This graduate seminar, taught by Michael Titelbaum, meets on Tuesdays from 4–6pm in Helen C. White room 5181, beginning on January 22nd.
Please note that my office hours this spring are Mondays 12:30–2:30, though I'm also happy to meet by appointment.
Available here.
Readings for the course:
Thanks to John Bengson and Jennifer Nagel for help assembling this list of readings.
Guiding compositional principle:
Epistemology AND Logic=
(Logic IN Epistemology) U (Epistemology OF Logic)
Logic IN Epistemology
Week 1 (1/22, Titelbaum leads discussion): Does logic have a special place in epistemology?
Reading:
- Harman (1986) Change In View, Ch. 1–3. (Apologies for the scribbling on the pdf. It's not mine.)
A handout for today's discussion.
Week 2 (2/5, Titelbaum): Rational requirements of logical coherence
Primary reading:
- Broome (1999) "Normative Requirements". Classic paper arguing for the distinction between wide- and narrow-scope requirements. We will focus on sections 1 through 8.
- MacFarlane (ms) "In What Sense (If Any) is Logic Normative for Thought?". What exactly is the logical form of these normative requirements?
Secondary reading:
- Titelbaum (2015) "How to Derive a Narrow-Scope Requirement from Wide-Scope Requirements". Suggests how one might do precisely that.
- Kolodny (2005) "Why Be Rational?". Most of the substance of this piece will come up next week, but Section 1.1 introduces a distinction between state requirements and process requirements that may come up this week as well.
Handout for today's discussion.
Week 3 (2/12, Hubert): Hmm… are there really rational coherence requirements?
Primary reading:
- Kolodny (2007) "How Does Coherence Matter?". Suggests that actually there are no rational coherence requirements, and offers an error theory for why we might think there are.
- Podgorski (ta) "Rational Delay". Argues that rational requirements are process rather than state requirements.
Secondary reading:
- Kolodny (2008) "Why Be Disposed to be Coherent?". Argues against the suggestion that while we might not be rationally required to be coherent, we might nevertheless be rationally required to be disposed to be coherent.
Handout for today's discussion.
Week 4 (2/19, Katie): Epistemic closure: Circularity concerns
Primary readings:
- Cohen (2002) "Basic Knowledge and the Problem of Easy Knowledge". Introduction to the bootstrapping problem that motivates important circularity concerns. [We probably aren't going to discuss the material in Sections VI and VII of this piece, so you can stop reading after Section V.]
- Vogel (2008) "Epistemic Bootstrapping". Discriminates different kinds of circular reasoning, and discusses which might be acceptable.
- Bergmann (2004) "Epistemic Circularity: Malignant and Benign". More on unacceptable and acceptable circularity.
Secondary reading:
- Baumann (2011) "Epistemic Closure". If you've never encountered debates about epistemic closure before, this is an excellent general overview introductory piece about the various issues.
- Feldman (1995) "In Defense of Closure" and Audi (1995) "Deductive Closure, Defeasibility and Scepticism: A Reply to Feldman". Exchange about a slightly different example of bootstrapping.
- Cohen (2010) "Bootstrapping, Defeasible Reasoning, and 'a priori' Justification". Return to the bootstrapping debate that takes up Vogel's circularity arguments.
Handout for discussion.
Week 5 (2/26, Dani): Epistemic closure: Epistemic risk
Primary readings:
- Dretske (2014) "The Case against Closure". Argues against closure on the grounds that evidential warrant doesn't transmit from premises to entailed conclusions.
- Schechter (2013) "Rational Self-Doubt and the Failure of Closure". Argues against even single-premise closure on the grounds that any inference has some risk of failure.
- Smith (2013) "Two Notions of Epistemic Risk". Responds to Schechter (and the Lasonen-Aarnio below).
Also if you get a chance:
- Lasonen-Aarnio (2008) "Single Premise Deduction and Risk".
Secondary readings:
- Dretske (1970) "Epistemic Operators". Classic paper in which Dretske first raised his closure concern.
- Hawthorne (2014) "The Case for Closure". Hawthorne's reply to Dretske's "Case against Closure", with a subsequent reply by Dretske.
- Vogel (1990) "Are There Counterexamples to the Closure Principle?". Replies to the purported counterexamples, addresses relevant alternatives.
- Nair (2019) "Must Good Reasoning Satisfy Cumulative Transitivity?". An interesting new approach to questions of closure; somewhat techy.
Handout for discussion.
Week 6 (3/5, Elizabeth): Logical omniscience requirements—why they're bad, how to fix
Primary readings:
- Stalnaker (1991) "The Problem of Logical Omniscience, I". Why logical omniscience is a problem, and how fixing it requires us to think about the semantics of belief.
- Hacking (1967) "Slightly More Realistic Personal Probability". Response to Savage (below) proposing a Bayesian solution to logical omniscience.
- Bjerring and Skipper (ms) "Bayesianism for Average Joe". Explains why extant formal approaches to logical omniscience fail, then offers a new, dynamic solution. (In class we’re going to focus on the negative arguments and not get into the details of their positive proposal. So feel free to skim from Section 3 onwards.)
Secondary readings:
- Savage (1967) "Difficulties in the Theory of Personal Probability". Classic paper in which Savage introduces the Bayesian problem of logical omniscience.
