A predicate of personal taste occurring in a sentence in which the perspectival information is not linguistically articulated by an experiencer phrase may have two different readings. In case the speaker of a bare sentence formed with a predicate of personal taste uses the subjective predicate encoding perspectival information in one way and the hearer interprets it in another way, the agents’ acts are not coordinated. In this paper I offer an answer to the question of how a hearer can strategically interact with a speaker on the intended perspectival information so that both agents can optimally solve their coordination problem. In this sense, I offer a game-theoretical account of the strategic communication with expressions referring to agents’ perspectives, communication which involves the interaction between a speaker who intends to convey some perspectival information and who chooses to utter a bare sentence formed with a predicate of personal taste, instead of a sentence in which the perspectival information is linguistically articulated by an experiencer phrase, and a hearer who has to choose between interpreting the uttered sentence in conformity with the speaker’s autocentric use of the predicate of personal taste or in conformity with the speaker’s exocentric use.

I reinforce my defense of permissivism about the rationality of doxastic attitudes on the face of a certain body of evidence against criticism published in this journal by Anantharaman. After making some conceptual clarifications, I manage to show that at least one of my original arguments pro-permissivism is left unscathed by Anantharaman's points.

In this paper, I argue that, as far as Gettier cases are concerned, appearances are deceiving. That is, Gettier cases merely appear to be cases of epistemic failure (i.e., failing to know that p) but are in fact cases of semantic failure (i.e., failing to refer to x). Gettier cases are cases of reference failure because the candidates for knowledge in these cases contain ambiguous designators. If this is correct, then we may simply be mistaking semantic facts for epistemic facts when we consider Gettier cases. This, in turn, is a good reason not to assign much, if any, evidential weight to Gettier intuitions (i.e., that S doesn’t know that p in a Gettier case).

James Van Cleve raises some objections to my attempt to solve the bootstrapping problem for what I call “basic justification theories.” I argue that given 1 the inference rules endorsed by basic justification theorists, we are a priori (propositionally) justified in believing that perception is reliable. This blocks the bootstrapping result.

Here I defend two counterexamples to Nozick’s truth-tracking theory of knowledge from an attack on them by Adams and Clarke. With respect to the first counterexample, Adams and Clarke make the error of judging that my belief counts as knowledge. More demonstrably, with respect to the second counterexample they make the error of thinking that, on Nozick's method-relativized theory, the method M in question in any given case must be generally reliable.

In the first section of this paper I present epistemic evidentialism and, in the following two sections, I discuss that view with counterexamples. I shall defend that adequately supporting evidence is a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for epistemic justification. Although we need epistemic elements other than evidence in order to have epistemic justification, there can be no epistemically justified belief without evidence. However, there are other kinds of justification beyond the epistemic justification, such as prudential or moral justification; therefore, there is room for justified beliefs (in a prudential or moral sense) without evidence.

Blameless norm violation in young children is an underexplored phenomenon in epistemology. An understanding of it is important for accounting for the full range of normative standings at issue in debates about epistemic norms, and the internalism-externalism debate generally. More specifically, it is important for proponents of factive epistemic norms. I examine this phenomenon and put forward a positive proposal. I claim that we should think of the normative dimension of certain actions and attitudes of young children in terms of a kind of “prospective agency.” I argue that the most sophisticated account of exculpatory defenses in epistemology – due to Clayton Littlejohn – does not provide an adequate model for exculpatory defenses of prospective agents. The aim is not primarily to challenge Littlejohn. Rather, I engage with his framework as a way of setting up my positive proposal. I call it the “heuristic model.”

This paper proposes a view on epistemic relativism that arises from the problem of the criterion, keeping in consideration that the assessment of criterion standards always occurs in a certain context. The main idea is that the epistemic value of the assertion “S knows that p” depends not only on the criterion adopted within an epistemic framework and the relationship between said criterion and a meta-criterion, but also from the collaboration with other subjects who share the same standards. Thus, one can choose between particularist and methodist criteria according to the context of assessment. This position has the advantage of presenting a new perspective concerning both the criterion problem and the problem of inter-contextuality in the evaluation of different epistemic frameworks.

