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Chris Ranalli [31]Christopher Ranalli [8]
  1. What is Deep Disagreement?Chris Ranalli - 2018 - Topoi 40 (5):983-998.
    What is the nature of deep disagreement? In this paper, I consider two similar albeit seemingly rival answers to this question: the Wittgensteinian theory, according to which deep disagreements are disagreements over hinge propositions, and the fundamental epistemic principle theory, according to which deep disagreements are disagreements over fundamental epistemic principles. I assess these theories against a set of desiderata for a satisfactory theory of deep disagreement, and argue that while the fundamental epistemic principle theory does better than the Wittgensteinian (...)
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  2. (1 other version)Deep disagreement and hinge epistemology.Chris Ranalli - 2018 - Synthese:1-33.
    This paper explores the application of hinge epistemology to deep disagreement. Hinge epistemology holds that there is a class of commitments—hinge commitments—which play a fundamental role in the structure of belief and rational evaluation: they are the most basic general ‘presuppositions’ of our world views which make it possible for us to evaluate certain beliefs or doubts as rational. Deep disagreements seem to crucially involve disagreements over such fundamental commitments. In this paper, I consider pessimism about deep disagreement, the thesis (...)
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  3. (1 other version)Deep Disagreement (Part 2): Epistemology of Deep Disagreement.Chris Ranalli & Thirza Lagewaard - 2022 - Philosophy Compass 17 (12):e12887.
    What is the epistemological significance of deep disagreement? Part I explored the nature of deep disagreement, while Part II considers its epistemological significance. It focuses on two core problems: the incommensurability and the rational resolvability problems. We critically survey key responses to these challenges, before raising worries for a variety of responses to them, including skeptical, relativist, and absolutist responses to the incommensurability problem, and to certain steadfast and conciliatory responses to the rational resolvability problem. We then pivot to the (...)
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  4. Luck, Propositional Perception, and the Entailment Thesis.Chris Ranalli - 2014 - Synthese 191 (6):1223-1247.
    Looking out the window, I see that it's raining outside. Do I know that it’s raining outside? According to proponents of the Entailment Thesis, I do. If I see that p, I know that p. In general, the Entailment Thesis is the thesis that if S perceives that p, S knows that p. But recently, some philosophers (McDowell 2002, Turri 2010, Pritchard 2011, 2012) have argued that the Entailment Thesis is false. On their view, we can see p and not (...)
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  5.  66
    Authorship and ChatGPT: a Conservative View.René van Woudenberg, Chris Ranalli & Daniel Bracker - 2024 - Philosophy and Technology 37 (1):1-26.
    Is ChatGPT an author? Given its capacity to generate something that reads like human-written text in response to prompts, it might seem natural to ascribe authorship to ChatGPT. However, we argue that ChatGPT is not an author. ChatGPT fails to meet the criteria of authorship because it lacks the ability to perform illocutionary speech acts such as promising or asserting, lacks the fitting mental states like knowledge, belief, or intention, and cannot take responsibility for the texts it produces. Three perspectives (...)
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  6. Political Hinge Epistemology.Christopher Ranalli - 2022 - In Constantine Sandis & Danièle Moyal-Sharrock (eds.), Extending Hinge Epistemology. Anthem Press. pp. 127-148.
    Political epistemology is the intersection of political philosophy and epistemology. This paper develops a political 'hinge' epistemology. Political hinge epistemology draws on the idea that all belief systems have fundamental presuppositions which play a role in the determination of reasons for belief and other attitudes. It uses this core idea to understand and tackle political epistemological challenges, like political disagreement, polarization, political testimony, political belief, ideology, and biases, among other possibilities. I respond to two challenges facing the development of a (...)
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  7. The Special Value of Experience.Christopher Ranalli - 2021 - Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Mind 1:130-167.
    Why think that conscious experience of reality is any more epistemically valuable than testimony about it? I argue that conscious experience of reality is epistemically valuable because it provides cognitive contact with reality. Cognitive contact with reality is a goal of experiential inquiry which does not reduce to the goal of getting true beliefs or propositional knowledge. Such inquiry has awareness of the truth-makers of one’s true beliefs as its proper goal. As such, one reason why conscious experience of reality (...)
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  8. What’s so bad about echo chambers?Christopher Ranalli & Finlay Malcolm - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    Echo chambers have received widespread attention in recent years, but there is no agreement over whether they are always epistemically bad for us. Some argue they’re inherently epistemically bad, whilst others claim they can be epistemically good. This paper has three aims. First, to bring together recent studies in this debate, taxonomizing different ways of thinking about the epistemic status of echo chambers. Second, to consider and reject several accounts of what makes echo chambers epistemically harmful or not, and then (...)
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  9. Rationally Maintaining a Worldview.Christopher Ranalli - 2020 - Social Epistemology Review and Reply Collective 11 (9):1-14.
