•  2752
    Epistemology of disagreement: The good news
    Philosophical Review 116 (2): 187-217. 2007.
    How should one react when one has a belief, but knows that other people—who have roughly the same evidence as one has, and seem roughly as likely to react to it correctly—disagree? This paper argues that the disagreement of other competent inquirers often requires one to be much less confident in one’s opinions than one would otherwise be.
  •  2107
    Disagreement as evidence: The epistemology of controversy
    Philosophy Compass 4 (5): 756-767. 2009.
    How much should your confidence in your beliefs be shaken when you learn that others – perhaps 'epistemic peers' who seem as well-qualified as you are – hold beliefs contrary to yours? This article describes motivations that push different philosophers towards opposite answers to this question. It identifies a key theoretical principle that divides current writers on the epistemology of disagreement. It then examines arguments bearing on that principle, and on the wider issue. It ends by describ…Read more
  •  2101
    The Epistemology of Disagreement: New Essays (edited book)
    Oxford University Press. 2013.
    This is a collective study of the epistemic significance of disagreement: twelve contributors explore rival responses to the problems that it raises for philosophy. They develop our understanding of epistemic phenomena that are central to any thoughtful engagement with others' beliefs.
  •  1727
    Higher Order Evidence
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 81 (1): 185-215. 2010.
    Sometimes we get evidence of our own epistemic malfunction. This can come from finding out we’re fatigued, or have been drugged, or that other competent and well-informed thinkers disagree with our beliefs. This sort of evidence seems to seems to behave differently from ordinary evidence about the world. In particular, getting such evidence can put agents in a position where the most rational response involves violating some epistemic ideal
  •  1351
    Epistemic Modesty Defended
    In David Christensen & Jennifer Lackey (eds.), The Epistemology of Disagreement: New Essays, Oxford University Press. pp. 77. 2013.
    It has often been noticed that conciliatory views of disagreement are "self-undermining" in a certain way: advocates of such views cannot consistently maintain them when other philosophers disagree. This leads to apparent problems of instability and even inconsistency. Does self-undermining, then, show conciliationism untenable? If so, the untenablity would extend not only to almost all views of disagreement, but to a wide range of other views supporting what one might call epistemic modesty: ro…Read more
  •  979
    Disagreement, Drugs, etc.: from Accuracy to Akrasia
    Episteme 13 (4): 397-422. 2016.
    We often get evidence concerning the reliability of our own thinking about some particular matter. This “higher-order evidence” can come from the disagreement of others, or from information about our being subject to the effects of drugs, fatigue, emotional ties, implicit biases, etc. This paper examines some pros and cons of two fairly general models for accommodating higher-order evidence. The one that currently seems most promising also turns out to have the consequence that epistemic akrasia…Read more
  •  898
    Disagreement and Public Controversy
    In Jennifer Lackey (ed.), Essays in Collective Epistemology, Oxford University Press. 2014.
    One of Mill’s main arguments for free speech springs from taking disagreement as an epistemically valuable resource for fallible thinkers. Contemporary conciliationist treatments of disagreement spring from the same motivation, but end up seeing the epistemic implications of disagreement quite differently. Conciliationism also encounters complexities when transposed from the 2-person toy examples featured in the literature to the public disagreements among groups that give the issue much of its …Read more
  •  848
    Responding rationally to the information that others disagree with one’s beliefs requires assessing the epistemic credentials of the opposing beliefs. Conciliatory accounts of disagreement flow in part from holding that these assessments must be independent from one’s own initial reasoning on the disputed matter. I argue that this claim, properly understood, does not have the untoward consequences some have worried about. Moreover, some of the difficulties it does engender must be faced by many …Read more
  •  822
    The Ineliminability of Epistemic Rationality
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 103 (3): 501-517. 2020.
    Many writers have recently urged that the epistemic rationality of beliefs can depend on broadly pragmatic (as opposed to truth-directed) factors. Taken to an extreme, this line of thought leads to a view on which there is no such thing as a distinctive epistemic form of rationality. A series of papers by Susanna Rinard develops the view that something like our traditional notion of pragmatic rationality is all that is needed to account for the rationality of beliefs. This approach has undeniabl…Read more
  •  765
    Diachronic coherence versus epistemic impartiality
    Philosophical Review 109 (3): 349-371. 2000.
    It is obvious that we would not want to demand that an agent' s beliefs at different times exhibit the same sort of consistency that we demand from an agent' s simultaneous beliefs; there' s nothing irrational about believing P at one time and not-P at another. Nevertheless, many have thought that some sort of coherence or stability of beliefs over time is an important component of epistemic rationality.
  •  740
    Conciliation, Uniqueness, and Rational Toxicity
    Noûs 50 (3): 584-603. 2014.
