Ideas of E Conee / R Feldman, by Theme

[American, fl. 2004, both Professors at the University of Rochester.]

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11. Knowledge Aims / A. Knowledge / 4. Belief / c. Aim of beliefs
If the only aim is to believe truths, that justifies recklessly believing what is unsupported (if it is right)
     Full Idea: If it is intellectually required that one try to believe all and only truths (as Chisholm says), ...then it is possible to believe some unsubstantiated proposition in a reckless endeavour to believe a truth, and happen to be right.
     From: E Conee / R Feldman (Evidentialism [1985], 'Justification')
     A reaction: This implies doxastic voluntarism. Sorry! I meant, this implies that we can control what we believe, when actually we believe what impinges on us as facts.
13. Knowledge Criteria / A. Justification Problems / 2. Justification Challenges / c. Knowledge closure
We don't have the capacity to know all the logical consequences of our beliefs
     Full Idea: Our limited cognitive capacities lead Goldman to deny a principle instructing people to believe all the logical consequences of their beliefs, since they are unable to have the infinite number of beliefs that following such a principle would require.
     From: E Conee / R Feldman (Evidentialism [1985], 'Doxastic')
     A reaction: This doesn't sound like much of an objection to epistemic closure, which I took to be the claim that you know the 'known' entailments of your knowledge.
13. Knowledge Criteria / B. Internal Justification / 3. Evidentialism / b. Evidentialism
Evidentialism says justifications supervene on the available evidence
     Full Idea: Fundamentally Evidentialism is a supervenience thesis, according to which facts about whether or not a person is justified in believing a proposition supervene on facts describing the evidence the person has.
     From: E Conee / R Feldman (Introduction to 'Evidentialism' [2004], p.1)
     A reaction: If facts 'describe', does that make them linguistic? That's not how I use 'facts'. A statement of a fact is not the same as the fact. An ugly fact can be beautifully expressed. I am, however, in favour of evidence.
20. Action / C. Motives for Action / 3. Acting on Reason / c. Reasons as causes
Rational decisions are either taken to be based on evidence, or to be explained causally
     Full Idea: In decision theory, there is a view according to which the rational basis for all decisions is evidential. This kind of decision theory is typically contrasted with causal decision theory.
     From: E Conee / R Feldman (Introduction to 'Evidentialism' [2004], p.3)
     A reaction: Your Kantian presumably likes rational reflection on evidence, and your modern reductive scientist prefers causality (which doesn't really sound very rational).