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- By Mitchell Aboulafia, Frederick Adams, Marilyn McCord Adams, Robert M. Adams, Laird Addis, James W. Allard, David Allison, William P. Alston, Karl Ameriks, C. Anthony Anderson, David Leech Anderson, Lanier Anderson, Roger Ariew, David Armstrong, Denis G. Arnold, E. J. Ashworth, Margaret Atherton, Robin Attfield, Bruce Aune, Edward Wilson Averill, Jody Azzouni, Kent Bach, Andrew Bailey, Lynne Rudder Baker, Thomas R. Baldwin, Jon Barwise, George Bealer, William Bechtel, Lawrence C. Becker, Mark A. Bedau, Ernst Behler, José A. Benardete, Ermanno Bencivenga, Jan Berg, Michael Bergmann, Robert L. Bernasconi, Sven Bernecker, Bernard Berofsky, Rod Bertolet, Charles J. Beyer, Christian Beyer, Joseph Bien, Joseph Bien, Peg Birmingham, Ivan Boh, James Bohman, Daniel Bonevac, Laurence BonJour, William J. Bouwsma, Raymond D. Bradley, Myles Brand, Richard B. Brandt, Michael E. Bratman, Stephen E. Braude, Daniel Breazeale, Angela Breitenbach, Jason Bridges, David O. Brink, Gordon G. Brittan, Justin Broackes, Dan W. Brock, Aaron Bronfman, Jeffrey E. Brower, Bartosz Brozek, Anthony Brueckner, Jeffrey Bub, Lara Buchak, Otavio Bueno, Ann E. Bumpus, Robert W. Burch, John Burgess, Arthur W. Burks, Panayot Butchvarov, Robert E. Butts, Marina Bykova, Patrick Byrne, David Carr, Noël Carroll, Edward S. Casey, Victor Caston, Victor Caston, Albert Casullo, Robert L. Causey, Alan K. L. Chan, Ruth Chang, Deen K. Chatterjee, Andrew Chignell, Roderick M. Chisholm, Kelly J. Clark, E. J. Coffman, Robin Collins, Brian P. Copenhaver, John Corcoran, John Cottingham, Roger Crisp, Frederick J. Crosson, Antonio S. Cua, Phillip D. Cummins, Martin Curd, Adam Cureton, Andrew Cutrofello, Stephen Darwall, Paul Sheldon Davies, Wayne A. Davis, Timothy Joseph Day, Claudio de Almeida, Mario De Caro, Mario De Caro, John Deigh, C. F. Delaney, Daniel C. Dennett, Michael R. DePaul, Michael Detlefsen, Daniel Trent Devereux, Philip E. Devine, John M. Dillon, Martin C. Dillon, Robert DiSalle, Mary Domski, Alan Donagan, Paul Draper, Fred Dretske, Mircea Dumitru, Wilhelm Dupré, Gerald Dworkin, John Earman, Ellery Eells, Catherine Z. Elgin, Berent Enç, Ronald P. Endicott, Edward Erwin, John Etchemendy, C. Stephen Evans, Susan L. Feagin, Solomon Feferman, Richard Feldman, Arthur Fine, Maurice A. Finocchiaro, William FitzPatrick, Richard E. Flathman, Gvozden Flego, Richard Foley, Graeme Forbes, Rainer Forst, Malcolm R. Forster, Daniel Fouke, Patrick Francken, Samuel Freeman, Elizabeth Fricker, Miranda Fricker, Michael Friedman, Michael Fuerstein, Richard A. Fumerton, Alan Gabbey, Pieranna Garavaso, Daniel Garber, Jorge L. A. Garcia, Robert K. Garcia, Don Garrett, Philip Gasper, Gerald Gaus, Berys Gaut, Bernard Gert, Roger F. Gibson, Cody Gilmore, Carl Ginet, Alan H. Goldman, Alvin I. Goldman, Alfonso Gömez-Lobo, Lenn E. Goodman, Robert M. Gordon, Stefan Gosepath, Jorge J. E. Gracia, Daniel W. Graham, George A. Graham, Peter J. Graham, Richard E. Grandy, I. Grattan-Guinness, John Greco, Philip T. Grier, Nicholas Griffin, Nicholas Griffin, David A. Griffiths, Paul J. Griffiths, Stephen R. Grimm, Charles L. Griswold, Charles B. Guignon, Pete A. Y. Gunter, Dimitri Gutas, Gary Gutting, Paul Guyer, Kwame