In Search of True Dogmatism
DRAFT
[This paper is overly long in the standard sense (it would be significantly shorter if the false claims were removed) and also for the purposes of presentation. My presentation of the material will gloss over the first two sections and focus on the rest.]
Descartes, sitting before his fire, deep in his search for knowledge, notes the difference between how things are and how they seem.
I am now seeing light, hearing a noise, feeling heat. But I am asleep, so all this is false. Yet I certainly seem to see, to hear, and to be warmed. This cannot be false; what is called ‘having a sensory perception’ is strictly just this, and in this restricted sense of the term it is simply thinking.” [Meditation II, AT, 29] i
He thus sets up a primary epistemic question: How can we know how external things are based on how they seem?
Dogmatism, sometimes know as Phenomenal Conservatism, is a plausible and popular response, and it comes in a variety of forms. I’ll start by laying out some of the options, identifying the one I want to reject and the one I want to explore.
Dogmatism: Unqualified and Qualified
Unqualified Perceptual Dogmatism is captured in the following principle.
UPD: Necessarily, if it perceptually seems to S that P, then P is prima facie justified for S.

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Our perceptual seemings, as experiences, prima facie justify their content propositions.
In the absence of defeaters, those propositions are justified for us, and we are well on our way to knowledge of the external world.
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A comparable principle of Unqualified Intellectual Dogmatism concerns the rational intuitions central to a priori justification.
UID: Necessarily, if it intellectually seems to S that P, then P is prima facie justified for S.
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When we consider the proposition that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, it just intellectually seems to us as if that’s how things are. Our intellectual seeming experience gives us prima facie justification for its content.
If we endorse Unqualified Perceptual Dogmatism and then double down with
Unqualified Intellectual Dogmatism, we may want to go all the way with Unqualified
General Dogmatism.
UGD: Necessarily, if it seems to S that P, then P is prima facie justified for S.
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The boundaries of the realm of seemings are unclear. Do they encompass hunches and gut intutions? How about what some [Bealer, 2000] have called “physical intuitions?”
What of seeming states that result from our inferring one proposition from others we believe? I’ll take Unqualified Dogmatism to cover perceptions, rational intuitions memories and introspections at a minimum.
It is important to note a few points about Unqualified Dogmatism. First, seemings are experiences with propositional content. They are also assertive; in a seeming experience, the propositional content of the experience is presented to us as being the case. Seemings have various sources. Perceptual seemings stem from, we

3 might with equal vagueness say that they are “grounded in,” sensations. We have certain sensations and, as a result, it visually seems to us that there is a tree before us.
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Intellectual seemings stem from our understanding of a proposition. We understand the proposition that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line, and, as a result, it intellectually seems to us that the proposition is true. There may also be spontaneous seemings, seeming which, at least in so far as we are aware, just occur with no obvious source in other experiences or acts of understanding.
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Second, the principles of Unqualified Dogmatism concern what is necessarily the case. The relations they claim to hold between seeming experiences and prima facie epistemic justification stem, not from contingent facts about our nature, but from the nature of seeming experiences and epistemic justification themselves.
Third, these principles are concerned, at least in the first instance, with propositional, rather than doxastic, justification. Doxastic justification is a property of beliefs; our doxastically justified beliefs are those we form on a basis that makes them epistemically appropriate or reasonable for us. Propositional justification is a relation between a person and a proposition. A proposition is prima facie propositionally justified for us just in case we have a basis for believing it. If we were to believe it on that basis, in the absence of rebutting or undercutting defeaters, our belief in it would be doxastically justified for us. According to the principles of Unqualified Dogmatism, seeming states are a source of prima facie propositional justification, and potential sources of doxastic justification.
Fourth, principles of Unqualified Dogmatism assert that seeming experiences—in general or in a particular form (e.g., perception)—are a source of prima facie

4 justification, independently of any background qualifications. The relevant seemings need not, for example, be reliable, the result of our exercise of a cognitive virtue, or an instance of cognitive function as specified by our design plan. The person who has the seeming experience need not have any reason to think it is of a truth-reliable sort.
Qualified Dogmatism is the alternative view that seemings are a source of prima facie justification only when appropriate background conditions are met. Qualified
General Dogmatism is represented by the following schema, where R is a place holder for the appropriate background condition(s).
QGD: Necessarily, if R and it seems to S that P, then P is prima facie justified for
S.
Qualified Perceptual and Intellectual Dogmatism can be stated in similar principles containing background conditions on perceptual and intellectual seemings respectively.
In what follows, I’ll consider three questons. Why be a Dogmatist and do the reasons to be a Dogmatist favor one form (Unqualified/Qualified) over the other? Why be a Qualified Dogmatist? What sort of Qualified Dogmatist should one be?
Why Be A Dogmatist?
One reason to be a Dogmatist is the same reason people have for actions that begin with, “Hey, watch this!,” and end with “When can the cast come off?”. It just seems right at moment. Perhaps that is what all reasons come down to in the end and some Dogmatists may think so, but for now we should try to do better.
Michael Huemer [2007] argues for Unqualified General Dogmatism, in particular.
According to his “Self-Defeat Argument,” we ought to adopt Unqualified General

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Dogmatism because any denial of it is self-defeating. The following statements by
Humer contain the argument’s basic steps.
My first premise is an empirical one, to the effect that, when we form beliefs, with a few exceptions not relevant here, our beliefs are based on the way things seem to us. [p. 39]
The second premise of the self-defeat argument is, roughly, that if one’s belief that p is based on something that does not constitute a source of justification for believing that p, then one’s belief that p is unjustified. [p. 40]
Given these premises, it follows that no belief is justified, unless one may have justification for believing that p in virtue of its appearing to one that p. If, that is, appearances do not confer at least some defeasible justification on propositions that are their contents, then since our beliefs are generally based on what seems to us to be the case (the reason we believe what we do is that it appears true to us; our method of forming beliefs is to believe what seems true to us), our beliefs are generally unjustified. [p. 41]
As I understand it, the argument runs as follows.
1. When we form beliefs, our beliefs are based on the way things seem to us.
2. If our belief is based on something that does not constitute a source of propositional justification for the content of the belief, then our belief is unjustified.
3. Therefore, if seemings don’t confer at least defeasible justification on propositions that are their contents, then, since our beliefs are generally based on what seems to us to be the case, our beliefs are generally unjustified.

