Justification

One recent strand of post-Gettier approaches to the relationship between knowledge and justification consists of putting knowledge ‘first’ in the sense of having it be the unanalysable epistemic variable that explains justification. This is in direct opposition to more traditional pre-Gettier analyses of knowledge that explain knowledge in terms of justification being one of its necessary conditions. My thesis leverages the knowledge-first work of Clayton Littlejohn and Timothy Williamson to evaluate several arguments for and against one way of reading knowledge’s (...) explanatory role, that of knowledge being the norm of justified belief (KNJ). -/- According to prominent KNJ deniers, knowledge being the norm of justified belief makes our understanding of justification and knowledge problematic by undermining their theoretical motivations and/or explanatory roles. In clarifying what this problematisation amounts to, I identify four broad issues that KNJ faces. First, KNJ defenders cannot accommodate important normative differences between cases of knowledge and cases of non-knowledge yet positively epistemically evaluable beliefs. Second, KNJ defenders face the dilemma of either adopting a highly foreign notion of rationality or admitting that in some cases one ought to adopt an irrational doxastic state of belief suspension. Third, given a reasonable account of different functions of justification within commonplace epistemic and legal contexts, knowledge is not needed to explain the features of beliefs that matter to their justifiability. Lastly, fourth, KNJ defenders’ attempts to appropriate the normative category of excuse to explain away intuitions about justifiable non-knowledge beliefs fail because they are either ad hoc, normatively indiscriminating, or otherwise incapable of accurately accounting for the extent of excusable beliefs. -/- I respond to the first three issues by leveraging Littlejohn’s identification of the hypological and deontic senses of justification. In doing so I highlight how this identification, which I call DHJ-i, not only grants knowledge an explanatory advantage over other epistemic variables in accommodating this identification but that it does so in a manner that affords the KNJ defender three distinct further advantages over the KNJ denier. First, DHJ-i gives knowledge conceptual work to do that throws into question the method, often reserved for KNJ deniers, of solely relying on intuitions about how to assess the justifiability of belief in a case-by-case basis (case-based intuitions about justified belief). Second, DHJ-i helps clarify for defenders a viable defence of the use of a more (KNJ)-friendly notion of rationality as the standard of norm-following doxastic behaviour, either as belief or belief suspension. Third, defenders can employ DHJ-i to reasonably argue that some (KNJ)-antagonistic positions, such as taking justification to have either a non-factive norm or no one individual norm at all, attain problematic normative ramifications even within some commonplace epistemic and legal contexts. -/- I respond to the fourth issue by motivating (KNJ)-friendly modifications to Williamson’s derivative norms framework (DNF). These modifications accomplish two things. First, they differentiate between the normative categories of excuse and exemption without sneaking in unwanted internalist assumptions about this difference. Second, they locate an agent’s following of the appropriate knowledge-derived norms within cases that the KNJ defender would also want to find excusable beliefs in. Moreover, in relation to this issue and for a broader purpose, I address an intriguing tension in the overall dialectic of the debate between KNJ defenders and deniers concerning excuse and justification. Basically, when making precise the dialectic between, on one hand, models of conditions for justification and excuse, and on the other, their counterexamples, there is good reason to suppose that the KNJ denier can eke out a small victory over the defender regarding their intuitions about the right sufficient conditions for justification rather than excuse. -/- Overall, the conclusion I draw from my thesis is twofold. On one hand, there are theoretically motivated grounds to consider the KNJ defender as having the upper hand against the KNJ denier, but only if knowledge’s explanatory advantage in accommodating DHJ-i is normatively probative enough to surpass the value of sticking to the denier’s more traditional case-based intuitions about justification. On the other hand, there are dialectically motivated grounds favouring the KNJ denier over the defender, since, on balance, intuitions against justified belief having a knowledge norm are dialectically advantaged over both intuitions for there being such a norm and intuitions that seek to explain these KNJ-antagonistic intuitions away. (shrink)

This paper defends phenomenal conservatism as an epistemology of logic (‘PC-Logic’), according to which basic logical beliefs are prima facie justified when they seem obvious to us. A central challenge—the ‘obscurity objection’—holds that PC-Logic offers a mysterious or unintelligible account of such justification. I examine leading versions of this objection and contend that each fails. In particular, I argue that logical seemings are no more obscure than other justificatory appearances and that evolutionary considerations can demystify the reliability of logical seemings.

Recent years have seen many cases where the moral transgressions of public figures have led to widespread disengagement from their work, such as no longer watching their shows or reading their books. In the academic context, this can manifest as not inviting an academic to speak, no longer citing or teaching their work, or even ending professional relationships. This paper aims to explore the question of whether there could be purely epistemic reasons that could underwrite such practices of disengagement; bracketing (...) social, moral, or political concerns. In doing so, it addresses a common criticism: an academic’s moral transgression need not give us epistemic reasons to doubt the quality of their work, making disengaging unjustified. The main part of the paper investigates whether this criticism can be countered by viewing an academic’s moral transgressions as a defeater. After dismissing the option of undercutting defeat, it proposes a template argument for when there could be purely epistemic reasons for disengaging, namely if it takes place in areas where the moral transgression that motivates disengagement also functions as a higher order defeater. (shrink)

To say that someone is justified is to say that they are justified in respect of something they are doing or have done. To say that something they are doing or have done is justified is to say that they are justified in respect of their doing it, or having done it. More formally: “justified” requires two arguments: an agent and an act/state. For this reason, situations in which an act/state is justified are always situations in which a person is (...) justified. I show that this undermines the only alternative to the much- discussed excuse response to the New Evil Demon thought experiment. (shrink)

