Bradley, D (2019) Are There Indefeasible Epistemic Rules? Philosophers' Imprint, 19. 3. ISSN 1533-628X
Abstract
What if your peers tell you that you should disregard your perceptions? Worse, what if your peers tell you to disregard the testimony of your peers? How should we respond if we get evidence that seems to undermine our epistemic rules? Several philosophers (e.g. Elga 2010, Titelbaum 2015) have argued that some epistemic rules are indefeasible. I will argue that all epistemic rules are defeasible. The result is a kind of epistemic particularism, according to which there are no simple rules connecting descriptive and normative facts. I will argue that this type of particularism is more plausible in epistemology than in ethics. The result is an unwieldy and possibly infinitely long epistemic rule — an Uber-rule. I will argue that the Uber-rule applies to all agents, but is still defeasible — one may get misleading evidence against it and rationally lower one’s credence in it.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2019 Darren Bradley. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 3.0 License. <www.philosophersimprint.org/019003/> (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/) |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science (Leeds) > School of Philosophy (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 22 Aug 2018 15:08 |
Last Modified: | 25 Jun 2023 21:29 |
Published Version: | http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.3521354.0019.003 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Michigan Publishing |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:134861 |
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