In defense of reliabilism

Objections to reliabilist theories of knowledge and justification have looked insuperable. Reliability is a property of the process of belief formation. But the generality problem apparently makes the specification of any such process ambiguous. The externalism of reliability theories clashes with strongly internalist intuitions. The reliability property does not appear closed under truth-preserving inference, whereas closure principles have strong intuitive appeal. And epistemic paradoxes, like the preface and the lottery, seem unavoidable if knowledge or justification depends on the frequency with which a process generates true beliefs. The present theory has the conceptual resources to meet these challenges. It requires that a justificatory belief-formation process be intentionally applied. It distinguishes the justification of beliefs from that of the believer. And it avoids a frequency interpretation of reliability by introducing a notion of the normalcy of conditions under which processes are intentionally used.     

Sosa on the normativity of belief

Sosa takes epistemic normativity to be kind of performance normativity: a belief is correct because a believer sets a positive value to truth as an aim and performs aptly and adroitly. I object to this teleological picture that beliefs are not performances, and that epistemic reasons or beliefs cannot be balanced against practical reasons. Although the picture fits the nature of inquiry, it does not fit the normative nature of believing, which has to be conceived along distinct lines.     

Implications of the Dutch Book: Following Ramsey��s axioms

The Dutch Book Argument shows that an agent will lose surely in a gamble (a Dutch Book is made) if his degrees of belief do not satisfy the laws of the probability. Yet a question arises here: What does the Dutch Book imply? This paper firstly argues that there exists a utility function following Ramsey’s axioms. And then, it explicates the properties of the utility function and degree of belief respectively. The properties show that coherence in partial beliefs for Subjective Bayesianism means that the degree of belief, representing a belief ordering, satisfies the laws of probability, and that coherence in preferences means that the preferences are represented by expected utilities. A coherent belief ordering and a utility scale induce a coherent preference ordering; a coherent preference ordering induces a coherent belief ordering which can be uniquely represented by a degree-of-belief function. The preferences (values) and beliefs are both incoherent or disordered if a Dutch Book is made.     

Choosing to believe

This article defends a regulative ethics of voluntary belief. In order to determine the occasion and the scope of such an ethics, the article begins with an examination of the concept of belief in conversation with the view of J. L. Schellenberg. Next, against the dominant position in contemporary epistemology, it argues that some beliefs can be voluntary, in the sense that they are under the immediate control of the believer, and replies to William Alston’s influential objections to doxastic voluntarism. If some beliefs are subject to the immediate control of the believer, then in these cases believers are ethically responsible not only for how they investigate those beliefs, but also for the choice of whether or not to believe them. The article concludes by formulating and defending two types of regulative ethical principles governing voluntary belief.     

Virtue Epistemology: No New Cures

One version of virtue epistemology defines knowledge as belief whose truth arises from, or is explained by, the motives that produced it. This version is also intended to solve the Gettier problem, by shielding properly caused beliefs from double accidents. Unfortunately, there is no notion of "explains" or "arises from" which explains in the intended sense the truth of true beliefs.     

Stakes and beliefs

The idea that beliefs may be stake-sensitive is explored. This is the idea that the strength with which a single, persistent belief is held may vary and depend upon what the believer takes to be at stake. The stakes in question are tied to the truth of the belief—not, as in Pascal’s wager and other cases, to the belief’s presence. Categorical beliefs and degrees of belief are considered; both kinds of account typically exclude the idea and treat belief as stake-invariant, though an exception is briefly described. The role of the assumption of stake-invariance in familiar accounts of degrees of belief is also discussed, and morals are drawn concerning finite and countable Dutch book arguments.     

Coherence in Epistemology and Belief Revision*

A general theory of coherence is proposed, in which systemic and relational coherence are shown to be interdefinable. When this theory is applied to sets of sentences, it turns out that logical closure obscures the distinctions that are needed for a meaningful analysis of coherence. It is concluded that references to “all beliefs” in coherentist phrases such as “all beliefs support each other” have to be modified so that merely derived beliefs are excluded. Therefore, in order to avoid absurd conclusions, coherentists have to accept a weak version of epistemic priority, that sorts out merely derived beliefs. Furthermore, it is shown that in belief revision theory, coherence cannot be adequately represented by logical closure, but has to be represented separately. *Contribution to “Seven Bridges”     

Coherence Theory of Knowledge: a Gradational Account

A satisfactory theory of knowledge in which the shortcomings of a pure externalist account are avoided and in which the Gettier problem is solved should consist in a combination of externalist and internalist components. The internalist component should guarantee that the epistemic subject has cognitive access to the justifying grounds of her belief. And the externalist component should guarantee that the justification of her belief does not depend on any false statement. Keith Lehrer's coherence theory of knowledge as undefeated justification is an example of such an internalist-externalist analysis of knowledge. But nevertheless, Lehrer's account leads to unintended results. Therefore, it is argued that a satisfactory coherence theory of knowledge must also be based on a gradual notion of systematic coherence.     

