Matthew Lutz | Wuhan University (original) (raw)

Papers by Matthew Lutz

Journal of Moral Philosophy, Mar 4, 2022

In a recent paper in this journal, Bengson, Cuneo and Reiser (hereafter BCR) present a novel epis... more In a recent paper in this journal, Bengson, Cuneo and Reiser (hereafter BCR) present a novel epistemic challenge to naturalist moral realism, which they call the Projectability Challenge. The Projectability Challenge aims to show that there is an important epistemic phenomenon, projectability, that naturalists are unable to explain, but which non-naturalists can explain. This flips a familiar dynamic on its head, since it is typically argued that the moral naturalist has epistemic advantages over the moral non-naturalist (see, e.g., Joyce 2006, Ch. 6; Bedke 2009). In this response, I argue that BCR dramatically underestimate the theoretical resources available to naturalists to explain the phenomenon of projectability. While BCR argue that no variety of moral naturalism can explain projectability, I contend that all varieties of moral naturalism can explain projectability. There is no projectability problem for any kind of naturalist realism. Penultiamte draft.

Oxford Studies in Metaethics Volume 15, 2020

The Reliability Challenge to moral non-naturalism has received substantial attention recently in ... more The Reliability Challenge to moral non-naturalism has received substantial attention recently in the literature on moral epistemology. While the popularity of this particular challenge is a recent development, this form of the challenge can be traced back to a skeptical challenge in the philosophy of mathematics raised by Paul Benacerraf. The current Reliability Challenge is widely regarded as the most sophisticated way to develop this skeptical line of thinking, making the Reliability Challenge the strongest epistemic challenge to normative non-naturalism. In this chapter, I argue that the innovations that have occurred since Benacerraf’s statement of the challenge are misconceived and confused in a number of ways. The Reliability Challenge is not the most potent epistemic challenge to moral non-naturalism. The most potent challenge comes from the fact that there is a causal condition on knowledge—or, more precisely, a becaual condition—that non-natural moral facts cannot satisfy.

The Routledge Handbook of Metaethics, 2017

Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, 2021

Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 2021

David Enoch has argued that we can be justified in believing in irreducibly normative reasons on ... more David Enoch has argued that we can be justified in believing in irreducibly normative reasons on the grounds that such reasons are deliberatively indispensable. This deliberative indipsensability argument has been attacked from a variety of angles, and is generally held to be rather weak. In this paper, I argue that existing criticisms of the deliberative indispensability argument do not touch the core of Enoch's argument. Properly understood, the deliberative indispensability argument is much stronger than its critics allege. It deserves to be taken seriously. Penultimate Draft

Philosophia, 2017

In this paper, I defend an inductivist solution to Hume’s Problem of Induction against the popula... more In this paper, I defend an inductivist solution to Hume’s Problem of Induction against the popular counterinduction parody argument. Once we examine the structure of the inductivist position closely, we will see that there is no coherent way to parody it.

International Journal for the Study of Skepticism, 2019

Synthese, 2018

In a recent paper, Appley and Stoutenburg present two new objections to Explanationist Evidential... more In a recent paper, Appley and Stoutenburg present two new objections to Explanationist Evidentialism (EE): the Regress Objection and the Threshold Objection. In this paper, I develop a version of EE that is independently plausible and empirically grounded, and show that it can meet Appley and Stoutenburg's objections.

Philosophical Studies, 2019

In this paper, I provide a novel explanationist framework for thinking about peer disagreement th... more In this paper, I provide a novel explanationist framework for thinking about peer disagreement that solves many of the puzzles regarding disagreement that have troubled epistemologists over the last two decades. Explanationism is the view that a subject is justified in believing a proposition just in case that proposition is part of the best explanation of that subject's total evidence. Applying explanationism to the problem of peer disagreement yields the following principle: in cases of peer disagreement, the thing that the subjects ought to believe is the thing that is the best explanation of their total evidence, where part of their evidence is the fact that they happen to find themselves in disagreement with an epistemic peer. In what follows, I show how to understand and apply this core idea.

