Epistemic Norms

Epistemic duties are important for answering certain questions within normative epistemology. Besides their role as criteria of epistemic evaluation, they are also supposed to guide the intellectual conduct of epistemic agents. Recently, epistemic duties have become very unpopular in epistemology. One reason for this is a famous argument against epistemic duties given by Alston. In this paper, I will develop an alternative approach to epistemic duties, which does not fall prey to Alston’s argument. To illustrate this, I will sketch Alston’s argument and discuss two responses to it and their shortcomings. In addition, I will give an alternative response to Alston’s argument. This response presupposes an alternative approach to epistemic duties which I will describe in this paper. Moreover, I will characterize epistemic duties in more detail by giving and discussing necessary conditions for them.

There is a kind of objectivism in epistemology that involves the acceptance of objective epistemic norms. It is generally regarded as harmless. There is another kind of objectivism in epistemology that involves the acceptance of an objectivist account of justification, one that takes the justification of a belief to turn on its accuracy. It is generally regarded as hopeless. It is a strange and unfortunate sociological fact that these attitudes are so prevalent. Objectivism about norms and justification stand or fall together. Justification is simply a matter of conforming to norms. In this essay, I shall make the case for objectivism about justification.

While we've said more than we need to say about the distinction between justification and knowledge, epistemologists have said little about the distinction between justification and excuse. The aim of this paper is to offer some general suggestions about how this distinction should be drawn, why we should distinguish justification from rationality, and how this all sheds light on Cohen's new evil demon objection to externalism.  I shall argue that externalists have nothing to fear from the demon for there's nothing wrong with saying that the deceived subject's beliefs are excused, not justified.  I shall also argue that there's something wrong with Cohen's methodology. The intuitions that he hopes to elicit cannot have the significance he takes them to.  A norm might be a genuine norm even if it's not demon-proofed. (No norm could be demon-proofed!)

Epistemology is widely seen as a normative discipline like ethics. Just like moral facts, epistemic facts – i.e. facts about our beliefs’ epistemic justification, rationality, reasonableness, correctness, warrant, and the like – are standardly viewed as normative facts. Yet, whereas many philosophers have rejected the existence of moral facts, few have raised similar doubts about the existence of epistemic facts.
In recent years however, several metaethicists and epistemologists have
rejected this Janus-faced or dual stance towards the existence of moral and epistemic facts. As recent developments in metaethics and normativity theory have made clear, objections to the existence of moral facts really are metanormative objections that target the existence of normative facts more generally. But since epistemic facts are no less normative than moral facts, the argument goes, the existence of the former is equally threatened by metaethical objections.
In this thesis, I argue that this rejection of the dual stance fails because
epistemic facts are not normative facts. Although they imply norms, they do not imply genuine normativity since the epistemic norms of belief that they imply lack necessary normative authority or force. Unlike moral norms and just like e.g. norms of etiquette and the law, there is not automatically a normative reason to conform to epistemic norms. Therefore, even if metaethical objections target all normative facts, it does not follow that they also target epistemic facts. I offer a two-part abductive argument in favour of that conclusion. First, I argue that epistemic facts lack five commonly cited features of normative facts (but not of merely norm-implying facts). Then, I argue that this is best explained by the thesis that epistemic facts are merely norm-implying and not genuinely normative. I end by exploring the potential consequences of this conclusion for epistemology and metaethics.

This article is focused on answering the question to what extent one can be a sceptic. Sextus Empiricus’s Outlines of Scepticism serves as a guide. In section 1, it is investigated whether three logical laws have a certain foundation or are subject to doubt. In section 2, Sextus’s way to deal with these laws is examined; the question arises how dogmatic his approach is. After that, a possible ‘reply’ by Sextus to the criticism receives attention. Section 3 is concentrated on a possible alternative to Sextus’s approach. Besides logical laws, some important methods are concerned.

This thesis addresses philosophical problems concerning improper
assertions. The first part considers the issue of defining lying: here,
against a standard view, I argue that a lie need not intend to deceive
the hearer. I define lying as an insincere assertion, and then resort
to speech act theory to develop a detailed account of what an
assertion is, and what can make it insincere.
Even a sincere assertion, however, can be improper (e.g., it can be
false, or unwarranted): in the second part of the thesis, I consider
these kinds of impropriety. An influential hypothesis maintains that
proper assertions must meet a precise epistemic standard, and
several philosophers have tried to identify this standard. After
reviewing some difficulties for this approach, I provide an innovative
solution to some known puzzles concerning this issue. In my view,
assertions purport to aim at truth, but they are not subject to a norm
that requires speakers to assert a proposition only if it is true.

