It can be seen as a mark against a belief that its causal history be disconnected from the truth. And that idea fits well with the view that discovering that a belief's causal history is so disconnected itself diminishes its normative status. But this latter view can also be held independently: believing that your belief was influenced by irrelevant factors might be seen as problematic even should it not be seen as in general a mark against a belief that it be caused in one way or another. I pursue a more radical rejection of the role of truth in an adequate understanding of the normative status of belief. If a belief can be perfectly good independently of its connection to the truth, then perhaps it can be perfectly good even for an agent who knows that it is not causally determined by the truth.

While groups can do many things, and are subject to important sorts of assessment, persons can exhibit some normative statuses that no group can realize. I defend an anti-realist position about group belief (and group agency, generally) and suggest that it can still, in a way, sympathetically accommodate the range of cases discussed by Lackey in her groundbreaking The Epistemology of Groups. The distinctive normative character of belief—its integration, in consciousness, into a framework of rational relations—makes it impossible for a group to believe. Our critique of a club, or a commission, or a community, or a company or corporation—in just the ways in which we seem also to evaluate individuals—can be explained in ways that do not require postulating that the group in question have beliefs: the evaluation is revealed as indicating a fundamentally different sort of feature. The group has perhaps failed, in a way that is worth attending to, but that failure was different in normative kind from the sort of flaw that characterizes, for example, irrational belief.

Philosophy and Phenomenological ResearchVolume 104, Issue 1 p. 250-255 Symposium A Counter-Reformation David Sosa, Corresponding Author David Sosa david_sosa@mail.utexas.edu University of Texas at Austin Correspondence David Sosa, University of Texas at Austin. Email: david_sosa@mail.utexas.eduSearch for more papers by this author David Sosa, Corresponding Author David Sosa david_sosa@mail.utexas.edu University of Texas at Austin Correspondence David Sosa, University of Texas at Austin. Email: david_sosa@mail.utexas.eduSearch for more papers by this author First published: 30 March 2022 https://doi.org/10.1111/phpr.12868Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume104, Issue1January 2022Pages 250-255 RelatedInformation

Peacocke introduces The Primacy of Metaphysics with the apt observation that ‘[t]here can be few issues as fundamental as the relation between the metaphysics of some domain and our ways of thinking about it’ (p. 1). Is there, for example, any relation of explanatory priority between them? Peacocke’s treatment of this topic is, characteristically, challenging, deep, and subtle. My critique here will try to engage the book in its own terms. The book proposes that ways of thinking about a domain cannot be explanatorily prior to its metaphysics: such ‘meaning-first’ positions are excluded in principle. Peacocke concludes that the space of philosophical possibilities is exhausted by the union of ‘metaphysics-first’ cases, in which the metaphysics is explanatorily prior, and ‘no-priority’ cases, in which neither metaphysics nor accounts of ways-of-thinking-about are explanatorily prior. Here I offer some reasons for hesitation. Let me preview two broad considerations that might keep one from adopting Peacocke’s position. I will then return to these considerations, afterward, for additional discussion.

This paper investigates S. Kripke’s, “A Puzzle about Belief”. I focus on three areas. First, it is not always clear where the puzzle lies. In what does the puzzle consist, exactly? A second focus is the methodology of Kripke’s paper. I believe Kripke’s use of the puzzle to defend Millianism involves an interesting methodology which has not received the attention it deserves. Third, I discuss relations between rationality, semantic value and reference. The current unfashionability of Fregean theories may be sustained by insensitivity to these relations. Toward the end I consider and reject a challenge to the Fregean position defended.

Philosophical IssuesVolume 25, Issue 1 p. 224-242 Original Article What Does it Matter What it's Like? David Sosa, David Sosa University of Texas at AustinSearch for more papers by this author David Sosa, David Sosa University of Texas at AustinSearch for more papers by this author First published: 12 October 2015 https://doi.org/10.1111/phis.12063Citations: 4Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume25, Issue1October 2015Pages 224-242 RelatedInformation

Manley and Wasserman (2008) join the chorus of opposition to the possibility of conditional analysis of dispositions. But that score cannot be settled without more careful attention to the implicit philosophical methodology. Some of the opposition to such an analysis badly overestimates the effect of counterexamples, as if the Gettier example were sufficient to refute the possibility of conjunctive analysis of knowledge. A general objection to a form of analysis must satisfy a number of constraints, and Manley and Wasserman join the chorus too in failing to satisfy them. Most significant is the optional presupposition that the conditional used in analysis will exhibit some sort of centring. We show that even a careful effort to repair and reform Manley and Wasserman's objection to provide a satisfactory argument requires, ultimately, appeal to centring. Worse, the particular positive proposal they offer is vulnerable to a minor variant of their own counterexample.

ABSTRACT: I distinguish two sorts of motivation for dualism. One motivation is driven by the distinctive character of conscious phenomenology. The other is driven by the special character of normativity: Is rationality an even “harder” problem than consciousness? There is no dramatic climax in which I show that these two dualist currents have a common source; in fact, I think they are relatively independent.

Philosophical IssuesVolume 21, Issue 1 p. 474-484 SOME OF THE STRUCTURE OF EXPERIENCE AND BELIEF David Sosa, David Sosa University of Texas at AustinSearch for more papers by this author David Sosa, David Sosa University of Texas at AustinSearch for more papers by this author First published: 26 October 2011 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1533-6077.2011.00212.xCitations: 4Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume21, Issue1October 2011Pages 474-484 RelatedInformation

The knowledge account of assertion—roughly: one should not assert what one does not know—aspires to identify the norm distinctive of assertion. One main argument given in support of the knowledge account has been the success with which it explains a variety of Moore-paradoxical assertion. But that explanation does not generalize satisfactorily.

Abstract Consequentialist and Kantian theories differ over the ethical relevance of consequences of actions. I investigate how they might differ too over the relevance of what actions are consequence of. Focusing on the case of group action and collective responsibility, I argue that there's a kind of analog to the problem of aggregating the value of consequences—about aggregating responsibility with respect to the roles of cooperating agents—that Kantian theories will not confront and consequentialist theories will. The issue provides a useful way to characterize a deep difference between Kantian and consequentialist theories and points, ironically, toward a way of making those views compatible.

Philosophical IssuesVolume 17, Issue 1 p. 245-261 PERCEPTUAL FRICTION David Sosa, David Sosa University of Texas at AustinSearch for more papers by this author David Sosa, David Sosa University of Texas at AustinSearch for more papers by this author First published: 12 January 2010 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1533-6077.2007.00132.xCitations: 5Read the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Citing Literature Volume17, Issue1September 2007Pages 245-261 RelatedInformation

Contemporary philosophy’s antipathy to intuition can come to seem baffling. There is inadequate reason to move away from the intuitively attractive view that we have a faculty of intuition, in many ways akin to our faculties of perception and memory and introspection, that gives us reason for belief, and with it, often enough, gives us knowledge. The purpose here is to consider whether scepticism about intuition is more reasonable than a corresponding scepticism about other epistemic faculties. I am sceptical that it is.