A Critical Introduction to Testimony

A Critical Introduction to Testimony
Author: Axel Gelfert
Publisher: A&C Black
Total Pages: 265
Release: 2014-09-25
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1441193502

A critical survey of the contemporary philosophical debate about the word of others as a source of knowledge, pointing to areas of future research.

A Critical Introduction to Testimony

A Critical Introduction to Testimony
Author: Axel Gelfert
Publisher:
Total Pages:
Release: 2014
Genre: PHILOSOPHY
ISBN: 9781472594082

The epistemology of testimony is a rapidly developing area in contemporary analytic philosophy. In this first thorough survey of the recent debate on the subject, Axel Gelfert provides an in-depth introduction to what has become one of the liveliest debates in contemporary epistemology. Covering existing literature and major debates, Gelfert discusses the epistemic status of testimony-based beliefs, relates changes to relevant developments in other areas and offers a critical perspective on current and future research trends. Devoting space to both the applications of social epistemology and the larger conceptual issues of knowledge, Gelfert not only introduces the epistemology of testimony; he offers an up-to-date introduction to epistemology. Equipped with a mix of study questions, examples, and suggestions for further reading, students of contemporary epistemology will find this a reliable guide to studying testimony as a source of knowledge.

Testimony

Testimony
Author: C. A. J. Coady
Publisher: Clarendon Press
Total Pages: 328
Release: 1992-04-16
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0191519987

The role of testimony in the getting of reliable belief or knowledge is a central but neglected epistemological issue. Western philosophical tradition has paid scant attention to the individual thinker's reliance upon the word of others; yet we are in fact profoundly dependent on others for a vast amount of what any of us claims to know. Professor Coady begins by exploring the nature and depth of our reliance upon testimony, addressing the complex definitional puzzles surrounding the idea. He analyses the tradition of debate on the topic in order to reveal the epistemic individualism which has given rise to an illusory ideal of `autonomous knowledge', and to gain a deeper understanding of the issues. He concludes this part of the book by showing what a feasible justification of testimony as a source of knowledge could be. In the second half of the book the author uses this new view of testimony to challenge certain widespread assumptions in the fields of history, mathematics, psychology, and law.

The Voice of Misery

The Voice of Misery
Author: Gert-Jan van der Heiden
Publisher: State University of New York Press
Total Pages: 352
Release: 2020-01-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1438477627

From analytic epistemology to gender theory, testimony is a major topic in philosophy today. Yet, one distinctive approach to testimony has not been fully appreciated: the recent history of contemporary continental philosophy offers a rich source for another approach to testimony. In this book, Gert-Jan van der Heiden argues that a continental philosophy of testimony can be developed that is guided by those forms of bearing witness that attest to limit experiences of human existence, in which the human is rendered mute, speechless, or robbed of a common understanding. In the first part, Van der Heiden explores this sense of testimony in a reading of several literary texts, ranging from Plato's literary inventions to those of Kierkegaard, Melville, Soucy, and Mortier. In the second part, based on the orientation offered by the literary experiments, Van der Heiden offers a more systematic account of testimony in which he distinguishes and analyzes four basic elements of testimony. In the third part, he shows what this analysis implies for the question of the truth and the truthfulness of testimony. In his discussion with philosophers such as Heidegger, Derrida, Lyotard, Agamben, Foucault, Ricoeur, and Badiou, Van der Heiden also provides an overview of how the problem of testimony emerges in a number of thinkers pivotal to twentieth- and twenty-first-century thought.

A Critical Introduction to Knowledge-How

A Critical Introduction to Knowledge-How
Author: J. Adam Carter
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 257
Release: 2018-02-22
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1472509870

We know facts, but we also know how to do things. To know a fact is to know that a proposition is true. But does knowing how to ride a bike amount to knowledge of propositions? This is a challenging question and one that deeply divides the contemporary landscape. A Critical Introduction to Knowledge-How introduces, outlines, and critically evaluates various contemporary debates surrounding the nature of knowledge-how. Carter and Poston show that situating the debate over the nature of knowledge-how in other epistemological debates provides new ways to make progress. In particular, Carter and Poston explore the question of what knowledge-how involves, and how it might come apart from propositional knowledge, by engaging with key epistemological topics including epistemic luck, knowledge of language, epistemic value, virtue epistemology and social epistemology. New frontiers for research on knowledge-how are also explored relating to the internalism - externalism debate as well as embodied and extended knowledge. A Critical Introduction to Knowledge-How provides an accessible introduction to the main arguments in this important and thriving debate suited for undergraduates and postgraduates in philosophy and related areas. A strength of the book is its methodology which places a premium on placing the debates over knowledge-how in a broader conversation over the nature of knowledge. This book also offers an opinionated discussion of various lines of argument which will be of interest to professional philosophers as well.