L’objectif de cet exposé est de présenter le pastiche publié par Manuel Quinon et Arnaud Saint-Martin, au cours de l’hiver 2015 (cf. Tremblay 2015). Ce pastiche, ainsi que les articles de révélation et d’analyse qui l’ont suivi, avaient pour vocation de revenir de manière critique sur la sociologie de l’universitaire Michel Maffesoli. Outre une théorie spécifique de la “postmodernité”, M. Maffesoli a structuré, à partir des années 1980, un réseau académique national et international. Nous souhaitons montrer dans cet exposé que bien que sa sociologie ne repose sur aucune base empirique conséquente, qu’elle manifeste une évidente “indifférence épistémique” (Engel 2014 ; article à paraître 2016), cette même sociologie demeure toutefois fortement structurée sur le plan des engagements ontologiques et axiologiques qui la caractérisent. La sociologie maffesolienne de la “postmodernité” se confond en fait avec une vision générale de l’homme et du monde, avec une “cosmologie”, au sens anthropologique du terme (Stoczkowski 2008). A partir de cet exemple, nous souhaitons interroger le pluralisme épistémologique en sociologie : celui-ci peut-il vraiment s’exempter de toute contrainte, de toute norme épistémique (cf. Engel & Mulligan 2003), au risque de sombrer dans le domaine de la conjecture pseudo-savante, qui en dit plus long sur la conception de l’homme et du monde de son énonciateur que sur une quelconque réalité sociale ?

The topic of epistemic normativity has come to the fore of recent work in epistemology, and so naturally, theories of knowledge, truth and justification have been increasingly held accountable to preserving normative epistemological
platitudes. Central to discussions of epistemic normativity are questions about epistemic agency and epistemic value. Here, our aim is to take up some of these issues as they come to bear on the rather unconventional brand of epistemology that was defended by Richard Rorty. Our purpose is to explore whether Rorty's epistemology - or perhaps his replacement for epistemology - can preserve these normative platitudes about epistemic agency, responsibility, achievement, and the value of knowledge. Our conclusion is a negative one: that Rorty's commitments leave him firmly at odds with some of the most plausible assumptions about epistemic agency and epistemic value.

How does knowledge come first? It comes first in the sense that you only come to have reasons in your possession once you know. Why is it first? It's first because it's distinctive. There is nothing but knowledge that could these reasons in your possession.  If this is right, the traditional view on which beliefs attain positive epistemic standing by being supported by reasons is mistaken.  Most defenders of the traditional view will say that perception or perceptual experience can provide us with reasons or evidence, but I argue here that perception cannot play the rational role that the traditional view requires.

On a standard view a subject's evidence or reasons determines what there is justification to believe and there is only justification to believe when there is strong evidential support. The standard view is wrong about the role that evidence and reasons play. While the reasons that bear on whether to believe determine what there is justification to believe, such reasons are not pieces of evidence and they do not supervene upon a subject's evidence.

Protocols, in an epistemic context, are rules or plans that (i) detail conditions for the selection of basic epistemic procedures and (ii) thereby restrict the ways that temporally extended processes of epistemic state change can unfold. A cluster of difficult problems in the intersection of epistemology and philosophy of logic can be connected and illuminated-if not analyzed and solved outright-by conceiving of norms of epistemic rationality in terms of protocols. The foregoing thesis can be developed and defended by deploying a formalism based on work in Logical Dynamics; this is the project of the dissertation proposed in this prospectus. The prospectus motivates the model, outlines its main features, and briefly outlines its applications to the aforementioned cluster of problems with a detailed chapter plan.

I investigate two limitations of common approaches to the alethic aspect of epistemic rationality. These approaches are either normative (what a reasoner ought to/may
believe?) or evaluative (how rational is a reasoner?), where evaluative approaches are often comparative (one reasoner is evaluated compared to another). The fact is that most of them fail in describing a standard of rationality satisfiable (i) on the face of blindspots and (ii) by finite reasoners (reasoners with limited cognitive resources). I propose a non-comparative evaluative function α, which accepts a set of beliefs as input and returns a numerical evaluation, and use this function to define a standard of rationality satisfiable on the face of blindspots and by finite reasoners. Function α also generates norms and evaluation methods (comparative and non-comparative) that can be used to investigate the rationality of finite reasoners and do not exhibit problems with blindspots. It is a result of this investigation that the project of providing alethic norms for finite reasoners is defective. In addition, the use of function α sheds light on important epistemological issues, such as the paradoxes of lottery and preface and the principles of clutter avoidance and reflection.

