On correctly responding to all decisive reasons we have

Benjamin Kiesewetter has recently provided an argument to the effect that necessarily, if one has decisive reason to φ, then one has sufficient reason to believe that she herself has decisive reason to φ. If sound, this argument has important implications for several debates in contemporary normative philosophy. I argue that the main premise in the argument is problematic and should be rejected. According to this premise (PRR), necessarily, one can respond correctly to all the decisive reasons one has. I show that PRR is confronted with counterexamples and presupposes an implausible commensurability of all kinds of reasons. If so, the conclusion in Kiesewetter’s argument doesn’t follow. I also discuss further implications of my objections to PRR for a specific family of ‘ought’ implies ‘can’ principles and ability constraints on reasons, and the consequences that these could have for a number of contemporary debates in normative philosophy.     

A non‐normative account of assertion

Many contemporary philosophers argue that assertion is governed by an epistemic norm. In particular, many defend the knowledge account of assertion, which says that one should assert only what one knows. Here, I defend a non‐normative alternative to the knowledge account that I call the repK account of assertion. According to the repK account, assertion represents knowledge, but it is not governed by a constitutive epistemic rule. I show that the repK account offers a more straightforward interpretation of the conversational patterns and intuitions that motivate the knowledge account. It does so in terms of ordinary normative principles that philosophers already accept, none of which are constitutive to assertion. I then contend that the repK account is preferable to the knowledge account because it is simpler, its implications are less contentious, and it avoids a problem for normative accounts of assertion recently raised by Peter Pagin. I also argue that the repK account offers a satisfying explanation of selfless assertion, a counterexample to the knowledge account posed by Jennifer Lackey.     

Excuses,exemptions, and derivative norms

Distinguishing between excuses and exemptions advances our understanding of a standard range of problem cases in debates about epistemic norms. But it leaves open a problem of accounting for blameless norm violation in ‘prospective agents’. By shifting focus in our theory of excuses from rational excellence to norms governing the dispositions of agents, we can account for a fuller range of normative phenomena at play in debates about epistemic norms.     

A Discourse on Educational Leadership: Global Themes,Postmodern Perspectives

Epistemology mirrors reality but notperfectly, and in the process molds reality butnot exactly as intended or anticipated. Horizontal interconnections also exist betweenand among epistemology, ideology, theory andpraxiology. However, these relations areneither deductive nor deterministic in naturebut are merely resonant, and then unclear,ambiguous and confounded. In this paper, thepoint is made that we need a grand reflectionon both our paradigms of reality and ourpredicaments of life as lived, to deal with thediscontent of humanity at this moment of thehistory of our civilization, and to engage inpraxis ``to act on our world and to reconstructit' to make it moral, just and more humane. Toundertake such a grand reflection, we need apractical philosophy of knowledge – that is, apractical epistemology – to bridge across themultiple epistemological approaches nowcrowding our discussions. An epistemictriangle formed by systems thinking,constructivist thinking, and dialecticalthinking is offered to serve as the startingpoint of crystallization for building a commonground for epistemologies. It is shown how suchan epistemological diagram could be first usedto develop a minimum ideological consensus andthen to bring orderliness to the chaos ofcontemporary themes of our civilization andissues of education and culture within andacross nations. Finally, an agenda foreducational leadership for educational practiceis offered to fit the needs of the globalcommunity of nations as we enter thetwenty-first century.     

Phenomenal transparency and cognitive self-reference

A representationalist analysis of strong first-person phenomena is developed (Baker 1998), and it is argued that conscious, cognitive self-reference can be naturalized under this representationalist analysis. According to this view, the phenomenal first-person perspective is a condition of possibility for the emergence of a cognitive first-person perspective. Cognitive self-reference always is reference to the phenomenal content of a transparent self-model. The concepts of phenomenal transparency and introspection are clarified. More generally, I suggest that the concepts of phenomenal opacity and phenomenal transparency are interesting instruments for analyzing conscious, self-representational content, and that their relevance in understanding reflexive, i.e., cognitive subjectivity may have been overlooked in the past.     

