David Henderson

This chapter focuses on scenarios that point in the direction of a reliabilist account of _being objectively justified in believing._ A concern for some form of epistemic safety is found to be central to the concept of justification. However, the chapter does not purport to give a final account of the relevant sort of safety. What does emerge is a plausible, refined, version of what is now classical reliabilist thinking. The refinements turn on two ideas. The first is a distinction between global reliability and (merely) local reliability. _Local_ reliability is reliability relative to the specific, spatiotemporally local, environment that the cognitive agent happens to occupy when the belief is formed. _Global_ reliability is reliability relative to the class of actual and potential local environments within the cognitive agent's global environment. The second idea is that of “suitable modulational control.” Cognitive agents like humans deploy various belief-forming processes in ways that are _holistically integrated_ within the agent's overall cognitive architecture. Information afforded my some processes may then condition, enhance, trigger, restrain, or suppress the working of other cognitive processes. Such modulational control can enhance the reliability of one's cognitive processes. On the refined reliabilist account developed here, termed _neoclassical_ reliabilism, in order to be objectively justified in holding a belief, one must have formed that belief by way of processes that are globally reliable under what we call suitable “modulational control.” While neoclassical reliabilism will be criticized in subsequent chapters, it provides a charitable version of much reliabilist epistemology.

The overall work of this chapter is two-fold: First, it illustrates how philosophical reflection leading to transglobal reliabilism fully conforms to the model of low-grade _a priori_ reflection advanced in Chapter 2. Second, the chapter serves to provide a sustained defense of transglobal reliabilism. The defense involves the full range of data that is characteristic of low-grade _a priori_ philosophical reflection. Of course the data to be accommodated includes judgments provoked by scenarios—so this chapter discusses a diversity of such judgments (some featured in the previous to chapters, some newly introduced here). Various judgment tendencies that initially seem to point in directions incompatible with transglobal reliabilism are discussed. It is shown how these tendencies can be accounted for by transglobal reliabilists. However, the data to be accommodated also includes some sense for the points and purposes of the evaluative concept of epistemic justification. It is not uncommon in philosophical reflection to find oneself pulled in apparently opposing directions when thinking about particularly difficult cases—and the concept of epistemic justification has its difficult applications and “dual pulls.” Ultimately, reflection on the points and purposes of the concept of epistemic justification allows one to understand this dual pull within a fleshed out transglobal reliabilist account.

This chapter develops a revisionary account of a kind of _a priori_ reflection that is central to much philosophy—viz., conceptual analysis. It argues that this kind of _a priori_ inquiry has subtle empirical elements rather than being a wholly non-empirical enterprise. This break with more traditional conceptions of the _a priori_ is marked by writing of “low-grad_e a priori”_ justification. The chapter begins with the observation that philosophical reflection commonly commences with intuitive judgments having to do with concrete scenarios. This is as it should be, for one's conceptual competence typically is much better at applying concepts to concrete cases then it is at directly yielding highly abstract, highly general, conceptually grounded necessary truths. To arrive at the sorts of general conceptually grounded necessary truths to which philosophers typically aspire, one must go beyond the direct and reasonably reliable deliverances of one's conceptual competence: one must engage in what is essentially an abductive inference—an inference to the best explanatory account of the workings of the relevant concepts _and_ of one's conceptual competence. It is argued that the needed abductive inference has an ineliminable empirical component.

Justificatory cognitive processes must be tractable. That one ought to produce and sustain beliefs in certain ways entails that one can. Fitting epistemic standards for human epistemic agents must be sensitive to which potential belief-forming processes humans are capable of employing, at least with training. Such (low-grade _a priori_) points call for a naturalized epistemology. This chapter clarifies this demand by elaborating upon the kind of idealized normative standards one can expect from a naturalized epistemology, and on the range of disciplines that can contribute to normative naturalized epistemology. It also advances a way of thinking about naturalized epistemology as encompassing a broad spectrum of inquiry ranging from low-grade reflection about central evaluative concepts to richly empirical inquiry revealing the character of actual human cognitive processes and the possibilities for variation. The organizing principle that holds the spectrum together is the concern for a kind of engineering for truth seeking. Just as various kinds of inquiry find a place within common engineering disciplines, so likewise a wide range of inquiries can find a place within naturalized epistemology. The spectrum of inquiry falling within naturalized epistemology is the E-spectrum (the ‘E’ standing both for epistemology and for engineering).

