A deontologist might refuse to kill one to save five, and yet take a one-in-a-million risk of killing one to avert a one-in-a-million risk of five dying. No prominent decision theory can accommodate this pair of preferences, as weighting outcomes by a uniform probability (or risk-weighted probability) preserves their ranking.
Risk-sensitive decision theories (which permit agents to have non-neutral attitudes towards risk) require them to have the same attitude towards all kinds of risk. But there are good reasons to think that if it can be rational to have a general risk attitude across all domains, then it can be rational to have domain-specific risk attitudes: to be, say, risk averse for epistemic goods, risk neutral for pleasure, and risk seeking for aesthetic value. I develop the formal resources to model these attitudes.
I argue that the characteristic feature of deontology is a particular kind of domain-specific risk attitude. Specifically, the deontologist thinks duty violations are worse than consequentialist harms, but is comparatively risk-seeking with respect to duty violations relative to consequentialist harms.
This paper examines whether doxastic dilemma pose a challenge to pragmatism. A doxastic dilemma arises when epistemic reasons support believing p, while practical reasons support believing not-p, raising the question of what one ought to believe all things considered. Evidentialists argue that pragmatists must answer this question and determine which belief is normatively required. This challenge, however, depends on a belief principle: if one ought to believe p, then one ought not to believe not-p. I argue that pragmatists need not accept this principle. By considering cases in which practical reasons conflict with one another, I show that even incompatible belief contents may each be supported by distinct reasons and thus possess their own normative standing. Therefore, the fact that one cannot simultaneously hold both beliefs does not show that only one has normative support. Doxastic dilemmas, thus, do not successfully undermine pragmatism.
It's widely reported that the classical Bayesian norms of rationality break down in the face 'higher-order evidence'. On first pass, this needn’t be particularly troubling. Classical Bayesianism has many well-documented limitations. However, these limitations don't undermine its application across a wide range of cases. So, they don't directly challenge Bayesian orthodoxy. On close inspection, the problem runs deeper though. Hedden & Dorst (2022) have recently argued that almost all evidence is (in part) ‘higher-order evidence’. If they are right, and it is in fact the case that the classical Bayesian norms break down in the face of ‘higher-order evidence’, it follows that the classical Bayesian norms break down in almost all cases. In this paper, I defuse this problem. I show that it rests on the conflation of two distinct kinds of 'higher-order evidence’. Once we properly attend to the distinction between these two kinds of higher-order evidence we can accept Hedden & Dorst’s (2022) initial observation without endorsing wide-spread violations of classical Bayesianism. Hence, we can make a more accurate assessment of the scope and limits of Bayesian epistemology.
This paper explores the debate between transmissive and generative views of testimony. According to the generation view, testimony can generate knowledge even when neither the testifier nor the testimonial chain previously possessed that knowledge. While this view has been extensively developed since Lackey’s seminal work, Wright (2016) argues that the central issue in the transmissive/generative dispute concerns justification rather than knowledge, particularly propositional justification. However, a corresponding generation view of testimonial justification remains underdeveloped. A parallel debate has emerged in the epistemology of memory. Although generative accounts of memorial knowledge were initially proposed by Lackey (2005) in a manner analogous to generative accounts of testimony, subsequent discussions have focused primarily on whether memory preserves or generates propositional justification since Senor (2007). These works have produced increasingly fine-grained accounts of the preservative/generative distinction. I argue that these developments in the epistemology of memory can illuminate the testimonial case. Drawing on Miyazono and Tooming’s (2025) analysis of the preservative/generative distinction, I reassess existing generative accounts of testimony and develop a more precise framework for understanding when testimony transmits justification and when it generates it. This framework clarifies the structure of the transmissive/generative debate and provides resources for responding to Wright’s challenge.
In discussions of social epistemology, Jennifer Lackey (2021) argues that ‘a significant percentage of a group’s operative members who believe that p’ is a necessary condition for ‘a group believes that p.’ Meanwhile, with respect to group evidence, she maintains that, in certain cases, evidence possessed by a minority of members can constitute group evidence. However, in ordinary thought, there is an intuition about evidence according to which only propositions that a subject takes to be true can serve as that subject’s evidence. This intuition is also widely endorsed in philosophical discussions of evidence by scholars such as Jessica Brown (2022). In response, this paper formulates a requirement on evidence based on this intuition and uses it to argue that Jennifer Lackey’s position in social epistemology is internally inconsistent.
In the increasingly interdisciplinary study of conspiracy theories - conspiracy theory theory - there is a debate (at least in philosophy) between generalism (the view that there is something generally wrong about conspiracy theories) and particularism (the view that conspiracy theories ought to be assessed on their relative merits, and thus no assumption can be made about their warrant sans some investigation of the particular theory). In this panel discussion three of the main contributors to that debate (Charles Pigden, M R. X. Dentith, and Steve Clarke) discuss why it seems that particularism is the dominant view (at least among philosophers), whether generalists are right to claim that non-philosophers agree with generalism, and whether there is some intermediate position between the two views.
