Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen
Biographic Data
| ID | 1222288 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Asbjørn Steglich-Petersen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Asbjørn |
| FAMILY NAME | Steglich-Petersen |
| SIGNATURE | STEGLICH-PETERSEN A |
| AFFILIATIONS | Aarhus University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5023-3449 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 33 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 25 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Dysregulation of Epistemic Emotions in ADHD
While difficulties with emotion regulation are widely recognized to be prevalent in individuals with ADHD, researchers disagree on the centrality and explanatory role of dysregulated emotions in ADHD. “Lumpers” comprehend emotion dysregulation as a core symptom alongside inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity, while “splitters” view the combination as a distinct entity, and “diplomats” hold that they are correlated but ultimately dissociable …
The Practical Import of Higher-Order Defeat
In some cases of higher-order defeat, you rationally doubt whether your credence in p is rational without having evidence of how to improve your credence in p . According to the resilience framework proposed by Steglich-Petersen (Higher-order defeat and Doxastic Resilience), such cases require loss of doxastic resilience: retain your credence level but become more disposed to change your mind given future evidence. Henderson (Higher-Order Evidenc…
Akratic thinking
Akratic action is voluntarily acting against one’s better judgment. Akratic belief is believing against one’s better judgment. We here provide an account of a phenomenon that sits somewhere between the two: “akratic thinking.” This is where we engage in a thought process against our better judgment. While the idea of akratic thinking has been tentatively considered before, no account has yet been offered of it. This is what we’ll offer here. Our …
On the social epistemology of psychedelic experience
Both traditional and recent accounts of the beneficial and therapeutic effects of psychedelic experiences tie these effects to specifically epistemic changes, for example the enabling of spiritual or psychological insight, or disruption of problematic beliefs or thought patterns. While these alleged benefits have sometimes been thought to be facilitated by false or even delusional beliefs , recent philosophical discussion strikes a more optimisti…
Curiosity and zetetic style in ADHD
While research on Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) has traditionally focused on cognitive and behavioral deficits, there is increasing interest in exploring possible resources associated with the disorder. In this paper, we argue that the attention-patterns associated with ADHD can be understood as expressing an alternative style of inquiry, or “zetetic” style, characterized mainly by a lower barrier for becoming curious and engagi…
Wrongful discrimination as biased discrimination
People working on the ethics of discrimination have struggled with accounting for a kind of moral wrongdoing that is thought to be present in all instances of wrongful discrimination. So far, any moral wrong claimed to be characteristic of wrongful discrimination in this way has failed to generalize to all cases of wrongful discrimination, moving many to abandon the idea that wrongful discrimination is normatively distinct at all. Motivated by th…
Body Checking in Anorexia Nervosa
Body checking, characterized by the repeated visual or physical inspection of particular parts of one’s own body (e.g. thighs, waist, or upper arms) is one of the most prominent behaviors associated with eating disorders, particularly Anorexia Nervosa (AN). In this paper, we explore the explanatory potential of the Recalcitrant Fear Model of AN (RFM) in relation to body checking. We argue that RFM, when combined with certain plausible auxiliary h…
Obsessive-compulsive disorder and recalcitrant emotion
It is widely agreed that obsessive-compulsive disorder involves irrationality. But where in the complex of states and processes that constitutes OCD should this irrationality be located? A pervasive assumption in both the psychiatric and philosophical literature is that the seat of irrationality is located in the obsessive thoughts characteristic of OCD. Building on a puzzle about insight into OCD, we challenge this pervasive assumption, and argu…
An instrumentalist unification of zetetic and epistemic reasons
Inquiry is an aim-directed activity, and as such governed by instrumental normativity. If you have reason to figure out a question, you have reason to take means to figuring it out. Beliefs are governed by epistemic normativity. On a certain pervasive understanding, this means that you are permitted – maybe required – to believe what you have sufficient evidence for. The norms of inquiry and epistemic norms both govern us as agents in pursuit of …
