Moral encroachment states that moral factors can make a difference to what we are epistemically justified in believing. I present two motivating cases that resemble a common example in the moral encroachment literature to show that the agent's commitments and beliefs, and not the moral factors of the situation, influence epistemic justification. I call this view Structural Encroachment.

Why comply with epistemic norms? In this paper, I argue that complying with epistemic norms, engaging in epistemically responsible conduct, and being epistemically trustworthy are constitutive elements of maintaining good epistemic relations with oneself and others. Good epistemic relations are in turn both instrumentally and finally valuable: they enable the kind of coordination and knowledge acquisition underpinning much of what we tend to associate with a flourishing human life; and just as good interpersonal relations with others can be good for (...) their own sake, standing in good epistemic relations is good for its own sake. On my account, we have reason to comply with epistemic norms because it is a way of respecting the final value of something that also tends to be an instrumentally valuable thing: good epistemic relations. Situating the account within the recent social turn in debates about epistemic instrumentalism, I argue that the dual‐value aspect of good epistemic relations can explain important anti‐instrumentalist intuitions, in a well‐motivated way, within a broadly instrumentalist framework. (shrink)

This paper develops a novel conception of freedom of thought as the right to epistemic self-realization. The recognition of this right is characterized here as a modally robust normative status that I think one has as a potential knower in an epistemic community. It is a status that one cannot enjoy without a specific form of institutionalized intellectual respect and support. To explain and defend this conception of freedom of thought, it is contrasted here with more traditionally “negative” conceptions of (...) freedom of thought, in terms of not being interfered with. It is also contrasted here with a “positive” conception of freedom of thought derived from a recently prominent account of doxastic agency as grounded in the rational capacity to self-determine one's own response to reasons. In both cases, the crux of the argument in this paper is that a conception of freedom of thought as a right to epistemic self-realization makes better sense of why we fear the counter-liberatory forces of propaganda and regulated thinking, and also why we hold out hope for the liberating potential of education and critical engagement with expertise in the public sphere. (shrink)

This article takes issue with two prominent views in the current debate around epistemic partiality in friendship. Strong views of epistemic partiality hold that friendship may require biased beliefs in direct conflict with epistemic norms. Weak views hold that friendship may place normative expectations on belief formation but in a manner that does not violate these norms. It is argued that neither view succeeds in explaining the relationship between epistemic norms and friendship norms. Weak views inadvertently endorse a form of (...) motivated reasoning, failing to resolve the normative clash they seek to avoid. Strong views turn out to be incoherent once we consider the question of whether the requirement to form an epistemically partial belief is independent of whether the belief in question would be true. It is then argued that an epistemology of friendship should recognise the special role that understanding plays in friendship. On this view, friendship normatively requires understanding the truth about our friends. This entails that epistemic partiality, far from being a requirement, is in fact at odds with good friendship. (shrink)

Philosophical work in the ethics of thought focuses heavily on the ethics of belief, with, in recent years, a particular emphasis on the ways in which we might wrong other people either through our beliefs about them, or our failure to believe what they tell us. Yet in our own lives we often want not merely to be believed, but rather to be understood by others. What does it take to understand another person? In this paper, I provide an account (...) of interpersonal understanding that speaks to this widespread human desire to be understood by others. On the view I defend, to be understood by another person is for them to see our motivating reasons as justifying reasons, whether or not they actually take our reasons to have that normative force. I then provide an explanation of why such understanding is valuable in our lives, which emphasizes how being understood by another person is a way of being more fully with them. (shrink)

I argue that level-incoherence is epistemically valuable in a specific set of epistemic environments: those in which it is easy to acquire justified false beliefs about normative requirements of epistemic rationality. I argue that in these environments level-incoherence is the rationally dominant strategy. Nevertheless, level-incoherent combinations exhibit a distinctive tension, and this tension has been thought by many to indicate that level-incoherence is always irrational. Although this idea has proved resilient, I argue that it is incorrect. I evaluate three candidate (...) explanations for the distinctive tension exhibited by level-incoherent combinations, only one of which is the traditional view (which I call the ‘Prohibition View’) that epistemic level-incoherence is prohibited by epistemic rationality. I argue instead for the ‘Inquiry View’, according to which level-incoherence is not rationally criticisable but is a reason to undertake further inquiry. (shrink)

