Introduction -- The epistemology of human development -- Culture and cultural psychology -- Mind, psyche and consciousness -- Brain -- Mind : brain : culture -- Index.

Root, branch, and blossom, attention is intertwined with epistemology. It is essential to our capacity to learn and decisive of the evidence we obtain, it influences the intellectual connections we forge and those we remember, and it is the cognitive tool whereby we enact decisions about inquiry. Moreover, because it is both an epistemic practice and a site of agency, attention is a natural locus for questions about epistemic morality. This article surveys the emerging epistemology of attention, reviewing the existing (...) literature and sketching avenues for future investigation. It also argues for a reorientation of epistemology itself. This argument is the focus of Section 1. Section 2 briefly reviews philosophical accounts of attention, Section 3 focuses on issues in traditional, individualistic epistemology, and Section 4 turns to social epistemology. (shrink)

The paper begins with a clarification of the notions of intuition (and, in particular, modal intuition), modal error, conceivability, metaphysical possibility, and epistemic possibility. It is argued that two-dimensionalism is the wrong framework for modal epistemology and that a certain nonreductionist approach to the theory of concepts and propositions is required instead. Finally, there is an examination of moderate rationalism’s impact on modal arguments in the philosophy of mind -- for example, Yablo’s disembodiment argument and Chalmers’s zombie argument. A less (...) vulnerable style of modal argument is defended, which nevertheless wins the same anti-materialist conclusions sought by these other arguments. (shrink)

Bishop and Trout here present a unique and provocative new approach to epistemology. Their approach aims to liberate epistemology from the scholastic debates of standard analytic epistemology, and treat it as a branch of the philosophy of science. The approach is novel in its use of cost-benefit analysis to guide people facing real reasoning problems and in its framework for resolving normative disputes in psychology. Based on empirical data, Bishop and Trout show how people can improve their reasoning by relying (...) on Statistical Prediction Rules. They then develop and articulate the positive core of the book. Their view, Strategic Reliabilism, claims that epistemic excellence consists in the efficient allocation of cognitive resources to reliable reasoning strategies, applied to significant problems. The last third of the book develops the implications of this view for standard analytic epistemology; for resolving normative disputes in psychology; and for offering practical, concrete advice on how this theory can improve real people's reasoning. This is a truly distinctive and controversial work that spans many disciplines and will speak to an unusually diverse group, including people in epistemology, philosophy of science, decision theory, cognitive and clinical psychology, and ethics and public policy. (shrink)

How do we know right from wrong? Do we even have moral knowledge? Moral epistemology studies these and related questions about our understanding of virtue and vice. It is one of philosophy’s perennial problems, reaching back to Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Locke, Hume and Kant, and has recently been the subject of intense debate as a result of findings in developmental and social psychology. Throughout the book Zimmerman argues that our belief in moral knowledge can survive sceptical challenges. He also draws (...) on a rich range of examples from Plato’s Meno and Dickens’ David Copperfield to Bernard Madoff and Saddam Hussein. (shrink)

This volume will be of great interest to scholars and students in epistemology.

This volume provides a clear and exhaustive exposition of Buddhist epistemology and logic, based on the works of classical thinkers such as Vasubandhu, Dinnaga,..

Paying attention to the inner workings of mathematicians has led to a proliferation of new themes in the philosophy of mathematics. Several of these have to do with epistemology. Philosophers of mathematical practice, however, have not (yet) systematically engaged with general (analytic) epistemology. To be sure, there are some exceptions, but they are few and far between. In this chapter, I offer an explanation of why this might be the case and show how the situation could be remedied. I contend (...) that it is only by conceiving the knowing subject(s) as embodied, fallible, and embedded in a specific context (along the lines of what has been done within social and feminist epistemology) that we can pursue an epistemology of mathematics sensitive to actual mathematical practice. I further suggest that this reconception of the knowing subject(s) does not force us to abandon the traditional framework of epistemology in which knowledge requires justified true belief. It does, however, lead to a fallible conception of mathematical justification that, among other things, makes Gettier cases possible. This shows that topics considered to be far removed from the interests of philosophers of mathematical practice might reveal to be relevant to them. (shrink)

