Laura Frances Callahan

There are better and worse ways to acquire epistemic virtues and more generally to be disposed to change or maintain one's epistemic dispositions over time. This is a dimension along which one might be better or worse as an epistemic agent that, we argue, cannot be explained with reference to current normative categories in epistemology but requires recognition of a new norm or virtue—namely, “epistemic authenticity”—which is the central virtue in a novel class of virtues (or norms) of epistemic development. We sketch the contours of an account of personal authenticity and then consider the nature and value of a specifically epistemic form.

The thought that intellectual arrogance consists in, roughly, overconfident resilience in one’s beliefs has been influential in philosophy and psychology. This thought is in the background of much of the philosophical literature on disagreement as well as some leading psychological scales of intellectual humility. It is not true, however. This paper highlights cases (of “stubborn fools” and the “arrogantly open-minded”) that cause trouble for equating intellectual arrogance with overconfident belief resilience. These cases are much better accommodated if we see intellectual arrogance as, instead, a form of vicious intellectual distraction by the ego.

This paper attempts to motivate and reconcile two thoughts about humility that are in tension. First, the experiences of oppressed people matter a great deal to the question of whether humility is a virtue. Second, prima facie anyway, there still seems reason to think humility is a virtue, and an ‘inclusive’ virtue at that, i.e. a virtue for all people. I attempt to reconcile these two thoughts by suggesting a new account of humility, which I call the no‐distraction account. Humility is just the disposition to be free from distracting pride.

There are better and worse ways to acquire epistemic virtues and more generally to be disposed to change or maintain one's epistemic dispositions over time. This is a dimension along which one might be better or worse as an epistemic agent that, we argue, cannot be explained with reference to current normative categories in epistemology but requires recognition of a new norm or virtue—namely, “epistemic authenticity”—which is the central virtue in a novel class of virtues (or norms) of epistemic development. We sketch the contours of an account of personal authenticity and then consider the nature and value of a specifically epistemic form.

Some philosophers—call them pessimists–think we have reason to avoid deferring to testimony to settle our questions in domains where deep understanding is important. Extant defences of pessimism focus on whether deferring to testimony is ever sufficient for acquiring understanding. But I argue that these defences/articulations of pessimism are unsatisfactory. Even if deference to testimony were always insufficient for acquiring understanding—which seems doubtful—this would not explain why we have reason to avoid deferring in certain domains. Instead, I claim we should think about how and when testimony can disincentivize and discourage agents’ coming to understand. I argue that deferring to testimony to settle a question often results in one having less reason to seek broader understanding and thereby sets one up to (continue to) lack understanding. The incentive pessimist appeals to this phenomenon to explain and defend the basic pessimist thought.

One of the foremost objections to theological voluntarism is the contingency objection. If God’s will fixes moral facts, then what if God willed that agents engage in cruelty? I argue that even unrestricted theological voluntarists should accept some logical constraints on possible moral systems—hence, some limits on ways that God could have willed morality to be—and these logical constraints are sufficient to blunt the force of the contingency objec­tion. One constraint I defend is a very weak accessibility requirement, related to (but less problematic than) existence internalism in metaethics. The theo­logical voluntarist can maintain: Godcouldn’t have loved cruelty, and even though he could have willed behaviors we find abhorrent, he could only have done so in a world of deeply alien moral agents. We cannot confidently declare such a world unacceptable.

Normativism is the (controversial) view that epistemic reasons for belief are really, genuinely normative. Normativists might wonder – and anti-normativists might press the question – why, or in virtue of what, are epistemic reasons normative? Borrowing Korsgaard's metaphor, what's the “source” of their normativity? Here I argue that this question is both highly interesting and subtly distinct from other common questions in the literature. I also propose an initial taxonomy of stance-dependent and stance-independent answers, and I advocate a novel, hybrid type of view as ultimately most promising for (mostly) vindicating normativism.

In The Transmission of Knowledge (2021), Greco departs significantly from his earlier view of all knowledge as an individual achievement of the knower, allowing that in some testimonial knowledge cases (cases of “transmission”), a hearer’s believing truly will be due to competent joint agency, between herself and the speaker. Greco argues that the new, hybrid view of knowledge as individual or joint achievement is still sufficiently unified and – importantly – still provides a satisfying answer to the value problem for knowledge. I will raise some worries for this latter claim. I begin by raising worries about Greco’s earlier answer to the value problem: that knowledge is distinctively valuable as an (individual’s) achievement. I then argue that these worries are not allayed by expanding the account of knowledge to include joint achievements and indeed are perhaps aggravated by this new move.

In Chapter 2, questions about appropriate responses to religious disagreement are related to questions about appropriate responses to religious testimony. If it is appropriate to alter one’s credence on the basis of encountering a disagreeing peer, it is also appropriate to alter one’s credence in a religious proposition on the basis of encountering a testifier who is at least as competent and informed as oneself, when one is antecedently unopinionated on the matter at hand. However, recent literature on moral testimony should give one pause; there is distinctive value or importance in acquiring not merely knowledge but understanding. It is argued in this chapter that it may often also be inappropriate to adjust one’s credence on the basis of religious disagreement, for the reason that in so doing one would threaten or disincentivize one’s religious understanding.

