J. Adam Carter

RRecently, much work has been done on G.E. Moore’s proof of an external world with the aim of diagnosing just where the Proof ‘goes wrong’. In the mainstream literature, the most widely discussed debate on this score stands between those who defend competing accounts of perceptual warrant known as dogmatism and conservativism. Each account implies a different verdict on Moore’s Proof, though both share a commitment to supposing that an examination of premise-conclusion dependence relations will sufficiently reveal what’s wrong with the Proof. Parallel to this debate on Moore stands perhaps an equally interesting debate within which the Proof is critiqued as it stands in the context of the skeptical debate. On this score, Michael Fara and Ernest Sosa have weighed in with a markedly different take on Moore’s anti-skeptical ambitions and on the nature of skeptical challenges more generally. The aim of this paper will be to critically evaluate these two very distinct strands of recent work on Moore’s Proof. Part I of the paper will focus on the mainstream debate, and in Part II of the paper, I’ll focus on the parallel debate about skepticism. My critical discussion will be aimed throughout at showing how the various proposals I’ve taken as representative of these two parallel debates surrounding Moore’s Proof ultimately fall short—each for different reasons—of what a satisfactory diagnosis of the Proof would require.

Abstract: Might knowledge normatively govern conversations and not just their discrete constituent thoughts and (assertoric) actions? I answer yes, at least for a restricted class of conversations I call aimed conversations. On the view defended here, aimed conversations are governed by participatory know-how - viz., knowledge how to do what each interlocutor to the conversation shares a participatory intention to do by means of that conversation. In the specific case of conversations that are in the service of joint inquiry, the view defended is that interlocutors (A, B, ... n) must intentionally inquire together into whether p, by means of an aimed conversation X, only if A,B, ... n know how to use X to find out together whether p. The view is supported by considerations about instrumental rationality, shared intentionality, the epistemology of intentional action, as well as linguistic data.

What is knowledge? Why is it valuable? How much of it do we have, and what ways of thinking are good ways to use to get more of it? These are just a few questions that are asked in epistemology, roughly, the philosophical theory of knowledge. This is Epistemology is a comprehensive introduction to the philosophical study of the nature, origin, and scope of human knowledge. Exploring both classic debates and contemporary issues in epistemology, this rigorous yet accessible textbook provides readers with the foundation necessary to start doing epistemology. Organized around 11 key subtopics, and assuming no prior knowledge of the subject, this volume exposes readers to diverse, often contentious perspectives—guiding readers through crucial debates including Hume’s problem of induction, Descartes’ engagement with radical skepticism, rationalist and empiricist evaluations of a priori justification, and many more. The authors avoid complex technical terms and jargon in favor of an easy-to-follow, informal writing style with engaging chapters designed to stimulate student interest and encourage class discussion. Throughout the text, a wealth of up-to-date references and links to online resources are provided to enable further investigation of an array of epistemological topics. A balanced and authoritative addition to the acclaimed This is Philosophy series, This is Epistemology is a perfect primary textbook for philosophy undergraduates, and a valuable resource for general readers with interest in this important branch of philosophy.

If Savulescu's controversial principle of Procreative Beneficence is correct, then an important implication is that couples should employ genetic tests for non-disease traits in selecting which child to bring into existence. Both defenders as well as some critics of this normative entailment of PB have typically accepted the comparatively less controversial claim about non-disease traits: that there are non-disease traits such that testing and selecting for them would in fact contribute to bringing about the child who is expected to have the best life. We challenge this less controversial claim, not by arguing deductively for its falsity, but by showing that Savulescu's central argument for this presumably less controversial claim fails. Savulescu offers intelligence as the paradigm example of a testable non-disease trait such that testing and selecting for it would increase the likelihood that the child selected would be the one who is expected to have the best life. We provide a series of arguments aimed at demonstrating that Savulescu's argument from intelligence fails. If our arguments are successful, the upshot is not that PB is false, but more modestly, that the burden of proof remains squarely with Savulescu.

Philosophy of mind and cognitive science have recently become increasingly receptive to the hypothesis of extended cognition, according to which external artifacts such as our laptops and smartphones can—under appropriate circumstances—feature as material realizers of a person's cognitive processes. We argue that, to the extent that the hypothesis of extended cognition is correct, our legal and ethical theorizing and practice must be updated by broadening our conception of personal assault so as to include intentional harm toward gadgets that have been appropriately integrated. We next situate the theoretical case for extended personal assault within the context of some recent ethical and legal cases and close with critical discussion.

