Reasons are not the same. Normative reasons need to be distinguished from non-normative reasons. Then, due to some considerations, we have to draw a distinction between explanatory reasons and motivating reasons. In this paper, I focus on a rather implicit assumption in drawing the explanatory-motivating distinction. Motivating reasons are mostly characterized as those reasons that the agent takes to be normative. This may imply that the agent always knows the reasons their motivating reasons. This I call the infallibility or transparency assumption. This suggests that there is some sort of report condition on motivating reasons. In contrast, one may ask whether it is possible for the agent to be mistaken about what their motivating reasons are. I argue that we can distinguish motivating reasons and satisfy the motivations for the explanatory-motivating distinction without committing to this infallibility assumption. I briefly sketch a character-based approach to motivating reasons as an alternative. Next, I argue that, in addition to being important on its own, this account has implications for other debates. I illustrate this by mentioning cases such as recalcitrant actions as well as critically discussing one kind of counter-example presented against the guise of the good thesis.

In Charles Mills’ essay, “White Ignorance,” and his trail-blazing monograph, The Racial Contract , he developed a view of how Whiteness or anti-Black-Indigenous-and-Latinx racism causes individuals to hold false beliefs or lack beliefs about racial injustice in particular and the world in general. I will defend a novel exegetical claim that Mills’ view is part of a more general view regarding how racial injustice can affect a subject’s epistemic standing such as whether they are justified in a belief and whether their degree of confidence in the belief is rational given their evidence. Then, in light of this novel exegetical claim, I show how this interpretation of Mills’ view about how racial injustice causes ignorance relates to proper evaluation of whether justified philosophers and social scientists count as epistemologically justified in holding the views that dominate their respective scholarly literature.

The paper argues that, although the role of responsibilist epistemic virtues is unclear in the framework of traditional knowledge-centred individualist and idealised epistemology, it can be properly understood if one considers other epistemic goods and activities, adopts insights from social epistemology, and acknowledges the non-ideality of our epistemic world. It proposes to explain the value of epistemic virtues in terms of their contribution to a healthy epistemic social environment. Specifically, it is argued that responsibilist virtues are essential (1) for respecting listeners who commit to testimonial justice; (2) for distinguished epistemic agents in their roles of teachers, guides, and exemplars; and (3) both to create and properly recognise these roles and epistemic positions within social networks. In that way, responsibilist virtue epistemology finds its place among the newly emerging topics of social epistemology.

The first pathway toward a new conceptualist answer to the existence of universals begins with Descartes. The article is guided by a Cartesian method of starting anew in metaphysics and our knowledge of mind-dependent universals. Relevant examples and learning experiments defend and validate the pragmatic utility of conceptualism. It is past time for analytic ontology to set aside its assumptions, reevaluate its methodology and simplify itself. I raise novel objections through metaphor and analogy against standard and Platonic realism. Independent universals of realism are speculative and are neither necessary nor sufficient. This rejection of metaphysical realism defends the validity of scientific empiricist realism. Historical arguments such as William James’ empirical conceptualism and J.S. Mill’s criticisms strengthen this position. Nominalist methods are also considered. My theory is confirmed and useful for a preliminary epistemic-ontology which evaluates concepts and universals of mineral species. This appendix is consistent with Descartes’ theory of attributes and provides a new important approach to this field of study. The article, long dormant, is made possible by the work of Rene Descartes.

Several years ago, John Williams posted his final response to Clarke, Adams and Barker in an ongoing debate about the status of Robert Nozick’s truth-tracking account of propositional knowledge and Fred Dretske’s early “Conclusive Reasons” account of knowledge. In this paper, we respond directly to his “Still Stuck on the Backward Clock” paper. We think that Williams’ Backward Clock Example fails against both Nozick and Dretske. Moreover, other objections by Williams against our views are shown to be either false or misrepresentations of our position.

Can a pain-belief such as “I feel pain” be fallibly justified and luckily true? In this discussion note, I provide a Gettier-type example to show that a belief about one’s own pain can be held on fallible justification and a matter of epistemic luck for its believer. This example underscores the significance of introspection and direct awareness in such epistemic situations. Moreover, perhaps surprisingly, the example suggests that one can, at the same time and with regard to the same body part, though in different respects, both know and not know “I feel pain.” The knowledge is possessed in terms of acquaintance; the lack of knowledge is explainable in terms of non-introspective justification.

In recent work, Palermos and Tollefsen develop a novel account of group know-how (GKH)—know-how applicable to a group as a whole—and which they take to be superior to envisioned accounts of group know-how that reduce the group know-how to that of individuals. While their argument has promise, I aim to show that it succumbs to several objections, an appreciation of which gives us a better sense of what desiderata a satisfactory account of group-level know-how will need to meet.