Daniel Greco

This paper examines a tension between three plausible claims: that violations of formal coherence requirements are paradigmatically irrational; that formal incoherence is best modeled as belief fragmentation; and that fragmentation need not be irrational. I argue that the first claim must be weakened. Some formally incoherent collections of belief are not irrational, because they are not appropriately subject to rational evaluation. Drawing on a Scanlonian notion of judgment-sensitivity, I propose that only incoherence that is remediable through reasoning constitutes irrationality. This view explains why fragmentation in domains such as perception and motor control is epistemically suboptimal without being irrational, while preserving a role for coherence norms in cases where coordination across fragments is possible.

This paper presents a straightforward objection to the view that what we know has epistemic probability 1: when combined with Bayesian decision theory, the view seems to entail implausible conclusions concerning rational choice. Three responses are considered and rejected. The first holds that the fault is with decision theory, rather than the view that knowledge has probability 1. The second two try to reconcile the claim that knowledge has probability 1 with decision theory by appealing to contextualism and sensitive invariantism, respectively. It is argued that each response fails, and that we can hold on to much of what was attractive in the responses while denying that what we know has probability 1.

It’s commonly held that the best metaethical account of our normative thought and language won’t place any significant constraints on our first-order normative theorizing; once we have the right metaethics, we can go on having the same first-order normative debates, and accepting the same first-order normative views. This thesis of the “autonomy of ethics” is particularly popular among writers in the expressivist tradition. This chapter argues, however, that broadly expressivist metanormative commitments have significant consequences in first-order normative _epistemological_ debates. It begins with the example of judgment internalism—a thesis endorsed by expressivists, but many non-expressivists as well. While judgment internalism is generally seen as irrelevant to first-order ethical debates, it is argued here that it has significant consequences for some putatively “first-order” debates in epistemology. It is then argued that accepting more thoroughly expressivist metaepistemological commitments has more far-reaching epistemological consequences, focusing on the internalism/externalism debate.

How should we form beliefs concerning global climate change? For most of us, directly evaluating the evidence isn’t feasible; we lack expertise. So, any rational beliefs we form will have to be based in part on deference to those who have it. But in this domain, questions about how to identify experts can be fraught. This chapter discusses a partial answer to the question of how we in fact identify experts: Dan Kahan’s cultural cognition thesis, according to which we treat experts on factual questions of political import only insofar as they share our moral and cultural values. The chapter then poses some normative questions about cultural cognition: is it a species of irrationality that must be overcome if we are to communicate scientific results effectively, or is it instead an inescapable part of rational belief management? Ultimately, it is argued that cultural cognition is substantively unreasonable, though not formally irrational.

The aim of this chapter is twofold. First, it shows how versions of physicalism, dualism, and idealism can be formulated as theses about grounding, or metaphysical explanation, rather than as more straightforwardly ontological theses concerning what exists. Second, it argues that this reformulation provides a helpful lens through which to look at arguments in the philosophy of religion. In particular, traditional versions of theism are naturally understood as versions of idealism, once idealism is understood as a thesis about grounding. The chapter goes on to argue that once theism is seen as a version of idealism, theistic arguments from design—in particular, fine-tuning arguments—can be seen to have a limitation that is otherwise easy to overlook. Such arguments can be understood as aiming to convince, not just the atheist, but the physicalist and/or dualist. And this turns out to be harder than one might have thought.

This chapter defends the possible worlds framework for modeling the contents of belief. Both the threats against which the chapter defends it—the problems of coarse grain—and the ‘fragmentationist’ response it offers are familiar. At least as a sociological matter, the fragmentationist response has been unpersuasive, likely because it can look like an ad hoc patch—an unmotivated epicycle aimed at saving a flailing theory from decisive refutation. The chapter offers two responses to this charge. First, the problems of coarse grain aren’t unique to the possible worlds framework and indeed arise for anyone who accepts certain very attractive views about the relationship between beliefs, desires, and action. Second, the fragmentationist response to these problems is in fact a special case of an independently motivated, ‘modest’ approach to model-building in philosophy.

To what extent can intellectual humility be formalized? One natural idea links humility to open-mindedness, captured by a regularity principle: no coherent hypothesis should get probability zero. While debates over regularity often concern infinities, my objection is different. Regularity is feasible only for ideally rational, logically omniscient agents. Yet on a common view, humility involves appreciating our limitations—including our failure to be such agents. So whatever its merits for ideal cognition, regularity is a poor model for human humility. Indeed, taking it as such would itself be un-humble, by failing to appreciate our own epistemic limitations.

