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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Serie: Contemporary Debates in Philosophy
- Sprache: Englisch
The perfect introduction to contemporary epistemology, completely overhauled for its third edition
In Contemporary Debates in Epistemology, pairs of specially commissioned essays defend opposing views on some of today’s most compelling epistemological issues and problems. Offering a unique blend of accessibility and originality, this timely volume brings together fresh debates on hotly contested issues to provide readers with the opportunity to engage in comparative analysis of constantly changing and developing epistemological concepts.
Now in its third edition, Contemporary Debates in Epistemology features up-to-date coverage of the latest developments in the field. Entirely new essays examine questions of epistemic normativity and knowledge, the relationship between belief and credence, the possibility of internalist epistemology, epistemic instrumentalism, norms of assertion, the use of thought experiments in epistemology, and more.
- Presents a rigorous yet accessible introduction to the major topics in contemporary epistemology
- Contains head-to-head chapters offering forceful advocacy of opposing philosophical stances
- Focuses on core areas of epistemology
- Uses a lively debate format that sharply defines the issues and encourages further discussion
- All-new chapters provide fully updated coverage of new and emerging topics in epistemology
Part of the Wiley-Blackwell Contemporary Debates in Philosophy series, Contemporary Debates in Epistemology, Third Edition, remains an essential resource for advanced undergraduate philosophy majors, graduate students in philosophy, and epistemologists who want to keep current with contemporary epistemological debates.
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Table of Contents
Cover
Table of Contents
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Notes on Contributors
Preface to the Third Edition
Preface to the Second Edition
Preface to the First Edition
Introduction
Chapter 1: Does Knowledge Come First in Epistemology?
Chapter 2: Does Justification Supervene on the Internal?
Chapter 3: Is Suspension of Judgment a Question‐Directed Attitude?
Chapter 4: Are There Practical Reasons for Belief?
Chapter 5: Is Evidence Permissive?
Chapter 6: Does Fundamental Evidence Consist in Seemings?
Chapter 7: Does Knowledge Exclude Luck?
Chapter 8: Is the A Priori/A Posteriori Distinction Important for Epistemology?
Chapter 9: How Should We Use Thought Experiments in Epistemology?
Chapter 10: Is Belief a Species of Credence?
Chapter 11: Is Epistemic Normativity Instrumental?
Chapter 12: Is Testimony a Basic Source of Justification?
Chapter 13: Does Common Sense Conflict with Skepticism?
Chapter 14: Is Knowledge the Norm of Assertion?
CHAPTER ONE: Does Knowledge Come First in Epistemology?
A. Knowledge Comes First
B. Known Unknowns and the Limits of Knowledge
C. Knowledge Still Comes First
D. Circumstantial Luck and Knowledge‐First Epistemology
References
Further Reading
CHAPTER TWO: Does Justification Supervene on the Internal?
A. Is Justification Just in the Head?
B. The Possibility of Internalist Epistemology
References
CHAPTER THREE: Is Suspension of Judgment a Question‐Directed Attitude?
A. Is Suspension of Judgment a Question‐Directed Attitude? No, Not Really
B. Suspension of Judgment Is a Question‐Directed Attitude
References
CHAPTER FOUR: Are There Practical Reasons for Belief?
A. There Are Practical Reasons for Belief
B. There Are No Practical Reasons for Belief
C. Reply to and Kelly and Cohen
References
CHAPTER FIVE: Is Evidence Permissive?
A. Introductions and Stage‐Setting
B. A Permissive Notion of Rationality
C. We Are Not Mushy Permissivists and, Moreover, We Should Not Be
D. Is the Disagreement Between Us Substantive?
E. A Final Plea for Impermissivism
F. Some Final Thoughts
G. Permissivism and Metaepistemology
References
CHAPTER SIX: Does Fundamental Evidence Consist in Seemings?
A. Evidence Is Seemings
B. Evidence Is Not Seemings
C. Four Challenges for Phenomenal Conservatism
D. Preservative Memory and Trouble for Internalism
References
CHAPTER SEVEN: Does Knowledge Exclude Luck?
A. Knowing Can Include Luck
B. There Cannot Be Lucky Knowledge
C. On Whether Knowing Can Include Luck: Asking the Correct Question
D. Reply to Hetherington
References
CHAPTER EIGHT: Is the A Priori/A Posteriori Distinction Important for Epistemology?
A. Is the A Priori/A Posteriori Distinction Superficial?
B. The Significance of A Priori Justification
C. Response to Boghossian
D. Reply to Williamson
References
CHAPTER NINE: How Should We Use Thought Experiments in Epistemology?
A. How to Use Thought Experiments
B. A Guide to Thought Experiments in Epistemology
C. How to Think About How to Use Thought Experiments
D. Thinking About Using Thought Experiments: Further Questions
References
CHAPTER TEN: Is Belief a Species of Credence?
A. Credences Are Degrees of Belief
B. Is Belief Credence 1? Depends on What You Mean!
C. Two in the Model, One in the Head
References
CHAPTER ELEVEN: Is Epistemic Normativity Instrumental?
A. Epistemic Normativity Is Independent of Our Goals
B. Epistemic Normativity Is Not Independent of Our Goals
C. A Brief Reply to Carter
References
CHAPTER TWELVE: Is Testimony a Basic Source of Justification?
A. A Defense of Local Reductionism About Testimony
B. Anti‐Reductionism in the Epistemology of Testimony
C. Comments on Sanford Goldberg’s “Anti‐Reductionism in the Epistemology of Testimony”
D. Comments on Elizabeth Fricker’s “A Defense of Local Reductionism About Testimony”
References
CHAPTER THIRTEEN: Does Common Sense Conflict with Skepticism?
A. Skepticism Is Common Sense
B. Skepticism Is Not Common Sense
C. Reply to Lawlor
D. Reply to Hazlett
References
Further Reading
CHAPTER FOURTEEN: Is Knowledge the Norm of Assertion?
