Epistemic Reasons, Transparency, and Evolutionary Debunking

Philosophia ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicole Dular ◽  
Nikki Fortier
Keyword(s):  
Epistemic Reasons ◽  
Evolutionary Debunking

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.

scholarly journals Who is afraid of black box algorithms? On the epistemological and ethical basis of trust in medical AI

2021 ◽  
pp. medethics-2020-106820 ◽  
Author(s):  
Juan Manuel Durán ◽  
Karin Rolanda Jongsma
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Medical Informatics ◽  
Patient Autonomy ◽  
Black Box ◽  
Epistemic Reasons ◽  
Potential Bias ◽  
Ethical Concerns ◽  
Normative Issues ◽  
Ethical Basis ◽  
Computational Processes

The use of black box algorithms in medicine has raised scholarly concerns due to their opaqueness and lack of trustworthiness. Concerns about potential bias, accountability and responsibility, patient autonomy and compromised trust transpire with black box algorithms. These worries connect epistemic concerns with normative issues. In this paper, we outline that black box algorithms are less problematic for epistemic reasons than many scholars seem to believe. By outlining that more transparency in algorithms is not always necessary, and by explaining that computational processes are indeed methodologically opaque to humans, we argue that the reliability of algorithms provides reasons for trusting the outcomes of medical artificial intelligence (AI). To this end, we explain how computational reliabilism, which does not require transparency and supports the reliability of algorithms, justifies the belief that results of medical AI are to be trusted. We also argue that several ethical concerns remain with black box algorithms, even when the results are trustworthy. Having justified knowledge from reliable indicators is, therefore, necessary but not sufficient for normatively justifying physicians to act. This means that deliberation about the results of reliable algorithms is required to find out what is a desirable action. Thus understood, we argue that such challenges should not dismiss the use of black box algorithms altogether but should inform the way in which these algorithms are designed and implemented. When physicians are trained to acquire the necessary skills and expertise, and collaborate with medical informatics and data scientists, black box algorithms can contribute to improving medical care.

scholarly journals Epistemic Blame and the Normativity of Evidence

Erkenntnis ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sebastian Schmidt
Keyword(s):  
Conclusive Evidence ◽  
Normative Reasons ◽  
Epistemic Reasons ◽  
Epistemic Norms ◽  
Plausible Assumption ◽  
Reasons For Belief ◽  
Normative Force ◽  
Epistemic Trust ◽  
Conceptual Connection ◽  
Epistemic Blame

AbstractThe normative force of evidence can seem puzzling. It seems that having conclusive evidence for a proposition does not, by itself, make it true that one ought to believe the proposition. But spelling out the condition that evidence must meet in order to provide us with genuine normative reasons for belief seems to lead us into a dilemma: the condition either fails to explain the normative significance of epistemic reasons or it renders the content of epistemic norms practical. The first aim of this paper is to spell out this challenge for the normativity of evidence. I argue that the challenge rests on a plausible assumption about the conceptual connection between normative reasons and blameworthiness. The second aim of the paper is to show how we can meet the challenge by spelling out a concept of epistemic blameworthiness. Drawing on recent accounts of doxastic responsibility and epistemic blame, I suggest that the normativity of evidence is revealed in our practice of suspending epistemic trust in response to impaired epistemic relationships. Recognizing suspension of trust as a form of epistemic blame allows us to make sense of a purely epistemic kind of normativity the existence of which has recently been called into doubt by certain versions of pragmatism and instrumentalism.

Faith and Reason

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Linda Zagzebski
Keyword(s):  
Epistemic Reasons ◽  
Word Of God ◽  
Potential Conflict ◽  
Faith And Reason

This article examines the potential conflict between faith and reason, with emphasis on the relation between beliefs arising from revelation and beliefs arising from reason. It analyses the reasonableness or unreasonableness of faith, focusing on the conditions that make believing what one is told reasonable, or unreasonable, and the sense of reasonable intended when applied to faith. In order to have a method for determining the reasonableness of a belief, it considers two kinds of epistemic reasons: theoretical and deliberative. The chapter argues that trust in ourselves when we are epistemically conscientious is more basic than either theoretical or deliberative reasons, and more basic than any norms of reasoning. It concludes by considering the place of faith in the epistemically conscientious person and suggesting that faith has a component of belief on the word of God which does not conflict with reason directly, but which can be reasonable or unreasonable.

scholarly journals Belief Pills and the Possibility of Moral Epistemology

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil Sinclair
Keyword(s):  
Moral Epistemology ◽  
Moral Truth ◽  
Recent Attempt ◽  
Evolutionary Debunking Arguments ◽  
Debunking Arguments ◽  
Moral Judgements ◽  
Evolutionary Debunking ◽  
Evolutionary Explanations ◽  
Moral Facts

This chapter argues that evolutionary debunking arguments are dialectically ineffective. Such arguments rely on the premise that moral judgements can be given evolutionary explanations which do not invoke their truth. The challenge for the debunker is to bridge the gap between this premise and the conclusion that moral judgements are unjustified. After discussing older attempts to bridge this gap, this chapter focuses on Joyce’s recent attempt, which claims that ‘we do not have a believable account of how moral facts could explain the mechanisms…which give rise to moral judgements’. It argues that whether there is such an account depends on what it is permissible to assume about moral truth and that it is reasonable to make assumptions which allow for the possibility of at least partial moral epistemologies. The challenge for the debunker is to show that these assumptions are unreasonable in a way which does not render their debunking argument superfluous.

Can there Be Epistemic Reasons for Action?

2006 ◽  
Vol 73 (1) ◽  
pp. 133-144 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anthony Robert Booth
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Epistemic Justification ◽  
Epistemic Reasons ◽  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Basing Relation

In this paper I consider whether there can be such things as epistemic reasons for action. I consider three arguments to the contrary and argue that none are successful, being either somewhat question-begging or too strong by ruling out what most epistemologists think is a necessary feature of epistemic justification, namely the epistemic basing relation. I end by suggesting a "non-cognitivist" model of epistemic reasons that makes room for there being epistemic reasons for action and suggest that this model may support moral realism.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document