Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-8ctnn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-21T04:23:05.416Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Chapter 4 - What Is Epistemic Entitlement?

Reliable Competence, Reasons, Inference, Access

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 July 2020

By
Peter J. Graham
Edited by
Christoph Kelp  and
John Greco
Christoph Kelp
Affiliation:
University of Glasgow
John Greco
Affiliation:
Georgetown University, Washington DC
Get access

Summary

Tyler Burge first introduced his distinction between epistemic entitlement and epistemic justification in ‘Content Preservation’ in 1993. He has since deployed the distinction in over twenty papers, changing his formulation around 2011. His distinction and its basis, however, is not well understood in the literature. This chapter distinguishes two uses of ‘entitlement’ in Burge and then focuses on the contrast between justification and entitlement, two forms of warrant, where warrants consists in the exercise of a reliable belief-forming competence. Since he draws the distinction in terms of reasons, this chapter brings his account of reasons altogether in one place. The chapter introduces a decision-procedure for classifying warrants as justifications or entitlements. The distinction is not the same as the inferential vs. non-inferential distinction. Inference is distinguished from processing, thinking, reasoning, and critically reasoning. Burge’s new formulation of the distinction was driven by the recognition of non-accessible modular reasons. Three kinds of access are distinguished.

Keywords

Tyler Burgeentitlementjustificationreasonswarrantepistemic competencereliabilisminferenceaccess
Type
Chapter
Information
Virtue Theoretic Epistemology
New Methods and Approaches
 , pp. 93 - 123
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Audi, Robert. 2001. The Architecture of Reason. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bergmann, Michael. 2006. Justification without Awareness. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Boghossian, Paul. 2003. “Epistemic Analyticity: A Defense,” Grazer Philosophische Studien 66: 15–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boghossian, Paul. 2014. “What is Inference?” Philosophical Studies 169: 1–18.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brandom, Robert. 1994. Making It Explicit. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Brandom, Robert. 2000. Articulating Reasons. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Burge, Tyler. 1993. “Content Preservation,” The Philosophical Review 102: 457–488.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burge, Tyler. 1996. “Our Entitlement to Self-Knowledge,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 1–26. Reprinted in Burge 2013a.Google Scholar
Burge, Tyler. 1997. “Interlocution, Perception, and Memory,” Philosophical Studies 86: 21–47. Reprinted in Burge 2013a.Google Scholar
Burge, Tyler. 1998. “Reason and the First Person” in Wright, Crispin, Smith, Barry C., and Macdonald, Cynthia (eds), Knowing Our Own Minds: Essays on Self-Knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Reprinted in Burge 2013a.Google Scholar
Burge, Tyler. 1999a. “A Century of Deflation and a Moment of Self-Knowledge,” Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association. Reprinted in Burge 2013a.Google Scholar
Burge, Tyler. 1999b. “Comprehension and Interpretation,” in Hahn, L. (ed.), The Philosophy of Donald Davidson. Chicago, IL: Open Court. Reprinted in Burge 2013a.Google Scholar
Burge, Tyler. 2003a. “Perceptual Entitlement,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 67: 503–548.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burge, Tyler. 2003b. “Logic and Analyticity,” Grazer Philosophische Studien 66: 199–249.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burge, Tyler. 2003c. “Perception,” International Journal of Psychoanalysis 84: 157–167.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Burge, Tyler. 2005. “Disjunctivism and Perceptual Psychology,” Philosophical Topics 33: 1–78.Google Scholar
Burge, Tyler. 2010a. Origins of Objectivity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burge, Tyler. 2010b. “Origins of Perception,” Disputatio 4: 1–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burge, Tyler. 2010c. “Steps Toward Origins of Propositional Thought,” Disputatio 4: 39–67.Google Scholar
Burge, Tyler. 2011a. “Self and Self-Understanding: The Dewey Lectures 2007,” Journal of Philosophy 108: 287–383. Reprinted in Burge 2013a.Google Scholar
Burge, Tyler. 2011b. “Epistemic Warrant: Humans and Computers,” first published in Burge 2013a.Google Scholar