This paper argues that any attempt to definitively assess the impact of a 'world-changing' endeavour—be it in thought, technology, entrepreneurship, or politics—inevitably succumbs to an infinite regress. We propose a formal "Regress of Impact Model" that delineates three constitutive layers of this regress: the retreat from quantitative metrics to substantive value, from social recognition to intrinsic content, and from proximate to long-term consequences. This model synthesizes critiques from epistemology, the sociology of knowledge, and technology ethics, demonstrating that the 'world-changing' status (...) of an action or idea is not a property to be measured but a perpetually deferred and reinterpreted narrative. The paper concludes by advocating for a pragmatic and responsibility-oriented model for evaluation that operates consciously within, rather than attempting to resolve, this fundamental regress. (shrink)

Suppose you believe on independent grounds that Verdi is Italian, Bizet is French, and Satie is French. To your surprise, you then learn that all three composers are compatriots. What should you believe? This case—Composers—has generated significant discussion. Some argue you should be cautious and become ambivalent as to whether all three composers are French or all three are Italian. Surprisingly, if that’s right, Composers wreaks epistemological anarchy: a wide variety of epistemological principles turn out to be false. Those resistant (...) to this anarchy instead argue you should be bold and conclude that all three composers are French. I endorse the anarchy. But I do so here in a unique way. Existing approaches to Composers side exclusively with either the cautious or bold reaction, ruling the other out as irrational. This is undesirable, as both reactions seem reasonable. I outline a new way to model—or should I say, ‘compose’—Composers that captures this permissive element of the case. (shrink)

Ernest Sosa sees the establishment of warrant for our knowledge in part as an a priori mode of establishing externalist warrant for our beliefs and their underlying competences. I clarify the place of this a priori warrant in Sosa’s understanding of the aptness hierarchy — i.e., how knowledge progresses to better knowledge — by showing that it makes sense of the attainment of better knowledge through a tight connection between the a priori mode of warrant establishment and another mode, called (...) the dispositional, representing the brute reliability of our disposition to take our apt first-order beliefs at face value. (shrink)

The idea that knowledge and justification can be defeated is a staple of contemporary epistemology. Recently, however, several prominent knowledge-firsters have rejected this idea. According to them, agents retain knowledge and justification in the face of (putatively) defeating evidence, at least in paradigm cases of (putative) defeat. But it isn’t plausible that the agents’ beliefs remain rational in such cases. To accommodate this, these knowledge-firsters posit unreasonable knowledge: cases where knowledge and rationality come apart. In this paper, I argue that (...) the accounts of rationality endorsed by prominent knowledge-firsters – when coupled with indefeasibilism about knowledge – fail to accommodate clear intuitions about rationality in certain novel defeat cases. Thus, knowledge-first indefeasibilists lack a satisfactory account of rationality. This, I suggest, provides us with reason to accept what seemed intuitive all along: that in putative cases of defeat, justification and knowledge really are defeated. This in turn undercuts much of the motivation for positing unreasonable knowledge. (shrink)

En la literatura en torno a la filosofía tardía de Wittgenstein, se ha debatido ampliamente si sus ideas apoyan un relativismo epistémico. Por este motivo, es menester examinar en qué medida su obra, particularmente Sobre la certeza, sostiene una postura relativista, definida por la dependencia de las creencias y de su justificación a un sistema epistémico específico. A través de una revisión de sus tesis sobre la justificación, los sistemas epistémicos y el rol de las creencias bisagra, se argumenta que (...) Wittgenstein rechaza un fundacionalismo absoluto y que, aunque permite la variabilidad y dependencia de sistemas, no suscribe a una equivalencia entre ellos. En última instancia, el texto concluye que Wittgenstein ofrece un relativismo epistémico moderado que descarta la posibilidad de resolver racionalmente desacuerdos entre sistemas incompatibles. Sin embargo, su anti-fundacionalismo no deriva en escepticismo radical, sino que clarifica la operación efectiva de nuestras prácticas epistémicas, sugiriendo que las creencias pueden justificarse en su propio contexto sin necesidad de una validación universal. (shrink)

This paper argues for two theses. First, divine and creaturely propositional knowledge have the same structure. Second, the epistemic conditions on divine and creaturely propositional knowledge are satisfied in the same general ways. I support the theses by identifying five of their explanatory merits. I also show that no consideration so far offered in the literature for competing models of divine knowledge impugns the theses. Finally, I explain why stances on other divine attributes should not themselves prevent us from adopting (...) the theses. (shrink)

In preface cases, people believe that some of their beliefs are false. Many have considered what such people are justified in believing. We turn our attention to what they can know. We introduce a novel ‘archipelago puzzle’, showing that if deduction extends knowledge, then ordinary knowledge of error can lead in surprising ways to the absurdly pessimistic knowledge that most of one’s beliefs are false.

