Epistemic Angst Research Articles

Knowledge‐first perceptual epistemology: A comment on Littlejohn and Millar

AbstractAccording to epistemological disjunctivism (ED), ordinary perceptual experience ensures an opportunity for perceptual knowledge. In recent years, two distinct models of this idea have been developed. For Duncan Pritchard (Epistemological disjunctivism, 2012, Oxford University Press; Epistemic angst: Radical skepticism and the groundlessness of our believing, 2012, Princeton University Press), perception provides distinctly powerful reasons for belief. By contrast, Clayton Littlejohn (Journal of Philosophical Research, 41, 201; Knowledge first, 2017, Oxford University Press; Normativity: Epistemic and practical, 2018, Oxford University Press) and Alan Millar (The nature and value of knowledge: Three investigations, 2010, Oxford University Press; Philosophical Issues, 21, 332) argue for a version of ED in terms of a “knowledge first” program, on which perception directly provides knowledge, without relying on antecedent reasons or justification. Specifically, both Littlejohn and Millar argue that “reasons first” ED faces a problematic regress. In this article, I defend “reasons first” ED by arguing that experience provides a type of reason that escapes the regress. I also argue that reasons are a fundamental aspect of ED, especially in its anti‐skeptical stance.

Introduction to special issue: Skepticism and Epistemic Angst

Introduction to special issue: Skepticism and Epistemic Angst

Scepticism and Epistemic Angst, Redux

Part one offers a precis of my book, Epistemic Angst (Princeton UP, 2015), with particular focus on the themes discussed by the participants in this symposium. Part two then examines a number of topics raised in this symposium in light of this precis. These include how best to understand the ‘non-belief’ account of hinge epistemology, whether we should think of our hinge commitments as being a kind of procedural knowledge, whether hinge epistemology can be used to deal with underdetermination-based scepticism, what the status of my acceptance of the closure principle amounts to, whether one’s total evidence in fact supports our hinge commitments, and the nature of the kind of reasoning that Wittgenstein employs when advancing a hinge epistemology. Finally, I offer some remarks on the notion of epistemic risk in the context of the sceptical problematic, and show how this has application to legal epistemology.

Epistemic Angst, Intellectual Courage and Radical Scepticism

The overarching aim of this paper is to persuade the reader that radical scepticism is driven less by independently plausible arguments and more by a fear of epistemic limitation which can be overcome. By developing the Kierkegaardian insight that knowledge requires courage, I show that we are not, as potential knowers, just passive recipients of a passing show of putatively veridical information, we also actively need to put ourselves in the way of it by learning to resist certain forms of epistemic temptation: the Cartesian thought that we could be ‘imprisoned’ within our own representations, and, hence permanently ‘out of touch’ with an ‘external’ world, and the Reasons Identity Thesis, which has us believe that whether we are in the good case or in the bad case, our epistemic grounds are the same.

Pritchard, D. (2016). Epistemic Angst. Radical Skepticism and the Groundlessness of Our Believing. Princeton, Oxford: Princeton University Press

El libro Epistemic Angst (2016a) de Duncan Pritchard pretende, de acuerdo con una lectura predominante del pensamiento de Wittgenstein, curarnos de la angustia epistémica que producen las variedades más relevantes del escepticismo contemporáneo (Pritchard, 2016a). El libro tiene un interés innegable tanto para los que cultivan dicho campo de investigación como para los estudiosos del pensamiento tardío de Wittgenstein o para los que se sientan atraídos por una de las variantes más significativas de la teoría del conocimiento y la percepción actuales, el disyuntivismo epistémico, auspiciada de manera destacada por John McDowell (1995, por ejemplo). Adicionalmente, y de manera central, el volumen que reseñamos supone un gran aporte al vigente, y muy activo en los últimos tiempos, campo de la conocida como “epistemología de goznes”, que desarrolla los supuestos epistémicos tan sólo esbozados en Sobre la certeza, obra póstuma compuesta a partir de los últimos cuadernos del ya mencionado Ludwig Wittgenstein. Finalmente, el libro tiene un gran atractivo por el modo en que dialoga críticamente con otros proponentes de dicha epistemología, así como con los defensores de respuestas alternativas al reto escéptico, bien sean internistas o externistas.

Closure, credence and rationality: a problem for non-belief hinge epistemology

Duncan Pritchard’s Epistemic Angst promises a novel solution to the closure-based sceptical problem that, unlike more traditional solutions, does not entail revising our fundamental epistemological commitments. In order to do this, it appeals to a Wittgensteinian account of rational evaluation, the overarching theme of which is that it neither makes sense to doubt nor to believe in our anti-sceptical hinge commitments. The purpose of this paper is to show that the argument for the claim that there can be no rational basis to believe our anti-sceptical hinge commitments relies upon an implicit assumption about rational support that I label The Pritchensteinian Rational Grounds Principle. I argue that, insofar as this principle is intended to apply to closure-style inferences, it leads to irrational doxastic attitudes. I consider a seemingly plausible modification of the principle that would avoid this result but show that this modified principle faces serious problems of its own.

Dobradiças, Vertigem Epistémica e Moralidade

This paper explores central themes of Duncan Pritchard’s epistemology intimately related to the Wittgensteinian idea of a “hinge epistemology”. The first section calls attention to the eminently empirical character of our “hinges”. The second section focuses on Pritchard’s notion of “arational hinge commitments”, more specifically his distinction between the pair “über hinge commitments”/“über hinge propositions” and the pair “personal hinge commitments”/“personal hinge propositions”. The third section brings to the discussion Timothy Williamson’s view of “inexact knowledge” and examines another pair of notions introduced by Pritchard, namely “antiskeptical hinge commitments”/“antiskeptical hinge propositions”. I conclude with a reevaluation of the diagnosis made by Pritchard that, confronted with a sceptical scenario, our “epistemic angst” can be surpassed if we follow Wittgenstein’s teaching in On Certainty about the “structure of rational evaluation”, but that an “epistemic vertigo” can never be ultimately dispelled. My argument is that in a moral scenario there is no room for vertigo.

