Fitting the Evidence

I've never been at all sure what to make of 'evidentialism' in epistemology. Following is a fairly naive response to Conee and Feldman; I suspect there's some discussion of these or closely related issues; I'd be happy to be pointed to them.

Conee and Feldman think that the doxastic attitude I'm justified in having toward any given proposition is the one that fits my evidence. However, it's just not at all clear what that's supposed to mean. They offer examples, by way of illustration:

Here are three examples that illustrate the application of this notion of justification. First, when a physiologically normal person under ordinary circumstances looks at a plush green lawn that is directly in front of him in broad daylight, believing that there is something green before him is the attitude toward this proposition that fits his evidence. That is why the belief is epistemically justified. Second, suspension of judgment is the fitting attitude for each of us toward the proposition that an even number of ducks exists, since our evidence makes it equally likely that the number is odd. Neither belief nor disbelief is epistemically justified when our evidence is equally balanced. And third, when it comes to the proposition that sugar is sour, our gustatory experience makes disbelief the fitting attitude. Such experiential evidence epistemically justifies disbelief.

My problem here isn't that anything strikes me as false -- it's just that I don't see that justification has been illuminated by the connection to 'fitting the evidence'. I don't feel like I have a better antecedent grip on what the evidence is, and how to tell what fits it, than I do on what is justified. Conee and Feldman go on to observe that various views about justification are inconsistent with evidentialism, because, e.g., they have the implication that only a responsibly formed belief is justified, but some beliefs that are not responsibly formed fit the evidence. One needn't think this, though; perhaps what fits the evidence is what one would do if responsible. Or, certain reliabilist views will have the implication that Bonjour's clairvoyant character has justified beliefs; this too can be rendered consistent with the letter of evidentialism by allowing that external facts about reliability play a role in what evidence one has (or, less plausibly, which attitude fits a given body of evidence). A commitment to evidentialism per se doesn't seem to tell you much.

A theory of justification, it seems, ought to be illuminating, in the sense that it should explain justification in terms of states and relations that are antecedently well-understood. (As indicated last post, however, I don't think this constraint implies that the stuff on the right-hand-side need always be non-epistemic.)

In Defense of a Kripkean Dogma

In Defense of a Kripkean Dogma, with Ishani Maitra and Brain Weatherson, penultimate draft: 22 February, 2010, forthcoming in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.

In “Against Arguments from Reference”, Ron Mallon, Edouard Machery, Shaun Nichols, and Stephen Stich (hereafter, MMNS) argue that recent experiments concerning reference undermine various philosophical arguments that presuppose the correctness of the causal-historical theory of reference. We will argue three things in reply. First, the experiments in question—concerning Kripke’s Gödel/Schmidt example—don’t really speak to the dispute between descriptivism and the causal-historical theory; though the two theories are empirically testable, we need to look at quite different data than MMNS do to decide between them. Second, the Gödel/Schmidt example plays a different, and much smaller, role in Kripke’s argument for the causal-historical theory than MMNS assume. Finally, and relatedly, even if Kripke is wrong about the Gödel/Schmidt example—indeed, even if the causal-historical theory is not the correct theory of names for some human languages—that does not, contrary to MMNS’s claim, undermine uses of the causal-historical theory in philosophical research projects.

Quantifiers, Knowledge, and Counterfactuals

Quantifiers, Knowledge, and Counterfactuals, forthcoming in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.

Many of the motivations in favor of contextualism about knowledge apply also to a contextualist approach to counterfactuals. I motivate and articulate such an approach, in terms of the context-sensitive ‘all cases’, in the spirit of David Lewis’s contextualist view about knowledge. The resulting view explains intuitive data, resolves a puzzle parallel to the skeptical paradox, and renders safety and sensitivity, construed as counterfactuals, necessary conditions on knowledge.

Explaining Away Intuitions

Explaining Away Intuitions, (2010) in Studia Philosophica Estonica, special issue on intuitions. Refer to published version, available here.

What is it to ‘explain away’ an intuition? Philosophers often attempt to explain intuitions away, but it is often unclear what the success conditions for their project consist in. I attempt to articulate these conditions, using several philosophical case studies as guides. I will conclude that explaining away intuitions is a more difficult task than has sometimes been appreciated; I also suggest, however, that the importance of explaining away intuitions has often been exaggerated.

Knowing the Intuition and Knowing the Counterfactual

Knowing the Intuition and Knowing the Counterfactual, (2009) Philosophical Studies, 145(3), September 2009: 435-443. Please refer to published version here. For a Philosophical Studies book symposium on Timothy Williamson's The Philosophy of Philosophy. See also Williamson's response here.

I criticize Timothy Williamson’s characterization of thought experiments on which the central judgments are judgments of contingent counterfactuals. The fragility of these counterfactuals makes them too easily false, and too difficult to know.

Dreaming

Dreaming, with Ernest Sosa. Forthcoming in The Oxford Companion to Consciousness.

Thought-Experiment Intuitions and Truth in Fiction

Thought-Experiment Intuitions and Truth in Fiction, with Benjamin Jarvis. (2009) Philosophical Studies 142 (2), January 2009: 221-246. Please refer to published version, available online here.

What sorts of things are the intuitions generated via thought experiment? Timothy Williamson has responded to naturalistic skeptics by arguing that thought-experiment intuitions are judgments of ordinary counterfactuals. On this view, the intuition is naturalistically innocuous, but it has a contingent content and could be known at best a posteriori. We suggest an alternative to Williamson’s account, according to which we apprehend thought-experiment intuitions through our grasp on truth in fiction. On our view, intuitions like the Gettier intuition are necessarily true and knowable a priori. Our view, like Williamson’s, avoids naturalistic skepticism.

Scepticism and the Imagination Model of Dreaming

Scepticism and the Imagination Model of Dreaming. (2008) The Philosophical Quarterly, 58 (232), July 2008: 519–527 doi:10.1111/j.1467-9213.2007.546.x  Penultimate draft; please refer to published version, available online here.

Ernest Sosa has argued that the solution to dream skepticism lies in an understanding of dreams as imaginative experiences – when we dream, on this suggestion, we do not believe the contents of our dreams, but rather imagine them.  Sosa rebuts skepticism thus: dreams don’t cause false beliefs, so my beliefs cannot be false, having been caused by dreams.
I argue that, even assuming that Sosa is correct about the nature of dreaming, belief in wakefulness on these grounds is epistemically irresponsible. The proper upshot of the imagination model, I suggest, is to recharacterize the way we think about dream skepticism: the skeptical threat is not, after all, that we have false beliefs. So even though dreams don’t involve false beliefs, they still pose a skeptical threat, which I elaborate.

Dreaming and Imagination

Dreaming and Imagination, (2009) Mind and Language, 24 (1), February 2009: 103-121. Please refer to published version, available online here.

I argue, on philosophical, psychological, and neurophysiological grounds, that contrary to an orthodox view, dreams do not typically involve misleading sensations and false beliefs. I am thus in partial agreement with Colin McGinn, who has argued that we do not have misleading sensory experience while dreaming, and partially in agreement with Ernest Sosa, who has argued that we do not form false beliefs while dreaming. Rather, on my view, dreams involve mental imagery and propositional imagination. I defend the imagination model of dreaming from some objections.