Opacity,Transparency, and the Paradox of the Accessibility Requirement

Key issues in epistemology for the most part have to do with epistemic values such as justification, truth, and knowledge—that is, values related to the epistemic status of our propositional attitudes, mental events, and states. However, another important issue that is worth examining is the extent to which a subject is in a position to evaluate the strength of her epistemic position. In this paper, I wish to emphasize two properties of our mental states that play a decisive part in that respect: their opacity and transparency. In the following, I will assume that a mental state is opaque whenever it presents itself with no underlying reason, whereas states that are supported by apparent reasons are transparent. One main argument that I will defend is that even when the opacity and transparency of our mental states are not reliable cues, still they remain highly informative. Notably, I draw some implications relative to the externalist/internalist debate in epistemology. I examine the claim that only mental states that are justified are well grounded or justification conferring and the idea that often stands behind, that is, that only states whose reasons are accessible are justified—namely, the Accessibility Requirement. I also examine the source of a recent debate in epistemology: the epistemic status of our intuitive states, as these are perfect instances of opaque mental states. I conclude that intuitive states in some respect are less misleading than states that are supported by apparent reasons.     

Shelter for the Cognitively Homeless

One of the main strands of the Cartesian tradition is the view that the mental realm is cognitively accessible to us in a special way: whenever one is in a mental state of a certain sort, one can know it just by considering the matter. In that sense, the mental realm is thought to be a cognitive home for us, and the mental states it comprises are luminous. Recently, however, Timothy Williamson has argued that we are cognitively homeless: no mental state is in fact luminous. But his argument depends on an excessively strong account of luminosity. I formulate a weaker conception of luminosity that is unaffected by Williamson’s argument and yet is substantial enough to satisfy those who wish to retain this part of the Cartesian tradition.     

Direct social perception and dual process theories of mindreading

The direct social perception (DSP) thesis claims that we can directly perceive some mental states of other people. The direct perception of mental states has been formulated phenomenologically and psychologically, and typically restricted to the mental state types of intentions and emotions. I will compare DSP to another account of mindreading: dual process accounts that posit a fast, automatic “Type 1” form of mindreading and a slow, effortful “Type 2” form. I will here analyze whether dual process accounts’ Type 1 mindreading serves as a rival to DSP or whether some Type 1 mindreading can be perceptual. I will focus on Apperly and Butterfill’s dual process account of mindreading epistemic states such as perception, knowledge, and belief. This account posits a minimal form of Type 1 mindreading of belief-like states called registrations. I will argue that general dual process theories fit well with a modular view of perception that is considered a kind of Type 1 process. I will show that this modular view of perception challenges and has significant advantages over DSP’s phenomenological and psychological theses. Finally, I will argue that if such a modular view of perception is accepted, there is significant reason for thinking Type 1 mindreading of belief-like states is perceptual in nature. This would mean extending the scope of DSP to at least one type of epistemic state.     

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.     

Homelessness in the mind

In this article, I am going to present several related, themes, based on data gathered from years of consulting to homelessness services, particularly staff and management working in the voluntary sector, who are responsible for the teams that deliver care to some of the most vulnerable and challenging individuals in society. The three concepts that I will put forward are as follows: firstly, the idea that there is a fundamental human concern, or state, regarding homelessness. What I will refer to as 'homelessness in the mind'. I will consider this from psychoanalytic and systems-psychodynamic viewpoints and explore the idea of an internalised homeless state and the structures which attempt to contain it. Second, is an almost universal hatred and repulsion of this state and a need for its expulsion and relocation, in phantasy, into individuals and services associated with the homeless population. Next, I will link the concept of homelessness in the mind with Bion’s idea of sophisticated/specialised basic assumption groups; groups, budded off from mainstream society to contain specific psychological aspects of the population. I will suggest that the associated psychological stressors and pressures of homelessness, and ‘homelessness in the mind’ and its subdivisions, dependency and shame, relate to aggressive and violent elements associated with the inability to correctly process, engage with, or contain, specific internal states related to homelessness. Throughout, I will refer to my practice as an organisational consultant, and my experience of working with managers and teams who work with the homeless population.     