The neoclassical reliabilism of chapter three is found to be flawed. Its inadequacy is strongly suggested by variants of the so-called “new evil demon problem.” Discussion of such scenarios, and the general association of epistemic safety with robustness of reliability, leads to a position that better captures the concern for epistemic safety associated with objective epistemic justification: _transglobal_ reliabilism. Transglobal reliability is reliability relative to the wide reference class made up of experientially relevant possible global environments. Further scenarios reinforce the idea that modulational control remains important. The resulting position is termed _transglobal reliabilism_. On this account, for an agent to be objectively justified in holding a belief, that belief must arise or be maintained by way of processes that are transglobally reliable under suitable modulational control. The main outlines of transglobal reliabilism are developed here and supported by reflection on a number of scenarios.

Results in the previous chapter call for an _iceberg epistemology_ with two complementary foci. One is the traditional focus on conscious and accessible psychological factors; the other focus is the full set of epistemologically relevant psychological factors, many of which may be only partially, piecemeal-fashion, accessible. This allows one to revisit and re-conceive certain traditional epistemological doctrines such as foundationalism and coherentism. One then finds that central themes associated with each position can be salvaged, but that doing so requires one to transform each position somewhat, limiting these doctrines in important ways. The holistic themes from coherentism can be honored, with qualifications, but only when abandoning the exclusive focus on occurrent doxastic states that has been characteristic of coherentism. These holistic chores are managed at the level of the full set of epistemically relevant psychological factors. The foundationalist insistence on terminating chains of justificatory bases does seem to characterize the justificatory processes at the level of accessible processes. But there will be some complications in just where justificatory bases leave off—and these will not be fully understandable at the level of accessible processes. Properly limited and conceived of as treating of processes understood in terms of the different foci just distinguished, coherentism and foundationalism are compatible and can each be honored—along with the position sometimes called contextualism.

Emerging results in cognitive science have far-reaching consequences concerning the cognitive processes that make for doxastic justification. Epistemologists commonly suppose that epistemological tasks can be, and are, managed by cognitive processes in which all the information bearing on a stretch of belief fixation is occurrently represented in the course of these processes. Recent work in cognitive science associated with “the frame problem” indicates that this common assumption is misguided (as are several tempting, weakened versions of it). It is argued that an epistemologically crucial aspect of effective belief-formation involves cognitive processing that accommodates a wide range of information in an implicit way—without the information being explicitly represented in the course of processing, either consciously or unconsciously. What emerges is a view of objectively justificatory human belief-fixing processes according to which much of the epistemic action, much of what contributes to one's systematic successes, lies below the readily accessible “surface” of one's cognition. This calls for an epistemology with two legitimate, and complementary, foci. One is the traditional focus on psychological factors that are conscious during belief formation, and/or are readily psychologically accessible after the fact. And the other focus is the full set of epistemologically relevant psychological factors, many of which may be only partially, piecemeal-fashion, accessible after the fact of belief-formation. Thus, one arrives at what is termed _iceberg epistemology_.

This chapter provides an overview of the chapters to follow, their central arguments, and how the various pieces of the view developed in the book fit together. Two of the subsequent chapters are identified as pivotal methodological chapters: Chapter Two—on the _a priori_ and on philosophical reflection in particular—and Chapter Six—on the spectrum of inquiry to be pursued within a fittingly naturalized epistemology. The chapters that follow each of these methodological chapters implement and illustrate their lessons. The discussion of various versions of reliabilism in the third, fourth, and fifth chapters provides an extended instance of the “low-grade priori” reflection characterized in Chapter Two. The discussion and criticism (in Chapter Seven) of the psychological “proto-theories” that have mis-informed much epistemology reflects the far-reaching significance of certain empirical parts of the epistemological spectrum, while Chapter Eight articulates some consequences of an empirically better informed understanding of epistemically relevant processes. Thus, the revisionary treatments (in Chapter Eight) of foundationalism, coherentism, and contextualism constitute important lessons to be gained from a fittingly naturalized epistemology.

