{"title":"Reasons for Reliabilism","authors":"Bob Beddor","doi":"10.1093/OSO/9780198847205.003.0007","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/OSO/9780198847205.003.0007","url":null,"abstract":"One leading approach to justification comes from the reliabilist tradition, which maintains that a belief is justified provided that it is reliably formed. Another comes from the ‘Reasons First’ tradition, which claims that a belief is justified provided that it is based on reasons that support it. These two approaches are typically developed in isolation from each other; this essay motivates and defends a synthesis. On the view proposed here, justification is understood in terms of an agent’s reasons for belief, which are in turn analysed along reliabilist lines: an agent’s reasons for belief are the states that serve as inputs to their reliable processes. I show that this synthesis allows each tradition to profit from the other’s explanatory resources. In particular, it enables reliabilists to explain epistemic defeat without abandoning their naturalistic ambitions. I go on to compare my proposed synthesis with other hybrid versions of reliabilism that have been proposed in the literature.","PeriodicalId":148935,"journal":{"name":"Reasons, Justification, and Defeat","volume":"50 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-04-16","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"126053831","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Losing Knowledge by Thinking about Thinking","authors":"Jennifer Nagel","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198847205.003.0004","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198847205.003.0004","url":null,"abstract":"Defeat cases are often taken to show that even the most securely based judgment can be rationally undermined by misleading evidence. Starting with some best-case scenario for perceptual knowledge, for example, it is possible to undermine the subject’s confidence in her sensory faculties until it becomes unreasonable for her to persist in her belief. Some have taken such cases to indicate that any basis for knowledge is rationally defeasible; others have argued that there can be unreasonable knowledge. I argue that defeat cases really involve not an exposure of weakness in the basis of a judgment, but a shift in that basis. For example, when threatening doubts are raised about whether conditions are favorable for perception, one shifts from a basis of unreflective perceptual judgment to a basis of conscious inference. In these cases, the basis of one’s knowledge is lost, rather than rationally undermined. This approach to defeat clears the path for a new way to defend infallibilism in epistemology, and a new understanding of what can count as the basis of any instance of knowledge.","PeriodicalId":148935,"journal":{"name":"Reasons, Justification, and Defeat","volume":"22 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"131703959","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Suspension, Higher-Order Evidence, and Defeat","authors":"Errol Lord, Kurt L. Sylvan","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198847205.003.0006","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198847205.003.0006","url":null,"abstract":"This paper has two main goals. The first and most central goal is to develop a framework for understanding higher-order defeat. The framework rests on the idea that higher-order evidence provides direct reasons for suspending judgment which leave evidential support relations on the first order intact. Equally importantly, we also seek to explain how this sort of defeat is possible by showing how direct reasons for suspension of judgment flow from the functional profile of suspension of judgment. As a result, our framework is embedded within an account of the nature of suspension of judgment that shows how new insights about its nature lead to a different picture of its rational profile. A second and subsidiary goal of the paper is to show how our framework provides a compelling basis for more moderate positions about disagreement and epistemic akrasia. We show that the puzzles about these topics rest on more fundamental mistakes about suspension and the relationship between reasons for suspension, reasons for belief, and evidence.","PeriodicalId":148935,"journal":{"name":"Reasons, Justification, and Defeat","volume":"42 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"121929310","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Knowledge, Action, and Defeasibility","authors":"C. Pavese","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198847205.003.0008","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198847205.003.0008","url":null,"abstract":"This essay reviews some motivations for a ‘knowledge-centered psychology’—a psychology where knowledge enters center stage in an explanation of intentional action (Section 8.2). Then it outlines a novel argument for the claim that knowledge is required for intentional action (Section 8.3) and discusses some of its consequences, in particular for the debate on the defeasibility of know-how. Section 8.4 argues that a knowledge-centered psychology motivates the intellectualist view that know-how is a species of know-that. In its more extreme form, the view is committed to an epistemologically substantial claim—i.e., that the epistemic profile of know-how is the same as that of propositional knowledge. Now, it is widely believed that know-that can be defeated by undermining and rebutting defeaters (e.g., Chisholm 1966; Goldman 1986; Pollock and Cruz 1999; Bergmann 2000). If that is correct, one corollary of intellectualism is that the defeasibility of know-how patterns with that of knowledge. A knowledge-centered psychology does predict that, for it predicts that both know-how and knowledge are defeated when one’s ability to intentionally act is defeated. In Section 8.5, by replying to a challenge raised in the recent literature (Carter and Navarro 2018), I argue that this prediction is actually borne out.","PeriodicalId":148935,"journal":{"name":"Reasons, Justification, and Defeat","volume":"119 52","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"120825530","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Competing Reasons","authors":"Justin Snedegar","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198847205.003.0011","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198847205.003.0011","url":null,"abstract":"One of the most important facts about the normative domain is that some considerations are contributory, rather than decisive, when it comes to determining what we ought to, must, or may do. This chapter investigates different ways that contributory reasons bearing on our options can compete with one another to determine the overall normative status of those options. Two key themes are (i) that the theory of this competition must include a distinct role for reasons against, in addition to reasons for, and (ii) that the theory must allow for comparative verdicts about which options are more strongly supported than others, rather than simply which options are required or permitted. I reject a simple and familiar balancing account of the competition, as well as an account that understands the competition in terms of giving and answering criticisms of the options. I introduce a new account that incorporates a distinct role for reasons against.","PeriodicalId":148935,"journal":{"name":"Reasons, Justification, and Defeat","volume":"104 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"127145529","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The Normativity of Knowledge and the Scope and Sources of Defeat","authors":"Sanford C. Goldberg","doi":"10.1093/oso/9780198847205.003.0002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198847205.003.0002","url":null,"abstract":"In this paper I will be appealing to a prior grasp of the normativity of knowledge itself—its role in entitling a subject to confidence and in authorizing others to believe on the strength of one’s epistemic standing—to shed light on the nature and scope of defeat. The strategy will be to focus on cases in which an otherwise epistemically well-positioned subject fails to enjoy these normative standings, and to argue that the best explanation is the presence of defeaters. In ordinary cases, this strategy yields results that are not particularly interesting: in such cases the allegation of relevant defeaters will be greeted with a yawn. The interest of the present paper lies in its use of this strategy to motivate the allegation of a type of defeat that is decidedly more controversial: so-called normative defeat (a term I borrow from Lackey (1999)). Highlighting this type of defeat underscores a social dimension to knowledge that the literature typically overlooks or ignores.","PeriodicalId":148935,"journal":{"name":"Reasons, Justification, and Defeat","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"1900-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"115226643","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}