The debate between scientific realists and anti-realists is now a classic debate in the Philosophy of Science. Van Fraassen (2002) has suggested that the positions that take part in the debate involve not only different doxastic attitudes regarding some propositions, but different epistemic stances, that is, different sets of commitments, values and epistemic strategies. The formulation of this debate in terms of epistemic stances and the voluntarist epistemology it motivates make it plausible to think of (...) it as a deep disagreement. This kind of disagreements cannot be settled by reason alone because they lack the conditions that are necessary for arguments to work. I argue, however, that the attempts to use arguments can have an epistemic value in these contexts, as they can help reveal intuitions. I adopt the view on intuitions put forward by Chudnoff (2014), according to which they are mental states capable of motivating epistemic action. I claim that, while the attempt to utter an argument cannot convince an opponent of changing her mind, it can make her perform some epistemic actions and, thus, bring out some of her intuitions. To show how arguments can work in this way, I take as a study case one of the main realist arguments: the No Miracles Argument. (shrink)

This article explores the role of text cohesion in the comprehension and production of text. While most discourse models have considered the roles of the text features and the reader, the crucial role of writers’ epistemic stance has not been widely considered. The thesis explored here is that levels of cohesion emerge in text based on the epistemic stance of the author relative to the reader. Evidence is provided indicating that text genres show compensatory relationships between different features (...) related to text difficulty. For example, while science texts have more challenging words than do narratives, they tend to have higher cohesion and simpler syntax. These text profiles indicate that skilled writers have an awareness of readers’ needs. By contrast, less skilled writers seem to have less sensitivity to the interplay between textual dimensions and less audience awareness. For example, evidence is reviewed showing that more proficient essays are characterized by lower cohesion than less proficient essays: less skilled writers tend to use more cohesive cues than do more skilled writers. To the extent that an author understands the readers’ needs, the author has a more successful epistemic stance toward the reader. This stance is partially evidenced by the crucial role of cohesion in text comprehension and writing. (shrink)

Studies in conversation analysis have shown that in assessments, various linguistic resources are used to express epistemic stance in ordinary conversation. In Korean conversation, although the evidential and non-evidential functions of sentence-ending suffixes are well recognized, little research has been done on their relation to epistemic stance and their use in assessments. In this study, using naturally-occurring conversation data and the CA framework, I analyze 59 cases of a speaker’s first assessment regarding his/her interlocutor and 49 responses to (...) these first assessments. I argue that in Korean assessment pairs, the evidential and non-evidential SE suffixes are used as a resource for expressing epistemic stance. The results show that 74.4% of the first assessments were marked with an evidential SE suffix whereas 71.4% of the second assessments were marked with a non-evidential SE suffix. Furthermore, certain evidential SE suffixes are used as a resource to convey a downgraded epistemic stance in first assessments whereas certain non-evidential SE suffixes are used to express epistemic primacy in second assessments. (shrink)

Debates between different kinds of scientific realists and antirealists are longstanding and show every sign of continuing. In this chapter I examine one explanation of their longevity: lurking beneath various forms of realism and antirealism are conflicting commitments which (1) sustain these positions and (2) are immune to refutation. These deeper commitments are to different epistemic stances. I consider the nature of philosophical stances generally and, more specifically, of epistemic stances in relation to the sciences. (...) I investigate the question of how stances are evaluated and adopted and elaborate on the most telling reason for their immunity, namely, a form of voluntarism regarding their adoption. (shrink)

Although the members’ categories associated with institutional settings may seem obvious, more can be said about the actions that make them noticeable and persistent across contexts. This study investigates how epistemic stance displays make the standardized relational pair ‘teacher–student’ relevant during writing conferences in a US university. Analysis of the interaction between teachers and their students shows that teachers tended to display more knowledgeable stances concerning writing and institutional practices, whereas students displayed knowledgeable stances with respect to (...) their own papers, indexing the immediate relevance of the ‘teacher–student’ relational pair and a tension between authority and autonomy. Further analysis reveals that participants also mentioned past and future writing activities, thus indexing the persistence of the ‘teacher–student’ pair as well as the emergence of the category ‘autonomous writer’. Additionally, participants’ orientation to the more general ‘writer–reader’ pair also functioned to index the persistent and emergent aspects of these categories. (shrink)

