Justification

According to the access internalist core claim, my evidence contributes to my justification because I represent my evidential situation. The representation of the evidential situation is understood as based not on empirical, but rather introspective grounds. The standard formulation of access internalism goes further, grounding access to evidence in reflective knowledge of one’s evidential situation. This paper aims to secure the plausibility of the core claim of access internalism by proposing the alternative to the knowledge view in terms of objectual (...) understanding. In Sect. 2, I separate the core claim of access internalism from its formulation in terms of knowledge. In Sect. 3, I defend the understanding view by explaining the psychological features of understanding that align with the intuition identified in Sect. 2. In Sects. 4 and 5, I refine the proposal by addressing a potential objection concerning sufficiency and necessity of understanding for access, respectively. In Sect. 6, I show how the understanding view avoids the main epistemological difficulty facing the knowledge view. Section 7 concludes. (shrink)

The major ethical theories—welfarist consequentialism, Kantianism, contractualism, common sense morality, and virtue ethics—appear to converge on the same practical advice in many situations. Such convergence seems epistemically significant. A natural thought would be that the convergence should assure us about the advice. However, what would be the rationale behind this—why should the convergence increase our assurance? That’s the main question we pursue in this paper. As the question is only sparsely addressed in the existing literature, we begin by detailing various (...) kinds and structures of convergence. In relation, we propose a specific way to think about the epistemic significance of convergence. The remainder of the paper is primarily negative. We argue that even granting nonskeptical assumptions that are common in moral epistemology, the epistemic significance of convergence is harder to account for than most would probably think. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the structural requirements for persistent autonomous systems under bounded conditions. Current AI systems demonstrate strong capability but lack persistence: they do not maintain identity across time, cannot guarantee decision lineage after change, and cannot independently verify consequential actions. -/- Starting from three constraints—bounded representational capacity, the impossibility of internal self-certification, and the requirement for invariant-governed continuity—the paper derives a necessary structural ordering: identity → invariant → observable → probability. -/- From this ordering, a phased architecture is constructed, (...) progressing from replayable decision systems to persistent autonomous systems. Core contributions include the Drift Lemma, which limits internal certainty in bounded systems, and a framework for external verification through replayable artifacts. -/- The paper does not claim that existing systems satisfy these conditions. Instead, it establishes necessary structural properties for autonomy under constraint, providing a framework for evaluating and designing systems that persist as the same lawful subject across time. (shrink)

Whether a belief is epistemically justified is widely considered to be an affair between the believer and the way they formed their belief. In this paper, I explore the view that the justificatory status of a belief is linked to what is appropriate for third parties to believe. In doing so, I will draw inspiration from debates in legal theory, where the view that legal justification is linked to the appropriateness of third-party conduct has been systematically worked out and widely (...) codified. I will show that these legal debates are strikingly analog to recent discussions about the function of epistemic assessment, where it has been argued that there is a link between a belief’s being epistemically justified and the appropriateness of third-party deference to said belief (Dogramaci, 2012, 2015; Greco and Hedden, 2016). In this paper, I will spell out this link and argue that it provides us with a powerful explanation of our division of epistemic labour. However, I will also show that this explanatory proposal is threatened by cases of (what I call) deference conflicts. I will argue that the most promising response to these cases is to take a “civil law–style” approach and favour the view that epistemic justification is factive. (shrink)

This paper develops a constraint-based extension of the Dual-Closure framework, which holds that authentic subjective experience and objective moral normativity jointly require non-contingent grounding in order to avoid justificatory regress. While the Dual-Closure Thesis establishes the necessity of such grounding, it leaves open the structural criteria any adequate ground must satisfy. This manuscript introduces the Multi-Closure Thesis, a conditional diagnostic framework consisting of five ontological and epistemic constraints. Rather than identifying or naming a specific metaphysical source, the framework delineates the (...) minimal requirements any candidate ground must meet if it is to successfully terminate regress across consciousness, normativity, and rational agency. By applying these constraints—echoed in historical precedents such as Al-Ghazali and Maturidi—the paper demonstrates why contingent, consensus-based, and purely naturalistic accounts fail to achieve full closure. The result is not a doctrinal conclusion, but a narrowed ontological space within which any viable account of ultimate grounding must fall. (shrink)

This paper articulates the Law of Epistemic Warrant: a constitutive, agent-general procedural law governing how epistemic warrant can arise for any finite conscious agent. The law does not function as a theory within epistemology, nor as a deductive argument for knowledge. Instead, it describes the necessary structural conditions that must be jointly instantiated for warrant-seeking inquiry to succeed at all. These conditions are expressed by the PIE Sequence (mnemonic: Perception, Inquiry, Experimentation), which specifies how epistemic instability arises, how inquiry is (...) normatively directed, and how warrant is procedurally resolved across distinct domains. The law yields exactly two non-arbitrary forms of epistemic warrant—Justified coherent belief (JCB) for intrinsic claims and Justified Reliable Belief (JRB) for extrinsic claims. By relocating epistemic warrant from propositional justification to procedural resolution, the law dissolves Agrippa’s Trilemma, which applies only to belief-justification frameworks. The persistence of Gettier-style problems is likewise explained as a structural consequence of attempting to force propositional truth conditions onto a domain governed by procedural warrant. (shrink)