It is a natural assumption in mainstream epistemological theory that ascriptions of knowledge of a proposition p track strength of epistemic position vis-à-vis p. It is equally natural to assume that the strength of one’s epistemic position is maximally high in cases where p concerns a simple analytic truth. For instance, it seems reasonable to suppose that one’s epistemic position vis-à-vis “a cat is a cat” is harder to improve than one’s position vis-à-vis “a cat is on the mat”, and consequently, that the former is at least as unambiguous a case of knowledge as the latter. The current paper, however, presents empirical evidence which challenges this intuitive line of reasoning. Our study on the epistemic intuitions of hundreds of academic philosophers supports the idea that simple and uncontroversial analytic propositions are less likely to qualify as knowledge than empirical ones. We show that our results, though at odds with orthodox theories of knowledge in mainstream epistemology, can be explained in a way consistent with Wittgenstein’s remarks on ‘hinge propositions’ or with Stalnaker’s pragmatics of assertion. We then present and evaluate a number of lines of response mainstream theories of knowledge could appeal to in accommodating our results. Finally, we show how each line of response runs into some prima facie difficulties. Thus, our observed asymmetry between knowing “a cat is a cat” and knowing “a cat is on the mat” presents a puzzle which mainstream epistemology needs to resolve.

In several passages, Frege suggests that successful communication requires that speaker and audience understand the uttered words and sentences to have the same sense. On the other hand, Frege concedes that, in many ordinary cases, variation in sense is tolerable. In a recent article in this journal, Michaelson and Textor (2023) offer a new interpretation of Frege on the tolerability of sense variation according to which variation in sense is tolerable when the conversation aims at joint action, but not when the conversation aims at joint thought. We maintain, contra Michaelson and Textor, that whether sense variation is tolerable does not depend on the conversational purpose, whether it be theoretical or practical. Rather, whether sense variation is tolerable depends instead on the conversational background. This picture offers what we take to be a more plausible reconstruction of Frege’s own view.

In recent work, Mark Alfano and Jennifer Saul have put forward a similar kind of provocative sceptical challenge. Both appeal to recent literature in empirical psychology to show that our judgments across a wide range of cases are riddled with unreliable cognitive heuristics and biases. Likewise, they both conclude that we know a lot less than we have hitherto supposed, at least on standard conceptions of what knowledge involves. It is argued that even if one grants the empirical claims that Saul and Alfano make, the sceptical conclusion that they canvass might not be as dramatic as it first appears. It is further argued, however, that one can reinstate a more dramatic sceptical conclusion by targeting their argument not at knowledge but rather at the distinct epistemic standing of understanding.

A common objection to Sosa’s epistemology is that it countenances, in an objectionable way, unsafe knowledge. This objection, under closer inspection, turns out to be in far worse shape than Sosa’s critics have realised. Sosa and his defenders have offered two central response types to the idea that allowing unsafe knowledge is problematic: one response type adverts to the animal/reflective knowledge distinction that is characteristic of bi-level virtue epistemology. The other less-discussed response type appeals to the threat of dream scepticism, and in particular, to the idea that many of our everyday perceptual beliefs are unsafe through the nearness of the dream possibility. The latter dreaming response to the safety objection to Sosa’s virtue epistemology has largely flown under the radar in contemporary discussions of safety and knowledge. We think that, suitably articulated in view of research in the philosophy and science of dreaming, it has much more going for it than has been appreciated. This paper further develops, beyond what Sosa does himself, the dreaming argument in response to those who think safety (as traditionally understood) is a condition on knowledge and who object to Sosa’s account on the grounds that it fails this condition. The payoffs of further developing this argument will be not only a better understanding of the importance of insights about dreaming against safety as a condition on knowledge, but also some reason to think a weaker safety condition, one that is relativised to SSS (i.e., skill/shape/situation) conditions for competence exercise, gets better results all things considered as an anti-luck codicil on knowledge.

According to Paul Boghossian a core tenet of epistemic relativism is what he calls epistemic pluralism, according to which ‘there are many fundamentally different, genuinely alternative epistemic systems’, but ‘no facts by virtue of which one of these systems is more correct than any of the others’. Embracing the former claim is more or less uncontroversial–viz., a descriptive fact about epistemic diversity. The latter claim by contrast is very controversial. Interestingly, the Wittgenstenian ‘hinge’ epistemologist, in virtue of maintaining that rational evaluation is essentially local, will be committed to the more controversial leg of the epistemic pluralist thesis, simply in virtue of countenancing the descriptive leg. This paper does three central things. First, it is shown that this ‘relativistic’ reading of Wittgenstein’s epistemology is plausible only if the locality of rational evaluation commits the Wittgenstenian to a further epistemic incommensurability thesis. Next, Duncan Pritchard’s novel attempt to save the hinge epistemologist from a commitment to epistemic incommensurability is canvassed and critiqued. Finally, it is suggested how, regardless of whether Pritchard’s strategy is successful, there might be another very different way—drawing from recent work by John MacFarlane —for the hinge epistemologist to embrace epistemic pluralism while steering clear of epistemic relativism, understood in a very specific way.

