Most of us believe that induction and perception have some normative status that counter-induction and crystal gazing lack: the former are correct, but the latter are not. How are such beliefs about rationality justified? My dissertation examines two skeptical arguments that contend the answer is: theyre not.
The first skeptical worry centers on circularity. The only defense I can give for the claim that induction will mostly lead me to true beliefs will invoke induction it will point out that induction has been reliable in the past and thus conclude (via inductive inference) that induction will be reliable in the future. Much the same applies to perception: I can give a story about why I expect it to be reliable, but only by citing perceptual beliefs. These defenses seem worryingly circular.
Non-skeptical responses to this puzzle fall into two camps: Mooreans embrace the circular defenses of perception and induction; rationalists say that justification to believe that perception and induction are reliable is apriori. I defend Moorean responses to skepticism: the most plausible accounts of why the aforementioned reasoning is viciously circular fail. In addition, I argue that rationalismwhile perhaps trueis insufficient to deflect the skeptical worry. It turns out that even rationalists need to embrace Moorean circular reasoning.
The second skeptical worry focuses on the etiology of our faculties of reason. There is some causal story about why I am inclined to engage in certain patterns of normative reasoning: roughly, evolution by natural selection. Selection pressures favored norms that helped our ancestors find food and show off to potential mates. A puzzle arises because correctness does not appear well-positioned to provide an adaptive edge. The correct ways of reasoning about normative matters might have aided survival, but only as a fortuitous side effect - so getting it right would be a fluke.
I show that this puzzle yields a serious skeptical worry. We ought to doubt that we are trustworthy normative reasoners unless there is an explanatory connection between the normative facts and our faculties for normative reasoning.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-08022011-191107 |
| Date | 30 September 2011 |
| Creators | Willenken, Timothy |
| Contributors | Anil Gupta, Karl Schafer, Cian Dorr, John McDowell, Kieran Setiya |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-08022011-191107/ |
| Rights | restricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
Page generated in 0.0015 seconds