Lewis’ contextualism entails that when there are too many epistemic possibilities in an epistemic context, epistemic infallibility is incompatible with knowledge given a residue of such alternatives not ruled out by evidence. I restrict certainty with epistemic context through epistemic relevance. Epistemically irrelevant alternatives do not belong to the epistemic context, while certainty of the fact is achieved when all epistemically relevant alternatives ruled out by evidence. Circularly, epistemic relevance is constituted by difference making to epistemic justifiability, such that something (...) is epistemically relevant to an epistemic decision to believe if and only if it made an epistemic justificatory difference to the belief's constitution of knowledge. I use the zoo case to illustrate the relevant alternative theory, with Williamson's conception of evidence in explaining cases of knowledge when threatened by radical scepticism. Alternativity is understood with informativeness from Stalnaker, which is illustrated with whether the listener came to know. (shrink)

Recent experimental epistemology has devoted increasing attention to folk attributions of epistemic justification. Empirical studies have tested whether lay people ascribe epistemic justification in specific lottery-style vignettes (Friedman and Turri 2014, Turri and Friedman 2015, Ebert et al. 2018) and also to more ordinary beliefs (Nolte et al. 2021). In this paper, I highlight three crucial but hitherto uncritically accepted assumptions of these studies, and I argue that they are untenable. Central to my criticism is the observation that epistemic justification (...) is a philosophical term of art mostly foreign to lay people: as such, it is not suitable for direct empirical testing without being previously introduced. This point reveals a folk conceptual gap between the subject matter of these experimental studies and the conceptual repertoire we can reasonably expect lay people to possess. I elaborate on this worry, and I end on a cautiously optimistic note: after suggesting better strategies to survey folk attributions of epistemic justification, I conclude that the challenge raised by the folk conceptual gap remains difficult but can in principle be addressed. (shrink)

It is a well-worn platitude that knowledge excludes luck. According to anti-luck virtue epistemology, making good on the anti-luck platitude requires an explicit anti-luck condition along the lines of safety: S knows that p only if S’s true belief that p could not have easily been mistaken. This paper offers an independent, virtue epistemological argument against the claim that safety is a necessary condition on knowledge, one that adequately captures the anti-luck platitude. The argument proceeds by way of analogy. I (...) focus on two paradigmatic kinds of normative achievements that also exclude luck: (i) – having a doxastically justified belief, and (ii) – performing a morally worthy action. I then show that while (i) and (ii) exclude luck, they are nevertheless susceptible to what I call ‘modal luck’. I then move on to show that knowledge, or at least some instance of knowledge, is a normative achievement, which I claim provides strong reasons to expect that knowledge is also susceptible to modal luck. Since safety entails that knowledge is incompatible with modal luck, the argument provides strong reasons to reject safety as a necessary condition on knowledge. (shrink)

Most epistemologists hold that epistemic norms not only forbid believing propositions for which one lacks sufficient evidence, but also sometimes positively require believing propositions for which one has excellent evidence. That is, on the standard view, there are both negative and positive epistemic obligations. Yet proponents of positive epistemic obligations face a serious challenge: namely, to provide an extensionally adequate, explanatorily satisfying account of when positive epistemic obligations are triggered. In light of this challenge, this paper defends the claim that (...) there are no positive epistemic obligations by developing a distinctive account of epistemic reasons called the “Enticing Epistemic Reasons View.” On this view, all epistemic reasons for belief are enticing rather than requiring: they justify believing p and favor believing p, but they do not contribute to making believing p required. Unlike other views rejecting positive epistemic obligations, the Enticing Epistemic Reasons View both successfully explains why there are no positive epistemic obligations and offers resources to accommodate the intuitive datum that failing to believe practically irrelevant propositions can be criticizable. (shrink)

This paper examines the epistemic status of Humean diagnosis itself, and uses that examination as the entry point for a broader inquiry into the structure of philosophical self-reference. Beginning from Hume's three central claims — that causal connection is a psychological projection rather than a feature of the world, that inductive inference carries no logical guarantee, and that testimony for miracles is structurally self-defeating — we ask whether these diagnoses are themselves necessary or contingent. We argue that they occupy an (...) unstable middle position: stronger than ordinary empirical generalizations, yet unable to secure the framework-external necessity they appear to claim. This instability generates a self-undermining structure, which we situate within a typology of philosophical self-reference organized under the figure of the Ouroboros. The paper opens with a methodological preamble: a three-layer framework distinguishing ontological, epistemological, and linguistic levels of philosophical inquiry. These levels are mutually incommensurable; the epistemological and linguistic turns are understood as successive filters, each constraining the preceding level without issuing first-order verdicts at that level. This framework governs the categorization of all arguments in this paper and is itself subject to the fallibilist treatment it recommends for everything else. The Ouroboros organizes two phenomena that require careful distinction: the self-directed character of philosophical critique, and the circularity that attends any attempt to justify the tools of justification. Not all instances of either are epistemically vicious; the correct diagnosis depends on identifying which type is operative. Applied to Hume, the typology relocates his self-undermining difficulty from the epistemological level — where the original problem of using a questioned capacity to assess that capacity's standing remains unresolved — to the logical level, where the narrower question of whether the diagnoses are self-refuting admits a cleaner answer. This relocation is a problem replacement, not a problem solution, and the paper acknowledges it as such. We address logical revision and Quinean holism, arriving at a logical pluralism our epistemological commitments can accommodate without instability. We construct a taxonomy of necessity after Hume, in which constitutive necessity emerges as the most robust survivor — not because it escapes Humean critique but because it operates at a different level than the critique targets. The necessary-but-not-sufficient / sufficient-but-not-necessary structure of hinge propositions is developed with a compact formal statement of the asymmetry, and a shared defeater schema is given for fallibilism, the incommensurability thesis, and the hinge presumption. A Selection/Derivation Boundary is then stated in general form, locating fallibility strictly at the level of adopted framework postulates rather than at derivations within a fixed framework, together with a Lakatosian standard for non-arbitrary core preservation under Duhem–Quine holism and a procedural boundary on legitimate abductive inference. The paper concludes with a treatment of probability as an epistemic instrument. (shrink)

