scholarly journals Performance normativity and here-and-now doxastic agency

Synthese ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 197 (12) ◽  
pp. 5137-5145 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Chrisman
Keyword(s):  
Belief Formation ◽  
Epistemic Normativity ◽  
Doxastic Agency ◽  
Natural Response ◽  
Normative Status ◽  
The Way

AbstractSosa famously argues that epistemic normativity is a species of “performance normativity,” comparing beliefs to archery shots. However, philosophers have traditionally conceived of beliefs as states, which means that they are not dynamic or telic like performances. A natural response to this tension is to argue that belief formation rather than belief itself is the proper target of epistemic normativity. This response is rejected here on grounds of the way it obscures the “here and now” exercise of cognitive agency that I view as central to any account of epistemic normativity and doxastic agency. Although the etiology of a belief can be relevant to its normative status, often so much more is relevant and more centrally so. This generates a dilemma for anyone following Sosa in pursuing the idea that epistemic normativity is a species of performance normativity.

Why Only Evidential Considerations Can Justify Belief

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kate Nolfi
Keyword(s):  
Alternative Explanation ◽  
Justify Belief ◽  
Epistemic Normativity ◽  
Epistemic Reasons ◽  
Aim Of Belief ◽  
The Way

At least when we restrict our attention to the epistemic domain, it seems clear that only considerations which bear on whether p can render a subject’s belief that p epistemically justified, by constituting the reasons on the basis of which she believes that p. And we ought to expect any account of epistemic normativity to explain why this is so. Extant accounts generally appeal to the idea that belief aims at truth, in an effort to explain why there is a kind of evidential constraint on the sorts of considerations that can be epistemic reasons. However, there are grounds for doubting that belief, in fact, aims at truth in the way that these accounts propose. This chapter develops an alternative explanation of why it is that non-evidential considerations cannot be epistemic reasons by taking seriously the idea that the constitutive aim of belief is fundamentally action-oriented.

Exploitation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Ferguson
Keyword(s):  
Sufficient Conditions ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Necessary And Sufficient Conditions ◽  
Welfare Gains ◽  
Unfair Advantage ◽  
Necessary And Sufficient ◽  
Normative Status ◽  
The Way

The concept of exploitation is often invoked in situations where relatively impoverished people are treated unfairly in economic and social contexts. While the claim that exploitation involves taking unfair advantage is broadly accepted, there is little consensus about what fairness requires and whether unfairness is seriously wrong in the context of exchanges. One family of accounts claims that exploitation involves the maldistribution of resources, either because exploitative transactions result in distributions that violate substantive norms of fairness, or because procedural flaws in the way exploitative transactions come about entail that their outcomes are unfair.A second, domination-based approach to exploitation claims that the moral flaw embodied by exploitative relations is the exploiter’s disrespectful use of his power over the exploitee. While exploiters’ domination of others may lead to maldistributions, defenders of the domination-based approach argue that distributive unfairness is neither necessary nor sufficient for exploitative relations.These approaches both face two kinds of challenges. The first concerns the scope. Neither appears to provide necessary and sufficient conditions that are adequate to capture all and only cases commonly described as exploitation. The second concerns the normative status. Exploitation is typically assumed to be morally impermissible, yet neither approach seems to satisfactorily explain how exploitations that nevertheless generate significant welfare gains for both parties can be wrong.

scholarly journals Culturing Belief

2021 ◽  
pp. 36-58
Author(s):  
Neil Levy
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Cultural Knowledge ◽  
Belief Formation ◽  
Epistemic Dependence ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Evolutionary Processes ◽  
Social Animals ◽  
Central Paradigm ◽  
The Way

