Kristoffer Ahlstrom-Vij

Reliabilism - the view that a belief is justified if it is produced by a reliable process -- is often characterized as a form of consequentialism. Recently, critics of reliabilism have suggested that, since a form of consequentialism, reliabilism condones a variety of problematic trade-offs, involving cases where someone forms an epistemically deficient belief now that will lead her to more epistemic value later. In the present paper, we argue that the relevant argument against reliabilism fails because it equivocates. While there is a sense in which reliabilism is a kind of consequentialism, it is not of a kind on which we should expect problematic trade-offs.

An important issue in epistemology concerns the source of epistemic normativity. Epistemic consequentialism maintains that epistemic norms are genuine norms in virtue of the way in which they are conducive to epistemic value, whatever epistemic value may be. So, for example, the epistemic consequentialist might say that it is a norm that beliefs should be consistent in virtue of the fact that holding consistent beliefs is the best way to achieve the epistemic value of accuracy. Thus epistemic consequentialism is structurally similar to the familiar family of consequentialist views in ethics. Recently, philosophers from both formal epistemology and traditional epistemology have shown interest in such a view. In formal epistemology, there has been particular interest in thinking of epistemology as a kind of decision theory where instead of maximizing expected utility one maximizes expected epistemic utility. In traditional epistemology, there has been particular interest in various forms of reliabilism about justification and whether such views are analogous to—and so face similar problems to—versions of rule consequentialism in ethics. This volume presents some of the most recent work on these topics as well as others related to epistemic consequentialism, by authors that are sympathetic to the view and those who are critical of it.

To what extent can we rely on others for information without such reliance becoming epistemically problematic? In this paper, this question is addressed in terms of a specific form of reliance: cognitive outsourcing. Cognitive outsourcing involves handing over (outsourcing) one’s information collection and processing (the cognitive) to others. The specific question that will be asked about such outsourcing is if there is an epistemic problem about cognitive outsourcing as such. To ask if there is an epistemic problem with x for S is to ask if x is a problem for S’s ability to acquire true belief and avoid false belief. To ask if there is a problem for S with x as such is to ask if it is impossible to solve the problem for S while leaving x as is. I argue that, if we consider the five most plausible candidate epistemic problems raised by cognitive outsourcing—i.e., unreliability, gullibility, irrationality, dependency, and lack of epistemic autonomy—we see for each candidate that it is either not an epistemic problem, or not a problem about cognitive outsourcing as such.

Recently, it has become popular to account for knowledge and other epistemic states in terms of epistemic virtues. The present paper focuses on an epistemic virtue relevant when deferring to others in testimonial contexts. It is argued that, while many virtue epistemologists will accept that epistemic virtue can be exhibited in cases involving epistemically motivated hearers, carefully vetting their testimonial sources for signs of untrustworthiness prior to deferring, anyone who accepts that also has to accept that an agent may exhibit epistemic virtue in certain cases of blind deference, involving someone soaking up everything he or she is told without any hesitation. Moreover, in order to account for the kind of virtue involved in the relevant cases of blind deference, virtue epistemologists need to abandon a widespread commitment to personalism, i.e., the idea that virtue is possessed primarily on account of features internal to the psychology of the person, and accept that some virtues are social virtues, possessed in whole or in large part on account of the person being embedded in a reliable social environment.

Epistemic consequentialists maintain that the epistemically right (e.g., the justified) is to be understood in terms of conduciveness to the epistemic good (e.g., true belief). Given the wide variety of epistemological approaches that assume some form of epistemic consequentialism, and the controversies surrounding consequentialism in ethics, it is surprising that epistemic consequentialism remains largely uncontested. However, in a recent paper, Selim Berker has provided arguments that allegedly lead to a ‘rejection’ of epistemic consequentialism. In the present paper, it is shown that reliabilism—the most prominent form of epistemic consequentialism, and one of Berker’s main targets—survives Berker’s arguments unscathed.

Truth monism is the idea that only true beliefs are of fundamental epistemic value. The present paper considers three objections to truth monism, and argues that, while the truth monist has plausible responses to the first two objections, the third objection suggests that truth monism should be reformulated. On this reformulation, which we refer to as accuracy monism, the fundamental epistemic goal is accuracy, where accuracy is a matter of ‘‘getting it right.’’ The idea then developed is that accuracy is a genus with several species. Believing truly is a prominent species, but it is not the only one. Finally, it is argued that accuracy monism is equally good or better than both traditional truth monism and its main dialectical rival, value pluralism, when it comes to satisfying three important axiological desiderata.

There is something very appealing about the idea that we are epistemic agents. One reason—if not the main reason—is that, while we are undoubtedly fallible creatures, us being epistemic agents that do things means that it might just be within our power to improve and thereby do better. One important way in which we would want to improve is in relation to our well- established tendency for cognitive bias. Still, the proper role of epistemic agency in us avoiding or correcting for cognitive bias is highly limited. In fact, what we know from empirical psychology—particularly with respect to our tendencies for overconfidence—suggests that we cannot rely on ourselves for epistemic improvement, and have good reason to impose significant constraints on our ability to exercise such agency in ameliorative contexts.

