Popper's ‘Rationality Principle’ and ‘Epistemic’ Rationality: an Attempt at Reconciliation

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Alfonso Palacio-Vera
Keyword(s):  
Epistemic Rationality

scholarly journals Epistemic Rationality in Political Theory

2022 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 44-54
Author(s):  
A. A. Shevchenko
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Epistemic Rationality ◽  
Negative Consequences ◽  
Procedural Approach ◽  
Theory Evaluation

The paper presents a brief analysis of the procedural approach towards constructing liberal political conceptions of justice and democracy. Treatment of J. Rawls’s evolution shows the negative consequences of abandoning external substantive criteria for theory evaluation, including efficiency, justification, truth. It also offers justification for the “epistemic turn” in contemporary political theory. The return of classical epistemological set of tools will help to strengthen the justification and legitimation of philosophical and political conceptions of justice and democracy by overcoming the key limitations of the procedural approach.

Conclusion

2021 ◽  
pp. 299-306
Author(s):  
William J. Talbott
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Epistemic Rationality ◽  
The Real ◽  
American Philosophy ◽  
Unreasonable Effectiveness

In this Conclusion, the author summarizes the main features of his theory of epistemic rationality and explains how his theory avoids commitment to any of the five presuppositions of the Proof Paradigm. He explains his new solution to the epistemological version of Berkeley’s puzzle. He recaps the real-world epistemological issues addressed by his theory. He concludes with some final thoughts, including a call to philosophers to reject both the presuppositions of the Proof Paradigm and the narrow scientism that characterizes so much of contemporary American philosophy. He urges us to replace that narrow scientism with a more expansive understanding of the human mind that can make sense of its “unreasonable effectiveness” in scientific and other inquiry.

Two Crises for the Proof Paradigm in the Enlightenment

2021 ◽  
pp. 34-58
Author(s):  
William J. Talbott
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
David Hume ◽  
The State ◽  
Epistemic Rationality ◽  
Metaphysical Necessity ◽  
Important Respect ◽  
Naturalistic Epistemology ◽  
The Enlightenment ◽  
Causal Necessity

In Chapter 2, the author critically discusses the epistemologies of David Hume and Immanuel Kant. The author distinguishes the skeptical Hume from the naturalist Hume. The author presents the skeptical Hume’s philosophy as a response to what he calls Berkeley’s puzzle. He argues that Hume’s skeptical arguments are self-refuting and self-undermining and that Hume’s analysis of cause is an example of an explanation-impairing framework substitution. Hume’s solution to his skeptical arguments was a new kind of epistemology, a naturalistic epistemology. The author presents Kant’s epistemology as a response to the state of rationalist metaphysics at the time of Kant’s first Critique. Kant’s epistemology was similar to Hume’s in one important respect. Just as Hume had psychologized the idea of causal necessity, Kant psychologized the idea of metaphysical necessity. The author argues that both solutions were a form of relativism. This chapter primarily serves to motivate a search for a non-skeptical, non-relativist, non-Platonist theory of epistemic rationality.

Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 3-18
Author(s):  
William J. Talbott
Keyword(s):  
Science Fiction ◽  
Practical Rationality ◽  
Epistemic Rationality ◽  
Stated Goal ◽  
History Of ◽  
New Vision

In the Introduction, the author defines epistemic rationality by contrasting it with practical rationality: epistemic rationality is aimed at truth, while practical rationality is aimed at other goals. To more clearly explain this definition, the author uses a science fiction dialogue with a philosophical anthropologist from a planet orbiting one of the Alpha Centauri stars to dramatize Western epistemology’s susceptibility to intellectual pathologies. The author resolves to recapitulate the history of Western epistemology to try to diagnose its susceptibility to these pathologies and to find a cure. His stated goal for this book is not to refute other approaches to epistemology, but to articulate a new vision and a new pathway for addressing issues in epistemology. The Introduction ends with an overview of the book.

