The following books have been received and many of them are still available for review. Interested reviewers please contact the reviews editor: [email protected], P. 2018. Philosophy in the H...

Social epistemology is the study of the social dimensions of knowledge or information. There is little consensus, however, on what the term "knowledge" comprehends, what is the scope of the "social", or what the style or purpose of the study should be. According to some writers, social epistemology should retain the same general mission as classical epistemology, revamped in the recognition that classical epistemology was too individualistic. According to other writers, social epistemology should be a more radical departure from classical (...) epistemology, a successor discipline that would replace epistemology as traditionally conceived. The classical approach could be realized in at least two forms. One would emphasize the traditional epistemic goal of acquiring true beliefs. It would study social practices in terms of their impact on the truth-values of agents' beliefs. A second version of the classical approach would focus on the epistemic goal of having justified or rational beliefs. Applied to the social realm, it might concentrate, for example, on when a cognitive agent is justified or warranted in accepting the statements and opinions of others. Proponents of the anti-classical approach have little or no use for concepts like truth and justification. In addressing the social dimensions of knowledge, they understand "knowledge" as simply what is believed, or what beliefs are "institutionalized" in this or that community, culture, or context. They seek to identify the social forces and influences responsible for knowledge production so conceived. Social epistemology is theoretically significant because of the central role of society in the knowledge-forming process. It also has practical importance because of its possible role in the redesign of information-related social institutions. (shrink)

Social epistemology is the study of the social dimensions of knowledge or information. There is little consensus, however, on what the term "knowledge" comprehends, what is the scope of the "social", or what the style or purpose of the study should be. According to some writers, social epistemology should retain the same general mission as classical epistemology, revamped in the recognition that classical epistemology was too individualistic. According to other writers, social epistemology should be a more radical departure from classical (...) epistemology, a successor discipline that would replace epistemology as traditionally conceived. The classical approach could be realized in at least two forms. One would emphasize the traditional epistemic goal of acquiring true beliefs. It would study social practices in terms of their impact on the truth-values of agents’ beliefs. A second version of the classical approach would focus on the epistemic goal of having justified or rational beliefs. Applied to the social realm, it might concentrate, for example, on when a cognitive agent is justified or warranted in accepting the statements and opinions of others. Proponents of the anti-classical approach have little or no use for concepts like truth and justification. In addressing the social dimensions of knowledge, they understand "knowledge" as simply what is believed, or what beliefs are "institutionalized" in this or that community, culture, or context. They seek to identify the social forces and influences responsible for knowledge production so conceived. Social epistemology is theoretically significant because of the central role of society in the knowledge-forming process. It also has practical importance because of its possible role in the redesign of information-related social institutions. (shrink)

Several epistemologists have advanced the idea that a subject’s epistemic status can be weakened by evidence she does not possess but should have possessed, or, alternatively, by beliefs or doubts she should have had under her evidential circumstances but does not have. This alleged phenomenon is known as normative defeat and its adherents have typically reported intuitions that it obtains under mundane circumstances. Some epistemologists have analyzed normative defeat in terms of breached epistemic obligations, while others have preferred an analysis (...) in terms of cognitive malfunctioning. No matter which analysis one prefers, I here argue that - given plausible psychological and epistemological assumptions - if the normative defeat phenomenon were real it would be more bizarre than is generally recognized. I conclude that alleged cases of normatively defeated knowledge or epistemic justification are better analyzed as cases of lucky or undeserved knowledge or epistemic justification. (shrink)

According to pragmatic encroachment, whether an epistemic attitude towards p has some positive epistemic status (e.g., whether a belief is epistemically rational or justified, or it amounts to knowledge) partially depends on practical factors such as the costs of being wrong or the practical goals of the agent. Pragmatic encroachment comes in many varieties. This survey article provides an overview of different kinds of pragmatic encroachment. It focuses on three dimensions under which kinds of pragmatic encroachment differ: the type of (...) epistemic status affected by practical factors, the type of practical factors affecting the epistemic status, and the type of normative considerations encroaching on the epistemic status. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that there are epistemic norms on evidence-gathering and consider consequences for how to understand epistemic normativity. Though the view that there are such norms seems intuitive, it has found surprisingly little defense. Rather, many philosophers have argued that norms on evidence-gathering can only be practical or moral. On a prominent evidentialist version of this position, epistemic norms only apply to responding to the evidence one already has. Here we challenge the orthodoxy. First, we argue that (...) there is no significant normative difference between responding to evidence you have and gathering more evidence. Second, we argue that our practices of epistemically criticizing agents for their poor evidence-gathering indicate the existence of epistemic norms on evidence-gathering. Finally, we show that our thesis has important implications for recent debates about the relationship between epistemic norms and inquiry. (shrink)

