Basil MÜLLER ABSTRACT: When an agent A depends on an agent B to promote one of A’s epistemic goals, this will often involve B’s forming and sharing of true beliefs. However, as is well documented in research on cognitive irrationality, agents are disposed to form and share false-but-useful beliefs in a lot of circumstances. The dependence relation is thus at …
Read More »THE PERMISSIBLE NORM OF TRUTH AND “OUGHT IMPLIES CAN” (pages 433-440)
Xintong WEI ABSTRACT: Many philosophers hold that a norm of truth governs the propositional attitude of belief. According to one popular construal of normativity, normativity is prescriptive in nature. The prescriptive norm can be formulated either in terms of obligation or permission: one ought to or may believe that p just in case p is true. It has been argued …
Read More »WEIGHING THE AIM OF BELIEF AGAIN (pages 141-145)
Asbjørn STEGLICH-PETERSEN ABSTRACT: In his influential discussion of the aim of belief, David Owens argues that any talk of such an ‘aim’ is at best metaphorical. In order for the ‘aim’ of belief to be a genuine aim, it must be weighable against other aims in deliberation, but Owens claims that this is impossible. In previous work, I have pointed out …
Read More »EXCUSING PROSPECTIVE AGENTS (pages 119-128)
Cameron BOULT ABSTRACT: Blameless norm violation in young children is an underexplored phenomenon in epistemology. An understanding of it is important for accounting for the full range of normative standings at issue in debates about epistemic norms, and the internalism-externalism debate generally. More specifically, it is important for proponents of factive epistemic norms. I examine this phenomenon and put forward a …
Read More »MOORE’S PARADOX AND EPISTEMIC NORMS (pages 445-464)
Patrizio LO PRESTI ABSTRACT: Why does it strike us as absurd to believe that it is raining and that one doesn’t believe that it is raining? Some argue that it strikes us as absurd because belief is normative. The beliefs that it is raining and that one doesn’t believe that it is are, it is suggested, self-falsifying. But, so it is …
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