The weight of facts: A puzzle about perception,reasons and deliberation

How should we understand the epistemic role of perception? According to epistemological disjunctivism (ED), a subject’s perceptual knowledge that p is to be explained in terms of the subject believing that p for a factive and reflectively accessible reason. I argue that ED raises far‐reaching questions for rationality and deliberation; I illustrate those questions by setting up a puzzle about belief‐suspension, and I argue that ED does not have the resources to make sense of the rationality of belief‐suspension in cases in which suspending is clearly rational. The conclusion that I draw from the puzzle is mainly negative: the epistemic contribution of perception cannot be explained in terms of a warrant‐conferring relation between perception and belief. However, toward the end, I sketch a positive picture of the epistemic role of perception in terms of a direct explanatory relation between perception and knowledge.     

Reasons and Promotion

A number of philosophers accept promotionalism, the view that whether there is a normative reason for an agent to perform an action or have an attitude depends on whether her doing so promotes a value, desire, interest, goal, or end. I show that promotionalism faces a prima facie problem when it comes to reasons for belief: it looks extensionally inadequate. I then articulate two general strategies promotionalists can (and have) used to solve this problem and argue that, even if one of these two strategies can successfully solve the problem with reasons for belief, promotionalists face a symmetrical problem in a range of structurally similar cases. As I'll argue, the problem is that promotionalism cannot account for reasons grounded in the ‘fit’ between an attitude and its object. I offer an alternative to promotionalism and explain how adopting this alternative solves the problems with promotionalism while preserving much of what made promotionalism attractive in the first place.     

Knowledge Under Threat

Many contemporary epistemologists hold that a subject S’s true belief that p counts as knowledge only if S’s belief that p is also, in some important sense, safe. I describe accounts of this safety condition from John Hawthorne, Duncan Pritchard, and Ernest Sosa. There have been three counterexamples to safety proposed in the recent literature, from Comesaña, Neta and Rohrbaugh, and Kelp. I explain why all three proposals fail: each moves fallaciously from the fact that S was at epistemic risk just before forming her belief to the conclusion that S’s belief was formed unsafely. In light of lessons from their failure, I provide a new and successful counterexample to the safety condition on knowledge. It follows, then, that knowledge need not be safe. Safety at a time depends counterfactually on what would likely happen at that time or soon after in a way that knowledge does not. I close by considering one objection concerning higher‐order safety.     

A new theory of absence experience

Ordering your morning coffee and then realising that your wallet is missing from your bag triggers an experience of the absence of your wallet. Familiar cases like this one provide good evidence for the idea that we frequently experience absences. According to one popular view, we experience absences by perceiving them. I argue that there are a number of problems with the perceptual view, and propose an alternative, cognitive account. Now, a cognitive account of absence experience has already been widely discussed and unequivocally rejected by participants in the debate. However, arguments against it depend upon the important, yet mistaken assumption that cognitive accounts must appeal to beliefs or judgements. I argue that the phenomenology involved in absence experience is not that associated with belief or judgement, but is instead an intellectual seeming. This renders my account immune to the objections that have been made against the existing cognitive view.     

Appearances,Rationality, and Justified Belief

One might think that its seeming to you that p makes you justified in believing that p. After all, when you have no defeating beliefs, it would be irrational to have it seem to you that p but not believe it. That view is plausible for perceptual justification, problematic in the case of memory, and clearly wrong for inferential justification. I propose a view of rationality and justified belief that deals happily with inference and memory. Appearances are to be evaluated as ‘sound’ or ‘unsound.’ Only a sound appearance can give rise to a justified belief, yet even an unsound appearance can ‘rationally require’ the subject to form the belief. Some of our intuitions mistake that rational requirement for the belief’s being justified. The resulting picture makes it plausible that there are also unsound perceptual appearances. I suggest that to have a sound perceptually basic appearance that p, one must see that p.     

