My aim in this paper is to initiate and contribute to debate concerning the possibility of behavior that is both self-defeating and self-governed. In the first section of the paper, I review a couple of points that figure in the literature as platitudes about (the relevant notion of) self-governance. In the second section, I explain how these points give rise to what seems to be a dilemma that suggests that informed self-defeating behavior, wherein one is aware (...) of the consequences of each choice one makes, is impossible. In the third and fourth sections, I consider two types of cases that appear to be cases of informed self-defeating behavior and argue that one of the cases is a genuine case of self-defeating self-governance. I end with some remarks concerning self-governance, self-defeat, and dynamic choice. I suggest that the notion of self-defeat here employed provides a simple and compelling answer to the question “Are there any diachronic rationality constraints on agents?” The answer (or at least part of the answer) is “Yes, agents must avoid self-defeating behavior.” In section 5, I give reasons for thinking that all cases of diachronic irrationality are cases of self-defeating behavior in the relevant sense. As will become apparent, to the extent that the requirement to avoid self-defeating behavior calls for any cross-temporal coherence, it does so without endorsing a sort of conservatism that can interfere with personal growth and change. (shrink)

Some normative theories are self-defeating. They tell us to respond to our situations in ways that bring about outcomes that are bad, given the aims of the theories, and which could have been avoided. Across a wide range of debates in ethics, decision theory, political philosophy, and formal epistemology, many philosophers treat the fact that a normative theory is self-defeating as sufficient grounds for rejecting it. I argue that this widespread and consequential assumption is false. In particular, I (...) argue that a theory can be self-defeating and still internally consistent, action-guiding, and suitable as a standard for criticism. (shrink)

At the core of public reason liberalism is the idea that the exercise of political power is legitimate only if based on laws or political rules that are justifiable to all reasonable citizens. Call this the Public Justification Principle. Public reason liberals face the persistent objection that the Public Justification Principle is self-defeating. The idea that a society’s political rules must be justifiable to all reasonable citizens is intensely controversial among seemingly reasonable citizens of every liberal society. So, the (...) objection goes, the Public Justification Principle is not justifiable to all reasonable citizens, and thus fails its own test of legitimacy. And this, critics conclude, undermines the public reason liberal project. This article argues that answering the self-defeat objection to public reason liberalism requires fundamentally rethinking prevailing accounts of the Public Justification Principle’s role. My aim is to develop an account of the Public Justification Principle that vindicates its coherence and moral appeal in the face of reasonable disagreement. (shrink)

Self-defeating and self-justifying expressions are reflexive insofar as they pertain to themselves. However, the reflexivity involved is often pragmatic, i.e., does not entirely depend upon the logical properties of what is expressed but also upon the expressive act. In this paper I present a general account of pragmatic reflexivity and apply it to some familiar self-defeating and self-justifying expressions in epistemology. This application indicates some important, if often neglected features of the epistemological issues involved. The account (...) I defend suggests that epistemology is particularly sensitive to pragmatic reflexivity since what epistemologists do, i.e., inquire, theorize, and defend theories, is also the subject of the inquiry and resultant theories. (shrink)

We have no reason to believe that reasons do not exist. Contra Bart Streumer’s recent proposal, this has nothing to do with our incapacity to believe this error theory. Rather, it is because if we know that if a proposition is true, we have no reason to believe it, then we have no reason to believe this proposition. From a different angle: if we know that we have at best misleading reasons to believe a proposition, then we have no reason (...) to believe it. This has two consequences. Firstly, coming close to believing the error theory is idle or pointless. Secondly, philosophers who argue that believing sweeping theories like determinism or physicalism is self-defeating because they are either false or believed for no reason pursue a worthwhile argumentative strategy. (shrink)

An argument is epistemically self-defeating when either the truth of an argument’s conclusion or belief in an argument’s conclusion defeats one’s justification to believe at least one of that argument’s premises. Some extant defenses of the evidentiary value of intuition have invoked considerations of epistemic self-defeat in their defense. I argue that there is one kind of argument against intuition, an unreliability argument, which, even if epistemically self-defeating, can still imply that we are not justified in (...) thinking intuition has evidentiary value. (shrink)

