Periodic Reporting for period 4 - EpComp (Competence and Success in Epistemology and Beyond)
Reporting period: 2022-07-01 to 2023-12-31
Competence is neither necessary nor sufficient for most successes we care about. Good outcomes can result from good luck and the best, most expert efforts can be thwarted by bad luck. But what about successes like knowledge, rational belief, understanding, and morally right action? For instance, is there such a thing as incompetent knowing? A core hypothesis of this project is that cases of both competent failure and incompetent success arise for any success we might care about. In any normative domain, we must distinguish between evaluations focused on valuable success and those focused on competence.
The project demonstrates how this recognition can solve a cluster of key problems in epistemology. By furthering our understanding of the structure of epistemic normativity, the project helps answer fundamental questions about how we ought to form and revise our beliefs, what the point of a distinctively epistemic kind of criticism is, and how knowledge fits into the picture. The starting point of the project is an externalist outlook in epistemology, which is well-placed to make sense of problems created by hostile epistemic environments such as those containing fake news or biased evidence.
The project generalizes some of the lessons learnt in epistemology to the study of normativity more generally, including morality. Ultimately, what emerges is a view of the nature and structure of normativity.
The objectives of the project are:
(O1) To develop the theoretical foundations of the so-called dual evaluations approach.
(O2) To put forth a novel view in epistemology that demonstrates how recognizing both cases of competent failure and of incompetent success solves highly current problems and puzzles, reconciling two opposing theoretical starting points.
(O3) To investigate and ultimately reject as theoretically important the notion of structural rationality, offering an alternative, competence-based explanation of verdicts that seem to show the need for such a notion.
(O4) To explore generalizations of the results of the previous parts of the project to the practical and moral domains, thereby a general theory of the structure of normativity.
The project demonstrates how this recognition can solve a cluster of key problems in epistemology. By furthering our understanding of the structure of epistemic normativity, the project helps answer fundamental questions about how we ought to form and revise our beliefs, what the point of a distinctively epistemic kind of criticism is, and how knowledge fits into the picture. The starting point of the project is an externalist outlook in epistemology, which is well-placed to make sense of problems created by hostile epistemic environments such as those containing fake news or biased evidence.
The project generalizes some of the lessons learnt in epistemology to the study of normativity more generally, including morality. Ultimately, what emerges is a view of the nature and structure of normativity.
The objectives of the project are:
(O1) To develop the theoretical foundations of the so-called dual evaluations approach.
(O2) To put forth a novel view in epistemology that demonstrates how recognizing both cases of competent failure and of incompetent success solves highly current problems and puzzles, reconciling two opposing theoretical starting points.
(O3) To investigate and ultimately reject as theoretically important the notion of structural rationality, offering an alternative, competence-based explanation of verdicts that seem to show the need for such a notion.
(O4) To explore generalizations of the results of the previous parts of the project to the practical and moral domains, thereby a general theory of the structure of normativity.
The project achieved all four of its main objectives. The PI’s research monograph The Good, the Bad, and the Feasible: Knowledge and Reasonable Belief (Oxford University Press) puts forth the feasibilist (aka dual-evaluations) approach defended in the project, applies it to solve a range of problems in epistemology, and generalizes beyond the epistemic normative domain. This is, however, only one of the research outputs. The project's objectives are achieved over dozens of articles published by the PI and the four post-doctoral researchers employed by the project.
Throughout the project, we organized numerous workshops, which brought together leading figures working on epistemology, rationality, ethics, and normativity. Project members gave over 70 research presentations at international conferences and workshops. In the last year of the project, two manuscript workshops were organized on the PI’s research monograph The Good, the Bad, and the Feasible (one by the project together with the Human Abilities Center for Advanced Studies in the Humanities in Berlin, and one at the COGITO Epistemology Research Center at the University of Glasgow).
Throughout the project, we organized numerous workshops, which brought together leading figures working on epistemology, rationality, ethics, and normativity. Project members gave over 70 research presentations at international conferences and workshops. In the last year of the project, two manuscript workshops were organized on the PI’s research monograph The Good, the Bad, and the Feasible (one by the project together with the Human Abilities Center for Advanced Studies in the Humanities in Berlin, and one at the COGITO Epistemology Research Center at the University of Glasgow).
The project will have broad ramifications for how we think of normativity:
• Recognizing the categories of competent failure and incompetent success transforms our understanding of a range of problems in epistemology, the study of rationality, and meta-ethics. The project pioneers a novel, systematic study of competence or virtue, drawing on cutting-edge work on the metaphysics of dispositions.
• The project shows how various evaluations that appear internalist can be explained and accommodated from more externalist starting points using the notion of success-conducive competence. In addition to undercutting core support for a justification-based picture, this overcomes the most pressing challenges for externalist views (e.g. the new evil demon problem). The project shows how some of the most severe objections raised for a knowledge-first epistemology can be answered by focusing on knowledge-conducive competencies.
• The project challenges contemporary trends in epistemology by uncovering deep problems with attempts to accommodate systematic defeat, particularly acute in connection with higher-order evidence. An alternative, competence-based account of the epistemic failure involved in ignoring higher-order evidence is developed.
• The project offers a systematic study of structural requirements of rationality across theoretical and practical domains. Such requirements have had enormous influence and are often presented as self-evident first principles. The project puts forth a completely novel view rejecting those requirements, which changes the way we look at the notion of rationality.
• The project puts forth a novel framework unifying the norms of theoretical reason, practical reason, and morality. For instance, it is not at all atypical for philosophers to be drawn to a coherentist view of practical rationality (“maximize subjective expected utility!”), while rejecting coherentism at least when it comes to epistemic norms (“proportion your beliefs to your evidence”). The dual-evaluations approach rejects coherentism across the board while accommodating more internal evaluations, including ones appealing to coherence, from an externalist starting point. The result is a unified take on questions regarding what we ought to do and believe.
• Recognizing the categories of competent failure and incompetent success transforms our understanding of a range of problems in epistemology, the study of rationality, and meta-ethics. The project pioneers a novel, systematic study of competence or virtue, drawing on cutting-edge work on the metaphysics of dispositions.
• The project shows how various evaluations that appear internalist can be explained and accommodated from more externalist starting points using the notion of success-conducive competence. In addition to undercutting core support for a justification-based picture, this overcomes the most pressing challenges for externalist views (e.g. the new evil demon problem). The project shows how some of the most severe objections raised for a knowledge-first epistemology can be answered by focusing on knowledge-conducive competencies.
• The project challenges contemporary trends in epistemology by uncovering deep problems with attempts to accommodate systematic defeat, particularly acute in connection with higher-order evidence. An alternative, competence-based account of the epistemic failure involved in ignoring higher-order evidence is developed.
• The project offers a systematic study of structural requirements of rationality across theoretical and practical domains. Such requirements have had enormous influence and are often presented as self-evident first principles. The project puts forth a completely novel view rejecting those requirements, which changes the way we look at the notion of rationality.
• The project puts forth a novel framework unifying the norms of theoretical reason, practical reason, and morality. For instance, it is not at all atypical for philosophers to be drawn to a coherentist view of practical rationality (“maximize subjective expected utility!”), while rejecting coherentism at least when it comes to epistemic norms (“proportion your beliefs to your evidence”). The dual-evaluations approach rejects coherentism across the board while accommodating more internal evaluations, including ones appealing to coherence, from an externalist starting point. The result is a unified take on questions regarding what we ought to do and believe.