This paper is about a class of conditionals that Anthony Gillies (ms) has dubbed ‘open indicatives’, that is, indicative conditionals “whose antecedents are consistent with our picture of the world” (1). I believe that what I say here can eventually be extended to all indicative conditionals, but indicatives that aren’t open raise special problems, so I’ll set them aside for today. In [auth 200...

In Crossing the Threshold of Divine Revelation, William Abraham offers a rich, subtle defense of an epistemology of divine revelation. In this paper, I focus on a cluster of metaepistemological claims made by Abraham. Specifically, I argue that Abraham’s remarks about epistemic fit and the epistemic standards we bring to bear in making evaluations of divine revelation claims commit him to a spe...

Cultural relativism continues to be closely identified with anthropology even though few anthropologists today endorse the comprehensive version of it first articulated by students of Franz Boas. A review of the progressive reduction of the scope of cultural relativism since the early decades of the twentieth century suggests that it should be regarded not as a comprehensive theory or doctrine ...

I begin with some familiar conceptions of epistemic relativism. One kind of epistemic relativism is descriptive pluralism. This is the simple, non-normative thesis that many different communities, cultures, social networks, etc. endorse different epistemic systems (E-systems), i.e., different sets of norms, standards, or principles for forming beliefs and other doxastic states. Communities try ...

This paper defends the view that philosophical propositions are merely relatively true, i.e. true relative to a doxastic perspective defined at least in part by a non-inferential belief-acquiring method. Here is the strategy: first, the primary way that contemporary philosophers defend their views is through the use of rational intuition, and this method delivers non-inferential, basic beliefs ...