This paper considers some puzzling knowledge ascriptions and argues that they present prima facie counterexamples to credence, belief, and justification conditions on knowledge, as well as to many of the standard meta-semantic assumptions about the context-sensitivity of ‘know’. It argues that these ascriptions provide new evidence in favor of contextualist theories of knowledge—in particular those that take the interpretation of ‘know’ to be sensitive to the mechanisms of constraint.
{"title":"Knowledge by constraint","authors":"Ben Holguín","doi":"10.1111/phpe.12153","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/phpe.12153","url":null,"abstract":"This paper considers some puzzling knowledge ascriptions and argues that they present <i>prima facie</i> counterexamples to credence, belief, and justification conditions on knowledge, as well as to many of the standard meta-semantic assumptions about the context-sensitivity of ‘know’. It argues that these ascriptions provide new evidence in favor of contextualist theories of knowledge—in particular those that take the interpretation of ‘know’ to be sensitive to the mechanisms of constraint.","PeriodicalId":51519,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Perspectives","volume":"40 10","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138525512","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Inference to the best explanation and the new size elitism\u0000 1","authors":"K. Elliott","doi":"10.1111/phpe.12148","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/phpe.12148","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":51519,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Perspectives","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2021-10-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49135743","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
I explore the motivation and logical consequences of the idea that we have some (limited) ability to know contingent facts about the future, even in presence of the assumption that the future is objectively unsettled or indeterminate. I start by formally characterizing skepticism about the future. This analysis nudges the anti-skeptic towards the idea that if some propositions about the future are objectively indeterminate, then it may be indeterminate whether a suitably positioned agent knows them.
{"title":"Human Foreknowledge","authors":"Fabrizio Cariani","doi":"10.1111/phpe.12158","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/phpe.12158","url":null,"abstract":"I explore the motivation and logical consequences of the idea that we have some (limited) ability to know contingent facts about the future, even in presence of the assumption that the future is objectively unsettled or indeterminate. I start by formally characterizing skepticism about the future. This analysis nudges the anti-skeptic towards the idea that if some propositions about the future are objectively indeterminate, then it may be indeterminate whether a suitably positioned agent knows them.","PeriodicalId":51519,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Perspectives","volume":"1 1","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2021-01-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"63605012","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
How many concepts do we need in ethics? Take the basic deontic concepts, that is, moral obligation and permissibility. Do we need both of these concepts in our ethical theorizing, or could we make do with just one of them? 1 A standard view is that these concepts are interdefinable —that is, either of them could be defined in terms of the other. On this view, either of obligation and permissibility could serve as a deontic primitive, allowing the other concept to be defined in terms of this primitive. More specifically, obligation and permissibility are usually thought to be interdefinable with the following duality definitions: 2
{"title":"Permissibility Is the Only Feasible Deontic Primitive","authors":"J. Gustafsson","doi":"10.1111/PHPE.12137","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/PHPE.12137","url":null,"abstract":"How many concepts do we need in ethics? Take the basic deontic concepts, that is, moral obligation and permissibility. Do we need both of these concepts in our ethical theorizing, or could we make do with just one of them? 1 A standard view is that these concepts are interdefinable —that is, either of them could be defined in terms of the other. On this view, either of obligation and permissibility could serve as a deontic primitive, allowing the other concept to be defined in terms of this primitive. More specifically, obligation and permissibility are usually thought to be interdefinable with the following duality definitions: 2","PeriodicalId":51519,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Perspectives","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2020-09-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1111/PHPE.12137","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48643935","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Consequentialist theories determine rightness solely based on real or expected consequences. Although such theories are popular, they often have difficulty with generalizing intuitions, which, in their pre-theoretic form, require concern for the question “What if everybody did that?” When generalizing versions of consequentialism have been attempted, as with rule consequentialism, the results are messy. We claim that the conceptual apparatus currently employed in generalizing consequentialism is not adequate to the task. Just as decision theory is crucial to modern consequentialism for handling uncertainty, so too is it crucial for handling generalization. Here, we present a relatively new decision theory, functional decision theory, that will allow us to sketch a theory of generalized act consequentialism. We argue that this theory is superior to rule consequentialism both in modeling the actual reasoning of generalizers and in delivering correct results.