A. Knowledge Is the Norm of Assertion
B. Knowledge Is Not Our Norm of Assertion
References
Index
End User License Agreement
List of Illustrations
Chapter 9
Figure 9.1
Figure 9.2
Figure 9.3
Figure 9.4
Figure 9.5
Figure 9.6
Guide
Cover Page
Table of Contents
Series Page
Title Page
Copyright Page
Notes on Contributors
Preface to the Third Edition
Preface to the Second Edition
Preface to the First Edition
Begin Reading
Index
WILEY END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT
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Contemporary Debates in Epistemology
In teaching and research, philosophy makes progress through argumentation and debate. Contemporary Debates in Philosophy provides a forum for students and their teachers to follow and participate in the debates that animate philosophy today in the Western world. Each volume presents pairs of opposing viewpoints on contested themes and topics in the central subfields of philosophy. Each volume is edited and introduced by an expert in the field, and also includes an index, bibliography, and suggestions for further reading. The opposing essays, commissioned especially for the volumes in the series, are thorough but accessible presentations of opposing points of view.
Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion
edited by Michael L. Peterson and Raymond J. VanArragon
Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Science
edited by Christopher Hitchcock
Contemporary Debates in Epistemology
edited by Matthias Steup and Ernest Sosa
Contemporary Debates in Applied Ethics
edited by Andrew I. Cohen and Christopher Heath Wellman
Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art
edited by Matthew Kieran
Contemporary Debates in Moral Theory
edited by James Dreier
Contemporary Debates in Cognitive Science
edited by Robert Stainton
Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Mind
edited by Brian McLaughlin and Jonathan Cohen
Contemporary Debates in Social Philosophy
edited by Laurence Thomas
Contemporary Debates in Metaphysics
edited by Theodore Sider, John Hawthorne, and Dean W. Zimmerman
Contemporary Debates in Political Philosophy
edited by Thomas Christiano and John Christman
Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Biology
edited by Francisco J. Ayala and Robert Arp
Contemporary Debates in Bioethics
edited by Arthur L. Caplan and Robert Arp
Contemporary Debates in Epistemology, Second Edition
edited by Matthias Steup, John Turri, and Ernest Sosa
Contemporary Debates in Applied Ethics, Second Edition
edited by Andrew I. Cohen and Christopher Heath Wellman
Contemporary Debates in Philosophy of Religion, Second Edition
edited by Michael L. Peterson and Raymond J. VanArragon
Contemporary Debates in Epistemology, Third Edition
edited by Blake Roeber, Ernest Sosa, Matthias Steup, and John Turri
Contemporary Debates in Epistemology
THIRD EDITION
Edited by
Blake RoeberErnest SosaMatthias SteupJohn Turri
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Notes on Contributors
Matthew A. Benton is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Seattle Pacific University. He previously held postdoctoral research fellowships at the University of Notre Dame and at the University of Oxford. He has published numerous articles in epistemology and philosophy of language, on norms of assertion, hedged assertion, lying, honesty, testimony, epistemic defeat, knowledge and hope, and on knowing persons. He also works in philosophy of religion and has co‐edited Knowledge, Belief, and God (Oxford University Press, 2018) and Religious Disagreement and Pluralism (Oxford University Press, 2021).
Paul Boghossian is Silver Professor of Philosophy at New York University and codirector of the New York Institute of Philosophy. He has worked in a wide range of areas, including philosophy of mind, philosophy of language, epistemology, and aesthetics. His books include Debating the A Priori (with Timothy Williamson), Content and Justification: Philosophical Papers; Fear of Knowledge: Against Relativism and Constructivism; New Essays on the A Priori (edited, with Christopher Peacocke), and Classical Music: Contemporary Perspectives and Challenges (edited, with Michael Beckerman).
Wesley Buckwalter is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy and a Faculty Fellow in the Institute for Philosophy and Public Policy at George Mason University. He specializes in epistemology, cognitive science, moral psychology, and experimental philosophy. His research interests in these areas span from responsibility, ability, and normativity to knowledge, methods, and bias.
J. Adam Carter is Reader in Epistemology at the University of Glasgow where he is deputy director of the COGITO Epistemology Research Centre. His work is mainly in epistemology (and, especially, on virtue epistemology, know‐how, and cognitive ability); recent books include Autonomous Knowledge (Oxford University Press, 2022), A Telic Theory of Trust (Oxford University Press, forthcoming), and Stratified Virtue Epistemology: A Defence (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).
Elijah Chudnoff is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Miami. He works primarily on topics at the intersection of theory of knowledge and philosophy of mind. He has published papers on intuition, perception, thinking, reasoning, consciousness, expertise, and knowledge. His books include Intuition (Oxford University Press, 2013), Cognitive Phenomenology (Routledge, 2015), and Forming Impressions: Expertise in Perception and Intuition (Oxford University Press, 2021).
Roger Clarke is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Queen’s University Belfast. His research mainly focuses on belief: how binary and degreed notions of belief fit together (“Belief Is Credence One (in Context),” Philosophers’ Imprint, 2013); the context‐sensitivity of belief (“Assertion, Belief, and Context,” Synthese, 2016); belief ascriptions in natural language (“Strong Belief Is Ordinary,” Episteme, forthcoming); and what it could mean to avoid belief entirely, as some skeptics recommend (work perpetually in progress, or at least until he can figure out how to stop suspending judgment).
Stewart Cohen is Professor Emeritus at the University of Arizona. His career centered around issues concerning the internalism/externalism debate, skepticism, the semantics for knowledge ascriptions, and the structure of reasons. Later in his career he became interested in the relation between the rationality of belief and the rationality of action. Some representative papers are “Contextualism, Skepticism, and the Structure of Reasons” (Philosophical Perspectives, 1999); “Bootstrapping, Defeasible Reasoning, and A Priori Justification” (Philosophical Perspectives, 2010); and “Against Practically Rational Belief” in Baron Reed and A.K. Flowerree (eds.), Toward an Expansive Epistemology: Norms, Action, and the Social Sphere (Routledge, 2019).
