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)

I introduce and defend a view about knowledge that I call Moderate Skeptical Invariantism. According to this view, a subject knows p only if she is practically certain that p, where practical certainty is defined as the confidence a rational subject would have to have for her to believe that p and act on p no matter the stakes. I do not provide a definitive case for this view, but I argue that it has several explanatory advantages over alternative views (...) and I show how it can avoid two pressing problems commonly addressed to similar approaches. (shrink)

What is knowledge? What should knowledge be like? Call an epistemological project that sets out to answer the first question ‘descriptive’ and a project that sets out to answer the second question ‘normative’. If the answers to these two questions don’t coincide—if what knowledge should be like differs from what knowledge is like—there is room for a third project we call ‘revisionary’. A revisionary project starts by arguing that what knowledge should be differs from what knowledge is. It then proposes (...) that we revise our account of knowledge accordingly. Our aim in this paper was to develop a methodology for revisionary projects in epistemology. Put roughly, the thought is that we start by looking at the various things that we expect knowledge to do for us. Once we have a list of the various things we expect knowledge to do for us we have a ‘job description’; a list of tasks we need done, and that we expect knowledge to perform. With the job description in hand, we can ask what knowledge would hav.. (shrink)

ABSTRACT A belief is correct if and only if the believed proposition is true. Some philosophers argued that from this standard of correctness it is possible to derive the statement of a norm, a claim about what a subject ought to do. Many formulations of the standard in terms of an ‘ought’-claim have been suggested, but all resulted affected by some problem. My aim in this article is to suggest a new formulation of the standard in ‘ought’-terms based on an (...) analysis of the relations occurring between the notions of correctness and ‘ought’. My suggested formulation is that, for any subject S and proposition p, according to the standard of correctness, given that S believes that p, it ought to be that p. (shrink)

Potential perspectivism is the view that what an agent ought to do (believe, like, fear, … ) depends primarily on facts that are potentially available to her. I consider a challenge to this view. Potentially accessible facts do not always agglomerate over conjunction. This implies that one can fail to have relevant access to a set of facts as a whole but have access to proper subsets of it, each of which can support different incompatible responses. I argue that potential (...) perspectivism has no unproblematic answer to the question of what the agent ought to do (believe, like, fear, … ) in such circumstances. (shrink)

A recent view in contemporary epistemology holds that practical reasoning is governed by an epistemic norm. Evidence for the existence of this norm is provided by the ways in which we assess our actions and reasoning on the basis of whether certain epistemic conditions are satisfied. Philosophers disagree on what this norm is—whether it is knowledge, justified belief or something else. Nobody however challenges the claim that practical reasoning is governed by such a norm. I argue that assuming the existence (...) of an epistemic norm of practical reasoning is neither the only nor the best way to accommodate the available data. I introduce and defend an alternative account that avoids the assumption. According to this account, the relevant epistemic assessments of action and reasoning are instrumental assessments relative to the regulation conditions of a non-epistemic norm. (shrink)

According to the Rational Threshold View, a rational agent believes p if and only if her credence in p is equal to or greater than a certain threshold. One of the most serious challenges for this view is the problem of statistical evidence: statistical evidence is often not sufficient to make an outright belief rational, no matter how probable the target proposition is given such evidence. This indicates that rational belief is not as sensitive to statistical evidence as rational credence. (...) The aim of this paper is twofold. First, we argue that, in addition to playing a decisive role in rationalizing outright belief, non-statistical evidence also plays a preponderant role in rationalizing credence. More precisely, when both types of evidence are present in a context, non-statistical evidence should receive a heavier weight than statistical evidence in determining rational credence. Second, based on this result, we argue that a modified version of the Rational Threshold View can avoid the problem of statistical evidence. We conclude by suggesting a possible explanation of the varying sensitivity to different types of evidence for belief and credence based on the respective aims of these attitudes. (shrink)

The aim of the present contribution is to defend a specific version of moderate skeptical invariantism, which I call Practical Skeptical Invariantism (PSI). The view is a form of skepticism to the extent that it denies knowledge of many facts that we ordinarily think or claim to know. It is moderate to the extent that it is supposed to be compatible with a quite weak, non-radical form of skepticism. According to this view, the threshold on evidential support required for knowledge (...) should be partially fixed by the practical circumstances of the subject: someone is in a position to know a proposition p only if she would be rational to act as if p even if the practical stakes on p were maximally high. I consider and address what I take to be the most pressing problem for the view, namely, that the view can’t avoid a collapse into a radical form of skepticism. Moreover, I propose a positive argument for this view. The argument relies on the claim that judgments in high stakes are generally more reliable than in low stakes. (shrink)