A transcendental deduction, in the sense used here, starts from public data and asks for the least hidden or structural support required to reconstruct those data under a specified adequacy standard. We target what we call the universal-property fallacy: the assumption that if a witness is canonical, unique, initial, or universal, the epistemic problem of reconstruction has been solved. The corrective is reentrant canonicality. Reentrancy means that the result of reconstruction must itself become an object of the practice's public norms: (...) exposable, checkable, and available for renewed use. A universal property can make an initial witness cheap to specify once the full reconstruction problem and an effective constructor are public; cost enters when finite agents must select, complete, construct, and certify the relevant route. We formalize this access question through practice-indexed presentation regimes and canonicality route packages; Kolmogorov- and Levin-style costs serve as lower-bound bookkeeping for whether public routes are short, feasible, and surveyable. Our formal centerpiece is a halting-probability stabilization model: a short public obligation generator determines a completed least fixed point, but exact stabilized finite approximants can lack any short charged public route and admit no uniform stabilization certificate. The finite minimal-hidden-support quotient gives the tractable countercase; de Sitter control illustrates certificate complexity in a live landscape-style setting. We conclude that strong initiality may be real while the route that would make it publicly available and transparent remains beyond finite agents. (shrink)

Out of all the candidates for a norm of justified belief, knowledge is not commonly viewed as favorably as others. Recently, however, those sympathetic to the knowledge norm have lodged various indirect defenses thereof by appropriating the concept ofexcuse, as part of a broader account of justification, to explain away intuitions that beliefs falling short of knowledge can be justified. I analyze how Williamson's externalist Derivative Norms Framework (DNF) can be modified to resist a common criticismoften lodged at this way (...) of viewing the normative significance of excuse, that excuse, once viewed through a DNF-friendly lens, istoo coarse a category to employ to properly discriminate between different normative dimensions of belief. A significant benefitof my analysis is that it can also avoid the worry that, in aiming to remove the charge of normative indiscrimination, the DNFdefender inadvertently undermines their very capacity to employ the category of excuse in explaining away intuitions anathemato the knowledge norm. I show how the DNF defender can avoid this by preventing falsification of a principle that ought to bepart of their account of excuse if it is to do the explanatory work they desire for it to do. (shrink)

This article examines a specific problem in AI evaluation: cases in which strong capability claims are drawn from results that do not, by themselves, justify those claims. Its central argument is that some benchmark results, behavioural outputs, and evaluative signals fail to support stronger conclusions not merely because the evidence is weak, but because the result-channel does not preserve the distinctions required for those conclusions. -/- The paper introduces a minimal criterion for identifying such cases, described here as same-channel non-repairability, (...) and develops it through a case study centred on recent debates about reasoning-model evaluation, including The Illusion of Thinking, subsequent rebuttals, and item-level benchmark analysis. Its broader aim is to clarify when the problem in AI evaluation is not simply lack of evidence, but a limitation in the representational route itself. (shrink)

According to the access internalist core claim, my evidence contributes to my justification because I represent my evidential situation. The representation of the evidential situation is understood as based not on empirical, but rather introspective grounds. The standard formulation of access internalism goes further, grounding access to evidence in reflective knowledge of one’s evidential situation. This paper aims to secure the plausibility of the core claim of access internalism by proposing the alternative to the knowledge view in terms of objectual (...) understanding. In Sect. 2, I separate the core claim of access internalism from its formulation in terms of knowledge. In Sect. 3, I defend the understanding view by explaining the psychological features of understanding that align with the intuition identified in Sect. 2. In Sects. 4 and 5, I refine the proposal by addressing a potential objection concerning sufficiency and necessity of understanding for access, respectively. In Sect. 6, I show how the understanding view avoids the main epistemological difficulty facing the knowledge view. Section 7 concludes. (shrink)

The major ethical theories—welfarist consequentialism, Kantianism, contractualism, common sense morality, and virtue ethics—appear to converge on the same practical advice in many situations. Such convergence seems epistemically significant. A natural thought would be that the convergence should assure us about the advice. However, what would be the rationale behind this—why should the convergence increase our assurance? That’s the main question we pursue in this paper. As the question is only sparsely addressed in the existing literature, we begin by detailing various (...) kinds and structures of convergence. In relation, we propose a specific way to think about the epistemic significance of convergence. The remainder of the paper is primarily negative. We argue that even granting nonskeptical assumptions that are common in moral epistemology, the epistemic significance of convergence is harder to account for than most would probably think. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the structural requirements for persistent autonomous systems under bounded conditions. Current AI systems demonstrate strong capability but lack persistence: they do not maintain identity across time, cannot guarantee decision lineage after change, and cannot independently verify consequential actions. -/- Starting from three constraints—bounded representational capacity, the impossibility of internal self-certification, and the requirement for invariant-governed continuity—the paper derives a necessary structural ordering: identity → invariant → observable → probability. -/- From this ordering, a phased architecture is constructed, (...) progressing from replayable decision systems to persistent autonomous systems. Core contributions include the Drift Lemma, which limits internal certainty in bounded systems, and a framework for external verification through replayable artifacts. -/- The paper does not claim that existing systems satisfy these conditions. Instead, it establishes necessary structural properties for autonomy under constraint, providing a framework for evaluating and designing systems that persist as the same lawful subject across time. (shrink)

