To Be Modest, Must I Be Inaccurate?

Jennifer Carr (University of California, San Diego)

Jennifer Carr (UC San Diego) will present "To Be Modest, Must I Be Inaccurate?" remotely at 11 on 11 May in Arts West 211.

Abstract: According to accuracy-first epistemology, the norms of epistemic rationality are the norms of effective pursuit of accuracy.  I show that accuracy-first epistemology, as currently conceived, is unable to allow modesty: the thesis that rational agents can be uncertain about their own rationality. This is a bad result: a rational agent can receive strong evidence that she's been drugged, or hit over the head with a frying pan, so that her reasoning has been impaired in some introspectively undetectable way. I argue that the problem stems from the representation of epistemic decision problems, and defend an alternative representation. I then show that the new framework is compatible with modesty.