KURT SYLVAN
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON (UK)
PH.D., RUTGERS UNIVERSITY (NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ, USA)
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     THE ETHICS OF BELIEF
SPRING 2017                    

       Meets Mondays in 58/1039 from 4-5
and Thursdays
 in 85/2207 from 9-11
 
SCHEDULE OF READINGS

For each week, the readings mainly divide into required
and optional further readings.  I include the optional
readings just in case you find the topic especially interesting and
​would like to write a paper on it or simply learn more.

Note that a great many of the readings can be found online
(see links for use when connected to campus internet).

Part 1. Introduction

Week 1 – The Possibility and Nature of the Ethics of Belief

Required Reading
There is none for this week.  But see here, here, and
here for some notes and slides for the week, and see
the references in the notes for optional further reading.

Part 2. The Normative Ethics of Belief​

Week 2 – Evidentialism vs. Pragmatism

Required Reading
Rinard, Susanna.  “Against the New Evidentialists.”
Shah, Nishi.  "A New Argument for Evidentialism."

Optional Further Reading
Clifford, William K. “The Ethics of Belief."
            James, William.  “The Will to Believe."
Leary, Stephanie.  "In Defense of Practical Reasons for Belief.”
McHugh, Conor.  “The Illusion of Exclusivity.”
Nolfi, Kate. “Why Evidence (and Only Evidence) Can Justify Belief.”

Week 3 – Pragmatic Encroachment

Required Reading
Brown, Jessica.  “Knowledge and Practical Reason.”
​
Strongly Recommended Reading
            Stanley, Jason and Hawthorne, John.  “Knowledge and Action.”

Optional Further Reading
 Brown, Jessica.  “Impurism, Practical Reasoning, and the Threshold Problem.”
Brown, Jessica.  “Practical Reasoning, Decision Theory, and Anti-Intellectualism.”
          Brown, Jessica.  “Subject-Sensitive Invariantism and the Knowledge Norm for Practical Reasoning.”
Fantl, Jeremy and McGrath, Matthew.  “Evidence, Pragmatics, and Justification.”
Hawthorne, John.  Selections from Knowledge and Lotteries.
Lackey, Jennifer.  “Acting on Knowledge.”
Stanley, Jason.  Selections from Knowledge and Practical Interests. 

Week 4 – Permissivism vs. Impermissivism

Required Reading
Schoenfield, Miriam.  “Permission to Believe.”

Strongly Recommended Reading
                        Cohen, Gerald Allan.  “Paradoxes of Conviction.”

Optional Further Reading
Feldman, Richard. “Reasonable Religious Disagreements.”
Kelly, Thomas.  “Evidence Can Be Permissive.”
Sylvan, Kurt. “Illusion of Discretion.”
Vavova, Ekaterina. “Irrelevant Influences.”
White, Roger. “Epistemic Permissiveness.”

Week 5 – Epistemic Consequentialism vs. Non-Consequentialism

Required
Berker, Selim.  "The Rejection of Epistemic Consequentialism."

Strongly Recommended Reading
Sylvan, Kurt.  "An Epistemic Non-Consequentialism."

Optional Further Reading
Ahlstrom-Vij, Kristoffer and Dunn, Geoffrey.  “A Defence of Epistemic
Consequentialism.”
Berker, Selim.  “Epistemic Teleology and the Separateness of Propositions.”
Firth, Roderick.  “Epistemic Merit: Intrinsic and Instrumental.”
Fumerton, Richard.  “Epistemic Normativity and Justification.”
Sylvan, Kurt.  “Reliabilism without Epistemic Consequentialism.”
Sylvan, Kurt.  “Veritism Unswamped.”

Week 6 – Virtue Epistemology

Required Reading
Sosa, Ernest.  Selections from Apt Belief and Reflective Knowledge: A Virtue Epistemology.
Zagzebski, Linda.  Selection from Virtues of the Mind.​

Recommended Reading
      Greco, John and Turri, John.  “Virtue Epistemology.”
Lackey, Jennifer.  “Why We Don’t Deserve Credit for Everything We Know.”
​
Zagzebski, Linda.  "From Reliabilism to Virtue Epistemology."
                
Optional Further Reading
Baehr, J.  “Character, Reliabilism, and Virtue Epistemology.”
Brogaard, Berit.  “Can Virtue Reliabilism Explain the Value of Knowledge?”
                        Code, Lorraine.  “Toward a ‘Responsibilist’ Epistemology.”
Miracchi, Lisa.  “Competence to Know.”
Montmarquet, James.  “Epistemic Virtue.”
                        Pritchard, Duncan.  “Apt Performance and Epistemic Value.”
                        Riggs, Wayne.  “Two Problems of Easy Credit.”
                        Sylvan, Kurt.  “Knowledge as a Non-Normative Relation.”
                        Sylvan, Kurt and Sosa, Ernest.  “The Place of Reasons in Epistemology.”
                        Sylvan, Kurt.  “Responsibilism out of Character.”

