Pragmatic encroachment

It is uncontroversial that testimony that p can give the hearer of the testimony an epistemic reason to believe p, and indeed make the hearer epistemically justified in believing p. 1 Call evidentialism the view that testimony gives such a reason by giving evidence that p, or at any rate by allowing the hearer justifiedly to take it that there is evidence that p. In its simplest version, evidentialism is a reductive individualist view of testimonial justification: the testimony gives such a reason because the hearer can infer that p from his or her belief that the testimonial act indicates that p, and the latter belief is justified either inductively or by a priori reasoning from a principle of charity in interpretation. 2 This view is reductive in understanding the reasons given in testimony to be based on the hearer's non-testimonially (in this case, inductively or a priori) justified beliefs. And it is individualist in understanding the giving of testimonial reasons to depend only on the belief p's being based on epistemically justified beliefs of the hearer. Contrasting with such a reductive view are non-reductive and non-individualist views. 3 I focus in this chapter on one non-reductive and non-individualist 216 view-the assurance view of testimony. 4 On this view, testimonial reason-giving or justification depends in some instances on the testifier's speech act of assuring the addressee that p, or on the addressee's acceptance of that assurance. Assurance allows an epistemic reason to be given to the addressee even when no evidence is given. The testifier's assurance may be understood in various ways-as the testifier's presenting himself or herself as having an adequate epistemic reason to believe p or as epistemically responsible in asserting p, or as inviting the addressee to trust him or her that p, or as offering to take responsibility for p's being true.

Argumentation is often conceived as a rational response to disagreement, even when it does not resolve differences of opinion. Arguing in the face of disagreement has, however, distinctive epistemic effects. Sometimes argumentation achieves convergence of opinion or at least the mutual recognition that a more thorough inquiry is required. But facing disagreement, participants of argumentative exchanges quite often remain steadfast in their initial views or even radicalize them. Can we make sense of these latter situations? To account for their occurrence, it is common to point out that people's ability to argue is flawed, that an "argumentative culture" is lacking, and that emotional and other nonrational factors often interfere in confrontative situations. But these suggestions do not amount to a thorough satisfactory explanation. In this paper, I provide the outline of a purely epistemic account of these peculiar effects of argumentation in the face of disagreement. I argue that probabilistic models of degrees of confidence (or "credences") can shed light on the conditions that give rise to several of these effects. This could provide some guidance on how to avoid them.

Interpersonalist theories of testimony have the theoretical virtue of giving room to the characteristic interpersonal features of testimonial exchange among persons. Nonetheless, it has been argued that they are at a serious disadvantage when it comes to accounting for the way in which testimonial beliefs may be epistemically justified. In this paper, we defend the epistemological credentials of interpersonalism, emphasizing that it is inseparable from the acceptance of non-evidential epistemic reasons to believe, which demands proper conceptual elaborations on the notions of epistemic reasons and of epistemic justification. We offer a proper reading of epistemic reason, and we defend non-purism on justification as the adequate way to conceive the epistemic proposal of interpersonalism on testimony, realizing that only this combination is capable of apprehending certain cases in which there seems to be no way to rule out the idea that the assurance offered by the testifier offers an epistemic reason to believe that it is not evidential.

The knowledge and attendant justification norms of belief and assertion serve to regulate our doxastic attitudes towards, and practices of asserting, various propositions. I argue that conforming to these norms under conditions of religious ignorance promotes responsible acts of assertion, epistemic humility, and non-dogmatic doxastic attitudes towards the content of one's own faith. Such conformity also facilitates the formation of the religious personality in a healthy direction in other ways. I explore these ideas in relation to the Christian faith tradition, but my reflections generalize.

Resumen: El costo de tomar una decisión sobre la base de las creencias falsas varía en diferentes contextos de acción. En algunos casos el costo del error podría ser muy alto para el bienestar de los agentes afectados y en otros casos muy bajo. El contraste entre estos dos tipos de contextos ha sido recientemente objeto de atención en la epistemología. Mi objetivo en este trabajo es extender el análisis de algunas de las implicaciones de ese contraste al campo moral. En particular, defenderé la tesis de que existen casos en los que un sujeto puede saber faliblemente que un curso de acción es el mejor desde una perspectiva moral y no estar, sin embargo, justificado a actuar sobre la base de ese conocimiento en el contexto en que se encuentra, dado el elevado costo que tendría que ese juicio fuese falso. Por lo tanto, en esos casos, existiría una brecha entre los conceptos de conocimiento moral y justificación moral de la acción. Palabras clave: conocimiento moral; costo del error; acción; justificación moral; injerencia pragmática Abstract: "Moral Knowledge and the Moral Justification of Action". The cost of making a decision on the basis of false beliefs varies according to different contexts of action. In some cases, the cost of the error could be very high for the wellbeing of the agents involved, while in others it might be very low. The contrast between these two types of contexts has recently been a focus of attention in epistemology. My aim in this article is to apply to the moral field the analysis of some of the implications from that contrast. In particular, I will defend the thesis that there are cases in which a subject may know fallibly that a course of action is best from a moral point of view. Despite which, however, he may not be justified to act on the basis of that knowledge in the context in which he is situated, given the high cost involved if the judgment was false. Therefore, in such cases, there would be a gap between the concepts of moral knowledge and the moral justification for an action.

