This paper formulates a general epistemological argument against what I call non-causal realism, generalizing domain specific arguments by Benacerraf, Field, and others. First I lay out the background to the argument, making a number of distinctions that are sometimes missed in discussions of epistemological arguments against realism. Then I define the target of the argument—non-causal realism—and argue that any non-causal realist theory, no matter the subject matter, cannot be given a reasonable epistemology and so should be rejected. Finally I (...) discuss and respond to several possible responses to the argument. In addition to clearing up and avoiding numerous misunderstandings of arguments of this kind that are quite common in the literature, this paper aims to present and endorse a rigorous and fully general epistemological argument against realism. (shrink)

On Folk Epistemology explores how we ascribe knowledge to ourselves and others. Empirical evidence suggests that we do so early and often in thought as well as in talk. Since knowledge ascriptions are central to how we navigate social life, it is important to understand our basis for making them. -/- A central claim of the book is that factors that have nothing to do with knowledge may lead to systematic mistakes in everyday ascriptions of knowledge. These mistakes are (...) explained by an empirically informed account of how ordinary knowledge ascriptions are the product of cognitive heuristics that are associated with biases. In developing this account, Mikkel Gerken presents work in cognitive psychology and pragmatics, while also contributing to epistemology. For example, Gerken develops positive epistemic norms of action and assertion and moreover, critically assesses contextualism, knowledge-first methodology, pragmatic encroachment theories and more. Many of these approaches are argued to overestimate the epistemological significance of folk epistemology. In contrast, this volume develops an equilibristic methodology according to which intuitive judgments about knowledge cannot straightforwardly play a role as data for epistemological theorizing. Rather, critical epistemological theorizing is required to interpret empirical findings. Consequently, On Folk Epistemology helps to lay the foundation for an emerging sub-field that intersects philosophy and the cognitive sciences: The empirical study of folk epistemology. (shrink)

Feminist philosophers of science have been prominent amongst social epistemologists who draw attention to communal aspects of knowing. As part of this work, I focus on the need to examine the relations between scientific communities and lay communities, particularly marginalized communities, for understanding the epistemic merit of scientific practices. I draw on Naomi Scheman's argument (2001) that science earns epistemic merit by rationally grounding trust across social locations. Following this view, more turns out to be relevant to epistemic assessment than (...) simply following the standards of "normal science". On such an account, philosophers of science need to attend to the relations between scientific communities and various lay communities, especially marginalized communities, to understand how scientific practices can rationally ground trust and thus earn their status as "good ways of knowing". Trust turns out to involve a wide set of expectations on behalf of lay communities. In this paper I focus on expectations of knowledge sharing, using examples of "knowledge-sharing whistleblowers" to illustrate how failures in knowledge sharing with lay communities can erode epistemic trust in scientific communities, particularly in the case of marginalized communities. (shrink)

Examining Scepticism and Animal Faith (SAF) together with the work of Descartes—first, in terms of structure, style, and substance; and second, in terms of method and purpose—supports a rethinking of Santayana’s philosophical project, supporting the notion that his primary aim was not epistemological but fundamentally moral. Considering the contrasting characters of Cartesian and Santayanan scepticism suggests that Descartes is not so much a foil but an inspiration for Santayana in attempting to order the mind as a sort of personal improvement.

In «Naturalized Epistemology and the Law of Evidence Revisited», the original target article for the various refutations that I comment on here, I revisited through a slightly different lens the subject of the article that I coauthored with Brian Leiter close to twenty years ago. That article has prompted four responses from Professors Pardo, Spellman, Muffato, and Enoch. Professors Pardo and Spellman basically accept the implications of the original article and offer useful but friendly amendments. Prof. Muffato apparently does (...) not want to dispute over my ground and so changes the subject, and in doing so offers a number of interesting points. Only the fourth, Prof. Enoch, has the same doubts about the utility of my original article as I do of the genre that gave rise to it. I can thus be quite brief in discussing professors Pardo, Spellman, and Muffato, but it will take bit more effort to lay out the limits of Prof. Enoch’s analysis. (shrink)

The theory of social representations must be understood in terms of its proper epistemology so that it can accomplish its full potential in social sciences. This is often difficult to achieve because researchers comprehend it in terms of concepts that are part of static and individualistic Newtonian epistemology rather than in terms of dynamic and relational Einsteinian epistemology. This article considers three signposts that Moscovici identifies and analyses in the theory of relativity, namely the relation between (...) class='Hi'>epistemology and science, theory and method, and the argument against the explanation of effects by their causes. The following question is posed: are these signposts also characteristic of the theory of social representations? This question is examined focusing on interactional epistemology, theory and method and the diversity of natural thinking and communication. Moscovici's Psychoanalysis shows that natural thinking appears in a plurality of modes according to the situation in which it takes place and according to social groups towards which it is directed. Natural thinking is controversial and communication-centred. Different professionals, groups and lay people use different kinds of speaking and different communicative genres when they try to resolve “the same” problem. The article suggests that bringing together dialogicality, dialogical linguistics and the theory of social representations may open up new possibilities for theoretical developments in social psychology. (shrink)

Probability is sometimes regarded as a universal panacea for epistemology. It has been supposed that the rationality of belief is almost entirely a matter of probabilities. Unfortunately, those philosophers who have thought about this most extensively have tended to be probability theorists first, and epistemologists only secondarily. In my estimation, this has tended to make them insensitive to the complexities exhibited by epistemic justification. In this paper I propose to turn the tables. I begin by laying out some rather (...) simple and uncontroversial features of the structure of epistemic justification, and then go on to ask what we can conclude about the connection between epistemology and probability in the light of those features. My conclusion is that probability plays no central role in epistemology. This is not to say that probability plays no role at all. In the course of the investigation, I defend a pair of probabilistic acceptance rules which enable us, under some circumstances, to arrive at justified belief on the basis of high probability. But these rules are of quite limited scope. The effect of there being such rules is merely that probability provides one source for justified belief, on a par with perception, memory, etc. There is no way probability can provide a universal cure for all our epistemological ills. (shrink)

