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1
Gärdenfors, Peter. Knowledge in flux: Modeling the dynamics of epistemic states. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1988.
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2
Schutte, John M. Casting net assessment: Andrew W. Marshall and the epistemic community of the Cold War. Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama: Air University Press, Air Force Research Institute, 2014.
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Rabaka, Reiland. Against epistemic apartheid: W.E.B. Du Bois and the disciplinary decadence of sociology. Lanham, Md: Lexington Books, 2010.
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4
Wedgwood, Ralph. Epistemic Teleology. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198779681.003.0005.
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Wedgwood focuses his discussion around two evaluative concepts: correctness and rationality. Wedgwood proposes that these two concepts are related in the following way: one belief state is more rational than another if and only if the first has less expected inaccuracy than the former. He argues, however, that this view should not be understood as a form of consequentialism since it is not the total consequences of a belief state that determine its rationality. The view is rather a version of epistemic teleology. Wedgwood deploys this view to illuminate the difference between synchronic and diachronic evaluation of belief states as well as to disarm objections that have been leveled against epistemic consequentialism.
5
Spiritual knowing: Alternative epistemic perspectives. Carrollton, GA: State University of West Georgia, 1997.
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Spiritual Knowing: Alternative Epistemic Perspective (State University of West Georgia Studies in the Social Scien). State University of West Georgia, 1997.
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8
Carballo, Alejandro Pérez. Good Questions. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198779681.003.0007.
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Pérez Carballo adopts an epistemic utility theory picture of epistemic norms where epistemic utility functions measure the value of degrees of belief, and rationality consists in maximizing expected epistemic utility. Within this framework he seeks to show that we can make sense of the intuitive idea that some true beliefs—say true beliefs about botany—are more valuable than other true beliefs—say true beliefs about the precise number of plants in North Dakota. To do so, however, Pérez Carballo argues that we must think of the value of epistemic states as consisting in more than simply accuracy. This sheds light on which questions it is most epistemically valuable to pursue.
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Askell, Amanda. Epistemic Consequentialism and Epistemic Enkrasia. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198779681.003.0013.
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Askell investigates what the epistemic consequentialist will say about epistemic enkrasia principles, principles that instruct one not to adopt a belief state that one takes to be irrational. She argues that a certain epistemic enkrasia principle for degrees of belief can be shown to maximize expected accuracy, and thus that a certain kind of epistemic consequentialist is committed to such a principle. But this is bad news for such an epistemic consequentialist, according to Askell, because epistemic enkrasia principles are problematic.
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Schellenberg, Susanna. Content Particularism. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198827702.003.0004.
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Chapter 3 distinguishes four ways one might account for perceptual particular. We can take an epistemic approach and understand perceptual particularity in terms of a special epistemic relation to the particulars perceived. We can take an ontological approach and understand perceptual particularity in terms of the ontological dependence of the perceptual state on the particulars perceived. We can take a psychologistic approach and understand perceptual particularity in terms of the phenomenal character of perceptual states by arguing that phenomenal character is constituted by the particulars perceived. Finally, we can take a representational approach and understand perceptual particularity in terms of features of perceptual content. The chapter argues that perceptual particularity is best accounted for in terms of perceptual content rather than in terms of epistemic, psychologistic, or ontological dependency properties.
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Brogaard, Berit. Looks and Seemings. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190495251.003.0003.
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Moving on from points established in chapter 1, the author considers the question of what looks and seemings are, and whether they are indeed mental states. She then argues that ‘look’- and ‘seem’-reports do indeed express mental states rather than observational properties, as Mike Martin has proposed. She then provides evidence for thinking that looks and seemings fall into two categories: phenomenal (non-epistemic, non-comparative) and epistemic. At the end of the chapter, she presents an argument for thinking that looks and seemings are representational and addresses the question of whether this conclusion implies that visual experiences are representational.
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Onuf, Nicholas Greenwood. State-Nations. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190879808.003.0008.
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In The Order of Things, Foucault failed to distinguish between modern and modernist moments in the epoch beginning around 1800 because he attributed interiority as an epistemic principle to the modern age when this is modernism’s defining feature. Instead, the scalar effects of demographic, scientific, and industrial revolutions define modernity as people came to experience it in their daily lives. Transformations in scale provoked the institutional development of lateral frames or levels. Modern states as nations occupy one level. Hegel took the revolutionary step of merging people as a collective singular with state as an apparatus, thereby granting the state-nation the agency of an “actual individual.” The society of state-nations stands a level above, people as individuals in various arrangements fill the level below. The central mechanism in making the modern epoch an age of levels is recognition of states by states.
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Schellenberg, Susanna. Perceptual Evidence. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198827702.003.0008.