3.  The Applied Ethics of Belief

Week 7 – Epistemic Injustice, Part 1: Fricker and Dotson

Required Reading
Fricker, Miranda.  Selections from Epistemic Injustice.
Dotson, Kristie.  "Conceptualizing Epistemic Oppression."

Strongly Recommended Reading
Anderson, Luvell.  “Epistemic Injustice and the Philosophy of Race.”
Fricker, Miranda.  Further Selections from Epistemic Injustice.
​

Optional Further Reading
Anderson, Elizabeth.  “Epistemic Injustice as a Virtue of Social Institutions.”
Fricker, Miranda.  “Epistemic Oppression and Epistemic Privilege.”
       Gendler, Tamar Szabo.  “The Epistemic Costs of Implicit Bias.”
Pohlhaus, Gaile.  “Relational Knowing and Epistemic Injustice.”
            Gougen, Stacey.  “Stereotype Threat, Epistemic Injustice, and Rationality.”

Week 8 – Epistemic Injustice, Part 2: The Nature of Prejudice

Required Reading
Appiah, Kwame Anthony.  "Racisms."
                        Kelly, Daniel and Roedder, Erica.  “Racial Cognition and the Ethics of Implicit Bias.”

Optional Further Reading
Brownstein, Michael.  "Implicit Bias."
Gendler, Tamar.  "Alief and Belief."
Gendler, Tamar.  "Alief in Action and Reaction."
            Greenwald, Anthony and Krieger, L. H.  “Implicit Bias: Scientific Foundations.”
Leslie, Sarah-Jane.  "The Original Sin of Cognition."
Mandelbaum, Eric.  "Against Alief."
Mandelbaum, Eric.  "Attitude, Inference, Association: On the Propositional Structure of Implicit Bias."
Nagel, Jennifer.  "Gendler on Alief."
Washington, Natalia and Kelly, Daniel.  "Who's Responsible for this?  Moral Responsibility and Knowledge of Implicit Bias." 

Week 9 – Ideology, Part 1

Required Reading
Shelby, Tommie.  “Ideology, Racism, and Critical Social Theory.”

Optional Further Reading
Althusser, Louis. “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses.”
Elster, John.  "Belief, Bias, and Ideology."
Geuss, Raymond.  "Ideology."
Haslanger, Sally. “Racism, Ideology, and Social Movements.”
Haslanger, Sally.  "Ideology Beyond Belief."
     Marx, Karl and Engels, Friedrich.  Selections from The German Ideology.
Rosen, Michael.  "The Forms of False Consciousness."

Week 10 – Ideology, Part 2

Required Reading
Stanley, Jason.  Selection from How Propaganda Works.

Optional Further Reading
            Lippmann, Walter.  Selections from Public Opinion.
       Stanley, Jason.  Further selections from How Propaganda Works​.
Srinivasan, A.  "Philosophy and Ideology."
​
Week 11 – Conceptual Ethics

Required Reading
Haslanger, Sally.  "'But Mom, Crop Tops Are Cute!'  Social Knowledge, Social Structure, and Ideology Critique."
Haslanger, Sally.  Introduction to Resisting Reality. 

Strongly Recommended Reading
Burgess, Alexis. and Plunkett, David.  "Conceptual Ethics."
  Haslanger, Sally.  More from Resisting Reality.

Optional Further Reading
Plunkett, David.  “Which Concepts Should We Use?”
                        Quine, W. V. O.  “Ontology and Ideology.”
                        Sider, Ted.  Selections from Writing the Book of the World.
                        Thomasson, Amie.  “Metaphysical Disputes and Metalinguistic Negotiation.”
                        Thomasson, Amie.  “What Can We Do, When We Do Metaphysics?”

4.  The Meta-Ethics of Belief

Week 12 – The Source of Doxastic Norms

Required Reading
Velleman, J. David.  "On The Aim of Belief."

Optional Further Reading
Enoch, David.  “Agency, Shmagency: Why Normativity Won’t Come from What Is Constitutive of Action.”
            McHugh, Conor.  “Belief and Aims.”
            Owens, David.  “Does Belief Have an Aim?”
Railton, Peter.  “On the Hypothetical and Non-Hypothetical in Reasoning about Action and Belief.”
Railton, Peter.  “Truth, Reason, and the Regulation of Belief.”
                      Shah, Nishi.  “How Truth Governs Belief.”
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