In Scientific Ontology, Chakravartty diagnoses a “dramatic conflict” between empiricism and metaphysics and aims to overcome that conflict by opting for a modern-day variant of Pyrrhonism, i.e. by appreciating the equal strength of the arguments for and against the empiricist and metaphysical positions, and by achieving tranquility by suspending judgment or remaining speechless in the face of that isostheneia. In this paper, I want to argue that instead of remaining speechless in the face of the isostheneia of the arguments for (...) and against the empiricist and metaphysical positions, we should adopt a position that remains underrated in Chakravartty’s analysis: a position that amounts to a modern-day variant of the Kantian combination of transcendental idealism and empirical realism, and that like the original Kantian combination, is capable of solving many instances of the dramatic conflict between empiricism and metaphysics and, in particular, a conflict that is the talk of the town in philosophy of science these days—the conflict between ontic-structural realism and Lewisian metaphysics. (shrink)

The philosophy of science has produced numerous accounts of how scientific facts are generated, from very specific facilitators of belief, such as neo-Kantian constitutive principles, to global frameworks, such as Kuhnian paradigms. I consider a recent addition to this canon: van Fraassen’s notion of an epistemic stance—a collection of attitudes and policies governing the generation of factual beliefs—and his commitment to voluntarism in this context: the idea that contrary stances and sets of beliefs are rationally permissible. I argue (...) that while scientific inquiry inevitably favours a high degree of consensus in our choices of stance, there is no parallel constraint in the case of philosophical inquiry, such as that concerned with how scientific knowledge should be interpreted. This leads, in the latter case, to a fundamental and apparently irresolvable mystery at the heart of stance voluntarism, regarding the grounds for choosing basic epistemic stances. (shrink)

Based on conversation analysis, this study investigates central practices in what is defined as a caring interview, in the context of welfare administration. Caring refers to a helpful interviewing in reformulations of questions, taking interviewees’ difficulties to answer into consideration; a caring attitude in the framing of questions, showing understanding of clients’ circumstances and professional’s enactment of expertise in assessments of clients’ disabilities and care needs. Data include a corpus of 43 recorded interviews in which officials at the Swedish Social (...) Insurance Agency interview clients who have applied for benefits. The study adds to research on interactional sensitivity, polar questions and epistemic stance in institutional interaction. The study shows how the interviewer prioritizes confirming polar questions, takes responsibilities of knowing into account and reduces the epistemic gap to the interviewee in practices of a caring interview. This makes the interviewing markedly different from standardized and bureaucratic interviewing. (shrink)

This article explores the use of epistemic stance strategies in journalistic discourse in English and Spanish. The linguistic resources of epistemic stance include evidential and modal expressions, as well as verbs of cognitive attitude and expressions of factivity. This article examines the pattern of distribution of epistemic stance expressions in three types of journalistic genres in English and Spanish and the presence of multifunctionality of some evidential expressions in the two languages. The article aims to reveal possible (...) similarities or differences in the use of the stance resources in the various genres and across languages. (shrink)

It has been just over 100 years since the birth of Alan Turing and more than 65 years since he published in Mind his seminal paper, Computing Machinery and Intelligence. In the Mind paper, Turing asked a number of questions, including whether computers could ever be said to have the power of “thinking”. Turing also set up a number of criteria—including his imitation game—under which a human could judge whether a computer could be said to be “intelligent”. Turing’s paper, as (...) well as his important mathematical and computational insights of the 1930s and 1940s led to his popular acclaim as the “Father of Artificial Intelligence”. In the years since his paper was published, however, no computational system has fully satisfied Turing’s challenge. In this paper we focus on a different question, ignored in, but inspired by Turing’s work: How might the Artificial Intelligence practitioner implement “intelligence” on a computational device? Over the past 60 years, although the AI community has not produced a general-purpose computational intelligence, it has constructed a large number of important artifacts, as well as taken several philosophical stances able to shed light on the nature and implementation of intelligence. This paper contends that the construction of any human artifact includes an implicit epistemic stance. In AI this stance is found in commitments to particular knowledge representations and search strategies that lead to a product’s successes as well as its limitations. Finally, we suggest that computational and human intelligence are two different natural kinds, in the philosophical sense, and elaborate on this point in the conclusion. (shrink)