Hegel indicates throughout his writings that the claims most pivotal to his system of philosophical science receive their proof only in logic itself. And yet, Hegel has surprisingly little to say in either the Encyclopaedia Logic or the Science of Logic itself about what he means by ‘proof’ or what sort of proof procedure it is that he thinks is suited to meet such a demand. In this paper, I develop an account of the proof procedure at work in the (...) Logic by considering Hegel’s treatment of the traditional proofs of God’s existence (specifically, the ontological and the cosmological arguments) that he offers in the logical writings and in his Religionsphilosophie. I develop this account through the speculative reconstruction of the traditional arguments of natural theology that Hegel offers in his 1827 Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion and the 1829 Lectures on the Proofs of the Existence of God where, I argue, these arguments are divested of their syllogistic form and reformulated on the model of conceptual mediation. In the end, I explain how this account of the Logic’s proof procedure sheds light on two lingering interpretive issues in Hegel’s metaphysics: its relationship to the ontological argument and its solution to ‘the problem of beginning’. (shrink)

The book develops and defends a general normative framework called feasibilism. Feasibilist norms urge manifesting the best feasible dispositions—ways of forming and retaining doxastic states, as well as choosing and acting, that are available to beings like us. The first half of the book presents case studies showing how epistemological implementations of feasibilism can advance long-standing debates in epistemology, including the New Evil Demon Problem, puzzles involving higher-order evidence and defeat, and challenges facing broadly consequentialist approaches. The feasibilist norm defended (...) urges manifesting the most knowledge-conducive feasible dispositions. This knowledge-centric implementation, I argue, provides the most promising normative theory in epistemology: simple, elegant, metaphysically respectable, and explanatorily powerful. The second half of the book moves from epistemology to a more systematic defence of the feasibilist normative framework. In the moral domain, too, we are confronted with problems of luck and limitation. Given any plausible standard of moral rightness, in some situations it is only possible to do the right thing by luck. Again, we need a normative standards more attuned to our limitations. Applying the feasibilist framework to the moral domain yields interesting and surprising results—for instance, that one can sometimes be blameworthy for morally right action. Feasibilism thus unifies different normative domains within a single, non-ideal framework, offering standards attuned to human limitations but tied to valuable normative successes. (shrink)

Bootstrapping and the easy knowledge problem can be understood as puzzles about conflicting intuitions. On one hand, each step of the inference seems correct, but on the other, the overall process seems unacceptable. These puzzles will be resolved by establishing two distinctions. First, untargeted cognitive processes of belief formation must be distinguished from processes of intentional inquiry. Second, conditions on justification transmission must be distinguished from conditions on rationality understood as an internal criterion of coherence. Bootstrapping as a process of (...) settling the question about the reliability of a source violates internal criteria of rationality, but this does not entail that justification cannot transmit via bootstrapping reasoning. The intuitive defectiveness of bootstrapping can be explained in terms of the violation of rules of rationality in contexts of inquiry without being committed to accepting the general defectiveness of bootstrapping in all contexts. (shrink)

This paper develops a comprehensive epistemological framework that addresses one of philosophy's most persistent puzzles: why intelligent, rational persons examining identical evidence often reach contradictory conclusions. Building upon the Fragment Theory of Knowledge, we argue that human cognition operates through necessarily partial access to a reality of incommensurable complexity, constrained by fundamental physical, cognitive, and socio-cultural limitations. Knowledge formation is not merely the accumulation of data but the integration of experiential fragments into coherent wholes. Crucially, we demonstrate that this integration (...) requirement is not merely epistemological but reflects the ontological structure of reality itself— information never exists in isolation but only in interconnected bundles at every level of existence. We demonstrate that belief is epistemically foundational, that proper integration requires both foundational beliefs and evidential reasoning, that abstraction must remain grounded, and that every epistemic commitment exists within a holistic web of belief. This framework has profound implications for understanding rational disagreement, showing that belief assessment requires evaluating total worldview integration rather than isolated propositions. (shrink)

Traditionally, many have imposed higher-order requirements on epistemic justification. That is, many have argued that for a belief to be epistemically justified, it not only needs to satisfy first-order requirements, such as being formed via a reliable process or supported by sufficient evidence, but also some higher-order requirement that bears on the way the belief is formed. For example, BonJour (1980) has famously argued that a clairvoyance belief, however reliable, is not justified unless one also has a justified belief that (...) one’s beliefs formed via clairvoyance are reliable. More recently, some have argued for higher-order requirements for inferentially justified beliefs. That is, for example, that inferential beliefs are only justified if we take the reasons for which those beliefs are formed to support the belief. While there is a common underlying theme, these proposals differ with respect to the kind of higher-order state they require. Some proposals require (justified) higher-order beliefs, while others require higher-order evidence or higher-order awareness. This paper sets out to systematically discuss different kinds of higher order requirements and the objections they face. While I will argue that there are good reasons to think that epistemic justification needs a built-in higher order requirement, I will argue that only so-called evidential requirements are able to guard off well-known objections. In particular, I will demonstrate that the evidentialist no-defeater clause I recently proposed in Graf (2025), can be understood as a general higher-order requirement which does not only explain the intuitions motivating such requirements, but also enables us to avoid common objections. (shrink)

