The Forest Library, 2019, photograph by Erik Johansson

The Nature of Epistemic Normativity

13th and 14th May 2021 on Zoom (3:00–7:20 pm CET)

Workshop

Realism and anti-realism are old rivals in philosophy, and epistemology is among the most frequented battlegrounds. Disputes abound concerning the status of epistemic norms regarding justification or epistemic reasons.

One such foundational dispute revolves around the relation of epistemic normativity to the ‘natural’ or non-normative facts. Is justification irreducibly normative, or can it be reduced to a natural relation, such as probability-raising? Are there categorical epistemic reasons, or are all epistemic reasons instrumental? In short, can epistemology be naturalized? And if it cannot be naturalized, is robust realism about epistemic norms defensible?

Such foundational questions relate to semantic ones: do normative epistemological statements represent, or do they express non-cognitive attitudes of some kind? Are normative epistemic statements true absolutely, or are they merely true relative to a particular perspective? Are such statements true in some substantive sense, or are they only true in a deflated sense?

Program:

13 May

3.00–4.20 pm Conor McHugh, Southampton, “Logic and Norms of Reasoning”

Logic is often thought to bear some important normative connection to (theoretical) reasoning. But it’s not obvious how this connection is to be made out. As Gilbert Harman famously pointed out, one is not necessarily required or even permitted to believe the logical consequences of what one believes - after all, these consequences might be uninteresting, or highly implausible. Subsequent literature has taken up the challenge implicitly set by Harman: to identify a plausible ‘bridge principle’ linking facts about logical consequence to normative facts of a certain kind. My first aim in this paper is to argue that, by failing to clearly distinguish norms governing belief from norms governing reasoning, this literature overlooks one natural approach to thinking of logic as normative for reasoning. My second aim is to take some steps towards developing and defending a version of this approach.

4:30–5:50 pm Debbie Roberts, Edinburgh, “Irreducible Epistemic Normativity”

Error theorists can object to the moral-epistemic companions in guilt argument by denying that epistemic normativity shares the problematic nature that, they contend, moral normativity would have if it existed. In the case of irreducibility-based companions in guilt arguments in particular, they can object that epistemic facts are merely reducibly normative. In this paper I consider the prospects of a response to this objection which argues that epistemic and moral facts are ‘ontologically entangled’ in such a way that holding that moral facts are irreducible commits you to holding that epistemic facts are irreducible too.

6:00–7:20 pm Terence Cuneo, Vermont, "Are Companions in Guilt Arguments Unworkable?"

In the last couple of decades, moral realists have developed so-called companions in guilt arguments in support of their views. The purpose of these arguments is to establish that, if one goes antirealist about morality, then one will have to also go antirealist about other normative domains, such as the epistemic and prudential domains. That, so proponents of the argument charge, is too high a price to pay. We’re better off being realists about all these normative domains.

Naturally, not everyone has been persuaded. Some have argued that while realists are right to say that these different normative domains are on a par, realists are wrong to say that the price of going antirealist across the normative board is too high. Others have argued that there isn’t parity between the moral domain and other normative domains. In this talk, I’m going to engage with what is arguably the most heavily worked out response of this last sort, namely, that offered by Christopher Cowie in his book Morality and Epistemic Judgement (OUP, 2019).

In this book, Cowie develops two main strategies for undercutting what he calls the “parity premise,” which (roughly) affirms that the moral domain is on a par with the epistemic domain. I will look at only one of these strategies, which appeals to the phenomenon of “trivial truths,” arguing that it doesn’t succeed.

14 May

3.00–4.20 pm Christos Kyriacou, Cyprus, “Against Epistemic Conventionalism”

Cowie (2019) has recently argued for epistemic conventionalism with the aim to destabilize the moral/epistemic parity and companions-in-guilt arguments for moral realism (e.g. Cuneo (2007)). As he argues, moral norms might be irreducible but epistemic norms may well be reducible to conventional norms. In this talk, I focus on some of his arguments for epistemic conventionalism and argue that they could, in principle, be resisted if we adopt a broadly Aristotelian, robustly realist metaepistemological framework.

4:30–5:50 pm Jonas Olson, Stockholm, “Error Theory and Self Defeat”

A popular objection to normative error theory is that it faces self-defeat and that this suffices to refute the view. In a recent article (Australasian Journal of Philosophy 98 (2020): 92-104), Spencer Case offers a new version of this objection. This paper provides a response. It is argued that self-defeat is not a uniform phenomenon and that the kind of self-defeat that normative error theory faces, according to Case’s argument, is benign and not malignant. Hence, normative error theory is not refuted.

6:00–7:20 pm Thomas Kelly, Princeton, “Doubts about Epistemic Value”

Many philosophers hold that epistemic normativity is ultimately grounded in facts about epistemic value. I argue that we should be extremely skeptical that there is any such thing as “epistemic value” in this sense. In the course of doing so, I explore a number of questions about the value of believing the truth.

Registration:

Please send an email to anna.petronella.foultier@philosophy.su.se with ‘Nature of Epistemic Normativity Registration’ in the subject heading.

Organised by:

Corine Besson, University of Sussex

Anna Petronella Foultier, Stockholm University

Anandi Hattiangadi, Stockholm University

The workshop is funded by Riksbankens jubileumsfond in connection with the project The Foundations of Epistemic Normativity (P17-0487:1). The project is hosted by the Department of Philosophy, Stockholm University, Sweden, in collaboration with the Department of Philosophy, University of Sussex, UK.