Defeaters and Higher-Level Requirements

Bergmann, Michael

doi:10.1111/j.0031-8094.2005.00408.x

Cited by 137 publications

(51 citation statements)

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“…Another way of articulating the idea that your higher-order epistemic attitudes affect the epistemic statuses of your corresponding lower-order doxastic attitudes is by appeal to the notion of an undercutting defeater (Bergmann 2005, pp. 422-7, Feldman 2005, p. 104, Christensen 2010, pp.…”

Section: 2mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Consider Michael Bergmann's (2005) Bergmann then considers the question of whether suspending judgment about whether your grounds are good also constitutes an undercutting defeater. "I think it does," he writes, since suspension "seems to undercut your justification for believing p in the same way as if you believed outright that the actual basis for your belief that p did not indicate p's truth."…”

Section: 2mentioning

confidence: 99%

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Higher-Order Epistemic Attitudes and Intellectual Humility

Hazlett¹

2012

Episteme

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Forthcoming in EpistemeRecent discussions of the epistemology of disagreement (Kelly 2005, Feldman 2006, Elga 2007, Christensen 2007 have focused on the question: how ought you respond to disagreement with an epistemic peer?1 These discussions have assumed that the question of the proper response to disagreement about p concerns whether you ought to change your doxastic attitude towards p.Here I suggest an alternative approach, on which the question of the proper response to disagreement about p concerns the proper doxastic attitude to adopt concerning the epistemic status of your doxastic attitude towards p.My discussion will focus on would-be necessary connections between doxastic attitudes about the epistemic statuses of your doxastic attitudes, or higher-order epistemic attitudes, and the epistemic statuses of those doxastic attitudes. 2 I will argue that, in some situations, it can be reasonable for a person to believe p and to suspend judgment about whether believing p is reasonable for her. This will set the stage for an account of the virtue of intellectual humility, on which humility is a matter of your higher-order epistemic attitudes. Feldman's skeptical argumentA crucial premise in Richard Feldman's (2006Feldman's ( , 2007 argument for skepticism (suspension of judgment) about controversial matters in religion, politics, and philosophy is the following principle:1 "Epistemic peer" is a term of art (Kelly 2005), referring to people who have equally good evidence (relevant to the question whether p) and who are equally epistemically virtuous (when it comes to answering the question whether p). 2 As will become clear, I intend "higher-order epistemic attitudes" to refer to attitudes about either actual or possible lower-order doxastic attitudes. In particular, we will be concerned with a person's attitudes about whether believing p is reasonable for her ( §2), where believing p can be reasonable for S even when S doesn't believe p. The conclusion Feldman seeks is:Conclusion: Epistemic peers that disagree about p ought to suspend judgment about p.Feldman's Principle provides the required connecting premise. But why accept it? Arguments for Feldman's principleIn this section I criticize arguments for Feldman's principle. First, some preliminaries. I assume three doxastic attitudes: belief, disbelief, and suspension of judgment. Disbelief is therefore distinct from not believing. And I assume suspension of judgment about p is an attitude towards p; it is distinct from taking no attitude towards p, and distinct from neither believing nor disbelieving p.We will speak of reasonable belief, reasonable disbelief, and reasonable suspension of judgment.These notions are subject-relative: believing p may be reasonable for me but not reasonable for you (e.g., if we have different evidence). To say that believing p is reasonable for someone does not entail that she believes p, and likewise for the other doxastic attitudes, for someone can fail 3 For simplicity we confine ourselves to situations in which people enj...

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Section: 2mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: 2mentioning

confidence: 99%

Higher-Order Epistemic Attitudes and Intellectual Humility

Hazlett¹

2012

Episteme

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“…See, e.g., Bergmann 2005. Note that Bergmann uses the term 'withholding belief ' to refer to the state of 17 deliberately refraining from adopting a belief, whereas I will use it more broadly to encompass any case in which an agent does not adopt a belief that the proposition is true.…”

Section: Testimony From Othersmentioning

confidence: 99%

Is Memory Merely Testimony from One's Former Self?

Barnett

2015

The Philosophical Review

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A natural view of testimony holds that a source's statements provide one with evidence about what the source believes, which in turn provides one with evidence about what is true. But some theorists have gone further and developed a broadly analogous view of memory. According to this view, which this essay calls the “diary model,” one's memory ordinarily serves as a means for one's present self to gain evidence about one's past judgments, and in turn about the truth. This essay rejects the diary model's analogy between memory and testimony from one's former self, arguing first that memory and a diary differ with respect to their psychological roles, and second that this psychological difference underwrites important downstream epistemic differences. The resulting view stands opposed to prominent discussions of memory and testimony, which either, like the diary model, treat memory by analogy to what we naively wish to say about testimony, or which instead attempt to extend to testimony the epistemically preservative role of memory.

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“…Of course, as Michael Bergmann (2000Bergmann ( , 2005 has argued, this kind of antiexternalist complaint, that one cannot acquire non-inferential justification or knowledge that one's principles, methods, or rules that are required for that kind of knowledge or justification are true without presupposing or using those principles, methods, or rules, is applicable to Fumerton's own view. After all, explaining how we know that acquaintance with facts generates non-inferential knowledge or justification on the basis of being acquainted with the fact that acquaintance with facts generates non-inferential knowledge or justification is rule-circular.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%