This chapter explores the challenge that the New Evil Demon Problem poses for so-called “externalist” theories of evidence. It argues that the best view of evidence is a liberalized form of externalism. According to that view, paradigmatic evidence in the sciences and elsewhere includes publicly known facts about the external world, evidence that we would not have in a hypothetical scenario in which we are the victims of radical deception. On the other hand, our evidence is not limited to our (...) knowledge, and for this reason even radically deceived thinkers are often in a position to have justified beliefs about their environment. Given the radical diversity of topics about which we can have justified beliefs, and the extremely wide range of circumstances in which it’s possible for us to hold such beliefs, we should embrace the idea that even radically different things can play the justifying role of evidence. (shrink)

The paper is concerned with a special class of inferences, in which we draw conclusions about individual people based on evidence about the groups to which they belong. One thing that is notable about these inferences is that they are often subject to a kind of moral criticism. By judging people in this way, it is claimed, we demean or diminish them, and fail to properly respect them as individuals. And yet, if these inferences are epistemically sound – as they (...) sometimes appear to be – then we face the possibility of a clash between moral and epistemic norms. One way to avoid this clash is through the thesis of moral encroachment – the idea that standards of epistemic justification are themselves sensitive to moral considerations and, in particular, can become more stringent when a belief has the potential to morally wrong others. In this paper I offer some reasons for doubting this thesis, and argue that group-to-individual inferences are, in the end, better understood through a more traditional framework on which epistemic justification is determined purely by the nature of one’s evidence. (shrink)

Should you defer to individual experts? That is, when a single expert—rather than a group of experts or a expert consensus—testifies that p, should you believe that p? In this paper, I argue that the answer to this question is, generally speaking, “no.” My argument is based on the notion of a complexity‐based defeater. Some questions are complex in a sense that makes inquirers less reliable at answering them. Expert testimony tends to be about such questions. Expert testimony thus tends (...) to be subject to a complexity‐based defeater. The pressing question, then, is whether the speaker's expertise in turn defeats that complexity‐based defeater. I first draw on the extant literature to show why we cannot reliably make case‐by‐case determinations of whether a particular speaker's expertise counteracts the complexity of the particular question they are answering. Next, I argue that a speaker's status as an expert does not, in general, defeat the complexity‐based defeaters that tend to come with expert testimony. We thus should not, generally speaking, defer to individual experts. I then address some issues with the peer review system that are relevant to the core argument. Finally, I briefly discuss a path to rational deference that remains open: a path through expert judgment aggregation. (shrink)

NOTE: This is an early preprint version. The definitive, citable "Version of Record" of this paper has been archived on Zenodo and can be found under the DOI 10.5281/zenodo.16276131. Please use the Zenodo version exclusively for all citations. -/- This paper presents a novel approach to the foundation of ethical systems, based on the concept of Ontological Symmetry Breaking. Starting from the observation that a fundamental asymmetry arises in the transition from an objective reality to the subjective experience of reality, (...) a formal framework is developed that derives the emergence of fundamental ethical stances directly from the structure of this asymmetry. Through the analysis of varying degrees of I-Thou-It projection, a typology of fundamental ethical stances is created, ranging from solipsistic to deeply empathic worldviews. In contrast to existing ethical theories, which are often based on external normative assumptions, this approach offers a derivation of ethical systems from the intrinsic structure of subjective experience itself. The theory is supported by references to empirical findings from moral psychology and comparative ethics. Furthermore, an extended notational system is developed that captures differentiated projection intensities (dominant vs. suppressed) and is applied to various social constellations---from hierarchical social structures and group conflicts to personal relationships. These application perspectives demonstrate the potential of the approach to integrate and reinterpret existing theories from power research, conflict theory, and relationship psychology. The work thus opens up new perspectives for understanding ethical and social dynamics at both individual and societal levels. (shrink)

Recent research in analytic epistemology suggests that one can form a rational belief without being in the position to identify and assess the evidence in its support. The reach of such unreflective responses to evidence has been explored in internalist and externalist theories of epistemic justification. It is also at work in defences of the rationality of non-human animals and young children. Unreflective responsiveness to evidence is in tension with reflective accounts, according to which being in the position to identify (...) and assess the relevant reasons is necessary for rational belief and action. We investigate the relation between these two rival characterizations of rational belief by engaging with recent work in developmental psychology and integrating it with lessons coming from the study of epistemic defeaters. We contend that the roots of epistemic rationality lie in what subjects do at the unreflective level. The arguments we provide speak against the widely held notion that the reflective minds of adult humans differ in kind from the presumed unreflective minds of young children and non-human animals. (shrink)