According to a popular view in contemporary epistemology, a belief is justified if, and only if, it amounts to knowledge. Upholders of this view also hold that knowledge is the fundamental norm governing belief and that conforming to this norm is both necessary and sufficient for justification. I argue against the claim that mere norm conformity is sufficient for justification. Rather, justification requires norm conformity for sufficient undefeated reasons. An important consequence is the rejection of the claim that conformity to (...) the norm of belief is necessary and sufficient for epistemic justification. I illustrate some interesting consequences of this result.Selon une thèse populaire en épistémologie contemporaine, une croyance est justifiée si, et seulement si, elle est une connaissance. Les défenseurs de cette thèse soutiennent également que la connaissance est la norme fondamentale de la croyance et que la conformité à cette norme est à la fois nécessaire et suffisante pour la justification. Je conteste l’affirmation selon laquelle la simple conformité à une norme suffit à justifier une croyance. La justification exige la conformité pour des raisons suffisantes et «invaincues». Une conséquence de ceci est le rejet de la thèse selon laquelle la conformité à la norme de la croyance est nécessaire et suffisante pour la justification épistémique. (shrink)

Benjamin Kiesewetter has recently provided an argument to the effect that necessarily, if one has decisive reason to φ, then one has sufficient reason to believe that she herself has decisive reason to φ. If sound, this argument has important implications for several debates in contemporary normative philosophy. I argue that the main premise in the argument is problematic and should be rejected. According to this premise (PRR), necessarily, one can respond correctly to all the decisive reasons one has. I (...) show that PRR is confronted with counterexamples and presupposes an implausible commensurability of all kinds of reasons. If so, the conclusion in Kiesewetter’s argument doesn’t follow. I also discuss further implications of my objections to PRR for a specific family of ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ principles and ability constraints on reasons, and the consequences that these could have for a number of contemporary debates in normative philosophy. (shrink)

The Knowability Paradox is a logical argument to the effect that, if there are truths not actually known, then there are unknowable truths. Recently, Alexander Paseau and Bernard Linsky have independently suggested a possible way to counter this argument by typing knowledge. In this article, we argue against their proposal that if one abstracts from other possible independent considerations supporting reasons for typing knowledge and considers the motivation for a type-theoretic approach with respect to the Knowability Paradox alone, there is (...) no substantive philosophical motivation to type knowledge, except that of solving the paradox. Every attempt to independently justify the typing of knowledge is doomed to failure. (shrink)

While buck-passing accounts are widely discussed in the literature, there have been surprisingly few attempts to apply buck-passing analyses to specific normative domains such as aesthetics and epistemology. In particular, there have been very few works which have tried to provide complete and detailed buck-passing analyses of epistemic values and norms. These analyses are, however, both interesting and important. On the one hand, they can bring to the surface the advantages and difficulties of extending the buck-passing account to specific normative (...) spheres, either providing further support for the approach or highlighting substantive difficulties. On the other hand, epistemic buck-passing analyses can be beneficial for normative epistemology, providing new perspectives on traditional epistemological problems, and possibly providing fresh approaches to such problems. This paper aims at partially filling this gap. (shrink)

An increasingly popular view in contemporary epistemology holds that the most fundamental norm governing belief is knowledge. According to this norm one shouldn’t believe what one doesn’t know. A prominent argument for the knowledge norm appeals to the claim that knowledge is the most general condition of epistemic assessment of belief, one entailing all other conditions under which we epistemically assess beliefs. This norm would provide an easy and straightforward explanation of why we assess beliefs along all these various epistemic (...) dimensions. This article argues that this line of argument is ultimately unsuccessful. I show that the main premise of the argument actually supports the opposite conclusion: the norm of belief requires a condition weaker than knowledge. Furthermore, I argue that if we hold on to the assumption that knowledge is the most general condition of belief’s epistemic assessment, the fundamental norm of belief is factive: one is not permitted to believe a proposition p if it is not true that p. (shrink)

The overall objective of this dissertation is to provide an analysis of the standard of correctness of belief. According to this standard, a belief is correct if and only if the believed proposition is true. My analysis consists in the investigation of a set of aspects and properties of the correctness standard of belief. The main point argued in this dissertation is that the correctness standard of belief is a standard of conformity to the satisfaction conditions of a representational function (...) constitutive of belief. Another relevant conclusionreached in my dissertation concerns the appropriate formulation of the standard in an ought-claim. I argued that the proper way of formulating the standard in an ought-claim is: "for any S, p: it ought to be the case that p, given that S believes that p". (shrink)

Deontic Doxastic Constitutivism is the view that beliefs are constitutively governed by deontic norms. This roughly means that a full account and understanding of the nature of these mental attitudes cannot be reached unless one appeals to some norm of this type. My aim in this article is to provide an objection to such a conception of the normativity of belief. I argue that if some deontic norm is constitutive of belief, then the addressees of such a norm are committed (...) to a potentially infinite number of norms. Furthermore, if addressees are in the position to fulfill all such norms, they must also be able to hold a potentially infinite number of logically independent beliefs. Both these consequences are problematic if compared with limited human capacities to act and believe. (shrink)

