Todd Stewart

What is the point of developing an epistemology for a topic—for example, morality? When is it appropriate to develop the epistemology of a topic? For many topics—for example, the topic of socks—we see no need to develop a special epistemology. Under what conditions, then, does a topic deserve its own epistemology? I seek to answer these questions in this article. I provide a criterion for deciding when we are warranted in developing an epistemological theory for a topic. I briefly apply this criterion to moral epistemology and argue that some approaches to moral epistemology should be abandoned. I also argue that we can develop an epistemology for a topic without committing ourselves to a specific substantive theory of justification, such as reliabilism or coherentism, if we work within a suitably neutral framework.

Andy believes that p because his tarot cards indicate that p. Betty believes that ∼p because her crystal ball reveals that ∼p. If Andy and Betty know that they disagree, and disagree because they engage in different practices, is Andy's belief that p rational? The answer depends in part on whether Andy has good reasons to think that reading tarot cards is reliable about the topic while reading crystal balls is not. If a person has good reasons to believe that practice P1 is reliable while a competing practice P2 is not, then it is not irrational to form beliefs by engaging in P1. What if a person does not have good reasons to think that one practice is reliable about a topic while competing practices are not, though? In such cases, would Andy's awareness of the existence of competing practices, on its own, be enough to render his belief that p irrational?

While there has been a great deal of discussion of whether and when beliefs formed in an epistemically circular manner can be justified, there has been almost no discussion of exactly which beliefs are formed in a circular manner. Here, I discuss two possible accounts of when a belief is formed in an epistemically circular manner, arguing that both have serious problems, and should thus be rejected. Seeing where they founder points the way to a better attempt at a criterion of epistemically circular belief

While there has been a great deal of discussion of whether and when beliefs formed in an epistemically circular manner can be justified, there has been almost no discussion of exactly which beliefs are formed in a circular manner. These discussions have tended to focus on an extremely limited number of intuitively-identified paradigm examples concerning attempts to establish the reliability of a method of belief formation. Here, I seek to answer a prior analytical question about the nature of epistemic circularity by developing a criterion which sorts epistemically circular beliefs from non-epistemically circular beliefs.

While there has been a great deal of discussion of whether and when beliefs formed in an epistemically circular manner can be justified, there has been almost no discussion of exactly which beliefs are formed in a circular manner. These discussions have tended to focus on an extremely limited number of intuitively-identified paradigm examples concerning attempts to establish the reliability of a method of belief formation. Here, I seek to answer a prior analytical question about the nature of epistemic circularity by developing a criterion which sorts epistemically circular beliefs from non-epistemically circular beliefs.

Intuitions about arguments are an important source of evidence in epistemology. In this paper, I consider a principle defended recently: Necessarily, an argument P therefore C is justification-affording for subject S only if S justifiably believes that if P, then C. Cling presents an argument for . is important because its truth is inconsistent with many plausible epistemological theories, including standard reliabilism and even some forms of internalist foundationalism. I will argue that non-skeptical epistemologists should find Cling's argument unconvincing. Further, I will briefly argue that is false

What is moral epistemology? It is the attempt to construct a theory that explains whether and how moral beliefs are epistemically justified. This dissertation is an evaluation of this project. Should we develop a specialized, topic-specific epistemology that applies only to the domain of morality, or should we develop a perfectly general theory which can be applied to ethics as a special case? In chapter one, I argue that we should be very cautious about developing topic-specific epistemologies like moral epistemology, and that we are in need of a good reason to do so. I explore and ultimately reject several skeptical motivations for the pursuit of moral epistemology. In chapter two, I sketch an argument put forth by Sinnott-Armstrong that because there are strong limits on the degree to which we can convince those who doubt the truth of our ethical beliefs, therefore a weak form of skepticism is reasonable. This argument fails because it targets nothing distinctive about morality. In chapter three, I consider Harman's view that there is something about our best epistemology that forces us to deny the existence of ethical facts. I reject this argument because the presupposed epistemology risks collapsing into general skepticism. In chapter four, I develop a new argument for moral skepticism. Sometimes if a person has the justified belief that there is enough disagreement about a topic this belief can defeat the justifications for that person's own beliefs about that topic. Given apparent widespread ethical disagreement, this presents a difficult challenge. In chapter five, I attempt to defuse the epistemological problem generated by disagreement, arguing that it is reasonable to deny that there is enough moral disagreement for the argument developed in chapter four to apply. Finally, in chapter six I consider a non-skeptical motivation for the development of moral epistemology, namely that there might be a process of belief formation important to moral beliefs but not to other sorts of beliefs. I argue that the moral emotions seem to carry some epistemic force, and that better understanding the moral emotions does provide an incentive for further work on moral epistemology.