Gyekye, Oscar A. Haac, Raul Hakli, Raul Hakli, Michael Hallett, Edward C. Halper, Jean Hampton, R. James Hankinson, K. R. Hanley, Russell Hardin, Robert M. Harnish, William Harper, David Harrah, Kevin Hart, Ali Hasan, William Hasker, John Haugeland, Roger Hausheer, William Heald, Peter Heath, Richard Heck, John F. Heil, Vincent F. Hendricks, Stephen Hetherington, Francis Heylighen, Kathleen Marie Higgins, Risto Hilpinen, Harold T. Hodes, Joshua Hoffman, Alan Holland, Robert L. Holmes, Richard Holton, Brad W. Hooker, Terence E. Horgan, Tamara Horowitz, Paul Horwich, Vittorio Hösle, Paul Hoβfeld, Daniel Howard-Snyder, Frances Howard-Snyder, Anne Hudson, Deal W. Hudson, Carl A. Huffman, David L. Hull, Patricia Huntington, Thomas Hurka, Paul Hurley, Rosalind Hursthouse, Guillermo Hurtado, Ronald E. Hustwit, Sarah Hutton, Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa, Harry A. Ide, David Ingram, Philip J. Ivanhoe, Alfred L. Ivry, Frank Jackson, Dale Jacquette, Joseph Jedwab, Richard Jeffrey, David Alan Johnson, Edward Johnson, Mark D. Jordan, Richard Joyce, Hwa Yol Jung, Robert Hillary Kane, Tomis Kapitan, Jacquelyn Ann K. Kegley, James A. Keller, Ralph Kennedy, Sergei Khoruzhii, Jaegwon Kim, Yersu Kim, Nathan L. King, Patricia Kitcher, Peter D. Klein, E. D. Klemke, Virginia Klenk, George L. Kline, Christian Klotz, Simo Knuuttila, Joseph J. Kockelmans, Konstantin Kolenda, Sebastian Tomasz Kołodziejczyk, Isaac Kramnick, Richard Kraut, Fred Kroon, Manfred Kuehn, Steven T. Kuhn, Henry E. Kyburg, John Lachs, Jennifer Lackey, Stephen E. Lahey, Andrea Lavazza, Thomas H. Leahey, Joo Heung Lee, Keith Lehrer, Dorothy Leland, Noah M. Lemos, Ernest LePore, Sarah-Jane Leslie, Isaac Levi, Andrew Levine, Alan E. Lewis, Daniel E. Little, Shu-hsien Liu, Shu-hsien Liu, Alan K. L. Chan, Brian Loar, Lawrence B. Lombard, John Longeway, Dominic McIver Lopes, Michael J. Loux, E. J. Lowe, Steven Luper, Eugene C. Luschei, William G. Lycan, David Lyons, David Macarthur, Danielle Macbeth, Scott MacDonald, Jacob L. Mackey, Louis H. Mackey, Penelope Mackie, Edward H. Madden, Penelope Maddy, G. B. Madison, Bernd Magnus, Pekka Mäkelä, Rudolf A. Makkreel, David Manley, William E. Mann (W.E.M.), Vladimir Marchenkov, Peter Markie, Jean-Pierre Marquis, Ausonio Marras, Mike W. Martin, A. P. Martinich, William L. McBride, David McCabe, Storrs McCall, Hugh J. McCann, Robert N. McCauley, John J. McDermott, Sarah McGrath, Ralph McInerny, Daniel J. McKaughan, Thomas McKay, Michael McKinsey, Brian P. McLaughlin, Ernan McMullin, Anthonie Meijers, Jack W. Meiland, William Jason Melanson, Alfred R. Mele, Joseph R. Mendola, Christopher Menzel, Michael J. Meyer, Christian B. Miller, David W. Miller, Peter Millican, Robert N. Minor, Phillip Mitsis, James A. Montmarquet, Michael S. Moore, Tim Moore, Benjamin Morison, Donald R. Morrison, Stephen J. Morse, Paul K. Moser, Alexander P. D. Mourelatos, Ian Mueller, James Bernard Murphy, Mark C. Murphy, Steven Nadler, Jan Narveson, Alan Nelson, Jerome Neu, Samuel Newlands, Kai Nielsen, Ilkka Niiniluoto, Carlos G. Noreña, Calvin G. Normore, David Fate Norton, Nikolaj Nottelmann, Donald Nute, David S. Oderberg, Steve Odin, Michael O’Rourke, Willard G. Oxtoby, Heinz Paetzold, George