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I’m generally sceptical of the value of surveys, as currently conducted by practitioners of ‘experimental philosophy’ as a way of getting clear about what’s going on in philosophically interesting thought experiments. The most systematic reason for this scepticism comes from thinking about what exactly is going on in thought experiments. Following Jonathan Ichikawa and Ben Jarvis, [...]

There was a fair bit of back and forth in the previous thread on just what us stakes-sensitive folks were claiming to be stakes-sensitive. So I thought I’d list what I thought was stakes-sensitive, and perhaps others who thought there is stakes-sensitivity somewhere can chime in either in comments or on their blogs/sites. Three qualifications before [...]

If you’re anything like me, you mostly read blogs through RSS feeds, and maybe Twitter links when they are posted. This means you sometimes miss slow developing comments threads. If so, you may not have seen the very interesting thread that developed on the previous post here. So this is just a small post to [...]

Per usual, I recommend the comments of Ned Block (NYU). Brian Leiter

The '3 Quarks Daily' blog is running another contest. Akeel Bilgrami (Columbia) is the judge this year. Brian Leiter

I think I'm going to make this a regular feature, in honor of some of the charming specimens of humanity who show up in my in-box. This one started peacably enough. Mr. Ginns (whoever he is) sent me the following... Brian Leiter

In his Epistemology, Fumerton argues that propositional justification is more central to (applied) epistemology than is doxastic justification.  Here is one of his arguments:

There is another reason that epistemologists interested in applied epistemology are probably well advised to focus on what there is [propositional] justification for people to believe rather than which beliefs are actually [doxastically] justified.  If it is true that S’s belief is [doxastically] justified only if it is based on good reasons, and it is also true that basing is to be understood, even partially, in terms of causation, then it is not clear that philosophers, in their capacity as philosophers, are particularly well equipped to answer questions concerning which beliefs are [doxastically] justified.  The causes of a belief are a more appropriate subject for the psychologist.  Freud spent a great deal of time wondering what causes a belief in a God or in an afterlife.  The epistemologist, qua epistemologist, should find such speculation utterly uninteresting.  Whatever causes such beliefs, the epistemologist’s concern is with the question of whether we possess good reasons for believing the propositions in question.  To answer that question we need not concern ourselves with what is actually causing our beliefs. (36-7)

I worry that this argument shows too much.  If it shows that epistemologists, qua epistemologists, shouldn’t be interested in what we are doxastically justified in believing, then a parallel line of reasoning shows that epistemologists, qua epistemologists, shouldn’t be interested in what we have propositional justification or good reasons for believing.  Here is the parallel argument:

Whether we have certain reasons to believe P largely depends on what beliefs or experiences we have.  But whether we have certain beliefs and experiences is the sort of question that epistemologists, qua epistemologists, are not suited to answer.  If you wanna know the answer to that question, go talk to our friends the psychologists and cognitive scientists.

The parallel certainly isn’t perfect, but it seems close enough to cast doubt on Fumerton’s argument. (The parallel is stronger if we assume (i) that one can be mistaken about which beliefs and experiences one has and (ii) that brain scans and/or psychological evaluation can provide information about what experiences or beliefs one is having.  Fumerton seems to endorse at least (i).)

. . . with up to 187,000 students possibly going without an offer to study at university this year. Details here.

Allan Hazlett (epistemology, metaphysics), Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University, has accepted an offer from the Department of Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, where he will be Lecturer in Epistemology. Brian Leiter

Nominations are open for the second philosophy blog writing prize at 3 Quarks Daily. Follow this link for details. David Shoemaker

Nominations are open for the second philosophy blog writing prize at 3 Quarks Daily. Follow this link for details. David Shoemaker

I’m delighted to announce that Allan Hazlett, currently at Fordham, will be joining us later this year to take up our new Lectureship in Epistemology. That’s a fantastic hire for us I think, and it will be great to have Allan as a colleague.

Eric Schwitzgebel (UC Riveride) takes a look. Brian Leiter

After defining Fallibilism as the possibility of knowing p on the basis of evidence E where E is consistent with ~p  he says this:

“For example, a fallibilist maintains that I may know that I have hands, on the basis of evidence that is logically consistent with the remote possibility that I do not have hands, because I am dreaming after a particularly terrible accident.”

So here’s what the fallibilist maintains:  I may know that I have hands, on the basis of evidence that is logically consistent with the remote possibility that I do not have hands, because I am dreaming after a particularly terrible accident

So suppose the fallibilist wishes to assert what she maintains (either because like most philosophers she’s eager to assert what she thinks, or because someone says, “Hey, you’re a fallibilist, what do you maintain?”).  What shall she say?  It seems she should, according to Stanley, say this.

FU  ”I may know that I have hands, on the basis of evidence that is logically consistent with the remote possibility that I do not have hands.”

Now suppose that our fallibilist reasonably believes (even knows, let’s say (let her know that she knows if need be)) she has hands.  Then there’s no “may” about it and she can say

FU2 “I  know that I have hands, on the basis of evidence that is logically consistent with the remote possibility that I do not have hands.”

Now given the conistency of her knowledge-grounding evidence with that possibility, what could possibly prevent the appropriateness of utterng FU2 from entailing the appropriateness of uttering

FU3 “I  know that I have hands, though there’s this remote possibility that I do not have hands.”