I show that the standard libertarian conception of justice is vulnerable to a kind of basic collective self-defeat not characteristic of its rivals. All deontological liberals, including the libertarian, ought to be committed to two very general claims regarding the nature of justice. The RSC (Reasonable Stability Criterion) is the requirement that in the just society, human beings will typically exhibit genuine literacy with the relevant conception. The MEC (Moral Education Condition) consists in the thought that a necessary (...) condition for any such literacy is a proper moral education. It is consistent with full respect for standard libertarian justice that a society living under its auspices will fail to satisfy the RSC, by failing to provide moral education to those who need it. This issues in the collective self-defeat of the conception, for by respecting all and only the constraints constitutive of libertarian justice, the group will have undermined the achievement of a characteristic aim. (shrink)

Statements of the core ethical and professional responsibilities of medical professionals are incomplete in ways that threaten fundamental goals of medicine. First, in the absence of explicit guida...

One of John Rawls’s major aims, when he wrote A Theory of Justice, was to present a superior alternative to utilitarianism. Rawls’s worry was that utilitarianism may fail to protect the fundamental rights and liberties of persons in its attempt to maximize total social welfare. Rawls’s main argument against utilitarianism was that, for such reasons, the representative parties in the original position will not choose utilitarianism, but will rather choose his justice as fairness, which he believed would securely protect the (...) worth of everybody’s basic rights and liberties. In this paper, I will argue that, under close formal examination, Rawls’s argument against utilitarianism is self-defeating. That is, I will argue that Rawls’s own reasons, assumptions, and the many theoretical devices he employs demonstrably imply that the representative parties in the original position will choose utilitarianism instead of justice as fairness. (shrink)

John DePoe has criticized the self-defeat argument for Phenomenal Conservatism. He argues that acquaintance, rather than appearance, may form the basis for non-inferentially justified beliefs, and that Phenomenal Conservatism conflicts with a central motivation for internalism. I explain how Phenomenal Conservatism and the self-defeat argument may survive these challenges.

Free will sceptics deny the existence of free will, that is the command or control necessary for moral responsibility. Epicureans allege that this denial is somehow self-defeating. To interpret the Epicurean allegation charitably, we must first realise that it is propositional attitudes like beliefs and not propositions themselves which can be self-defeating. So, believing in free will scepticism might be self- defeating. The charge becomes more plausible because, as Epicurus insightfully recognised,there is a strong connection between conduct (...) and belief—and so between thecontent of free will scepticism (since it is about conduct) and the attitude of believing it. Second, we must realise that an attitude can be self- defeating relative to certain grounds. This means that it might be self-defeating to be a free will sceptic on certain grounds, such as the putative fact that we lack leeway or sourcehood. This charge is much more interesting because of the epistemic importance of leeway and sourcehood. Ultimately, the Epicurean charge of self-defeat fails. Yet, it delivers important lessons to the sceptic. The most important of them is that free will sceptics should either accept the existence of leeway or reject the principle that ‘“ought” implies “can”’. (shrink)

An argument is self-defeating when it contains defeaters for some of its own defeasible lines. It is shown that the obvious rules for defeat among arguments do not handle self-defeating arguments correctly. It turns out that they constitute a pervasive phenomenon that threatens to cripple defeasible reasoning, leading to almost all defeasible reasoning being defeated by unexpected interactions with self-defeating arguments. This leads to some important changes in the general theory of defeasible reasoning.