Sinan Dogramaci is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. Some of his papers are about the practical function of epistemic evaluation, some are about the epistemology of logic, some papers are about both, and some are about neither.
Jane Friedman is Associate Professor of Philosophy at New York University. She has published papers on a range of topics in epistemology (including on suspension of judgment). She is currently working on a project on inquiry – its nature and norms as well as its place in epistemology.
Elizabeth Fricker is an Emeritus Fellow of Magdalen College Oxford, having formerly been a Tutorial Fellow in Philosophy there for many years. She is also an emeritus member of Oxford University Philosophy Faculty. Her primary research interest is in the epistemology of testimony on which she has published over thirty articles. She has also published in general epistemology and philosophy of mind and has a research interest in the philosophy of Wittgenstein.
Sanford C. Goldberg is Chester D. Tripp Professor in the Humanities and Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University, and Professorial Fellow at the Arché Research Center at the University of St Andrews. His research focuses on topics in epistemology and philosophy of language. Recent publications include Foundations and Applications of Social Epistemology (Oxford University Press, 2021), Conversational Pressure (Oxford University Press, 2020), To the Best of Our Knowledge (Oxford University Press: 2018), and Assertion (Oxford University Press, 2015).
Peter J. Graham is Professor of Philosophy and Linguistics, University of California, Riverside. His work focuses on topics in the epistemologies of perception and testimony and related areas in the philosophy of psychology, the philosophy of language, and the philosophy of biology. He has published in Noûs, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Philosophical Studies, Synthese, and other journals, and he has coedited two volumes: The Routledge Handbook of Social Epistemology (Routledge, 2021) and Epistemic Entitlement (Oxford University Press, 2020). He has received a Humboldt Research Award and a Leverhulme Visiting Professorship.
Allan Hazlett is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis. He is the author of A Luxury of the Understanding: On the Value of True Belief (Oxford University Press, 2013) and A Critical Introduction to Skepticism (Bloomsbury, 2014), along with many journal articles and book chapters. His research interests include the nature of desire, the existence of normative reasons, and skepticism about testimony.
Stephen Hetherington is Emeritus Professor of Philosophy, University of New South Wales, Sydney. He is the former editor of Australasian Journal of Philosophy and the present editor of Cambridge University Press’s Elements in Epistemology. Books include Good Knowledge, Bad Knowledge (Oxford University Press, 2001), Self‐Knowledge (Broadview, 2007), How to Know (Wiley Blackwell, 2011), Knowledge and the Gettier Problem (Cambridge University Press, 2016), What Is Epistemology? (Polity, 2019), and Defining Knowledge (Cambridge University Press, 2022). Edited books include Epistemology Futures (Oxford University Press, 2006), What Makes a Philosopher Great? (Routledge, 2017), The Philosophy of Knowledge: A History, four vols (Bloomsbury, 2019, general editor), and (with N.D. Smith) What the Ancients Offer to Contemporary Epistemology (Routledge, 2020).
Sophie Horowitz is Associate Professor of Philosophy at University of Massachusetts, Amherst. She works primarily in epistemology. She has published papers about epistemic akrasia, higher‐order evidence, permissivism, accuracy, and various formal requirements on rational belief.
Michael Huemer received his BA from the University of California, Berkeley, and his PhD from Rutgers University. He is presently Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is the author of more than eighty academic articles in ethics, epistemology, political philosophy, and metaphysics, as well as eight brilliant and amazing books that you should immediately buy, including The Problem of Political Authority (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), Dialogues on Ethical Vegetarianism (Routledge, 2019), and Understanding Knowledge (2022).
Thomas Kelly is Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University where he has taught since 2004. His book Bias: A Philosophical Study was published by Oxford University Press in 2023. He has published numerous papers in epistemology, including “Epistemic Rationality as Instrumental Rationality: A Critique” (2003), “The Epistemic Significance of Disagreement” (2005), “Is Reflective Equilibrium Enough?” (2010, with Sarah McGrath), “Following the Argument Where It Leads” (2011), and “Evidence Can Be Permissive” (2013).
Maria Lasonen‐Aarnio is Professor of Theoretical Philosophy at the University of Helsinki. Before moving to Helsinki she worked at the University of Michigan and the University of Oxford, where she obtained her PhD in 2010. She has published on a wide range of topics within epistemology, philosophy of mind, and the study of normality. Since moving to Helsinki she has been leading a project funded by the European Research Council. She is currently finalizing a monograph defending a novel normative framework and applying it to various problems and puzzles in epistemology. She is also affiliated with the University of Southern California.
Krista Lawlor is Henry Waldgrave Stuart Professor of philosophy at Stanford University. She received her PhD from the University of Michigan with a thesis on coreference (“New Thoughts About Old Things,” 2001). Her research is in epistemology, mind, and language. Central themes of her work include the semantics and pragmatics of knowledge claims (Assurance, Oxford University Press, 2013), self‐knowledge (“Knowing What One Wants”, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 2009), belief, and ordinary language philosophy. Her recent projects concern perceptual justification (“New Foundations for Perceptual Knowledge”) and the nature of reasonableness (“Knowledge and Reasonableness,” “A Genealogy of Reasonableness”).
Clayton Littlejohn is Senior Research Associate at the African Centre for Epistemology and Philosophy of Science, University of Johannesburg, and Professor of Philosophy at the Dianoia Institute of Philosophy at the Australian Catholic University. He is interested in issues in epistemology, ethical theory, and their interface.
Aidan McGlynn is Senior Lecturer in the Philosophy Department at the University of Edinburgh. He works mostly on issues in epistemology, particularly where it intersects with other areas such as the philosophies of language and mind and social and feminist philosophy. His recent research has covered self‐knowledge, trust, immunity to error through misidentification, skepticism, sex education, deep disagreement, externalism and internalism in epistemology, epistemic injustice, standpoint epistemology, knowledge‐first epistemology, active ignorance, propaganda, objectification, pornography, and silencing. He is author of Knowledge First? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) and is currently writing Epistemic Injustice: An Introduction for Routledge.