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4. If Unqualified General Dogmatism is false, then seemings don’t confer at least defeasible justification on propositions that are their contents.
5. Therefore, if Unqualified General Dogmatism is false, then our beliefs are generally unjustified, including any belief we have that Unqualified General
Dogmatism is false.
We thus deny Unqualified General Dogmatism at our peril, and if we think our beliefs are generally justified, we should adopt Unqualified General Dogmatism.
To see where the Self-Defeat Argument goes wrong, consider an analogous, but clearly unsound, argument for the principle:
Naïve inferential Justification: Necessarily, if S believes that P and S inferentially bases her belief that Q on her belief that P, then Q is prima facie justified for S.
This principle is false. Simply inferring one belief from another is not sufficient to give the conclusion prima facie justification. A background condition must be met: The evidence belief must have some positive epistemic status. An inference cannot transfer epistemic status that is not there in the first place. Yet, suppose there are some people— perhaps us—who base some beliefs on other beliefs when they make inferences.
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They might well defend the Principle of Naïve Inferential Justification by a self-defeat argument.
1. When we form inferential beliefs, our beliefs are based on other beliefs.
2. If our belief is based on something that does not constitute a source of justification for the content of the belief, then our belief is unjustified.

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3. Therefore, if beliefs don’t confer at least defeasible propositional justification on the contents of the beliefs we base on them, then our inferential beliefs are generally unjustified.
4. If Naïve Inferential Justification is false, then beliefs don’t confer at least defeasible propositional justification on beliefs that are based on them.
5. Therefore, if Naïve Inferential Justificaiton is false, then our inferential beliefs are generally unjustified, including any inferential belief we have that Naïve
Inferential Justification is false.
They thus deny Naïve Inferential Justification at their peril, and if they think that their inferential beliefs are generally justified, they should adopt the (false) principle of Naïve
Inferential Justification. It is obvious what has gone wrong here. The third step doesn’t follow from the first two and is, indeed, is false. Their mere beliefs don’t confer defeasible inferential justification on other beliefs, but that doesn’t imply that their inferential beliefs are generally unjustified. Any justified beliefs they have can still confer defeasible inferential justification on other beliefs.
The third step in the Self-Defeat Argument contains a similar error. That mere seemings don’t confer defeasible justification on their contents for us does not imply that any beliefs we base on seemings are unjustified. Seemings that meet appropriate background conditions can still confer justification. Just as beliefs must meet certain background conditions to provide inferential justification for other beliefs (they must have some positive epistemic status to transfer through the inference), seemings must meet certain background conditions to be a source of epistemic support.

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Huemer considers this line of response to the Self-Defeat Argument. He properly takes the objection to be that the argument has not ruled out a form of Qualified
Dogmatism, which he calls Restricted Phenomenal Conservatism and characterizes in the principle:
RPC S has defeasible justification for believing that p if and only if (i) it seems to
S that p and (ii) R(S,p).where R is some relation that S might stand in to p.
He objects to RPC as follows.
RPC is the general form of a restricted version of Phenomenal Conservatism.
Note that according to RPC, its seeming to S that p alone confers no justification, even defeasibly, on p. It is only the combination of this condition with S’s standing in R to p that can confer such justification. Now suppose also that in fact,
S believes some proposition A solely because of how things seem to S, and that the holding of R(S,A) is causally irrelevant to S’s belief formation. Then I would say that S’s belief that A is unjustified, for it is grounded in something that does not constitute justification for believing that A. While this factor may constitute part of an adequate source of justification for believing that A, it does not by itself provide any justification for believing that A. [p. 42]
According to Huemer:
One who would avoid the self-defeat argument by proposing a restricted phenomenal conservatism, then, must argue not only that there is some epistemically relevant difference between some appearances and others, but also that this difference makes a difference, causally, to what we believe. It is unlikely that this constraint can be satisfied. [p. 43]

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The problem with Huemer’s response can be seen by once again considering our rejection of Naïve Inferential Justification. In rejecting that view, we endorse a principle of qualified inferential justification. One belief confers positive epistemic status on the propositional content of another only if it meets the background condition of having some positive epistemic status of its own. There is an epistemically relevant difference between some beliefs and others: only those with positive epistemic status can inferentially convey positive status. Yet, that positive epistemic status itself need not make a causal difference in our belief formation. Analogously, there may well be an epistemic difference between some appearances and others by which only some support justified beliefs, even though that epistemic difference makes no causal difference to what we believe.
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Since we are looking for reasons to adopt some form of Dogmatism or other, rather than Unqualified General Dogmatism, in particular, we might revise the Self-
Defeat Argument to better serve our purpose. Consider:
1. When we form beliefs, our beliefs are based on the way things seem to us.
2. If our belief is based on something that does not, under any conditions, constitute a source of propositional justification for the content of the belief, then our belief is unjustified.
3. Therefore, if seemings don’t, under any conditions, confer at least defeasible justification on propositions that are their contents, then, since our beliefs are generally based on what seems to us to be the case, our beliefs are generally unjustified.

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4. If no form of either Unqualified or Qualified Dogmatism is true, then seemings don’t, under any conditions, confer at least defeasible justification on propositions that are their contents.
5. Therefore, if no form of Unqualified or Qualified Dogmatism is true, then our beliefs are generally unjustified, including any belief we have that no form of
Unqualified or Qualified Dogmatism is true.
So long as we have reason to adopt its first premise that all our beliefs are based on seeming experiences, the argument now gives us a reason to adopt some form or other of
Dogmatism, but it does not distinguish between Unqualified and Qualified Dogmatism.
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Chris Tucker [2010] offers us another argument for Unqualified General
Dogmatism. He argues for the view on the basis of its explanatory power relative to four epistemological issues. The first issue is that of the speckled hen. When we have the visual image of a speckled hen with just three speckles, we are directly aware of the image and its speckles and the proposition that the image has three speckles is prima facie justified for us. When we have the visual image of a speckled hen with forty-eight speckles, we are again directly aware of the image and its speckles, but the proposition that the image has forty-eight speckles is not prima facie justified for us. According to
Tucker, Unrestricted General Dogmatism explains the difference.
In normal humans, a visual image of a three-speckled hen is accompanied by a seeming that the hen has three speckles, and the visual image of the forty-eightspeckled hen is not accompanied by a seeming that the hen has forty-eight speckles. This difference in the way things seem is what explains the difference in justification. [p. 12]