In Charles Mills’ essay, “White Ignorance,” and his trail-blazing monograph, The Racial Contract, he developed a view of how Whiteness or anti-Black-Indigenous-and-Latinx racism causes individuals to hold false beliefs or lack beliefs about racial injustice in particular and the world in general. I will defend a novel exegetical claim that Mills’ view is part of a more general view regarding how racial injustice can affect a subject’s epistemic standing such as whether they are justified in a belief and whether their (...) degree of confidence in the belief is rational given their evidence. Then, in light of this novel exegetical claim, I show how this interpretation of Mills’ view that racial injustice causes ignorance relates to how epistemically justified philosophers and social scientists are in the views that dominate their respective scholarly literature. (shrink)

In this paper, I respond to Frank Hofmann’s reply to my (2022) argument against “evidential minimalism” (EM). According to defenders of EM, there is a close connection between evidence and normative reasons for belief: evidence is either itself, or (under certain “minimal” conditions) gives rise to, a normative reason for belief. In my (2022), I argued against EM by showing that there are cases where: (i) S possesses strong evidence E for the truth of p at time t, (ii) all (...) minimal conditions for the normativity of E are met at t, (iii) S doesn’t believe p at t, yet (iv) S isn’t criticizable on account of (i)-(iii) at t. I then appealed to a linking claim connecting criticizability with the existence of normative reasons for belief. Hofmann’s reply invokes a distinction between two different kinds of epistemic criticism: a strong and a weak form. I will argue that Hofmann’s distinction fails to save EM from my argument. (shrink)

This chapter states the contrast between presumptivism about testimonial warrant (often called anti-reductionism) and strict reductionism (associated with Hume) about testimonial warrant. Presumptivism sees an analogy with modest foundationalism about perceptual warrant. Strict reductionism denies this analogy. Two theoretical frameworks for these positions are introduced to better formulate the most popular version of persumptivism, a competence reliabilist account. Seven arguments against presumptivism are then stated and critiqued: (1) The argument from reliability; (2) The argument from reasons; (3) the argument from (...) positive reasons; (4) the argument from negative reasons; (5) the argument from agency; (6) the argument from psychological force; and (7) the argument from gullibility. If presumptivm is false, it is not for any of these arguments. (shrink)

A proper function of an entity is a beneficial effect that helps explain the persistence of the entity. Proper functions thereby arise through feedback mechanisms with beneficial effects as inputs and persistence as outputs. We continue to make assertions because they benefit speakers by benefiting speakers. Hearers benefit from true information. Speakers benefit by influencing hearer belief. If hearers do not benefit, they will not form beliefs in response to assertions. Speakers can then only maintain influence by providing true information, (...) often enough. The function of assertion is then inducing true hearer belief. When interests conflict, however, some mechanism must ensure that speakers provide true information often enough, instead of deceiving, or providing information regardless of quality. In humans, a core mechanism stabilizing true assertion involves social norms for truth telling. We tell the truth partly because we prescribe and enforce telling the truth. (shrink)

Clark and Chalmers propose that the mind extends further than skin and skull. If they are right, then we should expect this to have some effect on our way of knowing our own mental states. If the content of my notebook can be part of my belief system, then looking at the notebook seems to be a way to get to know my own beliefs. However, it is at least not obvious whether self-ascribing a belief by looking at my notebook (...) is a case of introspection the same way that knowing my non-extended beliefs is. Traditionally this sort of introspection is thought to be privileged and special in ways that the extended introspection case seems not to be. There is nothing privileged about looking at my notebook. Anyone could do it. The aim of the paper is to find out how to understand extended introspection and whether there is something privileged and special about knowing one’s own extended beliefs. Moreover, the notebook case has close analogs using twenty-first century technology. It seems possible to know our beliefs that are extended to smartphones, wearable technology or a cloud-based data store. First, I present the case of extended introspection. I then discuss whether it should be understood as ordinary introspection or as mind-reading. Both seem to be bad fits, which finally prompts an original account for extended introspection based on epistemic rules. (shrink)

Paying attention to the inner workings of mathematicians has led to a proliferation of new themes in the philosophy of mathematics. Several of these have to do with epistemology. Philosophers of mathematical practice, however, have not (yet) systematically engaged with general (analytic) epistemology. To be sure, there are some exceptions, but they are few and far between. In this chapter, I offer an explanation of why this might be the case and show how the situation could be remedied. I contend (...) that it is only by conceiving the knowing subject(s) as embodied, fallible, and embedded in a specific context (along the lines of what has been done within social and feminist epistemology) that we can pursue an epistemology of mathematics sensitive to actual mathematical practice. I further suggest that this reconception of the knowing subject(s) does not force us to abandon the traditional framework of epistemology in which knowledge requires justified true belief. It does, however, lead to a fallible conception of mathematical justification that, among other things, makes Gettier cases possible. This shows that topics considered to be far removed from the interests of philosophers of mathematical practice might reveal to be relevant to them. (shrink)

