Why warrant transmits across epistemological disjunctivist Moorean-style arguments

Thomas Lockhart

pp. 287-319

in: Philippe Huneman, Daniel Kostić (eds), Mechanistic and topological explanations, Synthese 195 (1), 2018.

Abstract

Epistemological disjunctivists (such as Duncan Pritchard and John McDowell) make appeal to Moorean-style anti-skeptical arguments. It is often held that one problem with using Moorean-style arguments in the context of a response to skepticism is that such arguments are subject to a kind of epistemic circularity. The specific kind of epistemic failure involved has come to be known as a failure of warrant transmission. It would likely pose a problem for the anti-skeptical ambitions of the epistemological disjunctivist if his version of the Moorean-style argument failed to transmit warrant; but no epistemological disjunctivist has offered an argument to show that this is not so. In this paper, I fill the gap by arguing that warrant transmits across epistemological disjunctivist Moorean-style arguments.

Cited authors

McDowell John

Pritchard Duncan