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    Respecting all the evidence

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    Author
    Sliwa, Paulina; Horowitz, Sophie
    Date
    2015
    Abstract
    Plausibly, you should believe what your total evidence supports. But cases of misleading higher-order evidence—evidence about what your evidence supports—present a challenge to this thought. In such cases, taking both first-order and higher-order evidence at face value leads to a seemingly irrational incoherence between one’s first-order and higher-order attitudes: you will believe P, but also believe that your evidence doesn’t support P. To avoid sanctioning tension between epistemic levels, some authors have abandoned the thought that both first-order and higher-order evidence have rational bearing. This sacrifice is both costly and unnecessary. We propose a principle, Evidential Calibration, which requires rational agents to accommodate first-order evidence correctly, while allowing rational uncertainty about what to believe. At the same time, it rules out irrational tensions between epistemic levels. We show that while there are serious problems for some views on which we can rationally believe, “P, but my evidence doesn’t support P”, Evidential Calibration avoids these problems. An important upshot of our discussion is a new way to think about the relationship between epistemic levels: why first-order and higher-order attitudes should generally be aligned, and why it is sometimes—though not always—problematic when they diverge.
    Citation
    Sliwa, Paulina and Horowitz, Sophie. "Respecting all the evidence." Philosophical Studies, (2015) Springer: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11098-015-0446-9.
    Published Version
    http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11098-015-0446-9
    Keyword
    higher-order evidence; rationality; reliability; epistemic akrasia; epistemic levels
    Type
    Journal article
    Publisher
    Springer
    Citable link to this page
    https://hdl.handle.net/1911/79025
    Rights
    This is an author's peer-reviewed final manuscript, as accepted by the publisher. The published article is copyrighted by Springer.
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    • Faculty Publications [4990]
    • Philosophy Department publications [12]

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    Home | FAQ | Contact Us | Privacy Notice | Accessibility Statement
    Managed by the Digital Scholarship Services at Fondren Library, Rice University
    Physical Address: 6100 Main Street, Houston, Texas 77005
    Mailing Address: MS-44, P.O.BOX 1892, Houston, Texas 77251-1892
    Site Map