Vice epistemology is the philosophical study of the nature, identity, and epistemological significance of intellectual vices. Such vices include gullibility, dogmatism, prejudice, closed-mindedness, and negligence. These are intellectual character vices, that is, intellectual vices that are also character traits. I ask how the notion of an intellectual character vice should be understood, whether such vices exist, and how they might be epistemologically significant. The proposal is that intellectual character vices are intellectual character traits that impede effective and responsible inquiry. I (...) argue that situationist critiques of virtue epistemology pose no significant threat to this proposal. Studies by social psychologists of belief in conspiracy theories suggest that it is sometimes appropriate to explain questionable beliefs by reference to intellectual character vices. Neither ‘regulative’ nor ‘analytic’ epistemology has any good reason to question the epistemological significance of such vices. (shrink)

Hostile epistemology is the study of how environmental features exploit our cognitive vulnerabilities. I am particularly interested in those vulnerabilities arise from the basic character of our epistemic lives. We are finite beings with limited cognitive resources, perpetually forced to reasoning a rush. I focus on two sources of unavoidable vulnerability. First, we need to use cognitive shortcuts and heuristics to manage our limited time and attention. But hostile forces can always game the gap between the heuristic and the ideal. (...) Second, we need to trust others, and trust makes us vulnerable. In particular, we need to trust experts whose expertise lies beyond our individual ability to vet. So we must rely on various imperfect signals and proxies, like institutional affiliation, to manage our trust. We are forced to use these imperfect and exploitable forms of reasoning, in order to cope with a cognitively overwhelming world. I present the hostile epistemology framework as a counterbalance to vice epistemology, which tends to locate responsibility for bad beliefs in the character of the believer. I draw two conclusions from my analysis. First: suppose we accept that that only communities and institutions can know about the world. This deeply social approach doesn’t solve the problem of expert identification. The individual still faces a problem: given their incomplete understanding, how should the individual pick which group to trust? Second: we might have hoped to get some kind of static picture of the right principles of reasoning — but hostile epistemology presents a different picture. We have to use risky heuristics and shortcuts, which hostile forces can game and exploit. We can respond by shifting to a different set of heuristics, but this simply shifts the location of our vulnerabilities. These new heuristics are also exploitable. There is no end to this, only a constant struggle to adapt. Limited beings in a hostile epistemic environment are locked in an unending epistemic arms race. (shrink)

Un discurso sobre las ciencias -- Hacia una epistemología de la ceguera : por qué razón las nuevas formas de "adecuación ceremonial" no regulan ni emancipan? -- Hacia una sociología de las ausencias y una sociología de las emergencias -- Más allá del pensamiento abismal : de las líneas globales a una ecología de saberes -- El fin de los descubrimientos imperiales -- Nuestra América : reinventando un paradigma subalterno de reconocimiento y redistribución -- Entre Próspero y Caliban : colonialismo, (...) poscolonialismo e inter-identidad -- De lo posmoderno a lo poscolonial y más allá de uno y de otro. (shrink)

Part One reviews some recent history of epistemology, focusing on ways in which the intellectual virtues have been invoked to solve specific epistemological problems. This part gives a sense of the contemporary landscape that has emerged and clarifies some of the disagreements among those who invoke the virtues in epistemology. Part Two explores some problems about knowledge in greater detail, and defends a externalist approach in virtue epistemology.

