Chris Tucker

Moral philosophers generally affirm that there are moral options: a single person sometimes has multiple morally permissible actions at a time. But epistemologists generally deny that there are epistemic options: a single person never has multiple epistemically permissible doxastic attitudes at a time. This asymmetry is striking. Furthermore, there are intuitive cases of epistemic options. However, it’s not clear how these cases differ from cases where withholding is required, such as a coin flip case. We call this the Permissivism Puzzle. In this paper, we offer a solution to the Permissivism Puzzle and defend the possibility of epistemic options by appealing to epistemic parity, which is something like imprecise equality. Not only does epistemic parity help solve the puzzle, but it also helps the permissivist respond to notable objections from, e.g., arbitrariness and accuracy.

Supererogatory acts are, in some sense, morally better their non-supererogatory alternatives. In this sense, what is it for one option A to be better than an alternative B? This chapter argues for three main conclusions. First, relative rankings are a type of all-in action guidance. If A is better than B, then morality recommends that you A rather than B. Such all-in guidance is useful when acts have the same deontic status. Second, Right > Wrong: permissible acts are always better than their impermissible alternatives. If Right > Wrong were false, then morality’s deontic verdicts would sometimes conflict with its relative rankings. Such conflict would undermine the thought that morality is a coherent, authoritative guide to action. Third, the All or Nothing Problem is not a counterexample to Right > Wrong, as is commonly thought. Instead, it involves an interesting ranking reversal: whether A > B can depend on whether a certain alternative is added as a third option.

Classical acquaintance theory is any version of classical foundationalism that appeals to acquaintance in order to account for non-inferential justification. Such theories are well suited to account for a kind of infallible non-inferential justification. Why is one justified in believing that one is in pain? An initially attractive (partial) answer is that one is acquainted with one’s pain. But since one can’t be acquainted with what isn’t there, acquaintance with one’s pain guarantees that one is in pain. What’s less clear is whether, given classical acquaintance theory, it’s possible to have non-inferential justification to believe something false. Classical acquaintance theorists try to make room for such a possibility. The chapter argues, however, that the attempts of Richard Fumerton and Ali Hasan are inadequate, at least with respect to introspective justification.

As I use the term, ‘entitlement’ is any warrant one has by default—i.e. without acquiring it. Some philosophers not only affirm the existence of entitlement, but also give it a crucial role in the justification of our perceptual beliefs. These philosophers affirm the Entitlement Thesis: that an essential part of what makes our perceptual beliefs justified is our entitlement to the proposition that I am not a brain-in-a-vat. Crispin Wright, Stewart Cohen and Roger White are among those who endorse this controversial claim. In this paper, I argue that the Entitlement Thesis is false.

It is natural to think that many of our beliefs are rational because they are based on seemings, or on the way things seem. This is especially clear in the case of perception. Many of our mathematical, moral, and memory beliefs also appear to be based on seemings. In each of these cases, it is natural to think that our beliefs are not only based on a seeming, but also that they are rationally based on these seemings—at least assuming there is no relevant counterevidence. This piece is an introduction to a volume dedicated to the question of what the connection is between seemings and justified belief: under what conditions, if any, can a seeming justify its content?

It is natural to think that many of our beliefs are rational because they are based on seemings, or on the way things seem. This is especially clear in the case of perception. Many of our mathematical, moral, and memory beliefs also appear to be based on seemings. In each of these cases, it is natural to think that our beliefs are not only based on a seeming, but also that they are rationally based on these seemings—at least assuming there is no relevant counterevidence. This piece is an introduction to a volume dedicated to the question of what the connection is between seemings and justified belief: under what conditions, if any, can a seeming justify its content?

This entry explains what the issue of weighing reasons is about and then discusses a number of theories concerning weighing reasons. The general issue concerns how reasons (or considerations or pros and cons) systematically interact to determine the normative status of some action, belief, or attitude. For example, it concerns how reasons determine whether an action is permissible, required, or what ought to be done. The general issue also concerns how reasons aggregate or themselves result from systematic interactions with the broader context. Along the way, the entry considers whether reasons can be incommensurable (e.g., be on a par); whether reasons have more than one weight value (e.g., justifying, requiring, and commending); the relation between reasons for and reasons against; conditions (enablers, disablers); modifiers (amplifiers, attenuators); exclusionary reasons; higher order evidence; what happens when, say, morality and epistemic rationality conflict; and so on.

