EVIDENCE, JUSTIFICATION, & SKEPTICISM
I. Basics
Meeting time: Tuesday 2.30-5ish
Meeting place: Ayres 114 (may be a bit of a hike, but it’s Awesome)
Professor: E.J. Coffman
E-mail address: ecoffma1@utk.edu
Course website: http://online.utk.edu
Office: 816 McClung Tower
Office Hours: Thursday 10.30-12.30; by appointment
II. Texts
Electronic versions of all assigned readings are available at our course’s Online@UT Blackboard site
(access at http://online.utk.edu). If you really want to buy a book for our course, I highly recommend
A.P. Martinich’s Philosophical Writing: An Introduction (Blackwell, 1997). This is the best book I know
of on basic philosophical concepts, terms, methods, and writing advice. If you already have Martinich’s
book and/or have extra book money burning a hole in your pocket, you might get a copy of Richard
Feldman’s Epistemology (Prentice-Hall, 2003) and/or a copy of Richard Feldman and Ted Warfield’s
(eds.) Disagreement (Oxford UP, 2010).
▪ If you are not able fully to demonstrate your abilities under ordinary classroom conditions please see me
to discuss reasonable accommodations. After verifying that you have registered with disabilities services,
I will work with you and disabilities services to arrive at a reasonable accommodation so that you may
fully demonstrate your abilities in this course.
III. Course Overview
In this course, we’ll explore two central topics in epistemology that are relevant to many other areas of
philosophy: evidence and epistemic justification. The course will be organized around two influential
skeptical arguments that together raise several basic questions about evidence and epistemic
justification. The intended result is a somewhat nonstandard (for me at least) introduction to
contemporary epistemology that’s broad and provocative enough to get everyone interested in something
we cover.
Here are simple versions of the two skeptical arguments our course will revolve around:
The Argument from Skeptical Hypotheses
1. Your evidence doesn’t support commonsense claims about reality (e.g., that you have hands) any
better than it supports certain skeptical hypotheses (e.g., that you are a mere brain-in-a-vat fed
misleading experiences).
2. If your evidence doesn’t support commonsense claims about reality any better than it supports the
rival skeptical hypotheses, then you aren’t justified in believing the commonsense claims.
So,
3. You aren’t justified in believing commonsense claims about reality.
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The Argument from Peer Disagreement
1. For many “not-straightforwardly-observational” issues that you’ve taken a position on (from such
domains as philosophy, politics, economics, religion, science, …), you know that there are equally
competent thinkers who have all the same evidence as you but disagree with your position.
2. If you know that there are equally competent thinkers who have all the same evidence as you but
disagree with your position on an issue, then you’re not justified in taking that position.
So,
3. For many “not-straightforwardly-observational” issues that you’ve taken a position on, you’re not
justified in taking those positions.
These arguments together impugn a disturbingly wide range of our beliefs. They also serve to highlight
several fundamental questions about the nature of evidence and epistemic justification:
▪ What is evidence? What kinds of evidence are there? What’s involved in having something as
evidence?
▪ What is it for your evidence to support one proposition over another? What’s the relationship
between evidential support and epistemic justification? Between epistemic justification and
knowledge?
▪ Can a body of evidence support more than one position on a given issue? Can a pair of equally
competent thinkers who take different positions on an issue in response to the same evidence be
equally justified (rational) in taking their different positions?
▪ How common is knowledge of “dissenting intellectual peers”? Does knowledge of dissenting
intellectual peers make you unjustified (irrational) in maintaining your original views on the disputed
issues?
Carefully extracting and evaluating key arguments presented in important recent work in epistemology
will help us develop our own well-reasoned positions on the above questions, and so on our two
motivating skeptical arguments. We’ll be shifting back and forth between work devoted primarily to the
nature of evidence and justification, on the one hand, and work devoted primarily to one or the other of
our two motivating skeptical arguments. This approach to the assigned readings should help keep things
engaging and interesting.
