LEMMings@Northwestern

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Workshop Papers

For those workshop participants who are willing to do so, the papers from the Midwest Epistemology Workshop will be published in a special edition of Philosophical Studies.

Audi | Casullo | Fumerton | Goldberg | Greco | Henderson
Lackey | McGrath | Sosa | Reed

Robert Audi - "Reliability as a Virtue"

This paper explores what constitutes reliability in persons, particularly intellectual reliability.  It considers global reliability, the overall reliability of persons, encompassing both the theoretical and practical realms; sectorial reliability, that of a person in a subject-matter (or behavioral) domain; and focal reliability, that of a particular belief.  The paper compares reliability with predictability of the kind most akin to it and distinguishes reliability as an intellectual virtue from reliability as an intellectual power.  The paper also connects reliability with insight, reasoning, knowledge, and trust.  It is argued that insofar as reliability is an intellectual virtue, it must meet both external standards of correctitude and internal standards of justification.

Albert Casullo - "How to Theorize about A Priori Knowledge: A Case Study"

There are two approaches to analyzing the concept of a priori knowledge. A theory-neutral approach provides an analysis that does not presuppose any general theory of knowledge or justification. A theory-laden approach provides an analysis that does presuppose some general theory of knowledge or justification (call it the background theory). Those who embrace a theory-laden analysis incur a special burden: they must separate features of their analysis that are constitutive of the a priori from those that are constitutive of the background theory. My goal is to illustrate, by means of a case study, how the failure to separate these features can lead to erroneous conclusions about the nature of a priori knowledge.

Richard Fumerton - "Luminous Enough for a Cognitive Home"

In this paper I evaluate the claim that we have stronger justification for believing propositions describing our mental life than we do for any propositions describing the physical world. That claim, I argue, is perfectly consistent with Williamson's argument against the luminosity of paradigmatic mental states, and is independently plausible.

Sandy Goldberg - "Reliabilism in Philosophy"

A problem is generated by the following three propositions: (1) Reliability (of some robust sort) is a necessary condition on epistemic justification; (2) On contested matters in philosophy, I am not reliable (in the relevant sense); (3) some of my beliefs regarding contested matters in philosophy are epistemically justified. I believe that each of the three propositions is defensible, but it appears that they can’t all be true. In this paper I explore the nature and scope of the problem, compare the problem to a similar problem arising in two other recent discussions, examine and reject some candidate solutions to the problem, and offer a brief and programmatic assessment of our predicament at the conclusion.

John Greco - "Knowledge as Success from Ability"

Several virtue epistemologists have claimed that knowledge is a kind of success from ability. The first part of the paper explores the nature of this claim. The second part of the paper explores some of its advantages. The bulk of the paper answers some objections in the light of two themes in the recent literature: that the concept of knowledge functions to flag good sources of information, and that knowledge is closely tied to practical reasoning.

David Henderson - "Motivated Contextualism"

