Metaepistemology

« Notre héritage du scepticisme n’est précédé d’aucun testament. Par-delà les vicissitudes de l’épistémologie traditionnelle et de l’anti-scepticisme, le spectre du « scepticisme à visage humain » selon Thompson Morgan Clarke, entre contextualisme, perspectivisme, pragmatisme et pyrrhonisme. » in Skepsis, Journal of Skepticism / Skepsis Journal : Revista de Filosofia ISSN 1981-4534, Vol. XI, N°23 " Thompson Clarke's Legacy and Hinge Epistemology", 2021, pp. 122-147.

Relativists about knowledge ascriptions think that whether a particular use of a knowledge-ascribing sentence, e.g., “Keith knows that the bank is open” is true depends on the epistemic standards at play in the assessor’s context—viz., the context in which the knowledge ascription is being assessed for truth or falsity. Given that the very same knowledge-ascription can be assessed for truth or falsity from indefinitely many perspectives, relativism has a striking consequence. When I ascribe knowledge to someone (e.g., when I say that, at a particular time, “Keith knows that the bank is open”), what I’ve said does not get a truth-value absolutely, but only relatively. If this semantic thesis about the word “knows” and its cognates is true, what implications would this have for epistemology, the philosophical theory of knowledge? The present aim will be to engage with this mostly unexplored question, and then to consider how the epistemological conclusions drawn might bear on the plausibility of a relativist semantics for “knows”.

Whereas epistemology is (broadly speaking) the philosophical theory of knowledge, its nature and scope, metaepistemology takes a step back from particular substantive debates in epistemology in order to inquire into the assumptions and commitments made by those who engage in these debates. This entry will focus on a selection of these assumptions and commitments, including (§1) whether (or not) there are objective epistemic facts; and how to characterize (§2) the subject matter and (§3) the methodology of epistemology.

While there has been a great deal of recent interest in parallels between metaethics and metaepistemology, there has been little discussion of epistemological analogues of the open question argument (hereafter, OQA). This is somewhat surprising—the general trend in recent work is in the direction of emphasizing the continuity between metaethics and metaepistemology, and to treat metanormative questions as arising in parallel in these two normative domains. And while the OQA has been subjected to a wide variety of objections, it is still influential in metaethics. In this paper, I aim to show that an epistemological version of the OQA is just as promising as its moral cousin. That’s not to say that I’ll unqualifiedly endorse either argument. Rather, my aim is to show that there is just as strong a prima facie (really, secunda facie) case for an OQA in metaepistemology as there is in metaethics—I leave open whether the ultima facie case collapses.

.....the double bind as constituting an entirely new, non-material, principle of evolution, major conceptual revisions may need to be made in our general understanding of evolution as contained within the “modern evolutionary synthesis”.

KEYWORDS:
behavior, communication, context, contradiction, deutero-learning, double bind, epistemology, evolution, incompleteness theorum, kinesics, learning, logical type theory, metacommunication, metamessages, metatheory, mystification, paradox, relationships, schismogenesis, schizophrenia,  scientific elegance, symmathesy, teleology, temporality, transcontextual, transdisciplinary, trauma

Epistemology is widely seen as a normative discipline like ethics. Just like moral facts, epistemic facts – i.e. facts about our beliefs’ epistemic justification, rationality, reasonableness, correctness, warrant, and the like – are standardly viewed as normative facts. Yet, whereas many philosophers have rejected the existence of moral facts, few have raised similar doubts about the existence of epistemic facts.
In recent years however, several metaethicists and epistemologists have
rejected this Janus-faced or dual stance towards the existence of moral and epistemic facts. As recent developments in metaethics and normativity theory have made clear, objections to the existence of moral facts really are metanormative objections that target the existence of normative facts more generally. But since epistemic facts are no less normative than moral facts, the argument goes, the existence of the former is equally threatened by metaethical objections.
In this thesis, I argue that this rejection of the dual stance fails because
epistemic facts are not normative facts. Although they imply norms, they do not imply genuine normativity since the epistemic norms of belief that they imply lack necessary normative authority or force. Unlike moral norms and just like e.g. norms of etiquette and the law, there is not automatically a normative reason to conform to epistemic norms. Therefore, even if metaethical objections target all normative facts, it does not follow that they also target epistemic facts. I offer a two-part abductive argument in favour of that conclusion. First, I argue that epistemic facts lack five commonly cited features of normative facts (but not of merely norm-implying facts). Then, I argue that this is best explained by the thesis that epistemic facts are merely norm-implying and not genuinely normative. I end by exploring the potential consequences of this conclusion for epistemology and metaethics.

This paper evaluates Gilles Deleuze’s theory of encounters as a contribution to a Sellarsian critique of epistemology, concluding that (against the views of modern Sellarsians like Rorty) he reveals the possibility for a non-givenist form of empiricism.

