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No way around cross-cultural and cross-linguistic epistemology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 November 2021

Edouard Machery
Affiliation:
Department of History and Philosophy of Science, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA15260, USAmachery@pitt.eduhttps://www.edouardmachery.com/
H. Clark Barrett
Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA90095, USAbarrett@anthro.ucla.eduhttp://www.hclarkbarrett.com/
Stephen P. Stich
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ 08901, USA. sstich@ruccs.rutgers.edu

Abstract

Phillips and colleagues claim that the capacity to ascribe knowledge is a “basic” capacity, but most studies reporting linguistic data reviewed by Phillips et al. were conducted in English with American participants – one of more than 6,500 languages currently spoken. We highlight the importance of cross-cultural and cross-linguistic research when one is theorizing about fundamental human representational capacities.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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