Purpose. The paper aimed at analyzing the anthropological and axiological dimensions of human social expectations in the aspect of the self-organization processes of social phenomena and revealing their essence. Theoretical basis. The research is based on the synergetic paradigm, the theory of shared intentionality as well as the concept of hidden influence on the processes of socialization, synchronization of social influence on moral decisions, benefits of the cooperative learning, interpretation of social expectations as epistemological norms and standards, and the concept (...) of social support. Originality. Social expectations are considered in a synergistic relationship to their anthropological and axiological nature. The anthropological dimension of social expectations based on human nature as a mortal and rational being is outlined. The paper highlights the axiological dimension of social expectations on the ground of the need for socialization and imitation of systems of material and spiritual values in the group. The concept of stereotype and the thanatology of social expectations is substantiated. It is proved that the stereotype of social expectations is dependent on its axiological dimension, and the thanatology of social expectations is dependent on its anthropological dimension, which is based on human mortality. It has been studied out that the stereotypical and thanatological nature of social expectations significantly influences the processes of social self-organization. Conclusions. The social expectations of a person are oriented mainly toward the anthropological dimension of values since by nature a human is a mortal being. Human social expectations are mainly related to life, health, and safety showing the priority of the thanatological nature of social expectations and their futuristic content. Social expectations are also oriented towards social values. The latter is related to the collective rational nature of a person who is prone to social imitation, which affects the stereotypical nature of social expectations. Any social expectation is an axiological one. It is an expectation of material and spiritual values. The axiological dimension of social expectations has a stereotypical nature since it is linked to the specificity of collective socialization and coexistence. The anthropological dimension of social expectations has a thanatological character and is based on human nature as a mortal and at the same time rational being forming own rationality in the group. The concept of stereotypical and thanatological social expectations is promising for further scientific exploration as its methodological basis. (shrink)

In contemporary analytic philosophy, while some epistemologists claim that reflection—understood as a critical self-examination of belief—is a necessary condition for the attribution of valuable epistemic states, others reject this claim and maintain that philosophers tend to overestimate the value of reflection in their reports of epistemological phenomena. In this essay, we present a brief overview of this debate and outline the elements that constitute disagreement between epistemologists. Our diagnosis is that, despite radical disagreement, these positions converge, because they deal with (...) reflection from an individualistic point of view, defining it as an agent’s private metacognitive performance of her own epistemic states. As well as being a reason for disagreement, this conception of reflection may be the reason that epistemologists misunderstand its place and value. (shrink)

Jennifer Lackey (2016) challenged group acceptance accounts of justification by arguing that these accounts make the possession of evidence arbitrary and hence lead to illegitimate manipulation of the group's evidence. She proposes that the only way out is to rely on the epistemic propriety of the individual group members, which leads to a dilemma for group acceptance views: either they are wrong about justification, or they cease to rely only on group acceptances. I argue that there is a third option (...) based on general expectations of epistemic propriety that restricts the group's maximal justification. A group cannot be more justified than any individual in the group's position could be expected to be. I motivate this solution by a discussion of normative defeat and epistemic expectations as proposed by Goldberg (2018). (shrink)

When does a group justifiedly believe that p? One answer to this question has been developed first by Schmitt and then by Hakli: when the group members jointly accept a reason for the belief. Call this the joint acceptance account of group justification. Their answer has great explanatory power, providing us with a way to account for cases in which the group's justification can diverge from the justification individual members have. Unfortunately, Jennifer Lackey developed a powerful argument against joint acceptance (...) accounts. She argues that these accounts lead to epistemically arbitrary reasons and therefore justification at will. Group justification loses the necessary connection to the world to be truth-conducive. In this paper I develop a new form of a joint acceptance account that can deal with Lackey's examples: the anchored joint acceptance account of group justification. I argue that properly understanding the role of epistemic expectations can help us form the best version of a joint acceptance account. While justification is only generated by joint acceptance of evidence, the evidential expectations towards a group are anchored in the group members. This anchoring guarantees that groups cannot manipulate their ultima facie justification illegitimately. (shrink)

