In this paper, I argue that, contrary to popular opinion, there is good reason to think that the qualities that make people good reasoners also make them better off. I will focus specifically on epistemic virtue: roughly, the kind of character in virtue of which one is excellently oriented towards epistemic goods. I propose that epistemic virtue is importantly implicated in the realization of some of the goods that are widely believed to be instrumental to, or even constitutive of, well-being. Here I focus on one such good: friendship.

We often get evidence concerning the reliability of our own thinking about some particular matter. This “higher-order evidence” can come from the disagreement of others, or from information about our being subject to the effects of drugs, fatigue, emotional ties, implicit biases, etc. This paper examines some pros and cons of two fairly general models for accommodating higher-order evidence. The one that currently seems most promising also turns out to have the consequence that epistemic akrasia should occur more frequently than is sometimes supposed. But it also helps us see why this might not be a bad thing.

In my comments I look at what was gained and lost in the move from the Simple Thermometer Model (STM) to the Idealized Thermometer Model (ITM). The move is motivated by the thought that there are going to be cases of disagreement for which the simple model cannot generate results. In this way, the STM is incomplete. I try to say a bit about why we might think that the ITM is incomplete in a relevantly similar way, while also taking a hit in terms of its explanatory value. The STM tells us what to believe (even if not in every case). The ITM might be able to churn out results in some cases that the STM cannot, but offers less guidance about what we ought to believe.

I consider the structural differences between reasons to believe and reasons to act. I argue that Mark Schroeder's project of providing a unified account of reasons to believe and reasons to act faces serious difficulties. I also investigate the difference between rational requirement and rational permission. While the difference between these notions in the case of action is a matter of the strength of one's reasons, I argue that in the case of belief, the difference depends on what one is attending to.

In “Reasons to Believe and Reasons to Act,” Stewart Cohen argues that balance of reasons accounts of rational action get the wrong results when applied to doxastic attitudes, and that there are therefore important differences between reasons to believe and reasons to act. In this paper, I argue that balance of reasons accounts of rational action get the right results when applied to the cases that Cohen considers, and that these results highlight interesting similarities between reasons to believe and reasons to act. I also consider an argument for Cohen's conclusion based on the principle that Adler, Moran, Shah, Velleman and others call “transparency.” I resist this argument by explaining why transparency is itself doubtful.

Elsewhere I and others have argued that evidence one should have had can bear on the justification of one's belief, in the form of defeating one's justification. In this paper, I am interested in knowing how evidence one should have had (on the one hand) and one's higher-order evidence (on the other) interact in determinations of the justification of belief. In doing so I aim to address two types of scenario that previous discussions have left open. In one type of scenario, there is a clash between a subject's higher-order evidence and the evidence she should have had: S's higher-order evidence is misleading as to the existence or likely epistemic bearing of further evidence she should have. In the other, while there is further evidence S should have had, this evidence would only have offered additional support for S's belief that p. The picture I offer derives from two “epistemic ceiling” principles linking evidence to justification: one's justification for the belief that p can be no higher than it is on one's total evidence, nor can it be higher than what it would have been had one had all of the evidence one should have had. Together, these two principles entail what I call the doctrine of Epistemic Strict Liability: insofar as one fails to have evidence one should have had, one is epistemically answerable to that evidence whatever reasons one happened to have regarding the likely epistemic bearing of that evidence. I suggest that such a position can account for the battery of intuitions elicited in the full range of cases I will be considering.

Epistemologists focus primarily on cases of knowledge, belief, or credence where the evidence which one possesses, or on which one is relying, plays a fundamental role in the epistemic or normative status of one's doxastic state. Recent work in epistemology goes beyond the evidence one possesses to consider the relevance for such statuses of evidence which one does not possess, particularly when there is a sense in which one should have had some evidence. I focus here on Sanford Goldberg's approach (“Should Have Known,” Synthese, Forthcoming; and “On the Epistemic Significance of Evidence You Should Have Had,” Episteme, 2016, this issue); but the discussion will interest anyone working on epistemic defeat.

