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Philosophy: Events

Epistemology Research Seminar

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Overview

Epistemology is one of the main research clusters in Philosophy at Edinburgh, and as such hosts a number of research activities including this regular reserach seminar. For more details about Epistemology @ Edinburgh, click here. Talks usually take place fortnightly on Wednesdays, 3.30-5pm in room G.06 of the Dugald Stewart Building. All are welcome.

All inquiries about this seminar and about the epistemology research cluster in general should be directed to Prof. Duncan Pritchard.

Programme for 2010-11

Autumn

ABSTRACT. This session will offer an overview of some of the main issues and topics in modal epistemology, such as: reliabilism and modal epistemology; sensitivity; safety; basis-relativity; infallibilism; epistemic position; modal epistemology and closure; anti-luck epistemology; anti-luck virtue epistemology. It will be split over two sessions, with the second session on Wednesday November 3rd.

ABSTRACT. Are there objective epistemic facts? If so, then in what does their objectivity consist? In this paper, I begin to address these questions by way of discussing four arguments against epistemic realism. While none of the arguments are entirely persuasive, their joint weight puts considerable pressure on the realist to give an account of the nature of epistemic objectivity.

ABSTRACT. Interest relativism about knowledge draws on support from material traditionally thought to support contextualism. Prior to these novel views, evidentialism's main rival was reliabilism. In this paper I draw on evidentialist responses to reliabilism and contextualism to craft replies to interest relativism.

    Presentation 2: Nico Silins (Cornell), 'Consciousness, Attention, and the Epistemology of Perception'

ABSTRACT. Do we consciously experience only what we attend to, or do we consciously experience more? This presentation will investigate the role of attention in constraining what we experience, and will focus especially on the role of attention in constraining how experiences justify beliefs.

ABSTRACT. Many philosophers think that belief is subject to a norm of truth. Many also think that this norm is prescriptive in character - it concerns what we ought, may, and ought not do. I argue that, if there is a truth norm of belief, it is more plausibly evaluative than prescriptive in character. That is, it concerns in the first place what is good and bad, rather than what we ought, may and ought not do. I propose an account according to which true beliefs are good doxastic states because they constitute the satisfaction of a goal or function that is constitutive of the doxastic domain—a goal or function that is, furthermore, essential to our nature and lives.

ABSTRACT. This session will offer an overview of some of the main issues and topics in modal epistemology, such as: reliabilism and modal epistemology; sensitivity; safety; basis-relativity; infallibilism; epistemic position; modal epistemology and closure; anti-luck epistemology; anti-luck virtue epistemology. This is the second of two sessions on this topic (the first being on Wednesday September 29th).

  • Thursday November 11th, 3.00-5pm, room 1.17 in the Dugald Stewart Building

    Presentation: Martin Kusch (Vienna), 'Disagreement and Picture in Wittgenstein's Lectures on Religious Belief' (Wittgenstein pdf)

ABSTRACT. This paper suggests that the central theme of Wittgenstein's Lectures on Religious Belief is the possibility of a certain form of faultless disagreement. The disagreement is between two sides: (1) advocates of different religious views (such as that there will be a Last Judgement), and (2) Wittgenstein himself. I shall explain Wittgenstein’s various attempts to clarify the nature of this disagreement; and why he holds the disagreement to be faultless. I will give special attention to the role of pictures in Wittgenstein’s reflections.

ABSTRACT. Recently there has been a surge of interest in the intersection between epistemology and action theory, especially in principles linking justification (or rationality) in thought and justification (or rationality) in action. Recently there has also been a surge of interest in the epistemic significance of perceived peer disagreement: what, epistemically speaking, is the rational response in light of disagreement with someone whom one regards as an epistemic peer? In this paper I will connect these two debates. First, I will attempt to further articulate and support the idea that the normative standing of our actions depend on the normative standing of our thoughts (or beliefs). Very roughly, the principle that I favour says that adequate epistemic justification for certain types of beliefs is a necessary condition on rational action. The principle highlights a key feature of many actions, viz. their goal-directedness. Second, against the background of this principle, I offer a criticism of non-conformism, a certain view on disagreement's epistemic significance.

Programme for 2009-10

Spring

ABSTRACT. Reliabilists accept the possibility of basic knowledge: knowledge that p in virtue of the reliability of some belief-producing process r without antecedent knowledge that r is reliable. Cohen (2002, 2005) and Vogel (2000, 2008) have argued that one can bootstrap knowledge that r is reliable from basic knowledge. This paper offers a diagnosis of epistemic bootstrapping, rejects some existing responses as in Kornblith (2009), and then proposes that such arguments are afflicted by a kind of epistemic circularity which is different from the ones found in Wright (2003), Bergman (2004), Vogel (2008) and Davies (2009).