Many of the decisions mothers face are morally intense. They're experienced as highly morally significant, and they are also often very morally complex, meaning that there aren't black-and-white, obvious answers to questions about what one morally may or must do. For example, I suggest that breastfeeding is complex in this way, despite a good deal of cultural pressure in favour of trying to do it. Acknowledging many of the decisions of motherhood as complex or as ‘grey areas’ is accurate, and also good for mums. But it also burdens mums with the responsibility of researching, discussing, thinking through, and ultimately making significant, complex moral decisions for themselves. I call this the moral load, taking inspiration from Emma's ‘mental load’. In the last section I consider what we could or should do to try to lessen the moral load as a burden on mums.

In perception, perceivers discriminate. They distinguish or single out the objects and property instances that they see. One might hope this discriminatory nature of perception could help explain how perceptual evidence can be sufficient for knowledge, even granting some form of a relevant alternatives condition on knowledge. Indeed, there are examples of such thinking in recent epistemology literature. But I argue that discriminating actual percepts from actual surrounds is importantly different than discriminating actual states of affairs from merely possible states of affairs. A tension remains between optimism about immediate perceptual knowledge and plausible relevant alternatives or safety conditions on knowledge in general.

Subjectivist permissivism is aprima facieattractive view. That is, it's plausible to think that what's rational for people to believe on the basis of their evidence can vary if they have different frameworks or sets of epistemic standards. In this paper, I introduce an epistemic existentialist form of subjectivist permissivism, which I argue can better address “the arbitrariness objection” to subjectivist permissivism in general. According to the epistemic existentialist, it's not just that what's rational to believe on the basis of evidence can vary according to agents’ frameworks, understood as passive aspects of individuals’ psychologies. Rather, what's rational to believe on the basis of evidence is sensitive to agents’ choices and active commitments (as are frameworks themselves). Here I draw on Chang's work on commitment and voluntarist reasons. The epistemic existentialist maintains that what's rational for us to believe on the basis of evidence is, at least in part,up to us. It can vary not only across individuals but for a single individual, over time, as she makes differing epistemic commitments.

Woollard and Porter argue that mothers have no moral duty to breastfeed their babies. Rather, mothers simply have moral reason(s) to breastfeed, stemming from the benefits of breast feeding for babies. According to Woollard and Porter, doing what one has moral reason to do is often supererogatory, not obligatory. I agree that mothers have no moral duty to breastfeed. However, it is misleading to suggest that mothers in general have moral reason to breastfeed and to liken not breastfeeding to not performing some supererogatory action. I will suggest mothers in general have pro tanto, but not all-things-considered, moral reason to breastfeed. Moreover, I suggest many mothers also have pro tanto moral reasons not to breastfeed. Breastfeeding is not always supererogatory; indeed, sometimes not breastfeeding is morally better. This is important because it contradicts dangerous assumptions in public discourse. One way of characterising popular consensus about breastfeeding is as Woollard and Porter do: mothers have a duty to breastfeed. But we might also characterise popular consensus differently: all moral reasons for/against breastfeeding are on the ’pro’ breastfeeding side of the issue, whereas if there are any (good) reasons not to breastfeed these are non-moral (prudential). Woollard and Porter’s argument is important and correct in concluding that mothers have no duty to breastfeed, but it leaves this other false and dangerous idea intact and even subtly reinforces it.

Why is there a felt asymmetry between cases in which agents defer to testifiers for certain moral beliefs, and cases in which agents defer on many other matters? One explanation influential in the literature is that having understanding of a proposition is both in tension with acquiring belief in the proposition by deferring to another's testimony and distinctively important when it comes to moral propositions, as compared with what we might think of as many ‘garden variety’ facts. My project in this paper is to offer a new and more defensible version of this explanation. This will involve re-conceiving understanding as a richer state than it is commonly thought to be, requiring affective and motivational engagement with reasons as well as cognitive facility. I also offer a new explanation of the tension between understanding and deference to testimony.

Matthew Benton, John Hawthorne, and Yoaav Isaacs (BHI) claim that evil must be evidence against God’s existence, because the absence of evil would be (presumably excellent) evidence for it. Their argument is obviously valid on standard Bayesian epistemology. But in addition to raising a few reasons one might doubt its premise, I here highlight the rather misleading meaning, in BHI’s argument, of evil’s being evidence against God. BHI seek to establish that if one learned simply “that there was evil,” perhaps via an oracle, one would gain evidence of some strength or other against God. But when we commonly observe that there is evil in the world, we learn a stronger proposition. And determining the evidential impact of that stronger proposition is not so easy. The interesting questions about the evidential impact of even a general awareness of evil in the world remain open.

Is religious faith consistent with being an intellectually virtuous thinker? In seeking to answer this question, one quickly finds others, each of which has been the focus of recent renewed attention by epistemologists: What is it to be an intellectually virtuous thinker? Must all reasonable belief be grounded in public evidence? Under what circumstances is a person rationally justified in believing something on trust, on the testimony of another, or because of the conclusions drawn by an intellectual authority? Can it be reasonable to hold a belief on a topic over which there is significant, entrenched disagreement among informed inquirers, or should such disagreement lead all parties to modify or suspend their own judgments? Is there anything about faith that exempts it from measurement against such epistemic norms? And if we would so evaluate it, how exactly should we understand the intellectual commitments faith requires? The volume's introduction provides a roadmap of the central issues and controversies as currently discussed by philosophers. In fourteen new essays written to engage nonspecialists as well as philosophers working in religion and epistemology, a diverse and distinguished group of thinkers then consider the place of intellectual virtue in religious faith, exploring one or more of the specific issues noted above.