Knowledge and reasoning

This paper develops a novel, functionalist, unified account of the epistemic normativity of reasoning. On this view, epistemic norms drop out of epistemic functions. I argue that practical reasoning serves a prudential function of generating prudentially permissible action, and the epistemic function of generating knowledge of what one ought to do. This picture, if right, goes a long way towards normatively divorcing action and practical reasoning. At the same time, it unifies reasoning epistemically: practical and theoretical reasoning will turn out to be governed by the same epistemic norm—knowledge—in virtue of serving the same epistemic function: generating knowledge of the conclusion.

Shifty Speech and Independent Thought

This is an essay in epistemology and the philosophy of language. It concerns epistemology in that it is a manifesto for epistemic independence: the independence of good thinking from practical considerations. It concerns philosophy of language in that it defends a functionalist account of the normativity of assertion in conjunction with an integrated view of the normativity of constative speech acts. The book defends the independence of thought from the most prominent threat that has surfaced in the last twenty years of epistemological theorizing: the phenomenon of shiftiness of proper assertoric speech with practical context. It does four things: first, it shows that, against orthodoxy, the argument from practical shiftiness of proper assertoric speech against the independence of proper thought from the practical does not go through, for it rests on normative ambiguation. Second, it defends a proper functionalist knowledge account of the epistemic normativity of assertion, in conjunction with classical invariantism about knowledge attributions. Third, it generalizes this account to all constative speech. Last, it defends detailed normative accounts for conjecturing, telling, and moral assertion.

The Epistemic Normativity of Conjecture

This chapter looks more closely into the epistemic normativity of a particular constative—conjecture—and examines and accounts for the contextual variation of its propriety. The chapter has two aims: (1) it breaks new ground in that it develops the first fully fledged account of the epistemic normativity of conjecture in the literature; (2) it goes sharply against orthodoxy, in arguing that the epistemic requirements placed on us by conjecture are stronger than those governing assertion. According to the view developed here, one’s conjecture that p is permissible only if one knows that one has warrant, but not sufficient warrant, to believe that p.

No Special Treatment for the Epistemic Normativity of Telling

While recent years have featured a vast amount of literature concerned with the epistemic norm for assertion, comparatively little attention has been paid to the corresponding norm governing acts of telling. One plausible explanation of this is that people have generally taken assertion and telling to fall under the same normative constraints. Recent work, however, ventures to show (i) that this assumption is false and (ii) that the epistemic propriety of instances of telling partly depends on what’s at stake for the hearer. This chapter argues that the case against normative commonality for assertion and telling fails due to speech act-theoretic and value-theoretic inaccuracies. In a nutshell, the chapter argues that there’s nothing special about the epistemic normativity of telling.

Knowledge Norms for Constative Speech Acts

This chapter is up to an ambitious task: it develops the first integrated account of the epistemic normativity of constatives. In order to do that, it argues for a generalized knowledge-based account of the epistemic normativity of constative speech, and it develops the corresponding accounts for, respectively, assertives, predictives, retrodictives, descriptives, ascriptives, informatives, confirmatives, concessives, retractives, assentives, dissentives, disputatives, responsives, suggestives, and suppositives. The chapter argues for a knowledge account from three different angles: (1) the nature of communicative speech acts, (2) the relation between assertion and other constatives, and (3) the normativity of belief together with constatives’ epistemic function.

From Psychology to Philosophy

Calls to develop a framework for ‘non-ideal epistemology’ have recently gained traction in philosophical discourse, but little detail has yet been offered as to what this might involve. This chapter aims to remedy this shortcoming, both as a broader theoretical development and with specific view toward the epistemology of prejudice. Specifically,this chapter develops the notion of non-ideal epistemology along two dimensions. Along one dimension, constraints arising from distinctive capacity limitations of the human mind (“endogenous non-ideality”) are considered. In another dimension, constraints arising from specific limitations on the information environments that epistemic agents are forced to operate within (“exogenous non-ideality”) are considered. Taking a non-ideal approach to epistemology does not, however, mean giving up on epistemic normativity altogether: to the contrary, this chapter argues that non-ideal epistemology provides the only way for such norms to provide a genuine critical grip on human cognition at all.

Moral Constraints on Belief?

The assumption that moral normativity and epistemic normativity run on separate tracks has recently come under pressure from developments such as “moral encroachment” and “doxastic morality.” Motivating these developments is the idea that in morally charged scenarios—for instance where we stand to impart unwarranted harms on others by forming certain beliefs about them—our epistemic requirements change: beliefs that would be justified by the evidence in a morally inert scenario may no longer be justified once the “moral stakes” are taken into account. In this sense, morality can act as a constraint on rational belief formation. This chapter argues that none of these approaches can carry out the task set for them. Specifically, both founder on the fact that moral and non-moral reasoning are often deeply entangled: even if we agreed about the moral principles, our assessment of who falls under the principles would depend on our further, non-moral beliefs.

The Source of Epistemic Normativity: Scientific Change as an Explanatory Problem

In this paper, I present the problem of scientific change as an explanatory problem, that is, as a philosophical problem concerning what logical forms of explanation we should employ in order to understand the major conceptual ruptures throughout the history of science. I distinguish between two logical forms of explanation: (a) empirical-scientific and (b) normative explanations. Based on this distinction, I distinguish between the scientific and the liberal versions of naturalism concerning the issue of scientific change. I argue in favor of the latter by showing that normative explanations are indispensable in order to fully understand scientific change. I also argue that we can defend scientific rationality without violating the naturalistic framework which is dominant in contemporary analytic philosophy. I conclude that endorsing scientific realism within a naturalistic framework is the only option for preserving scientific rationality.