  10.  58
    Moral hinges and steadfastness.Chris Ranalli - 2021 - Metaphilosophy 52 (3-4):379-401.
    Epistemic rationality seems to permit a more steadfast response to disagreements over our fundamental convictions than it does for our ordinary beliefs. Why is this? This essay explores three answers to this question: web-of-belief conservatism, moral encroachment, and hinge theories, and argues that hinge theories do a better job than the alternatives at vindicating the intuition that there is a rationally permissible asymmetry in our responses to disagreements over ordinary beliefs and fundamental convictions. The essay also shows how hinge theorists (...)
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  11.  36
    (1 other version)Knowledge of things and aesthetic testimony.Chris Ranalli - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
    Many philosophers believe that aesthetic testimony can provide aesthetic knowledge. This leaves us with the question: why does getting aesthetic knowledge by experience – by seeing a painting up close, or witnessing a performance first-hand – nevertheless seem superior to aesthetic testimony? I argue that it is due to differences in their epistemic value; in the diversity of epistemic goods each one provides. Aesthetic experience, or the experience of art or other aesthetic objects, affords multiple, distinctive epistemic goods whereas aesthetic (...)
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  12.  83
    The Puzzle of Philosophical Testimony.Chris Ranalli - 2020 - European Journal of Philosophy 28 (1):142-163.
    An epistemologist tells you that knowledge is more than justified true belief. You trust them and thus come to believe this on the basis of their testimony. Did you thereby come to know that this view is correct? Intuitively, there is something intellectually wrong with forming philosophical beliefs on the basis of testimony, and yet it's hard to see why philosophy should be significantly epistemically different from other areas of inquiry in a way that would fully prohibit belief by testimony. (...)
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  13.  51
    Closed-minded Belief and Indoctrination.Chris Ranalli - 2022 - American Philosophical Quarterly 59 (1):61-80.
    What is indoctrination? This paper clarifies and defends a structural epistemic account of indoctrination according to which indoctrination is the inculcation of closed-minded belief caused by “epistemically insulating content.” This is content which contains a proviso that serious critical consideration of the relevant alternatives to one's belief is reprehensible whether morally or epistemically. As such, it does not demand that indoctrination be a type of unethical instruction, ideological instruction, unveridical instruction, or instruction which bypasses the agent's rational evaluation. In this (...)
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  14. Suspensive Wronging.Chris Ranalli - forthcoming - In Alexandra Zinke & Verena Wagner (eds.), Suspension in Epistemology and Beyond. Routledge.
    According to the thesis of doxastic wronging, we can wrong people in virtue of having certain beliefs about them. In this chapter, I motivate and defend a similar view, the thesis of suspensive wronging, that we can wrong people in virtue of bearing an indecision attitude towards certain questions that bear on certain people. I explore the extent to which the thesis of suspensive wronging fits with certain prominent conceptions of suspension of judgment, including the sui generis attitude, higher-order, and (...)
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  15. An Ethics of Philosophical Belief: The case for personal commitments.Chris Ranalli - forthcoming - In Sanford C. Goldberg & Mark Walker (eds.), Attitude in Philosophy. Oxford University Press.
    What should we do when faced with powerful theoretical arguments that support a severe change in our personal beliefs and commitments? For example, what should new parents do when confronted by unanswered anti-natalist arguments, or two lovers vexed by social theory that apparently undermines love? On the one hand, it would be irrational to ignore theory just because it’s theory; good theory is evidence, after all. On the other hand, factoring in theory can be objectifying, or risks unraveling one's life, (...)
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  16. Extreme beliefs and Echo chambers.Finlay Malcolm & Christopher Ranalli - forthcoming - In Rik Peels & John Horgan (eds.), Mapping the Terrain of Extreme Belief and Behavior. Oxford University Press.
    Are extreme beliefs constitutive of echo chambers, or only typically caused by them? Or are many echo chambers unproblematic, amplifying relatively benign beliefs? This paper details the conceptual relations between echo chambers and extreme beliefs, showing how different conceptual choice-points in how we understand both echo chambers and extreme beliefs affects how we should evaluate, study, and engage with echo chambering groups. We also explore how our theories of extreme beliefs and echo chambers shape social scientific research and contribute in (...)
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  17. Disjunctivism and Scepticism.Duncan Pritchard & Chris Ranalli - 2018 - In Diego E. Machuca & Baron Reed (eds.), Skepticism: From Antiquity to the Present. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.
    An overview of the import of disjunctivism to the problem of radical scepticism is offered. In particular, the disjunctivist account of perceptual experience is set out, along with the manner in which it intersects with related positions such as naïve realism and intentionalism, and it is shown how this account can be used to a motivate an anti-sceptical proposal. In addition, a variety of disjunctivism known as epistemological disjunctivism is described, and it is explained how this proposal offers a further (...)