The typical function of goals is to regulate action in a way that furthers goal achievement. Goals are typically set on the assumption that they will help bring the agent closer to the desired state of affairs. However, sometimes endorsement of a goal, or the processes by which the goal is set, can obstruct its achievement. When this happens, the goal is self-defeating. Self-defeating goals are common in both private and social decision-making but have not received much attention (...) by decision theorists. In this paper, we investigate different variants of three major types of self-defeating mechanisms: The goal can be an obstacle to its own fulfilment, goal-setting activities can impede goal achievement, and disclosure of the goal can interfere with its attainment. Different strategies against self-defeasance are tentatively explored, and their efficiency against different types of self-defeasance is investigated. (shrink)

Michael Huemer has argued for the justification principle known as phenomenal conservativism by employing a transcendental argument that claims all attempts to reject phenomenal conservativism ultimately are doomed to self-defeat. My contribution presents two independent arguments against the self-defeat argument for phenomenal conservativism after briefly presenting Huemer’s account of phenomenal conservativism and the justification for the self-defeat argument. My first argument suggests some ways that philosophers may reject Huemer’s premise that all justified beliefs are (...) formed on the basis of seemings. In the second argument I contend that phenomenal conservativism is not a well-motivated account of internal justification, which is a further reason to reject the self-defeat argument. Consequently, the self-defeat argument fails to show that rejecting phenomenal conservativism inevitably leads one to a self-defeating position. (shrink)

There is a tendency to use data from neuroscience, cognitive science and experimental psychology to rail against philosophical ethics. Recently, Joshua Greene has argued that deontological judgments tend to be supported by emotional responses to irrelevant features, whereas consequentialist judgments are more reliable because they tend to be supported by cognitive processes. In this article, I will analyse the evidence used by Greene to suggest a different kind of argument against deontology, which I will call the argument from self-defeating (...) beliefs. The charge of this type of argument amounts to exposing a psychological nature of deontological judgements that is supposedly rejected by deontologists. I will argue that the alleged evidence is poorly understood, mixed and indeterminate, failing to endorse general conclusions about the psychological processes underlying deontological judgements. (shrink)

Anti-naturalistic critics of Unity of Science have often tried to establish a fundamental difference between social and physical science on the grounds that research in the social field (unlike physical research) seems to interfere with the original situations so as to make accurate predictions impossible. A 'social' prediction may, e.g., itself influence the course of events so that the prediction proves false. H. A. Simon has dealt with such effects of predictions in a well-known article. Drawing on a mathematical theorem, (...) Brouwer's so-called fixed-point theorem, he claims to prove that reactions to published predictions can be accounted for so that appropriately adjusted predictions can avoid being self-destructive. The present article is an attempt to show that Simon's use of the Brouwer theorem is misplaced, and that his proof does not parry the anti-naturalistic argument. Indeed, the burden of his proof is not really of a mathematical, but, it is argued, of a 'protosociological' kind. In conclusion, the article points to the fundamental inadequacy of a frame of reference which makes the 'interference' or 'reaction' effects due to people's having access to social knowledge appear strange or eccentric: as some kind of marginal irregularity causing trouble in the philosophy of (social) science. (shrink)

In "Warrant and Proper Function" Plantinga argues that atheistic Naturalism is self-defeating. What is the probability that our cognitive faculties are reliable, given this Naturalism and an evolutionary explanation of their origins? Plantinga argues that if the Naturalist is modest enough to believe that it is irrational to have any belief as to the value of this probability, then he is irrational even to believe his own Naturalism. I suggest that Plantinga's argument has a false premise, and that even (...) if his argument were sound there would be reasons for doubting whether the Naturalist should respond to it by abandoning his Naturalism. (shrink)

I address Moti Mizrahi‟s objections to my use of the Self-Defeat Argument for Phenomenal Conservatism (PC). Mizrahi contends that other epistemologicaltheories can be supported by parallel self-defeat arguments. I argue that the self-defeat arguments for other theories either (a) are compatible with PC and thus present no problem, or (b) have a false premise, unlike the self-defeat argument for PC.

Steven Wall has two compelling arguments for what I shall call public reason liberalism's reflexivity requirement. The political concerns to reconcile persons who hold diverse moral views, and to avoid authoritarianism in politics not only require the public justification of coercion but the public justification of the standard used to determine when coercion is publicly justified. The reflexivity requirement is said to entail that public reason is self-defeating. Once RR is correctly formulated, however, cases of self-defeat will (...) be rare, as citizens seldom employ public justification requirements as reasons. When they do, such requirements are rarely their sole reason for supporting political coercion. A properly formulated reflexivity requirement, therefore, does not imply self-defeat. It also allows for a more ecumenical understanding that establish the processes of public justification. (shrink)