Wilfrid Sellars’ hugely influential Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind repudiates the idea that “sense data” are given to the mind in a way that would permit them to be used as foundations for empirical knowledge. He argues that although sensory consciousness is innate, classificatory consciousness (consciousness of facts and kinds) is acquired through language-learning, and so knowledge of public objects is logically prior to knowledge of private, mental episodes of awareness. The possibility that inner sensory episodes are self-authenticating foundations of knowledge is thus rejected by Sellars. He uses the term “givenism” to refer to the equivocation of causes of thought (in sensation) with justifications of beliefs (which require knowledge of kinds).

In a striking case of parallel philosophical evolution, Deleuze makes the same argument in his early work. He also distinguishes sensory and classificatory consciousness and restricts the latter (and, therefore, the possibility of knowledge) to what is ‘explicit and communicable’—in other words, to what is public. Deleuze’s critique of givenism is found in his rejection of recognition and representation as “postulates of the dogmatic image of thought.”

Deleuze’s and Sellars’ independent developments of this critique of empiricist foundationalism reveal a lacuna in Sellars’ account. While Sellars wanted to delimit sensory consciousness from the (implicitly normative) sphere of classificatory consciousness, Deleuze’s interest lies in those interactions between the two spheres which disrupt categories of thought, which he calls “encounters.” By focusing on disruption rather than justification, he can investigate non-givenist interactions between the spheres. This enables him, contra Sellars, to revive a form of empiricism without succumbing to givenism.

We defend Uniqueness, the claim that given a body of total evidence, there is a uniquely rational doxastic state that it is rational for one to be in.  Epistemic rationality doesn't give you any leeway in what beliefs to form in response to your evidence. We argue for Uniqueness by appealing to two metaepistemological pictures about the roles played by rational evaluations.  First, rational evaluative terms serve to guide our practices of deference to the opinions of others.  Second, they help us formulate contingency plans about what to believe in various situations.  Uniqueness vindicates the ability of rational evaluations to play these  two roles, while Permissivism does not.  So much the worse for Permissivism.

The aim of this paper is to contribute to an appreciation of the metaphilosophical significance of scepticism. It proceeds by investigating what the differing characterisations of the sceptical threat reveal about the kind of understanding that is being sought; and specifically, what this envisaged understanding connotes concerning how epistemological inquiry is itself conceived. An investigation, that is to say, into how these characterisations support or help constitute that conception of inquiry by attempting to keep a relationship with ‘the sceptic’ going on their own terms.

One notable line of argument for epistemic relativism appeals to considerations to do with non-neutrality: in certain dialectical contexts—take for instance the famous dispute between Galileo and Cardinal Bellarmine concerning geocentrism—it seems as though a lack of suitably neutral epistemic standards that either side could appeal to in order to (non-question-beggingly) resolve their first-order dispute is itself—as Rorty (1979) influentially thought—evidence for epistemic relativism. In this essay, my aim is first to present a more charitable reformulation of this line of reasoning, one that is framed not merely in terms of the availability of epistemic norms that are suitably neutral between interlocutors, but in terms of the availability of what I call Archimedean metanorms. Once this more charitable line of argument is developed, I show how, even though it avoids problems that face 'non-neutrality' versions of the argument, it nonetheless runs into various other problems that appear ultimately intractable and, further, that the strategy in question gives us no decisive reason to draw the relativist's conclusion rather than the Pyrrhonian sceptic's.

I present an argument for a sophisticated version of skeptical invariantism that has so far gone unnoticed: Bifurcated Skeptical Invariantism (BSI). I argue that it can, on the one hand, (dis)solve the Gettier problem, address the dogmatism paradox and, on the other hand, show some due respect to the Moorean methodological incentive of 'saving epistemic appearances'. A fortiori, BSI promises to reap some other important explanatory fruit that I go on to adduce (e.g. account for concessive knowledge attributions). BSI can achieve this much because it distinguishes between two distinct but closely interrelated (sub)concepts of (propositional) knowledge, fallible-but-safe knowledge and infallible-and-sensitive knowledge, and explains how the pragmatics and the semantics of knowledge discourse operate at the interface of these two (sub)concepts of knowledge. I conclude that BSI is a novel theory of knowledge discourse that merits serious investigation.

This paper analyzes a single theoretical aspect of the so-called «problem of the criterion», which was for the first time formulated by Sextus Empiricus in his Outlines of Pyrrhonism. It stresses the circularity of arguments  designed to conclusively justify the criterion of justication postulated by a theory of knowledge. Formulated in this manner, this problem can be defined a metaepistemological one. Roderick Chisholm has tried to deal with it in a manner that maybe misses the point of Sextus’ argument.