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Tucker’s second issue concerns the relative support relation between sensations and propositions. The olfactory sensation that gives us evidence that a flower is nearby might give another sort of creature evidence that he has a small, hard object in his hand.
How is it that the sensation that leads us to have evidence for one proposition leads another to have evidence for a different one? According to Tucker, Unqualified General
Dogmatism provides an adequate answer.
The dogmatist, then, can explain these species-wide differences in justification by appealing to species-wide differences in the way things seem. [p. 16]
The same sensation causes different seeming states in different species, and the different seeming states epistemically support different propositions. It seems to us that a flower is nearby; it seems to the other creature that there’s a hard object in his hand.
The third issue concerns the difference between experts and non-experts.
Although the landlubber and seafarer both see a dolphin, the proposition that there is a dolphin is only prima facie justified for the latter, who has learned what dolphins look like. According to Tucker, Unqualified General Dogmatism explains the difference despite the similarity in their visual experience. When seafaring Captain Jack sees a dolphin, it seems to him that the creature is a dolphin, and when Hillbilly considers the image, it does not seem to him that the creature is a dolphin. This difference in the way things seem explains why Jack, but not Hillbilly, has justification that the creature is a dolphin. [p. 17]
The fourth issue concerns the epistemic similarity between ourselves and our counterparts in a demon world. Why are the same propositions justified for us and our

12 counterparts and why is that, despite this fact, we have knowledge and our counterparts do not?
The dogmatist has an intuitively appealing answer at her disposal: the demon victim’s beliefs are justified because they are appropriate responses to her seemings, but they are not knowledge because her seemings, unbeknownst to her, were caused in an inappropriate way. [p. 20]
Even though our seeming experiences are caused by objects of the sort they represent and our counterparts’ are caused by a deceiving demon, we all have the same seeming experiences and that is enough to make the same propositions prima facie justified for us; the difference in the cause of our seeming experiences explains the difference in knowledge.
Tucker is certainly right that Unqualified General Dogmatism provides an explanation of each case. Yet, it is again important to note that his considerations don’t distinguish between Unqualified and Qualified Dogmatism. Qualified Dogmatism can explain all four issues just as well Unqualified Dogmatism. Consider the case of the
Speckled Hen. When we see the three-speckled hen, it seems three speckled to us and the requisite background conditions are met; when we see the forty-eight speckled hen, it does not seem forty-eight-speckled to us or, if it does (perhaps due to the influence of a brain tumor, ray gun, witch’s spell or whatever), the requisite background qualifications are not met. Consider the issue of the relative support relation between sensations and propositions. When we have a flowery-smell sensation, it seems to us that a flower is present and, in response to the same sensation, it seems to some other creature that he has a small, hard object in his hand. Insofar as different propositions are justified for us and

13 the other creature, it is because we have different seeming states in the presence of required background conditions. Consider the difference between the seafarer and landlubber. The proposition that there is a dolphin is prima facie justified only for the seafarer. This is because only the seafarer has the seeming experience that there’s a dolphin in the context of the necessary background qualifications. The landlubber either doesn’t seem to see a dolphin or, if he does (brain tumors, ray guns, witches and such again), he doesn’t meet the appropriate background qualifications. With regard fourth case, we can explain the similarity in justification between our demon world counterparts and ourselves by an appeal to the fact that we all have the same seeming experiences under the same background conditions. We can explain the difference in knowledge by appeal to the fact that we meet, but they don’t, some external condition for knowledge, e.g. our beliefs are true and theirs are false. In short, Tucker’s appeal to explanatory power gives us some reason to accept Dogmatism, but it does not differentiate between the unqualified and qualified forms.
Those of us who are right thinking enough to be Foundationalists and believe that there are immediately justified beliefs have another reason to be Dogmatists. It offers us a way to avoid what Sosa [2003] terms “the dreaded Sellarsian dilemma.”
[E]ither the foundational conscious states have propositional content, in which case they would seem to require justification in turn, and could not after all function as a foundation; or else they have no propositional content of their own, in which case it is hard to see how they could possibly provide epistemic justification for any belief founded upon them. [p. 212]

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One way out is to find a kind of experience that has the requisite propositional content to provide justification but does not require it. Seeming experiences fit the bill, as Huemer
[2001] points out with regard to perceptual seemings.
But, it will be objected, one belief can only justify another belief if the first belief is, itself, justified. Similarly, therefore, shouldn’t we say that a perceptual experience can only justify a perceptual belief if the experience is, itself, justified?
But the latter condition makes no sense. It does not make sense—it is a category error—to say that an experience is justified or unjustified. [p. 97]
It is quite plausible to think that we normally and appropriately do base at least some beliefs on seeming states, as opposed to other states with propositional content that are also beyond epistemic justification, such as hopes, desires and imaginings. Seeming states also have an assertive character, which these other states lack and which may help explain why seeming experiences can support epistemic justification when these other states cannot [Tucker, 2010]. Dogmatism thus offers Foundationalists a way to account for basic beliefs. Note again though that this promise is offered by both Unqualified and
Qualified Dogmatism.
These considerations certainly give us reason to take Dogmatism seriously, but the reasons apply to both its unqualified and qualified forms. Let’s move on then to the next question: If we are going to be Dogmatists, what sort should we be? Partly to simply the discussion and partly to point it toward the truth, I’ll address this question within the context of another philosophical commitment, one to Mentalism.
M: If any two possible individuals are exactly alike mentally, then the same beliefs are (doxastically) justified for them to the same extent.
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A commitment to Mentalism has significant, but even handed, implications for our inquiry. On the one hand, it limits the responses that Unqualified Dogmatists can give to some challenges to their view, as we shall see in a bit. On the other hand, it rules out the
“low-hanging” background qualifications available to Qualified Dogmatists who reject
Mentalism for some form of Externalism (e.g., our seeming experiences must be truthreliable or an instance of a proper functioning cognitive design plan).
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Qualified
Dogmatists who are Mentalists have to stretch to find background qualifications that are reflected in our mental states, and they have to do so without straining the limits to plausibility. It won’t do, for example, to require that, while our seeming experiences need not be reliable, they must be such that we justifiably believe them to be reliable.
Too many people with justified beliefs based on seeming experiences never form any beliefs about the reliability of their seeming experiences.
Why Be a Qualified Dogmatist?
Dogmatists should be Qualified Dogmatists, because Unqualified Dogmatism is false, at least in its General, Perceptual and Intellectual Forms. Consider a counterexample to Unqualified Perceptual Dogmatism.
Prospectors
Gus and Virgil are gold prospectors. Gus is an expert at identifying gold. He has learned to do so through long experience. He began with a list of identification rules and consciously applied them. He then reached the point where he could
“just see” that a nugget is gold. Virgil is a novice. He has a general sense of what gold looks like, but he is not very good at its visual identification. Virgil is