The Truth Fairy and the Indirect Epistemic Consequentialist

2020 ◽  
pp. 344-360
Author(s):  
Daniel Y. Elstein ◽  
C.S.I. Jenkins
Keyword(s):  
Epistemic Rationality ◽  
Epistemic Value ◽  
Epistemic Consequentialism

Friends of Wright-entitlement cannot appeal to direct epistemic consequentialism (believe or accept what maximizes expected epistemic value) in order to account for the epistemic rationality of accepting Wright-entitled propositions. The tenability of direct consequentialism is undermined by the “Truth Fairy”: a powerful being who offers you great epistemic reward (in terms of true beliefs) if you accept a proposition p for which you have evidence neither for nor against. However, this chapter argues that a form of indirect epistemic consequentialism seems promising as a way to deal with the Truth Fairy problem. The relevant form of indirect consequentialism accommodates evidentialism but allows for exceptions in the case of anti-sceptical hypotheses. Since these are the kind of propositions to which Wright-entitlement is supposed to apply—i.e. cornerstone propositions—indirect consequentialism is entitlement-friendly.

Higher-Order Evidence

2019 ◽  
pp. 312-344
Author(s):  
Declan Smithies
Keyword(s):  
Higher Order ◽  
Epistemic Rationality ◽  
Total Evidence ◽  
Epistemic Akrasia ◽  
Level Splitting ◽  
Higher Order Evidence

Chapter 10 explores a puzzle about epistemic akrasia: if you can have misleading higher-order evidence about what your evidence supports, then your total evidence can make it rationally permissible to be epistemically akratic. Section 10.1 presents the puzzle and three options for solving it: Level Splitting, Downward Push, and Upward Push. Section 10.2 argues that we should opt for Upward Push: you cannot have misleading higher-order evidence about what your evidence is or what it supports. Sections 10.3 and 10.4 defend Upward Push against David Christensen’s objection that it licenses irrational forms of dogmatism in ideal and nonideal agents alike. Section 10.5 responds to his argument that misleading higher-order evidence generates rational dilemmas in which you’re guaranteed to violate one of the ideals of epistemic rationality. Section 10.6 concludes with some general reflections on the nature of epistemic rationality and the role of epistemic idealization.

De-Idealizing Bayesianism

2019 ◽  
pp. 12-33
Author(s):  
Julia Staffel
Keyword(s):  
Bayesian Framework ◽  
Normative Theory ◽  
Epistemic Rationality ◽  
Epistemic Norms ◽  
Ways Of Being

Chapter 2 is concerned with the question of how we should develop a comprehensive normative theory of the epistemic rationality of credences. Its aim is twofold: (i) to familiarize readers with the basics of the Bayesian framework that are essential for understanding the arguments in subsequent chapters, and (ii) to offer an interpretation of the goals and methods of the Bayesian framework that reveals its shortcomings when applied to non-ideal thinkers. It is argued that the Bayesian view of ideal norms that is currently being developed lacks the capacity to distinguish between better and worse ways of being imperfectly epistemically rational. Moreover, it lacks the resources to substantiate a central Bayesian claim, namely that ideal epistemic norms apply to the beliefs of non-ideal thinkers as aims that should be approximated.

Punishment and Transformation

2020 ◽  
pp. 230-253
Author(s):  
Jennifer Lackey
Keyword(s):  
Mental States ◽  
Epistemic Rationality ◽  
Transformative Experiences ◽  
Natural Life

This chapter argues that the possibility of transformations and transformative experiences shows that strict, long-term punishments are epistemically irrational. Since the rationality of punishment must be sensitive to the mental states of the person being punished, including their mental states after the time of the punishable act, the possibility of radical changes makes it irrational to punish a person in a way that precludes considering future evidence about these changes. Since strict, long-term punishments, such as sentences of natural life without the possibility of parole, do just this, such punishments always run afoul of the demands of epistemic rationality.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document