Investigative and Suspensive Scepticism

Sextus Empiricus portrays the Pyrrhonian sceptics in two radically different ways. On the one hand, he describes them as inquirers or examiners, and insists that what distinguishes them from all the other philosophical schools is their persistent engagement in inquiry. On the other hand, he insists that the main feature of Pyrrhonian attitude is suspension of judgement about everything. Many have argued that a consistent account of Sextan scepticism as both investigative and suspensive is not possible. The main obstacle to characterizing Pyrrhonism as both investigative and suspensive is the fact that it seems that the mature sceptics, after they have suspended judgement and thus reached tranquillity, have no motivation for further inquiry. Any inquiry they seem to be interested in after they have suspended judgement is the refutation of (relevant) beliefs needed for maintaining tranquillity. I try to show that the mature sceptics' removal of distress does not ipso facto mean removal of the desire for knowledge. This is because distress is not just a matter of unsatisfied desire, but of belief that one of the opposed appearances must be true, or, more generally, of belief that the truth is the only worthwhile epistemic goal. Having abandoned this belief, the sceptics can still engage in philosophical inquiries. This is because Sextus does not assume that philosophy is the search for truth: it is so only for the dogmatists. In a more general sense, applicable to the sceptics as well, philosophy is just an inquiry into certain things, and for the sceptics, its epistemic goal is still open.     

The cognitive attitude of rational trust

I provide an account of the cognitive attitude of trust that explains the role trust plays in the planning of rational agents. Many authors have dismissed choosing to trust as either impossible or irrational; however, this fails to account for the role of trust in practical reasoning. A can have therapeutic, coping, or corrective reasons to trust B to ${\phi}$ , even in the absence of evidence that B will ${\phi}$ . One can choose to engage in therapeutic trust to inspire trustworthiness, coping trust to simplify one’s planning, or corrective trust to avoid doing a testimonial injustice. To accommodate such types of trust, without accepting doxastic voluntarism, requires an account of the cognitive attitude of trust broader than belief alone. I argue that trust involves taking the proposition that someone will do something as a premise in one’s practical reasoning, which can be a matter of believing or accepting the proposition. I defend this account against objections that it (i) provides insufficient rational constraints on trust, (ii) conflates trust and pretense of trust, and (iii) cannot account for the rationality of back-up planning.     

Reliance,Trust, and Belief

Abstract

An adequate theory of the nature of belief should help us explain the most obvious features of belief as we find it. Among these features are: guiding action and reasoning non-inferentially; varying in strength in ways that are spontaneously experience-sensitive; ‘aiming at truth’ in some sense and being evaluable in terms of correctness and warrant; possessing inertia across time and constancy across contexts; sustaining expectations in a manner mediated by propositional content; shaping the formation and execution of plans; generalizing spontaneously projectively; and being independent of the will and resisting instrumentalization. Using the method of ‘creature construction’, I attempt to show how we can build an attitude with these features step-by-step from simpler components, thereby avoiding the problems of regress or circularity affecting a number of influential accounts of belief.     

Can We Be Self‐Deceived about What We Believe? Self‐Knowledge,Self‐Deception,and Rational Agency

Abstract: This paper considers the question of whether it is possible to be mistaken about the content of our first‐order intentional states. For proponents of the rational agency model of self‐knowledge, such failures might seem very difficult to explain. On this model, the authority of self‐knowledge is not based on inference from evidence, but rather originates in our capacity, as rational agents, to shape our beliefs and other intentional states. To believe that one believes that p, on this view, constitutes one's belief that p and so self‐knowledge involves a constitutive relation between first‐ and second‐order beliefs. If this is true, it is hard to see how those second‐order beliefs could ever be false. I develop two counter‐examples which show that despite the constitutive relation between first‐ and second‐order beliefs in standard cases of self‐knowledge, it is possible to be mistaken, and even self‐deceived, about the content of one's own beliefs. These counter‐examples do not show that the rational agency model is mistaken—rather, they show that the possibility of estrangement from one's own mental life means that, even within the rational agency model, it is possible to have false second‐order beliefs about the content of one's first‐order beliefs. The authority of self‐knowledge does not entail that to believe that one believes that p suffices to make it the case that one believes that p.     

Against Right Reason

I argue against ‘right reason’ style accounts of how we should manage our beliefs in the face of higher‐order evidence. I start from the observation that such views seem to have bad practical consequences when we imagine someone acting on them. I then catalogs ways that Williamson, Weatherson, and Lasonen‐Aarnio have tried to block objections based on these consequences; I argue all fail. I then move on to offer my own theoretical picture of a rational ‘should believe,’ and show that, if such a picture is right, it can neatly explain why right reason isn't. I close by arguing that the extent to which anti‐luminosity arguments motivate right reason has been overstated; the positive picture developed here, despite rejecting right reason, is nonetheless consistent with luminosity failures.     