Probability is sometimes regarded as a universal panacea for epistemology. It has been supposed that the rationality of belief is almost entirely a matter of probabilities. Unfortunately, those philosophers who have thought about this most extensively have tended to be probability theorists first, and epistemologists only secondarily. In my estimation, this has tended to make them insensitive to the complexities exhibited by epistemic justification. In this paper I propose to turn the tables. I begin by laying out some rather (...) simple and uncontroversial features of the structure of epistemic justification, and then go on to ask what we can conclude about the connection between epistemology and probability in the light of those features. My conclusion is that probability plays no central role in epistemology. This is not to say that probability plays no role at all. In the course of the investigation, I defend a pair of probabilistic acceptance rules which enable us, under some circumstances, to arrive at justified belief on the basis of high probability. But these rules are of quite limited scope. The effect of there being such rules is merely that probability provides one source for justified belief, on a par with perception, memory, etc. There is no way probability can provide a universal cure for all our epistemological ills. (shrink)

This chapter aims to lay out a map of the diverse epistemological perspectives within the Islamic theological tradition, in the conceptual framework of contemporary analytic philosophy of religion. In order achieve that goal, it aims to consider epistemological views in light of their historic context, while at the same time seeking to “translate” those broadly medieval perspectives into contemporary philosophical language. In doing so, the chapter offers a succinct overview of the main epistemic trends within the Islamic theological tradition concerning (...) religious epistemology. The chapter is divided into two main sections designated for discussions of differing accounts found in distinct trends of the tradition, namely the Rationalist and Traditionalist trends. The discussion concerning the Rationalist trend focuses on the philosophical-theologians of the dominant Mu’tazilite, Ash’arite, and Maturidite schools. The section on Islamic Traditionalism focuses on the Atharite scripturalism of Ibn Qudāma, and in particular the thought of Ibn Taymiyya. In order to map out these historic positions in light of contemporary religious epistemology, reference is made to a threefold typology of current views in the literature: (1) theistic evidentialism, (2) reformed epistemology, and (3) fideism. As such, the remainder of the chapter will attempt to outline the different approaches toward religious epistemology in the Islamic theological tradition with this threefold typology in mind. (shrink)

ConclusionWe remain perplexed why Loughlin and Pritchard chose to single out our study on lay views of mental health as a basis for attacking relativism generally within social science. We consider that political, epistemological and health policy grounds for a social scientific consideration of lay knowledge are so strong that they negate naïve objectivist critiques which appearl to the reason and thus reasonableness of professional knowledge. Reason and rationality, like reality, are not singular, clear cut and self-evident. Accordingly, it is (...) the responsibility of social scientists to explore the ambiguities and complexities of knowledge held and enacted by a whole range of social groups. (shrink)

In recent years there has been a great deal of discussion about the prospects of developing a “naturalized epistemology,” though different authors tend to interpret this label in quite different ways.1 One goal of this paper is to sketch three projects that might lay claim to the “naturalized epistemology” label, and to argue that they are not all equally attractive. Indeed, I’ll maintain that the first of the three – the one I’ll attribute to Quine – is simply (...) incoherent. There is no way we could get what we want from an epistemological theory by pursuing the project Quine proposes. The second project on my list is a naturalized version of reliabilism. This project is not fatally flawed in the way that Quine’s is. However, it’s my contention that the sort of theory this project would yield is much less interesting than might at first be thought. (shrink)

Machery argues: that “philosophers’ intuitions about reference are not more reliable than lay people’s —if anything, they are probably worse”; that “intuitions about the reference of proper names and uses of proper names provide equally good evidence for theories of reference”. lacks theoretical and empirical support. cannot be right because usage provides the evidence that intuitions are reliable.

Fuller's program of social epistemology engages a rhetoric of inquiry that can be usefully compared and contrasted with other discursive theories of knowledge, such as that of Richard Rorty. Resisting the model of “conversation,” Fuller strikes an activist posture and lays the groundwork for normative “knowledge policy,” in which persuasion and credibility play key roles. The image of investigation is one that overtly rejects the “storehouse” conception of knowledge and invokes the metaphors of distributive economics. Productive questions arise as (...) to how notions of creation and distribution might guide this rhetoric. (shrink)

We remain perplexed why Loughlin and Pritchard chose to single out our study on lay views of mental health as a basis for attacking relativism generally within social science. We consider that political, epistemological and health policy grounds for a social scientific consideration of lay knowledge are so strong that they negate naïve objectivist critiques which appearl to the reason and thus reasonableness of professional knowledge. Reason and rationality, like reality, are not singular, clear cut and self-evident. Accordingly, it is (...) the responsibility of social scientists to explore the ambiguities and complexities of knowledge held and enacted by a whole range of social groups. (shrink)

This article aims to clarify the epistemological foundations of the Freudian energetics model, starting with a historical review of the 19th century scientific context in which Freud's research lay down its roots. Beyond the physiological and anatomical references of Project for a Scientific Psychology, the physiology Freud makes reference to is in reality primarily anchored in an epistemological model derived from physics. Whilst across the Rhine, the autonomy of physiology in relation to physics was far from being accomplished, as a (...) counterpoint, in France, the revolution in physiology driven by Claude Bernard established itself autonomously from physics,. In contrast, Freud's scientific landscape is entirely dominated by the physics elevated to the rank of an ideal science. The influence of Helmholtz, who is both a medical doctor and a physicist, has a determining influence on Freud's training. The discoveries in physics at that time, in particular the formulation of the principle of 'conservation of force' - first principle of thermodynamics - will constitute the points of reference upon which Freud will elaborate his energetics model, then subsequently, the idea of economy in his metapsychology. In this way we can trace both the historic and epistemological path that led Freud from a concept based on physics, and more specifically thermodynamic energy, to an idea of nervous energy that constitutes the basis of the concept of "quantity" as it is stated as 'first fundamental idea' in Project for a Scientific Psychology. This notion will subsequently evolve, and lead Freud to the introduction of the concept of 'psychical energy,' this time in a purely metapsychological sense. (shrink)