Is Understanding Epistemic in Nature?

Is understanding epistemic in nature? Does a correct account of what constitutes understanding of a concept mention epistemological notions such as knowledge, justification or epistemic rationality? We defend the view that understanding is epistemic in nature – we defend epistemological conceptions of understanding. We focus our discussion with a critical evaluation of Tim Williamson's challenges to epistemological conceptions of understanding in The Philosophy of Philosophy. Against Williamson, we distinguish three kinds of epistemological conceptions and argue that Williamson's arguments succeed against only the most heavily committed kind, and leave the less heavily committed kinds untouched. Further, we argue that Williamson's elaboration of lessons from his arguments point in a direction opposite of his own conclusions and give vivid articulation and support to epistemological conceptions. We suggest also that skepticism about Williamson's larger metaphilosophical conclusions – according to which understanding plays no special role in the epistemology of philosophy – may be in order.     

Permissive Situations and Direct Doxastic Control

According to what I will call ‘the disanalogy thesis,’ beliefs differ from actions in at least the following important way: while cognitively healthy people often exhibit direct control over their actions, there is no possible scenario where a cognitively healthy person exhibits direct control over her beliefs. Recent arguments against the disanalogy thesis maintain that, if you find yourself in what I will call a ‘permissive situation’ with respect to p, then you can have direct control over whether you believe p, and you can do so without manifesting any cognitive defect. These arguments focus primarily on the idea that we can have direct doxastic control in permissive situations, but they provide insufficient reason for thinking that permissive situations are actually possible, since they pay inadequate attention to the following worries: permissive situations seem inconsistent with the uniqueness thesis, permissive situations seem inconsistent with natural thoughts about epistemic akrasia, and vagueness threatens even if we push these worries aside. In this paper I argue that, on the understanding of permissive situations that is most useful for evaluating the disanalogy thesis, permissive situations clearly are possible.     

Phenomenal Contrast Arguments for Cognitive Phenomenology

According to proponents of irreducible cognitive phenomenology some cognitive states put one in phenomenal states for which no wholly sensory states suffice. One of the main approaches to defending the view that there is irreducible cognitive phenomenology is to give a phenomenal contrast argument. In this paper I distinguish three kinds of phenomenal contrast argument: what I call pure—represented by Strawson's Jack/Jacques argument—hypothetical—represented by Kriegel's Zoe argument—and glossed—first developed here. I argue that pure and hypothetical phenomenal contrast arguments face significant difficulties, but that there is a sound glossed phenomenal contrast argument for irreducible cognitive phenomenology.     

Mentalism and Epistemic Transparency

Questions about the transparency of evidence are central to debates between factive and non-factive versions of mentalism about evidence. If all evidence is transparent, then factive mentalism is false, since no factive mental states are transparent. However, Timothy Williamson has argued that transparency is a myth and that no conditions are transparent except trivial ones. This paper responds by drawing a distinction between doxastic and epistemic notions of transparency. Williamson's argument may show that no conditions are doxastically transparent, but it fails to show that no conditions are epistemically transparent. Moreover, this reinstates the argument from the transparency of evidence against factive mentalism.     

Consciousness is not a property of states: A reply to Wilberg

According to Rosenthal's higher-order thought (HOT) theory of consciousness, one is in a conscious mental state if and only if one is aware of oneself as being in that state via a suitable HOT. Several critics have argued that the possibility of so-called targetless HOTs—that is, HOTs that represent one as being in a state that does not exist—undermines the theory. Recently, Wilberg (2010) has argued that HOT theory can offer a straightforward account of such cases: since consciousness is a property of mental state tokens, and since there are no states to exhibit consciousness, one is not in conscious states in virtue of targetless HOTs. In this paper, I argue that Wilberg's account is problematic and that Rosenthal's version of HOT theory, according to which a suitable HOT is both necessary and sufficient for consciousness, is to be preferred to Wilberg's account. I then argue that Rosenthal's account can comfortably accommodate targetless HOTs because consciousness is best understood as a property of individuals, not a property of states.     