Recently, veritistic value monism, i.e. the idea that true belief is unique in being of fundamental epistemic value, has come under attack by pluralist philosophers arguing that it cannot account fully for the domain of epistemic value. However, the relevant arguments fail to establish any such thing. For one thing, there is a presumption of monism due to considerations about axiological parsimony. While such a presumption would be defeated by evidence that the relevant kind of monism cannot account fully for the domain of epistemic value, an examination of the most promising pluralist counterexamples casts serious doubt upon the claim that there is any such evidence.

Recent critiques of veritistic value monism, or the idea that true belief is unique in being of fundamental epistemic value, typically invoke a claim about the surplus value of knowledge over mere true belief, in turn traced back to Plato’s Meno. However, to the extent Plato at all defends a surplus claim in the Meno, it differs from that figuring in contemporary discussions with respect to both its scope and the kind of value at issue, and is under closer scrutiny fully compatible with veritistic value monism. Consequently, contrary to what seems to be sup- posed in the literature, the critics of monism have little to gain from turning to the Meno for support.

Robert Talisse’s recent attempt to justify liberal democracy in epistemic terms is in many ways a breath of fresh air. However, in the present paper we argue that his defense faces two inter-related problems. The first problem pertains to his defense of liberalism, and owes to the fact that a commitment to the folk-epistemological norms in terms of which he makes his case does not commit one to partaking in liberal institutions. Consequently, our (alleged) commitment to the relevant epistemic norms does not justify liberal democracy. The second problem pertains to his defense of democracy. The problem is that, if Talisse provides what we take to be the most plausible response to the first problem, framed in terms of his acceptance of a form of epistemic perfectionism, he is able to maintain his commitment to liberal institutions, but at the price of leaving democracy behind in favor of what we will refer to as a liberal epistocracy.

Philosophers have been concerned for some time with the epistemic caliber of the general public, qua the body that is, ultimately, tasked with political decision-making in democratic societies. Unfortunately, the empirical data paint a pretty dismal picture here, indicating that the public tends to be largely ignorant on the issues relevant to governance. To make matters worse, empirical research on how ignorance tends to breed overconfidence suggests that the public will not only lack knowledge on the relevant issues, but also wisdom, in the Socratic sense of an awareness of your ignorance. While increasing the knowledge and wisdom of the public might be thought an obvious remedy, there is, as far as sound political decision-making and action are concerned, nothing particularly valuable about knowledge or wisdom per se. In fact, it might just be that what the public needs is nothing but the most basic epistemic good: true belief.

Recently, Ernest Sosa (2007) has proposed two novel solutions to the problem of dream skepticism. In the present paper, I argue that Sosa’s first solution falls prey to what I will refer to as the conditionality problem, i.e., the problem of only establishing a conditional—in this case, “if x, then I am awake,” x being a placeholder for a condition incompatible with dreaming—in a context where it also needs to be established that we can know that the antecedent holds, and as such can infer the consequent, i.e., “I am awake.” Sosa’s second solution, in terms of so-called reflective knowledge, is shown to land him in the dilemma of either facing yet another conditionality problem, or violating an internalist constraint that he explicitly grants the skeptic with respect to what kind of factors can be legitimately invoked in our account of how we may know the relevant antecedent. For these reasons, I conclude that Sosa has not solved the problem of dream skepticism.

Recently, Hilary Kornblith has argued that epistemological investigation is substantially empirical. In the present paper, I will first show that his claim is not contingent upon the further and, admittedly, controversial assumption that all objects of epistemological investigation are natural kinds. Then, I will argue that, contrary to what Kornblith seems to assume, this methodological contention does not imply that there is no need for attending to our epistemic concepts in epistemology. Understanding the make-up of our concepts and, in particular, the purposes they fill, is necessary for a proper acknowledgement of epistemology’s role in conceptual improvement.

We know that we are fallible creatures, liable to cognitive bias. Yet, we also have a strong and stubborn tendency to overestimate our reasoning capacities. This presents a problem for any attempt to help us reason in more accurate ways: While we might see the point of others heeding intellectual advice and relying on reasoning aids, each and every one of us will tend not to see the point of doing so ourselves. The present book argues that the solution to this problem lies in accepting a form of epistemic paternalism. Accepting such paternalism is to accept that we are sometimes justified in interfering with the inquiry of another without his or her consent but for his or her own epistemic good. Because when it comes to our freedom to conduct inquiry in whatever way we see fit, more is not always better. In fact, less is quite often more.

