[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":3,"doc-seo-139577-105":59,"doc-detail-139577-en":130},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",[7,13,18,23,28,33,38,43,48,51,55],{"id":8,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":10,"show_sort_weight":11,"slug":12},1,"Document","Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":14,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":15,"show_sort_weight":16,"slug":17},2,"Literature",80,"literature",{"id":19,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":20,"show_sort_weight":21,"slug":22},4,"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":24,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":25,"show_sort_weight":26,"slug":27},5,"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":29,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":30,"show_sort_weight":31,"slug":32},6,"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":34,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":35,"show_sort_weight":36,"slug":37},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":39,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":40,"show_sort_weight":41,"slug":42},8,"Research & Report",30,"research-report",{"id":44,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":45,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":47},9,"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":46,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":49,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":50},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":52,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":53,"show_sort_weight":52,"slug":54},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":56,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":57,"show_sort_weight":24,"slug":58},19,"General","general",{"code":4,"msg":60,"data":61},"ok",{"site_id":62,"language":63,"slug":64,"title":65,"keywords":66,"description":67,"schema_data":68,"social_meta":123,"head_meta":125,"extra_data":127,"updated_unix":129},105,"en","cognitive-diversity-and-the-contingency-of-evidence-original-research","Cognitive Diversity and the Contingency of Evidence - Original Research","","The paper defends evidence contingency against “evidence essentialism,” the claim that if something is evidence of a target for an agent at a time, it is necessarily evidence for any agent at any time. Cognitive diversity among epistemic agents shows evidential relations are relative to cognizers and thus contingent. The argument is developed through extreme cases and epistemic defeat, while also addressing prima facie justification and evaluating multiple conceptions of evidence.",{"@graph":69,"@context":122},[70,84,105],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/cognitive-diversity-and-the-contingency-of-evidence-original-research/139577/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/cognitive-diversity-and-the-contingency-of-evidence-original-research/139577.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"Sage","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-09-18","2026-08-24",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":19},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",{"@type":106,"mainEntity":107},"FAQPage",[108,114,118],{"name":109,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":111},"What is evidence essentialism, and why does the paper reject it?","Question",{"text":112,"@type":113},"Evidence essentialism holds that if e is evidence of h for an agent at a time, then it is necessarily evidence of h for any agent at any time. The paper argues this is only plausible if cognitive diversity among epistemic agents is ignored, since evidential relations turn out to be relative to cognizers.","Answer",{"name":115,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":116},"How does cognitive diversity support evidence contingency?",{"text":117,"@type":113},"Different agents have different cognitive skills, capacities, abilities, and proclivities. The paper claims this cognitive diversity makes evidential relations contingent, so what counts as evidence depends on factors extrinsic to the evidence and the target belief.",{"name":119,"@type":110,"acceptedAnswer":120},"What role does the New Evil Demon Problem play in the argument?",{"text":121,"@type":113},"The paper discusses a reliabilist motivation and the New Evil Demon Problem to illustrate that justification can remain when reliability differs across worlds. This helps motivate the broader point that justification and knowledge may depend on contingent factors beyond external reliability.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":124,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":126,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":128,"site_id":62},139577,1787558295,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":131},{"doc_id":128,"user_id":132,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":133,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":134,"file_id":135,"file_url":136,"file_type":137,"file_size":138,"view_count":19,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":46,"language":139,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":140,"faqs":141,"seo_title":142,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":129,"read_time":31},687197207057,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/davatar_29158cc5080c5b710cf443261637dec0","Synthese (2022) 200:202  \n[https://doi.org/10.1007/s1](https://doi.org/10.1007/s1)1229-022-03660-8  \nORIGINAL RESEARCH  \nCognitive diversity