Research Articles
Mark J. BOONE, Inferential, Coherential, and Foundational Warrant: An Eclectic Account of the Sources of Warrant
T. Ryan BYERLY, A Dispositional Internalist Evidentialist Virtue Epistemology
Tjerk GAUDERIS, On Theoretical and Practical Doxastic Attitudes
Patrizio LO PRESTI, Moore’s Paradox and Epistemic Norms

Discussion Notes/Debate
Giovanni MION, Grueing Gettier

Abstract: On the standard story about knowledge, knowledge has a normative dimension by virtue of the fact that knowledge involves justification. On the standard story, justification is necessary but insufficient for knowledge. The additional conditions that distinguish knowledge from justified belief are normatively insignificant.  In this chapter we will consider whether the concept of knowledge might be irrelevant to normative questions in epistemology. Some proponents of the standard story might think that it is, but we shall see that the concept of knowledge might play three important roles in answering normative questions in epistemology. The concept might be useful in helping us understand evidence and epistemic reasons, the kind of rational support required for justification, and in formulating epistemic norms.

Juger irrationnelles une croyance, une émotion ou une action, c'est faire un jugement normatif. De tels jugements peuvent-ils être objectifs ? On montre qu'ils peuvent l'être dans une classe importante de cas : ceux où une personne a un ensemble d'attitudes qui sont inconsistantes avec ses propres normes, ces normes étant constitutives des attitudes considérées. Les normes constitutives sont des normes avec lesquelles les attitudes et les actions intentionnelles des agents doivent s'accorder pour que les jugements d'irrationalité deviennent intelligibles.

When is a person justified in believing a proposition? In this paper, I defend a view according to which a person is justified in believing a proposition just in case the person’s evidence sufficiently supports the proposition and the person responsibly acquired and sustained the evidence that supports the proposition. This view overcomes a deficiency in a prominent theory of epistemic justification. As championed by Earl Conee and Richard Feldman, Evidentialism is a theory subject to counterexamples at the hands of cases involving epistemic irresponsibility. I critically discuss such a case as put forward by Jason Baehr. After providing an argument that clarifies why the case is problematic for Evidentialism, I defend my argument from a response by Earl Conee. Then I develop a theory of epistemic justification capable of handling cases involving epistemic irresponsibility, and I defend this theory from evidentialist objections.

For many epistemologists and normativity theorists, epistemic norms necessarily entail normative reasons. Why or in virtue of what do epistemic norms have this necessary normative authority? According to what I call epistemic constitutivism, it is ultimately because belief constitutively aims at truth. In this paper, I examine various versions of the aim of belief thesis and argue that none of them can plausibly ground the normative authority of epistemic norms. I conclude that epistemic constitutivism is not a promising strategy for grounding epistemic normativity.

Articles
Patrick BONDY, How to Understand and Solve the Lottery Paradox
William A. BRANT, Levelling the Analysis of Knowledge via Methodological Scepticism
Caroline Alexandra MATHIEU, The Confrontation Between Qualitative and Quantitative Researchers: A Different Article, a Daring Publication
Peter MURPHY, Another Blow to Knowledge from Knowledge
Anguel S. STEFANOV, Zeno’s Paradoxes Revisited

Debate
Jimmy Alfonso LICON, Dissecting the Suicide Machine Argument: Insights from the Hales – Licon Debate
Clayton LITTLEJOHN, Are Epistemic Reasons Ever Reasons to Promote?
Nicolás LO GUERCIO, Reply to Palmira

An increasingly popular view in contemporary epistemology holds that the most fundamental norm governing belief is knowledge. According to this norm one shouldn’t believe what one doesn’t know. A prominent argument for the knowledge norm appeals to the claim that knowledge is the most general condition of epistemic assessment of belief, one entailing all other conditions under which we epistemically assess beliefs (truth, evidence, reliability…). This norm would provide an easy and straightforward explanation of why we assess beliefs along all these various epistemic dimensions. This article argues that this line of argument is ultimately unsuccessful. I show that the main premise of the argument actually supports the opposite conclusion: the norm of belief requires a condition weaker than knowledge. Furthermore, I argue that if we hold on to the assumption that knowledge is the most general condition of belief’s epistemic assessment, the fundamental norm of belief is factive: one is not permitted to believe a proposition p if it is not true that p.

