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research articles

1. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 8 > Issue: 4
Peter Baumann

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Can I be wrong about my own beliefs? More precisely: Can I falsely believe that I believe that p? I argue that the answer is negative. This runs against what many philosophers and psychologists have traditionally thought and still think. I use a rather new kind of argument, – one that is based on considerations about Moore's paradox. It shows that if one believes that one believes that p then one believes that p – even though one can believe that p without believing that one believes that p.
2. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 8 > Issue: 4
David Coss

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Contextualism is the view that the word ‘knows’ is context sensitive and shifts according to the relevant standards in play. I argue that Contextualism is best paired with internalism about contexts. That is to say, an attributor’s context is completely determined by mental facts. Consequently, in the absence of awareness, external facts do not lead to contextual shifts. I support this view by appealing to the typical cases contextualists employ, such as DeRose’s Bank Cases and Cohen’s Airport Case. I conclude by reflecting on the nature of attributor’s themselves, and suggest this also supports the view that Contextualism is internalistic about contextual shifts.
3. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 8 > Issue: 4
Patrick Grim, Nicholas Rescher

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This paper surveys our inescapable limits as cognitive agents with regard to a full world of fact: the well-known metamathematical limits of axiomatic systems, limitations of explanation that doom a principle of sufficient reason, limitations of expression across all possible languages, and a simple but powerful argument regarding the limits of conceivability. In ways demonstrable even from within our limits, the full world of fact is inescapably beyond us. Here we propose that there must nonetheless be a totality of fact, and that despite our limits we can know something of its general character. The world as the totality of fact must form a plenum, with a radically unfamiliar formal structure that contains distinct elements corresponding to each element of its own power set.
4. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 8 > Issue: 4
Richard Pettigrew

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How does logic relate to rational belief? Is logic normative for belief, as some say? What, if anything, do facts about logical consequence tell us about norms of doxastic rationality? In this paper, we consider a range of putative logic-rationality bridge principles . These purport to relate facts about logical consequence to norms that govern the rationality of our beliefs and credences. To investigate these principles, we deploy a novel approach, namely, epistemic utility theory. That is, we assume that doxastic attitudes have different epistemic value depending on how accurately they represent the world. We then use the principles of decision theory to determine which of the putative logic-rationality bridge principles we can derive from considerations of epistemic utility.
5. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 8 > Issue: 4
Maura Priest

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In Part I, this paper argues that Duncan Pritchard’s version of safety is incompatible with closure. In Part II I argue for an alternative theory that fares much better. Part I begins by reviewing past arguments concerning safety’s problems with closure. After discussing both their inadequacies and Pritchard’s response to them, I offer a modified criticism immune to previous shortcomings. I conclude Part I by explaining how Pritchard’s own arguments make my critique possible. Part II argues that most modal theories of knowledge will run into problems similar to those found in Pritchard’s Anti-Luck Virtue Epistemology. I hence offer my own theory grounded in risk assessment and explain why and how it does much better.
6. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 8 > Issue: 4
Michael J. Shaffer

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This paper introduces a new argument for the safety condition on knowledge. It is based on the contention that the rejection of safety entails the rejection of the factivity condition on knowledge. But, since we should maintain factivity, we should endorse safery.

7. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 8 > Issue: 4

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8. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 8 > Issue: 4

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9. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 8 > Issue: 4

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research articles

10. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 8 > Issue: 3
Michael J. Shaffer

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Given the sheer vastness of the totality of contemporary human knowledge and our individual epistemic finitude it is commonplace for those of us who lack knowledge with respect to some proposition(s) to appeal to experts (those who do have knowledge with respect to that proposition(s)) as an epistemic resource. Of course, much ink has been spilled on this issue and so concern here will be very narrowly focused on testimony in the context of epistemological views that incorporate evidentialism and internalism, and which are either reductivist or non-reductivist in nature. Also, as the main question about testimony addressed here is whether or not testimony can provide any basic justification at all, attention will be narrowly focused on the simple case where one is presented with testimony that something is the case from only one source and on one occasion. It turns out that there are some seriously odd epistemic features of such appeals to expertise that arise both for those who intend to accept internalism, evidentialism and reductivism about justification by testimony and for those who intend to accept internalism, evidentialism and non-reductivism about justification by testimony.
11. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 8 > Issue: 3
Marc Andree Weber

