The Reliability Challenge in Moral Epistemology

The Reliability Challenge to moral non-naturalism has received substantial attention recently in the literature on moral epistemology. While the popularity of this particular challenge is a recent development, the challenge has a long history, as the form of this challenge can be traced back to a skeptical challenge in the philosophy of mathematics raised by Paul Benacerraf. The current Reliability Challenge is widely regarded as the most sophisticated way to develop this skeptical line of thinking, making the Reliability Challenge the strongest epistemic challenge to normative nonnaturalism. In this paper, I argue that the innovations that have occurred since Benacerraf’s statement of the challenge are misconceived and confused in a number of ways. The Reliability Challenge is not the most potent epistemic challenge to moral non-naturalism. The most potent challenge comes from the fact that there is a causal condition on knowledge – or, more precisely, a becaual condition – that non-natural moral facts cannot satisfy

Ecumenical alethic pluralism

ABSTRACTEcumenical Alethic Pluralism is a novel kind of alethic pluralism. It is ecumenical in that it widens the scope of alethic pluralism by allowing for a normatively deflated truth property alongside a variety of normatively robust truth properties. We establish EAP by showing how Wright’s Inflationary Arguments fail in the domain of taste, once a relativist treatment of the metaphysics and epistemology of that domain is endorsed. EAP is highly significant to current debates on the nature of truth insofar as it involves a reconfiguration of the dialectic between deflationists and pluralists

The source of modal truth

This thesis concerns the source of modal truth. I aim to answer the question: what is it in virtue of which there are truths concerning what must have been the case as a matter of necessity, or could have been the case but isn't. I begin by looking at a dilemma put forward by Simon Blackburn which attempts to show that any realist answer to this question must fail, and I conclude that either horn of his dilemma can be resisted. I then move on to clarify the nature of the propositions whose truth I am aiming to find the source of. I distinguish necessity de re from necessity de dicto, and argue for a counterpart theoretic treatment of necessity de re. As a result, I argue that there is no special problem concerning the source of de re modal facts. The problem is simply to account for what it is in virtue of which there are qualitative ways the world could have been, and qualitative ways it couldn't have been. I look at two ways to answer this question: by appealing to truthmakers in the actual world, or by appealing to non-actual ontology. I develop a theory of truthmakers, but argue that it is unlikely that there are truthmakers for modal truths among the ontology of the actual. I look at the main possibilist ontology, David Lewis' modal realism, but argue that warrant for that ontology is unobtainable, and that we shouldn't admit non-actual possibilia into our ontology. I end by sketching a quasi-conventionalist approach to modality which denies that there are modal facts, but nevertheless allows that we can speak truly when we use modal language

An investigation into Moritz Schlick's foundationalist epistemology

Moritz Schlick is an influential figure in the history of philosophy, but his place in the narrative is often confined to having been the man who brought great thinkers together, rather than having been a great thinker himself. In this thesis I argue that Schlick’s ideas deserve greater philosophical recognition, and to this end I focus on his work on the foundations of scientific enquiry. I trace Schlick’s thought from Allgemeine Erkenntnislehre through the prism of Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico Philosophicus and into his later work on the form and content of statements. I then look at the Vienna Circle’s so-called “protocol sentences debate” and explain why Schlick felt the need to introduce his controversial account of Konstatierungen, his objective being to find epistemically-guaranteed foundations for our scientific beliefs. The problem with Schlick’s account appears to be that any statement that is epistemically secure cannot be connected appropriately to our network of scientific beliefs, which itself is never immune to revision. I argue that Schlick may have been attempting to bridge this gap with the middle-Wittgensteinian notion of the criteria for the acceptance of a statement as separate from its truth conditions, but I argue that this approach leaves the link between Konstatierungen and science underexplained. Finally, I consider some of the advances made in philosophy since Schlick’s death – Donald Davidson’s arguments against the need for individually-infallible judgements to form the foundations of knowledge, and David Chalmers’ scrutability framework which helps us explicate the connection needed between foundational statements and the system of science. I conclude that there is a viable position within the scrutability framework – “weak phenomenal structuralism” – that allows us to retain Schlick’s emphasis on the role of experience in science and implies that science, as a whole, is well-founded, but individually-guaranteed Konstatierungen must stand wholly outside this system