy argument to provide more specific and empirically informed proposals for the possible nature of philosophical expertise. (shrink)

In this paper, I respond to Philip Atkins’ reply to my attempt to explain why Gettier cases (and Gettier-style cases) are misleading. I have argued that Gettier cases (and Gettier-style cases) are misdealing because the candidates for knowledge in such cases contain ambiguous designators. Atkins denies that Gettier’s original cases contain ambiguous designators and offers his intuition that the subjects in Gettier’s original cases do not know. I argue that his reply amounts to mere intuition mongering and I explain why (...) Gettier cases, even Atkins’ revised version of Gettier’s Case I, still contain ambiguous designators. (shrink)

This paper develops a precise understanding of the thesis of moral encroachment, which states that the epistemic status of an opinion can depend on its moral features. In addition, I raise objections to existing accounts of moral encroachment. For instance, many accounts fail to give sufficient attention to moral encroachment on credences. Also, many accounts focus on moral features that fail to support standard analogies between pragmatic and moral encroachment. Throughout the paper, I discuss racial profiling as a case study, (...) arguing that moral encroachment can help us identify one respect in which racial profiling is epistemically problematic. (shrink)

This paper investigates a limitation of the model of belief and knowledge prevailing in mainstream economics, namely the state-space model. Because of its set-theoretic nature, this model has difficulties in capturing the difference between expressions that designate the same object but have different meanings, i.e., expressions with the same extension but different intensions. This limitation generates puzzling results concerning what individuals believe or know about the world as well as what individuals believe or know about what other individuals believe or (...) know about the world. The paper connects these puzzling results to two issues that are relevant for economic theory beyond the state-space model, namely, framing effects and the distinction between the model-maker and agents that appear in the model. Finally, the paper discusses three possible solutions to the limitations of the state-space model, and concludes that the two alternatives that appear practicable also have significant drawbacks. (shrink)

This paper argues that just as full beliefs can constitute knowledge, so can properties of your credence distribution. The resulting notion of probabilistic knowledge helps us give a natural account of knowledge ascriptions embedding language of subjective uncertainty, and a simple diagnosis of probabilistic analogs of Gettier cases. Just like propositional knowledge, probabilistic knowledge is factive, safe, and sensitive. And it helps us build knowledge-based norms of action without accepting implausible semantic assumptions or endorsing the claim that knowledge is interest-relative.

In the following essay I set out the core argument expounded by Nicholas Rescher in regard of the link between reality and appearance, illustrating this argument based on chapter 6 of his Reality and its Appearance. Rescher’s argument overlaps with critical realist concerns based on his approach to metaphysical realism. I make the point that the argument exhibits the virtue of concision, but, as a result, suffers from under-elaboration in important areas; most particularly, an explicit engagement with standard philosophical problems (...) of appearance, such as Gettier, and, more generally, the fundamental issue of how appearance may or may not change in response to changes in the human condition. (shrink)

Algunos de los más relevantes filósofos del derecho de los últimos años, como Carlos S. Nino y Ronald Dworkin, han defendido que hay una pluralidad de conceptos de Derecho. Scott Shapiro ha sostenido una posición especialmente relevante acerca de ello: la palabra ‘Derecho’ es sistemáticamente ambigua, pues a veces designa un conjunto de normas y otras veces una organización social. Esta es precisamente la tesis criticada en el trabajo. Se argumenta, basándose en determinada literatura filosófica acerca de los conceptos, que (...) los conceptos de objetos sociales de carácter intencional contienen una dimensión social y una dimensión significativa, normativa en el caso del derecho. El mismo concepto de Derecho expresa una dimensión social y una normativa imbricadas entre sí. Some of the most relevant legal philosophers in the last decades, as Carlos S. Nino and Ronald Dworkin, have defended the idea that there is a plurality of concepts of law. Scott Shapiro has sustained this account in a particularly relevant way: the word ‘law’ displays a ubiquitous ambiguity, sometimes designates a set of norms and other a social organization. This is precisely the thesis which is criticized in the paper. It is argued, from a certain philosophical literature about the concepts, that concepts of social objects of intentional character contain a social dimension and a meaning dimension, normative in the case of the law. That is to say, the concept of law expresses a social dimension and a normative dimension intertwined. (shrink)

