Rational Belief in the Shadowlands

1996

I will argue that it is not so much the Demon that is threatening our knowledge, but rather the assumption concerning the justification involved in the Demon-type skep tical arguments. This notion of justification is unreasonable and would not allow knowledge even if there were no Demon at all.

The grounding or motivating intuitions behind internalism and externalism seem to be fundamentally at odds. If there is ever to be a viable or satisfying solution to the problem, it must satisfy the grounding intuitions behind both sides of the debate. Duncan Pritchard claims his theory of epistemological disjunctivism (ED) does just this, arguing that it could be the holy grail we have all been waiting for. However, I believe the holy grail is already out there in the form of the theory that knowledge is a mental state (KMS). In this paper, I defend the idea the KMS is far better able to satisfy the internalist and externalist intuitions than ED. Introduction: One of the most well-known, and most enduring, debates in epistemology is the debate between internalism and externalism. Both sides seem to be motivated by well-founded and intuitively persuasive arguments, and yet finding a satisfactory response to the dilemma has been notoriously difficult. However, Duncan Pritchard has made progress when he defends what he calls the 'holy grail' of epistemology: a conception of paradigmatic perceptual knowledge that satisfies both the internalist and externalist intuitions. He calls this position Epistemological Disjunctivism (ED). But I believe that there is another conception of knowledge (more generally) which satisfies both internalist and externalist intuitions, and it is my aim in this paper to show how it does so far more satisfactorily than Pritchard's ED. It is the view that knowledge is a mental state (KMS). KMS is the thesis that knowledge is an irreducible state that is mental, and distinct from belief. It involves a rejection of the common conception of the mental as a purely internal realm. The KMS thesis, as I defend it here, is not a unified theory in the literature. The view can be primarily attributed to Timothy Williamson, from his book 'Knowledge and its Limits',1 but is also defended by Jennifer Nagel,2 and Alexander Bird.3 The metaphysical underpinnings of KMS can be attributed to John McDowell and his rejection of the outer/ inner distinction.4 I present the view as 'disjunctivism about knowledge,' though Williamson is not technically a disjunctivist, and McDowell is not (straight forwardly) a disjunctivist about knowledge.5 However, how KMS differs from ED will become clear, and I do not think that these particulars matter when it comes to the heart of the issue.

Duncan Pritchard's recent book (Pritchard 2012) provides a lucid articulation and defence of epistemological disjunctivism (ED). He offers a characteristically clear formulation of the view:

2025

This article investigates the epistemological nature of the act of believing, aiming to clarify to what extent belief can be considered a legitimate instance of knowledge or a mental state with epistemic value. The analysis begins with the conception of belief as a representational psychological disposition associated with a predicative proposition, whose validity and truth are presupposed by the subject. It is argued that, for a belief to possess full epistemic status, it must be properly justified and true, resulting from a cognitive process oriented toward reality. The implications of Gettier-style cases and Alvin Plantinga's approach to warrant are examined, confronting internalist and externalist perspectives on justification. It is concluded that believing, although psychologically necessary, is epistemically valid only when it is open to the rational and ontological scrutiny of truth, and may, under certain conditions, coincide with knowledge. Belief is thus conceived as a mental state that participates in the economy of knowledge, but whose epistemic value is conditional, graded, and dependent on its grounding in reality.

Journal of Philosophical Research, 1998

This paper disputes Michael Williams' thesis that worldly skepticism derives from a contentious doctrine of epistemological realism (which maintains that knowledge claims naturally segment themselves into distinct epistemic natural kinds).

Journal of Philosophical Research, 2016

An articulation is offered of the main themes of my book, Epistemological Disjunctivism (Oxford University Press, 2012). Let me first outline about what I was trying to achieve in Epistemological Disjunctivism. 1 The overarching idea behind the book is to defend a broadly McDowellian account of perceptual knowledge, a view which I think it is fair to say is anathema to many in contemporary epistemology. 2 This is the proposal that one's perceptual knowledge can, in suitable conditions, enjoy rational support which is both reflectively accessible and also factive. In particular, epistemological disjunctivism is at root the idea that in paradigm cases of perceptual knowledge one's rational support for one's knowledge that p can be that one sees that p, where this rational support is both reflectively accessible and also factive (i.e., it entails p). It's easy to see why epistemological disjunctivism would be thought controversial. To begin with, notice that it doesn't fit into the usual epistemic categories. Consider the epistemic internalism/externalism distinction, for example. That one's rational support is reflective accessible appears to suggest a form of epistemic internalism, but that's hard to square with the rational support in question being factive (think here of the new evil demon thesis that epistemic internalists are keen to cite). But while having epistemic support which has direct implications for how the world in fact is sits well with epistemic externalism, epistemic externalists would hardly be keen on such a 'worldly' condition being reflectively accessible.

Well-Founded Belief: New Essays on the Epistemic Basing Relation, 2019

According to epistemological disjunctivism, in paradigm cases of perceptual knowledge one's belief can enjoy rational support that is both factive and reflectively accessible. In this paper we will explore how epistemological disjunctivism understands the distinctively factive notion of epistemic basing that is part of this proposal. In particular, we will see how understanding this basis correctly provides epistemological disjunctivism with the resources to evade some prima facie difficulties that might be posed for it.

Journal of Philosophical Research, 2016

A response to commentaries on my book, Epistemological Disjunctivism (Oxford University Press, 2012), by Sanford Goldberg, Clayton Littlejohn, and Ram Neta. The themes covered include: the viability of the epistemological disjunctivist response to radical scepticism (Goldberg); the extent to which epistemological disjunctivism has dialectical advantages over classical epistemic internalism from an anti-sceptical point of view (Neta); and whether epistemological disjunctivism incorporates the right view of the nature of reasons (Littlejohn).