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Standardly, epistemic peers regarding a given matter are said to be people of equal competence who share all relevant evidence. Alternatively, one can define epistemic peers regarding a given matter as people who are equally likely to be right about that matter. I argue that a definition in terms of likelihood captures the essence of epistemic peerhood better than the standard definition or any variant of it. What is more, a likelihood definition implies the truth of the central thesis in the debate on peer disagreement, the so-called Equal Weight View, according to which we should give the opinions of our peers the same weight we give our own. Adopting a likelihood definition, however, does not end the debate on peer disagreement, because the alleged theoretical alternatives to the Equal Weight View, reinterpreted in the light of a likelihood definition, can in fact be shown to be compatible with this view—though the reinterpreted versions may appear less plausible than the original ones.

discussion notes/debate

12. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 8 > Issue: 3
Philip Atkins

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Moti Mizrahi has argued that Gettier cases are misleading, since they involve a certain kind of semantic failure. In a recent paper, I criticized Mizrahi’s argument. Mizrahi has since responded. This is a response to his response.
13. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 8 > Issue: 3
Landon D. C. Elkind

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I critically discuss a new proposal for a metaphysics of sense-data. This proposal is due to Peter Forrest. Forrest argues that, if we accept Platonism about universals, sense-data are best understood as structured universals–in particular, as structured universals with temporal and spatial properties as components. Against this proposal, I argue sense-data as structured universals are not universals at all.
14. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 8 > Issue: 3
Mark Schroeder

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In “Stakes, Withholding, and Pragmatic Encroachment on Knowledge,” I used a variety of cases, including cases of forced choice, to illustrate my explanation of how and why some pragmatic factors, but not others, can affect whether an agent knows. In his recent contribution, Andy Mueller argues that cases of forced choice actually pose a dilemma for my account. In this paper I reply.

15. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 8 > Issue: 3

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16. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 8 > Issue: 3

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17. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 8 > Issue: 3

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research articles

18. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 8 > Issue: 2
Miloud Belkoniene

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This paper discusses an assumption on which explanationist accounts of the evidential support relation rely with a focus on McCain’s recent account. Explanationist accounts define the relation of evidential support in terms of relations of best explanation that hold between the evidence a subject possesses and the propositions she believes. Such a definition presupposes that the explanatory virtues of what best explains a subject’s body of evidence is indicative of its truth. Yet, recent cases offered in the literature against McCain’s account show that there is no straightforward way of vindicating this assumption.
19. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 8 > Issue: 2
Fabio Lampert, John Biro

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Richard Feldman’s well-known principle about disagreement and evidence – usually encapsulated in the slogan, ‘evidence of evidence is evidence,’ (EEE) – invites the question, what should a rational believer do when faced by such evidence, especially when the disagreement is with an epistemic peer? The question has been the subject of much controversy. However, it has been recently suggested both that the principle is subject to counterexamples and that it is trivial. If either is the case, the question of what to do in the face of evidence of evidence becomes less pressing. We contend that even if one or the other of these suggestions is right about (EEE) as a general principle about evidence, they leave it untouched insofar as it plays a role in the debates about the rational way to respond to disagreement and, in particular, to disagreement by an epistemic peer. This is because in such cases the evidence about which one has evidence and which is supposed to provide evidence against one's belief is the mere fact of someone’s disagreeing, rather than something that is related to the content of the proposition about which the parties disagree. We go on to argue that, so understood, the principle is false.
20. Logos & Episteme: Volume > 8 > Issue: 2
Michael J. Shaffer

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Pascal’s wager is a familiar heuristic designed to show that believing that God exists is of greater practical value than believing that God does not exist given the outcomes associated with those beliefs as understood in Christian theology. In this way Pascal argues that we that we ought to believe that God exists, independent of epistemic grounds. But, things are not easy, because he understands that belief is not subject to direct voluntary control. So, for purely practical reasons, he advises us to put ourselves in situations that will maximize our chances of acquiring the belief that God exists. In effect, he advises us to attempt to acquire that belief by indirect control. But, then the wager is not a proper decision problem since it does not involve a real choice. Additionally, there are at least two other problems that afflict the traditional wager: one involving the value of eternal damnation and one concerning the coherence of infinite utilities. In this paper the wager will be explored and a corrected version will be presented that yields a rather surprising, but theoretically correct, conclusion.