Bayesian epistemology addresses epistemological problems with the help of the mathematical theory of probability. It turns out that the probability calculus is especially suited to represent degrees of belief (credences) and to deal with questions of belief change, confirmation, evidence, justification, and coherence. Compared to the informal discussions in traditional epistemology, Bayesian epis- temology allows for a more precise and fine-grained analysis which takes the gradual aspects of these central epistemological notions into account. Bayesian epistemology therefore complements traditional epistemology; it (...) does not re- place it or aim at replacing it. (shrink)

In ”Epistemology and Ethics,” Noah Lemos suggests that moral epistemology is mainly concerned with “whether and how we can have knowledge or justified belief” about moral issues. After addressing skeptical arguments, he considers how the moral epistemologist and moral philosopher should begin their account of moral knowledge. Lemos favors a particularist approach whereby we begin with instances of moral knowledge and use these to formulate and evaluate criteria for moral knowledge. After relating his approach to concerns about the nature of (...) the epistemic justification of moral beliefs as dealt with by foundationalists and coherentists, Lemos responds to arguments against particularist approaches in moral epistemology. Specifically, he addresses the claim that our moral beliefs must receive their justification from an independent moral criterion developed from nonmoral beliefs. (shrink)

In “Epistemology in Philosophy of Religion,” Philip Quinn focuses on the central problem of religious epistemology for monotheistic religions: the epistemic status of belief in the existence of God. He explores what epistemic conditions arguments for God's existence would have to satisfy to be successful and whether any arguments satisfy those conditions. Turning to the claims of reformed epistemology about belief in God, Quinn assesses Alvin Plantinga's claim that belief in God is for many theists properly basic, that is, has (...) positive epistemic status even when it is not based on arguments or any other kind of propositional evidence. Quinn distinguishes two versions of this claim. According to the first, emphasized in Plantinga's earlier work, theistic belief is properly basic with respect to justification or rationality, while according to the second version, prominent in Plantinga's more recent work, theistic belief is properly basic with respect to warrant. (shrink)

Probabilistic models have much to offer to philosophy. We continually receive information from a variety of sources: from our senses, from witnesses, from scientific instruments. When considering whether we should believe this information, we assess whether the sources are independent, how reliable they are, and how plausible and coherent the information is. Bovens and Hartmann provide a systematic Bayesian account of these features of reasoning. Simple Bayesian Networks allow us to model alternative assumptions about the nature of the information sources. (...) Measurement of the coherence of information is a controversial matter: arguably, the more coherent a set of information is, the more confident we may be that its content is true, other things being equal. The authors offer a new treatment of coherence which respects this claim and shows its relevance to scientific theory choice. Bovens and Hartmann apply this methodology to a wide range of much discussed issues regarding evidence, testimony, scientific theories, and voting. Bayesian Epistemology is an essential tool for anyone working on probabilistic methods in philosophy, and has broad implications for many other disciplines. (shrink)

In Epistemology, Laurence Bonjour introduces the serious philosophy student to the history and concepts of epistemology, while simultaneously challenging them to take an active part in its ongoing debates. The text reflects BonJour's conviction that the place to start any discussion of the theories of knowledge is with the classical problems, beginning with and centered around Descartes.

Feminist epistemology and philosophy of science studies the ways in which gender does and ought to influence our conceptions of knowledge, the knowing subject, and practices of inquiry and justification. It identifies ways in which dominant conceptions and practices of knowledge attribution, acquisition, and justification systematically disadvantage women and other subordinated groups, and strives to reform these conceptions and practices so that they serve the interests of these groups. Various practitioners of feminist epistemology and philosophy of science argue that dominant (...) knowledge practices disadvantage women by (1) excluding them from inquiry, (2) denying them epistemic authority, (3) denigrating their “feminine” cognitive styles and modes of knowledge, (4) producing theories of women that represent them as inferior, deviant, or significant only in the ways they serve male interests, (5) producing theories of social phenomena that render women's activities and interests, or gendered power relations, invisible, and (6) producing knowledge (science and technology) that is not useful for people in subordinate positions, or that reinforces gender and other social hierarchies. Feminist epistemologists trace these failures to flawed conceptions of knowledge, knowers, objectivity, and scientific methodology. They offer diverse accounts of how to overcome these failures. They also aim to (1) explain why the entry of women and feminist scholars into different academic disciplines, especially in biology and the social sciences, has generated new questions, theories, and methods, (2) show how gender has played a.. (shrink)

Standard epistemology takes it for granted that there is a special kind of value: epistemic value. This claim does not seem to sit well with act utilitarianism, however, since it holds that only welfare is of real value. I first develop a particularly utilitarian sense of “epistemic value”, according to which it is closely analogous to the nature of financial value. I then demonstrate the promise this approach has for two current puzzles in the intersection of epistemology and value theory: (...) first, the problem of why knowledge is better than mere true belief, and second, the relation between epistemic justification and responsibility. (shrink)

Epistemological disjunctivism in outline -- Favouring versus discriminating epistemic support -- Radical scepticsim.