The authors argue in favor of the “nonconciliation” (or “steadfast”) position concerning the problem of peer disagreement. Throughout the paper they place heavy emphasis on matters of phenomenology—on how things seem epistemically with respect to the net import of one’s available evidence vis-à-vis the disputed claim p, and on how such phenomenology is affected by the awareness that an interlocutor whom one initially regards as an epistemic peer disagrees with oneself about p. Central to the argument is a nested goal/sub-goal hierarchy that the authors claim is inherent to the structure of epistemically responsible belief-formation: pursuing true beliefs by pursuing beliefs that are objectively likely given one’s total available evidence; pursuing this sub-goal by pursuing beliefs that are likely true (given that evidence) relative to one’s own deep epistemic sensibility; and pursuing this sub-sub-goal by forming beliefs in accordance with one’s own all-in, ultima facie, epistemic seemings.

We argue that introspection reveals a ubiquitous aspect of conscious experience that hitherto has been largely unappreciated in philosophy of mind and in cognitive science: conscious appreciation of a large body of background information, and of the holistic relevance of this information to a cognitive task that is being consciously undertaken, without that information being represented by any conscious, occurrent, intentional mental state. We call this phenomenon chromatic illumination. We begin with a phenomenological case study, involving an experience of joke-understanding in which the conscious aspect of chromatic illumination is especially vivid. Then we offer an account of the prototypical causal role of conscious intentional states, and we offer a contrasting account of the somewhat different prototypical causal role of conscious chromatic-illumination features of conscious intentional states. Finally, we describe the specific kind of physical-to-mental supervenience situation that needs to obtain in order for a chromatically illuminated conscious intentional state to figure as a supervenient mental cause that exerts both kinds of prototypical, content-appropriate, reasons-guidance vis-a-vis one’s cognition and behavior.

The chapter rehearses the main outlines of _gatekeeping contextualism_—the view that it is central to the concept of _knowledge_ that attributions of knowledge function in a kind of epistemic gatekeeping for contextually salient communities. The case for gatekeeping contextualism is clarified within an extended discussion of the character of philosophical reflection. The chapter argues that normatively valenced, evaluative concepts constitute a broad class of concepts for which a sociolinguistic point or purpose may be readily sensed—and for which the intimate connection between point/purpose and the concept itself is readily understandable. Commonly at the inception of philosophical reflection one’s sense for the point or purpose of a specific concept is seldom highly articulate. The chapter argues that this does not prevent one’s grasp of point/purpose from doing real work in philosophical reflection.

The authors argue in favor of the “nonconciliation” (or “steadfast”) position concerning the problem of peer disagreement. Throughout the paper they place heavy emphasis on matters of phenomenology—on how things seem epistemically with respect to the net import of one’s available evidence vis-à-vis the disputed claim p, and on how such phenomenology is affected by the awareness that an interlocutor whom one initially regards as an epistemic peer disagrees with oneself about p. Central to the argument is a nested goal/sub-goal hierarchy that the authors claim is inherent to the structure of epistemically responsible belief-formation: pursuing true beliefs by pursuing beliefs that are objectively likely given one’s total available evidence; pursuing this sub-goal by pursuing beliefs that are likely true (given that evidence) relative to one’s own deep epistemic sensibility; and pursuing this sub-sub-goal by forming beliefs in accordance with one’s own all-in, ultima facie, epistemic seemings.

SummaryIn his Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough, Wittgenstein holds that in studying or interpreting a language and associated activities we should not attempt to explain what goes on, just describe, for description is able to give us everything we could ask for. He seems to presents two arguments for this descriptivist approach. I criticize both. Generally, I argue that Wittgenstein's position seems to presuppose a radical distinction between description and explanation that cannot be supported.Specifically, I show that Wittgenstein's first objection to explanatory concerns in interpretive contexts is an overly quick generalization from limitations in Frazer's early attempts at explanation. The inadequacy of one attempt at explaining some phenomena hardly implies that it is wrong to attempt an explanation of that phenomena. Nor does the fact that a false explanation may support a false description of some phenomena show that a correct explanation would not support a correct description. Wittgenstein's second, and most important, objection turns on the crucial claim that correct description is at least as satisfying as explanation. There is one significant respect in which I agree this claim, and another in which I disagree. I show that, on Wittgenstein's view, a description is a perspicuous story about an effect and its antecedents. It answers a “why”‐question. This is to say, a good description is something of a condensed explanation. Now, when description is so understood, it would be foolish to deny that description is as satisfying as explanation, for here, description is not just theory‐laden, it is also explanation‐laden. However, I argue that in contexts where reliability worries become pressing, the more familiar, explicit, forms of explanation have important advantages