Most inferentialists hope to bypass givenness by tracking the conditionals claimants are implicitly committed to. I argue that this approach is underdetermined because one can always construct parallel trees of conditionals. I illustrate this using the Müller-Lyer illusion and touching a table. In the former case, the lines are either even or uneven; in the latter case, a moving hand will either sweep through or be halted. For each possibility, we can rationally foresee consequents. However, I argue that, until and unless we benefit from what is given in experience, we cannot know whether to affirm the antecedents of those conditionals.

Daniel Whiting has argued, in this journal, that Mark Schroeder’s analysis of knowledge in terms of subjectively and objectively sufficient reasons for belief makes wrong predictions in fake barn cases. Schroeder has replied that this problem may be avoided if one adopts a suitable account of perceptual reasons. I argue that Schroeder’s reply fails to deal with the general worry underlying Whiting’s purported counterexample, because one can construct analogous potential counterexamples that do not involve perceptual reasons at all. Nevertheless, I claim that it is possible to overcome Whiting’s objection, by showing that it rests on an inadequate characterization of how defeat works in the examples in question.

Tristan Haze claims we have made two mistakes in replying to his two attempted counter-examples to Tracking Theories of Knowledge. Here we respond to his two recent claims that we have made mistakes in our reply. We deny both of his claims.

Huemer defends phenomenal conservatism (PC) and also the further claim that belief in any rival theory is self-defeating (SD). Here I construct a dilemma for his position: either PC and SD are incompatible, or belief in PC is itself self-defeating. I take these considerations to suggest a better self-defeat argument for (belief in) PC and a strong form of internalism.

We argue that explanationist views in epistemology continue to face persistent challenges to both their necessity and their sufficiency. This is so despite arguments offered by Kevin McCain in a paper recently published in this journal which attempt to show otherwise. We highlight ways in which McCain’s attempted solutions to problems we had previously raised go awry, while also presenting a novel challenge for all contemporary explanationist views.

The objection from the insolvability of principle-based modal disagreements appears to support the claim that there are no objective modal facts, or at the very least modal facts cannot be accounted for by modal rationalist theories. An idea that resurfaced fairly recently in the literature is that the use of ordinary empirical statements presupposes some prior grasp of modal notions. If this is correct, then the idea that we may have a total agreement concerning empirical facts and disagree on modal facts, which is the starting point of the objection from the insolvability of modal disagreement, is undercut. This paper examines the no-separation thesis and shows that some of the arguments against the classical (empiricist) distinction between empirical and modal statements fail to be conclusive if they are taken to defend a strong notion of metaphysical possibility. The no-separation thesis appears to work only in theoretical frameworks where metaphysical modalities are considered (broadly) conceptual. For these reasons, the no-separation thesis cannot save modal rationalism from the insolvability of modal disagreement.

The concern of deductive logic is generally viewed as the systematic recognition of logical principles, i.e., of logical truths. This paper presents and analyzes different instantiations of the three main interpretations of logical principles, viz. as ontological principles, as empirical hypotheses, and as true propositions in virtue of meanings. I argue in this paper that logical principles are true propositions in virtue of the meanings of the logical terms within a certain linguistic framework. Since these principles also regulate and control the process of deduction in inquiry, i.e., they are prescriptive for the use of language and thought in inquiry, I argue that logic may, and should, be seen as an instrument or as a way of proceeding (modus procedendi ) in inquiry.

Definitions I presented in a previous article as part of a semantic approach in epistemology assumed that the concept of derivability from standard logic held across all mathematical and scientific disciplines. The present article argues that this assumption is not true for quantum mechanics (QM) by showing that concepts of validity applicable to proofs in mathematics and in classical mechanics are inapplicable to proofs in QM. Because semantic epistemology must include this important theory, revision is necessary. The one I propose also extends semantic epistemology beyond the ‘hard’ sciences. The article ends by presenting and then refuting some responses QM theorists might make to my arguments.