Gareth Evans infers the absoluteness of truth and reality from the absoluteness of the correctness of assertion: since the correctness of assertion does not vary with time, he concludes that truth and reality cannot vary with time either. In this paper, I argue that Evans’s argument fails and diagnose why it fails. In doing so, I aim to shed some new light on the relationship between the temporality of judgment and that of reality. To understand this relationship fully, we must attend not only to the temporality of the correctness of judgment but also to the temporality of the act of judgment itself.
Debates on the rationality of endorsing conspiracy theories often focus on the primary evidence conspiracy theorists have: errant data, eyewitnesses, revealed documentation, and the kind of facts typical investigators would use. Once we focus on the appreciation of this primary evidence, a significant portion of conspiracy theorists (most Flat Earthers, for example), turn out not to appreciate their primary evidence. They use evidence that, in fact, does not support their beliefs at all. Thus, if we only focus on primary evidence, we would be forced to posit a deep kind of irrationality in order to explain how these conspiracy theorists arrive at their beliefs. We propose a more palatable alternative on which (the appreciation of) secondary evidence plays a crucial role in the formation of conspiratorial beliefs: conspiracy theorists often don’t (just) rely on primary evidence; they also rely on testimonies that point out to them what such evidence (supposedly) supports. While there often still is something irrational to accepting poorly supported conspiracy theories, that irrationality is no longer blatant. We compare our approach to other social epistemological alternatives in the literature and argue that it is descriptively more accurate and normatively more satisfying.
Bringing together Philosophy of Technology and Social Epistemology, this paper investigates how technology can engender worlds and affective atmospheres that structure epistemic exchanges. In addition to mediating the perception and actions of the speaker and audience, the materiality of technology can contribute to the persistence of identity prejudices, the reliability of ignorance, and the recalcitrance of maladjusted epistemological systems. In particular, this paper critically analyzes how technology such as Confederate monuments can consequently provide material scaffolding for epistemic violence.
This paper reconfigures epistemic reparations through a decolonial lens. Shifting away from reparations as restoring the victim’s epistemic standing to contribute to a “common pool of knowledge,” we focus on epistemic sovereignty. In so doing, we explore the epistemic violence of coloniality identifying two resulting epistemic harms: epistemic jurisdiction-harm and epistemic capability-harm. To address these harms, we propose an intervention consisting of three reparative moves: (1) the decolonizing of testimonial spaces, (2) the right to not be known, and (3) an expanded notion of the right to return. We conclude by hinting at our broader project of going beyond reparations and toward reclamation.
Memory sceptics typically argue that we don’t possess memory knowledge because our memory beliefs are underdetermined by memorial evidence. In response, the particularist anti-sceptical proposal argues that our anti-sceptical beliefs can be justified by our case-intuitions that identify certain beliefs as paradigmatic cases of knowledge. Those case-intuitions, as Michael Bergmann recently argued, should overweigh our principle-intuitions supporting scepticism-inducing epistemic principles. However, Bergmann’s proposal is dialectically ineffective in the absence of substantial reasons for prioritising our anti-sceptical case-intuitions over rival principle-intuitions. To overcome this defect, a transcendental particularist argument against scepticism is defended in this paper, which provides empirically supported reasons for favouring our anti-sceptical case-intuitions. Drawing on prototype theory and exemplar theory in cognitive linguistics, I argue that the conceptual categorisation of ‘memory knowledge’ is premised on its paradigmatic cases that we possess. Therefore, the sceptic’s categorisation of memory knowledge is groundless and the sceptical argument is inherently self-undermining.
Epistemic perceptualism is the view that emotions provide immediate prima facie justification for evaluative beliefs. I defend this view against recent criticism by Michael Brady. I address two of his arguments in particular: what I have termed the Proxy and Symmetry Arguments. According to the former, emotions are only proxy reasons. They can stand in for genuine reasons, but they lack justificatory force of their own. This objection fails, I argue, because it assumes that proxy reasons can always be rendered epistemically superfluous in light of other reasons. I show that this is not always true, and in particular that it is not true of emotions. Far from being superfluous, emotions appear to play an important epistemic role: to independently verify the veracity of our evaluative judgments. Finally, I show that the Symmetry Argument is sound only if Brady’s account of proxy reasons is generally correct.