Matthew McGrath is Professor of Philosophy at Washington University in St. Louis. He works on a range of issues in epistemology, philosophy of perception and metaphysics. He is author of two books, Knowledge in an Uncertain World (with Jeremy Fantl; Oxford University Press, 2011) and Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction (with Alvin Goldman; Oxford University Press, 2015). Among his journal articles in epistemology are “Evidence, Pragmatics and Justification” (Philosophical Review, 2002; with Jeremy Fantl), “Knowing What Things Look Like” (Philosophical Review, 2017), “Looks and Perceptual Justification” (Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 2018), and “Being Neutral: Agnosticism, Inquiry, and the Suspension of Judgment” (Noûs, 2021).
Nikolaj Jang Lee Linding Pedersen is Underwood Distinguished Professor and Professor of Philosophy at Underwood International College, Yonsei University. His main research areas are epistemology, truth, metaphysics, and the philosophies of logic, mathematics, and technology. Pedersen is the founder of the Veritas Research Center (Yonsei University), the founding editor in chief of the Asian Journal of Philosophy (Springer Nature), and a cofounder of the Asian Epistemology Network and Eastern Hemisphere Language and Metaphysics Network. He has coedited numerous collections, including Epistemic Entitlement (Oxford University Press, 2020) and Truth and Pluralism: Current Debates (Oxford University Press, 2013).
Duncan Pritchard is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for Knowledge, Technology and Society at the University of California, Irvine. His monographs include Epistemic Luck (Oxford University Press, 2005), The Nature and Value of Knowledge (coauthored, Oxford University Press, 2010), Epistemological Disjunctivism (Oxford University Press, 2012), Epistemic Angst: Radical Skepticism and the Groundlessness of Our Believing (Princeton University Press, 2015), and Scepticism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2019).
Susanna Rinard is Professor of Philosophy at Harvard University. Her research concerns what we should believe – in science, philosophy, and everyday life – and how probability can be used to model rational belief. Specific topics include skepticism, the ethics of belief, imprecise probability and decision theory, the ravens paradox, and philosophical methodology.
Miriam Schoenfield is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas in Austin. Her research interests within epistemology focus on questions concerning higher‐order evidence, permissivism, and imprecise probabilities.
Mona Simion is Professor of Philosophy and deputy director of the COGITO Epistemology Research Centre at the University of Glasgow. Her research is in epistemology, philosophy of language, and ethics. She is the author of two monographs: Shifty Speech and Independent Thought (Oxford University Press, 2021) and Sharing Knowledge (Cambridge University Press, 2021, with C. Kelp). She is the winner of the Young Epistemologist Prize 2021.
Julia Staffel is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research is mainly in epistemology, especially formal epistemology. In her recent book Unsettled Thoughts. A Theory of Degrees of Rationality (Oxford University Press 2019), she explores how ideal theories of rationality can apply to non‐ideal agents for whom being fully rational is unattainable. She is currently working on a monograph on the attitudes we form during ongoing reasoning processes and their justification conditions, provisionally entitled Unfinished Business: Examining our Thoughts in Progress.
Kurt L. Sylvan is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southampton, UK. His research focuses on epistemic and practical normativity. He was editor (with Ruth Chang) of the Routledge Handbook of Practical Reason and is currently editing (with Jonathan Dancy, Matthias Steup, and Ernest Sosa) the Blackwell Companion to Epistemology (third edition). His work has appeared in The Philosophical Review, Mind, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, and Philosophical Studies, among many other venues.
Timothy Williamson is the Wykeham Professor of Logic at Oxford University and Whitney Griswold Visiting Professor at Yale University. His books include Identity and Discrimination (Blackwell, 1990), Vagueness (Routledge, 2002), Knowledge and its Limits (2000), The Philosophy of Philosophy (Blackwell, 2007), Modal Logic as Metaphysics (Oxford University Press, 2013), Tetralogue: I’m Right, You’re Wrong (Oxford University Press, 2015), Doing Philosophy: From Common Curiosity to Logical Reasoning (Oxford University Press, 2018), Suppose and Tell: The Semantics and Heuristics of Conditionals (Oxford University Press, 2020), and (with Paul Boghossian) Debating the A Priori (Oxford University Press, 2020). His work is the subject of P. Greenough and D. Pritchard (eds.), Williamson on Knowledge (Oxford University Press, 2009) and M. McCullagh and J. Yli‐Vakkuri (eds.), Williamson on Modality (Routledge, 2019). He is currently investigating how philosophers’ judgments of examples rely on imperfectly reliable heuristics.
Alex Worsnip is Associate Professor of Philosophy and director of the Applied Epistemology Project at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His primary research interests are in epistemology (both theoretical and applied), the theory of normativity, and their intersection. He is the author of Fitting Things Together: Coherence and the Demands of Structural Rationality (Oxford University Press, 2021), and numerous articles in leading journals.
Preface to the Third Edition
The third edition of Contemporary Debates in Epistemology contains entirely original content. While some of the topics were covered in the first or second edition of the book, all of the essays in this volume are new. This volume contains over 30 essays on 14 central questions in epistemology. Each question is addressed by multiple authors, acknowledged experts in their respective fields, who argue for opposing points of view.
The first edition was published nearly 20 years ago, when the endless supply of counterexamples, modifications, and refinements to the leading theories of knowledge tended to obscure the fundamental issues. Counterexamples, modifications, and refinements still dominate the journals, and it is just as easy today as it was 20 years ago to lose sight of the core issues. The third edition aims to bring these issues into focus and illuminate the motivations for the opposing points of view. In this respect, the third edition mirrors the first and second editions. However, since the publication of the second edition, some debates at the forefront of epistemology have receded from view, other debates have taken their place, and all the debates have evolved significantly. The fully revised and updated third edition aims to capture the current state of epistemology by including newly commissioned essays on (a) topics that did not appear in the earlier editions and (b) topics from the earlier editions that have evolved so much since the second edition that they require entirely new contributions. As with the first and second editions, the third edition should be essential reading to professors, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates looking for accessible introductions to the central debates in epistemology. We wish to think our contributors for the excellent essays that they have written for this volume, and Marissa Koors, Charlie Hamlyn, Will Croft, and Soniya Subramanian at Wiley for their assistance along the way.