The epistemic stances of both Whitehead and the Book of Changes are founded on the assumption that process is reality; there are important resonances with respect to perception, meaning and significance. Such a process-oriented approach is productive for developing non-representational and non-dualistic theories in the fields of epistemology, philosophy of language and philosophy of mind. An exploration of these resonances will further provide an appropriate foundation for dialogue between the philosophy of the Book of Changes and that of (...) contemporary Euro-American philosophy. The important differences between the Book of Changes and Whiteheadian philosophy will also become apparent. (shrink)

In relevance-theoretic pragmatics thelower-levelorfirst-order explicatureis a propositional form resulting from a series of inferential developments of the logical form. It amounts to the message the speaker communicates explicitly. Thehigher-levelorsecond-order explicatureis a description of the speech act that the speaker performs, her affective attitude towards what she says or her epistemic stance to the communicated information. Information about the speaker’s affective attitude or epistemic stance need not solely be represented in the latter, though. It could be included as beliefs (...) in the mental files of pragmatically adjusted conceptual representations featuring in lower-level explicatures. Those beliefs would originate as lexical pragmatic processes operate and their representation would be triggered by elements like evaluative morphemes, expressive expletives, insulting terms and evidential participles. Although they may be true or false in their own right, such beliefs would not affect the truth-conditional content of the expressed proposition. (shrink)

Based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork in lowland Peru, this study examines linguistic resources used for coding agreements in Alto Perené conversation. The study draws on the anthropological tradition of conversation analysis-informed ethnographies. The investigation of agreeing responses is limited to those which allow a projectedly ‘knowing’, or K-plus, participant to raise his or her epistemic status from the sequentially second position. It is shown that Alto Perené K-plus response formats include the evaluative property word kametsari ‘good’ with an intensifier (...) and/or upgraded prosody, argument focus structures, two polarity verbs ari ‘it is the case’ and omapero ‘it is true’, and the verb ñakiro ‘as you can see’. This analysis demonstrates a relationship between the Alto Perené practices of expressing K-plus agreements and the collateral effects arising from the particular meanings and functions of structures which are used for accomplishing an agreeing action. (shrink)

Drawing on insights from the epistemological work of the Jaina philosophers of classical India, I argue in defense of epistemic pluralism, the view that there are different but equally valid ways of knowing the world. The version of epistemic pluralism I defend is stance pluralism, a pluralism about epistemic stances or perspectives, understood to be policies or stratagems of knowing. I reject the view that the correct way to characterize epistemic pluralism is as consisting in (...) a pluralism about epistemic systems. (shrink)

Some versions of empiricism have been accused of being neither empirically confirmable nor analytically true and therefore meaningless or unknowable by their own lights. Carnap, and more recently van Fraassen, have responded to this objection by construing empiricism as a stance containing non-cognitive attitudes. The resulting stance empiricism is not subject to the norms of knowledge, and so does not self-defeat as per the objection. In response to this proposal, several philosophers have argued that if empiricism is a stance, then (...) there can be no distinctively epistemic reasons in favor of adopting it, but only prudential or moral reasons. I defend stance empiricism against this objection by showing that stance empiricism furthers many plausibly epistemic goals, such as false belief avoidance, wisdom, and justification. I respond to three objections to my argument: that I assume a conception of epistemic reason that leads to problematic tradeoffs, that to have epistemic reason is just to be epistemically justified, and that my premise that experience is the only source of information has no empirical content. (shrink)

I present an account of epistemic autonomy as a distinctively wide-ranging epistemic virtue, one that helps us to understand a range of phenomena that might otherwise seem quite disparate – from the appropriate selection of epistemic methods, stances and topics of inquiry, to the harms of epistemic oppression, gaslighting and related phenomena. The account draws on four elements commonly incorporated into accounts of personal autonomy: (i) self-governance, (ii) authenticity, (iii) self-creation and (iv) independence. I further (...) argue that for a distinctively epistemic virtue of autonomy; the above elements must ultimately reliably lead to valuable epistemic goods (for the agent herself and others). I then turn to the domains or ways in which epistemic autonomy so understood, can be made manifest. I suggest that epistemic autonomy is a virtue that allows us to appropriately choose (i) subject matters and areas of inquiry, (ii) methods, sources, and processes of belief formation, (iii) epistemic goals and (iv) epistemic stances or frameworks. So understood, epistemic autonomy has a role to play in shaping most every aspect of our epistemic lives. (shrink)