{"title":"Act Consequentialism without Free Rides","authors":"Preston Greene, B. Levinstein","doi":"10.1111/phpe.12138","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/phpe.12138","url":null,"abstract":"Consequentialist theories determine rightness solely based on real or expected consequences. Although such theories are popular, they often have difficulty with generalizing intuitions, which, in their pre-theoretic form, require concern for the question “What if everybody did that?” When generalizing versions of consequentialism have been attempted, as with rule consequentialism, the results are messy. We claim that the conceptual apparatus currently employed in generalizing consequentialism is not adequate to the task. Just as decision theory is crucial to modern consequentialism for handling uncertainty, so too is it crucial for handling generalization. Here, we present a relatively new decision theory, functional decision theory, that will allow us to sketch a theory of generalized act consequentialism. We argue that this theory is superior to rule consequentialism both in modeling the actual reasoning of generalizers and in delivering correct results.","PeriodicalId":51519,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Perspectives","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2020-08-12","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1111/phpe.12138","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43594666","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
You are irrational in a distinctive way if you fail to intend to do what you believe you ought to do, such as when you believe that you ought to work on your paper but end up watching your favorite TV show, or when you believe you ought not to drink and yet pick up another tempting glass of wine: you are akratic. It seems as if two different parts of your mind fail to cohere with each other: one part tells you (not) to do something, but the other part resists. Since being in such a state of mind seems to be a distinctive form of rational failure, it has been widely held that there is a principle of rationality, “Enkrasia”, which requires you not to be akratic. However, the nature of Enkrasia yet remains unclear. Although akratic irrationality intuitively involves incoherence of some sort, Enkrasia seems importantly dissimilar from other principles of coherence, as a number of writers point out (Broome 2013, Reisner 2013, Worsnip 2018). Broome (2013: 174) writes, for example, “[intending] what you believe you ought seems very different from not having contradictory beliefs, or intending what you believe is a means implied by an end that you intend, or satisfying other requirements of rationality.” My aim in this paper is to offer a novel view of the nature of Enkrasia, according to which it is not an independent principle of rationality. Properly understood, Enkrasia is simply an instance of instrumental rationality, which is a matter of intending what you believe to be the necessary means to an end you intend. I argue that believing, all-things-considered, that you ought to φ implies intending that you do what you ought to do out of a set of alternatives, of which φ-ing is an element. If so, the content of your belief that you ought to φ (out of those alternatives) can be seen as specifying the means to your end, i.e., doing what you ought to do. If so, when you intend to φ in accordance with your belief that you ought to φ, it can be seen as intending what you believe to be the means to your end.
{"title":"Enkratic Rationality Is Instrumental Rationality\u0000 *","authors":"Wooram Lee","doi":"10.1111/phpe.12136","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/phpe.12136","url":null,"abstract":"You are irrational in a distinctive way if you fail to intend to do what you believe you ought to do, such as when you believe that you ought to work on your paper but end up watching your favorite TV show, or when you believe you ought not to drink and yet pick up another tempting glass of wine: you are akratic. It seems as if two different parts of your mind fail to cohere with each other: one part tells you (not) to do something, but the other part resists. Since being in such a state of mind seems to be a distinctive form of rational failure, it has been widely held that there is a principle of rationality, “Enkrasia”, which requires you not to be akratic. However, the nature of Enkrasia yet remains unclear. Although akratic irrationality intuitively involves incoherence of some sort, Enkrasia seems importantly dissimilar from other principles of coherence, as a number of writers point out (Broome 2013, Reisner 2013, Worsnip 2018). Broome (2013: 174) writes, for example, “[intending] what you believe you ought seems very different from not having contradictory beliefs, or intending what you believe is a means implied by an end that you intend, or satisfying other requirements of rationality.” My aim in this paper is to offer a novel view of the nature of Enkrasia, according to which it is not an independent principle of rationality. Properly understood, Enkrasia is simply an instance of instrumental rationality, which is a matter of intending what you believe to be the necessary means to an end you intend. I argue that believing, all-things-considered, that you ought to φ implies intending that you do what you ought