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Are there epistemic duties to inquire? The idea enjoys intuitive support. However, prominent evidentialists argue that our only epistemic duty is to believe well (i.e. to have doxastically justified beliefs), and doing so does not require inquiry. Against this, I argue that evidentialists are plausibly committed to the idea that if we have epistemic duties to believe well, then we have epistemic duties to inquire. This is because on plausible evidentialist views of evidence possession (i.e. views that result in plausible theories of evidentialist justification), inquiry is sometimes a necessary constitutive means of forming doxastically justified beliefs—beliefs that are proportioned to and based on one's evidence. So, either evidentialist views of evidence possession commit them to epistemic duties to inquire or they lead to independently implausible theories of evidentialist justification. My discussion also has important implications for the zetetic turn in epistemology, since I argue that evidentialists who are staunchly opposed to epistemic norms on inquiry have reason to reconsider. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author presents replies to critics that reviewed her book "Fallibilism: Evidence and Knowledge." Topics discussed include the possible avoidance of scepticism by an infallibilist through sufficiency of knowledge for self-support (SKSS), the evidentialist view on the justification to believe one's evidence, and the arguments raised about the alleged epistemic link of testimony to facts.

The article provides a summary of the book "The Epistemic Role of Consciousness" by Smithies (2019), which develops a theory of epistemic justification that emphasizes the importance of phenomenal consciousness. The article presents a condensed version of the theory, discussing steps such as evidentialism, probabilism, higher-order probabilities, accessibilism, and the motivation behind these concepts.

Recently, evidentialists have argued that only they can explain transparency--the psychological phenomena wherein the question of doxastic deliberation of whether to believe p immediately gives way to the question of whether p--and thus that pragmatism about epistemic reasons is false. In this paper, we provide a defense of pragmatism. We depart from previous defenses of pragmatism which argue against the evidentialist explanation of transparency or the fact of transparency itself, by instead arguing that the pragmatist can provide a sound explanation of transparency while maintaining her distinctive view of epistemic reasons. We do so by putting forth an evolutionary debunking explanation of doxastic deliberation. Since both the evidentialist and pragmatist have sound explanatory accounts of transparency, we argue that transparency should not be appealed to when trying to adjudicate the debate between evidentialists and pragmatists, but rather must be decided on other grounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What is it for an imprecise credence to be justified? It might be thought that this is not a particularly urgent question for friends of imprecise credences to answer. For one might think that its answer just depends on how a well-trodden issue in epistemology plays out—namely, that of which theory of doxastic justification, be it reliabilism, evidentialism, or some other theory, is correct. I'll argue, however, that it's difficult for reliabilists to accommodate (the existence of justified) imprecise credences, at least if we understand such credences to be determinate first-order attitudes. If I'm right, reliabilists will have to reject imprecise credences, and friends of imprecise credences will have to reject reliabilism. Near the end of the paper, I'll also consider whether reliabilism can accommodate indeterminate credences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The article focuses on causal decision theory (CDT) which is an act of choiceworthy to the extent that you expect it to promote valuable ends. It mentions evidential decision theory (EDT) and particular decisions in which causally unratifiable acts appear more choiceworthy than their causally ratifiable alternatives. It also mentions virtue of the theory that it agrees with, and helps to explain, the intuitive verdicts about these cases.