What kind of being are we? This of course is one of the oldest questions in philosophy. In earlier eras, answers were often non-naturalistic (we are animals with souls, for instance). Today, one of the oldest answers is also one of the most popular: with Aristotle, we often think we are distinguished from other animals by our rationality. This chapter suggests that another answer is at least as defensible: we are epistemically social animals. In making the case for this answer, it provides some of the background for the account of belief formation developed in the book. It highlights evidence from cultural evolution for our epistemic dependence on one another. Cultural evolution shows how human flourishing is due to cultural knowledge that escapes the grasp of individuals and that is the product of evolutionary processes. The chapter then turns to our central paradigm of a successful epistemic enterprise: modern science. It argues that science, too, owes its success to the way in which cognition is distributed across agents, groups, and even artifacts.

scholarly journals Why No True Reliabilist Should Endorse Reliabilism

Episteme ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-18
Author(s):  
Kristoffer Ahlstrom-Vij ◽  
Jeffrey S. Dunn
Keyword(s):  
True Belief ◽  
Belief Formation ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Side Constraints ◽  
The Way

Abstract Critics have recently argued that reliabilists face trade-off problems, forcing them to condone intuitively unjustified beliefs when they generate lots of true belief further downstream. What these critics overlook is that reliabilism entails that there are side-constraints on belief-formation, on account of which there are some things you should not believe, even if doing so would have very good epistemic consequences. However, we argue that by embracing side-constraints the reliabilist faces a dilemma: she can either hold on to reliabilism, and with it aforementioned side-constraints, but then needs to explain why we should allow the pursuit of justification to get in the way of the acquisition of true belief; or she can deny that there are side-constraints – and in effect give up on reliabilism. We'll suggest that anyone moved by the considerations that likely attract people to reliabilism in the first place – the idea the true belief is good, and as such should be promoted – should go for the second horn, and instead pursue a form of epistemic utilitarianism.

scholarly journals Indoctrination, delusion and the possibility of epistemic innocence

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-61
Author(s):  
Ruth J. Wareham
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Belief Formation ◽  
States Of Mind ◽  
Philosophy Of Psychiatry ◽  
Direct Relevance ◽  
Key Features ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
Normal Cognition ◽  
Normative Status ◽  
Epistemic Innocence

In this article, I illuminate ongoing debates about the normative status of indoctrination via close examination of recent work in the philosophy of psychiatry and, more particularly, delusion. Here it has been argued, contrary to the established view that delusional states of mind are epistemically problematic, that delusions can (at least under certain circumstances) exhibit a quality called ‘epistemic innocence’. That is, they may ‘[deliver] a significant epistemic benefit, that could not be obtained otherwise’. This might lead us to wonder whether indoctrinated beliefs – which appear to share key features with delusional beliefs – might also be capable of such epistemic innocence and, if so, what the educational consequences of such a conclusion would be. By drawing meaningful distinctions between delusion and normal cognition, as well as expanding our notions of what is conducive to epistemic achievement, philosophers of psychiatry and psychopathology provide us with novel, empirically informed theoretical resources which are particularly well placed to facilitate better understanding of belief formation and malformation. As such, this work is of direct relevance to philosophers of education concerned with questions pertaining to the legitimate transmission of beliefs. I begin by briefly outlining my own outcome-based account of indoctrination before discussing some of the relevant similarities and differences between indoctrination and delusion. This is followed by a discussion of how the aforementioned shared features might motivate the conclusion that indoctrination is morally problematic. In the second half of the article, I shift my focus to the possible epistemic benefits of delusional beliefs, before going on to explain why none of the candidates for epistemically innocent forms of belief transmission can be properly described as indoctrination.

The Value-First Account and the Unity of the Normative

2019 ◽  
pp. 38-54
Author(s):  
Richard Rowland
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reasons ◽  
Epistemic Normativity ◽  
Epistemic Reasons ◽  
Reasons For Belief ◽  
The Way

The Value-First Account (VFA) analyses reasons for pro-attitudes in terms of goodness or value. This chapter makes an argument against VFA. It argues that epistemic reasons for belief should not be analysed in terms of value. But it argues that if epistemic reasons should not be analysed in terms of value but reasons for pro-attitudes should be analysed in terms of value, then epistemic reasons for belief cannot be instances of the very same relation as reasons for pro-attitudes. And this chapter argues that we should hold that epistemic reasons for belief are instances of the very same relation as practical reasons. So, we should reject VFA because it is inconsistent with the way in which epistemic normativity relates to practical normativity.