S. Pappas, Anthony J. Parel, Lydia Patton, R. P. Peerenboom, Francis Jeffry Pelletier, Adriaan T. Peperzak, Derk Pereboom, Jaroslav Peregrin, Glen Pettigrove, Philip Pettit, Edmund L. Pincoffs, Andrew Pinsent, Robert B. Pippin, Alvin Plantinga, Louis P. Pojman, Richard H. Popkin, John F. Post, Carl J. Posy, William J. Prior, Richard Purtill, Michael Quante, Philip L. Quinn, Philip L. Quinn, Elizabeth S. Radcliffe, Diana Raffman, Gerard Raulet, Stephen L. Read, Andrews Reath, Andrew Reisner, Nicholas Rescher, Henry S. Richardson, Robert C. Richardson, Thomas Ricketts, Wayne D. Riggs, Mark Roberts, Robert C. Roberts, Luke Robinson, Alexander Rosenberg, Gary Rosenkranz, Bernice Glatzer Rosenthal, Adina L. Roskies, William L. Rowe, T. M. Rudavsky, Michael Ruse, Bruce Russell, Lilly-Marlene Russow, Dan Ryder, R. M. Sainsbury, Joseph Salerno, Nathan Salmon, Wesley C. Salmon, Constantine Sandis, David H. Sanford, Marco Santambrogio, David Sapire, Ruth A. Saunders, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, Charles Sayward, James P. Scanlan, Richard Schacht, Tamar Schapiro, Frederick F. Schmitt, Jerome B. Schneewind, Calvin O. Schrag, Alan D. Schrift, George F. Schumm, Jean-Loup Seban, David N. Sedley, Kenneth Seeskin, Krister Segerberg, Charlene Haddock Seigfried, Dennis M. Senchuk, James F. Sennett, William Lad Sessions, Stewart Shapiro, Tommie Shelby, Donald W. Sherburne, Christopher Shields, Roger A. Shiner, Sydney Shoemaker, Robert K. Shope, Kwong-loi Shun, Wilfried Sieg, A. John Simmons, Robert L. Simon, Marcus G. Singer, Georgette Sinkler, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Matti T. Sintonen, Lawrence Sklar, Brian Skyrms, Robert C. Sleigh, Michael Anthony Slote, Hans Sluga, Barry Smith, Michael Smith, Robin Smith, Robert Sokolowski, Robert C. Solomon, Marta Soniewicka, Philip Soper, Ernest Sosa, Nicholas Southwood, Paul Vincent Spade, T. L. S. Sprigge, Eric O. Springsted, George J. Stack, Rebecca Stangl, Jason Stanley, Florian Steinberger, Sören Stenlund, Christopher Stephens, James P. Sterba, Josef Stern, Matthias Steup, M. A. Stewart, Leopold Stubenberg, Edith Dudley Sulla, Frederick Suppe, Jere Paul Surber, David George Sussman, Sigrún Svavarsdóttir, Zeno G. Swijtink, Richard Swinburne, Charles C. Taliaferro, Robert B. Talisse, John Tasioulas, Paul Teller, Larry S. Temkin, Mark Textor, H. S. Thayer, Peter Thielke, Alan Thomas, Amie L. Thomasson, Katherine Thomson-Jones, Joshua C. Thurow, Vzalerie Tiberius, Terrence N. Tice, Paul Tidman, Mark C. Timmons, William Tolhurst, James E. Tomberlin, Rosemarie Tong, Lawrence Torcello, Kelly Trogdon, J. D. Trout, Robert E. Tully, Raimo Tuomela, John Turri, Martin M. Tweedale, Thomas Uebel, Jennifer Uleman, James Van Cleve, Harry van der Linden, Peter van Inwagen, Bryan W. Van Norden, René van Woudenberg, Donald Phillip Verene, Samantha Vice, Thomas Vinci, Donald Wayne Viney, Barbara Von Eckardt, Peter B. M. Vranas, Steven J. Wagner, William J. Wainwright, Paul E. Walker, Robert E. Wall, Craig Walton, Douglas Walton, Eric Watkins, Richard A. Watson, Michael V. Wedin, Rudolph H. Weingartner, Paul Weirich, Paul J. Weithman, Carl Wellman, Howard Wettstein, Samuel C. Wheeler, Stephen A. White, Jennifer Whiting, Edward R. Wierenga, Michael Williams, Fred Wilson, W. Kent Wilson, Kenneth P. Winkler, John F. Wippel, Jan Woleński, Allan B. Wolter, Nicholas P. Wolterstorff, Rega Wood, W. Jay Wood, Paul Woodruff, Alison Wylie, Gideon Yaffe, Takashi Yagisawa, Yutaka Yamamoto, Keith E. Yandell, Xiaomei Yang, Dean Zimmerman, Günter Zoller, Catherine Zuckert, Michael Zuckert, Jack A. Zupko (J.A.Z.)