Strange bedfellows: on Pritchard’s disjunctivist hinge epistemology

The paper discusses some themes in Duncan Pritchard’s last book, Epistemic Angst. Radical Skepticism and the Groundlessness of Our Believing. It considers it in relation to other forms of Wittgenstein-inspired hinge-epistemology. It focuses, in particular, on the proposed treatment of Closure in relation to entailments containing hinges, the treatment of Underdetermination-based skeptical paradox and the avail to disjunctivism to respond to the latter. It argues that, although bold and thought-provoking, the mix of hinge epistemology and disjunctivism Pritchard proposes is not motivated.

Perceptual Knowledge, Discrimination, and Closure

Carter and Pritchard (Philos Stud 173(4):969–990, 2016) and Pritchard (Nous 44(2):245–268, 2010, Epistemological disjunctivism, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2012, Epistemic angst: radical scepticism and the groundlessness of our believing, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2016) have tried to reconcile the intuition that perceptual knowledge requires only limited discriminatory abilities with the closure principle. To this end, they have introduced two theoretical innovations: a contrast between two ways of introducing error-possibilities and a distinction between discriminating and favoring evidence. I argue that their solution faces the “sufficiency problem”: it is unclear whether the evidence that is normally available to adult humans is sufficient to retain knowledge of the entailing proposition and come to know the entailed proposition. I submit that, on either infallibilist or fallibilist views of evidence, Carter and Pritchard have set the bar for deductive knowledge too low. At the end, I offer an alternative solution. I suggest that the knowledge-retention condition of the closure principle is not satisfied in zebra-like scenarios.

Book Symposium: Duncan Pritchard, Epistemic Angst (Princeton University Press, 2015, xiii + 236 pages)

This book symposium features three critical pieces dealing with Duncan Pritchard's book, 'Epistemic Angst'; the symposium also contains Pritchard's replies to his critics.

Duncan Pritchard: Epistemic Angst: Radical Skepticism and the Groundlessness of Our Believing

Duncan Pritchard: Epistemic Angst: Radical Skepticism and the Groundlessness of Our Believing

Epistemic Angst: Radical Skepticism and the Groundlessness of Our Believing, written by Duncan Pritchard

Epistemic Angst: Radical Skepticism and the Groundlessness of Our Believing, written by Duncan Pritchard

Epistemic Angst: Radical Skepticism and the Groundlessness of Our Believing

Epistemic Angst: Radical Skepticism and the Groundlessness of Our Believing

How to undercut radical skepticism

Radical skepticism relies on the hypothesis that one could be completely cut off from the external world. In this paper, I argue that this hypothesis can be rationally motivated by means of a conceivability argument. Subsequently, I submit that this conceivability argument does not furnish a good reason to believe that one could be completely cut off from the external world. To this end, I show that we cannot adequately conceive scenarios that verify the radical skeptical hypothesis. Attempts to do so fall prey to one or another of three pitfalls: they end up incomplete, reveal a deep contradiction or recreate a non-skeptical hypothesis. I use these results to improve upon Pritchard’s (Epistemological disjunctivism. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2012; Epistemic angst: radical scepticism and the groundlessness of our believing, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 2016) recent attempt at undercutting radical skepticism.

Epistemic Angst

Support is canvassed for a novel solution to the sceptical problem regarding our knowledge of the external world. Key to this solution is the claim that what initially looks like a single problem is in fact two logically distinct problems. In particular, there are two putative sceptical paradoxes in play here, which each trade on distinctive epistemological theses. It is argued that the ideal solution to radical scepticism would thus be a biscopic proposal—viz., a two‐pronged, integrated, undercutting treatment of both putative sceptical paradoxes. A particular biscopic proposal is then explored which brings together two apparently opposing anti‐sceptical theses: he Wittgensteinian account of the structure of rational evaluation and epistemological disjunctivism. It is argued that each proposal enables us to gain a purchase on one, but only one, aspect of the two‐sided sceptical problem. Furthermore, it is argued that these proposals are not only compatible positions, but also mutually supporting and advanced in the same undercutting spirit. A potential cure is thus offered for epistemic angst.

The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous (Asa Simon Mittman and Peter J. Dendle, eds.)

<i>The Ashgate Research Companion to Monsters and the Monstrous</i> (Asa Simon Mittman and Peter J. Dendle, eds.)

Scepticism, epistemic luck, and epistemic angst

A commonly expressed worry in the contemporary literature on the problem of epistemological scepticism is that there is something deeply intellectually unsatisfying about the dominant anti-sceptical theories. In this paper I outline the main approaches to scepticism and argue that they each fail to capture what is essential to the sceptical challenge because they fail to fully understand the role that the problem of epistemic luck plays in that challenge. I further argue that scepticism is best thought of not as a quandary directed at our possession of knowledge simpliciter, but rather as concerned with a specific kind of knowledge that is epistemically desirable. On this view, the source of scepticism lies in a peculiarly epistemic form of angst. 1One finds explicit formulations of the sceptical paradox along these lines in, for example, DeRose [1995], Sosa [1999], Vogel [1990], and Pritchard [2002d], and even where the sceptical paradox is not explicitly formulated in this way, it is usually clear that such a formulation is being presupposed. For more on how the sceptical problem is understood in the contemporary debate, see Pritchard [2002c]. It is always by favour of Nature that one knows something. [Wittgenstein 1969: §505]