The Pragmatic Encroachment Debate

Does knowledge depend in any interesting way on our practical interests? This is the central question in the pragmatic encroachment debate. Pragmatists defend the affirmative answer to this question while purists defend the negative answer. The literature contains two kinds of arguments for pragmatism: principle‐based arguments and case‐based arguments. Principle‐based arguments derive pragmatism from principles that connect knowledge to practical interests. Case‐based arguments rely on intuitions about cases that differ with respect to practical interests. I argue that there are insurmountable problems for both kinds of arguments, and that it is therefore unclear what motivates pragmatism.     

Total Pragmatic Encroachment and Epistemic Permissiveness

This article explores the relationship between pragmatic encroachment and epistemic permissiveness. If the suggestion that all epistemic notions are interest‐relative is viable (as Jason Stanley has recently claimed), then it seems that a certain species of epistemic permissivism must be viable as well. For, if all epistemic notions are interest relative then, sometimes, parties in paradigmatic cases of shared evidence can be maximally rational in forming competing basic doxastic attitudes towards the same proposition. However, I argue that this total pragmatic encroachment is not tenable, and, thus, epistemic permissivism cannot be vindicated in this way.     

COHEN TO THE RESCUE!

Cohen seeks to rescue the concept of justice from those, among whom he includes Rawls, who think that correct fundamental moral principles are fact‐sensitive. Cohen argues instead that any fundamental principles of justice, and fundamental moral principles generally, are fact‐insensitive and that any fact‐sensitive principles can be traced back to fact‐insensitive ones. This paper seeks to clarify the nature of Cohen's argument, and the kind of fact‐insensitivity he has in mind. In particular, it distinguishes between internal and external fact‐sensitivity – that is, whether facts are referenced in the content of the principle, or must otherwise be the case in order for the principle to apply at all. Cohen himself seems likely to endorse internally fact‐sensitive fundamental principles. This leads to a discussion of Cohen's Platonism about moral principles and the extent to which his arguments cover all its rivals. 1     

THE GENETIC RECOMBINATION OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION

The estrangement between genetic scientists and theologians originating in the 1960s is reflected in novel combinations of human thought (subject) and genes (investigational object), paralleling each other through the universal process known in chaos theory as self‐similarity. The clash and recombination of genes and knowledge captures what Philip Hefner refers to as irony, one of four voices he suggests transmit the knowledge and arguments of the religion‐and‐science debate. When viewed along a tangent connecting irony to leadership, journal dissemination, and the activities of the “public intellectual” and the public at large, the sequence of voices is shown to resemble the passage of genetic information from DNA to mRNA, tRNA, and protein, and from cell nucleus to surrounding environment. In this light, Hefner's inquiry into the voices of Zygon is bound up with the very subject matter Zygon covers.     

A limited defense of moral perception

One popular reason for rejecting moral realism is the lack of a plausible epistemology that explains how we come to know moral facts. Recently, a number of philosophers have insisted that it is possible to have moral knowledge in a very straightforward way—by perception. However, there is a significant objection to the possibility of moral perception: it does not seem that we could have a perceptual experience that represents a moral property, but a necessary condition for coming to know that X is F by perception is the ability to have a perceptual experience that represents something as being F. Call this the ‘Representation Objection’ to moral perception. In this paper I argue that the Representation Objection to moral perception fails. Thus I offer a limited defense of moral perception.     

Can Pragmatists Be Moderate?

In discussions of whether and how pragmatic considerations can make a difference to what one ought to believe, two sets of cases feature. The first set, which dominates the debate about pragmatic reasons for belief, is exemplified by cases of being financially bribed to believe (or withhold from believing) something. The second set, which dominates the debate about pragmatic encroachment on epistemic justification, is exemplified by cases where acting on a belief rashly risks some disastrous outcome if the belief turns out to be false. Call those who think that pragmatic considerations make a difference to what one ought to believe in the second kind of case, but not in the first, ‘moderate pragmatists’. Many philosophers – in particular, most advocates of pragmatic and moral encroachment – are moderate pragmatists. But moderate pragmatists owe us an explanation of exactly why the second kind of pragmatic consideration makes a difference, but the first kind doesn’t. I argue that the most promising of these explanations all fail: they are either theoretically undermotivated, or get key cases wrong, or both. Moderate pragmatism may be an unstable stopping point between a more extreme pragmatism, on one hand, and an uncompromising anti-pragmatism on the other.     