In recent years there has been a great deal of discussion about the prospects of developing a ‘naturalized epistemology’, though different authors tend to interpret this label in quite different ways. One goal of this paper is to sketch three projects that might lay claim to the ‘naturalized epistemology’ label, and to argue that they are not all equally attractive. Indeed, I'll maintain that the first of the three—the one I'll attribute to Quine—is simply incoherent. There is no (...) way we could get what we want from an epistemological theory by pursuing the project Quine proposes. The second project on my list is a naturalized version of reliabilism. This project is not fatally flawed in the way that Quine's is. However, it's my contention that the sort of theory this project would yield is much less interesting than might at first be thought. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Richard Rorty Lays Down the LawLeon SuretteRichard Rorty has found a large cross-disciplinary academic audience for his argument that philosophy ought to abandon its self-appointed role as a foundational discipline and adopt the “ironic” and “conversational” practices of literary criticism. Explicitly invoking early pragmatism—which argued that philosophy should join the natural sciences and regard itself as “the workshop of being, where we catch fact in the making” 1 —Rorty (...) argues that philosophers should now abandon the natural sciences, and become “edifiers” and “ironist theorists” on the model of literary criticism. 2Rorty’s pragmatism amounts to the claim that philosophy ought to wind up and put away its long preoccupation with metaphysics, ontology, and epistemology and abandon the pretense of deductive rigor to become “dialectical.” This newly reformed philosophy would, as Rorty puts it, “play off vocabularies against one another, rather than merely... infer propositions from one another” (CIS, p. 78). Rorty’s belief in philosophy as a form of conversation may owe less to American pragmatism, however, than to Continental hermeneutics (particularly Hans Georg Gadamer’s Truth and Method). Nevertheless, I intend to take him at his word, and apply the fundamental tenet of pragmatism to his own theorizing. I take the following remark by William James as definitional of American pragmatism: “What practical difference would it make to any one if this notion rather than that notion were true? If no practical difference whatever can be traced, then the alternatives mean practically the same thing, and all dispute is idle. Whenever a dispute is serious, we ought to be able to show that some practical difference that must follow from one side or the other’s being right” (PR, p. 26).In the light of this pragmatic principal, most philosophical and [End Page 261] literary theories make little if any practical difference to the practice of literary criticism, although philosophy and theory can displace, occlude, or banish it. The whole issue turns on what is meant by the term, literary criticism. Rorty assumes that criticism is an interpretive activity, and that nothing further need be said. Yet interpretation is not the sole activity of literary criticism, nor is the practice of literary interpretation sufficiently well formulated to serve as a model upon which philosophy could reform itself.Although Rorty’s proposed reformation of philosophy on the model of literary criticism is seen by many literary critics as a friendly takeover, it can just as easily be seen as hostile, as an updating and domestication of Hans Georg Gadamer’s philosophical hermeneutics, which would make interpretation foundational for all of the knowledge industries. With respect to his paternalistic attitude toward literary criticism, Rorty is very much within a philosophical tradition of foundationalism that begins, as far as literary criticism is concerned, with Plato’s Ion. Whereas Plato argued that literary criticism is a misguided or unworthy form of discourse, Rorty turns it into an approved variety of philosophical discourse. But he can achieve this end only by occluding (through misrepresentation) the praxis of literary criticism as it has been constituted both within and without the academy.Rorty’s project of “edification” through the reform of philosophy as “conversation” was first proposed in Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature (pp. 360, 371) and has subsequently been refined in Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity, where it becomes the Nietzschean project of “making the best selves for ourselves that we can” (p. 80). This goal is said to be achieved through “literary criticism,” which he describes as “the attempt to play off vocabularies against one another” (pp. 78–79). Such an idea is enormously flattering to literary critics, and, not surprisingly, has garnered Rorty many admirers in literature departments. But it rests upon a highly selective characterization of literary criticism—a characterization which conforms roughly to New Critical and Deconstructive practice, though not to longer-standing critical practices.Rorty ignores literary criticism’s long standing self-definition as the reinterpretation or redescription of object texts. Instead, he assumes that the practice of Harold Bloom, in which both “creative” and critical discourse are regarded as varieties of usurpation or “misprision,” is standard. Rorty speaks of “literary discourse” as a... (shrink)