FU3 was obtained from FU2 by highlighting the bit after “FU2″, copying it, pasting it in front of “FU3″ and replacing “on the basis of evidence that is logically consistent with the” with “though there’s this”.  But how could you object to *that*?  After all, if the possibility is logically consistent with my (knowledge-grounding) evidence, then, well, it’s *there*.  And we usually just make knowledge claims without stating the evidence they’re based on.  So the move from FU2 to FU3 seems perfectly harmless. Now, Jason buys into the now-standard account of epistemic possibility: Consistency with what one knows (with a troubling psychological caveat we needn’t pursue).  So they want to “rule out” (such an odd notion to me) skeptical scenarios as even *possible* because inconsistent with knowledge (that’s overkill for sure).  But what an odd situation!  Recall Stanley’s definition of fallibilism:

“Fallibilism is the doctrine that someone can know that p, even though their evidence for p is logically consistent with the truth of not-p” (127).

So it appears that on Stanley’s model, my p-knowledge-grounding evidence doesn’t rule out a skeptical scenario S in which not-p, but, mirabile dictu, the knowledge I get from it does!

This is weird enough that I don’t think it’s going to be a good route to go to block the seemingly obvious move from FU to FU3.  But FU comes from the lips of Stanley himself and FU3 is a concessive knowledge attribution.

——————————————
[Brief Excursus]
Of course, Jason says more or less explicitly that CKA’s *can* express truths.

S1  “I believe that utterances of the sentences in (1) do in fact almost always express false propositions” (127, emphasis added).

S2  “What I will argue is that, when utterances of (1a) and (1c) express false propositions, the fact that they are false does not refute the fallibilist position” (127, emphasis added).

But if I read 2005 correctly, that’s just because the “mixed” variety (his 1b, 2b: “John K’s…but what I K….) possibly express truths (he accepts a pragmatic account here: Dougherty and Rysiew 2009 provide a unified account which explains all the infelicity as pragmatic).  And the case I’ve focused on here–the sober assertion of fallibilism–doesn’t seem to bear any relevent similarity to these case.

Also, I never noticed before the seeming admission that there are some felicitous non-mixed CKA’s.

S3  “This explains the typical oddity of utterances of these sentences” (128, emphasis added).

S4  “such utterances are almost always odd” (128).

Maybe he’s just playing it safe.
[End Brief Excursus]
———————————————

FU3 plausibly entails Jason’s

(5a) I know that I have hands, but I haven’t ruled out that I’m just a brain in a vat with no body at all.
FU3 doesnt mention “ruling out” but if you believe in “ruling out” then plausibly FU3 entails (5a).  And he thinks the natural way to understand “ruling out” is to know it’s not the case, which yields

(6a) I know that I have hands, but I don’t know that I’m not a brain in a vat with no body at all.
I don’t think “ruling out” is an epistemic notion.  I think it’s a completely pragmatic notion, something along the lines of S’s justifiedly believing p false and being such that further inquiry into p has negative expected utility.  I get off the train at (5a).  So I don’t need to endorse (6a).

However, it seems that Jason does.  If I’m right–it has not failed to occur to me that this will be disputed (nor has it failed to occur to me that the disputants might be correct)–then Jason’s definition of fallibilism commits him to (5a) and his understanding of “excludes” then commits him to (6a).

This is kind of ironic because he says “there are some positions that are versions of fallibilism that do entail the truth (and presumably the acceptability) of the sentences in (6).”  He notes that Nozick will be stuck with this but then claims “it is not the case that any non-contextualist account of knowledge that is fallibilist predicts that the sentences in (6) can be both true and felicitously assertable” (131).  From this and the preceding conclusion, it follows that Jason–who is clearly a fallibilist–must be a contextualist.  :-)

The readership has been generous in the past with restaurant advice, and I plan to offer some here on a more regular basis, starting with this self-proclaimed Catalan tapas place. Having been several times to the Catalan region (Barcelona, Girona,... Brian Leiter

. . . is judged the best one-liner at the Edinburgh Fringe. The top ten are:

The top 10 festival funnies were judged to be:

1) Tim Vine "I've just been on a once-in-a-lifetime holiday. I'll tell you what, never again."

2) David Gibson "I'm currently dating a couple of anorexics. Two birds, one stone."

3) Emo Philips "I picked up a hitch hiker. You've got to when you hit them."

4) Jack Whitehall "I bought one of those anti-bullying wristbands when they first came out. I say 'bought', I actually stole it off a short, fat ginger kid."

5) Gary Delaney "As a kid I was made to walk the plank. We couldn't afford a dog."

6) John Bishop "Being an England supporter is like being the over-optimistic parents of the fat kid on sports day."

7) Bo Burnham "What do you call a kid with no arms and an eyepatch? Names."

8) Gary Delaney "Dave drowned. So at the funeral we got him a wreath in the shape of a lifebelt. Well, it's what he would have wanted."

9) Robert White "For Vanessa Feltz, life is like a box of chocolates: Empty."

10) Gareth Richards "Wooden spoons are great. You can either use them to prepare food. Or, if you can't be bothered with that, just write a number on one and walk into a pub…"


Full story is here.

The curious details are here.

. . . the truth is out here. It is incredible that so many would believe otherwise. I've never understood why so many care about the quality of the food they ingest, but not the quality of their information. Yet more evidence that Plato was right.

. . . can be found here, and with this terrific line: 'to reduce higher education to its essentials, we risk, if not throwing the baby out with the bathwater, at least throwing out the bathwater before the baby's had a bath'. Brilliant.