Basic Knowledge and Conditions on Knowledge

How do we know what we know? In this stimulating and rigorous book, Mark McBride explores two sets of issues in contemporary epistemology: the problems that warrant transmission poses for the category of basic knowledge; and the status of conclusive reasons, sensitivity, and safety as conditions that are necessary for knowledge. To have basic knowledge is to know (have justification for) some proposition immediately, i.e., knowledge (justification) that doesn’t depend on justification for any other proposition. This book considers several puzzles that arise when you take seriously the possibility that we can have basic knowledge. McBride’s analysis draws together two vital strands in contemporary epistemology that are usually treated in isolation from each other. Additionally, its innovative arguments include a new application of the safety condition to the law. This book will be of interest to epistemologists―both professionals and students

Intuitive Closure, Transmission Failure, and Doxastic justification

In response to the claim that certain epistemically defective inferences such as Moore’s argument lead us to the conclusion that we ought to abandon closure, Crispin Wright suggests that we can avoid doing so by distinguishing it from a stronger principle, namely transmission. Where closure says that knowledge of a proposition is a necessary condition on knowledge of anything one knows to entail it, transmission makes a stronger claim, saying that by reasoning deductively from known premises one can thereby acquire knowledge of or justification for the conclusion. Wright’s thought is that in cases such as Moore what is really going on is a failure of transmission, not a failure of closure. The problem with this claim is that it relies on an outdated formulation of closure which few nowadays would find plausible. Once we stipulate that it is the intuitive closure principle that deserves our attention, it becomes far less obvious that the project of diagnosing what is wrong with arguments such as Moore in terms of transmission failure but not closure failure can be vindicated. In order to demonstrate this claim, I consider intuitive closure of propositional justification vs. transmission of propositional justification and concede that perhaps these can come apart in the way that Wright suggests. I then argue that despite this concession, we also need an answer to the question of whether intuitive closure for doxastic justification and transmission for doxastic justification can come apart. We need an answer to this question because our ultimate interest in these issues stems from our interest in whether knowledge obeys closure, not merely whether propositional justification does. I argue that, even on the assumption that there is transmission failure of propositional justification, there is no transmission failure of doxastic justification. And if this is true, then there is no transmission failure of knowledge either. The transmission failure diagnosis of Moore’s argument and its ilk is thus in trouble

Social Knowledge and Social Norms

Social knowledge, for the most part, is knowledge through testimony. This essay separates knowledge from justification, characterizes testimony as a source of belief, explains why testimony is a source of knowledge, canvasses arguments for anti-reductionism and for reductionism in the reductionism vs. anti-reductionism debate, addresses counterexamples to knowledge transmission, defends a safe basis account of testimonial knowledge, and turns to social norms as a partial explanation for the reliability of testimony

Informed consent and the transmission of sexual disease: Dadson Revivified

This article examines the impact of the decisions in R v Dica (2004) and R v Konzani (2005) on the extent of the defence of consent. As well as analysing the impact of the decisions on the extent of the defence where a defendant faces criminal liability for the transmission of sexual disease, it also considers and examines the wider issue of whether the presence or absence of consent forms part of the actus reus of the relevant assault offence or whether it is a separate and independent element that stands outside of the conduct component of the offence. It is argued that recent developments have given insufficient consideration to accepted doctrine and revived much criticised principles by focusing on unknown circumstances of justification rather than the defendant's state of knowledge and mind

Money in monetary policy design under uncertainty: a formal characterization of ECB-style cross-checking

The European Central Bank has assigned a special role to money in its two pillar strategy and has received much criticism for this decision. The case against including money in the central bank’s interest rate rule is based on a standard model of the monetary transmission process that underlies many contributions to research on monetary policy in the last two decades. In this paper, we develop a justification for including money in the interest rate rule by allowing for imperfect knowledge regarding unobservables such as potential output and equilibrium interest rates. We formulate a novel characterization of ECB-style monetary cross-checking and show that it can generate substantial stabilization benefits in the event of persistent policy misperceptions regarding potential output. JEL Classification: E32, E41, E43, E52, E5