In contemporary epistemology, much attention has been given to misinformation, disinformation, and epistemic luck. However, little focus has been given to a structurally distinct but increasingly pervasive epistemic condition: information saturation. This paper argues that an overabundance of information can lead not merely to confusion or indecision, but to a collapse in the very structure of epistemic justification. Drawing on analogies from overload in decision theory, entropy in cognitive science, and noise in communication theory, I argue that information saturation introduces (...) a distinct failure mode for knowledge acquisition. This phenomenon challenges traditional internalist and externalist models alike, and demands a new framework for understanding epistemic responsibility in high-volume informational environments. (shrink)

What is the place of coherence, or structural rationality, in good first-personal deliberation? According to Kolodny (2005), considerations of coherence are irrelevant to good first-personal deliberation. When we deliberate, we should merely care about the reasons or evidence we have for our attitudes. So, considerations of coherence should not show up in deliberation. In response to this argument, Worsnip (2021) argues that considerations of coherence matter for how we structure deliberation. For him, we should treat incoherent combinations of attitudes as (...) off-limits in deliberation. Some important questions are left unanswered by both camps. What do we mean by considerations of coherence “showing up” in first-personal deliberation? How do we interpret the divide between reasons-responsiveness and coherence? How should we interpret cases in which considerations of coherence interact with other norms or requirements? In this paper, I show how Haack’s (1993) crossword puzzle analogy sheds light on these questions. Also, the crossword puzzle analogy allows us to evaluate Kolodny’s objection and identify promising avenues for future research. (shrink)

My aim in this paper is to introduce and motivate a general normative framework, which I call feasibilism, and to sketch a view of the relationship between the prescriptive and the hypological in the epistemic domain by drawing on the theoretical resources provided by this framework. I then generalise the lesson to the moral domain. I begin by motivating feasibilism. A wide range of norms appear to leave uncharted an important part of the normative landscape. Across different domains we need (...) norms more directed at the subject, and less dependent on how the world beyond our control plays out. In the beginning of this paper I briefly outline two broad ways of seeking such subject-directed norms: perspectivism and feasibilism. According to feasibilism, the ultimate reason why more objectivist norms are inadequate on their own is not that they fail to take into account the limits of an agent’s perspective, but that they are not sensitive to limits on what ways of choosing, acting, and believing are feasible in a given situation. I think of these ways of choosing, acting, and believing in terms of an agent’s dispositions. This paper focuses on a gnosticist implementation of feasibilism. Such a view supplements a knowledge norm with a norm urging one to only be in doxastic states that are manifestations of the most knowledge-conducive feasible dispositions – that is, a norm urging one to be in doxastic states that are reasonable. But how should we think about the normative statuses of knowledge versus reasonableness? By drawing on two general hypotheses about the relationship between succeeding (e.g. knowing) and manifesting dispositions conducive to success (e.g. reasonable belief), I argue for a view on which the prescriptive and the hypological come radically apart. The result is that an epistemic analogue of a thesis that many have assumed to hold in the moral realm should be rejected. This thesis is Only Blameworthy for Wrongs: we can only ever be blameworthy for acts that are morally wrong. I argue that on the picture presented, we can be epistemically blameworthy for doxastic states that do not violate any prescriptive epistemic norms. I then generalise the considerations to the moral realm, arguing against Only Blameworthy for Wrongs. (shrink)

According to the Doctrine of Normative Defeat (‘the DND’), you may lose justification to believe that p if you fail to possess negatively relevant evidence that you ought to possess. This paper presents an objection to the DND as it’s standardly developed: it carries with it an absurd implication regarding how one’s knowledge can be restored once one’s associated epistemic justification is presumed to be normatively defeated. I defend the force of this objection before closing with a note about what (...) my argument means for the DND's motivation. (shrink)

Recently an abductivist approach to the epistemology of logic has gained traction. A necessary component of logical abductivism is justification holism, asserting that claims of logical entailment can only be justified in the context of an entire logical theory, e.g., classical, intuitionistic, etc. One view that is incompatible with abductivism is an atomistic view on which individual entailment-claims can be justified point-wise rather than in the context of a whole theory. This paper provides two atomistic counterexamples to justification holism in (...) the epistemology of logic. Both examples appeal to pre-theoretic commitments of deductive validity. The main aim is to show that there are some foundational entailment-claims for which we can have propositional justification independently of theory choice and outside the context of a whole logical theory. If one were to give up on these foundational claims, all semantic and syntactic accounts of deductive validity would be non-starters. (shrink)

In this paper, I show how a pragmatist stance may address the problem of the resolvability of moral conflicts. Pragmatism challenges skeptical and relativist views by arguing that moral conflict resolution is possible via inquiry and exchange of reasons. From a normative standpoint, pragmatism also differs from utilitarian and deontological views, according to which a specific moral theory is correct in every context. From a pragmatist point of view, both utilitarian and deontological responses can be justified, depending on contextual conditions (...) and reasons, on the people to whom reasons are offered, and on constraints of inclusivity, publicity, empirical accuracy, and coherence. Pragmatism’s empiricist method for solving conflicts and making normative adjustments can be seen as a form of reflective equilibrium, where moral beliefs and commitments are adjusted in light of new non-moral knowledge, such as evidence about the reliability of decision processes. Recent empirical research also supports pragmatism’s pluralist and flexible approach more than monistic and generalist normative views like deontology and utilitarianism. (shrink)