16 though consumed by a lust for gold. He wants very, very badly to make a discovery. Gus looks at a nugget in his pan, his developed gold-identification abilities come into play and it just seems to him that it’s gold. He believes accordingly. Virgil looks at his nugget, his strong desire that it be gold comes into play and as a result, it just seems to him that it’s gold. He too believes accordingly. Each believes that his nugget is gold on the basis of his visual seeming experience. Yet, where Gus sees what he has learned to see; Virgil sees what he wants to see. This makes all the difference epistemically. Gus’ belief is epistemically appropriate in a way in which Virgil’s is not.
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The perceptions of Gus and Virgil are examples of cognitive penetration.
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In each case, other mental states “penetrate” the subject’s visual experience causing things to seem a certain way to him. Gus’s learning process causes his nugget to seem to be gold to him.
Virgil’s lust for gold makes his nugget seem to be gold to him.
Prospectors poses a serious challenge to Unqualified Perceptual Dogmatism. It is clear that Gus’s belief is epistemically appropriate in a way in which Virgil’s is not, but what is the difference? A plausible answer is that Gus is prima facie justified, and in the absence of any defeaters just plain justified, in his belief, while Virgil is not even prima facie justified in his belief. Fans of Unqualified Perceptual Dogmatism may not say this, however. According to their view, Gus and Virgil are both prima facie justified in their beliefs. The content propositions of their beliefs are prima facie justified by their seeming experiences, and they base their beliefs in those propositions on those seeming experiences. Unqualified Dogmatists need another explanation of the epistemic difference between the beliefs of Gus and Virgil, but the available alternatives won’t do.

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One option is the defeasiblity approach: Gus and Virgil are both prima facie justified in their beliefs, but only Gus is actually justified; the epistemic support provided by his seeming experience is undefeated, while that provided by Virgil’s seeming experience is defeated. There are two significant problems here. First, the defeasibility approach locates Virgil’s error in the wrong place. It is not that Virgil shouldn’t form his belief on the basis of his seeming experience, because its epistemic support is defeated.
It is that he should not have his seeming experience in the first place. To put the point another way, it is not that he has an epistemically appropriate seeming experience but ignores counter or undercutting evidence. It is that his seeming experience is itself epistemically inappropriate. His nugget shouldn’t seem to be gold to him in the way that
Gus’ should seem to be gold to him.
Second, if Mentalism is true, there’s no guarantee that Virgil has a defeater for his seeming experience. There are propositions, including true ones, that rebut or uncut his seeming experience, e.g., that he strongly wants the nugget to be gold and his strong desires have inaccurately “colored” his perceptions in the past. Yet, given Mentalism, these propositions are not defeaters for Virgil unless they are somehow reflected in his mental states, most likely by his believing them, and they may not be. It is quite possible that Virgil does not believe, or even consider, these potential defeaters.
Another way to deal with Prospectors within Unqualified Perceptual Dogmatism is the knowledge approach: Gus and Virgil are both prima facie justified in their beliefs, and even justified in the absence of defeaters; the epistemic difference between them is that Gus knows that his nugget is gold and Virgil does not. One problem with the knowledge approach is that there’s no reason to assume that Gus knows, while Virgil

18 does not. We can locate Prospectors in a demon world in which there is no gold and Gus and Virgil have always been fed all of their experiences by a demon. Neither has knowledge, but Gus’s belief is still epistemically appropriate in a way that Virgil’s is not.
His belief is based on a seeming that results from a learning process involving various reinforcing justified beliefs and experiences, while Virgil’s is just the result of his desire.
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Tucker [2010] has proposed a third way of dealing with Prospectors within
Unqualified Perceptual Dogmatism, the blameworthiness approach. Noting that our expert, Gus, and novice, Virgil, might be located in a demon world, he suggests that we can explain the epistemic difference between them, by pointing out that Novice is blameworthy for his false belief and his inappropriately-caused seeming and Expert isn’t. The suggestion, then, is this: both Novice and Expert have justification that the nugget is gold, but Novice is nonetheless blameworthy in a way that Expert isn’t. [p. 22]
This strategy runs into the following question: If the difference between Gus and Virgil is that, while both have justified beliefs, Virgil is epistemically blameworthy and Gus is not, what is the negative outcome for which Virgil is epistemically blameworthy? Tucker says that Virgil is blameworthy for two things: having the false belief that his nugget is gold and having an inappropriately-caused seeming [p. 22]. Yet, if Prospectors takes place in a demon world, Virgil is hardly to blame for having a false belief. The demon ensures that all his external world beliefs are false no matter what he might do. And, if we locate Prospectors in the real world, Virgil may well have a true belief. It is equally hard to see how Virgil can be blameworthy for having an inappropriately-caused

19 seeming. Presumably, the inappropriateness here is epistemic, but what can be epistemically inappropriate about how Virgil’s seeming is caused, if the manner of its causation leaves it quite capable of justifying propositions and supporting knowledge for him? Perhaps, the idea is that the seeming is inappropriately caused in that it is caused in such a way that it would not support knowledge even if all the other conditions (truth, justification) were met. Yet, this gets things backwards. It is not that the inappropriateness of how Virgil’s seeming experience is caused resides in the fact that it is caused in a way that keeps it from supporting knowledge in the presence of other requirements. It is that the inability of Virgil’s seeming experience to support knowledge in the presence of other requirements resides in the fact that it is inappropriately caused.
In short, it is difficult, within Unqualified Dogmatism, to find a negative outcome for which Virgil is blameworthy.
A fourth way of dealing with Prospectors within Unqualified Dogmatism is the harmless foul approach. There is an important epistemic difference between Gus and
Virgil. Gus has an epistemically appropriate seeming experience. Given his learned ability to perceptually identify gold, his nugget should seem to be gold to him. Virgil has an epistemically inappropriate seeming experience. Given his lack of any perceptual ability to identify gold and the influence of his desire on his perceptions, his nugget should not seem to be gold to him. In this way, Gus is performing better epistemicaly than Virgil. Yet, that’s as far as the epistemic difference between them goes. The proposition that his nugget is gold is prima facie justified for each of them and, lacking defeaters, justified. If the rest of the necessary conditions for knowledge, whatever they