Much recent work in epistemology has concerned the relationship between the epistemic and the practical, with a particular focus on the question of how, if at all, practical considerations affect what we ought to believe. Two main positive accounts have been proposed: reasons pragmatism and pragmatic encroachment. According to reasons pragmatism, practical (including moral) considerations can affect what we ought to believe by constituting distinctively practical (i.e., non‐epistemic) reasons for or against belief. According to pragmatic encroachment, practical considerations bear on (...) what we ought to believe by affecting epistemic justification (e.g. how much justification is required to justifiably believe). Both debates center around intuitive judgments about cases together with various principles involving reasons (or justification) and belief, with many contributors in the pragmatism and—to a lesser extent—encroachment debates helping themselves to talk of belief without saying much about what exactly they have in mind. There has also been a tendency to overlook potentially relevant distinctions among different kinds of reasons that have been drawn elsewhere. The goal of this paper is to argue that greater clarity and care concerning both reasons and belief is called for. Increased sensitivity to various subtleties will not only minimize the chances of unwittingly engaging in merely verbal disputes but also allow us to better navigate the pragmatism and encroachment debates. (shrink)

Subjectivism about moral wrongness is the view that the moral wrongness of an action (if and how wrong that action is) is grounded solely in facts about the agent's mental state at the time of action. Antisubjectivism is the denial of subjectivism. I offer an argument against subjectivism, and for antisubjectivism, based on an examination of the main concern of the morally conscientious person, viz., the concern to avoid acting wrongly.

Understanding is often descibed as a kind of “seeing”, and that would make moral understanding a kidn of moral vision. Recently the idea of moral perception has been explored. I suggest that the identification of moral understanding with moral perception is promising, as it seems to give a good account of what is distinctively valuable about moral understanding. But in the end it faces a difficult dilemma. I draw some conclusions about what is distinctive about moral understanding and the role (...) that moral vision might play. (shrink)

Several authors have recently argued that knowledge is not the aim of inquiry since it can make sense to inquire into a question even though one knows the answer. I argue that this a faulty diagnostic for determining whether one has met the constitutive standard of success of an activity type. The constitutive standards of success tell us when an activity is successful, but such standards can be exceeded and exceeding them can be reasonable. To back this up I develop (...) an account of zetetic supererogation and argue that subjects who continue to inquire into a question while knowing the answer do what is zetetically supererogatory. (shrink)

I develop a broadly reliabilist theory of non-ideal epistemic rationality and argue that if it is correct we should reject the recently popular idea that the standards of non-ideal epistemic rationality are mere social conventions.

It’s plausible that we only fully appreciate the value of something, say a painting or a blameworthy action, when we have a fitting emotional response to it, such as admiration or guilt. But exactly how and why do we grasp value through emotion? I propose, first, that a subject S phenomenally grasps property P only if what it is to be P is manifest in the phenomenal character of S’s experience. Second, following clues from the Stoics, I argue that the (...) phenomenal character of emotional experience is constitutively linked with its having directive content. More precisely, emotional experience directs us both to adopt a maxim for action – take certain characteristic kinds of action for an emotion-specific end – and to treat something about the object as a presumptively decisive reason to take such action for such end. If we assent to what the experience proposes (or rational control gets bypassed), we are motivated to take the relevant action and have a corresponding evaluative belief. This picture of emotional cognition yields a natural conception of the evaluative fittingness conditions of emotions without the problematic assumption that they have a presentational phenomenology. Instead, it is precisely in virtue of the directive and valenced phenomenology of emotion that values are only fully manifest in emotional experience, since values are essentially action- and attitude-guiding properties. (shrink)

This article is concerned with a puzzle that arises from three initially plausible assumptions that form an inconsistent triad: (i) Epistemic reasons are normative reasons (normativism); (ii) reasons are normative only if conformity with them is good (the reasons/value‐link); (iii) conformity with epistemic reasons need not be good (the nihilist assumption). I start by defending the reasons/value‐link, arguing that normativists need to reject the nihilist assumption. I then argue that the most familiar view that denies the nihilist assumption—epistemic teleology—is untenable. (...) Finally, I consider two alternative ways of accounting for the goodness of conformity with epistemic reasons: it may be good because it accords with the virtue of reasons‐responsiveness, and it may be good because it is good to conform with normative reasons as such. I argue that both of these conceptions avoid the problems of epistemic teleology and merit serious consideration as potential solutions to the puzzle. (shrink)

Let “phenomenal dogmatism” be the thesis that some experiences provide some beliefs with immediate prima facie justification, and do so purely in virtue of their phenomenal character. A basic question-mark looms over phenomenal dogmatism: Why should the fact that a person is visited by some phenomenal feel suggest the likely truth of a belief? In this paper, I press this challenge, arguing that perceptually justified beliefs are justified not purely by perceptual experiences’ phenomenology, but also because we have justified second-order (...) background beliefs to the effect that the occurrence of certain perceptual experiences is indicative of the likely truth of certain corresponding beliefs. To bring this out, I contrast “perceptual dogmatism” with “moral dogmatism”: the thesis that some emotional experiences provide some moral beliefs with immediate prima facie justification, and do so purely in virtue of their phenomenal character. I argue that moral dogmatism is much less antecedently appealing, precisely because the counterpart second-order beliefs here are much less plausible. (shrink)