Proper Address and Epistemic Conditions for Acting on Sexual Consent
It has recently been argued that to permissibly act on someone’s consent to sex, the agent must possess firsthand evidence of the consent directly from the consenter (Lackey 2021; Dougherty 2018). This view is motivated by a case where it seems impermissible to act on testimonial knowledge of someone’s consent to sex. Although we agree that it is impermissible to act as if there is consent in this case, we argue that the explanation in terms of a…
Instrumentalism, Moral Encroachment, and Epistemic Injustice
This paper outlines a new pluralistic theory of normative reasons for belief, welfarist pluralism, which aims to explain how there can be basic alethic/epistemic reasons for belief and basic pragmatic/non-alethic reasons for belief that can combine to determine what one ought to believe. The paper shows how this non-derivative first-order pluralism arises from a purely welfarist account of the foundations of theoretical normativity, thereby combi…
On the roles of false belief and recalcitrant fear in anorexia nervosa
The DSM‐5 highlights two essential psychological features of anorexia nervosa (AN): recalcitrant fear of gaining weight and body image disturbance. Prominent accounts grant false beliefs about body weight and shape a central role in the explanation of AN behavior. In this article, we propose a stronger emphasis on recalcitrant fear. We show that such fear can explain AN behavior without the intermediary of a false belief, and thus without the ass…
Does luck exclude knowledge or certainty
Group disagreement
The debate on the epistemology of disagreement has so far focused almost exclusively on cases of disagreement between individual persons . Yet, many social epistemologists agree that at least certain kinds of groups are equally capable of having beliefs that are open to epistemic evaluation. If so, we should expect a comprehensive epistemology of disagreement to accommodate cases of disagreement between group agents, such as juries, governments, …
A Reply to Céspedes’ Defense of Causal Contrastivism
In a recent article in this journal, Esteban Céspedes (2015) seeks to defend the contrastive account of singular causation from my criticisms (Steglich-Petersen 2012). Céspedes objects to my argument on three counts: (1) it is circular in presupposing a principle that it seeks to establish; (2) that same principle is false; and (3) even if the principle were true, it would not speak against the contrastive account. In this note I argue that all t…
Knowing the Answer to a Loaded Question
Many epistemologists have been attracted to the view that knowledge‐ wh can be reduced to knowledge‐ that . An important challenge to this, presented by J onathan S chaffer, is the problem of “convergent knowledge”: reductive accounts imply that any two knowledge‐ wh ascriptions with identical true answers to the questions embedded in their wh ‐clauses are materially equivalent, but according to S chaffer, there are counterexamples to this equiva…
Philosophical thought experiments as heuristics for theory discovery
The No Guidance Argument
In a recent article, I criticized K athrin G lüer and Åsa W ikforss's so‐called “no guidance argument” against the truth norm for belief, for conflating the conditions under which that norm recommends belief with the psychological state one must be in to apply the norm. In response, G lüer and W ikforss have offered a new formulation of the no guidance argument, which makes it apparent that no such conflation is made. However, their new formulati…
Clumps and Pumps
It is widely held that the possibility of value-incomparability poses a serious threat to comparativism. Some comparativists propose to avoid this problem by supplementing the three traditional value relations with a fourth value relation, variously identified as ‘roughly equal’ or ‘on a par’. However, in a recent article in this journal, Nien-he Hsieh has proposed that the comparisons thought to require rough equality or parity could instead be …
Against the Contrastive Account of Singular Causation
For at least three decades, philosophers have argued that general causation and causal explanation are contrastive in nature. When we seek a causal explanation of some particular event, we are usually interested in knowing why that event happened rather than some other specified event. And general causal claims, which state that certain event types cause certain other event types, seem to make sense only if appropriate contrasts to the types of e…
Against Essential Mental Normativity Again
In a recent paper (2008), I presented two arguments against the thesis that intentional states are essentially normative. In this paper, I defend those arguments from two recent responses, one from Nick Zangwill in his (2010) and one from Daniel Laurier in the present volume, and offer improvements of my arguments in light of Laurier's criticism
Anaphora and Semantic Innocence
