Toward a Lockean Unification of Formal and Traditional Epistemology

A Lockean metaphysics of belief that understands outright belief as a determinable with degrees of confidence as determinates is supposed to effect a unification of traditional coarse-grained epistemology of belief with fine-grained epistemology of confidence. But determination of belief by confiden...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inEpisteme Vol. 19; no. 1; pp. 111 - 129
Main Authors Lee, Matthew Brandon, Silva, Paul
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Cambridge, UK Cambridge University Press 01.03.2022
Subjects
Attitudes
Beliefs
Confidence
Epistemology
Inheritances
Metaphysics
Lockean thesis
mistuned knowledge
determinate
credal reductivism
threshold view
determinable
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Summary:A Lockean metaphysics of belief that understands outright belief as a determinable with degrees of confidence as determinates is supposed to effect a unification of traditional coarse-grained epistemology of belief with fine-grained epistemology of confidence. But determination of belief by confidence would not by itself yield the result that norms for confidence carry over to norms for outright belief unless belief and high confidence are token identical. We argue that this token-identity thesis is incompatible with the neglected phenomenon of “mistuned knowledge” – knowledge in the absence of rational confidence. We show how partial epistemological unification can be secured, even without token identity, given determination of outright belief by degrees of confidence. Finally, we suggest a direction for the pursuit of thoroughgoing epistemological unification.
ISSN:1742-3600
1750-0117
DOI:10.1017/epi.2020.11