While scientific pluralism enjoys widespread popularity within the philosophy of science, a related position, epistemic relativism, does not have much traction. Defenders of scientific pluralism, however, dread the question of whether scientific pluralism entails epistemic relativism. It is often argued that if a scientific pluralist accepts epistemic relativism, she will be unable to pass judgment because she believes that “anything goes”. In this article, I will show this concern to be unnecessary. I will also argue that common (...) strategies to differentiate relativism and pluralism fail. Building upon this analysis, I will propose a new way of looking at both positions’ relations. This article aims to understand what explains the friction between scientific pluralism and epistemic relativism. I will demonstrate that conceptualizing both epistemic relativism and scientific pluralism as “stances” sheds better light on their relation and demonstrates that it is, in principle, possible to support both positions at the same time. Preferred policies and levels of analysis, however, cause friction in practice. (shrink)

Inspired by Bas van Fraassen’s Stance Empiricism, Anjan Chakravartty has developed a pluralistic account of what he calls epistemic stances towards scientific ontology. In this paper, I examine whether Chakravartty’s stance pluralism can exclude epistemic stances that licence pseudo-scientific practices like those found in Scientology. I argue that it cannot. Chakravartty’s stance pluralism is therefore prone to a form of debilitating relativism. I consequently argue that we need (1) some ground or constraint in relation to which (...) epistemic stances can be ranked by degrees, and (2) some way to demarcate science from pseudo-science so that we know what epistemic stances are about. Regarding (1), I argue that empirical detectability can serve as the ground in relation to which epistemic stances are ranked by degrees. Regarding (2), I argue for ranking sciences on a continuum according to established institutional criteria, rather than attempting to draw a strict demarcation. (shrink)

Voluntarism about beliefs is the view that persons can be free to choose their beliefs for non-epistemic (truth-related) reasons (cf. Williams 1973). One problem for belief voluntarism is that it can lead to Moore-paradoxality. The person might believe that -/- a.) there are also good epistemic reasons for her belief, or that b.) there are no epistemic reasons one way or the other, or that c.) there are good epistemic reasons against her belief. -/- If the (...) person is aware of the fact that she chose her belief for non-epistemic reasons, then she would believe one of the following three things (using "evidence" as a term for all kinds of epistemic reasons): -/- a.) I believe that p but not because of the good evidence in favour of it; b.) I believe that p but that has nothing to do with the evidence; c.) I believe that p but the evidence speaks against it. -/- We could add a fourth case in which the person suspends belief on the subject matter despite the evidence: -/- d.) The evidence supports "p" but I have no view on the matter. -/- All the different versions a-d are somehow Moore-paradoxical. They constitute different ways of mistrusting one's own belief (cf. Wittgenstein 1958, p.190). Given that one cannot, for conceptual reasons, mistrust one's beliefs, it follows that a person cannot be in one of the above predicaments described by a-d. Hence, voluntarism about beliefs is false, at least if we are dealing with cases in which the person is aware of the fact that she chose her belief for non-epistemic reasons. It won't help to focus on cases in which the person is not aware of that fact, either because she has forgotten the genesis of her belief or because the process of belief acquisition was unconscious. -/- Bas van Fraassen's conception of a stance (cf. van Fraassen 2002)-a mix of commitments, values, goals-gives us reason to rethink the possibility of voluntarism. Might we be free to choose our stances for non-epistemic reasons? I argue here that the answer is negative. First, it is not clear at all whether stances can be objects of choice, properly speaking. And: Can we make sense of the idea of a free choice here? Furthermore, I argue that similar problems of Moore-paradoxality would arise for voluntarism about stances. If one does not want to completely devalue the idea of a stance, one should avoid voluntarism. (shrink)

The volume addresses a variety of issues on Stance and Inter/Subjectivity, and the expression of Identity in discourse. It focuses on the multifaceted nature of stance, and the use of resources of epistemicity, effectivity, and evaluation and metaphor, as well as other dimensions within the domain of stance, such as mirativity, emotion and attribution. In this way it provides a more in-depth and a wider perspective into the nature of stance. The contributions feature the use of stance resources in several (...) languages, and in various discourse domains and genres, such as oral discourse, political and newspaper discourse, and science popularization and medical research articles, as well as online fora on social issues, mental health and peer support platforms. (shrink)

