On what has become the received view of the principle of charity, it is a fundamental methodological constraint on interpretation that we find peoples’ intentional states patterned in ways that are characterized by norms of rationality. This recommended use of normative principles of rationality to inform intentional description is epistemically unmotivated. To say that the received view lacks epistemic motivation is to say that to interpret as it recommends would be epistemically irresponsible ans, in important respects irrational. On (...) the alternative that I recommend, descriptive psychological generalization are what properly inform interpretation. One can readily understand the epistemic motivations for so interpreting, for they are the familiar reasons for informing description with background descriptive information. No parallel motivations for the received view seems possible. (shrink)

This paper explores in detail an argument for epistemic expressivism, what we call the Argument from Motivation. While the Argument from Motivation has sometimes been anticipated, it has never been set out in detail. The argument has three premises, roughly, that certain judgments expressed in attributions of knowledge are intrinsically motivating in a distinct way (P1); that motivation for action requires desire-like states or conative attitudes (HTM); and that the semantic content of knowledge attributions cannot be (...) specified without reference to the intrinsically motivating judgments that such attributions express (P2). We argue that these premises entail a version of ecumenical expressivism. Since the argument from motivation has not been explicitly stated before, there is no current discussion of the argument. In this paper we therefore consider and reject various objections that one might propose to the argument, including some that stem from the idea that knowledge is factive, or that knowledge involves evidence that rules out relevant alternatives. Other objections to (P1) specifically might be derived from cases of apparent lack of epistemic motivation considered in in Kvanvig (The value of knowledge and the pursuit of understanding, 2003) and Brown (Nous 42(2):167–189, 2008), as well as from general forms of externalism about epistemic motivation. We consider these and find them wanting. Finally, the paper offers some critical remarks about the prospect of denying (P2). (shrink)

Delusions are defined as irrational beliefs that compromise good functioning. However, in the empirical literature, delusions have been found to have some psychological benefits. One proposal is that some delusions defuse negative emotions and protect one from low self-esteem by allowing motivational influences on belief formation. In this paper I focus on delusions that have been construed as playing a defensive function (motivated delusions) and argue that some of their psychological benefits can convert into epistemic ones. Notwithstanding their (...) class='Hi'>epistemic costs, motivated delusions also have potential epistemic benefits for agents who have faced adversities, undergone physical or psychological trauma, or are subject to negative emotions and low self-esteem. To account for the epistemic status of motivated delusions, costly and beneficial at the same time, I introduce the notion of epistemic innocence. A delusion is epistemically innocent when adopting it delivers a significant epistemic benefit, and the benefit could not be attained if the delusion were not adopted. The analysis leads to a novel account of the status of delusions by inviting a reflection on the relationship between psychological and epistemic benefits. (shrink)

Is there an epistemic analogue of moral motivational internalism? The answer to this question has implications for our understanding of the nature of epistemic normativity. For example, some philosophers have argued from claims that epistemic judgement is not necessarily motivating to the view that epistemic judgement is not normative. This paper examines the options for spelling out an epistemic analogue of moral motivational internalism. It is argued that the most promising approach connects epistemic judgements (...) to doxastic dispositions, which are related to motivation in a fairly tenuous sense. It is also argued that this approach currently lacks a plausible and informative account of the nature and workings of these doxastic dispositions, and, hence, an explanation of the range of phenomena internalist theses typically set out to explain. The most promising route for developing such an account, based on recent expressivist work, is investigated and found inadequate for the task. (shrink)

This article argues that intellectual character vices involve non-instrumental motives to oppose, antagonise, or avoid things that are epistemically good in themselves. This view has been the recent target of criticism based on alleged counterexamples presenting epistemically vicious individuals who are virtuously motivated or at least lack suitable epistemically bad motivations. The paper first presents these examples and shows that they do not undermine the motivational approach. Finally, having distinguished motivating from explanatory reasons for belief and action, it argues that (...) our epistemic practice of vice attribution supplies evidence in favour of motivational accounts of vice. (shrink)