Whether a belief is epistemically justified is widely considered to be an affair between the believer and the way they formed their belief. In this paper, I explore the view that the justificatory status of a belief is linked to what is appropriate for third parties to believe. In doing so, I will draw inspiration from debates in legal theory, where the view that legal justification is linked to the appropriateness of third-party conduct has been systematically worked out and widely (...) codified. I will show that these legal debates are strikingly analog to recent discussions about the function of epistemic assessment, where it has been argued that there is a link between a belief’s being epistemically justified and the appropriateness of third-party deference to said belief (Dogramaci, 2012, 2015; Greco and Hedden, 2016). In this paper, I will spell out this link and argue that it provides us with a powerful explanation of our division of epistemic labour. However, I will also show that this explanatory proposal is threatened by cases of (what I call) deference conflicts. I will argue that the most promising response to these cases is to take a “civil law–style” approach and favour the view that epistemic justification is factive. (shrink)

This paper develops a constraint-based extension of the Dual-Closure framework, which holds that authentic subjective experience and objective moral normativity jointly require non-contingent grounding in order to avoid justificatory regress. While the Dual-Closure Thesis establishes the necessity of such grounding, it leaves open the structural criteria any adequate ground must satisfy. This manuscript introduces the Multi-Closure Thesis, a conditional diagnostic framework consisting of five ontological and epistemic constraints. Rather than identifying or naming a specific metaphysical source, the framework delineates the (...) minimal requirements any candidate ground must meet if it is to successfully terminate regress across consciousness, normativity, and rational agency. By applying these constraints—echoed in historical precedents such as Al-Ghazali and Maturidi—the paper demonstrates why contingent, consensus-based, and purely naturalistic accounts fail to achieve full closure. The result is not a doctrinal conclusion, but a narrowed ontological space within which any viable account of ultimate grounding must fall. (shrink)

This paper articulates the Law of Epistemic Warrant: a constitutive, agent-general procedural law governing how epistemic warrant can arise for any finite conscious agent. The law does not function as a theory within epistemology, nor as a deductive argument for knowledge. Instead, it describes the necessary structural conditions that must be jointly instantiated for warrant-seeking inquiry to succeed at all. These conditions are expressed by the PIE Sequence (mnemonic: Perception, Inquiry, Experimentation), which specifies how epistemic instability arises, how inquiry is (...) normatively directed, and how warrant is procedurally resolved across distinct domains. The law yields exactly two non-arbitrary forms of epistemic warrant—Justified coherent belief (JCB) for intrinsic claims and Justified Reliable Belief (JRB) for extrinsic claims. By relocating epistemic warrant from propositional justification to procedural resolution, the law dissolves Agrippa’s Trilemma, which applies only to belief-justification frameworks. The persistence of Gettier-style problems is likewise explained as a structural consequence of attempting to force propositional truth conditions onto a domain governed by procedural warrant. (shrink)

On Logins’s Erotetic View of reasons, normative reasons are the possible appropriate answers to normative ‘Why?’ questions. These questions can be interpreted in two ways: as requiring either an argument/reasoning or an explanation. Consequently, this view posits not only normative reasoning reasons but also normative explanatory reasons. Against this view, this paper argues for two claims. First, putative normative explanatory reasons are not fundamentally distinct from normative justificatory reasons. Second, although normative ‘Why?’ questions could sometimes guide someone normatively, these questions (...) themselves are not genuinely normative. (shrink)

Hegel indicates throughout his writings that the claims most pivotal to his system of philosophical science receive their proof only in logic itself. And yet, Hegel has surprisingly little to say in either the Encyclopaedia Logic or the Science of Logic itself about what he means by ‘proof’ or what sort of proof procedure it is that he thinks is suited to meet such a demand. In this paper, I develop an account of the proof procedure at work in the (...) Logic by considering Hegel’s treatment of the traditional proofs of God’s existence (specifically, the ontological and the cosmological arguments) that he offers in the logical writings and in his Religionsphilosophie. I develop this account through the speculative reconstruction of the traditional arguments of natural theology that Hegel offers in his 1827 Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion and the 1829 Lectures on the Proofs of the Existence of God where, I argue, these arguments are divested of their syllogistic form and reformulated on the model of conceptual mediation. In the end, I explain how this account of the Logic’s proof procedure sheds light on two lingering interpretive issues in Hegel’s metaphysics: its relationship to the ontological argument and its solution to ‘the problem of beginning’. (shrink)

The notion of danger is ubiquitous in our everyday practical judgments. Yet discussions of danger and its normative role in guiding our actions are rare in contemporary philosophy. This could be partially explained by the frequent conflation of danger with risk. This paper aims to address this gap by clarifying what danger is and how it differs from risk. Drawing on various conceptual, linguistic, and formal considerations, I argue against standard risk‐based accounts of danger and in favor of a modified (...) version of Timothy Williamson's modal account. The upshot is a partial model of danger, along with a list of features that distinguish danger from risk. I also explore the normative dimension of danger and how it differs from that of risk. I conclude by providing a partial justification for accepting norms of danger alongside norms to avoid risk. (shrink)

The book develops and defends a general normative framework called feasibilism. Feasibilist norms urge manifesting the best feasible dispositions—ways of forming and retaining doxastic states, as well as choosing and acting, that are available to beings like us. The first half of the book presents case studies showing how epistemological implementations of feasibilism can advance long-standing debates in epistemology, including the New Evil Demon Problem, puzzles involving higher-order evidence and defeat, and challenges facing broadly consequentialist approaches. The feasibilist norm defended (...) urges manifesting the most knowledge-conducive feasible dispositions. This knowledge-centric implementation, the book argues, provides the most promising normative theory in epistemology: simple, elegant, metaphysically respectable, and explanatorily powerful. The second half of the book moves from epistemology to a more systematic defence of the feasibilist normative framework. In the moral domain, too, we are confronted with problems of luck and limitation. Given any plausible standard of moral rightness, in some situations it is only possible to do the right thing by luck. Again, we need a normative standard more attuned to our limitations. Applying the feasibilist framework to the moral domain yields interesting and surprising results—for instance, that one can sometimes be blameworthy for morally right action. Feasibilism thus unifies different normative domains within a single, non-ideal framework, offering standards attuned to human limitations but tied to valuable normative successes. (shrink)

