• Workshop overview
• Presentations

Workshop overview

This small informal graduate workshop on Epistemology will be held on Monday 13th April, 12-4pm, in room 7.01 of the Dugald Stewart Building. Everyone is welcome and there is no registration fee. Any questions about this event should be directed to Georgi Gardiner at epistemologyworkshops@googlemail.com. This event is part of the Epistemology research group at Edinburgh.

Presentations

• Georgi Gardiner
  'The Nature of Epistemic Norms'

ABSTRACT. Building on the work of Matthew Chrisman and Mike Ridge, I motivate a move from epistemic expressivism to epistemic prescriptivism. I defend a prescriptivist analysis of the meaning of epistemic concepts (such as epistemic justification), where epistemic judgements have both a cognitive and non-cognitive aspect. The former is understood with a network analysis picking out descriptive properties, the latter as prescriptions governing our inquiry and belief revision. I argue that epistemic normativity is categorical for all believers, and explain how this categoricalness is captured by my account. I also explain Mike Ridge's desiderata between ecumenical cognitivism and ecumenical non-cognitivism. After explaining some potential potholes for these methods of dividing the terrain, I suggest my own, and so argue that my account qualifies as ecumenical expressivsm because it emphasises that the function of epistemic discourse is action guiding, rather than primarily descriptive.

• Ray Critch
  'Some Preliminary Thoughts on Inferentialism and Theoretical Reasoning'

ABSTRACT. To follow.

• Chris Ranalli
  'Disambiguating the McKinsey Paradox With Moore (more) Kant'

ABSTRACT. Content externalism is the thesis that the semantic content of our thoughts are, at least in part, dependent upon the external conditions of the environment that we inhabit, or more weakly, upon the linguistic community present in the environment that we inhabit. There is an apparent tension between the theses of content externalism and privileged self-knowledge, which gives rise to the alleged McKinsey Paradox. My intention for this essay is twofold. First, I rehearse the McKinsey Paradox, and briefly explain thewaysin which philosophers have attempted to resolve the paradox. Secondly, and more importantly, I argue that Crispin Wrights and Martin Davies intended compatibilist solution to the McKinsey Paradox fails. I show this by arguing that Wright and Davies need to disambiguate between two interpretations of the McKinsey paradox. In brief: in the first case (Wrights & Davies), the McKinsey argument is analogous with the antiskeptical Moorean argument, and thus suffers from nontransmission of warrant. In the second case, the McKinsey argument is analogous – so I will argue – with a Kantian-style transcendental argument, and thereby does not suffer from nontransmission of warrant. Thus, I argue that the tension between these two interpretations capitulates to an unsolved dilemma for the compatibilist and thereby Wright and Davies solution is not an intellectually satisfying solution to the paradox.

• Rachel Fairnie

  'Internalism/Externalism and Religious Belief'

ABSTRACT. To follow.