ABSTRACT. In his influential paper ‘Solving the Skeptical Problem’ , Keith DeRose presents an intriguing counterexample to the tracking theory of knowledge drawing on its apparent failure to accommodate for certain kinds of higher-level knowledge (DeRose 1995: 22). DeRose himself does not find this deficiency decisive since, in his view, it can be accounted for simply by modifying the formulation of the tracking theory. However, other prominent epistemologists have argued that DeRose’s case is fatal for the tracking theory. In the words of Jonathan Vogel, the troubles that it gives rise to “are not with the fruit, but go down to the very roots” (Vogel 2007: 83). In the same vein, Ernest Sosa comments that “This sort of counterexample […] strikes me as conclusive” (Sosa 1999: n.11). And Timothy Williamson, in a detailed and extensive discussion of DeRose’s case, concludes that it is decisive. (Williamson 2000: 157-161). The aim of the my paper is to show that the tracking theory can handle DeRose’s counterexample. I show that it is not as devastating as it may first appear. A careful analysis reveals that it trades on an illicit ambiguity regarding the content of the relevant higher-level beliefs. Once this ambiguity is resolved, the tracking theory turns out not only to deliver the intuitively correct results when subjected to DeRose’s case, but also to provide a very useful diagnosis of the prima facia puzzling fact that certain kinds of higher-level beliefs disqualify as knowledge no matter how strong the supporting evidence may be.

ABSTRACT. This paper arises from work on Wittgenstein's On Certainty, and my underlying concern is as much with Wittgenstein's response to Moore's Proof, as with the latter's viability. In elucidating the Proof, one must consider two opposed accounts of the relation of scepticism and everyday belief. The first, which underlies the received interpretation of Moore as a dogmatic proponent of commonsense, places sceptical and everyday practice on the same level. The second account - apparently advocated, for instance, by Stroud - insulates scepticism and everyday belief from each other. Each of these opposed positions is implausible, I will argue. Scepticism and everyday doubt and belief are not insulated from each other, but neither do they operate on the same level. The difficulty is to nuance their relationship correctly. Although Moore is not a naïve dogmatist, his way of showing how scepticism relates to everyday belief is unsatisfactory. My view, following Baldwin, is that there is interaction but non-equivalence between these practices. However, I argue that Baldwin is too uncritical of Moore, and neglects an interesting analogue, in the case of knowledge, of Moore's paradox concerning belief.

ABSTRACT. In this paper I defend the claim that belief is involuntary. (This is part of a bigger project ithe point of which it is to show that humans can be properly held responsible for what they believe--even if belief is involuntary). After clarifying what exactly the claim amounts to, in part I of the paper I zero in on three ways of going about that might conceivably be thought of as instances of 'voluntarily believing proposition p', viz. (a) paying selective attention to evidence relevant to p, (b) seeking the company of p-believers, and (c) self-suggestion. I argue that none of these qualify as instances of voluntary belief. The main reason for this is that neither (a), nor (b) nor (c) can be used as a policy that ensures that one will wind up believing that p as a result of the application of the policy. In part II of the paper I consider the bearing of two lines of empirical psychological research on the claim that belief is involuntary. First I consider the so-called 'motivated reasoning' research, and second the research having to do with the 'adaptive unconscious'. I argue that these lines of research furnish no reason to back of from the claim that belief is involuntary.

  • March 3rd, 3-5pm (NB. Note earlier start time), room G.06 in the Dugald Stewart Building

    Edinburgh Postgraduate Short Research Presentations

Raban Reichman, 'Does Finitude Pose an Epistemic Threat?'

ABSTRACT. Because we are finite it is logically possible that we should fail to know p for a reason that is, quite literally, beyond us. That is, a reason that we cannot understand, conceive of, or otherwise cognitively engage with. The question that I will address is whether we can confidently dismiss this somewhat abstract sceptical possibility on the grounds that it is modally distant. I will argue that we cannot because we lack access to information that we would need to have access to in order to do so. I believe that any optimist modal verdict concerning the above possibility must be based on some kind of projection, or inductive leap, from that which we can cognitively engage with to that with which we cannot. My (tentative) claim is that any such projection is either illegitimate or, more likely, a pseudo-projection that simply ignores the salient feature of the above possibility.

Cameron Boult, 'Entitlement as a Response to Scepticism'

ABSTRACT. I will outline some salient points in Crispin Wright's 'unified strategy' against radical scepticism and point out a potential tension in his notion of entitlement. Formulating his strategy, Wright suggests that the most interesting and challenging sceptical paradoxes share a general two-step form: i) they make the case that a certain proposition is what he calls a 'cornerstone' proposition (e.g. 'there is an external world'), and ii) proceed to argue that we have no warrant for this proposition. Since warrant for large classes of everyday beliefs depends upon warrant for cornerstones, these sceptical arguments purport to be cognitively devastating. Wright aims to show that while there may not be evidential justification for cornerstones, this does not yet eliminate the possibility of another--unearned--kind of warrant. And this is enough, he claims, to avoid the cognitive devastation of scepticism. Wright explores four potential kinds of unearned warrant. Looking at two of these, 'Strategic Entitlement' and 'Entitlement of Cognitive Project', I aim to outline precisely what it is that unearned warrant can entitle us to do. I will suggest that a tension arises in Wright's attempt at specifying a certain propositional attitude underlying entitlement.

