Description:

David Christensen (Brown University) 

Research Interests: I’m mainly interested in epistemology (both formal and informal). I’m currently working on questions about how our theory of rational belief should in general accommodate one's doubts about one's own cognitive reliability.

Title: "Disagreement, Drugs, etc.: from Accuracy to Akrasia"

Abstract: We often get evidence about the reliability of our own thinking about some particular matter. This can come from the disagreement of others, or from information about our being subject to the effects of drugs, fatigue, emotional ties, implicit biases, etc. Accounts that make rational belief sensitive to such evidence depend on reliability-assessments of the agent’s thinking about the matter in question. But specific proposals about how such assessments rationally constrain agents’ credences seem to yield unintuitive results—especially in cases where the agent’s first-order thinking does fall short rationally. This paper sketches a possible approach to this problem, one which would unify our treatment of disagreement evidence and other evidence about the reliability of our thinking. It has the consequence that epistemic akrasia should occur more frequently than is sometimes supposed. But it helps us see why this might be OK after all.