Intuitionism in Meta-Epistemology

This paper is a response to a paper by Alston which attempts to bring out similarities between views in meta-ethics and views in meta-epistemology. Alston contrasts naturalist (generally causal) epistemology with normative epistemology; but there is a further, more revealing contrast concerning the number of basic epistemological principles. Naturalism is a causal form of one-principle theory, but an analogy with ethical intuitionism should allow many coordinate epistemological principles of justification. So the question at issue is the number of ethical, or epistemological, principles. If there are many ethical principles, the question is how they are known. The merits of a Ross-style epistemology with many coordinate principles are stressed, though Ross maintained that moral principles are epistemically useless. Pursuing that line, the possibility of an epistemological particularism emerges. The paper ends with a discussion of the relation between resultance and supervenience

Epistemology without guidance

Epistemologists often appeal to the idea that a normative theory must provide useful, usable, guidance to argue for one normative epistemology over another. I argue that this is a mistake. Guidance considerations have no role to play in theory choice in epistemology. I show how this has implications for debates about the possibility and scope of epistemic dilemmas, the legitimacy of idealisation in Bayesian epistemology, uniqueness versus permissivism, sharp versus mushy credences, and internalism versus externalism.

Normative Epistemology for Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems

The rise of human-information systems, cybernetic systems, and increasingly autonomous systems requires the application of epistemic frameworks to machines and human-machine teams. This chapter discusses higher-order design principles to guide the design, evaluation, deployment, and iteration of Lethal Autonomous Weapons Systems (LAWS) based on epistemic models. Epistemology is the study of knowledge. Epistemic models consider the role of accuracy, likelihoods, beliefs, competencies, capabilities, context, and luck in the justification of actions and the attribution of knowledge. The aim is not to provide ethical justification for or against LAWS, but to illustrate how epistemological frameworks can be used in conjunction with moral apparatus to guide the design and deployment of future systems. The models discussed in this chapter aim to make Article 36 reviews of LAWS systematic, expedient, and evaluable. A Bayesian virtue epistemology is proposed to enable justified actions under uncertainty that meet the requirements of the Laws of Armed Conflict and International Humanitarian Law. Epistemic concepts can provide some of the apparatus to meet explainability and transparency requirements in the development, evaluation, deployment, and review of ethical AI.

Radical Externalism

This article presents a novel challenge to epistemic internalism. The challenge rests on a set of cases which feature subjects forming beliefs under conditions of “bad ideology”—that is, conditions in which pervasively false beliefs have the function of sustaining, and are sustained by, systems of social oppression. In such cases, the article suggests, the externalistic view that justification is in part a matter of worldly relations, rather than the internalistic view that justification is solely a matter of how things stand from the agent’s individual perspective, becomes the more intuitively attractive theory. But these “bad ideology” cases do not merely yield intuitive verdicts that favor externalism over internalism. These cases are, moreover, analogous to precisely those canonical cases widely taken to be counterexamples to externalism: cases featuring brains-in-vats, clairvoyants, and dogmatists. That is, such “bad ideology” cases are, in all relevant respects, just like cases that are thought to count against externalism—except that they intuitively favor externalism. This, the author argues, is a serious worry for internalism. What is more, it bears on the debate over whether externalism is a genuinely “normative” epistemology.

Naturalizing epistemology : reconsidering quine and nietzsche

[ACCESS RESTRICTED TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MISSOURI AT REQUEST OF AUTHOR.] This dissertation argues for ways to construct a more viable normative epistemology--the part of epistemology that focuses on normative notions such as rationality, justification, evidence, and reasons--for a branch of naturalism called replacement naturalism. The replacement naturalist, in contrast to other types of naturalists, rejects a priori methods and wants to replace those methods with a posteriori methods. Critics of replacement naturalism have questioned the plausibility of providing a normative epistemology account based solely on empirical methods. Most contemporary replacement naturalist theories fail to adequately respond to common critiques about their viability, because their normative epistemologies lack coherence and substance. I argue that we can find insights on how to better respond to these basic viability concerns by looking back to Quine and Nietzsche. In this regard, I offer a new interpretation of Quine's naturalized epistemology and his turn to psychology--one that reduces concerns about coherence, but still affirms he was not abandoning normative epistemology. I also offer a new interpretation of Nietzsche's normative theory--which focuses on his central project of the reevaluation of all values. Reconsidering Quine's turn to psychology and Nietzsche's reevaluation of values can help replacement naturalists respond to the incoherence and substantiality objections against their normative epistemology accounts.