Moral encroachment is the thesis that morality has an effect-unrecognized by traditional epistemology-on which doxastic states are epistemically appropriate. The thesis is increasingly popular among those who, in opposition to Gendler (2011), desire harmony between epistemic and moral demands on belief. This paper has three main goals. First, drawing on attractive structural principles concerning belief and justification, it is shown that a thoroughgoing harmony between moral and epistemic demands is implausible. This weakens the motivation for positing moral encroachment, but a proponent might still hope that moral encroachment can have a significant effect, so that many of the central cases of apparent disharmony can be avoided. The next goal of the paper is to argue that any significant effect of moral encroachment would manifest itself in the credences which are most epistemically appropriate. Finally, it is shown that even a small effect of moral encroachment on credence is in tension with widely accepted basic constraints on epistemically appropriate credence.

We constantly assess each other's epistemic positions. We attempt to distinguish valuable from worthless information, reliable from unreliable informants, etc. Without established social practices of epistemic evaluations we could not navigate the flood of information we are exposed to every day in order to perform essential selections of valiable information. Yet the way we epistemically evaluate each other, ascribe or deny knowledge, who we deem knowledgeable or ignorant, and whom we refer to as an expert or a layman also crucially shape our epistemic milieu and the structure of our society. Epistemic asymmetry often results in and reflects social asymmetry; higher epistemic appraisal often increases social standing. Also, epistemic evaluations such as knowledge ascriptions are commonly performed against the background of certain epistemic and non-epistemic (e.g., practical) concerns and interests. Consequently, epistemic and non-epistemic factors interact in guiding our epistemic practice. To advance our understanding of how they do so is not only a worthwhile project from an epistemological point of view but can be expected to have repercussions on decision making, in debates within political and social theory as well as within ethics, and help us understand and evaluate how we act and even how to act. Moreover, it might shed light on the perennial question of how theoretical and practical rationality relate to one another. A much-discussed question in recent debates on knowledge ascriptions is the question of whether-and if so, how-epistemic standards (standards of how much it takes to count as knowing or as a knower) are influenced by, and/or contextually vary with, non-epistemic factors such as stakes, interests, aims, etc., and whether this in turn affects the truth-conditions of knowledge ascriptions or only their assertibility (or sayability) conditions. This has been a main point of contention between contextualists, invariantists and relativists (of various brands) concerning knowledge acsriptions (cf.,

Abstract
    This paper outlines the fundamental of a new Pragmatics, formulated in a new conceptual framework, including a new normative system - Conversational Etiquette. It's claimed that it does better than the Gricean system or its offshoots, and covers a much broader domain. It's main new concepts are: Steering-Thrust; Posting; and Pragmatic Stances. Its main applications are:
1. Assertion is a Pragmatic construction, which invokes a raise in the degree of Steering Thrust.
2. 'presupposition' as used in Logic/Linguistics (or what's in the 'Common Ground') is analyzed in terms of the new Pragmatics: The main phenomenon involves is: Posting-without Steering.
3. There is no Pragmatic Encroachment (into the semantics of 'know'). Fluctuations in knowledge-ascriptions in High/Low Stakes convey a DIFFERENT dominant Pragmatic content that drives our intuitions, which track so-called 'Sayability' rather than Truth-Values.
4. Pragmatic Inconsistencies amount to Steering-Thrusts in opposite directions (polarity). Moorean sentences invoke Pragmatic Inconsistencies.
5. Misleading is a Pragmatic phenomenon.

Abstract            Posted in PhilPapers on 12-30-2018: PERMANENT Posting
Igal Kvart: A Coding Conception in Action-Directed-Pragmatics.
    I present formal Pragmatics for a domain in Pragmatics that I call Action-Directed Pragmatics, which focuses on the Pragmatic riddle of how implicit contents are conveyed and understood, by adopting a coding model, in which the speaker and addressee simulate each other iteratively in a deliberative context (an ‘action-pregnant’ one). The implicit content, conveyed by a speaker and decoded by her addressee, in such cases, consists in the specified steered-to action, plus modulations on the action-polarity (pro or con) and the degree of the so-called Steering Thrust that accompanies such assertions and is conveyed by verbal locutions, intonation, and/or bodily and facial gestures. There are two main tasks to model (in a given setup and conversational context): First, how is the speaker, with a steered-to action in mind (and Steering Thrust), to select an assertion so as to (say) optimize the successful transmission and decoding of its implicit pragmatic content by her and her addressee? Second, how does the addressee, given an assertion by the speaker, decipher the implicit pragmatic content conveyed via it? Both will invoke pertinent information they have about each other and the setup/context in order to best encode and best decode the implicit pragmatic content. (This coding mechanism proposed here is not offered for the ubiquitous ‘frozen’, ‘trivial’ or ‘routinized’ pragmatic messages.) A prelude to this formal Pragmatics is a general formal Pragmatic account of Assertibility in contexts that are multi-normative (which is the common case). I focus here only on Epistemic/Semantic and Instrumental Norms. A linear representation of degrees of Overall Assertibility (i.e., taking into account various operative norms) will be an n-dimensional qualitative vector space with a function that computes them given different degrees of sub-normative Assertibility on each axis.