It is plausible to think that the epistemic benefit of having an explanation is understanding. My focus in this article is on the extent to which explanatory understanding, perhaps unlike knowledge, is compatible with certain forms of luck—the extent to which one can understand why something is the case when one is lucky to truly believe an explanatorily relevant proposition. I argue, contra Stephen Grimm ([2006]) and Duncan Pritchard ([2008], [2009]), that understanding quite generally is compatible with luckily believing a (...) true, explanatorily relevant proposition. My strategy is to argue that various intuitions that seem to rule against lucky understanding can be explained away, and thus do not compel us to reject the thesis that, in general, understanding tolerates luck. In arriving at this conclusion, I address some salient issues regarding the testimony of others, and also draw out the consequences of my discussions for the status of understanding as a cognitive achievement. (shrink)

Qualia Epiphenomenalism is the view that qualitative events lack causal efficacy. A common objection to qualia epiphenomenalism is the so-called Self-Stultifying Objection, which suggests that justified, true belief about qualitative events requires, among other things, the belief to be caused by the qualitative event—the very premise that qualia epiphenomenalism denies. William Robinson provides the most sustained response to the self-stultification objection that is available. In this paper I argue that Robinson's reply does not sufficiently overcome the self-stultification objection.

According to instrumental proceduralism, political power is justified when it is the output of a reliable procedure. In this paper, I examine how procedures are supposed to confer normative properties. Based on this assessment, I conclude that many proceduralists set the reliability bar too low. Next, I motivate two additional requirements for instrumental procedures. I introduce the notion of “predictable” procedural failure and argue that in order for a procedure to confer legitimacy or other normative properties on its output, it (...) must not have failed predictably. Finally, I argue that even when procedures are highly reliable, it must not be the case that their failures fall disproportionately on certain people. The goal is to develop an instrumental proceduralism that is more sensitive to the failures of real institutions. (shrink)

I sketch an explanatory framework that fits a variety of contemporary research programs in cognitive science. I then investigate the scope and the implications of this framework. The framework emphasizes (a) the explanatory role played by the semantic content of cognitive representations, and (b) the important mechanistic, non-intentional dimension of cognitive explanations. I show how both of these features are present simultaneously in certain varieties of cognitive explanation. I also consider the explanatory role played by grounded representational content, that is, (...) content evaluated by appeal to its truth, falsity, accuracy, inaccuracy and other relational properties. (shrink)

According to orthodox views of philosophical methodology, when philosophers appeal to intuitions, they treat them as evidence for their contents. Call this “descriptive evidentialism.” Descriptive evidentialism is assumed both by those who defend the epistemic status of intuitions and by those, including many experimental philosophers, who criticize it. This article shows, however, that the idea that philosophers treat intuitions as evidence struggles to account for the way philosophers treat intuitions in a variety of philosophical contexts. In particular, it cannot account (...) for philosophers' treatment of a priori intuitions, for nonpropositional uses of intuition, and for philosophers' failure to use intuition to exclude the counterintuitive. The article concludes that alternatives to descriptive evidentialism (some of which are sketched) must be developed, and that much of the recent debate between traditionalists and skeptics from, for example, experimental philosophy is probably based on a false presupposition. (shrink)