Grading Modal Judgement

This paper proposes a new model of graded modal judgement. It begins by problematizing the phenomenon: given plausible constraints on the logic of epistemic modality, it is impossible to model graded attitudes toward modal claims as judgements of probability targeting epistemically modal propositions. This paper considers two alternative models, on which modal operators are non-proposition-forming: (1) Moss (2015), in which graded attitudes toward modal claims are represented as judgements of probability targeting a ‘proxy’ proposition, belief in which would underwrite belief in the modal claim; (2) a model on which graded attitudes toward modal claims are represented as judgements of credence taking as their objects (non-propositional) modal representations (rather than proxy propositions). The second model, like Moss’s model, is shown to be semantically and mathematically tractable. The second model, however, can be straightforwardly integrated into a plausible model of the role of graded attitudes toward modal claims in cognition and normative epistemology.

Greek and Roman Logic

In ancient philosophy, there is no discipline called “logic” in the contemporary sense of “the study of formally valid arguments.” Rather, once a subfield of philosophy comes to be called “logic,” namely in Hellenistic philosophy, the field includes (among other things) epistemology, normative epistemology, philosophy of language, the theory of truth, and what we call logic today. This entry aims to examine ancient theorizing that makes contact with the contemporary conception. Thus, we will here emphasize the theories of the “syllogism” in the Aristotelian and Stoic traditions. However, because the context in which these theories were developed and discussed were deeply epistemological in nature, we will also include references to the areas of epistemological theorizing that bear directly on theories of the syllogism, particularly concerning “demonstration.” Similarly, we will include literature that discusses the principles governing logic and the components that make up arguments, which are topics that might now fall under the headings of philosophy of logic or non-classical logic. This includes discussions of problems and paradoxes that connect to contemporary logic and which historically spurred developments of logical method. For example, there is great interest among ancient philosophers in the question of whether all statements have truth-values. Relevant themes here include future contingents, paradoxes of vagueness, and semantic paradoxes like the liar. We also include discussion of the paradoxes of the infinite for similar reasons, since solutions have introduced sophisticated tools of logical analysis and there are a range of related, modern philosophical concerns about the application of some logical principles in infinite domains. Our criterion excludes, however, many of the themes that Hellenistic philosophers consider part of logic, in particular, it excludes epistemology and metaphysical questions about truth. Ancient philosophers do not write treatises “On Logic,” where the topic would be what today counts as logic. Instead, arguments and theories that count as “logic” by our criterion are found in a wide range of texts. For the most part, our entry follows chronology, tracing ancient logic from its beginnings to Late Antiquity. However, some themes are discussed in several eras of ancient logic; ancient logicians engage closely with each other’s views. Accordingly, relevant publications address several authors and periods in conjunction. These contributions are listed in three thematic sections at the end of our entry.

Passing the Epistemic Buck

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

Normative epistemology

There are three kinds of normative work in epistemology. The first is the provision of epistemic advice, which offers guidance towards improving the cognitive condition of an individual or community. This advice often concerns science. Philosophers in the tradition of Francis Bacon have sought to identify and advocate proper forms of scientific research and explanation. More generally, according to some philosophers, a principal epistemological task is that of finding and recommending ways to improve the whole range of our individual and collective cognitive activities. A second kind of epistemology is classified as normative because evaluative concepts figure in explanations. For example, A.J. Ayer explains knowledge partly in terms of having a right to be sure. Other evaluative notions enter into work in this category, such as intellectual duties, responsibilities and virtues. Some of these are specifically ethical notions; some are non-ethical evaluative notions such as proper cognitive functioning and intellectual excellence. Epistemic concepts such as justification and rationality appear to be normative, or at least evaluative, in a way that contrasts with purely desciptive concepts. One tendency in naturalistic epistemology is to seek either to explain away this appearance or to reconcile it with a scientific worldview. Non-naturalistic efforts in epistemology commonly find no reason to undertake this project, and are consequently often counted as normative. Most historical epistemology is normative by this standard.