The assumption that the justifiability of scientific belief depends exclusively on the relevant facts is a widely accepted orthodoxy both inside and outside of the scientific establishment. Drawing on the pragmatic and moral encroachment thesis in epistemology, this paper challenges that assumption by showing that practical and moral considerations affect the justifiability of our beliefs regarding the safety of COVID-19 vaccines. In particular, I show that a proper consideration of the practical and moral costs of committing to the belief that COVID-19 vaccines are safe enough for a general vaccine mandate requires COVID-19 vaccines to meet a higher-than-current evidentiary standard of safety. Furthermore, I show that a reassessment of existing COVID-19 vaccines against a higher evidentiary standard of safety would entail a wider scope of medical exemptions and remedial duties. Beyond the case of COVID-19 vaccines, this argument has important general implications for how scientific beliefs should be assessed.

Over the last hundred years, competing and incompatible positions in relation to basic problems of knowledge and the use of the verb ‘to know’ have multiplied; and the prospect of a consensus solution emerging with respect to any of the problems has not seemed particularly good. We have a Gordian knot. Even so, I suggest that we also have a way to cut it. This will involve identifying why the cognitive mechanism that produces our intuitions of knowing evolved and was maintained (by natural selection), i.e., identifying the ‘teleonomic function’ of that cognitive mechanism. Also, it will involve predicting, on the basis of this teleonomic function, the triggering-conditions of these natural knowledge intuitions. In this thesis, I develop a general theory of the origin, function and triggering-conditions of knowledge intuitions that will allow us to cut that knot. That theory follows basic biological theory (including that which pertains to natural altruism) and also signal detection theory.

My theory identifies a number of different circumstances under which the triggering-conditions of knowledge intuitions are different. Strikingly, these different circumstances (and their associated triggering-conditions) map onto the different competing and incompatible epistemological positions to which I referred. This suggests that these positions are all correct within the boundaries of one of the circumstances that my theory identifies; and that the Gordian knot is largely the result of epistemologists claiming universal applicability of a theory that in fact only applies under particular circumstances. We cut the knot by specifying the different circumstances under which each of the different epistemological positions will hold, and the reason we should expect it to hold in just these circumstances, in light of the teleonomic function of knowledge intuitions.

According to subject-sensitive invariantism (SSI), whether S knows that p depends not only on the subject's epistemic position (the presence of a true belief, sufficient warrant, etc.) but also on non-epistemic factors present in the subject's situation; such factors are seen as "encroaching" on the subject's epistemic standing. Not the only such nonepistemic factor but the most prominent one consists in the subject's practical stakes. Stakes-based SSI holds that two subjects can be in the same epistemic position with respect to some proposition but with different stakes for the two subjects so that one of them might know the proposition while the other might fail to know it. It is remarkable that the notion of stakes has not been discussed much in great detail at all so far. This paper takes a closer look at this notion and proposes a detailed, new analysis. It turns out that there is more than one kind of stakes, namely event-stakes, knowledge-stakes and action-stakes. I discuss several issues that even plausible notions of stakes raise and propose solutions.

Philosophers have argued that stakes affect knowledge: a given amount of evidence may suffice for knowledge if the stakes are low, but not if the stakes are high. By contrast, empirical work on the influence of stakes on ordinary knowledge ascriptions has been divided along methodological lines: "evidence-fixed" prompts rarely find stakes effects, while "evidence-seeking" prompts consistently find them. We present a cross-cultural study using both evidence-fixed and evidence-seeking prompts with a diverse sample of 17 populations in 11 countries, speaking 14 languages. Our study is the first to use an evidence-seeking prompt cross-culturally, and includes several previously untested populations (including indigenous populations). Across cultures, we do not find evidence of a stakes effect with our evidencefixed prompt, but do with our evidence-seeking prompt. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

Much of the literature on the relationship between belief and credence has focused on the reduction question: that is, whether either belief or credence reduces to the other. This debate, while important, only scratches the surface of the belief-credence connection. Even on the anti-reductive dualist view, belief and credence could still be very tightly connected. Here, I explore questions about the belief-credence connection that go beyond reduction. This paper is dedicated to what I call the independence question: just how independent are belief and credence? I look at this question from two angles: a descriptive one (as a psychological matter, how much can belief and credence come apart?) and a normative one (for a rational agent, how closely connected are belief and credence?) Ultimately, I suggest that the two attitudes are more independent than one might think.

In Unsettled Thoughts, Julia Staffel argues that non-ideal thinkers should seek to approximate ideal Bayesian rationality. She argues that the more rational you are, the more benefits of rationality you will enjoy. After summarizing Staffel's main results, this paper looks more closely at two issues that arise later in the book: the relationship between Bayesian rationality and other kinds of rationality, and the role that outright belief plays in addition to credence. Ultimately, I argue that there are several roles that outright belief might play, and I explore different ways that these roles for belief might fit together.

