scholarly journals Virtue Perspectivism, Normativity, and the Unity of Knowledge

Daímon ◽  
2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Modesto Gómez Alonso
Keyword(s):  
Epistemic Rationality ◽  
Epistemic Value ◽  
Epistemic Status ◽  
Personal Agency ◽  
Binding Problem ◽  
Unity Of Knowledge ◽  
Epistemic Perspective

It will be argued that personal agency, far from lacking epistemic value, contributes to knowledge in a substantial way. To this end, it will be claimed that what Sosa calls an epistemic perspective is necessary to solve the binding problem in epistemology at the three junctures at which it can occur: as the Pyrrhonian question of whether one can rationally endorse one’s epistemic rationality; as the problem of the epistemic status of guessing; and as the enquiry into the contribution of the agential perspective for evading coincidental luck. Our aim has been that of elucidating and expanding Sosa’s virtue perspectivism.

The Truth Fairy and the Indirect Epistemic Consequentialist

2020 ◽  
pp. 344-360
Author(s):  
Daniel Y. Elstein ◽  
C.S.I. Jenkins
Keyword(s):  
Epistemic Rationality ◽  
Epistemic Value ◽  
Epistemic Consequentialism

Friends of Wright-entitlement cannot appeal to direct epistemic consequentialism (believe or accept what maximizes expected epistemic value) in order to account for the epistemic rationality of accepting Wright-entitled propositions. The tenability of direct consequentialism is undermined by the “Truth Fairy”: a powerful being who offers you great epistemic reward (in terms of true beliefs) if you accept a proposition p for which you have evidence neither for nor against. However, this chapter argues that a form of indirect epistemic consequentialism seems promising as a way to deal with the Truth Fairy problem. The relevant form of indirect consequentialism accommodates evidentialism but allows for exceptions in the case of anti-sceptical hypotheses. Since these are the kind of propositions to which Wright-entitlement is supposed to apply—i.e. cornerstone propositions—indirect consequentialism is entitlement-friendly.

scholarly journals Accuracy and epistemic conservatism

Analysis ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 79 (4) ◽  
pp. 658-669 ◽  
Author(s):  
Florian Steinberger
Keyword(s):  
Utility Theory ◽  
True Belief ◽  
Epistemic Rationality ◽  
Epistemic Value ◽  
Methodological Principle ◽  
Epistemic Risk ◽  
Epistemic Utility ◽  
Epistemic Conservatism

Abstract Epistemic utility theory (EUT) is generally coupled with veritism. Veritism is the view that truth is the sole fundamental epistemic value. Veritism, when paired with EUT, entails a methodological commitment: norms of epistemic rationality are justified only if they can be derived from considerations of accuracy alone. According to EUT, then, believing truly has epistemic value, while believing falsely has epistemic disvalue. This raises the question as to how the rational believer should balance the prospect of true belief against the risk of error. A strong intuitive case can be made for a kind of epistemic conservatism – that we should disvalue error more than we value true belief. I argue that none of the ways in which advocates of veritist EUT have sought to motivate conservatism can be squared with their methodological commitments. Short of any such justification, they must therefore either abandon their most central methodological principle or else adopt a permissive line with respect to epistemic risk.

scholarly journals Two Shapes of Pragmatism

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Léna Mudry
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Epistemic Rationality ◽  
Practical Reasons ◽  
Epistemic Status ◽  
Ethics Of Belief ◽  
Pragmatic Encroachment ◽  
The Ethics Of Belief

Abstract The ethics of belief is concerned with the question of what we should believe. According to evidentialism, what one should believe is determined by evidence only. Pragmatism claims that practical considerations too can be relevant. But pragmatism comes in two shapes. According to a more traditional version, practical considerations can provide practical reasons for or against belief. According to a new brand of pragmatism, pragmatic encroachment, practical considerations can affect positive epistemic status, such as epistemic rationality or knowledge. In the literature, the distinction between the two versions of pragmatism is not always made. If it is mentioned, it is quickly put aside. Sometimes, it is simply overlooked. As evidentialists face two distinct pragmatist challenges, they must get clearer on the distinction. But it matters for pragmatists too. As I see it, if one accepts one version of pragmatism, one should reject the other. This paper’s goals are to get clearer on the distinction and argue that both pragmatisms are independent. Accepting one version does not commit one to accept the other. Moreover, even if both pragmatisms tend to be neutral toward one another, I will argue that traditional pragmatism has good reasons to reject pragmatic encroachment and vice versa.

scholarly journals Moral Obligation and Epistemic Risk

2020 ◽  
pp. 81-105
Author(s):  
Zoë Johnson King ◽  
Boris Babic
Keyword(s):  
Social Group ◽  
Moral Obligation ◽  
Statistical Information ◽  
Epistemic Rationality ◽  
Epistemic Status ◽  
Epistemic Risk ◽  
Political Costs ◽  
Epistemic States ◽  
Predictive Inferences ◽  
Apparent Conflict

