The limits of rational belief revision

A dilemma for the Darwinian debunker

Datos Bibliográficos

ID21364171
AutoresKatia Vavova (Mount Holyoke College, autor de correspondencia)
Año2021
Volumen55
Número3
Páginas717-734
Fecha de publicación2021-09-01
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaNoûs (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0029-4624 • E-ISSN: 1468-0068
EditorialWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/nous.12327
OpenAlexW3008256150
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas8
Referencias citadas26

We are fallible creatures, prone to making all sorts of mistakes. So, we should be open to evidence of error. But what constitutes such evidence? And what is it to rationally accommodate it? I approach these questions by considering an evolutionary debunking argument according to which (a) we have good, scientific, reason to think our moral beliefs are mistaken, and (b) rationally accommodating this requires revising our confidence in, or altogether abandoning the suspect beliefs. I present a dilemma for such debunkers, which shows that either we have no reason to worry about our moral beliefs, or we do but we can self‐correct. Either way, moral skepticism doesn't follow. That the evolutionary debunking argument fails is important; also important, however, is what its failure reveals about rational belief revision. Specifically, it suggests that getting evidence of error is a non‐trivial endeavor and that we cannot learn that we are likely to be mistaken about some matter from a neutral stance on that matter

Argument (complex analysis) · Creatures · Darwinism · Dilemma · Epistemology · Natural (archaeology) · Skepticism · Suspect · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science · Psychology · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment

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