Group polarization—roughly, the tendency of groups to incline towards more extreme positions than initially held by their individual members— has been rigorously studied by social psychol- ogists, though in a way that has overlooked important philosophical questions about this phenomenon which remain unexplored. Two such salient questions are metaphysical and epistemological, respectively. From a metaphysical point of view, can group polarization, understood as an epistemic feature of a group, be reduced to epistemic features of its individual members? Relatedly, from an epistemological point of view, is group polarization best understood as a kind of cognitive bias or rather in terms of intellectual vice? This book taxonomizes this possibility space by comparing four models which combine potential answers to the metaphysical and epistemological questions. The models we consider are: group polarization as a collective bias, a summation of individual epistemic vices; a summation of individual biases; and a collective epistemic vice. We defend a collective vice model of group polarization over the competing alternatives.

A familiar point in the literature on the epistemology of disagreement is that in the face of disagreement with a recognised epistemic peer the epistemically virtuous agent should adopt a stance of intellectual humility. That is, the virtuous agent should take a conciliatory stance and reduce her commitment to the proposition under dispute. In this paper, we ask the question of how such intellectual humility would manifest itself in a corresponding peer disagreement regarding knowledge-how. We argue that while it is relatively straightforward to recast this debate in terms of a reductive intellectualist account of knowledge-how, whereby knowledge-how just is a matter of having a particular propositional attitude, the issue becomes more complex once we turn to anti-intellectualist positions. On these views, after all, such a disagreement won’t be just a matter of disagreeing about the truth of a proposition. Accordingly, to the extent that some kind of conciliation is plausibly required of the virtuous agent in the face of a recognised peer disagreement, this conciliation will not consist simply in belief revision. We propose a novel way to address this problem. We claim that what is required of the epistemically virtuous agent when confronted with peer disagreement regarding knowing how to φ is that thereafter she should be disposed to employ her way of φ-ing across a narrower range of practical circumstances than beforehand. Moreover, just as an agent needs to call on her intellectual virtues in order to determine the extent of conciliation required in an ordinary case of epistemic peer disagreement, so the intellectual virtues will play an important role in determining this shift in dispositions to φ that occurs as regards epistemic peer disagreement about knowledge-how.

Within contemporary philosophy of mind, it is taken for granted that externalist accounts of meaning and mental content are, in principle, orthogonal to the matter of whether cognition itself is bound within the biological brain or whether it can constitutively include parts of the world. Accordingly, Clark and Chalmers (Analysis 58(1):7–19, 1998) distinguish these varieties of externalism as ‘passive’ and ‘active’ respectively. The aim here is to suggest that we should resist the received way of thinking about these dividing lines. With reference to Brandom’s (1994, 2000, Inquiry 47:236–253, 2008) broad semantic inferentialism, we show that a theory of meaning can be at the same time a variety of active externalism. While we grant that supporters of other varieties of content externalism (e.g., Putnam 1975 and Burge (Philosophical Review 95:3–45, 1986) can deny active externalism, this is not an option for semantic inferentialists: On this latter view, the role of the environment (both in its social and natural form) is not ‘passive’ in the sense assumed by the alternative approaches to content externalism.

In almost any domain of endeavour, successes can be attained through skill, but also by dumb luck. An archer’s wildest shots occasionally hit the target. Against enormous odds, some fair lottery tickets happen to win. The same goes in the case of purely cognitive or intellectual endeavours. As inquirers, we characteristically aim to believe truly rather than falsely, and to attain such standings as knowledge and understanding. Sometimes such aims are attained with commendable competence, but of course, not always. Epistemic luck is a species of luck which features in circumstances where a given cognitive success—in the broadest sense, some form of cognitive contact with reality—is attained in a manner that is interestingly lucky—viz., chancy, accidental or beyond our control. In the paradigmatic case, this involves the formation of a belief that is luckily true, and where the subject plausibly deserves little credit for having gotten things right. Although the literature on epistemic luck has focused predominantly on the relationship between luck and propositional knowledge—which is widely taken to exclude luck—epistemologists are increasingly exploring the compatibility of epistemic luck with other kinds of epistemic standings, such as knowledge-how and understanding.