Synthese, 2013

The goal of this paper is to defend Simple Modest Invariantism (SMI) about knowledge from the thr... more The goal of this paper is to defend Simple Modest Invariantism (SMI) about knowledge from the threat presented by pragmatic encroachment. Pragmatic encroachment is the view that practical circumstances are relevant in some way to the truth of knowledge ascriptions—and if this is true, it would entail the falsity of SMI. Drawing on Ross and Schroeder’s recent Reasoning Disposition account of belief, I argue that the Reasoning Disposition account, together with Grice’s Maxims, gives us an attractive pragmatic account of the connection between knowledge ascriptions and practical circumstances. This gives us the ability to explain away the data that is supposed to support pragmatic encroachment. Finally, I address three important objections to the view offered by giving a pragmatic account of when it is conversationally appropriate to cancel a conversational implicature, and discussing when sentences with true content can end up sounding false as well as cases where sentences with false content can end up sounding true.

Erkenntnis, 2017

Evolutionary Debunking Arguments purport to show that our moral beliefs do not amount to knowledg... more Evolutionary Debunking Arguments purport to show that our moral beliefs do not amount to knowledge because these beliefs are ''debunked'' by the fact that our moral beliefs are, in some way, the product of evolutionary forces. But there is a substantial gap in this argument between its main evolutionary premise and the skeptical conclusion. What is it, exactly, about the evolutionary origins of moral beliefs that would create problems for realist views in metaethics? I argue that evolutionary debunking arguments are best understood as offering up defeaters for our moral beliefs. Moreover, the defeater in question is a paradigmatic instance of undercutting defeat. If anything is an undercutting defeater, then learning about the evolutionary origins of our moral beliefs is a defeater for those beliefs.

Philosophical Studies, 2013

Pacific Philosophical Quarterly

David Enoch has argued that we can be justified in believing in irreducibly normative reasons on ... more David Enoch has argued that we can be justified in believing in irreducibly normative reasons on the grounds that such reasons are deliberatively indispensable. This deliberative indipsensability argument has been attacked from a variety of angles, and is generally held to be rather weak. In this paper, I argue that existing criticisms of the deliberative indispensability argument do not touch the core of Enoch's argument. Properly understood, the deliberative indispensability argument is much stronger than its critics allege. It deserves to be taken seriously.

Penultimate Draft

Journal of Moral Philosophy

In a recent paper in this journal, Bengson, Cuneo and Reiser (hereafter BCR) present a novel epis... more In a recent paper in this journal, Bengson, Cuneo and Reiser (hereafter BCR) present a novel epistemic challenge to naturalist moral realism, which they call the Projectability Challenge. The Projectability Challenge aims to show that there is an important epistemic phenomenon, projectability, that naturalists are unable to explain, but which non-naturalists can explain. This flips a familiar dynamic on its head, since it is typically argued that the moral naturalist has epistemic advantages over the moral non-naturalist (see, e.g., Joyce 2006, Ch. 6; Bedke 2009). In this response, I argue that BCR dramatically underestimate the theoretical resources available to naturalists to explain the phenomenon of projectability. While BCR argue that no variety of moral naturalism can explain projectability, I contend that all varieties of moral naturalism can explain projectability. There is no projectability problem for any kind of naturalist realism.

Penultiamte draft.

International Journal for the Study of Skepticism, 2019

A review with critical comments of Wouter Floris Kalf's book, Moral Error Theory.

Philosophical Studies

In this paper, I provide a novel explanationist framework for thinking about peer disagreement th... more In this paper, I provide a novel explanationist framework for thinking about peer disagreement that solves many of the puzzles regarding disagreement that have troubled epistemologists over the last two decades. Applying explanationism to the problem of peer disagreement yields the following principle: In cases of peer disagreement, the thing that subjects ought to believe is the thing that is the best explanation of their total evidence, where part of their evidence is the fact that they are in disagreement with an epistemic peer. In this paper, I show how to understand and apply this idea.

Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy

A skeptical hypothesis argument introduces a scenario – a skeptical hypothesis – where our belief... more A skeptical hypothesis argument introduces a scenario – a skeptical hypothesis – where our beliefs about some subject matter are systematically false, but our experiences do not discriminate between the case where our beliefs are true and the skeptical scenario where they are not. Because we are unable to rule out this scenario, we do not know that any of our beliefs about the subject matter are true. As one famous skeptical hypothesis argument goes: I cannot rule out the hypothesis that I am being deceived by a demon. Therefore, I cannot know anything about the external world. By similar token, a moral skeptical hypothesis argument is an argument that moral knowledge is impossible for
agents like us in situations like ours, because we are unable to rule out some skeptical hypothesis.

In this paper, I defend a moral skeptical hypothesis argument – the Moral Closure Argument – against a number of objections. This argument is not novel, but it has rarely been taken seriously because it is widely held that the argument has serious flaws. My task in this paper is to argue that these supposed flaws are merely apparent; the Moral Closure Argument is much more potent than it might seem.

Synthese

In a recent paper, Appley and Stoutenburg present two new objections to Explanationist Evidential... more In a recent paper, Appley and Stoutenburg present two new objections to
Explanationist Evidentialism (EE): the Regress Objection and the Threshold Objection. In this paper, I develop a version of EE that is independently plausible and empirically grounded, and show that it can meet Appley and Stoutenburg's objections. Forthcoming in Synthese.

Philosophia

In this paper, I defend an inductivist solution to Hume's Problem of Induction against the popula... more In this paper, I defend an inductivist solution to Hume's Problem of Induction against the popular counterinduction parody argument. Once we examine the structure of the inductivist position closely, we will see that there is no coherent way to parody it.

Journal of Moral Philosophy, Mar 4, 2022

In a recent paper in this journal, Bengson, Cuneo and Reiser (hereafter BCR) present a novel epis... more In a recent paper in this journal, Bengson, Cuneo and Reiser (hereafter BCR) present a novel epistemic challenge to naturalist moral realism, which they call the Projectability Challenge. The Projectability Challenge aims to show that there is an important epistemic phenomenon, projectability, that naturalists are unable to explain, but which non-naturalists can explain. This flips a familiar dynamic on its head, since it is typically argued that the moral naturalist has epistemic advantages over the moral non-naturalist (see, e.g., Joyce 2006, Ch. 6; Bedke 2009). In this response, I argue that BCR dramatically underestimate the theoretical resources available to naturalists to explain the phenomenon of projectability. While BCR argue that no variety of moral naturalism can explain projectability, I contend that all varieties of moral naturalism can explain projectability. There is no projectability problem for any kind of naturalist realism. Penultiamte draft.

Oxford Studies in Metaethics Volume 15, 2020

The Reliability Challenge to moral non-naturalism has received substantial attention recently in ... more The Reliability Challenge to moral non-naturalism has received substantial attention recently in the literature on moral epistemology. While the popularity of this particular challenge is a recent development, this form of the challenge can be traced back to a skeptical challenge in the philosophy of mathematics raised by Paul Benacerraf. The current Reliability Challenge is widely regarded as the most sophisticated way to develop this skeptical line of thinking, making the Reliability Challenge the strongest epistemic challenge to normative non-naturalism. In this chapter, I argue that the innovations that have occurred since Benacerraf’s statement of the challenge are misconceived and confused in a number of ways. The Reliability Challenge is not the most potent epistemic challenge to moral non-naturalism. The most potent challenge comes from the fact that there is a causal condition on knowledge—or, more precisely, a becaual condition—that non-natural moral facts cannot satisfy.