Many philosophers have adopted epistemic expressivism in recent years. The core commitment of epistemic expressivism is that epistemic claims express conative states. This paper assesses the plausibility of this commitment. First, we raise a new type of problem for epistemic expressivism, the epistemic motivation problem. The problem arises because epistemic expressivists must provide an account of the motivational force of epistemic judgment (the mental state expressed by an epistemic claim), yet various (...) features of our mental economy seem to show that they can’t do so. Second, we develop what we take to be the most promising response to that problem for expressivists. We end by noting that this response faces an important challenge pertaining to the psychology of epistemic criticism and praise. (shrink)

This paper motivates institutional epistemic trust as an important ethical consideration informing the responsible development and implementation of AI technologies (or AI- Inclusivity) in healthcare. Drawing on recent literature on epistemic trust and public trust in science, we examine the conditions under which we can have institutional epistemic trust in AI- inclusive healthcare systems and their members' medical information providers. In particular, we discuss that institutional epistemic trust in AI-inclusive healthcare depends, in part, on the reliability (...) of AI-inclusive medical practices and programs, its knowledge and understanding amongst different stakeholders, its effect on epistemic and communicative duties and burdens on medical professionals, and finally, its interaction with ethical values and interests as well as background socio-political conditions which shape AI-inclusive healthcare systems. To assess the applicability of these conditions, we explore a proposal for AI-inclusivity within the Dutch Newborn Screening Program, thereby illustrating the importance, scope, and potential challenges of fostering and maintaining institutional epistemic trust in a context where generating, assessing, and providing reliable and timely screening results for genetic risk is of high priority. Finally, to motivate the general relevance of our discussion and case study, we provide suggestions for strategies, interventions, and measures for AI-inclusivity in healthcare more widely. (shrink)

Rowbottom (2008) has recently challenged my definition of epistemic reasons for action and has offered an alternative account. In this paper, I argue that less than giving an 'alternative' definition, Rowbottom has offered an additional condition to my original account. I argue, further, that such an extra condition is unnecessary, i.e. that the arguments designed to motivate it do not go through.

This article argues that intellectual character vices involve non‐instrumental motives to oppose, antagonise, or avoid things that are epistemically good in themselves. This view has been the recent target of criticism based on alleged counterexamples presenting epistemically vicious individuals who are virtuously motivated or at least lack suitable epistemically bad motivations. The paper first presents these examples and shows that they do not undermine the motivational approach. Finally, having distinguished motivating from explanatory reasons for belief and action, it argues that (...) our epistemic practice of vice attribution supplies evidence in favour of motivational accounts of vice. (shrink)

This essay engages Chandra Mohanty, M. Jacqui Alexander, and María Lugones in a “plurilogue” to elaborate and exhibit a method that animates the differential mode of Women of Color politics while rendering more acute the strategies each scholar offers against the racialized, gendered oppressions of colonialism and global capitalism. Ella Shohat describes “a multifaceted plurilogue” as a “dissonant polyphony” that “links different yet co-implicated constituencies and arenas of struggle” (Shohat 2001, 2). The emphasis on reading differences within Women of Color (...) theorizing resists the homogenizing tendency of superficial engagement that glosses Women of Color scholarship as a unified genre of thought. A plurilogue thus pursues dissimilarities to clarify the conceptual interventions made within Women of Color theorizing and the relationship among the different patterns of oppression that each intervention exposes. Plurilogued engagements bring these conceptual strategies and understandings of multiple oppressions together, not to resolve or rank them, but to more effectively ascertain the complexities of, and varied coalitional strategies for, resisting the racialized, heteropatriarchal oppressions of global capitalism and colonialism. (shrink)

Philosophers and metrologists have refuted the view that measurement’s epistemic privilege in scientific practice is explained by its theory-neutrality. Rather, they now explicitly appeal to the role that theories play in measurement. I formulate a challenge for this view: scientists sometimes ascribe epistemic privilege to measurements even if they lack a shared theory about their target quantity, which I illustrate through a case study from early geodesy. Drawing on that case, I argue that the epistemic privilege of (...) measurement precedes shared background theory and is better explained by its pre-theoretic function in enabling a distinctive kind of inquiry. (shrink)