Virtue Epistemology Virtue epistemology is a collection of recent approaches to epistemology that give epistemic or intellectual virtue concepts an important and fundamental role. Virtue epistemologists can be divided into two groups, each accepting a different conception of what an intellectual virtue is. Virtue reliabilists conceive of intellectual virtues as stable, reliable and truth-conducive cognitive … Continue reading Virtue Epistemology →.

Introduction -- Part I: The classical problems of epistemology -- Descartes's epistemology -- The concept of knowledge -- The problem of induction -- A priori justification and knowledge -- Immediate experience -- Knowledge of the external world -- Some further epistemological issues : other minds, testimony, and memory -- Part II: Contemporary responses to the cartesian epistemological program -- Introduction to part II -- Foundationalism and coherentism -- Internalism and externalism -- Quine and naturalized epistemology -- Knowledge and skepticism.

What are the qualities of an excellent thinker? A growing new field, virtue epistemology, answers this question. Section I distinguishes virtue epistemology from belief-based epistemology. Section II explains the two primary accounts of intellectual virtue: virtue-reliabilism and virtue-responsibilism. Virtue-reliabilists claim that the virtues are stable reliable faculties, like vision. Virtue-responsibilists claim that they are acquired character traits, like open-mindedness. Section III evaluates progress and problems with respect to three key projects: explaining low-grade knowledge, high-grade knowledge, and the individual intellectual virtues.

In _Hinge Epistemology_, eminent epistemologists investigate Wittgenstein's concept of basic or 'hinge' certainty as deployed in _On Certainty_ and show its importance for mainstream epistemology.

2022 UPDATE: The approach of this monograph has been updated and developed further in Appendix II, "Epistemological Intelligence," of the author’s 2021 book _Critique of Impure Reason: Horizons of Possibility and Meaning_. The book is available both in a printed edition (under ISBN 978-0-578-88646-6 from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and other booksellers) and an Open Access eBook edition (available through Philpapers under the book’s title and other philosophy online archives). ●●●●● -/- The monograph’s twofold purpose is to recognize epistemological intelligence (...) as a distinguishable variety of human intelligence, one that is especially important to philosophers, and to understand the challenges posed by the psychological profile of philosophers that can impede the development and cultivation of the skills associated with epistemological intelligence. (shrink)

It is now common to distinguish Metaphysical from Epistemological Disjunctivism. It is equally common to suggest that it is at least not obvious that the latter requires a commitment to the former: at the very least, a suitable bridge principle will need to be identified which takes one from the latter to the former. This paper identifies a plausible-looking bridge principle that takes one from the version of Epistemological Disjunctivism defended by John McDowell and Duncan Pritchard, which I label Reflective (...) Epistemological Disjunctivism, or (RED), to Metaphysical Disjunctivism. Moreover, it identifies a modification the proponent of (RED) could, and should, make to the Internalist component of their theory, and argues that the commitment to Metaphysical Disjunctivism remains, even if such a modification is made. The upshot is that the commitment to Metaphysical Disjunctivism on the part of (RED) is shown to be particularly robust. (shrink)

Critical comments on Guido Melchior’s book, Knowing and Checking: An Epistemological Investigation (2019). In the second part of his book, Melchior aims to employ his sensitivity account of the epistemic concept of checking to explain well-known puzzle cases about knowing. My comments focus on Melchior’s explanation of knowledge-closure puzzles, as exemplified by Dretske’s zebra case. I raise three critical points about the explanation Melchior proposes for puzzles of this type.

