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4Replies to criticsAsian Journal of Philosophy 3 (1). 2024.In these replies, I react to comments on my paper “Facts about Incoherence as Non-Evidential Epistemic Reasons”, provided by Aleks Knoks, Sebastian Schmidt, Keshav Singh, and Conor McHugh. I discuss potential counterexamples to my claim that the fact that the subject’s doxastic attitudes are incoherent is an epistemic reason for her to suspend; whether such incoherence-based reasons bear on individual attitudes or only on combinations of attitudes; the prospects of restricting evidentialism abou…Read more
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68Bare statistical evidence and the legitimacy of software-based judicial decisionsSynthese 201 (4): 1-27. 2023.Can the evidence provided by software systems meet the standard of proof for civil or criminal cases, and is it individualized evidence? Or, to the contrary, do software systems exclusively provide bare statistical evidence? In this paper, we argue that there are cases in which evidence in the form of probabilities computed by software systems is not bare statistical evidence, and is thus able to meet the standard of proof. First, based on the case of State v. Loomis, we investigate recidivism p…Read more
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16Religious Belief, Occurrent Thought, and Reasonable Disagreement: A Response to Tim CraneNeue Zeitschrift für Systematicsche Theologie Und Religionsphilosophie 65 (4): 438-446. 2023.This comment raises two worries for Crane’s view of religious beliefs and their contents. First, I argue that his appeal to inferentialism about the contents of dispositional beliefs cannot fully avoid the problem of inconsistent beliefs. For the same problem can be raised for occurrent thought, and the inferentialist solution is not available there. Second, I argue that religious beliefs differ from ordinary beliefs with respect to their justification in cases of peer disagreements. This sugges…Read more
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26Introduction - Wittgenstein and BeyondIn Christoph C. Pfisterer & Nicole Rathgeb (eds.), Wittgenstein and Beyond: Essays in Honour of Hans-Johann Glock, Routledge. pp. 1-12. 2022.The introduction charts Hans-Johann Glock’s academic career, introduces some of his core philosophical views, and provides an overview of the chapters included in the festschrift.
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43Reasons, attenuators, and virtue: A novel account of pragmatic encroachmentAnalytic Philosophy 1-22. forthcoming.In this paper, I explicate pragmatic encroachment by appealing to pragmatic considerations attenuating, or weakening, epistemic reasons to believe. I call this the ‘Attenuators View’. I will show that this proposal is better than spelling out pragmatic encroachment in terms of reasons against believing – what I call the ‘Reasons View’. While both views do equally well when it comes to providing a plausible mechanism of how pragmatic encroachment works, the Attenuators View does a better job dist…Read more
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58Facts about incoherence as non-evidential epistemic reasonsAsian Journal of Philosophy 2 (1): 1-22. 2023.This paper presents a counterexample to the principle that all epistemic reasons for doxastic attitudes towards p are provided by evidence concerning p. I begin by motivating and clarifying the principle and the associated picture of epistemic reasons, including the notion of evidence concerning a proposition, which comprises both first- and second-order evidence. I then introduce the counterexample from incoherent doxastic attitudes by presenting three example cases. In each case, the fact that…Read more
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56Wittgenstein and Beyond: Essays in Honour of Hans-Johann Glock (edited book)Routledge. 2022.This volume celebrates the work of Hans-Johann Glock, a philosopher renowned for both his exegesis of Wittgenstein and his many contributions to debates in contemporary philosophy. It brings together 16 new essays by up-and-coming and distinguished philosophers engaging with Glock’s work, and it concludes with a "Reflections and Replies" chapter in which Glock responds to his interlocutors. Glock’s distinctive philosophical voice features a rare combination of a Wittgenstein-inspired approach wi…Read more
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24Bayesianische Erkenntnistheorie für Normalos: Unsettled Thoughts: A Theory of Degrees of Rationality (review)Deutsche Zeitschrift für Philosophie 70 (2): 350-356. 2022.
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33Religiöse Erfahrung: Inhalt, epistemische Signifikanz und ExpertiseIn Martin Breul & Klaus Viertbauer (eds.), Der Glaube und seine Gründe: Beiträge zur Religiösen Epistemologie. pp. 11-30. 2022.This article investigates whether religious experience can be conceived in such a way that the perceiver's religious expertise (via cognitive penetration or perceptual learning) contributes to the justificatory power of the experience. It also considers what kind of content religious experience would have to have to be able to justify standard types of religious beliefs. It argues that, against first impressions, religious expertise cannot supplement perceptual justification. At the same time, t…Read more
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99Teleology first: Goals before knowledge and beliefBehavioral and Brain Sciences 44. 2021.Comparing knowledge with belief can go wrong in two dimensions: If the authors employ a wider notion of knowledge, then they do not compare like with like because they assume a narrow notion of belief. If they employ only a narrow notion of knowledge, then their claim is not supported by the evidence. Finally, we sketch a superior teleological view.
