Pragmatic Encroachment in Epistemology

Pragmatic Encroachment in Epistemology
Author: Brian Kim
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 226
Release: 2018-10-25
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1351685244

According to philosophical lore, epistemological orthodoxy is a purist epistemology in which epistemic concepts such as belief, evidence, and knowledge are characterized to be pure and free from practical concerns. In recent years, the debate has focused narrowly on the concept of knowledge and a number of challenges have been posed against the orthodox, purist view of knowledge. While the debate about knowledge is still a lively one, the pragmatic exploration in epistemology has just begun. This collection takes on the task of expanding this exploration into new areas. It discusses how the practical might encroach on all areas of our epistemic lives from the way we think about belief, confidence, probability, and evidence to our ideas about epistemic value and excellence. The contributors also delve into the ramifications of pragmatic views in epistemology for questions about the value of knowledge and its practical role. Pragmatic Encroachment in Epistemology will be of interest to a broad range of epistemologists, as well as scholars working on virtue theory and practical reason.

Pragmatic Encroachment, Religious Belief and Practice

Pragmatic Encroachment, Religious Belief and Practice
Author: A. Rizzieri
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Total Pages: 167
Release: 2013-01-01
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9781349436033

Engaging several recent and important discussions in the mainstream epistemological literature surrounding 'pragmatic encroachment', the volume asks, amongst others, the question: Do the high stakes involved in accepting or rejecting belief in God raise the standards for knowledge that God exists?

Normativity

Normativity
Author: Conor McHugh
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 295
Release: 2018
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0198758707

What should I do? What should I think? Traditionally, ethicists tackle the first question, while epistemologists tackle the second. This volume is innovative in drawing together issues from epistemology and ethics and in exploring neglected connections between epistemic and practical normativity.

Social Epistemology and Relativism

Social Epistemology and Relativism
Author: Natalie Alana Ashton
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 200
Release: 2020-03-09
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0429581270

This is the first book to explore the connections and interactions between social epistemology and epistemic relativism. The essays in the volume are organized around three distinct philosophical approaches to this topic: 1) foundational questions concerning deep disagreement, the variability of epistemic norms, and the relationship between relativism and reliabilism; 2) the role of relativistic themes in feminist social epistemology; and 3) the relationship between the sociology of knowledge, philosophy of science, and social epistemology. Recent trends in social epistemology seek to rectify earlier work that conceptualized cognitive achievements primarily on the level of isolated individuals. Relativism insists that epistemic judgements or beliefs are justified or unjustified only relative to systems of standards—there is not neutral way of adjudicating between them. By bringing together these two strands of epistemology, this volume offers unique perspectives on a number of central epistemological questions. Social Epistemology and Relativism will be of interest to researchers working in epistemology, feminist philosophy, and the sociology of knowledge.

Probabilistic Knowledge

Probabilistic Knowledge
Author: Sarah Moss
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 281
Release: 2018
Genre: Mathematics
ISBN: 0198792158

Sarah Moss argues that in addition to full beliefs, credences can constitute knowledge. She introduces the notion of probabilistic content and shows how it plays a central role not only in epistemology, but in the philosophy of mind and language. Just you can believe and assert propositions, you can believe and assert probabilistic contents.

Knowledge, Belief, and God

Knowledge, Belief, and God
Author: Matthew A. Benton
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2018
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0198798709

Recent decades have seen a fertile period of theorizing within mainstream epistemology which has had a dramatic impact on how epistemology is done. Investigations into contextualist and pragmatic dimensions of knowledge suggest radically new ways of meeting skeptical challenges and of understanding the relation between the epistemological and practical environment. New insights from social epistemology and formal epistemology about defeat, testimony, a priority, probability, and the nature of evidence all have a potentially revolutionary effect on how we understand our epistemological place in the world. Religion is the place where such rethinking can potentially have its deepest impact and importance. Yet there has been surprisingly little infiltration of these new ideas into philosophy of religion and the epistemology of religious belief. Knowledge, Belief, and God incorporates these myriad new developments in mainstream epistemology, and extends these developments to questions and arguments in religious epistemology. The investigations proposed in this volume offer substantial new life, breadth, and sophistication to issues in the philosophy of religion and analytic theology. They pose original questions and shed new light on long-standing issues in religious epistemology; and these developments will in turn generate contributions to epistemology itself, since religious belief provides a vital testing ground for recent epistemological ideas.

On Folk Epistemology

On Folk Epistemology
Author: Mikkel Gerken
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 315
Release: 2017-09-22
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0192525212

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

Tell Me Something I Don't Know: Dialogues in Epistemology

Tell Me Something I Don't Know: Dialogues in Epistemology
Author: Michael Veber
Publisher: Broadview Press
Total Pages: 202
Release: 2018-02-28
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1460406281

Tell Me Something I Don’t Know is a collection of original dialogues in epistemology, suitable for student readers but also of interest to experts. Familiar problems, theories, and arguments are explored: second-order knowledge, epistemic closure, the preface paradox, skepticism, pragmatic encroachment, the Gettier problem, and more. New ideas on each of these issues are also offered, defended, and critiqued, often in humorous and entertaining ways.

Knowledge in an Uncertain World

Knowledge in an Uncertain World
Author: Jeremy Fantl
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 262
Release: 2009-11-05
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 019955062X

This study explores the relation between knowledge, reasons and justification. It argues that you can rely on what you know, since what you know can be a reason you have and you can rely on your reasons. But the assumption that knowledge allows for a chance of error makes this a controversial position in epistemology.

Epistemology

Epistemology
Author: Ernest Sosa
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 252
Release: 2018-12-04
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0691183260

One of the world's leading epistemologists provides a sophisticated, revisionist introduction to the subject In this concise book, one of the world’s leading epistemologists provides a sophisticated, revisionist introduction to the problem of knowledge in Western philosophy. Modern and contemporary accounts of epistemology tend to focus on limited questions of knowledge and skepticism, such as how we can know the external world, other minds, the past through memory, the future through induction, or the world’s depth and structure through inference. This book steps back for a better view of the more general issues posed by the ancient Greek Pyrrhonists. Returning to and illuminating this older, broader epistemological tradition, Ernest Sosa develops an original account of the subject, giving it substance not with Cartesian theology but with science and common sense. Descartes is a part of this ancient tradition, but he goes beyond it by considering not just whether knowledge is possible in the first place, but also how we can properly attain it. In Cartesian epistemology, Sosa finds a virtue-theoretic account, one that he extends beyond the Cartesian context. Once epistemology is viewed in this light, many of its problems can be solved or fall away. The result is an important reevaluation of epistemology that will be essential reading for students and teachers.