Against Hanna on Phenomenal Conservatism

Abstract

Supporters of PC claim that it not only provides an internalist account of justification, but it offers a way to respond to external world skepticism, it can make plausible an account of ethical intuitionism, and it solves puzzles about noninferential justification, including the problem of the speckled hen. Despite all of these purported benefits, Nathan Hanna (Forthcoming) has recently argued that PC faces a serious problem; it is false. He supports his claim by way of a reductio ad absurdum of PC. Very roughly, Hanna argues that in some instances a belief that p can behave like an appearance that p, which would make PC equivalent to a version of epistemic conservatism in those instances. Since Hanna takes epistemic conservatism to be absurd, he concludes that PC must be false. In what follows I begin by explaining Hanna’s argument and his support for it. Next, I argue that given any of the four plausible ways of understanding what it is for a belief that p to behave like an appearance that p Hanna’s argument is unsound or has insufficiently supported premises. Acta Anal (2012) 27:45–54 DOI 10.1007/s12136-012-0148-2