Research on self-determination theory emphasizes the importance of the internalization of motivation as a crucial factor for determining the quality of motivation. Hence, intrinsic motivation is deemed as an important predictor of learning. Research on epistemic beliefs, on the other hand, focuses on the nature of knowledge, and learning with more sophisticated epistemic beliefs associated with more adaptive outcomes. While learning and achievement are multiply determined, a more comprehensive theoretical model that takes into account both (...) motivational quality and epistemic beliefs is needed. Hence, this study aims to examine the role of intrinsic and instrumental motivation alongside epistemic beliefs in predicting students’ achievement in science. Data were drawn from the PISA 2015 survey. We focused on four of the top-performing societies. Two were Eastern societies – Singapore and Hong Kong, and the other two were Western societies: Canada and Finland. We found both common and specific patterns among the four societies. Regarding the common patterns, we found that intrinsic motivation and epistemic beliefs had direct positive effects on science achievement. As for the regionally-specific findings, instrumental motivation positively predicted achievement only in Western societies, but not in Eastern societies. The interaction effect between motivation and epistemic beliefs also demonstrated different patterns across the four societies. Implications for the role of motivation and epistemic beliefs in optimizing student learning and achievement are discussed. (shrink)

In several papers, Mark Wrathall argued that French phenomenologist, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, identifies a sui generis type of grounding, one not reducible to reason or natural causality. Following the Phenomenological tradition, Merleau-Ponty called this form of grounding “motivation,” and described it as the way in which one phenomenon spontaneously gives rise to another through its sense. While Wrathall’s suggestion has been taken up in the practical domain, its epistemic import has still not been fully explored. I would like to (...) take up the epistemic dimension of Wrathall’s thought in this paper. Following Wrathall, I explain how motivation can help us understand the manner in which perceptions ground singular, experiential judgments. But I extend this work in two ways. First, I suggest some additional considerations that support Wrathall’s view. Second, I argue that motivation can also help account for the way perceptions ground general judgments. My aim here will not be so much to rule out other answers to these longstanding epistemological questions, as to show that motivation carves out an attractive epistemological space. (shrink)

To assess the merits and demerits of the content of Culp’s educational programme, the paper does three things: First, it discusses whether Culp’s defence against conceivable objections manages to effectively dispel the charge of cosmopolitan arrogance. Second, it spells out one implication of epistemic modesty, which Culp considers a core competence to be imparted by citizenship education. Third, it reflects upon the tricky task of motivating individuals to comply with the demands of justice. Taken together, the paper argues that (...) Culp’s case is impressively strong but nevertheless tends to suffer from a rationalist constriction. It does not leave sufficient room for tradition in private life and public reasoning. This rationalist constriction is problematic from a normative philosophical, and especially a practice-oriented viewpoint. (shrink)

Debate rages in virtue epistemology between virtue reliabilists and responsibilists. Here, I develop and argue for a new kind of responsibilism that is more conciliar to reliabilism. First, I argue that competence-based virtue reliabilism cannot adequately ground epistemic credit. Then, with this problem in hand, I show how Aristotle’s virtue theory is motivated by analogous worries. Yet, incorporating too many details of Aristotelian moral theory leads to problems, notably the problem of unmotivated belief. As a result, I suggest a (...) re-turn to Aristotle to develop a distinctively epistemological virtue theory that does not require any motive or affect for epistemic virtue. Nevertheless, my theory affirms that virtues are acquired, agent-expressive traits. The result is a conciliar responsibilism that leans closer to reliabilism. I end by arguing that my virtue responsibilism can solve worries facing both reliabilism and responsibilism. (shrink)