Semantic theories that violate semantic innocence, that is require reference shifts when terms are embedded in ‘that’ clauses and the like, are often challenged by producing sentences where an anaphoric expression, while not itself embedded in a context in which reference shifts, is anaphoric on an antecedent expression that is embedded in such a context. This, in conjunction with a widely accepted principle concerning unproblematic anaphora (the…
Luck as an epistemic notion
Voluntarism and Transparent Deliberation
It is widely assumed that doxastic deliberation is transparent to the factual question of the truth of the proposition being considered for belief, and that this sets doxastic deliberation apart from practical deliberation. This feature is frequently invoked in arguments against doxastic voluntarism. I argue that transparency to factual questions occurs in practical deliberation in ways parallel to transparency in doxastic deliberation. I argue t…
No Norm Needed
Does transparency in doxastic deliberation entail a constitutive norm of correctness governing belief, as Shah and Velleman argue? No, because this presupposes an implausibly strong relation between normative judgements and motivation from such judgements, ignores our interest in truth, and cannot explain why we pay different attention to how much justification we have for our beliefs in different contexts. An alternative account of transparency …
No Norm Needed
Does transparency in doxastic deliberation entail a constitutive norm of correctness governing belief, as Shah and Velleman argue? No, because this presupposes an implausibly strong relation between normative judgements and motivation from such judgements, ignores our interest in truth, and cannot explain why we pay different attention to how much justification we have for our beliefs in different contexts. An alternative account of transparency …
Luck as an epistemic notion
Against the Contrastive Account of Singular Causation
For at least three decades, philosophers have argued that general causation and causal explanation are contrastive in nature. When we seek a causal explanation of some particular event, we are usually interested in knowing why that event happened rather than some other specified event. And general causal claims, which state that certain event types cause certain other event types, seem to make sense only if appropriate contrasts to the types of e…
Philosophical thought experiments as heuristics for theory discovery
Proper Address and Epistemic Conditions for Acting on Sexual Consent
It has recently been argued that to permissibly act on someone’s consent to sex, the agent must possess firsthand evidence of the consent directly from the consenter (Lackey 2021; Dougherty 2018). This view is motivated by a case where it seems impermissible to act on testimonial knowledge of someone’s consent to sex. Although we agree that it is impermissible to act as if there is consent in this case, we argue that the explanation in terms of a…
Does luck exclude knowledge or certainty
Against Essential Mental Normativity Again
In a recent paper (2008), I presented two arguments against the thesis that intentional states are essentially normative. In this paper, I defend those arguments from two recent responses, one from Nick Zangwill in his (2010) and one from Daniel Laurier in the present volume, and offer improvements of my arguments in light of Laurier's criticism
Voluntarism and Transparent Deliberation
It is widely assumed that doxastic deliberation is transparent to the factual question of the truth of the proposition being considered for belief, and that this sets doxastic deliberation apart from practical deliberation. This feature is frequently invoked in arguments against doxastic voluntarism. I argue that transparency to factual questions occurs in practical deliberation in ways parallel to transparency in doxastic deliberation. I argue t…
Voluntarism and Transparent Deliberation
It is widely assumed that doxastic deliberation is transparent to the factual question of the truth of the proposition being considered for belief, and that this sets doxastic deliberation apart from practical deliberation. This feature is frequently invoked in arguments against doxastic voluntarism. I argue that transparency to factual questions occurs in practical deliberation in ways parallel to transparency in doxastic deliberation. I argue t…
No Norm Needed
Does transparency in doxastic deliberation entail a constitutive norm of correctness governing belief, as Shah and Velleman argue? No, because this presupposes an implausibly strong relation between normative judgements and motivation from such judgements, ignores our interest in truth, and cannot explain why we pay different attention to how much justification we have for our beliefs in different contexts. An alternative account of transparency …
Anaphora and Semantic Innocence