M R. X. Dentith is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the International Center for Philosophy at Beijing Normal University at Zhuhai. Their chief research interests concern the epistemic analysis of conspiracy theories, rumours, fake news, and the epistemology of secrecy. In 2014... Read More →
An agent makes an epistemic trade-off when she forms a belief, that is prima facie irrational, to achieve some larger epistemic good (such as the attainment of a more valuable belief). Most epistemologists contend that trade-offs are impermissible; however, I argue that examples of permissible trade-offs can be found in a recognizable phenomenon in social epistemology: the adoption of unique belief-formation norms by agents in epistemic roles (e.g., scientists, reporters, etc.). On my view, these norms are authoritative since they help the agents who occupy these roles transmit specialized knowledge to the public. And just like ethical role norms, epistemic role norms often conflict with the norms that govern typical agents. Agents in these roles are thus permitted to form prima facie irrational beliefs so that others can achieve a larger epistemic good (the acquisition of specialized knowledge), which fits the definition of a trade-off. As an example, I analyze mid-century belief-formation norms that instructed anthropologists to irrationally disbelieve any moral claim about the practices of other cultures. These norms led to the adoption of irrational morally relativistic beliefs; however, they were a necessary step to ending the Eurocentric biases that led early anthropologists to adopt implausible theories.
Recent work on the philosophy of conspiracy theory in Philosophy has largely consolidated around the thesis of Particularism. Particularists argue that we cannot make broad generalisations about the class of conspiracy theories. Instead, we have to assess particular instances of conspiracy theories on their merits. However, like many emerging consensus positions in philosophy, particularism is not unassailed. Generalists argue that we have reasons to treat conspiracy theories - as a class - as epistemically suspect, and they have found particularism as a thesis to be wanting. In this paper I examine both how generalists have described particularist positions, as well we how particularists have articulated particularism. I argue that if generalists want to challenge the particularist consensus, then it is going to be important to show that their construals of particularist positions accurately reflect what particularists argue for if they want to then show where particularism asa. thesis falls down. That is, I will ask and then answer the question of what, exactly, generalists need to show in order to both undermine particularism and challenge the particularist consensus.
M R. X. Dentith is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the International Center for Philosophy at Beijing Normal University at Zhuhai. Their chief research interests concern the epistemic analysis of conspiracy theories, rumours, fake news, and the epistemology of secrecy. In 2014... Read More →
Thursday July 9, 2026 2:00pm - 2:55pm NZST MSB1.05
Keith DeRose's (1992, 2009, 2011) epistemic contextualism maintains that when S makes a knowledge attribution, the truth conditions of the statement "S knows that P" vary in a specific way depending on the context of S's assertion. This "specific way" is jointly determined by both epistemic and practical factors. In particular, the claim that stakes (as a practical factor) affect knowledge attributions has been challenged by experimental philosophy, generating a substantial body of literature (among others, Beaman & Francis 2023; Buckwalter 2021; Dinges & Zakkou 2020; Francis, Beaman & Hansen 2019; Pinillos 2012, 2024; Porter et al. 2024; Rose et al. 2019; Shurakov 2025; Wu 2023). However, I argue that when experimental philosophy tests these claims, it fails to clearly distinguish between the interpretations of objective knowledge and knowledge attributions under different theoretical frameworks. Consequently, existing experimental results fail to provide an objective evaluation of DeRose's contextualism. Therefore, this paper will argue that, due to the failure to clearly distinguish between knowledge attributions and objective knowledge, the empirical findings of experimental philosophy cannot provide an objective assessment of DeRose's contextualism.
Hearer-oriented etiological functionalism explains the epistemic norm of assertion by appeal to assertion’s characteristic epistemic function. On the version defended by Christoph Kelp and Mona Simion, assertion characteristically functions to generate testimonial knowledge in audiences, and an assertion is epistemically permissible when it is disposed to do so under normal conditions. The view is stronger than a crude actual-success condition, because it asks about normal functioning. The view is also more social than speaker-centered rule accounts, because it places the hearer at the center of evaluation. I argue that confidentiality practices create a deeper problem for the account than existing discussion has recognized. Some true assertions that would predictably give a hearer testimonial knowledge of their content are epistemically impermissible, because the hearer’s knowledge of that content would block the route to the knowledge the inquiry is organized to secure. The argument concerns a constitutive epistemic role. A promotional gain alone would not suffice. Finite inquirers sometimes need managed ignorance in order to know what they often set out to know. Science makes the pattern vivid, and ordinary evaluative practices display the same pattern.
