Is there such a thing as *conscious* inference?

...at least as I think we are accustomed to think about it. What I mean is that in cases of what is usually called "conscious inference" when I look closely I don't find that I'm really *doing* anything, which is how I think I've been led to believe about conscious inference whereas in "unconscious inference" it "just happens".

I just can't see what I'm *doing* other than perhaps wondering, sending a query to my cognitive system, a request for a result. And then I just wait for the result to pop up on the screen. That's not doing much. On this model conscious inference is little more than being conscious *of* an inference, of a process--the exact same process--that occurs when I'm not "looking".

Often it seems I don't even have to send the query. So when I display this:

(A v B) & ~A

You just had "therefore B" pop into your head whether you liked it or not. In this case *I* initiated the cognitive module for inference in your mind. Was that a "conscious inference"? You were conscious of the premise and conscious of the conclusion popping up on your screen (maybe you want a pop-up blocker for your mind (I know I would)), but you didn't really *do* anything, not even send a query regarding whether something followed from that WFF.

In a paper I'm working on, I argue that this more accurate understanding could save internalist foundationalism from skeptical worries about it.

The FEW, the proud...

...the...formal epistemologists. Just got the good news last week that I'll be presenting at the Fourth Annual Formal Epistemology Workshop.

I was *very* happy about this as it is *the* event in my area of speciality (no, that's not spelled wrong: it's pronounced spesh-ee-AL-ity).

Fourth Annual Formal Epistemology Workshop
FEW 2007
CMU
May 31 – June 3, 2007
Organizers: Richard Scheines, Sahotra Sarkar, and Branden Fitelson
Sponsors: The Philosophy Departments at Berkeley, Austin, and CMU
Announcement Schedule Info. & Links FEW 2006 FEW 2005 FEW 2004

What is the watershed moment for fallibilism?

My buddy Ted Poston put that questioin to me today, so here's my surmise.

I wish I knew, but I’m certain that a big part of it was Chisholm’s focus on degrees of reasonableness.

He studied with C.I. Lewis but I haven’t actually read much of his original stuff. It surely happened between Russell and Chisholm though. Unless it’s Moore. I guess it could be Moore because he’d have admitted that *of course* it’s possible that he was being deceived, but that’s a bunch of philosophy crap! In some ways that marks a clear departure from the kind of epistemology Descartes practiced. I wouldn’t really count Hempel or Carnap because that was considered philosophy of science and it’s pretty recently that standard epistemologists have listened.

That’s my take.