Abstract

This dissertation is concerned with two fundamental problems in epistemology. The first is how to understand the nature of epistemic normativity. Several prominent epistemologists claim that one's beliefs are properly subject to normative epistemic evaluation only if one wants to have true beliefs, or if having true beliefs is pragmatically beneficial for one. In Chapter 2, I argue that this view, known as epistemic instrumentalism, is mistaken. One's beliefs are subject to epistemic norms, even if complying with them would not advance any end that one wants to achieve. I argue that epistemic instrumentalism conflates epistemic abilities and capacities for practical agency. In my view, epistemic abilities, such as propositional inference, memory, and the ability to form perceptual beliefs, are distinguished from capacities for practical agency by the fact that epistemic abilities have a distinctive constitutive function: to yield beliefs that are true.

The second problem concerns how to understand perception and the way in which it epistemically warrants empirical belief. In Chapters 3 and 4, I critically assess disjunctive theories of perception. Such theories maintain that there can be no substantive type of perceptual state common to instances of veridically perceiving a given object, perceiving a duplicate object, and experiencing a perceptual referential illusion. In Chapter 3, after discussing the philosophical motivations for disjunctivism, I argue that it implies a philosophically and empirically implausible view of how perceptual states are caused. In Chapter 4, I develop five theses concerning epistemic norms and perceptual epistemic abilities. The theses comprise a framework for understanding how to reconcile the fallibility of perceptual warrant with the intuitive notion that epistemic warrant is, in some sense, a "good route to truth." I argue that the theses entail certain constraints on the individuation of perceptual states, and that, in particular, the theses rule out disjunctive theories of perception.

In the end, I think that the arguments of this dissertation illustrate how reflection on the relationship between epistemic warrant and true belief can provide an a priori source of insight into certain very general features of our cognitive states and abilities.