Nikolaj Jang Lee Linding Pedersen

Entitlement, value and rationality

In this paper I discuss two fundamental challenges concerning Crispin Wright’s notion of entitlement of cognitive project: first, whether entitlement is an epistemic kind of warrant since, seemingly, it is not underwritten by epistemic reasons, and, second, whether, in the absence of such reasons, the kind of rationality associated with entitlement is epistemic in nature. The paper investigates three possible lines of response to these challenges. According to the first line of response, entitlement of cognitive project is underwritten by epistemic reasons—and thus supports epistemic rationality—because, when P is an entitlement, trust in P is a dominant strategy with respect to promotion of epistemic value. The second line of response replaces dominance with maximization of expected utility. I argue that both of these proposals are flawed and develop an alternative line of response.

On the rationality of pluralistic ignorance

Pluralistic ignorance is a socio-psychological phenomenon that involves a systematic discrepancy between people’s private beliefs and public behavior in certain social contexts. Recently, pluralistic ignorance has gained increased attention in formal and social epistemology. But to get clear on what precisely a formal and social epistemological account of pluralistic ignorance should look like, we need answers to at least the following two questions: What exactly is the phenomenon of pluralistic ignorance? And can the phenomenon arise among perfectly rational agents? In this paper, we propose answers to both these questions. First, we characterize different versions of pluralistic ignorance and define the version that we claim most adequately captures the examples cited as paradigmatic cases of pluralistic ignorance in the literature. In doing so, we will stress certain key epistemic and social interactive aspects of the phenomenon. Second, given our characterization of pluralistic ignorance, we argue that the phenomenon can indeed arise in groups of perfectly rational agents. This, in turn, ensures that the tools of formal epistemology can be fully utilized to reason about pluralistic ignorance.

True Alethic Functionalism

In Truth as One and Many (henceforth TOM), Lynch presents and develops a functionalist theory of truth. TRUTH is a functional concept, characterized by its functional role – the truth-role (to be specified below). In turn, at the level of properties, truth is the property that plays the truth-role necessarily. Lynch thinks that there is a unique such property. The point of this article is to pose a dilemma for Lynch. The dilemma takes aim at the idea that Lynch’s uniqueness claim can be unproblematically combined with a classification of his view as a true, or pure, form of alethic functionalism. I will proceed as follows: Section 2 presents selected aspects of Lynch’s view, including the three principles – or ‘truisms’ – that jointly delineate the truth-role. Section 3 shows that a certain disjunctive property necessarily satisfies the truisms. Lynch takes the disjunctive property to be distinct from the intended truth property of alethic functionalism. However, it would then appear that the uniqueness claim is undermined: two truth properties necessarily satisfy the truisms, and so, by purely functionalist lights, there are two truth properties. Section 4 presents the problem of mixed compounds – a problem that Lynch levels as an objection against the idea that the disjunctive property is a viable truth property. I offer the following rejoinder: in relying on the problem of mixed compounds, Lynch relies on resources that go beyond his own professed functionalism. As such, if he really wants to make use of the problem of mixed compounds to dismiss the disjunctive property, he has to grant that his view is not a true, or pure, form of functionalism. In Section 5 I combine the lessons learned from Sections 3 and 4 and present the following dilemma: either Lynch has to abandon the uniqueness claim or admit that his view is not a true, or pure, form of alethic functionalism.

Truth, Pluralism, Monism, Correspondence

When talking about truth, we ordinarily take ourselves to be talking about one-and-the-same thing. Alethic monists suggest that theorizing about truth ought to begin with this default or pre-reflective stance, and, subsequently, parlay it into a set of theoretical principles that are aptly summarized by the thesis that truth is one. Foremost among them is the invariance principle.