Blake RoeberErnest SosaMatthias SteupJohn Turri
Preface to the Second Edition
The second edition of Contemporary Debates in Epistemology contains opposing essays on five new topics: the analyzability of knowledge and how to do epistemology, pragmatic encroachment, the relation between knowledge and intellectually virtuous motives, the relation between knowledge and luck, and evidential slack. These essays can be found in Chapters 1, 4, 6, 7, and 12. The inclusion of these new chapters made it necessary to drop two debates from the first edition: one on conceptual content in perceptual experience, the other on epistemic responsibility. We have also added three new essays to the debate on immediate justification (Chapter 9) and two additional essays to the debate on justification and coherence (Chapter 10). Nine of the first edition’s topics have been retained, so the second edition contains debates on altogether 14 chapters.
Significantly updated and enlarged, we believe that the second edition will, even more so than the first, be essential and fascinating reading to fellow epistemologists, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates. We wish to thank the contributors for debating each other vigorously and with sophistication, Travis Gilmore for proofreading the manuscript, and Jeff Dean, Lindsay Bourgeois, and Jennifer Bray at Wiley Blackwell for their invaluable assistance in putting this volume together.
Matthias SteupJohn Turri1Ernest Sosa
Note
1
JT’s work on this volume was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the British Academy, the Association of Commonwealth Universities, the National Endowment for the Humanities, The Character Project at Wake Forest University and the John Templeton Foundation (neither of which necessarily endorses any opinion expressed here), and an Ontario Early Researcher Award.
Preface to the First Edition
This volume, part of Blackwell’s Contemporary Debates series, is a collection of 22 essays on 11 central questions in epistemology. Each question is addressed by a pair of authors, acknowledged experts in their respective fields, who argue for clearly opposite points of view.
When reading the epistemological literature of the previous two or three decades, noting the bewildering plethora of views on “S knows that p” and seemingly endless supply of counterexamples, modifications, and refinements, it is easy to lose sight of the underlying, fundamental issues. The debate format, upon which this volume is based, is ideally suited to bring these issues into clear focus, and to cast the spotlight on what the arguments are that motivate opposing points of view. Thus, we believe that this collection will enliven epistemology and make exciting reading for scholars working in the field, graduate students, and advanced undergraduates alike. If it achieves this aim, it will be due to the hard work of the contributors. We wish to thank them for their efforts, and Jeff Dean and Nirit Simon at Blackwell Publishing for guiding this project towards completion.
Matthias SteupErnest Sosa
Introduction
Chapter 1: Does Knowledge Come First in Epistemology?
Traditional theories of knowledge explain knowledge in terms of things like justification and belief. Knowledge‐first theories of justification and belief explain justification and belief in terms of knowledge. When epistemologists ask whether knowledge “comes first,” they are asking whether traditional theories of knowledge take the right approach, or whether knowledge‐first theories of things like justification and belief take the right approach. In her contribution to this debate, Mona Simion defends knowledge‐first epistemology by defending a knowledge‐first theory of belief and using this theory of belief to motivate a knowledge‐first theory of justification. In his contribution to this debate, Aidan McGlynn defends traditional epistemology by critiquing Simion’s knowledge‐first theory of belief. As Simion and McGlynn both recognize, Simion’s argument depends on the idea that beliefs which do not amount to knowledge are epistemically defective. While Simion thinks this is plausible, McGlynn thinks we can produce examples of epistemically non‐defective beliefs that do not amount to knowledge. As McGlynn acknowledges, his contribution to the debate does not provide a traditional theory of knowledge in place of Simion’s knowledge‐first theories of justification and belief. However, if McGlynn is right in that we can produce examples of epistemically non‐defective beliefs that do not amount to knowledge, this casts doubt on at least one central idea in knowledge‐first epistemology: that knowledge has explanatory priority over belief.
Chapter 2: Does Justification Supervene on the Internal?
Consider your belief that you are reading this book right now. Your belief is (presumably) epistemically justified. Now consider a brain in a vat that is your internal duplicate. By hypothesis, the brain in the vat has exactly the same relevant experiences as you, exactly the same (real or apparent) relevant memories as you, exactly the same relevant background beliefs as you, and so on. A scan showing all of your brain activity right now as you read this page would be indistinguishable from a scan showing all of the activity of your duplicate right now, and your duplicate would be just as convinced as you are that it is reading this page. Given that you and your duplicate are internally indistinguishable, does it follow that, if you are epistemically justified in believing that you are reading this page, your duplicate is also epistemically justified in believing that it is reading this page? And does it follow that your duplicate has exactly the same degree of justification as you, whatever level of justification you happen to have? In his contribution to this debate, Clayton Littlejohn argues that the answer is no. According to the externalist position that Littlejohn defends, two people might differ with respect to epistemic justification even while being literally identical internally. In his contribution to this debate, Kurt Sylvan defends the opposite answer. Sylvan sketches a Kantian version of internalism designed to answer all of Littlejohn’s challenges to internalism.
Chapter 3: Is Suspension of Judgment a Question‐Directed Attitude?
Will it rain in Honolulu exactly one year from today? Presumably, you neither believe that it will, nor believe that it won’t. Are you suspending judgment on this question, then? It depends, both on the correct theory of suspension of judgment and on facts about your psychology. Jane Friedman and Matthew McGrath agree that suspending judgment requires more than simply lacking the relevant beliefs, but they disagree about the additional requirements for suspension of judgment. On Friedman’s view, suspension of judgment is a question‐directed attitude, in the sense that suspending judgment on some question requires having some interest in resolving that question. On her view, if you simply do not care whether it will rain in Honolulu exactly one year from today, you are not suspending judgment on this question, whether or not you believe any answer to this question. In McGrath’s contribution to the debate, McGrath argues that suspension of judgment is only a question‐directed attitude in the trivial sense that we suspend judgment on questions. On his view, it does not matter whether you have any interest in resolving the question whether it will rain in Honolulu exactly one year from today. Rather, the additional requirement for suspension of judgment is that you are intentionally omitting judgment. In her contribution to the debate, Freidman responds to McGrath’s arguments by defending her thesis that suspending judgment on some question requires having some interest in resolving that question.