According to conciliatory views on the significance of disagreement, it’s rational for you to become less confident in your take on an issue in case your epistemic peer’s take on it is different. These views are intuitively appealing, but they also face a powerful objection: in scenarios that involve disagreements over their own correctness, conciliatory views appear to self-defeat and, thereby, issue inconsistent recommendations. This paper provides a response to this objection. Drawing on the work from defeasible logics (...) paradigm and abstract argumentation, it develops a formal model of conciliatory reasoning and explores its behavior in the troubling scenarios. The model suggests that the recommendations that conciliatory views issue in such scenarios are perfectly reasonable—even if outwardly they may look odd. (shrink)

When is a moral theory self-defeating? I suggest the following. There are certain things we ought to try to achieve. Call these our moral aims. Our moral theory would be self-defeating if we believed we ought to do what will cause our moral aims to be worse achieved. Is this ever true? If so, what does it show?

Huemer defends phenomenal conservatism (PC) and also the further claim that belief in any rival theory is self-defeating (SD). Here I construct a dilemma for his position: either PC and SD are incompatible, or belief in PC is itself self-defeating. I take these considerations to suggest a better self-defeat argument for (belief in) PC and a strong form of internalism.

Examines whether it is an objection to S that, in some cases, S is directly collectively self‐defeating; some bad defences of S and M ‐ why it is an objection to M that this theory is directly collectively self‐defeating; how and why we ought to solve this problem by revising M. The different parts of moral theories are also explored.

According to deflationism, truth is insubstantial. Edwards (2018) argues that the deflationist thesis of insubstantiality is incoherent, regardless of how it is characterized. By clarifying the deflationist concepts of reference and truth (and their relations) and addressing the distinction between substantial properties and insubstantial properties within the deflationist framework, we will argue that Edwards’s self-defeating argument is problematic and ultimately unconvincing.

According to the Self‐interest Theory, or S, our own well‐being is the supremely rational aim. According to Consequentialism, or C, the ultimate moral aim is that things go as well as possible. The chapter explains how these theories can be indirectly self‐defeating, in the sense that our trying to achieve these aims may cause them to be worse; how it can be rational to cause ourselves to be irrational, and how it might be right to cause ourselves to (...) be disposed to act wrongly; how these theories might be self‐effacing by telling us to believe other theories; and how these theories do not fail in their own terms. (shrink)

In this paper, I respond to Michael Huemer’s reply to my objection against Phenomenal Conservatism (PC). I have argued that Huemer’s Self-defeat Argument for PC does not favor PC over competing theories of basic propositional justification, since analogous self-defeat arguments can be constructed for competing theories. Huemer responds that such analogous self-defeat arguments are unsound. In this paper, I argue that Huemer’s reply does not save his Self-defeat Argument for PC from my (...) original objection. (shrink)

Many philosophers have claimed that normative error theorists are committed to the claim ‘Error theory is true, but I have no reason to believe it’, which to some appears paradoxical. Case (2019) has claimed that the normative error theorist cannot avoid this paradox. In this paper, we argue that there is no paradox in the first place, that is once we clear up the ambiguity of the word ‘reason’, both on the error theorist’s side and those that claim that there (...) is a self-defeat problem. Upon clarification, we also raise scepticism to what exactly the nature of self-defeat is meant to be. (shrink)

Recently, Tomas Bogardus (2016), Andreas Mogensen (2017) and – at least on one plausible reconstruction – Sharon Street (2005) have argued that evolutionary theory debunks our moral beliefs by providing higher-order evidence of error. In response, moral realists such as Katia Vavova (2014) have objected that such evolutionary debunking arguments are self-defeating. The literature lacks any discussion of whether this self-defeat objection can be handled. My overall aim is to argue that it cannot, thus filling that lacuna (...) – and vindicating Vavova’s worry. To achieve my aim, I proceed in two steps. First, I propose a novel, prima facie promising strategy for avoiding self-defeat: evolutionary debunkers should reject Conciliationism, as defended by David Christensen (2007, 2009, 2011) and others, and instead explore Thomas Kelly’s (2010) Total Evidence View as their background view on the epistemic significance of higher-order evidence of error. Then, I show that evolutionary debunkers face insuperable difficulties trying to successfully implement that strategy. Depending on the kind of higher-order evidence of error that evolutionary considerations putatively provide, they either struggle with evidential weight or are committed to inconsistent assumptions about evolutionary counterparts. Either way, the evolutionary debunking argument from higher-order evidence of error fails. (shrink)