Jacob Hilty, 'Williamson on Knowledge of Counterfactuals'

ABSTRACT. In Timothy Williamson's paper, 'Philosophical Knowledge and Knowledge of Counterfactuals', he claims that knowledge of metaphysical modality is just a special case of knowledge of counterfactual conditionals. I will argue that, while knowledge of counterfactuals and modality are equivalent, it is not possible to evaluate counterfactuals, and thus gain knowledge of them, without appealing to knowledge of possible worlds, and therefore, that his solution to the problem of not being able to epistemically access possible worlds, is flawed. Further I will argue that given the relationship he shows between counterfactuals and possible worlds, and the lack of epistemic access we have to possible worlds show that we cannot have epistemic access to counterfactuals.

ABSTRACT. In his 2007 paper ‘From Epistemic Contextualism to Epistemic Expressivism’, Matthew Chrisman motivates and defends a version of epistemic expressivism. As Chrisman sees it, epistemic expressivism offers an attractive alternative to epistemic contextualism and relativism in that it is better placed than those views to explain what he calls the ‘dialectical intuitions’ problem. In the first section of this paper I’ll argue that Chrisman’s expressivism fails for a number of reasons to address the dialectical intuitions problem. In the second section I’ll consider a related form of epistemic expressivism proposed by Michael Ridge and argue that it fails to address what I call our concept of legitimate epistemic concern—a concept that plays a central role in why we should be concerned to explain the dialectical intuitions problem Chrisman discusses. In each of the first two sections I proceed on the assumption that epistemic expressivism need not rely on deflationism about any semantic item to respond to these problems. In the final section I suggest that the epistemic expressivist is ill advised to address either problem by invoking deflationism.

ABSTRACT. Some ways of evaluating people’s beliefs seem more legitimate (appropriate, justified) than others. For example, evaluation of beliefs in epistemic terms – e.g., positively evaluating epistemically rational beliefs, and negatively evaluating epistemically irrational beliefs – seems legitimate in some sense in which it is not legitimate to positively evaluative beliefs formed on a Tuesday and to negatively evaluate beliefs formed on other days of the week. What makes this the case? One way of answering that question, epistemic essentialism, appeals to the claim that epistemic evaluation of beliefs is the evaluation of beliefs qua beliefs, i.e. the evaluation of beliefs as such. I articulate three versions of this view, and argue that the prospects for epistemic essentialism are dim. There are two big reasons for this. First, things that could plausibly ground the legitimacy of epistemic evaluation, such as an intention or desire to believe the truth, are not plausibly essential for belief. Second, empirical research suggests that epistemically irrational beliefs are often functioning well, from a biological or psychological perspective.

ABSTRACT. What I call 'continuity skepticism' maintains that there is a sharp discontinuity between the mental life of animals and ours, so there can be no philosophically cogent account of how human thought and language could emerge in a natural world. I argue that this is a much more radical claim -- and a much less plausible one -- than other skeptical claims regarding animal mindedness. Yet both sides of the debate on animal mentality often fail to recognize that. I then suggest that a proper understanding of the phenomenon of expressive behavior, which non-linguistic animals share with us humans, may help break through the barrier put up by continuity skepticism.

ABSTRACT. In this paper I add credence to Linda Zagzebski’s (1994) analysis of Gettier problems (and the current trend to abandon the standard analysis) by analyzing the nature of luck. It is widely accepted that the lesson to be learned from Gettier problems is that knowledge is incompatible with luck or at least a certain species of it. As such, understanding the nature of luck is central to understanding the Gettier problem. Thanks by and large to Duncan Pritchard’s seminal work, Epistemic Luck (2005), a great deal of literature has been developed recently concerning the nature of luck and anti-luck epistemology. The literature, however, has yet to account for the very intuitive idea that luck comes in degrees. I propose that once luck is recognized to admit degrees even the slightest non-zero degree (of the relevant sort) precludes knowledge. Connecting this to Zagzebski’s thesis, I propose that a given theory of warrant must guarantee truth in order to avoid Gettier-counterexamples (or subsequently deny that warrant bears any relationship to the truth whatsoever), simply because a sufficient standard analysis of knowledge cannot allow for knowledge that is even marginally lucky.

