Possessing reasons: why the awareness-first approach is better than the knowledge-first approach

Silva, Paul

doi:10.1007/s11229-020-02916-5

Cited by 4 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…(To adapt the traditional conception for our purposes, we need to specify the source of justification, such that e.g., S is propositionally justified to believe that P by a source J , just in case S possesses an adequate reason to believe that P, where that reason is available to J .) NOPRIOR follows from the traditional view and INACCESSIBILITY if we accept that possession of adequate reasons requires (some form of) accessibility of those reasons to S (Silva, 2021, 2939; Lord, 2018, 86). According to Silva, to possess a reason is to be in a position to be aware of it.…”

Section: A Defense Of Generationismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Imagination as a generative source of justification

Miyazono

Tooming

2023

Nous

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One of the most exciting debates in philosophy of imagination in recent years has been over the epistemic use of imagination where imagination epistemically contributes to justifying beliefs and acquiring knowledge. This paper defends “generationism about imagination” according to which imagination is a generative source, rather than a preservative source, of justification. In other words, imagination generates new justification above and beyond prior justification provided by other sources. After clarifying the generation/preservation distinction (Section 2), we present an argument for generationism about imagination, which can be divided into two parts; the philosophical part and the empirical part. In the philosophical part of our argument (Section 3), we claim that generationism about imagination follows from what we call “INACCESSIBILITY”. According to INACCESSIBILITY, imagination is properly constrained by the imaginative constrainers (i.e., the prior representations that constrain the development of a scenario in imagination) to which non‐imaginative belief‐forming processes do not have access. In the empirical part of our argument (Section 4), we claim that INACCESSIBILITY is plausible in light of relevant studies and theories in the empirical literature, especially the literature on mental simulation (Section 4.1), core cognition (Section 4.2), and intuitive physics (Section 4.3).

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Section: A Defense Of Generationismmentioning

confidence: 99%

Imagination as a generative source of justification

Miyazono

Tooming

2023

Nous

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“…For example, we can first come to know (i) that p and (ii) that p entails q, and after, and in response, later come to believe q. This is an entirely ordinary way in which we update our beliefs (Silva 2021(Silva , 2023Wedgwood 2014).…”

Section: Joyce Then Deducesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…A second concrete proposal for awareness has been advanced by Michael Huemer (2001:51-57) and Paul Silva (2021Silva ( , 2022Silva ( , 2023. Both hold that being aware of the fact that p is non-accidentally representing the fact that p: Awareness = Non-Accidental True Representation (A = NATR): S is aware of the fact that p iff p, S represents the fact that p, and S's representation of that fact is suitably non-accidental.…”

Section: Two Substantive Views Of Awarenessmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…He argues only that the relevant notion must exclude a significant degree of chance or coincidence. Silva (2021Silva ( , 2022Silva ( , 2023 agrees, pointing out that reliabilist virtue-theoretic conditions and safety-theoretic conditions can effectively be generalized to apply to the total class of representational states, not just belief states. For one could take any non-accidentality condition applied to belief (a special case of representation) for the purposes of understanding knowledge, and then take that knowledgerelevant non-accidentality condition and apply it to representational states more generally (e.g.…”

Section: Two Substantive Views Of Awarenessmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Ignorance and awareness

Silva

Siscoe

2023

Nous

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Knowledge implies the presence of a positive relation between a person and a fact. Factual ignorance, on the other hand, implies the absence of some positive relation between a person and a fact. The two most influential views of ignorance hold that what is lacking in cases of factual ignorance is knowledge or true belief, but these accounts fail to explain a number of basic facts about ignorance. In their place, we propose a novel and systematic defense of the view that factual ignorance is the absence of awareness, an account that both comes apart from the dominant views and overcomes their deficiencies. Given the important role that ignorance plays in moral and legal theory and our understanding of various epistemic injustices, a precise and theoretically unproblematic account of the nature of ignorance is important not only for normative epistemology, but also for law, ethics, and applied epistemology.

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“…Even appealing to the most up-to-date literature on the nature of reasons, it is hard to say whether the reasons in this case count as accessible to the agent. For some consideration to count as a reason one has, it is taken to be critical that the agent knows it(Littlejohn 2017;Lord 2018) or is aware of it(Silva 2020), but all parties to the debate seem to grant that you do not actually have to know the information as long as it is suitably close to hand. For instance,Lord's (op.…”

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confidence: 99%

When Should the Master Answer? Respondeat Superior and the Criminal Law

Silver

2023

Criminal Law, Philosophy

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Respondeat superior is a legal doctrine conferring liability from one party onto another because the latter stands in some relationship of authority over the former. Though originally a doctrine of tort law, for the past century it has been used within the criminal law, especially to the end of securing criminal liability for corporations. Here, I argue that on at least one prominent conception of criminal responsibility, we are not justified in using this doctrine in this way. Firms are not answerable for the crimes committed by their employees, because firms cannot answer as to why the crime was committed; they lack the authority to offer the employee’s reasons for action. Though this rules out respondeat superior as a general principle, I show contexts in which vicarious liability is still appropriate in the criminal law, and I respond to a number of other concerns raised by this picture.

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Possessing reasons: why the awareness-first approach is better than the knowledge-first approach

Cited by 4 publications

References 46 publications

Imagination as a generative source of justification

Imagination as a generative source of justification

Ignorance and awareness

When Should the Master Answer? Respondeat Superior and the Criminal Law

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