Epistemic Dilemmas: New Arguments, New Angles (eds. K. McCain, S. Stapleford, M. Steup), Routledge, 2021
This paper focuses on a specific kind of (epistemic) normative conflict, collateral normative con... more This paper focuses on a specific kind of (epistemic) normative conflict, collateral normative conflict-viz., where cognition's working badly at the global level of general dispositions to believe is the price to be paid for its working well locally. I argue that such normative conflicts are much rarer than Williamson (2021) and Lasonen-Aarnio (2010) take them to be, even though, and contra proponents of revisionary defeat (e.g., Brown 2018), knowers can, as Williamson and Lasonen-Aarnio rightly maintain, at least sometimes disregard misleading evidence from reliable sources. My rationale for the rarity of collateral epistemic conflicts draws from recent insights by Sosa (2021) on the appropriateness of aiming, in certain domains of inquiry, not just at knowledge, but at knowledge firsthand. A consequence of the rationale offered, however, is that an entirely different kind of normative conflict-what I call cross-modal normative conflict-turns out to be much more common than appreciated.
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Books by J. Adam Carter
Available to order September 2017: http://www.rowmaninternational.com/buy-books/product-details/?productId=3-156-796db39d-91b6-499e-ba0c-d487d0bb06bb
Knowledge-First: A background
“Knowledge-First” constitutes what is widely regarded as the most significant innovation in contemporary epistemology in the past twenty-five years. Knowledge-first epistemology is (in short) the idea that knowledge per se is an epistemic kind with theoretical importance that is not derivative from its relationship to other epistemic kinds such as rationality. Knowledge-first epistemology is rightly associated with Timothy Williamson in light of his influential book, Knowledge and Its Limits (KAIL). In KAIL, Williamson suggests that although knowing might be characterised as a very general kind of factive mental state, meeting the conditions for knowing is not constitutively explained by meeting the conditions for anything else, e.g. justified true belief. Accordingly, knowledge is conceptually and metaphysically prior to other cognitive and epistemic kinds. In this way, the concept KNOW is a theoretical primitive. The status of KNOW as a theoretical primitive makes it particularly suitable for using it to make substantive constitutive and causal explanations of a number of other phenomena, including the nature of belief, the nature of evidence, and the success of intentional actions.
Ways of Extending Knowledge-First
One of the principal virtues of the knowledge-first approach in epistemology is the way that it connects epistemology to other areas in philosophy. This virtue explains in part some of the wide-ranging impact the knowledge-first approach has had over the past decade or so, and it is a virtue that our proposed volume shares. Specifically, the volume will explore not merely the knowledge-first approach in epistemology, but also its ramifications for a variety of areas in philosophy, including the philosophy of mind and cognitive science, the philosophy of action, and value theory. For this reason, we think that the theme of the volume is well chosen. It is focused enough so that intellectual exchange between researchers will be productive. However, it is focused on a topic that is amenable to research in a variety of different areas in philosophy.
Papers by J. Adam Carter
Unsurprisingly, responses to the peer disagreement question have fallen into two broadly opposing categories: those who think that discovering that an epistemic peer disagrees with you rationality requires you to some substantial kind of conciliation —perhaps even agnosticism —and those who think that it does not. Interestingly, the past ten years or so have shown that--in the close orbit of the peer disagreement question--are a range of related and interesting epistemological questions, questions that are perhaps just as epistemologically as well as practically significant.
Just consider that the peer disagreement question is individualistically framed. It is a question about what rationality requires of an individual when they disagree with another individual about some contested proposition. Gaining an answer tells us, at most, and in short, what individuals should do in the face of epistemic adversity. But we also want to know what groups should do in the face of epistemic adversity. For example: what should a group---say, a scientific committee--do if it turns out that one of the members on the committee holds a view that runs contrary to the consensus? It would be convenient if answering questions about how individuals should respond to epistemic adversity implied answers to the interesting questions about how groups should do the same. Unfortunately, though, things are not so simple. This is because, to a first approximation, the epistemic properties of groups are not, as recent collective epistemology has suggested, always simply reducible to an aggregation of the epistemic properties of its members. If we want to understand what groups should do, rationally speaking, when there is internal disagreement among members, or when there is disagreement between a group and individuals or groups external to the group, we cannot and should not expect to find the answers we need simply by looking to the results social epistemology has given us to questions individualistically framed.The topic of this volume---the epistemology of group disagreement---aims to face the complex topic of group disagreement head on; it represents the first-ever volume of papers dedicated exclusively to group disagreement and to the epistemological puzzles such disagreements raise. The volume consists of twelve new essays by leading epistemologists working in the area, and it spans a range of different key themes related to group disagreement, some established themes and others entirely new. In what follows, we offer brief summaries of these twelve chapters, drawing some connections between them where appropriate.