ABSTRACT. In this talk the indicativity account of knowledge is applied to the problem of perceptual skepticism, and in particular to the retraction phenomenon, which involves the reaction of the subject to a skeptical challenge, whereby the subject retracts her earlier assertion. A cognitive explanation of the retraction phenomenon is offered, with no appeal to threshold volatility, thereby offering an alternative account of perceptual skepticism and, more specifically, of the retraction phenomenon, to that of contextualism. Along the way a methodological conception of conceptual analysis as a simulation model is presented, which is employed in the explanation of the retraction phenomenon. Different notions of assertibility are presented, which are natural derivatives of the indicativity account of knowledge, and which are useful for the analysis of perceptual skepticism and the retraction phenomenon. The more important among them reflects an internalist norm of assertion. The contrast to the contextualist approach is presented primarily as involving the stability (as opposed to the volatility) during the encounter with the skeptic of the threshold as well as of the truth conditions of knowledge ascriptions, as well as of various notions of assertibility. The account presented here brings out the diversity of appropriate responses to the skeptical challenge in different sub-cases of, e.g., the zebra/painted-mule case.

ABSTRACT. Testimony, conceived broadly as affirming something to someone, is the mainstay of human communication and essential for the spread of knowledge. But testimony may also spread error. Under what conditions does affirming something succeed in creating knowledge of what is affirmed in the person addressed? Must the recipient, for instance, trust the attester? And does the attester have to know what is affirmed, or it is enough that it be true and believed by the attester? A related question is what it takes for the recipient to be justified in believing what the attester affirms. Is testimony-based justification acquired in the same way as testimony-based knowledge? These questions lead to another pressing one significant for us all: What standards must we uphold in forming beliefs on the basis of what we are told—whether in person or in other communications? In Aristotelian terms, what is the mean between a naive credulity and a crippling skepticism? This paper addresses these and other questions. It offers a theory of the role of testimony in producing knowledge and justification, a brief account of how trust of others can be squared with critical habits of mind, and an outline of some important standards for intellectual responsibility in giving and receiving testimony.

Autumn

  • September 30th, 3.30-5pm, room G.06 in the Dugald Stewart Building

    Presentation: Claudine Tiercelin (Institut Jean-Nicod), 'Knowledge First? Why Not? Some Pragmatist Suggestions for a Naturalist and Normative Approach to Epistemology' (handout pdf)

ABSTRACT. Pragmatists are often presented (by Putnam, Hookway, Stanley and even a former Tiercelin) as viewing knowledge mainly as inquiry rather than, for example, following either a classical framework of knowledge as justified true beliefs or a straightforward virtue epistemology model. In the first part of my talk, I shall explain to what extent such a view is partly true and the consequences it has in terms of the way many pragmatists are held to favour inquiry and understanding rather than knowledge proper, to conflate epistemic and practical norms, to dissolve the problem of justification, to extend the scope of epistemology itself so as to make its frontiers with ethics unclear, and yet, by the same token, to seem to offer interesting and original parries to the sceptical challenge. In many respects, such a picture is accurate: however it is also misleading and its consequences much less fruitful or even innocuous than it might seem at first sight. In the second part of my talk, I shall argue that another - although still pragmatist - strategy is possible. It consists mainly in viewing 1) knowledge as the aim of inquiry; 2) inquiry, as a scientific and realistic method of investigation (stressing the necessary analysis of the conditions of possibility of doubt itself) rather than as a mere question-answer process; 3) epistemic norms, both as constitutive principles and as goals of our inquiries, somewhat continuous with metacognitive states and emerging from nature. In the third part of the talk, I shall sketch the various (epistemological, cognitive and metaphysical) constraints such a strategy puts on a possible new definition of knowledge which tries 1) to combine externalist and internalist components, 2) to stick both to evidentialist requirements and to such irreducible notions as truth and agent responsibility, mainly viewed in terms of a sentimental and rational education of one’s natural dispositions. In the concluding part, I shall explain in what way such a strategy can offer 1) some interesting tools against scepticism and 2), contrary to most projects which tend to stress the links between general epistemology and cognitive psychology in terms of a reductionist model of naturalized epistemology (e.g., Quine), a naturalistic and normative approach to epistemology, partly conforted by some results from current inquiries into metacognitive normativity and in keeping with a view foreseen (although given up) by Kant, namely a sort of “system of preformation of pure reason” able to account for the way in which, so to speak, norms emerge from nature.

ABSTRACT. To follow.

ABSTRACT. This paper addresses recent responses to the epistemic significance of peer disagreement made by conformists such as Christensen, Elga, and Feldman. I open the paper by articulating just what the epistemic significance of peer disagreement is supposed to amount to. I do this, in part, by tracing the roots of this argument to the problem of religious pluralism. I then survey the conformist responses, tracing a thread of similarity that runs through the three primary representatives of conformism. I then argue that in certain domains of knowledge first order peer disagreement requires no doxastic revision. This argument raises a worry about forming beliefs in unsafe domains. A worry that I take up and respond to in the close of the paper.

  • November 4th , 3.30-5pm, room TBC in the Dugald Stewart Building

    Presentation: Mikkel Gerken (Copenhagen), 'If the Word 'Knowledge' Did Not Exist, Would it be Necessary to Invent It?'