Inference to the best explanation—or, IBE—tells us to infer from the available evidence to the hypothesis which would, if correct, best explain that evidence. As Peter Lipton puts it, the core idea driving IBE is that explanatory considerations are a guide to inference. But what is the epistemic status of IBE, itself? One issue of contemporary interest is whether it is possible to provide a justification for IBE itself which is non- objectionably circular. We aim to carve out some new space in this debate. In particular, we suggest that the matter of whether a given rule-circular argument is objectionably circular itself depends crucially on some subtle distinctions which have been made in the recent literature on perceptual warrant. By bringing these debates together, a principled reason emerges for why some kinds of rule-circular justifications for IBE are considerably less objectionable than others.

In a recent and provocative paper, Matthew Fisher, Mariel Goddu, and Frank Keil have argued, on the basis of experimental evidence, that ‘searching the Internet leads people to conflate information that can be found online with knowledge “in the head” ’, specifically, by inclining us to conflate mere access to information for personal knowledge. This paper has three central aims. First, we briefly detail Fisher et al.’s results and show how, on the basis of re- cent work in virtue epistemology, their interpretation of the data supports the thesis that searching the Internet is conducive to the vice of intellectual arrogance. Second, we argue that this arrogance interpretation of the data rests on an implicit commitment to cognitive internalism. Thirdly, we show how the data can be given a very different explanation in light of the hypothesis of extended cognition —one which challenges the extent to which Fisher et al. are entitled to insist that subjects are actually conflating access to knowledge for personal knowledge in the first place. We conclude by suggesting how, against the background of extended cognition rather than cognitive internalism, we have some reason to think that searching the Internet might actually foster virtuous intellectual humility.

It is argued that trust is a performative kind and that the evaluative normativity of trust is a special case of the evaluative normativity of performances generally. The view is shown to have advantages over competitor views, e.g., according to which good trusting is principally a matter of good believing (e.g., Hieronymi, 2008; McMyler, 2011), or good affect (e.g., Baier, 1986; Jones, 1996), or good conation (e.g., Holton, 1994). Moreover, the view can be easily extended to explain good (and bad) distrust, where the latter is understood as aimed (narrow-scoped) forbearance from trusting. The overarching framework—which assimilates the evaluative norms of trusting (and distrusting) to performance-theoretic norms—supplies us with an entirely new lens to view traditional philosophical problems about what is involved in trusting and distrusting well and badly, and thus, places our capacity to make progress on problems in this area on a new footing.

We know facts, but we also know how to do things. To know a fact is to know that a proposition is true. But does knowing how to ride a bike amount to knowledge of propositions? This is a challenging question and one that deeply divides the contemporary landscape. A Critical Introduction to Knowledge-How introduces, outlines, and critically evaluates various contemporary debates surrounding the nature of knowledge-how. Carter and Poston show that situating the debate over the nature of knowledge-how in other epistemological debates provides new ways to make progress. In particular, Carter and Poston explore the question of what knowledge-how involves, and how it might come apart from propositional knowledge, by engaging with key epistemological topics including epistemic luck, knowledge of language, epistemic value, virtue epistemology and social epistemology. New frontiers for research on knowledge-how are also explored relating to the internalism - externalism debate as well as embodied and extended knowledge. A Critical Introduction to Knowledge-How provides an accessible introduction to the main arguments in this important and thriving debate suited for undergraduates and postgraduates in philosophy and related areas. A strength of the book is its methodology which places a premium on placing the debates over knowledge-how in a broader conversation over the nature of knowledge. This book also offers an opinionated discussion of various lines of argument which will be of interest to professional philosophers as well.

The topic of epistemic normativity has come to the fore of recent work in epistemology, and so naturally, theories of knowledge, truth and justification have been increasingly held accountable to preserving normative epistemological platitudes. Central to discussions of epistemic normativity are questions about epistemic agency and epistemic value. Here, our aim is to take up some of these issues as they come to bear on the rather unconventional brand of epistemology that was defended by Richard Rorty. Our purpose is to explore whether Rorty’s epistemology—or perhaps his replacement for epistemology—can preserve these normative platitudes about epistemic agency, responsibility, achievement, and the value of knowledge. Our conclusion is a negative one: that Rorty’s commitments leave him firmly at odds with some of the most plausible assumptions about epistemic agency and epistemic value

This paper develops and defends a new account of therapeutic trust, its nature and its constitutive norms. Central to the view advanced is a distinction between two kinds of therapeutic trust – default therapeutic trust and overriding therapeutic trust – each which derives from a distinct kind of trusting competence. The new view is shown to have advantages over extant accounts of therapeutic trust, and its relation to standard (non-therapeutic) trust, as defended by Hieronymi, Frost-Arnold, and Jones.