Many philosophers think that a necessary condition on moral blameworthiness is that the wrongdoer can reasonably be expected to avoid the action for which she is blamed. Those who think so assume as a matter of course that the expectations at issue here are normative expectations that contrast with the non-normative or predictive expectations we form concerning the probable conduct of others, and they believe, or at least assume, that there is a clear-cut distinction between the two. In this paper (...) I put this widespread assumption under scrutiny and argue that it’s mistaken: although predictive and normative expectations are indeed distinct, there is no sharp separation between them. On the contrary, predictive expectations can have a substantial bearing on normative expectations in two related ways: they can recalibrate what is reasonable to expect of agents when responsibility attributions are at stake and they can help to uncover previously undetected excusing conditions. I illustrate my claims with the famous bystander effect from social psychology and show that it yields predictive expectations that affect normative expectations in these two ways. (shrink)

How much linguistic understanding is required for testimonial knowledge acquisition? One answer is that, so long as we grasp the content expressed by the speaker, it does not matter if our understanding of it is poor. Call this the ‘Liberal View’ of testimony. This approach looks especially promising when combined with the thesis that we share a public language that makes it easy to grasp the right content. In this paper, I argue that this picture is epistemically problematic. Poor linguistic (...) understanding undermines our ability to recognise evidence and counterevidence for the testimonial content. Because of this, in many cases in which a hearer’s understanding is poor, her resultant testimonial belief will lack sufficient warrant to qualify as knowledge. Given that we often do not possess a sufficiently good understanding of the testimony we consume, I argue that we acquire far less knowledge through testimony than the Liberal View suggests. (shrink)

I will discuss a variety of cases such that the subject's believing truly is somewhat of an accident, but less so than in a Gettier case. In each case, this is because her reasons are not ultimately undefeated full stop, but they are ultimately undefeated with certain qualifications. For example, the subject's reasons might be ultimately defeated considered in themselves but ultimately undefeated considered as a proper part of an inference to the best explanation that is undefeated without qualification. In (...) each section of the paper, I consider different qualifications and show how in each case we get an epistemic standing I call “coach-class knowledge”. First-class knowledge requires justifying reasons that are undefeated without qualification. Coach-class knowledge only requires qualified lack of defeat. I will use this distinction to bring debates over knowledge from falsehood and fake barns to an ecumenical resolution. In both cases, the subject enjoys coach-class rather than first-class knowledge. I will also show that the defeasible reasoning tradition can better account for graded accidental truth than safety theories. (shrink)

To avoid the problem of regress, externalists have put forward defeaters-based accounts of justification. The paper argues that existing proposals face two serious concerns: (i) They fail to accommodate related counterexamples such as Norman the clairvoyant, and, more worryingly, (ii) they fail to explain how one can be epistemically responsible in holding basic beliefs—i.e., they fail to explain how basic beliefs can avoid being arbitrary from the agent’s point of view. To solve both of these problems, a new, externalist, defeaters-based (...) account of justification is offered—viz., System Reliabilism. The core message of the view—and the way it deals with both (i) and (ii)—is the claim that the justificatory status of justified basic beliefs originates from being the undefeated outputs of a reliable, cognitively integrated system that is capable of defeating them. Simply put, to be candidates for being justified, basic beliefs must be epistemically responsible and to be so they must be undefeated while being defeasible. The paper also offers a detailed, naturalistic analysis of the notion of cognitive integration. This long-due, mechanistic account of cognitive integration is then used to argue that an additional advantage of System Reliabilism is its unique position to account for the as yet unexplained intuition that responsible beliefs are also likely to be true. (shrink)

The paper proposes an account of the rational response to higher-order evidence whose key claim is that whenever we acquire such evidence we ought to engage in the inquiring activity of double-checking. Combined with a principle that establishes a connection between rational inquiry and rational belief retention, the account offers a novel explanation of the alleged impermissibility of retaining one’s belief in the face of higher-order evidence. It is argued that this explanation is superior to the main competitor view which (...) appeals to the notion of defeat. (shrink)

In virtue of what are we responsible for our beliefs? I argue that doxastic responsibility has a crucial social component: part of being responsible for our beliefs is being responsible to others. I suggest that this responsibility is a form of answerability with two distinct dimensions: an individual and an interpersonal dimension. While most views hold that the individual dimension is grounded in some form of control that we can exercise over our beliefs, I contend that we are answerable for (...) our beliefs as long as they reflect our evaluative commitments and dispositions, or are products of our reasoning, where this does not amount to a form of control. I next argue that answerability has a second, largely neglected dimension: the interpersonal dimension, which is grounded in what I call our relations of doxastic dependence. As social creatures, we depend on one another in our capacity as believers. We depend on one another as believers not only in epistemic ways, but also in practical ways, because our beliefs inform and motivate our actions, and allow us to participate in shared practical goals. Depending on one another in these ways is an unavoidable part of cooperating in the shared project of pursuing epistemic and practical success, and it makes us vulnerable to both epistemic and moral harm. It is because of this, I argue, that answerability has interpersonal normative force upon us: we are subject to legitimate expectations associated with participating in relations of doxastic dependence. (shrink)