According to the eligibility theory of meaning, often attributed to David Lewis, the referent of a predicate is the property that best balances the twin constraints of charity and eligibility, where eligibility is a function of metaphysical naturalness. This sort of metasemantics, which is motivated by its ability to resolve problems of indeterminacy and secure shared reference between disputing parties, can be somewhat friendly towards revisionary theories, since highly natural properties can act as “reference magnets,” securing our reference despite some (...) mismatch with usage. In this paper, I apply these considerations to normative ethics and argue that the theory of rule utilitarianism achieves a high balance of charity and eligibility. I proceed by comparing rule utilitarianism to two of its well-known rivals, act utilitarianism and Rossian pluralism. I show how the former achieves a high degree of eligibility but only at a significant cost of charity, while the latter does the opposite, fitting very nicely with our considered judgments but at the price of very low eligibility. Rule utilitarianism, on the other hand, strikes a good balance between these extremes; it assigns to our core moral term a relatively natural property without doing too much damage to our moral convictions. Thus, rule utilitarianism should be regarded as a promising moral theory by any philosopher who takes seriously considerations of eligibility and naturalness. (shrink)

Has the theory of rationality as ‘openness to criticism’ solved the problem of ‘rational belief in reason’? This is the main question the present article intends to address. I respond to this question by arguing that the justified true belief account of knowledge has prevented Karl Popper’s critical and William Bartley’s pan-critical rationalism from solving the problem of rational belief in reason. To elaborate this response, the article presents its arguments in three stages: First, it argues that the idea of (...) objective knowledge as justified true belief leads to the equation of objective knowledge with justification. Hence, if we base the theory of critical rationalism, as openness to criticism, upon such a conception of knowledge, our theory of rationality involves in infinite regress of proofs. Second, it argues that Popper describes critical rationalism as an ‘irrational attitude’ of openness to criticism because the rationalist cannot justify his belief in reason by argument or experience. Thus, since Popper assumes that ‘a belief in reason’ must be justified in order to be ‘rational’ he cannot lead to a solution for the problem of rational belief in reason. Third, it argues that, like Popper’s critical rationalism, Bartley’s pan-critical rationalism originates in the justified true belief account of knowledge, however, not because Bartley defines critical rationalism as irrational faith in reason, but because his theory does not tell us how an ‘open’ belief in reason is to be refuted logically. The reason for this failure is that Bartley uses Popper’s epistemology of science to define the conception of criticism. While Popper and Bartley are recognized as the non-justificationist philosophers of science and rationality, this article tries to reveal that the idea of objective knowledge as justified true belief has prevented them from showing how ‘a rational belief in reason’ can be defended by argument. The article also briefly shows the consequence of this study for a notable change in the logical foundations of science. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that, as far as Gettier cases are concerned, appearances are deceiving. That is, Gettier cases merely appear to be cases of epistemic failure (i.e., failing to know that p) but are in fact cases of semantic failure (i.e., failing to refer to x). Gettier cases are cases of reference failure because the candidates for knowledge in these cases contain ambiguous designators. If this is correct, then we may simply be mistaking semantic facts for epistemic facts (...) when we consider Gettier cases. This, in turn, is a good reason not to assign much, if any, evidential weight to Gettier intuitions (i.e., that S doesn’t know that p in a Gettier case). (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that, just as the problem of unconceived alternatives provides a basis for a New Induction on the History of Science to the effect that a realist view of science is unwarranted, the problem of unconceived objections provides a basis for a New Induction on the History of Philosophy to the effect that a realist view of philosophy is unwarranted. I raise this problem not only for skepticism’s sake but also for the sake of making a (...) point about philosophical argumentation, namely, that anticipating objections to one’s claim is not the same as supporting one’s claim. In other words, defending p from objections does not amount to support or evidence for p. This, in turn, presents dialectical and pragma-dialectical approaches to argumentation with the following question: does proper argumentation require that arguers anticipate and respond to unconceived objections? (shrink)