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  18.  92
    Epistemological Disjunctivism and Introspective Indiscriminability.Chris Ranalli - 2019 - Philosophia 47 (1):183-205.
    According to Duncan Pritchard’s version of epistemological disjunctivism, in paradigm cases of perceptual knowledge, one’s knowledge that p is grounded in one’s seeing that p, and one can, by reflection alone, come to know that they see that p. In this paper, I argue that the epistemic conception of introspective indiscriminability is incompatible with epistemological disjunctivism, so understood. This has the consequence that theories of the nature of sensory experience which accept the epistemic conception of introspective indiscriminability—such as phenomenal character (...)
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  19. Revisionism, Scepticism, and the Non-Belief Theory of Hinge Commitments.Chris Ranalli - 2018 - International Journal for the Study of Skepticism 8 (2):96-130.
    In his recent work, Duncan Pritchard defends a novel Wittgensteinian response to the problem of radical scepticism. The response makes essential use of a form of non-epistemicism about the nature of hinge commitments. According to non-epistemicism, hinge commitments cannot be known or grounded in rational considerations, such as reasons and evidence. On Pritchard’s version of non-epistemicism, hinge commitments express propositions but cannot be believed. This is the non-belief theory of hinge commitments. One of the main reasons in favour of NBT (...)
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  20. Skepticism, Invulnerability, and Epistemological Dissatisfaction.Chris Ranalli - 2013 - In C. Illies & C. Schaefer (eds.), Metaphysics or Modernity? Bamberg University Press. pp. 113-148.
    How should we understand the relationship between the contents of our color, causal, modal, and evaluative beliefs, on the one hand, and color, causal, modal, and evaluative properties, on the other? According to Barry Stroud (2011), because of the nature of the contents of those types of beliefs, we should also think that what he calls a “negative metaphysical verdict” on the latter is not one that we could consistently maintain. The metaphysical project aims to arrive at an improved conception (...)
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  21.  52
    Is Radical Doubt Morally Wrong?Chris Ranalli - forthcoming - Erkenntnis.
    Is radical skepticism ethically problematic? This paper argues that it is. Radical skepticism’s strong regulation of our doxastic economy results in us having to forego doxastic commitments that we owe to others. Whatever skepticism’s epistemic defects, it is ethically defective. In turn, I defend Moralism, the view that the kind of extreme doubt characteristic of radical skepticism is a serious moral and eudaimonic weakness of radical skeptical epistemology. Whether this means that skepticism is false or incorrect, however, is a further (...)
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  22. Recent Work on Skepticism in Epistemology.Chris Ranalli - 2023 - American Philosophical Quarterly 60 (3):257-273.
    This paper critically surveys 20 years of recent work on radical skepticism. It focuses on three key issues. First, it starts by exploring how philosophers have recently challenged our understanding of radical skeptical arguments. It then unpacks and critically evaluates some influential reactions to radical skepticism: structuralism, knowledge-first epistemology, epistemological disjunctivism, and hinge epistemology. Third, it explores some novel developments of pragmatism, like pragmatic skepticism, gauges its anti-skeptical import, and reflects on the ways in which radical skeptical epistemology and ethics (...)
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  23. Rorty, Williams, and Davidson: Skepticism and Metaepistemology.Duncan Pritchard & Chris Ranalli - 2013 - Humanities 2 (3):351-368.
    We revisit an important exchange on the problem of radical skepticism between Richard Rorty and Michael Williams. In his contribution to this exchange, Rorty defended the kind of transcendental approach to radical skepticism that is offered by Donald Davidson, in contrast to Williams’s Wittgenstein-inspired view. It is argued that the key to evaluating this debate is to understand the particular conception of the radical skeptical problem that is offered in influential work by Barry Stroud, a conception of the skeptical problem (...)
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  24. Putnam on Brains-in-Vats and Radical Skepticism.Duncan Pritchard & Chris Ranalli - 2016 - In Sanford Goldberg (ed.), Putnam on Brains in Vats. Cambridge University Press.
  25.  76
    The Puzzle of Philosophical Testimony.Christopher Ranalli - 2019 - European Journal of Philosophy 28 (1):142-163.
    An epistemologist tells you that knowledge is more than justified true belief. You trust them and thus come to believe this on the basis of their testimony. Did you thereby come to know that this view is correct? Intuitively, there is something intellectually wrong with forming philosophical beliefs on the basis of testimony, and yet it's hard to see why philosophy should be significantly epistemically different from other areas of inquiry in a way that would fully prohibit belief by testimony. (...)
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  26. (1 other version)On Metaepistemological Scepticism.Duncan Pritchard & Chris Ranalli - 2016 - In Brett Coppenger & Michael Bergmann (eds.), Intellectual Assurance: Essays on Traditional Epistemic Internalism. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press.