The Future of Testimony

The Future of Testimony
Author: Antony Rowland
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 255
Release: 2014-06-20
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1135010013

Celebrating the twentieth anniversary of the groundbreaking Testimony, this collection brings together the leading academics from a range of scholarly fields to explore the meaning, use, and value of testimony in law and politics, its relationship to other forms of writing like literature and poetry, and its place in society. It visits testimony in relation to a range of critical developments, including the rise of Truth Commissions and the explosion and radical extension of human rights discourse; renewed cultural interest in perpetrators of violence alongside the phenomenal commercial success of victim testimony (in the form of misery memoirs); and the emergence of disciplinary interest in genocide, terror, and other violent atrocities. These issues are necessarily inflected by the question of witnessing violence, pain, and suffering at both the local and global level, across cultures, and in postcolonial contexts. At the volume’s core is an interdisciplinary concern over the current and future nature of witnessing as it plays out through a ‘new’ Europe, post-9/11 US, war-torn Africa, and in countless refugee and detention centers, and as it is worked out by lawyers, journalists, medics, and novelists. The collection draws together an international range of case-studies, including discussion of the former Yugoslavia, Gaza, and Rwanda, and encompasses a cross-disciplinary set of texts, novels, plays, testimonial writing, and hybrid testimonies. The volume situates itself at the cutting-edge of debate and as such brings together the leading thinkers in the field, requiring that each address the future, anticipating and setting the future terms of debate on the importance of testimony.

Forensic Science Evidence and Expert Witness Testimony

Forensic Science Evidence and Expert Witness Testimony
Author: Paul Roberts
Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing
Total Pages: 454
Release: 2018-11-30
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1788111036

Forensic science evidence plays a pivotal role in modern criminal proceedings. Yet such evidence poses intense practical and theoretical challenges. It can be unreliable or misleading and has been associated with miscarriages of justice. In this original and insightful book, a global team of prominent scholars and practitioners explore the contemporary challenges of forensic science evidence and expert witness testimony from a variety of theoretical, practical and jurisdictional perspectives. Chapters encompass the institutional organisation of forensic science, its procedural regulation, evaluation and reform, and brim with comparative insight.

A Critical Introduction to the Epistemology of Perception

A Critical Introduction to the Epistemology of Perception
Author: Ali Hasan
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 185
Release: 2017-02-23
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1472526570

We ordinarily take it as obvious that we acquire knowledge of our world on the basis of sensory perception, and that such knowledge plays a central cognitive and practical role in our lives. Upon reflection, however, it is far from obvious what perception involves and how exactly it contributes to our knowledge. Indeed, skeptical arguments have led some to question whether we have any knowledge, or even rational or justified belief, regarding the world outside our minds. Investigating the nature and scope of our perceptual knowledge and perceptually justified belief, A Critical Introduction to the Epistemology of Perception provides an accessible and engaging introduction to a flourishing area of philosophy. Before introducing and evaluating the main theories in the epistemology of perception, Ali Hasan sets the stage with a discussion of skepticism, realism, and idealism in early modern philosophy, theories of perceptual experience (sense-datum theory, adverbialism, intentionalism, and metaphysical disjunctivism), and central controversies in general epistemology. Hasan then surveys the main theories in the contemporary debate, including coherentism, abductivism, phenomenal conservatism or dogmatism, reliabilism, and epistemological disjunctivism, presenting the motivations and primary objections to each. Hasan also shows how to avoid confusing metaphysical issues with epistemological ones, and identifies interesting connections between the epistemology and metaphysics of perception. For students in epistemology or the philosophy of perception looking to better understand the central questions, concepts, and debates shaping contemporary epistemology, A Critical Introduction to the Epistemology of Perception is essential reading.

The Palgrave Handbook of Testimony and Culture

The Palgrave Handbook of Testimony and Culture
Author: Sara Jones
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 637
Release: 2023-04-19
Genre: History
ISBN: 3031137949

This Palgrave Handbook examines the ways in which researchers and practitioners theorise, analyse, produce and make use of testimony. It explores the full range of testimony in the public sphere, including perpetrator testimony, testimony presented through social media and virtual reality. A growing body of research shows how complex and multi-layered testimony can be, how much this complexity adds to our understanding of our past, and how creators and users of testimony have their own complex purposes. These advances indicate that many of our existing assumptions about testimony and models for working with it need to be revisited. The purpose of this Palgrave Handbook is to do just that by bringing together a wide range of disciplinary, theoretical, methodological, and practice-based perspectives.