Knowledge and the Many Norms on Action

American Philosophical Quarterly, 2018

One central debate in recent literature on epistemic normativity concerns the epistemic norm for action. This paper argues that this debate is afflicted by a category mistake: strictly speaking, there is no such thing as an epistemic norm for action. To this effect, I introduce a distinction between epistemic norms and norms with epistemic content; I argue that while it is plausible that norms of the latter type will govern action in general, epistemic norms will only govern actions characteristically associated with delivering epistemic goods.

One prominent argument for pragmatic encroachment (PE) is that PE is entailed by a combination of a principle that states that knowledge warrants proper practical reasoning, and judgments that it is more difficult to reason well when the stakes go up. I argue here that this argument is unsuccessful. One problem is that empirical tests concerning knowledge judgments in high-stakes situations only sometimes exhibit the result predicted by PE. I argue here that those judgments that appear to support PE are better interpreted not as judgments that the epistemic demands for knowing increase as one’s practical situation becomes more demanding, but instead as judgments reflecting a different kind of normative epistemic evaluation, namely whether one is acting in an epistemically responsible way. The general idea is that when someone treats a proposition as a reason for acting we can evaluate them epistemically both in terms of whether they know that proposition, as well as in terms of whether they are acting on their knowledge in the right kind of way. My charge against the PE proponent, then, is that she is interpreting judgments that are indicative of whether we are adhering to certain normative epistemic requirements generally as being indicative of whether we have knowledge specifically. There are, however, normative epistemic requirements that make demands of us that are indicative of something other than our possession of knowledge.

Logos & Episteme, 2012

Recently a number of variously motivated epistemologists have argued that knowledge is closely tied to practical matters. On the one hand, radical pragmatic encroachment is the view that facts about whether an agent has knowledge depend on practical factors and this is coupled to the view that there is an important connection between knowledge and action. On the other hand, one can argue for the less radical thesis only that there is an important connection between knowledge and practical reasoning. So, defenders of both of these views endorse the view that knowledge is the norm of practical reasoning. This thesis has recently come under heavy fire and a number of weaker proposals have been defended. In this paper counterexamples to the knowledge norm of reasoning will be presented and it will be argued that this viewand a number of related but weaker views-cannot be sustained in the face of these counterexamples. The paper concludes with a novel proposal concerning the norm of practical reasoning that is immune to the counterexamples introduced here.

2016

This dissertation consists of three essays, each of which closely relates to epistemic norms for rational doxastic states. The central issue is whether epistemic rationality is

Many epistemologists equate the rational and the justied. Those who disagree have done little to explain the dierence, leading their opponents to suspect that the distinction is an ad hoc one designed to block counterexamples. The rst aim of this dissertationpursued in the rst three chaptersis to improve this situation by providing a detailed, independently motivated account of the distinction. The account is unusual in being inspired by no particular theoretical tradition in epistemology, but rather by ideas in the meta-ethical literature on reasons and rationality. The account is also unusual in proposing that the distinction between rationality and justication can be derived from a reasons-based account of justication. Historically, this is a striking claim. In epistemology, reasons-based accounts of justication are standardly treated as paradigmatically internalist accounts, but this dissertation argues that we should believe the reverse: given the best views about reasonsagain drawn from meta-ethicswe should expect reasons-based accounts of justication to be strongly externalist.

Synthese, 2011

What is the relation between what we ought to do, on the one hand, and our epistemic access to the ought-giving facts, on the other? In assessing this, it is common to distinguish 'objective' from 'subjective' oughts. Very roughly, on the objectivist conception what an agent ought to do is determined by ought-giving facts in such a way that does not depend on the agent's beliefs about, or epistemic access to, those facts; whereas on the subjectivist conception, what an agent ought to do depends on his beliefs. This paper defends the need for, and explicates, a third category of 'ought': 'warranted oughts'. Section 1 introduces the distinction between objective and subjective 'oughts'. Sections 2-3 draw attention to some serious problems with each. Section 4 examines, though rejects, a recent attempt to replace subjective 'oughts' with objective 'wide-scope oughts' operating on belief-action combinations. Section 5 explicates the notion of a warranted 'ought' and defends the account against some possible objections. The resulting a picture is one in which an adequate analysis of practical normativity requires both objective and warranted 'oughts'. Section 6 concludes by responding to a worry about countenancing both.