ABSTRACT. I investigate whether the word ‘knowledge’ is “rationally necessary” in the following sense: Could we, given our cognitive make-up and communicative needs, rationally abandon ‘knowledge’ in favor of the alternative epistemic vocabulary that we possess? I explore an account according to which the question should be answered in the affirmative. The account begins by a number of considerations about the concept of knowledge. I argue that our intuitive epistemic judgments that form the basis for our linguistic knowledge ascriptions are governed by cognitive heuristics that deploy the concept of knowledge by default. This psychological hypothesis gives rise to three inconclusive, but mutually supporting, rationales for taking ‘knowledge’ to be rationally necessary. I conclude by considering the methodological ramifications of taking ‘knowledge’ to be rationally necessary. My central point is cautionary. I argue that ‘answering the question in the affirmative provides no reason to adopt a “knowledge first’ program in epistemology.

ABSTRACT. Recent debates in epistemology exhibit a growing sensitivity to the dialectical parallel between ethics and epistemology. That is, theoretical positions and arguments predominantly first applied in ethics, seem to also carry over to epistemology and many ethicists and epistemologists are increasingly becoming aware of it. This growing sensitivity to the ethics-epistemology dialectical parallel has ushered philosophers to borrow theoretical schemes and arguments mostly applied to ethics and transpose them to epistemology (e.g., virtue theories). In this talk I try my own hand. I embark from Gibbard’s (1990) moral norm-expressivism towards a form of epistemic norm-expressivism. That is, I make a first preliminary gesture towards a norm-expressivist account of the semantics of epistemic justification claims and attributions (and, more generally, epistemic evaluations as such). My claim is a very modest one. I only claim that at least some of the explanatory fruit moral norm-expressivism promises to reap is equally promised to be reaped by its 'twin' epistemic norm-expressivism.

ABSTRACT. The externalist, the mentalist and the accessibilist account of justification are traditionally considered as antagonist and incompatible views. My goal is to provide some further support for the claim, defended by W. Alston, according to which epistemologists who disagree about the notion of justifiedness of beliefs do not have a common pre-theoretical conception of what they are debating. More accurately, I would like to bring support to this view by showing that the various conceptions of justifiedness are actually reflecting three independent ways for a performance to be good: the instrumental goodness, the goodness of rationality and, what I call, the goodness of commendability. The starting point is that externalists, mentalists and accessibilists do, at least, agree on the fact that a justified belief acquisition is a belief acquisition which is good in a way. From there, I try to show that externalists pre-theoretically conceive justifiedness as instrumental goodness, that mentalists pre-theoretically conceive justified belief acquisitions as “good because rational” belief acquisitions and that accessibilists pre-theoretically conceive justifiedness as the goodness of commendability. In a second time, I discuss the problem of the explanation of the goodness of justifiedness and consider two influential explanations: the reliabilist explanation and the so-called credit explanation. This leads me to suggest an accessibilist explanation of the goodness of justifiedness, i.e. an explanation grounded on what I previously described as the accessibilist conception of the goodness of justifiedness. Finally I try to show that an accessibilist explanation of the goodness of justifiedness does not encounter the objection which is traditionally addressed against the credit explanation. The accessibilist explanation is able to account for our being sometimes justified when we believe the testimony of others.

Programme for 2008-09

Autumn

Meetings will be held fortnightly on Wednesdays from 2.30-4pm throughout the semester in room G.06 in the Dugald Stewart Building. The provisional schedule for this semester is as follows:

  • October 8th

    Presentation: Julien Dutant (Geneva), 'Four Worries for Safety' (Paper pdf) (Handout pdf)

ABSTRACT. Several authors have recently defended a safety condition on knowledge according to which one knows only if one's belief couldn't easily have been wrong. The basic understanding of this clause is that S's belief that p is safe iff in all close worlds in which S believes that p, p is true. Here I raise four problems for basic safety: (1) it cannot deal with fake barn cases, (2) it cannot deal with borderline ignorance resulting from vague predicates or concepts, (3) it treats symmetrical cases in an asymmetrical way when necessary truths are involved, (4) it cannot deal with cases of knowledge based on accidentally-gathered evidence. I argue that all worries point out in the same direction: that safety has to be formulated with reference to methods. The consequences are (1) safety is not so different from reliabilism after all; in particular it faces the generality problem just as reliabilism does; (2) safety thus generalized may be sufficient for knowledge.

  • October 22nd

    Presentation: Anne Meylan (Geneva/Edinburgh), 'Bringing Closer Epistemic Responsibility and Responsibility for Consequences' (Powerpoint pdf)

ABSTRACT. To follow.

  • November 5th

    Presentation: Georgi Gardiner (Edinburgh), 'Defending Robust Virtue Epistemology'.