This paper introduces a model for evidence denial that explains this behavior as a manifestation of rationality and it is based on the contention that social values (measurable as utilities) often underwrite these sorts of responses. Moreover, it is contended that the value associated with group membership in particular can override epistemic reason when the expected utility of a belief or belief system is great. However, it is also true that it appears to be the case that it is (...) still possible for such unreasonable believers to reverse this sort of dogmatism and to change their beliefs in a way that is epistemically rational. The conjecture made here is that we should expect this to happen only when the expected utility of the beliefs in question dips below a threshold where the utility value of continued dogmatism and the associated group membership is no longer sufficient to motivate defusing the counter-evidence that tells against such epistemically irrational beliefs. (shrink)

If a sensory field exists as a pure natural sign open to all kinds of interpretation as evidence (see 'Sensing as non-epistemic'), what is it that does the interpreting? Borrowing from the old Gestalt psychologists, I have proposed a gestalt module that picks out wholes from the turmoil, it being the process of noticing or attending to , but the important difference from Koffka and Köhler (Koffka, 1935; Köhler, 1940), the originators of the term 'gestalt' in the psychology of (...) perception ( is that the emphasis is upon the gestalt projection as motivated . Gestalt-attention of this kind is usually enforced in the first instance by pain or pleasure, and the resulting projections are placed in memory tabbed with fear or desire, such that if such a pattern recurs in the sensory field, fear or desire are triggered. In advanced animals the ability to play with the gestalt module has been evolved, because experimenting in curiosity has proved adaptive, as the exploratory behaviour in the Rat, the Raven, the Apes and Homo sapiens bears out. (shrink)

In Democracy and Moral Conflict, Robert Talisse defends a folk epistemological justification of democracy. This is a universalist and non-moral justification that he deems necessary to accommodate moral pluralism. In contrast, I argue that this attempt fails to justify democracy, on three grounds. First, democracy cannot accommodate moral pluralism, as Talisse understands it. Second, Talisse's own conception of democracy is inconsistent with moral pluralism. And third, democracy requires moral justification and motivation, both of which can be made consistent from (...) within an experimental moral pluralism. (shrink)

The epistemic theory of causality views causality as a tool that helps us to predict, explain and control our world, rather than as a relation that exists independently of our epistemic practices. In this chapter, we first provide an introduction to the epistemic theory of causality. We then outline four considerations that motivate the epistemic theory: the failure of standard theories of causality; parsimony; the epistemology of causality; and neutrality. We illustrate these four considerations in the (...) contexts of the social sciences and the cognitive sciences. We argue that the epistemic theory provides a very natural account of causality across these contexts. (shrink)

The zetetic turn in epistemology raises three questions about epistemic and zetetic norms. First, there is the relationship question: what is the relationship between epistemic and zetetic norms? Are some epistemic norms zetetic norms, or are epistemic and zetetic norms distinct? Second, there is the tension question: are traditional epistemic norms in tension with plausible zetetic norms? Third, there is the reaction question: how should theorists react to a tension between epistemic and zetetic norms? (...) Drawing on an analogy to practical philosophy, I develop a focal point view to resolve these motivating questions. On the focal point view, traditional epistemic norms and zetetic norms answer different types of normative questions. There is nevertheless a familiar type of evaluative tension between traditional epistemic norms and zetetic norms, but this tension is an unavoidable feature of the normative landscape and not a sign that traditional epistemic norms need revision. But if traditional epistemic norms are not zetetic norms, then in what sense is zetetic epistemology a project for epistemologists? I conclude by articulating a sense in which some nontraditional epistemic norms are zetetic norms, and in which zetetic epistemology is an important part of the study of theoretical rationality. (shrink)