    Conciliationism holds that disagreement of apparent epistemic peers often substantially undermines rational confidence in our opinions. Uniqueness principles say that there is at most one maximally rational doxastic response to any given batch of total evidence. The two views are often thought to be tightly connected. This paper distinguishes two ways of motivating conciliationism, and two ways that conciliationism may be undermined by permissive accounts of rationality. It shows how conciliatio…Read more
  •  716
    Akratic (epistemic) modesty
    Philosophical Studies 178 (7): 2191-2214. 2020.
    Abstract: Theories of epistemic rationality that take disagreement (or other higher-order evidence) seriously tend to be “modest” in a certain sense: they say that there are circumstances in which it is rational to doubt their correctness. Modest views have been criticized on the grounds that they undermine themselves—they’re self-defeating. The standard Self-Defeat Objections depend on principles forbidding epistemically akratic beliefs; but there are good reasons to doubt these principles—even…Read more
  •  655
    Does murphy’s law apply in epistemology?
    Oxford Studies in Epistemology 2 3-31. 2007.
    Formally-inclined epistemologists often theorize about ideally rational agents--agents who exemplify rational ideals, such as probabilistic coherence, that human beings could never fully realize. This approach can be defended against the well-know worry that abstracting from human cognitive imperfections deprives the approach of interest. But a different worry arises when we ask what an ideal agent should believe about her own cognitive perfection (even an agent who is in fact cognitively perfec…Read more
  •  631
    Epistemic Akrasia: No Apology Required
    Noûs 1 (online first): 1-22. 2022.
    It is natural to think that rationality imposes some relationship between what a person believes, and what she believes about what she’s rational to believe. Epistemic akrasia—for example, believing P while believing that P is not rational to believe in your situation—is often seen as intrinsically irrational. This paper argues otherwise. In certain cases, akrasia is intuitively rational. Understanding why akratic beliefs in those case are indeed rational provides a deeper explanation how typica…Read more
  •  583
    Introduction: The Epistemology of Disagreement
    Episteme 6 (3): 231-232. 2009.
    One of the most salient features of forming beliefs in a social context is that people end up disagreeing with one another. This is not just an obvious fact about belief-formation; it raises interesting normative questions, especially when people become aware of the opinions of others. How should my beliefs be affected by the knowledge that others hold contrary beliefs? In some cases, the answer seems easy. If I have reason to think that my friend is much better informed than I am, her dissent w…Read more
  •  576
    Skeptical problems, semantical solutions
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 53 (2): 301-321. 1993.
    This paper defends the legitimacy of semantical responses to certain skeptical challenges, with a particular focus on Putnam’s treatment of a particular version of Brain-in-Vat skepticism. It argues that while Putnam’s argument does not provide a general reply to Brain-in-Vat skepticism, the general approach it exemplifies is actually crucial in replying to other skeptical challenges that are otherwise hard to rebut.
  •  576
    Rational Reflection
    Philosophical Perspectives 24 (1): 121-140. 2010.
    This paper explores an initially attractive principle connecting beliefs in general with beliefs about what beliefs are rational. The principle turns out to be violated by intuitively rational beliefs in some situations. The paper lays out some options for reacting to this fact.
  •  553
    Confirmational holism and bayesian epistemology
    Philosophy of Science 59 (4): 540-557. 1992.
    Much contemporary epistemology is informed by a kind of confirmational holism, and a consequent rejection of the assumption that all confirmation rests on experiential certainties. Another prominent theme is that belief comes in degrees, and that rationality requires apportioning one's degrees of belief reasonably. Bayesian confirmation models based on Jeffrey Conditionalization attempt to bring together these two appealing strands. I argue, however, that these models cannot account for a certai…Read more
  •  522
    Formulating Independence
    In Mattias Skipper & Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen (eds.), Higher-Order Evidence: New Essays, Oxford University Press. pp. 13-34. 2019.
    We often get evidence that bears on the reliability of some of our own first-order reasoning. The rational response to such “higher-order” evidence would seem to depend on a rational assessment of how reliable we can expect that reasoning to be, in light of the higher-order evidence. “Independence” principles are intended to constrain this reliability-assessment, so as to prevent question-begging reliance on the very reasoning being assessed. However, extant formulations of Independence principl…Read more
  •  480
    Epistemic Self-respect
    Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 107 (1pt3): 319-337. 2007.