Burge, Tyler. 2011c. “Postscript: ‘Content Preservation’,” first published in Burge 2013a.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burge, Tyler. 2011d. “Disjunctivism Again,” Philosophical Explorations 14: 43–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burge, Tyler. 2011e. “A Warrant for Belief in Other Minds,” first published in Burge 2013a.Google Scholar
Burge, Tyler. 2013a. Cognition through Understanding: Self-Knowledge, Interlocution, Reasoning, Reflection: Philosophical Essays, volume 3. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Burge, Tyler. 2013b. “Introduction,” in Burge 2013a.Google Scholar
Burge, Tyler. 2020. “Entitlement: The Basis of Empirical Warrant,” in Graham and Pedersen 2020a: 37–142.Google Scholar
Call, Josep. 2004. “Inferences about the Location of Food in Great Apes,” Journal of Comparative Psychology 118: 232–241.Google Scholar
Call, Josep. 2006. “Descartes’s Two Errors: Reason and Reflection in Great Apes,” in Hurley, S. and Nudds, M. (eds), Rational Animals? Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Carruthers, Peter. 2006. The Architecture of the Mind. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Casullo, Albert. 2007. “What is Entitlement?” Acta Analytica 22: 267–279.Google Scholar
Comesana, Juan and McGrath., Matthew 2014. “Having False Reasons” in Littlejohn, Clayton and Turri, John (eds), Epistemic Norms. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Dretske, Fred. 2000. “Entitlement: Epistemic Rights without Epistemic Duties?” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 60(3): 591–606.Google Scholar
Fantl, Jeremy and McGrath., Matthew 2009. Knowledge in an Uncertain World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Fodor, Jerry. 1983. The Modularity of Mind. Cambridge, MA: Cambridge: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Gerken, Mikkel. 2013. Epistemic Reasoning and the Mental. London: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Gerken, Mikkel. 2018. “The New Evil Demon and the Devil in the Details,” in Mitova, Veli (ed.), The Factive Turn in Epistemology. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gerken, Mikkel. 2020. “Epistemic Entitlement: Its Scope and Limits,” in Graham and Pedersen 2020.Google Scholar
Graham, Peter J. 2006. “Liberal Fundamentalism and Its Rivals,” in Lackey, Jennifer and Sosa, Ernest (eds), The Epistemology of Testimony. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Graham, Peter J. 2010. “Testimonial Entitlement and the Function of Comprehension,” in Millar, Alan, Haddock, Adrian, and Pritchard, Duncan (eds), Social Epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Graham, Peter J. 2012a. “Epistemic Entitlement,” Nous 46: 449–482.Google Scholar
Graham, Peter J. 2012b. “Psychological Capacity and Positive Epistemic Status,” in Henderson, Jill (ed.), The New Intuitionism. New York: Continuum Press.Google Scholar
Graham, Peter J. 2014. “Warrant, Functions, History,” in Fairweather, Abrol and Flanagan, Owen (eds), Naturalizing Epistemic Virtue. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Graham, Peter J. 2018a. “Formulating Reductionism about Testimonial Warrant and the Challenge of Childhood Testimony,” Synthese 195: 3013–3033.Google Scholar
Graham, Peter J. 2018b. “Sincerity and the Reliability of Testimony: Burge on the A Priori Basis of Testimonial Warrant,” in Michaelson, Eliot and Stokke, Andreas (eds), Lying: Language, Knowledge and Ethics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Graham, Peter J. 2020. “Why Should Warrant Persist in Demon Worlds?” in Graham and Pedersen 2020a: 179–202.Google Scholar
Graham, Peter J. and Pederson, Nikolaj J. L. L. (eds). 2020a. Epistemic Entitlement. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Graham, Peter J. and Pederson, Nikolaj J. L. L. (eds). 2020b. “Recent Work on Epistemic Entitlement,” American Philosophical Quarterly 57: 193–122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Graham, Peter J., Pedersen, Nikolaj J. L. L., Bachman, Zachary, Rosa., Luis 2020. “Introduction and Overview: Two Entitlement Projects,” in Graham and Pedersen 2020a: 1–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greco, John. 2010. Achieving Knowledge. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hatfield, Gary. 2002. “Perception as Unconscious Inference,” in Heyer, Dieter and Mausfeld, Rainder (eds), Perception and the Physical World: Psychological and Philosophical Issues in Perception. New York: John Wiley: 115–143.Google Scholar
Hyman, John. 2015. Action, Knowledge, & Will. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kelp, Chris. 2011. “In Defense of Virtue Epistemology,” Synthese 179: 409–433.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kornblith, Hilary. 2012. On Reflection. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Kornblith, Hilary. 2015. “The Role of Reasons in Epistemology,” Episteme 12: 225–239.Google Scholar
