James Simpson

According to the dogmatism puzzle, for any S and any p, if S knows that p, then she is entitled to be dogmatic about p, and so disregard any evidence against p, for she knows that (or is in a position to know that) that evidence is misleading. But this seems clearly problematically dogmatic. The standard solution to the dogmatism puzzle involves appealing to the view that acquiring new evidence (even misleading evidence) can undermine one's knowledge that p. That is why one cannot rightly disregard any future evidence against p. This solution to the dogmatism puzzle has come to be called “the defeat solution.” Maria Lasonen‐Aarnio has recently argued, however, that the defeat solution leaves unsolved a partial defeat version of the dogmatism puzzle, where some subject acquires weak misleading evidence against p, but, since it is weak, it does not rob her of knowledge that p. Lasonen‐Aarnio argues that solving this partial defeat version of the dogmatism puzzle requires those who endorse the defeasibility of knowledge to either go dogmatist or reject an extremely plausible principle that she calls “Entitlement” (roughly, for any S and any e, if S knows that evidence e is misleading, then S can rightly disregard e). In this paper, however, I argue that defeasibilists face no such challenge from any version of the dogmatism puzzle, since the dogmatism puzzle, in both its original and partial defeat form, rests on an assumption that we have very good reason to think is mistaken. Specifically, the assumption that, for any S and any p, if S knows that p, then S knows (or is in a position to know) that any evidence against p is misleading. I further argue that rejecting this assumption also yields a neat solution to the dogmatism puzzle involving intention originally proposed by Saul Kripke and recently adapted by R.E. Fraser.

In this paper, I argue that the metaphysical possibility of essential omnipotence implies that God exists. Showing that the possibility of essential omnipotence implies the existence of God is a new and interesting result. The implication, however, also points to a new argument for the existence of God, since if the possibility of essential omnipotence implies that God exists, and it’s rational to believe that essential omnipotence is possible, then, by closure, it’s rational to believe that God exists.

Fallibilism is typically taken to face a problem from the apparent infelicity of concessive knowledge attributions (hereafter, CKAs). CKAs are of the form: “S knows that p, but it’s possible that q”, where q obviously entails not-p. CKAs sound to the ears of many philosophers as contradictory or infelicitous. CKAs, though, appear to be statements that fallibilists are committed to being true if fallibilism is true, since if S fallibly knows that p, then she cannot properly rule out some possibility in which not-p. Do fallibilists, then, have some way of explaining the seeming infelicity of CKAs that does not impugn the truth of fallibilism? Fallibilists think so. In this connection, there are two well-known responses to the problem in the philosophical literature: Patrick Rysiew’s pragmatic strategy and Jason Stanley’s semantic strategy. While both strategies have real virtues, there are aspects of each strategy that face objections. In this paper, I outline those objections and develop some remedies for them. This paper will show that the challenge posed by CKAs is not a grave problem for fallibilism at all. In particular, I argue that either the semantic strategy succeeds or the pragmatic strategy succeeds. So, if CKAs really are statements that fallibilists are committed to being true if fallibilism is true, then the pragmatic strategy succeeds, but if the pragmatic strategy fails because CKAs are obviously false or are not statements that fallibilists are committed to being true if fallibilism is true, then the semantic strategy succeeds. Thus, the problem for fallibilism posed by CKAs is a problem that fallibilists are in a position to resolve.

One well-known argument that it is morally impermissible to deploy strongly autonomous weapon systems in war comes from Duncan Purves, Ryan Jenkins, and Bradley Strawser. They argue that even if strongly autonomous weapon systems, once sufficiently technologically developed, are able to make moral decisions that are just as good as humans, deploying them in war is still morally impermissible because strongly autonomous weapon systems cannot act for the right reasons in deciding matters of life and death. In this short paper, however, I argue that we have very good reason to think that Purves, Jenkins, and Strawser’s in principle argument against deploying strongly autonomous weapon systems in war is unsound.

According to the dogmatism puzzle, for any S and any p, if S knows that p, then she’s entitled to be dogmatic about p, and so disregard any evidence against p, for she knows that (or is in a position to know that) that evidence is misleading. But this seems clearly problematically dogmatic. The standard solution to the dogmatism puzzle involves appealing to the view that acquiring new evidence (even misleading evidence) can undermine one’s knowledge that p. That’s why one can’t rightly disregard any future evidence against p. This solution to the dogmatism puzzle has come to be called ‘the defeat solution’. Maria Lasonen-Aarnio has recently argued, however, that the defeat solution leaves unsolved a partial defeat version of the dogmatism puzzle, where some subject acquires weak misleading evidence against p, but, since it is weak, it doesn’t rob her of knowledge that p. Lasonen-Aarnio argues that solving this partial defeat version of the dogmatism puzzle requires those who endorse the defeasibility of knowledge to either go dogmatist or reject an extremely plausible principle that she calls ‘Entitlement’ (roughly, for any S and any e, if S knows that evidence e is misleading, then S can rightly disregard e). In this paper, however, I argue that defeasibilists face no such challenge from any version of the dogmatism puzzle, since the dogmatism puzzle, in both its original and partial defeat form, rests on an assumption that we have very good reason to think is mistaken. Specifically, the assumption that, for any S and any p, if S knows that p, then S knows (or is in a position to know) that any evidence against p is misleading. I further argue that rejecting this assumption also yields a neat solution to the dogmatism puzzle involving intention originally proposed by Saul Kripke and recently adapted by R.E. Fraser.