It has been argued by Clayton Littlejohn that cases of insufficient evidence provide an argument against evidentialism. He distinguishes between evidential reasons and norm-reasons, but this distinction can be accepted by evidentialists, as we argue. Furthermore, evidentialists can acknowledge the existence of norm-reasons stemming from an epistemic norm, like the norm that one should not believe a proposition if one has only insufficient evidence for it. An alternative interpretation of evidentialism according to which it rejects the existence of norm-reasons is also presented. Therefore, no reason to reject evidentialism arises in this context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Epistemologists have recently noted a tension between (i) denying access internalism, and (ii) maintaining that rational agents cannot be epistemically akratic, believing claims akin to ' p, but I shouldn't believe p '. I bring out the tension, and develop a new way to resolve it. The basic strategy is to say that access internalism is false, but that counterexamples to it are 'elusive' in a way that prevents rational agents from suspecting that they themselves are counterexamples to the internalist principles. I argue that this allows us to do justice to the motivations behind both (i) and (ii). And I explain in some detail what a view of evidence that implements this strategy, and makes it independently plausible, might look like. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'Why ain'cha rich?' argument for one-boxing in Newcomb's problem allegedly vindicates evidential decision theory and undermines causal decision theory. But there is a good response to the argument on behalf of causal decision theory. I develop this response. Then I pose a new problem and use it to give a new 'Why ain'cha rich?' argument. Unlike the old argument, the new argument targets evidential decision theory. And unlike the old argument, the new argument is sound. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This article considers question‐begging's opposite fallacy. Instead of relying on my beliefs for my premises when I should be using my adversary's beliefs, I rely on my adversary's beliefs when I should rely on my own. Just as question‐begging emerges from egocentrism, its opposite emerges from other‐centrism. Stepping into the other person's shoes is an effective strategy for understanding him. But you must return to your own shoes when forming your beliefs. Evidence is agent centered. Other‐centric reasoning is most striking when both parties partake simultaneously. We are then treated to the spectacle of each side using the other's premises to establish its conclusion. These remarkable debates arise regularly when there is open disagreement about whether a right‐conferring relationship has ended. Those who contend the relationship is abrogated will be tempted to stand on the rights persistently credited to them by their adversary. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Defeaters can prevent a perceptual belief from being justified. For example, when you know that red light is shining at the table before you, you would typically not be justified in believing that the table is red. However, can defeaters also destroy a perceptual experience as a source of justification? If the answer is ‘no’, the red light defeater blocks doxastic justification without destroying propositional justification. You have some-things-considered, but not all-things-considered, justification for believing that the table is red. If the answer is ‘yes’, the red light defeater blocks doxastic justification by destroying propositional justification. You have neither all-things-considered nor some-things-considered justification for believing that the table is red. According to dogmatism, the justificational force of perceptual experiences is indestructible. According to conservatism about sense experience, a perceptual experience ceases to have justificational force if there is evidence against its reliability. Finally, according to meta-evidentialism, a perceptual experience is blocked from being a source of justification is there is no evidence of its reliability. I argue that, of these three theories, meta-evidentialism is the most plausible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores a structural account of propositional justification in terms of the notion of being in a position to know and negation. Combined with a nonnormal logic for being in a position to know, the account allows for the derivation of plausible principles of justification. The account is neutral on whether justification is grounded in internally individuated mental states, and likewise on whether it is grounded in facts that are already accessible by introspection or reflection alone. To this extent, it is compatible both with internalism and with externalism about justification. Even so, the account allows for the proof of principles that are commonly conceived to depend on an internalist conception of justification. The account likewise coheres both with epistemic contextualism and with its rejection, and is compatible both with the knowledge-first approach and with its rejection. Despite its neutrality on these issues, the account makes propositional justification luminous and so is controversial. However, it proves quite resilient in the light of recent anti-luminosity arguments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Imagine I hold up a Granny Smith apple for all to see. You would thereby gain justified beliefs that it was green, that it was apple, and that it is a Granny Smith apple. Under classical foundationalism, such simple visual beliefs are mediately justified on the basis of reasons concerning your experience. Under dogmatism, some or all of these beliefs are justified immediately by your experience and not by reasons you possess. This paper argues for what I call the looks view of the justification of simple visual beliefs. According to the looks view, such beliefs are mediately justified on the basis of reasons concerning how the relevant things look. Unlike under classical foundationalism, under the looks view as I develop it, these reasons are public. They are public with respect to both their content and possession: with respect to content, they are not about ourselves and our experiences, and with respect to their possession, many people can have the very same looks‐related reasons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