What Assertion Doesn't Show

Abstract: Some recent arguments against the classical invariantist account of knowledge exploit the idea that there is a ‘knowledge norm’ for assertion. It is claimed that, given the existence of this norm, certain intuitions about assertability support contextualism, or contrastivism, over classical invariantism. In this paper I show that, even if we accept the existence of a knowledge norm, these assertability‐based arguments fail. The classical invariantist can accommodate and explain the relevant intuitions about assertability, in a way that retains the idea that knowledge is the epistemic norm for assertion. When we consider the role of assertion as a conversational act, it becomes plausible that a subject's epistemic warrant to assert can be defeated even though she has knowledge. This defeasibility thesis is what allows the classical invariantist to accommodate and explain the kinds of intuitions on which assertability‐based arguments depend.     

THE TRIPLISM OF PRACTICAL REASON

There can be reasons for belief, for action, and for feeling. In each case, knowledge of such reasons requires non‐empirical knowledge of some truths about them: these will be truths about what there is reason to believe, to feel, or to do – either outright or on condition of certain facts obtaining. Call these a priori truths about reasons, ‘norms’. Norms are a priori true propositions about reasons. It's an epistemic norm that if something's a good explanation that's a reason to believe it. It's an evaluative norm that if someone's cheated you that's a reason to be annoyed with them. There are many evaluative norms, relating to a variety of feelings. Equally, there may be various epistemic norms, even though in this case they all relate to belief. My concern here, however, is with practical norms: a priori truths about what there is reason to do. I have a suggestion about what fundamental practical norms there are, which I would like to describe and explain. It is that there are just three distinct kinds of practical norm governing what there is reason to do – three categories or generic sources of practical normativity, one may say. I call them the Bridge principle, the principle of Good, and the Demand principle – Bridge, Good and Demand for short. I have said more about them in my book, The Domain of Reasons; 1 here my aim is simply to set them out and sketch some questions to which this ‘triplism of practical reason’ 2 gives rise. In particular, since these norms are about practical reasons, not about morality, a question I'll touch on is how moral obligation comes onto the scene.     

Assertion, Practical Reason, and Pragmatic Theories of Knowledge

Defenders of pragmatic theories of knowledge (such as contextualism and sensitive invariantism) argue that these theories, unlike those that invoke a single standard for knowledge, comport with the intuitively compelling thesis that knowledge is the norm of assertion and practical reason. In this paper, I dispute this thesis, and argue that, therefore, the prospects for both "high standard" and "low standard" invariantist theories are better than the pragmatists contend. I also provide a limited defense of the "high standard" approach, and contend that if one abandons the thesis that knowledge is the norm of assertion and practical reason, the most serious arguments against it lose their force.     

The argument from agreement: How universal values undermine moral realism

The most popular argument against moral realism is the argument from disagreement: if there are mind‐independent moral facts, then we would not expect to find as much moral disagreement as we in fact do; therefore, moral realism is false. In this paper, I develop the flipside of this argument. According to this argument from agreement, we would expect to find lots of moral disagreement if there were mind‐independent moral facts. But we do not, in fact, find much moral disagreement; therefore, moral realism is false. I defend the argument, explain the empirical evidence that supports it, and show what makes this challenge novel and powerful.     

Motivated contextualism

The concept of knowledge is used to certify epistemic agents as good sources (on a certain point or subject matter) for an understood audience. Attributions of knowledge and denials of knowledge are used in a kind of epistemic gate keeping for (epistemic or practical) communities with which the attributor and interlocutors are associated. When combined with reflection on kinds of practical and epistemic communities, and their situated epistemic needs for gate keeping, this simple observation regarding the point and purpose of the concept of knowledge has rich implications. First, it gives one general reason to prefer contextualism over various forms of sensitive invariantism. Second, when gate keeping for a select community of experts or authorities, with an associated body of results on which folk generally might then draw (when gate keeping for a general source community) the contextual demands approximate those with which insensitive invariantists would be comfortable.

Organ sales and moral distress

abstract The possibility that organ sales by living adults might be made legal is morally distressing to many of us. However, powerful arguments have been provided recently supporting legalisation (I consider two of those arguments: the Consequentialist Argument and the Autonomy Argument). Is our instinctive reaction against a market of organs irrational then? The aim of this paper is not to prove that legalization would be immoral, all things considered, but rather to show, first, that there are some kinds of arguments, offered in favour of legalisation, that are, in an important sense, illegitimate, and second, that even if legalisation might not be wrong all things considered, there are good reasons for our negative moral intuitions. Moreover, identifying these reasons will help highlight some features of moral decisions in non‐ideal situations, which in turn might be relevant to some other moral or policy choices.     

On Pragmatic Encroachment in Epistemology

We argue, contrary to epistemological orthodoxy, that knowledge is not purely epistemic—that knowledge is not simply a matter of truth-related factors (evidence, reliability, etc.). We do this by arguing for a pragmatic condition on knowledge, KA: if a subject knows that p, then she is rational to act as if p. KA, together with fallibilism, entails that knowledge is not purely epistemic. We support KA by appealing to the role of knowledge-citations in defending and criticizing actions, and by giving a principled argument for KA, based on the inference rule KB: if a subject knows that A is the best thing she can do, she is rational to do A. In the second half of the paper, we consider and reject the two most promising objections to our case for KA, one based on the Gricean notion of conversational implicature and the other based on a contextualist maneuver.     

