Titelbaum Oxford studies in epistemology, 2015) has recently argued that the Enkratic Principle is incompatible with the view that rational belief is sensitive to higher-order defeat. That is to say, if it cannot be rational to have akratic beliefs of the form “p, but I shouldn’t believe that p,” then rational beliefs cannot be defeated by higher-order evidence, which indicates that they are irrational. In this paper, I distinguish two ways of understanding Titelbaum’s argument, and argue that neither version is (...) sound. The first version can be shown to rest on a subtle, but crucial, misconstrual of the Enkratic Principle. The second version can be resisted through careful consideration of cases of higher-order defeat. The upshot is that proponents of the Enkratic Principle are free to maintain that rational belief is sensitive to higher-order defeat. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop and defend a novel account of Moore’s paradox, which locates its source in self-reference. The main insight comes from Gareth Evans’s discussion of Transparency, which says that a normal person takes p to be directly relevant to the truth of “I believe that p.” It has been noticed by many philosophers that Moore’s paradox is closely related to Evans’s Transparency. However, Evans’s claim that Transparency is constitutively related to self-reference has received relatively little attention from (...) those philosophers. I claim that once we get the two links straight and join them, a novel and plausible account of Moore’s paradox emerges. According to this account, the absurdity involved in Moore’s paradox is traceable to a constitutive relation between Transparency and self-reference. Asserting “p but I do not believe that p” sounds absurd, because the use of “I” indicates that the subject thinks of the individual referred to as herself, while her failing to conform to Transparency implies the opposite. (shrink)

Angle Grinder Man removes wheel locks from cars in London.1 He is something of a folk hero, saving drivers from enormous parking and towing fi nes, and has succeeded thus far in eluding the authorities. In spite of his cape and lamé tights, he is no fi ction; he’s a real person. By contrast, Pegasus, Zeus and the like are fi ctions. None of them is real. In fact, not only is each of them different from the others, all differ (...) from Angle Grinder Man. After all, Zeus throws thunderbolts but doesn’t remove boots from cars; unlike Superman, Angle Grinder Man couldn’t leap over a parked Mini, and all sightings suggest that he is a human being, not a horse. (shrink)