This is a critical discussion of the accuracy-first approach to epistemic norms.  If you think of accuracy (gradational or categorical) as the fundamental epistemic good and think of epistemic goods as things that call for promotion, you might think that we should use broadly consequentialist reasoning to determine which norms govern partial and full belief. We will look at consequentialist arguments for probabilism and the normative Lockean view. I shall argue that the consequentialist framework isn't nearly as promising as it might first appear.

We shall evaluate two strategies for motivating the view that knowledge is the norm of belief. The first draws on observations concerning belief’s aim and the parallels between belief and assertion. The second appeals to observations concerning Moore’s Paradox. Neither of these strategies gives us good reason to accept the knowledge account. The considerations offered in support of this account motivate only the weaker account on which truth is the fundamental norm of belief.

This paper focuses on the relation between epistemic reasons and the subject's epistemic perspective. It tackles the questions of whether epistemic reasons are dependent on the perspective of the subject they are reasons for, and if so, whether they are dependent on the actual or the potential perspective. It is argued that epistemic reasons are either independent or minimally dependent on the subject's epistemic perspective. In particular, I provide three arguments supporting the conclusion that epistemic reasons are not dependent on the subject's actual perspective. Furthermore, I show that variants of these arguments apply against popular views holding that epistemic reasons depend on the subject's potential perspective, such as the view that epistemic reasons are facts that one is in a position to know.

Discusses epistemic norms and the demands that reasons place upon us.  Argues against evidentialist views on the grounds that relations between evidence and belief are not the only normatively significant relations.  Argues against knowledge-first approaches to epistemic normativity on the grounds that one might do no epistemic wrong even if one believes what one doesn't know.

Avec le pluralisme croissant et la participation démocratique en baisse, les théories de la démocratie délibérative ont retenu l'attention de nombreux philosophes et politologues. Le modèle délibératif, largement influencé par les oeuvres de John Rawls et Jürgen Habermas, soutient essentiellement que la légitimité démocratique repose sur l'échange public d'arguments concernant le bien commun et non sur les mécanismes traditionnels du vote et de la représentation. Les notions d'égalité et de réciprocité dans le débat public sont au centre de l'idéal délibératif. D'ailleurs, cette procédure plus équitable permettrait d'atteindre des décisions collectives plus rationnelles. Nous voyons donc que la rationalité des participants dans le débat public ainsi que leur capacité à définir collectivement le bien commun représentent deux des plus importants présupposés des théories délibératives de la démocratie. Ainsi, ces théories reposent sur une conception plutôt forte de la raison publique, qui exige que les raisons avancées dans le débat politique prennent la forme d'arguments impartiaux et soient recevables par tous. Cet excès de rationalisme a été l'objet de plusieurs critiques et les démocrates délibératifs formulent désormais des normes communicationnelles beaucoup plus souples et inclusives. Je souhaite défendre l'idée que cet assouplissement de la raison publique, quoique désirable, met en lumière les limites mêmes de la délibération que nous ne pouvons dépasser que par l'usage de mécanismes non délibératifs.

What is the source of epistemic normativity? In virtue of what do epistemic norms have categorical normative authority? According to epistemic teleologism, epistemic normativity comes from value. Epistemic norms have categorical authority because conforming to them is necessarily good in some relevant sense. In this article, I argue that epistemic teleologism should be rejected. The problem, I argue, is that there is no relevant sense in which it is always good to believe in accordance with epistemic norms, including in cases where the matter at hand is completely trivial. Therefore, if epistemology is normative, its normativity won't come from value.

There has been considerable discussion recently of consequentialist justifications of epistemic norms. In this paper, I shall argue that these justifications are not justifications. The consequentialist needs a value theory, a theory of the epistemic good. The standard theory treats accuracy as the fundamental epistemic good and assumes that it is a good that calls for promotion. Both claims are mistaken. The fundamental epistemic good involves accuracy, but it involves more than just that. The fundamental epistemic good is knowledge, not mere true belief, because the goodness of an epistemic state is connected to that state's ability to give us reasons. If I'm right about the value theory, this has a number of significant implications for the consequentialist project. First, the good-making features that attach to valuable full beliefs are not features of partial belief. The resulting value theory does not give us the values we need to give consequentialist justifications of credal norms. Second, the relevant kind of good does not call for promotion. It is good to know, but the rational standing of a belief is not determined by the belief's location in a ranked set of options. In the paper's final section, I explain why the present view is a kind of teleological non-consequentialism. There is a kind of good that is prior to the right, but as the relevant kind of good does not call for promotion the value theory shows us what is wrong with the consequentialist project.