Simondon adopts some concepts of social psychology as ‘in group’ and ‘out group’, namely from Kurt Lewin and Gordon Allport, that allow him to describe the fundamental processes shaping the domain of collective individuation, and to challenge Bergson’s distinction between a ‘closed’ community and an ‘open’ society. Reconstructing Simondon’s sources is necessary to understand how he tries to provide an analysis of the social system without presupposing a given anthropology, but rather exploring different perspectives on the human/nature threshold through the (...) concept of transindividual. In his study of the social system Simondon progressively gives conceptual shape to the processes he calls transindividual thanks to the ontogenetic analysis of the phenomena of belief, work and language. In all these domains, a ‘basic community’ emerges just over the threshold of the biological group, where the structural ambivalence of all collective processes as simultaneously closed and open becomes clear. That is why Simondon does not present the concept of the transindividual as a solution to the epistemological problem of psychic and collective individuation, but rather as the ‘field’ in which a whole series of social, biological and technical dimensions can be made converge towards a science of anthropogenic processes. (shrink)

This chapter reviews some faults of the theoretical literature and findings from the experimental literature on “Gettier” cases. Some “Gettier” cases are so poorly constructed that they are unsuitable for serious study. Some longstanding assumptions about how people tend to judge “Gettier” cases are false. Some “Gettier” cases are judged similarly to paradigmatic ignorance, whereas others are judged similarly to paradigmatic knowledge, rendering it a theoretically useless category. Experimental procedures can affect how people judge “Gettier” cases. Some important central tendencies (...) in judging “Gettier” cases appear to be robust against demographic variation in biological sex, age, language, and culture, although there could be some interesting differences related to culture and personality traits. Some remaining questions regarding Gettier’s cases, “Gettier” cases, and “the Gettier problem” concern the psychology and sociology of contemporary anglophone theoretical epistemology. Some remaining questions regarding the empirical study of knowledge judgments concern mechanisms underlying observed behavioral patterns. (shrink)

An overview of the main areas of epistemological debate to which experimental philosophers have been contributing and the larger, philosophical challenges these contributions have raised.

There are three primary aims of the book. The first, set out in the book's introduction, is to explain how two fairly recent developments in philosophy, externalism and modalism, provide the basis for a promising account of knowledge - an account that achieves anti-skeptical results and avoids Gettier-style counterexamples that are based on an agent having warranted beliefs that are merely luckily true. Epistemological externalism is the thesis that not all the factors that make a true belief a case of (...) knowledge need to be cognitively accessible or "internal" to the agent. Modalism, as the author construes it, is the use of possible worlds talk in clarifying what would or might be the case and what is necessarily so." "The second objective is to work through the different modalized epistemologies extant in the literature, assessing their strengths and weaknesses, with a view toward constructing a working theory. Finally, the author proposes the theory that knowledge is reliably formed, sensitive true belief, and defends the theory against objections."--Jacket. (shrink)

Vice epistemology is in the business of defining epistemic vice. One of the proposed requirements of epistemic vices is that they are reprehensible—blameworthy in a non-voluntarist way. Our problem, as vice epistemologists, is giving an analysis of non-voluntarist responsibility that will count just the right qualities, no more and no less, as epistemic vices. If our analysis of non-voluntarist responsibility ends up being too narrow, then it risks excluding some qualities that we want to count as epistemic vices, such as (...) implicit biases. Whereas, if it ends up being too broad, it risks including qualities that we do not want to count as epistemic vices, such as impaired vision. I recommend a three-step program for vice epistemologists: 1. admit that we have a responsibility problem; 2. strive to define the responsibility problem; 3. work together with specialists in non-voluntarist responsibility to solve the responsibility problem. (shrink)

