Adam Leite

Traditional epistemological reflection on our beliefs about the world attempts to proceed without presupposing or ineliminably depending upon any claims about the world. It has been argued that epistemological externalism fails to engage in the right way with the motivations for this project. I argue, however, that epistemological externalism satisfyingly undermines this project. If we accept the thesis that certain conditions other than the truth of one's belief must obtain in the world outside of one's mind in order for one to have knowledge (or justified belief) about the world, then there is no good intellectual motivation for taking up the traditional project. This results stands even if we accept the traditional theses that knowledge requires justified belief and that justified belief requires the ability to provide good reasons for one's belief.

According to a common view, the activity of justifying is epistemologically irrelevant: being justified in believing as one does never requires the ability to justify one’s belief. This view runs into trouble regarding the epistemic basing relation, the relation between a person’s belief and the reasons for which the person holds it. The view must appeal to basing relations as part of its account of what it is for a person to be justified in believing as she does, but the view prevents basing relations from doing the needed work. In place of the common view, I propose an account of basing relations which links them to the person’s commitments and hence to her justificatory activity. If this proposal is correct, then positive justificatory status, too, will be conceptually linked to the ability to succeed in the activity of justifying.

“Moorean Dogmatist” responses to external world skepticism endorse courses of reasoning that many people find objectionable. This paper seeks to locate this dissatisfaction in considerations about epistemic responsibility. I sketch a theory of immediate warrant and show how it can be combined with plausible “inferential internalist” demands arising from considerations of epistemic responsibility. The resulting view endorses immediate perceptual warrant but forbids the sort of reasoning that “Moorean Dogmatism” would allow. A surprising result is that Dogmatism’s commitment to immediate epistemic warrant isn’t enough to avoid certain standard arguments for skepticism about the external world.

Is it coherent to suppose that in order to hold a belief responsibly, one must recognize something else as a reason for it? This paper addresses this question by focusing on so-called "Inferential Internalist" principles, that is principles of the following form: in order for one to have positive epistemic status Ø in virtue of believing P on the basis of R, one must believe that R evidentially supports P, and one must have positive epistemic status Ø in relation to that latter belief as well. While such principles and their close relatives figure centrally in a wide variety of recent epistemological discussions, there is confusion in the literature about what, precisely, Inferential Internalism commits one to and whether it is so much as coherent. This paper articulates a broader framework for understanding the notion of epistemic responsibility, motivates Inferential Internalism on the basis of considerations about the basing relation, epistemic responsibility, and parallels with practical deliberation, defends Inferential Internalism against charges of incoherence leveled by James Van Cleve and Paul Boghossian, and shows that contrary to a currently widespread view, Inferential Internalism is coherent even if foundationalism and the a priori are rejected. The paper closes with a preliminary argument for an affirmative answer to the initiating question about the requirements of epistemic responsibility.

DeRose appeals to ordinary English usage to support his contextualist semantics for "know"-attributions. A common objection holds that though the relevant assertions are both appropriate and seemingly true, their seeming truth arises merely from their appropriateness. This Warranted Assertability Maneuver (WAM) aims to provide a stand-alone objection by providing a reason not to take the ordinary language data at face-value. However, there is no plausible model or mechanism for the pragmatic phenomena WAMmers must postulate. Given what the WAM requires, it is doubtful it could work out in detail.

I take as my starting point the evident fact that people are capable of modifying their beliefs in response to reasons in the course of deliberation. This fact is sufficient to make notions such as responsibility, blameworthiness, and praiseworthiness applicable to people with regard to their beliefs. If a state is such, and one is such, that one is capable of determining it through one’s best evaluations of reasons in the course of deliberation, then even if it isn’t under one’s voluntary control, it is attributable to one as something for which one is appropriately held accountable. There is thus conceptual space for the possibility of one’s conducting oneself poorly or well with regard to it, and accordingly for the application of praise or criticism. And there is room for an evaluation of whether one has conducted oneself responsibly or irresponsibly – that is, whether one has proceeded in a way that takes proper account of the considerations which one reasonably could have been expected to take account of, or not.

This paper responds to Stephen Hetherington's discussion of my ‘Is Fallibility an Epistemological Shortcoming?’ (2004). The Infallibilist skeptic holds that in order to know something, one must be able to rule out every possible alternative to the truth of one’s belief. This requirement is false. In this paper I first clarify this requirement’s relation to our ordinary practice. I then turn to a more fundamental issue. The Infallibilist holds – along with many non-skeptical epistemologists – that Infallibility is epistemically superior to the epistemic position attained when we have (what we ordinarily call) knowledge. This is false, too, as our ordinary practices show. Ordinary epistemic appraisal does not concern our standing on a scale of evaluation which has Infallibility at its apex. For this reason, even if gradualism is correct, it does not show how Infallibilist skepticism can arise out of our ordinary practice.

In Knowledge and Its Limits, Timothy Williamson argues that knowledge is a purely mental state, that is, that it is never a complex state or condition comprising mental factors and non-mental, environmental factors. Three of his arguments are evaluated: arguments from (1) the non-analyzability of the concept of knowledge, (2) the “primeness” of knowledge, and (3) the (alleged) inability to satisfactorily specify the “internal” element involved in knowledge. None of these arguments succeeds. Moreover, consideration of the third argument points the way to a cogent argument that knowledge is not a purely mental state.