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Chapter 7 introduces a distinction between two kinds of evidence: phenomenal evidence (evidence that corresponds to how our environment sensorily seems to us) and factive evidence (evidence that is determined by the environment to which we are perceptually related). Regardless of whether we are perceiving, hallucinating, or suffering an illusion, we have phenomenal evidence. However, when we perceive, we have additional factive evidence. The rational source of both phenomenal and factive evidence lies in employing perceptual capacities: perceptual states have epistemic force due to the epistemic and metaphysical primacy of employing perceptual capacities in perception over employing them in hallucination or illusion. So epistemic force stems from an asymmetric dependence of the employment of perceptual capacities in hallucination and illusion on their employment in perception. Insofar as both kinds of evidence stem from properties of the perceptual capacities employed, capacitism provides a unified account of phenomenal and factive evidence.
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Rosenkranz, Sven. Justification as Ignorance. Oxford University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198865636.001.0001.
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Justification as Ignorance offers an original account of epistemic justification as both non-factive and luminous that vindicates core internalist intuitions, without construing justification as an internal condition. The account conceives of justification, in its doxastic and propositional varieties, as a kind of epistemic possibility of knowing, and of being in a position to know, respectively. It thus contrasts with other recently proposed views that characterize justification in terms of the metaphysical possibility of knowing. In developing his account, Rosenkranz devises a suitable non-normal multi-modal epistemic logic for knowledge and being in a position to know that respects the finding that these notions create hyperintensional contexts, defends his conception of justification against well-known anti-luminosity arguments, shows that the account allows for fruitful applications and principled solutions to the lottery and preface paradoxes, and provides a metaphysics of justification, and of its varying degrees of strength, that is compatible with core assumptions of the knowledge-first approach and disjunctivist conceptions of mental states.
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Moss, Sarah. Probabilistic Knowledge. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198792154.001.0001.
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Traditional philosophical discussions of knowledge have focused on the epistemic status of full beliefs. This book argues that in addition to full beliefs, credences can constitute knowledge. For instance, your .4 credence that it is raining outside can constitute knowledge, in just the same way that your full beliefs can. In addition, you can know that it might be raining, and that if it is raining then it is probably cloudy, where this knowledge is not knowledge of propositions, but of probabilistic contents. The notion of probabilistic content introduced in this book plays a central role not only in epistemology, but in the philosophy of mind and language as well. Just as tradition holds that you believe and assert propositions, you can believe and assert probabilistic contents. Accepting that we can believe, assert, and know probabilistic contents has significant consequences for many philosophical debates, including debates about the relationship between full belief and credence, the semantics of epistemic modals and conditionals, the contents of perceptual experience, peer disagreement, pragmatic encroachment, perceptual dogmatism, and transformative experience. In addition, accepting probabilistic knowledge can help us discredit negative evaluations of female speech, explain why merely statistical evidence is insufficient for legal proof, and identify epistemic norms violated by acts of racial profiling. Hence the central theses of this book not only help us better understand the nature of our own mental states, but also help us better understand the nature of our responsibilities to each other.
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Barrett, Justin L. The Argument from Positive Epistemic Status. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190842215.003.0010.
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Plantinga’s suggested argument for God from positive epistemic status takes as its starting point that many of our beliefs have positive epistemic status and that such positive status is best thought of as derived from our belief-forming faculties functioning properly in an appropriate environment. Plantinga suggests that this proper function is best understood in terms of a designer having engineered these faculties for particular purposes, the best candidate for this designer being God. A ready objection is that the needed “proper” functioning could be derived from evolution and, so, God is not obviously the best candidate for being the “designer.” This essay evaluates versions of this objection in reference to recent scientific research from cognitive developmental psychology and cognitive science of religion.
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Thomas, Alan. Should Epistemic Injustices Be Redressed by the “Corrective Virtues”? Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190631741.003.0009.
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This chapter examines the kind of wronging of a person involved in cases of epistemic injustice and whether or not epistemic injustice, so understood, is better remedied by state action or by what Miranda Fricker calls the “corrective virtues.” It is argued that there is a trade off between arguing that such injustices are very pervasive, or identifying what it is distinctively to wrong a person in their capacity as a knower. Focusing on the idea of an epistemic capacity, it is argued that the core sense of the concept involves cases where a person attempts to disqualify another from the status of being an epistemic subject at all. It is a form of expressively injurious speech or conduct that attack a person’s status thereby indirectly undermining their rights. This attempt to introduce stratification into the standing of free and equal citizens explains why both Fricker and her critics are partially correct. There is an ethos inherent to liberal democracy that requires that citizens refrain from interfering in the legitimate projects of others. When the state speaks in its expressive capacity it both exemplifies, and seeks to entrench, such an ethos at the level of individual conduct.
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Marshall, Colin. Compassion and Being in Touch. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198809685.003.0005.