This course is the Proseminar for new graduate students (it counts as an ELMS seminar for old graduate
students). The Proseminar’s main purpose is to focus us more intently on—and help us continue
cultivating and strengthening—certain “research-oriented” habits and skills required to thrive in graduate
school and beyond as a professional. These are habits and skills that enable you to make a significant
contribution to research on your favorite philosophical issues (e.g., MA thesis/PhD dissertation,
conference presentation, published article, etc.). Central among these habits and skills are:
• finding recent, high-quality work (journal articles, books, reviews, …) on your favorite
philosophical topics, questions, and issues.
• properly understanding—or: trying hard and realizing that you still don’t understand—the central
philosophical “moves” in whatever you’re currently studying (assigned by others or yourself).
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• coming up with—and then developing in detail—“debate-advancing” objections, arguments,
theories, accounts, analyses, defenses, etc.
• sharing and discussing your ideas with peers and professors.
• identifying additional relevant published work to ensure your research is suitably informed and
thorough.
• drafting well-organized, well-written conference- (≈ 3000 words) and journal- (≈ 5000 words)
length papers that meet the following basic criteria for good philosophical essays:
◦ is informed by, and interacts with, some prominent recent (≈ last 15-20 years) works.
◦ presents plausible arguments for nontrivial conclusions.
◦ defends arguments from likely questions, objections, worries, etc.
▫ has been revised in light of feedback from peers and professors.
While these habits and skills are “research-oriented,” cultivating them naturally improves one’s teaching
too.
IV. Course Requirements
▪ A main goal for everyone: A paper worthy of presentation at a well-established professional
philosophy conference.
A. Proseminar requirements
▪ Weekly Mini-Commentaries (MCs) on assigned readings
▫ Each week, you’ll write a 1-2 page critical essay (500-750 words) on an assigned reading. You’ll
aim to do two things in these essays: (i) contextualize and reconstruct one of the reading’s key
philosophical moves (e.g., an argument, objection, defense, account, etc.) and (ii) raise a significant
objection to or question about that move. In doing these things, you’ll want to use our discipline’s
standard technical terminology for explaining and assessing arguments (for a refresher, see the papers
by Frances, Pryor, and Coffman in the ‘Philosophy Fundamentals: Concepts, Methods, & Writing’
folder at our Bb site [subfolder: ‘Basic Concepts, Terms, & Methods’]).
▫ You’ll submit a given MC to me via e-mail (ecoffma1@utk.edu) on Monday morning (i.e.,
before noon) prior to our Tuesday afternoon class. Each of your MCs will earn a grade of Exemplary,
Satisfactory, or Unsatisfactory. An Exemplary MC will contextualize and reconstruct a central part
of an assigned reading, then raise a significant objection to or question about that part of the reading.
All MCs must include a word count.
▫ MCs will help form the basis of class discussion. I reserve the right to ask authors of MCs deemed
Exemplary to present their MCs informally to the class. We’ll devote a lot of our time in class to
group discussion of assigned readings. Our aim in discussing a given paper will be to lay the
groundwork for what would be a good “conference commentary” on that paper: a reply of 750-1000
words that raises a handful of critical points meant to help the author improve the paper.
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▪ Philosopher’s Index + PhilPapers research assignment
▫ Using Philosopher’s Index (accessible through the Library’s Philosophy subject guide:
http://www.lib.utk.edu/refs/phil/), you’ll find one recently published (≈ last 15 years) article that you
think might figure in your term paper for the course, and write an MC on it. Then you’ll repeat the
same exercise (find one recently published relevant article and write an MC on it) using the
PhilPapers website (http://philpapers.org/). Your two MCs on the articles you find using these
research resources are due by 5P Friday October 28th.
▪ Term paper (2500-3000 words)
▫ You’ll write this course’s term paper (which can build on some of your MCs) in five steps:
• Prospectus: Before starting serious work on a full draft of your term paper, you’ll construct a
prospectus that you’ll submit to me for comments (due: 5P Friday November 4th).
◦ prospectus = a rough summary (in paragraph or outline form) of the following key
elements of your paper: (i) the main conclusion(s) you’ll be arguing for; (ii) brief sketches of
the arguments you’ll give for your main conclusion(s); and (iii) brief sketches of some
questions about, or objections to, your argument you’ll consider.