Chapter 4: Are There Practical Reasons for Belief?
If eating a piece of buttered toast would bring me pleasure, then I have at least one reason to eat the toast – namely, that it would bring me pleasure. If I would enjoy watching a certain movie, I have that reason to watch the movie. If I will live longer as a consequence of regular exercise, then that is a reason for me to exercise regularly. What if believing something will make me happier? What if believing that God exists will make me happier, for example? Is that a reason for me to believe that God exists? Suppose I do not believe that God exists, even though I know that I would be happier if I did believe that God exists. Am I less rational in this scenario than I would be in an otherwise identical scenario where I know that I would not be happier if I believed that God exists? If there are practical reasons for belief, the positive consequences of forming a belief might give me reasons to form that belief, and those reasons might bear on the rationality of my belief (or lack thereof). In their contribution to this debate, Thomas Kelly and Stewart Cohen argue that practical reasons for belief do not exist. On their view, the rational status of a person’s belief depends entirely on the evidence possessed by that person. If believing some proposition would make me happy, it cannot be a reason for me to believe the proposition unless the fact that believing it would make me happy is somehow evidence that this proposition is actually true. In her reply to Kelly and Cohen, Susanna Rinard argues that there are practical reasons for belief. Indeed, she argues that there are only practical reasons for belief. On her view, truth is just like happiness, in that it’s a good that we may pursue. If I have evidence that believing some proposition would make me happy, that evidence is a practical reason for me to believe the proposition, because it’s good to be happy. Similarly, on Rinard’s view, if I have evidence that believing some proposition would make me correct, that evidence is a practical reason for me to believe the proposition, because it’s good to believe the truth.
Chapter 5: Is Evidence Permissive?
Suppose you and I have exactly the same total evidence, and suppose we have different precise credences in some proposition p (0.6 and 0.7, say). Does it follow that at least one of us is irrational? According to impermissivists about the relationship between evidence and rational credences, the answer is yes. For any body of total evidence, there is exactly one precise credence that fits that body of evidence. Since you and I have different credences in p, at least one of us has the wrong credence in p. According to permissivists about the relationship between evidence and rational credences, the answer is no. Even though you and I have exactly the same total evidence, it does not follow that at least one of us is irrational, because multiple precise credences might fit a body of total evidence. Let p be the proposition that it will rain in Honolulu exactly one year from today. If impermissivism is true, some precise credence in p uniquely fits your total evidence. So, which one is it? Nobody can answer this question. According to impermissivists, this is because we are ignorant. There is a correct answer to this question, but we have no way to know what it is. According to permissivists, this is because the question asks for something that does not exist. Multiple precise credences in p fit your total evidence, so there is no precise credence in p that uniquely fits your total evidence. In their contribution to this debate, Sophie Horowitz and Sinan Dogramaci defend the impermissivist’s response, which posits a unique rationally permissible credence and maintains that nobody has any way to determine which credence it is. In her contribution to this debate, Miriam Schoenfield argues that the disagreement between permissivists and impermissivists is mostly verbal, because, regardless of what permissivists and impermissivists say, they will end up forming beliefs about non‐epistemic matters, and acting, in exactly the same ways.
Chapter 6: Does Fundamental Evidence Consist in Seemings?
Are things the way they seem to be? Sometimes, they are. Right now, I seem to be sitting at my desk, and in fact I am. Sometimes, however, they are not. When I look at the lines of the Mueller–Lyer illusion, the lines seem to be different lengths, even though they are the same length. Provided that we do not have any reason to believe that things are not as they seem to be, are we justified in believing that things are the way they seem to be? When we are justified in believing that the world is a particular way, is this because the world seems to be that way? In his contribution to this debate, Michael Huemer argues that there is an intimate relationship between justification and the way things seem to us, because all of our beliefs are either basic beliefs or based on basic beliefs, and seemings are the only things that provide any justification for our basic beliefs. In her contribution to the debate, Maria Lasonen‐Aarnio argues that the relationship between justification and seemings is not especially intimate, because seemings are neither necessary nor sufficient for the justification of our basic beliefs.
Chapter 7: Does Knowledge Exclude Luck?
Visiting Chicago for the first time, you look at the clock tower in Seward Park. The clock says that it is 3:27pm, and you form the belief that it is 3:27pm. Unbeknownst to you, the clock is broken. It stopped at 3:27 p.m. several weeks ago and it hasn’t moved since. By sheer luck, right now, as you look at the clock, it happens to be 3:27 p.m. This scenario provides an example of what Duncan Pritchard and Stephen Hetherington call veritic luck. Roughly, a true belief exhibits veritic luck if that belief is the product of a method or process that produces a false belief in many nearby possible worlds. In a very close world, you look at the clock one minute later and form the false belief that it is 3:27 p.m. In his contribution to this debate, Pritchard provides a defense and analysis of the widely held intuition that knowledge excludes veritic luck. In response, Hetherington argues that this intuition is based on a confusion, and that knowledge does not exclude veritic luck. Indeed, on Hetherington’s view, you know the time in the scenario above, where you happen to look at the stopped clock during one of the two minutes each day that it gives the right time.
Chapter 8: Is the A Priori/A Posteriori Distinction Important for Epistemology?