What should we do when someone who is smart and well-informed disagrees with us? Should we change our opinion, or hold fast to our previous viewpoint? This question has divided epistemologists, and those working in the epistemology of disagreement have spilled much ink defending various answers. 1 One concept that's been central to the disagreement debate is an epistemic peer. An epistemic peer is roughly someone who is epistemically "on a par" with you-they have similar evidence to you, and are approximately equally reliable, epistemically virtuous, and free from bias about the matter in question. While later, I'll argue that epistemic peerhood need not play a central role in the epistemology of disagreement, it's important for understanding the debate thus far. For now, we'll understand the central question of peer disagreement as: should one alter their opinion when they knowingly encounter a disagreeing epistemic peer? In this chapter, following Buchak (2021), I argue that this central question of peer disagreement presents us with a dilemma; we have good reason to answer both "yes" and "no" to this question. I then offer and motivate a particular solution to that dilemma. This solution revolves around what I call belief-credence dualism, the view that we have two attitudes-beliefs and credencesand neither reduces to the other. In particular, I'll argue that we should alter our credences, but not our beliefs, when encountering an epistemic peer. This chapter proceeds as follows. In Section 13.2, I explain how peer disagreement leads to an epistemic dilemma. That is, there's good reason to think that we should both revise and not revise our opinions in response to peer disagreement. In Section 13.3, I offer a solution to this dilemma: if belief-credence dualism is true, this allows for the possibility that we should modify our credences, but not our beliefs, in response to peer disagreement. In Sections 13.4 and 13.5, I motivate this solution; my first motivation relates to the nature of contents and attitudes, and the second relates to epistemic peerhood. In Section 13.6, I address some worries about the view I've proposed, and in Section 13.7, I conclude.

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Belief-credence dualism is the view that we have both beliefs and credences and neither attitude is reducible to the other. Pragmatic encroachment is the view that stakes alone can affect the epistemic rationality of states like knowledge or justified belief. In this paper, I argue that dualism offers a unique explanation of pragmatic encroachment cases. First, I explain pragmatic encroachment and what motivates it. Then, I explain dualism and outline a particular argument for dualism. Finally, I show how dualism can explain the intuitions that underlie pragmatic encroachment. My basic proposal is that in high-stake cases, it is not that one cannot rationally believe that p; instead, one ought not to rely on one's belief that p. One should rather rely on one's credence in p. I conclude that we need not commit ourselves to pragmatic encroachment in order to explain the intuitiveness of the cases that motivate it.

By responding tentatively to Quanbeck and others, this paper hopes to sketch an essentially plausible and defensible account of belief that is recognizably Kierkegaardian by having a basis in Kierkegaard's work and recent interpretations of it. Here I will contrast cognition (Erkjendelse) with knowledge, introduce Kierkegaard's Leibnizian approach to modality, and the focus on epistemic undecidability and how practical considerations affect epistemic ones. In this connection, I will also introduce belief-credences dualism and epistemic permissivism against a broadly Kantian background. I end by discussing religious belief, aiming to shed new light on the elusive God-postulate in Concluding Unscientific Postscript.

Call these requirements the traditional epistemic requirements, and call the features which satisfy these requirements the traditional epistemic features. Pragmatic Encroachment is the view that, in addition to these traditional epistemic requirements, knowledge ascriptions are true only if they meet some pragmatic requirement. More perspicuously, Pragmatic Encroachment is the view that two subjects, S a and S b , can, if their practical situations are sufficiently different, differ with respect to knowing p, even though they are just alike with respect to the traditional epistemic features. Two comments. First, I'm not attempting to give, or for that matter even concern myself with, an analysis of knowledge here. Second, I've chosen to describe the traditional epistemic requirements as requirements on the truth conditions of knowledge ascriptions rather than requirements on knowledge. Doing this has a cost and a benefit. The cost is that it's either confusing or cumbersome. It's initially confusing because it makes epistemology appear to be a study of knowledge ascriptions, which it is not. It is a study of knowledge. However, if the disquotational schema ["S knows that p," iff S knows that p] is true, then any knowledge ascription claim can be converted into a knowledge claim, and this would remove the confusion. But, constantly using the disquotational schema is cumbersome. The benefit of describing the traditional epistemic requirements in terms of knowledge ascriptions is that it makes contrasting Pragmatic Encroachment with nearby views, Contextualism in particular, much easier. This is because Contextualism is a semantic thesis that can only be expressed by talking about knowledge ascriptions-it doesn't make sense to talk about Contextualism's requirements on knowledge. But, Pragmatic Encroachment and Strict Invariantism can be characterized in terms of knowledge ascriptions, albeit awkwardly, with the help of the

Credences are a model of levels of confidence, represented as a value on the [0,1] interval. This entry sheds light on questions about credence, including its relationship to full belief, with an eye toward the empirical relevance of credence. First, I provide a brief epistemological history of credence and lay out some of the main theories of the nature of credence. Then, I provide an overview of the main views on how credences relate to full beliefs. Finally, I turn to the empirical, and suggest some ways that cognitive science does and could answer questions about credence, such as what credences one has, how credences relate to beliefs, and the extent to which we can control our credences.