In his recent book, (Bias: A Philosophical Study, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2022). Thomas Kelly argues that various phenomena that look initially like examples of how irrational we are in thinking about bias—especially our own biases—turn out to be exactly what you’d expect from ideally rational agents. The phenomena he discusses which I’ll focus on are (1) our inability to introspectively identify our biases, and (2) our tendency to respond to accusations of bias with counteraccusations. In this paper, I’ll concede that Kelly is right about how ideally rational agents would think about their biases, while raising questions about whether the fact that we think similarly is best explained by our rationality. In §2, I’ll explain how Kelly’s “perspectival account of bias attributions” predicts that rational agents would be unable to identify their own biases, and would respond to accusations of bias with counter-accusations of bias. In §3, I’ll describe how a certain sort of irrational agent would behave differently—these irrational agents would respond to accusations of bias with searching introspection, and that introspection might reliably turn up evidence of bias, which would then lead them to change their views in the direction of being less biased. We are clearly not such agents, since we do exhibit (1) and (2). I’ll argue that the sort of behavior we exhibit could be explained either because we’re more rational than the agents described, or because we’re less rational than them—just as incoherent, but also worse at introspectively noticing our incoherence. I’ll argue that it’s an empirical question, to which Kelly’s arguments don’t speak, whether the fact that we exhibit (1) and (2) is best explained by our rationality, or our irrationality.

It's standard in epistemology to approach questions about knowledge and rational belief using idealized, simplified models. But while the practice of constructing idealized models in epistemology is old, metaepistemological reflection on that practice is not. Greco argues that the fact that epistemologists build idealized models isn't merely a metaepistemological observation that can leave first-order epistemological debates untouched. Rather, once we view epistemology through the lens of idealization and model-building, the landscape looks quite different. Constructing idealized models is likely the best epistemologists can do. Once one starts using epistemological categories like belief, knowledge, and confidence, the realm of idealization and model-building is entered. We can object to a model of knowledge by pointing to a better model, but in the absence of a better model, the fact that a framework for epistemologizing theorizing involves simplifications, approximations, and other inaccuracies-the fact of its status as an idealized model-is not in itself objectionable. Once we accept that theorizing in epistemological terms is inescapably idealized, a number of intriguing possibilities open up. Greco defends a package of epistemological views that might otherwise have looked indefensibly dismissive of our cognitive limitations-a package according to which we know a wide variety of facts with certainty, including what our evidence is, what we know and don't know, and what follows from our knowledge.

Jessica Brown argues against infallibilist views of knowledge as follows. (1) Infallibilism is committed to the sufficiency of knowledge for self-support: if one knows that p, then p is part of one's evidence for p. (2) This commitment is false: often one knows that p, but p isn't part of one's evidence for p. So (3) infallibilism about knowledge is false. I’ll respond by questioning the motivation for (2). Brown’s main line of argument in defense of (2) concerns the awkwardness of citing a proposition as evidence in support of itself. I’ll argue that this infelicity, while genuine, stem not from any particular view about knowledge, but from a probabilistic conception of evidential support. Given such a conception of evidential support, whenever E is part of someone’s evidence, E is evidence for E. This is no less awkward for the fallibilist than the infallibilist. I’ll argue that if we adopt a contextualist view of evidence, we can hold on to the independently attractive probabilistic conception of evidential support, while respecting the idea that there's something wrong with citing a proposition as evidence for itself.

The concept of higher-order evidence—roughly, evidence about what our evidence supports—promises epistemological riches; it has struck many philosophers as necessary for explaining how to rationally respond to disagreement in particular, and to evidence of our own fallibility more generally. But it also threatens paradox. Once we allow higher-order evidence to do non-trivial work—in particular, once we allow that people can be rationally ignorant of what their evidence supports—we seem to be committed to a host of puzzling or even absurd consequences. The aim in this chapter is to have our cake and eat it too; it presents an independently motivated framework that lets us mimic the particular case judgments of those who explain how to accommodate evidence of our fallibility by appeal to higher-order evidence, but without commitment to the absurd consequences.