“The beginning of philosophy must be either something mediated or something immediate, and it is easy to show that it can be neither the one nor the other; so either way of beginning runs into contradiction” (WL: 45/5:65). In these words, Hegel articulates what has come to be known as the ‘problem of beginning’, a problem that would seem to challenge the very possibility of legitimate philosophical inquiry. In his recent book, Hegel and the Problem of Beginning, Robb Dunphy makes (...) a compelling case that Hegel not only sought to resolve this notorious difficulty, but that he did so in an effort to secure the beginning of his Logic against sceptical objection. As such, it powerfully demonstrates the relevance of Pyrrhonian scepticism to Hegel’s philosophical project. Other scholars, including notably Kenneth Westphal, Michael Forster, Klaus Vieweg and Ioannis Trisokkas, have made valuable contributions to this topic. Dunphy’s study, however, is the first book-length treatment of the topic to focus specifically on the way that Pyrrhonism influences Hegel’s approach to the problem of beginning in his Logic and the first to argue that Hegel’s engagement with Pyrrhonism is crucial for understanding the scientific status of that work. (shrink)

Some random processes, like a series of coin flips, can produce outcomes that seem particularly remarkable or striking. This paper explores an epistemic puzzle that arises when thinking about these outcomes and asking what, if anything, we can justifiably believe about them. The puzzle has no obvious solution, and any theory of epistemic justification will need to contend with it sooner or later. The puzzle proves especially useful for bringing out the differences between three prominent theories; the probabilist theory, the (...) normic theory and a theory recently defended by Goodman and Salow. (shrink)

This paper critically examines Coliva and Palmira’s characterization of the disagreement between Humean skeptics and hinge epistemologists as a distinctive kind of conceptual disagreement. Humean skepticism requires evidential justification for all rational beliefs, presenting a narrower conception of rationality. This contrasts with constitutivist hinge epistemology, which posits that our unwarranted hinge propositions — the basic certainties which makes the justifications for ordinary empirical propositions possible — are constitutive of the concept of epistemic rationality, thus they are also rationally accepted by (...) us. Coliva and Palmira (2020, 2021) argue that this divergence reflects a conceptual disagreement over the conception of epistemic rationality, implying a dispute about how the concept of epistemic rationality should be understood. Their strategy is two-fold: they first mentioned Stroud’s (2019) categorization of conceptual disagreement, but contended that the disagreement between Humean skeptics and hinge epistemologists represents a novel kind of conceptual disagreement that Stroud’s categorization cannot encompass. They suggest this new framing allows for a rational resolution of the disagreement; second, they argue that the extended conception of rationality is superior because it coherently accounts for the rationality of our epistemic practices. However, I contend that both parts of their two-fold strategy fail. Even if the disagreement is conceptual, it can be understood as a type of disagreement within Stroud’s categorization; therefore, it does not represent a novel type of disagreement. Additionally, I argue that they misinterpret the skeptic’s stance. Skeptics do not assume that our epistemic practices are rational; rather, they doubt the rationality of these practices and the possibility of knowledge. Therefore, for a skeptic, there is no advantage from a conceptual proposal that makes a coherent account of the alleged rationality of our epistemic practices. (shrink)

It is commonplace amongst epistemologists to note the importance of grasping or appreciating one’s evidence. The idea seems to be that agents cannot successfully utilize evidence without it. Despite the popularity of this claim, the nature of appreciating or grasping evidence is unclear. This paper develops an account of what it takes to appreciate the epistemic relevance of one’s evidence, such that it can be used for some specific conclusion. I propose a basing account on which appreciating evidence involves being (...) able to correctly base. That is, the agent is disposed to base various conclusions on her evidence that are objectively supported by that evidence. She can also derive correct conclusions if her evidence were slightly different. This account is cognitively undemanding, and explains why appreciation is crucial for the core functions of using evidence, like excluding hypotheses and probabilistic reasoning. I contrast this view with possible rival accounts and argue that the rival accounts add nothing over and above the basing account. (shrink)

Suspension of judgment is a ubiquitous phenomenon in our lives. It is also relevant for several debates in contemporary epistemology (e.g., evidentialism/pragmatism; peer-disagreement/higher-order evidence; inquiry). The goal of this paper is to arrive at a better understanding of what suspension of judgment is. We first question the popular assumption that we call the Triad view according to which there are three and only three (paradigmatic) doxastic attitudes, namely, belief, disbelief, and suspension of judgment. We elaborate a cumulative argument regarding crucial (...) differences between belief/disbelief and suspension and conclude tentatively that suspension is not a doxastic state. On the constructive side, we defend the positive thesis (with special attention to justification/rationality and reasons for suspension) that suspension is rather an affective phenomenon, viz. a sort of mood. Finally, we consider further consequences of our view for contemporary debates in epistemology, and how it relates to ancient skepticism. (shrink)

The article discusses the main ideas of Alvin Goldman’s process reliabilism and related epistemological theories. A conceptual distinction between epistemic reliability and veritic effectiveness is introduced as a more parsimonious alternative to traditional arguments against reliabilism. The main ideas of reliabilism are examined in light of the notion of veritic effectiveness.