20 are, also fall into place, each even knows that his nugget is gold. The epistemic difference between them begins and ends with the appropriateness of their seemings.
The problem here is the following. If Virgil were to base his belief that his nugget is gold, not on an perceptual seeming experience, but on a another belief for which he had no rational basis, one that he should not epistemically have, his doing so would have implications for the justification of his nugget belief. His nugget belief would lack rational support; it would not have prima facie justification. Yet, basing a belief on an inappropriate perceptual seeming should have the same implications for the belief’s status as basing it on an inappropriate belief. If Virgil bases his belief on a perceptual seeming experience that is epistemically inappropriate, one that he should not epistemically have, his doing so also has negative implications for the justification of his nugget belief. The epistemic difference between Gus and Virgil does not end with the epistemic appropriateness of their seeming experiences; it carries over to the justification of their beliefs.
Prospectors is a counterexample to Unqualified Perceptual Dogmatism. Here is a counterexample to Unqualified Intellectual Dogmatism.
Mathematics Machine
Elias has a fuller understanding of fractions than Igor and can rationally intuit a truth Igor cannot:
(P) 237/148 is greater than 425/266.
Nonetheless, they both understand (P), as they both believe it. Elias believes (P) on the basis of his rational intuition. Igor believes it on the basis of Elias’ testimony. (P) just seems true, indeed necessarily true, to Elias. (P) neither seems

21 true nor false to Igor. In an attempt to intuit (P), Igor starts to study fractions, but he is unable to attain Elias’s level of comprehension, and Elias decides to help him. He hooks Igor up to the mathematics machine while he sleeps. He types in
(P) and the machine makes an adjustment in Igor’s brain. From then on, when
Igor considers (P) and understands it well enough to believe it, it seems to him that it is necessarily true. Elias uses the machine to make similar adjustments for some other mathematical truths Igor understands well enough to believe but does not rationally intuit. When Igor wakes, he knows nothing of what Elias has done.
Some days later, when Igor again considers (P), its truth just seems obvious to him. He proclaims, “Now I see it!” and stands taller for his sense of accomplishment, all the better to look down on those who aren’t as smart as he is.
Elias’ belief that (P) is epistemically appropriate in way in which Igor’s is not. Elias has a background knowledge of fractions that enables him to “rationally grasp” the truth of
(P); the proposition seems true to him as a result of his deep understanding of its content.
Given his deep understanding of (P), it should seem true to him. Igor has no such deep understanding of (P). He never “rationally grasps” its truth. The proposition seems true to him because the mathematics machine modifies his brain so that his meager knowledge of fractions and limited understanding of (P) is sufficient to make it seem to him that (P) is true. Relative to his limited understanding, (P) should not seem true to him.
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Unqualified Intellectual Dogmatism closes the door on an obvious explanation of how Elias’s belief in (P) is epistemically appropriate in a way in which Igor’s is not: (P) is prima facie justified for Elias but not for Igor. The remaining ways to explain the

22 epistemic difference are again inadequate. The defeasibility approach won’t do, as the approach again locates Igor’s epistemic error in the wrong place. It is not that he has an epistemically appropriate seeming experience but ignores counter or undercutting evidence in forming the belief that (P). It is that his seeming experience is itself epistemically inappropriate. Given his limited knowledge of fractions, (P) should not seem true to him. Moreover, given Mentalism, there is no reason to assume that Igor has a defeater for his belief that (P). The knowledge approach is also a dead end. We can modify the example so that neither Elias nor Igor knows, by replacing (P) by a false proposition that, on the one hand, seems true to Elias due to his understanding of fractions and a subtle mistake, and, on the other hand, seems true to Igor due to a connection established by the mathematics machine. The blameworthiness approach does no better. It leaves us with nothing bad for which Igor can be blameworthy. He has a true belief, and, according to Unqualified Intellectual Dogmatism, the seeming state on which he bases it epistemically supports it. The harmless foul approach fails. Igor’s basing his belief in (P) on a seeming experience he should not have, given his limited understanding of (P), has implications for the justification of his belief, just like his basing his belief in (P) on another completely unjustified belief.
Prospectors and Mathematics Machine make the same point. Some seeming experiences are epistemically appropriate and others are not. Gus’s nugget should seem to be gold to him, given his learned identification ability, and (P) should seem to be true to Elias given his sophisticated understanding of fractions. Virgil’s nugget should not seem to be gold to him, given ignorance of what gold looks like, and (P) should not seem true to Igor, given his limited understanding of fractions. Beliefs based on epistemically

23 appropriate seeming experiences are epistemically superior to beliefs based on epistemically inappropriate ones. Unqualified Dogmatism does not account for this fact.
How To Be A Qualified Dogmatist
Let’s consider then how we can best develop Qualified Dogmatism within the context of Mentalism. I’ll focus on Qualified Perceptual Dogmatism. It may be that, at the right level of generality, one background qualification applies to all seeming experiences capable of supporting justification, be they perceptual, intellectual, memorial and so on. At this point, though, I’ll focus on perceptual seemings and the background conditions applicable to them.
Recall Prospector . It seems to Gus that his nugget is gold, and his epistemically proper seeming experience evidentially supports his belief. It seems to Virgil that his nugget is gold, and his epistemically improper seeming experience doesn’t evidentially support his belief. Each has a visual experience, each attends to certain features of his experience—perhaps even the same features—and each is caused, by attending to those features, to have the seeming experience that his nugget is gold. What does Gus’ seeming experience have going for it in epistemic terms that Virgil’s does not? I want to explore two answers, the Presumptive Reliablity Proposal and the Knowledge How
Proposal.
Matthias Steup [1996], noting that his being appeared to dodecagonally does not evidence for him that there is a dodecagon present, but his being appeared to redly does evidence for him that something is red, offers the following explanation.