In virtue of what are we responsible for our beliefs? I argue that doxastic responsibility has a crucial social component: part of being responsible for our beliefs is being responsible to others. I suggest that this responsibility is a form of answerability with two distinct dimensions: an individual and an interpersonal dimension. While most views hold that the individual dimension is grounded in some form of control that we can exercise over our beliefs, I contend that we are answerable for (...) our beliefs as long as they reflect our evaluative commitments and dispositions, or are products of our reasoning, where this does not amount to a form of control. I next argue that answerability has a second, largely neglected dimension: the interpersonal dimension, which is grounded in what I call our relations of doxastic dependence. As social creatures, we depend on one another in our capacity as believers. We depend on one another as believers not only in epistemic ways, but also in practical ways, because our beliefs inform and motivate our actions, and allow us to participate in shared practical goals. Depending on one another in these ways is an unavoidable part of cooperating in the shared project of pursuing epistemic and practical success, and it makes us vulnerable to both epistemic and moral harm. It is because of this, I argue, that answerability has interpersonal normative force upon us: we are subject to legitimate expectations associated with participating in relations of doxastic dependence. (shrink)

I motivate and develop a novel account of the epistemic assessability of suspension as a development of my knowledge-first, virtue-epistemological research program. First, I extend an argument of Ernest Sosa's for the claim that evidentialism cannot adequately account for the epistemic assessability of suspension. This includes a kind of knowledge-first evidentialism of the sort advocated by Timothy Williamson. I agree with Sosa that the reasons why evidentialism fails motivate a virtue-epistemological approach, but argue that my knowledge-first account is preferable to (...) his view. According to my account, rational belief is belief that manifests proper practical respect for what it takes to know. Beliefs are the only primary bearers of epistemic evaluation since they are the only candidates for knowledge. However, suspension can manifest a derivative kind of practical respect for what it takes to know. Thus, we can explain why the same sort of assessment is applicable to both belief and suspension, and why belief has a privileged claim to these properties. Lastly, I'll look at Sosa's and Williamson's treatments of Pyrrhonian skepticism, which treats a certain kind of suspension as the epistemically superior practice, and argue that my account provides a better anti-skeptical response than either of their approaches. (shrink)

One emerging issue in contemporary epistemology concerns the relation between animal knowledge, which can be had by agents unable to take a view on the epistemic status of their attitudes, and reflective knowledge, which is only available to agents capable of taking such a view. Philosophers who are open to animal knowledge often presume that while many of the beliefs of human adults are formed unreflectively and thus constitute mere animal knowledge, some of them—those which become subject of explicit scrutiny (...) or are the result of a deliberative effort—may attain the status of reflective knowledge. According to Sanford Goldberg and Jonathan Matheson (2020), however, it is impossible for reflective subjects to have mere animal knowledge. If correct, their view would have a number of repercussions, perhaps most notably the vindication of a dualism about knowledge, which would frustrate attempts to provide a unified account of knowledge-attributions to human adults, very young children, and non-human animals. I discuss Goldberg and Matheson’s proposal, outline some of the ways in which it is insightful, and argue that it is ultimately unsuccessful because it neglects the inherent temporal dimension of knowledge acquisition. While the article is pitched as a reply to Goldberg and Matheson, its primary aim is to highlight significant connections between the debates on the relation between animal and reflective knowledge, propositional and doxastic justification, and the theory of epistemic defeat. (shrink)

In this paper, I identify a theoretical and political role for ‘white ignorance’, present three alternative accounts of white ignorance, and assess how well each fulfils this role. On the Willful Ignorance View, white ignorance refers to white individuals’ willful ignorance about racial injustice. On the Cognitivist View, white ignorance refers to ignorance resulting from social practices that distribute faulty cognitive resources. On the Structuralist View, white ignorance refers to ignorance that results as part of a social process that systematically (...) gives rise to racial injustice, and is an active player in the process. I argue that, because of its greater power and flexibility, the Structuralist View better explains the patterns of ignorance that we observe, better illuminates the connection to white racial domination, and is overall better suited to the project of ameliorating racial injustice. As such, the Structuralist View should be preferred. (shrink)

Influential cases have been provided that seem to suggest that one can fail to have knowledge because of the social environment. If not a distinct kind of social defeater, is there a uniquely social phenomenon that defeats knowledge? My aim in this paper is to explore these questions. I shall argue that despite initial appearances to the contrary, we have no reason to accept a special class of social defeater, nor any essentially social defeat phenomenon. We can explain putative cases (...) of social defeat with our existing epistemological apparatus. (shrink)