The via negativa conception of physicalism defines the thesis in terms of the exclusion of fundamental mentality: no property is both fundamental and mental. I argue that its appeal is best understood as resting on a deeper metaphysical ideal inherited from classical materialism—the ideal of natural continuity. Rather than proposing a rival formulation, I reconstruct this continuity ideal as the animating commitment behind many physicalist views. This reconstruction helps to systematize characteristic modal judgments in the literature and to explain the appeal of via negativa. However, if physicalism’s metaphysical motivation is tied to this ideal, then developments in contemporary physics, especially non-locality and indeterminism, may place it under pressure. Physicalism’s future thus depends on whether our evolving scientific worldview continues to sustain the continuity ideal that historically gave the view its force.
I argue for a longevity interpretation of Bernard Williams’s argument against the desirability of immortality and employ it to analyze and critique John Martin Fischer’s narrative model of immortality. According to the interpretation I defend, Williams’s primary concern is not immortality per se, but rather the possibility of living long enough to annihilate the categorical desires and ground projects that confer meaning on an individual’s life, given a specific character. I contend that the longevity framework reveals a challenge to Fischer’s model of immortality, which I call “never-ending stories.” Fischer presents an immortal life as a series of overlapping, interconnected stories. He contends that an immortal life need not be a single, unified narrative to remain meaningful. I argue that narrative unity is essential to satisfy the criteria that Williams insists a plausible model of immortality must fulfill. Longevity is related to narrative unity because it shows that a life story can be extended beyond the point at which a life is meaningful. If the argument works, then Fischer has not provided a model that bypasses Williams’s objection to immortality.
Nudge theory proposes to deliberately alter people’s behaviour or choices for their welfare. Based on insights from behavioural economics, choice architects intentionally design nudges to influence agents’ behaviour or choices towards specific options as judged by themselves. In the context of nudging practices, GPS is frequently referred to as a “prime” example of nudging. The problem is not only that GPS is misclassified as a nudge, but also that it is invoked to launder ethical concerns associated with other nudges by importing the moral intuitions of a tool into the governance of libertarian paternalistic choice architecture. Proponents claim that, since GPS is an ethically uncontroversial nudge, similar acceptance should be extended to other nudges. However, we argue that this comparison overlooks critical distinctions in the design objectives and applications of GPS and nudges. During navigation, the primary purpose of GPS is to provide users with efficient route guidance and to enhance user experience based on user input. Unlike navigation by GPS, nudges aim to steer individuals’ behaviour or choices away from one option and gently guide them towards another option through choice architecture. This paper distinguishes the structure and purpose behind the design of nudges from that of GPS. Based on the necessary conditions of a nudge, we demonstrate that GPS does not meet the criteria for being classified as a nudge. Therefore, GPS should not be considered a nudge and, hence, cannot be used as a prime example of a nudge to justify nudging in ethical discourse.
In “Armchair Luck” (2007a), Nenad Miščević argues that Duncan Pritchard’s safe-true-belief anti-luck epistemology cannot rule out a priori veritic luck. Since a priori necessary truths are true in all possible worlds, Pritchard’s safety condition is satisfied in clear cases of knowledge-destroying a priori veritic luck. Thus, Pritchard’s modal anti-luck epistemology is mistaken. Nenad’s diagnosis is that Pritchard puts too much focus on the world and not enough focus on the epistemic agent. The solution, he argues, is a strong virtue-based epistemology that puts the focus on the epistemic agent. While I agree with his refutation of Pritchard’s anti-luck epistemology, I disagree with his diagnosis. The problem lies with Pritchard’s modal account of veritic luck. The kind of veritic luck that is incompatible with knowledge is the sort of evidence-based veritic luck that I identified when I originally introduced the distinction between evidential luck and veritic luck. Once that is recognized, we can see that there are two reliability constraints on knowledge—S’s reasons need to be reliable-indicator reasons and S needs to be a reliable interpreter of those reasons. While Nenad is right to recognize the important role played by the epistemic agent, virtuous epistemic agency is not enough. The would-be knower also needs the right kind of reasons.