Reflective equilibrium ("RE", for short) is a method of justification which works roughly as follows: We start with our pre-theoretical judgements (about, e.g. moral issues) and try to explain them by a systematic theory. This leads to a process in which judgements and principles are mutually adjusted to each other until a state of equilibrium is reached. For more than half a century, RE has been very popular, as well as controversial, among philosophers of many persuasions. Given how frequently the (...) method is mentioned, embraced and attacked, it is surprising that only very few attempts have been made at analysing and developing RE in detail. This topical collection brings together papers that develop RE on a conceptual level, analyse it using formal methods or investigate applications of RE. (shrink)

This article examines Christoph Kelp's project of epistemology, which combines the approaches of Timothy Williamson's knowledge-first approach and Ernest Sosa's virtue reliabilism. Arguments are given in favour of the position that Kelp's theory of competence is a quite productive and substantially self-contained epistemological concept. It allows to construct special epistemologies and to analyse the competence of non-human actors.

The presence of easily accessible yet unpossessed evidence seems to matter epistemically. In this chapter I offer an inquiry-theoretic explanation of this datum. I argue that agents in the target cases fail to be competent inquirers and gather the relevant easily accessible evidence. This offers a deflationary explanation of the initial datum. I then show how to inflate this explanation to vindicate the thought that unpossessed evidence has defeating power over the justificatory status of one’s beliefs. The inflationary explanation rests (...) on two main planks. First, the subject who believes that p in the target cases ought to have gathered the target piece of evidence that bears on p. Secondly, such a duty is incompatible with justifiedly believing p. Along the way, the chapter offers a framework for thinking about zetetic competence, comments on the existence of epistemic duties of inquiry, and discusses the relationship between such duties and traditional epistemic norms of belief. (shrink)

In this paper I investigate whether there are any cases in which it is rational for a person to hold inconsistent beliefs and, if there are, just what implications this might have for the theory of epistemic justification. A number of issues will crop up along the way – including the relation between justification and rationality, the nature of defeat, the possibility of epistemic dilemmas, the importance of positive epistemic duties, and the distinction between transitional and terminal attitudes.

There are two broad views in the epistemology of testimony, conservatism and liberalism. The two views disagree over a particular necessary condition on testimonial justification: the positive reasons requirement (PRR). Perhaps the most prominent objection levelled at liberalism from the conservative camp stems from gullibility; without PRR, the thought goes, an objectionable form of gullibility looms large for liberals. In this paper I aim to make two main contributions: to introduce a new metric for adjudicating this debate; and to argue (...) that, from the perspective of this new metric, the liberal view is stronger than has been appreciated. Drawing on work from James (The Will to believe and other essays in Popular Philosophy, Harvard University Press, 1896), Goldman (Epistemology and Cognition, Harvard University Press, 1986), and Kelp et al. (Synthese 197:5187–5202, 2020), I firstly countenance the distinction between positive and negative epistemic measures. Positive measures concern, roughly, the acquisition of truths, whereas negative measures concern the avoidance of falsehoods. Both, it is argued, are relevant to epistemic justification, but this debate has proceeded in such a way as to overemphasise the importance of the latter over the former. Once this distinction is made, new conceptual terrain opens for the liberal. Rather than being resigned to a predominantly defensive role—of mitigating worries about negative measures—the liberal can go on the offensive, and explore the independent epistemic strengths of their position. The upshot is that liberals have a new way to dispel their most prominent objection. (shrink)

Davidson was right when he said that the idea of truth as a goal or norm makes no sense — truth is not something we can aim for, and whenever we say that we aim for truth, what we are really aiming for is some kind of epistemic justification. Nevertheless, the notion of a concern for or with truth can be understood in (at least) three ways that do make sense: (1) it can refer to a philosophical concern with the (...) nature of truth, theories of truth, and related philosophical problems; (2) it can refer to a concern (or aim) for ‘strong’ justification; and (3) it can refer to an attitude or ideal of truth(fulness). Concern for epistemic justification can be found in the Chinese and Indian philosophical traditions as well, and is probably universal among philosophical and scientific traditions. Assessing the third sense of concern for truth is more complicated, but considering that a lack of desire for the truth of one’s theories and ideas seems anathema to science and philosophy, it seems likely that something like this concern is universal among philosophical and scientific traditions as well. Concern with truth in the most literal sense — that is, a philosophical concern with truth in its basic sense as captured in Tarski’s schema — appears to be rare, however, and may even be unique to the Western tradition. (shrink)

Let “phenomenal dogmatism” be the thesis that some experiences provide some beliefs with immediate prima facie justification, and do so purely in virtue of their phenomenal character. A basic question-mark looms over phenomenal dogmatism: Why should the fact that a person is visited by some phenomenal feel suggest the likely truth of a belief? In this paper, I press this challenge, arguing that perceptually justified beliefs are justified not purely by perceptual experiences’ phenomenology, but also because we have justified second-order (...) background beliefs to the effect that the occurrence of certain perceptual experiences is indicative of the likely truth of certain corresponding beliefs. To bring this out, I contrast “perceptual dogmatism” with “moral dogmatism”: the thesis that some emotional experiences provide some moral beliefs with immediate prima facie justification, and do so purely in virtue of their phenomenal character. I argue that moral dogmatism is much less antecedently appealing, precisely because the counterpart second-order beliefs here are much less plausible. (shrink)

I develop a broadly reliabilist theory of non‐ideal epistemic rationality and argue that if it is correct we should reject the recently popular idea that the standards of non‐ideal epistemic rationality are mere social conventions.

