Abstract: Epistemologists generally agree that the stringency of intuitive ascriptions of knowledge is increased when unrealized possibilities of error are mentioned. Non-sceptical invanantists (Williamson, Hawthorne) think it a mistake to yield in such cases to the temptation to be more stringent, but they do not deny that we feel it. They contend that the temptation is best explained as the product of a psychological bias known as the availability heuristic. I argue against the availability explanation, and sketch a rival account of what happens to us psychologically when possibilities of error are raised.
Risk and Rationality
Publisher’s Note: Lara Buchak sets out a new account of rational decision-making in the face of risk. She argues that the orthodox view is too narrow, and suggests an alternative, more permissive theory: one that allows individuals to pay attention to the worst-case or best-case scenario, and vindicates the ordinary decision-maker.
Moore and Wittgenstein: Scepticism, Certainty, and Common Sense
Publisher’s Note: Does scepticism threaten our common sense picture of the world? Does it really undermine our deep-rooted certainties? This book offers an answer to these questions through a comparative study of the epistemological work of two key figures in the history of analytic philosophy: G. E. Moore and Ludwig Wittgenstein. While historically accurate and engaging with scholarly work in this area, the book also puts forward novel interpretations of their works and brings out their relevance to present-day debates both in epistemology and philosophy of language.
The Justification of Deduction
Abstract: It is often taken for granted by writers who propose – and, for that matter, by writers who oppose – ‘justifications’ of inductions, that deduction either does not need, or can readily be provided with, justification. The purpose of this paper is to argue that, contrary to this common opinion, problems analogous to those which, notoriously, arise in the attempt to justify induction, also arise in the attempt to justify deduction.
The Degree of Epistemic Justification and the Conjunction Fallacy
Abstract: This paper describes a formal measure of epistemic justification motivated by the dual goal of cognition, which is to increase true beliefs and reduce false beliefs. From this perspective the degree of epistemic justification should not be the conditional probability of the proposition given the evidence, as it is commonly thought. It should be determined instead by the combination of the conditional probability and the prior probability. This is also true of the degree of incremental confirmation, and I argue that any measure of epistemic justification is also a measure of incremental confirmation. However, the degree of epistemic justification must meet an additional condition, and all known measures of incremental confirmation fail to meet it. I describe this additional condition as well as a measure that meets it. The paper then applies the measure to the conjunction fallacy and proposes an explanation of the fallacy.
Against Gullibility
Summary: This paper refutes the PR thesis according to which the hearer has such a special presumptive right to trust the speaker’s assertion. The refutation consists of 1) arguing against that it is not possible for a hearer to obtain independent confirmation that a given speaker is trustworthy – that what she says will be true; 2) a full rejection to various positive arguments for a PR which may be made.
Chance, Possibility and explanation
Summary: In this paper the author argues against the common and influential view that non-trivial chances arise only when the fundamental laws are indeterministic. The problem with this view, she claims, is not that it conflicts with some antecedently plausible metaphysics of chance or that it fails to capture our everyday use of ‘chance’ and related terms, but rather that it is unstable. Any reason for adopting the position that non-trivial chances arise only when the fundamental laws are indeterministic is also a reason for adopting a much stronger, and far less attractive, position. Emery suggests an alternative account, according to which chances are probabilities that play a certain explanatory role: they are probabilities that explain associated frequencies.
Belief Contexts and Epistemic possibility
Abstract: Although epistemic possibility figures in several debates, those debates have had relatively little contact with one another. G. E. Moore focused squarely upon analyzing epistemic uses of the phrase, ‘It’s possible that p’, and in doing so he made two fundamental assumptions. First, he assumed that epistemic possibility statements always express the epistemic position of a community, as opposed to that of an individual speaker. Second, he assumed that all epistemic uses of ‘It’s possible that p’ are analyzable in terms of knowledge, not belief. A number of later theorists, including Keith DeRose, provide alternative accounts of epistemic possibility, while retaining Moore’s two assumptions. Neither assumption has been explicitly challenged, but Jaakko Hintikka’s analysis provides a basis for doing so. Drawing upon Hintikka’s analysis, I argue that some epistemic possibility statements express only the speaker’s individual epistemic state, and that contra DeRose, they are not degenerate community statements but a class in their own right. I further argue that some linguistic contexts are belief- rather than knowledge-based, and in such contexts, what is possible for a speaker depends not upon what she knows, but upon what she believes.
What is Science? Methodological Pitfalls Underlying the Empirical Exploration of Scientific Knowledge
Abstract: The validity of three premises, set as foundational pillars of modern sociological approach to science, is contested, namely: (i) the postulate, stating that science is devoid of whatever generis specifical; (ii) it is liable to the usual empirical study; (iii) the practicing scientist’s self-reflexive judgements must be disbelieved and rejected. Contrariwise, the ignored so far quaint nature of knowledge, escaping even from the elementary empirical treating – discernment and observation – is revealed and demonstrated. This peculiar nature requires, accordingly, a specific meta-cognitive dealing for positing it as ’empirical object’, unfortunately missed still by the Strong Programme. The inadequate approach adopted led to a substitution of ‘scientific’ for common knowledge. The tacit thus far alternative, setting the foundations of meta-science, is suggested.
Philosophy and the sciences after Kant
Summary: In this article Massimi discusses the important role that history and philosophy of science plays or ought to play within philosophy. The aim of the paper is to offer a historical reconstruction and a possible diagnosis of why the long marriage between philosophy and the sciences was eventually wrong after Kant. Massimi examines Kant’s view on philosophy and the sciences, from his early scientific writings to the development of critical philosophy and the pressing epistemological he felt the need to address in response to the sciences of his time.