Conditionalization,Reflection, and Self-Knowledge

Van Fraassen famously endorses the Principle of Reflection as a constraint on rational credence, and argues that Reflection is entailed by the more traditional principle of Conditionalization. He draws two morals from this alleged entailment. First, that Reflection can be regarded as an alternative to Conditionalization – a more lenient standard of rationality. And second, that commitment to Conditionalization can be turned into support for Reflection. Van Fraassen also argues that Reflection implies Conditionalization, thus offering a new justification for Conditionalization. I argue that neither principle entails the other, and thus neither can be used to motivate the other in the way van Fraassen says. There are ways to connect Conditionalization to Reflection, but these connections depend on poor assumptions about our introspective access, and are not tight enough to draw the sorts of conclusions van Fraassen wants. Upon close examination, the two principles seem to be getting at two quite independent epistemic norms. My thanks to Frank Arntzenius, Barry Loewer, Chris Meacham, John Hawthorne, and an anonymous referee for their helpful discussion and criticism. Special thanks to Bliss Kern for bringing the topic to my attention.     

On Toleration,Charity, and Epistemic Fallibilism

In this paper I examine some presuppositions of toleration and pluralism and explore two models, viz., a deontological and a consequentialist model, respectively, which could support the view that rational agents should act in a tolerant way. Against the background which is offered by the first model, I give two arguments in favor of the view that people are better off and more rational if they act in a tolerant way. The first argument draws upon a principle of charity which is usually applied in philosophy of mind and philosophy of language, but which could, equally well, work with regard to foundational issues in ethics and philosophy of action. The second argument is built upon the epistemic principle of fallibilism and it is meant to show that acting in a tolerant way is the rational thing to do from this perspective.     

A strategy for assessing closure

This paper looks at an argument strategy for assessing the epistemic closure principle. This is the principle that says knowledge is closed under known entailment; or (roughly) if S knows p and S knows that p entails q, then S knows that q. The strategy in question looks to the individual conditions on knowledge to see if they are closed. According to one conjecture, if all the individual conditions are closed, then so too is knowledge. I give a deductive argument for this conjecture. According to a second conjecture, if one (or more) condition is not closed, then neither is knowledge. I give an inductive argument for this conjecture. In sum, I defend the strategy by defending the claim that knowledge is closed if, and only if, all the conditions on knowledge are closed. After making my case, I look at what this means for the debate over whether knowledge is closed.     

Charity and Error‐Theoretic Nominalism

I here investigate whether there is any version of the principle of charity both strong enough to conflict with an error‐theoretic version of nominalism about abstract objects (EN), and supported by the considerations adduced in favour of interpretive charity in the literature. I argue that in order to be strong enough, the principle, which I call “(Charity)”, would have to read, “For all expressions e, an acceptable interpretation must make true a sufficiently high ratio of accepted sentences containing e”. I next consider arguments based on (i) Davidson's intuitive cases for interpretive charity, (ii) the reliability of perceptual beliefs, and (iii) the reliability of “non‐abstractive inference modes”, and conclude that none support (Charity). I then propose a diagnosis of the view that there must be some universal principle of charity ruling out (EN). Finally, I present a reason to think (Charity) is false, namely, that it seems to exclude the possibility of such disagreements as that between nominalists and realists.     

Two arguments against lying

Kant and Sidgwick are at opposite extremes on whether we may tell paternalistic lies. I trace the extremism to their views about ethical concepts. Sidgwick thinks fundamental ethical concepts must be precise. Common Sense morality says we may tell paternalistic lies to children but not to sane adults. Because the distinction between a child and an adult is imprecise, Sidgwick thinks this principle cannot be fundamental, and must be based on the (precise) principle of utility, which often mandates paternalistic lies to adults. Kant thinks that ethical concepts are ideals of reason, which do not fit the world precisely because the world is imperfect. We lie to children and the insane because they are irrational, but no one is perfectly rational. We must treat all persons with the respect due to rational agents, so the pressure of the theory is toward not lying to anyone. Decisions about where to draw the line must be made pragmatically and to some extent arbitrary. But fear of this is not a good reason to abandon ethical ideals for utilitarianism.     

Charity, Supervenience, and Skepticism

In a number of articles Donald Davidson has argued that the charitable nature of his method of radical interpretation rules out the possibility of massive error and thus refutes Cartesian skepticism. The diversity of such arguments and the suggestions that are all being made under the name of the principle of charity have prompted a large body of conflicting responses, adding only to the obscurity of the issues that are generally associated with the question of skepticism. In this paper I propose to consider the debate in a new light by reconstruing the principle of charity as a supervenience constraint on belief attribution. This would help explain some of the puzzling features of Davidson's arguments, like the idea of an omniscient interpreter, and the ensuing commentaries. Having provided an analysis of the limitations of Davidson's arguments, I shall then suggest an alternative explanation of the purported necessity of the principle of charity. Finally, having construed the principle of charity as a supervenience constraint, I shall examine what consequences this construal has for the logical status of the principle itself and its alleged epistemic potentials.     