After a period of inactivity, interest in explanationism as a thesis about the nature of epistemic justification has been renewed. Poston (Reason and explanation: a defense of explanatory coherentism, 2014) and McCain (Evidentialism and epistemic justification 2014; Erkenntnis 79:99-109, 2014) have both recently offered versions of explanationist evidentialism. In this paper, we pose two objections to explanationist evidentialism. First, explanationist evidentialism fails to state a sufficient condition for justification. Second, explanationist evidentialism implies a vicious regress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the sheer vastness of the totality of contemporary human knowledge and our individual epistemic finitude it is commonplace for those of us who lack knowledge with respect to some proposition(s) to appeal to experts (those who do have knowledge with respect to that proposition(s)) as an epistemic resource. Of course, much ink has been spilled on this issue and so concern here will be very narrowly focused on testimony in the context of epistemological views that incorporate evidentialism and internalism, and which are either reductivist or non-reductivist in nature. Also, as the main question about testimony addressed here is whether or not testimony can provide any basic justification at all, attention will be narrowly focused on the simple case where one is presented with testimony that something is the case from only one source and on one occasion. It turns out that there are some seriously odd epistemic features of such appeals to expertise that arise both for those who intend to accept internalism, evidentialism and reductivism about justification by testimony and for those who intend to accept internalism, evidentialism and non-reductivism about justification by testimony. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses transmission views of testimony which claim that epistemic states can be transmitted between agents. It highlights the general notion that epistemic states are transmitted from speaker to hearer. It mentions the core idea of the transmission hypothesis that in various cases of testimonial knowledge or justification, the audience receives the speaker's knowledge or justification. Arguments against transmission are outlined.

The article traces the diachronic development of the assumed evidential needless to say. This parenthetical expression allows the speaker to make certain assertions regarding the obviousness of what s/he is about to say, thus serving as an evidential strategy that marks the information conveyed as being based on inference and/or assumed or general knowledge. Parenthetical needless to say has its roots in the Early Modern English needless to-INF construction (meaning 'it is unnecessary to do something'), which originally licensed a wide range of infinitives. Over the course of time, however, it became restricted to uses with utterance verbs, eventually giving rise to the grammaticalized evidential expression needless to say. In fact, it is only in Late Modern English that the evidential pragmatic inferences become conventionalized and that the first parenthetical uses of the construction are attested. In Present-day English, parenthetical needless to say occurs primarily at the left periphery with forward scope. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidentialism is generally taken to be a position which is not friendly to a religious epistemology. However, in this paper, I will argue for a religious epistemology which is compatible with fundamental tenets of an evidentialist position on epistemic justification. It is a position which entails both a 'will to believe' which goes beyond the standard evidentialist principles governing the appropriate doxastic attitude towards a proposition, but nonetheless satisfies epistemic principles at the basis of an evidentialist position on justification. If my argument is successful, a proponent of a conception of religious faith may be able to have her cake and eat it too: namely, she may be able to fundamentally accept both the evidentialist demand that epistemically rational belief fit, or be supported by evidence as well as the position that rational faith is willing belief beyond what one's evidence strictly demands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents objections to both inflationary and deflationary approaches to the justification of group beliefs. It proposes that groups be understood as epistemic agents in their own rights whose justified beliefs are constrained by the epistemic status and normative obligations of their individual members. The resulting view neither inflates nor deflates group epistemology but recognizes that their justified beliefs are constrained but are not reducible to members' justified beliefs.