Bootstrapping and the easy knowledge problem can be understood as puzzles about conflicting intuitions. On one hand, each step of the inference seems correct, but on the other, the overall process seems unacceptable. These puzzles will be resolved by establishing two distinctions. First, untargeted cognitive processes of belief formation must be distinguished from processes of intentional inquiry. Second, conditions on justification transmission must be distinguished from conditions on rationality understood as an internal criterion of coherence. Bootstrapping as a process of (...) settling the question about the reliability of a source violates internal criteria of rationality, but this does not entail that justification cannot transmit via bootstrapping reasoning. The intuitive defectiveness of bootstrapping can be explained in terms of the violation of rules of rationality in contexts of inquiry without being committed to accepting the general defectiveness of bootstrapping in all contexts. (shrink)

This paper develops a comprehensive epistemological framework that addresses one of philosophy's most persistent puzzles: why intelligent, rational persons examining identical evidence often reach contradictory conclusions. Building upon the Fragment Theory of Knowledge, we argue that human cognition operates through necessarily partial access to a reality of incommensurable complexity, constrained by fundamental physical, cognitive, and socio-cultural limitations. Knowledge formation is not merely the accumulation of data but the integration of experiential fragments into coherent wholes. Crucially, we demonstrate that this integration (...) requirement is not merely epistemological but reflects the ontological structure of reality itself— information never exists in isolation but only in interconnected bundles at every level of existence. We demonstrate that belief is epistemically foundational, that proper integration requires both foundational beliefs and evidential reasoning, that abstraction must remain grounded, and that every epistemic commitment exists within a holistic web of belief. This framework has profound implications for understanding rational disagreement, showing that belief assessment requires evaluating total worldview integration rather than isolated propositions. (shrink)

Traditionally, many have imposed higher-order requirements on epistemic justification. That is, many have argued that for a belief to be epistemically justified, it not only needs to satisfy first-order requirements, such as being formed via a reliable process or supported by sufficient evidence, but also some higher-order requirement that bears on the way the belief is formed. For example, BonJour (1980) has famously argued that a clairvoyance belief, however reliable, is not justified unless one also has a justified belief that (...) one’s beliefs formed via clairvoyance are reliable. More recently, some have argued for higher-order requirements for inferentially justified beliefs. That is, for example, that inferential beliefs are only justified if we take the reasons for which those beliefs are formed to support the belief. While there is a common underlying theme, these proposals differ with respect to the kind of higher-order state they require. Some proposals require (justified) higher-order beliefs, while others require higher-order evidence or higher-order awareness. This paper sets out to systematically discuss different kinds of higher order requirements and the objections they face. While I will argue that there are good reasons to think that epistemic justification needs a built-in higher order requirement, I will argue that only so-called evidential requirements are able to guard off well-known objections. In particular, I will demonstrate that the evidentialist no-defeater clause I recently proposed in Graf (2025), can be understood as a general higher-order requirement which does not only explain the intuitions motivating such requirements, but also enables us to avoid common objections. (shrink)

Changing our minds isn’t easy. Even when we recognize our views are disputed by intelligent and informed people, we rarely doubt our rightness. Why is this so? How can we become more open-minded, putting ourselves in a better position to tolerate conflict, advance collective inquiry, and learn from differing perspectives in a complex world? In this engrossing, provocative book, Nathan Ballantyne defends the indispensable role of epistemology in tackling these issues. For early modern philosophers, the point of reflecting on inquiry (...) was to understand how our beliefs are often distorted by prejudice and self-interest, and to improve the foundations of human knowledge. Ballantyne seeks to recover and modernize this classical tradition by vigorously defending an interdisciplinary approach to epistemology, blending philosophical theorizing with insights from the social and cognitive sciences. We need tools to help us think more circumspectly about our controversial views. Ballantyne develops a method for distinguishing between our reasonable and unreasonable opinions, in light of evidence about bias, information overload, and rival experts. This method guides us to greater intellectual openness—in the spirit of skeptics from Socrates to Montaigne to Bertrand Russell—making us more inclined to admit that sometimes we don’t have the right answers. With vibrant prose and fascinating examples from science and history, Ballantyne shows how epistemology can help us know our limits. (shrink)

There is an underexplored puzzle in the philosophy of religion that presents a _prima facie_ reason to believe God does not exist: the problem of blameless moral ignorance. If God is omniscient, omnipotent, and morally perfect, then he would desire and ensure that all non-blameable rational agents have sufficient moral knowledge to act rightly. Yet cases of sincere moral ignorance persist. Drawing on a recent formulation of this problem by Elbert (Ergo an Open Access Journal of Philosophy 8:32, 2022), this (...) paper proceeds in three stages. First, I critique Elbert’s argument by identifying unsupported theological and epistemic assumptions. Second, I develop a more defensible version of the argument that better aligns with its underlying commitments. Third, I evaluate the revised argument and argue that, even in its improved form, the challenge fails to demonstrate that God does not exist. In the end, I draw out an implication of this discussion for understanding moral knowledge within a theistic framework: not as a static set of propositions to be disclosed, but as a process of moral transformation and discovery. (shrink)

