Stability and cognitive architecture: response to Machery

Abstract

ABSTRACT In this response to Edouard Machery's comments on On Folk Epistemology, I address his methodological challenges, the first of which concerns cross-cultural and interpersonal instability of case judgments. Whereas I agree with Machery about the importance of not going too quickly from folk epistemological judgments to epistemological theory, I argue against skepticism about such judgments. Machery's second challenge concerns my bias account of patterns of knowledge ascriptions. Whereas I agree with Machery that bias accounts should not be overgeneralized, I argue that the evidence he cites is consistent with the restricted applications of the book's bias accounts.