According to a popular view in contemporary epistemology, a belief is justified if, and only if, it amounts to knowledge. Upholders of this view also hold that knowledge is the fundamental norm governing belief and that conforming to this norm is both necessary and sufficient for justification. These related claims constitute the core of a broadly externalist model of epistemic normativity. The main rationale for this model relies on parallels with the use of central normative notions in other normative disciplines, in particular in the practical and legal domains, where the notion of justification is most often employed and discussed. In this paper, assuming the same general framework and methodology, I argue against the claim that mere norm conformity is sufficient for justification. Following Gardner (2007), I argue that justification requires conformity to a norm for sufficient undefeated reasons. An important consequence of this result is the rejection of the claim that conformity to the norm of belief is necessary and sufficient for epistemic justification. Furthermore, assuming that only knowledge justifies belief, if justification can require more than norm conformity, the norm of belief can be some property falling short of knowledge, such as truth. In the concluding part of the paper, I sketch how a model of epistemic normativity can be developed within this externalist normative framework assuming that truth is the norm of belief.

Recent literature argues that knowledge is not necessary for epistemically proper assertion. The most prominent competing account on the market imposes a weaker, rational credibility norm on assertion (RCNA); it is argued that (1) theoretical considerations, such as a priori simplicity, speak in favour of RCNA, (2) the weaker norm scores equally well when it comes to accommodating linguistic data and (3) KNA, as opposed to RCNA, has a hard time explaining cases in which assertions on lesser epistemic standings do not render the speakers subject to criticism.
This paper tips the balance back in favour of the knowledge norm (KNA). I argue that: (1) the argument for the a priori simplicity of RCNA does not go through; (2) KNA scores better when it comes to accommodating linguistic data; (3) KNA and RCNA are shoulder to shoulder when it comes to explaining blamelessness of speakers in breach of the norm and (4) KNA fares better than RCNA in terms of a posteriori simplicity

In this chapter, we follow Edward Craig's (1990) advice: ask what the concept of knowledge does for us and use our findings as clues about its application conditions. What a concept does for us is a matter of what we can do with it, and what we do with concepts is deploy them in thought and language. So, we will examine the purposes we have in attributing knowledge. This chapter examines two such purposes, agent-evaluation and informant-suggestion, and brings the results to bear on an important debate about the application conditions of the concept of knowledge—the debate between contextualists and their rivals. }

The paper responds to arguments from Jessica Brown that there is nothing special about the use of 'knows' to criticize and defend action. Briefly, I respond that by using 'knows that p' in this context we close off a certain sort of objection to one's evaluation of the action -- the "epistemic" objection, according to which the agent doesn't have good enough evidence, strong enough grounds for p. For instance, if I say, "Bob should have taken a left back there, because he knew the restaurant was on Elm Street!," I close off the objection "but Bob didn't have good enough grounds for thinking it was on Elm." Contrast this with criticizing Bob's action by say8ing, "Bob should have taken a left because he had reason to believe it was on Elm Street." This doesn't close off responses of the form "well, he had good reason, but not good enough; he didn't want to take the risk." Such a response isn't always appropriate, but it sometimes is. Using 'knows' closes it off in a way that using 'has reason to believe' doesn't. Using 'knew p' closes it off in a way that merely using 'p' or 'he truly believed that p' doesn't.

GRUNDDATEN Dozent: Bahadir Eker, M.A. ([email protected]; Sprechstunde: n. V.) Tag & Uhrzeit: Mo, 12-14 Ort: Burse, Schellingzimmer Webseite: ILIAS-Ordner des Seminars (Passwort: "überzeugung") E-Mail-Adresse des Seminars: [email protected] (nur für die Einreichung von schriftlichen Seminarleistungen; nicht für Fragen usw.)

The purpose of this paper is to consider the explanatory resources that Robert Brandom‟s distinction between acknowledged and consequential commitments affords in relation to the problem of logical omniscience. With this distinction the importance of the doxastic perspective under consideration for the relationship between logic and norms of reasoning is emphasized, and it becomes possible to handle a number of problematic cases discussed in the literature without thereby incurring a commitment to revisionism about logic.

