In this dissertation, I reconcile our knowledge of our own minds with philosophical naturalism. Philosophers traditionally hold that our knowledge of our own minds is especially direct and authoritative in comparison with other domains of knowledge. I introduce the subject in the first chapter. In the second and third chapters, I address the idea that we know our own minds directly. If self-knowledge is direct, it must not be grounded on anything more epistemically basic. This creates a puzzle for all epistemologists. For the naturalist, the puzzle is especially tricky. To say that self-knowledge has no epistemic ground threatens the naturalist’s ability to understand it as psychologically real. I argue that the idea that self-knowledge is direct is not well motivated and that models of direct self-knowledge have fundamental problems. In the fourth and fifth chapters, I examine first-person authority. I distinguish between epistemic authority, or being in a better position than others to know, and nonepistemic authority, or being immune to challenge according to some conventional norm. I argue that we have only limited epistemic authority over our own minds. I then consider whether there may be an interesting non-epistemic authority attached to the first-person perspective. This would locate first-person authority in connection with our responsibility for our own minds. I argue that this sort of authority may exist, but is unlikely to threaten naturalism without further anti-naturalist commitments in the philosophy of mind. In the final two chapters, I explore the possibility that the underlying disagreements between naturalists and anti-naturalists are about the nature of belief. I consider what failures of self-knowledge might demonstrate about the nature of belief. I show how, with the proper understanding of belief, a theory of self-knowledge can assuage some of these worries. Having adopted a conception of belief that makes sense for philosophy and empirical psychology, I outline a positive theory of self-knowledge and suggest directions for future research.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

Epistemologists often debate whether we ought to be internalists or externalists about epistemic justification. Internalists say that whether an agent's belief is justified depends on facts internally accessible to the agent, and externalists deny this. But what if internalists and externalists could both be right? This would be a pluralist view of epistemic justification. You might think that a pluralist view would be plausible because it would allow us to explain why we have different intuitions in different cases, and it would allow us to use different concepts for different purposes. In this paper, I argue the pluralist view has several serious flaws that make it much less plausible than it might initially seem. I show that pluralists run into even worse problems than monists when trying to vindicate intuitions about cases. They also run into problems when trying to specify a singular concept of epistemic justification to use for a certain purpose. It is therefore unclear what reason we would have to adopt a pluralist stance. I conclude that we ought to be monists about epistemic justification. / Master of Arts / Epistemologists often debate what it is that makes a belief justified. The view that the criteria for justification are internal to an agent is called "internalism" and the view that the criteria include factors external to an agent is callee "externalism." But what if internalists and externalists could both be right? This would be a pluralist view of epistemic justification. You might think that a pluralist view would be plausible because it would allow us to explain why we have different intuitions in different cases, and it would allow us to use different concepts for different purposes. In this paper, I argue the pluralist view has several serious flaws that make it much less plausible than it might initially seem.

Foundationalism about justification has historically enjoyed widespread acceptance among philosophers despite equally widespread disagreement about how foundational justification is possible. It is widely agreed that all knowledge must by justified by a foundation that does not stand in need of justification, but philosophers disagree on what could provide that foundation. Internalists, who look for justification in factors internal to rational agents, tend to agree that foundational justification is provided by seemings, or the way things seem to one to be. This view has most commonly gone by the name 'Phenomenal Dogmatism' although variations of it have been defended. Phenomenal dogmatism has been criticized for being too permissive with regard to the states it counts as able to confer foundational justification. In this paper I will consider one attempt, offered by Berit Brogaard, to revise phenomenal dogmatism in response to these criticisms. I will argue that Brogaard's revised view has significant problems of its own. Specifically, it does not account for problems arising from the possibility of cognitively penetrated perceptions. / Master of Arts