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This chapter argues that only compassion can provide the epistemic good of putting an agent in touch with a suffering creature’s pain. The argument proceeds by showing that only compassion satisfies the conditions for being in touch, according to which a subject must experience the suffering creature in a way that reveals the property of pain. To show that compassion can be part of phenomenologically basic experience, the views of René Descartes, Arthur Schopenhauer, and Max Scheler are discussed. Neither propositional knowledge nor accurate imagination, it is argued, are sufficient for an agent to be in touch. This chapter also proposes capturing the motivational structure of pain and compassion in imperatival terms (drawing on recent work in the philosophy of mind), and argues that there is no barrier to states with imperatival content providing epistemic, world-matching goods.
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Manne, Kate. Exonerating Men. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190604981.003.0007.
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The flipside of misogyny’s punishment of women is exonerating the privileged men who engage in misogyny. This chapter canvasses this phenomenon, along with the flow of sympathy up the social hierarchy, away from the female victims of misogyny toward its (again, privileged) male perpetrators. This is dubbed “himpathy.” These phenomena are connected to epistemic injustice and epistemic oppression, theorized by Miranda Fricker and Kristie Dotson, among others. As a contrast with the much-discussed Isla Vista killings, the chapter considers the far less publicized case of the serial rapist police officer in Oklahoma City, who preyed on black women who had criminal records, in the belief that these women would have no legal recourse. This is an instance of systemic “misogynoir”—Moya Bailey’s term for the distinctive, in some ways sui generis form of misogyny to which black women in the United States are subject, given misogyny’s interaction with racism and white supremacy.
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Chakravartty, Anjan. The Nature and Provenance of Epistemic Stances. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190651459.003.0007.
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The second of two forms of ontological uncertainty, previously introduced, is explored in detail. This form of uncertainty concerns the contention that not only is ontological commitment something that varies between individuals with different, prior, philosophical commitments in the form of different epistemic stances, but some such differences are irresolvable in principle. The deflationary stance and the two stances most relevant to disputes about this form of uncertainty—the empiricist and metaphysical stances—are considered. The view that the stance one adopts is subject to a kind of choice, thus constituting a form of epistemic voluntarism, is elaborated. Crucial to this view is a description and defense of “permissive” norms of rationality for ontological belief, according to which more than one but not all possible stances are rationally acceptable.
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Guerra Hernandez, Hector. Estudos africanos: abordagens e possibilidades heurísticas de uma área em construção interdisciplinar. Brazil Publishing, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.31012/978-65-990565-1-2.
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Scholars presently engaged in African History have to face obstacles inherent to the constraints which involve academic production and its regimens of truth. It is in the circle of academic debates that one may grasp the lack of epistemic autonomy not only in defining our own historical questions, but also our heuristic models and approaches. Being able to call into question such regimens of truth which sustain the production of knowledge about the African continent is contingent on the critical reframing of epistemic vantage points, in spite of the recognition that that the very conceptual frameworks and categorization systems remain embedded in Western epistemology. Critically grasping this fact represents a challenge of daunting proportions. Therefore, to make historical sense of African societies' constitutive processes it is imperative to provincialize the political historicism which insists in placing the State as a definitive, rational and consolidated form of political organization. The analytical gaze deployed in this book intends to set out of the inverse perspective by focusing upon processes of social mobility, associativism and conflict management as constitutive elements of these societies. It is posited that it is possible to approach these processes out of the usual paradigms of modern states - either colonial or contemporary - in order to build heuristic perspectives conducive to the uplifting of social agency and autonomy of African historical processes.
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Schellenberg, Susanna. Perceptual Capacities, Knowledge, and Gettier Cases. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198724551.003.0005.
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I will exploit the basic commitments of capacitivism to develop a distinctive externalist view of perceptual knowledge. The basic idea of capacitivism is that perception is constitutively a matter of employing perceptual capacities that function to discriminate and single out particulars in our environment. It is because a given subject is employing perceptual capacities with a certain function that her mental states have epistemic force. Employing such perceptual capacities constitutes a mental state that provides us with phenomenal evidence, and employing such capacities in the good case also provides us with knowledge-worthy factive evidence. Capacitivism is an externalist view that does not invoke reliability, remains steadfastly naturalistic, and by recognizing a metaphysically substantive common element between perception and hallucination avoids any commitment to disjunctivism.
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Moran, Richard. Speech, Intersubjectivity, and Social Acts. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190873325.003.0001.
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This chapter uses a discussion of Thomas Reid’s characterization of “social acts of mind” to introduce the main themes of the book. Two ways of considering ordinary speech are contrasted: one, speech as a behavioral sign, indicating the states and attitudes of the speaker, and two, speech as a social act that people perform together. The political aspect of being recognized as a speaking subject is discussed in connection with Hobbes and others. This is contrasted with an understanding of testimony that sees it as not essentially different from perception-based knowledge (Quine, Millikan). The question is introduced: how can it matter to the epistemic status of a phenomenon (someone’s utterance) that it is essentially self-conscious, that the speaker herself understands it in a particular way and produces it with a particular communicative intention?
