Epistemic value in the subpersonal vale

Abstract

A vexing problem in contemporary epistemology-one with origins in Plato's Meno-concerns the value of knowledge, and in particular, whether and how the value of knowledge exceeds the value of mere (unknown) true opinion. The recent literature is deeply divided on the matter of how best to address the problem. One point, however, remains unquestioned: that if a solution is to be found, it will be at the personal level, the level at which states of subjects or agents, as such, appear. We take exception to this orthodoxy, or at least to its unquestioned status. We argue that subpersonal states play a significant-arguably, primary-role in much epistemically relevant cognition and thus constitute a domain in which we might reasonably expect to locate the "missing source" of epistemic value, beyond the value attached to mere true belief.

Perceptual justification in the Bayesian brain: a foundherentist account

“…Despite those facts, I take perceptual inferences in PP to be truth-preserving transitions between representational states (see also Kiefer, 2017). These inferences can endow perceptual states with epistemic justification because they are similar enough to other unconscious, non-voluntary inferences that we take for granted as underlying justification transfer (Ghijsen, 2018;Siegel, 2017; see also Carter et al 2020). 6 Second, perceptual states' epistemic standing originates from their inferential relations to antecedent states instead of being merely modulated by them.…”

Socially Extended Scientific Knowledge

“…6 For an important recent discussion of the relevance of sub-personal cognitive processes in cases of extended cognition, including with regard to the epistemological ramifications of extended cognition, see Clark (2015). For more on the epistemological relevance of subpersonal cognitive processes, see Carter and Rupert (2020). 7 One important variety of extended cognition where the extended cognitive processes do not employ information-processing features of the environment is embodied cognition-see Noë (2004), Gallagher (2005), Chemero (2009), Rowlands (2009), andShapiro (2011).…”

“… 6 For an important recent discussion of the relevance of sub-personal cognitive processes in cases of extended cognition, including with regard to the epistemological ramifications of extended cognition, see Clark (2015) . For more on the epistemological relevance of subpersonal cognitive processes, see Carter and Rupert (2020) . …”

The Unconscious Mind Worry: A Mechanistic-Explanatory Strategy

“…While this distinction was originally introduced by Dennett to denote different styles of explanation, it is commonly interpreted as an ontic distinction: there is a personal levelthe level of mental statesand there is a subhttps://doi.org/10.1017/psa.2022.18 Published online by Cambridge University Press personal levelthe level of the neuronal, biological, and physical mechanisms that may be involved in realizing the states of the personal level. The most crucial problem for an account in terms of the personal/sub-personal distinction is that the latter is usually spelled out in terms of the conscious/unconscious distinction (Drayson 2012, 15;Carter and Rupert 2020). Processes at the personal level are conscious, whereas those at the subpersonal level are unconscious.…”