In the recent epistemological literature much has been written about the nature of suspending judgement or agnosticism. There has also been a surge of recent interest in the nature of ignorance. But what is the relationship between these two epistemically significant states? Prima facie, both suspension and ignorance seem to involve the lack of a correct answer to a question. And, again prima facie, there may be some intuitive attraction to the idea that when one is ignorant whether p, one (...) ought to suspend judgement whether p. In this paper we will explore a range of different possible normative connections between ignorance and suspension of judgement. We will also discuss how both ignorance and suspension are related to having inconclusive evidence. As we will see, the issues can become quite complex due to the fact that there are different, competing views about the nature of ignorance and also about the nature of suspension. Moreover, there are importantly different kinds of epistemic norms. Our overall aim then will be to systematically chart how these different choices will impact the possible normative connections between ignorance and suspension. (shrink)

It is a well-worn platitude that knowledge excludes luck. According to anti-luck virtue epistemology, making good on the anti-luck platitude requires an explicit anti-luck condition along the lines of safety: S knows that p only if S’s true belief that p could not have easily been mistaken. This paper offers an independent, virtue epistemological argument against the claim that safety is a necessary condition on knowledge, one that adequately captures the anti-luck platitude. The argument proceeds by way of analogy. I (...) focus on two paradigmatic kinds of normative achievements that also exclude luck: (i) – having a doxastically justified belief, and (ii) – performing a morally worthy action. I then show that while (i) and (ii) exclude luck, they are nevertheless susceptible to what I call ‘modal luck’. I then move on to show that knowledge, or at least some instance of knowledge, is a normative achievement, which I claim provides strong reasons to expect that knowledge is also susceptible to modal luck. Since safety entails that knowledge is incompatible with modal luck, the argument provides strong reasons to reject safety as a necessary condition on knowledge. (shrink)

Evidentialism is one of the most sensible claims of recent philosophy. Yet it is often joined with other theses about the structure of justification and the nature of experience that are dubious. In this paper, I argue that experience is not a basic source of evidence. I contend that for an experience to justify a belief, it must be independently plausible that the experience is reliable based on background information. The paper develops an account of plausibility and examines cases, including (...) differences in expertise, clairvoyance, and social perceptions, to illustrate how background knowledge is necessary for the justification of experiential beliefs. I consider challenges from Bergmann's distinction between learned and unlearned doxastic responses and Lyons's inferential reliabilism. I conclude that these challenges do not succeed; perceptual evidence requires a broader perspective that supports the reliability of the experiential evidence. (shrink)

While growing empirical evidence suggests a continuity between human and non-human psychology, many philosophers still think that only humans can act and form beliefs rationally. In this paper, we challenge this claim. We first clarify the notion of rationality. We then focus on the rationality of beliefs and argue that, in the relevant sense, humans are not the only rational animals. We do so by first distinguishing between unreflective and reflective responsiveness to epistemic reasons in belief formation and revision. We (...) argue that unreflective responsiveness is clearly within the reach of many animals. We then defend that a key demonstration of reflective responsiveness would be the ability to respond to undermining defeaters. We end by presenting some empirical evidence that suggests that some animal species are capable of processing these defeaters, which would entail that even by the strictest standards, humans are not the only rational animals. (shrink)

The present article examines two important challenges raised by Steup for explanationist accounts of evidential fit. The first challenge targets the notion of available explanation which is key to any explanationist account of evidential fit. According to Steup, any plausible construal of the notion of available explanation already presupposes the notion of evidential fit. In response to that challenge, an alternative conception of what it takes for an explanation to be available to a subject is offered and shown to be (...) able to shed better light on the specific role played by that notion in explanationist accounts of evidential fit. The second challenge relies on the claim that the explanatory goodness of competing explanations is determined by their evidential fit, rather than the other way around. In response to that challenge, it is argued that explanationists can concede that the relative explanatory goodness of an explanation is in part dependent on that explanation’s likeliness on the overall evidence possessed by the subject without thereby conceding that Explanationism about justification is circular. (shrink)