24
[T]he difference is that I have evidence for taking myself to be reliable in discerning the color red, whereas I do not have evidence for taking myself to be reliable in discerning dodecagons. [p. 105]
Although Steup is not directly concerned here with the difference between epistemically appropriate and epistemically inappropriate seeming experiences, we can draw inspiration from his remark. The difference between the two lies in whether we have evidence that the seeing experience is reliable. In the case of epistemically appropriate seemings, we do; in the case of epistemically inappropriate seemings, we do not.
This gives us the right result for Prospectors.
Gus’ seeming experience that his nugget is gold is an instance of a learned identification ability he has developed over time. He started with inferential identifications made on the basis of his justified belief in a particular gold-identification standard. Over time, his identifications became immediate rather than inferential, as certain nuggets just automatically seemed to be gold to him. In the course of developing his non-inferential identification ability, he became aware of the coherence between his gold-seeming experiences and his other experiences and beliefs, and he thus gained evidence for the reliability of his gold-seeming experiences. Virgil’s gold-seeming experience is not an instance of any such learned identification ability. He has it with no background evidence that seemings of that sort are reliable.
The Presumptive Reliability Proposal has serious drawbacks, however. The background conditions for perceptual seeming experiences ought to be whatever it is that makes some experiences epistemically appropriate and others epistemically inappropriate. The difference in evidence of reliability is not what makes Gus’ and

25
Virgil’s experiences different in this way. The difference lies instead in the source of each experience. Gus’ seeming experience is the result of the cognitive penetration of his experience by information he has, initially in the form of justified beliefs, about how gold nuggets look, though a learning process by which he develops his non-inferential visual identification ability. Virgil’s seeming experience is the result of the cognitive penetration of experience by his lust for gold. Gus has evidence of the reliability of his gold-seeming experiences as a result of how the epitemically proper cognitive penetration of his experience by his justified beliefs works; it involves a learning process in the course of which he gains evidence of the reliability of those seeming experiences. Virgil lacks evidence of the reliability of his gold-seeming experiences, because of how the epistemically improper cognitive penetration of his experience by his desires works. Yet, the difference in evidence of reliability is not what makes Gus’ seeming experience appropriate and Virgil’s inappropriate.
A second worry about the Presumptive Reliability Proposal concerns whether it allows for basic doxastic justification and so enables us to use Qualified Dogmatism to support Foundationalism. On what must Gus base his belief that his nugget is gold for his belief to be doxastically justified for him? If Gus’ perceptual seeming experience by itself is not sufficient to prima facie justify for him the proposition that his nugget is gold, if his experience must be combined with at least some evidence that his perceptual seeming experiences are reliable, then his perceptual seeming experience by itself is not a sufficient basis for doxastic justification for his belief that his nugget is gold. Yet, if his belief that his nugget is gold is based on both his seeming experience and those beliefs

26 that evidence the reliability of his seeming experiences, then his belief is not immediately justified.
Epistemically Proper Perceptual Seemings: Knowledge How
The second proposal to consider is the Knowledge How Proposal. Gus’ seeming experience in Prospectors is an instance of a learned non-inferential identification ability.
He knows how to visually identify gold nuggets and his seeming state and resulting belief are an instance of his exercise of this know-how. Virgil’s seeming experience is not an instance of his knowledge of how to visually identify gold nuggets, for he has no such knowledge how. We might then say that an epistemically appropriate perceptual seeming experience to the effect that p is one that is had in the exercise of the subject’s knowledge of how to perceptually identify its being the case that p.
For this proposal to be even initially plausible, we need to make some assumptions and modifications. First, we need to assume that we can know how to perceptually identify objects as having certain properties, even though our actual perceptual identifications are quite unreliable. Consider the demon world edition of
Prospectors. Demon World Gus has an epistemically appropriate seeming experience and Demon World Virgil does not, just like their actual world counterparts. So on the current proposal, Demon World Gus knows how to perceptually identify gold nuggets, even though all of his identifications are mistaken. This implication of the proposal is not a serious problem. We can know how to do something but fail to do it reliably, if our failure is the result of some external intervention. I might learn how to fly a plane in a flight simulator, know how to fly and exercise my knowledge but never actually fly,

27 because all my fights are, perhaps even unbeknownst to me, always in the flight simulator. This is what happens to Gus in the demon world edition of Prospectors.
Second, we must modify our commitment to Mentalism. The Knowledge How
Proposal introduces an historical element into the account of epistemically appropriate perceptual seemings. Whether one of our perceptual seemings is appropriate is determined, in part, by how we developed the associated knowledge how. Two people can be in the very same mental states at the present time even though only one of them has an epistemically appropriate perceptual seeming. We need to modify our Mentalism so that it covers both present and past mental states.
xvi
Third, we must distinguish between properly and improperly learned perceptual identification abilities. Consider Modified Prospectors . This case is just like
Prospectors , except that this time Virgil’s gold-seeming experience, while still rooted in his lust for gold, results from a learning process somewhat similar to Gus’. Virgil begins with the desire that all the objects that display certain features in his visual experience be gold. The features are the very ones given in the gold-identification standard with which
Gus begins to develop his perceptual ability to identify gold. Where Gus has a justified belief in the standard, Virgil just desires that it be true. Virgil’s desire causes objects with those features to seem to be gold to him and he believes them to be such. After some time, Virgil’s general desire fades away but he retains a perceptual gold identification ability that mirrors Gus’ ability. He just looks at a nugget, attends to the relevant features in his experience (the same ones to which Gus attends), and is caused to have the seeming experience that the nugget is gold, just like Gus. According to the
Knowledge How Proposal, his seeming experience of gold is epistemically appropriate,

28 just like Gus’. That hardly seems right. Virgil’s seeming experience is an instance of a knowledge how that began with his desires and proceeded by the cognitive penetration of his seeming experiences by those desires. Given that Virgil in Prospectors does not have an epistemically appropriate seeming experience, neither does Virgil in Modified
Prospectors. We need to modify the Knowledge How Proposal: an epistemically appropriate perceptual seeming experience to the effect that p is one that is had in the exercise of the subject’s knowledge of how to perceptually identify its being the case that p , where that knowledge how has been properly learned .
Gus’ gold identifications involve such seeming experiences in both Prospectors and Modified Prospectors ;
Virgil’s gold identifications do not meet the standard in either case.
What makes Gus’ learning process proper? I’m not sure, but some traits are clearly relevant. It is rooted in his initial justified beliefs about how gold nuggets look. It further involves the reinforcement of his seeming experiences and associated beliefs by his awareness of the coherence between them and other beliefs he has. It may well involve his gaining evidence that prima facie justifies for him the proposition that his seeming experiences are reliable.
xvii
The Knowledge How Proposal is, I suggest, promising, but it is still open to at least two serious problems that have to be addressed, if it is to be a contender in the search for an adequate from of Qualified Dogmatism. The first problem is posed by the possibility of unlearned perceptual identification abilities. Might there be some properties we can just visually identify in things without learning to do so? Plantinga [1993] seems to think so.

