The claim that prejudice causes prejudiced beliefs is a familiar one. Call it the causal claim. In this paper, I turn to sexism and sexist beliefs to explore the causal claim within the context of current debates in the ethics of beliefs about moral encroachment on epistemic rationality. My goal is to consider and arbitrate between plausible ways of fleshing out the idea that the non-doxastic dimensions of sexism (including its motivational and affective components as well as its structural and institutional varieties) cause sexist beliefs in a normatively significant way - that is, in a way that can render those beliefs epistemically deficient. I suggest that, in conjunction with the assumption that sexist beliefs are epistemically irrational, each position in the ethics of belief debate lends itself to a different interpretation of the causal claim: purism about epistemic rationality supports a narrow interpretation, while revisionism supports a broad one. After developing each interpretation, I argue that - at the heart of the disagreement between them - is a different story about the normative significance of the fact that evidence about an unfortunate truth has a sexist provenance. Along the way, I consider what it means for evidence to be "stacked in favor" of sexist beliefs.

Our social identity affects what we believe. But, how should we epistemically evaluate this doxastic impact? Achieving a robust picture of the epistemic significance of social identity requires us to explore the understudied intersection of irrelevant influences and standpoint epistemology, which leads us to cases of double higher-order evidence. Reflecting on social identity through the lens of irrelevant influences gives us higher-order evidence of error, while reflecting through the lens of standpoint advantage gives us higher-order evidence of accuracy. We must weigh the strength of each piece of higher-order evidence case by case to epistemically evaluate the doxastic impact of social identity. Notre identit & eacute; sociale influe sur nos croyances. Mais comment & eacute;valuer cet impact doxastique d'un point de vue & eacute;pist & eacute;mique ? Pour obtenir un portrait fiable de l'importance & eacute;pist & eacute;mique de l'identit & eacute; sociale, nous devons explorer la jonction peu & eacute;tudi & eacute;e des influences non pertinentes et de l'& eacute;pist & eacute;mologie du point de vue, ce qui nous am & egrave;ne & agrave; des cas de double preuve d'ordre sup & eacute;rieur. Le fait d'envisager l'identit & eacute; sociale sous l'angle des influences non pertinentes nous donne une preuve d'ordre sup & eacute;rieur d'erreur, tandis que l'examen selon l'avantage du point de vue fournit une preuve d'ordre sup & eacute;rieur d'exactitude. Nous devons donc soupeser la force de chaque & eacute;l & eacute;ment de preuve d'ordre sup & eacute;rieur au cas par cas afin d'& eacute;valuer & eacute;pist & eacute;miquement l'impact doxastique de l'identit & eacute; sociale.

Recently, some philosophers have argued that friendship demands that we have positive beliefs about our friends even when such beliefs go against the evidence. Call this the doxastic account of the cognitive demands of friendship. I consider both motivations and worries for the doxastic account before developing a new account: the attentional account. According to it, friendship places demands on how we direct our attention. I argue that the attentional account accommodates the considerations that motivate the doxastic account and weathers the worries that trouble it. Along the way, I question the assumption that friendship's cognitive demands center on positivity.

Anti-pornography feminists have famously argued that pornography silences women: specifically, pornography causes women to be illocutionarily disabled in some real-life sexual contexts so that they are unable to refuse sex by saying 'no'. Call this view Silencing. Some philosophers object to Silencing because it seems to entail that, in some cases, a rapist's blameworthiness is significantly diminished. If the woman cannot refuse sex by saying 'no', and this allows the man's belief, that she consents, to be rational, then the man's blameworthiness for rape is significantly diminished. The objection is that something must be wrong with a view like Silencing that allows rapists to escape the moral hook when, intuitively, they should not. In this paper, I defend Silencing from this objection by appealing to insights from the literature on moral encroachment in order to argue that it is not rational for the rapist to believe (or accept) that the woman consents.

Most people believe that death is bad for the one who dies. Much attention has been paid to the Epicurean puzzle about death that the rests on a tension between that belief and another-that death is the end of one's existence. But there is nearby puzzle about death that philosophers have largely left untouched. This puzzle rests on a tension between the belief that death is bad for the one who dies and the belief that that death is not the end of one's existence. Many philosophers have responded to the Epicurean puzzle with the deprivation account of the badness of death, which seeks to make sense of the badness of death given that there is no life after death. This paper focus on the other puzzle, and advances the argument that the deprivation account can also make sense of the badness of death given that there is life after death.

According to evidentialism, what is epistemically rational to believe is determined by evidence alone. So, assuming that prejudiced beliefs are irrational, evidentialism entails that they must not be properly based on the evidence. Recently, philosophers have been interested in cases of beliefs that seem to undermine evidentialism: these are beliefs that seem both prejudiced (and, thus, irrational) and properly based on the evidence (and, thus, rational). In these cases, a believer has strong statistical evidence that most members of a social group have some property and then comes to believe that an individual member of that social group will likely have that property. For example, a server at a restaurant has statistical evidence that most Black diners tip less than average and then comes to believe that a particular Black diner will likely tip less than average. The goal of this paper is to defend evidentialism from the challenge posed to it by beliefs like the server's by developing a plausible evidentialist account that explains away these conflicting intuitions.

ABSTRACT:Epistemic partialism is the view that friends have a doxastic duty to overestimate each other. If one holds that there are no practical reasons for belief, we will argue, one has to deny the existence of any epistemic duties, and thus reject epistemic partialism. But if it is false that one has a doxastic duty to overestimate one’s friends, why does it so often seem true? We argue that there is a robust causal relationship between friendship and overestimation that can be mistaken for a constitutive relationship; we also argue that one can still accept some of the normative intuitions that motivate epistemic partialism even if one rejects epistemic partialism itself. Along the way, we consider and reject a watered-down version of epistemic partialism—call it epistemic partialism-light—according to which one has a duty to take steps to create in oneself a disposition to overestimate one’s friends.