The Knower Paradox Revisited

Philosophical Studies -     

Moore's Paradox and Epistemic Norms

We shall evaluate two strategies for motivating the view that knowledge is the norm of belief. The first draws on observations concerning belief's aim and the parallels between belief and assertion. The second appeals to observations concerning Moore's Paradox. Neither of these strategies gives us good reason to accept the knowledge account. The considerations offered in support of this account motivate only the weaker account on which truth is the fundamental norm of belief.     

Epistemic Closure and Epistemological Optimism

Philosophia - Half a century later, a Dretskean stance on epistemic closure remains a minority view. Why? Mainly because critics have successfully poked holes in the epistemologies on which closure...     

Radical Scepticism Without Epistemic Closure

This paper contributes to the current debate about radical scepticism and the structure of warrant. After a presentation of the standard version of the radical sceptic’s challenge, both in its barest and its more refined form, three anti‐sceptical responses, and their respective commitments, are being identified: the Dogmatist response, the Conservativist response and the Dretskean response. It is then argued that both the Dretskean and the Conservativist are right that the anti‐sceptical hypothesis cannot inherit any perceptual warrants from ordinary propositions about the environment—and so the Dogmatist response founders. However, if this is so Epistemic Closure lacks any clear rationale. There is therefore good reason to agree with both the Dretskean and the Dogmatist that perceptual warrants for ordinary propositions about the environment are enough in order for those propositions to enjoy a positive epistemic status—and so the Conservativist response founders. However, the Conservativist is nonetheless right that a warrant for the anti‐sceptical hypothesis is needed. For contrary to what much of the recent literature suggests, the radical sceptic need not appeal to Epistemic Closure in order to cast doubt on the legitimacy of our beliefs in ordinary propositions about the environment: there is a Pyrrhonian version of scepticism that, though equally radical, is consistent with failure of Epistemic Closure. For this reason, the Dretskean response is insufficient to answer scepticism.     

Epistemic Principles and Sceptical Arguments: Closure and Underdetermination

Anthony Brueckner has argued that claims about underdetermination of evidence are suppressed in closure-based scepticism (“The Structure of the Skeptical Argument”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 54:4, 1994). He also argues that these claims about underdetermination themselves lead to a paradoxical sceptical argument—the underdetermination argument—which is more fundamental than the closure argument. If Brueckner is right, the status quo focus of some predominant anti-sceptical strategies may be misguided. In this paper I focus specifically on the relationship between these two arguments. I provide support for Brueckner’s claim that the underdetermination argument is the more fundamental sceptical argument. I do so by responding to a challenge to this claim put forward by Stewart Cohen (“Two Kinds of Skeptical Argument”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 58:1, 1998). Cohen invokes an alternative epistemic principle which he thinks can be used to challenge Brueckner. Cohen’s principle raises interesting questions about the relationship between evidential considerations and explanatory considerations in the context of scepticism about our knowledge of the external world. I explore these questions in my defence of Brueckner.     

Epistemic Principles and Epistemic Circularity

Can we show that our senses are reliable sources of information about the world? To show this, we need to establish that most of our perceptual judgments have been true. But we cannot determine these inductive instances without relying upon sense perception. Thus, it seems, we cannot establish the reliability of sense perception by means of an argument without falling into epistemic circularity. In this paper, I argue that this consequence is not an epistemological disaster. For this purpose, I defend a normative claim that it is reasonable to accept the general reliability of our perceptual judgments, instead of a factual claim that our perceptual judgments are generally reliable. More specifically, I offer a normative practical argument which explains why it is reasonable to accept the general reliability of our perceptual judgments, even though we cannot establish the general reliability of our perceptual judgments by means of theoretical reasoning.     

Epistemic Intuitions and Epistemic Contextualism

In this paper I examine the way appeals to pretheoretic intuition are used to support epistemological theses in general and the thesis of epistemic contextualism in particular. After outlining the sceptical puzzle and the contextualist's resolution of that puzzle, I explore the question of whether this solution fits better with our intuitive take on the puzzle than its invariantist rivals. I distinguish two kinds of fit a theory might have with pretheoretic intuitions–accommodation and explanation, and consider whether achieving either kind of fit would be a virtue for a theory. I then examine how contextualism could best claim to accommodate and explain our intuitions, building the best case that 1 can for contextualism, but concluding that there is no reason to accept contextualism either in the way it accommodates nor the way it explains our intuitions about the sceptical puzzle.     