Objectivism is the view that how an agent ought to act depends on all kinds of facts, regardless of the agent’s epistemic position with respect to them. One of the most important challenges to this view is constituted by certain cases involving specific conditions of uncertainty—so-called three-options cases. In these cases it seems overwhelmingly plausible that an agent ought to do what is recommendable given her limited perspective, even though the agent knows that this is not objectively the best course (...) of action. The standard objectivist response to this challenge relies on a distinction between what one ought to do and what would be blameworthy or unreasonable to do. This response is affected by several problems. In this paper I introduce and defend an alternative objectivist response to the challenge. My proposal admits that in the relevant cases the agent ought to do what is recommendable given her perspective, but maintains that this diagnosis of the cases is fully compatible with objectivism. I argue that this proposal has several advantages over alternative accounts of the cases. (shrink)

Some philosophers have recently argued that whether a true belief amounts to knowledge in a specific circumstance depends on features of the subject’s practical situation that are unrelated to the truth of the subject’s belief, such as the costs for the subject of being wrong about whether the believed proposition is true. One of the best-known arguments used to support this view is that it best explains a number of paradigmatic cases, such as the well-known Bank Case, in which a (...) difference in knowledge occurs in subjects differing exclusively with respect to their practical situation. I suggest an alternative explanation of such cases. My explanation has a disjunctive character: on the one hand, it accounts for cases in which the subject is aware of the costs of being wrong in a given situation in terms of the influence of psychological factors on her mechanisms of belief-formation and revision. On the other hand, it accounts for cases in which the subject is ignorant of the costs of being wrong in her situation by imposing a new condition on knowledge. This condition is that one knows that p only if one does not underestimate the importance of being right about whether p. I argue that my explanation has a number of advantages over other invariantist explanations: it accounts for all the relevant cases preserving the semantic significance of our ordinary intuitions, it is compatible with an intellectualist account of knowledge and it escapes several problems affecting competing views. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the relation between epistemic reasons and the subject’s epistemic perspective. It tackles the questions of whether epistemic reasons are dependent on the perspective of the subject they are reasons for, and if so, whether they are dependent on the actual or the potential perspective. It is argued that epistemic reasons are either independent or minimally dependent on the subject’s epistemic perspective. In particular, I provide three arguments supporting the conclusion that epistemic reasons are not dependent on (...) the subject’s actual perspective. Furthermore, I show that variants of these arguments apply against popular views holding that epistemic reasons depend on the subject’s potential perspective, such as the view that epistemic reasons are facts that one is in a position to know. (shrink)

An increasingly popular view in contemporary epistemology holds that the most fundamental norm governing belief is knowledge. According to this norm one shouldn’t believe what one doesn’t know. A prominent argument for the knowledge norm appeals to the claim that knowledge is the most general condition of epistemic assessment of belief, one entailing all other conditions under which we epistemically assess beliefs. This norm would provide an easy and straightforward explanation of why we assess beliefs along all these various epistemic (...) dimensions. This article argues that this line of argument is ultimately unsuccessful. I show that the main premise of the argument actually supports the opposite conclusion: the norm of belief requires a condition weaker than knowledge. Furthermore, I argue that if we hold on to the assumption that knowledge is the most general condition of belief’s epistemic assessment, the fundamental norm of belief is factive: one is not permitted to believe a proposition p if it is not true that p. (shrink)

Some philosophers have argued that a standard of correctness is constitutive of the concept or the essence of belief. By this claim they mean, roughly, that a mental state is a belief partially in virtue of being correct if and only if its content is true. In this paper I provide a new argument in support of the constitutivity of the correctness standard for belief. I first argue that the standard expresses a conceptual necessity. Then I argue that, since conceptual (...) necessities are such in virtue of some concept, the standard must also be necessary in virtue of some concept. Finally, I provide an argument by exclusion to the effect that the standard is necessary in virtue of the concept of belief. (shrink)

Dispositionalist accounts of belief define beliefs in terms of specific sets of dispositions. In this article, I provide a blind-spot argument against these accounts. The core idea of the argument is that beliefs having the form [p and it is not manifestly believed that p] cannot be manifestly believed. This means that one cannot manifest such beliefs in one’s assertions, conscious thoughts, actions, behaviours, or any other type of activity. However, if beliefs are sets of dispositions, they must be manifestable (...) in some way. Therefore, according to my argument, beliefs are not sets of dispositions. The argument is defended against some possible objections. (shrink)

