photo of Sherrilyn Roush

Sherrilyn Roush

Professor of Philosophy

Office: 233 Moses
Phone: (510) 296-5925
E-mail: sherri.roush@gmail.com

Tracking Truth argued, among other things, that justified belief is not necessary for knowledge. This makes it puzzling what justified belief is and what it is good for. Since it intuitively involves some form of self-certification of reliability, it must also be possible to rationally disapprove of our beliefs. This issue thus dove-tails with questions about how to generalize Bayesianism away from extreme idealizations about respect for one’s own beliefs. I provide such a framework in “Second-Guessing: A Self-Help Manual,” which shows how to coherently entertain and cope with news about one’s own unreliability. I apply this work to questions about how to admit the fallibility of science without falling into abject skepticism. Other current papers include “Closure on Skepticism,” “Optimism about the Pessimistic Induction,” “The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Survival.” Works in progress are “Inconceivable Support Relations,” “Skepticism about Reasoning,” “The Re-Calibrating Bayesian,” and “Why Re-Calibrate?”