The Truth Fairy and the Indirect Epistemic Consequentialist

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.

Knowledge, Default, and Skepticism

Virtue epistemology takes its own approach to the questions of traditional epistemology. In what follows, a fresh treatment of philosophical skepticism is enabled by a distinctive notion of default assumptions, along with an analogy between epistemic and athletic performance, and between episteme and praxis more generally. The novel response to the skeptics will explain how they’ve mistaken what’s required for the epistemic quality of ordinary judgments and beliefs. Our virtue epistemological approach relies on a category of default assumptions that is different from any “default justification” or “entitlement” already in the literature, if only because ours is embedded in virtue theory and is to be understood thereby. Wittgenstein comes closest in On Certainty, though his own ideas are also unhinged from any broader virtue epistemology.

Perceptual Entitlement and Skepticism

What are the implications for perceptual anti-individualism for radical scepticism about perceptual entitlement? Previous ambitious arguments are criticized: one can only know a posteriori the extent of perceptual entitlement. But one can know a priori that one is not the only sentient being to have ever existed. Brueckner presented a reconstruction of an argument thought to be discernible in Burge’s “Perceptual Entitlement.” It was supposed to be an a priori argument for the existence of perceptual entitlement. Though it was not touted as such, the argument would be a kind of a priori anti-skeptical argument. For if it could be demonstrated a priori that we have entitlement to hold our perceptual beliefs, then this would answer a skeptic who claimed that our perceptual beliefs have no positive epistemic status, given our inability to rule out his skeptical counterpossibilities in a manner that itself possesses positive epistemic status.

Why Should Warrant Persist in Demon Worlds?

In ‘Perceptual Entitlement’ (2003) Burge argues that a perceptual competence that is reliable in normal conditions when functioning normally confers prima facie warrant when functioning normally in any conditions, and so a normal functioning perceptual competence continues to confer warrant even when the individual is unknowingly massively deceived, such as in a brain-in-a-vat or a “demon world” scenario. This chapter critically examines Burge’s explanation. Burge’s explanation does not adequately explain why warrant should persist outside of normal conditions, and so why warrant should persist in demon worlds. The chapter distinguishes between bounded versus non-bounded normal conditions reliabilism to explain why Burge’s account falls short. According to bounded reliabilism, perceptual warrant does not persist outside of normal conditions. According to unbounded reliablism, it does. The chapter distinguishes two grades of warrant in terms of the distinction between bounded and unbounded reliabilism. With these two grades of warrant, one can then explain why warrant should persist in demon worlds.

Internalism and Entitlement to Rules and Methods

We rely on belief-forming mechanisms: modus ponens, inference to the best explanation, and the transformation rules of our perceptual system. Why are we entitled to rely on these mechanisms? This chapter criticizes Method Internalist answers. Extreme Method Internalism launches a regress. Defense Internalism also launches a regress and has other limitation. Mentalism (Mental Internalist) is motivated by demon world cases, but better (non-internalist) treatments of such cases are possible.

Moorean Pragmatics, Social Comparisons, and Common Knowledge

One function of knowledge attributions is to make social comparisons: to imply that one person, but not some salient other person or people, knows something. When we attribute an item of common knowledge to S, however, it is false that S, but not some salient other person or people, knows. For this reason, attributions of common knowledge sometimes seem false. In this chapter, I will argue that the anti-skeptical philosopher’s utterance of “I know that I’m not deceived by a demon” seems false because it is an assertion of common knowledge. This provides a tool for theorists of anti-skeptical entitlement theorists to use in diagnosing skeptical intuitions.

Epistemic Entitlement—Its Scope and Limits

This chapter explores the nature of epistemic entitlement and its role in epistemology in relation to the epistemic internalism-externalism dispute. I argue for epistemic pluralism according to which the genus of epistemic rationality, warrant, harbors two distinct species: an internalist one, justification, and an externalist one, entitlement. On this basis, I advance a new criterion for drawing the distinction between justification and entitlement: The Reason Criterion: entitlements are warrants that do not involve the exercise of the faculty of Reason.

Entitlement

The chapter is comprised of five sections. First, it situates knowledge and epistemic warrant in a frame of representational and epistemic norms. It distinguishes two types of epistemic warrant–entitlement (warrant without reason) and justification (warrant through reason). Second, it argues that epistemic internalism—according to which epistemic warrant supervenes on psychological states of the warranted individual—is unacceptable. Third, it discusses the status of scepticism in epistemology. Fourth, it criticizes an argument that believing that we are entitled to perceptual beliefs would commit us to an unacceptable way of validating the reliability of those beliefs. Fifth, it rebuts an argument that believing that we are entitled to perceptual beliefs is inconsistent with intuitions about confirmation and with Bayesian principles of subjective probability.

Introduction and Overview

Tyler Burge and Crispin Wright both distinguish two forms of warrant: entitlement and justification. But they use these terms in very different ways. Entitlement for Wright is a non-evidential, a priori rational right to claim knowledge against the skeptic. Wright’s project engages the skeptic. Entitlement for Burge is a truth-conducive good route to knowledge that does not involve reasons. Justification is the route that involves reasons. Burge’s project falls within moderate foundationalist, competence-based approaches to knowledge. Burge’s project examines the structure of knowledge. The chapters of the volume are introduced. The chapters in Part I engage Burge’s project. Part II engages and extends competence and moderate foundationalist approaches. Part II engages Wright’s project.

Full Blooded Entitlement

Entitlement is defined as a sort of epistemic justification that one can possess by default—a sort of epistemic justification that does not need to be earned or acquired. Epistemologists who accept the existence of entitlement generally have a certain anti-sceptical role in mind for it—entitlement is intended to help us resist what would otherwise be compelling radical sceptical arguments. But this role leaves various details unspecified and, thus, leaves scope for a number of different potential conceptions of entitlement. At one extreme there are conceptions that portray entitlement as a weak, attenuated epistemic status and, at the other, we have conceptions that portray entitlement as something potent and strong. Certain intermediate conceptions are also possible. This chapter argues that the weak and moderate conceptions of entitlement do not survive careful scrutiny. The stronger conceptions—while they do, in a way, strain credulity—are the only conceptions ultimately viable.