The Evolutionary Naturalist Challenge to Non-Naturalist Normative Epistemic Realism

In Chapter 12, the author presents and responds to Street’s evolutionary naturalist challenge to non-naturalist normative realism, especially as applied to non-naturalist normative epistemic realism. He begins by defining scientistic naturalism. Then he introduces a new conception of non-Platonist sensitivity to fundamental normative principles, especially fundamental epistemic principles. The author refers to this as probabilistic sensitivity. It is not any form of direct insight into the content of the fundamental epistemic principles; it is a sensitivity of our particular epistemic judgments, both explicit and implicit, to the requirements of those principles in particular cases. The author responds to Street’s challenge by arguing that her position, a form of scientistic naturalism, is subject to reliability defeat. He avoids reliability defeat for his own position by arguing that evolution selected for better learners over worse learners, and this selection produced beings with probabilistic sensitivity to the metaphysically necessary, fundamental principles of epistemic rationality, which are the principles for being a good learner.

Public Reason And Public Policy: The Need For Epistemic Realism In Political Argument

This paper examines the concept of public reason, the regime of principles and rules under which political argument in a liberal-democratic society should be conducted. It examines the two most prominent accounts of public reason: John Rawls’, which derives rules of public reason from a presumed duty of mutual respect, and Jurgen Habermas’, which begins with the premise that communication is a necessary condition for knowledge. It then answers subjectivist objections to public reason, and concludes that public reason is ultimately defined and upheld by a shared commitment to epistemic realism: the understanding that we inhabit a shared world made up of mind-independent objects that can be known by all members of that shared world. The paper then examines the Canadian citizenry’s willingness and capacity to engage in public reason and the government’s ability to facilitate it, and concludes that in the absence of political will or a pre-existing culture of public reason, the burden of promoting and sustaining it will fall to organized and motivated sub-sectors of civil society. Keywords: Public Reason, Public Policy, Rawls, Habermas, Political Knowledge, Civil Society

Public Reason And Public Policy: The Need For Epistemic Realism In Political Argument

This paper examines the concept of public reason, the regime of principles and rules under which political argument in a liberal-democratic society should be conducted. It examines the two most prominent accounts of public reason: John Rawls’, which derives rules of public reason from a presumed duty of mutual respect, and Jurgen Habermas’, which begins with the premise that communication is a necessary condition for knowledge. It then answers subjectivist objections to public reason, and concludes that public reason is ultimately defined and upheld by a shared commitment to epistemic realism: the understanding that we inhabit a shared world made up of mind-independent objects that can be known by all members of that shared world. The paper then examines the Canadian citizenry’s willingness and capacity to engage in public reason and the government’s ability to facilitate it, and concludes that in the absence of political will or a pre-existing culture of public reason, the burden of promoting and sustaining it will fall to organized and motivated sub-sectors of civil society. Keywords: Public Reason, Public Policy, Rawls, Habermas, Political Knowledge, Civil Society

Moral and Epistemic Error Theory

Many moral error theorists hold that moral facts are irreducibly normative. They also hold that irreducible normativity is metaphysically queer and conclude that there are no irreducibly normative reasons and consequently no moral facts. A popular response to moral error theory utilizes the so-called ‘companions in guilt’ strategy and argues that if moral reasons are irreducibly normative, then epistemic reasons are too. This is the Parity Premise, on the basis of which critics of moral error theory draw the Parity Conclusion that if there are no irreducibly normative reasons, there are no moral reasons and no epistemic reasons. From the Parity Conclusion and Epistemic Realism (the view that there are epistemic reasons), it follows that it is false that there are no irreducibly normative reasons. In this chapter, it is argued that the Parity Premise and the Parity Conclusion can both plausibly be rejected.

The Costs of Epistemic Realism

This chapter considers some neglected costs of epistemic realism. It argues that those responding to the realist’s main argument against epistemic expressivism—the so-called perspective objection—have overestimated the power of that argument, since a central premise of it can actually be used to turn the tables on the realist. More specifically, the premise entails that, unless the realist accepts a far-reaching scepticism, she must do two things. First, she must reject the idea that true belief is a central epistemic goal. Second, she must hold that the diversity of views in discussions about epistemic normativity is a sign of cognitive-behavioural incoherence, if not of widespread irrationality, on the part of epistemologists. Such are the costs of epistemic realism.

Scientific Realism

This article endeavors to identify the strongest versions of the two primary arguments against epistemic scientific realism: the historical argument—generally dubbed “the pessimistic meta-induction”—and the argument from underdetermination. It is shown that, contrary to the literature, both can be understood as historically informed but logically valid modus tollens arguments. After specifying the question relevant to underdetermination and showing why empirical equivalence is unnecessary, two types of competitors to contemporary scientific theories are identified, both of which are informed by science itself. With the content and structure of the two nonrealist arguments clarified, novel relations between them are uncovered, revealing the severity of their collective threat against epistemic realism and its “no-miracles” argument. The final section proposes, however, that the realist’s axiological tenet “science seeks truth” is not blocked. An attempt is made to indicate the promise for a nonepistemic, purely axiological scientific realism—here dubbed “Socratic scientific realism.”