The Role of Sensory Experience in Epistemic Justification: a Problem for Coherentism

The author argues that coherence views of justification, in spite of their crucial insight into the interpenetration of our beliefs, neglect a key constraint on justification: they are unable to accommodate the epistemic significance of experience. Epistemic justification is not just a function of our beliefs and their interrelations. Both, beliefs and experiences, are relevant to the justification of an empirical belief. Experience is not itself a form of belief or disposition to believe; it cannot be analyzed in doxastic terms. And, yet, nondoxastic experiences play a justificatory role, not merely a causal role. The positive epistemic status of a perceptual belief depends upon being appeared to in appropriate ways. It is important that, for an ordinary perceptual belief to be justified, one does not have to believe that one is appeared to in these ways. It is the experiences themselves, the ways of being appeared to, not our beliefs about them, that are required for justification.     

ON THE COHERENCE OF HIGHER‐ORDER BELIEFS

Let us by ‘first‐order beliefs’ mean beliefs about the world, such as the belief that it will rain tomorrow, and by ‘second‐order beliefs’ let us mean beliefs about the reliability of first‐order, belief‐forming processes. In formal epistemology, coherence has been studied, with much ingenuity and precision, for sets of first‐order beliefs. However, to the best of our knowledge, sets including second‐order beliefs have not yet received serious attention in that literature. In informal epistemology, by contrast, sets of the latter kind play an important role in some respectable coherence theories of knowledge and justification. In this paper, we extend the formal treatment of coherence to second‐order beliefs. Our main conclusion is that while extending the framework to second‐order beliefs sheds doubt on the generality of the notorious impossibility results for coherentism, another problem crops up that might be no less damaging to the coherentist project: facts of coherence turn out to be epistemically accessible only to agents who have a good deal of insight into matters external to their own belief states.     

Rational Illogicality

Many accounts of structural rationality give a special role to logic. This paper reviews the problem case of clear-eyed logical uncertainty. An account of rational norms on belief that does not give a special role to logic is developed: doxastic probabilism.     

Rationality of belief or: why savage’s axioms are neither necessary nor sufficient for rationality

Economic theory reduces the concept of rationality to internal consistency. As far as beliefs are concerned, rationality is equated with having a prior belief over a ??Grand State Space??, describing all possible sources of uncertainties. We argue that this notion is too weak in some senses and too strong in others. It is too weak because it does not distinguish between rational and irrational beliefs. Relatedly, the Bayesian approach, when applied to the Grand State Space, is inherently incapable of describing the formation of prior beliefs. On the other hand, this notion of rationality is too strong because there are many situations in which there is not sufficient information for an individual to generate a Bayesian prior. It follows that the Bayesian approach is neither sufficient not necessary for the rationality of beliefs.     

Minimizing Inaccuracy for Self-Locating Beliefs

One's inaccuracy for a proposition is defined as the squared difference between the truth value (1 or 0) of the proposition and the credence (or subjective probability, or degree of belief) assigned to the proposition. One should have the epistemic goal of minimizing the expected inaccuracies of one's credences. We show that the method of minimizing expected inaccuracy can be used to solve certain probability problems involving information loss and self-locating beliefs (where a self-locating belief of a temporal part of an individual is a belief about where or when that temporal part is located). We analyze the Sleeping Beauty problem, the duplication version of the Sleeping Beauty problem, and various related problems.     

The deontological conception of epistemic justification: a reassessment

This paper undertakes two projects: Firstly, it offers a new account of the so-called deontological conception of epistemic justification (DCEJ). Secondly, it brings out the basic weaknesses of DCEJ, thus accounted for. It concludes that strong reasons speak against its acceptance. The new account takes it departure from William Alston’s influential work. Section 1 argues that a fair account of DCEJ is only achieved by modifying Alston’s account and brings out the crucial difference between DCEJ and the less radical position of epistemic deontologism. Section 2 starts by setting up two fundamental problems for proponents of DCEJ to solve. It argues further that proponents of DCEJ may not convincingly solve those problems by appeal to a notion of permissible belief. Section 3 investigates, whether an appeal to the notion of blameless belief may help DCEJ overcome its central problems. It argues that, even if an appeal to the notion of blameless belief has advantages over an appeal to the notion of permissible belief, DCEJ cannot convincingly overcome the problems set up for it. Further, it is brought out that DCEJ commits its proponents to a problematic non-standard view regarding the intrinsic value of epistemic justification. Section 4 concludes that DCEJ is not the natural conception of epistemic justification, that Alston takes it to be. However, its problems do not leave a scratch on epistemic deontologism, properly conceived.     