and the contingency of evidence  \nJack C. Lyons1  \nReceived: 3 March 2020 / Accepted: 16 March 2022 / Published online: 6 May 2022 © The Author(s) 2022  \nAbstract  \nMany epistemologists endorse a view I call “evidence essentialism:” if e is evidence of h, for some agent at some time, then necessarily, e is evidence of h, for any agent at anytime. I argue that such a view is only plausible if we ignore cognitive diversity among epistemic agents, i.e., the fact that different agents have different—sometimes radically different—cognitive skills, abilities, and proclivities. Instead, cognitive diversity shows that evidential relations are contingent and relative to cognizers. This is especially obvious in extreme cases (from pathological to gifted agents) and in connection with epistemic defeat, butitis also very plausibly true ofordinary agents, and regarding prima facie justification.  \nKeywords Evidence · Reliabilism · Evidentialism · Cognitive processes  \nExternalist epistemologies often claim that justification and knowledge depend on factors that hold only contingently. A simple form of reliabilism, for example, holds that the justification of a belief depends on the reliability of the process that produced it, in the world where that process was used. A process that is reliable, and hence justification-conferring, in this world might be unreliable in another. One famous objection to this view holds that victims of a Cartesian demon might be fully justified in their beliefs, even though those beliefs result from processes that are unreliable in that world (e.g., Lehrer & Cohen, 1983) . The idea behind this New Evil Demon Problem is at least in part that so long as my demon world counterpart is forming the same beliefs as I am, on the basis of the same evidence as I am, then her beliefs are equally justified as mine.  \nEvidence essentialism, as I’ll call it, is the view that evidence relations hold necessarily, in the sense that if e is evidence of h, for some agent at some time, then necessarily, e is evidence of h, for any agent at any time. Evidence contingency is the  \nT.C.: Neurodivergence (ii) Guest Editor Name: Lead Guest Editor: Dr. Alejandro Vázquez del Mercado  \nB Jack C. Lyons [jack.lyons@glasgow.ac.uk](jack.lyons@glasgow.ac.uk)  \n1 University of Glasgow, Glasgow, UK  \ndenial of this. The reliabilist view sketched above implies evidence contingency. But even if the New Evil Demon Problem shows that this kind of reliabilism is false, 1 there are other ways in which justification and knowledge might depend on contingent factors, beside external world factors that affect reliability. In particular, internal, psychological factors might help determine what counts as evidence for what, in a way that is incompatible with evidence essentialism. Different cognizers have different skills, capacities, abilities and proclivities, and this cognitive diversity has the effect of, among other things, rendering evidential relations contingent.2  \nThe goal of this paper is to argue for evidence contingency. I begin by laying some groundwork in Sect. 1, clarifying what’s meant by evidence essentialism and evidence contingency, in particular, getting clear on the operative understanding of evidence. In Sect. 2, I distinguish three general conceptions of evidence: an informational view, a phenomenal view, and an etiological view. In the next section, I discuss some problems for the informational view, one having to do with beliefs about necessary truthsand another deriving from considerations of cognitive diversity. In the following two sections, 4 and 5, I consider phenomenal and etiological solutions to these problems, concluding that the etiological view does much better. The etiological view commits us to evidence contingency. In Sect. 6 I argue that the phenomenon of epistemic defeat provides a fur","cbCaip3CucOxRXlD","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaip3CucOxRXlD","pdf",291647,"English","# Abstract\n# Evidence essentialism and contingency\n## What counts as evidence\n## Evidence essentialism vs contingency\n# Conceptual framework for evidence\n## Three conceptions of evidence\n# Problems for competing views\n## Informational view and cognitive diversity\n# Phenomenal and etiological solutions\n## Epistemic defeat and the etiological view\n# Compatibility with internalism\n# Concluding comments","[{\"question\":\"What is evidence essentialism, and why does the paper reject it?\",\"answer\":\"Evidence essentialism holds that if e is evidence of h for an agent at a time, then it is necessarily evidence of h for any agent at any time. The paper argues this is only plausible if cognitive diversity among epistemic agents is ignored, since evidential relations turn out to be relative to cognizers.\"},{\"question\":\"How does cognitive diversity support evidence contingency?\",\"answer\":\"Different agents have different cognitive skills, capacities, abilities, and proclivities. The paper claims this cognitive diversity makes evidential relations contingent, so what counts as evidence depends on factors extrinsic to the evidence and the target belief.\"},{\"question\":\"What role does the New Evil Demon Problem play in the argument?\",\"answer\":\"The paper discusses a reliabilist motivation and the New Evil Demon Problem to illustrate that justification can remain when reliability differs across worlds. This helps motivate the broader point that justification and knowledge may depend on contingent factors beyond external reliability.\"}]","Cognitive Diversity and the Contingency of Evidence - Original Research | PDF"]