Suspension, Higher-Order Evidence, and Defeat

This paper has two main goals. The first and most central goal is to develop a framework for understanding higher-order defeat. The framework rests on the idea that higher-order evidence provides direct reasons for suspending judgment which leave evidential support relations on the first order intact. Equally importantly, we also seek to explain how this sort of defeat is possible by showing how direct reasons for suspension of judgment flow from the functional profile of suspension of judgment. As a result, our framework is embedded within an account of the nature of suspension of judgment that shows how new insights about its nature lead to a different picture of its rational profile. A second and subsidiary goal of the paper is to show how our framework provides a compelling basis for more moderate positions about disagreement and epistemic akrasia. We show that the puzzles about these topics rest on more fundamental mistakes about suspension and the relationship between reasons for suspension, reasons for belief, and evidence.

Disclaiming epistemic Akrasia: arguments and commentaries

In many ways one’s quest for knowledge can go wrong. Since the publication ofAmélie Rorty’s article “Akratic Believers”, in 1983, there has been a great deal of discussion asto one particular form of flaw in reasoning to which we, as less-than-perfect rational entities,are continuously prone to in our epistemic endeavors: “epistemicakrasia” (an analog, withintheoretical reason, of the weakness of will that is commonly thought to affect practical rea-son). The debate that article gave rise became, then, split between authors to whom the ideaof epistemicakrasiapromotes an interesting diagnosis of some of our intellectual imperfec-tions, and their opponents, those who disclaim the very possibility of the phenomenon. Inthis paper I’ll examine, and present original objections to, four of the main arguments put for-ward by the latter, showing that none of them have consistently ruled out all the legitimatelyconceivable forms of the phenomenon.

Sobre a akrasia e o vínculo entre epistemologia e ética

Este artigo aborda a incontinência, ou akrasia, sob a perspectiva da epistemologia da virtude de Christopher Hookway a fim de estabelecer uma relação entre epistemologia e ética. A tese é que o fenômeno em questão possui uma contraparte epistêmica, que permite a aproximação entre as disciplinas e promove o debate acerca da validade da distinção entre áreas teóricas e práticas, descritivas e normativas. Pretende-se com isso enfatizar a centralidade do aspecto normativo da epistemologia. Os textos usados são a Ética a Nicômaco, de Aristóteles, no qual a incontinência comum é exposta no contexto de uma ética da virtude; e o artigo “Epistemic akrasia and epistemic virtue”, de Hookway, no qual é defendida a possibilidade da incontinência epistêmica e de uma epistemologia da virtude.

Higher-Order Uncertainty

You have higher-order uncertainty iff you are uncertain of what opinions you should have. This chapter defends three claims about it. First, the higher-order evidence debate can be helpfully reframed in terms of higher-order uncertainty. The central question becomes how your first- and higher-order opinions should relate—a precise question that can be embedded within a general, tractable framework. Second, this question is nontrivial. Rational higher-order uncertainty is pervasive, and lies at the foundations of the epistemology of disagreement. Third, the answer is not obvious. The Enkratic Intuition—that your first-order opinions must “line up” with your higher-order opinions—is incorrect; epistemic akrasia can be rational. If all this is right, then it leaves us without answers—but with a clear picture of the question, and a fruitful strategy for pursuing it.

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.