This project explores the intersection of two lively debates in epistemology that have not yet engaged with each other: accounts of group belief in collective epistemology and work the nature of epistemic trust. As social epistemology has come to occupy a central role in epistemology over the past several decades, we’ve seen the amount of work on both collective belief and epistemic trust explode. However, despite the literature in both fields booming, we haven’t yet seen any sustained examination of how these currently separate literatures might be intersected and interconnected. This paper begins such an examination. Given the many accounts of both collective belief and epistemic trust, these different literatures can provide different axes along which to vary models of collective trust. Explicating and exploring these different models may serve as options ripe for more examination by social epistemologists.
This paper offers a formal and exegetical analysis of the notion of proprium (proper accident), a concept rooted in Aristotelian logic and further developed by Thomas Aquinas and other medievals. While commonly defined as a property that necessarily follows from a thing’s essence without being part of it, the proprium has been a source of terminological divergence and substantive disagreement, both in scholastic and analytic circles. We defend a refined version of Kit Fine’s account—according to which propria follow logically from essence—by situating it within the framework of Aristotelian-Thomistic logic and explicating it through higher-order logic. In particular, we argue that proper accidents are those whose definition contains the proper subject as a specific difference, thus violating the so-called “inverse proportion of extension and comprehension,” and yielding propositions that are true solely in virtue of the meaning of the terms involved, while being non-analytic in a modern sense. The paper contributes both a formal reconstruction of the concept and a historical reinterpretation of Aquinas’s position, and it clarifies how our account refines or reconciles competing contemporary views—especially those framed in causal rather than logical terms.
In this paper I examine two common conservative responses to two questions about social progress: How should social progress be pursued? And when does social change constitute social progress? These two responses can be summarised as follows: “Less teleologically, and less often, than non-conservatives generally think”. The first response is anchored in a criticism of the claims of reason in the pursuit of social progress. I reconstruct and examine this criticism and its variants, and then turn to the second response, and more specifically to a way of arguing for it based on value conservatism. I argue that, even if correct, value conservatism speaks less often against social change than conservatives generally think.
Intuition is a psychological state that often accompanies some propositions, particularly when engaging in thought experiments. I argue that these intuitive states can sometimes serve as evidence for the propositions they accompany. To support this claim, I present a novel argument for the evidentiary role of intuition: Some philosophical arguments rely solely on intuition for at least one of their premises. Some conclusions from such arguments are justified. If the conclusion of an argument is (i) justified and (ii) justified by its premises, then premises of that argument are justified. Therefore, all premises of such arguments are justified. If all premises of such arguments are justified, then that implies that some premises of such arguments are justified only by intuition. Therefore, intuitions can justify. One virtue of this argument is that it does not require establishing the nature of intuition before demonstrating that it can be justificatory.
The ‘Now What?’ problem for moral error theorists concerns whether (and how) error theorists should maintain or abolish moral discourse. If moral discourse is systematically error-ridden, one must decide whether to abandon it, as we have abandoned talk of phlogiston, or maintain it, as most mathematical error theorists retain number discourse. Prompted by companions-in-guilt arguments, some moral error theorists have also endorsed prudential error theories. These developments pave the way for a novel metanormative debate — a ‘Now What?’ problem for prudential discourse. Just as moral error theorists must decide what to do with their error-ridden discourse, so must prudential error theorists decide what to do with theirs. This paper addresses this novel problem, by (i) arguing that multiple forms of moral error theory lead to prudential error theory, (ii) characterising the prudential ‘Now What?’ problem, and (iii) proposing a method for how error theorists can answer it (and practically deliberate in general). Finally, (iv) the paper takes a substantive position on the debate by recommending that moral and prudential error theorists adopt metaphorist prudential fictionalism.