• 1st full draft: You’ll then work up a full draft of your paper in light of my feedback on your
prospectus.
• Peer comments: Next, I’ll pair you with one of your colleagues, who will provide you with
written comments on a full draft of your paper.
• 2nd full draft: After revising your paper in light of your colleague’s comments, you’ll submit
your paper to me for additional comments (due: 5P Wednesday November 30th).
• 3rd (and final!) draft: Finally, you’ll submit a draft of your paper revised in light of my
comments (due: 12P Monday December 12th).
▪ Small but important pro-research activities
▫ Sign up for electronic updates from some journals relevant to your main philosophical interests.
▫ Identify three non-APA professional or graduate student conferences to which you could submit a
polished version of your term paper.
B. ELMS seminar requirements
▪ Three Critical Commentaries (first two by the Friday after Fall Break, third by Thanksgiving Break)
Each of your CCs (1000-1500 words) will earn a grade of Exemplary, Satisfactory, or Unsatisfactory. An
Exemplary CC will raise—and maybe attempt to answer—a handful of significant objections to and/or
questions about central parts of some or other required or recommended reading(s). All CCs must be
typed and include a word count; submit them to me via e-mail (ecoffma1@utk.edu).
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▪ Term Paper (3000-4000 words)
You’ll submit a prospectus (see above) to me for comments by 5P Friday November 11th. The final
draft of your term paper will be due by 5P Monday December 5th. Your term paper can derive from
one of your CCs.
▪ Small but important pro-research activities (see above)
V. Important Dates
8/23 (T): First class meeting
8/30 (T): First MC due (Proseminar)
9/29-9/30 (R-F): Fall Break
10/7: First two CCs due (ELMS)
10/28 (F): PI + PP research assignment due (Proseminar)
11/4 (F): Term paper prospectus due (Proseminar)
11/11 (F): Term paper prospectus due (ELMS)
11/24-11/25 (R-F): Thanksgiving Break; third CC due (ELMS)
11/30 (W): First full draft of term paper due (Proseminar—revised in light of peer’s comments)
12/5 (M): Full draft of term paper due (ELMS)
12/12 (M): Second full draft of term paper due (Proseminar—revised in light of EJ’s comments)
VI. List of Required Readings
▪ All assigned readings will be available at Bb. I’ll make official reading assignments—and occasionally
suggest recommended readings—in class, over e-mail, and at Bb.
2003: Richard Feldman, Epistemology (chapters 1 and 2; selections from chapters 7 and 9)
1983: Hilary Kornblith, “Justified Belief and Epistemically Responsible Action”
1985: Richard Feldman and Earl Conee, “Evidentialism”
1988: William Alston, “The Deontological Conception of Epistemic Justification”
2008: Hilary Kornblith, “Knowledge Needs No Justification”
2004: Earl Conee and Richard Feldman, “Making Sense of Skepticism”
1995: Alvin Plantinga, “Pluralism: A Defense of Religious Exclusivism”
2010: Peter van Inwagen, “We’re Right They’re Wrong”
1988: Richard Feldman, “Having Evidence”
1997: Timothy Williamson, “Knowledge as Evidence”
2008: Ram Neta, “What Evidence Do You Have?”
2008: Earl Conee and Richard Feldman, “Evidence”
2003: Thomas Kelly, “Epistemic Rationality as Instrumental Rationality: A Critique”
2007: Adam Leite, “Epistemic Instrumentalism and Reasons for Belief”
2007: Thomas Kelly, “Evidence and Normativity: Reply to Leite”
2000: Timothy Williamson, “Skepticism and Evidence”
2005: Nicholas Silins, “Deception and Evidence”
2005: Richard Feldman, “Respecting the Evidence”
2005: Thomas Kelly, “The Epistemic Significance of Disagreement”
2005: Roger White, “Epistemic Permissivism”
2006: Richard Feldman, “Epistemological Puzzles about Disagreement”
2007: David Christensen, “Epistemology of Disagreement: The Good News”
2010: Adam Elga, “How to Disagree about How to Disagree”
2007: Adam Elga, “Reflection and Disagreement”
2010: Thomas Kelly, “Peer Disagreement and Higher-Order Evidence”
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