Phenomenal Explanationism

This chapter incorporates a sophisticated version of PC (one that draws on the distinctions between kinds of appearances that explained in Chapter 3) into a broader explanationist framework to produce the view that is defended in this book: Phenomenal Explanationism (PE). Explanationism is an account of evidential support, i.e., of how and when evidence supports particular doxastic attitudes toward propositions. However, on its own, Explanationism does not say what evidence is or when one has a particular bit of information as evidence. This is true even when Explanationism is construed, as this chapter does, in terms of mentalist evidentialism. As a theory of evidential support, mentalist Explanationism leaves open which mental states constitute one’s evidence. Explanationism can thus be readily combined with different theories of evidence and evidence possession. If PC is understood as a theory of basic evidence, the sophisticated version of PC can be combined with Explanationism. This chapter introduces a specific version of Explanationism and describes how this variant of PC can be incorporated into it to produce PE. It also describes how PE accounts for both non-inferential and inferential justification (both deductive and inductive). Finally, it explores how PE overcomes the challenges to PC raised in Chapter 2.

Epistemic Obligations of the Laity

Very often when the vast majority of experts agree on some scientific issue, laypeople nonetheless regularly consume articles, videos, lectures, etc., the principal claims of which are inconsistent with the expert consensus. Moreover, it is standardly assumed that it is entirely appropriate, and perhaps even obligatory, for laypeople to consume such anti-consensus material. I maintain that this standard assumption gets things backwards. Each of us is particularly vulnerable to false claims when we are not experts on some topic – such falsehoods have systematic negative impacts on our doxastic attitudes that we can neither prevent nor correct. So, when there is clear expert consensus on a given scientific issue, while it is permissible for experts to consume anti-consensus material, laypeople have an epistemic obligation to avoid such material. This argument has important consequences for philosophical discussions of our epistemic obligations to perform or omit belief-influencing actions. Such discussions typically abstract away from the important differences between experts and laypeople. Accordingly, we should reject this typical practice as problematic, and insist instead that laypeople and experts have fundamentally different epistemic obligations.

Alleged Counterexamples to Uniqueness

Kopec and Titelbaum collect five alleged counterexamples to Uniqueness, the thesis that it is impossible for agents who have the same total evidence to be ideally rational in having different doxastic attitudes toward the same proposition. I argue that four of the alleged counterexamples fail and that Uniqueness should be slightly modified to accommodate the fifth example.

The Attitudes We Can Have

This article investigates when one can (rationally) have attitudes, and when one cannot. It argues that a comprehensive theory must explain three phenomena. First, being related by descriptions or names to a proposition one has strong reason to believe is true does not guarantee that one can rationally believe that proposition. Second, such descriptions, and so on, do enable individuals to rationally have various non-doxastic attitudes, such as hope and admiration. And third, even for non-doxastic attitudes like that, not just any description will allow it. The article argues that one should think of attitude formation like one does (practical) choices among options. The article motivates this view linguistically, extending “relevant alternatives” theories of the attitudes to both belief and to the other, non-doxastic attitudes. Given a natural principle governing choice, and some important differences between doxastic and non-doxastic “choices,” one can explain these puzzling phenomena.

Attitudes

Probabilities and utilities of possible outcomes yield the expected utilities of the acts an agent considers in a decision problem. This chapter introduces probability and utility as the book’s decision principles understand these functions. It has them attach to propositions that declarative sentences express, and it takes their values to represent the strengths of attitudes—strengths of doxastic attitudes in the case of probabilities and strengths of conative attitudes in the case of utilities. Desires and aversions, typical conative attitudes, may have narrow or wide evaluative scope. Intrinsic desires have narrow scope, and extrinsic desires have wide scope. Utility assignments may, correspondingly, have narrow or wide scope. The intrinsic utility of a risk evaluates the risk taken by itself, whereas the extrinsic or comprehensive utility of the risk evaluates all that accompanies the risk. Methods of measurement apply to these types of probability and utility, as the appendix demonstrates.

A Puzzle About Withholding

This paper presents a puzzle about justification and withholding. The puzzle arises in a special case where experts advise us to not withhold judgment. My main thesis is simply that the puzzle is genuinely a puzzle, and so leads us to rethink some common assumptions in epistemology, specifically assumptions about the nature of justification and doxastic attitudes.

The Arbitrariness Objection Against Permissivism

The debate between Uniqueness and Permissivism concerns whether a body of evidence sometimes allows multiple doxastic attitudes towards a proposition. An important motivation for Uniqueness is the so-called ‘arbitrariness argument,’ which says that Permissivism leads to some unacceptable arbitrariness with regard to one's beliefs. An influential response to the argument says that the arbitrariness in beliefs can be avoided by invoking epistemic standards. In this paper, I argue that such a response to the arbitrariness argument is unsuccessful. Then I defend a new response: contrary to common conception, the arbitrariness resulted by Permissivism is acceptable. The basic idea is that the arbitrariness resulted by Permissivism is analogous to the arbitrariness in permissive actions and the latter arbitrariness is intuitively acceptable. I answer three possible objections against this analogy, which are all motivated by the thought that beliefs aim at the truth. In addressing the last objection, I draw inspiration from the recent debate on transformative experience.

Intellectual Humility and Incentivized Belief

Despite disagreement about what is fundamental or necessary to intellectual humility, there is broad agreement that intellectual humility will bear on the higher-order epistemic attitudes one takes towards one’s beliefs (and other doxastic attitudes). Intellectually humble people tend not to under- or overstate the epistemic strength of their doxastic attitudes. This article shows how incentivized beliefs—beliefs that are held partly for pragmatic reasons—present a test case for intellectual humility. Intellectually humble persons will adopt ambivalent higher-order epistemic attitudes towards their incentivized beliefs. This is important for institutions that incentivize belief with material or social rewards, such as religious institutions that require orthodoxy for membership. The article argues that such institutions cannot simultaneously incentivize orthodox belief and enjoin conviction about such beliefs, unless they are willing to reject intellectual humility as a virtue.

Cognitive opacity and the analysis of faith: acts of faith interiorized through a glass only darkly

In conversation with Morgan (2015), I point out that the view ofrelational faithI have elsewhere defended (McKaughan 2013, 2016, 2017) fits rather well with the understanding ofpististhat emerges from Morgan's careful reading of New Testament texts. Moreover, the fact that New Testament authors display little interest in examining interior aspects of faith makes it difficult to justify the claim that their understanding of thepistislexiconrequiresbelieving in the modern sense as the attitude Christians must take towards relevant content, in contrast to various other positive but non-doxastic attitudes that philosophers recognize today. Such faith is of contemporary interest, given its congruity with early Christian tradition, the role it can play in helping relationships to persevere through various kinds of challenges (including doubts significant enough to preclude believing), and for the wide range of evidential circumstances in which it can be enacted with intellectual integrity.