I—Crispin Wright: Warrant for Nothing (and Foundations for Free)?

Abstract

Two kinds of epistemological sceptical paradox are reviewed and a shared assumption, that warrant to accept a proposition has to be the same thing as having evidence for its truth, is noted. 'Entitlement', as used here, denotes a kind of rational warrant that counter-exemplifies that identification. 1 The paper pursues the thought that there are various kinds of entitlement and explores the possibility that the sceptical paradoxes might receive a uniform solution if entitlement can be made to reach sufficiently far. Three kinds of entitlement are characterised and given prima facie support, and a fourth is canvassed. Certain foreseeable limitations of the suggested anti-sceptical strategy are noted. The discussion is grounded, overall, in a conception of the sceptical paradoxes not as directly challenging our having any warrant for large classes of our beliefs but as crises of intellectual conscience for one who wants to claim that we do. 2 I T wo Kinds of Sceptical Paradox. Call a proposition a cornerstone for a given region of thought just in case it 1. The term is already in use in contemporary epistemology in a number of contrastive senses. My use of it contrasts in particular-though it also has points of contact-with that of Tyler Burge in a number of important recent articles (see e.g. Burge [1993]). Such overlap in terminology is unfortunate but, given that English has only so many expressions for norms of doxastic acceptance, all of which are already in use with multiple connotations, it is too late to hope to avoid it. 2. The paper originates in ideas that go back to my Henriette Hertz British Academy lecture (Wright [1985]) which shared the root idea that an attractive response to scepticism might draw on the possibility of non-evidential warrant. The major strategic contrast with the present proposals is in how such warrant is conceived as possible. In the lecture, I proposed that at least some 'cornerstones' might be regarded as defective in factual content and that acceptance of them might accordingly be freed from the requirements of evidence that I took to be characteristic of the factual. In the present discussion, non-factuality is no longer assigned a role in making a case that rational acceptance need not be evidence-based.

Entitlement and Mutually Recognized Reasonable Disagreement

“…Related theories have been defended by Crispin Wright (2004aWright ( , 2004b and Michael Williams (1996), and suggested by Ludwig Wittgenstein (1969) and Thomas Reid (in his 1785 Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man).…”

“…Reasonable belief may require not only that the inquiries upon which my belief is based be conduced in a non-vicious fashion, but also that my belief is not sustained by my vicious refusal to inquire. Wright (2004a) requires, for entitlement to believe some presupposition, that there be no independent way to justify such belief (pp. 191-2).…”

“…Relativism about reasonable belief is consistent with absolutism about knowledge, if one takes the question of whether S's belief that p is reasonable to be orthogonal to the question of whether S's belief that p amounts to knowledge. 6 On Wright's (2004a) view, a cognitive project must be "indispensable, or anyway sufficiently valuable to us" for its presuppositions to enjoy entitlement (Ibid. p. 192).…”

Intentionalism, defeasibility, and justification

“…There is work in progress by Jim Pryor in reaction to this (accessible on his homepage). See also Cohen 2005, Wright 2004, Wright 2007, Spectre 2009, McGrath 2013 for relevant discussion. The basic observation goes back to Carnap (1950).…”

Wright, Okasha and Chandler on transmission failure

“…This explanation has been re-proposed in Wright (2002Wright ( , 2003Wright ( and 2004 in connection with the discussion of hot topics of epistemology and philosophy of mind, such as the analysis of Moore's proof of the existence of a material world and the McKinsey paradox. Formal epistemologists have struggled to turn Wright's informal explanation of transmission failure into cogent Bayesian reasoning, but no satisfactory formalization has yet been achieved.…”