The Effects of Moral and Pragmatic Arguments Against Torture on Demands for Judicial Reform

Torture can be opposed on the basis of pragmatic (e.g., torture does not work) or moral arguments (e.g., torture violates human rights). Three studies investigated how these arguments affect U.S. citizens' attitudes toward U.S.‐committed torture. In Study 1, participants expressed stronger demands for redressing the injustice of torture when presented with moral rather than pragmatic or no arguments against torture. Study 2 replicated this finding with an extended justice measure and also showed the moderating role of ingroup glorification and attachment. Moral arguments increased justice demands among those who typically react most defensively to ingroup‐committed wrongdoings: the highly attached and glorifying. Study 3 showed that the effect of moral arguments against torture on justice demands and support for torture among high glorifiers is mediated by moral outrage and empathy but not guilt.     

Is the Same‐sex Marriage Debate Really Just about Marriage?

In What is Marriage? One Man and One Woman: A Defense, Sherif Girgis, Ryan Anderson and Robert George defend the ‘conjugal marriage’ while claiming to make no moral judgments about homosexuality. My contention in this article is that the argument of What is Marriage is not sufficiently different from the arguments of classical new natural law theorists (NNLT), and, therefore, What is Marriage does not remain neutral on the question of whether homosexuality is moral. First, I give an overview of some classical NNLT arguments on the nature of marriage and their sexual ethic. Next, I present What is Marriage's account of conjugal marriage as a comprehensive union of two people, focusing on what makes a genuinely bodily union. I then move to the central contention of this article. By drawing on its understanding of genuinely bodily union and its account of the harm of same‐sex marriage, I argue that What is Marriage is committed to the view that same‐sex sexual unions cannot be good, since on its account of things there can be no shared sexual goods in a same‐sex sexual ‘union’.     

VALUES,DESIRES, AND LOVE: REFLECTIONS ON WOLLHEIM'S MORAL PSYCHOLOGY

In The Thread of Life, Richard Wollheim argues that a person's sense of value is grounded in the power of love to generate certain favourable perceptions of an object. Following from his view is a psychoanalytic conception of valuing as constituted by the imaginative force of phantasy, rather than rational deliberation. In this paper, I shall defend this conception with a view to explaining the relation between values and desires. I suggest that valuing qua phantasy‐making can ‘tune up’ a person's desires to fit his perception of the good. Such power of phantasy is to be contrasted with various types of motivational failure in moral imagination. Finally, I argue that ‘effective valuing’, which makes us capable of desiring what we perceive to be good, requires an affective kind of imagination which assures us that we have the ability to love and to be loved.     

A PEIRCEAN RESPONSE TO THE EVOLUTIONARY DEBUNKING OF MORAL KNOWLEDGE

The evolutionary debunking argument advanced by Sharon Street, Michael Ruse, and Richard Joyce employs the logic of Paul Griffiths and John Wilkins to contend that humans cannot have knowledge of moral truths, since the evolutionary process that has produced our basic moral intuitions lacks causal connections to those (putative) truths. Yet this argument is self‐defeating, because its aim is the categorical, normative claim that we should suspend our moral beliefs in light of the discoveries about their non‐truth‐tracking origins, when it is precisely this claim that relies upon the normativity under attack. This article cites Charles S. Peirce (1839–1914) to argue that such self‐defeat can be avoided by expanding upon the basic structure of the argument put forth by Griffiths and Wilkins, provided that one embraces a version of realism that corresponds with Peirce's doctrine of final causation. So construed, final causation reconciles real generals (including real moral values) with natural selection and undergirds further speculation of moral facts within values per se.     

BETWEEN EXAMPLE AND DOCTRINE Contract Law and Common Morality

In Democracy and Tradition, Jeffrey Stout contends that American constitutional democracy constitutes a well‐functioning moral and political tradition that is not hostile to religion, although it does not depend on any specifically religious claims. I argue that Stout's contention is supported by a consideration of the great common law subject of contracts, as taught to first‐year law students across the United States. First, I demonstrate how contract law can fruitfully be understood as a MacIntyrean tradition. Second, I illustrate the moral richness of this tradition, and the mutually interpreting nature of rules and facts, by close attention to one particularly colorful case, Syester v. Banta. I conclude by suggesting that both religious and secular ethicists might find common law cases in general and contract law cases in particular to be a source of moral reflection that is substantively rich without being religiously divisive.