Abstract: In trying to distinguish the right kinds of reasons from the wrong, epistemologists often appeal to the connection to truth to explain why practical considerations cannot constitute reasons. The view they typically opt for is one on which only evidence can constitute a reason to believe. Talbot has shown that these approaches don’t exclude the possibility that there are non-evidential reasons for belief that can justify a belief without being evidence for that belief. He thinks that there are indeed such reasons and that they are the right kind of reasons to justify belief. The existence of such truth promoting non-epistemic reasons is said to follow from the fact that we have an epistemic end that involves the attainment of true belief. I shall argue that there are no such reasons precisely because there is an epistemic end that has normative authority.

Se dire que nos croyances reflètent l'influence de facteurs arbitraires et non-pertinents  peut être dérangeant. La découverte de l'importance de tels facteurs sur la manière dont nous évaluons les données disponibles devrait-elle nous faire réduire notre confiance en ces croyances ? Quelle est la bonne réaction ? Plus généralement, lorsque nous apprenons qu’une croyance reflète l’influence de facteurs non-pertinents, de combien devrions-nous réduire la vigueur de la croyance en question ? La réponse est : cela dépend. Cela dépend si oui ou non le facteur non-pertinent risque de nous empêcher d’être en accord avec nos propres standards pour raisonner. Si c'est oui, alors le fait de se rendre compte de l'influence de ce facteur devrait réduire la vigueur des croyances influencées par ce facteur. Si c'est non, alors non. Ceci est ma thèse.

While it is generally believed that justification is a fallible guide to the truth, there might be interesting exceptions to this general rule. In recent work on bridge-principles, an increasing number of authors have argued that truths about what a subject ought to do are truths we stand in some privileged epistemic relation to and that our justified normative beliefs are beliefs that will not lead us astray. If these bridge-principles hold, it suggests that justification might play an interesting role in our normative theories. In turn, this might help us understand the value of justification, a value that's notoriously difficult to understand if we think of justification as but a fallible means to a desired end. We will argue that these bridge-principles will be incredibly difficult to defend. While we do not think that normative facts necessarily stand in any interesting relationship to our justified beliefs about them, there might well be a way of defending the idea that our justified beliefs about what to do won't lead us astray. In turn, this might help us understand the value of justification, but this way of thinking about justification and its value comes with costs few would be willing to pay.

According to epistemic instrumentalism (EI), epistemic normativity arises from and depend on facts about our ends. On that view, a consideration C is an epistemic reason for a subject S to Φ only if Φ-ing would promote an end that S has. However, according to the Too Few Epistemic Reasons objection, this cannot be correct since there are cases in which, intuitively, C is an epistemic reason for S to Φ even though Φ-ing would not promote any of S’s ends. After clarifying both EI and the Too Few Epistemic Reasons objection, I examine three major instrumentalist replies and argue that none of them is satisfactory. I end by briefly sketching a fourth possible response, which is, I suggest, more promising than the other three.

Belief normativism is roughly the view that judgments about beliefs are normative judgments. Kathrin Glüer and Åsa Wikforss (G&W) suggest that there are two ways one could defend this view: by appeal to what might be called 'truth-norms', or by appeal to what might be called 'norms of rationality' or 'epistemic norms'. According to G&W, whichever way the normativist takes, she ends up being unable to account for the idea that the norms in question would guide belief formation. Plausibly, if belief normativism were true, the relevant norms would have to offer such guidance. I argue that G&W’s case against belief normativism is not successful. In section 1, I defend the idea that truth-norms can guide belief formation indirectly via epistemic norms. In section 2, I outline an account of how the epistemic norms might guide belief. Interestingly, this account may involve a commitment to a certain kind of expressivist view concerning judgments about epistemic norms.

Advocates of different deflationary accounts of truth agree that the concept of truth has no explanatory role to play in philosophy. They do not deny that truth talk is sometimes useful for the purposes of formulating and expressing explanations; but, they insist, such talk does not and cannot contribute any genuinely explanatory content to the explanations which we formulate with its help. The article offers and discusses a counterexample to this no-explanatory-role claim.

According to the Rational Threshold View, a rational agent believes p if and only if her credence in p is equal to or greater than a certain threshold. One of the most serious challenges for this view is the problem of statistical evidence: statistical evidence is often not sufficient to make an outright belief rational, no matter how probable the target proposition is given such evidence. This indicates that rational belief is not as sensitive to statistical evidence as rational credence. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, we argue that, in addition to playing a decisive role in rationalizing outright belief, non-statistical evidence also plays a preponderant role in rationalizing credence. More precisely, when both types of evidence are present in a context, non-statistical evidence should receive a heavier weight than statistical evidence in determining rational credence. Second, based on this result, we argue that a modified version of the Rational Threshold View can avoid...