This article briefly considers current positions about whether the inclusion of the perspectives and interests of marginalised groups in the construction of knowledge is of epistemic value. It is then argued that applied social epistemology is the proper epistemic stance to take in evaluating this question. Theorists who have held that diversity makes an epistemic contribution are interpreted as attempting to reform social pathways to knowledge in ways that make true belief more likely. Thus, the demand for (...) diversity challenges the individualistic and a priori nature of traditional epistemology. This stance has consequences for education. It supports greater attention to helping students examine the testimonial bases for their beliefs. And it prepares students for their role as citizens in supporting policies that maintain credible inclusive institutions of public knowledge. (shrink)

This paper identifies and elucidates a hitherto unnamed epistemic vice: epistemic insouciance. Epistemic insouciance consists in a casual lack of concern about whether one’s beliefs have any basis in reality or are adequately supported by the best available evidence. The primary intellectual product of epistemic insouciance is bullshit in Frankfurt’s sense. This paper clarifies the notion of epistemic insouciance and argues that epistemic insouciance is both an epistemic posture and an epistemic vice. (...) Epistemic postures are attitudes towards epistemic objects such as knowledge, evidence, or inquiry. Epistemic vices are defined as character traits, attitudes, or thinking styles that systematically obstruct the gaining, keeping or sharing of knowledge. Epistemic insouciance is not just a posture but an affective posture. Such postures are distinguished from epistemic stances, which are policies that one can adopt or reject. Epistemic malevolence is an example of an epistemically vicious epistemic stance that issues in active attempts to undermine the knowledge possessed by a specified group of individuals. An example of epistemic malevolence in action is the so-called ‘tobacco strategy.’ I argue that epistemic malevolence undermines knowledge by instilling doubts about respectable sources of evidence. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that stance voluntarism is a coherent and useful view for understanding debates about the ontological commitments warranted by science. To do so, I first engage in a defensive move: I rescue stance voluntarism from what I take to be the most pressing objection to have emerged in recent literature, which I call the ‘irrationality objection’. According to this objection, an agent courts irrationality by simultaneously holding an epistemic stance and believing that stance voluntarism is (...) true. I argue that this objection is based on a misunderstanding of stance voluntarism and the kinds of reasons that agents take themselves to have for their adopted stances. I then make the positive contention that we can expect the idea of stance voluntarism, thus saved, to not only be a defensible, but also a useful framework for understanding ontological disputes within science. I do this by presenting a case study from contemporary cosmology in which it is so. Combining these two claims, I argue that stance voluntarism is a coherent and useful view for understanding some ongoing disputes about ontology within scientific contexts. (shrink)

Bas van Fraassen’s stance voluntarism has raised the question of how to justify one’s own stance choice if one is to follow the voluntarist dictum that all rational stances, i.e. all those that don’t lead to ‘self-sabotage by one’s own lights’, are equally rational. van Fraassen’s response is that one justifies their stance choice based on one’s own values, but the problem is that those values only appeal to holders of the said stance and not others. In this paper (...) I propose a pragmatist approach to justifying stance choice. I argue that we can provide stance-transcendent justification for our choice of stance based on its stance-transcendent benefits. Consequently, multiple stances having stance-transcendent benefits should all be embraced as it is the epistemically virtuous thing to do. I advocate a move away from the standard voluntarist position of being a stance monist in practice—i.e. defending and holding only one stance—while acknowledging other rational stances only begrudgingly. I defend an active stance pluralism where we strive to actively hold different (apparently conflicting) stances depending on the context. Where that’s not possible, I propose that we should at least enthusiastically encourage multiple stances (taken by others). In Sect. 1 I introduce epistemic stances via a discussion of stance empiricism and stance scientific realism. In Sect. 2 I discuss the problem of stance justification and explore a few different existing teleological proposals for stance choice. Finally in Sect. 3 based on numerous examples from science and philosophy, I argue for a pragmatic, active, normative stance pluralism. I conclude with some clarifications on the rationale behind active stance pluralism. (shrink)