The Routledge Handbook of Metaethics, 2017

Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, 2021

Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, 2021

David Enoch has argued that we can be justified in believing in irreducibly normative reasons on ... more David Enoch has argued that we can be justified in believing in irreducibly normative reasons on the grounds that such reasons are deliberatively indispensable. This deliberative indipsensability argument has been attacked from a variety of angles, and is generally held to be rather weak. In this paper, I argue that existing criticisms of the deliberative indispensability argument do not touch the core of Enoch's argument. Properly understood, the deliberative indispensability argument is much stronger than its critics allege. It deserves to be taken seriously. Penultimate Draft

Philosophia, 2017

In this paper, I defend an inductivist solution to Hume’s Problem of Induction against the popula... more In this paper, I defend an inductivist solution to Hume’s Problem of Induction against the popular counterinduction parody argument. Once we examine the structure of the inductivist position closely, we will see that there is no coherent way to parody it.

International Journal for the Study of Skepticism, 2019

Synthese, 2018

In a recent paper, Appley and Stoutenburg present two new objections to Explanationist Evidential... more In a recent paper, Appley and Stoutenburg present two new objections to Explanationist Evidentialism (EE): the Regress Objection and the Threshold Objection. In this paper, I develop a version of EE that is independently plausible and empirically grounded, and show that it can meet Appley and Stoutenburg's objections.

Philosophical Studies, 2019

In this paper, I provide a novel explanationist framework for thinking about peer disagreement th... more In this paper, I provide a novel explanationist framework for thinking about peer disagreement that solves many of the puzzles regarding disagreement that have troubled epistemologists over the last two decades. Explanationism is the view that a subject is justified in believing a proposition just in case that proposition is part of the best explanation of that subject's total evidence. Applying explanationism to the problem of peer disagreement yields the following principle: in cases of peer disagreement, the thing that the subjects ought to believe is the thing that is the best explanation of their total evidence, where part of their evidence is the fact that they happen to find themselves in disagreement with an epistemic peer. In what follows, I show how to understand and apply this core idea.

Synthese, 2013

The goal of this paper is to defend Simple Modest Invariantism (SMI) about knowledge from the thr... more The goal of this paper is to defend Simple Modest Invariantism (SMI) about knowledge from the threat presented by pragmatic encroachment. Pragmatic encroachment is the view that practical circumstances are relevant in some way to the truth of knowledge ascriptions—and if this is true, it would entail the falsity of SMI. Drawing on Ross and Schroeder’s recent Reasoning Disposition account of belief, I argue that the Reasoning Disposition account, together with Grice’s Maxims, gives us an attractive pragmatic account of the connection between knowledge ascriptions and practical circumstances. This gives us the ability to explain away the data that is supposed to support pragmatic encroachment. Finally, I address three important objections to the view offered by giving a pragmatic account of when it is conversationally appropriate to cancel a conversational implicature, and discussing when sentences with true content can end up sounding false as well as cases where sentences with false content can end up sounding true.

Erkenntnis, 2017

Evolutionary Debunking Arguments purport to show that our moral beliefs do not amount to knowledg... more Evolutionary Debunking Arguments purport to show that our moral beliefs do not amount to knowledge because these beliefs are ''debunked'' by the fact that our moral beliefs are, in some way, the product of evolutionary forces. But there is a substantial gap in this argument between its main evolutionary premise and the skeptical conclusion. What is it, exactly, about the evolutionary origins of moral beliefs that would create problems for realist views in metaethics? I argue that evolutionary debunking arguments are best understood as offering up defeaters for our moral beliefs. Moreover, the defeater in question is a paradigmatic instance of undercutting defeat. If anything is an undercutting defeater, then learning about the evolutionary origins of our moral beliefs is a defeater for those beliefs.

Philosophical Studies, 2013

Pacific Philosophical Quarterly

David Enoch has argued that we can be justified in believing in irreducibly normative reasons on ... more David Enoch has argued that we can be justified in believing in irreducibly normative reasons on the grounds that such reasons are deliberatively indispensable. This deliberative indipsensability argument has been attacked from a variety of angles, and is generally held to be rather weak. In this paper, I argue that existing criticisms of the deliberative indispensability argument do not touch the core of Enoch's argument. Properly understood, the deliberative indispensability argument is much stronger than its critics allege. It deserves to be taken seriously.