Many epistemologists endorse a view I call “evidence essentialism:” if e is evidence of h, for some agent at some time, then necessarily, e is evidence of h, for any agent at any time. I argue that such a view is only plausible if we ignore cognitive diversity among epistemic agents, i.e., the fact that different agents have different—sometimes radically different—cognitive skills, abilities, and proclivities. Instead, cognitive diversity shows that evidential relations are contingent and relative to cognizers. This is especially (...) obvious in extreme cases and in connection with epistemic defeat, but it is also very plausibly true of ordinary agents, and regarding prima facie justification. (shrink)

While social epistemology is a diverse field, much of it still understands knowledge as an individual status—albeit an individual status that crucially depends on various social factors (such as testimony). Further, the literature on group knowledge until now has primarily focused on limited, specialized groups that may be said to know this or that as a group. I wish to argue, to the contrary, that all knowledge-attributions ascribe a collective status; and that this follows more or less directly from an (...) essential function of entitlement-ascriptions: Ascriptions of knowledge and entitlement serve a primarily social function in that they facilitate coordination by maintaining consensus around true beliefs, true theories, and truth-producing methodologies. This conclusion will shed light on ways in which traditional theories of knowledge (such as foundationalism and coherentism) fail to capture a central function of our epistemic practice. (shrink)

Virtue epistemology is the view that beliefs are attempts at truth (or perhaps knowledge) and, as a result, can be assessed as successful, competent, and apt. Moreover, virtue epistemology identifies central epistemic properties with normative properties of beliefs as attempts. In particular, knowledge is apt belief and justified belief is competent belief. This paper develops a systematic virtue epistemological account of defeat (of justification/competence). I provide reason to think that defeat occurs not only for beliefs but for attempts more general. (...) The key constructive idea is that defeaters are evidence that attempting (in a certain way) isn't successful and that defeaters defeat the competence of an attempt when one stands in a certain normative relation to the defeater. I argue that while this account handles paradigm cases of defeat both within epistemology and beyond nicely, cases of external (sometimes also ‘normative’ or ‘propositional’) defeat continue to cause trouble. To handle these cases, I develop a distinctively functionalist version of virtue epistemology. This functionalist version of virtue epistemology allows me to countenance proficiencies, that is, roughly, abilities that have the function to produce successes under certain conditions. It is the normative import of proficiencies that delivers the normative relation that serves to explain defeat in cases of external defeat. In this way, the functionalist version of virtue epistemology ushers the way towards a satisfactory account even of external defeat. (shrink)

A prominent question in social epistemology concerns the epistemic profile of groups. While inflationists and deflationists agree that groups are fit to constitute knowers, they disagree about whether group knowledge is reducible to knowledge of their individual members. This paper develops and defends a weak inflationist view according to which some, but not all, group knowledge is over and above any knowledge of their members. This view sits between the deflationist view that all group knowledge is reducible to individual knowledge, (...) and the strong inflationist view that some such knowledge even fails to supervene on features of individuals. Thus, some group knowledge is irreducible, but all such knowledge is anchored in, and so doesn't float freely from, individual features. (shrink)

This article makes a case for wide reflective equilibrium in doing African epistemology. It argues that on the issue of formulating a viable theory of knowledge, such an approach is more promising than the extant dominant approaches, namely the method of ethno-epistemology and the method of particularistic studies. More specifically, wide reflective equilibrium articulates a proper balance between philosophy and culture and endows a theory of knowledge with multiple sources of normativity.

This paper brings together two lines of thought. The first is the broadly contextualist idea that what is takes to satisfy central epistemic concepts such as the concept of knowledge or that of objectively justified belief may vary with the stakes faced in settings or contexts. Attributions of knowledge, for example, certify an agent to those who might treat them as a source on which to rely. Henderson and Horgan write of gate-keeping for an epistemic community. The second line of (...) thought turns on the idea that such central epistemic concepts are keyed to the conformity with epistemic norms for the fitting fixation of belief—and that the epistemic norms function in important ways as social norms by which folk regulate their epistemic lives as members of communities of interdependent agents. The two lines of thought are practically made for one another! I develop the connections and show how the results both vindicate and reinforce a form of contextualist epistemology, but refine and limit the range of contextual variation one should envision. (shrink)

The debate concerning epistemic contextualism represents a kind of linguistic turn in epistemology, where the focus has shifted from theorising about knowledge to theorising about knowledge attributions. Such a shift may well prove valuable, but only if we are clear on what the relationship is between a semantic analysis of knowledge attributions and a philosophical analysis of knowledge. One plausible approach is to claim that the semantic analysis entails and is entailed by the philosophical analysis. Yet this view - referred (...) to here as the default view - has been explicitly adopted by few in the contextualism debate. This paper considers a form of argument in favour of the default view, and then considers the challenges that arise from either accepting or rejecting the default view. (shrink)