I approach contextualism and sensitive invariantism by drawing on what I think should be an uncontroversial point regarding the point of the concept of knowledge: it is used to certify epistemic agents as good sources (on a certain point or subject matter) for an understood audience. Attributions of knowledge and denials of knowledge are used in a kind of epistemic gate keeping for (epistemic or practical) communities with which the attributor and interlocutors are associated. When combined with reflection on epistemic communities, and their situated epistemic needs for gate keeping, and when combined with reflection on applied communities and the epistemic gate keeping needs they face, this simple observation regarding the point and purpose of the concept of knowledge has rich implications. To begin with, it gives one reason to prefer contextualism over various forms of sensitive invariantism. It makes a good deal less sense that the gate keeping would be attuned to the interests of an epistemic agent who might have interests and projects rather at odds with the community for whom gate keeping is managed in the talk of knowledge. I sketch the suggested variant of contextualism—gate keeping contextualism. There is yet a second line of thought to be developed here—one that significantly limits the contextualist themes to be supported. Still thinking of knowledge as associated with community gate keeping, one should reflect on a spectrum gate keeping cases or contexts. At one end of the spectrum are cases in which the attributor and interlocutors may be engaged in gate keeping for a group that is focused on some practical project. (The group may be designing a machine or system, trying to install a program, trying to repair an engine or restore an ecosystem, trying to determine criminal responsibility, or trying to reach a lasting political compromise on a matter of dispute.) The members of such a group are concerned with sources of actionable information on which to proceed in their project. Call this gate keeping for an applied community. At the other end, there are cases in which the attributor and interlocutors may be gate keeping for a general source community—in effect, including or excluding folk from a select community of experts or authorities, with an associated body of results on which folk generally might then draw. Most interesting for my purposes here, are authorities (with their associated information) that are not closely associated with some delimited range of practical projects. Think of the vast range of practical projects that have recourse to the results of general molecular biology—or some other general discipline. Such disciplines provide a body of results on which people with an indeterminate range of practical projects might draw. (Of course, such disciplines are focused on subject matters that may have been associated with certain practical interests, but the range of practical projects that may come to draw on a discipline (think of particle physics, for example, or molecular biology) is really quite diverse. Here the concern is with general purpose actionable information. Call this gate keeping for a general source community. In contexts, where the operative interests are associated with gate keeping for sources of such general purpose information, no concrete limited purposes are likely to provide a simple decisive understanding of just what counts as actionable information. The punchline: while thinking about gate keeping for ad hoc applied or practical communities may encourage contextualist themes, thinking about gate keeping for general source communities mutes some of these tendencies. Here, what one gets results that look rather like those with which insensitive invariantists would be comfortable.

Jennifer Lackey - "Knowledge and Credit"

A widely accepted view in recent work in epistemology is that knowledge is a cognitive achievement that is properly creditable to those subjects who possess it. More precisely, according to the Credit View of Knowledge, if S knows that p, then S deserves credit for truly believing that p. I have elsewhere argued that the Credit View is false. In particular, I argued that whatever notion of credit the proponent of the Credit View invokes, it has to be robust enough to rule out subjects in Gettier and Gettier-type situations from deserving credit for their true beliefs, yet weak enough to allow subjects in testimonial cases deserving of credit for their true beliefs. And this, I argue, is a task that is doomed to failure. Various responses have been offered to my argument and I here consider each of these objections in turn. I show that none succeeds in undermining my argument and, thus, my original conclusion stands---the Credit View of Knowledge is false.

Matt McGrath - "Advice for Fallibilists:  Put Knowledge to Work"

I begin by asking what fallibilism about knowledge is.  I distinguish several conceptions of fallibilism and give some reason to accept what I call strong epistemic fallibilism, the view that one can know that something is the case even if there remains an epistemic chance, for one, that it is not the case.  The bulk of the talk, then, concerns how best to defend this sort of fallibilism from objections.  I argue that the best defense makes the following claims. First, while knowledge that p is compatible with an epistemic chance that not-p, it is compatible only with an insignificant such chance.  Second, the insignificance of the chance that not-p is plausibly understood in terms of the irrelevance of that chance to p's serving as a *justifier*.  In other words, if you know that p, then any chance for you that not p doesn't stand in the way of p's justifying you to do, believe, etc. certain things.

Baron Reed - "A New Argument for Skepticism"

I develop a new argument for skepticism, grounded in considerations on accidental truth and accidental justification.  Unlike traditional skepticism, which is generally a direct problem only for internalist theories of knowledge, my new argument applies equally well to both internalist and externalist views.  I close by considering both the presuppositions and the consequences of the new argument.

Ernest Sosa - "Knowing Full Well: the Normativity of Beliefs as Performances"

A sort of epistemic normativity is a special case of performance normativity. The success of a performance with an aim is to be distinguished from its competence, and also from its aptness. A performance is apt if and only if its success manifests the performer's competence. Beliefs fall into place as cognitive performances with the aim of truth. How can the normativity of withholding have a place within this framework, however, if to withhold is to forbear performing? The expansion of the framework of performance normativity to deal with the problem of withholding is found to have further implications involving the distinction between two sorts of knowledge, the animal and the reflective.