Semantic theories that violate semantic innocence, that is require reference shifts when terms are embedded in ‘that’ clauses and the like, are often challenged by producing sentences where an anaphoric expression, while not itself embedded in a context in which reference shifts, is anaphoric on an antecedent expression that is embedded in such a context. This, in conjunction with a widely accepted principle concerning unproblematic anaphora (the…
Luck as an epistemic notion
Against Essential Mental Normativity Again
In a recent paper (2008), I presented two arguments against the thesis that intentional states are essentially normative. In this paper, I defend those arguments from two recent responses, one from Nick Zangwill in his (2010) and one from Daniel Laurier in the present volume, and offer improvements of my arguments in light of Laurier's criticism
Clumps and Pumps
It is widely held that the possibility of value-incomparability poses a serious threat to comparativism. Some comparativists propose to avoid this problem by supplementing the three traditional value relations with a fourth value relation, variously identified as ‘roughly equal’ or ‘on a par’. However, in a recent article in this journal, Nien-he Hsieh has proposed that the comparisons thought to require rough equality or parity could instead be …
Against the Contrastive Account of Singular Causation
For at least three decades, philosophers have argued that general causation and causal explanation are contrastive in nature. When we seek a causal explanation of some particular event, we are usually interested in knowing why that event happened rather than some other specified event. And general causal claims, which state that certain event types cause certain other event types, seem to make sense only if appropriate contrasts to the types of e…
The No Guidance Argument
In a recent article, I criticized K athrin G lüer and Åsa W ikforss's so‐called “no guidance argument” against the truth norm for belief, for conflating the conditions under which that norm recommends belief with the psychological state one must be in to apply the norm. In response, G lüer and W ikforss have offered a new formulation of the no guidance argument, which makes it apparent that no such conflation is made. However, their new formulati…
Knowing the Answer to a Loaded Question
Many epistemologists have been attracted to the view that knowledge‐ wh can be reduced to knowledge‐ that . An important challenge to this, presented by J onathan S chaffer, is the problem of “convergent knowledge”: reductive accounts imply that any two knowledge‐ wh ascriptions with identical true answers to the questions embedded in their wh ‐clauses are materially equivalent, but according to S chaffer, there are counterexamples to this equiva…
Philosophical thought experiments as heuristics for theory discovery
A Reply to Céspedes’ Defense of Causal Contrastivism
In a recent article in this journal, Esteban Céspedes (2015) seeks to defend the contrastive account of singular causation from my criticisms (Steglich-Petersen 2012). Céspedes objects to my argument on three counts: (1) it is circular in presupposing a principle that it seeks to establish; (2) that same principle is false; and (3) even if the principle were true, it would not speak against the contrastive account. In this note I argue that all t…
Group disagreement
The debate on the epistemology of disagreement has so far focused almost exclusively on cases of disagreement between individual persons . Yet, many social epistemologists agree that at least certain kinds of groups are equally capable of having beliefs that are open to epistemic evaluation. If so, we should expect a comprehensive epistemology of disagreement to accommodate cases of disagreement between group agents, such as juries, governments, …
Does luck exclude knowledge or certainty
Instrumentalism, Moral Encroachment, and Epistemic Injustice
This paper outlines a new pluralistic theory of normative reasons for belief, welfarist pluralism, which aims to explain how there can be basic alethic/epistemic reasons for belief and basic pragmatic/non-alethic reasons for belief that can combine to determine what one ought to believe. The paper shows how this non-derivative first-order pluralism arises from a purely welfarist account of the foundations of theoretical normativity, thereby combi…
On the roles of false belief and recalcitrant fear in anorexia nervosa
The DSM‐5 highlights two essential psychological features of anorexia nervosa (AN): recalcitrant fear of gaining weight and body image disturbance. Prominent accounts grant false beliefs about body weight and shape a central role in the explanation of AN behavior. In this article, we propose a stronger emphasis on recalcitrant fear. We show that such fear can explain AN behavior without the intermediary of a false belief, and thus without the ass…
Body Checking in Anorexia Nervosa
Body checking, characterized by the repeated visual or physical inspection of particular parts of one’s own body (e.g. thighs, waist, or upper arms) is one of the most prominent behaviors associated with eating disorders, particularly Anorexia Nervosa (AN). In this paper, we explore the explanatory potential of the Recalcitrant Fear Model of AN (RFM) in relation to body checking. We argue that RFM, when combined with certain plausible auxiliary h…