I aim to vindicate the claim that we can owe someone gratitude for believing in us and to show how this seemingly prosaic fact has important upshots for the normativity of gratitude. I start by sketching a novel account of what it is to believe in someone according to which it consists in holding an affective attitude of confident optimism toward their general ability in some domain(s). I then argue that people can deserve gratitude for holding this attitude. I close (...) by showing how the possibility of being gratitudeworthy for believing in someone casts down on three commonplaces about when gratitude is owed. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider the potential implications of the observation that epistemic judgment seems to be less emotional than moral judgment. I argue that regardless of whether emotions are necessary for blame, blaming emotions do play an important epistemic role in the moral domain. They allow us to grasp propositions about moral blameworthiness and thereby to appreciate their significance in a special way. Further, I argue that if we generally lack blaming emotions in the epistemic domain, then we are (...) unable to grasp propositions about epistemic blameworthiness. As a result, regardless of one’s theory of epistemic blame, there emerges a tension between the claim that we are epistemically blameworthy for our epistemic failings and the claim that we do not feel epistemic blaming emotions. (shrink)

According to a classical view, suspension of judgement is, like belief and disbelief, a cognitive state. However, as some authors (Crawford 2022; Lord 2020; McGrath 2021a, 2021b; Sosa 2019, 2021) have pointed out, to suspend judgement is also to perform a certain mental action. The main goal of this article is to defend a precise account of the action that we take when we suspend our judgement: the Preventing Account. The Preventing Account has both the advantage of (i) accounting for (...) familiar situations in which subjects suspend judgements and (ii) of explaining the tendency, which is widespread in the philosophical tradition (from sceptics to pragmatists), to consider suspension of judgement as something that is (at least, to some degree) difficult to achieve. (shrink)

What should we believe when epistemic and practical reasons pull in opposite directions? The traditional view states that there is something that we ought epistemically to believe and something that we ought practically to (cause ourselves to) believe, period. More recent accounts challenge this view, either by arguing that there is something that we ought simpliciter to believe, all epistemic and practical reasons considered (the weighing view), or by denying the normativity of epistemic reasons altogether (epistemic anti‐normativism). I argue against (...) both accounts and defend the traditional view. An agent can be blameworthy in doxastic dilemmas for complying with their practical but not their epistemic reasons. This reveals how epistemic reasons are normative: the concept of epistemic blame helps us track epistemic normativity. (shrink)

Both actions and beliefs are subject to normative evaluation as rational or irrational. As such, we might expect there to be some general, unified story about what makes them rational. However, orthodox approaches suggest that the rationality of action is determined by practical considerations, while the rationality of belief is determined by properly epistemic considerations. This apparent disunity leads some, like Rinard (2019), to reject orthodox theories of the rationality of belief in favor of pragmatism. In this paper, I argue (...) we should reject pragmatist approaches to unifying the rationality of action and belief. Instead, I argue, we should embrace a correctness‐based view of rationality, on which rationality is fundamentally about getting things correct as best we can, given our epistemic limitations. On such a view, the facts about rational action and belief are a function of the facts about correct action and belief. I contend that the apparent disunity of orthodox theories is created by the fact that action and belief have different correctness conditions. Nevertheless, on the correctness‐based view, this disunity is merely apparent. This renders pragmatism's revisionary implications for the rationality of belief unnecessary to take on in order unify it with the rationality of action. (shrink)

Feminists critique acts and practices as victim-blaming. Victim-blaming is a moral phenomenon: to call a communicative act victim blaming is to criticise it. It is also a political phenomenon. As feminists point out, it plays a important role in perpetuating oppression. But what makes a communicative act an act of victim-blaming? I propose that victim-blaming communicative acts attribute responsibility to the victim for the wrong in contexts in which such attributions are morally improper. Attributions of responsibility can be morally imporoper (...) in virtue of what they make salient in a conversation. Making salient the victim's conduct and backgrounding the conduct of the perpetrator can run afoul of the duties we have to the victim: including the duty to listen to the victim, to support her, and to hold the perpetrator responsible. (shrink)

Contemporary discussions of moral expertise have raised a host of problems for the very idea of a “moral expert.” This article interrogates the conception of moral expertise that such discussions seem to assume and proposes instead that we understand moral expertise as a species of practical skill. On this model, a skilled moral agent is more similar to a skilled pianist than she is to a theoretical expert (for instance, an expert on the War of 1812). The article argues both (...) that it is more natural to understand the moral “expert” as excelling in a form of skilled practice and that such a conception would render moot many of the concerns which preoccupy contemporary discussions. (shrink)