Money in Monetary Policy Design under Uncertainty: A Formal Characterization of ECB-Style Cross-Checking

The European Central Bank has assigned a special role to money in its two pillar strategy and has received much criticism for this decision. The case against including money in the central bank’s interest rate rule is based on a standard model of the monetary transmission process that underlies many contributions to research on monetary policy in the last two decades. In this paper, we develop a justification for including money in the interest rate rule by allowing for imperfect knowledge regarding unobservables such as potential output and equilibrium interest rates. We formulate a novel characterization of ECB-style monetary cross-checking and show that it can generate substantial stabilization benefits in the event of persistent policy misperceptions regarding potential output.Monetary Policy, Money, Quantity Theory, Phillips Curve, European Central Bank, Policy Under Uncertainty

Lost in transmission: Testimonial justification and practical reason

Transmission views of testimony hold that a speaker's knowledge or justification can become the audience's knowledge or justification. We argue that transmission views are incompatible with the hypothesis that one's epistemic state, together with one's practical circumstances, determines what actions are rationally permissible for an agent. We argue that there are cases where, if the speaker's epistemic state were transmitted to the audience, then the audience would be warranted in acting in particular ways. Yet, the audience in these cases is not so warranted, as their strength of justification does not come close to the speaker's

The Bayesian explanation of transmission failure

Even if our justified beliefs are closed under known entailment, there may still be instances of transmission failure. Transmission failure occurs when P entails Q, but a subject cannot acquire a justified belief that Q by deducing it from P. Paradigm cases of transmission failure involve inferences from mundane beliefs (e.g., that the wall in front of you is red) to the denials of skeptical hypotheses relative to those beliefs (e.g., that the wall in front of you is not white and lit by red lights). According to the Bayesian explanation, transmission failure occurs when (i) the subject’s belief that P is based on E, and (ii) P(Q|E) P(Q). No modifications of the Bayesian explanation are capable of accommodating such cases, so the explanation must be rejected as inadequate. Alternative explanations employing simple subjunctive conditionals are fully capable of capturing all of the paradigm cases, as well as those missed by the Bayesian explanatio

Not without justification

In this paper I take issue with Jonathan Sutton's attempt at defending the thesis that knowledge is justified belief. I argue, first, that the arguments he adduces in support of it fail. Second, I provide independent reason to believe that knowledge and justified belief come apart

The Method of Moral Hypothesis

Moral philosophy has become interested again in particular, substantive questions of right and wrong. In an effort to divine answers to such questions, philosophers often employ the following method: general rules are floated as potential principles of morality; the principles are regarded as confirmed insofar as they match our pre-theoretical intuitions about particular cases; and otherwise infirmed. Such principles, if sufficiently confirmed, are then used to overturn other, ‘aberrant’ moral intuitions that do not square with the rule. The aim of this work is to indict this ‘method of moral hypothesis’, and with it the moral theory project which relies on it. I argue that the method trades on an unsustainable picture of moral epistemology; that the motivations for engaging in it are without merit; and that its attractions as a systematizing tool are illusory. In chapter one, I examine some recent ‘etiological’ skeptical challenges to moral knowledge; and argue that such challenges succeed only against a particular sort of moral epistemology—the kind to which the moral theory project is wedded. I conclude that we should reject this epistemology, and the project with it. Chapter two aims to vindicate the charges of Pessimists about moral testimony—those who claim that testimony cannot transmit moral knowledge. I argue that one barrier to moral-knowledge transmission by testimony is its inability to transfer moral-conceptual ‘know-how’; more generally that the ‘Humean reasons’ which support testimony are insufficient to support moral knowledge; and that, for parallel reasons, the theory project cannot produce moral knowledge. Chapter three attacks a picture of justification which makes the theory project seem pressing. In its place, I argue for an alternative picture, on which justification is infected with certain pragmatic, contextual factors. This alternative undermines one of the motivations for the theory project: finding an ultimate justification for our moral beliefs. In chapter four, I unify these arguments; and argue that, in general, we are correct to reject any summarizing principle which conflicts with a strongly held, pre-theoretical moral verdict. This negates one of the central ambitions of the theory project. Its other motivations are, I argue, equally misplaced