by Juan Comesa (Author)
In Being Rational and Being Right, Juan Comesa argues for a cluster of theses related to the rationality of action and belief. His starting point is that rational action requires rational belief but tolerates false belief. From there, Comesa provides a novel account of empirical evidence according to which said evidence consists of the content of undefeated experiences. This view, which Comesa calls Experientialism, differs from the two main views of empirical evidence on offer nowadays: Factualism, according to which our evidence is what we know, and Psychologism, according to which our experiences themselves are evidence. He reasons that Experientialism fares better than these rival views in explaining different features of rational belief and action. Comesa embeds this discussion in a Bayesian framework, and discusses in addition the problem of normative requirements, the easy knowledge problem, and how Experientialism compares to forms of evidentialism and reliabilism.
Author Biography
Juan Comesa, Professor, Rutgers University
Juan Comesa is Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University. He has taught at the University of Wisconsin and at the University of Arizona and is the co-author of Skepticism: The Basics (Routledge, 2022). He works mainly in epistemology, though he is also interested in metaphysics and metaethics.