Metaphysics and Epistemology Group (Tuesday - Week 7, MT25)

Abstract: Traditionally, Epistemic Purism has come under attack from pragmatic encroachment via indirect routes, i.e. via knowledge-action or knowledge-assertion links. The good news for us purists is that we've moved past that: as it turns out, the links were guilty of ambiguating on normative types. More recently, however, a more serious (direct) threat has started surfacing: a threat to Epistemic Purism from the normativity of reasoning. The thought, very roughly, goes as follows: the attitudes we form in the process of reasoning through our evidence are governed by epistemic norms that are pragmatically encroached. If so, justification in general is pragmatically encroached.  This talk defends purism: I show that the trouble lies with an (admittedly) very popular, but mistaken independence priciple concerning the evidential support relation and the evidential having relation. I also sketch a nicely purist view of the epistemic normativity governing our attitudes in the process of reasoning.