Idealization is a necessity. Stripping away levels of complexity makes questions tractable, focuses our attention, and lets us develop comprehensible, testable models. Applying such models, however, requires care and attention to how the idealizations incorporated into their development affect their predictions. In epistemology, we tend to focus on idealizations concerning individual agents' capacities, such as memory, mathematical ability, and so on, when addressing this concern. By contrast, this dissertation focuses on social idealizations, particularly those pertaining to salient social categories (...) like race, sex, and gender. In Chapter II, Privilege and Superiority, we begin with standpoint epistemology, one of the earliest efforts to grapple with the ways that social structures affect our epistemic lives. I argue that, if we interpret standpoint epistemologists' claims as hypotheses about the ways that our social positions affect access to evidence, we can fruitfully employ recent developments in evidence logic to study the consequences. I lay the groundwork for this project, developing a model based on neighborhood semantics for modal logic. Adapting this framework to standpoint epistemology helps to clarify the meaning of terms like "epistemic privilege" and "superior knowledge" and to elucidate the differences between various accounts of standpoint epistemology. I also address a longstanding criticism of these views: Longino's (1990) bias paradox, which suggests that there is no objective position from which to judge the goodness of a particular standpoint. Chapter III, Evidence in a Non-Ideal World, turns to the broader social context, looking at how ideology affects the availability of evidence. Throughout the chapter, I take the formation, justification, and maintenance of racist, sexist, and otherwise oppressive beliefs as a central case. I argue that these beliefs are, at least sometimes, formed as a result of evidential distortion, a structural feature of our epistemic contexts that skews readily available evidence in favor of dominant ideologies. Because they are formed this way, such beliefs will appear justified on prominent accounts of justification, both internalist and externalist. As a result, epistemic norms that fail to account for such non-ideal conditions will deliver verdicts that are not only counter-intuitive, but also morally unpalatable. This, I argue, reveals a kind of structural epistemic injustice, especially where oppressive ideology is involved and suggests the need for epistemic norms that are sensitive to agents' social contexts. Much of the discussion in Chapters II and III depends on social categories like race and gender, arguing that they have a distinctive influence on our epistemic lives. In Chapter IV, I Know You Are, But What Am I?, my co-author and I focus on social categories themselves, distinguishing between self-identity, social identity, and social role. We self-identify as gay or straight, men or women, couch-potatoes or gym rats. Sometimes, these identities affect our social roles---the way we are perceived and treated by others---and sometimes they do not. This relationship between our internal identities and our preferred public perceptions begs for explanation. On our account, this relationship is captured by what we refer to as 'social identity'---roughly, internal identities made available to others. We argue that this account of social identity plays an illuminating role in structural explanation of discrimination and individual behavior, dissolves puzzles surrounding the phenomenon of 'passing', and explains certain moral and political obligations toward individuals. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that philosophers’ intuitions about reference are not more reliable than lay people’s and that intuitions about the reference of proper names and uses of proper names provide equally good evidence for theories of reference.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.2 (2001) 314-334 [Access article in PDF] The Epistemology of Cognitive Literary Studies F. Elizabeth Hart I Literary scholars have begun incorporating the insights of cognitive science into literary studies, bringing to bear on questions of literary experience the results of explorations within a wide range of fields that define today's cognitive science. The investigation of the human mind and its reasoning processes encompasses a (...) rich variety of empirical and speculative disciplines, including cognitive psychology, neuroscience, linguistics, evolutionary psychology, developmental psychology, computer science, philosophy, and anthropology. These disciplines are all related to one another by the questions they ask about the brain and mind and the ground they cover in staking out their research agendas; but each also contributes uniquely in terms of individual scope and focus. Literary critics, eavesdropping on this maturing coalition, are now producing critical works that apply cognitive research to a similarly impressive range of literary concerns, with results so far that seem to span the gap between traditional and more contemporary literary critical approaches.All such criticism is dependent on scientific studies of the brain and mind and so accepts axiomatically some degree of epistemological efficacy in scientific empiricism. But this acceptance has not been naive or uncritical and has, in fact, been at times carefully qualified by critics' sensitivity to debate--to the lack of consensus among cognitive scientists, and to the fact that cognitive science is itself in its infancy stage, with its own practitioners often openly tentative about their results and descriptive capabilities. As it happens, such debate, in recent years, has even proven beneficial for literary scholarship since an important [End Page 314] paradigm shift has taken place that now makes some aspects of cognitive science more compatible than ever with the interests of literary studies. This is because, whereas an earlier phase of cognitive science focused its energies on Artificial Intelligence and on theories of language and psychology that supported AI, grounding its theories implicitly in a metaphor of the mind as a computer, today's cognitive scientists tend to concentrate instead on the more organic metaphor of the "embodiment" of mind, that is, of the mind's substantive indebtedness to its bodily, social, and cultural contexts, and on the figurative phenomena of metaphor, metonymy, image schemata, "fields," "frames," other "integrative mental spaces" (as they are called), and the gradient structures and prototypical bases of semantic categories, all of which contribute to recasting human reason into a set of highly imaginative--not logical but figural--processes. 1 For literary theory and criticism, this shift in cognitive science toward "the body in the mind" 2 --tantamount to a wholesale rejection of philosophical rationalism--has given rise to a new kind of interdisciplinary practice, to the potential for a sincere engagement between diverse sciences and even between literature and science that stretches all the bounds of what literary scholars generally mean when they speak of being interdisciplinary (e.g., exchanges with history, art history, anthropology, film studies, sociology).In the discussion that follows, I would like to explore this new interdisciplinarity in literary studies by examining its epistemological implications. I begin with a description of the kinds of criticism now being produced under the rubric of cognitive literary criticism or--to reflect the field's scope more accurately--cognitive and cognitive-evolutionary criticism. This description is not intended as a comprehensive or evaluative survey, since in-depth review articles of extant works are available elsewhere. 3 Rather, I hope to familiarize my readers with the basic orientations of this theory and criticism so that they can grasp the epistemological relations that will become the essay's focus. To lay a further groundwork for this focus, I will review various uses of the term "cognitive" (or "cognitivism") in the scholarship and offer an analysis of its meanings, first in cognitive science and then in literary theory. Building, then, on what "cognitive" might signify for literary studies, I show how a literary approach based on today's cognitive science is uniquely situated among other approaches because of its underlying theory of human... (shrink)

Uniformism about the epistemology of modality is the view that there is only one basic route to modal knowledge; non-uniformism is the view that there are several. Non-uniformism is becoming an increasingly popular stance, but how can it be defended? I prise apart two ways of understanding the uniformism/non-uniformism conflict that are mixed up in the literature. I argue that once separated, it is evident that they lead up to two different non-uniformist theses that need to be argued for (...) in very different ways. In particular, one construal allows only for a weak thesis about the actual lay of the current theoretical land in modal epistemology, while the other allows for a strong thesis that can be defended without reliance on claims about the alleged goodness or badness of individual accounts of modal justification. I argue that philosophers inclined towards non-uniformism ought to go for the strong, rather than the weak, thesis. (shrink)

Philosophy & Social Criticism, Ahead of Print. Abdolkarim Soroush’s theory of ‘The Theoretical Contraction and Expansion of Religious Knowledge’ is arguably one of the most controversial theories of religion in post-revolutionary Iran. Soroush’s theory paves the way for recognising a pluralist interpretation of religion by merging the epistemological and hermeneutical theory of religion. However, he later adds another approach to his reformist framework to explain the phenomenon of revelation. In this paper, after carefully laying out Soroush’s contraction and expansion theory, (...) I will discuss his three approaches, that is, epistemological, hermeneutical and phenomenological approaches to religion, through presenting Kantian and Quinian interpretations of contraction and expansion of religious knowledge, addressing the epistemology of contraction and expansion and the phenomenology of revelation, and pointing out some issues about error recognition within contraction and expansion of religious knowledge. I argue that the role of error recognition is crucial in understanding Soroush’s reformist project since it links his epistemology and hermeneutics of religious knowledge to the way he theorises about revelation phenomenologically. (shrink)