Over the last hundred years, competing and incompatible positions in relation to basic problems of knowledge and the use of the verb ‘to know’ have multiplied; and the prospect of a consensus solution emerging with respect to any of the problems has not seemed particularly good. We have a Gordian knot. Even so, I suggest that we also have a way to cut it. This will involve identifying why the cognitive mechanism that produces our intuitions of knowing evolved and was maintained (by natural selection), i.e., identifying the ‘teleonomic function’ of that cognitive mechanism. Also, it will involve predicting, on the basis of this teleonomic function, the triggering-conditions of these natural knowledge intuitions. In this thesis, I develop a general theory of the origin, function and triggering-conditions of knowledge intuitions that will allow us to cut that knot. That theory follows basic biological theory (including that which pertains to natural altruism) and also signal detection ...

A scenario exists that is almost exclusively specific to university life. We are driven by the supposition that our work is focused on the most elevated epistemic goals— pursued not only by each of us individually, but also by society—and that our task is a cognitively collective enterprise that involves the mind and an infinite number of performances by other people. Further, we accept from the outset that the people with whom we live are, at least in principle, as epistemically competent as we are, capable of observing, thinking, and achieving epistemic performances with us. In most cases, we secure our jobs because of our skills and achievements. When we start working at university, our goals are public, and we have access to the same techniques and instruments, methodological resources, and sources of information. In other words, it is a necessary condition for us to live in the midst of epistemic peers. But the fact is that these people are not always in agreement with us, and we frequently find ourselves in situations in which somebody demands explanations from us, better reasons and justifications, proof, and arguments.

For this reason, our life at the university is marked by epistemic disagreements in practically all subjects. And the absence of such disagreements should cause us a certain amount of discomfort because it may mean that academic power is excessively concentrated in the hands of someone arrogant and oppressive.

The public intellectual shaped by a university is somebody prepared to converse, to dialogue. They are trained to recognize that there are disagreements, and that this recognition is not trivial. Recognizing that the person we disagree with is an epistemic peer (is, at least ideally, as able and competent as we are in producing good epistemic achievements) is the central pillar of epistemic cooperation and one of the principles of democracy. In daily life, this type of recognition is rarer: in day-to-day situations when we enter into a disagreement, we almost always assume that our divergence is only a matter of viewpoint and taste; at other times we assume that our interlocutor is an opponent and must be less capable and rational than we are. In these cases, we doubt the competence, taste, honesty, and reasonableness of our opponent. But in epistemic disagreements between virtuous epistemic agents, our challenger must be someone who has good reason to believe things that are different from the things we believe.

Interpersonalist theories of testimony have the theoretical virtue of giving room to the characteristic interpersonal features of testimonial exchange among persons. Nonetheless, it has been argued that they are at a serious disadvantage when it comes to accounting for the way in which testimonial beliefs may be epistemically justified. In this paper, we defend the epistemological credentials of interpersonalism, emphasizing that it is inseparable from the acceptance of non-evidential epistemic reasons to believe, which demands proper conceptual elaborations on the notions of epistemic reasons and of epistemic justification. We offer a proper reading of epistemic reason, and we defend non-purism on justification as the adequate way to conceive the epistemic proposal of interpersonalism on testimony, realizing that only this combination is capable of apprehending certain cases in which there seems to be no way to rule out the idea that the assurance offered by the testifier offers an epistemic reason to believe that it is not evidential.

Folk epistemology refers to a range of cognitive skills that involve epistemic concepts such as knowledge and truth. As human beings we are able to assess the truth of an utterance by another agent or whether an inference someone makes is valid. We can evaluate to what extent sources we acquire information from are reliable and whether new information we acquire should lead to belief revision. We consistently produce, in particular, epistemic evaluations. We can judge, for instance, that: "p is true", "it is probable that p", "A is justified in thinking that p", "B is trustworthy when she says that p", or "C is lying". Epistemology is the normative study of how such epistemic evaluations should be made. By contrast, the study of folk epistemology focuses on epistemic evaluations that people actually make and on the processes that produce them. It is a descriptive research project on the beliefs and intuitions people have about knowledge, truth, reasons and other epistemic notions, as well as a research project on the psychological and cognitive processes that sustain them. We use the term "folk epistemology" to specify that the scope of this notion is not just epistemology as traditionally understood by philosophers, but the epistemology that reflects how people make epistemic evaluations; the term "folk" also refers to an established tradition in psychology that investigates "naive" or "folk" theories that ground the cognition of specific domains: folk physics, for instance, as the cognition of physical objects, or folk psychology, as the cognitive ability to ascribe intentions, beliefs and desires to others. Research on folk epistemology, or folk epistemologies, spans the study of the form and content of epistemic evaluations, as well as their cognitive underpinnings.

A key assumption underlying analyses of risk is that analyzing risks helps generate justified beliefs about risks. Hence, by analyzing risks, we become wiser in our dealings with risks. However, what exactly is it to have a justified belief, and, moreover, is proper justification of risk beliefs within reach? These probing questions are the topics of this article in which two different perspectives on the justification for risk beliefs are examined, labeled epistemic and pragmatic justification. While epistemic justification amounts to showing that risk beliefs signify knowledge, pragmatic justification amounts to showing that risk beliefs serve as useful signposts for how to act. Arguably, much of the difficulty of providing a cogent basis for risk analysis originates from our conception of justification as only meaning epistemic justification, with this making us ignorant of the pragmatic route to justification. A point advanced in this article is that the chances of justification will be significantly improved by a broadening of perspective to include epistemic as well as pragmatic justification of risk beliefs.