Definition and hypothesis in Plato's Meno 1 (I)

There is no amount or quality of evidence such that if that amount or quality is reached, then truth is reached. If, therefore, a proposition must be true in order to constitute knowledge, knowledge is never reached. If certain standards of evidence are satisfied I have the right to say ’I know’, and the right does not depend on how one answers the question whether it is right what I say.     

How to Use Cognitive Faculties You Never Knew You Had

Norman forms the belief that the president is in New York by way of a clairvoyance faculty he doesn’t know he has. Many agree that his belief is unjustified but disagree about why it is unjustified. I argue that the lack of justification cannot be explained by a higher‐level evidence requirement on justification, but it can be explained by a no‐defeater requirement. I then explain how you can use cognitive faculties you don’t know you have. Lastly, I use lessons from the foregoing to compare Norman's belief, formed by clairvoyance, with Sally's theistic belief, formed by a sensus divinitatis.     

If You Can't Change What You Believe,You Don't Believe It

I develop and defend the view that subjects are necessarily psychologically able to revise their beliefs in response to relevant counter-evidence. Specifically, subjects can revise their beliefs in response to relevant counter-evidence, given their current psychological mechanisms and skills. If a subject lacks this ability, then the mental state in question is not a belief, though it may be some other kind of cognitive attitude, such as a supposition, an entertained thought, or a pretense. The result is a moderately revisionary view of belief: while most mental states we thought were beliefs are beliefs, some mental states which we thought were beliefs are not beliefs. The argument for this view draws on two key claims: First, subjects are rationally obligated to revise their beliefs in response to relevant counter-evidence. Second, if some subject is rationally obligated to revise one of her mental states, then that subject can revise that mental state, given her current psychological mechanisms and skills. Along the way to defending these claims, I argue that rational obligations can govern activities which reflect on one's rational character, whether or not those activities are under one's voluntary control. I also show how the relevant version of epistemic ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ survives an objection which plagues other variants of the principle.     

Why ‘believes’ is not a vague predicate

According to what I call the ‘Vagueness Thesis’ (‘VT’) about belief, ‘believes’ is a vague predicate. On this view, our concept of belief admits of borderline cases: one can ‘half-believe’ something (Price in Belief, George Allen & Unwin, London, 1969) or be ‘in-between believing’ it (Schwitzgebel in Philos Q 51:76–82, 2001, Noûs 36:249–275, 2002, Pac Philos Q 91:531–553, 2010). In this article, I argue that VT is false and present an alternative picture of belief. I begin by considering a case—held up as a central example of vague belief—in which someone sincerely claims something to be true and yet behaves in a variety of other ways as if she believes that it is not. I argue that, even from the third-person perspective prioritised by proponents of VT, the case does not motivate VT. I present an alternative understanding of the case according to which the person in question believes as they say they do yet also has a belief-discordant implicit attitude otherwise. Moreover, I argue that, independently of the interpretation of any particular case, VT fails to accommodate the first-person perspective on belief. Belief is not only an item of one’s psychology that helps explain one’s behaviour; it is what one takes to be true. This fact about belief manifests itself in the nature of deliberation concerning whether to believe something and that of introspection regarding whether one believes something. Attending to these phenomena reveals that VT is not merely unmotivated, but untenable.     

How to become an idealist: Fichte on the transition from dogmatism to idealism

In Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, Kant claims that all human beings are originally and radically evil: they choose to adopt a ‘supreme maxim’ that gives preference to sensibility over the moral law. Because Kant thinks that all agents have a duty to develop good character, part of his task in the Religion is to explain how moral conversion is possible. Four years after Kant publishes the Religion, J. G. Fichte takes up the issue of conversion in slightly different terms: he is interested in how people he characterizes as ‘dogmatists’ (those who minimize or deny their status as free agents) become ‘idealist’ (those who recognize and exercise their freedom). Against recent interpreters, I argue that Fichte characterizes the choice to convert from dogmatism to idealism as one that is grounded in a non-rational choice. Along the way, I consider Daniel Breazeale and Allen Wood’s recent arguments to the contrary, alternative accounts of what it might mean for a conversion to count as ‘rational’, and how well my conclusion harmonizes with Fichte’s views on education.