The literature on the epistemology of ignorance already discusses how certain forms of discrimination, such as racism and sexism, are perpetuated by the ignorance of individuals and groups. However, little attention has been given to how speciesism—a form of discrimination on the basis of species membership—is sustained through ignorance_._ Of the few animal ethicists who explicitly discuss ignorance, none have related this concept to speciesism as a form of discrimination. However, it is crucial to explore this connection, I argue, (...) as ignorance is both an integral part of the injustice done to animals as well as an obstacle to improving their treatment. In order to adequately criticize sustained structural speciesism and injustices towards animals, I develop an epistemological account of ‘speciesist ignorance’. I begin by defining and distinguishing between individual and group-based accounts of speciesist ignorance. I argue that humans, taken as a group, enjoy a position of privilege, which allows them to comfortably remain ignorant of their participation in collective wrongdoings towards animals. Additionally, I point out that speciesist ignorance is structurally encouraged and thereby maintains the dominant view that the human-animal-relationship, as it stands, is just. In sum, this article lays the groundwork for a social epistemology of speciesist ignorance. In particular, it informs further debate about individual and institutional epistemic duties to inquire into speciesism and to inform the public, about the moral culpability of ignorant actions, and about effective animal advocacy and policy which actively rejects speciesist ignorance. (shrink)

Most of the knowledge of an ordinary person has a very messy structure and cannot meet standard epistemological criteria for its justification. Rather, a street-level epistemology makes sense of ordinary knowledge. Street-level epistemology is a subjective account of knowledge, not a public account. It is not about what counts as knowledge in, say, physics, but deals rather, with your knowledge, my knowledge, the ordinary person's knowledge. I wish not to elaborate this view here, but to apply it to (...) the problems of representative democracy. I will briefly lay out the central implications of a street-level epistemology and then bring it to bear on democratic citizenship, especially on the problem of the citizen's holding elected officials accountable for their actions. (shrink)

Explicitly dismantling or decommissioning existing sociotechnical systems seems to be unimaginable both within dominant public imaginaries and in academic thought. Indeed, ‘gee whiz’ journalistic narratives regarding emerging technoscience abound as many members of the public appear to eagerly await any new innovation coming out of Silicon Valley. At the same time, most science and technology studies (STS) research focuses on the creation of new technoscience, not its destruction or temporary decommissioning. Yet, lay citizens clearly engage in forms of Luddism: schoolchildren (...) and overworked professionals take digital ‘detoxes’, a number of cities have dismantled their urban highways, and a growing movement of parents have opted their children out of their state’s standardized testing requirements. While all such efforts are rooted in the rejection of a technology, they vary in terms of their resemblance to 19th century English Luddism as well as with respect to Langdon Winner’s concept of epistemological Luddism. How might STS scholars better make sense of 21st century Luddism? This article conceptualizes a number of contemporary examples of technological dismantling with regard to their epistemological and political characteristics. We end with a call for research to better understand lay technological refusal, especially in comparison to elite-driven forms of disruption. (shrink)

Machery argues: (1) that “philosophers’ intuitions about reference are not more reliable than lay people’s—if anything, they are probably worse”; (2) that “intuitions about the reference of proper names and uses of proper names provide equally good evidence for theories of reference”. (1) lacks theoretical and empirical support. (2) cannot be right because usage provides the evidence that intuitions are reliable.Machery defiende que (1) “las intuiciones de los filósofos sobre la referencia no son más fiables que las de los legos (...) —si acaso, serían peores”; (2) las “intuiciones acerca de la referencia de los nombres propios y los usos de los nombres propios ofrecen evidencia de igual valor para las teorías de la referencia”. (1) carece de base empírica o teórica. (2) no puede ser correcta, puesto que el uso ofrece evidencia de que las intuiciones son fiables. (shrink)

THOMAS NAGEL has argued that ‘true liberalism’ excludes appeals to conceptions of the good in political argument. According to Nagel, liberalism's impartiality is grounded not in skepticism but, rather, in its commitment to ‘epistemological restraint.’ As he puts it, ‘We accept a kind of epistemological division between the private and the public domains: in certain contexts I am constrained to consider my beliefs merely as beliefs rather than as truths, however convinced I may be that they are true, and that (...) I know it.’ Nagel's notion of epistemological restraint has been roundly criticized by perfectionist liberals and advocates of liberal neutrality alike. In fact, even Nagel has come to reject the epistemological argument—in part, because of the epistemological asymmetry that it presupposes. In this paper, I offer an answer to Nagel's critics, one that makes the notion of epistemological asymmetry coherent. In so doing, I show how to defend liberal neutrality without embracing skepticism. I structure the paper in the following way: Section II lays out the critique of epistemological restraint; Section III defends the coherence of this notion; and Section IV considers an objection to the analysis developed in Section III. (shrink)

In 1958 I set down some thoughts that arose from an attempt to consider epistemological problems on the assumptions that The biology of the human nervous system is relevant to epistemology and The human nervous system, like every other object of biological investigation, is a product of evolution by natural selection. These thoughts lay more or less neglected until they were brought stunningly to mind by Professor George Gaylord Simpson's [1] recent paper on “Biology and the Nature of Science”. (...) In that paper Professor Simpson writes: “Still another consideration seems to me the most interesting of all, and yet I have never seen it clearly expressed elsewhere. It is, in a sense a validation of the ‘animal faith’ given by Russell … as sole basis for assuming that we really can obtain knowledge of the outer world. The fact is that man originated by a slow process of evolution guided by natural selection. At every stage in this long progression our ancestors necessarily had adaptive reactions to the world around them. As behavior and sense organs became more complex, perception of sensations from those organs obviously maintained a realistic relationship to the environment. To put it crudely but graphically, the monkey who did not have a realistic perception of the tree branch he jumped for was soon a dead monkey-and therefore did not become one of our ancestors. Our perceptions do give true, even though not complete, representations of the outer world because that was and is a biological necessity.”. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that warrant for Lewis’ Modal Realism is unobtainable. I consider two familiar objections to Lewisian realism – the modal irrelevance objection and the epistemological objection – and argue that Lewis’ response to each is unsatisfactory because they presuppose claims that only the Lewisian realist will accept. Since, I argue, warrant for Lewisian realism can only be obtained if we have a response to each objection that does not presuppose the truth of Lewisian realism, this circularity (...) is vicious. I end by contrasting Lewis’ methodology with Forrest’s in order to illustrate a rival method that does not fall victim to the objection I lay against Lewis. (shrink)