In an important 2006 paper, Nishi Shah defends 'evidentialism', the position that only evidence for a proposition's truth constitutes a reason to believe this proposition. In opposition to Shah, Anthony Robert Booth, Andrew Reisner and Asbjorn Steglich-Petersen argue that things other than evidence of truth, so-called non-evidential or 'pragmatic' reasons, constitute reasons to believe a proposition. I argue that we can effectively respond to Shah's pragmatist critics if, following Shah, we are careful to distinguish the evaluation of the reasons for a belief from the process of actually forming a belief and allowing it to influence action. Drawing this distinction is assisted if we utilize Rudolf Carnap's probabilistic interpretation of what it means to be disposed to believe a claim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores religious belief in connection with epistemological disjunctivism. It applies recent advances in epistemological disjunctivism to the religious case for displaying an attractive model of specifically Christian religious belief. What results is a heretofore unoccupied position in religious epistemology-a view I call 'religious epistemological disjunctivism' (RED). My general argument is that RED furnishes superior explanations for the sort of 'grasp of the truth' which should undergird 'matured Christian conviction' of religious propositions. To this end I first display the more familiar perceptual epistemological disjunctivism (PED), contrasting it with both externalist and classically internalist views. This prepares the way for introducing RED with its own distinctive factive mental state operator- pneuming that p. In this second section I present the RED model, not failing to address a potential problem concerning religious disagreement. I also clarify RED's distinctive internalist aspect, describing how it comports with contemporary internalist thinking in epistemology. I then move in section three to criticize externalist and classical internalist views, showing where they fail to make proper sense of the sort of knowing which should ground mature Christian conviction. Specifically, I highlight three intuitions which I think any theory of religious belief should capture: what I call the case- closed intuition, the good believer intuition, and the Plantingian platitude. This is all to set up for the final section where I argue that RED is superior for understanding proper religious believing-capturing the aforementioned intuitions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What are the conditions under which suspension of belief—or suspension, for short—is justified? Process reliabilists hold that our beliefs are justified if and only if these are produced or sustained by reliable cognitive processes. But they have said relatively little about suspension. Perhaps they think that we may easily extend an account of justified belief to deal with justified suspension. But it's not immediately clear how we may do so; in which case, evidentialism has a distinct advantage over reliabilism. In this paper, I consider some proposals as to how process reliabilists might seek to account for justified suspension. Although several of these proposals do not work, two are promising. The first such proposal appeals to the notion of propositional justification; the second involves weaving evidentialist elements into reliabilism. I'll argue that the second proposal is better than the first. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Falls remain an important problem in older people. There is strong evidence that falls can be prevented with appropriately designed intervention programs. To start a targeted fall prevention program, a first step is to identify those at high risk of falls. Sensor-based tests hold great promise for more frequent and accurate assessment of fall risk in clinical and home settings. The aims of this study were to (a) empirically examine the feasibility of the iStoppFalls (Information and communications technology–based System to Predict & Prevent Falls) assessment, a Kinect and inertial sensor-based test for regular and unsupervised fall risk assessments at home, (b) investigate the experience of older adults with this home-based self-assessment, and (c) make recommendations for future assessments. The iStoppFalls assessment system was installed into the homes of 62 community-living older people in Australia, Germany, and Spain for the duration of 4 months. Participants were asked to perform at least 1 assessment each month. The system use and the user experience were evaluated. To our knowledge, these are the first results on the long-term use of an unsupervised directed routine fall risk assessment system at private homes. In total, 241 assessments were independently performed by the participants. Most participants felt positive about their experience and could see themselves continuing with the assessment on a regular basis. Through the analysis the user motivation, the design and selection of appropriate tests, the user feedback, the reliability and usability of the applied technology, the frequency and duration of the assessment and the safety and support aspects were identified as important characteristics of a home-based self-assessment. The findings demonstrate the feasibility of a sensor-based self-assessment for fall risk but also highlight that further work is necessary. Future research should consider the necessary design requirements identified by this study. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Much of the intuitive appeal of evidentialism results from conflating two importantly different conceptions of evidence. This is most clear in the case of perceptual justification, where experience is able to provide evidence in one sense of the term, although not in the sense that the evidentialist requires. I argue this, in part, by relying on a reading of the Sellarsian dilemma that differs from the version standardly encountered in contemporary epistemology, one that is aimed initially at the epistemology of introspection but which generalizes to theories of perceptual justification as well. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present article explores the utility and feasibility of treatment validation consultation (TVC). Although evidence exists for behavioral consultation, few findings have been reported for TVC. TVC is based on core components of behavioral consultation, but has several unique characteristics. In this article, TVC is situated within the behavioral consultation literature; one case study is used to demonstrate TVC’s utility and feasibility; and considerations for future TVC research are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, I examine a contextualist thesis that has been little discussed in comparison with contextualism about knowledge, namely contextualism about evidential support. This seems surprising since, prima facie, evidential support statements seem shifty in a way parallel to knowledge ascriptions. I examine but reject the suggestion that contrastivism about evidential support is motivated by arguments analogous to those used to motivate contrastivism about knowledge including sceptical closure arguments, the nature of inquiry, the existence of explicitly contrastive evidential support statements, and the intuitive shiftiness of some binary evidential support statements. I end by discussing the relations between contextualism about evidential support, evidence and knowledge. In particular, I argue that my discussion of contrastivism about evidential support undermines Neta's contextualist view about evidence, and his broader suggestion that the shiftiness of evidence statements explains the shiftiness of knowledge ascriptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As sesame is a somewhat neglected crop, information concerning its response to salinity is lacking. The effects of NaCl stress were studied on seven genotypes of Sesamum indicum L. The 6-weeks-old sesame seedlings were treated with different NaCl concentrations (0, 30, and 60 mM). The NaCl caused significant decreases in fresh and dry mass of all genotypes; however responses of genotypes to the salt were significantly different. Based on the data obtained for fresh and dry mass accumulation, the genotypes were divided into two groups: i.e. salt-tolerant (Ardestan, Varamin, and Darab) and salt-sensitive (NazTakshakheh, Naz-Chandshakheh, Yekta and Oltan). Lipid peroxidation was recorded to be the lowest in cv. ‘Varamin', ‘Darab', and ‘Ardestan' (tolerant group), whereas it was recorded to be maximum in genotypes ‘Naz-Takshakhe’, ‘Naz-Chandshakhe’, ‘Oltan' and ‘Yekta’ (sensitive group) in the 60 mM NaCl treatment. In both 30 and 60 mM NaCl treatments, the activities of SuperOxide Dismutase (SOD), Catalase (CAT), Ascorbate Peroxidase (APX) and Glutathione Reductase (GR) were found to be higher in the tolerant group, compared to the sensitive group of genotypes. The accumulation of proline in the sesame leaves under saline conditions was higher in tolerant group, compared to the sensitive genotypes. It seems that in the salt-tolerant genotypes of sesame, increases in antioxidant enzymes activities and proline accumulation, along with a lower lipid peroxidation at cellular membranes, led to a higher level of tolerance to the salt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The 'problem of forgotten evidence' is a common objection to evidentialist theories of epistemic justification. This objection is motivated by cases where someone forms a belief on the basis of supporting evidence and then later forgets this evidence while retaining the belief. Critics of evidentialist theories argue that in some of these cases the person's belief remains justified. So, these critics claim that one can have a justified belief that is not supported by any evidence the subject possesses. I argue that these critics are mistaken. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the context of the Sleeping Beauty problem, it has been argued that so-called 'halfers' can avoid Dutch book arguments by adopting evidential decision theory. I introduce a Dutch book for a variant of the Sleeping Beauty problem and argue that evidential decision theorists fall prey to it, whether they are halfers or thirders. The argument crucially requires that an action can provide evidence for what the agent would do not only at other decision points where she has exactly the same information, but also at decision points where she has different but 'symmetric' information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Contemporary epistemologists typically define a priori justification as justification that is independent of sense experience. However, sense experience plays at least some role in the production of many paradigm cases of a priori justified belief. This raises the question of when experience is epistemically relevant to the justificatory status of the belief that is based on it. In this paper, I will outline the answers that can be given by the two currently dominant accounts of justification, i.e. evidentialism and reliabilism. While for the evidentialist, experience is epistemically relevant only if it is used as evidence, the reliabilist requires that the reliability of the relevant process depends on the reliability of experiential processes. I will argue that the reliabilist account accommodates our pre-theoretic classifications much better. In the final part of my paper I will use the reliabilist criterion to defend the a priori-a posteriori distinction against recent challenges by Hawthorne and Williamson. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can a belief source confer justification when we lack antecedent justification for believing that it's reliable? A negative answer quickly leads to skepticism. A positive answer, however, seems to commit one to allowing pernicious reasoning known as 'epistemic bootstrapping.' Puzzles surrounding bootstrapping arise because we illicitly assume either that justification requires doxastic awareness of a source's epistemic credentials or that there is no requirement that a subject be aware of these credentials. We can resolve the puzzle by splitting the horns and requiring a non-conceptual awareness of, or direct acquaintance with, a source's legitimacy. Requiring non-conceptual as opposed to doxastic awareness halts the regress and avoids the skeptical results. On the other hand, requiring non-conceptual awareness also guarantees that we are aware of evidence for a source's reliability prior to using that source to form justified beliefs; we thereby avoid the problem of allowing epistemic bootstrapping to generate the illicit gains in justification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

According to an orthodox account of the relationship between propositional and doxastic justification, basing one's belief in P on one's source of propositional justification to believe P suffices for having a doxastically justified belief. But in an increasingly recognized work Turri (Philos Phenomenol Res 80:312-326, ) argues that this thesis fails and proposes a new view according to which having propositional justification depends on having the ability to acquire doxastic justification. Turri's novel position has surprisingly far-reaching epistemological consequences, ruling out some common epistemological positions that afford one propositional justification in the absence of an ability to acquire doxastic justification (e.g., common forms of evidentialism, conservatism, and closure principles). In what follows I show Turri's novel position to be problematic and go on to suggest a more modest revision to orthodoxy. The first section presents the orthodox view of the relationship between propositional and doxastic justification and Turri's counterexample to it. The second section introduces Turri's novel view of that relationship and draws out some of its epistemological implications. The third section gives counterexamples to Turri's proposal. The fourth section defends a modest revision to orthodoxy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper shows that strict evidentialism about normative reasons for belief is inconsistent with taking truth to be the source of normative reasons for belief. It does so by showing that there are circumstances in which one can know what truth requires one to believe, yet still lack evidence for the contents of that belief. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores what happens if we construe evidentialism as a thesis about the metaphysical grounds of justification. According to grounding evidentialism, facts about what a subject is justified in believing are grounded in facts about that subject's evidence. At first blush, grounding evidentialism appears to enjoy advantages over a more traditional construal of evidentialism as a piece of conceptual analysis. However, appearances are deceiving. I argue that grounding evidentialists are unable to provide a satisfactory story about what grounds the evidential facts, and that this provides good reason to reject grounding evidentialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The generality problem is perhaps the most notorious problem for process reliabilism. Several recent responses to the generality problem have claimed that the problem has been unfairly leveled against reliabilists. In particular, these responses have claimed that the generality problem is either (i) just as much of a problem for evidentialists, or (ii) if it is not, then a parallel solution is available to reliabilists. Along these lines, Juan Comesaña has recently proposed solution to the generality problem-well-founded reliabilism. According to Comesaña, the solution to the generality problem lies in solving the basing problem, such that any solution to the basing problem will give a solution to the generality problem. Comesaña utilizes Conee and Feldman's evidentialist account of basing (Conee and Feldman's well-foundedness principle) in forming his version of reliabilism. In this paper I show that Comesaña's proposed solution to the generality problem is inadequate. Well-founded reliabilism both fails to solve the generality problem and subjects reliabilism to new damning verdicts. In addition, I show that evidentialism does not face any parallel problems, so the generality problem remains a reason to prefer evidentialism to reliabilism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper articulates and defends a novel version of internalist evidentialism which employs dispositions to account for the relation of evidential support. In section one, I explain internalist evidentialist views generally, highlighting the way in which the relation of evidential support stands at the heart of these views. I then discuss two leading ways in which evidential support has been understood by evidentialists, and argue that an account of support which employs what I call epistemic dispositions remedies difficulties arguably faced by these two leading accounts. In sections two and three, I turn to advantages that my dispositionalist account of evidential support offers evidentialists beyond its remedying apparent difficulties with rival accounts of support. In section two, I show that the account is well-suited to help the evidentialist respond to the problem of forgotten evidence. And, in section three, I show that adopting my dispositional account makes possible an attractive and natural synthesis of evidentialism and virtue epistemology which is superior to the leading contemporary synthesis of these views. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many people worldwide suffer from pain and a portion of these sufferers are diagnosed with a chronic pain condition. The management of chronic pain continues to be a challenge, and despite taking prescribed medication for pain, patients continue to have pain of moderate severity. Current pain therapies are often inadequate, with side effects that limit medication adherence. There is a need to identify novel therapeutic targets for the management of chronic pain. One potential candidate for the treatment of chronic pain is therapies aimed at modulating the vasoactive peptide endothelin-1. In addition to vasoactive properties, endothelin-1 has been implicated in pain transmission in both humans and animal models of nociception. Endothelin-1 directly activates nociceptors and potentiates the effect of other algogens, including capsaicin, formalin, and arachidonic acid. In addition, endothelin-1 has been shown to be involved in inflammatory pain, cancer pain, neuropathic pain, diabetic neuropathy, and pain associated with sickle cell disease. Therefore, endothelin-1 may prove a novel therapeutic target for the relief of many types of chronic pain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The original M eno problem is to explain why knowledge is more valuable than mere true belief. In this paper I argue that evidentialists face an additional M eno problem, a M eno problem that, to date, no evidentialist has considered. Specifically, evidentialists must account for the additional epistemic value of a doxastically justified doxastic attitude as compared to a doxastic attitude that is merely propositionally justified. I consider the nature of the problem facing evidentialism and critically discuss two attempts to account for this additional epistemic value. Then, I highlight the remaining options and present the alternative I favor. According to this alternative, while the nature of doxastic justification is analyzed in terms of propositional justification, the value of doxastic justification is not. Holding a doxastic attitude on the basis of propositionally justifying evidence is a fundamental epistemic good. In virtue of this, doxastically justified doxastic attitudes have fundamental epistemic value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The topic of this paper is the familiar problem of skepticism about the external world. How can you know that you are not a brain in a vat being fooled by alien scientists? And if you can't know that, how can you know anything about the external world? The paper assumes Evidentialism as a theory about justification, and then argues that you are justified in believing that you are not a brain in a vat, in virtue of the fact that your evidence supports that belief. The paper also considers a number of different objections to this proposal. The upshot is that you do know that you are a not a brain in a vat, and that you also know lots of things about the external world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Richard Feldman and Ram Neta have recently noted that philosophers give relatively little attention to specifying the conditions under which S has something as evidence at a time. This issue is significant to evidentialists. Evidentialism states that which doxastic attitude S is epistemically justified in taking toward a proposition at a time depends upon what is supported by the total evidence S has at that time. What we regard as being necessary and sufficient for S's having something as evidence partly determines evidentialism's implications in all cases. Evidentialists need to offer a plausible account that, when conjoined with evidentialism, yields plausible results about epistemic justification in all cases. Here's what I do in this paper. After considering and rejecting two attempts to identify when S has something as evidence, I present and explain Richard Feldman's recent account. I argue that evidentialists ought to reject Feldman's account, too. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 'Why the generality problem is everybody's problem,' Michael Bishop argues that every theory of justification needs a solution to the generality problem. He contends that a solution is needed in order for any theory to be used in giving an acceptable account of the justificatory status of beliefs in certain examples. In response, first I will describe the generality problem that is specific to process reliabilism and two other sorts of problems that are essentially the same. Then I will argue that the examples that Bishop presents pose no such problem for some theories. I will illustrate the exempt theories by describing how an evidentialist view can account for the justification in the examples without having any similar problem. It will be clear that other views about justification are likewise unaffected by anything like the generality problem. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I distinguish between three kinds of reliabilism for epistemic justification, namely, pure reliabilism, evidential reliabilism, and reasons reliabilism, and I argue for reasons reliabilism. Pure reliabilism and evidential reliabilism are plagued, most importantly, by the generality problem, and they cannot deal adequately with defeater phenomena. One can avoid these problems only by jettisoning the idea of process reliability. The truth connection – which is essential for any kind of reliabilism – has to be provided in an altogether different way, namely, by means of facts in the world which serve as objective reasons (or evidence). So, as reasons reliabilism says, a justified belief has to be anchored in an objective reason which speaks in favor of its truth. Only in this way can intuitions about defeaters be preserved and explained. And reasons reliabilism can avoid the generality problem. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This article argues against fallibilist evidentialism on the basis of considerations about knowability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cartesian skepticism about epistemic justification ('skepticism') is the view that many of our beliefs about the external world-e.g., my current belief that I have hands-aren't justified. I examine the two most influential arguments for skepticism-the Closure Argument and the Underdetermination Argument-from an evidentialist perspective. For both arguments it's clear which premise the anti-skeptic must deny. The Closure Argument, I argue, is the better argument in that its key premise is weaker than the Underdetermination Argument's key premise. Next I examine ways of motivating each argument's key premise. I argue that attempts to motivate them which appeal to one's having the same evidence in skeptical scenarios, to skeptical hypotheses' alleged ability to explain our evidence just as well as real world hypotheses, or to the fact that if skeptical scenarios were true everything would appear just as it does all fail to provide any motivation for the premises or for skepticism. But I close by considering a different argument for the key premises and skepticism that lacks the central defect of these other arguments. Future work on skepticism should focus on this final argument at the expense of the others. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this brief re-reply to Axtell, I reply to key criticisms of my previous reply and flesh out a bit my notions of the relationship between internalist evidentialism and epistemic virtue and epistemic value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Michael Bergmann seeks to motivate his externalist, proper function theory of epistemic justification by providing three objections to the mentalism and mentalist evidentialism characteristic of nonexternalists such as Richard Feldman and Earl Conee. Bergmann argues that (i) mentalism is committed to the false thesis that justification depends on mental states; (ii) mentalism is committed to the false thesis that the epistemic fittingness of an epistemic input to a belief-forming process must be due to an essential feature of that input, and, relatedly, that mentalist evidentialism is committed to the false thesis that the epistemic fittingness of doxastic response B to evidence E is an essential property of B-E; and (iii) mentalist evidentialism is 'unmotivated'. I object to each argument. The argument for (i) begs the question. The argument for (ii) suffers from the fact that mentalist evidentialists are not committed to the consequences claimed for them; nevertheless, I show that there is, in the neighborhood, a substantive dispute concerning the nature of doxastic epistemic fittingness. That dispute involves what I call 'Necessary Fittingness', the view that, necessarily, exactly one (at most) doxastic attitude ( belief, or disbelief, or suspension of judgment) toward a proposition is epistemically fitting with respect to a person's total evidence at any time. Reflection on my super-blooper epistemic design counterexamples to Bergmann's proper function theory reveals both the plausibility of Necessary Fittingness and a good reason to deny (iii). Mentalist evidentialism is thus vindicated against the objections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his late writings, Frege was tempted by a minimalist, or deflationary, account of truth. I elaborate a version of minimalism that is consistent with Frege's key insights into the nature of truth. No form of minimalism, though, is consistent with the thesis that a statement's truth-conditions determine its sense, so the present theory of truth needs to be supplemented with an alternative account of the determination of content. I argue that Frege was not committed to a truthconditional account of the determination of content; I then sketch a non-truthconditional theory--called evidentialism--that incorporates insights from his account of Sinn. On this theory, it is the evidence that would fully support an affirmative use of a statement that determines its content. As formulated, however, evidentialism collapses into an anti-realism that Frege would certainly have repudiated. So I conclude by elaborating and recommending a variant theory called bilateral evidentialism. On this view, a statement's content is determined jointly by the evidence that would fully support its affirmation and the evidence that would fully support its rejection. If bilateral evidentialism is not to collapse into evidentialism simpliciter, one of Frege's claims in "Die Verneinung" needs to be repudiated: rejecting a statement cannot be analysed as accepting its negation [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his Epistula, Saint Augustine seems to suggest an epistemic position that is antithetical to an evidentialist position on epistemic justification. However, I think it can be shown that even if evidentialism is taken to be the preferred method of epistemic justification, an epistemic position that incorporates a faith which is grounded in the truth and produces knowledge is epistemologically justified. Evidentialist objections to such a faith-grounded position founder on principles that even the staunchest defenders of an evidentialist theory of justification, Richard Feldman and Earl Conee, deem to be epistemically justified. Hence, if I am right, there is no compelling argument from an evidentialist perspective that a “faith in things not yet understood” is inconsistent with a fundamentally evidentialist theory of justification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Timothy Williamson has a marvelously precise account of epistemic justification in terms of knowledge and probability. I argue that the account runs aground on certain cases involving the probability values 0 and 1. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]