The literature on the ethics of presenting as queer has been largely confined to a commonly acknowledged phenomenon called "passing," or fully concealing one's membership to a marginalized group. Often employed as a survival strategy, many are sympathetic to the idea that one should be able to pass if need be. With that said, many philosophers argue that it is inextricably tied to oppression in the sense that acts of passing are acts complicit with one's own oppression. Because of the usually drastic alteration to one's appearance or behavior passing encompasses, along with its connection to oppression, a larger problem has gone unnoticed: covering. Covering differs from passing as one's membership to a marginalized community is now background knowledge in any social interaction where one may cover. Covering, then, depicts the intentional editing of one's behavior to modify the way in which their marginalized status is communicated to an audience. It is because one has announced their status as a community member that this concept often surfaces without controversy. This, at first, is intuitive. Why should someone be able to permissibly hide the entirety of their identity if partial concealment is impermissible? In the end, the very reason that covering is often excluded from the ethical discourse – that one has already announced their status as a marginalized community member – is actually a reason for my claim, that covering is wrong but passing is not, rather than one against it. I begin my argument with a negative claim: there is no duty not to cover. After explaining why this is the case, I argue for my second, positive claim: there is a duty to refrain from covering. If successful, my argument should show that a duty not to pass, or to be out, is too demanding. This will offer a better starting point for a relocation of some duty, which I argue should be on covering. If it is placed on covering, then demandingness concerns are circumvented and the goal of a duty to be out is more tangible. / Master of Arts / The acts of passing and covering are socially constructed. To research them further, I spent a significant amount of time understanding others' experiences of passing and covering. This involved finding articles where one intentionally engaged in either act, as well as their commentary on how they believe others perceived these actions. Upon gaining more understanding on these aspects of passing and covering, I also spent time researching the social constructs that make these acts as important as they are. Specifically, it seems that queer people are often thought to represent the queer community, whether they want to or not, just because of how others view us. In light of this, it seemed especially important to understand why this is the case. This is where my research on standpoint epistemology entered the argument. Lastly, the goal of this project was not simply to understand these acts but to use that understanding in an attempt to alter the way the queer community is viewed. Because of this, I also researched how societal perceptions may change, specifically in reference to queer people. Here, I was able to find that those who do not accept the queer community are often unaccepting due to their lack of familiarity with the community, rather than because there was a logical issue that. In other words, it does not seem that rational persuasion is especially helpful in changing opinions on the queer community. This seems to provide good reason to begin to analyze the way the queer community is perceived by others.

I consider whether evolutionary explanations can debunk our moral beliefs. Most contemporary discussion in this area is centred on the question of whether debunking implications follow from our ability to explain elements of human morality in terms of natural selection, given that there has been no selection for true moral beliefs. By considering the most prominent arguments in the literature today, I offer reasons to think that debunking arguments of this kind fail. However, I argue that a successful evolutionary debunking argument can be constructed by appeal to the suggestion that our moral outlook reflects arbitrary contingencies of our phylogeny, much as the horizontal orientation of the whale’s tail reflects its descent from terrestrial quadrupeds. An introductory chapter unpacks the question of whether evolutionary explanations can debunk our moral beliefs, offers a brief historical guide to the philosophical discussion surrounding it, and explains what I mean to contribute to this discussion. Thereafter follow six chapters and a conclusion. The six chapters are divided into three pairs. The first two chapters consider what contemporary scientific evidence can tell us about the evolutionary origins of morality and, in particular, to what extent the evidence speaks in favour of the claims on which debunking arguments rely. The next two chapters offer a critique of popular debunking arguments that are centred on the irrelevance of moral facts in natural selection explanations. The final chapters develop a novel argument for the claim that evolutionary explanations can undermine our moral beliefs insofar as they show that our moral outlook reflects arbitrary contingencies of our phylogeny. A conclusion summarizes my argument and sets out the key questions that arise in its wake.

Abstract In this research report, the author defends Peter van Inwagen’s modal skepticism. Van Inwagen accepts that we have much basic, everyday modal knowledge, but denies that we have the capacity to justify philosophically interesting modal claims that are far removed from this basic knowledge. The author also defends the argument by means of which van Inwagen supports his modal skepticism. Van Inwagen argues that Stephen Yablo’s recent and influential account of the relationship between conceivability and possibility supports his skeptical claims. The author’s defence involves a creative interpretation and development of Yablo’s account, which results in a recursive account of modal epistemology, what the author calls the “safe explanation” model of modal epistemology. The defence of van Inwagen’s argument also involves a rebuttal to objections offered to van Inwagen by Geirrson and Sosa.

How are beliefs about the nature of knowledge reflected and reproduced in language use? It is clear that some linguistic resources, e.g. the modal verbs may and must, indicate one’s epistemic stance with respect to a proposition, i.e. one’s judgement of how likely it is to be true. What is less clear is how the use of such resources relates to speakers’ beliefs about the nature of knowledge per se, i.e. their epistemic policies (Teller 2004). To investigate the putative relationship between epistemological variation and linguistic variation, I examine samples of written and spoken English from a community that is particularly epistemologically diverse: academia. I synthesize research on social epistemology, sociolinguistics, linguistic anthropology, and Academic English (AE) to propose an explanatory model of variability in the expression of epistemic stance. Then, using AE as a case study, I evaluate the predictions of this model both quantitatively via corpus analysis of research articles and regression modelling of interview data, as well as qualitatively via analysis of discursive practices in terms of experience-organizing frames (Goffman 1974) and the semiotic notion of indexicality (e.g. Irvine 2001), whereby ideological differences produce, and are reproduced by, linguistic differences. This research makes contributions to a number of fields. It questions the analytic validity of disciplinarity, providing support for a unifying theory of variation in AE based instead on an epistemologically principled analysis of institutional language use. The indexical basis of sociolinguistic research on language and belief/identity is problematized by attending to epistemological context; the ramifications of this will be explored in future research. I develop a linguistic metric of epistemic belief, offering a means of developing a quantitative social epistemology to complement that field’s highly articulated theoretical work. Applications beyond academia are possible in areas concerned with knowledge management and transfer, such as public health.