Recent experimental epistemology has devoted increasing attention to folk attributions of epistemic justification. Empirical studies have tested whether lay people ascribe epistemic justification in specific lottery-style vignettes (Friedman and Turri 2014, Turri and Friedman 2015, Ebert et al. 2018) and also to more ordinary beliefs (Nolte et al. 2021). In this paper, I highlight three crucial but hitherto uncritically accepted assumptions of these studies, and I argue that they are untenable. Central to my criticism is the observation that epistemic justification (...) is a philosophical term of art mostly foreign to lay people: as such, it is not suitable for direct empirical testing without being previously introduced. This point reveals a folk conceptual gap between the subject matter of these experimental studies and the conceptual repertoire we can reasonably expect lay people to possess. I elaborate on this worry, and I end on a cautiously optimistic note: after suggesting better strategies to survey folk attributions of epistemic justification, I conclude that the challenge raised by the folk conceptual gap remains difficult but can in principle be addressed. (shrink)

The method of reflective equilibrium (MRE) is a method of justification popularized by John Rawls and further developed by Norman Daniels, Michael DePaul, Folke Tersman, and Catherine Z. Elgin, among others. The basic idea is that epistemic agents have justified beliefs if they have succeeded in forming their beliefs into a harmonious system of beliefs which they reflectively judge to be the most plausible. Despite the common reference to MRE as a method, its mechanisms or rules are typically expressed in (...) a metaphorical or simplified manner and are therefore criticized as too vague. Recent efforts to counter this criticism have been directed towards the attempt to provide formal explications of MRE. This paper aims to supplement these efforts by providing an informal working definition of MRE. This approach challenges the view that MRE can adequately be characterized only in the negative as a set of anti-essentialisms. I argue that epistemic agents follow MRE iff they follow four interconnected rules, which are concerned with a minimalistic form of foundationalism, a minimalistic form of fallibilism, a moderate form of holism, and a minimalistic form of rationality. In the critical spirit of MRE, the corresponding working definition is, of course, provisional and revisable. In general, the aim is to contribute to a reflective equilibrium (RE) concerning MRE. If it is successful, this working definition provides a better grasp of the most basic elements of the method and thereby enhances our understanding of it. (shrink)

Robust metanormative realists think that there are irreducibly normative, metaphysically heavy normative facts. One might wonder how we could be epistemically justified in believing that such facts exist. In this paper, I offer an answer to this question: one’s belief in the existence of robustly real normative facts is epistemically justified because so believing is indispensable to being a successful inquirer for creatures like us. The argument builds on Enoch's (2007, 2011) deliberative indispensability argument for Robust Realism but avoids relying (...) on an overly pragmatic account of the sources of basic epistemic justification. Instead, I suggest that the sources of basic epistemic justification are those belief-forming methods which are indispensable for zetetically indispensable projects, that is, projects which are constitutive of being a successful inquirer for embodied, agential creatures like ourselves. (shrink)

One of the central questions in the epistemology of conversational AIs is how to classify the beliefs acquired from them. Two promising candidates are instrument-based and testimony-based beliefs. However, the category of instrument-based beliefs faces an intrinsic problem, and a challenge arises in its application. On the other hand, relying solely on the category of testimony-based beliefs does not encompass the totality of our practice of using conversational AIs. To address these limitations, I propose a novel classification of beliefs that (...) shifts the focus from the properties of the conversational AIs themselves to how recipients perceive AI output, specifically whether they take the output at face value. The proposed categories are beliefs by regarding as instruments and beliefs by regarding as testifiers. By using these complementary categories, a more comprehensive understanding of beliefs acquired from conversational AIs can be achieved while avoiding the problems associated with the traditional classification. (shrink)

Traditionally, philosophers have been skeptical that the imagination can justify beliefs about the actual world. After all, how could merely imagining something give you any reason to believe that it is true? However, within the past decade or so, a lively debate has emerged over whether the imagination can justify empirical belief and, if so, how. This paper provides a critical overview of the recent literature on the epistemology of imagination and points to avenues for future research.

Within collective epistemology, there is a class of theories that understand the epistemic status of collective attitude ascriptions, such as ‘the college union knows that the industrial action is going to plan’, or ‘the jury justifiedly believes that the suspect is guilty’, as saying that a sufficient subset of group member attitudes have the relevant epistemic status. In this paper, I will demonstrate that these summativist approaches to collective epistemology are incompatible with epistemic permissivism, the doctrine that a single body (...) of evidence may rationalize multiple doxastic attitudes. In particular, I will make use of epistemic permissivism to provide a general recipe for generating so-called divergence cases, which demonstrate situations in which rationality requires group-level and member-level attitudes to diverge. I will call this class of cases permissive divergence cases. While other divergence cases have been discussed in the literature, permissive divergence cases prove themselves to be less susceptible to many of the worries raised against their competitors, while being directly built on an often-defended epistemological thesis. (shrink)

In what follows, I’ll discuss several approaches to suspension. As we’ll see, the issue of whether and in what sense(s) suspension is *question-directed* is important to developing an adequate account. I will argue that suspension isn’t question-directed in the way that curiosity, wondering, and inquiry are. The most promising approach, in my view, takes suspension to be an agential matter; it involves the will. As we’ll see, this view makes sense of a lot of familiar facts about suspension, and it (...) makes sense of its role in curating beliefs. It also raises intriguing questions about how it comes up for epistemic assessment. (shrink)