Moral Constraints on Belief?

Prejudice ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 155-173
Author(s):  
Endre Begby
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Rational Belief ◽  
Belief Formation ◽  
Epistemic Normativity ◽  
Moral Beliefs ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
Requirements Change ◽  
Moral Normativity ◽  
Change Beliefs ◽  
Moral Encroachment

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.

Aiming at Aptness

Episteme ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 438-452
Author(s):  
Joshua Schechter
Keyword(s):  
Epistemic Virtue ◽  
Epistemic Normativity ◽  
Better Than ◽  
The Way

AbstractThis paper discusses Ernest Sosa's account of knowledge and epistemic normativity. The paper has two main parts. The first part identifies places where Sosa's account requires supplementation if it is going to capture important epistemic phenomena. In particular, additional theoretical resources are needed to explain (i) the way in which epistemic aims are genuinely good aims, and (ii) the way in which some forms of reasoning can be epistemically better than others even when they are equally conducive to attaining the truth. The second part focuses on Sosa's claim that there is a kind of belief – judgmental belief – that doesn't merely aim at truth but also aims at aptness, and that this kind of belief is central to our mental lives. The paper raises several concerns about this part of Sosa's account, including the concern that aiming at aptness is overly self-directed, and so is more closely tied to vice than epistemic virtue.

The Formation of Maintenance of Delusions: a Bayesian Analysis

1986 ◽  
Vol 149 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. R. Hemsley ◽  
P. A. Garety
Keyword(s):  
Bayesian Inference ◽  
Bayesian Analysis ◽  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Bayesian Theory ◽  
Belief Formation ◽  
Normative Model ◽  
Precise Nature ◽  
The Way

This paper argues that recent research on normal-belief formation is relevant to our understanding of the establishment and maintenance of delusions. Bayesian theory provides a normative model of the way in which evidence relevant to normal beliefs may be evaluated: this makes it possible to classify delusional beliefs in terms of deviations from optimal Bayesian inference. Some hypothetical forms of deviation appear to correspond closely to cognitive processes observed in some groups of deluded patients. Theories of the precise nature of the abnormal judgemental processes also have implications for psychological approaches to treatment of deluded patients. The role of hallucinations in the formation and/or maintenance of delusions and the extent to which the distortions of cognitive processes associated with delusions are content-specific or mood-specific are also considered.

The Normative and the Evaluative

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Rowland
Keyword(s):  
Normative Ethics ◽  
Epistemic Normativity ◽  
Extensive Discussion ◽  
Moral Properties ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Buck Passing ◽  
Reason Problem ◽  
The Way

Many have been attracted to the idea that for something to be good is just for there to be reasons to favour it. This view has come to be known as the buck-passing account of value. According to the buck-passing account, for pleasure to be good is just for there to be reasons for us to desire and pursue it. And for liberty and equality to be values is just for there to be reasons for us to promote and preserve them. There has been extensive discussion of some of the problems that the buck-passing account faces such as the wrong kind of reason problem. But there has been little discussion of why we should accept the buck-passing account or what the theoretical pay-offs and other implications of accepting it are. This book provides the first comprehensive motivation and defence of the buck-passing account of value. It argues that the buck-passing account explains several important features of the relationship between reasons and value, as well as the relationship between the different varieties of value, in a way that its competitors do not. It argues that alternatives to the buck-passing account are inconsistent with important views in normative ethics, are uninformative, and are at odds with the way in which we should see practical and epistemic normativity as related. And it extends the buck-passing account to provide an account of moral properties as well as all other normative and deontic properties, such as fittingness and ought, in terms of reasons.

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