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Levine, Joseph. Knowing What It’s Like. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198800088.003.0006.
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This paper deals with self-knowledge as it applies to the contents of phenomenally conscious states. I argue that a plausible view of our epistemic situation with respect to the phenomenal character of our conscious states rules out various kinds of proposals for identifying phenomenal character with external properties. This paper comes at the issue of representationalism about phenomenal character from the angle of what is involved in self-knowledge of phenomenal character. The main problem, as developed here, is that externalist theories of phenomenal character are inherently vulnerable to “Frege cases,” in which we can internally distinguish our representational states even though they pick out the same external property. By pinning our experience on the identity of the referent of our perceptual states, the theory undermines our intimate self-knowledge of experience.
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Marshall, Colin. Compassionate Moral Realism. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198809685.001.0001.
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This book offers a novel defense of compassion and morality. The core claim is that compassion is our capacity to perceive or experience other creatures’ pains, pleasures, and desires as they really are, and that mere factual knowledge is no replacement for this. As a result, people without compassion cannot fully face reality, even if they know what reality contains. Part I of the book defends this claim with respect to simple cases involving compassion for a suffering creature. Part II extends that conclusion to cases involving other states and multiple creatures, thereby providing a general epistemic answer to the “why be moral?” question. Part III uses the argument of Part I to develop a novel form of moral realism. This view, called “Compassionate Moral Realism,” offers a distinctive set of virtues. It is naturalist, and yet posits necessary, knowable moral facts. It also vindicates the intuition that there is an epistemic asymmetry between morally good people and amoral people. Unlike other views, it locates that asymmetry at the level of perception or experience, not at the level of propositional judgment or knowledge. Throughout, the argument draws on a variety of historical figures and on work in contemporary metaethics.
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Schechter, Joshua. Difficult Cases and the Epistemic Justification of Moral Belief. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198805076.003.0002.
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This chapter concerns the epistemology of difficult moral cases where the difficulty is not traceable to ignorance about non-moral matters. The chapter first argues for a principle concerning the epistemic status of moral beliefs about difficult moral cases. The basic idea behind the principle is that one’s belief about the moral status of a potential action in a difficult moral case is not justified unless one has some appreciation of what the relevant moral considerations are and how they bear on the moral status of the potential action. The chapter then argues that this principle has important ramifications for moral epistemology and moral metaphysics. It puts pressure on some views of the justification of moral belief, such as ethical intuitionism and reliabilism. It puts pressure on some antirealist views of moral metaphysics, including simple versions of relativism. It also provides some direct positive support for broadly realist views of morality.
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Carayannis, Tatiana, and Thomas G. Weiss. The "Third" United Nations. Oxford University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198855859.001.0001.
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This book is about the Third UN: the ecology of supportive non-state actors—intellectuals, scholars, consultants, think tanks, NGOs, the for-profit private sector, and the media—that interacts with the intergovernmental machinery of the First UN (member states) and the Second UN (staff members of international secretariats) to formulate and refine ideas and decision-making at key junctures in policy processes. Some advocate for particular ideas, others help analyze or operationalize their testing and implementation; many thus help the UN “think.” While think tanks, knowledge brokers, and epistemic communities are phenomena that have entered both the academic and policy lexicons, their intellectual role remains marginal to analyses of such intergovernmental organizations as the United Nations. The Third UN in this volume connotes those working toward knowledge and normative advances for the realization of the values underlying the UN Charter; the book does not discuss armed belligerents and criminals, the main focus of previous analyses of non-state actors and the UN system.
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Carter, J. Adam, and Duncan Pritchard. Inference to the Best Explanation and Epistemic Circularity. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198746904.003.0009.
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Inference to the best explanation (IBE) tells us to infer from the available evidence to the hypothesis which would, if correct, best explain that evidence. As Peter Lipton puts it, the core idea driving IBE is that explanatory considerations are a guide to inference. But what is the epistemic status of IBE itself? One issue of contemporary interest is whether it is possible to provide a justification for IBE itself which is non-objectionably circular. We aim to carve out some new space in this debate. In particular, we suggest that the matter of whether a given rule-circular argument is objectionably circular itself depends crucially on some subtle distinctions which have been made in the recent literature on perceptual warrant. By bringing these debates together, a principled reason emerges for why some kinds of rule-circular justifications for IBE are considerably less objectionable than others.
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Goff, Philip. Revelation and the Transparency Argument. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190677015.003.0005.
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This chapter complete the argument against physicalism. The chapter defends the thesis of Revelation, roughly the thesis that we stand in a special epistemic relationship to our conscious states such that (i) their nature is introspectively revealed to us, and (ii) we know with something close to certainty that they are instantiated. Revelation is supported on the grounds that it is the best explanation of Super-Justification, roughly the thesis that certain truths about our conscious experience can be known with something close to certainty. Revelation implies that we grasp the essences of our conscious states, and hence it secures the crucial premise of the transparency conceivability argument outlined in the last chapter. However, Revelation is also inconsistent with physicalism in a more straightforward way: Revelation in conjunction with physicalism entails that we have introspective access to the supposed physical nature of our conscious states, which is clearly not the case.