Van Fraassen has argued that many philosophical positions should be understood as stances rather than factual beliefs. In this paper I discuss the vexed question of whether and how such stances can be rationally justified. Until this question has been satisfactorily answered, the otherwise promising stance approach cannot be considered a viable metaphilosophical option. One can find hints, and the beginnings of an answer to this question, in van Fraassen’s (and others’) writings, but no general, fully clear and (...) convincing account has been offered. I aim to provide such an account. In the first section I introduce the concept of a stance. In the second section I argue that stances may be justified pragmatically, in terms of both their epistemic fruits, and their coherence with values. In the third section I further consider the relationship between stances and values, arguing that the value-ladenness of a stance does not render it immune to rational scrutiny. In the final section I look at van Fraassen’s version of epistemological voluntarism, which plays a central role in his conception of the basis on which a stance may be rationally adopted. I show that voluntarism provides a theoretical framework, and approach to epistemology, within which the forms of justification appropriate to stance choice I outline in sections 2 and 3 find a natural home. (shrink)

This paper identifies and elucidates a hitherto unnamed epistemic vice: epistemic insouciance. Epistemic insouciance consists in a casual lack of concern about whether one’s beliefs have any basis in reality or are adequately supported by the best available evidence. The primary intellectual product of epistemic insouciance is bullshit in Harry Frankfurt’s sense. This paper clarifies the notion of epistemic insouciance and argues that epistemic insouciance is both an epistemic posture and an epistemic (...) vice. Epistemic postures are attitudes towards epistemic objects such as knowledge, evidence or inquiry. Epistemic vices are defined as character traits, attitudes or thinking styles that systematically obstruct the gaining, keeping or sharing of knowledge. Epistemic insouciance is not just a posture but an affective posture. Such postures are distinguished from epistemic stances, which are policies that one can adopt or reject. Epistemic malevolence, as Jason Baehr describes it, is an example of an epistemically vicious epistemic stance that issues in active attempts to undermine the knowledge possessed by a specified group of individuals. An example of epistemic malevolence in action is the so-called ‘tobacco strategy’. I argue that epistemic malevolence undermines knowledge by instilling doubts about respectable sources of evidence. (shrink)

This paper addresses Bas van Fraassen’s claim that empiricism is a ‘stance’. I begin by distinguishing two different kinds of stance: an explicit epistemic policy and an implicit way of ‘finding oneself in a world’. At least some of van Fraassen’s claims, I suggest, refer to the latter. In explicating his ordinarily implicit ‘empirical stance’, he assumes the stance of the phenomenologist, describing the structure of his commitment to empiricism without committing to it in the process. This latter stance (...) does not incorporate the attitude that van Fraassen takes to be characteristic of empiricism. Thus its possibility serves to illustrate that empiricism as an all-encompassing philosophical orientation is untenable. I conclude by discussing the part played by feelings in philosophical stances and propose that they contribute to philosophical conviction, commitment and critique. (shrink)

My argument here is principally that the ubiquity of epistemics is evident in the ways in which knowledge claims and attributions of knowledge to self and other are embedded in turns and sequences, inform the design of turns at talk, are amended in the corrections that speakers sometimes make, to change from one epistemic stance to another, and are contested, in the occasional ‘struggles’ between participants, as to which of them has epistemic primacy. I show that these cannot (...) be understood in cognitive terms; furthermore, I show that epistemics – again the attribution of knowledge to self and other – is ‘real’ for participants. That is, in these four practices and aspects of interaction it is evident that participants orient to their states of knowledge relative to one another, on a moment-by-moment, turn-by-turn basis. (shrink)

Since van Fraassen first put forward the suggestive idea that many philosophical positions should be construed as ‘stances’ rather than factual beliefs, there have been various attempts to spell out precisely what a philosophical stance might be, and on what basis one should be adopted. In this paper I defend a particular account of stances, the view that they are pragmatically justified perspectives or ways of seeing the world, and compare it to some other accounts that have been (...) offered. In Sect. 2 I consider van Fraassen’s argument for construing empiricism as a stance, and look at some responses to it. In Sect. 3 I outline my conception of stances as perspectives or ways of seeing, and explain how stances so understood may be justified. I illustrate this conception by way of a discussion of the model pluralist position with respect to the units of selection debate in biology, and suggest that on the model pluralist view different perspectives on the units of selection, such as the gene’s eye view, are in fact van Fraassian stances. In Sect. 4 I discuss the view put forward by Teller and Chakravartty among others that stances should be understood as epistemic policies, and argue that it is consistent with the conception of stances as perspectives. In the final section I criticise Rowbottom’s attempt to assimilate stances to Kuhnian paradigms. I argue that he has overlooked some important disanalogies between stances and paradigms, so that the comparison obscures more than it reveals. (shrink)