In this paper, we present what we call the argument from accidental truth, according to which some instances of deflationist schemata, even those carefully reformulated and adjusted by Field and Horwich to accommodate the truth of utterances, are falsified due to accidental truths. Since the folk concept of truth allows for accidental truths, the deflationary theory of truth will face a serious problem. In particular, it follows that the deflationist schema fails to capture the proper extension of truth by precluding (...) accidental truths of utterances. Even though the argument uses the contextualist cases, this conclusion does not require so much as the truth of contextualism, but only two assumptions, the existence of context-relative non-literal contents of utterances (or speech acts), and the existence of accidental truths, both of which are widely accepted by folks and theorists. We will also consider various responses to the argument, including the revisionary deflationist position, all of which we argue are unsatisfactory or committed to a highly implausible view. (shrink)

I have argued that Gettier cases are misleading because, even though they appear to be cases of knowledge failure, they are in fact cases of semantic failure. Atkins has responded to my original paper and I have replied to his response. He has then responded again to insist that he has the so-called “Gettier intuition.” But he now admits that intuitions are only defeasible, not conclusive, evidence for and/or against philosophical theories. I address the implications of Atkins’ admission in this (...) paper and I again show that his attempts to revise Gettier’s original cases such that they do not involve semantic failures are unsuccessful. (shrink)

I argue against traditional virtue epistemology on which knowledge is a success due to a competence to believe truly, by revealing an in-principle problem with the traditional virtue epistemologist’s explanation of Gettier cases. The argument eliminates one of the last plausible explanation of Gettier cases, and so of knowledge, in terms of non-factive mental states and non-mental conditions. I then I develop and defend a different kind of virtue epistemology, on which knowledge is an exercise of a competence to know. (...) I show how the account, while circular, is not viciously so. It explains both how knowledge is a mental state, as well as the relationship between knowledge and justification, including justified false beliefs and Gettier cases. Moreover, although direct virtue epistemology is compatible with many views on the nature of belief, it can explain how knowledge might be metaphysically more fundamental than belief as well. (shrink)

Whether legal systems are necessarily coercive raises normative concerns. Coercion carries a presumption of illegitimacy and a special justificatory burden. If legal systems are necessarily coercive, coerciveness necessarily taints our legal institutions. Traditionally, legal systems have been regarded as contingently coercive. This view is mainly supported by the society of angels thought experiment. For the past few years, however, this traditional view has been under attack. Critics have challenged the reliability of the thought experiment and have urged us to centre (...) the discussion on typical legal systems: legal systems made by humans to address human needs. Once we do so – they claim – we would inevitably reject the traditional view. This paper argues that the critics are wrong. After discussing key features of the society of angels thought experiment and responding to objections, it is argued that even typical legal systems are contingently coercive. Coerciveness is a feature that our legal systems can and should strive to get rid of. (shrink)

The paper aims to stress the structural similarities between Nelson Goodman’s ‘new riddle of induction’ and Edmund Gettier’s counterexamples to the standard analysis of knowledge.

Scientific consensus is widely deferred to in public debates as a social indicator of the existence of knowledge. However, it is far from clear that such deference to consensus is always justified. The existence of agreement in a community of researchers is a contingent fact, and researchers may reach a consensus for all kinds of reasons, such as fighting a common foe or sharing a common bias. Scientific consensus, by itself, does not necessarily indicate the existence of shared knowledge among (...) the members of the consensus community. I address the question of under what conditions it is likely that a consensus is in fact knowledge based. I argue that a consensus is likely to be knowledge based when knowledge is the best explanation of the consensus, and I identify three conditions—social calibration, apparent consilience of evidence, and social diversity, for knowledge being the best explanation of a consensus. (shrink)

Philosophers have recently argued, against a prevailing orthodoxy, that standards of knowledge partly depend on a subject’s interests; the more is at stake for the subject, the less she is in a position to know. This view, which is dubbed “Pragmatic Encroachment” has historical and conceptual connections to arguments in philosophy of science against the received model of science as value free. I bring the two debates together. I argue that Pragmatic Encroachment and the model of value-laden science reinforce each (...) other. Drawing on Douglas’ argument about the indispensability of value judgments in science, and psychological evidence about people’s inability to objectively reason about what they care about, I introduce a novel argument for Pragmatic Encroachment. (shrink)

