Pluralistic ignorance is a socio-psychological phenomenon that involves a systematic discrepancy between people's private beliefs and public behavior in certain social contexts. Recently, pluralistic ignorance has gained increased attention in formal and social epistemology. But to get clear on what precisely a formal and social epistemological account of pluralistic ignorance should look like, we need answers to at least the following two questions: What exactly is the phenomenon of pluralistic ignorance? And can the phenomenon arise among perfectly rational agents? In this paper, we propose answers to both these questions. First, we characterize different versions of pluralistic ignorance and define the version that we claim most adequately captures the examples cited as paradigmatic cases of pluralistic ignorance in the literature. In doing so, we will stress certain key epistemic and social interactive aspects of the phenomenon. Second, given our characterization of pluralistic ignorance, we argue that the phenomenon can indeed arise in groups of perfectly rational agents. This, in turn, ensures that the tools of formal epistemology can be fully utilized to reason about pluralistic ignorance.
Alethic pluralism is the view that the nature of truth is not uniform across domains. There are several ways of being true (T 1 ... T n ). A simple argument, the 'instability challenge ', purports to show that this view is inherently unstable. One can simply say that something is uniformly true if and only if it is T 1 or ... or T n . Being uniformly true is a single truth property that applies across the board, and so the nature of truth is uniform across domains, contra pluralism. I defend pluralism against the instability challenge. I show that the challenge bifurcates: one challenge is formulated in terms of predicates, and the other is formulated in terms of properties. The pluralist has the resources to defuse both of these. The sparse/abundant property distinction and considerations of explanatory asymmetry play a crucial role in my argument.
In this paper I discuss two fundamental challenges concerning Crispin Wright's notion of entitlement of cognitive project: first, whether entitlement is an epistemic kind of warrant since, seemingly, it is not underwritten by epistemic reasons, and, second, whether, in the absence of such reasons, the kind of rationality associated with entitlement is epistemic in nature. The paper investigates three possible lines of response to these challenges. According to the first line of response, entitlement of cognitive project is underwritten by epistemic reasons-and thus supports epistemic rationality-because, when P is an entitlement, trust in P is a dominant strategy with respect to promotion of epistemic value. The second line of response replaces dominance with maximization of expected utility. I argue that both of these proposals are flawed and develop an alternative line of response.
In this paper we explore the potential bearing of the extended mind thesisthe thesis that the mind extends into the world-on epistemology. We do three things. First, we argue that the combination of the extended mind thesis and reliabilism about knowledge entails that ordinary subjects can easily come to enjoy various forms of restricted omniscience. Second, we discuss the conceptual foundations of the extended mind and knowledge debate. We suggest that the theses of extended mind and extended knowledge lead to a bifurcation with respect to the concepts of belief and knowledge. We suggest that this conceptual bifurcation supports a form of pluralism about these concepts. Third, we discuss whether something similar can be said at the metaphysical level.
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