In this paper, we argue that certain theoretical conceptions of health, particularly those described as ‘biomedical’ or ‘naturalistic’, are viciously epistemically unjust. Drawing on some recent work in vice epistemology, we identity three ways that abstract objects (such as theoretical conceptions, doctrines, or stances) can be legitimately described as epistemically vicious. If this is right, then robust reform of individuals, social systems, and institutions would not be enough to secure epistemic justice: we must reform the deeper conceptions of (...) health that underlie them. (shrink)

The only subtype of epistemic agent currently recognized within scientonomy is community. The place of both individuals and epistemic tools in the scientonomic ontology is yet to be clarified. This paper extends the scientonomic ontology to include epistemic agents and epistemic tools as well as their relationship to one another. Epistemic agent is defined as an agent capable of taking epistemic stances towards epistemic elements. These stances must be taken intentionally, that (...) is, based on a semantic understanding of the epistemic element in question and its available alternatives, with reason, and for the purpose of acquiring knowledge. I argue that there can be both communal and individual epistemic agents. Epistemic agents are linked by relationships of authority delegation based on their differing areas of expertise. Having established the role of epistemic agents in the process of scientific change, I then turn to the role of epistemic tools, such as a thermometer, a text, or a particle accelerator in epistemic activities. I argue that epistemic tools play a different role in scientific change than do epistemic agents. This role is specified by an agent’s employed method. A physical object or system is an epistemic tool for some epistemic agent if there is a procedure by which the tool can provide an acceptable source of knowledge for answering some question under the employed method of the agent. An agent is said to rely on such a tool. (shrink)

Hart offers a biologically based explanation for the use of an ‘epistemic positioning strategy’ aimed by speakers/writers at the legitimization of assertions, at persuading addressees of the veracity of the propositions, as a prior condition for the discursive legitimization of actions. This article focuses on various issues addressed in Hart’s article, among them the degree of commitment invoked in speakers/writers’ choice of epistemic stance expressions as legitimization strategies, as well as the expression of subjectivity/intersubjectivity in discourse and the (...) degree to which this involves responsibility and accountability for the speaker/writer. The article also provides an alternative proposal of the categories identified by Bednarek for the conceptual domain of evidentiality. (shrink)

This study investigates moments in which one participant in an interaction embodies that he is “doing thinking,” a display that is commonly referred to as “thinking face. ” From an interactional perspective, it is assumed that embodied displays of “doing thinking” are a recurring social practice and serve interactive functions. While previous studies have examined thinking faces primarily in word searches and storytelling, the present study focuses on argumentative activities, in which children engage in processes of joint decision-making. The paper (...) has two interrelated aims. The first aim is to describe how multiple modalities—beyond the face—are temporally coordinated to create multimodal gestalts of “doing thinking.” It is shown that thinking displays not only involve dynamic imaginative gaze but also stylized bodily postures. The second aim is to generate knowledge about the functions of thinking displays in children's argumentative activities. The analysis describes how both speakers and recipients use thinking displays in different turn positions and align them with verbal talk or silence. The data for this study comprise video recordings of decision-making processes in groups of older children. Drawing on a multimodal approach to situated interaction, it will be proposed that embodied displays of “doing thinking” provide a resource to shape participation frameworks, mark epistemic stances and create epistemic ecologies for collaborative reasoning. By investigating thinking displays in a particular conversational activity, the study sheds light on the diversity and context-sensitive functionality of thinking displays. It also contributes to recent research on children's collaborative reasoning as an embodied discursive practice. (shrink)

The genus problem of populism presents one of the most vexing conceptual questions across the social sciences: Some theorists believe that populism is nothing more than an assembly of discursive patterns, while others maintain that populism is a strategy to gain political power. Then there are those that argue that populism is a thin ideology that lacks a coherent set of guiding principles. The paper intervenes in this debate in two ways: First, it offers a methodological apparatus for evaluating and (...) developing contested concepts such as populism. Second, it puts forward and defends the claim that populism can be fruitfully understood as a coherent ideology that rests on four foundational principles. These principles, I will argue, are necessary for explaining the paradigmatic beliefs and dispositions exhibited by exponents of populism. One of the key characteristics of populism, on the account developed in this paper, is its peculiar epistemic stance. (shrink)

