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"Goldman, Alvin I."
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Against global method safety
The global method safety account of knowledge states that an agent’s true belief that p is safe and qualifies as knowledge if and only if it is formed by method M, such that her beliefs in p and her beliefs in relevantly similar propositions formed by M in all nearby worlds are true. This paper argues that global method safety is too restrictive. First, the agent may not know relevantly similar propositions via M because the belief that p is the only possible outcome of M. Second, there are cases where there is a fine-grained belief that is unsafe and a relevantly similar coarse-grained belief (with looser truth conditions) that is safe and where both beliefs are based on the same method M. Third, the reliability of conditional reasoning, a basic belief-forming method, seems to be sensitive to fine-grained contents, as suggested by the wide variation in success rates for thematic versions of the Wason selection task.
Journal Article
A diachronic perspective on peer disagreement in veritistic social epistemology
The main issue in the epistemology of peer disagreement is whether known disagreement among those who are in symmetrical epistemic positions undermines the rationality of their maintaining their respective views. Douven and Kelp have argued convincingly that this problem is best understood as being about how to respond to peer disagreement repeatedly over time, and that this diachronic issue can be best approached through computer simulation. However, Douven and Kelp’s favored simulation framework cannot naturally handle Christensen’s famous Mental Math example. As a remedy, I introduce an alternative (Bayesian) simulation framework, Laputa, inspired by Alvin Goldman’s seminal work on veritistic social epistemology. I show that Christensen’s conciliatory response, reasonably reconstructed and supplemented, gives rise to an increase in epistemic (veritistic) value only if the peers continue to recheck their mental math; else the peers might as well be steadfast. On a meta-level, the study illustrates the power of Goldman’s approach when combined with simulation techniques for handling the computational issues involved.
Journal Article
“Give me the blade. Some things are worth spilling blood for.” Madeline Miller’s Circe and the issue of claiming agency
This article proposes an alternative interpretation—with regard to the current state of research—of Madeline Miller’s Circe as a character claiming her agency. In it, I capitalise on Devi and Khuraijam’s linking witchcraft and agency in Circe as well as Alvin Goldman’s theory of human action. On this basis, I substantiate the thesis that, in Madeline Miller’s Circe, the protagonist claims her agency through developing her witchcraft skills. This process consists of manifesting traits pertinent to being an active character, such as intentionality, motivation through desire or beliefs, and the will to initiate. Circe gradually and slowly moves through these stages to reach her independence and self-assuredness, which she lacks in her childhood. Therefore, in order to reflect these stages, the analytical part of the article is divided into three sections. The first section deals with the rare moments of Circe’s first attempts at witchcraft, which reveal her resolution and intention, even if she fails to act on them. In the second section, Circe’s desires and beliefs are explored as they represent the eventual force behind her future decisions and use of witchcraft. Finally, in the last section, I explore how the previous two stages come to fruition in the shape of Circe actively exercising her will to employ her now superb witchcraft skills in defiance of the rules and conventions that have bound her into submission thus far.
Journal Article
Normal Circumstances Reliabilism
Alvin Goldman’s paper “What Is Justified Belief ” and his book Epistemology and Cognition pioneered reliabilist theories of epistemic justifiedness. In light of counterexamples to necessity (demon worlds, brains-in-vats) and counterexamples to sufficiency (Norman the clairvoyant, Mr. Truetemp), Goldman has offered a number of refinements and modifications. This paper focuses on those refinements that relativize the justification conferring force of a belief-forming process to its reliably producing a high ratio of true beliefs over falsehoods in special circumstances: reliability in the actual world, in normal worlds, and in nonmanipulated environments. This paper argues that Goldman’s refinements fall short and suggests instead the relativization to reliability in normal circumstances. Normal circumstances are those where the belief-forming process acquired the etiological function of reliably inducing true beliefs. This theory invites the Swampman objection. Two lines of response are pursued.
Journal Article
Two Legacies of Goldman’s Epistemology
Goldman’s epistemology has been influential in two ways. First, it has influenced some philosophers to think that, contrary to erstwhile orthodoxy, relations of evidential support, or confirmation, are not discoverable a priori. Second, it has offered some philosophers a powerful argument in favor of methodological reliance on intuitions about thought experiments in doing philosophy. This paper argues that these two legacies of Goldman’s epistemology conflict with each other.
Journal Article
Doxastic Justification Is Fundamental
It is widely assumed that the notion of doxastic justification should be explained in terms of the more fundamental notion of propositional justification, a notion which itself explains evidential support relations as a priori knowable. It is argued here, following Goldman, that this is a mistake. Doxastic justification is the more fundamental notion, and once one sees this, one must recognize that evidential support relations have an ineliminable psychological dimension which undermines the claim that they are knowable a priori.
Journal Article
COMMENTS AND CRITICISM: AN INSUBSTANTIAL EXTERNALISM
Aspeitia presents Alvin I. Goldman's argument against internalism from section VII of his article published in the Journal of Philosophy. Then, he explains how Goldman's way of presenting the internalist/externalist debate in epistemology is related to the intrinsic/extrinsic debate in the metaphysics of properties. Finally, he shows how a simple variation on Goldman's argument can be used to prove that, for any object a and any of its properties P, a is extrinsically P.
Journal Article
ON WHAT IT TAKES TO BE AN EXPERT
This paper tackles the problem of defining what a cognitive expert is. Starting from a shared intuition that the definition of an expert depends upon the conceptual function of expertise, I shed light on two main approaches to the notion of an expert: according to novice-oriented accounts of expertise, experts need to provide laypeople with information they lack in some domain; whereas, according to research-oriented accounts, experts need to contribute to the epistemic progress of their discipline. In this paper, I defend the thesis that cognitive experts should be identified by their ability to perform the latter function rather than the former, as novice-oriented accounts, unlike research-oriented ones, fail to comply with the rules of a functionalist approach to expertise.
Journal Article