We review the "Entitlement" projects of Tyler Burge and Crispin Wright in light of recent work from and surrounding both philosophers. Our review dispels three misunderstandings. First, Burge and Wright are not involved in a common “entitlement” project. Second, though for both Wright and Burge entitlement is the new notion, “entitlement” is not some altogether third topic not clearly connected to the nature of knowledge or the encounter with skepticism. Third, entitlement vs. justification does not align with the externalism vs. (...) internalism distinction. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to articulate and defend a particular role for ethico-political values in social epistemology research. I begin by describing a research programme in social epistemology—one which I have introduced and defended elsewhere. I go on to argue that by the lights of this research programme, there is an important role to be played by ethico-political values in knowledge communities, and an important role in social epistemological research in describing the values inhering in particular knowledge communities. (...) I conclude by noting how, even as it expands its focus beyond the traditional one to include descriptions of our “knowledge practices,” this sort of project relates to some of the core questions that have been pursued by traditional epistemology. (shrink)

In this paper I explore the epistemic significance of practical reasons to inquire. I have in mind the range of practical reasons one might have to do such things as collect (additional) evidence, consult with various sources, employ certain methods or techniques, double-check one’s answer to a question, etc. After expanding the diet of examples in which subjects have such reasons, I appeal to features of these sorts of reason in order to question the motivation for pragmatic encroachment in epistemology. (...) Once we reject pragmatic encroachment, it can seem that we are forced to treat practical reasons to inquire as having no distinctly epistemic significance. This is not so; I conclude by sketching an alternative account of what the epistemic significance of such reasons might be. (shrink)

Among epistemologists, it is common to assume that insofar as coherence bears on the justification of belief, the only relevant coherence relations are those _within_ an individual subject’s web of beliefs. After clarifying this view and exploring some plausible motivations for it, we argue that this individualistic account of the epistemic relevance of coherence fails to account for central facets of scientific practice. In its place we propose a social account of coherence. According to the view we propose, a scientist (...) _S_’s belief that _p_ is _prima facie_ unjustified if this belief negatively coheres with justified scientific claims in her scientific community. This account of coherence yields an epistemology for scientific belief which, we argue, has all of the benefits and none of the liabilities of its more individualistic predecessor. (shrink)

This paper develops a normative account of epistemic luck, according to which the luckiness of epistemic luck is analyzed in terms of the expectations a subject is entitled to have when she satisfies the standards of epistemic justification. This account enables us to distinguish three types of epistemic luck—bad, good, and sheer—and to model the roles they play e.g. in Gettierization. One controversial aspect of the proposed account is that it is non‐reductive. While other approaches analyze epistemic luck in non‐epistemic (...) terms—either in modal terms (lack of safety) or in agential terms (lack of creditworthiness)—I argue that the non‐reductive nature of the normative account is actually a selling‐point relative to its competitors. (shrink)

This paper aims to provide a novel response on behalf of Process Reliabilism to the Swamping Problem. Unlike previous responses, the present response does not involve conditional probabilities (as Goldman and Olsson do), it does not appeal to permissivism or attitudes towards epistemic risk (as Pettigrew does), it will not depend on the generality of the problem (as Carter and Jarvis do) and it does not embrace either evidentialism or evidence monism (as Bjelde does). Instead it appeals to the modal (...) properties of those beliefs formed through reliable process-types. What is more, the argument is generalizable: while I will frame my conclusion in Process Reliabilist terms, it should be of interest to anyone who is a truth monist regarding epistemic value. (shrink)

I submit that the critical epistemology of race and standpoint literature has not explicitly focused on the properties of information about, say, racial or gender injustice in a way similar to how epistemologists have focused on propositions and information when they describe propositional justification. I describe information in the racial-injustice-information domain in a way similar to how epistemologists describe propositional justification. To this end, I argue (C1) that if subjects in racially unjust societies tend to violate norms that promote a (...) community’s reliable information flow because racial prejudice is widely held in racially unjust societies, then racial injustice can make information flow less reliably in a community. I also argue (C2) that if racial prejudice can make information flow less reliably in a community, then information that non-dominant subjects are more likely to have will less reliably flow to community members who lack it. (shrink)

