Ram Neta

The goal of this chapter is to provide a unified solution to two widely discussed epistemological puzzles: the puzzle of easy knowledge and the puzzle of higher-order evidence. The chapter begins by setting out each of these two puzzles. It then briefly surveys some of the proposed solutions to each puzzle, none of which generalizes to the other. Finally, the chapter argues that the two puzzles arise because of a widespread confusion concerning the relation of substantive and structural constraints of rationality: or, in the epistemic domain, the relation of evidence and coherence. Clearing up this confusion allows us to clear up both puzzles at once.

Infinitism is both a theory of epistemic justification and a solution to the regress problem. To specify the content of infinitism more precisely than this requires some stage-setting. Section I if this chapter is devoted to that stage-setting, and to stating the content of infinitism more precisely. Section II gives a sympathetic rendering of Klein’s argument for infinitism. Section III rebuts what the chapter takes to be the most compelling objections to that argument, and shows how we need to interpret Klein in order to issue those rebuttals. In the concluding section, the chapter briefly sketches what seems to to be a more promising strategy for rebutting Klein’s argument.

This paper discusses a particular epistemological puzzle that is a version of what has sometimes been called “the problem of easy knowledge.” It begins by spelling out what the problem is. It is then argued that recent attempts to address the problem (from Jonathan Weisberg, Michael Titelbaum, and Chris Tucker) all fail. Finally, a principle (very similar to one that Crispin Wright has recently defended) that solves the problem is articulated. The common objection to this principle—an objection that Wright, for instance, accepts—is that it is inconsistent with a plausible empiricism. It is argued that this objection fails: in fact, the principle is fully consistent with any plausible empiricism.

In the final chapter of _Knowing Full Well_, Ernest Sosa argues that his virtue epistemology can solve the problem of epistemic circularity. This chapter argues that his solution is unsuccessful, because it cannot solve the problem in all its manifestations. The correct solution to the problem, it is argued, involves a generalization of Crispin Wright’s notion of “transmission failure.” But this chapter shows that the notion of transmission failure can be applied to solve the problem of circularity without abandoning empiricism (as Wright does) or foundationalism (as Sosa does). The resulting view also solves what has come to be known as “the problem of easy knowledge.”

You crave a gin and tonic, and you have just been served a glass containing what very clearly appears to you to be a gin and tonic. As it happens, appearances in this case are misleading: the liquid in the glass is gasoline, but there’s nothing to suggest this to you, and so you don’t suspect it at all. In such a case, we may say, there is a reason for you to refrain from drinking the contents of the glass – namely, whatever reason there is for you to refrain from drinking gasoline. 11 Nonetheless, the fact that the glass contains gasoline is not a fact that, in these circumstances, can motivate you to refrain from drinking the contents of the glass, or make it rational for you to refrain from drinking the contents of the glass. Thus, even though there is a reason for you to refrain from drinking the contents of the glass, this is not a reason that you have. In the situation described, you may not have any reason to refrain from drinking the contents of the glass.

In his book How to Take Skepticism Seriously, Adam Leite defends the efforts of Moore and Austin to show that the skeptic’s assumptions are at odds with ordinary epistemic practice. In these comments, I want to raise two questions. The first question concerns the extent of what counts as “ordinary epistemic practice.” While various plausible general principles concerning knowledge and justified belief clearly count as part of this practice, do various recondite, or even potentially controversial, empirical claims also count as part of this practice? The second question I want to raise concerns just what it is that Leite can claim to have shown about the truth of skepticism, even granting that he has shown that the case for skepticism cannot be made from within ordinary epistemic practice. If we grant that Leite has shown that much, we can conclude that ordinary epistemic practice does not undermine itself. But should this somehow reassure us of the truth of our ordinary knowledge attributions, or otherwise alter our attitudes concerning those attributions?

Stephen Schiffer has argued that contextualist solutions to skepticism rest on an implausible “error theory” concerning our own semantic intentions. Similar arguments have recently been offered also by Thomas Hofweber and Patrick Rysiew. I attempt to show how contextualists can rebut these arguments. The kind of self‐knowledge that contextualists are committed to denying us is not a kind of self‐knowledge that we need, nor is it a kind of self‐knowledge that we can plausibly be thought to possess.