This chapter provides an account of what dogmatism is, why the term matters, and how it applies to withholding judgment. Roughly, a person is dogmatic about P when a certain problematic personal investment—a superiority complex, broadly construed—biases their judgment concerning whether P. The term dogmatism and its cognates matter because of their social function. To accuse you of dogmatism is to signal how you are to be treated: your judgment or behavior needs to be “brought down to earth,” so that you have a more accurate view of yourself or so you stop treating others as less important or less than. Withholding judgment can be dogmatic in the same way that belief is dogmatic. Belief (withholding) is dogmatic just when the relevant problematic personal investment results in biases that keep a person stuck in that belief (withholding).

The book develops, defends, and applies a "Dual Scale" model of weighing reasons to resolve various issues in ethics. It tells you everything you ever wanted to know about weighing reasons and probably a lot of stuff you didn't want to know too. It addresses, among other things, what the general issue of weighing reasons is; what it is to weigh reasons correctly; whether reasons have more than one weight value (e.g., justifying, requiring, and/or commending weight); whether weight values are context sensitive; how to tell what the weights of reasons are; how reasons for are related to reasons against; and how the weights of reasons aggregate. After addressing such issues, it explains a number of puzzling phenomena in ethics, such as the All or Nothing Problem, the normative significance of small improvements, and the intransitivity of the makes-it-permissible-to-act-against relation.

It may seem that epistemic and practical rationality weigh reasons differently, because ties in practical rationality tend to generate permissions and ties in epistemic rationality tend to generate a requirement to withhold judgment. I argue that epistemic and practical rationality weigh reasons in the same way, but they have different "default biases". Practical rationality is biased toward every option being permissible whereas epistemic rationality is biased toward withholding judgment's being required.

Supererogatory acts are, in some sense, morally better their non-supererogatory alternatives. In this sense, what is it for one option A to be better than an alternative B? I argue for three main conclusions. First, relative rankings are a type of all-in action guidance. If A is better than B, then morality recommends that you A rather than B. Such all-in guidance is useful when acts have the same deontic status. Second, I argue that Right > Wrong: permissible acts are always better than their impermissible alternatives. If Right > Wrong were false, then morality’s deontic verdicts would sometimes conflict with its relative rankings. Such conflict would undermine the thought that morality is a coherent, authoritative guide to action. Third, the All or Nothing Problem is not a counterexample to Right > Wrong as is commonly thought. Instead, it involves an interesting ranking reversal: whether A > B can depend on whether a certain alternative is added as a third option.

We can often permissibly choose a worse self-interested option over a better altruistic alternative. For example, it is permissible to eat out rather than donate the money to feed five hungry children for a single meal. If we eat out, we do something permissibly partial toward ourselves. If we donate, we go beyond the call of moral duty and do something supererogatory. Such phenomena aren’t easy to explain, and they rule out otherwise promising moral theories. Incommensurability and Ruth Chang’s notion of parity can explain certain small improvement puzzles, but they can’t explain permissible partiality and supererogation. On the other hand, Josh Gert’s distinction between justifying and requiring weight can explain all three phenomena: permissible partiality, supererogation, and the relevant small improvement puzzle. Indeed, this chapter provides a reason to endorse the justifying/requiring weight distinction by showing that it provides the only extant explanation of all three phenomena.

The (moral) permissibility of an act is determined by the relative weights of reasons, or so I assume. But how many weights does a reason have? Weight Monism is the idea that reasons have a single weight value. There is just the weight of reasons. The simplest versions hold that the weight of each reason is either weightier than, less weighty than, or equal to every other reason. We’ll see that this simple view leads to paradox in at least two ways. We must complicate the picture somehow. I consider two candidate complications. The first, Parity Monism, is inspired by Ruth Chang’s suggestion that parity is a fourth comparative beyond the traditional three (>, <, =). This view complicates the single weight relation by allowing that the weights of reasons can be on a par. Unfortunately, Parity Monism resolves only one of the two paradoxes that afflict simple versions of Weight Monism. To resolve both paradoxes, we need our second candidate complication, Weight Pluralism. This view holds that reasons have at least two weight values (e.g., justifying weight and requiring weight) and these two values aren’t always equivalent. Parity is no substitute for Pluralism.