In this paper I will present a puzzle about epistemic akrasia, and I will use that puzzle to motivate accepting some non-standard views about the nature of epistemological judgment. The puzzle is that while it seems obvious that epistemic akrasia must be irrational, the claim that epistemic akrasia is always irrational amounts to the claim that a certain sort of justified false belief—a justified false belief about what one ought to believe—is impossible. But justified false beliefs seem (...) to be possible in any domain, and it’s hard to see why beliefs about what one ought to believe should be an exception. I will argue that when we get clearer about what sort of psychological state epistemic akrasia is, we can resolve the puzzle in favor of the intuitive view that epistemic akrasia is always irrational. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that epistemic trust is an intellectual virtue. First, I offer a brief analysis of what it means to place epistemic trust in someone involving several components: belief, communication, dependence, and confidence. I show this account of trust fits a major approach to virtue in the second section. Next, I argue that epistemic trust both contributes to the epistemic good life and that the paradigmatically rational or virtuous agent will include trust in (...) her motivational structure. Considerations from both the structure and meta-epistemology of virtues give us excellent grounds to accept that such a trait is an epistemic virtue. Following these arguments, I discuss a few implications of the view. Epistemic trust will be a mean between two vices of credulity and suspiciousness but that mean will be sensitive to the agent’s particular epistemic context. The view is not evidentialist (for good trust is not defined solely in terms of evidence) but it does account for the role evidence often plays in good epistemic trust (since other virtues relevant to the obtaining and weighing of evidence must be in operation). Finally, I apply the view to three issues in epistemology: the problem of easy or low grade knowledge, testimony, and disagreement; arguing that we’re provided with interesting, fruitful ways of approaching them. (shrink)

Following Robert Adams's account of idolatry, this paper develops the concept of epistemic idolatry. Where there is devotion belonging to truth but given to a particular epistemic good, there we find epistemic idolatry. With this concept in hand, motivationalist virtue epistemologists gain two theoretical advantages: their list of defective motives can include intellectual motivation in excess without the implausible claim that, intellectually, one can be too motivated by truth; and the disvalue of many intellectual vices, including (...) some putative counterexamples to their theory of intellectual vice, can be explained in terms of epistemic idolatry. (shrink)

The debate between scientific realists and anti-realists is now a classic debate in the Philosophy of Science. Van Fraassen (2002) has suggested that the positions that take part in the debate involve not only different doxastic attitudes regarding some propositions, but different epistemic stances, that is, different sets of commitments, values and epistemic strategies. The formulation of this debate in terms of epistemic stances and the voluntarist epistemology it motivates make it plausible to think of it as (...) a deep disagreement. This kind of disagreements cannot be settled by reason alone because they lack the conditions that are necessary for arguments to work. I argue, however, that the attempts to use arguments can have an epistemic value in these contexts, as they can help reveal intuitions. I adopt the view on intuitions put forward by Chudnoff (2014), according to which they are mental states capable of motivating epistemic action. I claim that, while the attempt to utter an argument cannot convince an opponent of changing her mind, it can make her perform some epistemic actions and, thus, bring out some of her intuitions. To show how arguments can work in this way, I take as a study case one of the main realist arguments: the No Miracles Argument. (shrink)

This paper is broadly concerned with the question of what epistemic decolonization might involve. It is divided into two parts. The first part begins by explaining the specifically epistemic problem to which calls for epistemic decolonization respond. I suggest that calls for decolonization are motivated by a perceived epistemic crisis consisting in the inadequacy of the dominant Eurocentric paradigm to properly theorize our modern world. I then discuss two general proposals, radical and moderate, for what (...) class='Hi'>epistemic decolonization might involve. In the second part, I argue that the inadequacy of Eurocentric epistemic resources constitutes a hermeneutical injustice caused by an irreducible form of epistemic oppression. I then argue that addressing this form of epistemic oppression requires thinking ‘outside’ of the Eurocentric paradigm because the paradigm might fail to reveal and address the epistemic oppression sustaining it. This lends further plausibility to the radical proposal that epistemic decolonization must involve thinking from ‘outside’ the Eurocentric paradigm, but also accommodates the moderate proposal that adopting critical perspectives on Eurocentric thought is an important part of epistemic decolonization. (shrink)

