Source: http://www.kurtlsylvan.com/new-work-in-progress.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-20 12:30:45+00:00

Document:
In the past year, I drafted eight new papers. Five of them are available below.
of the rest. ​The titles and abstracts of all are visible below.
have been changes to authors and topics. The volume will likely be published in mid 2018.
Monique Wonderly and David Wong.
It will be dedicated to the memory of Derek Parfit.
Abstract. Reasons fundamentalists hold that reasons are the fundamental constituents of the normative. This paper discusses a neglected problem for reasons fundamentalists when it comes to solving the famous wrong kind of reasons (WKR) problem, which in its broadest form is a problem for fundamentalists and non-fundamentalists alike. We begin by noting that solving the WKR problem requires solving two further problems. These are particularly acute for reasons fundamentalists because their outlook imposes a tight constraint on an acceptable solution: in particular, the solution cannot appeal to anything normative (besides reasons). We argue that this constraint raises a dilemma for reasons fundamentalists. We consider three responses to the dilemma, arguing that only a form of constitutivism provides a somewhat promising solution. Whether the existence of this solution should comfort the reasons fundamentalist is, however, left an open question.
​Abstract. This paper argues that reliabilism can be straightforwardly defended without epistemic consequentialism, either as a non-consequentialist normative theory or as part of a non-normative account of knowledge on a par with similar accounts of the metaphysics of perception and action. It argues moreover that reliabilism should not be defended as a consequentialist theory. Its most plausible versions are not aptly dubbed 'consequentialist' in a sense that genuinely parallels the dominant one in ethics. Indeed, there is no strong reason to believe reliabilism was ever seriously intended as a form of epistemic consequentialism. At the heart of the original motivation for reliabilism was a concern about the necessity of non-accidentality for knowledge and competent belief, a concern perfectly at home in a non-consequentialist setting. Reliabilism’s connection to epistemic consequentialism was an accretion of the 1980s, and a feature of only one formulation of reliabilism in that decade.
Abstract. This paper argues that (1) if we want to explain why rationality is normative in the epistemic domain, we should reject epistemic consequentialism, and that (2) a version of epistemic non-consequentialism I call Epistemic Kantianism provides the best explanation. According to the Epistemic Kantian's story, rationality is normative in the epistemic domain because complying with apparent epistemic reasons constitutes respect for the truth, and there is stringent objective reason, not merely apparent reason, to manifest such respect. After introducing the topic in §1, I explain in §2 why epistemic consequentialism undermines the normativity of epistemic rationality. In §3, I rehearse arguments against a thesis about derivative value I call Instrumentalism that is widely rejected outside epistemology though still popular among epistemologists, and show that epistemic consequentialism is either false or unmotivated if Instrumentalism is false. In §4, I show how Epistemic Kantians can explain the normativity of epistemic rationality. Before concluding in §6, I ask in §5 how strong a version of non-consequentialism is needed to explain the normativity of epistemic rationality, and suggest that a full vindication does indeed require Epistemic Kantianism.
​Abstract. Could knowledge be the foundation of justified belief, as some knowledge-firsters suggest? It would stand a chance if it were identical to something which is already a plausible candidate for being a foundation of justified belief. Theaetetus memorably suggested that knowledge is perception. Perception is a serious candidate for being a foundation of justification, so knowledge would stand a chance if Theaetetus were right. Theaetetus’s simple suggestion is, of course, false. But I argue that a revised suggestion according to which one's knowing that p is being in a state which, when occurrent, constitutes one's perceiving that p has a reading which is not only sane but defensible from lessons in externalist epistemology and philosophy of perception. Defensible or not, some distinctions emerge in considering the thesis that encourage us to rethink the relation between the structure of knowledge and the structure of justification, promising to revive some of knowledge-firsters’ wilder dreams.
​Abstract. Judgment and Agency contains Sosa's latest effort to explain how higher epistemic value of the sort missing from an unwitting clairvoyant's beliefs might be a special case of performance normativity, with its superior value following from truisms about performance value. This paper argues that the new effort rests on mistaken assumptions about performance normativity. Once these mistaken assumptions are exposed, it becomes clear that higher epistemic value cannot be a mere special case of performance normativity, and its superiority cannot be guaranteed just by truisms about performance value. §§1-2 set the stage, clarifying the thesis and the relevant features of Sosa's strategy, and explaining why the strategy requires the mistaken assumptions. §3 presents a dilemma for the new account of higher epistemic value. §4 deepens the case for one of the horns. §5 takes stock and draws some broader morals.
​Abstract. While there has recently been a backlash against epistemic consequentialism, an explicit systematic alternative has yet to emerge in the literature. This paper fills the gap by offering a detailed alternative, showing it to be at least as attractive as epistemic consequentialism and more attractive on several counts. §1 covers some preliminaries, explaining how the epistemic consequentialism/non-consequentialism debate should be understood, why the shining success of 'epistemic utility theory' is a red herring, and why it is unclear whether epistemic consequentialism ever was a prominent position. I then develop a positive non-consequentialist view I call Epistemic Kantianism, sketching its general outlines in §2 and filling in the details in §3. In §4, I offer some arguments for Epistemic Kantianism. After taking stock in §5, I close by answering a few objections and re-evaluating the debate.
Abstract. I argue that evidentialism can and should be framed as a meta-normative account of justification in the same genre as the buck-passing account of value—i.e., as a theory of how normative facts of one kind are grounded in normative facts of another kind. So understood, it can remain an interesting theory and help the cause of the reasons fundamentalism, understood as the view that reasons are normatively fundamental. Not so understood, it risks being either false, trivial, or explanatorily idle. Having made these points in §2 and §3, I ask in §4 what it takes to support and challenge evidentialism. Both take more than many assume, I argue. This fact has an important corollary. Setting aside hybrid theories, like Comesaña (2010) and Goldman (2011)’s, evidentialism sans phrase is often treated as a potential rival to reliabilism sans phrase. Even this treatment is, I argue, wrong. These views can conflict no more than a buck-passing account of value can conflict with a hedonist account of value.
Abstract. Some epistemologists think the simple perceptual relation of which object-seeing and feature-seeing are special cases is the basis of perceptual knowledge. While this suggestion can be read in different ways, one reading paints it as an externalist descendant of acquaintance foundationalism, purporting to unearth similarly basic reasons for perceptual belief. This paper argues that despite its externalism, this view fails owing to problems like those for acquaintance foundationalism. After introducing the view in Section 1, Section 2 considers why its defenders have thought certain prima facie counterexamples aren't counterexamples, detailing their case for lurking inferential epistemology in these cases. Section 3 argues that this story fails in more interesting cases. While there is a computational tale that might be deemed `inferential', there is no corresponding tale in epistemic structure, not even in a minimal sense compatible with rejecting what Siegel (2017) calls the `Reckoning Model' of inference. Indeed, there sometimes couldn't be, as the literature on perceptual organization follows Kanizsa (1985) in suggesting. Section 4 offers a deeper argument, maintaining that this view faces a Sellars-style dilemma. Section 5 concludes that while non-epistemic perception might be part of some story about how we acquire knowledge, its role will be merely technological.

References: §1
 §2
 §3
 §4
 §6
 §5
 §3
 §4
 §5
 §1
 §2
 §3
 §4
 §5
 §2
 §3
 §4