In this paper we investigate whether and to what extent scientists (e.g. inquirers such as epidemiologists or virologists) can have rational and fruitful disagreement with what we call post-enquirers (e.g. conspiratorial anti-vaxxers) on topics of scientific relevance such as the safety and efficacy of vaccines. In order to accomplish this aim, we will rely and expand on the epistemological framework developed in detail in Ferrari & Moruzzi (2021) to study the underlying normative profile of enquiry and post-enquiry. We take it (...) that our analysis provides an effective explanation of why standard argumentative strategies such as fact-checking and debunking cannot work in the context of disagreement between scientists and denialists unless they are coupled with a discussion of the values that are endorsed by the scientific community. (shrink)

The paper investigates what type of motivation can be given for adopting a knowledge-based decision theory. KBDT seems to have several advantages over competing theories of rationality. It is commonly argued that this theory would naturally fit with the intuitive idea that being rational is doing what we take to be best given what we know, an idea often supported by appeal to ordinary folk appraisals. Moreover, KBDT seems to strike a perfect balance between the problematic extremes of subjectivist and (...) objectivist decision theory. We argue that these alleged advantages do not stand up to a closer scrutiny: KBDT inherits the same kinds of problems as alternative decision theoretic frameworks but doesn’t retain any of the respective advantages. Moreover, differently from other knowledge-action principles advanced in the literature, KBDT cannot fully explain the intuitive connections between knowledge and rational action. We conclude that the most serious challenge for knowledge-based decision theorists is to provide a substantive rationale for the adoption of such a view. (shrink)

The Public Justification Principle requires that coercive institutions be justified to all who live under them. I argue that this principle often cannot be satisfied without persons depending on the pure informative testimony of others, even under realistically idealized situations. Two main results follow. First, the sense of justification relevant to this principle has a strongly externalist component. Second, normative expectations of trust are essential to public justification. On the view I propose, whether the Public Justification Principle is satisfied depends (...) on the features of the network of testifiers in which persons are embedded. I consider several such networks to show which features are plausibly relevant. The importance of testimony for public justification ultimately suggests that we should moderate our expectations about the kind of conciliation we can achieve with the social order in which we live. (shrink)

Zetetic norms govern our acts of inquiry. Epistemic norms govern our beliefs and acts of belief formation. Recently, Jane Friedman (2020) has defended that we should think of these norms as conforming a single normative domain: epistemology should take a zetetic turn. Though this unification project implies a substantive re-elaboration of our traditional epistemic norms, Friedman argues that the reasons supporting the turn are robust enough to warrant its revisionary implications. In this paper, I suggest we should read Friedman’s proposal (...) as a dilemma. Either we believe the zetetic turn is well-motivated and undertake the task of looking for the proper revision of our traditional epistemic norms, or we take the revisionary implications of the turn to be unacceptable, in which case our challenge is to show why a zetetic epistemology is not a well-motivated project after all. After presenting this dilemma, I make a case for endorsing its second horn by presenting a two-pronged argument against Friedman’s project. First, I show that the revisionary implications of the zetetic turn are more far-reaching than expected. Second, I defend that the most persuasive reasons for endorsing the turn are not strong enough to support it. Taken together, these considerations speak against accepting the zetetic turn and the revisionary implications that come with it. (shrink)

When subjects violate epistemic standards or norms, we sometimes judge them blameworthy rather than blameless. For instance, we might judge a subject blameworthy for dogmatically continuing to believe a claim even after receiving evidence which undermines it. Indeed, the idea that one may be blameworthy for belief is appealed to throughout the contemporary epistemic literature. In some cases, a subject seems blameworthy for believing as she does even though it seems prima facie implausible that she is morally blameworthy or professionally (...) blameworthy. Such cases raise the question of whether one can be blameworthy for a belief in a specifically epistemic sense rather than in some already recognised sense, such as being morally or professionally blameworthy. A number of authors have recently argued that there is a moral or social sense in which one ought to conform one’s beliefs to the evidence. In this paper, I argue that even while accepting that there are moral and social norms governing belief, there are cases in which a subject is blameworthy for a belief but isn’t plausibly morally or socially blameworthy. If this latter view is correct, then we may need to develop a new account of blame which can be applied to beliefs which are not morally or socially blameworthy. (shrink)

One challenge in developing an account of the nature of epistemic blame is to explain what differentiates epistemic blame from mere negative epistemic evaluation. The challenge is to explain the difference, without invoking practices or behaviors that seem out of place in the epistemic domain. In this paper, I examine whether the most sophisticated recent account of the nature of epistemic blame—due to Jessica Brown—is up for the challenge. I argue that the account ultimately falls short, but does so in (...) an instructive way. Drawing on the lessons learned, I put forward an alternative approach to the nature of epistemic blame. My account understands epistemic blame in terms of modifications to the intentions and expectations that comprise our “epistemic relationships” with one another. This approach has a number of attractions shared by Brown’s account, but it can also explain the significance of epistemic blame. (shrink)