We provide an overview of three ways in which the expression “Historical epistemology” (HE) is often understood: (1) HE as a study of the history of higher-order epistemic concepts such as objectivity, observation, experimentation, or probability; (2) HE as a study of the historical trajectories of the objects of research, such as the electron, DNA, or phlogiston; (3) HE as the long-term study of scientific developments. After laying out various ways in which these agendas touch on current debates within (...) both epistemology and philosophy of science (e.g., skepticism, realism, rationality of scientific change), we conclude by highlighting three topics as especially worthy of further philosophical investigation. The first concerns the methods, aims and systematic ambitions of the history of epistemology. The second concerns the ways in versions of HE can be connected to versions of naturalized and social epistemologies. The third concerns the philosophy of history, and in particular the level of analysis at which a historical analysis should aim. (shrink)

In this clear and up-to-date introduction, Thomas D. Senor lays the philosophical foundation needed to understand the justification of memory belief. This book explores traditional accounts of the justification of memory belief and examines the resources that prominent positions in contemporary epistemology have to offer theories of the memorial justification. Along the way, epistemic conservatism, evidentialism, foundationalism, phenomenal conservatism, reliabilism, and preservationism all feature. Study Questions and annotated Further Reading guides at the end of each chapter make this book (...) ideal for classroom use and independent study. Written in very clear prose, A Critical Introduction to the Epistemology of Memory is a valuable resource for students approaching epistemology for the first time or those looking to advance their understanding of a core area of philosophy. (shrink)

In this article we tackle the core question of machine emotion research – “Can machines have emotions?” – in the context of “social robots”, a new class of machines designed to function as “social partners” for humans. Our aim, however, is not to provide an answer to the question “Can robots have emotions?” Rather we argue that the “robotics of emotion” moves us to reformulate it into a different one – “Can robots affectively coordinate with humans?” Developing a series of (...) arguments relevant to theory of emotion, philosophy of AI, and the epistemology of synthetic models, we argue that the answer to this different question is positive, and that it lays grounds for an innovative ethical approach to emotional robots. This ethical project, which we introduced elsewhere as “synthetic ethics”, rejects the diffused ethical condemnation of emotional robots as “cheating” technology. Synthetic ethics focuses not on an ideological refusal, but on the concrete sustainability of the emerging mixed human-robot social ecologies. On this basis, in contrast to a purely negative ethical approach to social robotics it promotes an analytical case by case ethical inquiry into the type of human flourishing that can result from human-robot affective coordination. (shrink)

This paper lays out the epistemology of Maria Montessori . I start with what I call Montessori's ‘interested empiricism’, her empiricist emphasis on the foundational role of the senses combined with her insistence that all cognition is infused with ‘interest’. I then discuss the unconscious. Partly because of her emphasis on early childhood, Montessori puts great emphasis on unconscious cognitive processes and develops a conceptual vocabulary to make sense of the continuity between conscious and unconscious processes. The final sections (...) turn to two brief but important applications of this general epistemic framework, the importance of ‘meditation’ as an epistemic practice and Montessori's accounts of epistemic virtues. (shrink)

The lay follower Citta’s debate with Mahāvīra in the _Nigaṇṭha Sutta_ reflects not just simple polemic, but a fundamental epistemological division between Early Jains and Buddhists. A close reading of the _Ācārāṅga Sūtra_ shows that the Jains see the truth as a property of the self-knowing purified soul that knows all things. For the Buddhists, consciousness is conditioned and dependent. If truth is a property or relation of consciousness, then it too is conditioned and dependent. In order to maintain that (...) truth is the end of the Buddha’s path, Buddhists sever the connection between consciousness and truth by formulating a negative definition of truth. Truth is that which lacks a deceptive nature and accordingly, Nirvāṇa is the ultimate truth. The Buddha’s path culminates in the discovery of truth through the elimination of deception by the annihilation of consciousness, which the Jains hold is impossible because knowledge is essential to the soul. (shrink)

Following Ballantyne, we can distinguish between descriptive and regulative epistemology. Whereas descriptive epistemology analyzes epistemic categories such as knowledge, justified belief, or evidence, regulative epistemology attempts to guide our thinking. In this paper, we argue that regulative epistemologists should focus their attention on what we call epistemic prudence. Our argument proceeds as follows: First, we lay out an objection to virtue-based regulative epistemology that is analogous to the no-guidance objection to virtue ethics. According to this objection, (...) virtue-based regulative epistemology cannot offer us useful guidance in our deliberations, because an abstract knowledge of virtue does not tell us what we should do here and now, especially in hard cases. We respond to this objection by showing that our making good epistemic decisions cannot simply be a matter of our following the right epistemic rules. In order to reliably inquire and deliberate well, we need epistemic prudence. Thus, while virtue-based regulative epistemology fails to determine how we should inquire and resolve deliberation here and now, this is also true of norm-based regulative epistemology. The upshot of this argument is that regulative epistemologists should focus their attention on understanding the nature of epistemic prudence and on understanding how we can promote its development in ourselves and others. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that warrant for Lewis’ Modal Realism is unobtainable. I consider two familiar objections to Lewisian realism – the modal irrelevance objection and the epistemological objection – and argue that Lewis’ response to each is unsatisfactory because they presuppose claims that only the Lewisian realist will accept. Since, I argue, warrant for Lewisian realism can only be obtained if we have a response to each objection that does not presuppose the truth of Lewisian realism, this circularity (...) is vicious. I end by contrasting Lewis’ methodology with Forrest’s in order to illustrate a rival method that does not fall victim to the objection I lay against Lewis. (shrink)

Brain death or determination of death based on the neurological criterion has been an enduring source of controversy in academic and clinical circles. The controversy chiefly concerns how death is defined, and it also bears on the justification of the proposed criteria for death determination and their interpretation. Part of the controversy on brain death and death determination stems from disputed crucial medical facts, but in this paper I formulate another hypothesis about the nature of ongoing controversies. At stake is (...) a misunderstood relationship between, on the one hand, the nature of our lay views about death and, on the other hand, the nature of scientific insights into death and its determination. The misunderstanding of this relationship has partly anchored the controversy and continues to fuel it. Based on a perspective inspired by pragmatism, which stresses the positive contribution of science to ethical and policy debates but also challenges different forms of scientism in science and philosophy found in foundationalist interpretations, I scrutinize three different stances regarding the relationship between lay and scientific perspectives about the definition of death: foundational lay views, foundational expert views, and co-evolving views. I argue that only the latter is sustainable given recent challenges to foundationalist interpretations. (shrink)