I outline a novel counterexample to the principle of belief revision, Anticipation: if both learning and learning not‐ would render belief in unjustified, you cannot now be justified in believing. If I am right, not only is the leading theory of belief revision false, so are various recently proposed weakenings. I develop and defend a new theory that correctly predicts the failures of Anticipation I argue for, predicated on the simple idea that one is justified in ruling out possibility just (...) in case that possibility is sufficiently improbable. (shrink)

Hilary Kornblith is one of the world’s leading epistemologists, a champion of an innovative philosophical research program that is at once traditional and revisionary. In viewing the study of knowledge as inseparable from the empirical study of the mind, Kornblith aligns himself closely with the approach of the traditional empiricists of the 17th and 18th centuries. Yet in taking contemporary empirical work seriously, Kornblith has developed views and arguments that shift the epistemological focus away from what is available first-personally _within_ (...) the mind towards what is revealed third-personally _of_ the mind instead. Indeed, anyone looking seriously at the history of 20th century epistemology can draw a straight line from W.V.O. Quine through Alvin Goldman to Hilary Kornblith – all three, in their ways, champions of a science-centered epistemology. On the innovative leading edge of that tradition, however, Kornblith has developed a systematic rejection of the traditional philosophical method of conceptual analysis (_pace_ Goldman) while establishing a thoroughly empirical and yet unambiguously philosophical approach to the study of knowledge (_pace_ Quine). As such, Kornblith’s work is required reading for anyone interested in the structure and nature of knowledge, the structure and grounds of justification, the sources of epistemic normativity, the history and the prospects for a naturalized epistemology, the legitimacy of intuition-dependent conceptual analysis as a philosophical method, and the significance and reliability of reflection and reasoning. This volume collects 16 original essays that advance the state of play by engaging critically and substantively with Kornblith’s views on these and other topics, along with an essay by Kornblith himself replying to his critics. (shrink)

This chapter explores the challenge that the New Evil Demon Problem poses for so-called “externalist” theories of evidence. It argues that the best view of evidence is a liberalized form of externalism. According to that view, paradigmatic evidence in the sciences and elsewhere includes publicly known facts about the external world, evidence that we would not have in a hypothetical scenario in which we are the victims of radical deception. On the other hand, our evidence is not limited to our (...) knowledge, and for this reason even radically deceived thinkers are often in a position to have justified beliefs about their environment. Given the radical diversity of topics about which we can have justified beliefs, and the extremely wide range of circumstances in which it’s possible for us to hold such beliefs, we should embrace the idea that even radically different things can play the justifying role of evidence. (shrink)

The paper is concerned with a special class of inferences, in which we draw conclusions about individual people based on evidence about the groups to which they belong. One thing that is notable about these inferences is that they are often subject to a kind of moral criticism. By judging people in this way, it is claimed, we demean or diminish them, and fail to properly respect them as individuals. And yet, if these inferences are epistemically sound – as they (...) sometimes appear to be – then we face the possibility of a clash between moral and epistemic norms. One way to avoid this clash is through the thesis of moral encroachment – the idea that standards of epistemic justification are themselves sensitive to moral considerations and, in particular, can become more stringent when a belief has the potential to morally wrong others. In this paper I offer some reasons for doubting this thesis, and argue that group-to-individual inferences are, in the end, better understood through a more traditional framework on which epistemic justification is determined purely by the nature of one’s evidence. (shrink)

The child objection is a major challenge for reductionism, which requires hearers to have positive reasons for testimonial justification. However, it has been pointed out that anti-reductionism, which requires only the absence of negative reasons, or defeaters, suffers from the same kind of problem. The child objection presupposes the empirical thesis that “children do not have the capacity to consider reasons,” but the plausibility of this assumption may be revealed by developmental psychology research on selective trust. This paper uses recent (...) epistemological studies as a guide to narrow down the types of defeaters that children are required to consider, and then clarifies what kind of reasons various experiments can be said to test the ability to consider, and in what sense children who pass the test can be said to be “considering” reasons. In doing so, we clarify the scope and limits of the implications that selective trust studies can have for reductionism and anti-reductionism. We then suggest what future psychological research is desired from an epistemological interest to go beyond the current limitations. (shrink)

In this paper, I explicate pragmatic encroachment by appealing to pragmatic considerations attenuating, or weakening, epistemic reasons to believe. I call this the ‘Attenuators View’. I will show that this proposal is better than spelling out pragmatic encroachment in terms of reasons against believing – what I call the ‘Reasons View’. While both views do equally well when it comes to providing a plausible mechanism of how pragmatic encroachment works, the Attenuators View does a better job distinguishing practical and epistemic (...) reasons to believe. First, this view does not appeal to the costs of believing falsely as reasons against believing; second, because of this, it does not run the risk of tearing down the wall between practical and epistemic reasons bearing on belief. I underpin the Attenuators View with a virtue‐theoretic account of how pragmatic encroachment attenuates epistemic reasons and close my discussion by considering some objections against such a view. (shrink)