In §6.54 of the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, Ludwig Wittgenstein famously claims that his work consists of nonsensical sentences. Both resolute and orthodox readers try to explain this claim, but the nonsensicality of Tractarian sentences poses a problem for the mechanism of their functioning and our understanding of them. Typically, if I understand a sentence s, then I entertain proposition p, which is expressed by the sentence s. However, nonsensical sentences do not express any propositions. It is also a standard assumption that if a sentence is nonsensical, then it makes no sense to talk of it as implying or entailing anything. If we understand Tractarian sentences, how is this possible? How do we understand nonsensical sentences even though they do not express propositions? The main objective of this paper is to explain the mechanism behind understanding nonsensical Tractarian sentences and how this understanding differs from understanding meaningful sentences in other philosophical works. I develop Cora Diamond’s suggestion that understanding nonsense requires an imaginative activity, and I propose interpreting imagination in terms of pretence, as is common in theories of fiction. Nonsensical sentences do not express any propositions, but we pretend that they do. Understanding a nonsensical sentence amounts to understanding the make-believe proposition expressed by this sentence. My proposal has a number of advantages: it favours neither the resolute nor the orthodox readings of the Tractatus; it shows that nonsense attributions are meaningful and that understanding nonsense is conceptual, and it explains the difference between understanding meaningful sentences and understanding nonsensical sentences.
This paper advances the thesis that there is a substantive tension between the Non- Reductionist View of the Self, according to which the self is fundamental (irreducible to physical or psychological states or processes) and indivisible (not composed of parts), and the Block Universe Theory, which holds that all events and moments coexist within a four-dimensional reality. The paper develops this thesis by presenting two arguments: the Temporal Zombie Argument and the Epistemic Zombie Argument. The former argument contends that combining the Non-Reductionist View of the Self with the Block Universe Theory entails the existence of philosophical zombies, whereas the latter argument suggests that we could have lived our entire lives among such entities without realising it. If this line of reasoning is correct, non-reductionists cannot coherently adopt the Block Universe Theory as their temporal framework; conversely, block universe theorists cannot endorse the Non-Reductionist View of the Self without facing these problems.
Platonism about properties holds that there are uninstantiated properties. For properties do not depend on their instances, whereas their instances depend on them. In this paper, I shall discuss two ‘heterodox’ versions of Platonism about properties: Meinongian Essentialist Platonism about Properties and Mutualist Essentialist Platonism about Properties. In Section 1 I shall introduce what I label ‘Orthodox Platonism about Properties’, its virtues and problems. In Section 2 I shall present a weaker form of Platonism, i.e., Essentialist Platonism about Properties (EPP), which only takes into account the essential dependence relations between Platonic properties and their instances. In line with this view, in Section 3 and Section 4 two versions of EPP will be presented: Meinongian EPP and Mutualist EPP. The former roughly consists in claiming that Platonic properties do not have the sort of existence that is typical of substances, though they are endowed with essences. The latter roughly consists in claiming that Platonic properties existentially depend on their instances but their instances essentially depend upon them. In Section 5 and in Section 6 I shall reconsider the problems that affect Platonism about properties and show how Meinogian EPP and Mutualist EPP can successfully cope with them.
This paper develops a normative account of our epistemic duties towards experts and expertise, advancing two complementary models of such duties. In an optimisation model, disregarding expertise constitutes a violation of the general norms of epistemic efficiency. In a reputational model, the manner in which expert testimony is accepted or disregarded has tangible effects on the epistemic social environment, thereby generating context-sensitive commitments. In many cases, disrespect for expertise undermines the collective calibration of epistemic trust. This account explains why disrespect for expertise constitutes a distinctive epistemic fault while avoiding the excesses of assurance-based and pre-emption theories. It also addresses the problem of predatory experts, showing how norms of epistemic reputation can justify the suspension of trust in cases of abuse without collapsing into general scepticism about expertise.
