My primary research develops a defense of epistemic permissivism. Epistemic permissivists and impermissivists disagree on whether epistemic rationality gives us a certain amount of leeway in what to believe. The permissivist says ‘yes;’ the impermissivist says ‘no.’ In my dissertation, I develop three arguments in defense of epistemic permissivism, which shed light on the tie between ideal rationality and epistemic impermissivism and the under-discussed theoretical issues of intrapersonal permissivism and epistemic supererogation. This debate has the potential to extend to broader contexts concerning theory choice in science (e.g., is there a uniquely rational theory of a natural/social phenomenon?) to the rationality of self-understanding( e.g., is there a uniquely rational attitude toward myself and my experience?).

In this paper, I explore how the ideal rationality-based account of propositional justification impacts our understanding of the relation between propositional and doxastic justification. The ideal rationality-based account sits uncomfortably with the widely accepted claim that propositional justification is necessary for doxastic justification. 

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In this paper, I explore an under-discussed version of epistemic permissivism: intrapersonal permissivism. Many permissivists exclusively endorse interpersonal permissivism, or permissiveness between different agents. Contrary to them, I argue that arguments for interpersonal permissivism, in particular arguments from reasonable peer disagreement and incommensurability of theoretical virtues, can be extended to intrapersonal permissivism, or permissiveness for a single agent. Thus, those who exclusively endorse interpersonal permissivism but deny intrapersonal permissivism are in an unstable position.

I develop an argument for epistemic supererogation, which has been less discussed than its moral counterpart, and utilize the argument in defense of epistemic permissivism. I argue that epistemic supererogation can be defended in the context of inquiry. At the early stage of an inquiry, it is rationally permissible for an inquirer to stick to an evidentially less well-supported belief, even if an evidentially better-supported alternative, such as a predominant view in the research domain (a supererogatory option) is available to the inquirer. The case of epistemic supererogation supports epistemic permissivism because it shows that there is more than one rationally permissible doxastic attitude an inquirer picks at the early stage of her inquiry. 

I respond to an influential challenge to epistemic permissivism, the so-called “Arbitrariness Objection.” According to this objection, if multiple doxastic attitudes are rationally permissible, then it’s hard to see what reasons – other than arbitrary reasons – I could have for singling out one of those permissible doxastic attitudes as my belief. To respond to this challenge, I show that the Aribrariness Objection makes a distinction between arbitrary and non-arbitrary factors in terms of the distinction between evidential and non-evidential factors. After clarifying the central conceptual distinction, I will argue that it is neither realistic nor normatively adequate to eliminate arbitrary factors in our doxastic lives insofar as arbitrary factors are understood as the challenge suggests. First, it is not realistic to eliminate arbitrary factors in our doxastic lives. As the philosophy of science literature, e.g., Rudner 1953 and Douglas 2000 shows, the influence of non-evidential factors is pervasive throughout the scientific inquiry, from accepting one hypothesis instead of another to deciding how to characterize data. Second, I recharacterize a potential permissive case as one in which epistemic reasons cannot advise us how to choose between options, and we can make an epistemically “unforced choice” (cf. Winsberg et al. 2014) in this case.  However, there might be non-epistemic reasons we can reasonably prioritize over other non-epistemic reasons. Therefore, it is not necessarily inadequate to eliminate arbitrary factors in our doxastic lives.

In this paper, I respond to another major challenge to epistemic permissivism. Since permissivism holds the view that one takes both p and not-p to be rationally permissible, on permissivism, a person can randomly move around between permissible doxastic attitudes without undermining the person’s rationality. This potential psychological instability in permissivism isn’t attractive. For my response, I point out that most discussions of epistemic permissiveness presume that arguments for or against permissivism apply to a range of different doxastic states, particularly belief and credence. However, this is a mistake. One notable lesson from the dualistic approach to belief and credence is that a central difference between belief and credence is that belief is a terminal state while credence is a transitional (and terminal) state. This difference is important because psychological instability will be problematic only when the relevant state at issue is terminal rather than transitional. Thus, psychological instability might not be problematic at all on a credence-based picture. Furthermore, I highlight an interesting feature of Fleisher’s (2018) rational endorsement and Barnett’s (2019) disagreement-insulated inclination, which illustrates how one can resiliently be committed to a view or theory without believing that view or theory, even when an equally good (or a better) alternative doxastic state is available to the agent. Based on this feature, I will provide a picture of how a permissivist can be provisionally committed to her credal state, even if an equally well-supported credal state is available.