Peter Baumann

Are our beliefs mostly true? Donald Davidson has proposed some very interesting arguments in favor of his "extended claim" that most our beliefs must be true. The main aim of this paper is to show that Davidson's arguments are not convincing. The most well known of his arguments is the argument of the "omniscient interpreter". The conceivability of a totally ignorant interpreter, however, shows that this argument fails. Davidson offers two more arguments for his extended claim: one of them based on his holism of the propositional attitudes, the other one based on his externalism of language and thought. Both arguments, however, do not sufficiently support the extended claim. Hence, it must remain open at least whether we live in one of the best possible epistemic worlds.

A moral theory is "self-effacing" if it tells one not to believe in it. Many people think that the aims of a moral theory (like utilitarianism) can be better reached if it is self-effacing. I argue here that moral theories should not be self-effacing. Except in a special case, the self-effacing character of a theory goes hand in hand with mutually incompatible intentions, practical dilemmas, or pragmatical paradoxes. Hence, if a moral (or non-moral) theory is self-effacing, one should rather give it up.

Most contextualists agree that contexts differ with respect to relevant epistemic standards. In this paper, I discuss the idea that the difference between more modest and stricter standards should be explained in terms of the closeness or remoteness of relevant possible worlds. I argue that there are serious problems with this version of contextualism. In the second part of the paper, I argue for another form of contextualism that has little to do with standards and a lot with the well-known problem of the reference class. This paper also illustrates the fact that contextualism comes in many varieties.

We often describe lives (or parts of lives) as meaningful or as not meaningful. It is also common to characterize them as more or less meaningful. Some lives, we tend to think, are more meaningful than others. But how then can one compare lives with respect to how much meaning they contain? Can one? This paper argues that (i) only a notion of rough equality can be used when comparing different lives with respect to their meaning, and that (ii) the relation of being more meaningful is not transitive. It follows that all attempts to rank different lives in terms of meaning can at best lead to partially indeterminate and incomplete rankings. One should also give up on the idea of “maximizing” meaning. I will use Thaddeus Metz’s important recent book “Meaning in Life. An Analytic Study” as a foil for my discussion.

This paper discusses two versions of reliabilism: modal and probabilistic reliabilism. Modal reliabilism faces the problem of the missing closeness metric for possible worlds while probalistic reliabilism faces the problem of the relevant reference class. Despite the severity of these problems, reliabilism is still very plausible (also for independent reasons). I propose to stick with reliabilism, propose a contextualist (or, alternatively, harmlessly relativist) solution to the above problems and suggest that probabilistic reliabilism has the advantage over modal reliabilism.

For each of the many goals of an agent it is true that the agent wants its realization. Given further very plausible assumptions, one can show that there is no good reason for an agent not to want the realization of all of his goals. However, it seems also true that reaching all of one’s goals would be extremely boring; most human beings would consider such a life not worth living. In this respect, leading a life is like playing some game: A game loses its point if one always easily wins. Human agents not only pursue goals but they also have the second-order desire to lead the life of a goal-pursuer. More precisely, they want to be goal-pursuers such that many but not all of their goals are being realized. I argue here that they have a good reason not to want the realization of all of their goals. Now, all this constitutes an antinomy: Apparently, there are very plausible arguments both for affirming as well as denying that an agent has good reasons not to want the realization of his goals. This antinomy is similar to the preface-paradox about beliefs which has a convincing solution (due to Frank Ramsey). I argue, however, that there is no such solution in the case of goals. This leaves us with the question what a solution could look like.

According to reliabilist conceptions of knowledge, knowledge implies reliable true belief. Since reliability is an irreducibly probabilistic notion, one's view of knowledge also depends on one's view of probability. If one believes that all probability is subjective probability, knowledge becomes a relativized concept: knowledge is relative to a given body of beliefs of a given person at a given time. Since such a relativized conception of knowledge is extremely implausible and since reliabilism seems to capture at least part of the truth, one should rather give up a purely subjective view of probability.

One of the most interesting accounts of knowledge which have been recently proposed is the safety account of knowledge. According to it, one only knows that p if one's true belief that p could not have easily been false: S believes that p ==> p (where "==>" stands for the subjunctive conditional). This paper presents a counter-example and discusses attempts to fix the problem. It turns out that there is a deeper underlying problem which does not allow for a solution that would help the safety theorist. It is not the case that knowledge is safe.

There is a very plausible principle of the transitivity of justifying reasons. It says that if "p" is better justified than "q" (all things considered) and "q" better than "r", then "p" is better justified than "r" (all things considered). There is a corresponding principle of rational theory choice. Call one theory "a better theory than" another theory if all criteria of theory choice considered (explanatory power, simplicity, empirical adequacy, etc.), the first theory meets the criteria better than the second theory. The corresponding transitivity principle says that if theory A is a better theory than theory B and if theory B is a better theory than theory C, then A is a better theory than theory C. I argue against this principle. It turns out that whenever there are 2 or more relevant and independent criteria of theory evaluation, and whenever at least of one the criteria is "non-linear" in a certain sense, there may be violations of transitivity which do not violate any standards of rationality (of theory choice). This shows, again, that theory choice cannot be seen as merely the application of given rules of rational theory choice.