The standard account of supererogation holds that Liv is not morally required to jump on a grenade, thereby sacrificing her life, to save the lives of five soldiers. Many proponents defend the standard account by appealing to moral rationalism about requirement. These same proponents hold that Bernie is morally permitted to jump on a grenade, thereby sacrificing his life, to spare someone a mild burn. I argue that this position is unstable, at least as moral rationalism is ordinarily defended. The proponent of the standard account of supererogation must either reject moral rationalism or endorse that Bernie is morally required to remain in safety. Along the way, this paper brings together three neglected topics: going *too far* beyond the call of duty, moral rationalism about *permission*, and how to weigh reasons when some reasons have a different proportion of justifying and requiring weight than others.

Ethicists increasingly reject the scale as a useful metaphor for weighing reasons. Yet they generally retain the metaphor of a reason’s weight. This combination is incoherent. The metaphor of weight entails a very specific scale-based model of weighing reasons, Dual Scale. Justin Snedegar worries that scale-based models of weighing reasons can’t properly weigh reasons against an option. I show that there are, in fact, two different reasons for/against distinctions, and I provide an account of the relationship between the various kinds of reason for and against. With this account in hand, we’ll see that Dual Scale has no problem weighing any kind of reason against.

Philosophers use disagreement as a way to discover truth. It is constructive. It can lead one to refine one's own position and/or better understand the opposing position. When you are comfortable with the people you disagree with, it can be a fun way to learn. It can even build community. Yet students often see disagreement as divisive. There are winners and losers, and it's not much fun when you are losing. Rarely do students actively use it as a tool for better understanding their own positions and arguments. In this one-page handout, I provide some tips to help students have constructive and respectful disagreement. It is intended for use in the philosophy classroom, but it may have other uses. [If you use the guide in your class, it would be nice to let me know but not required. Feedback and criticism are welcome.]

The metaphor of weighing reasons brings to mind a single (double-pan balance) scale. The reasons for φ go in one pan and the reasons for ~φ go in the other. The relative weights, as indicated by the relative heights of the two pans of the scale, determine the deontic status of φ. This model is simple and intuitive, but it cannot capture what it is to weigh reasons correctly. A reason pushes the φ pan down toward permissibility (has justifying weight) only insofar as it pushes the ~φ pan up toward impermissibility (has requiring weight). Thus, Single Scale is committed to Single Proportion (first pass): all reasons have the same proportion of justifying and requiring weight. Many normative theories reject Single Proportion, and they are not thereby confused about how to weigh reasons. One can be mistaken about the weight of a reason without being confused about how reasons are to be weighed. Single Scale is problematic, not because it appeals to the image of a scale, but because it appeals to the image of a single scale. We need two scales to capture what it is to weigh reasons correctly.

This paper accomplishes three goals. First, it reveals that God’s ethics has a radical satisficing structure: God can choose a good enough suboptimal option even if there is a best option and no countervailing considerations. Second, it resolves the long-standing worry that there is no account of the good enough that is both principled and demanding enough to be good enough. Third, it vindicates the key ethical assumption in the problem of evil without relying on the contested assumption that God’s ethics is our ethics.

This chapter explores whether and when experience can be evidence. It argues that experiences can be evidence, and that this claim is compatible with just about any epistemological theory. It evaluates the most promising argument for the conclusion that certain experiences (e.g., seeming to see) are always evidence for believing what the experiences represent. While the argument is very promising, one premise needs further defense. The argument also depends on a certain connection between reasonable belief and the first person perspective.