Contemporary virtue epistemology (hereafter ‘VE’) is a diverse collection of approaches to epistemology. At least two central tendencies are discernible among the approaches. First, they view epistemology as a normative discipline. Second, they view intellectual agents and communities as the primary focus of epistemic evaluation, with a focus on the intellectual virtues and vices embodied in and expressed by these agents and communities. -/- This entry introduces many of the most important results of the contemporary VE research program. These include (...) novel attempts to resolve longstanding disputes, solve perennial problems, grapple with novel challenges, and expand epistemology’s horizons. In the process, it reveals the diversity within VE. Beyond sharing the two unifying commitments mentioned above, its practitioners diverge over the nature of intellectual virtues, which questions to ask, and which methods to use. -/- It will be helpful to note some terminology before proceeding. First, we use ‘cognitive’, ‘epistemic’ and ‘intellectual’ synonymously. Second, we often use ‘normative’ broadly to include not only norms and rules, but also duties and values. Finally, ‘practitioners’ names contemporary virtue epistemologists. (shrink)

Virtue epistemologies about knowledge have traditionally been divided into two camps: virtue reliabilism and virtue responsibilism. Initially, what set them apart was that virtue responsibilism took intellectual character virtues and responsible agency to be necessary to knowledge acquisition, whereas virtue reliabilism took reliable cognitive faculties to be constitutive of it instead. Despite recent concessions between these camps, there are residual disagreements. Chapter 8 focuses primarily on Linda Zagzebski’s account of virtue responsibilism and John Greco’s and Ernest Sosa’s defenses of virtue (...) reliabilism. It argues that despite their misgivings about virtue responsibilism, Greco and Sosa are ultimately required to accept that intellectual character virtues involve a substantial truth-motivational component, and that knowledge requires a kind of epistemic responsibility that is far more substantive than a causal, naturalistic notion of attribution. (shrink)

Recent epistemology has focused almost exclusively on propositional knowledge. This paper considers an underexplored area of epistemology, namely knowledge of persons: if propositional knowledge is a state of mind, consisting in a subject's attitude to a (true) proposition, the account developed here thinks of interpersonal knowledge as a state of minds, involving a subject's attitude to another (existing) subject. This kind of knowledge is distinct from propositional knowledge, but it exhibits a gradability characteristic of context-sensitivity, and admits of shifty thresholds. (...) It is supported by a wide range of unexplored linguistic data and intuitive cases; and it promises to illuminate debates within epistemology, philosophy of religion, and ethics. (shrink)

"Bartley and Radnitzky have done the philosophy of knowledge a tremendous service. Scholars now have a superb and up-to-date presentation of the fundamental ideas of evolutionary epistemology." --Philosophical Books.

We learn a lot. Friends tell us about their lives. Books tell us about the past. We see the world. We reason and we reflect on our mental lives. As a result we come to know and to form justified beliefs about a range of topics. We also seem to keep these beliefs. How? The natural answer is: by memory. It is not too hard to understand that memory allows us to retain information. It is harder to understand exactly how (...) memory allows us to retain knowledge and reasons for our beliefs. Learning is largely a matter of acquiring reasons for changing views. But how do we keep reasons for the views we keep? The epistemology of memory concerns memory’s role in our having knowledge and justification. This branch of epistemology, unlike nearly all other branches, addresses our having knowledge and justification over time. This article reviews the major epistemic roles that philosophers have assigned to memory. Section 1 surveys the nature of memory and the various memory systems. Some philosophers think the relation knowledge bears to at least one memory system is maximally strong: remembering just is a way of knowing. Section 2 covers this strong relation. Section 3 canvases the main problems that data on human memory pose to theories of justification and the central attempts to solve these problems. Section 4 discusses the historical and contemporary responses to two main skeptical challenges about memory. (shrink)

Religious diversity is a key topic in contemporary philosophy of religion. One way religious diversity has been of interest to philosophers is in the epistemological questions it gives rise to. In other words, religious diversity has been seen to pose a challenge for religious belief. In this study four approaches to dealing with this challenge are discussed. These approaches correspond to four well-known philosophers of religion, namely, Richard Swinburne, Alvin Plantinga, William Alston, and John Hick. The study is concluded by (...) suggesting four factors which shape one’s response to the challenge religious diversity poses to religious belief. (shrink)