29
We don’t have to learn of the connection between being appeared to greenly and there being something green present in order for the former to be evidence, for us, for the latter. This evidential connection is, as it were, built in . . . . [p. 99]
Bergmann [2006] too writes of unlearned perceptual identifications.
Learned doxastic responses, such as an experienced birdwatcher’s immediate bird identifications after a quick look (or listen), are ones a person comes to have only after first finding out independently (i.e. without relying in any essential way on other instances of the same type of doxastic response) that there is a connection between the truth of such beliefs and the experiences to which they eventually become immediate responses. By contrast, an unlearned doxastic response to experience is a hardwired or automatic response that occurs (perhaps only after a certain level of cognitive development) without the subject first independently finding out that there is a correlation between the truth of the belief in question and the experience to which it is a response. [p. 117]
Even if Plantinga and Bergmann are wrong about our being able to make unlearned perceptual identifications, it is certainly possible that some creatures do so. Call them
Autotrons. They are created so that when they attend to some features of a visual experience, they have the seeming experience that something is green (or hard, round, a gold nugget, intrinsically good, the work of God, Princess Diana, Rex the Wonder Horse, or whatever). Their seeming experiences are not informed by any past or present justified beliefs about how such things appear. Yet, surely their seeming experiences and the beliefs they base on them are epistemically proper in a way in which Virgil’s desire-

30 caused gold seemings and accompanying beliefs are not. A ready explanation is that their seeming experiences support prima facie justification, while Virgil’s do not.
xviii
Note first that there is at least one other way to explain how an Autotron with unlearned perceptual seemings is in a better epistemic position than Virgil. We can say that, while the Autotron and Virgil both lack prima facie justification, Virgil displays an epistemic defect that the Autotron does not. The Autotron forms a belief on the basis of a seeming experience that does not evidentially support his belief, and he does so because that is how he is made to function. His belief does not constitute a failure to function at his epistemic best, even if it doesn’t amount to his having evidence that serves to prima facie justify his belief. Virgil fails to perform at his epistemic best. His perceptual experience is cognitively penetrated by his lust for gold. If he were performing at his epistemic best, he would not have this seeming state and would not believe that his nugget is gold.
xix
We can slide past the Autotron case in this way, but do we have any reason to think that if a perceptual seeming really is not the product of an appropriately learned identification ability, then it is not epistemically proper and not a source of prima facie justification? Consider a perceptual variation on Mathematics Machine . Virgil wants very much to learn to noninferentialy identify gold nuggets on sight, but he just can’t master the skill. He looks at gold nuggets and just doesn’t have any seeming experience to the effect of their being gold. So Gus hooks Virgil up to the Gold Identification
Machine while Virgil sleeps. The machine modifies his brain so that his attending to certain features of his gold nugget perceptions causes those nuggets to seem to be gold to him. He wakes and finds that whenever he looks at some nuggets, they now just seem to

31 be gold to him. He tells Gus that he can now spot gold nuggets on sight. And he can; he has the unlearned ability to visually identify gold nuggets. Yet, his unlearned visual seeming experiences of gold nuggets are no more or less epistemically proper or a source of prima facie justification for him than Igor’s intellectual seeming experience is for him in Mathematics Machine . Since Igor’s seeming experiences are epistemically inappropriate, so are his. Moreover, there’s no relevant difference between Virgil’s seeming experience and those of the Autotron. Of course, Virgil’s are unnatural, while the Autotron’s are in some sense natural, but being natural is no more a source of epistemic appropriateness for seeming experiences than it is of moral appropriateness for actions.
A second challenge to the Knowledge How Proposal is presented by an example of Suzanna Siegel’s [2011].
[S]uppose Jill believes that Jack is angry at her, and this makes her experience his face as expressing anger. Now suppose she takes her cognitively penetrated experience at face value, as additional support for her belief that Jack is angry at her (just look at his face!). She seems to have moved in a circle, starting out with the penetrating belief, and ending up with the same belief, via having an experience. From Jill’s point of view, she seems to be gaining additional evidence from this experience for her belief that Jack is angry at her, elevating the epistemic status of that belief. This situation seems epistemically pernicious. [p.
2]
Jill’s unjustified belief that Jack in angry cognitively penetrates her experience of Jack’s face, causing her to have the seeming experience that he is angry. Her seeming

32 experience is epistemically inappropriate. Yet, might not Jill be having her inappropriate seeming experience as an instance of her properly learned ability to perceptually identify anger in others though their facial expressions? If so, the Knowledge How Proposal has a serious problem.
The details of Jill’s case merit close attention. She looks at Jack, attends to certain features of her experience and as a result has the seeming experience that he is angry.
How does her prior belief influence this process? One possibility is that it intervenes in the causal relationship between her attending to certain features of her experience and her having the seeming experience. The features to which she attends are not such that her attending them would normally cause her to have the seeming experience that Jack is angry. Her knowledge of how to visually identify anger includes no disposition to have anger-seeming experiences in response to attending to features of that sort. Somehow, however, her belief that Jack is angry enters into the mix is such a way that, in this case, her attending to those features does cause her to have an anger-seeming experience. If this is how the case goes, it doesn’t pose a problem for the Knowledge How Proposal.
Jane does not have her seeming experience in the exercise of her knowledge how to visually identify anger. She is not exercising her knowledge how. She is prevented from doing so by the intervention of her prior belief.
Jill’s prior belief may intervene in her perception in a different way. Perhaps, it causes her experience to have features that it would not otherwise have, ones she has learned to take as indications of anger, so that her attending to them does, in the exercise of her knowledge how, cause her to have the seeming experience that Jack is angry.

