Recently, a number of epistemologists (notably Feldman [2007], [2009], and White [2005], [2013]) have argued for the rational uniqueness thesis, the principle that any set of evidence permits only one rationally acceptable attitude toward a given proposition. In contrast, this paper argues for extreme rational permissivism, the view that two agents with the same evidence (evidential peers) may sometimes arrive at contradictory beliefs rationally. This paper (1) identifies different versions of uniqueness and permissivism that vary in strength and range, (2) argues that evidential peers with different interests need not rationally endorse all the same hypotheses, (3) argues that evidential peers who weigh the theoretic virtues differently (that is, who have different standards) can sometimes rationally endorse contradictory conclusions, and finally (4) defends the permissivist appeal to standards against objections in the works of Feldman and White.
Unlike first-person Moorean sentences, it’s not always awkward to assert, “p, but you don’t know that p.” This can seem puzzling: after all, one can never get one’s audience to know the asserted content by speaking thus. Nevertheless, such assertions can be conversationally useful, for instance, by helping speaker and addressee agree on where to disagree. I will argue that such assertions also make trouble for the growing family of views about the norm of assertion that what licenses proper assertion is not the initiating epistemic position of the speaker but the (potential) resulting epistemic position of the audience.
This paper defends a new norm of assertion: Assert that p only if you are in a position to know that p. We test the norm by judging its performance in explaining three phenomena that appear jointly inexplicable at first: Moorean paradoxes, lottery propositions, and selfless assertions. The norm succeeds by tethering unassertability to unknowability while untethering belief from assertion. The PtK‐norm foregrounds the public nature of assertion as a practice that can be other‐regarding, allowing asserters to act in the best interests of their audience when psychological pressures would otherwise prevent them from communicating the knowable truth.
I argue that the story of God's commanding Abraham to sacrifice Isaac can be read as a variant of Kavka's (1983) Toxin Puzzle. On this reading, Abraham has no reason to kill Isaac, only reason to intend to kill Isaac. On one version of the Kavkan reading, it's impossible for Abraham, thus situated, to form the intention to kill Isaac. This would make the binding an impossible story: I explore the ethical and theological consequences of reading the story in this way. Finally, I suggest that analytic philosophers may have more to contribute to interpretative projects in philosophical theology than generally practised.
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