Littlejohn, Clayton 2018. “Reasons and Theoretical Rationality,” in Star, Daniel (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Reasons and Rationality. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Lyons, Jack 2009. Perception and Basic Beliefs: Zombies, Modules, and the Problem of the External World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
McHugh, Conor and Way., Jonathan 2016. “Against the Taking Condition,” Philosophical Issues 26: 314–331.Google Scholar
Majors, Brad. 2015. “What Entitlement Is,” Acta Analytica 30: 363–387.Google Scholar
Majors, Brad and Sawyer., Sarah 2005. “The Epistemological Argument for Content Externalism,” Philosophical Perspectives 19: 257–280.Google Scholar
Mandelbaum, Eric. 2018. “Seeing and Conceptualizing: Modularity and the Shallow Contents of Perception,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 97(2): 267–283.Google Scholar
Mercier, Hugo and Sperber., Dan 2017. The Enigma of Reason. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Millikan, Ruth. 1984. Language, Thought, and Other Biological Categories. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Neta, Ram. 2010. “Can A Priori Entitlement be Preserved by Testimony?” in Millar, Alan, Haddock, Adrian, and Pritchard, Duncan (eds.), Social Epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Peacocke, Christopher. 1996. “Entitlement, Self-Knowledge and Conceptual Redeployment,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 96: 117–158.Google Scholar
Peacocke, Christopher. 2004. “Explaining Perceptual Entitlement,” in Schantz, Richard (ed.), The Externalist Challenge. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar
Plantinga, Alvin. 1993. Warrant and Proper Function. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pollock, John. 1986. Contemporary Theories of Knowledge. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Pollock, John and Cruz, Joseph. 1999. Contemporary Theories of Knowledge, second edition. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.Google Scholar
Pritchard, Duncan. 2012. “Anti-Luck Virtue Epistemology,” Journal of Philosophy 109: 247–279.Google Scholar
Quilty-Dunn, Jake and Mandelbaum., Eric 2018. “Inferential Transitions,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 96: 532–547.Google Scholar
Rescorla, Michael. 2009. “Chrysippus’ Dog as a Case Study in Non-Linguistic Cognition,” in Lurz, R. (ed.), The Philosophy of Animal Minds. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Rescorla, Michael. 2015. “Bayesian Perceptual Psychology,” in Matthen, Mohan (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Perception. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rescorla, Michael. 2016. “Bayesian Sensormotor Psychology,” Mind & Language 31: 3–36.Google Scholar
Robbins, Philip. 2017. “Modularity of Mind” The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Zalta, Edward N. (ed.). https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2017/entries/modularity-mind/. Accessed January 24, 2020.Google Scholar
Schroeder, Mark. 2008. “Having Reasons,” Philosophical Studies 138: 57–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Shieber, Joseph. 2015. Testimony: A Philosophical Introduction. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Sosa, Ernest. 2015. Judgment and Agency. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Sperber, Dan. 2001. “In Defense of Massive Modularity,” in Dupoux, E. (ed.), Language, Brain, and Cognitive Development. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press.Google Scholar
Sperber, Dan and Wilson., Diedre 2002. “Pragmatics, Modularity, and Mindreading,” Mind & Language 17: 3–23.Google Scholar
Sylvan, Kurt and Sosa., Ernest 2018. “The Place of Reasons in Epistemology,” in Star, Daniel (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Reasons and Normativity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Williams, Michael. 2008. “Responsibility and Reliability,” Philosophical Papers 37: 1–26.Google Scholar
Wright, Crispin. 2004a. “On Epistemic Entitlement: Warrant for Nothing, and Foundations for Free?” Aristotelian Society supp. 78: 167–212.Google Scholar
Wright, Crispin. 2004b. “Intuition, Entitlement and the Epistemology of Logical Laws,” Dialectica 58: 155–175.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wright, Crispin. 2014. “On Epistemic Entitlement (II): Welfare State Epistemology,” in Dodd, Dylan and Zardini, Elia (eds), Scepticism and Perceptual Justification. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×