According to Descartes, we come to know about the mind and the body as separate substances by way of philosophical meditation, while we see that mind and body may interact as a union by ‘‘using only life and ordinary conversation’’ and ‘‘abstaining from meditating.’’ What is significant, indeed, far more significant than has been appreciated by commentators so far, is that we, thereby, are supposed to answer what has come to be considered one of the most central questions of Descartes’ philosophy, the question ‘‘How do minds and bodies interact?’’, not by way of Descartes’ official method of meditation through methodological doubt and clear and distinct perception, but by explicitly acting against the recommendations of this method. Since meditation is supposed to provide an unshakeable epistemic foundation for claims to knowledge, this raises the question whether there is any sense in which we, on Descartes’ view, can be said to know anything about the mind-body union.

Many political philosophers are attracted to the idea of a deliberative democracy, i.e., the idea that a healthy democracy is one where citizens regularly get together to deliberate. A common objection to deliberative democracy, however, is that available evidence on public ignorance suggests that people aren’t informed enough for social deliberation among the public to yield accurate outputs. In this paper, I reject two recent responses to this objection. The first response is that the correct conclusion to draw from the evidence is simply that we must work harder to ensure that the deliberative process improves the deliberators’ accuracy. The main problem for this response is that there are non-deliberative alternatives available—most prominently information markets, which offer people the opportunity to ‘bet’ on future events, and then generate a prediction in the form of a price signal—that do a better job from the point of view of accuracy than does social deliberation. So why keep bothering with deliberation? The second response attempts to answer this question by arguing that only socially deliberative practices can confer political legitimacy on the resulting policies, where a politically legitimate policy is one that we have reason to obey. In response to this, it is argued that information markets actually carry more promise than does social deliberation when it comes to offering the kinds of justifications that are relevant to legitimacy. That is why deliberative democracy is and remains untenable.

The present paper argues that there are at least two equally plausible yet mutually incompatible answers to the question of what is of non-instrumental epistemic value. The hypothesis invoked to explain how this can be so—moderate epistemic expressivism—holds that (a) claims about epistemic value express nothing but commitments to particular goals of inquiry, and (b) there are at least two viable conceptions of those goals. It is shown that such expressivism survives recent arguments against a more radical form of epistemic expressivism, as well as two further arguments, framed in terms of the two most promising attempts to ground claims about epistemic value in something other than commitments to particular conceptions of inquiry. While this does not establish that moderate epistemic expressivism is true, its ability to explain a significant but puzzling axiological datum, as well as withstand strong counterarguments, makes clear that it is a theory to be reckoned with.

This chapter considers some neglected costs of epistemic realism. It argues that those responding to the realist’s main argument against epistemic expressivism—the so-called _perspective objection_—have overestimated the power of that argument, since a central premise of it can actually be used to turn the tables on the realist. More specifically, the premise entails that, unless the realist accepts a far-reaching scepticism, she must do two things. First, she must reject the idea that true belief is a central epistemic goal. Second, she must hold that the diversity of views in discussions about epistemic normativity is a sign of cognitive-behavioural incoherence, if not of widespread irrationality, on the part of epistemologists. Such are the costs of epistemic realism.

It is well established that the general population tend to lack in-depth knowledge about key political and policy matters. What are the implications for policymaking? This chapter considers this question in the context of immigration policy, reporting first on a focus group study which offers evidence that reported desires for a reduced number of immigrants might ultimately reflect a desire for immigrants of (perceived) high _quality_, not a reduction in overall _quantity_, where quality is defined in terms of fiscal impact. The chapter then argues that public preferences for such “good immigrants” are problematic, deploying a number of counterfactual models that suggest that such preferences are based on mistaken beliefs, and arguing that they thereby likely fail to reflect what the person truly desires. These findings extend beyond immigration policy and serve to highlight the often-overlooked problem that policies implemented with reference to popular sentiments might not capture “the will of the people.”

Chapter 12 notes that we often fail to defer to sources who know what they are talking about, and argues that when we do so consistently, we fail to manifest a virtue of deference. This is because epistemic virtues are dispositions that promote epistemic goals, and knowledge is an epistemic goal. The chapter makes two points about how to instill the virtues of deference. First, they can be instilled by promoting compliance with requests on the part of good sources to be listened to, since listening is conducive to believing. Second, recent research in social psychology on the relationship between justice and compliance suggests that one way to promote compliance with such requests is by having the relevant sources manifest a virtue of their own, namely, that of procedural justice, which involves as a crucial component being prepared to listen.

Political knowledge is a resource: having a lot of it means being in a position to navigate the political world, and stand a better chance of connecting your fundamental political goals with successful means. The present piece argues that standard political knowledge tests measure political knowledge, so understood, and uses counterfactual modeling to demonstrate the difference having such knowledge can make to political choice. It then takes up two of the most forceful objections to political knowledge and its measurement, by (a) rejecting the idea that knowledge scales encode elitist assumptions, and (b) arguing that, even if political knowledge breeds dogmatism, such dogmatism can be expected to serve a protective function in exactly the type of hostile epistemic environments – filled with lies, falsehoods, and misinformation – that make up the political domain.