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Mainstream and Formal Epistemology
- Vincent F. Hendricks
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- 07 December 2009
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- 19 December 2005
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Mainstream and Formal Epistemology provides the first, easily accessible, yet erudite and original analysis of the meeting point between mainstream and formal theories of knowledge. These two strands of thinking have traditionally proceeded in isolation from one another, but in this book, Vincent F. Hendricks brings them together for a systematic comparative treatment. He demonstrates how mainstream and formal epistemology may significantly benefit from one another, paving the way for a new unifying program of 'plethoric' epistemology. His book will both define and further the debate between philosophers from two very different sides of the epistemological spectrum.
9 - ‘Plethoric’ Epistemology
- Vincent F. Hendricks, Roskilde Universitetscenter, Denmark
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- Mainstream and Formal Epistemology
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Summary
Epistemology seems to enjoy an unexpectedly sexy reputation these days. A few years ago William Safire wrote a popular novel called The Sleeper Spy. It depicts a distinctly post-cold-war world in which it is no longer easy to tell the good guys – or, rather, the good spies – from the bad ones. To emphasize this sea change, Safire tells us that his Russian protagonist has not been trained in the military or the police, as he would have been during the old days, but as an epistemologist.
Jaakko Hintikka (2003b)Conceptual Analysis
One often hears that philosophy largely concerns conceptual analysis. Conceptual analysis is enjoying a revival these days after having been put to sleep for a number of years partly due to the stream of naturalism that has fled the philosophical landscape for the past 50 years or so.
In contemporary mainstream epistemology, the goal of these new conceptual exercises is to spell out and elucidate some of the epistemologically significant notions, like knowledge, justification and rationality, that ordinary folk use on a daily basis. An integral part of the elucidation process is to stretch the usage of these concepts to the max in order to reveal their limitations and what these limitations in turn reveal about the nature of human cognition. Seen from this perspective, conceptual analysis is focused on clarifying how words are used in everyday epistemic contexts.
The actual ‘stretching’ is performed by applying the method of ‘consulting intuitions about possible cases,’ as Jackson (1994) recently made a case for. Jackson takes conceptual analysis to be an indispensable part of intellectual activity in general.