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138From Responsibility to Reason-Giving Explainable Artificial IntelligencePhilosophy and Technology 35 (1): 1-30. 2022.We argue that explainable artificial intelligence (XAI), specifically reason-giving XAI, often constitutes the most suitable way of ensuring that someone can properly be held responsible for decisions that are based on the outputs of artificial intelligent (AI) systems. We first show that, to close moral responsibility gaps (Matthias 2004), often a human in the loop is needed who is directly responsible for particular AI-supported decisions. Second, we appeal to the epistemic condition on moral …Read more
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17Kiesewetter, Benjamin: The Normativity of Rationality. Oxford: Oxford University Press 2017. 314 Seiten. [978-0-19-875428-2]. (review)Zeitschrift für Philosophische Literatur 7 (2): 53-59. 2019.
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1195What do we want from Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI)? – A stakeholder perspective on XAI and a conceptual model guiding interdisciplinary XAI researchArtificial Intelligence 296 (C): 103473. 2021.Previous research in Explainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) suggests that a main aim of explainability approaches is to satisfy specific interests, goals, expectations, needs, and demands regarding artificial systems (we call these “stakeholders' desiderata”) in a variety of contexts. However, the literature on XAI is vast, spreads out across multiple largely disconnected disciplines, and it often remains unclear how explainability approaches are supposed to achieve the goal of satisfying sta…Read more
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150Pluralism About Practical Reasons and Reason ExplanationsPhilosophical Explorations (2): 1-18. 2021.This paper maintains that objectivism about practical reasons should be combined with pluralism both about the nature of practical reasons and about action explanations. We argue for an ‘expanding circle of practical reasons’, starting out from an open-minded monist objectivism. On this view, practical reasons are not limited to actual facts, but consist in states of affairs, possible facts that may or may not obtain. Going beyond such ‘that-ish’ reasons, we argue that goals are also bona fide p…Read more
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237How to Make Norms ClashAustralasian Philosophical Review 5 (1): 46-55. 2021.In this comment on Katherine Dormandy's paper «True Faith», I point out that the clash she describes between epistemic norms and faith-based norms of belief needs to be supplemented with a clear understanding of the pertinent norms of belief. I argue that conceiving of them as evaluative fails to explain the clash, and that understanding them as prescriptive is no better. I suggest an understanding of these norms along the lines of Ross’s (1930) prima facie duties, and show how this picture can …Read more
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524The Explanatory Merits of Reasons-First EpistemologyIn Christoph Demmerling & Dirk Schroder (eds.), Concepts in Thought, Action, and Emotion: New Essays, Routledge. pp. 75-91. 2020.I present an explanatory argument for the reasons-first view: It is superior to knowledge-first views in particular in that it can both explain the specific epistemic role of perception and account for the shape and extent of epistemic justification.
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489Where Reasons and Reasoning Come ApartNoûs 55 (4): 762-781. 2021.Proponents of the reasoning view analyze normative reasons as premises of good reasoning and explain the normativity of reasons by appeal to their role as premises of good reasoning. The aim of this paper is to cast doubt on the reasoning view by providing counterexamples to the proposed analysis of reasons, counterexamples in which premises of good reasoning towards φ‐ing are not reasons to φ.
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7Die Eigenart religiöser ErfahrungIn Klaus Viertbauer & Georg Gasser (eds.), Handbuch Analytische Religionsphilosophie. Akteure – Diskurse – Perspektiven, Metzler. pp. 173-184. 2019.Über Zeiten und Kulturen hinweg finden sich Berichte von religiösen Erfahrungen wie der von Ruge geschilderten. Menschen meinen etwas Göttlichem, Heiligem, Übernatürlichem begegnet zu sein oder dieses erlebt zu haben. Es gibt eine große Bandbreite solcher religiöser Erfahrungen, über die dieser Beitrag einen ersten Überblick geben soll. Das zweite Thema des Beitrags betrifft die epistemische Relevanz religiöser Erfahrungen: Diese können vielleicht dazu genutzt werden, religiösen Glauben zu begrü…Read more
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Quellen des WissensIn Martin Grajner & Guido Melchior (eds.), Handbuch Erkenntnistheorie, Metzler. pp. 122-128. 2019.