By entitling her recent collection of essays on philosophy and literature Love's Knowledge , Martha Nussbaum signals her commitment to giving a positive answer to the question posed by the title of this paper. If love can deliver or lay claim to knowledge, then moods must be thought of as having a cognitive significance, and so must not only permit but require the attentions of the epistemologist. As Nussbaum points out, such a conclusion runs counter to a central strand of (...) thinking in both ancient and modern philosophy. The rational or cognitive side of human nature is often defined in contrast to its affective or emotional side, the latter being understood as having no role to play in the revelation of reality. On the contrary, where reason and the senses can combine to disclose the way things are, moods typically cloud that cognitive access by projecting a purely subjective colouration onto the world and leading us to attribute properties or qualities to it which have at best a purely personal and internal reality. (shrink)

Lay understanding and scientific accounts of female sexuality and orgasm provide a fertile site for demonstrating the importance of including epistemologies of ignorance within feminist epistemologies. Ignorance is not a simple lack. It is often constructed, maintained, and disseminated and is linked to issues of cognitive authority, doubt, trust, silencing, and uncertainty. Studying both feminist and nonfeminist understandings of female orgasm reveals practices that suppress or erase bodies of knowledge concerning women's sexual pleasures.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:36 Feminist Studies 45, no. 1. © 2019 by Feminist Studies, Inc. Sonny Nordmarken Queering Gendering: Trans Epistemologies and the Disruption and Production of Gender Accomplishment Practices Those who are deemed “unreal” nevertheless lay hold of the real, a laying hold that happens in concert, and a vital instability is produced by that performative surprise. —Judith Butler, Gender Trouble Beginning in the 1960s, scholars began to theorize gender as (...) a contextually specific process rather than a universal category reflecting an essential pre-discursive sex. Two interrelated traditions developed: a discursive approach, which theorized gender as performative, and an interactionist approach, which investigated the interactional achievement of gender. For Judith Butler, “what we take to be an internal essence of gender is manufactured through a sustained set of acts, posited through the gendered stylization of the body.”1 Gender is therefore performative : it is a series of effects produced through the repetition and citation of stylized acts, which are named via and thus produced through discourse ; discourse also produces the defining limits of subjects.2 Candace West and Don Zimmerman theorized gender as a “routine, methodical, 1. Judith Butler, Gender Trouble, 10th anniversary ed. (New York: Routledge, 1999), xv. 2. Butler, Gender Trouble; Judith Butler, Bodies that Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex (New York: Routledge, 1993); Judith Butler, Undoing Gender (New York: Routledge, 2004). Sonny Nordmarken 37 and recurring accomplishment” produced in social interaction.3 They observed how, in the relational process of “doing gender,” social actors display gender, presenting an appearance to others, who attribute gender by interpreting this appearance. In this article, I investigate how actors interactionally challenge and construct discursive structures in order to contribute to scholarship that analyzes the role language plays in such interactions.4 Following Sandy Stone, who suggests that transsexuals are not a class, nor a third gender, but a genre, “a set of embodied texts,” who, through their interpretation, might potentially disrupt dichotomous sexuality and gender categories, I examine the spaces in which the discursive and the interactional merge to investigate how gender minorities, as simultaneous subjects, texts, social actors, and cultural workers, queer hegemonic gender practices.5 I argue that members of trans linguistic communities and gender nonconforming individuals queer the normative gender process in two ways: by productively linguistically communicating third-person gender pronouns and by disruptively inhibiting gender’s hegemonic attribution. Lal Zimman has made parallel observations, explaining linguistic gender self-determination practices as a new cultural phenomenon, focusing on terminology for types of gendered persons, grammatical gender forms (i.e., pronouns), and lexical items that relate to embodied sex.6 My analysis builds on Zimman’s observations using sociological, performance 3. Candace West and Don H. Zimmerman, “Doing Gender,” Gender & Society 1, no. 2 (1987): 126. 4. For example, see Mimi Schippers, “Recovering the Feminine Other: Masculinity, Femininity, and Gender Hegemony,” Theory and Society 36, no. 1 (2007): 85–102. 5. Sandy Stone, “The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto,” in Body Guards: The Cultural Politics of Gender Ambiguity, ed. Julia Epstein and Kristina Straub (New York: Routledge, 1991), 296. The term “gender minorities ” encompasses individuals identifying with gender identity terms other than those they were assigned and individuals with gender nonconforming appearance. 6. See Lal Zimman, “Transgender Language Reform: Some Challenges and Strategies for Promoting Trans-affirming, Gender-Inclusive Language,” Journal of Language and Discrimination 1, no. 1 (2017): 84–105; Lal Zimman, “Trans People’s Linguistic Self-Determination and the Dialogic Nature of Identity,” in Representing Trans: Linguistic, Legal, and Everyday Perspectives, ed. Evan Hazenberg and Miriam Meyerhoff (Wellington, New Zealand: Victoria University Press, 2017). 38 Sonny Nordmarken studies and performativity frameworks to theorize these practices. By approximating new gender pronoun-attribution norms that bring a trans queer paradigm to life in interactions and by disregarding their perceptions of each other’s bodies, actors accomplish gender pronouns linguistically, override hegemonic gender attribution norms, and reorganize gender accountability. These practices institutionalize a new interpretive frame and accountability structure through which social actors create and recognize a variety of gender expressions, identities, and pronouns, reworking performativity to produce gender minorities as subjects. I argue that this gendering-queering is a form of disidentificatory gender accomplishment. In addition, I... (shrink)

: Lay understanding and scientific accounts of female sexuality and orgasm provide a fertile site for demonstrating the importance of including epistemologies of ignorance within feminist epistemologies. Ignorance is not a simple lack. It is often constructed, maintained, and disseminated and is linked to issues of cognitive authority, doubt, trust, silencing, and uncertainty. Studying both feminist and nonfeminist understandings of female orgasm reveals practices that suppress or erase bodies of knowledge concerning women's sexual pleasures.