Contents
- Vincent F. Hendricks, Roskilde Universitetscenter, Denmark
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- Mainstream and Formal Epistemology
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7 - Computational Epistemology
- Vincent F. Hendricks, Roskilde Universitetscenter, Denmark
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- Mainstream and Formal Epistemology
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Apart from recent trends in logical epistemology, the epistemologies discussed in the preceding chapter largely neglect the connection between successful learning and knowledge. Computational epistemology is an approach embodying knowledge acquisition studies. It utilizes logical and computational techniques to investigate when guaranteed convergence to the truth about epistemic problems is feasible. Every epistemic problem determines a set of possible worlds over which the inquiring agent is to succeed witnessing a forcing relation.
FORCING ‘Logical reliability theory’ is a more accurate term, since the basic idea is to find methods that succeed in every possible world in a given range.
Kelly et al. (1997)Computational epistemology is not a traditional epistemological paradigm by any means – neither from the mainstream nor formal perspectives treated so far. It does not start off with global conceptual analyses of significant epistemological notions like knowledge, justification and infallibility. It does not follow logical epistemology in locally focusing on axiomatics, validity and strength of epistemic operators. Computational epistemology is not obligated to hold a particular view, or formulate its ‘characteristic’ definition, of what knowledge is. Given its foundation in computability theory and mathematical logic, computational epistemology is not actually about knowledge but about learning – but learning of course is knowledge acquisition.
6 - Logical Epistemology
- Vincent F. Hendricks, Roskilde Universitetscenter, Denmark
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- Mainstream and Formal Epistemology
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Summary
Logical epistemology, also known as epistemic logic, proceeds axiomatically. ‘Ξ knows that A’ is formalized as a modal operator in a formal language that is interpreted using the standard apparatus of modal logic. This formal epistemological approach also pays homage to the forcing heuristics by limiting the scope of the knowledge operator through algebraic constraints imposed on the accessibility relation between possible worlds.
FORCING ‘What the concept of knowledge involves in a purely logical perspective is thus a dichotomy of the space of all possible scenarios into those that are compatible with what I know and those that are incompatible with my knowledge. This observation is all we need for most of epistemic logic.
Jaakko Hintikka 2003bLogical epistemology dates back to Von Wright (1951) and especially to the work of Hintikka (1962) in the early 1960's. Epistemic logics have since then grown into powerful enterprises enjoying many important applications. The general epistemological significance of the logics of knowledge has to some extent been neglected by mainstreamers and formalists alike. The field is in a rather awkward position today. On the one hand, it is a discipline of importance for theoretical computer scientists, linguists and game theorists, for example, but they do not necessarily have epistemological ambitions in their use of epistemic logic. On the other hand, it is a discipline devoted to the logic of knowledge and belief but is alien to epistemologists and philosophers interested in the theory of knowledge.
Recent results and approaches have fortunately brought the logics of knowledge quite close to the theories of knowledge.
Acknowledgments
- Vincent F. Hendricks, Roskilde Universitetscenter, Denmark
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5 - Contextual Epistemology
- Vincent F. Hendricks, Roskilde Universitetscenter, Denmark
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The concept of knowledge is elusive – at least when epistemology starts scrutinizing the concept too much. According to Lewis's contextual epistemology, all there is to knowledge attribution in a given context is a set of rules for eliminating the relevant possibilities of error while succeeding over the remaining possibilities and properly ignoring the extravagant possibilities of error. Considering demons and brains as relevant possibilities of error is often what makes the concept of knowledge evaporate into thin air
FORCINGS knows that P iff S's evidence eliminates every possibility in which not-P – Psst! – except for those possibilities that we are properly ignoring.
David Lewis (1996)Contextualistic epistemology starts much closer to home. Agents in their local epistemic environments have knowledge – and plenty of it in a variety of (conversational) contexts. Knowledge is not only possible, as counterfactual epistemology demonstrates, it is a real and fundamental human condition.
