Brian Weatherson
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Epistemology Papers
Epistemic Permissiveness and Symmetric Games
Permissivism in epistemology is a family of theses, each of which says that rationality is compatible with a number of distinct attitudes. This paper argues that thinking about symmetric games gives us new reason to believe in permissivism. In some finite games, if permissivism is false then we have to think that a player is more likely to take one option rather than another, even though each have the same expected return given that player’s credences. And in some infinite games, if permissivism is false there is no rational way to play the game, although intuitively the games could be rationally played. The latter set of arguments rely on the recent discovery that there are symmetric games with only asymmetric equilibria. It was long known that there are symmetric games with no pure strategy symmetric equilibria; the surprising new discovery is that there are symmetric games with asymmetric equilibria, but no symmetric equilibria involving either mixed or pure strategies.
2021
Brian Weatherson
Review of “What do Philosophers Do”
Review of Penelope Maddy, “What Do Philosophers Do?: Skepticism and the Practice of Philosophy”. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017.
2019
Brian Weatherson
Accuracy and the Imps
Recently several authors have argued that accuracy-first epistemology ends up licensing problematic epistemic bribes. They charge that it is better, given the accuracy-first approach, to deliberately form one false belief if this will lead to forming many other true beliefs. We argue that this is not a consequence of the accuracy-first view. If one forms one false belief and a number of other true beliefs, then one is committed to many other false propositions, e.g., the conjunction of that false belief with any of the true beliefs. Once we properly account for all the falsehoods that are adopted by the person who takes the bribe, it turns out that the bribe does not increase accuracy.
2019
James M. Joyce, Brian Weatherson
Interests, Evidence and Games
Pragmatic encroachment theories have a problem with evidence. On the one hand, the arguments that knowledge is interest-relative look like they will generalise to show that evidence too is interest-relative. On the other hand, our best story of how interests affect knowledge presupposes an interest-invariant notion of evidence. The aim of this paper is to sketch a theory of evidence that is interest-relative, but which allows that ‘best story’ to go through with minimal changes. The core idea is that the evidence someone has is just what evidence a radical interpreter says they have. And a radical interpreter is playing a kind of game with the person they are interpreting. The cases that pose problems for pragmatic encroachment theorists generate fascinating games between the interpreter and the interpretee. They are games with multiple equilibria. To resolve them we need to detour into the theory of equilibrium selection. I’ll argue that the theory we need is the theory of
risk-dominant equilibria
. That theory will tell us how the interpreter will play the game, which in turn will tell us what evidence the person has. The evidence will be interest-relative, because what the equilibrium of the game is will be interest-relative. But it will not undermine the story we tell about how interests usually affect knowledge.
2018
Brian Weatherson
Intellectual Skill and the Rylean Regress
Intelligent activity requires the use of various intellectual skills. While these skills are connected to knowledge, they should not be identified with knowledge. There are realistic examples where the skills in question come apart from knowledge. That is, there are realistic cases of knowledge without skill, and of skill without knowledge. Whether a person is intelligent depends, in part, on whether they have these skills. Whether a particular action is intelligent depends, in part, on whether it was produced by an exercise of skill. These claims promote a picture of intelligence that is in tension with a strongly intellectualist picture, though they are not in tension with a number of prominent claims recently made by intellectualists. (The picture is Rex Whistler’s portrait of Ryle, from
Wikipedia
.)
2017
Brian Weatherson
Interest-Relative Invariantism
An opinionated survey of the state of the literature on interest-relative invariantism.
2017
Brian Weatherson
Analytic-Synthetic and A Priori-A Posteriori
This article focuses on the distinction between analytic truths and synthetic truths (i.e. every truth that isn’t analytic), and between a priori truths and a posteriori truths (i.e. every truth that isn’t a priori) in philosophy, beginning with a brief historical survey of work on the two distinctions, their relationship to each other, and to the necessary/contingent distinction. Four important stops in the history are considered: two involving Kant and W. V. O. Quine, and two relating to logical positivism and semantic externalism. The article then examines questions that have been raised about the analytic–synthetic and a priori–a posteriori distinctions, such as whether all distinctively philosophical truths fall on one side of the line and whether the distinction is relevant to philosophy. It also discusses the argument that there is a lot more a priori knowledge than we ever thought, and concludes by describing epistemological accounts of analyticity.
2016
Brian Weatherson
Reply to Eaton and Pickavance
Daniel Eaton and Timothy Pickavance argued that interest-relative invariantism has a surprising and interesting consequence. They take this consequence to be so implausible that it refutes interest-relative invariantism. But in fact it is a consequence that any theory of knowledge that has the resources to explain familiar puzzles (such as Gettier cases) must have.
