Graham Oddie (U Colorado Boulder): “Cognitive value, accuracy and the vindication of epistemic norms”

Abstract: A number of philosophers have argued that certain epistemic norms can be justified by appeal to the fundamental value of truth or accuracy. In his recent monograph (Accuracy and the Laws of Credence, OUP 2016) Richard Pettigrew makes an impressive case for the comprehensive grounding of epistemology in the epistemic utility of accuracy together with standard principles of decision theory. Unfortunately there is a flaw in the foundation of the epistemic utility program. I argue that what is generally taken to be accuracy isn’t actually accuracy at all.  And a basic desideratum on the notion of accuracy is incompatible with the central postulate of the epistemic utility program.

Professor Graham Oddie received his PhD from the London School of Economics in 1979, and has been Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado in Boulder since 1994.