Almost everyone agrees that knowledge can be transmitted via testimony, but only some think that transmission is a special phenomenon, and one that has been largely neglected in epistemology. Let's call this “special transmission,” or transmission*. This paper offers a positive proposal for characterizing transmission*, and then considers a radical theoretical option: that an adequate account of transmission* cannot be given in traditional epistemological categories. In that case, traditional epistemological theories are best conceived as explaining knowledge generation rather than knowledge transmission*.

Greco wants to understand the difference between knowledge generation and transmission. Doing so, he argues, will show that there are substantively different norms governing the two types of knowledge acquisition. I offer an alternative way of cashing out the difference between transmission and generation in non-normative terms.

According to the so-called ‘deliberation crowds out prediction’ thesis, while deliberating about what you'll do, you cannot rationally have credences for what you'll do – you cannot rationally have option-credences. Versions of the thesis have been defended by authors such as Spohn, Levi, Gilboa, Price, Louise, and others. After registering a number of concerns about the thesis, I rehearse and rebut many of the main arguments for it, grouped according to their main themes: agency, vacuity, betting, and decision-theoretical considerations. I go on to suggest many possible theoretical roles for option-credences.

I locate the debate about the thesis in a broader discussion: Are there rational credence gaps – propositions to which one cannot rationally assign credences? If there are, they spell trouble for various foundations of Bayesian epistemology, including the usual ratio formula for conditional probability, conditionalization, decision theory, and independence. According to the thesis, credence gaps are completely mundane; they arise every time someone rationally deliberates. But these foundations are safe from any threat here, I contend, since the thesis is false. Deliberation welcomes prediction.

Alan Hájek launches a formidable attack on the idea that deliberation crowds out prediction – that when we are deliberating about what to do, we cannot rationally accommodate evidence about what we are likely to do. Although Hájek rightly diagnoses the problems with some of the arguments for the view, his treatment falls short in crucial ways. In particular, he fails to consider the most plausible version of the view, the best argument for it, and why anyone would ever believe it in the first place. In doing so, he misses a deep puzzle about deliberation and prediction – a puzzle which all of us, as agents, face, and which we may be able to resolve by recognizing the complicated relationship between deliberation and prediction.

In this paper I consider the meaning of the term “epistemic.” I discuss the idea that “epistemic” means “of or relating to knowledge,” and consider some uses of “epistemic” that do not jibe with this characterization of its meaning. I argue that “epistemic” is ambiguous: it is sometimes used to mean “of or relating to knowledge” and sometimes to mean “of or relating to belief.” I raise some worries about this ambiguity, and sympathetically consider the prospects for eliminating “epistemic” from our philosophical lexicon.

I articulate the value of the epistemic and the central importance of epistemology in response to a challenge from Allan Hazlett. I argue that epistemic evaluations should not be simply absorbed into a single, all-things-considered point of view.

How does the intellectually virtuous person respond to the beliefs of those whom they judge to be their epistemic superiors? Linda Zagzebski argues that we ought to take the beliefs of those we judge to be our epistemic authorities as a preemptive reason to believe the same. Zagzebski's argument for this preemption is intended to be an extension of Joseph Raz's argument for political authority. After exploring Zagzebski's specific formulation of epistemic preemption, I argue that epistemic authority is significantly different from political authority; hence Raz's arguments cannot be extended to the epistemic case. Further, I demonstrate that a virtue epistemic perspective will recommend against epistemic preemption. Such preemption brings about a problematic closed-mindedness to ourselves and is an extreme reaction more suited to epistemic vice than to epistemic virtue.

When relying on someone whom we take to be an epistemic authority, should we believe preemptively what she does or not? According to Linda Zagzebski, the answer to this question is yes: beliefs formed on the basis of what an authority believes can be epistemically rational, where “[w]hat is essential to authority is that it is a normative power that generates reasons for others to do or to believe something preemptively” (Zagzebski 2012: 102). In a recent paper in this journal, Sarah Wright takes issue with this thesis, but defends a relativized version of it. Here I show that as a general policy – even relative to certain kinds of cases, such as those involving agreement or disagreement – we should neither always add nor replace our reasons with those provided by an authority. Thus, we should never believe preemptively.