Available to order September 2017: http://www.rowmaninternational.com/buy-books/product-details/?productId=3-156-796db39d-91b6-499e-ba0c-d487d0bb06bb
Knowledge-First: A background
“Knowledge-First” constitutes what is widely regarded as the most significant innovation in contemporary epistemology in the past twenty-five years. Knowledge-first epistemology is (in short) the idea that knowledge per se is an epistemic kind with theoretical importance that is not derivative from its relationship to other epistemic kinds such as rationality. Knowledge-first epistemology is rightly associated with Timothy Williamson in light of his influential book, Knowledge and Its Limits (KAIL). In KAIL, Williamson suggests that although knowing might be characterised as a very general kind of factive mental state, meeting the conditions for knowing is not constitutively explained by meeting the conditions for anything else, e.g. justified true belief. Accordingly, knowledge is conceptually and metaphysically prior to other cognitive and epistemic kinds. In this way, the concept KNOW is a theoretical primitive. The status of KNOW as a theoretical primitive makes it particularly suitable for using it to make substantive constitutive and causal explanations of a number of other phenomena, including the nature of belief, the nature of evidence, and the success of intentional actions.
Ways of Extending Knowledge-First
One of the principal virtues of the knowledge-first approach in epistemology is the way that it connects epistemology to other areas in philosophy. This virtue explains in part some of the wide-ranging impact the knowledge-first approach has had over the past decade or so, and it is a virtue that our proposed volume shares. Specifically, the volume will explore not merely the knowledge-first approach in epistemology, but also its ramifications for a variety of areas in philosophy, including the philosophy of mind and cognitive science, the philosophy of action, and value theory. For this reason, we think that the theme of the volume is well chosen. It is focused enough so that intellectual exchange between researchers will be productive. However, it is focused on a topic that is amenable to research in a variety of different areas in philosophy.
Unsurprisingly, responses to the peer disagreement question have fallen into two broadly opposing categories: those who think that discovering that an epistemic peer disagrees with you rationality requires you to some substantial kind of conciliation —perhaps even agnosticism —and those who think that it does not. Interestingly, the past ten years or so have shown that--in the close orbit of the peer disagreement question--are a range of related and interesting epistemological questions, questions that are perhaps just as epistemologically as well as practically significant.
Just consider that the peer disagreement question is individualistically framed. It is a question about what rationality requires of an individual when they disagree with another individual about some contested proposition. Gaining an answer tells us, at most, and in short, what individuals should do in the face of epistemic adversity. But we also want to know what groups should do in the face of epistemic adversity. For example: what should a group---say, a scientific committee--do if it turns out that one of the members on the committee holds a view that runs contrary to the consensus? It would be convenient if answering questions about how individuals should respond to epistemic adversity implied answers to the interesting questions about how groups should do the same. Unfortunately, though, things are not so simple. This is because, to a first approximation, the epistemic properties of groups are not, as recent collective epistemology has suggested, always simply reducible to an aggregation of the epistemic properties of its members. If we want to understand what groups should do, rationally speaking, when there is internal disagreement among members, or when there is disagreement between a group and individuals or groups external to the group, we cannot and should not expect to find the answers we need simply by looking to the results social epistemology has given us to questions individualistically framed.The topic of this volume---the epistemology of group disagreement---aims to face the complex topic of group disagreement head on; it represents the first-ever volume of papers dedicated exclusively to group disagreement and to the epistemological puzzles such disagreements raise. The volume consists of twelve new essays by leading epistemologists working in the area, and it spans a range of different key themes related to group disagreement, some established themes and others entirely new. In what follows, we offer brief summaries of these twelve chapters, drawing some connections between them where appropriate.
is not a species of knowledge? (ii) If not, what kind of state of intellectual impoverishment
best describes a lack of understanding? (iii) What would a radical sceptical argument look like that threatened that kind of intellectual impoverishment, even if not threatening ignorance? This paper answers each of these questions in turn. I conclude by showing how the answers developed to (i-iii) interface in an interesting way with Virtue Perspectivism as an anti-sceptical strategy.
In this paper, we move the dialectic forward by way of arguing that the superstitious lawyer genuinely infers his client’s innocence from the evidence. To show that the lawyer’s inference is genuine, we argue in defense of a version of a doxastic construal of the ‘taking’ condition on inference. We also provide a pared-down superstitious lawyer-style case, which displays the key features of the original case without including its complicated and distracting features. But interestingly, although we argue that the lawyer’s belief is based on his good evidence, and is also plausibly doxastically justified, we do not argue that the lawyer knows that his client is innocent.
which there are two grades of knowledge, animal and reflective. The exercise of reliable
competences suffices to give us animal knowledge; but we can then use these
same competences to gain a second-order assuring perspective, one through which we
may appreciate those faculties as reliable and in doing so place our first-order (animal)
knowledge in a competent second-order perspective. Virtue perspectivism has
considerable theoretical power, especially when it comes to vindicating our external
world knowledge against threats of scepticism and regress. Prominent criticisms,
however, doubt whether the view ultimately hangs together without succumbing to
vicious circularity. In this paper, I am going to focus on circularity-based criticisms
of virtue perspectivism raised in various places by Barry Stroud (2004), Baron Reed
(2012) and Richard Fumerton (2004), and I will argue that virtue perspectivism can
ultimately withstand each of them.