Non-inferential knowledge

Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society (Hardback), 2012

Synthese

I consider the ‘inferentialist’ thesis that whenever a mental state rationally justifies a belief it is in virtue of inferential relations holding between the contents of the two states. I suggest that no good argument has yet been given for the thesis. I focus in particular on Williamson (2000) and Ginsborg (2011) and show that neither provides us with a reason to deny the plausible idea that experience can provide non-inferential justification for belief. I finish by pointing out some theoretical costs and tensions associated with endorsing inferentialism. [Forthcoming in Synthese . . . ]

2015

John McDowell articulated a radical criticism of normative inferentialism against Robert Brandom’s expressivist account of conceptual contents. One of his main concerns consists in vindicating a notion of intentionality that could not be reduced to the deontic relations that are established by discursive practitioners. Noticeably, large part of this discussion is focused on empirical knowledge and observational judgments. McDowell argues that there is no role for inference in the application of observational concepts, except the paradoxical one of justifying the content of an observational judgment in terms of itself. This paper examines the semantical consequences of the analysis of the content of empirical judgments in terms of their inferential role. These, it is suggested, are distinct from the epistemological paradoxes that McDowell charges the inferentialist approach with.

What is evidence? One line of thought is that our evidence is where our reasoning ultimately originates. Much of what we know or believe is inferred. Our evidence is that from which those beliefs or knowledge are inferred. Such a view is favoured, for example, by foundationalist accounts of evidence. It is closely related to Patrick Maher's account of evidence as knowledge given directly by experience. 1 On this view, then, evidence is non-inferential. Non-inferential what? Non-inferential belief, noninferential justified belief, non-inferential knowledge, or something else? For reasons I am about to explain, this paper will focus on the claim that our evidence is non-inferential knowledge. I intend to show that this prima facie plausible claim is false. However, along the way I shall replace it with another, correct, view of the relationship between evidence and inference.

Nous, 2018

I foreground the principle of epistemic dependence. I isolate that relation and distinguish it from other relations and note what it does and does not entail. In particular, I distinguish between dependence and necessitation. This has many interesting consequences. On the negative side, many standard arguments in episte-mology are subverted. More positively, once we are liberated from the necessary and sufficient conditions project, many fruitful paths for future epistemological investigation open up. I argue that that not being defeated does not make for knowledge. And I argue for the multiple realization of epistemic properties in non-epistemic properties. If we know something then there is something in virtue of which we know it; and if we are justified in believing something then there is something in virtue of which we are justified in believing it. That much is relatively uncontroversial. Only slightly more controversial is the claim that our having an epistemic achievement, such as knowing something or being justified in believing something, depends on how we are in non-epistemic respects. That is, instantiating epistemic properties depends on our instantiating non-epistemic properties. In this paper, I argue that epistemic/non-epistemic dependence should be given a central place in epistemology, and that doing so has significant consequences. In the first part of this paper, the dependence approach is contrasted with what I shall call " the necessary and sufficient conditions project " the project of attempting to give necessary and sufficient conditions for someone knowing something or being justified in believing something. Although statements of the goal of uncovering necessary and sufficient conditions for knowledge or justification are common in the first few pages of epistemology textbooks and articles, I have yet to find an articulation or defense of the project to take as an explicit target. It is usually briefly stated, in passing, as if it were obvious, before moving on. So I will proceed by

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research Volume 74, Issue 3, pages 651–676, May 2007, 2007

D. Zahavi, ed., The Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Phenomenology: 327-348. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012

Synthese

We constantly assess each other's epistemic positions. We attempt to distinguish valuable from worthless information, reliable from unreliable informants, etc. Without established social practices of epistemic evaluations we could not navigate the flood of information we are exposed to every day in order to perform essential selections of valiable information. Yet the way we epistemically evaluate each other, ascribe or deny knowledge, who we deem knowledgeable or ignorant, and whom we refer to as an expert or a layman also crucially shape our epistemic milieu and the structure of our society. Epistemic asymmetry often results in and reflects social asymmetry; higher epistemic appraisal often increases social standing. Also, epistemic evaluations such as knowledge ascriptions are commonly performed against the background of certain epistemic and non-epistemic (e.g., practical) concerns and interests. Consequently, epistemic and non-epistemic factors interact in guiding our epistemic practice. To advance our understanding of how they do so is not only a worthwhile project from an epistemological point of view but can be expected to have repercussions on decision making, in debates within political and social theory as well as within ethics, and help us understand and evaluate how we act and even how to act. Moreover, it might shed light on the perennial question of how theoretical and practical rationality relate to one another. A much-discussed question in recent debates on knowledge ascriptions is the question of whether-and if so, how-epistemic standards (standards of how much it takes to count as knowing or as a knower) are influenced by, and/or contextually vary with, non-epistemic factors such as stakes, interests, aims, etc., and whether this in turn affects the truth-conditions of knowledge ascriptions or only their assertibility (or sayability) conditions. This has been a main point of contention between contextualists, invariantists and relativists (of various brands) concerning knowledge acsriptions (cf.,

Synthese, 2018

Current Controversies in Experimental Philosophy, 2014

You see Plato running right past you. Unfortunately, you mistake him for Socrates, and you form the confident belief that Socrates is running, based on what you have seen. As it happens, just at this very moment Socrates is running, in a distant city. Do you know that Socrates is running? Trusting his audience to share his feeling that knowledge is absent here, the 14 th century philosopher Peter of Mantua uses this example as ammunition against a theory according to which knowledge is just belief that is both confident and true (Boh, 1985). In doing so, he was engaging in a practice used by Eastern and Western philosophers from Plato's time to the present day: the practice of using epistemic intuitions-impressions about the presence or absence of knowledge, and the like-as evidence in epistemology. Is this practice legitimate? Do these feelings about particular instances of knowledge generally serve as a reliable guide to the nature of knowledge itself? This chapter argues that they do, and defends the practice of relying on intuitions against a variety of challenges. The chapter starts with a brief overview of the nature of epistemic intuitions. Although people evaluate judgments along many dimensions of interest to epistemology, the main focus of this article will be on propositional knowledge attributions, immediate judgments of the form "Jane knows that John is running." Section two lays out some of the