The general contextualistic template for a theory of knowledge is crisply summarized in DeRose's (1995) description of the attribution of knowledge. The description also embodies many of the epistemological themes central to the contextualistic forcing strategy:
Suppose a speaker A says, ‘S knows that P’, of a subject S's true belief that P. According to contextualist theories of knowledge attributions, how strong an epistemic position S must be in with respect to P for A's assertion to be true can vary according to features of A's conversational context. (p. 4)
The incentive to take skeptical arguments to knowledge claims seriously is based on an exploitation of the way in which otherwise operational epistemic concepts, notably knowledge, can be gravely disturbed by sudden changes of the linguistic context in which they figure.
4 - Counterfactual Epistemology
- Vincent F. Hendricks, Roskilde Universitetscenter, Denmark
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In counterfactual epistemology, knowledge is characterized by tracking the truth, that is, avoiding error and gaining truth in all worlds sufficiently close to the actual world given the standard semantic interpretation of counterfactual conditionals. This conception of knowledge imposes a categorical conception of reliability able to solve the Gettier paradoxes and other severe skeptical challenges.
FORCING Knowledge is a real factual relation, subjunctively specifiable, whose structure admits our standing in this relation, tracking, to p without standing in it to some q which we know p to entail.
Robert Nozick 1981Epistemology begins with facing the beastly skepticism that arises from the possibility of an evil demon. Any talk about knowledge possession, acquisition let alone maintenance before skepticism's claim about the impossibility of knowledge is defeated, is absurd. To get epistemology off the ground it must be demonstrated that knowledge is in fact possible:
Our task here is to explain how knowledge is possible, given what the skeptic says that we do accept (for example, that it is logically possible that we are dreaming or are floating in a tank). (Nozick 1981, 355)
This is the starting point for the counterfactual epistemology developed by Dretske (1970) and later refined by Nozick (1981).
The often cited premise supporting the skeptical conclusion that agents do not know much of anything is this: If an agent cannot be guaranteed the ability to know the denials of skeptical hypotheses, then knowledge regarding other issues cannot be ascribed to the agent. The traditional understanding of infallibilism (see Chapter 2), which counts every possible world as relevant, supports this pessimistic premise.
References
- Vincent F. Hendricks, Roskilde Universitetscenter, Denmark
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Preface
- Vincent F. Hendricks, Roskilde Universitetscenter, Denmark
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Forcing epistemology is a trendy way of defeating the skeptics who since the days of old have cited prima facie error possibilities as some of the most devastating arguments against claims to knowledge. The idea of forcing is to delimit the set of possibilities over which the inquiring agent has to succeed: If the agent can succeed over the relevant possibility set, then the agent may still be said to have knowledge even if he commits many errors, even grave ones, in other but irrelevant possibilities.
Contemporary epistemological studies are roughly either carried out:
in a mainstream or informal way, using largely conceptual analyses and concentrating on sometimes folksy and sometimes exorbitantly speculative examples or counterexamples, or (2) in a formal way, by applying a variety of tools and methods from logic, computability theory or probability theory to the theory of knowledge. The two traditions have unfortunately proceeded largely in isolation from one another.
Many contemporary mainstream and formal epistemologies pay homage to the forcing strategy. The aim of this book is to demonstrate systematically that the two traditions have much in common, both epistemologically and methodologically. If they could be brought closer together, not only might they significantly benefit from one another, the way could be paved for a new unifying program in ‘plethoric’ epistemology.
8 - Modal Operator Epistemology
- Vincent F. Hendricks, Roskilde Universitetscenter, Denmark
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Frontmatter
- Vincent F. Hendricks, Roskilde Universitetscenter, Denmark
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Index
- Vincent F. Hendricks, Roskilde Universitetscenter, Denmark
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3 - Mainstream Epistemology
- Vincent F. Hendricks, Roskilde Universitetscenter, Denmark
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Mainstream epistemology seeks necessary and sufficient conditions for the possession of knowledge. The focus is on folksy examples and counterexamples, with reasons undercutting reasons that undercut reasons. According to epistemic reliabilism, reasons may be sustained, truth gained and error avoided if beliefs are reliably formed, sometimes in the actual world, sometimes in other worlds too. But the stochastic notion of reliability unfortunately backfires, reinviting a variety of skeptical challenges.
