Language, Epistemology, Metaphysics, and Mind Research Interest Group Talk (Declan Smithies, Ohio State)

The Language, Epistemology, Metaphysics, and Mind Research Group welcomes Declan Smithies, a professor in the Department of Philosophy at Ohio State University. He works primarily on issues in epistemology and the philosophy of mind. His book, The Epistemic Role of Consciousness, was published with Oxford University Press in September, 2019. He has also co-edited two volumes of essays: Introspection and Consciousness (Oxford, 2012) and Attention: Philosophical and Psychological Essays (Oxford, 2011).

This is an in-person event, but you are also welcome to join the talk via Zoom. 

Talk Title

Valenced Experience and the Epistemology of Value

Talk Abstract

What epistemic role does valenced experience play in justifying our beliefs about value? According to the perceptual model, valenced experience justifies beliefs about value in much the same way that perceptual experience justifies beliefs about color, shape, and motion. The perceptual model generates plausible verdicts in some cases: for example, feeling aversion to the painful condition of your foot justifies believing that this painful condition is bad for you without needing any justification itself. In other cases, however, the perceptual model generates implausible verdicts: feeling moral admiration towards an act of wanton cruelty cannot justify believing that the act is morally admirable when this moral feeling is unjustified. If the perceptual model is right in some cases, then why isn’t it right in all cases? There is a puzzling asymmetry here that needs to be explained. The challenge is to explain why some valenced feelings can justify belief about value without needing any justification, while others need to be justified in the same way as beliefs about value We cannot solve this puzzle simply by restricting the perceptual model to those cases where it delivers plausible results. This theoretically unsatisfying without some explanation of why it applies in some cases but not others. And yet the perceptual model doesn’t provide the theoretical resources to explain this in any principled way. Instead, I explain the puzzling asymmetry by combining an alternative epistemology of value – the inferential model – with plausible assumptions in the metaphysics of value.

About the Language, Epistemology, Metaphysics and Mind Research Group

One of six departmental research interest groups, the Language, Epistemology, Metaphysics and Mind Group undertakes research in philosophy of mind, philosophy of cognitive science, traditional and formal epistemology, metaphysics, and philosophy of language.