Imagination plays a rich epistemic role in our cognitive lives. For example, if I want to learn whether my luggage will fit into the overhead compartment on a plane, I might imagine trying to fit it into the overhead compartment and form a justified belief on the basis of this imagining. But what explains the fact that imagination has the power to justify beliefs, and what is the structure of imaginative justification? In this paper, I answer these questions by (...) arguing that imaginings manifest an epistemic status: they are epistemically evaluable as justified or unjustified. This epistemic status grounds their ability to justify beliefs, and they accrue this status in virtue of being based on evidence. Thus, imaginings are best understood as justified justifiers. I argue for this view by way of showing how it offers a satisfying explanation of certain key features of imaginative justification that would otherwise be puzzling. I also argue that imaginings exhibit a number of markers of the basing relation, which further motivates the view that imaginings can be based on evidence. The arguments in this paper have theoretically fruitful implications not only for the epistemology of imagination, but for accounts of reasoning and epistemic normativity more generally. (shrink)

I focus on the No-Paradise Dilemma, which results from some initially plausible epistemic ideals, coupled with an assumption concerning our evidence. Our evidence indicates that we are not in an epistemic paradise, in which we do not experience cognitive failures. I opt for a resolution of the dilemma that is based on an evidentialist position that can be motivated independently of the dilemma. According to this position, it is rational for an agent to believe a proposition on the (...) agent’s total evidence just in case the (total) evidence stably supports the proposition. Based on this evidentialist position, I argue that it is not an epistemic ideal in the actual world that we hold rational beliefs that are logically equivalent to our rational beliefs. The dilemma is resolved by giving up this ideal for the actual world and adopting the evidentialist position in terms of stable evidential support. (shrink)

Empirical work on motivated reasoning suggests that our judgments are influenced to a surprising extent by our wants, desires and preferences (Kahan 2016; Lord, Ross, and Lepper 1979; Molden and Higgins 2012; Taber and Lodge 2006). How should we evaluate the epistemic status of beliefs formed through motivated reasoning? For example, are such beliefs epistemically justified? Are they candidates for knowledge? In liberal democracies, these questions are increasingly controversial as well as politically timely (Beebe et al. 2018; Lynch forthcoming, (...) 2018; Slothuus and de Vreese 2010). And yet, the epistemological significance of motivated reasoning has been almost entirely ignored by those working in mainstream epistemology. We aim to rectify this oversight. Using politically motivated reasoning as a case study, we show how motivated reasoning gives rise to three distinct kinds of skeptical challenges. We conclude by showing how the skeptical import of motivated reasoning has some important ramifications for how we should think about the demands of intellectual humility. (shrink)

It is commonly assumed that blameworthiness is epistemically constrained. If one lacks sufficient epistemic access to the fact that some action harms another, then one cannot be blamed for harming. Acceptance of an epistemic condition for blameworthiness can give rise to a worry, however: could agents ever successfully evade blameworthiness by deliberately stunting their epistemic position? I discuss a particularly worrisome version of such epistemic shirking, in which agents pre-emptively seek to avoid access to potentially morally (...) relevant facts. As Roy Sorensen and Jan Willem Wieland have argued, we seem to be faced with a potentially troubling regress when trying to explain what goes wrong in such situations. I argue that the solution to this so-called Shirker Problem is not to be found in complicated and demanding anti-shirking-principles with universal scope and potentially self-reflexive content. Instead, careful consideration of the necessary motivational make-up of genuine shirkers reveals their ignorance to lack the necessary depth to be exculpatory. Since shirkers by definition react to the possibility of the revelation of morally relevant facts with acts of epistemic self-limitation, they necessarily prove guilty of a form of culpable moral recklessness. Epistemic shirking thus does not pose a worrisome problem for ethical theory. (shrink)

In this chapter, I argue for the thesis that phenomenal consciousness is the basis of epistemic justification. More precisely, I argue for the thesis of phenomenal mentalism, according to which epistemic facts about which doxastic attitudes one has justification to hold are determined by non-epistemic facts about one’s phenomenally individuated mental states. I begin by providing intuitive motivations for phenomenal mentalism and then proceed to sketch a more theoretical line of argument according to which phenomenal mentalism provides (...) the best explanation of the independently motivated thesis of access internalism. The result is a theory of epistemic justification that brings intuition and theory into reflective equilibrium. (shrink)

