Matthias Steup

This paper makes three points: First, empiricism as a stance is problematic unless criteria for evaluating the stance are provided. Second, Van Fraassen conceives of the empiricist stance as receiving its content, at least in part, from the rejection of metaphysics. But the rejection of metaphysics seems to presuppose for its justification the very empiricist doctrine Van Fraassen intends to replace with the empiricist stance. Third, while I agree with Van Fraassen’s endorsement of voluntarism, I raise doubts about the possibility of defending voluntarism without engaging in the kind of metaphysics Van Fraassen rejects.

Defeaters can prevent a perceptual belief from being justified. For example, when you know that red light is shining at the table before you, you would typically not be justified in believing that the table is red. However, can defeaters also destroy a perceptual experience as a source of justification? If the answer is ‘no’, the red light defeater blocks doxastic justification without destroying propositional justification. You have some-things-considered, but not all-things-considered, justification for believing that the table is red. If the answer is ‘yes’, the red light defeater blocks doxastic justification by destroying propositional justification. You have neither all-things-considered nor some-things-considered justification for believing that the table is red. According to dogmatism, the justificational force of perceptual experiences is indestructible. According to conservatism about sense experience, a perceptual experience ceases to have justificational force if there is evidence against its reliability. Finally, according to meta-evidentialism, a perceptual experience is blocked from being a source of justification is there is no evidence of its reliability. I argue that, of these three theories, meta-evidentialism is the most plausible.

I propose a version of foundationaUsm with the following distinctive features. First, it includes in the class of basic beliefs ordinary beliefs about physical objects. This makes it unrestricted. Second, it assigns the role of ultimate justifiers to A-states: states of being appeared to in various ways. Such states have propositional content, and are justifiers if they are presumptively reliable. The beliefs A-states justify are basic if they are non-inferential. In the last three sections of the paper, I defend this version of foundationalism against Sellars's famous anti-foundationalist dilemma, according to which sense-experiential states can't be justifiers ifthey lack propositional content, and can't terminate the justificatory regress if they have propositional content. I argue that the latter of these two claims is false. A-states can play the role of justifiers because they have propositional content, and they can terminate the justificatory regress because they themselves are capable of neither being true or false, nor being justified or unjustified.

When I take a sip from the coffee in my cup, I can taste that it is sweet. When I hold the cup with my hands, I can feel that it is hot. Why does the experience of feeling that the cup is hot give me justification for believing that the cup is hot?And why does the experience of tasting that the coffee is sweet give me justification for believing that the coffee is sweet?In general terms: Why is it that a sense experience that P is a source of justification—a reason—for believing that P? Call this the Question. I will discuss various answers to the Question, and defend the one I myself favor.

Defined narrowly, epistemology is the study of knowledge and justified belief. As the study of knowledge, epistemology is concerned with the following questions: What are the necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge? What are its sources? What is its structure, and what are its limits? As the study of justified belief, epistemology aims to answer questions such as: How we are to understand the concept of justification? What makes justified beliefs justified? Is justification internal or external to one's own mind? Understood more broadly, epistemology is about issues having to do with the creation and dissemination of knowledge in particular areas of inquiry. This article will provide a systematic overview of the problems that the questions above raise and focus in some depth on issues relating to the structure and the limits of knowledge and justification

In this paper, I examine Alston's arguments for doxastic involuntarism. Alston fails to distinguish (i) between volitional and executional lack of control, and (ii) between compatibilist and libertarian control. As a result, he fails to notice that, if one endorses a compatibilist notion of voluntary control, the outcome is a straightforward and compelling case for doxastic voluntarism. Advocates of involuntarism have recently argued that the compatibilist case for doxastic voluntarism can be blocked by pointing out that belief is never intentional. In response to this strategy, I distinguish between two types of intentionality and argue that belief is no less intentional than action is

I distinguish between Old Contextualism, New Contextualism, and the Multiple Concepts Theory. I argue that Old Contextualism cannot handle the following three problems: (i) the disquotational paradox, (ii) upward pressure resistance, (iii) inability to avoid the acceptance of skeptical conclusions. New Contextualism, in contrast, can avoid these problems. However, since New Contextualism appears to be a semanticized mirror image of MCT, it remains unclear whether it is in fact a genuine version of contextualism.