Although most people believe that it is morally wrong to intentionally create children who have an impairment, it is widely held that we cannot criticize such procreative choices unless we find a solution to Parfit’s non-identity problem. I argue that we can. Jonathan Glover has recently argued that, in certain circumstances, such choices would be self-defeating even if morally permissible. I argue that although the scope of Glover’s argument is too limited, it nevertheless directs attention to a moral defect (...) in the attitudes that could motivate such procreative choices, attitudes that, properly characterized, turn out to be person-affecting in character. I conclude by arguing that prospective parents who want to create a child with an impairment face a dilemma. If they want to avoid the charge that their aim is morally defective, they must deny that the desired impairment is harmful. But this would commit them to endorsing the controversial claim that it is morally permissible or even required to turn normal children into impaired ones. (shrink)

In this paper, I shall try to present and defend some arguments against naturalistic evolutionism that are partly inspired by A. Plantinga’s well-known evolutionary argument against naturalism. I give two different characterizations of naturalistic evolutionism: according to the first, it is the view for which, for every human activity, that activity is governed by adaptive functions and nothing else ; according to second, it is the view for which, for most human activities, those activities are governed by adaptive functions and (...) nothing else. Both versions of naturalistic evolutionism fall in trouble when they have to ground the truth of metaphysical beliefs, even including the beliefs that N.E.1, that N.E.2, that N.E.1 is true and that N.E.2 is true. Thus, it seems either that naturalistic evolutionism is false and self-defeating or that its defense is a huge metaphysical task to undertake than one could expect. (shrink)

In the intriguing final chapter of his book Warrant and Proper Function, Alvin Plantinga argues that naturalism, conjoined with a neo-Darwinian picture, is self-defeating. This argument has drawn its fair share of critical response. Plantinga in turn has recently responded in his as yet unpublished manuscript ‘Naturalism Defeated’. This first volley of debate has helped bring into focus several points of contention between Plantinga and his critics, but to date, the logical structure of the argument has not been an (...) element of the discussion. In this paper I argue that the logical structure of Plantinga’s argument has been misconstrued – that it does not show that naturalism is self-defeating. I argue further that properly reconstructed, it fails to make the case for the (ordinary) defeat of naturalism as well. (shrink)

Jennifer Saul argues that the evidence from the literature on implicit biases entails a form of skepticism. In this paper, I argue that Saul faces a dilemma: her argument is either self-defeating, or it does not yield a skeptical conclusion. For Saul, both results are unacceptable; thus, her argument fails.

An important source of doubt about our knowledge of the "external world" is the thought that all of our sensory experience could be delusive without our realizing it. Such wholesale questioning of the deliverances of all forms of perception seems to leave no resources for successfully justifying our belief in the existence of an objective world beyond our subjective experiences. I argue that there is there is a fatal flaw in the very expression of philosophical doubt about the "external world." (...) Therefore, no such justification is necessary. The feature of skepticism which I believe renders it vulnerable is the assumption that each of us has a right to be certain of his own existence as a subject of conscious experience even in the face of comprehensive doubt about our empirical beliefs. (shrink)

In the first part of Reasons and Persons, Derek Parfit argues that common‐sense morality, or M, is self‐defeating, so that it must be rejected or revised. I defend M. We can rebut Parfit’s argument if we make an assumption about the moral importance of doing what is morally right. We need to assume that this end has sufficient weight in M.