T here is an argumentative route that begins with a platitude like: The Principle of Inferential J ustification (PIJ): "To be justified in believing one proposition P on the basis of another proposition E, one must be (1) justified in believing E, (2) justified in believing that E makes probable P". 1 and ends up by challenging our capacity to justifiedly believing propositions concerning physical objects and past events. This is, at least, what Richard Fumerton claims, but, like Christopher Hookway, 2 I doubt that there is such a route. The plausibility of PIJ in ordinary contexts relies, according to Hookway, on a number of assumptions like, for instance, the need to distinguish between salient information and background view of things. The problem is that Fumerton's sceptical route requires the application of PIJ not only to particular beliefs but to broad

We constantly assess each other's epistemic positions. We attempt to distinguish valuable from worthless information, reliable from unreliable informants, etc. Without established social practices of epistemic evaluations we could not navigate the flood of information we are exposed to every day in order to perform essential selections of valiable information. Yet the way we epistemically evaluate each other, ascribe or deny knowledge, who we deem knowledgeable or ignorant, and whom we refer to as an expert or a layman also crucially shape our epistemic milieu and the structure of our society. Epistemic asymmetry often results in and reflects social asymmetry; higher epistemic appraisal often increases social standing. Also, epistemic evaluations such as knowledge ascriptions are commonly performed against the background of certain epistemic and non-epistemic (e.g., practical) concerns and interests. Consequently, epistemic and non-epistemic factors interact in guiding our epistemic practice. To advance our understanding of how they do so is not only a worthwhile project from an epistemological point of view but can be expected to have repercussions on decision making, in debates within political and social theory as well as within ethics, and help us understand and evaluate how we act and even how to act. Moreover, it might shed light on the perennial question of how theoretical and practical rationality relate to one another. A much-discussed question in recent debates on knowledge ascriptions is the question of whether-and if so, how-epistemic standards (standards of how much it takes to count as knowing or as a knower) are influenced by, and/or contextually vary with, non-epistemic factors such as stakes, interests, aims, etc., and whether this in turn affects the truth-conditions of knowledge ascriptions or only their assertibility (or sayability) conditions. This has been a main point of contention between contextualists, invariantists and relativists (of various brands) concerning knowledge acsriptions (cf.,

To be a critical thinker is to base one's beliefs and actions on reasons. But the notions of 'reason' and 'rationality' are philosophically problematic. What is a reason? How do we tell that some consideration constitutes a reason for doing or believing something? By what criteria do we evaluate reasons? How are those criteria themselves evaluated? What is it for a belief or action to be justified? What is the relationship between justification and truth? These questions are epistemological questions; they are also relevant to critical thinking and its pedagogy. In this paper I argue (1) that critical thinking presupposes particular answers to contentious epistemological questions, i.e. that there is an epistemology underlying critical thinking; and (2) that these epistemological considerations are fundamental to an adequate understanding of critical thinking and should be explicitly treated in basic critical thinking courses. Epistemology is basic both to critical thinking and to its pedagogy.

The aim of this paper is to explore the hypothesis that luck is a risk-involving phenomenon. I start by explaining why this hypothesis is prima facie plausible in view of the parallelisms between luck and risk. I then distinguish three ways to spell it out: in probabilistic terms, in modal terms, and in terms of lack of control. Before evaluating the resulting accounts, I explain how the idea that luck involves risk is compatible with the fact that risk concerns unwanted events whereas luck can concern both wanted and unwanted events. I turn to evaluating the modal and probabilistic views and argue, firstly, that they fail to account for the connection between risk and bad luck; secondly, that they also fail to account for the connection between risk and good luck. Finally, I defend the lack of control view. In particular, I argue that it can handle the objections to the probabilistic and modal accounts and that it can explain how degrees of luck and risk covary. 4th of July of 1943, 11:07 pm. A Consolidated B-24 Liberator takes off from Gibraltar Airport. It carries Władysław Sikorski, the commander-in-chief of the Polish Army and the Prime Minister of the Polish government-in-exile. Sixteen seconds after takeoff the aircraft crashes into the sea. Sikorski dies along with ten other people. The pilot, Flight Lieutenant Eduard Prchal, survives. Later investigations of this World War II event failed to pin down the specific cause of the accident, but it is believed that the elevator system of the aircraft was jammed. Prchal's efforts to move the stick of the steering mechanism were all in vain. He could not pull up and the plane lost height quickly. Inevitably, it ended in the waters of the Strait of Gibraltar.

Havstad (2022) argues that the argument from inductive risk for the claim that non-epistemic values have a legitimate role to play in the internal stages of science is deductively valid. She also defends its premises and thus soundness. This is, as far as we are aware, the best reconstruction of the argument from inductive risk in the existing literature. However, there is a small flaw in this reconstruction of the argument from inductive risk which appears to render the argument invalid. This flaw is superficial, and a small amendment to it rescues the claim of validity.