In a recent series of papers, Timothy Williamson argues that one can reach Edmund Gettier’s conclusion that the justified-true-belief (JTB) theory of knowledge is insufficient for knowledge by constructing Gettier cases in the framework of epistemic logic. In this paper, I argue, however, that Williamson’s Gettier cases in the framework of epistemic logic crucially turn on an assumption that the JTB theorist can plausibly and justifiably reject. In particular, I argue that it is rational for the JTB theorist to reject Williamson’s preferred epistemic accessibility relation in favor of one for which Gettier cases in epistemic logic do not arise. Thus, I conclude that Williamson’s Gettier cases in epistemic logic do not genuinely threaten the tripartite theory of knowledge.

In this paper, I develop a serious new dilemma involving necessary truths for safety-based theories of knowledge, a dilemma that I argue safety theorists cannot resolve or avoid by relativizing safety to either the subject’s basis or method of belief formation in close worlds or to a set of related or sufficiently similar propositions. I develop this dilemma primarily in conversation with Duncan Pritchard’s well-known, oft-modeled safety-based theories of knowledge. I show that Pritchard’s well-regarded anti-luck virtue theory of knowledge and his recently proposed (allegedly superior) anti-risk virtue theory of knowledge clearly succumb to the dilemma, and so they are inadequate as they stand. If Pritchard’s safety-based theories of knowledge are shown to be inadequate by the dilemma that is developed in this paper, then a number of other safety-based theories of knowledge (e.g., Beddor and Pavese’s, Luper’s, Dutant’s, early Pritchard’s, and others) look to be in jeopardy in this connection as well.

A familiar anti-sceptical response (à la Sosa) to radical sceptical scenarios employs the safety of knowledge. Radical sceptical scenarios are purported to be too modally remote to really threaten knowledge of ordinary propositions. Why? Because knowledge requires safety, and safety requires the target belief to be true in all nearby possible worlds, but radical sceptical scenarios purportedly take place at distant possible worlds. Hence, the safety theorist claims that radical sceptical scenarios don’t challenge our knowledge of ordinary propositions. But it's alleged by Sosa and others that there's one radical sceptical scenario that can’t be dismissed so easily: the dream scenario. After all, unlike evil demons and brains in vats, ‘dreaming is a daily part of our lives…it is too close for comfort’. In this paper, I sketch an argument to the effect that there's good reason to think that the dream of dream scepticism describes a modally remote possibility, in which case I argue that if the safety-based anti-sceptical response is successful against the evil demon sceptical scenario, the brain in a vat sceptical scenario, and other Cartesian sceptical scenarios in this mould, then it's successful against the dream sceptical scenario as well.

In a recent article in this journal, Calum Miller skillfully and creatively argues for the counterintuitive view that there aren’t any good reasons to believe that non-human animals feel pain in a morally relevant sense. By Miller’s lights, such reasons are either weak in their own right or they also favor the view that non-human animals don’t feel morally relevant pain. In this paper, I explain why Miller’s view is mistaken. In particular, I sketch a very reasonable abductive argument for the conclusion that non-human animals feel morally relevant pain. This argument shows that, even in the face of Miller’s moderate skepticism about whether non-human animals feel pain in a morally relevant sense, it’s still more epistemically reasonable to believe that non-human animals feel pain in a morally relevant sense than not. In which case, I conclude that Miller has failed to show that there aren’t any good reasons to believe that non-human animals don’t feel pain in a morally relevant sense that don’t also count in favor of the view that non-human animals don’t feel morally relevant pain.

In a recent article, Timothy Hsiao criticizes the basic argument for moral vegetarianism. In this connection, Hsiao offers an interesting, original argument (that I'll christen Hsiao's Argument) with the conclusion that human consumption of meat solely for the purposes of nutrition trumps the welfare interests of nonhuman animals. In this article, however, I'll argue that if Hsiao's Argument isn't to be problematically circular, we have very strong grounds for thinking that it is either unsound or invalid. Toward the end of this article, I'll also show that a slightly modified version of Hsiao's Argument—that I call Hsiao's Argument*—fares no better than Hsiao's Argument. So, the basic argument for moral vegetarianism looks to be in much better shape than Hsiao imagines.

In this paper, I’ll survey a number of closure principles of epistemic justification and find them all wanting. However, it’ll be my contention that there’s a novel closure principle of epistemic justification that has the virtues of its close cousin closure principles, without their vices. This closure principle of epistemic justification can be happily thought of as a multi-premise closure principle and it cannot be used in Cartesian skeptical arguments that employ a closure principle of epistemic justification. In this way, then, it represents marked improvement over other contemporary closure principles of epistemic justification that require both sacrificing multi-premise closure and forcing anti-Cartesian skeptics who reject the closure principle employed in certain Cartesian skeptical arguments to cast aside justification closure.

In a recent exchange in the pages of this journal, John Biro responds to Gabor Forrai’s argument against Biro’s argument that in most, if not all, Gettier cases the belief condition, contra popular opinion, isn’t satisfied. In this note, I’ll argue that Biro’s response to Forrai satisfactorily resolves the first of Forrai’s two central objections to Biro’s argument that the belief condition isn’t satisfied in most, if not all, Gettier cases. But Biro’s response leaves mostly unaddressed the most plausible way of construing Forrai’s second objection. I’ll take up the mantle of successfully defending Biro’s argument from this more plausible construal of Forrai’s second objection. However, even though I’ll argue that Biro’s argument is in good shape with respect to Forrai’s objections, I’ll show that the definition of serious belief that Biro offers us is mistaken.