A proposition is knowable a priori if it can be known “independent of experience,” whereas a proposition that is only knowable a posteriori can only be known “on the basis of experience.” The proposition that rectangles have four sides is a paradigmatic example of a proposition that is knowable a priori, while the proposition that my aunt’s coffee table is rectangular is a paradigmatic example of a proposition that is only knowable a posteriori. The distinction matters (to the extent that it does) for our understanding of “armchair” disciplines like philosophy and mathematics. In their contribution to this debate, Timothy Williamson and Paul Boghossian defend opposing views about the importance of this distinction. Williamson argues that the distinction is real, but entirely superficial, and thus not important to epistemology. In response, Boghossian defends the traditional view, which maintains that the distinction has deep implications for epistemology.
Chapter 9: How Should We Use Thought Experiments in Epistemology?
In their most familiar form, thought experiments ask readers to consider fictional scenarios and judge whether various epistemological properties are present or absent in those scenarios. Epistemologists use thought experiments in many ways, but (a) eliciting the intuitions of the folk and (b) probing the various theories debated by epistemologists are perhaps the two most common uses. In their opening contributions to this debate, Elijah Chudnoff tells us how we should use thought experiments if we have the latter goal, and Wesley Buckwalter tells us how we should conduct thought experiments if we have either goal – or indeed if we have any of the other goals that epistemologists might have when they use thought experiments. In his response to Buckwalter, Chudnoff argues that Buckwalter’s advice won’t always apply when epistemologists are using thought experiments the way that he (Chudnoff) uses them: to probe epistemological theses and theories. In his reply to Chudnoff, Buckwalter argues that his advice will always apply, even when epistemologists are using thought experiments to probe epistemological theses and theories.
Chapter 10: Is Belief a Species of Credence?
You check today’s weather forecast, see that there is a 95% chance of rain, and decide to bring your umbrella. This scenario is not remarkable. Suppose we add the following detail: based on the forecast you form two distinct mental states, (a) the belief that it will rain today, and (b) a 0.95 credence in the proposition that it will rain today. Given this additional detail, is this scenario still unremarkable? No. For now, it is debatable whether this scenario is even possible. In his contribution to this debate, Roger Clarke argues that belief is a species of credence. On his view, believing a given proposition consists in having credence 1 in that proposition, in context. Since your credence in the proposition that it will rain is lower than 1, his view entails that you do not believe that it is going to rain. And even if your credence in rain were 1, his view would entail that you do not have two distinct mental states. You would believe that it is going to rain, but your belief would simply be your credence in that proposition. In her contribution to this debate, Julia Staffel rejects both of these conclusions. First, on her view, belief does not require credence 1, even in context. You might believe that it will rain, even though your credence that it will rain is below 1. Second, on her view, belief and credence are distinct mental states. Neither is a species of the other. Whatever credence you have in the proposition that it will rain, that credence cannot be your belief that it will rain. Staffel defends “dualism” about the relationship between credence and belief, whereas Clarke defends a version of “monism.”
Chapter 11: Is Epistemic Normativity Instrumental?
Beliefs can be evaluated in various ways. Believing p might be a good thing because you would practically benefit from believing p. Or it might be a good thing because there are moral reasons requiring that you believe p. Or it might be a good thing epistemically. In epistemology, we are interested primarily in this third type of evaluation. But what marks the difference between epistemic and non‐epistemic ways of evaluating beliefs? What is distinctive about evaluating a belief epistemically? Here is a fairly standard answer: what makes a belief’s epistemically good is that the belief is good relative to the believer’s goal of believing what is true and not believing what is false. This answer expresses what is known as the instrumental conception of epistemic normativity. According to it, believing p, provided you have evidence in support of p, is the means by which you can achieve your truth goal.
Suppose an expert mathematician tells you that 107 is a prime number. According to the instrumental view, if you aim at believing the proposition “107 is a prime number” if and only if that proposition is true, then the mathematician’s testimony gives you a reason to believe that proposition, which is to say that you then epistemically ought to believe that proposition. But what if you are indifferent about prime numbers? What if you don’t mind having false beliefs about which numbers are prime and which are not? The instrumental conception entails that, in that case, even though you have excellent evidence that 107 is a prime number (namely the mathematician’s testimony), it is not the case that you ought to believe that 107 is a prime number. Arguably, the instrumental view even entails that, if you were to believe that 107 is not a prime number, there would then be nothing epistemically bad about your belief. For opponents of the instrumental view, this is an unacceptable consequence. They deny, therefore, that epistemic normativity flows from any truth goal. From that non‐instrumental or non‐teleological point of view, after the mathematician tells you that 107 is a prime number, you ought to believe it whether or not you have a truth goal with regard to the proposition that 107 is a prime number.
In the following four essays, Alex Worsnip makes the case for rejecting the instrumentalist view, and, drawing on Ernest Sosa’s telic virtue epistemology, J. Adam Carter offers a defense of it.
Chapter 12: Is Testimony a Basic Source of Justification?
Suppose you see your colleague in the hall, and she tells you that the meeting scheduled for this afternoon has been canceled. You form the belief that the meeting has been canceled, because you trust your colleague and you believe that she just told you that the meeting has been canceled, and you believe this latter thing because you trust your eyes and ears. It looked like your colleague was there in the hallway, talking to you, and it sounded like she was saying “the meeting scheduled for this afternoon has been canceled.” Your perceptual experiences are (we can suppose) basic sources of justification. This means that, as long as you lacked good reason to distrust your eyes and ears, you were justified in trusting them when you formed the belief that your colleague told you that the meeting was canceled. What about your belief that the meeting was canceled? If testimony is a basic course of justification, then the same lesson applies here too. As long as you lacked good reason to distrust your colleague, you were justified in trusting her when you formed the belief that the meeting was canceled. In his contribution to this debate, Sanford Goldberg argues that testimony is a basic course of justification. According to Goldberg, we get an unacceptable form of skepticism if we deny that testimony is a basic course of justification. In her contribution to this debate, Elizabeth Fricker argues that testimony is not a basic course of justification – at least for adults, who know, based in large‐part on testimony, that testimony is often false. According to Fricker, you were not justified in trusting your colleague unless you not only lacked good reason to distrust her, but had good reason to trust her.