- Garber (1983) "Old Evidence and Logical Omniscience in Bayesian Confirmation Theory" and Gaifman (2004) "Reasoning with Limited Resources and Assigning Probabilities to Arithmetical Statements". Two more formal Bayesian solutions to logical omniscience.
- Bjerring (2013) "Impossible Worlds and Logical Omniscience: An Impossibility Result". Gets into the techy details of Bjerring's proof that traditional impossible worlds approaches don't solve logical omniscience.
- Egan (2008) "Seeing and Believing: Perception, Belief Formation and the Divided Mind". Fragmentation approach that might help with logical omniscience.
Handout for discussion.
Week 7 (3/8, Alex, meeting at 3:30 in 5181 Helen C. White): Logical omniscience requirements—maybe not so bad?
Primary readings:
- Littlejohn (2018) "Stop Making Sense? On a Puzzle about Rationality", Smithies (2015) "Ideal Rationality and Logical Omniscience", Titelbaum (2015) "Rationality's Fixed Point (or: In Defense of Right Reason)". These crazy kids argue that logical mistakes might also be rational mistakes.
Suggestions on doing the primary readings: Start with either the Smithies or the Titelbaum; read the Littlejohn after the Titelbaum. In the Titelbaum, we won't be focusing on the peer disagreement aspect, so don't devote time to Section 6. In the Littlejohn, the positions he introduces are roughly the same positions Titelbaum discusses, just with different names—roughly speaking, Littlejohn's Perspectivism is Titelbaum's Top-Down View, Incoherentism=Mismatch, and Objectivism=Bottom-Up.
Secondary readings:
- Titelbaum (ta) "Return to Reason". Responses to some objections to "Right Reasons", some fuller explanations of the position, and an amendment.
- To the extent the pieces for this week develop a consensus, a lot of people have argued against that consensus. Here are a few especially interesting paths of resistance:
Handout for discussion.
Week 8 (3/12, Hannah): (Metaphysically) analytic views of the a priori
Primary readings:
Secondary readings:
Handout for discussion.
The week of 3/19 is Spring Break.
Week 9 (3/26, Sean): Epistemic analyticity
Primary readings:
- Boghossian (1997) "Analyticity". Distinguishes metaphysical from epistemic analyticity, embraces epistemic analyticity view of the a priori.
- Chudnoff (2014) "Is Intuition Based on Understanding?". Argues against the epistemic analyticity position.
Secondary readings:
- Williamson (2007) The Philosophy of Philosophy Chapters 3 and 4. Arguments against both the metaphysical and epistemic analyticity views of the a priori.
- Dogramaci (2010) "Knowledge of Validity". A fairly different objection to the epistemic analyticity program. Argues that the only way we can know our rules of reasoning are valid is non-inferentially.
- M. Balcerak Jackson and B. Balcerak Jackson (2013) "Reasoning as a source of justification". Presents a position in the vicinity of epistemic analyticity, on which competent reasoning can generate justification.
Handout for discussion.
Week 10 (4/2, Mandi): The a priori through intuition
Primary readings:
- Bealer (1998) "Intuition and the Autonomy of Philosophy". I'm not so interested in the autonomy of philosophy, but this piece contains a concise overview of many of Bealer's views about intuition and the a priori, which have been very influential.
- Bengson (2015) "Grasping the Third Realm". An excellent presentation of the Benacerraf problem, plus Bengson's suggestion how to solve it.
Secondary readings:
- Bengson (2015) "The Intellectual Given". Bengson's broader view of the epistemology of intuition.
- Chudnoff (2011) "Intuitive Knowledge". Discussion of how intuition makes us aware of abstract knowledge. Related to Bengson's view in "Grasping", but different in important details.
- Koksvik (2015) "The Phenomenology of Intuition". Alex sent along this Philosophy Compass piece that might be of interest to those writing on this topic.
Handout for discussion.
Week 11 (4/9, Patrick): Naturalists' views and criticisms of other views
Primary readings:
Secondary readings:
Handout for discussion.
Week 12 (4/16, Lindley): Inferentialism
Primary readings:
- Balcerak Jackson (2018) "Intuitions as Inferential Judgments". Criticizes theories of intuitions as perception-like, then offers a theory of intuitions as inferential judgments.
- Wright (2018) "Logical Non-Cognitivism". Section IV criticizes views of intuitions as perception-like. Section III applies the inferential view to logic, then criticizes it. Don't worry about the other sections, much less trying to figure out Wright's positive view!
Secondary reading:
- I had posted this already in the secondary reading for an earlier week. But I thought it might be worth re-posting Dogramaci (2010) "Knowledge of Validity", because he argues that the inferential approach will never secure logical knowledge of sufficient generality.
Handout for discussion.
Week 13 (4/23, Jonathan): A Kantian approach
Primary readings:
- Parsons (1980) "Mathematical Intuition".
- Jeshion (2014) "Intuiting the Infinite". The Parsons piece lays out the view we'll be discussing. But the Parsons is also somewhat difficult to understand. So you might want to read Jeshion first to get a sense of what the view is supposed to be (as well as some replies to objections) before tackling Parsons.
Secondary readings:
Handout for discussion.
Week 14 (4/30, Titelbaum): Titelbaum has crazy notions
No assigned reading for today, though I may use this space to post some articles relevant to what I'll be talking about. Instead of reading, work on your papers!
Final paper due date: E-mailed to me as a pdf by 5pm on Friday, May 10th.