In this book, which is as much about postmodern continental philosophy as about analytic epistemology, Alcoff argues that epistemology is in need of a reorientation away from foundationalism and metaphysical realism toward coherentism and what Alcoff calls “immanent” realism. Alcoff begins, in the book’s introduction, by making an initial case for coherentism and against dismissing epistemology altogether. She considers it a valuable postmodernist insight that philosophical theorizing reflects social, gender, and ethnic hierarchies, and thus is driven by unacknowledged elements such as desire and power. Alcoff suggests, however, that it would be a mistake for philosophers to be content with simply exposing the hidden role such forces play. Epistemology as a philosophical discipline answers to important questions and concerns. But, Alcoff urges, it must transform itself if it is to preserve the postmodernist lessons. Such a transformation, if accomplished, would end the autonomy of epistemology, for it would tear down the traditional boundaries between the philosophical and the political, the normative and the sociological.

A foundationalist account of the justification of our empirical beliefs is committed to the following two claims: (1) Sense experience is a source of justification. (2) Some empirical beliefs are basic: justified without receiving their justification from any other beliefs. In this paper, I will defend each of these claims against an objection. The objection to (1) that I will discuss is due to Donald Davidson. He writes: The relation between a sensation and a belief cannot be logical, since sensations are not beliefs or other propositional attitudes. What then is the relation? The answer is, I think, obvious: the relation is causal. Sensations cause some beliefs and in this sense are the basis or ground of those beliefs. But a causal explanation of a belief does not show how or why the belief is justified. [1] There are two important thoughts in this passage. The first of these is explicitly expressed, the second implied: (3) Sense-experiential states are devoid of propositional content. (4) Necessarily, if a mental state can play the role of a justifier, it has propositional content. (3) and (4) entail that a sense-experiential state cannot play the role of a justifier. If that is true, then (1) is false. This, in any case, seems to me to be Davidson's argument. In response to it, I accept (4) but reject (3). This is an unusual move for foundationalists, who tend to accept (3) and deny (4). Nevertheless, it is what I take to be the right move.

According to Michael Bergmann, advocates of internalism face a serious dilemma. He argues that, depending on how the key notion of awareness is construed, internalism is either strong or weak. Strong internalism generates a regress Bergmann considers vicious. Weak internalism yields a notion of justification that he thinks falls victim to one of the very objections internalists level against externalism. Since in addition to its weak or strong construal, there is no middle way, internalism seems doomed. I present and defend a version of weak internalism, which in previous work I have labelled ‘internalist reliabilism’. I argue internalist reliabilism is immune to Bergmann’s objection.

Two claims are essential to foundationalist theories of knowledge. First, that there are directly evident propositions; secondly, that, in justifying a particular knowledge claim, one ultimately arrives at a directly evident proposition making another proposition evident. In this dissertation, both claims are being defended. ;In defense of the first claim, a week definition of a proposition's being directly evident is suggested. Any attack against foundationalism rejecting the first claim must show that there are no contingent directly evident propositions in the sense of this definition. According to the thesis of privileged access, what a man believes about his mental states is directly evident, or, according to different versions of this thesis, self-presenting, infallible, self-evident, indubitable, or incorrigible. Rejecting a number of objections to it, the thesis of privileged access in all of its versions is being defended. In defense of the second claim, an account of prima facie evidence is set forth, incorporating definitions of the concepts "e tends to make h evident," "i defeats the evidence e provides for h," and "e makes h prima facie evident for S." It is claimed that, if a proposition p is made prima facie evident for a person S, then there is no ground on which it is reasonable for S to doubt that p is true. ;Furthermore, two epistemic principles are being offered. The first lays down the conditions under which evidence is generated, asserting that evidence is generated in virtue of a person's being in a psychological state. The second lays down the conditions under which evidence is transmitted from a directly to an indirectly evident proposition, asserting that evidence is transmitted from a directly to an indirectly evident proposition if the former bears to the latter the relation of "e making h prima facie evident."