Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-c4f8m Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T03:27:09.678Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Toward a Lockean Unification of Formal and Traditional Epistemology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 May 2020

Matthew Brandon Lee Open the ORCID record for Matthew Brandon Lee [Opens in a new window]  and
Paul Silva Jr.
Matthew Brandon Lee*
Affiliation:
Berry College, Mount Berry, GA, USA
Paul Silva Jr.
Affiliation:
University of Cologne, Cologne, Germany
*
*Corresponding author. Email: mlee@berry.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

A Lockean metaphysics of belief that understands outright belief as a determinable with degrees of confidence as determinates is supposed to effect a unification of traditional coarse-grained epistemology of belief with fine-grained epistemology of confidence. But determination of belief by confidence would not by itself yield the result that norms for confidence carry over to norms for outright belief unless belief and high confidence are token identical. We argue that this token-identity thesis is incompatible with the neglected phenomenon of “mistuned knowledge” – knowledge in the absence of rational confidence. We show how partial epistemological unification can be secured, even without token identity, given determination of outright belief by degrees of confidence. Finally, we suggest a direction for the pursuit of thoroughgoing epistemological unification.

Keywords

Lockean thesiscredal reductivismthreshold viewmistuned knowledgedeterminabledeterminate
Type
Article
Information
Episteme , Volume 19 , Issue 1 , March 2022 , pp. 111 - 129
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 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, R. (2001). The Architecture of Reason. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Audi, R. (2005). ‘Wrongs Within Rights.’ Philosophical Issues 15, 121–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buchak, L. (2013). ‘Belief, Evidence, and Norms.’ Philosophical Studies 2, 1–27.Google Scholar
Burke, M. (1992). ‘Copper Statues and Pieces of Copper: A Challenge to the Standard Account.’ Analysis 52, 12–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chellas, B.F. (1980). Modal Logic: An Introduction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Christensen, D. (2004). Putting Logic in its Place: Formal Constraints on Rational Belief. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clarke, R. (2013). ‘Belief is Credence One (in Context).’ Philosopher's Imprint 13(11), 1–18.Google Scholar
Ehring, D. (1996). ‘Mental Causation, Determinables and Property Instances.’ Noûs 30, 461–80.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fantl, J. and McGrath, M. (2010). Knowledge in an Uncertain World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Foley, R. (1992). ‘The Epistemology of Belief and the Epistemology of Degrees of Belief.’ American Philosophical Quarterly 29, 111–24.Google Scholar
Foley, R. (1993). Working Without a Net: A Study of Egocentric Epistemology. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Ganson, D. (2008). ‘Evidentialism and Pragmatic Constraints on Outright Belief.’ Philosophical Studies 139(3), 441–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gendler, T. (2008 a). ‘Alief and Belief.’ Journal of Philosophy 105(10), 634–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gendler, T. (2008 b). ‘Alief in Action (and Reaction).’ Mind and Language 23(5), 552–85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Greco, D. (2015). ‘How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Probability 1.’ Philosophical Perspectives 29(1), 179–201.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hawthorne, J. (2004). Knowledge and Lotteries. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hawthorne, J. (2009). ‘The Lockean Thesis and the Logic of Belief.’ In Huber, F. and Schmidt-Petri, C. (eds), Degrees of Belief, pp. 49–74. New York, NY: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hawthorne, J. and Stanley, J. (2008). ‘Knowledge and Action.’ Journal of Philosophy 105, 571–90.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hunter, D. (1996). ‘On the Relation Between Categorical and Probabilistic Belief.’ Noûs 30(1), 75–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jeffrey, R.C. (1956). ‘Valuation and the Acceptance of Scientific Hypotheses.’ Philosophy of Science 23, 237–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kaplan, M. (1996). Decision Theory as Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kelly, T. (2014). ‘Evidence can be Permissive.’ In Steup, M., Turri, J. and Sosa, E. (eds), Contemporary Debates in Epistemology, 2nd edition, pp. 298–311. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.Google Scholar