ON THE NORMATIVE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE AIMS OF RELIGIOUS PRACTICE

During the last decades it has been common to assert—especially in the field of science and religion—that the aims characteristic of religious practice determine the norms we should employ when evaluating its normative status. However, until now, this issue has not been properly investigated by paying attention to contemporary metanormative research. In this article, I critically examine how different popular theories of normativity relate to the proposed normative significance of the aims characteristic of religious practice. I argue that whether or not, and in what way exactly, the aims characteristic of religious practice are normatively significant is highly dependent both on controversial issues concerning the nature of religion, and on a number of controversial metanormative issues.     

Rationalizing Socrates’ daimonion

That Socrates took himself to possess a divine sign is well attested by ancient sources. Both Plato and Xenophon mention Socrates’ daimonion on numerous occasions. What is problematic for contemporary scholars is that Socrates unfailingly obeys the warnings of his sign. Scholars have worried that Socrates seems to ascribe greater epistemic authority to his sign than his own critical reasoning. Moreover, he never so much as questions the authority of his sign to guide his actions, much less its divine nature. Socrates’ unquestioning obedience to his sign thus appears to be in conflict with another of Socrates’ defining characteristics: namely, his relentless rationality. However, Socrates does not seem to recognize such inconsistency. The problem of the daimonion, then, is this: is Socrates’ professed commitment to rationality consistent with his unquestioning deference to his daimonion’s warnings? And if so, how? In this paper, I first discuss several solutions to the problem of the daimonion. I aim to show that none of the accounts of Socrates’ sign that have appeared in the scholarly literature are adequate. I then propose a new account of the daimonion, which, I argue, secures the rationality of Socrates’ obedience to his divine sign.     

Conclusive Reasons and Epistemic Luck

What is it to have conclusive reasons to believe a proposition P? According to a view famously defended by Dretske, a reason R is conclusive for P just in case [R would not be the case unless P were the case]. I argue that, while knowing that P is plausibly related to having conclusive reasons to believe that P, having such reasons cannot be understood in terms of the truth of this counterfactual condition. Simple examples show that it is possible to believe P on the basis of reasons that satisfy the counterfactual, and still get things right about P only as a matter of luck. Seeing where this account of conclusive reasons goes wrong points to an important distinction between having conclusive reasons and relying on reasons that are in point of fact conclusive. It also has wider consequences for whether modal principles like sensitivity and safety can rule out the pernicious kind of epistemic luck, or the kind of luck that interferes with knowledge.     

Instrumentalism about practical reason: not by default

Instrumentalism is the view that all requirements of practical reason can be derived from the instrumental principle, that is, from the claim that one ought to take the suitable means to one's ends. Rationalists, by contrast, hold that there are requirements of practical reason that concern the normative acceptability of ends. To the extent that rationalists put forward these requirements in addition to the instrumental principle, rationalism might seem to go beyond instrumentalism in its normative commitments. This is why it is sometimes thought that rationalism is stronger than instrumentalism in a way that entails that instrumentalism is the default view, while rationalists carry the burden of proof. In this paper, I explore and discuss different ways of spelling out this idea. I argue that rationalism is not stronger than instrumentalism in a way that has implications for matters of justification and differences in prima facie defensibility of the two sorts of views.     

Human rights and the rights of states: a relational account

What is the relationship between human rights and the rights of states? Roughly, while cosmopolitans insist that international morality must regard as basic the interests of individuals, statists maintain that the state is of fundamental moral significance. This article defends a relational version of statism. Human rights are ultimately grounded in a relational norm of reciprocal independence and set limits to the exercise of public authority, but, contra the cosmopolitan, the state is of fundamental moral significance. A relational account promises to justify a limited conception of state sovereignty while avoiding the familiar cosmopolitan criticisms of statist accounts.