33
Now her seeming experience counts as appropriate and supports her belief, according to the Knowledge How Proposal.
Yet, what is wrong with that? Siegel’s worry is that there’s something epistemically pernicious here, since Jane’s believing, with no justification, that Jack is angry results in her gaining epistemic support for that very belief. Yet, there’s nothing pernicious, so long as the causal relation between Jill’s belief and her seeming experience is mediated by her application of her knowledge how to visually identify anger. Her belief is functioning as the demon does in the standard demon world, causing her experience to have features that, with the application of her knowledge of how to perceptually identify various sorts of things, causes her quite properly to have the associated beliefs. For another analogous case, suppose that I believe without justification that the food you just placed before me is poisoned and my belief causes me to examine the food with enough care that, using my learned abilities to detect certain poisons by smell, I have the seeming experience that it is indeed poisoned. My seeming experience is appropriate and it supports for me the proposition that the food is poisoned.
That I am paranoid doesn’t mean you aren’t out to get me, and my paranoia also doesn’t imply that the proposition that you are out to get me is not supported by my experiences, if those experiences are the result of my properly learned ability to detect threats.
Perhaps, there are other ways to interpret Siegel’s example; perhaps on some of them, it poses a serious problem for the Knowledge How Proposal. That, though, remains to be seen.
Conclusion

34
We have good reasons to take Dogmatism seriously, and, if we are going to be
Dogmatists, we should be Qualified Dogmatists. If we are going to be Qualified
Perceptual Dogmatists with a commitment to Mentalism of the sort that precludes such standard Externalist moves as appeals to reliability and proper function, then we should opt for the Knowledge How Proposal, even though it comes with costs. It leaves us with questions to answer: in particular, just when is a perceptual identification ability properly learned? It requires us to extend Mentalism beyond the present and deny the existence of unlearned perceptual identification abilities. Other questions remain as well. In particular, should we extend Qualified Dogmatism to such other forms of seeming experience as rational intuition and memory, and, if so, how?
xx

35
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Descartes, Rene. 1628. Rules for the Direction of the Mind, transl. John Cottingham,
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_______. 1641. The Meditations on First Philosophy, transl. John Cottingham, Robert
Stoothoff and Dugald Murdoch. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes.
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__________. 2008. “Immediate Justification and Process Reliabilism.” In Smith, Quentin
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36
Huemer, Michael. 1999. “The Problem of Memory Knowledge.” Pacific Philosophical
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i
Descartes [1628; p. 83.
37 ii
See Huemer, 2001 and 2007; Pryor, 2000; and Tucker, 2010. Note that the claim is that seeming experiences, as experiences, justify beliefs, not that beliefs about seemings experiences justify other beliefs. iii
See Huemer 2005; 2007 iv v
Huemer, 2007; Tucker, 2010.
For more on the relation between sensations and seemings, see Bergmann, 2008 and Tucker, 2010. vi For more detailed accounts of the nature of seemings and some substantial disagreements see Huemer, 2001, 2005 and 2007; Sosa, 2007 and Tucker, 2010. vii
As Chris Tucker has pointed out to me, Huemer may deny that we base beliefs on other beliefs, even in inferences; they are all based on seeming experiences.
viii Indeed, we should expect there to be such an epistemic difference between some seemings and others. If beliefs must meet epistemic background conditions in order to provide support for other beliefs, why should seeming experiences not have to do so?
What gives them an epistemic privilege that beliefs don’t have? It is not enough to say that they are exempt from the particular condition that applies to beliefs (that they be justified) on the grounds that they aren’t capable of being justified. The question remains why they are exempt from any background condition whatsoever concerning their epistemic merit.

38 ix Do we have reason to believe the argument’s first premise? As Huemer notes, it is a general empirical claim, of the sort we might expect to be based on some psychological studies. I know of none at this point.
x
See Feldman and Conee [2004] for an extended discussion and defense of
Mentalism. For an attack on Mentalism, see Bergmann [2006]. xi See Bergmann [2009] for a form of Qualified Dogmatism employing a proper cognitive function condition. xii
Prospectors is a variation on counterexamples I’ve proposed elsewhere [2005;
2006]. See too Goldman [2008] and Siegel [2011]. xiii
For more on cognitive penetration, see Siegel [2011]. xiv The knowledge approach also appears to be based on the idea that Virgil’s case is actually a sort of “Gettier” case in which the subject has a justified true belief but not knowledge. Yet, Virgil’s case is markedly different from the original Gettier cases or their subsequent variations. In those cases, there is nothing inappropriate about the internal belief-forming process. We can remove any problem by just modifying external features (the subject’s belief about who will get the job and has ten coins in his pocket is not false; the valley in which the subject perceives a barn is not salted with fakes). In
Virgil’s case, there is something wrong with his internal belief-forming process: his seeming state is cognitively penetrated by an inappropriate mental state.

39 xv
Note the historical precedent for the claim that a rational intuition that (P) requires a degree of understanding beyond that required for mere belief. Descartes writes in The
Rules for the Direction of the Mind that intuition is “the indubitable conception of a clear and attentive mind which proceeds solely from the light of reason” [p. 14; my emphasis].
Consider too Leibniz’s comment in
The Discourse on Metaphysics , 24: “When my mind understands at once and distinctly all the primitive ingredients of a conception , then we have intuitive knowledge” [pp. 41-42]. On the contemporary scene, Sosa [2007] takes rational intuitions to be intellectual seemings that are explained by our ability to discriminate between true and false modally strong propositions that we understand well enough with no further reliance on introspection, perception, memory testimony or inference [61; my emphasis]. Bealer [2000, p. 11] requires that in rational intution we must possess the relevant concepts in a full sense: “A subject possess a concept in the full sense iff (i) the subject at least nominally possesses the concept and (ii) the subject does not do this with misunderstanding or incomplete understanding or just by virtue of satisfying our attribution practices or in any other such manner” [p.11]. xvi
Some Unqualified Dogmatists [e.g., Huemer, 1999] have had to set aside
Mentalism restricted to present mental states in order to extend their view to cover memory beliefs. xvii Might
it be that for Gus’s learning process to be proper is just for it to supply him with evidence that his seeming states are reliable? If so, the difference between the
Presumptive Reliability and Knowledge How Proposals is much less than I suggest.

40
Having evidence of the reliability of our seeming experiences is not the result of a properly learned identification ability, it is what it is to have learned one’s ability properly.
xviii This is, of course, one of those points at which a commitment to Mentalism seems truly burdensome. It is tempting to deal with unlearned perceptual identifications abilities by appealing to externalist considerations, such as reliability or proper function.
The perceptual seeming experiences of Autotrons are epistemically proper, because they are instances of the proper function of their intellectual faculties or part of reliable beliefforming processes. See Bergmann [2006] in particular. xix Note the difference between this explanation and an appeal to proper function. It is not that the Autotron’s belief is prima facie justified because it is an instance of proper function for him and Virgil’s belief is not prima facie justified because it is an instance of improper function for him. It is that neither has a prima facie justified belief because each bases his belief on an epistemically improper seeming state. The difference between them is that this not a failure to do his epistemic best for the Autotron, as he is incapable of doing better, but it is such a failure for Virgil. xx I’ve gained from discussing these general issues with Matt McGrath and Andrew
Moon. Chris Tucker provided helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.