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Beer, Andreas, and Gesa Mackenthun, eds. Fugitive Knowledge. The Loss and Preservation of Knowledge in Cultural Contact Zones. Waxmann Verlag GmbH, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.31244/9783830982814.
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Encounters between cultures are also encounters between knowledge systems. This volume brings together a number of case studies that explore how some knowledge in cultural contact zones becomes transient, evanescent, and ephemeral. The essays examine various aspects of cultural, especially colonial, epistemic exchanges, placing special emphasis on the fate of those knowledges that are not easily appropriated by or translated from one cultural sphere into another and thus remain at the margins of cross-cultural exchanges. In addition, the imposition of colonial power is unthinkable without the strategic deployment and use of knowledge; most colonial states, including those of Germany in the Baltic and in West Africa, were knowledge-acquiring machines – yet, acquisition always includes rejection, detainment and subjugation of recalcitrant epistemes. Bringing together insights from various scholarly disciplines, including literary studies, history, historical anthropology, and political science, the essays in this volume investigate how different or unfamiliar knowledge was, and in some cases still is, disarticulated by being belittled, discredited, and demonized. But they also show the strategies of resilience deployed by subjugated and subaltern people: the ways in which certain materials have escaped the coloniality of knowledge – how fragments and shards of other epistemologies remain inscribed in the polyphony and fuzziness of intercultural documents and archives.
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Bar-On, Dorit, and Kate Nolfi. Belief Self-Knowledge. Oxford University Press, 2016. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935314.013.51.
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A fundamental puzzle about self-knowledge is this: spontaneous, unreflective self-attributions of beliefs and other mental states (avowals) appear to be at once epistemically groundless and epistemically privileged. On the one hand, it seems that avowals simply do not require justification or evidence. On the other hand, avowals seem to represent a substantive epistemic achievement. Several authors have tried to explain away avowals’ groundlessness by appeal to the so-called transparency of present-tense self-attributions. After a critical discussion of two extant construals of transparency, this article presents an alternative reading of transparency (based on neo-expressivism about avowals) that explains, without explaining away, the apparent groundlessness of avowals. The article goes on to explore a way of coupling this alternative reading with a plausible account of how it is that ordinary avowals can represent genuine knowledge of present states of mind.
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Schellenberg, Susanna. Justification, Luminosity, and Credences. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198827702.003.0009.
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Chapter 8 discusses the repercussions of capacitism for the justification of beliefs, the credences we should assign to perceptual beliefs, and the luminosity of mental states. In light of this discussion, the chapter explores the consequences of capacitism for various familiar problem cases: speckled hens, identical twins, brains in vats, new evil demon scenarios, matrixes, and Swampman. I show why perceptual capacities are essential and cannot simply be replaced with representational content. I argue that the asymmetry between the employment of perceptual capacities in perception and their employment in relevant hallucinations and illusions is sufficient to account for the epistemic force of perceptual states yielded by employing such capacities. I show, moreover, why capacitism is compatible with standard Bayesian principles and how it accounts for degrees of justification. Finally, I discuss the relationship between evidence and rational confidence in light of an externalist view of perceptual content.
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Marshall, Colin. Beyond the Present. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198809685.003.0006.
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This chapter argues that subjects can be in touch with things outside their immediate environment, and applies this conclusion to compassion. Three cases of being in touch with spatial properties are considered, in which subjects “see in their mind’s eye,” episodically remember, and vividly anticipate properties of objects. Though none of these states are perceptions in the familiar sense, it is argued that they share some of perception’s irreplaceable epistemic goodness. Differences in being in touch are then found to coincide with intuitive moral distinctions in cases in which agents are or are not pained by spatially distant, past, and future pains. Finally, a potential objection is addressed about agents becoming ineffective through getting caught up in some thought of distant pain.
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Ichikawa, Jonathan Jenkins. Contextualising Knowledge. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199682706.001.0001.
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Contextualising Knowledge defends a contextualist semantics to knowledge ascriptions, and integrates it into a detailed discussion of the theoretical significance of knowledge. Ichikawa develops a kind of relevant alternatives contextualism, suggesting that which possibilities a subject must rule out in order to count as “knowing” vary according to the speaker’s conversational context, and uses it to consider the prospects for central theoretical roles for knowledge. Contextualism and the “knowledge first” program are rarely treated together, and sometimes argued to stand in significant tension. But Contextualising Knowledge makes the case that together they comprise an appealing package of views. After articulating and defending his preferred form of contextualism (Chapter 1), Ichikawa explores connections between knowledge and many other states of interest; Chapter 2 defends a contextualist semantics for counterfactual conditionals, and relates it to that given for knowledge ascriptions, including a vindication of a kind of traditional “sensitivity” constraints on knowledge. Chapter 3 defends a version of “E=K”, proposing that evidence ought to be understood in terms of knowledge, and that contextualism can help defend the view from some important objections. This chapter also relates contextualism to foundationalism and central epistemic questions. Chapter 4 defends a theory of epistemic justification in terms of knowledge; Chapters 5–7 take up and defend particular versions of knowledge norms of practical reasoning, assertion, and belief, respectively. The overall picture of Contextualising Knowledge is one that emphasizes the importance of both knowledge itself, and of the semantics of “knows” in thinking about the former.
