QUASI-EVIDENTIALISM: INTERESTS, JUSTIFICATION AND EPISTEMIC VIRTUE

Abstract

AbstractIn this paper I argue against what I call ‘strict evidentialism’, the view that evidence is the sole factor for determining the normative status of beliefs. I argue that strict evidentialism fails to capture the uniquely subjective standpoint of believers and as a result it fails to provide us with the tools necessary to apply its own epistemic norms. In its place I develop an interest-relative theory of justification which I call quasi-evidentialism, according to which S has a justified belief that P at time t if and only if S's evidence at time t supports P in proportion to S's interest in P. I take interests as fixed and argue that adjusting our confidence in a proposition in the right way, given our interests, is fine-tuned through the exercise of intellectual virtue, in particular the virtue of epistemic conscientiousness. This theory refocuses epistemic responsibility in the subject and by locating agency in the cultivation of epistemic virtue it also provides a handy solution to the problem of doxastic voluntarism, insofar as the development of our epistemic virtue guides our responsiveness to reason.