2016
Brian Weatherson
For Bayesians, Rational Modesty Requires Imprecision
Gordon Belot has recently developed a novel argument against Bayesianism. He shows that there is an interesting class of problems that, intuitively, no rational belief forming method is likely to get right. But a Bayesian agent’s credence, before the problem starts, that she will get the problem right has to be 1. This is an implausible kind of immodesty on the part of Bayesians. My aim is to show that while this is a good argument against traditional, precise Bayesians, the argument doesn’t neatly extend to imprecise Bayesians. As such, Belot’s argument is a reason to prefer imprecise Bayesianism to precise Bayesianism.
2016
Brian Weatherson
Games, Beliefs and Credences
In previous work I’ve defended an interest-relative theory of belief. This paper continues the defence. I have four aims. First, to offer a new kind of reason for being unsatisfied with the simple Lockean reduction of belief to credence. Second, to defend the legitimacy of appealing to credences in a theory of belief. Third, to illustrate the importance of theoretical, as well as practical, interests in an interest-relative account of belief. And finally, to have another try at extending my basic account of belief to cover propositions that are practically and theoretically irrelevant to the agent.
2016
Brian Weatherson
Reply to Blackson
Thomas Blackson argues that interest-relative epistemologies cannot explain the irrationality of certain choices when the agent has three possible options. I argue that his examples only refute a subclass of interest-relative theories. In particular, they are good objections to theories that say that what an agent knows depends on the stakes involved in the gambles that she faces. But they are not good objections to theories that say that what an agent knows depends on the odds involved in the gambles that she faces. Indeed, the latter class of theories does a better job than interest-invariant epistemologies of explaining the phenomena he describes.
2016
Brian Weatherson
Memory, Belief and Time
I argue that what evidence an agent has does not supervene on how she currently is. Agents do not always have to infer what the past was like from how things currently seem; sometimes the facts about the past are retained pieces of evidence that can be the start of reasoning. The main argument is a variant on Frank Arntzenius’s Shangri La example, an example that is often used to motivate the thought that evidence does supervene on current features.
2015
Brian Weatherson
Probability and Scepticism
One way to motivate scepticism is by looking at the ways we might possibly know we aren’t brains in vats. Could we know we aren’t brains in vats a priori? Many will say no, since it is possible to be a brain in a vat. Could we know it on the basis of evidence? The chapter argues that given some commonly held assumptions, the answer is no. In particular, there is a kind of sceptical hypothesis whose probability is decreased by conditionalising on the evidence we have. Using this fact, I argue that if we want to say our knowledge that we aren’t brains in vats is a posteriori, we have to give up the view that all updating on evidence is by conditionalisation.
2014
Brian Weatherson
Disagreements, Philosophical and Otherwise
The Equal Weight View of disagreement says that if an agent sees that an epistemic peer disagrees with her about p, the agent should change her credence in p to half way between her initial credence, and the peer’s credence. But it is hard to believe the Equal Weight View for a surprising reason; not everyone believes it. And that means that if one did believe it, one would be required to lower one’s belief in it in light of this peer disagreement. Brian Weatherson explores the options for how a proponent of the Equal Weight View might respond to this difficulty, and how this challenge fits into broader arguments against the Equal Weight View.
2013
Brian Weatherson
Margins and Errors
Timothy Williamson has argued that cases involving fallible measurement show that knowledge comes apart from justified true belief in ways quite distinct from the familiar ‘double luck’ cases. I start by describing some assumptions that are necessary to generate Williamson’s conclusion, and arguing that these assumptions are well justified. I then argue that the existence of these cases poses problems for theorists who suppose that knowledge comes apart from justified true belief only in a well defined class of cases. I end with some general discussion of what we can know on the basis of imperfect measuring devices.
2013
Brian Weatherson
Ross on Sleeping Beauty
In two excellent recent papers, Jacob Ross has argued that the standard arguments for the ‘thirder’ answer to the Sleeping Beauty puzzle lead to violations of countable additivity. The problem is that most arguments for that answer generalise in awkward ways when he looks at the whole class of what he calls Sleeping Beauty problems. In this note I develop a new argument for the thirder answer that doesn’t generalise in this way.
2013
Brian Weatherson
Knowledge, Bets and Interests
This paper argues that the interest-relativity of knowledge cannot be explained by the interest-relativity of belief. The discussion starts with an argument that knowledge plays a key pair of roles in decision theory. It is then argued that knowledge cannot play that role unless knowledge is interest-relative. The theory of the interest-relativity of belief is reviewed and revised. That theory can explain some of the cases that are used to suggest knowledge is interest-relative. But it can’t explain some cases involving ignorance, or mistake, about the odds at which a bet is offered. The paper ends with an argument that these cases require positing interest-relative defeaters, which affect whether an agent knows something without affecting whether she believes it, or is justified in believing it.