Korcz, K.A. (2015). ‘The Epistemic Basing Relation.’ In E.N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2015 Edition), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2015/entries/basing-epistemic/.Google Scholar
Lee, M.B. (2017). ‘Credence and Correctness: In Defense of Credal Reductivism.’ Philosophical Papers 46(2), 273–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lee, M.B. (2018). ‘On Doubt.’ Philosophia 46(1), 141–58.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leitgeb, H. (2014). ‘The Stability Theory of Belief.’ Philosophical Review 123(2), 131–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Leitgeb, H. (2017). The Stability of Belief: How Rational Belief Coheres with Probability. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Macdonald, C. and Macdonald, G. (1986). ‘Mental Causation and Explanation of Action.’ In Stevenson, L., Squires, R. and Haldane, J. (eds), Mind, Causation and Action, pp. 35–48. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.Google Scholar
McNamara, P. (2019). ‘Deontic Logic.’ In E.N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2019 Edition), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2019/entries/logic-deontic/.Google Scholar
Moon, A. (2017). ‘Beliefs Do Not Come in Degrees.’ Canadian Journal of Philosophy 47(6), 760–78.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Myers-Schulz, B. and Schwitzgebel, E. (2013). ‘Knowing that P Without Believing that P.’ Noûs 47(2), 371–84.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Neta, R. (Forthcoming). ‘Basing and Taking.’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.Google Scholar
Radford, C. (1966). ‘Knowledge – By Examples.’ Analysis 27, 1–11.Google Scholar
Rose, D. and Schaffer, J. (2013). ‘Knowledge Entails Dispositional Belief.’ Philosophical Studies 166, 19–50.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ross, J. and Schroeder, M. (2014). ‘Belief, Credence, and Pragmatic Encroachment.’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 88(2), 259–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schroeder, M. (2015). ‘Knowledge is Belief for Sufficient (Objective and Subjective) Reason.’ In Gendler, T.S. and Hawthorne, J. (eds), Oxford Studies in Epistemology, vol. 5, pp. 226–52. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silva, P. (2015). ‘On Doxastic Justification and Properly Basing One's Beliefs.’ Erkenntnis 80, 945–55.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sosa, E. (1980). ‘The Raft and the Pyramid: Coherence versus Foundations in the Theory of Knowledge.’ Midwest Studies in Philosophy 5, 3–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spohn, W. (2012). The Laws of Belief: Ranking Theory and its Philosophical Applications. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Staffel, J. (2016). “Beliefs, Buses and Lotteries: Why Rational Belief Can't be Stably High Credence.’ Philosophical Studies 173, 1721–34.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sturgeon, S. (2008). ‘Reason and the Grain of Belief.’ Noûs 42(1), 139–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sturgeon, S. (2010). ‘Confidence and Coarse-Grained Attitudes.’ In Gendler, T.S. and Hawthorne, J. (eds), Oxford Studies in Epistemology, vol. 3, pp. 126–49. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Turri, J. (2010). ‘On the Relationship Between Propositional and Doxastic Justification.’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 80, 312–26.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Van Fraassen, B.C. (1989). Laws and Symmetry. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wasserman, R. (2018). ‘Material Constitution.’ In E.N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2018 Edition), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2018/entries/material-constitution/.Google Scholar
Weatherson, B. (2005). ‘Can We Do Without Pragmatic Encroachment?’ Philosophical Perspectives 19, 417–43.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wedgwood, R. (2012). ‘Outright Belief.’ Dialectica 66(3), 309–29.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wiggins, D. (1968). ‘On Being in the Same Place at the Same Time.’ Philosophical Review 77(1), 90–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, J. (1999). ‘How Superduper Does a Physicalist Supervenience Need to be?’ Philosophical Quarterly 49(194), 33–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wilson, J. (2017). ‘Determinables and Determinates.’ In E.N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2017 Edition), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2017/entries/determinate-determinables/.Google Scholar