Perceptual dogmatism is a prominent theory in epistemology concerning the relationship between perceptual experience and reasonable belief. It holds that, in the absence of counterevidence, it is reasonable to believe what your perceptual experience tells you. Thus, if you are not aware of your experience’s casual history, then it doesn’t matter. Critics object that the causal history does matter: when a perceptual experience is caused in certain ways, it is unreasonable to trust what it tells you. These objections regularly appeal to cognitive penetration and biased searches for evidence. Given the myriad accounts of what covert attention is, one wonders (at least I wondered) if biased patterns of covert attention could raise a new objection to dogmatism. I argue that, while covert selection might raise various problems for dogmatism, none of them are new. This is good news for dogmatism, because the fewer distinct problems it faces, the more likely it can resolve them all.

Just as theory of representation is deficient if it can’t explain how misrepresentation is possible, a theory of computation is deficient if it can’t explain how miscomputation is possible. Nonetheless, philosophers have generally ignored miscomputation. My primary goal in this paper is to clarify both what miscomputation is and how to adequately explain it. Miscomputation is a special kind of malfunction: a system miscomputes when it computes in a way that it shouldn’t. To explain miscomputation, you must provide accounts of computational behavior, computational norms, and how computational behavior can deviate from computational norms. A secondary goal of this paper is to defend an (quasi-)individualist, mechanistic theory of miscomputation. Computational behavior is narrowly individuated. Computational norms are widely individuated. A system miscomputes when its behavior manifests a narrow computational structure that the widely individuated norms say that it should not have.

In replying to certain objections to the existence of God, Robert Adams, Bruce Langtry, and Peter van Inwagen assume that God can appropriately choose a suboptimal world, a world less good than some other world God could have chosen. A number of philosophers, such as Michael Slote and Klaas Kraay, claim that these theistic replies are therefore committed to the claim that satisficing can be appropriate. Kraay argues that this commitment is a significant liability. I argue, however, that the relevant defenses of theism are committed to the appropriateness of, not satisficing, but motivated submaximization. When one submaximizes with motivation, one aims at the optimum but accepts the good enough because of a countervailing consideration. When one satisfices, one aims at the good enough and chooses the good enough because it realizes her aim at the good enough. While commitment to the appropriateness of satisficing may be a significant liability, commitment to the appropriateness of motivated submaximization is not.

While there are alternative accounts, many virtue theories are character based, that is, they assert that the primary loci if moral evaluation are a person's character traits. According to these theories, any individual human being is good insogar as she possesses certain character traits, the virtues, and does not possess their antipodes, the vices. Gilbert Harman has attacked this view by citing evidence in empirical psychology that human behaviour is explained by situational factors to the exclusion of stable dispositions of character. In this paper I argue that Harman's attack fails, firstly because his target is too wide, meaning that the traits tested for are not of the type most relevant to virtue theory, and secondly because he cannot dispense with character traits for explaining behaviour.

Perceptual dogmatism holds that if it perceptually seems to S that P, then S thereby has prima facie perceptual justification for P. But suppose Wishful Willy's desire for gold cognitively penetrates his perceptual experience and makes it seem to him that the yellow object is a gold nugget. Intuitively, his desire-penetrated seeming can't provide him with prima facie justification for thinking that the object is gold. If this intuitive response is correct, dogmatists have a problem. But if dogmatists have a problem, you do too (well, most of you anyway). Reliabilists have denounced dogmatism's cognitive penetration problems, but they have problems with cognitive penetration that are even worse

Open-minded people should endorse dogmatism because of its explanatory power. Dogmatism holds that, in the absence of defeaters, a seeming that P necessarily provides non-inferential justification for P. I show that dogmatism provides an intuitive explanation of four issues concerning non-inferential justification. It is particularly impressive that dogmatism can explain these issues because prominent epistemologists have argued that it can’t address at least two of them. Prominent epistemologists also object that dogmatism is absurdly permissive because it allows a seeming to provide justification even if the seeming was caused in some apparently inappropriate way. I conclude by disarming this objection.

Phenomenal conservatism holds, roughly, that if it seems to S that P, then S has evidence for P. I argue for two main conclusions. The first is that phenomenal conservatism is better suited than is proper functionalism to explain how a particular type of religious belief formation can lead to non-inferentially justified religious beliefs. The second is that phenomenal conservatism makes evidence so easy to obtain that the truth of evidentialism would not be a significant obstacle to justified religious belief. A natural objection to phenomenal conservatism is that it makes evidence too easy to obtain, but I argue this objection is mistaken.