ABSTRACT
What sorts of considerations help to determine whether S’s belief that p has the epistemic status that it has? If S’s belief that p is, e.g., epistemically justified, what sorts of considerations make it so? Common sense and philosophical orthodoxy agree that, at least in paradigmatic cases, evidential considerations—i.e. considerations that are truth-relevant; considerations that affect the (subjective or objective) likelihood of p—play a crucial role in determining the epistemic status of S’s belief that p. If S believes that p on the basis of considerations c 1,…, cn, and if c1,…, cn provide especially good evidential support for p, then it certainly seems that these facts are part of what makes it the case that S’s belief that p enjoys the positive epistemic status that it seems to have. But do non-evidential considerations ever help to determine the epistemic status of our beliefs? That is, do considerations ever help make it the case that S’s belief that p has the epistemic status that it does without affecting the likelihood that p is true? And if they do, when and how do such non-evidential considerations help to determine the epistemic status of our beliefs?
