Research Group
in Analytic Philosophy

Abstract

What is evidence? According to the capacity view, evidence and allied notions such as justification and knowledge are to be understood in terms of the mental capacities employed. The notion of a capacity is understood to be explanatorily basic. It is because a given subject is employing a mental capacity with a certain nature that her mental states have epistemic force. Among capacity views there is a distinction to be drawn between normative capacity views, on which mental capacities are understood as virtues or in other normative ways (Sosa 1991, 2006, 2007, Greco 2001, 2010), and capacity views that forego normative terms (Burge 2003, Bergmann 2006, Graham 2011, Schellenberg 2013, 2014). In this paper, I aim to defend a version of the capacity view that is distinctly non- normative and non-reliabilist. I will explore the implications of the view for familiar problem cases.