Philosophy Compass, 2008

It has become recently popular to suggest that knowledge is the epistemic norm of practical reasoning and that this provides an important constraint on the correct account of knowledge, one which favours subject-sensitive invariantism over contextualism and classic invariantism. I argue that there are putative counterexamples to both directions of the knowledge norm. Even if the knowledge norm can be defended against these counterexamples, I argue that it is a delicate issue whether it is true, one which relies on fine distinctions among a variety of relevant notions of propriety which our intuitions may reflect. These notions variously apply to the agent herself, her character traits, her beliefs, her reasoning and any resultant action. Given the delicacy of these issues, I argue that the knowledge norm is not a fixed point from which to defend substantive and controversial views in epistemology. Rather, these views need to be defended on other grounds.

Knowledge-First: Approaches in Epistemology and Mind, J. Adam Carter, Emma Gordon & Benjamin Jarvis (eds.) , 2017

Since the publication of Timothy Williamson’s Knowledge and its Limits, knowledge-first epistemology has become increasingly influential within epistemology. This paper discusses the viability of the knowledge-first program. The paper has two main parts. In the first part, I briefly present knowledge-first epistemology as well as several big picture reasons for concern about this program. While this considerations are pressing, I concede, however, that they are not conclusive. To determine the viability of knowledge-first epistemology will require philosophers to carefully evaluate the individual theses endorsed by knowledge-first epistemologists as well as to compare it with alternative packages of views. In the second part of the paper, I contribute to this evaluation by considering a specific thesis endorsed by many knowledge-first epistemologists – the knowledge norm of assertion. According to this norm, roughly speaking, one should assert that p only if one knows that p. I present and motivate this thesis. I then turn to a familiar concern with the norm: In many cases, it is intuitively appropriate for someone who has a strongly justified belief that p, but who doesn't know that p, to assert that p. Proponents of the knowledge norm of assertion typically explain away our judgments about such cases by arguing that the relevant assertion is improper but that the subject has an excuse and is therefore not blameworthy for making the assertion. I argue that that this response does not work. In many of the problem cases, it is not merely that the subject’s assertion is blameless. Rather, the subject positively ought to make the assertion. Appealing to an excuse cannot be used to adequately explain this fact. (Nor can we explain this fact by appealing to some other, quite different, consideration.) Finally, I conclude by briefly considering whether we should replace the knowledge norm of assertion with an alternative norm. I argue that the most plausible view is that there is no norm specifically tied to assertion.

Disputatio. International Journal of Philosophy, 2016

The questions “Do I know p?” and “Shall I act on p?” seem to belong to different domains; or so claims Ernest Sosa in his Judgment and Agency (2015), the latest version of his virtue epistemology. According to Sosa, we may formulate the first question in a purely epistemological way—a matter of knowledge “full stop”—, while the second one is necessarily intruded by pragmatic factors—a matter of “actionable knowledge”. Both should be answered, in his view, considering the reliability of my belief, but the former could be faced in total abstraction from my specific practical concerns. In this paper I dispute Sosa’s view, and claim that no purely epistemic level of knowledge “full stop” is conceivable, at least within a reliabilist framework. My argument is based on the idea that some given belief may not be considered as reliable by itself, as a token, but always as a member of a type, belonging to some class of reference of other beliefs. I will claim that the practical task where the agent is involved radically affects that class of reference. This puts us in a different direction in order to account for the relationship between epistemic and practical deliberation. The former would be inscribed in the latter, and could not constitute a separate domain of assessment.

Knowledge in Contemporary Philosophy

Abstract: On the standard story about knowledge, knowledge has a normative dimension by virtue of the fact that knowledge involves justification. On the standard story, justification is necessary but insufficient for knowledge. The additional conditions that distinguish knowledge from justified belief are normatively insignificant. In this chapter we will consider whether the concept of knowledge might be irrelevant to normative questions in epistemology. Some proponents of the standard story might think that it is, but we shall see that the concept of knowledge might play three important roles in answering normative questions in epistemology. The concept might be useful in helping us understand evidence and epistemic reasons, the kind of rational support required for justification, and in formulating epistemic norms.