Penultimate Draft

Journal of Moral Philosophy

In a recent paper in this journal, Bengson, Cuneo and Reiser (hereafter BCR) present a novel epis... more In a recent paper in this journal, Bengson, Cuneo and Reiser (hereafter BCR) present a novel epistemic challenge to naturalist moral realism, which they call the Projectability Challenge. The Projectability Challenge aims to show that there is an important epistemic phenomenon, projectability, that naturalists are unable to explain, but which non-naturalists can explain. This flips a familiar dynamic on its head, since it is typically argued that the moral naturalist has epistemic advantages over the moral non-naturalist (see, e.g., Joyce 2006, Ch. 6; Bedke 2009). In this response, I argue that BCR dramatically underestimate the theoretical resources available to naturalists to explain the phenomenon of projectability. While BCR argue that no variety of moral naturalism can explain projectability, I contend that all varieties of moral naturalism can explain projectability. There is no projectability problem for any kind of naturalist realism.

Penultiamte draft.

International Journal for the Study of Skepticism, 2019

A review with critical comments of Wouter Floris Kalf's book, Moral Error Theory.

Philosophical Studies

In this paper, I provide a novel explanationist framework for thinking about peer disagreement th... more In this paper, I provide a novel explanationist framework for thinking about peer disagreement that solves many of the puzzles regarding disagreement that have troubled epistemologists over the last two decades. Applying explanationism to the problem of peer disagreement yields the following principle: In cases of peer disagreement, the thing that subjects ought to believe is the thing that is the best explanation of their total evidence, where part of their evidence is the fact that they are in disagreement with an epistemic peer. In this paper, I show how to understand and apply this idea.

Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy

A skeptical hypothesis argument introduces a scenario – a skeptical hypothesis – where our belief... more A skeptical hypothesis argument introduces a scenario – a skeptical hypothesis – where our beliefs about some subject matter are systematically false, but our experiences do not discriminate between the case where our beliefs are true and the skeptical scenario where they are not. Because we are unable to rule out this scenario, we do not know that any of our beliefs about the subject matter are true. As one famous skeptical hypothesis argument goes: I cannot rule out the hypothesis that I am being deceived by a demon. Therefore, I cannot know anything about the external world. By similar token, a moral skeptical hypothesis argument is an argument that moral knowledge is impossible for
agents like us in situations like ours, because we are unable to rule out some skeptical hypothesis.

In this paper, I defend a moral skeptical hypothesis argument – the Moral Closure Argument – against a number of objections. This argument is not novel, but it has rarely been taken seriously because it is widely held that the argument has serious flaws. My task in this paper is to argue that these supposed flaws are merely apparent; the Moral Closure Argument is much more potent than it might seem.

Synthese

In a recent paper, Appley and Stoutenburg present two new objections to Explanationist Evidential... more In a recent paper, Appley and Stoutenburg present two new objections to
Explanationist Evidentialism (EE): the Regress Objection and the Threshold Objection. In this paper, I develop a version of EE that is independently plausible and empirically grounded, and show that it can meet Appley and Stoutenburg's objections. Forthcoming in Synthese.

Philosophia

In this paper, I defend an inductivist solution to Hume's Problem of Induction against the popula... more In this paper, I defend an inductivist solution to Hume's Problem of Induction against the popular counterinduction parody argument. Once we examine the structure of the inductivist position closely, we will see that there is no coherent way to parody it.

My article for the SEP on the subject of Moral Naturalism. It still has to go through a review an... more My article for the SEP on the subject of Moral Naturalism. It still has to go through a review and editorial process before it goes up on the SEP website.

In this paper, I outline and defend a novel explanation-based theory of knowledge, which I call t... more In this paper, I outline and defend a novel explanation-based theory of knowledge, which I call the Matched Explanations Theory of Knowledge, or Matched Explanations for short. According to Matched Explanations, a subject knows that P when that subject bases a belief that P on accurate explanatory modeling. This theory elucidates our core concept of knowledge.