On the Epistemic Significance of Evidence You Should Have Had

Can we understand epistemic justification in terms of epistemic rights? In this paper, we consider two arguments for the claim that we cannot and in doing so, we provide two arguments for the claim that we can. First, if, as many think, William James is right that the epistemic aim is to believe all true propositions and not to believe any false propositions, then there are likely to be situations in which believing (or disbelieving) a proposition serves one of these goals, whereas suspending judgement serves the other, equally important goal. Second, it is in principle always possible to have different epistemic standards for evaluating the evidence for the proposition in question, so that one can have a right to believe (or disbelieve) that proposition and a right to suspend judgement on it. Whereas the first consideration counts in favour of the idea that believing justifiedly is at least sometimes a matter of having an epistemic right, the latter consideration favours the view that believing justifiedly is always a matter of having an epistemic right.

2014

We present a complete, decidable logic for reasoning about a notion of completely trustworthy (" conclusive ") evidence and its relations to justifiable (implicit) belief and knowledge, as well as to their explicit justifications. This logic makes use of a number of evidence-related notions such as availability, admissibility, and " goodness " of a piece of evidence, and is based on an innovative modification of the Fitting semantics for Artemov's Justification Logic designed to preempt Gettier-type counterexamples. We combine this with ideas from belief revision and awareness logics to provide an account for explicitly justified (defeasible) knowledge based on conclusive evidence that addresses the problem of (logical) omniscience.

2007

Some of the few who endorse some such requirement are Fumerton [1995], Bonjour [1998], Wright [2004a]-but not without qualification. 2 For instance Van Cleve [1984], Greco [1999]. 1 This proposition is, at least at the face of it, not equivalent to the proposition (1) and (2) epistemically support (3). The latter proposition is about an epistemic supportrelation, not about a logical relation. But I think that some of the things said in this chapter about L apply to the latter proposition too. But there are very important differences between the two [cf. Cohen, 1998], so that they must be properly treated separately. I discuss similar issues with respect to the proposition about epistemic support in chapter 4. 2 "equivocation" may be understood as designating the fact that the same linguistic expression in two different premises stands for two different concepts. In this sense the mental process of inferring cannot show "equivocation". But whenever we fall prey to an "equivocation", it is also true that our reasoning is defective. It is this defect in reasoning that I call equivocation. 3 I discuss the relation between evidence and attitudes in section 2.2. 4 I sometimes express this fact by saying that the subject "has justification for (3)" or that for the subject "(3) has positive epistemic status". 5 I express the fact that the subject believes (3) for her good epistemic reason sometimes by saying that she "justifiably believes (3)" or that she "is justified in believing (3)". Furthermore, the subject's believing (3) for her good epistemic reason in N , involves the fact that I express by saying that the subject "bases her belief in (3) on her beliefs in (1) and (2)". See below in the text. 12 Furthermore Fumerton does not distinguish between E makes probable P and E supports/justifies P. In his commentary to Fumerton [1995], Stewart Cohen [1998] objects to taking the latter two propositions to be equivalent.

Recent authors have drawn attention to a new kind of defeating evidence commonly referred to as higher-order evidence. Such evidence works by inducing doubts that one’s doxastic state is the result of a flawed process – for instance, a process brought about by a reason-distorting drug. I argue that accommodating defeat by higher-order evidence requires a two-tiered theory of justification, and that the phenomenon gives rise to a puzzle. The puzzle is that at least in some situations involving higher-order defeaters the correct epistemic rules issue conflicting recommendations. For instance, a subject ought to believe p, but she ought also to suspend judgment in p. I discuss three responses. The first resists the puzzle by arguing that there is only one correct epistemic rule, an Über-rule. The second accepts that there are genuine epistemic dilemmas. The third appeals to a hierarchy or ordering of correct epistemic rules. I spell out problems for all of these responses. I conclude that the right lesson to draw from the puzzle is that a state can be epistemically rational or justified even if one has what looks to be strong evidence to think that it is not. As such, the considerations put forth constitute a non question-begging argument for a kind of externalism.

Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 2016

What is it to have conclusive reasons to believe a proposition P? According to a view famously defended by Dretske, a reason R is conclusive for P just in case [R would not be the case unless P were the case]. I argue that, while knowing that P is plausibly related to having conclusive reasons to believe that P, having such reasons cannot be understood in terms of the truth of this counterfactual condition. Simple examples show that it is possible to believe P on the basis of reasons that satisfy the counterfactual, and still get things right about P only as a matter of luck. Seeing where this account of conclusive reasons goes wrong points to an important distinction between having conclusive reasons and relying on reasons that are in point of fact conclusive. It also has wider consequences for whether modal principles like sensitivity and safety can rule out the pernicious kind of epistemic luck, or the kind of luck that interferes with knowledge.

Synthese (SYNT)

To say that evidence is normative is to say that what evidence one possesses, and how this evidence relates to any proposition, determines which attitude among believing, disbe-lieving and withholding one ought to take toward this proposition if one deliberates about whether to believe it. It has been suggested by McHugh that this view can be vindicated by resting on the premise that truth is epistemically valuable. In this paper, I modify the strategy sketched by McHugh so as to overcome the initial difficulty that it is unable to vindicate the claim that on counterbalanced evidence with respect to P one ought to conclude deliberation by withholding on P. However, I describe the more serious difficulty that this strategy rests on principles whose acceptance commits one to acknowledging non-evidential reasons for believing. A way to overcome this second difficulty, against the evidentialists who deny this, is to show that we sometimes manage to believe on the basis of non-epis-temic considerations. If this is so, one fundamental motivation behind the evidentialist idea that non-epistemic considerations could not enter as reasons in deliberation would lose its force. In the second part of this paper I address several strategies proposed in the attempt to show that we sometimes manage to believe on the basis of non-epistemic considerations and show that they all fail. So, I conclude that the strategy inspired by McHugh to ground the normativity of evidence of the value of truth ultimately fails.

For decades, philosophers have displayed an interest in what it is to have an epistemically justified belief. Recently, we also find among philosophers a renewed interest in the so-called ethics of belief: what is it to believe (epistemically) responsibly and when is one’s belief blameworthy? This paper explores how epistemically justified belief and responsible belief are related to each other. On the so-called ‘deontological conception of epistemic justification’, they are identical: to believe epistemically responsibly is to believe epistemically justifiedly. I argue that William Alston’s criticism of a deontological conception of epistemic justification in terms of our influence on our beliefs is unconvincing. Moreover, such a conception meets three criteria that one might put forward in order for an account of epistemic justification to be plausible: it shows a concern with the Jamesian goal of having true rather than false beliefs, it is relevantly similar to accounts of justification in non-doxastic realms, such as action, and there is good reason to think that, if spelled out in sufficient detail, it may well provide a necessary condition for knowledge. I conclude that the deontological conception of epistemic justification is stronger than is often thought: it is worth exploring whether epistemically justified belief is epistemically responsible belief.

Philosophical Studies, 2019

This paper is about how epistemic and practical reasons for belief can be compared against one another when they conflict. It provides a model for determining what one ought to believe, all-things-considered, when there are conflicting epistemic and practical reasons. The model is meant to supplement a form of pluralism about doxastic normativity that I call 'Inclusivism'. According to Inclusivism, both epistemic and practical considerations can provide genuine normative reasons for belief, and both types of consideration can contribute to (metaphysically) determining what beliefs one ought, all-things-considered, to have.

Episteme, 2016

In this paper I argue against what I call ‘strict evidentialism’, the view that evidence is the sole factor for determining the normative status of beliefs. I argue that strict evidentialism fails to capture the uniquely subjective standpoint of believers and as a result it fails to provide us with the tools necessary to apply its own epistemic norms. In its place I develop an interest-relative theory of justification which I call quasi-evidentialism, according to which S has a justified belief that P at time t if and only if S’s evidence at time t supports P in proportion to S’s interest in P. I take interests as fixed and argue that adjusting our confidence in a proposition in the right way, given our interests, is fine-tuned through the exercise of intellectual virtue, in particular the virtue of epistemic conscientiousness. This theory refocuses epistemic responsibility in the subject and by locating agency in the cultivation of epistemic virtue it also provides a handy solution to the problem of doxastic voluntarism, insofar as the development of our epistemic virtue guides our responsiveness to reason.