ABSTRACT. Robust Virtue Epistemology (RVE) is the thesis that knowledge is true belief that is attained through the cognitive virtues of the agent. The nature of knowledge can be understood entirely through truth, belief, (cognitive) virtues, and the relationships between them. No separate anti-luck condition is necessary for knowledge. In this paper I explain why the counterexamples to RVE are unconvincing. I argue that no separate anti-luck condition is needed to account for our knowledge attributions. I argue that given the theoretic advantages of RVE, epistemologists ought to either develop RVE, or else to disprove it once and for all. I refine RVE with a better (causal) understanding of the “through” relation. I’ll also make some comments on virtues.

  • November 19th

    Presentation: J. Adam Carter (Edinburgh), 'Knowledge, Credit and Testimony'

ABSTRACT: A recent view in epistemology contends that if you know p, then it is to your credit that you've come to believe p truly. Call this 'Credit Theory.' Jennifer Lackey notes a tension between Credit Theory and putative cases of testimonial knowledge; she concludes from the thought that (i) recipients of testimonial knowledge don't deserve credit for truly believing what their informant tells them; and (ii) these cases nonetheless count as clear cases of knowing, that 'Credit Theory' must be false. Lackey's argument poses a serious challenge to Credit Theory and has been given quite a bit of attention recently; in this talk, I intend to defend credit theory against Lackey's critique.

  • November 26th

    Presentation: Conor McHugh (Edinburgh), 'Self-Knowledge and Epistemological Internalism

ABSTRACT. A number of philosophers have claimed that our knowledge of our own conscious mental states is explained by the fact that such states themselves give their subjects reasons to self-ascribe them. That is, when you think that it is raining, that very thought (and not introspection of it) gives you a reason to judge, “I am thinking that it is raining”. Call this 'the reasons account'. The reasons account is intended to be an epistemologically internalist account of self-knowledge. This seems an advantage of the account, since self-knowledge is surely a paradigm of internalist knowledge. In a recent article, Annalisa Coliva argues that a conscious state can function as an internalist reason for its own self-ascription only if the subject already has a kind of epistemic access to that state--a kind of epistemic access that already amounts to or presupposes self-knowledge. Coliva claims, therefore, that the reasons account faces a dilemma: it must either make subjects' justifications for self-ascriptions circular (since the justification presupposes self-knowledge), or forego its claim to be a genuinely internalist account. I will distinguish between various versions of internalism according to how they construe the kind of access a subject must have to her reason. I will argue that Coliva's conception of access leads to a hardline version of internalism. This hardline internalism, I will argue, cannot be the framework for a plausible account of self-knowledge. Then I will develop a slightly softer version of internalism which is compatible with the reasons account. I will conclude that the reasons account is a promising account of self-knowledge, and that we have reason to reject Coliva's hardline version of internalism across the board, since it is problematic even when applied in the domain that is supposed to be a paradigm of internalist knowledge.

  • December 3rd

    Presentation: Jesper Kallestrup (Edinburgh), 'Knowledge and Determination'

ABSTRACT: Just as Dummett famously argued that there's no such thing as bare predicative knowledge, this paper argues that there's no such thing as bare propositional knowledge: all such knowing is knowing in a specific way. For instance, seeing that so-and-so is a way of knowing that so-and-so. Since such properties sustain the platitudes about determinables and their determinates, the determinable relation offers an attractive account of the relationship between ways of knowing as determinates of the determinable knowing. Consequently, there are distinctive epistemic determination dimensions for knowledge--the features according to which knowledge can be determined--to do with epistemic strength, source and defeat. Moreover, if causes must be proportional to their effects, then the determinable knowledge property is the causally efficacious property. This yields the correct result in a range of cases much discussed in the recent literature.

  • December 10th

    Presentation: Martijn Blaauw (Amsterdam), 'The Unassertability of Contextualism' (Handout pdf)

ABSTRACT. To follow.

Spring

Meetings will be held fortnightly on Wednesdays from 4pm-5.30pm (note the time change) throughout the semester in room G.06 in the Dugald Stewart Building. The schedule for this semester is as follows:

  • January 14th

    Presentation: Michael Lynch (UConn), 'Epistemic Circularity and Epistemic Disagreement'

ABSTRACT. In recent years, many philosophers have become convinced that externalist accounts of knowledge and justification can answer skeptical arguments stemming from the so-called problem of epistemic circularity. In this paper, I argue that even if this is so, externalism has no traction against a different problem, distinct from skepticism, which I'll call the problem of epistemic disagreement. Like the skeptical argument, the problem of epistemic disagreement is rooted in part in the issue of epistemic circularity. But unlike its cousin, it is not a problem about whether we in fact have knowledge or are justified in our opinions, but whether we can show that we do, to the satisfaction of ourselves or others, in the face of a practical demand to decide what one ought to believe. Moreover, unlike the skeptical problem, this problem is both live and pressing, and demands an answer.

