Abstract
Let ‘strong normative evidentialism’ be the view that a belief is doxastically justified just when (i) the belief is (properly) based on evidence in the agent’s possession, and (ii) the evidence constitutes a good reason for the belief. Strong normative evidentialism faces two challenges. One is that of explaining which kinds of evidence can serve as a good reason for belief. The other is to explain how inferential justification is possible. If a belief p is based on a belief q that justifies p, then it would seem that the subject would need to be justified in believing that q makes p likely. The problem for the evidentialist is to explain what justifies this belief about likelihood. I will argue that the evidentialist can respond to both worries by construing basic evidence as seemings and then adopt a version of phenomenal dogmatism – the view that seemings can confer immediate and full justification upon belief – that takes seemings to be good reasons when they are evidence-insensitive in virtue of their phenomenology. This view meets the first challenge by explaining what kinds of evidence constitute a good reason. It meets the second challenge by taking beliefs that one phenomenon makes another phenomenon more likely to be immediately and fully justified by memory seemings.
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- 1.
Not all evidentialists construe evidence in terms of propositions. Some construe it in terms of mental states (see e.g. Conee and Feldman 2004; McCain 2014). When so construed, Alice’s evidence may be, e.g., her belief that a crocodile snatched a puppy and dragged it under water in a gated community in Miami yesterday.
- 2.
I shall here set aside a reading of the word ‘evidence’ according to which it refers to a particular object, as in ‘Don’t touch the knife. It’s evidence’.
- 3.
I here assume a standard distinction between propositional and doxastic justification. Propositional justification requires having good reasons for one’s belief, whereas doxastic justification requires (properly) basing one’s belief on the good reasons one possesses.
- 4.
This exposition does not exhaust the question of what counts as a defeater. The question remains whether holding a belief that defeats a seeming suffices for that belief having the status of a defeater. One might think that the belief would need to be justified in order for it to serve as a defeater. But even if the belief needn’t be justified in order for it to count as a defeater, a worry remains. If it seems to S that p but S believes that not-p, why think that the belief overrides the seeming (qua justifier)? I shall set aside this worry here. (For discussion and a solution, see McCain 2016. McCain suggests that one seeming p is a defeater of another seeming q just when p is the best explanation of the phenomenon in question. On this view, explanations must be available to the subject. This requires at a minimum that the subject has the disposition to have the appropriate sort of seeming about the explanation when reflecting on her evidence).
- 5.
I shall here assume a representational view of experience and seemings. For a defense of this sort of view, see Brogaard (2018).
- 6.
More precisely: a seeming p is properly based on an experience q just in case (i) the phenomenology and corresponding content of p is a subset of the phenomenology and corresponding content of q, and (ii) q has produced p exclusively as a result of a rule-based psychological (inferential) process.
- 7.
For a notion of proper basing with respect to belief that will suffice for our purposes, see McCain 2014.
- 8.
Chudnoff formulates the two views in terms of experience rather than seemings. Nothing of substance hinges on this deviance.
- 9.
- 10.
Note that there is nothing circular about this constraint, as evidence insensitivity is insensitivity to a defeater.
- 11.
Nor is evidence insensitivity a metacognitive feeling directed toward the seemings, as suggested by Chomanski and Chudnoff (2018) in their objection to this sort of view. It’s a property of the phenomenology of the seeming.
- 12.
One might hold that the basing relation is always inferential, consisting in either deductive, inductive or abductive inference. On this view, a belief that some tomatoes are red that is based on a belief that the tomato in front of me is red might be the result of deductive inference. A belief that the ravens we will spot this afternoon will be black that is based on a belief that all the ravens we have observed in the past have been black may be the result of inductive inference. Finally, a belief that it will rain that is based on a belief that there are dark clouds outside may be the result of abductive inference (inference to the best explanation). As noted above, I will not be able to provide an account of the basing relation for beliefs based on other beliefs in this paper, however. For a notion that will suffice for our purposes here, see McCain 2014.
- 13.
PIJ arguably does not present a problem for beliefs that are (accurately) deductively inferred from other beliefs. If you infer that some tomatoes are red on the basis of your belief that the tomato in front of you is red by following the rule of existential generalization, then your belief that the base makes the inferred belief probable (probability = 1) may be justified in virtue of you having an intellectual seeming that this rule is valid.
- 14.
For helpful discussion of these issues, I am grateful to Elijah Chudnoff, Kevin McCain, the students in a graduate seminar at University of Miami and audiences at Essen, Humboldt, Kirschberg, NYU, the SPP and UMSL.
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Brogaard, B. (2018). Phenomenal Dogmatism, Seeming Evidentialism and Inferential Justification. In: McCain, K. (eds) Believing in Accordance with the Evidence. Synthese Library, vol 398. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-95993-1_5
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