Interpersonal Epistemic Entitlements

This chapter argues that the nature of our epistemic entitlement to rely on certain belief-forming processes—perception, memory, reasoning, and perhaps others—is not restricted to one’s own belief-forming processes. It argues as well that we can have access to the outputs of others’ processes, in the form of their assertions. These two points support the conclusion that epistemic entitlements are “interpersonal.” It then proceeds to argue that this opens the way for a non-standard version of anti-reductionism in the epistemology of testimony, and a more “extended” epistemology—one that calls into question the epistemic significance that has traditionally been ascribed to the boundaries separating individual subjects.

Epistemic austerity: limits to entitlement

Epistemic entitlement is a species of internalist warrant that can be had without any evidential support. Unfortunately, for this kind of warrant the so-called problem of demarcation arises, a form of epistemic relativism. I first present entitlement theory and examine what the problem of demarcation is exactly, rejecting that it is either based on bizarreness or disagreement in favour of the thesis that the problem of demarcation is based on epistemic arbitrariness. Second, I argue that arbitrariness generates a problem for entitlement because it undermines epistemic warrant. Third, I draw out some of the consequences that arbitrariness has for an entitlement epistemology, notably that it threatens to generalise to all our beliefs. Finally, I examine how different solutions to the problem of demarcation fare with respect to the danger of arbitrariness. I argue that none of the considered options succeeds in dealing with the risks of arbitrariness.

Epistemic Entitlement—Its Scope and Limits

This chapter explores the nature of epistemic entitlement and its role in epistemology in relation to the epistemic internalism-externalism dispute. I argue for epistemic pluralism according to which the genus of epistemic rationality, warrant, harbors two distinct species: an internalist one, justification, and an externalist one, entitlement. On this basis, I advance a new criterion for drawing the distinction between justification and entitlement: The Reason Criterion: entitlements are warrants that do not involve the exercise of the faculty of Reason.

Epistemic Entitlement

This volume collects new work on epistemic entitlement partly motivated by Tyler Burge’s and Crispin Wright’s seemingly identical distinctions between two forms of warrant: entitlement and justification. But despite nomenclature, Burge and Wright are engaged in different projects. Recognizing that we cannot provide a non-question begging evidential reply to the sceptic, Wright seeks an a priori, non-evidential, rational right to accept and claim to know cornerstone propositions. He calls these rights epistemic entitlements. Epistemic justifications are evidential warrants, contributors to knowledge. Tyler Burge does not engage the sceptic. Instead, he assumes knowledge and investigates its structure. Burge’s two core notions are warrant and reasons. Warrants are exercises of belief-forming competences that are good routes to truth and knowledge. A reason is a proposition with a mode that contributes to an explanation of the belief-worthiness of a belief for the individual. A justification is a warrant with reasons. An entitlement is a warrant without reasons. The volume begins with a substantial chapter by Burge. Burge discusses the functional structure of epistemic norms, the case against internalism, clairvoyance and demon world cases, Moore’s anti-sceptical argument, so-called “easy-knowledge”, and Bayesianism in perceptual psychology and objections from Bayesianism to moderate foundationalism. The other chapters by leading figures in epistemology further advance our understanding and possibility of both forms of epistemic entitlement and related topics central to ongoing research in epistemology.

PERCEPTION, HISTORY AND BENEFIT

In recent literature, several authors attempt to naturalize epistemic normativity by employing an etiological account of functions. The thought is that epistemic entitlement consists in the normal functioning of our belief-acquisition systems, where the latter acquire the function to reliably deliver true beliefs through a history of biological benefit.This paper's aim is twofold. First, it puts pressure on the main proper functionalist claim; it is argued that a history of positive biological feedback is neither necessary nor sufficient for epistemic justification. Second, I suggest that this problem is sourced in a defect of application of functionalist accounts to epistemic normativity, and I offer a fix.