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Byrne, Alex. Transparency and Self-Knowledge. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198821618.001.0001.
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T&SK sets out and defends a theory of self-knowledge—knowledge of one’s mental states. Inspired by Gareth Evans’ discussion of self-knowledge in his The Varieties of Reference, the basic idea is that one comes to know that one is in a mental state M by an inference from a worldly or environmental premise to the conclusion that one is in M. (Typically the worldly premise will not be about anything mental.) The mind, on this account, is “transparent”: self-knowledge is achieved by an “outward glance” at the corresponding tract of the world, not by an “inward glance” at one’s own mind. Belief is the clearest case, with the inference being from ‘p’ to ‘I believe that p.’ One serious problem with this idea is that the inference seems terrible, because ‘p’ is at best very weak evidence that one believes that p. Another is that the idea seems not to generalize. For example, what is the worldly premise corresponding to ‘I intend to ϕ,’ or ‘I feel a pain’? T&SK argues that both problems can be solved, and explains how the account covers perception, sensation, desire, intention, emotion, memory, imagination, and thought. The result is a unified theory of self-knowledge that explains the epistemic security of beliefs about one’s mental states (privileged access), as well as the fact that one has a special first-person way of knowing about one’s mental states (peculiar access).
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Chang, Hasok. Epistemic iteration and natural kinds: Realism and pluralism in taxonomy. Edited by Kenneth S. Kendler and Josef Parnas. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/med/9780198796022.003.0029.
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Psychiatry can benefit from methods of handling the challenge of evolving and shifting taxonomy that have been effective in other areas. Epistemic iteration creates successive stages of knowledge in order to attain certain goals. Inquiry can begin in the absence of assured foundations, using the results to correct and refine its starting point. If the iterative process converges, the pattern may be regarded as cumulative progress. But what if convergence is to a “local minimum, ” not to the best answer? I propose that all local minima should be appreciated as achievements with realist significance. A field like medicine or social care seems to require a unified taxonomic framework for the effective coordination of action, so it may be best to maintain one system as the official framework for action while fostering research in multiple systems, until another system shows itself to be clearly superior to the official one.
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Byrne, Alex. Problems of Self-Knowledge. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198821618.003.0001.
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Various problems of self-knowledge are introduced, along with the important notions of transparency, privileged access, and peculiar access. Accounts of self-knowledge are classified according to whether they are economical, inferential, detectivist, or unified. Roughly: economical accounts repurpose other epistemic capacities; inferential accounts say self-knowledge is acquired by inference; detectivist accounts say the explanation of self-knowledge involves causal mechanisms; and unified accounts give the same basic epistemological story for all mental states. The account to be defended later has all four features. The chapter concludes by reviewing the history of self-knowledge considered as a philosophical problem. Self-knowledge from Descartes onwards was generally taken for granted, unlike our knowledge of the external world, which was thought deeply problematic. This gets things completely back to front.
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Epistemic Governance In Higher Education Quality Enhancement Of Universities For Development. Springer, 2012.
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Marshall, Colin. Locke and Compassion. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198809685.003.0003.
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This chapter presents the core thought behind the larger argument of the book by appealing to John Locke’s theory of ideas, according to which some ideas have the distinctive epistemic goodness of resembling qualities in their objects. While Locke believed that only ideas of certain physical qualities had this goodness, it is argued here that Locke’s views imply that it is also had by certain compassionate states. The moral significance of this is illustrated using a case in which one person is pained by the suffering of an injured wombat while another person is amused. The former person intuitively seems morally better and also, on the Lockean view, has a reaction that resembles a quality in its object, since pain resembles pain. It is shown that the Lockean view can help address some potential objections to this conclusion about compassion.
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Sollberger, Michael. Can Synaesthesia Present the World as it Really Is? Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199688289.003.0010.
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Can some synaesthetic experiences be treated as veridical perceptual experiences, i.e. as conscious mental states in which worldly objects and their features perceptually appear as they really are? Most empirical scientists and philosophers working on synaesthesia answer this question in the negative. Contrary to this prevailing opinion, Mohan Matthen’s ‘When is Synaesthesia Perception?’ (Chapter 8, this volume) argues that such a dismissive approach to the epistemic properties of synaesthetic experiences is not mandatory. Matthen claims that there is conceptual room for a more tolerant approach according to which at least one variety of synaesthesia, which he calls ‘direct synaesthesia’, is epistemically on a par with everyday non-synaesthetic perception. The aim of this chapter is to evaluate the idea of ‘direct synaesthesia’ and to assess whether the accepted dogma that synaesthesia is always prone to error has to go.