Implicit commitment in theory choice

The proper evaluation of a theory’s virtues seems to require taking into account what the theory is indirectly or implicitly committed to, in addition to what it explicitly says. Most extant proposals for criteria of theory choice in the literature spell out the relevant notion of implicit commitment via some notion of entailment. I show that such criteria behave implausibly in application to theories that differ over matters of entailment. A recent defence by Howard Peacock of such a criterion against this objection is examined and rejected. I go on to a develop a better proposal on which, roughly speaking, a theory is counted committed to a claim if and only if its best fully explicit extension is explicitly committed to the claim. Such extensions in turn are evaluated by ordinary standards of theory choice adapted to the case of theories assumed to articulate their intended content in a fully explicit fashion.     

SOLVING THE PROBLEM OF LOGICAL OMNISCIENCE

This paper looks at three ways of addressing probabilism's implausible requirement of logical omniscience. The first and most common strategy says it's okay to require an ideally rational person to be logically omniscient. I argue that this view is indefensible on any interpretation of ‘ideally rational’. The second strategy says probabilism should be formulated not in terms of logically possible worlds but in terms of doxastically possible worlds, ways you think the world might be. I argue that, on the interpretation of this approach that lifts the requirement of certainty in all logical truths, the view becomes vacuous, issuing no requirements on rational believers at all. Finally, I develop and endorse a new solution to the problem. This view proposes dynamic norms for reasoning with credences. The solution is based on an old proposal of Ian Hacking's that says you're required to be sensitive to logical facts only when you know they are logical facts.     

The principle of charity and the problem of irrationality (translation and the problem of irrationality)

Common formulations of the principle of charity in translation seem to undermine attributions of irrationality in social scientific accounts that are otherwise unexceptionable. This I call the problem of irrationality. Here I resolve the problem of irrationality by developing two complementary views of the principle of charity. First, I develop the view (ill-developed in the literature at present) that the principle of charity is preparatory, being needed in the construction of provisional first-approximation translation manuals. These serve as the basis for explanatory accounts and associated refinements in the translation manual. In developing such explanatory accounts, the principle of charity is no longer constraining. Thus, the principle of charity applies only in the early stages of constructing translation manuals, and there is no problem of irrationality in the later stages of constructing translation manuals. Second, I reduce the principle of charity, where it does apply, to a special case of what I call the principle of explicability: so translate as to attribute explicable beliefs and practices to the speakers of the source-language. I show that the appropriate formulation of the principle of charity counsels just what the principle of explicability requires in the early stages of social scientific investigation.I am grateful to Robert Barrett, Roger Gibson, and Paul Roth for their generous assistance.     

Kant and the creation of freedom: a response to Terry Godlove

In his review of my book, Terry Godlove raises some robust objections to the exegesis of Kant that I present in my recent book, Kant and the Creation of Freedom: a Theological Problem (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press, 2013). I respond to these criticisms in this article. Properly to locate Godlove’s exegetical objections, I dedicate the first section to setting out the arc of the argument I trace. I then set out and treat in turn Godlove’s main objections to my exegesis: that it depends upon an interpretation of transcendental idealism which makes the doctrine ‘flatly inconsistent and probably just silly’; that I neglect the most plausible account interpretation of Kant’s various statements about transcendental idealism; and that I ‘pick and choose’ supporting texts too narrowly, leading to an unbalanced presentation, which is too convenient to my thesis. I conclude with some general methodological reflections—stimulated by Godlove, but not aimed at him—about how historical philosophical texts are often treated. I express some anxieties about the principle of charity that underlies much current exegesis, and ‘rational reconstruction’ of historical texts, and I propose a case for what might be called ‘creative decomposition’ (not of the text, but of the self).     

Doing What is Best

If doing what is best sets the right ideal of rational agency, then rational agents should do what they believe to be best. As long as we leave open the question what makes an option best, all plausible theories of rationality willfit into this framework. Consequently, rational agents will always want to do the things they believes to be best. This claim is an instance of what David Lewis calls the desire-as-belief thesis, which he has tried to refute. I reject Lewis' argument by criticizing his treatment of belief-change in respect of propositions about degrees of goodness.     

Okasha on Inductive Scepticism

In a recent paper replying to the inductive sceptic, Samir Okasha says that the Humean argument for inductive scepticism depends on mistakenly construing inductive reasoning as based on a principle of the uniformity of nature. I dispute Okasha's argument that we are entitled to the background beliefs on which (he says) inductive reasoning depends. Furthermore, I argue that the sorts of theoretically impoverished contexts to which a uniformity-of-nature principle has traditionally been restricted are exactly the contexts relevant to the inductive sceptic's argument, and ( pace Okasha) are not at all remote from actual scientific practice. I discuss several scientific examples involving such contexts.     

