ABSTRACT. The Requirement of Total Evidence (RTE) asks an agent to make her confidence in a belief proportional to the support it receives from her total evidence. This paper examines (RTE) as a norm of epistemic rationality and argues that it is problematic. Looking at the work of Peter Achinstein (2001) on the notion of evidence it becomes clear that (RTE) endorses a view of the constitution of evidence that is neither necessary nor sufficient for something to count as evidence. To overcome this and other deficiencies associated with (RTE) a move is made to an objective view of evidence. This move aligns epistemic rationality with scientific rationality in seeking to capture veridical evidence. It also leads to a new norm of epistemic rationality—the Proper Subset Evidence Requirement (PSER).

Click on the following link to access a presentation on the paper.

Disclaimer: Reading my paper listed on the site provides a good overview of the total evidence requirement, but I’ve tightened and refined my argument against the requirement. I’m now arguing for an objective requirement on epistemic rationality, which does not require factoring subjective and epistemic situation evidence into determining what it is reasonable to believe about a proposition. Though such evidence is still part of the body of total evidence, only a proper subset of evidence (i.e., potential and veridical evidence) should carry the day in determining what it is reasonable to believe about a proposition and to what degree.

• This paper puts forward a new account of epistemic justification. The Evidence and Reasons for Belief (ERB) thesis is offered as a response to deficiencies in a thesis endorsed by Stephen Kearns and Daniel Star (2008, 2009). In section 1, I substantiate the components of ERB in reference to the literature on the nature of propositions, facts, evidence, and normative reasons. Section 2 argues against the Kearns and Star thesis called Reasons as Evidence (RE). This is done by laying bare the logical structure of RE and showing that either of the conditionals in the biconditional endorsed by RE can be falsified using two cases inspired by Richard Foley (1991). In section 3, I argue for ERB in relation to ordinary linguistic intuitions and the ability of ERB to handle the two cases RE was unable to handle. Section 4 responds to a couple of objections to ERB, and section 5 summarizes and concludes the paper.

Update: The paper is now down for revision.

• A requirement on rational belief frequently invoked in epistemology and inductive logic is the total evidence requirement (TER). This requirement asks one to consult all evidence when making a determination about what one believes or the degree of confirmation to assign to a hypothesis. Despite the wide-spread use of the requirement there are many problems with it. After explaining the requirement in section 1 of this paper I motivate the requirement in section 2. In section 3, I highlight problems with successive interpretations of the requirement. This applies pressure to abandon TER or revise it. In section 4, I create the proportional evidence requirement (PER). This requirement revises the notion of what constitutes relevant evidence by making the notion proportional to the weight of evidence for a given hypothesis. After formulating two key principles behind PER I realize that one of the principles may not be an improvement over the commitments of TER. So, I revise one of the principles in PER to avoid such problems and create a requirement on evidence that is truly an upgrade over TER. I conclude this paper in section 5 by summarizing and indicating directions for future research.

Update: The paper is now down for revision.