Forthcoming in Nous

Oxford Studies in Metaethics, 2017

This paper concerns the epistemology of difficult moral cases where the difficulty is not traceable to ignorance about non-moral matters. The paper first argues for a principle concerning the epistemic status of moral beliefs about difficult moral cases. The basic idea behind the principle is that one’s belief about the moral status of a potential action in a difficult moral case is not justified unless one has some appreciation of what the relevant moral considerations are and how they bear on the moral status of the potential action. The paper then argues that this principle has important ramifications for moral epistemology and moral metaphysics. It puts pressure on some views of the justification of moral belief, such as ethical intuitionism and reliabilism. It puts pressure on some antirealist views of moral metaphysics, including simple versions of relativism. It also provides some direct positive support for broadly realist views of morality.

Erkenntnis

Sometimes it is epistemically beneficial to form a belief on authority. When you do, what happens to other reasons you have for that belief? Linda Zagzebski’s total-preemption view says that these reasons are ‘‘preempted’’: you still have them, but you do not use them to support your belief. I argue that this situation is problematic, because having reasons for a belief while not using them forfeits you doxastic justification. I present an alternative account of belief on authority, the proper-basing view, which enables the agent to base her belief on as many reasons as she has. A salient result is that the notion of a preemptive reason, useful though it may be in accounting for acting on authority, does not have any place in an account of believing on authority or in epistemology more generally.

Argues that resolving the central dispute in the ethics of belief between evidentialists and pragmatists turns on the correct explanation of the first-personal deliberative perspective on belief. Although evidentialism does not follow directly from the mere psychological truth that we cannot believe for non-evidential reasons, it does follow directly from the conceptual truth about belief that explains why we cannot do so.

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 1996

The distinction between prima facie and what is sometimes called 'ultima facie' justification in epistemology is familiar. Yet I believe that its importance is generally under-appreciated. This distinction is extremely useful in making clear the demarcations between competing epistemological theories. I begin this paper by discussing the primary motivation for recognizing this distinction, and then enumerate the ways that it sheds light on the foundationalist/coherentist, internalist/externalist, and naturalism debates in contemporary epistemology. 2. Marking the Distinction The primary reason to make the distinction between prima and ultima facie justification is to make a place for epistemic defeasibility. The need for an account of defeasibility arises from the recognition that there are two rather different ways of having unjustified beliefs. One's belief might be unjustified because one bases one's belief on either bad reasons or no reasons. Let me briefly describe three cases that will serve as paradigms in the discussion that follows: Case 1: Chuck believes that Mary doesn't like chicken because they were once at a restaurant together and Mary ordered lamb when she could have had chicken. Case 2: Alice looks across the quad (in good light) and sees in the distance a person she takes to be her colleague Ed. She comes to believe that she sees Ed. However, Alice also (justifiably) believes that Ed is in France and will not return to the U.S. for another six months. THE PRIMA/ULTIMA FACIE JUSTIFICATION DISTINCTION IN EPISTEMOLOGY 551

Philosophical Studies, 2008

Many stored beliefs, like beliefs in one's personal data or beliefs in one's area of expertise, intuitively amount to knowledge, and so are justified. This uncontroversial datum arguably tells against evidentialism, the position according to which a belief is justified if it fits the available evidence: stored beliefs are normally not sustained by one's available evidence. Conee and Feldman have tried to meet this potential objection by relaxing the notion of available evidence. According to their proposal, stored beliefs are dispositionally justified, because they are justified by the evidence one has the disposition to retrieve; such evidence, as a consequence, is to be characterize as available, though in a derivative sense. Goldman has criticized this proposal, by offering a counterexample to the claim that a disposition to generate a piece of evidence may qualify as a justifier. In this paper I critically examine two possible replies to Goldman's example stemming from Conee and Feldman, and finally propose my own, based on a distinction, inspired by Audi, between dispositional evidence and the disposition to have evidence. Though this proposal differs from Conee and Feldman's one, I will conclude that it fits pretty well their intuitions.