FORCING On the present rendering, it looks as if the folk notion of justification is keyed to dispositions to produce a high ratio of true beliefs in the actual world, not in ‘normal’ worlds.
Alvin Goldman (1992)Mainstream epistemologies emphasizing reliability date back at least to the 1930s, to F. P. Ramsey's (1931) note on the causal chaining of knowledge. The nomic sufficiency account developed by Ramsey and later picked up and modified by Armstrong in the 1970s is roughly as follows: If a connection can be detected to the effect that the method responsible for producing a belief is causally chained to the truth due to the laws of nature, then this suffices for nomologically stable knowledge and keeps Gettierization from surfacing. Causality through laws of nature gives reliability (Armstrong 1973).
Armstrong draws an illuminating analogy between a thermometer reliably indicating the temperature and a belief reliably indicating the truth. Now a working thermometer is one that gives accurate readings in a range of temperatures. This is not a coincidence. A thermometer is successful because there are laws of nature that connect the readings to the very temperature itself.
2 - Priming the Pump
- Vincent F. Hendricks, Roskilde Universitetscenter, Denmark
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The epistemo-methodological prerequisites for comparing mainstream and formal epistemologies concentrate on the following items: the modality of knowledge, infallibility, forcing and the reply to skepticism; the interaction between epistemology and methodology; the strength and validity of knowledge; reliability; and the distinction between a first-person perspective and a third-person perspective on inquiry.
If knowledge can create problems, it is not through ignorance we can solve them.
Isaac AsimovModal Knowledge, Infallibility and Forcing
Agents inquire to replace ignorance with knowledge. Knowledge is a kind of epistemic commitment or attitude held toward propositions or hypotheses describing some aspect of the world under consideration. Agents may in general hold a host of different propositional attitudes, such as belief, hope, wish, desire etc. But there is a special property that knowledge enjoys over and above the other commitments. As Plato pointed out, a distinct property of knowledge is truth. Whatever is known must be true; otherwise it is not knowledge, even though it very well may qualify as belief or some other propositional attitude.
Contemporary notions of knowledge are often modal in nature. Knowledge is defined with respect to other possible states of affairs besides the actual state of affairs (Fig. 2.1). The possibility of knowledge seems ruled out when it is possible that we err. Introducing other possible state of affairs is an attempt to preclude exactly these error possibilities. Knowledge must be infallible by definition. As Lewis (1996) puts it, “To speak of fallible knowledge, of knowledge despite uneliminated possibilities of error, just sounds like a contradiction” (p. 367).
1 - Introduction
- Vincent F. Hendricks, Roskilde Universitetscenter, Denmark
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It is a curiosity of the philosophical temperament, this passion for radical solutions. Do you feel a little twinge in your epistemology? Absolute skepticism is the thing to try … Apparently the rule is this: if aspirin doesn't work, try cutting of your head.
Jerry Fodor (1985)Humans are in pursuit of knowledge. It plays a significant role in deliberation, decision and action in all walks of everyday and scientific life. The systematic and detailed study of knowledge, its criteria of acquisition and its limits and modes of justification is known as epistemology.
Despite the admirable epistemic aim of acquiring knowledge, humans are cognitively accident-prone and make mistakes perceptually, inferentially, experimentally, theoretically or otherwise. Epistemology is the study of the possibility of knowledge and how prone we are to making mistakes. Error is the starting point of skepticism. Skepticism asks how knowledge is possible given the possibility of error. Skeptics have for centuries cited prima facie possibilities of error as the most substantial arguments against knowledge claims. From this perspective, epistemology may be viewed as a reply to skepticism and skeptical challenges. Skepticism is the bane of epistemology, but apparently also a blessing, according to Santayana (1955): “Skepticism is the chastity of the intellect, and it is shameful to surrender it too soon or to the first comer” (p. 50).
Skepticism is a tough challenge and requires strong countermeasures. In set theory, a powerful combinatorial technique for proving statements consistent with the axioms of set theory was invented by P. Cohen in the 1960s.