    Certain situations seem to call for acknowledging the possibility that one’s own beliefs are biased or distorted. On the other hand, certain sorts of epistemic self-doubts (such as ‘I believe it’s raining, but it’s not’) seem paradoxical. And some have put forth epistemic principles requiring rational agents to regard their own credences as so-called ‘expert functions’. This paper examines the question of whether rationality requires agents to respect their own credences in a way in which they n…Read more
  •  452
    The most immediately appealing model for formal constraints on degrees of belief is provided by probability theory, which tells us, for instance, that the probability of P can never be greater than that of (P v Q). But while this model has much intuitive appeal, many have been concerned to provide arguments showing that ideally rational degrees of belief would conform to the calculus of probabilities. The arguments most frequently used to make this claim plausible are the so-called "Dutch Book" …Read more
  •  449
    Clever bookies and coherent beliefs
    Philosophical Review 100 (2): 229-247. 1991.
    A critical examination of the Reflection principle in Bayesian epistemology, and of the diachronic Dutch-book-style arguments that have been invoked to support Reflection and Conditionalization.
  •  442
    Conservatism in epistemology
    Noûs 28 (1): 69-89. 1994.
    A wide range of prominent epistemological theories include a principle of conservatism. Such principles take the fact that an agent currently holds a certain belief to constitute at least some measure of epistemic justification for her to maintain that belief. I examine the main arguments that have been made in conservatism's behalf, and find them unsound. Most interestingly, conservatism does not fall out of confirmational holism (the view that the justification of each of our beliefs is in …Read more
  •  432
    Measuring confirmation
    Journal of Philosophy 96 (9): 437-461. 1999.
    The old evidence problem affects any probabilistic confirmation measure based on comparing pr(H/E) and pr(H). The article argues for the following points: (1) measures based on likelihood ratios also suffer old evidence difficulties; (2) the less-discussed synchronic old evidence problem is, in an important sense, the most acute; (3) prominent attempts to solve or dissolve the synchronic problem fail; (4) a little-discussed variant of the standard measure avoids the problem, in an appealing way…Read more
  •  414
    Testimony, memory and the limits of the a priori
    Philosophical Studies 86 (1): 1-20. 1997.
    A number of philosophers, from Thomas Reid1 through C. A. J. Coady2, have argued that one is justified in relying on the testimony of others, and furthermore, that this should be taken as a basic epistemic presumption. If such a general presumption were not ultimately dependent on evidence for the reliability of other people, the ground for this presumption would be a priori. Such a presumption would then have a status like that which Roderick Chisholm claims for the epistemic principle that we …Read more
  •  396
    Preference-based arguments for probabilism
    Philosophy of Science 68 (3): 356-376. 2001.
    Both Representation Theorem Arguments and Dutch Book Arguments support taking probabilistic coherence as an epistemic norm. Both depend on connecting beliefs to preferences, which are not clearly within the epistemic domain. Moreover, these connections are standardly grounded in questionable definitional/metaphysical claims. The paper argues that these definitional/metaphysical claims are insupportable. It offers a way of reconceiving Representation Theorem arguments which avoids the untenable p…Read more
  •  395
    What is relative confirmation?
    Noûs 31 (3): 370-384. 1997.
    It is commonly acknowledged that, in order to test a theoretical hypothesis, one must, in Duhem' s phrase, rely on a "theoretical scaffolding" to connect the hypothesis with something measurable. Hypothesis-confirmation, on this view, becomes a three-place relation: evidence E will confirm hypothesis H only relative to some such scaffolding B. Thus the two leading logical approaches to qualitative confirmation--the hypothetico-deductive (H-D) account and Clark Glymour' s bootstrap account--analy…Read more
  •  356
    Causal powers and conceptual connections
    Analysis 52 (3): 163-8. 1992.
    In "A Modal Argument for Narrow Content" ("Journal of Philosophy", LXXXVIII, 1991, pp 5-26), Jerry Fodor proposes a necessary condition for the distinctness of causal powers. He uses this condition to support psychological individualism. I show that Fodor's argument relies on inconsistent interpretations of his condition on distinct causal powers. Moreover, on no consistent interpretation does Fodor's condition yield the results claimed for it
  •  327
    The irrelevance of bootstrapping
    Philosophy of Science 57 (4): 644-662. 1990.
    The main appeal of the currently popular "bootstrap" account of confirmation developed by Clark Glymour is that it seems to provide an account of evidential relevance. This account has, however, had severe problems; and Glymour has revised his original account in an attempt to solve them. I argue that this attempt fails completely, and that any similar modifications must also fail. If the problems can be solved, it will only be by radical revisions which involve jettisoning bootstrapping's basic…Read more
  •  314
    Rationality for the Self-Aware (Ernest Sosa Lecture)
    Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 95 215-236. 2021.
    This lecture illustrates some of the theoretical richness that emerges from thinking about self-aware agents. It argues that taking self-awareness into account yields a picture of rational belief that is surprising, in a number of different, but interconnected, ways. The complexities it focuses on emerge most clearly in cases that involve so-called “higher-order evidence.”