A conception of the relation between reasons for belief, justified belief, and knowledge is outlined on which a belief is justified, in the sense of being well‐founded, only if there is an adequate reason to believe it, reasons to believe something are constituted by truths, and a reason to believe something justifies one in believing it only if it is constituted by a truth or truths that one knows. It is argued that, contrary to initial appearances, perceptual justification does not (...) pose a problem for this view. The discussion touches upon the relation between believing for reasons and reflective knowledge. (shrink)

An explanation is given of why it is in the nature of inquiry into whether or not p that its aim is fully achieved only if one comes to know that p or to know that not-p and, further, comes to know how one knows, either way. In the absence of the latter one is in no position to take the inquiry to be successfully completed or to vouch for the truth of the matter in hand. An upshot is that (...) although knowledge matters because truth matters this should not be understood to mean that knowledge matters because true belief matters. (shrink)

It is argued that seeing that P is a mode of knowing that P that is to be explained in terms of the exercise of visual-perceptual recognitional abilities. The nature of those abilities is described. The justification for believing that P, when one sees that P, is provided by the fact that one sees that P. Access to this fact is explained in terms of an ability to recognize of seen objects that one is seeing them. Reasons for resistance to (...) such an account are considered. The distinction between merely reasonable belief and well-founded belief is emphasised. (shrink)

Experimental philosophers are often puzzled as to why many armchair philosophers question the philosophical significance of their research. Armchair philosophers, in contrast, are often puzzled as to why experimental philosophers think their work sheds any light on traditional philosophical problems. I argue there is truth on both sides.

Expectations play an important role in how people plan their lives and pursue their projects. People living in highly industrialized countries share a way of life that comes with high levels of emissions. Their expectations to be able to continue their projects imply their holding expectations to similarly high future levels of personal emissions. We argue that the frustration or undermining of these expectations would cause them significant harm. Further, the article investigates under what conditions people can be thought to (...) hold legitimate expectations, in particular about permissible levels of future emissions. We distinguish differing theories of understanding these conditions, namely authority-based and justice-based theories, that each allows us to systematically distinguish between legitimate and illegitimate expectations. Furthermore, with respect to individuals’ future permissible emissions we give several reasons for holding that such theories cannot identify a particular expectation to a specific level of personal emissions as the only legitimate one. Finally, we argue that the set of legitimate expectations that people hold with respect to a just and effective solution to climate change has normative significance in at least two ways: the differing but equally legitimate expectations ought to be taken into account when justifying what could count as such a solution and when determining the just way of arriving at and implementing such a solution. (shrink)

Warrant is “that, whatever precisely it is, which makes the difference between knowledge and mere true belief.” S knows that p, therefore, if and only if S’s belief that p is warranted and p is true. This is a purely formal characterization of warrant. Warrant may, no doubt, be a messy item: a substantive analysis might be full of disjuncts and conjuncts and conditionals and caveats. But if there are true beliefs that are not knowledge, then there is something that (...) all beliefs that are knowledge share, and all merely true beliefs lack. This is warrant. I want to argue that warrant, whatever it is that makes the difference between mere true belief and knowledge, entails truth. (shrink)

Questions surrounding deep disagreement have gained significant attention in recent years. One of the central debates is metaphysical, focusing on the features that make a disagreement deep. Proposals for what makes disagreements deep include theories about hinge propositions and first epistemic principles. In this paper, I criticize this metaphysical discussion by arguing that it is methodologically flawed. Deep disagreement is a technical or semi-technical term, but the metaphysical discussion mistakenly treats it as a common-sense concept to be analyzed and captured (...) by our pre-theoretical intuitions. Since the literature on deep disagreement is subject to this fundamental confusion and deep disagreement is not a helpful umbrella term either, I propose eliminating the notion of deep disagreement from the philosophical discourse. Instead of analyzing the nature of deep disagreement, we should develop theories about different forms of disagreement, including disagreement about hinge propositions and disagreement about epistemic principles, and, in particular, a theory of rationally irresolvable disagreement. (shrink)