Measuring coherence

This paper aims to contribute to our understanding of the notion of coherence by explicating in probabilistic terms, step by step, what seem to be our most basic intuitions about that notion, to wit, that coherence is a matter of hanging or fitting together, and that coherence is a matter of degree. A qualitative theory of coherence will serve as a stepping stone to formulate a set of quantitative measures of coherence, each of which seems to capture well the aforementioned intuitions. Subsequently it will be argued that one of those measures does better than the others in light of some more specific intuitions about coherence. This measure will be defended against two seemingly obvious objections.     

Minimal Belief Change and the Pareto Principle

This paper analyzes the notion of a minimal belief change that incorporates new information. I apply the fundamental decision-theoretic principle of Pareto-optimality to derive a notion of minimal belief change, for two different representations of belief: First, for beliefs represented by a theory – a deductively closed set of sentences or propositions – and second for beliefs represented by an axiomatic base for a theory. Three postulates exactly characterize Pareto-minimal revisions of theories, yielding a weaker set of constraints than the standard AGM postulates. The Levi identity characterizes Pareto-minimal revisions of belief bases: a change of belief base is Pareto-minimal if and only if the change satisfies the Levi identity (for “maxichoice” contraction operators). Thus for belief bases, Pareto-minimality imposes constraints that the AGM postulates do not. The Ramsey test is a well-known way of establishing connections between belief revision postulates and axioms for conditionals (“if p, then q”). Pareto-minimal theory change corresponds exactly to three characteristic axioms of counterfactual systems: a theory revision operator that satisfies the Ramsey test validates these axioms if and only if the revision operator is Pareto-minimal. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Credulism

Conclusion The credulity principle approach to the issue of the rationality of religious belief is a clear advance over the proof approach. For the proof approach, in the end, is simply too wedded to an infallibilist conception of rational belief; and initially, at least, the credulity principle approach seems to avoid this conception. In the end, however, it affirms that same viewpoint; for if it does not embody an infallibilist conception of epistemic principles, its critical property of intersubjectivity is beyond defense. Thus, in recognizing the inadequacy of infallibilist conceptions of rationality, we can see the inadequacy of both the proof approach and the credulity principle approach to the existence of God. It is simply false that the experiences of others is efficacious in conferring rationality on our beliefs.But if neither of these approaches is adequate, how is one to approach the issue of the rationality of religious belief? The subjective nature of rational belief provides the answer - if one wishes to argue that God exists, one will have to provide as many arguments as there are divergent sets of acceptable epistemic principles. There still is a place for such arguments; but only given the assumption that we share views about what sorts of inferences are proper, or that other arguments can be constructed for the superiority of certain epistemic principles. The view that must be given up, however, is that the discussions philosophers have of these issues need bear any relation to whether or not the normal religious believer has a reasonable belief or not - he does not need there to be a good philosophical argument that God exists in order to reasonably believe that God exists. Nor is any non-believer necessarily irrational just because there is such a good argument.Thus, once the nature of rational belief is properly appreciated, it appears that the question of the rationality of religious belief is not a central question any longer. Whether such beliefs are rational is a quite subjective question not capable of being answered by any sort of universal generalization about all religious believers and/or non-believers.     

Statistical Bias and Endorsement of Conspiracy Theories

Previous research proposes that endorsement of anomalous beliefs is associated with proneness to conjunction error. This supposition ignores important differences between belief types. Correspondingly, the present study examined the degree to which components of statistical bias predicted conspiratorial ideation and belief in the paranormal. Confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling revealed that conjunction error was associated with conspiratorial ideation, whilst perception of randomness most strongly predicted belief in the paranormal. These findings opposed the notion that anomalous beliefs, by virtue of possession of common characteristics, relate similarly to conjunction error. With regard to conspiracy, conjunction‐framing manipulations produced only minor variations in relationship strength. This supported the notion that conspiratorial ideation was associated with a domain‐general susceptibility to conjunction error. Framing, however, did influence the relationship between belief in the paranormal and conjunction; whilst paranormal conjunctions were generally easier to solve, performance declined as level of paranormal belief increased.Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Revocable Belief Revision

Krister Segerberg proposed irrevocable belief revision, to be contrasted with standard belief revision, in a setting wherein belief of propositional formulas is modelled explicitly. This suggests that in standard belief revision is revocable: one should be able to unmake (‘revoke’) the fresh belief in the revision formula, given yet further information that contradicts it. In a dynamic epistemic logical setting for belief revision, for multiple agents, we investigate what the requirements are for revocable belief revision. By this we not merely mean recovering belief in non-modal propositions, as in the recovery principle for belief contraction, but recovering belief in modal propositions: beliefs about beliefs. These requirements are almost never met, a surprising result.