to do out of a set of alternatives, of which φ-ing is an element. If so, the content of your belief that you ought to φ (out of those alternatives) can be seen as specifying the means to your end, i.e., doing what you ought to do. If so, when you intend to φ in accordance with your belief that you ought to φ, it can be seen as intending what you believe to be the means to your end.","PeriodicalId":51519,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Perspectives","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2020-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1111/phpe.12136","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46814734","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper sketches a theory of the reason-giving force of well-being that allows us to reconcile our intuitions about two of the most recalcitrant problem cases in population ethics: Jan Narveson’s Procreation Asymmetry and Derek Parfit’s Non-Identity Problem. I show that what has prevented philosophers from developing a theory that gives a satisfactory account of both these problems is their tacit commitment to a teleological conception of well-being, as something to be ‘promoted’. Replacing this picture with one according to which our reasons to confer well-being on people are conditional on their existence allows me to do better. It also enables us to understand some of the deep structural parallels between seemingly disparate normative phenomena such as procreating and promising. The resulting theory charts a middle way between the familiar dichotomy of narrow personaffecting theories and totalist or wide-person affecting theories in population ethics. 1. The Procreation Asymmetry Many of us hold pre-theoretical views about the morality of procreation that are, in an important sense, asymmetrical. Suppose you can foresee that a child you could create would live a life so full of uncompensated suffering as to be not worth living.1 Most would agree that – exceptional circumstances aside – it would constitute a serious moral wrong to bring this child into existence. That is, given a choice between Nobody: Create no new life and Misery: Create person A, with a life that is not worth living we believe that there is strong moral reason to choose Nobody over Misery. 1 More precisely, imagine that such a child would have a life that is, in Derek Parfit’s phrase, “worth not living”, since its life would be worse than a life spent in a permanent coma (which would also be not worth living). For stylistic reasons, I will continue to use the former locution. However, you may assume throughout that when I refer to a life as “not worth living”, this is also a life that is “worth not living”, in Parfit’s sense.
{"title":"Conditional Reasons and the Procreation Asymmetry","authors":"J. Frick","doi":"10.1111/phpe.12139","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/phpe.12139","url":null,"abstract":"This paper sketches a theory of the reason-giving force of well-being that allows us to reconcile our intuitions about two of the most recalcitrant problem cases in population ethics: Jan Narveson’s Procreation Asymmetry and Derek Parfit’s Non-Identity Problem. I show that what has prevented philosophers from developing a theory that gives a satisfactory account of both these problems is their tacit commitment to a teleological conception of well-being, as something to be ‘promoted’. Replacing this picture with one according to which our reasons to confer well-being on people are conditional on their existence allows me to do better. It also enables us to understand some of the deep structural parallels between seemingly disparate normative phenomena such as procreating and promising. The resulting theory charts a middle way between the familiar dichotomy of narrow personaffecting theories and totalist or wide-person affecting theories in population ethics. 1. The Procreation Asymmetry Many of us hold pre-theoretical views about the morality of procreation that are, in an important sense, asymmetrical. Suppose you can foresee that a child you could create would live a life so full of uncompensated suffering as to be not worth living.1 Most would agree that – exceptional circumstances aside – it would constitute a serious moral wrong to bring this child into existence. That is, given a choice between Nobody: Create no new life and Misery: Create person A, with a life that is not worth living we believe that there is strong moral reason to choose Nobody over Misery. 1 More precisely, imagine that such a child would have a life that is, in Derek Parfit’s phrase, “worth not living”, since its life would be worse than a life spent in a permanent coma (which would also be not worth living). For stylistic reasons, I will continue to use the former locution. However, you may assume throughout that when I refer to a life as “not worth living”, this is also a life that is “worth not living”, in Parfit’s sense.","PeriodicalId":51519,"journal":{"name":"Philosophical Perspectives","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":2.0,"publicationDate":"2020-08-09","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"https://sci-hub-pdf.com/10.1111/phpe.12139","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49462897","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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