This paper provides a critical overview of recent work on epistemic blame. The paper identifies key features of the concept of epistemic blame and discusses two ways of motivating the importance of this concept. Four different approaches to the nature of epistemic blame are examined. Central issues surrounding the ethics and value of epistemic blame are identified and briefly explored. In addition to providing an overview of the state of the art of this growing but controversial (...) field, the paper highlights areas where future work is needed. (shrink)

This book uses the framework of care ethics to articulate a novel theory of our epistemic obligations to one another. It presents an original way to understand our epistemic vulnerabilities, our obligations in education, and our care-duties toward others with whom we stand in epistemically vulnerable relationships. As embodied and socially interdependent knowers, we have obligations to one another that are generated by our ability to care-that is to meet each other's epistemic vulnerabilities. The author begins the (...) book by arguing that the same motivations that moved social epistemologists away from individualistic epistemology should motivate a move to a care-based theory. The following chapters outline our epistemic care-duties to vulnerable agents, and offer criteria of epistemic goodness for communities of inquiry. Finally, the author discusses the tension between epistemic care and epistemic paternalism. Epistemic Care will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in social epistemology, ethics, feminist philosophy, and philosophy of education. (shrink)

Epistemic partialism is the view that friends have a doxastic duty to overestimate each other. If one holds that there are no practical reasons for belief, we will argue, one has to deny the existence of any epistemic duties, and thus reject epistemic partialism. But if it is false that one has a doxastic duty to overestimate one’s friends, why does it so often seem true? We argue that there is a robust causal relationship between friendship and (...) overestimation that can be mistaken for a constitutive relationship; we also argue that one can still accept some of the normative intuitions that motivate epistemic partialism even if one rejects epistemic partialism itself. Along the way, we consider and reject a watered-down version of epistemic partialism—call it epistemic partialism-light—according to which one has a duty to take steps to create in oneself a disposition to overestimate one’s friends. (shrink)

Dynamic Epistemic Logic This article tells the story of the rise of dynamic epistemic logic, which began with epistemic logic, the logic of knowledge, in the 1960s. Then, in the late 1980s, came dynamic epistemic logic, the logic of change of knowledge. Much of it was motivated by puzzles and paradoxes. The number … Continue reading Dynamic Epistemic Logic →.

Many theories of rational action are predicated on the idea that what it is rational to do in a given situation depends, in part, on what it is rational to believe in that situation. In short: they treat epistemic rationality as explanatorily prior to practical rationality. If they are right in doing so, it follows, on pain of explanatory circularity, that epistemic rationality cannot itself be a form of practical rationality. Yet, many epistemologists have defended just such a (...) view of epistemic rationality. According to them, there is no such thing as a distinctively epistemic form of rationality which could be explanatorily prior to practical rationality. Rather, they maintain, there is just one form of rationality—practical rationality—of which epistemic rationality is a species. What to make of this conflict? The aim of this paper is to motivate a view about the relationship between epistemic and practical rationality which resolves the conflict in a way that should be attractive to both sides. The central idea is to ground both epistemic and practical rationality in an independently motivated notion of evidential probability which is itself to be understood in non-normative terms. Doing so, I argue, allows us to unify epistemic and practical rationality in a way that does justice to the idea that what it is rational to do depends, in part, on what it is rational to believe; and to do so in a way that avoids explanatory circularity. (shrink)

I consider a number of questions for foundational epistemology that arise from further reflection on salience of alternatives and epistemic position. On this basis, I turn to more applied issues. First, I will consider work in social psychology to motivate the working-hypothesis that social stereotypes will make some alternatives more, and some less, salient. A related working-hypothesis is that social stereotypes may lead to both overestimation and underestimation of a subject’s epistemic position. If these working-hypotheses are true, the (...) outcome may be a distinctive route to epistemic injustice. (shrink)