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40Objectivism and Causalism About Reasons for ActionIn Gunnar Schumann (ed.), Explanation in Action Theory and Historiography: Causal and Teleological Approaches, Routledge. pp. 124-145. 2019.This chapter explores whether a version of causalism about reasons for action can be saved by giving up Davidsonian psychologism and endorsing objectivism, so that the reasons for which we act are the normative reasons that cause our corresponding actions. We address two problems for ‘objecto-causalism’, actions for merely apparent normative reasons and actions performed in response to future normative reasons—in neither of these cases can the reason for which the agent acts cause her action. To…Read more
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16Normative Reasons for MentalismIn Christos Kyriacou & Robin McKenna (eds.), Metaepistemology: Realism & Antirealism, Palgrave Macmillan. pp. 97-120. 2018.The aim of this paper is to connect the traditional epistemological issue of justification with what one might call the “new reasons paradigm” coming from the philosophy of action and metaethics. More specifically, I will show that Conee and Feldman’s mentalism, a version of internalism about justification, can profitably be spelled out in terms of subjective normative reasons. On the way to achieving this aim, I will argue that it is important to ask not just the oft-discussed ontological quest…Read more
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23Responses to McGraw and FrenchIn Robert French & John R. Smythies (eds.), Direct versus Indirect Realism: A Neurophilosophical Debate on Consciousness, Elsevier. pp. 255-258. 2018.
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23Comments on French, “A Defence of Representational Realism”In Robert French & John R. Smythies (eds.), Direct versus Indirect Realism: A Neurophilosophical Debate on Consciousness, Elsevier. pp. 181-185. 2018.
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28Comment on John Smythies, “The Metaphysical Foundations of Contemporary Neuroscience: A House Built on Sand”In Robert French & John R. Smythies (eds.), Direct versus Indirect Realism: A Neurophilosophical Debate on Consciousness, Elsevier. pp. 181-190. 2018.
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22Comments on David McGraw, "against the combination of materialism and direct realism"In Robert French & John R. Smythies (eds.), Direct versus Indirect Realism: A Neurophilosophical Debate on Consciousness, Elsevier. pp. 190-192. 2018.
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37Correction to: Possessing epistemic reasons: the role of rational capacitiesPhilosophical Studies 176 (2): 503-503. 2019.In the original publication of the article, the last sentence in footnote 16 was incorrectly published as “Thanks to—for raising this issue.” The corrected sentence should read as “Thanks to Daniel Star for raising this issue.”
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79A dilemma for epistemological disjunctivismIn Robert French & John R. Smythies (eds.), Direct versus Indirect Realism: A Neurophilosophical Debate on Consciousness, Elsevier. pp. 141-162. 2018.I argue that epistemological disjunctivism, as defended by Pritchard (2012) or McDowell (1982/2009), faces a dilemma. To avoid collapsing into the “highest common factor view” (McDowell 1982/2009, 80), it has to combined with a metaphysical brand of disjunctivism. This is so because the epistemological disjunctivist’s contention, that veridical perception provides the perceiver with reflectively accessible epistemic reasons that are superior to those provided by hallucination, is tenable only if…Read more
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484Possessing epistemic reasons: the role of rational capacitiesPhilosophical Studies 176 (2): 483-501. 2019.In this paper, I defend a reasons-first view of epistemic justification, according to which the justification of our beliefs arises entirely in virtue of the epistemic reasons we possess. I remove three obstacles for this view, which result from its presupposition that epistemic reasons have to be possessed by the subject: the problem that reasons-first accounts of justification are necessarily circular; the problem that they cannot give special epistemic significance to perceptual experience; t…Read more
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100New Trouble for “Reasons as Evidence”: Means That Don’t Justify the EndsEthics 127 (3): 708-718. 2017.In this article, I argue against Kearns and Star’s reasons-as-evidence view, which identifies normative reasons to ɸ with evidence that one ought to ɸ. I provide a new counterexample to their view, the student case, which involves an inference to the best explanation from means to end or, more generally, from a derivative to a more foundational “ought” proposition. It shows that evidence that one ought to act a certain way is not in all cases a reason so to act. I present a diagnosis of the prob…Read more
Eva Schmidt
TU Dortmund
Universität des Saarlandes
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TU DortmundDepartment of Philosophy and Political ScienceProfessor
Areas of Specialization
2 more
Epistemic Normativity |
Perception |
Practical Reason |
Ethics of Artificial Intelligence |
Moral Reasoning and Motivation |
Epistemological Sources |
Intentionality |