Epistemic Dilemmas

Kevin McCain is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. His authored works include: Evidentialism and Epistemic Justification (Routledge, 2014), The Nature of Scientific Knowledge: An Explanatory Approach (2016), (with Kostas Kampourakis) Uncertainty: How It Makes Science Advance (2019), and Epistemology: 50 Puzzles, Paradoxes, and Thought Experiments (Routledge, 2021). His edited works include: (with Ted Poston) Best Explanations: New Essays on Inference to the Best Explanation (2017), Believing in Accordance with the Evidence: New Essays on Evidentialism (2018), (with Ted Poston) The Mystery of Skepticism: New Explorations (2018), (with Kostas Kampourakis) What is Scientific Knowledge? An Introduction to Contemporary Epistemology of Science (Routledge, 2019), and (with Scott Stapleford) Epistemic Duties: New Arguments, New Angles (Routledge, 2020). Scott Stapleford is Professor of Philosophy at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, Canada. He is the author of Kant’s Transcendental Arguments: Disciplining Pure Reason (2008), coauthor (with Lorne Falkenstein and Molly Kao) of Logic Works: A Rigorous Introduction to Formal Logic (Routledge, 2022), coauthor (with Tyron Goldschmidt) of Berkeley’s Principles: Expanded and Explained (Routledge, 2016) and Hume’s Enquiry: Expanded and Explained (Routledge, 2021), coeditor (with Kevin McCain) of Epistemic Duties: New Arguments, New Angles (Routledge, 2020), and co-translator and coeditor (with Courtney D. Fugate and Curtis Sommerlatte) of Tetens’s Writings on Method, Language, and Anthropology (2021). Matthias Steup received his Ph.D. from Brown University in 1985. He is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and the author of An Introduction to Contemporary Epistemology (1996) and numerous articles in epistemology. He is the editor of Knowledge, Truth and Duty (2001) and co-editor of Contemporary Debates in Epistemology (2005, 2014) and A Companion to Epistemology (2010).

Introductory Note

Kevin McCain, Scott Stapleford and Matthias Steup

Part I: What are Epistemic Dilemmas? Do they exist?

1. Rational Dilemmas and their Place in the Bigger Picture

Graham Priest

2. Higher-Order Evidence and the Normativity of Logic

Mattias Skipper

3. Collateral Conflicts and Epistemic Norms

J. Adam Carter

4. Epistemic Dilemma and Epistemic Conflict

Verena Wagner

5. Epistemic Dilemmas, Epistemic Quasi-Dilemmas, and Quasi-Epistemic Dilemmas

Scott Stapleford and Kevin McCain

6. Defeaters, Higher-Order Evidence, and Epistemic Dilemmas

Matthias Steup

7. Scepticism about Epistemic Dilemmas

Mona Simion

8. When in Doubt, Withhold: A Defense of Two Grounds of Rational Withholding

A.K. Flowerree

9. Epistemic Dilemmas Denied

Earl Conee

Part II: No Easy Way Out? Facing Epistemic Dilemmas

10. Embracing Epistemic Dilemmas

David Christensen

11. Knowledge-First Evidentialism and the Dilemmas of Self-Impact

Eyal Tal and Paul Silva Jr.

12. Stereotypes, Epistemic Dilemmas and Epistemic Dispositions

Katherine Puddifoot

13. Dilemmas, Disagreement, and Dualism

Liz Jackson

14. Normative Indeterminacy in the Epistemic Domain

Nick Leonard and Fabrizio Cariani

15. Who’s Afraid of Epistemic Dilemmas?

Nick Hughes