Kant’s Refutation of Idealism has often been assessed either from a realistic or from a transcendental point of view. Each of them proves to be unsufficient. The realistic approach wouldn’t it enough the tenets of the Transcendental Esthetics, and the transcendental approach doesn’t allow us to go beyond our representations. We put forward a logical and structural analysis of the famous paragraph from the System of all principles and its rewriting in the Preface to the Second edition of the first (...) Critique. Additional evidence from the Opus Postumum leads us to suggest that Kant more or less willingly endorses an equivocation on the phrase “existing outside me”, which wonderfully serves his double purpose of saving the transcendental deduction and facing the so-called “scandal of idealism.”. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Phenomenal Conservatism (PC) is not superior to alternative theories of basic propositional justification insofar as those theories that reject PC are self-defeating. I show that self-defeat arguments similar to Michael Huemer’s Self-Defeat Argument for PC can be constructed for other theories of basic propositional justification as well. If this is correct, then there is nothing special about PC in that respect. In other words, if self-defeat arguments can (...) be advanced in support of alternatives to PC, then Huemer’s Self-Defeat argument doesn’t uniquely motivate PC. (shrink)

Conciliatory views of disagreement are an intuitive class of views on the epistemic significance of disagreement. Such views claim that making conciliation is often required upon discovering that another disagrees with you. One of the chief objections to these views of the epistemic significance of disagreement is that they are self-defeating. Since, there are disagreements about the epistemic significance of disagreement, such views can be turned on themselves, and this has been thought to be problematic. In this paper, I (...) examine several different incarnations of this objection and defend conciliatory views of disagreement from each of them, while making a modification regarding how such views should be understood. (shrink)

Derek Parfit has notably argued that while a moral theory should not be directly self-defeating, there is nothing necessarily wrong with a moral theory that is only indirectly self-defeating. Here I resist this line of argument. I argue instead that indirectly self-defeating moral theories are indeed problematic. Parfit tries to sidestep the oddities of indirectly self-defeating theories by focusing on the choice of dispositions rather than actions. But the very considerations that can make it impossible to (...) achieve a theory's aims if we try to do what the theory recommends can also make it impossible to achieve a theory's aims if we instead try to adopt the dispositions the theory recommends. What makes a theory indirectly self-defeating has little to do with the object of choice, but with the nature of choosing itself. (shrink)

Metaethical debunking arguments often conclude that no moral belief is epistemically justified. Early versions of such arguments largely relied on metaphors and analogies and left the epistemology of debunking underspecified. Debunkers have since come to take on substantial and broad-ranging epistemological commitments. The plausibility of metaethical debunking has thereby become entangled in thorny epistemological issues. In this thesis, I provide a critical yet sympathetic evaluation of the prospects and challenges facing such arguments in light of this development. In doing so, (...) I address the following central question: how could genealogical information undermine the epistemic justification of moral beliefs? In Part I, I begin answering the central question by extracting explicit and implicit epistemic principles from three popular debunking arguments. These arguments, due to Gilbert Harman, Richard Joyce, and Sharon Street, generate principles concerning ontological parsimony, explanatory dispensability, epistemic insensitivity, lack of epistemic safety, unexplained reliability, epistemic coincidences, and explanatory constraints on rational belief. Having set out the principles tasked with explaining how genealogical information undermines, Part II of the thesis seeks to evaluate whether debunking arguments built on them succeed. To this end, I consider two types of challenges faced by such arguments. First, there are strategies that attempt to block global moral debunking arguments. I argue that one popular such strategy, the so-called ‘third-factor strategy’, has been misunderstood. When understood correctly, it is of no help in answering debunking arguments. I then flesh out an alternative and more promising strategy for blocking such arguments. I then turn to internal challenges facing debunkers, particularly those who rely on ‘explanationist’ principles. I argue that explanationist debunking arguments, as well as most others, fall prey to one or more of four internal challenges: the implausibility of first-order epistemic principles, the threat of overgeneralization, the threat of self-defeat, and the need for costly metaepistemic commitments. I conclude that current debunking arguments fail to establish that no moral belief is justified. By analyzing why existing arguments fail, I develop two conditions of adequacy that debunkers must satisfy in order to navigate the internal challenges successfully. I end by suggesting future directions that debunkers should pursue to rehabilitate the prospects for global moral debunking arguments. (shrink)