The aim of the present contribution is to defend a specific version of moderate skeptical invariantism, which I call Practical Skeptical Invariantism (PSI). The view is a form of skepticism to the extent that it denies knowledge of many facts that we ordinarily think or claim to know. It is moderate to the extent that it is supposed to be compatible with a quite weak, nonradical form of skepticism. According to this view, the threshold on evidential support required for knowledge should be partially fixed by the practical circumstances of the subject: someone is in a position to know a proposition p only if she would be rational to act as if p even if the practical stakes on p were maximally high. I consider and address what I take to be the most pressing problem for the view, namely, that the view can’t avoid a collapse into a radical form of skepticism. Moreover, I propose a positive argument for this view. The argument relies on the claim that judgments in high stakes are generally more reliable than in low stakes.

Accounts of the demonic within the Christian tradition as causative in differing forms of illness and suffering can be traced back to the New Testament. Demonic accounts also exist more centrally in the language of spiritual warfare that pervades some evangelical groups. Contemporary research suggests that belief in the demonic as aetiologically culpable in mental illness has potentially stigmatising effects for those with mental illness and can also negatively impact help-seeking behaviours. However, no research has explored how evangelical groups which subscribe to belief in demonic entities represent the demonic and their relative role in relation to mental illness. This study explores perceptions of the demonic in relation to mental illness, with a sample of evangelical Christians who actively subscribe to belief in the demonic, by using the novel qualitative story completion task. A convenience sample of 43 evangelical Christians completed a third-person fictional story stem featuring a gender-neutral character (Alex) who encountered the demonic (in an ambiguous way) in relation to their mental health. A contextualist informed thematic analysis suggests that while mental ill health was often positioned as having a biopsychological cause, demonic activity was also frequently cited as exacerbating mental illness. Narrations of the demonic positioned Alex in either an active position, wherein they were responsible for their engagement with the occult and the subsequent onset of their mental illness (causative), or a passive position, wherein their pre-existing mental ill health made them vulnerable to demonic attack. In relation to recovery, storied data situated medical and spiritual interventions as effective. Significantly, participants positioned Alex's Christian faith as a source of power over the demonic and over mental ill health-thus, despite demonic attacks, a sense of agency was often maintained. That the stories positioned demonic influence as external to the self, thereby maintaining a level of individual agency amidst suffering, highlights the potential limitations of assuming all demonic accounts are singularly stigmatising and negative in nature. Findings underline the need for future research to explore demonic accounts in religiously and culturally syntonic ways without imposing meaning.

The value-free ideal for science holds that values should not influence the core features of scientific reasoning. We defend the difference-to-inference model of value permeation, which holds that value-permeation in science is problematic when values make a difference to the inferences made about a hypothesis. This view of value permeation is superior to existing views, and suggests a corresponding maxim, namely that scientists should strive to eliminate differences to inference. This maxim is the basis of a novel value-free ideal for science.

So-called "traditional epistemology" and "Bayesian epistemology" share a word, but it may often seem that the enterprises hardly share a subject matter. They differ in their central concepts. They differ in their main concerns. They differ in their main theoretical moves. And they often differ in their methodology. However, in the last decade or so, there have been a number of attempts to build bridges between the two epistemologies. Indeed, many would say that there is just one branch of philosophy here-epistemology. There is a common subject matter after all. In this paper, we begin by playing the role of a "bad cop," emphasizing many apparent points of disconnection, and even conflict, between the approaches to epistemology. We then switch role, playing a "good cop" who insists that the approaches are engaged in common projects after all. We look at various ways in which the gaps between them have been bridged, and we consider the prospects for bridging them further. We conclude that this is an exciting time for epistemology, as the two traditions can learn, and have started learning, from each other.

I have argued for a kind of 'counterfactual scepticism': most counterfactuals ever uttered or thought in human history are false. I briefly rehearse my main arguments. Yet common sense recoils. Ordinary speakers judge most counterfactuals that they utter and think to be true. A common defence of such judgments regards counterfactuals as context-dependent: the proposition expressed by a given counterfactual can vary according to the context in which it is uttered. In normal contexts, the counterfactuals that we utter are typically true, the defence insists, while granting that there may be more rarefied contexts in which they are false. I give a taxonomy of such contextualist replies. One could be a contextualist about the counterfactual connective, about its antecedent, or about its consequent. I offer some general concerns about all these varieties of contextualism. I then focus especially on antecedent-contextualism, as I call it. I firstly raise some high-level objections to it. Then, I look at such a contextualist account due to Sandgren and Steele. I think it has many virtues, but also some problems. I conclude with some avenues for future research.

It is certainly well accepted that formal models play a key role in scientific job. Its use goes from natural sciences like physics and even to social sciences like economics and politics. Using mathematics allows the researcher to consider more complicated scenarios involving several variables. Some models are developed to make predictions, others to describe a phenomena, or just to improve the explanation of events in the world. But what has all this to do with philosophy? The aim of the present paper is to investigate debates on the role of formal models in a specific philosophical subject, precisely, the epistemology of rationality. Are we able to explain why models are needed in epistemological work? This answer will be addressed on the assumptions that epistemological theorizing is committed with normative statements. More specifically, epistemologists are concerned with normative questions about what rationality requires from epistemic agents. The first goal is to discuss some assumptions about the role of mathematical models in formal epistemology undertaking. And secondly, I will argue for the following two claims: (i) formal models are useful tools for predicting consequences of normative assumption about what is intuitively required by rationality; and (ii) insofar rationality theory is normative in virtue of being instrumentalist and aiming at truth, formal models are means-end tools, therefore, for rationality, mathematical models are devices for maximizing truth in doxastic states.