Intentional action is, in some sense, non-accidental, and one common way action theorists have attempted to explain this is with reference to control. The idea, in short, is that intentional action implicates control, and control precludes accidentality. But in virtue of what, exactly, would exercising control over an action suffice to make it non-accidental in whatever sense is required for the action to be intentional? One interesting and prima facie plausible idea that we wish to explore in this paper is that control is non-accidental in virtue of requiring knowledge—either knowledge-that or knowledge-how (e.g., Beddor and Pavese 2021; cf., Setiya 2008; 2012 and Habgood-Coote 2018). We review in detail some key recent work defending such knowledge-centric theories of control, and we show that none of these accounts holds water. We conclude with some discussion about how control opposes the sort of luck intentional action excludes without doing so by requiring knowledge (that- or how).

Information we use to structure our lives is increasingly stored digitally, rather than in biomemory. (Just think: if your online calendar went down, would you know where you are supposed be and at what time next week?) Likewise, with breakthroughs such as those from Google DeepMind and OpenAI, discoveries at the frontiers of knowledge are increasingly due to machine learning (often, applied to massive datasets, extracted from a fast-growing datasphere) rather than to brainbound cognition. It’s hard to deny that knowledge retention and production is becoming increasingly – in various ways – digitised. Digital Knowledge: A Philosophical Investigation is the first book to squarely and rigorously investigate digital knowledge: what it is, how to make sense of it in connection with received theories of knowledge, and where it is going. Key questions J Adam Carter examines along the way are the following: How is mere digital information converted into reliable digital knowledge? To what extent can digital knowledge be vindicated against sceptical challenges, and in what ways might digital knowledge stand distinctively subject to defeat? What is the epistemically optimal way for us to decide which tasks to outsource entirely to intelligent machines, and to what extent is further outsourcing appropriate (or not) to verify the results of that same outsourced cognition? Are there any ways in which the expansion of the datasphere threatens to make knowledge more, rather than easy, to come by? If so, are there any promising ways to safeguard, epistemically, against such threats? Using fascinating examples throughout, such as the recent chess match between Stockfish and Google’s AlphaZero, smartphones and personalisation, Digital Knowledge: A Philosophical Investigation is an ideal for researchers investigating this fascinating area of research at the intersection of traditional mainstream epistemology, the philosophy of cognitive science, the philosophy of technology, and computer science.

This essay investigates an underappreciated way in which trust and testimonial injustice are closely connected. Credibility deficit and credibility excess cases both (in their own distinctive ways) contribute to a speaker’s being harmed in her capacity a knower. But moreover, as we will show—by using the tools of a performance-theoretic framework—both credibility deficit and credibility excess cases also feature incompetent trusting on the part of the hearer. That is, credibility deficit and excess cases are shown to manifest qualities of thinkers that are inconducive to trust’s being reliably fulfilled. What this implies is an interesting result about testimonial injustice: to the extent that we want to mitigate against testimonial injustice—one promising way to do so will be to target incompetent trusting of the sort that underlies it. We conclude by outlining and defending what we take to be a promising substantive version of such a mitigation strategy, one which is centred around the cultivation of higher-order trusting competences.

Virtue epistemology is among the dominant influences in mainstream epistemology today. An important commitment of one strand of virtue epistemology – responsibilist virtue epistemology – is that it must provide regulative normative guidance for good thinking. Recently, a number of virtue epistemologists have held that virtue epistemology not only can provide regulative normative guidance, but moreover that we should reconceive the primary epistemic aim of all education as the inculcation of the intellectual virtues. Baehr’s picture contrasts with another well-known position – that the primary aim of education is the promotion of critical thinking. In this paper – that we hold makes a contribution to both philosophy of education and epistemology and, a fortiori, epistemology of education – we challenge this picture. We outline three criteria that any putative aim of education must meet and hold that it is the aim of critical thinking, rather than the aim of instilling intellectual virtue, that best meets these criteria. On this basis, we propose a new challenge for intellectual virtue epistemology, next to the well-known empirically-driven ‘situationist challenge’. What we call the ‘pedagogical challenge’ maintains that the intellectual virtues approach does not have available a suitably effective pedagogy to qualify the acquisition of intellectual virtue as the primary aim of education. This is because the pedagogic model of the intellectual virtues approach is not properly action-guiding. Instead, we hold that, without much further development in virtue-based theory, logic and critical thinking must still play the primary role in the epistemology of education.