    Fumerton’s distinctive brand of metaepistemological scepticism is compared and contrasted with the related position outlined by Stroud. It is argued that there are at least three interesting points of contact between Fumerton and Stroud’s metaepistemology. The first point of contact is that both Fumerton and Stroud think that (1) externalist theories of justification permit a kind of non-inferential, perceptual justification for our beliefs about non-psychological reality, but it’s not sufficient for philosophical assurance. However, Fumerton claims, while Stroud denies, that (2) (...)
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  27.  51
    Collective ignorance: an information theoretic account.Christopher Ranalli & René van Woudenberg - 2019 - Synthese 198 (5):4731-4750.
    We are ignorant knowers. This paper proposes an information theoretic explanation of that fact. The explanation is a conjunction of three claims. First, that even in those dimensions where we are capable of picking up information, there is information that we don’t pick up. Second, that there can be dimensions of information for which we lack the capacity to pick up any information whatsoever. Third, that we don’t know whether the faculties and cognitive capacities we are endowed with process all (...)
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  28.  66
    Normativity in studying conspiracy theory belief: Seven guidelines.Rik Peels, Nora Kindermann & Chris Ranalli - 2023 - Philosophical Psychology 36 (6):1125-1159.
    This paper aims to provide clear guidelines for researchers studying conspiracy theory belief. It examines the meta-linguistic question about how we should conceptualize 'conspiracy theory' and its relationship to the evaluative question of how we should evaluate beliefs in conspiracy theories, addressing normative issues surrounding the meaning, use, and conceptualization of ‘conspiracy theory’, as well as how these issues might impact how researchers study conspiracy theories or beliefs in them It argues that four norms, the Empirical Accuracy Norm, the Linguistic (...)
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  29. Colour, Scepticism and Epistemology.Duncan Pritchard & Chris Ranalli - 2017 - In Derek Brown & Fiona Macpherson (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Colour. New York: Routledge.
  30.  45
    “Indoctrination” as Propaganda.Chris Ranalli - 2022 - The Philosophers' Magazine 98:54-59.
  31.  39
    Common sense and Ontological commitment.Chris Ranalli & Jeroen De Ridder - 2020 - In Rik Peels & René van Woudenberg (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Common-Sense Philosophy. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. pp. 287-309.
    How ontologically committal is common sense? Is the common-sense philosopher beholden to a florid ontology in which all manner of objects, substances, and processes exist and are as they appear to be to common sense, or can she remain neutral on questions about the existence and nature of many things because common sense is largely non-committal? This chapter explores and tentatively evaluates three different approaches to answering these questions. The first applies standard accounts of ontological commitment to common-sense claims. This (...)
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  32.  71
    Are There Heavyweight Perceptual Reasons?Chris Ranalli - forthcoming - International Journal for the Study of Skepticism:1-26.
    Genia Schönbaumsfeld has recently argued for the view that our ordinary perceptual reasons provide support for heavyweight metaphysical and epistemological views, such as that there is a mind-independent physical world. Call this the Heavyweight Reasons Thesis. In this paper, I argue that we should reject the Heavyweight Reasons Thesis. I also argue that the rejection of the Heavyweight Reasons Thesis is compatible with the Factive Perceptual Reasons Thesis, the thesis that our perceptual reasons for our ordinary beliefs can be factive, (...)
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  33.  13
    The Philosophy of Indoctrination: Epistemology, Ethics, and Politics.Chris Ranalli - 2024 - New York, NY: Routledge.
    "This book develops and defends a novel social epistemological account of indoctrination. It answers important epistemological, ethical, and political questions about what indoctrination is, why it is epistemically harmful, how it can be practiced, and how we should talk about indoctrination. The author presents three views related to the epistemology of indoctrination. First, he argues that indoctrination is most fundamentally a structural epistemic phenomenon which results in closed-minded beliefs. The sources of indoctrination are diverse: institutional structures, technological systems, ideological frames, (...)
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  34. Meta-epistemological Scepticism: Criticisms and a Defence.Chris Ranalli - 2015 - Dissertation, University of Edinburgh
    The epistemological problem of the external world asks: (1) “How is knowledge of the external world possible given certain obstacles which make it look impossible?” This is a “how-possible?” question: it asks how something is possible given certain obstacles which make it look impossible (cf. Cassam 2007; Nozick 1981; Stroud 1984). Now consider the following question, which asks: (2) “How is a philosophically satisfying answer to (1) possible?” Skepticism is the thesis that knowledge of the external world is impossible. It (...)
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  35.  24
    Descartes: A Guide for the Perplexed, by Justin Skirry. [REVIEW]Christopher Ranalli - 2011 - Praxis 3 (1).
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