A logical argument known as Fitch’s Paradox of Knowability, starting from the assumption that every truth is knowable, leads to the consequence that every truth is also actually known. Then, given the ordinary fact that some true propositions are not actually known, it concludes, by modus tollens, that there are unknowable truths. The main literature on the topic has been focusing on the threat the argument poses to the so called semantic anti-realist theories, which aim to epistemically characterize the notion (...) of truth; according to those theories, every true proposition must be knowable. But the paradox seems to be a problem also for epistemology and philosophy of science: the conclusion of the paradox – the claim that there are unknowable truths – seems to seriously narrow our epistemic possibilities and to constitute a limit for knowledge. This fact contrasts with certain views in philosophy of science according to which every scientific truth is in principle knowable and, at least at an ideal level, a perfected, “all-embracing”, omniscient science is possible. The main strategies proposed in order to avoid the paradoxical conclusion, given their effectiveness, are able to address only semantic problems, not epistemological ones. However, recently Bernard Linsky (2008) proposed a solution to the paradox that seems to be effective also for the epistemological problems. In particular, he suggested a possible way to block the argument employing a type-distinction of knowledge. In the present paper, firstly, we introduce the paradox and the threat it represents for a certain views in epistemology and philosophy of science; secondly, we show Linsky’s solution; thirdly, we argue that this solution, in order to be effective, needs a certain kind of justification, and we suggest a way of justifying it in the scientific field; fourthly, we show that the effectiveness of our proposal depends on the degree of reductionism adopted in science: it is available only if we do not adopt a complete reductionism. (shrink)

Nicholas Rescher, in The Limits of Science (1984), argued that: «perfected science is a mirage; complete knowledge a chimera» . He reached the above conclusion from a logical argument known as Fitch’s Paradox of Knowability. The argument, starting from the assumption that every truth is knowable, proves that every truth is also actually known and, given that some true propositions are not actually known, it concludes, by modus tollens, that there are unknowable truths. Prima facie, this argument seems to seriously (...) narrow our epistemic possibilities and to constitute a limit for knowledge (included scientific knowledge). Rescher’s above quoted conclusion follows the same sort of reasoning. Recently, Bernard Linsky exploited a possible way to block the argument employing a type-distinction of knowledge. If the Knowability paradox is blocked, then Rescher’s conclusion cannot be drawn. After an introduction to the paradox, we suggest, in our paper, a possible way of justifying a type-solution for it in the scientific field. A noteworthy point is that the effectiveness of this solution depends on the degree of reductionism adopted in science: the given solution is available only if we do not adopt a complete reductionism in science so that there is just one kind of scientific knowledge and, consequently, of scientific justification. Otherwise Rescher's argument still works. (shrink)

In "The Limits of Science" N. Rescher introduces a logical argument known as the Knowability Paradox, according to which, if every true proposition is knowable, then every true proposition is known, i.e. if there are unknown truths, there are unknowable truths. Rescher argues that the Knowability Paradox, giving evidence to a limit of our knowledge (the existence of unknowable truths) could be used for arguing against perfected science. In this article we present two criticisms against Rescher's argument.

The thesis includes six essays, each corresponding to a chapter, which have the target of widening the discussion on the limits of knowability through the consideration of some general problematics and the discussion of specific topics. The work is composed of two parts, each of three chapters. In the first part, the discussion is focused on a perspective proper of the philosophy of language. In particular, I consider the discussion on the limits of knowability from the point of view of (...) the debate between semantic realism and antirealism. The second part of the thesis is focused on the discussion on the limits of knowability from a perspective more strictly epistemological and proper of the philosophy of science. (shrink)

The Knowability Paradox is a logical argument that, starting from the plainly innocent assumption that every true proposition is knowable, reaches the strong conclusion that every true proposition is known; i.e. if there are unknown truths, there are unknowable truths. The paradox has been considered a problem for every theory assuming the Knowability Principle, according to which all truths are knowable and, in particular, for semantic anti-realist theories. A well known criticism to the Knowability Paradox is the so called restriction (...) strategy. It bounds the scope of the universal quantification in (KP) to a set of formulas whose logical form avoids the paradoxical conclusion. Specifically, Tennant suggests to restrict the quantifier in (KP) to propositions whose knowledge is provably inconsistent. He calls them Anti-Cartesian propositions and distinguished them in three kinds. In this paper we will not be concerned with the soundness of the restriction proposal and the criticisms it has received. Rather, we are interested in analyzing the proposed distinction. We argue that Tennant’s distinction is problematic because it is not completely clear, it is not grounded on an adequate logical analysis, and it is incomplete. We suggest an alternative distinction, and we give some reasons for accepting it: it results logically grounded and more complete than Tennant’s one, inclusive of it and independent from non-epistemic notions. (shrink)