2012
Brian Weatherson
Induction and Supposition
An argument that we should not treat rules of inductive inference in ordinary life as being anything like the inference rules in natural deduction systems.
2012
Brian Weatherson
Games and the Reason-Knowledge Principle
A potential counterexample to Hawthorne and Stanley’s Reason-Knowledge Principle
2012
Brian Weatherson
Dogmatism, Probability and Logical Uncertainty
Many epistemologists hold that an agent can come to justifiably believe that p is true by seeing that it appears that p is true, without having any antecedent reason to believe that visual impressions are generally reliable. Certain reliabilists think this, at least if the agent’s vision is generally reliable. And it is a central tenet of dogmatism (as described by James Pryor) that this is possible. Against these positions it has been argued (e.g. by Stewart Cohen and Roger White) that this violates some principles from probabilistic learning theory. To see the problem, let’s note what the dogmatist thinks we can learn by paying attention to how things appear. (The reliabilist says the same things, but we’ll focus on the dogmatist.)
2012
David Jehle, Brian Weatherson
The Temporal Generality Problem
The traditional generality problem for process reliabilism concerns the difficulty in identifying each belief forming process with a particular kind of process. That identification is necessary since individual belief forming processes are typically of many kinds, and those kinds may vary in reliability. I raise a new kind of generality problem, one which turns on the difficulty of identifying beliefs with processes by which they were formed. This problem arises because individual beliefs may be the culmination of overlapping processes of distinct lengths, and these processes may differ in reliability. I illustrate the force of this problem with a discussion of recent work on the bootstrapping problem.
2012
Brian Weatherson
Stalnaker on Sleeping Beauty
A contribution to a book symposium on Stalnaker’s Our Knowledge of the Internal World, focussing on the way his framework helps cast new light on the Sleeping Beauty problem.
2011
Brian Weatherson
Defending Interest Relative Invariantism
Since interest-relative invariantism (hereafter, IRI) was introduced into contemporary epistemology in the early 2000s, it has been criticised on a number of fronts. This paper responds to six different criticisms of IRI launched by five different authors. And it does so by noting that the best version of IRI is immune to the criticisms they have launched. The ‘best version’ in question notes three things about IRI. First, what matters for knowledge is not strictly the
stakes
the agent faces in any decision-problem, but really the
odds
at which she has to bet. Second, IRI is a relatively weak theory; it just says interests sometimes matter. Defenders of IRI have often derived it from much stronger principles about reasoning, and critics have attacked those principles, but much weaker principles would do. Third, and most importantly, interests matter because generate certain kinds of
defeaters
. It isn’t part of this version of IRI that an agent can know something in virtue of their interests. Rather, the theory says that whether a certain kind of consideration is a defeater to an agent’s putative knowledge that
p
depends on their interests. This matters for the intuitive plausibility of IRI. Critics have argued, rightly, that interests don’t behave in ways distinctive of grounds of knowledge. But interests do behave like other kinds of defeaters, and this undermines the criticisms of IRI.
2011
Brian Weatherson
Assertion, Knowledge and Action
We argue against the knowledge rule of assertion, and in favour of integrating the account of assertion more tightly with our best theories of evidence and action. We think that the knowledge rule has an incredible consequence when it comes to practical deliberation, that it can be right for a person to do something that she can’t properly assert she can do. We develop some vignettes that show how this is possible, and how odd this consequence is. We then argue that these vignettes point towards alternate rules that tie assertion to sufficient evidence-responsiveness or to proper action. These rules have many of the virtues that are commonly claimed for the knowledge rule, but lack the knowledge rule’s problematic consequences when it comes to assertions about what to do.
2010
Ishani Maitra, Brian Weatherson
Deontology and Descartes’s Demon
In this paper, I defend a broadly Cartesian position about doxastic freedom. At least some of our beliefs are freely formed, so we are responsible for them. Moreover, this has consequences for epistemology. But the some here is crucial. Some of our beliefs are not freely formed, and we are not responsible for those. And that has epistemological consequences too. Out of these considerations a concept of doxastic responsibility arises that is useful to the externalist in responding to several challenges. I will say at some length how it supports a familiar style of externalism response to the New Evil Demon problem, and I will note some difficulties in reconciling internalism with the idea that justification is a kind of blamelessness. The internalist, I will argue, has to say that justification is a kind of praiseworthiness, and this idea that praise is more relevant to epistemic concepts than blame will be a recurring theme of the paper.
2008
Brian Weatherson
The Bayesian and the Dogmatist
It has been argued recently that dogmatism in epistemology is incompatible with Bayesianism. That is, it has been argued that dogmatism cannot be modelled using traditional techniques for Bayesian modelling. I argue that our response to this should not be to throw out dogmatism, but to develop better modelling techniques. I sketch a model for formal learning in which an agent can discover a posteriori fundamental epistemic connections. In this model, there is no formal objection to dogmatism.