Human dignity seems very important to us. At the same time, the concept ‘human dignity’ is extraordinarily elusive. A good way to approach the questions “What is it?” and “Why is it important?” is to raise another question first: In virtue of what do human beings have human dignity? Speciesism – the idea that human beings have a particular dignity because they are humans – does not seem very convincing. A better answer says that human beings have dignity because and insofar as they are persons. I discuss several versions of this idea as well as several objections against it. The most promising line of analysis says that human beings cannot survive psychologically without a very basic form a recognition and respect by others. The idea that humans have a special dignity is the idea that they owe each other this kind of respect. All this also suggests that human dignity is inherently social. Non-social beings do not have dignity – nor do they lack it. It is because we are social animals of a certain kind that we have dignity – not so much because we are rational animals.

Is knowledge necessary or sufficient or both necessary and sufficient for acceptable practical reasoning and rational action? Several authors (e.g., Williamson, Hawthorne, and Stanley) have recently argued that the answer to these questions is positive. In this paper I present several objections against this view (both in its basic form as well in more developed forms). I also offer a sketch of an alternative view: What matters for the acceptability of practical reasoning in at least many cases (and in all the cases discussed by the defenders of a strong link between knowledge and practical reasoning) is not so much knowledge but expected utility.

Philip Kitcher recently argued for a reconstruction in philosophy. According to him, the contemporary mainstream of philosophy has deteriorated into something that is of relevance only to a few specialists who communicate with each other in a language nobody else understands. Kitcher proposes to reconstruct philosophy along two axes: a knowledge axis and a value axis. The present article discusses Kitcher's diagnosis as well as his proposal of a therapy. It argues that there are problems with both, and it ends with an alternative view of what some core problems of the profession currently are

Are there moral truths? Are (at least some) moral statements or beliefs „true“ or „false“ in the sense of a correspondence theory of truth? Are there moral facts that make those statements or beliefs true or false? In this paper I propose an argument against the idea that moral sentences and beliefs have truth-conditions in that sense. The argument focuses on the semantic and epistemic status of those beliefs and sentences. I also argue that all this does not lead to a subjectivist interpretation of morality.

Are we free? What does "freedom" mean here? In the following, I shall only focus with freedom of action. My main thesis is that there is not just one basic type of free action but more. Philosophers, however, tend to assume that there is just one way to act freely. Hence, a more detailed analysis of free action is being called for. I will distinguish between different kinds of free action and discuss the relations between them. The analysis of different types of coercion will lead to a different view on freedom – a view which stresses the many faces of free action.

There is a sceptical puzzle according to which knowledge appears to license an unacceptable kind of dogmatism. Here is a version of the corresponding sceptical argument: (1) If a subject S knows a proposition p, then it is OK for S to ignore all evidence against p as misleading; (2) It is never OK for any subject to ignore any evidence against their beliefs as misleading; (3) Hence, nobody knows anything.I distinguish between different versions of the puzzle (mainly a ‘permissibility’ version and a ‘closure’ version) and offer a solution for one version (the permissibility version) of the problem. No matter how much a subject knows, knowledge never gives one a license to ignore evidence against a proposition. Premise (1) of the argument is false and the puzzle can thus be resolved

Christoph Jäger (2004) argues that Dretske's information theory of knowledge raises a serious problem for his denial of closure of knowledge under known entailment: Information is closed under known entailment (even under entailment simpliciter); given that Dretske explains the concept of knowledge in terms of "information", it is hard to stick with his denial of closure for knowledge. Thus, one of the two basic claims of Dretske would have to go. Since giving up the denial of closure would commit Dretske to skepticism, it would most probably be better to rather give up the information-theoretic account of knowledge. But that means that one of the best externalist views of knowledge has to be given up. I argue here that Jäger is mistaken and that there is no problem for Dretske. There is a rather easy way out of Jäger’s problem.

Peter Baumann develops and defends a distinctive version of epistemic contextualism, the view that the truth conditions or the meaning of knowledge attributions of the form "S knows that p" can vary with the context of the attributor. The first part of the book examines arguments for contextualism and develops Baumann's version. It begins by dealing with the argument from cases and ordinary usage, and then addresses "theoretical" arguments, from reliability and from luck. The second part of the book discusses the problems contextualism faces, to which it must respond, and provides an extension of contextualism beyond epistemology. The third part of the book is focused on some major objections to contextualism and alternative views, namely subject-sensitive invariantism, contrastivism and relativism.