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Summary

Martin Kusch

in Knowledge by Agreement: The Programme of Communitarian Epistemology

This chapter provides a short summary of Ch. 1–5.

Towards a Virtue Epistemological Account of Testimony

Miranda Fricker

in Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing

This chapter presents a diagnostic account of the state of play in the epistemology of testimony, and proposes a virtue epistemological non-inferentialist alternative. This account depends on ... More

This chapter presents a diagnostic account of the state of play in the epistemology of testimony, and proposes a virtue epistemological non-inferentialist alternative. This account depends on arguments substantiating a parallel between the moral cognitivist account of virtuous perception, and a proposed account of epistemically virtuous perception that the virtuous hearer possesses owing to a well-trained testimonial sensibility. He perceives his interlocutor as more, or less, credible in what she is telling him.Less

And Not Antifoundationalism Either

Jason A. Springs

in Toward a Generous Orthodoxy: Prospects for Hans Frei's Postliberal Theology

Frei's appeals to the "givenness" of revelation-the claim, for instance, that all doctrines or theological assertions are directly or indirectly grounded in faith, or that faith is rational in that ... More

Frei's appeals to the "givenness" of revelation-the claim, for instance, that all doctrines or theological assertions are directly or indirectly grounded in faith, or that faith is rational in that it seeks understanding within a set of reasons afforded by God's revelatory activity in Scripture-incur charges of "revelational foundationalism." Chapter 6 employs recent treatments of epistemic foundationalism in order to dispel charges of "crypto-foundationalism" as well as answering the equally frequent charge that talk of "rationality intrinsic to faith" implicates Frei's thought in a type of fideism.Less

On the Meaning of “Ought” 1

Matthew Chrisman

in Oxford Studies in Metaethics Volume 7

Discussions about the meaning of the word “ought” are pulled in two apparently competing directions. First, in ethical theory this word is used in the paradigmatic statement of ethical principles and ... More

Discussions about the meaning of the word “ought” are pulled in two apparently competing directions. First, in ethical theory this word is used in the paradigmatic statement of ethical principles and conclusions about what some agent is obligated to do. This leads some ethical theorists to claim that the word “ought” describes a real relation, roughly, of being obligated to (realism) or expresses some non-cognitive attitude toward agents acting in certain ways (expressivism). Second, in theoretical linguistics this word is classified as a modal auxiliary verb alongside words like “might,” “may,” “can,” “must,” etc. This leads some theoretical linguists to claim that the word “ought” is a weak necessity modal, which can be modeled with universal quantification over a restricted set of possible worlds. This chapter seeks some resolution of this tension by showing how versions of realism and expressivism can be modified in light of the best semantics of “ought” as a weak necessity modal. In addition, the chapter explains how this semantics might point to a third view—inferentialism—that accounts for the meaning of “ought” not in terms of what relation it describes, nor in terms of what attitude it expresses, but rather in terms of its inferential role.Less

From Epistemic Expressivism to Epistemic Inferentialism

Matthew Chrisman

in Social Epistemology

Recent philosophical debate about the meaning of knowledge claims has largely centred on the question of whether epistemic claims are plausibly thought to be context sensitive. The default assumption ... More

Recent philosophical debate about the meaning of knowledge claims has largely centred on the question of whether epistemic claims are plausibly thought to be context sensitive. The default assumption has been that sentences that attribute knowledge or justification (or whatever else is epistemic) have stable truth-conditions across different contexts of utterance, once any non-epistemic context sensitivity has been fixed. The contrary view is the contextualist view that such sentences do not have stable truth-conditions but can vary depending on the context of utterance. This debate manifestly presupposes that the meta-epistemological issue of accounting for the meaning of epistemic claims is to be settled by determining the truth-conditions of these claims. This chapter believes that this presupposition is undermotivated in light of two observations. First, many epistemologists see epistemic claims as evaluative or normative, in some sense. Second, in the meta-ethical debate most philosophers take alternatives to truth-conditional semantics, such as expressivism, as live options when it comes to evaluative or normative claims. As it turns out, the chapter proposes that expressivism doesn't provide a plausible account of normative concepts across the board. But considering it as an alternative in the meta-epistemological debate points the way to another alternative to truth-conditional semantics. This is a form of inferentialism. This chapter tries to motivate a move to epistemic inferentialism by showing how it overcomes worries about expressivism and interacts with plausible ideas about the social function epistemic claims play in our commerce with one another and the word.Less

