Epistemology of Belief

by Hamid Vahid

Overview

This book offers a challenge to certain epistemic features of belief, resulting in a unified and coherent picture of the epistemology of belief. The author examines current ideas in a number of areas, beginning with the truth-directed nature of belief in the context of the so-called 'Moore's paradoxes'. He then investigates the sensitivity of beliefs to evidence by exploring how sensory experiences can confer justifications on the beliefs they give rise to, and provides an account of the basing relation problem. The consequences of these arguments are carefully considered, particularly the issues involving the problem of easy knowledge and warrant transmission. Finally, he focuses on the purported fallibility of beliefs and our knowledge of their contents, arguing that the fallible/infallible distinction is best understood in terms of externalist/internalist conceptions of knowledge and that the thesis of content externalism does not threaten the privileged character of self-knowledge.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780230267459
Publisher:	Palgrave Macmillan
Publication date:	10/24/2008
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
File size:	333 KB

About the Author

HAMID VAHID is Professor of Philosophy and the Head of the Analytic Philosophy Faculty at the Institute for Fundamental Sciences in Tehran, Iran. He is the author of Epistemic Justification and the Skeptical Challenge and has published work in several journals including Philosophical Studies, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Synthese, Erkenntnis, European Journal of Philosophy, Kant-Studien, Metaphilosophy and Ratio.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements vii

Introduction 1

1 Truth and the Aim of Belief 7

1.1 Unpacking the metaphor: a survey and critique 8

1.2 Truth as doxastic and epistemic goals: the anatomy of a confusion 19

1.3 The aim of belief: aiming at a target and hitting the target 24

2 Belief, Interpretation and Moore's Paradox 33

2.1 Resolving the paradox: varieties of approaches 34

2.2 Moore's paradox: the pragmatic approach 35

2.3 Moore's paradox: the doxastic approach 36

2.4 Moore's paradox: the epistemic approach 40

2.5 Moore's paradox: the interpretive approach 44

3 Belief, Sensitivity and Safety 51

3.1 Sensitivity and safety 51

3.2 Safety: the intuitive version 53

3.3 Safety: the epistemic version 55

3.4 Safety: the doxastic version 58

3.5 Safety and sensitivity as distinct cognitive goals 63

4 Basic Beliefs and the Problem of Non-doxastic Justification 69

4.1 Experience and reason: the problem explained 69

4.2 Resolving the problem: normative paradigms 71

4.3 Inferential paradigms 71

4.4 Non-inferential paradigms 82

4.5 Way forward 86

5 Experience as Reason for Beliefs 89

5.1 The supervenience thesis explained and applied 90

5.2 Normativity and content: an argument from functional role semantics 104

6 The Problem of the Basing Relation 114

6.1 Main approaches to the basing relation: a survey and analysis 114

6.2 Alston: basing relation as input to psychologically realized functions 121

6.3 Basing relation: triangulation and content 124

7 Basic Beliefs, Easy Knowledge and the Problem of Warrant Transfer 131

7.1 The problem of easy knowledge 131

7.2 What is wrong with easyknowledge? 133

7.3 EK-Inferences as illegitimate 136

7.4 Dogmatism: EK-inferences as legitimate 144

7.5 The legitimacy of EK-inferences as context-dependent 147

7.6 Strength of evidence and epistemic distance: varieties of transmission failure 149

8 Belief, Justification and Fallibility 160

8.1 Fallibility as the possibility of falsity or accidental truth 163

8.2 Fallibility as failable knowledge 166

8.3 Analyzing fallible knowledge 170

8.4 Fallible knowledge as externalist knowledge 172

8.5 Consequences and confirmations 176

9 Knowledge of our Beliefs and Privileged Access 180

9.1 The slow switching argument explained 181

9.2 Some responses to the slow switching argument 182

9.3 The standard strategy: a critique 186

9.4 Examining the switching argument 188

9.5 Externalism and privileged self-knowledge: a diagnosis 192

Notes 197

References 205

Index 211