The Epistemological Problem of Other Minds and the Knowledge Asymmetry

The traditional epistemological problem of other minds seeks to answer the following question: how can we know someone else's mental states? The problem is often taken to be generated by a fundamental asymmetry in the means of knowledge. In my own case, I can know directly what I think and feel. This sort of self‐knowledge is epistemically direct in the sense of being non‐inferential and non‐observational. My knowledge of other minds, however, is thought to lack these epistemic features. So what is the basic source of my knowledge of other minds if I know my mind in such a way that I cannot know the minds of others? The aim of this paper is to clarify and assess the pivotal role that the asymmetry in respect of knowledge plays within a broadly inferentialist approach to the epistemological problem of other minds. The received dogma has always been to endorse the asymmetry for conceptual reasons and to insist that the idea of knowing someone else's mental life in the same way as one knows one's own mind is a complete non‐starter. Against this, I aim to show that it is at best a contingent matter that creatures such as us cannot know other minds just as we know a good deal of our own minds and also that the idea of having someone else's mind in one's own introspective reach is not obviously self‐contradictory. So the dogma needs to be revisited. As a result, the dialectical position of those inferentialists who believe that we know about someone else's mentality in virtue of an analogical inference will be reinforced.     

A puzzle about epistemic akrasia

In this paper I will present a puzzle about epistemic akrasia, and I will use that puzzle to motivate accepting some non-standard views about the nature of epistemological judgment. The puzzle is that while it seems obvious that epistemic akrasia must be irrational, the claim that epistemic akrasia is always irrational amounts to the claim that a certain sort of justified false belief—a justified false belief about what one ought to believe—is impossible. But justified false beliefs seem to be possible in any domain, and it’s hard to see why beliefs about what one ought to believe should be an exception. I will argue that when we get clearer about what sort of psychological state epistemic akrasia is, we can resolve the puzzle in favor of the intuitive view that epistemic akrasia is always irrational.     

Expanding the scope of reflective knowledge: From MINE to OURS

Ernest Sosa has suggested that we distinguish between animal knowledge, on the one hand, and reflective knowledge, on the other. Animal knowledge is direct, immediate, and foundationally structured, while reflective knowledge involves a knower's higher‐order awareness of her own mental states, and is structured by relations of coherence. Although Sosa's distinction is extremely appealing, it also faces serious problems. In particular, the sorts of processes that would be required for reflective knowledge, as Sosa understands it, are not processes that are instantiated in human cognition. I argue that the problems facing Sosa's notion of reflective knowledge stem from treating human cognitive processes individualistically. They stem from what I will term Sosa's perspective of methodologically individualistic noetic explanation—or MINE. I suggest that these problems disappear if we expand the scope of what counts as cognitive processes to include socially distributed cognitive processes, if we adopt a framework of other‐derived united reflective self‐evaluation—or OURS. In other words, I'll suggest that a solution to the problems facing the distinction between animal and reflective knowledge may be found in a shift of perspective from MINE to OURS.     

Safety,Explanation, Iteration

This paper argues for several related theses. First, the epistemological position that knowledge requires safe belief can be motivated by views in the philosophy of science, according to which good explanations show that their explananda are robust. This motivation goes via the idea—recently defended on both conceptual and empirical grounds—that knowledge attributions play a crucial role in explaining successful action. Second, motivating the safety requirement in this way creates a choice point—depending on how we understand robustness, we'll end up with different conceptions of safety in epistemology. Lastly, and most controversially, there's an attractive choice at this point that will not vindicate some of the most influential applications of the safety‐theoretic framework in epistemology, e.g., Williamson's (2000) arguments against the KK principle, and luminosity.     

Is There a Problem With Cognitive Outsourcing?