Pure Epistemic Pluralism

Section 1 offers some stage setting. Pluralist views have recently attracted considerable attention in different areas of philosophy. Truth and logic are cases in hand. According to the alethic pluralist, there are several ways of being true. According to the logical pluralist, there are several ways of being valid. Section 2 introduces epistemic pluralism through the work of Tyler Burge, Alvin Goldman, and William Alston. In the work of these authors, we find pluralism about, respectively, epistemic warrant (Burge), justification (Goldman), and desiderata (Alston). Section 3 investigates what rationale can be given for epistemic pluralism. Drawing on the literature on truth pluralism, I suggest that one rationale for adopting a pluralist view in epistemology is its wider scope. Pluralism puts one in a position to accommodate a wider range of cases of epistemic assessments. In Sect. 4, I do two things. First, I explain why the distinction between epistemic monism and epistemic pluralism is most interestingly drawn at the level of non-derivative epistemic goods. Second, I make the observation that, at a very fundamental level, the varieties of epistemic pluralism presented in Sect. 2 are not particularly pure in nature. This is because they are all combined with veritic unitarianism, i.e. the view that there are several epistemic goods but that truth is the only non-derivative one. What, other than truth, might qualify as goods of this kind? Section 5 offers some preliminary considerations on this question, drawing on the work of Michael DePaul and Jonathan Kvanvig. In Sect. 6, I present two kinds of collapse arguments, each meant to show that pluralism is inherently unstable. I first consider each argument in the case of truth and then transpose them to epistemology. In Sect. 7, I respond to both collapse arguments.

Epistemic transmission and interaction

Mainstream and formal epistemology naturally meet on issues pertaining to justification and knowledge transmission for one agent and cognitive interaction issues between two or more rational agents. Principles of transmission of justification, knowledge, and other epistemic properties have been subject to extensive investigation and discussion in the recent epistemological literature. Some discussions zoom in on epistemic transmission within a single agent. For instance, it has been hotly debated whether Moore’s infamous proof of a material world transmits warrant from the premises to the conclusion. Some argue that it fails because one of its premises cannot be warranted prior and independently of the conclusion. More generally, it is an open issue whether the justification of perceptual belief transmits to all its logical consequences or whether it cannot transmit to the negations of the non-perceiving hypotheses (such as sceptical alternatives). Formal epistemologists have been investigating the conditions that permit incremental confirmation to transmit across entailment. Other discussions concern the transmission of true belief, warrant or knowledge between agents—the discussion of testimonial warrant and knowledge being a prime example, another being the debate over whether certain arrangements (such as free speech) do better in terms of promotion of true beliefs in groups of agents than alternative arrangements.

The epistemology of inclusiveness

A very numerous assembly cannot be composed of very enlightened men. It is even probable that those comprising this assembly will on many matters combine great ignorance with many prejudices. Thus there will be a great number of questions on which the probability of the truth of each voter will be below 1/2. It follows that the more numerous the assembly, the more it will be exposed to the risk of making false decisions (Condorcet 1976/1785, p. 49).

Truth: The New Wave

Two decades ago, there was a great flurry of work on the subject of truth, which subsequently set much of the agenda for future debates. Ralph Walker’s (1989) monograph on coherence gave the coherence theory of truth a much-needed update, while Cheryl Misak’s monograph (1991) did the same for the pragmatist theory. Paul Horwich’s Truth (1990) made the case for the minimalist program, while Dorothy Grover (1992) and Robert Brandom (1994) each made the case for prosententialism. Crispin Wright’s Truth and Objectivity (1992) leveraged an argument for the conclusion that deflationism inflates, introduced the construct of superassertibility in the service of an assertion-conditional semantics, and alluded to the possibility of a kind of alethic pluralism. Anil Gupta & Nuel Belnap published their Revision Theory of Truth (1993). And Marian David’s (1994) Truth and Disquotation reviewed and criticized the disquotationalist response to the correspondence theory. These are just a few of the major monographs on truth from that periodiXthe tip of the iceberg, the depths of which were plumbed in additional detail by Richard Kirkham’s primer (1992/2001).

Entitlements, good and bad

Abstract Crispin Wright has recently introduced a non-evidential notion of warrant, entitlement of cognitive project, as a promising response to certain sceptical arguments that purport to show that we cannot claim any warrant for a wide range of beliefs that we ordinarily take ourselves to possess a warrant for. The basic idea is that, for a given class of cognitive projects, there are certain basic propositions – entitlements – which one is warranted in trusting provided there is no sufficient reason to think them false. Having presented Wrights notion of entitlement and rehearsed the sceptical arguments he invokes the notion to respond to, we proceed to raise what will be referred to as “the generality problem”. The problem raises the question whether entitlements come on the cheap. The good news delivered by entitlement is that it seems to deliver a way of resisting the sceptical conclusion. The bad news, however, is that it also appears to do much more than that by supporting, or providing a foundation for, what we would consider crazy and bizarre cognitive projects.