"Acting as Judge in One’s Own (Epistemic) Case"
Abstract: We often get evidence that bears on the reliability of our own first-order reasoning. The rational response to such “higher-order” evidence would seem to depend on an assessment of how reliable we can expect that reasoning to be. Independence principles are intended to constrain that reliability-assessment, so as to prevent question-begging reliance on the very reasoning being assessed.
Critics have offered several arguments against the very idea of Independence principles. Moreover, extant formulations of Independence principles have often been vague or ambiguous. This paper aims to make some progress toward defending and developing an Independence-based approach to describing how rational beliefs are constrained by evidence bearing on agents’ cognitive reliability.