Obsessive-compulsive disorder and recalcitrant emotion
It is widely agreed that obsessive-compulsive disorder involves irrationality. But where in the complex of states and processes that constitutes OCD should this irrationality be located? A pervasive assumption in both the psychiatric and philosophical literature is that the seat of irrationality is located in the obsessive thoughts characteristic of OCD. Building on a puzzle about insight into OCD, we challenge this pervasive assumption, and argu…
An instrumentalist unification of zetetic and epistemic reasons
Inquiry is an aim-directed activity, and as such governed by instrumental normativity. If you have reason to figure out a question, you have reason to take means to figuring it out. Beliefs are governed by epistemic normativity. On a certain pervasive understanding, this means that you are permitted – maybe required – to believe what you have sufficient evidence for. The norms of inquiry and epistemic norms both govern us as agents in pursuit of …
Proper Address and Epistemic Conditions for Acting on Sexual Consent
It has recently been argued that to permissibly act on someone’s consent to sex, the agent must possess firsthand evidence of the consent directly from the consenter (Lackey 2021; Dougherty 2018). This view is motivated by a case where it seems impermissible to act on testimonial knowledge of someone’s consent to sex. Although we agree that it is impermissible to act as if there is consent in this case, we argue that the explanation in terms of a…
Akratic thinking
Akratic action is voluntarily acting against one’s better judgment. Akratic belief is believing against one’s better judgment. We here provide an account of a phenomenon that sits somewhere between the two: “akratic thinking.” This is where we engage in a thought process against our better judgment. While the idea of akratic thinking has been tentatively considered before, no account has yet been offered of it. This is what we’ll offer here. Our …
On the social epistemology of psychedelic experience
Both traditional and recent accounts of the beneficial and therapeutic effects of psychedelic experiences tie these effects to specifically epistemic changes, for example the enabling of spiritual or psychological insight, or disruption of problematic beliefs or thought patterns. While these alleged benefits have sometimes been thought to be facilitated by false or even delusional beliefs , recent philosophical discussion strikes a more optimisti…
Curiosity and zetetic style in ADHD
While research on Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) has traditionally focused on cognitive and behavioral deficits, there is increasing interest in exploring possible resources associated with the disorder. In this paper, we argue that the attention-patterns associated with ADHD can be understood as expressing an alternative style of inquiry, or “zetetic” style, characterized mainly by a lower barrier for becoming curious and engagi…
Wrongful discrimination as biased discrimination
People working on the ethics of discrimination have struggled with accounting for a kind of moral wrongdoing that is thought to be present in all instances of wrongful discrimination. So far, any moral wrong claimed to be characteristic of wrongful discrimination in this way has failed to generalize to all cases of wrongful discrimination, moving many to abandon the idea that wrongful discrimination is normatively distinct at all. Motivated by th…
Dysregulation of Epistemic Emotions in ADHD
While difficulties with emotion regulation are widely recognized to be prevalent in individuals with ADHD, researchers disagree on the centrality and explanatory role of dysregulated emotions in ADHD. “Lumpers” comprehend emotion dysregulation as a core symptom alongside inattention, hyperactivity and impulsivity, while “splitters” view the combination as a distinct entity, and “diplomats” hold that they are correlated but ultimately dissociable …
The Practical Import of Higher-Order Defeat
In some cases of higher-order defeat, you rationally doubt whether your credence in p is rational without having evidence of how to improve your credence in p . According to the resilience framework proposed by Steglich-Petersen (Higher-order defeat and Doxastic Resilience), such cases require loss of doxastic resilience: retain your credence level but become more disposed to change your mind given future evidence. Henderson (Higher-Order Evidenc…
Epistemology (20 works) · Philosophy (20 works) · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics (14 works) · Psychology (14 works) · Computer Science (11 works) · Law (8 works) · Philosophy and Theoretical Science (8 works) · Political science (8 works) · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment (8 works) · Philosophy of science (7 works)