Objectivity

Martin Kusch

in Knowledge by Agreement: The Programme of Communitarian Epistemology

Discusses Robert Brandom's and John Haugeland's proposals on how to make space for the possibility of objectivity, i.e. for the possibility of community‐wide error and ignorance. It is argued that ... More

Discusses Robert Brandom's and John Haugeland's proposals on how to make space for the possibility of objectivity, i.e. for the possibility of community‐wide error and ignorance. It is argued that both proposals fail. Brandom overlooks that the ’non‐perspectival‐ness’ of objects is itself a relative and perspectival matter. Haugeland's suggestion fails because his notion of incompatibility is ambiguous and individualistic.Less

Inferentialism —Pro and Contra

Martin Kusch

in Knowledge by Agreement: The Programme of Communitarian Epistemology

Reviews the debate between Elizabeth Fricker and Tony Coady over the role of inferences in testimony reception. It distinguishes between four areas of disagreement in the debate: phenomenology, ... More

Reviews the debate between Elizabeth Fricker and Tony Coady over the role of inferences in testimony reception. It distinguishes between four areas of disagreement in the debate: phenomenology, psychology (the question regarding conscious and unconscious mechanisms), normative epistemology, and pragmatics (how do we talk about, and justify, the adoption of testimonial beliefs?). Argues against inferentialism, but it also identifies problems shared by Fricker and Coady: the assumption that testimony reception has a phenomenology, and the assumption that one can give context‐independent rules for the evaluation of testimony.Less

Consciousness, agents, and the knowledge game

Luciano Floridi

in The Philosophy of Information

The chapter applies the informational analysis of knowledge in order to pursue three goals. The first is to introduce the ‘knowledge game’, a new, simple and yet powerful tool for analysing some ... More

The chapter applies the informational analysis of knowledge in order to pursue three goals. The first is to introduce the ‘knowledge game’, a new, simple and yet powerful tool for analysing some intriguing philosophical questions. The second is to apply the knowledge game as an informative test to discriminate between conscious (human) and conscious-less agents (zombies and robots), depending on which version of the game they can win. And the third is to use a version of the knowledge game to provide an answer to Dretske's question ‘how do you know you are not a zombie?’. At the end of the chapter one should have a better view of which agents count as conscious informational organisms (inforgs), that is, the sort of inforgs that can intentionally process relevant semantic information.Less

Closing Reflections¹: Timothy Williamson

Paul Boghossian and Timothy Williamson

in Debating the A Priori

In these brief comments, the author discusses the origins of his interest in the epistemology, why he has always found inferentialist accounts of it implausible, and why the similarities between the ... More

In these brief comments, the author discusses the origins of his interest in the epistemology, why he has always found inferentialist accounts of it implausible, and why the similarities between the epistemology of logic and the epistemology of other domains have always been salient to him. There is also a brief account of the asymmetry between the role of internalism in Boghossian’s epistemology and the role of externalism in the author’s epistemology. Finally, there are some reflections on the ways in which we can hope to improve the shaky methodology of traditional epistemology, for example by making more use of formal methods and the findings of experimental psychology.Less

Reply to Boghossian on the A Priori and the Analytic¹: Timothy Williamson

Paul Boghossian and Timothy Williamson

in Debating the A Priori

This chapter replies to Boghossian’s defence of the a priori–a posteriori distinction against the arguments for its shallowness in?The Philosophy of Philosophy. In particular, it shows how to ... More

This chapter replies to Boghossian’s defence of the a priori–a posteriori distinction against the arguments for its shallowness in?The Philosophy of Philosophy. In particular, it shows how to understand the example of an unorthodox thinker who is linguistically competent with conjunction but refuses to treat the rule of conjunction elimination as logically valid. It also rebuts Boghossian’s charge of circularity against the account of knowledge of metaphysical modality in terms of the cognitive capacities required to assess ordinary counterfactual conditionals. For the explanation of knowledge of logic and mathematics, the key significance is emphasized of the distinction between knowing the truth of what is in fact a necessary truth and knowing that it is necessary.Less

Inferentialism, Logicism, Harmony, and a Counterpoint

Neil Tennant

in Logic, Language, and Mathematics: Themes from the Philosophy of Crispin Wright

Inferentialism is explained as an attempt to provide an account of meaning that is more sensitive (than the tradition of truth-conditional theorizing deriving from Tarski and Davidson) to what is ... More

