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After the Spade Turns: Disagreement, First Principles and Epistemic Contractarianism
In: International Journal for the Study of SkepticismReasons, Wittgenstein warned, come to an end; we hit bedrock; the spade is turned. Long philosophical tradition, not to mention common sense, agrees. You can’t justify everything. In this paper, I examine a case where it is not only especially compelling that reasons run out—it is especially troubling. The case is when there is disagreement over explicitly epistemic first principles. Epistemic first principles are principles that announce that basic methods for acquiring beliefs are reliable. Where we disagree over such principles, we face the alarming prospect of being unable to defend them without relying on the very methods whose reliability is in question. I then explore, however briefly, what options remain in such situations for still engaging in what we might call rational persuasion. I suggest our prospects depend on whether we can make sense of giving objective practical reasons for our epistemic first principles.
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Alston W.P. (1986). “ Epistemic Circularity,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 47: 1–30.
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Cohen L.J. (1989). “ Belief and Acceptance,” Mind 98: 367–389.
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Lynch M., (2010) “ Epistemic Disagreement and Epistemic Incommensurability.” In Haddock , A., , Miller A., , and Pritchard D. (eds.), Social Epistemology, 262–277. Oxford University Press.
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———. (2012a). “ Democracy as a Space of Reasons.” In Elkins J., and Norris A. (eds.), Truth and Democracy, 114–129. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
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———. (2012b). In Praise of Reason. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
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———. (2013). “ Epistemic Commitments, Epistemic Agency and Practical Reasons,” Philosophical Issues 23: 343–362.
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Neta R. (2006). “ Epistemology Factualized: New Contractarian Foundations for Epistemology,” Synthese 150: 247–280.
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Pritchard D. (2005). Epistemic Luck. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Pritchard D. (2011).“ Wittgenstein on Scepticism.” In McGinn, M. and Kuusela, O. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Wittgenstein, 521–547. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
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Reid T. (2000) Inquiry into the Human Mind: On the Principles of Common Sense. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
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Williams M. (1995). Unnatural Doubts: Epistemological Realism and the Basis of Skepticism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
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Wittgenstein L., (1977). On Certainty. Edited by Anscombe G.E.M., and von Wright G.H.; translated by D. Paul and G.E.M. Anscombe. Oxford: Blackwell.
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2
See Pritchard (2005) on epistemic ‘angst.’
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4
See also Williams (1995) and Pritchard (ms).
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After the Spade Turns: Disagreement, First Principles and Epistemic Contractarianism
In: International Journal for the Study of SkepticismReasons, Wittgenstein warned, come to an end; we hit bedrock; the spade is turned. Long philosophical tradition, not to mention common sense, agrees. You can’t justify everything. In this paper, I examine a case where it is not only especially compelling that reasons run out—it is especially troubling. The case is when there is disagreement over explicitly epistemic first principles. Epistemic first principles are principles that announce that basic methods for acquiring beliefs are reliable. Where we disagree over such principles, we face the alarming prospect of being unable to defend them without relying on the very methods whose reliability is in question. I then explore, however briefly, what options remain in such situations for still engaging in what we might call rational persuasion. I suggest our prospects depend on whether we can make sense of giving objective practical reasons for our epistemic first principles.
| All Time | Past Year | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 281 | 94 | 8 |
| Full Text Views | 209 | 15 | 4 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 45 | 22 | 9 |