Chapter 13: Does Common Sense Conflict with Skepticism?
Your perceptual experiences tell you that there is an external world of innumerable material objects that constitute the physical world you live in. But do your perceptual experiences give you knowledge that there really is an external physical world? Descartes introduced the disturbing possibility that your perceptual experiences are not caused by an actual physical object but instead by an evil demon who is deceiving you into believing that there is an external physical world. Based on Descartes’s evil demon hypothesis, a skeptic can reason as follows: “If you know there is an external world, then you know you are not deceived by an evil demon. But you do not know that you are not deceived by an evil demon. Therefore, you don’t know that there is an external world.” The two premises are not implausible. It is not, therefore, obvious how the argument should be rebutted. However, there is a radically anti‐skeptical commonsense tradition in epistemology that has its origin in Thomas Reid and, in the twentieth century, has been aptly defended by G.E. Moore and Roderick Chisholm. According to Moore, the skeptical argument fails because, whatever its merits might otherwise be, its conclusion is less plausible than the negation of the claim that we do in fact know that there is an external world. Therefore, denying the argument’s conclusion is more reasonable than accepting its premises. Although Moore’s reply suffers from an obvious limitation – it does not explain exactly which premise we should reject and why – it nevertheless has been highly influential.
But is it correct that common sense is by its very nature anti‐skeptical? Perhaps we can find within common sense insights about knowledge that motivate the skeptical argument’s two premises. If so, commons sense is less anti‐skeptical than it might initially seem. In this debate, Alan Hazlett challenges the thought that common sense is inherently anti‐skeptical. According to him, skepticism is not a challenge to common sense but rather a paradox within common sense. Krista Lawlor defends the contrary view. According to her, if we are guided by common sense, we must reject skepticism.
Chapter 14: Is Knowledge the Norm of Assertion?
Suppose I tell you in a casual tone of voice that our meeting has been canceled. In common parlance, asserting something requires saying it with added force or conviction, so I don’t assert to you that our meeting has been canceled when I tell you casually that it has been canceled. This is not how epistemologists use the word “assertion.” By “assertion,” epistemologists just mean the act of putting a proposition forward as true (usually by uttering or writing a declarative sentence that expresses it). On this usage, my casual statement that our meeting has been canceled does count as an assertion. As Matthew Benton, Peter Graham, and Nikolaj Jang Lee Linding Pedersen observe, in response to my assertion that our meeting has been canceled, it might be perfectly appropriate for you to ask how I know that it has been canceled. This is curious. I didn’t tell you that I know that it has been canceled. I just told you that it has been canceled. My assertion wasn’t about me, as it would have been if I had said “I know that our meeting has been canceled.” It was simply about our meeting. So, why does it seem perfectly appropriate for you to ask how I know that it has been canceled, after I say just that it has been canceled? According to the knowledge norm of assertion (the KNA), it’s inappropriate to assert that p if one does not know that p. In this debate, Benton defends the KNA by arguing that it provides the best explanation, not just of the propriety of your asking how I know that our meeting has been canceled, but of many other linguistic phenomena. In their reply to Benton, Graham and Pedersen argues that these phenomena are either better explained by KNA’s rivals or not genuine phenomena in the first place.
CHAPTER ONEDoes Knowledge Come First in Epistemology?
A. Knowledge Comes First
Mona Simion
A.1 Introduction
According to the view I will defend here, epistemic justification turns on knowledge.1 I argue that generating knowledge is the function of our belief‐formation systems, in virtue of the fact that they are representational systems, and that successful representation via belief is knowledge. Knowledge functions, in turn, give rise to knowledge norms. Since justification turns on norm compliance, epistemic justification turns on knowledge. The bad news is that we are not justified to believe the deliverances of mere belief‐formation systems: we are only justified to believe the deliverances of knowledge‐generating systems. The good news is that our belief‐formation systems are knowledge‐generating systems, so, when they are properly functioning, we are justified to believe their deliverances. Or so I will argue.
In what follows, I will purport to offer three arguments for the three key claims above: that knowledge is the function of our belief‐formation systems (Section 1.2), that epistemic justification turns on knowledge (Section 1.3), and that we are justified to believe the deliverances of our properly functioning belief‐formation systems (Section 1.4).
A.2 Generating Knowledge Is the Function of our Belief‐Formation Systems
I first argue that, since our belief‐formation systems are representational systems, and since to generate non‐knowledgeable beliefs is to fail to successfully represent, the function of our belief‐formation systems is generating knowledge. Here is the argument2 unpacked:3
(1) Representational systems have representational main functions.
(2) The representational function of a system is to successfully represent.
(3) If a subject S has a belief‐formation system, then it is a representational system.
(4) If S has a belief‐formation system, then its representational main function is to successfully represent (from 1 to 3).
(5) Belief‐formation systems successfully represent if and only if they generate knowledge.
(6) If S has a belief‐formation system, its representational main function is to generate knowledge (from 4 and 5).
I take (1) and (2) to not need much defense. It is eminently plausible that some systems wear their main functions up their sleeves, as it were, in that their dubbing is function‐driven. Plausibly, toasters have toasting main functions. Also plausibly, the toasting function of any system is to toast successfully. Washing machines have washing main functions, and the washing function of any system is to wash successfully. Representational systems have representational main functions, and their representational function is to successfully represent.
Condition (3) assumes a view on the nature of our belief‐formation systems whereby their being representational systems is an essential feature of belief‐formation systems qua belief‐formation systems. I take this not to need much defense either: after all, beliefs are representational devices, with mind to world direction of fit. That is not to say, of course, that one can know on a priori grounds that my eyes and so forth generate representations: surely, there could be a world populated by creatures that have the exact same mechanisms that we use for representing, only they use them, say, for digesting. It is an empirical question whether some given system is a belief‐formation system (Burge 2013). But if a psychological system is a belief‐formation system, its main function is to form representational devices (i.e., beliefs), hence to represent.
Condition (4) follows from (1), (2), and (3).