  • January 28th

    Presentation: Matthew Chrisman (Edinburgh), 'Expressivism, Constructivism, and Knowledge-Talk'

ABSTRACT. It's a curious fact that the possibility and nature of normative knowledge is a weapon wielded by both normative realists and antirealists against their opponents. Antirealists argue that most realists don't have plausible accounts of our epistemic access to normative facts, while realists argue that most antirealists can't accommodate the fact that it's quite common to attribute normative knowledge in ordinary discourse. This paper considers some possible responses to the latter argument that may be made by normative expressivists and constructivists.

  • February 11th

    Presentation: Esben Petersen (South Denmark), 'Orthodox Invariantism, Pragmatics and the Contextualist Challenge'

ABSTRACT. In a series of recent papers Patrick Rysiew has argued that the intuitions purported to reflect the context-sensitivity of ‘know’ can be accounted for without abandoning classical invariantism. To that end, Rysiew systematically develops a proposal arguing that the relevant intuitions are due to the influence of pragmatic phenomena on epistemic discourse, rather than semantic context-sensitivity. I consider the details of the proposal, and argue that it does not provide a plausible response to the contextualist.

  • February 25th

    Presentation: Karol Polcyn (University of Szczecin, Poland), 'Conceivability Intuitions and the Intuition of Distinctness'

ABSTRACT. Joseph Levine insists that we do not understand at an intuitive level how mind-brain identities can be true and offers a conceptual explanation of this intuition. According to him, phenomenal and theoretical concepts employ substantial conceptions of their referents and we do not understand how those conceptions can be conceptions of the same properties. Here I want to explicate the nature of this conceptual gap further. I will argue that the reason why we do not understand why mind-brain identities should be true has to do with the conceivable distinctness of the corresponding phenomenal and physical states. Given that pain, say, is conceivably distinct from c-fibers firing, there is conceptual room for the question as to why pain and c-fibers firing should be identical. No such corresponding question arises in the case of other theoretical identities because the nature of our conceivability intuitions about those other identities is different. For example, although water, say, is conceivably distinct from H2O, it is not conceivable that what ‘water’ picks out in the actual world (H2O) might not be H2O. By contrast, when we conceive of pain as distinct from c-fibers firing, we consider the situation in which the very property that ‘pain’ picks out in the actual world (the feeling of pain) might be distinct from c-fibers firing. This then explains why it remains unintelligible to us why pain should be identical with c-fibers firing. The identity of pain and c-fibers firing seems to be brute and inexplicable.

  • March 11th

    Presentation: Eric Kerr (Edinburgh), 'Rock, Paper, Scissors: Engineering Knowledge as Knowledge of Artificial Kinds'

ABSTRACT. Do you know how your radio works? What does it mean to know this? One account has been provided by Wybo Houkes (2006) who argues that knowledge of technical artefact function is a distinct form of knowledge worthy of serious epistemological attention. Consider the following uses of ‘knows’ (and its cognates): knowing that a tin-opener is for opening tins; a computer technician’s knowledge of how to recover damaged data from a hard-disk drive; ‘S knows which wire is ‘earth.' Houkes terms uses such as these use know-how. In this paper I consider use know-how to be one critical focus of engineering knowledge, and a means to distinguish the latter from ‘applied science’ and from some aspects of scientific knowledge itself. However, Houkes’ account is committed to the ‘dual nature’ conception of technical artefacts viz. that such artefacts have both a structural (i.e. physical) and an intentional (i.e. social) component. Conceiving of this dual nature as separably analyzable, I argue, raises intractable problems of design, function, ‘correct’ use, and normativity, which may be better accounted for by classifying technical artefacts as artificial kinds, as per Martin Kusch’s definition. Through such analysis we find in engineering knowledge a validation of certain social epistemological claims.

  • March 25th

    Presentation: Joe Kuntz (Edinburgh), 'When Intuition is Evidence and Evidence Confers Epistemic Status: A Look at Closure and Transmission'

ABSTRACT. I’ll here pursue the question of whether intuition qua evidence can be formulated under some principle of epistemic closure or transmission. I want to see if intuitions are closed under some sort of entailment, even though knowing is not. Transmission principles differ from closure principles as they says how one comes to the consequent, whereas closure leaves this open. This is, perhaps, an odd way of going about examining the epistemology of intuitions. Debates about closure and transmission have mainly concerned knowledge, something on the other end of the spectrum of epistemic weightiness. Nevertheless, this approach is consistent with thinking of intuition as a kind of propositional attitude, and we are able to arrive at interesting conclusions. We’ll examine simple closure, closure under known entailment, closure under merely believed entailment, closure under evidential entailment, competent deduction, modal closure under known entailment, Blome-Tillmann’s Revised Modal Closure, and varieties of transformations thereof. I’ll show that, in many instances, evidence-based closure principles fail for the same reasons that knowledge-based principles fail, but not in all cases.