For Thomas Reid, moral knowledge is a matter of having "good evidence" supplied by a sense-like moral faculty concerning moral reality, and the purpose of this work is to show that such a view can be both consistent and plausible. The first chapter attempts to characterize the state of moral epistemology and the assumptions that were considered uncontroversial when Reid wrote. The second chapter opens with a brief recounting of Reid's central claims about the moral sense and the progress (...) of moral knowledge, and then seeks to describe the various problems that confront those who would explain and defend his views. Three features in particular of his account turn out to be in need clarification: his reasons for using the moral sense analogy, his understanding of the object apprehended by the moral faculty, and his conception of evidence. ;Reid's expectations about moral ontology are handled somewhat briefly in chapter 2, and the rest of the work concentrates on the more purely epistemological issues of evidence and the process of moral belief-formation. Chapter 2 concludes with an explanation of the difficulty Reid's text poses for understanding his doctrine of evidence, and the third chapter lays the foundation for resolving those difficulties by detailing an epistemological conception of evidence which parallels the legal conception of evidence in use in the Scottish courts of Reid's day. Chapter 4 builds on this foundation, developing Reid's general epistemological strategy and showing that Reid's various claims about evidence and self-evidence are best understood in light of the legal model detailed in chapter 3. ;The fifth chapter returns to Reid's claims about moral knowledge, explaining his understanding of the primary task of the moral faculty--practical deliberation--and defending his invocation of the moral sense analogy. With these clarifications secured, chapter 6 characterizes and attempts to make plausible Reid's account of moral knowledge, both concerning individual actions and the truth of moral principles. The final chapter sketches brief responses to twentieth-century worries about "moral sense" constructions, and offers a final assessment of the success of Reid's project. (shrink)

By systematically uncovering and comprehensively examining the epistemological implications of Heidegger's history of being and Foucault's archaeology of discursive formations, Towards an Epistemology of Ruptures shows how Heidegger and Foucault significantly expand the notions of knowledge and thought. This is done by tracing their path-breaking responses to the question: What is the object of thought? The book shows how for both thinkers thought is not just the act by which the object is represented in an idea, and knowledge not (...) just a state of the mind of the individual subject corresponding to the object. Each thinker, in his own way, argues that thought is a productive event in which the subject and the object gain their respective identity and knowledge is the opening up of a space in which the subject and object can encounter each other and in which true and false statements about an object become possible. They thereby lay the ground for a new conceptual framework for rethinking the very relationship between knowledge and its object. (shrink)

This paper traces how media representations encouraged enthusiasts, youth and skilled volunteers to participate actively in science and technology during the twentieth century. It assesses how distinctive discourses about scientific amateurs positioned them with respect to professionals in shifting political and cultural environments. In particular, the account assesses the seminal role of a periodical, Scientific American magazine, in shaping and championing an enduring vision of autonomous scientific enthusiasms. Between the 1920s and 1970s, editors Albert G. Ingalls and Clair L. Stong (...) shepherded generations of adult ‘amateur scientists’. Their columns and books popularized a vision of independent non-professional research that celebrated the frugal ingenuity and skills of inveterate tinkerers. Some of these attributes have found more recent expression in present-day ‘maker culture’. The topic consequently is relevant to the historiography of scientific practice, science popularization and science education. Its focus on independent non-professionals highlights political dimensions of agency and autonomy that have often been implicit for such historical actors.The paper argues that the Scientific American template of adult scientific amateurism contrasted with other representations: those promoted by earlier periodicals and by a science education organization, Science Service, and by the national demands for recruiting scientific labour during and after the Second World War. The evidence indicates that advocates of the alternative models had distinctive goals and adapted their narrative tactics to reach their intended audiences, which typically were conceived as young persons requiring instruction or mentoring. By contrast, the monthly Scientific American columns established a long-lived and stable image of the independent lay scientist. (shrink)

This paper develops an account of how the implementation of ML models into healthcare settings requires revising the methodological apparatus of philosophical bioethics. On this account, ML models are cognitive interventions that provide decision-support to physicians and patients. Due to reliability issues, opaque reasoning processes, and information asymmetries, ML models pose inferential problems for them. These inferential problems lay the grounds for many ethical problems that currently claim centre-stage in the bioethical debate. Accordingly, this paper argues that the best way (...) to make progress in remedying these ethical problems is to distil their epistemic core and to identify appropriate epistemic norms as guardrails. The viability of this approach will be highlighted based on four key issues: trust, responsibility, paternalism, and fairness. In that respect, the paper also contributes to a more pronounced view of the specific methodological challenges for ethical theorizing, when the point of reference are complex statistical models that make predictions, rather than individual agents, acting for reasons. (shrink)

This paper lays the groundwork for normative-yet-naturalistic social epistemology. I start by presenting two scenarios for the history of epistemology since Kant, one in which social epistemology is the natural outcome and the other in which it represents a not entirely satisfactory break with classical theories of knowledge. Next I argue that the current trend toward naturalizing epistemology threatens to destroy the distinctiveness of the sociological approach by presuming that it complements standard psychological and historical approaches. (...) I then try to reassert, in Comtean fashion, the epistemologist's credentials in regulating knowledge production. Finally, I consider how social epistemology may have something exciting and relevant to say about contemporary debates in the theory of knowledge. (shrink)

Delusions are typically regarded as beliefs of a certain kind, both by psychiatrists and by lay people. In “Double Bookkeeping and Doxasticism about Delusion,” Porcher formulates and assesses two kinds of arguments against doxasticism about delusions, the theoretical stance according to which delusions are a kind of belief. Those arguments, which Porcher calls “the argument from action guidance and the argument from phenomenology” are motivated by a phenomenon sometimes associated with delusions: double bookkeeping, a kind of ambivalence of patients, who (...) “often appear to be living in two parallel but separate worlds: consensual reality and the realm of their hallucinations and delusions” (Sass, 1994, p.... (shrink)

Kulp provides a thorough examination of John Dewey's influential arguments against traditional theories of knowledge; in particular against the thesis that knowing is fundamentally a passive "beholding" relation between the knower and the object known and ultimately, he finds them deficient. He also lays the basis for a defense of a spectator theory of having knowledge, a basis that incorporates important considerations about introspective knowledge.