tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5673382.post8580994693784246334..comments2024-02-24T20:58:00.069-08:00Comments on There is some truth in that: Introspective and Reflective DistinguishabilityJonathan Jenkins Ichikawahttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05260245860017778409noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5673382.post-65453086531575246142014-10-14T15:18:36.891-07:002014-10-14T15:18:36.891-07:00So I'm happy to grant the narrow/broad reflect...So I'm happy to grant the narrow/broad reflection distinction. (At least for the purpose of argument; as I said in the body of the post, I'm suspicious of the idea of divorcing any capacity from a priori reasoning.) What I am not seeing is how this distinction, which concerns which capacities are made use of, is related to the distinction between favouring and discriminating support.<br /><br />Like I said in the post, I just have a hard time seeing how the kinds of internalist, skeptical intuitions that would lead someone to suppose we can't tell from the inside whether we're in good or bad cases, are plausibly read as ones specific to narrow reflection, defined as you do.<br /><br />This isn't a complaint about the approach to epistemology -- I have considerable sympathy with a lot of it. I'm not just convinced that it manages to be the kind of 'holy grail' of epistemology that does justice to deep-seated internalist intuitions.Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05260245860017778409noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5673382.post-19363723743027715482014-10-13T05:54:07.664-07:002014-10-13T05:54:07.664-07:00Hi Jonathan,
Yes, I talk about this towards the ...Hi Jonathan, <br /><br />Yes, I talk about this towards the end of part two, though the terminology is slightly different. I contrast a narrow introspective version of what you're calling 'reflection', with a broader category which includes both introspection and a priori reasoning (which I call 'reflective'). With the different terminologies in play, it might be best to characterise this distinction as 'narrow reflection' versus 'broad reflection', or something like that. The thought is that while the sceptic is quite right to say that we can't reflectively distinguish between the good and bad cases in the narrow sense (because there's a lack of discriminating epistemic support), they are wrong to conclude on this basis that one has no reflective grounds available to one in the good case which indicate that one is in the good case (because according to ED one has the favouring factive epistemic support, which entails that one is in the good case). In sloganising form: I'm claiming that there's a way of appealing to one's reflectively accessing grounds so as to know that one is in the good case (when one is in the good case) which is not thereby a way of introspectively telling the good and bad cases apart. Duncan Pritchardhttp://www.philosophy.ed.ac.uk/people/view.php?name=duncan-pritchard-frsenoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5673382.post-37277031171944102832014-10-12T14:51:36.123-07:002014-10-12T14:51:36.123-07:00Thanks Duncan.
I am still struggling to understan...Thanks Duncan.<br /><br />I am still struggling to understand the difference between what you call favouring epistemic support and discriminating epistemic support. I agree that there is difference between having some support for a hypothesis and having an ability to discriminate it perceptually from other hypotheses, but I haven't quite convinced myself that this motivates a dramatic difference in kinds of epistemic support.<br /><br />I wasn't aware you were thinking of the kinds of epistemic support as corresponding to different senses of 'reflection'. Is that discussed in the book?Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05260245860017778409noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5673382.post-59430448467159557272014-10-12T14:41:42.533-07:002014-10-12T14:41:42.533-07:00Many thanks for the comments Jonathan (and apologi...Many thanks for the comments Jonathan (and apologies for the delay in responding--I haven't been on-line much the last few days). I think there's a key element of my view which you're missing out here, which is the distinction I draw between favouring and discriminating epistemic support (a distinction which I argue we should all accept--i.e., it's meant to be independent of ED). The idea is that with this distinction in play we can come to see how a further distinction can be drawn between a narrow sense of 'reflection' in which we clearly cannot reflectively tell the difference between good and bad cases (lack of discriminating epistemic support of the right kind), and a broad sense of 'reflection' by which we can come to reflectively know the difference (via favouring epistemic support). The point is that with this distinction in play we can resist the sceptical inference from the fact that there is nothing in my current experiences which distinguishes them from the sceptical case to the (I claim stronger) claim that there is no reflective basis available to me (even in the good case) which epistemically favours my being in the good case rather than the bad case. If we deny the latter, then conceding the former is (I claim) harmless. That's the general idea anyway. (And note that all I need is for the distinction to be genuine. I'm sure you're quite right that there are certain particular cases where the distinction becomes blurred and perhaps even artificial for various reasons. But I just need the general shape of the distinction and its application to the sceptical reasoning). Duncan Pritchardnoreply@blogger.com