2007
Brian Weatherson
Questioning Contextualism
This chapter argues against the pragmatism that shows that there is a striking disanalogy between the behavior of “knows” in questions and the behavior of “knows” in terms. The chapter discusses that different people may have different standards for knowledge, so perhaps they may mean different things by a statement, because they communicate to meet their preferred standards for knowledge. Standards for knowledge are not the kind of thing that people can differ on without making a mistake, in the way one would say that different people can have different immediate goals (about what to have for dinner) without making a mistake. This explains that one does not just adopt questioners’ standards for knowledge while answering their knowledge questions. So, it is argued that questions involving “knows” should have the three properties—speaker, clarification, and different answers. However, the counter argument is that the proposition can be true relative to some contexts and false relative to other contexts, just as temporality about propositions that a proposition can be true at some times and false at other times, and the utterance is true if the proposition is true only in the context of the utterance.
2006
Brian Weatherson
Scepticism, Rationalism, and Externalism
I argue that we have to accept one of the three isms in the title. Either inductive scepticism is true, or we have substantial contingent a priori knowledge, or a strongly externalist theory of knowledge is correct.
2006
Brian Weatherson
Can We Do Without Pragmatic Encroachment?
I argue that interests primarily affect the relationship between credence and belief. A view is set out and defended where evidence and rational credence are not interest-relative, but belief, rational belief, and knowledge are.
2005
Brian Weatherson
Should We Respond to Evil With Indifference?
In a recent article, Adam Elga outlines a strategy for “Defeating Dr Evil with Self-Locating Belief”. The strategy relies on an indifference principle that is not up to the task. In general, there are two things to dislike about indifference principles: adopting one normally means confusing risk for uncertainty, and they tend to lead to incoherent views in some ‘paradoxical’ situations. I argue that both kinds of objection can be levelled against Elga’s indifference principle. There are also some difficulties with the concept of evidence that Elga uses, and these create further difficulties for the principle.
2005
Brian Weatherson
Review of “The Realm of Reason”
Review of Christopher Peacocke, “The Realm of Reason”. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2004
2004
Brian Weatherson
Luminous Margins
Timothy Williamson has recently argued that few mental states are luminous, meaning that to be in that state is to be in a position to know that you are in the state. His argument rests on the plausible principle that beliefs only count as knowledge if they are safely true. That is, any belief that could easily have been false is not a piece of knowledge. I argue that the form of the safety rule Williamson uses is inappropriate, and the correct safety rule might not conflict with luminosity.
2004
Brian Weatherson
Are You a Sim?
Nick Bostrom argues that if we accept some plausible assumptions about how the future will unfold, we should believe we are probably not humans. The argument appeals crucially to an indifference principle whose content is unclear. I set out four possible interpretations of the principle, none of which can be used to support Bostrom’s argument. On the first two interpretations the principle is false; on the third it does not entail the conclusion; and on the fourth it only entails the conclusion given an auxiliary hypothesis which we have no reason to believe.
2003
Brian Weatherson
What Good are Counterexamples?
Intuitively, Gettier cases are instances of justified true beliefs that are not cases of knowledge. Should we therefore conclude that knowledge is not justified true belief? Only if we have reason to trust intuition here. But intuitions are unreliable in a wide range of cases. And it can be argued that the Gettier intuitions have a greater resemblance to unreliable intuitions than to reliable intuitions. What’s distinctive about the faulty intuitions, I argue, is that respecting them would mean abandoning a simple, systematic and largely successful theory in favour of a complicated, disjunctive and idiosyncratic theory. So maybe respecting the Gettier intuitions was the wrong reaction, we should instead have been explaining why we are all so easily misled by these kinds of cases.
2003
Brian Weatherson
Begging the Question and Bayesians
In a recent article Patrick Maher shows that the ‘depragmatised’ form of Dutch Book arguments for Bayesianism tend to beg the question against their most interesting anti-Bayesian opponents. I argue that the same criticism can be levelled at Maher’s own argument for Bayesianism.
2001
Brian Weatherson
Keynes, Uncertainty and Interest Rates
Uncertainty plays an important role in
The General Theory
, particularly in the theory of interest rates. Keynes did not provide a theory of uncertainty, but he did make some enlightening remarks about the direction he thought such a theory should take. I argue that some modern innovations in the theory of probability allow us to build a theory which captures these Keynesian insights. If this is the right theory, however, uncertainty cannot carry its weight in Keynes’s arguments. This does not mean that the conclusions of these arguments are necessarily mistaken; in their best formulation they may succeed with merely an appeal to risk.
2001
Brian Weatherson
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