Proseminar Readings in Epistemology – Pasnau

Week 1. Two Classic Papers

• Fred Dretske, “Epistemic Operators,” Journal of Philosophy 67 (1970) 1007-23.

 Optional reading. For more on epistemic closure, see the SEP entry, and this 2014 exchange between Dretske and John Hawthorne.

• David Lewis, “Elusive Knowledge,” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 74 (1996) 549-67.

Optional reading. For much more on contextualism, see the SEP entry and this 2014 exchange between Earl Conee and Stewart Cohen. For the background semantics of indexicals on which epistemic contextualism depends, see this SEP entry.

Week 2. Other Options

• Brian Kim, “Pragmatic Encroachment in Epistemology,” Philosophy Compass 12 (2017) 1-14.

• John MacFarlane, “Relativism and Knowledge Attributions,” in D. Pritchard and S. Bernecker (eds.), The Routledge Companion to Epistemology (London: Routledge, 2011), 536-44.

Optional reading. For a more general discussion of the “new relativism” of which MacFarlane is the leading proponent, see the relevant section of this SEP entry.

• Jennifer Nagel, “The Psychological Basis of the Harman-Vogel Paradox,” Philosophers’ Imprint 11:5 (2011) 1-28.

Week 3. Knowledge and Practical Reasoning

• John Hawthorne and Jason Stanley, “Knowledge and Action,” Journal of Philosophy 105 (2008) 571-90.

• Jessica Brown, “Subject-Sensitive Invariantism and the Knowledge Norm for Practical Reasoning” Nous 42 (2008) 167-89.

Optional reading. For another, more recent discussion of the knowledge-action relationship, with a direct consideration of its implications for the analysis of knowledge, see this 2014 exchange between Fantl & McGrath and Baron Reed.

Week 4. Moral Encroachment

• Rima Basu and Mark Schroeder, “Doxastic Wronging” in Kim and M. McGrath (eds.), Pragmatic Encroachment in Epistemology (London: Routledge, 2019).

• Georgi Gardiner, “Evidentialism and Moral Encroachment,” in K. McCain (ed.), Believing in Accordance with the Evidence: New Essays on Evidentialism (Cham: Springer, 2018) 169-95.

Previous Versions of the Epistemology Seminar (to see what you've missed!)

Week 1 on disagreement:

• David Christensen, “Epistemology of Disagreement: The Good News,” Philosophical Review 116 (2007) 187-217.
• David Enoch, “Not Just a Truthometer: Taking Oneself Seriously (but not Too Seriously) in Cases of Peer Disagreement,” Mind 119 (2010) 953-97.

Week 2 on uniqueness:

• Roger White, “Epistemic Permissiveness,” Philosophical Perspectives 19 (2005) 445-59.
• Miriam Schoenfield, “Permission to Believe: Why Permissivism Is True and What It Tells Us About Irrelevant Influences on Belief,” Nous 48 (2014) 193-218.

Week 3 on the ethics of belief:

• Richard Feldman, “The Ethics of Belief,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 60 (2000) 667-95.
• Susanna Rinard, “No Exception for Belief,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 94 (2017) 121-43.

Spring 2017 Readings

Week 1. Testimony

• David Hume on miracles (First Enquiry, sec. 10)
• Richard Moran, "Getting Told and Being Believed," Philosophers' Imprint 5.5 (2005) 1-29

• Jennifer Lackey, "It Takes Two to Tango: Beyond Reductionism and Non-Reductionism in the Epistemology of Testimony," in J. Lackey and E. Sosa (eds.), The Epistemology of Testimony (Oxford: Clarendon, 2006) 160-89
• Annette C. Baier, "Secular Faith," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 10 (1980) 131-48>

• Karen Jones, "Trust as an Affective Attitude," Ethics 107 (1996) 4-25
• Sarah Stroud, "Epistemic Partiality in Friendship," Ethics 116 (2006) 498-524
• Katherine Hawley, "Partiality and Prejudice in Trusting," Synthese 191 (2014) 2029-45

• Miranda Fricker, Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007), intro and ch. 1
• Charles Mills, "White Ignorance," in S. Sullivan and N. Tuana (eds.), Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2007) 11-38.

Fall 2015 Readings

I. What is Probability?

Objective Interpretations

J. M. Keynes, A Treatise on Probability (London: Macmillan and Co., 1921), chapters 1-3.

Further Readings

For background and broader context: Maria Galavotti, "The Modern Epistemic Interpretations of Probability: Logicism and Subjectivism"

Subjective Interpretations

Frank Ramsey, “Truth and Probability” in Philosophical Papers

Further Readings

• Antony Eagle (ed.), Philosophy of Probability: Contemporary Readings (Routledge, 2011)
• Hájek, Alan, "Interpretations of Probability", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.).

II. Does Belief Come in Degrees?

Pro

Mark Kaplan, “Decision Theory as Philosophy,” Philosophy of Science 50 (1983) 549-77.

[The technical material in section 3 is peripheral to our concerns.]

Further Readings

Kaplan's 1996 book by this same name goes into considerably more detail. And for other points of view see F. Huber and C. Schmidt-Petri (eds.),  Degrees of Belief: An Anthology (Dordrecht: Springer, 2009) 75-93.

Con

Lara Buchak, “Belief, Credence, and Norms,” Philosophical Studies 169 (2014) 285-311.

Holton, Richard. “Intention as a Model for Belief,” in M. Vargas and G. Yaffe (eds.), Rational and Social Agency: The Philosophy of Michael Bratman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014) 12-37.

III. Is Knowledge First?

Timothy Williamson , Knowledge and Its Limits (OUP, 2000) preface, intro., chs. 1-2

Elizabeth Fricker, “Is Knowing a State of Mind? The Case Against,” in Patrick Greenough and Duncan Pritchard (eds.), Williamson on Knowledge (Oxford UP, 2009) 31-59.

Further Readings

• Patrick Greenough and Duncan Pritchard (eds.), Williamson on Knowledge (Oxford UP, 2009).
• Aidan McGlynn, Knowledge First? (Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).
• Contemporary Debates in Epistemology , ed. Steup et al., 2 nd ed. (Blackwell, 2014): the first chapter is an extended exchange on this topic, with Williamson against Trent Dougherty and Patrick Rysiew (2nd edition only).

IV. Is Knowledge Universal?

Jennifer Nagel, “Intuitions and Experiments: A Defense of the Case Method in Epistemology” PPR 85 (2012) 495-527

Stephen Stich, “Do Different Groups Have Different Epistemic Intuitions? A Reply to Jennifer Nagel” 87 (2013) 151-78

Jennifer Nagel, “Defending the Evidential Value of Epistemic Intuitions: A Reply to Stich,” PPR 87 (2013) 179-99.

Further Readings

A new entry into the debate: Edouard Machery, Stephen Stich, David Rose, Amita Chatterjee, Kaori Karasawa, Noel Struchiner, Smita Sirker, Naoki Usui and Takaaki Hashimoto, “Gettier Across Cultures” Nous (forthcoming) – published online in August 2015.