Truth,omniscience, and the Knower

Conclusion Let us sum up.The paradox of the Knower poses a direct and formal challenge to the coherence of common notions of knowledge and truth. We've considered a number of ways one might try to meet that challenge: propositional views of truth and knowledge, redundancy or operator views, and appeal to hierarchy of various sorts. Mere appeal to propositions or operators, however, seems to be inadequate to the task of the Knower, at least if unsupplemented by an auxiliary recourse to hierarchy. But the cost of hierarchy appears to be an abandonment of any notion of all truth or of omniscience. What the contradictions of the Knower seem to demand, then, is at least an abandonment of these.As noted in the introduction, the argument is complicated enough that one must be wary of dogmatic and precipitate conclusions. One may legitimately wonder whether some new response, or some variation on an old one, will yet offer a way out.Far too often, however, it is asked what has gone wrong with paradox rather than what paradox may have to teach us. What the Knower may have to teach us, I think, is that there really can be no coherent notion of all truth and really can be no coherent notion of omniscience. In its own way that conclusion is perhaps as humbling as is any traditional notion of God.I am grateful to C. Anthony Anderson, Robert F. Barnes, David Boyer, Tyler Burge, Evan W. Conyers, and Allen Hazen for correspondence and discussion regarding basic ideas, and owe a special debt to David Boyer and Evan W. Conyers for careful criticism of earlier drafts.     

The Epistemic Basic Structure

The epistemic basic structure of a society consists of those institutions that have the greatest impact on individuals’ opportunity to obtain knowledge on questions they have an interest in as citizens, individuals, and public officials. It plays a central role in the production and dissemination of knowledge and in ensuring that people have the capability to assimilate this knowledge. It includes institutions of science and education, the media, search engines, libraries, museums, think tanks, and various government agencies. This article identifies two demands of justice that apply specifically to the institutions that belong to it. First, the epistemic basic structure should serve all citizens fairly and reliably. It should provide them with the opportunity to acquire knowledge they need for their deliberations about the common good, their individual good, and how to pursue them. Second, the epistemic basic structure should produce and disseminate the knowledge that various experts and public officials need to successfully pursue justice and citizens need to effectively exercise their rights. After arguing for these duties, I discuss what policies follow from them and respond to the worry that these duties have illiberal implications.     

The No-No Paradox Is a Paradox

The No-No Paradox consists of a pair of statements, each of which ‘says’ the other is false. Roy Sorensen claims that the No-No Paradox provides an example of a true statement that has no truthmaker: Given the relevant instances of the T-schema, one of the two statements comprising the ‘paradox’ must be true (and the other false), but symmetry constraints prevent us from determining which, and thus prevent there being a truthmaker grounding the relevant assignment of truth values. Sorensen's view is mistaken: situated within an appropriate background theory of truth, the statements comprising the No-No Paradox are genuinely paradoxical in the same sense as is the Liar (and thus, on Sorensen's view, must fail to have truth values). This result has consequences beyond Sorensen's semantic framework. In particular, the No-No Paradox, properly understood, is not only a new paradox, but also provides us with a new type of paradox, one which depends upon a general background theory of the truth predicate in a way that the Liar Paradox and similar constructions do not.     

The Reflective Epistemic Renegade

Philosophers often find themselves in disagreement with contemporary philosophers they know full well to be their epistemic superiors on the topics relevant to the disagreement. This looks epistemically irresponsible. I offer a detailed investigation of this problem of the reflective epistemic renegade. I argue that although in some cases the renegade is not epistemically blameworthy, and the renegade situation is significantly less common than most would think, in a troublesome number of cases in which the situation arises the renegade is blameworthy in her disagreement with recognized epistemic superiors. I also offer some thoughts on what it would mean for philosophical practice for us to refrain from being renegades. Finally, I show how a new kind of radical skepticism emerges from modest theses regarding the renegade.