Entailment and Bivalence

My purpose in this paper is to argue that the classical notion of entailment is not suitable for non-bivalent logics, to propose an appropriate alternative and to suggest a generalized entailment notion suitable to bivalent and non-bivalent logics alike. In classical two valued logic, one can not infer a false statement from one that is not false, any more than one can infer from a true statement a statement that is not true. In classical logic in fact preserving truth and preserving non-falsity are one and the same thing. They are not the same in non-bivalent logics however and I will argue that the classical notion of entailment that preserves only truth is not strong enough for such a logic. I will show that if we retain the classical notion of entailment in a logic that has three values, true, false and a third value in between, an inconsistency can be derived that can be resolved only by measures that seriously disable the logic. I will show this for a logic designed to allow for semantic presuppositions, then I will show that we get the same result in any three valued logic with the same value ordering. I will finally suggest how the notion of entailment should be generalized so that this problem may be avoided. The strengthened notion of entailment I am proposing is a conservative extension of the classical notion that preserves not only truth but the order of all values in a logic, so that the value of an entailed statement must alway be at least as great as the value of the sequence of statements entailing it. A notion of entailment this strong or stronger will, I believe, be found to be applicable to non-classical logics generally. In the opinion of Dana Scott, no really workable three valued logic has yet been developed. It is hard to disagree with this. A workable three valued logic however could perhaps be developed however, if we had a notion of entailment suitable to non-bivalent logics.     

God knows (but does God believe?)

The standard view in epistemology is that propositional knowledge entails belief. Positive arguments are seldom given for this entailment thesis, however; instead, its truth is typically assumed. Against the entailment thesis, Myers-Schulz and Schwitzgebel (Noûs, forthcoming) report that a non-trivial percentage of people think that there can be propositional knowledge without belief. In this paper, we add further fuel to the fire, presenting the results of four new studies. Based on our results, we argue that the entailment thesis does not deserve the default status that it is typically granted. We conclude by considering the alternative account of knowledge that Myers-Schulz and Schwitzgebel propose to explain their results, arguing that it does not explain ours. In its place we offer a different explanation of both sets of findings—the conviction account, according to which belief, but not knowledge, requires mental assent.     

Universalizability for Collective Rational Agents: A Critique of Agentrelativism

This paper contends that a Kantian universalizability constraint on theories of practical reason in conjunction with the possibility of collective rational agents entails the surprisingly strong conclusion that no fully agent-relative theory of practical reason can be sound. The basic point is that a Kantian universalizability constraint, the thesis that all reasons for action are agent-relative and the possibility of collective rational agents gives rise to a contradiction. This contradiction can be avoided by either rejecting Kantian universalizability, the possibility of collective rational agents, or the tenability of a fully agent-relative theory of practical reason; we cannot have all three.     

DEDUCTIVE CLOSURE,SCEPTICISM AND THE PARADOXES OF CONFIRMATION1

To undermine much of what we ordinarily claim to know, sceptics have often appealed to a principle (known as the principle of closure) according to which knowledge (justification) is closed under known entailment. In this paper after expounding the views of Stein, Klein and others, I shall argue that they all fail to take note of different contexts in which the principle of closure is applied. The relevance of the principle of closure for scepticism is then analyzed in the light of, what I call, the ‘infectious’ character of epistemic contexts. I shall also highlight the similarities in the behaviour of the concepts of justification and confirmation and appeal to certain solutions to the paradoxes of confirmation to provide a comprehensive account of the different instances of the principle of closure.     

Rethinking the Priority of Practical Reason in Kant

Throughout the critical period Kant enigmatically insists that reason is a ‘unity’, thereby suggesting that both our theoretical and practical endeavors are grounded in one and the same rational capacity. How Kant's unity thesis ought to be interpreted and whether it can be substantiated remain sources of controversy in the literature. According to the strong reading of this claim, reason is a ‘unity’ because all our reasoning, including our theoretical reasoning, functions practically. Although several prominent commentators endorse this view, it is widely thought to lack exegetical support. This paper seeks to strengthen the case for this reading by showing how theoretical reason's positive function, as Kant presents it in the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic, may be construed as fundamentally practical. I argue that reason's supreme regulative principle ought to be understood as a categorical practical imperative. This interpretation, I suggest, resolves the apparent inconsistencies that blight Kant's account of the principle in the Appendix, while bringing greater overall coherence to his account of theoretical reason's regulative function.     

Global Constraints on Imprecise Credences: Solving Reflection Violations,Belief Inertia,and Other Puzzles

The move to imprecise credence models leaves many formal norms of rationality surprisingly intact, as rational constraints on precise credences are often reinterpreted as constraints on individual elements of a rational agent’s representor. However, constraints on imprecise credences needn’t take this form. Whether an imprecise agent is rational might just as easily depend on global features of her representor. This paper is an extended investigation of global rules of rationality. I begin by distinguishing and defining multiple notions of globalness. Then I use these notions to solve several problems faced by fans of imprecise credences. On behalf of fans of imprecise credences, I respond to the problem of belief inertia, according to which certain imprecise agents are unable to engage in inductive learning. In addition, I answer the objection that that imprecise agents are doomed to violate the rational principle of Reflection.     

Amicably Deceived

A widely accepted thesis in the philosophy of friendship is what I call ‘the self-knowledge thesis,’ which says that good friendship is essentially such as to conduce to self-knowledge. I argue in this paper that the self-knowledge thesis is false. Good friendship need not conduce to self-knowledge, for it is part of the nature and value of friendship that it might lead us to form false beliefs about ourselves.