This article will address the views of Kazimierz Ajdukiewicz-the leading representative of the Lvov-Warsaw School. I will present arguments proving that the Polish philosopher could have anticipated contemporary metaontological discussions. In the first part, I will provide a profile of Ajdukiewicz as a representative of the Lvov-Warsaw School. I will outline the assumptions of his metaepistemological projects: radical conventionalism and semantic epistemology. In the second part, I will argue that the former project resulted in views on existence similar to Hilary Putnam's and Eli Hirsch's, whereas the outcomes of the other project are views similar to those of Amie Thomasson and her easy ontology project.

The core expressivist manoeuvre is a strategy that, if it were succesfully executed, would enable expressivists to bracket prominent metanormative issues, such as those that concern the existence and nature of values, and focus on the topics that most interest them, namely, the character of normative thought and discourse. In this essay, I contend that the most prominent versions of expressivism are not well-positioned to execute the manoeuvre. The conclusion I reach is that being positioned to execute the manoeuvre will require supplementing and perhaps developing expressivism in ways that involve modifying some of its central ambitions and commitments.

Az előadás célja a John Rawls népszerűsítette filozófiai módszer (az "átgondolás egyensúlya") és a David Lewis-féle ekvilibrizmus metafilozófiai álláspontjának összekapcsolása, kritikáik számba vétele, valamint egy lehetséges megoldás keresése.

An account of meta-epistemic defeaters—distinct from traditional (first-order) epistemic defeaters—is motivated and defended, drawing from case studies involving epistemic error-theory (e.g., Olson 2011; cf., Streumer 2012) and epistemic relativism (e.g., MacFarlane 2005; 2011; 2014). Mechanisms of traditional epistemic defeat and meta-epistemic defeat are compared and contrasted, and some new puzzles are introduced.

In this essay, I distinguish two different epistemological strategies an anti-realist might pursue in developing an "evolutionary debunking" of moral realism. Then I argue that a moral realist can resist both of these strategies by calling into question the epistemological presuppositions on which they rest. Nonetheless, I conclude that these arguments point to a legitimate source of dissatisfaction about many forms of moral realism. I conclude by discussing the way forward that these conclusions indicate.

This paper is about two topics: metaepistemological absolutism and the epistemic principles governing perceptual warrant. Our aim is to highlight – by taking the debate between dogmatists and conservativists about perceptual warrant as a case study – a surprising and hitherto unnoticed problem with metaepistemological absolutism, at least as it has been influentially defended by Paul Boghossian (2006a) as the principal metaepistemological contrast point to relativism. What we find is that the metaepistemological commitments at play on both sides of this dogmatism/conservativism debate do not line up with epistemic relativism nor do they line up with absolutism, at least as Boghossian articulates this position.  What this case study reveals is the need in metaepistemological option space for the recognition of a weaker and less tendentious form of absolutism, what we call “environment relativism”. On this view, epistemic principles are knowable, objective, and they can serve as the basis of particular epistemic evaluations, but their validity is relative to the wider global environment in which they are applied.

Recent objections to epistemic permissivism have a metaepistemic flavor. Impermissivists argue that their view best accounts for connections between rationality, planning and deference. Impermissivism is also taken to best explain the value of rational belief and normative assessment. These objections pose a series of metaepistemic explanatory challenges for permissivism. In this paper, I illustrate how permissivists might meet their explanatory burdens by developing two permissivist metaepistemic views which fare well against the explanatory challenges.

What is the source of epistemic normativity? In virtue of what do epistemic norms have categorical normative authority? According to epistemic teleologism, epistemic normativity comes from value. Epistemic norms have categorical authority because conforming to them is necessarily good in some relevant sense. In this article, I argue that epistemic teleologism should be rejected. The problem, I argue, is that there is no relevant sense in which it is always good to believe in accordance with epistemic norms, including in cases where the matter at hand is completely trivial. Therefore, if epistemology is normative, its normativity won't come from value.

According to G.E. Moore's 'Open Question' argument (OQA), moral facts cannot be reduced or analyzed in non-normative natural terms. Does the OQA apply equally in the epistemic domain? Does Moore's argument have the same force against reductionist accounts of epistemic facts and concepts? In a recent article, Daniel Greco has argued that it does. According to Greco (2015), an epistemological version of the OQA is just as promising as its moral cousin, because the relevant questions in epistemology are just as 'open' as those in ethics. In this paper, I offer a two-part reply to Greco. First, I argue that his argument in favor of the openness of epistemology is not persuasive. Second, I offer a case against the openness of epistemology. Unlike claims linking natural and moral properties, claims linking natural and epistemological properties do give rise to closed questions. An epistemological OQA is therefore not as promising as its moral cousin.