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Brown, Jessica. Undermining Defeat. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198801771.003.0006.
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This chapter examines the challenge posed to undermining defeat by ‘level-splitting’ views according to which it is sometimes rational for one to be in in epistemically akratic combination of states, say, maintaining the belief that p while also holding that one’s evidence does not support that p. This chapter argues against such level-splitting views by developing arguments already in the literature that such views lead to problematic practical and theoretical reasoning. It then turns to examine and reject arguments for level-splitting views based on 1) the possibility of justified false beliefs about one’s epistemic standing; and 2) the possibility of evidence being misleading about itself. Together with chapter 5, this chapter completes the defence of the phenomenon of defeat, and thus of the conclusion that closure fails because of defeat quite independently of the debate between infallibilism and fallibilism.
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Kim, Sunae, Ameneh Shahaeian, and Joëlle Proust. Developmental diversity in mindreading and metacognition. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198789710.003.0006.
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A first aim of this chapter is to explain why children seem to present different patterns of development across cultures for solving false-belief tasks. Anthropological evidence is presented suggesting that the tests devised for Western children might not be adequate outside Western cultures. Alternative practices and values, such as the willingness/refusal to express one’s own mental states, the degree of autonomous agency allocated to young children, and the style of communication used in child-rearing, might partly explain the timing differences in the development of mindreading. A second aim is to identify the sociocultural factors that might also differentially impact the development of metacognitive abilities. It is proposed that the cultural practices that regulate patterns of attention, ways of learning, and communicational pragmatics should differentially influence the kinds of epistemic decisions that need to be monitored and the process of attribution of knowledge to the self in young children.
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Bovet, Emilie. Biography of a brain structure: studying the diencephalon as an epistemic object. Oxford University Press, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/med/9780198725978.003.0014.
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Chapter 14 discusses the study of a hypothesis representative of the numerous attempts of psychiatry to understand brain dysfunctions. Elaborated during the first half of the twentieth century, the “diencephalic hypothesis” illustrates the quest for scientific legitimacy of psychiatry before the “discovery” of psychoactive drugs. The first aim is to show how physiology, endocrinology, neurology, and neurosurgery have influenced psychiatrists in their consideration of the mind–brain interaction, in their clinical practice and experimental researches. The second aim is to shed light on the theoretical continuity between the period preceding the “revolution” of psychoactive drugs and the one that follows it, a continuity that contrasts with the idea of a sudden transition conveyed by the more classical works. Finally, this approach raises the current stakes surrounding the birth of the psychiatric neurosciences, by inscribing them in a history based on questionings prior to the development of the neurosciences.
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Neuwirth, Angelika. Locating the Qurʾan and Early Islam in the ‘Epistemic Space’ of Late Antiquity. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198748496.003.0005.
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Locating the qur’anic event in Late Antiquity, understood not as a historical epoch but an epistemic space, the chapter focuses on textual strategies rather than on the transfer of semantic knowledge or extra-textual circumstances. Qurʾanic speech oscillates between literal and ‘allegorical’ expression. Among the last mentioned, typology, hitherto widely neglected—although perhaps the most representative textual practice in the late antique culture of debate—appears a useful key to the question of the qur’anic community’s rapid development of a theology of its own and its attainment of social coherence. Sifting the changing modes of qur’anic typology—from the ‘simple’ mode of restaging biblical events and the mimesis of biblical figures via the more demanding pattern of promise and fulfilment to the daringly innovative mode: mythopoiesis—allows us to trace the successive stages of the first listeners’ construction of a communal identity of their own.
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Leiter, Brian. Moral Psychology with Nietzsche. Oxford University Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199696505.001.0001.
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This book offers both a reading and defense of Nietzsche’s moral psychology, drawing on both empirical psychological results and contemporary philosophical positions and arguments. Among the views explained and defended are: anti-realism about all value, including epistemic value; a kind of sentimentalism about evaluative judgment; epiphenomenalism about certain conscious mental states, including those involved in the conscious experience of willing; and radical skepticism about free will and moral responsibility. Psychological research, from Daniel Wegner’s work on the experience of willing to the famed Minnesota Twin studies, is marshalled in support of the Nietzschean picture of moral psychology. Nietzschean views are brought into dialogue with contemporary philosophical views defended by, among many others, Harry Frankfurt, T.M. Scanlon, Gary Watson, and Derk Pereboom. Nietzsche emerges not simply as a museum piece from the history of ideas, but as a philosopher and psychologist who exceeds David Hume for insight into human nature and the human mind, one who repeatedly anticipates later developments in empirical psychology, and continues to offer sophisticated and unsettling challenges to much conventional wisdom in philosophy.
