Dispositional evaluations

In this talk I outline an epistemic framework based on a book I am writing, and apply the framework to a certain kind of case involving higher-order evidence. I begin with various cases that have been used to motivate the need for a more “subjective” kind of ought, and accompanying norms, in both the practical and theoretical domains. I outline a broad paradigm for thinking about such oughts, which I call perspectivalist. According to this paradigm, what one ought to do and believe is fixed by one’s perspective, which is a kind of representation of the world (e.g. the propositions constituting one’s evidence). My purpose will be to outline and defend an alternative view. I first sketch how what I call dispositional evaluations work, and the kinds of norms they give rise to (roughly: ‘do what would manifest the best feasible dispositions!’, or ‘manifest the best feasible dispositions!’). I outline my overall normative framework, in which dispositional evaluations/norms play an important role, and show how it deals with cases that have been used to motivate so-called subjective oughts. I then implement the account in the context of a knowledge-first epistemology, and apply it to diagnose what is wrong with retaining belief in (putative) cases of defeat by higher-order evidence.