For a long time philosophers have struggled to reach a definition of knowledge that is fully satisfactory from an intuitive standard. But what is so fuzzy about the concept of knowledge that makes our intuitions to not obviously support a single analysis? One particular approach from a naturalistic perspective treats this question from the view of the psychology of concepts. According to it, this failure is explained by the structure of our folk concept of knowledge, which organizes its constitutive information in a much looser way than we presuppose when we rely on intuitive knowledge ascriptions. I will adopt the same starting point here, but argue against the proposed answer and defend that this difficulty is explained not by something about the specific structure of our concept of knowledge but, on the contrary, by its lack of structure. I claim that our folk concept of knowledge should be understood as a primitive mental state concept.

There is a line of reasoning in metaepistemology that is congenial to naturalism and hard to resist, yet ultimately misguided: that knowledge might be a natural kind, and that this would undermine the use of conceptual analysis in the theory of knowledge. In this paper, I first bring out various problems with Hilary Kornblith’s argument from the causal-explanatory indispensability of knowledge to the natural kindhood of knowledge. I then criticize the argument from the natural kindhood of knowledge against the method of conceptual analysis in the theory of knowledge. A natural motivation for this argument is the following seemingly plausible principle: if knowledge is a natural kind, then the concept of knowledge is a natural kind concept. Since this principle lacks adequate support, the crucial semantic claim that the concept of knowledge is a natural kind concept must be defended in some more direct way. However, there are two striking epistemic disanalogies between the concept of knowledge and paradigmatic natural kind concepts that militate against this semantic claim. Conceptual analyses of knowledge are not affected by total error, and the proponents of such analyses are not subject to a priori conceptual obliviousness. I conclude that the argument from natural kindhood does not succeed in undermining the use of conceptual analysis in the theory of knowledge.

I show that some of the most initially attractive routes of refuting epistemological solipsism face serious obstacles. I also argue that for creatures like ourselves, solipsism is a genuine form of external world skepticism. I suggest that together these claims suggest the following morals: No proposed solution to external world skepticism can succeed which does not also solve the problem of epistemological solipsism. And, more tentatively: In assessing proposed solutions to external world skepticism, epistemologists should explicitly consider whether those solutions extend to knowledge of other minds. Finally, and also tentatively: epistemological solipsism warrants more philosophical attention than it currently enjoys.

In the following I discuss the debate between epistemological internalists and externalists from an unfamiliar meta-epistemological perspective. In doing so, I focus on the question of whether rationality is best captured in externalist or internalist terms. Using a conception of epistemic judgments as “doxastic plans,” I characterize one important subspecies of judgments about epistemic rationality—focusing on the distinctive rational/functional role these judgments play in regulating how we form beliefs. Then I show why any judgment that plays this role should be expected to behave the manner internalists predict. In this way, I argue, we can explain why our basic toolbox for epistemic evaluation includes an internalist conception of rationality.

According to epistemic instrumentalism (EI), epistemic normativity arises from and depend on facts about our ends. On that view, a consideration C is an epistemic reason for a subject S to Φ only if Φ-ing would promote an end that S has. However, according to the Too Few Epistemic Reasons objection, this cannot be correct since there are cases in which, intuitively, C is an epistemic reason for S to Φ even though Φ-ing would not promote any of S’s ends. After clarifying both EI and the Too Few Epistemic Reasons objection, I examine three major instrumentalist replies and argue that none of them is satisfactory. I end by briefly sketching a fourth possible response, which is, I suggest, more promising than the other three.

Expressivism is a blossoming meta-semantic framework sometimes relying on-what Carter and Chrisman (2012:323) call-'the core expressivist maneuver'. That is, that instead of asking about the nature of a certain kind of value that we should be asking about the nature of the value judgment in question. According to expressivists, this question substitution opens theoretical space for the elegant, economical and explanatorily powerful expressivist treatment of the relevant domain. I argue, however, that experimental work from cognitive psychology can shed light on how the core expressivist maneuver operates at the cognitive level and that this: (a) raises worries about the aptness of the expressivist question substitution and (b) supports an evolutionary debunking argument against expressivism. Since evolutionary debunking arguments are usually run in favor of expressivism, this creates an obvious puzzle for expressivists. I wrap up by briefly responding to the objection that the debunking argument against expressivism over-generalizes and, therefore, should be rejected.

I argue that, at least on the assumption that if there are epistemic facts they are irreducible, the evolutionary debunking maneuver is prima facie self-debunking because it seems to debunk a certain class of facts, namely, epistemic facts that prima facie it needs to rely on in order to launch its debunking arguments. I then appeal to two recent reconstructions of the evolutionary debunking maneuver (Kahane (2011), Griffiths and Wilkins (2015)) and find them wanting. Along the way I set aside two ways (one envisaged, the other by Sterpetti (2015)) to avoid the self-debunking problem that I find unpromising. I conclude that the evolutionary debunking maneuver needs to clarify the meta-epistemological commitments upon which it is supposed to operate.