What epistemic conditions must one satisfy to be morally responsible for an action or attitude? A common worry is that robust epistemic requirements would have disastrous implications for our responsibility attributing practices: we would be unable to make epistemically justified responsibility attributions, or we would be licensed to disrespectfully excuse agents for their sincerely held beliefs. Those more optimistic about robust epistemic requirements inadvertently make them too demanding to explain the moral successes of ordinary agents. The present (...) project shows how both the pessimists and optimists rely on instructively mistaken assumptions in epistemology, ethics, and action theory, and it culminates in a theoretical framework for responsibility for right action (or moral worth) from which well-motivated and unproblematic epistemic requirements fall out. A right action is morally worthy, I argue, just to the extent that it is explained by a reliable tie to the right that is secured through the influence one’s values have (perhaps unreflectively) on one’s informational access and processing. This Value-Secured Reliability framework has wide-reaching import and readily extends to a further variety of moral success: respect. (shrink)

Epistemic contextualism is one of the most hotly debated topics in contemporary epistemology. Contextualists claim that ‘know’ is a context-sensitive verb associated with different evidential standards in different contexts. Contextualists motivate their view based on a set of behavioural claims. In this paper, I show that several of these behavioural claims are false. I also show that contextualist test cases suffer from a critical confound, which derives from people's tendency to defer to speakers’ statements about their own mental states. (...) My evidence consists in results from several behavioural experiments. I conclude that contextualism is an idle hypothesis and I propose some general methodological lessons. (shrink)

Dynamic Epistemic Logic This article tells the story of the rise of dynamic epistemic logic, which began with epistemic logic, the logic of knowledge, in the 1960s. Then, in the late 1980s, came dynamic epistemic logic, the logic of change of knowledge. Much of it was motivated by puzzles and paradoxes. The number … Continue reading Dynamic Epistemic Logic →.

One of the key tenets of Linda Zagzebski’s book " Epistemic Authority" is the Preemption Thesis. It says that, when an agent learns that an epistemic authority believes that p, the rational response for her is to adopt that belief and to replace all of her previous reasons relevant to whether p by the reason that the authority believes that p. I argue that such a “Hobbesian approach” to epistemic authority yields problematic results. This becomes especially virulent (...) when we apply Preemption to cases in which the agent and the authority share their belief, maybe even for the same reasons, or in which both have either a positive or a negative graded doxastic attitude toward a given proposition. As an alternative I propose a “Socratic account”, according to which the authority will not only motivate us to adopt her belief, but also provide us with higher-order reasons for re-assigning our own considerations their proper place in the web of reasons for and against the view in question. (shrink)

Epistemic contextualism is the theory that “knows” is a context sensitive expression. As a linguistic theory, epistemic contextualism is motivated by claims about the linguistic behavior of competent speakers. This chapter reviews evidence in experimental cognitive science for epistemic contextualism in linguistic behavior. This research demonstrates that although some observations that are consistent with epistemic contextualism can be confirmed in linguistic practices, these observations are also equally well explained both by psychological features that do not provide (...) support for contextualism and by rival theories that are inconsistent with contextualism. I conclude that the motivation for epistemic contextualism is underdetermined by existing experimental evidence, yielding little reason to accept it as an account of our actual linguistic practices. (shrink)

Strong epistemic anti-individualism—i.e., the claim that knowledge can be irreducibly social—is increasingly debated within mainstream and social epistemology. Most existing approaches attempt to argue for the view on the basis of aggregative analyses, which focus on the way certain groups aggregate the epistemic attitudes of their members. Such approaches are well motivated, given that many groups to which we often ascribe group knowledge—such as juries and committees—operate in this way. Yet another way that group knowledge can be generated (...) is on the basis of epistemic collaborations, such as scientific research teams and Transactive Memory Systems. To produce knowledge, epistemic collaborations rely heavily on the mutual interactions of their group members. This is a distinctive feature of epistemic collaborations that renders them resistant to aggregative analyses. To accommodate this kind of group knowledge, the paper combines virtue reliabilism with the hypothesis of distributed cognition in order to introduce the hybrid approach of distributed virtue reliabilism. On this view, beliefs produced by epistemic collaborations entertain positive epistemic standing in virtue of the mutual interactions of their group members; this positive epistemic standing is a collective property; epistemic collaborations qualify as epistemic group agents; collaborative knowledge is a special kind of group knowledge, motivating strong epistemic anti-individualism in a distinctive way. (shrink)