While epistemologists have long debated what it takes for beliefs to be justified, they've devoted much less collective attention to the question of what it takes for beliefs to be excused, and how excuses differ from justifications. This stands in contrast to the state of affairs in legal scholarship, where the contrast between justifications and excuses is a standard topic in introductory criminal law textbooks. My goal in this paper is to extract some lessons from legal theory for epistemologists seeking to distinguish epistemic justifications from epistemic excuses. First, I'll provide a brief overview of appeals to the justification/excuse distinction in epistemology, focusing on the internalism/externalism debate. Then, I'll identify some choice points in legal theory for how to think about the function of the justification/excuse distinction, and will in turn correspond to analogous choice points in epistemology. Ultimately, I'll argue that depending on which way we go at some crucial junctures, we can motivate either a traditional, non‐factive, internalist conception of justification, or a purely factive one where truth is all that's required for a belief to be justified. But there's no clear path, via legal theory, to view that only beliefs that amount to knowledge are justified.

I present a straightforward objection to the view that what we know has epistemic probability 1: when combined with Bayesian decision theory, the view seems to entail implausible conclusions concerning rational choice. I consider and reject three responses. The first holds that the fault is with decision theory, rather than the view that knowledge has probability 1. The second two try to reconcile the claim that knowledge has probability 1 with decision theory by appealing to contextualism and sensitive invariantism, respectively. I argue that each response fails, and that we can hold on to much of what was attractive in the responses while denying that what we know has probability 1.

In this paper I will present a puzzle about epistemic akrasia, and I will use that puzzle to motivate accepting some non-standard views about the nature of epistemological judgment. The puzzle is that while it seems obvious that epistemic akrasia must be irrational, the claim that epistemic akrasia is always irrational amounts to the claim that a certain sort of justified false belief—a justified false belief about what one ought to believe—is impossible. But justified false beliefs seem to be possible in any domain, and it’s hard to see why beliefs about what one ought to believe should be an exception. I will argue that when we get clearer about what sort of psychological state epistemic akrasia is, we can resolve the puzzle in favor of the intuitive view that epistemic akrasia is always irrational

Epistemologists and philosophers of mind both ask questions about belief. Epistemologists ask normative questions about belief—which beliefs ought we to have? Philosophers of mind ask metaphysical questions about belief—what are beliefs, and what does it take to have them? While these issues might seem independent of one another, there is potential for an interesting sort of conflict: the epistemologist might think we ought to have beliefs that, according to the philosopher of mind, it is impossible to have. This essay argues that this conflict does arise and that it creates problems for traditional skeptical views in epistemology. In particular, it argues that on certain popular views about the nature of belief, it is impossible to adopt the near-global agnosticism recommended by the skeptical epistemologist. On other plausible views, it is possible only in special circumstances, and this limitation undermines skeptical epistemological claims. The only views about the nature of belief on which there are no metaphysical hurdles to adopting the agnosticism recommended by the skeptic are views that face powerful objections—objections that are completely independent of antiskeptical epistemological considerations.

While recent discussions of contextualism have mostly focused on other issues, some influential early statements of the view emphasized the possibility of its providing an alternative to both coherentism and traditional versions of foundationalism. In this essay, I will pick up on this strand of contextualist thought, and argue that contextualist versions of foundationalism promise to solve some problems that their non-contextualist cousins cannot. In particular, I will argue that adopting contextualist versions of foundationalism can let us reconcile Bayesian accounts of belief updating with a version of the holist claim that all beliefs are defeasible.

This paper argues for several related theses. First, the epistemological position that knowledge requires safe belief can be motivated by views in the philosophy of science, according to which good explanations show that their explananda are robust. This motivation goes via the idea—recently defended on both conceptual and empirical grounds—that knowledge attributions play a crucial role in explaining successful action. Second, motivating the safety requirement in this way creates a choice point—depending on how we understand robustness, we'll end up with different conceptions of safety in epistemology. Lastly, and most controversially, there's an attractive choice at this point that will not vindicate some of the most influential applications of the safety-theoretic framework in epistemology, e.g., Williamson's arguments against the KK principle, and luminosity.

In this paper I present a qualified defense of the KK principle. In section one I introduce two popular arguments against the KK principle, along with an example in which these arguments seem to prove too much. In section two I provide a simple formal model of knowledge in which KK holds, and which I argue provides an attractive analysis of the example from section one. I go on argue that when this model is combined with contextualism, we can retain our attractive analysis of the example, while also explaining away the appeal of the aforementioned arguments against KK. I use the same maneuver contextualists have used to defend epistemic closure principles--I argue that KK holds within contexts, but can fail across contexts.