Summer

  • April 8th [NB. In room 1.01, Dugald Stewart Building]

    Presentation: Evan Butts (Edinbugh), 'The Cognitive in Epistemology'

ABSTRACT. In order to solve certain problems with basic reliabilism, epistemologists have placed restrictions on which reliable belief-forming processes will count as knowledge-conducive. In particular, some have ultimately turned to cognitive abilities to delineate the proper set of knowledge-conducive reliable processes. I argue, however, that in this regard the relevant epistemologists have become confused. After a brief recapitulation of why reliabilist epistemologists would initially be motivated to appeal to ability and eventually cognitive ability more specifically, I shall discuss why such a move commits our epistemologists to some heterodox theory of cognition. Further, I discuss why this fact should not be surprising upon reflection. Finally, I discuss what problems attend such a committment for our epistemologists, and what options for further manoevuring are available.

  • April 17th

    3-5pm, Conference Room, Ground Floor, David Hume Tower [NB. Note that this is a different day, time and venue to the usual slot]

    • Presentation: Steven Hales (Bloomsburg), 'Moral Relativism and Evolutionary Psychology'

ABSTRACT. I argue that evolutionary strategies of kin selection and game-theoretic reciprocity are apt to generate agent-centered and agent- neutral moral intuitions, respectively. Such intuitions are the building blocks of moral theories, resulting in a fundamental schism between agent-centered theories on the one hand and agent-neutral theories on the other. An agent-neutral moral theory is one according to which everyone has the same duties and moral aims, no matter what their personal interests or interpersonal relationships. Agent-centered moral theories deny this and include at least some prescriptions that include ineliminable indexicals. I argue that there are no rational means of bridging the gap between the two types of theories; nevertheless this does not necessitate skepticism about the moral—we might instead opt for an ethical relativism in which the truth of moral statements is relativized to the perspective of moral theories on either side of the schism. Such a relativism does not mean that any ethical theory is as good as any other; some cannot be held in reflective equilibrium, and even among those that can, there may well be pragmatic reasons that motivate the selection of one theory over another. But if no sort of relativism is deemed acceptable, then it is hard to avoid moral skepticism.

ABSTRACT. Soon after it came on the scene some thirty years ago, virtue epistemology divided into a reliabilist, competence-based side, and a responsibilist, character-based opposing side. This lecture will argue that the opposition is false. There are two sides of epistemology—theory of knowledge and intellectual ethics—but these are not in opposition. Competence theory pertains mostly to the former, and character theory mostly to the latter. This becomes clear once we discern the several levels of virtue and epistemic agency. Levels of knowledge can be distinguished on that basis: the animal, the reflective, the full. And knowledge of all levels can be distinguished from a larger epistemic wisdom. The lecture aims thus to provide an overview of virtue epistemology, of its development and present state, and to reveal its deep unity. Its responsibilist and reliabilist sides are seen to be complementary, not oppositional.

  • August 24th

    3-4.30pm, room 7.01, Dugald Stewart Building

    • Presentation: Bruce Russell (Wayne State), 'Epistemic Disagreement' (pdf)

ABSTRACT. Suppose your epistemic peer is someone who has all of your epistemic, or intellectual, virtues and the same total evidence. I argue that known disagreement with a known epistemic peer always gives you some reason to lower your confidence in the disputed belief. However, I also argue that it is possible for both you and your epistemic peer to be perfectly rational in believing what you do in cases of disagreement. That is because there can be more than one scale for weighing evidence that is equally good from an epistemic standpoint. Just as in morality there are cases where there is no fact of the matter regarding which group of prima facie duties outweighs some other group, so in epistemology there are cases where there is no fact of the matter about which considerations make one hypothesis a better explanation than another of certain evidence. In such cases, it is rationally permissible to do, or believe, either the one thing or the other. Despite arguing for the possibility of rational disagreement among epistemic peers, I maintain that they are rare in philosophy. Most often in philosophical disputes the differing parties either have different evidence, or neither one of them is perfectly rational on the particular occasion because they both overlook subtle equivocations, or on the particular occasion one side is irrational in ignoring evidence against, or incorrectly weighing evidence for, its view.

Previous meetings

During the 2007-08 academic year we read Ernest Sosa's new book, A Virtue Epistemology: Reflective Knowledge and Apt Belief (Oxford University Press, 2007) and, in conjunction with the Ethics research cluster, Ralph Wedgwood's new book, The Nature of Normativity (Oxford University Press, 2007). In addition, we had a number of one-off meetings on specific topics, including presentations from visiting speakers such as Prof. Mike Lynch (University of Connecticut).

Last updated: September 1st 2010 by Duncan Pritchard.

Contact details

Philosophy,
School of Philosophy,
Psychology and Language Sciences,
Dugald Stewart Building,
3 Charles Street,
George Square,
Edinburgh EH8 9AD

Maintained by Inna Kupreeva and Duncan Pritchard
Last modified on: Monday, 08-Nov-2010 10:08:50 GMT