In our work we have drawn attention to an aspect of conscious experience that we have labeled chromatic illumination, which consists of conscious appreciation of a large body of background information, and of the holistic relevance of this information to a cognitive task that is being consciously undertaken, without that information being represented by any conscious, occurrent, intentional mental state. We have also characterized the prototypical causal role of chromatic-illumination features of conscious intentional states, and we have detailed the specific kind of physical-to-mental supervenience situation that would need to obtain in order for a chromatically illuminated conscious intentional state to figure as a supervenient mental cause of one’s subsequent cognition and behavior. In this paper we answer two residual questions. The first is a “How possible?” question, asking whether such a supervenience scenario is really a coherent conceptual possibility, given that it posits a putative conscious feature of conscious experience that allegedly plays a conscious causal role that supposedly constitutes conscious appreciation of information not being consciously represented. The second is a “How plausible?” question, asking whether the details of such a physical-to-mental supervenience scenario can be spelled out in a way that makes actually plausible the claim that chromatic illumination actually gets physically implemented this way in the human brain. We argue that the supervenient causal efficacy of chromatically illuminated conscious experience is not only a genuine conceptual possibility, but also very plausibly can really occur in humans.

People develop and deploy epistemic norms – normative sensibilities in light of which they regulate both their individual and community epistemic practice. There is a similarity to folk's epistemic normative sensibilities – and it is by virtue of this that folk commonly can rely on each other, and even work jointly to produce systems of true beliefs – a kind of epistemic common good. Agents not only regulate their belief forming practices in light of these sensitivities, but they make clear to others that they approve or disapprove of practices as these accord with their sensibilities – they thus regulate the belief forming practices of others in an interdependent pursuit of a good – something on the order of a community stock of true beliefs. Such general observations suggest ways in which common epistemic norms function as social norms, as these are characterized by Cristina Bicchieri's (2006) discussion of various kinds of norms. I draw on this framework – together with an important elaboration in Bicchieri (2017) – as it affords an analysis of the various related ways in which normative sensibilities function in communities of interdependent agents. The framework allows one to probe how these normative sensibilities function in the various associated choice situations. I argue that epistemic norms are fundamentally social norms, and, at the same time, they also are widely shared sensibilities about state-of-the-art ways of pursuing projects of individual veritistic value. The two foundations suggest the analogy of an arch.

The chapter rehearses the main outlines of gatekeeping contextualism—the view that it is central to the concept of knowledge that attributions of knowledge function in a kind of epistemic gatekeeping for contextually salient communities. The case for gatekeeping contextualism is clarified within an extended discussion of the character of philosophical reflection. The chapter argues that normatively valenced, evaluative concepts constitute a broad class of concepts for which a sociolinguistic point or purpose may be readily sensed—and for which the intimate connection between point/purpose and the concept itself is readily understandable. Commonly at the inception of philosophical reflection one’s sense for the point or purpose of a specific concept is seldom highly articulate. The chapter argues that this does not prevent one’s grasp of point/purpose from doing real work in philosophical reflection.

Descriptions of social norms can be explanatory. The erotetic approach to explanation provides a useful framework. I describe one very broad kind of explanation-seeking why-question, a genus that is common to the special sciences, and argue that descriptions of norms can serve as an answer to such why-questions. I draw upon Woodward’s recent discussion of the explanatory role of generalizations with a significant degree of invariance. Descriptions of norms provide what is, in effect, a generalization regarding the kind of historically contingent system— a group or society, a generalization with a significant degree of invariance. Key Words: explanation • invariance • norms • social sciences • erotetic • laws.