We constantly assess each other's epistemic positions. We attempt to distinguish valuable from worthless information, reliable from unreliable informants, etc. Without established social practices of epistemic evaluations we could not navigate the flood of information we are exposed to every day in order to perform essential selections of valiable information. Yet the way we epistemically evaluate each other, ascribe or deny knowledge, who we deem knowledgeable or ignorant, and whom we refer to as an expert or a layman also crucially shape our epistemic milieu and the structure of our society. Epistemic asymmetry often results in and reflects social asymmetry; higher epistemic appraisal often increases social standing. Also, epistemic evaluations such as knowledge ascriptions are commonly performed against the background of certain epistemic and non-epistemic (e.g., practical) concerns and interests. Consequently, epistemic and non-epistemic factors interact in guiding our epistemic practice. To advance our understanding of how they do so is not only a worthwhile project from an epistemological point of view but can be expected to have repercussions on decision making, in debates within political and social theory as well as within ethics, and help us understand and evaluate how we act and even how to act. Moreover, it might shed light on the perennial question of how theoretical and practical rationality relate to one another. A much-discussed question in recent debates on knowledge ascriptions is the question of whether-and if so, how-epistemic standards (standards of how much it takes to count as knowing or as a knower) are influenced by, and/or contextually vary with, non-epistemic factors such as stakes, interests, aims, etc., and whether this in turn affects the truth-conditions of knowledge ascriptions or only their assertibility (or sayability) conditions. This has been a main point of contention between contextualists, invariantists and relativists (of various brands) concerning knowledge acsriptions (cf.,

And finally to see if responses to Knowledge Attribution are due to protagonist projection, we asked: Strict Knowledge Attribution: In your personal opinion, which of the following sentences better describes Bob's situation? [Bob knows the bank will be open on Saturday./Bob thinks he knows the bank will be open on Saturday, but he doesn't actually know it will be open.] 1

Feminist standpoint theory has a contentious history. It is an explicitly political as well as social epistemologa characterized by the thesis that those who are marginalized or oppressed under conditions of systemic inequity may, in fact, be better knowers, in a number of respects, than those who are socially or economically privileged. Their epistemic advantage arises from the kinds of experience they are likely to have, situated as they are, and the resources available to them for understanding this experience. Feminist standpoint theorists argue that gender is one dimension of social differentiation that makes such an epistemic difference.1 Standard critiques of feminist standpoint theory attribute to it two manifestly untenable theses: that epistemically consequential standpoints must be conceptualized in essentialist terms, and that those who occupy them have automatic and comprehensive epistemic privilege. A world structured by hierarchical, oppressive social divisions thus b...

And finally to see if responses to Knowledge Attribution are due to protagonist projection, we asked: Strict Knowledge Attribution: In your personal opinion, which of the following sentences better describes Bob's situation? [Bob knows the bank will be open on Saturday./Bob thinks he knows the bank will be open on Saturday, but he doesn't actually know it will be open.] 1

According to intellectualism, what a person knows is solely a function of the evidential features of the person's situation. Anti-intellectualism is the view that what a person knows is more than simply a function of the evidential features of the person's situation. Jason Stanley (2005) argues that, in addition to "traditional factors," our ordinary practice of knowledge ascription is sensitive to the practical facts of a subject's situation. In this paper, we investigate this question empirically. Our results indicate that Stanley's assumptions about knowledge ascriptions do not reflect our ordinary practices in some paradigmatic cases. If our data generalize, then arguments for anti-intellectualism that rely on ordinary knowledge ascriptions fail: the case for anti-intellectualism cannot depend on our ordinary practices of knowledge ascription. Imagine that you and your friend Bill are hiking in the woods. You come across a rickety old bridge over a shallow, five-foot ravine. Bill ventures safely across. Do you know that the bridge is safe for you to cross given that it is safe to cross? Imagine that the bridge spans a one hundred-foot drop. Now do you know? Intellectualism implies that the answer to both questions must be the same. According to intellectualism, what a person knows is solely a function of the truth-conducive features of the person's situation. Anti-intellectualist views claim that what a person knows is more than simply a function of these truth-conducive features of her situation. Anti-intellectualism allows for the possibility that you know the bridge is safe when it spans a five-foot drop but not when it spans a one hundred-foot drop. Some anti-intellectualists have claimed that anti-intellectualism captures part of our ordinary practices of knowledge ascription. Recently, similar untested empirical claims made by * Authorship is equal. We would like to thank [OMITTED FOR BLIND REVIEW] for helpful comments on this paper.

In this paper I discuss three important, distinct phenomena. In my terminology, one is common knowledge of co-presence. Another is mutual recognition. I shall spend the most time on that. The third phenomenon is joint attention. As we shall see, common knowledge of co-presence is essential to mutual recognition; this, in turn, is essential to joint attention. 1

* I want to thank everyone who had faith in me and supported me during the process of writing this thesis-most importantly my family and people from the Department of Philosophy of the University of Tartu. I would also like to express my gratitude to people from the Department of Philosophy of the University of Konstanz, above all prof. Wolfgang Spohn whose supervision and guidance helped me make a significant leap forward.