An Accuracy Based Approach to Higher Order Evidence

Schoenfield, Miriam

doi:10.1111/phpr.12329

Cited by 37 publications

(46 citation statements)

References 28 publications

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“…Similar cases of misleading higher-order evidence can be found in Christensen (2010), Elga (2013),Horowitz and Sliwa (2015),Schoenfield (2015;, and several chapters in this volume.…”

supporting

confidence: 77%

Higher-Order Defeat and the Impossibility of Self-Misleading Evidence

Skipper¹

2019

Higher-Order Evidence

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Two attractive theses about epistemic rationality—evidentialism and the enkratic principle—jointly imply that a certain sort of self-misleading evidence is impossible. That is to say, if evidentialism and the enkratic principle are both true, one’s evidence cannot support certain false beliefs about what one’s evidence supports. Recently, some epistemologists have argued that self-misleading evidence is possible, since misleading higher-order evidence doesn’t have the strong defeating force needed to rule out this possibility. The goal of this chapter is to offer an account of higher-order defeat that does indeed render self-misleading evidence impossible. Central to the account is the idea that higher-order evidence acquires its normative significance by influencing which conditional beliefs it’s rational to have. What emerges is an independently plausible view of higher-order evidence that allows us to reconcile evidentialism and the enkratic principle.

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“…Similar cases of misleading higher-order evidence can be found in Christensen (2010), Elga (2013),Horowitz and Sliwa (2015),Schoenfield (2015;, and several chapters in this volume.…”

supporting

confidence: 77%

Higher-Order Defeat and the Impossibility of Self-Misleading Evidence

Skipper¹

2019

Higher-Order Evidence

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“…Consider the following example, adapted from similar cases discussed among others by Christensen (2010), Elga (2013), Horowitz (2014), Lasonen-Aarnio (2014), Schoenfield (2018) and Worsnip (2018):…”

Section: Misleading Self-doubt Reasons Responsiveness and Coherencementioning

confidence: 93%

“…The puzzling feature of cases like Mathematics is that the (misleading) higher-order evidence does not weaken or undermine the agent's original first-order reasons. In 1 I take the label 'calibrationism' from Schoenfield (2015). particular, the premises of Jane's mathematical calculation keep entailing deductively her original conclusion: these premises are still as good reasons for believing the conclusion as one could have.…”

Section: Misleading Self-doubt Reasons Responsiveness and Coherencementioning

confidence: 99%

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Dispossessing Defeat

Salas

2019

Philos Phenomenol Research

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Higher-order evidence can make an agent doubt the reliability of her reasoning. When this happens, it seems rational for the agent to adopt a cautious attitude towards her original conclusion, even in cases where the higher-order evidence is misleading and the agent's original reasons were actually perfectly good. One may think that recoiling to a cautious attitude in the face of misleading self-doubt involves a failure to properly respond to one's reasons. My aim is to show that this is not so. My proposal is that (misleading) higher-order evidence can undermine the agent's possession of her first-order reasons, constituting what I call a dispossessing defeater. After acquiring the higher-order evidence, the agent is no longer in a position to rely competently on the relevant first-order considerations as reasons for her original conclusion, so that such reasons stop being available to her (even if they remain as strong as in the absence of the higher-order evidence). In this way, an agent with misleading higher-order evidence can adopt a cautious stance towards her original conclusion, while properly responding to the set of reasons that she possesses-a set that is reduced due to the acquisition of higher-order dispossessing defeaters. Reasons Responsiveness (Permission): It is permissible for S to φ if and only if, on balance, S's possessed normative reasons sufficiently support φ-ing.

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“…33For further discussion of such cases, see Christensen (2010), Lasonen‐Aarnio (2014), Schoenfield (2018) or Weatherson (2019). …”

mentioning

confidence: 99%