Should you defer to individual experts? That is, when a single expert—rather than a group of experts or a expert consensus—testifies that p, should you believe that p? In this paper, I argue that the answer to this question is, generally speaking, “no.” My argument is based on the notion of a complexity‐based defeater. Some questions are complex in a sense that makes inquirers less reliable at answering them. Expert testimony tends to be about such questions. Expert testimony thus tends (...) to be subject to a complexity‐based defeater. The pressing question, then, is whether the speaker's expertise in turn defeats that complexity‐based defeater. I first draw on the extant literature to show why we cannot reliably make case‐by‐case determinations of whether a particular speaker's expertise counteracts the complexity of the particular question they are answering. Next, I argue that a speaker's status as an expert does not, in general, defeat the complexity‐based defeaters that tend to come with expert testimony. We thus should not, generally speaking, defer to individual experts. I then address some issues with the peer review system that are relevant to the core argument. Finally, I briefly discuss a path to rational deference that remains open: a path through expert judgment aggregation. (shrink)

While much of politics is about making decisions, machine learning is about making predictions. Despite this diverging focus, machine learning is increasingly deployed in politically sensitive fields. This chapter focuses on the tension arising from this deployment. We specifically address the question of whether machine learning-based political decision making can be justified and how this question of justification interrelates with considerations about epistemological aspects of machine learning. To that end, we evaluate the epistemic state that individual decision makers can reach (...) when relying on machine learning systems and assess when this state can be considered justified. We then broaden this first-person perspective and turn to political justification. By employing the so-called public justification principle, we investigate whether epistemic justification transmits to political justification in applications of machine learning. We argue that in light of the epistemological considerations, a series of problems arise concerning the political justification of deploying these models. (shrink)

_Verificationism_ is the first comprehensive history of a concept that dominated philosophy and scientific methodology between the 1930s and the 1960s. The verificationist principle - the concept that a belief with no connection to experience is spurious - is the most sophisticated version of empiricism. More flexible ideas of verification are now being rehabilitated by a number of philosophers. C.J. Misak surveys the precursors, the main proponents and the rehabilitators. Unlike traditional studies, she follows verificationist theory beyond the demise of (...) positivism to examine its reappearance in the work of modern philosophers. Most interestingly, she argues that despite feminism's strenuous opposition to positivism, verificationist thought is at the heart of much of contemporary feminist philosophy. _Verificationism_ is an excellent assessment of a major and influential system of thought. (shrink)

Knowledge, from Plato onwards, has been considered in relation to justified belief. Current debate has centred around the nature of the justification and whether justified belief can be considered an internal or extenal matter. Epistemological internalists argue that the subject must be able to reflect upon a belief to complete the process of justification. The externalists, on the other hand, claim that it is only necessary to consider whether the belief is reliably formed, and argue that the ability to know (...) by reflection is not required for a justified belief. In the historical section of this book the three most important epistemologists, Plato, Descartes and Hume, as well as the ancient epistemologies of the stoics, Academics and Pyrhonians, are considered. In reconsidering the history of epistemology the author is led to argue against hte view that internalism is historically dominant. His critique of internalism is then developed into a sustained argument against many of its forms, and he goes onto defend an externalist, reliabilist epistemology. (shrink)

NOTE: This is an early preprint version. The definitive, citable "Version of Record" of this paper has been archived on Zenodo and can be found under the DOI 10.5281/zenodo.16276131. Please use the Zenodo version exclusively for all citations. -/- This paper presents a novel approach to the foundation of ethical systems, based on the concept of Ontological Symmetry Breaking. Starting from the observation that a fundamental asymmetry arises in the transition from an objective reality to the subjective experience of reality, (...) a formal framework is developed that derives the emergence of fundamental ethical stances directly from the structure of this asymmetry. Through the analysis of varying degrees of I-Thou-It projection, a typology of fundamental ethical stances is created, ranging from solipsistic to deeply empathic worldviews. In contrast to existing ethical theories, which are often based on external normative assumptions, this approach offers a derivation of ethical systems from the intrinsic structure of subjective experience itself. The theory is supported by references to empirical findings from moral psychology and comparative ethics. Furthermore, an extended notational system is developed that captures differentiated projection intensities (dominant vs. suppressed) and is applied to various social constellations---from hierarchical social structures and group conflicts to personal relationships. These application perspectives demonstrate the potential of the approach to integrate and reinterpret existing theories from power research, conflict theory, and relationship psychology. The work thus opens up new perspectives for understanding ethical and social dynamics at both individual and societal levels. (shrink)

Recent research in analytic epistemology suggests that one can form a rational belief without being in the position to identify and assess the evidence in its support. The reach of such unreflective responses to evidence has been explored in internalist and externalist theories of epistemic justification. It is also at work in defences of the rationality of non-human animals and young children. Unreflective responsiveness to evidence is in tension with reflective accounts, according to which being in the position to identify (...) and assess the relevant reasons is necessary for rational belief and action. We investigate the relation between these two rival characterizations of rational belief by engaging with recent work in developmental psychology and integrating it with lessons coming from the study of epistemic defeaters. We contend that the roots of epistemic rationality lie in what subjects do at the unreflective level. The arguments we provide speak against the widely held notion that the reflective minds of adult humans differ in kind from the presumed unreflective minds of young children and non-human animals. (shrink)

In contemporary epistemology, much attention has been given to misinformation, disinformation, and epistemic luck. However, little focus has been given to a structurally distinct but increasingly pervasive epistemic condition: information saturation. This paper argues that an overabundance of information can lead not merely to confusion or indecision, but to a collapse in the very structure of epistemic justification. Drawing on analogies from overload in decision theory, entropy in cognitive science, and noise in communication theory, I argue that information saturation introduces (...) a distinct failure mode for knowledge acquisition. This phenomenon challenges traditional internalist and externalist models alike, and demands a new framework for understanding epistemic responsibility in high-volume informational environments. (shrink)