PHD PROJECT ON HIGHER-ORDER EVIDENCE
In recent years, epistemologists have become increasingly interested in a range of questions concerning the nature and bearing of higher-order evidence. To a first approximation, higher-order evidence is evidence of one's own rational failure. It works by indicating that one's current belief state is somehow unjustified or rationally flawed. If, for example, I learn that I've been systematically too optimistic in my weather predictions, I can lower my confidence in fair weather tomorrow. Or if I learn that my trusted colleague prescribes antibiotics less often than I do, I can start to question my own prescription practice. In both cases, my loss of confidence is rationalized by higher-order evidence indicating that my former belief state was less than fully rational. By contrast, ordinary first-order evidence rationalizes a change of belief without indicating that I've been less than fully rational. If, for example, I get an updated weather forecast, I may well be required to lower my confidence in fair weather tomorrow. But this obviously does not show that my former high confidence was unjustified given the evidence I had at the time.
Higher-order evidence is a pervasive feature of human life. Ordinary people like you and me often fall short of rational perfection: we suffer from cognitive biases, make calculation errors, ignore sound criticism, jump to hasty conclusions, and so on. Accordingly, an important part of any responsible epistemic life consists in accommodating one’s own rational imperfections. In this regard, higher-order evidence is a valuable source of epistemic self-improvement: it provides an opportunity of rectifying one's rational mistakes.
However, our theoretical understanding of higher-order evidence remains limited. In particular, it remains unclear how we should understand the interaction between higher-order evidence and ordinary first-order evidence. This issue crops up in a number of ongoing debates, including:
The aim of my project is to make progress in these and related debates through a general theoretical investigation of the nature and bearing of higher-order evidence. The project is funded by Aarhus University and will run over a four-year period (2016-2020).
Higher-order evidence is a pervasive feature of human life. Ordinary people like you and me often fall short of rational perfection: we suffer from cognitive biases, make calculation errors, ignore sound criticism, jump to hasty conclusions, and so on. Accordingly, an important part of any responsible epistemic life consists in accommodating one’s own rational imperfections. In this regard, higher-order evidence is a valuable source of epistemic self-improvement: it provides an opportunity of rectifying one's rational mistakes.
However, our theoretical understanding of higher-order evidence remains limited. In particular, it remains unclear how we should understand the interaction between higher-order evidence and ordinary first-order evidence. This issue crops up in a number of ongoing debates, including:
- The epistemic significance of disagreement.
- The rationality of epistemic akrasia.
- The possibility of epistemic dilemmas.
- The scope and limits of epistemic defeat.
- The form and content of epistemic norms.
- The nature of self-locating beliefs and self-locating evidence.
- The role of coherence requirements in our theory of rationality.
The aim of my project is to make progress in these and related debates through a general theoretical investigation of the nature and bearing of higher-order evidence. The project is funded by Aarhus University and will run over a four-year period (2016-2020).