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Brownlee, Kimberley. Is Religious Conviction Special? Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198794394.003.0022.
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Religious convictions are not special when it comes to their 1) cultural trappings, 2) epistemic pedigree, or 3) epistemic status within the communities that hold them. This chapter defends the claim, however, that both religious and non-religious moral convictions are worthy of toleration and accommodation where possible, when they meet certain conditions. Many non-religious convictions are both deeply held and community-embedded, and although many religious convictions differ from many non-religious convictions regarding cultural trappings, epistemic pedigree, and epistemic status, the chapter argues that neither type of conviction differs categorically from the other in any one of these respects.
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Mário, Mouzinho, Celso M. Monjane, and Ricardo Santos. The education sector in Mozambique: From access to epistemic quality in primary education. UNU-WIDER, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.35188/unu-wider/2020/887-0.
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From the early days of national independence in 1975, the central aim of the educational policy in Mozambique has been to ensure that all school-age children have access to school and can remain there until they have completed their basic education. In the pursuit of this aim, the extension of access to primary education was achieved relatively successfully, given that it reached a net rate of school coverage of almost 100 per cent. However, the impressive increase in school attendance rates has not been accompanied by a corresponding improvement in the quality of learning, and there are worrying signs of a considerable setback in relation to this aspect. Using this observation as a starting point, the study identifies and analyses the variables in the institutional context behind ‘schooling without learning’. The results of the study point to (i) weak state capacity; (ii) excessive dependence on external aid; and (iii) poor community involvement and participation in school management, as being factors with a major influence on the poor quality of education in primary schools.
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Bratman, Michael E. Planning, Time, and Self-Governance. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190867850.001.0001.
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Our human capacity for planning agency plays central roles in the cross-temporal organization of our agency, in our acting and thinking together, and in our self-governance. Intentions can be understood as states in such a planning system. The practical thinking essential to this planning capacity is guided by norms that enjoin synchronic plan consistency and coherence as well as forms of plan stability over time. This book’s essays aim to deepen our understanding of these norms and defend their status as norms of practical rationality for planning agents. General guidance by these planning norms has many pragmatic benefits, especially given our cognitive and epistemic limits. But appeal to these pragmatic benefits does not fully explain the normative force of these norms in application to the particular case. In response, some think these norms are norms of theoretical rationality on belief; or are constitutive of agency; or are just a myth. These essays chart an alternative path, which sees these planning norms as tracking conditions of a planning agent’s self-governance, both at a time and over time. This path articulates associated models of self-governance; it appeals to the agent’s end of her self-governance over time; and it argues that this end is rationally self-sustaining. This end is thereby in a position to play a role in our planning framework that is analogous to the role of a concern with quality of will within the framework of the reactive attitudes, as understood by Peter Strawson.
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Littlejohn, Clayton. How and Why Knowledge is First. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198716310.003.0002.
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This chapter’s dialectical aim has, as its focus, a sustained defence of the claim that one cannot have a reason in one’s possession unless it is something that one knows. This view is claimed to have advantages over a different way of thinking about epistemic status. On the ‘reasons-first’ approach to epistemic status, reasons and the possession of them are prior to epistemic status. In reversing this picture, the chapter reveals an important sense in which knowledge comes first—namely, in that we first come to have reasons in our possession by coming to know that certain things are true; there is nothing prior to knowledge that puts these reasons in our possession. In the course of advancing this picture, the chapter furthermore offers a defence of Williamson’s identification of evidence and knowledge (E=K).
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Carter, J. Adam, Andy Clark, Jesper Kallestrup, S. Orestis Palermos, and Duncan Pritchard, eds. Socially Extended Epistemology. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198801764.001.0001.
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The present volume explores the topic of socially extended knowledge. This is a topic of research at the intersection of epistemology and philosophy of mind and cognitive science. The core idea of socially extended epistemology is that epistemic states such as beliefs, justification, and knowledge can be collectively realized by groups or communities of individuals. Typical examples that are being studied in the literature include collective memory in old partners, problem-solving by juries, and the behaviors of hiring committees, scientific research teams, and intelligence agencies. This volume attempts to further our understanding of socially extended knowledge while also exploring its potential practical and societal impact by inviting perspectives not just from philosophy but from cognitive science, computer science, Web science, and cybernetics too. Contributions to the volume mostly fall within two broad categories: (i) foundational issues within socially extended epistemology (including elaborations on, defences and criticisms of core aspects of socially extended epistemology), and (ii) applications and new directions, where themes in socially extended epistemology are connected to these other areas of research. The volume is accordingly divided into two parts corresponding to these broad categories. The topics themselves are of great conceptual interest, and wider interdisciplinary perspectives suggest many connections with social concerns and policy-making.