A skeptic claims that I do not have knowledge of the external world. It has been thought that the skeptic reaches this conclusion because she employs unusually stringent standards for knowledge. But the skeptic does not employ unusually high standards for knowledge. Rather, she employs unusually restrictive standards of evidence. Thus, her claim that we lack knowledge of the external world is supported by considerations that would equally support the claim that we lack evidence for our beliefs about the external world. These considerations do not threaten the truth of our ordinary attributions of evidence, however, for such attributions are context‐sensitive in their semantics. It is argued that this solution to the problem of the external world enjoys all of the benefits. and suffers none of the problems, of other solutions to the problem of the external world.

Philosophers advance hypotheses, and occasionally those hypotheses are to some extent justified on the basis of some evidence. But what sorts of things can serve as such evidence, and how can they do so? These are the central questions of Lycan’s book On Evidence in Philosophy. There, he claims that one sort of thing that can serve as evidence in philosophy is “intuition.” But what, in Lycan’s view, are intuitions, and what is it about intuitions that enable them to function as evidence in philosophy? In this chapter, I critically assess Lycan’s answers to these questions. Though I am sympathetic to much of what Lycan says, I argue for slightly different answers to his central questions.

My cat Percy and I both engage in inquiry. For example, we both might wonder where the food is, and look around systematically in an effort to find the food. Indeed, we might even recruit others to help us search for the food, and so engage in collaborative inquiry concerning the location of the food. But such inquiry, even when collaborative, does not amount to _research_. Why not? What distinguishes research from the kinds of inquiry in which Percy and I can both engage? You might think that research involves the exercise of distinctive skills or capacities, or that it involves focus on a special range of topics. But how can we specify the relevant skills, or the relevant range of topics? This paper articulates and defends an account of research that answers these questions. According to the present account, research is a form of inquiry _that is guided by the judgment that the answer to this very inquiry matters to our theoretical understanding_.

Right now, I see a computer in front of me. Now, according to current philosophical orthodoxy, I could have the very same perceptual experience that I’m having right now even if I were not seeing a computer in front of me. Indeed, such orthodoxy tells us, I could have the very same experience that I’m having right now even if I were not seeing anything at all in front of me, but simply suffering from a hallucination. More generally, someone can have the very same perceptual experience no matter whether she is enjoying a veridical perception of some mindindependent object, or merely hallucinating. What differs across these two kinds of case is not the kind of experience that she has, but rather the connections between her experience and the rest of the world. So say most philosophers

How does moral reasoning motivate? Michael Smith argues that it does so by rationally constraining us to have desires that motivate, but the plausibility of his argument rests on a false assumption about the relation between wide-scope and narrow-scope constraints of rationality. Michael Huemer argues that it does so by generating motivating appearances, but the plausibility of his argument rests on a false assumption about the skeptical costs of a thoroughgoing empiricism. The chapter defends an alternative view, according to which moral facts can be a priori obvious, and our a priori knowledge of them can motivate us to act.

Ernest Sosa’s new monograph, Epistemic Explanations, develops an important new account of epistemic evaluation, epistemic normativity, and the explanatory role of these. The first two sections of the present paper develop an interpretation of Sosa’s metaphysics of the mental states of rational agents as a version of hylomorphism. The second half of the paper uses this hylomorphic view to argue that Sosa can account for differences among the various kinds of knowledge by appeal to nothing more than differences among the belief-like attitudes involved in those kinds of knowledge. My argument for this last claim will also challenge Sosa’s own argument for two of the book’s most heterodox epistemological claims, viz., that knowledge can be recognizably insecure, and that knowledge can be based on mere assumptions.

Rationality, whatever exactly it demands of us, promotes success, whatever exactly that is. Some philosophers interpret that slogan as something that can provide them with a way of reductively explaining the demands of rationality by appeal to some independently intelligible notion of success: being rational, they might say, is just having whatever property it is that promotes success. Other philosophers may interpret the same slogan as something that can provide them with a way of reductively explaining the notion of success by appeal to some independently intelligible notion of the demands of rationality: having success, they might say, is just having whatever property it is that is promoted by being rational. In this paper, I argue that neither of these reductive efforts can succeed. I then argue that understanding the way in which rationality promotes success requires us to understand why the promotion relation between rationality and success can be severed by some kinds of luck, but not by others. To explain the kind of luck that can sever promotion, we should conceive of both rationality and success as distinct but related facets of something more fundamental than either of them.