Inferentialism is explained as an attempt to provide an account of meaning that is more sensitive (than the tradition of truth-conditional theorizing deriving from Tarski and Davidson) to what is learned when one masters meanings. The logically reformist inferentialism of Dummett and Prawitz is contrasted with the more recent quietist inferentialism of Brandom. Various other issues are highlighted for inferentialism in general, by reference to which different kinds of inferentialism can be characterized. Inferentialism for the logical operators is explained, with special reference to the Principle of Harmony. The statement of that principle in the author’s book Natural Logic is fine-tuned here in the way obviously required in order to bar an interesting would-be counterexample furnished by Crispin Wright, and to stave off any more of the same.Less

Varieties of Pluralism and Relativism for Logic

Stewart Shapiro

in Varieties of Logic

The purpose of this chapter is to develop a number of different ways in which one can be a folk-relativist or pluralist about logic. One is an extended argument that phrases like “validity” and ... More

The purpose of this chapter is to develop a number of different ways in which one can be a folk-relativist or pluralist about logic. One is an extended argument that phrases like “validity” and “logical consequence” are either polysemous or else they express cluster concepts. There are a number of distinct notions going by those names. This usefully explains away some of the ongoing debates in philosophical logic, such as that between inferentialists and advocates of a model-theoretic approach. A closely-related sort of pluralism arises from a perspective sometimes called “logic-as-model.” A third sort of pluralism emerges from an argument that logical consequence and validity are relative to a choice of logical terms. Another sort of pluralism concerns the possibility that the notion of logical consequence, or one of its articulations, is vague. On some accounts, vague expressions are relative to something, such as a sharpening or a conversational context.Less

The Rational Roles of Intuition

Elijah Chudnoff

in Intuitions

Intuitions often are seen as inputs to theoretical reasoning: e.g. you might form a belief by taking an intuition at face value or take your intuitions as starting points in the method of reflective ... More

Intuitions often are seen as inputs to theoretical reasoning: e.g. you might form a belief by taking an intuition at face value or take your intuitions as starting points in the method of reflective equilibrium. This chapter argues that in addition to these roles intuitions play a role in guiding action. The chapter reflects on the transmission of justification through inference: inferential internalists justify belief in the conclusion of an argument by inferring it from the premises in that argument. It endorses the idea that one’s ‘seeing’ such a support-relation relies on one’s having an intuition. Introducing Boghossian’s recent work against inferential internalism inspired by Carroll’s dialogue ‘What the Tortoise Said to Achilles,’ the chapter responds to Boghossian’s argument that intuitions work like mental imperatives and inferences are mental actions performed by obeying them. It then explores what it is in virtue of which intuitions play a guidance role, when they do so.Less

Moral Intuitionism, Experiments, and Skeptical Arguments

Mark van Roojen

in Intuitions

Ethical intuitionism is a species of foundationalism for which the outputs of intuition function as justificational regress-stoppers and also provide an independent basis for choosing between equally ... More

Ethical intuitionism is a species of foundationalism for which the outputs of intuition function as justificational regress-stoppers and also provide an independent basis for choosing between equally coherent moral theories. The leading contemporary ethical intuitionists characterize intuitions as resulting from non-inferential processes whose outputs provide justification sufficiently strong to rationally license belief in the contents of intuition. Various critics have used experimental arguments to suggest that the target judgements are unreliable and hence unable to provide such justification. The chapter argues that intuitionists should moderate their key claims, which may not provide justification strong enough to rationalize belief in the outputs of intuition absent confirming evidence. Even so, they can be fit to play both the regress-stopping and theory-testing roles. Furthermore, there is no need to define intuitions as non-inferential. A partly inferential process can provide materials for testing theories without introducing circularity into the overall method of justification.Less

Unrestricted Logical Inferentialism

Jared Warren

in Shadows of Syntax: Revitalizing Logical and Mathematical Conventionalism

This chapter develops and defends an unrestricted inferentialist theory of the meanings of logical constants. Unlike restricted inferentialism, unrestricted inferentialism puts no constraints on ... More

This chapter develops and defends an unrestricted inferentialist theory of the meanings of logical constants. Unlike restricted inferentialism, unrestricted inferentialism puts no constraints on which rules can determine meanings. The foundations of inferentialism are also discussed, including various types of holism and the distinction between basic and derivative rules. In order to develop and defend a detailed inferentialist theory of logic, this chapter provides an inferentialist account of the “logical” constants, solves Carnap’s categoricity problem for the meanings of logical constants, and provides inferentialist approaches to both the psychology and metaphysics of logic. Finally, the chapter briefly discusses the challenge to unrestricted inferentialism posed by tonk and related types of bad company. Building on the foundation provided by Part I (chapters 1-2) of the book, this chapter provides a freestanding development and defense of logical inferentialism.Less