To what extent can we rely on others for information without such reliance becoming epistemically problematic? In this paper, this question is addressed in terms of a specific form of reliance: cognitive outsourcing. Cognitive outsourcing involves handing over (outsourcing) one's information collection and processing (the cognitive) to others. The specific question that will be asked about such outsourcing is if there is an epistemic problem about cognitive outsourcing as such. To ask if there is an epistemic problem with x for S is to ask if x is a problem for S’s ability to acquire true belief and avoid false belief. To ask if there is a problem for S with x as such is to ask if it is impossible to solve the problem for S while leaving x as is. I argue that, if we consider the five most plausible candidate epistemic problems raised by cognitive outsourcing—i.e., unreliability, gullibility, irrationality, dependency, and lack of epistemic autonomy—we see for each candidate that it is either not an epistemic problem, or not a problem about cognitive outsourcing as such.     

Moore's Proof And Martin Davies's Epistemic Projects

In the recent literature on Moore's Proof of an external world, it has emerged that different diagnoses of the argument's failure are prima facie defensible. As a result, there is a sense that the appropriateness of the different verdicts on it may depend on variation in the kinds of context in which the argument is taken to be a move, with different characteristic aims. In this spirit, Martin Davies has recently explored the use of the argument within two different epistemic projects called respectively ‘deciding what to believe’ and ‘settling the question’. Depending on which project is in hand, according to Davies, the diagnoses of its failure—if indeed it fails—will differ. I believe that, by introducing the idea that the effectiveness of a valid argument may be epistemic project-relative, Davies has pointed the way to an important reorientation of the debates about Moore's Proof. But I wish to take issue with much of the detail of his proposals. I argue that Davies's characterization of his two projects is misleading (§1), and his account of their distinction defective (§2). I then canvass some suggestions about how it may be improved upon and about how further relevant kinds of epistemic projects in which Moore's argument may be taken to be a move can be characterized, bringing out how each of these projects impinges differently on the issue of the Proof's failure and of its diagnosis (§§3 and 4). In conclusion (§5) I offer an overview of the resulting terrain.     

Permissible Epistemic Trade-Offs

Recent rejections of epistemic consequentialism, like those from Firth, Jenkins, Berker, and Greaves, have argued that consequentialism is committed to objectionable trade-offs and suggest that consequentialism's propensity for trade-offs hints at a larger problem. Here I argue that sanctioning trade-offs isn't a fault of a theory of epistemic normativity, because there are permissible epistemic trade-offs. I give examples of permissible epistemic trade-offs in pedagogy, in changes of worldview, and in indirect epistemic decisions. I also show that views that sanction trade-offs have an easier time than their rivals in explaining both why we ought to be open-minded and how arguments with suppositions get their argumentative force. These considerations don't eliminate the consequentialist's burden to respond to the objectionable cases, but they do undermine the idea that no correct theory of epistemic normativity properly sanctions trade-offs.     

Distant Peers

What is the nature of rational disagreement? A number of philosophers have recently addressed this question by examining how we should respond to epistemic conflict with a so‐called epistemic peer—that is, someone over whom you enjoy no epistemic advantage. Some say that you're rationally required to suspend judgment in these cases—thereby denying the very possibility of a certain kind of rational disagreement. Others say that it's permissible to retain your beliefs even in the face of epistemic conflict. By distinguishing between close peers and distant peers, I argue that it's rational to respond to different types of peers in different ways. I also argue that remote peers—a particularly distant kind of distant peer—provide us with an important lesson in epistemic humility.     

Epistemic Normativity and Cognitive Agency

On the assumption that genuinely normative demands concern things connected in some way to our agency, i.e. what we exercise in doing things with or for reasons, epistemologists face an important question: are there genuine epistemic norms governing belief, and if so where in the vicinity of belief are we to find the requisite cognitive agency? Extant accounts of cognitive agency tend to focus on belief itself or the event of belief‐formation to answer this question, to the exclusion of the activity of maintaining a system of beliefs. This paper argues that a full account of epistemic normativity will need to make sense of this activity as a core locus of cognitive agency. This idea is used to motivate the conclusion that one important and often overlooked kind of epistemic norms is the kind of norms governing the various cognitive activities by which we check, sustain, and adjust our belief systems.