Phenomenal Explanationism vs Conservatism

This chapter situates PE within the context of the broader debate between Epistemic Liberalism (which holds, roughly, that it is reasonable to grant that things are the way they appear to be unless there is reason for doubting it) and Epistemic Conservatism (the view that, roughly, it is not reasonable to grant that things are the way they appear to be unless there is independent reason to think that the appearances are reliable). PE is squarely within the Liberal camp. Therefore, after explaining some of the primary elements of Liberal/Conservative debate in epistemology, two of the primary challenges faced by Liberal views like PE are examined. The first is, again, the problem of bootstrapping, which any theory that allows for immediate justification seems to run into. The second is White’s Bayesian objection to PC (introduced in Chapter 1), according to which Liberalism, and so PE, is flawed because it is incompatible with probabilistic reasoning. It is shown that PE is not troubled by these challenges. The upshot of the chapter is that Liberalism, when exemplified in PE, is victorious over Conservatism.

From One Conservative to Another

Epistemic conservatism maintains that some beliefs are immediately justified simply because they are believed. The intuitive implausibility of this claim sets the burden of proof against it. Some epistemic conservatives have sought to lessen this burden by limiting its scope, but I show that they cannot remove it entirely. The only hope for epistemic conservativism is to appeal to its theoretical fruit. However, such a defense is undercut by the introduction of phenomenal conservatism, which accomplishes the same work from a more intuitive starting point. Thus, if one opts for conservatism, better to choose the phenomenal kind.

Accuracy monism and doxastic dominance: reply to Steinberger

Given the standard dominance conditions used in accuracy theories for outright belief, epistemologists must invoke epistemic conservatism if they are to avoid licensing belief in both a proposition and its negation. In ‘Accuracy and epistemic conservatism’ Florian Steinberger charges the committed accuracy monist – the theorist who thinks that the only epistemic value is accuracy – with being unable to motivate this conservatism. I show that the accuracy monist can avoid Steinberger’s charge by moving to a subtly different set of dominance conditions. Having done so, they no longer need to invoke conservatism. I briefly explore some ramifications of this shift.

Accuracy and epistemic conservatism

Epistemic utility theory (EUT) is generally coupled with veritism. Veritism is the view that truth is the sole fundamental epistemic value. Veritism, when paired with EUT, entails a methodological commitment: norms of epistemic rationality are justified only if they can be derived from considerations of accuracy alone. According to EUT, then, believing truly has epistemic value, while believing falsely has epistemic disvalue. This raises the question as to how the rational believer should balance the prospect of true belief against the risk of error. A strong intuitive case can be made for a kind of epistemic conservatism – that we should disvalue error more than we value true belief. I argue that none of the ways in which advocates of veritist EUT have sought to motivate conservatism can be squared with their methodological commitments. Short of any such justification, they must therefore either abandon their most central methodological principle or else adopt a permissive line with respect to epistemic risk.