This chapter concerns pernicious predictive inferences: taking someone to be likely to possess a socially disvalued trait based on statistical information about the prevalence of that trait within a social group to which she belongs. Some scholars have argued that pernicious predictive inferences are morally prohibited, but are sometimes epistemically required, leaving us with a tragic conflict between the requirements of epistemic rationality and those of morality. Others have responded by arguing that pernicious predictive inferences are sometimes epistemically prohibited. The present chapter takes a different approach, considering the sort of reluctance to draw pernicious predictive inferences that seems morally praiseworthy and vindicating its epistemic status. We argue that, even on a simple, orthodox Bayesian picture of the requirements of epistemic rationality, agents must consider the costs of error—including the associated moral and political costs—when forming and revising their credences. Our attitudes toward the costs of error determine how “risky” different credences are for us, and our epistemic states are justified in part by our attitudes toward epistemic risk. Thus, reluctance to draw pernicious predictive inferences need not be epistemically irrational, and the apparent conflict between morality and epistemic rationality is typically illusory.

Approximating Ideal Rationality with Multiple Norms

2019 ◽  
pp. 95-126
Author(s):  
Julia Staffel
Keyword(s):  
Epistemic Rationality ◽  
Epistemic Value ◽  
Epistemic Norms ◽  
Principal Principle ◽  
Epistemic Values ◽  
Epistemic States

Chapter 6 considers views on which being ideally rational requires more than just being coherent. While extreme subjective Bayesians think that the coherence norm is the only requirement of epistemic rationality, more moderate proponents defend further requirements, such as versions of the Indifference Principle or the Principal Principle. This raises the question of how we can measure approximations to rationality, when being ideally rational requires thinkers to comply with multiple different epistemic norms. Different approaches to justifying norms of rationality are distinguished by whether they assume that there is a single epistemic value or good that explains the various requirements of rationality, or whether there are multiple epistemic values or goods that have to be aggregated somehow in evaluating the rationality of epistemic states. Each view of how epistemic values give rise to norms of rationality is then paired with a suitable strategy for measuring approximations to ideal rationality.

The Epistemic Innocence Project

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Lisa Bortolotti
Keyword(s):  
Irrational Beliefs ◽  
Epistemic Rationality ◽  
Epistemic Status ◽  
Innocence Project ◽  
New Framework ◽  
Epistemic Innocence ◽  
Conceptual Resources

Human agents do not simply survive but navigate their world quite successfully despite being inclined to adopt and hang onto irrational beliefs. In this introductory chapter, the author justifies the new framework of epistemic innocence as an attempt to make sense of the idea that our undesirable and at times cringeworthy irrationality may be instrumental to succeed as imperfect agents. The challenge is to create the conceptual resources for evaluating the epistemic status of beliefs that violate standards of truth, accuracy, and epistemic rationality but play an important role in supporting epistemic functionality. The notions of epistemic irrationality, epistemic functionality, and epistemic innocence are introduced and the methodological assumptions guiding the discussion in the subsequent chapters are explained.

Pluralist Consequentialist Anti-Scepticism

2020 ◽  
pp. 297-326
Author(s):  
Nikolaj J. L. L. Pedersen
Keyword(s):  
External World ◽  
Epistemic Rationality ◽  
Epistemic Value ◽  
Crispin Wright ◽  
Absence Of Evidence ◽  
Brain In A Vat

How could it be warranted and rational to accept anti-sceptical hypotheses (I’m not a brain in a vat, There is an external world, etc.) in the absence of evidence supporting such propositions? Crispin Wright has introduced entitlement of cognitive project—a non-evidential species of warrant—as a response to the sceptic. Critics (Pritchard and Jenkins) have argued that Wright-style entitlement is not an epistemic kind of warrant and does not sustain epistemic rationality. This chapter develops a consequentialist alternative to Wright’s proposal. Acceptance of anti-sceptical hypotheses is epistemically warranted and rational because it maximizes epistemic value. This is argued within an axiological framework that incorporates pluralism about epistemic value or goods. Truth is not the only epistemic good—contra veritic monism, the most widely held view about epistemic value. Furthermore, the chapter argues that the success of the consequentialist approach eliminates the need for Wright-style entitlement.

scholarly journals Group epistemic value

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Dunn
Keyword(s):  
Peer Review ◽  
Social Epistemology ◽  
School Curriculum ◽  
Social World ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Epistemic Value ◽  
Aggregate Level ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
Epistemic Perspective ◽  
Oxford University Press

AbstractSometimes we are interested in how groups are doing epistemically in aggregate. For instance, we may want to know the epistemic impact of a change in school curriculum or the epistemic impact of abolishing peer review in the sciences. Being able to say something about how groups are doing epistemically is especially important if one is interested in pursuing a consequentialist approach to social epistemology of the sort championed by Goldman (Knowledge in a social world. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1999). According to this approach we evaluate social practices and institutions from an epistemic perspective based on how well they promote the aggregate level of epistemic value across a community. The aim of this paper is to investigate this concept of group epistemic value and defend a particular way of measuring it.

Personal agency disavowed: Identity construction in asexual women of color.

2019 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 127-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aasha B. Foster ◽  
Austin Eklund ◽  
Melanie E. Brewster ◽  
Amelia D. Walker ◽  
Emma Candon
Keyword(s):  
Identity Construction ◽  
Women Of Color ◽  
Personal Agency
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