Good physical experiments conform to the basic methodological standards of experimental design: they are objective, reliable, and valid. But is this also true of thought experiments? Especially problems of personal identity have engendered hypothetical scenarios that are very distant from the actual world. These imagined situations have been conspicuously ineffective at resolving conflicting intuitions and deciding between the different accounts of personal identity. Using prominent examples from the literature, I argue that this is due to many of these thought experiments (...) not adhering to the methodological standards that guide experimental design in nearly all other disciplines. I also show how empirically unwarranted background assumptions about human physiology render some of the hypothetical scenarios that are employed in the debate about personal identity highly misleading. (shrink)

Here I advance a unified account of the structure of the epistemic normativity of assertion, action, and belief. According to my Teleological Account, all of these are epistemically successful just in case they fulfill the primary aim of knowledgeability, an aim which in turn generates a host of secondary epistemic norms. The central features of the Teleological Account are these: it is compact in its reliance on a single central explanatory posit, knowledge-centered in its insistence that knowledge sets the fundamental (...) epistemic norm, and yet fiercely pluralistic in its acknowledgment of the legitimacy and value of a rich range of epistemic norms distinct from knowledge. Largely in virtue of this pluralist character, I argue, the Teleological Account is far superior to extant knowledge-centered accounts. (shrink)

In light of the failure of attempts to analyse knowledge as a species of justified belief, a number of epistemologists have suggested that we should instead understand justification in terms of knowledge. This paper focuses on accounts of justification as a kind of ‘would-be’ knowledge. According to such accounts a belief is justified just in case any failure to know is due to uncooperative external circumstances. I argue against two recent accounts of this sort due to Alexander Bird and Martin (...) Smith. A further aim is to defend a more traditional conception, according to which justification is a matter of sufficiently high evidential likelihood. In particular, I suggest that this conception of justification offers a plausible account of lottery cases: cases in which one believes a true proposition – for example that one's lottery ticket will lose – on the basis of probabilistic evidence.Send article to KindleTo send this article to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Find out more about sending to your Kindle. Note you can select to send to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be sent to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply. Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.JUSTIFICATION AS ‘WOULD-BE’ KNOWLEDGEVolume 9, Issue 4Aidan McGlynnDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2012.22Your Kindle email address Please provide your Kindle [email protected]@kindle.com Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Dropbox To send this article to your Dropbox account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Dropbox. JUSTIFICATION AS ‘WOULD-BE’ KNOWLEDGEVolume 9, Issue 4Aidan McGlynnDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2012.22Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Send article to Google Drive To send this article to your Google Drive account, please select one or more formats and confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about sending content to Google Drive. JUSTIFICATION AS ‘WOULD-BE’ KNOWLEDGEVolume 9, Issue 4Aidan McGlynnDOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/epi.2012.22Available formats PDF Please select a format to send. By using this service, you agree that you will only keep articles for personal use, and will not openly distribute them via Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services. Please confirm that you accept the terms of use. Cancel Send ×Export citation Request permission. (shrink)

The Generality Problem for process reliabilism is to outline a procedure for determining when two beliefs are produced by the same process, in such a way as to avoid, on the one hand, individuating process types so narrowly that each type is instantiated only once, or, on the other hand, individuating them so broadly that beliefs that have different epistemic statuses are subsumed under the same process type. In this paper, I offer a solution to the problem which takes belief‐independent (...) processes to be functions that take as inputs information about distal states of affairs, and produce beliefs as outputs. Processes are individuated narrowly, so as to avoid the latter aspect of the Generality problem, but, by holding process tokens to be of the same type when they take perceptually equivalent scenes as inputs, and produce beliefs of the same kind as outputs, the former aspect of the problem is avoided too. Having argued that this method of typing process tokens solves the Generality Problem, I then argue that my solution does not fall prey to objections that have been, or might be, raised for similar proposals. (shrink)