Epistemic nihilism for inquiry is the claim that there are no epistemic norms of inquiry. Epistemic nihilism was once the received stance towards inquiry, and I argue that it should be taken seriously again. My argument is that the same considerations which led us away from epistemic nihilism in the case of belief not only cannot refute epistemic nihilism for inquiry, but in fact may well support it. These include the argument from non-existence that there (...) are no non-epistemic reasons for belief; the linguistic argument that epistemic norms of belief are needed to capture the semantics of ordinary epistemic talk; and the argument from theoretical roles that epistemic norms are needed to play key theoretical roles for rational belief. I conclude by sketching an alternative Gibbardian picture on which norms of inquiry are all-things-considered norms governing action. (shrink)

This article briefly considers current positions about whether the inclusion of the perspectives and interests of marginalised groups in the construction of knowledge is of epistemic value. It is then argued that applied social epistemology is the proper epistemic stance to take in evaluating this question. Theorists who have held that diversity makes an epistemic contribution are interpreted as attempting to reform social pathways to knowledge in ways that make true belief more likely. Thus, the demand for (...) diversity challenges the individualistic and a priori nature of traditional epistemology. This stance has consequences for education. It supports greater attention to helping students examine the testimonial bases for their beliefs. And it prepares students for their role as citizens in supporting policies that maintain credible inclusive institutions of public knowledge. (shrink)

_ Source: _Page Count 39 What is the correct epistemic stance that laypeople should take vis-a-vis epistemic authorities? The author provides an answer to this question based on a critical examination of Linda Zagzebski’s _Preemption Thesis_, according to which the fact that an authority has a belief p is a reason for a layperson to believe p that replaces her other reasons relevant to believing p and is not simply added to them. In contrast, the author argues that (...) _epistemic deference_ requires a layperson to perform a number of epistemic tasks and involves an active and critical stance that conflicts with the Preemption Thesis. (shrink)

Those of us who have followed Fred Dretske's lead with regard to epistemic closure and its impact on skepticism have been half-wrong for the last four decades. But those who have opposed our Dretskean stance, contextualists in particular, have been just wrong. We have been half-right. Dretske rightly claimed that epistemic status is not closed under logical implication. Unlike the Dretskean cases, the new counterexamples to closure offered here render every form of contextualist pro-closure maneuvering useless. But there (...) is a way of going wrong under Dretske's lead. As the paper argues, Cartesian skepticism thrives on closure failure in a way that is yet to be acknowledged in the literature. The skeptic can make do with principles which are weaker than the familiar closure principles. But I will further claim that this is only a momentary reprieve for the skeptic. As it turns out, one of the weaker principles on which a skeptical modus tollens must rest can be shown false. (shrink)

Half a century later, a Dretskean stance on epistemic closure remains a minority view. Why? Mainly because critics have successfully poked holes in the epistemologies on which closure fails. However, none of the familiar pro-closure moves works against the counterexamples on display here. It is argued that these counterexamples pose the following dilemma: either accept that epistemic closure principles are false, and steal the thunder from those who attack classical logic on the basis of similarly problematic cases—specifically, relevance (...) logicians and like-minded philosophers—or stick with closure and surrender to relevantist claims of failure in truth-preservation aimed at classical rules of inference. Classicist closure advocates find the promise of a way out of the dilemma in the works of Roy Sorensen and John Hawthorne. The paper argues against their pro-closure move and renews Robert Audi’s call for a theory of closure-failure. (shrink)

Should the scientific realist admit that their realism involves what Chakravartty has called an epistemic stance? I argue that the realist should accept the need for a realist stance that licenses the use of inference to the best explanation. However, unlike Chakravartty, I maintain that the realist should insist that their realist stance is rationally obligatory. This requires an anti-voluntarism about stances that involves theoretical reasons for adopting one stance rather than another. I present one account of what (...) these reasons might be that is tied to principles that identify some strong connections between evidence, knowledge and genuine explanation. (shrink)

In The empirical stance, Bas van Fraassen argues for a reconceptualization of empiricism, and a rejection of its traditional rival, speculative metaphysics, as part of a larger and provocative study in epistemology. Central to his account is the notion of voluntarism in epistemology, and a concomitant understanding of the nature of rationality. In this paper I give a critical assessment of these ideas, with the ultimate goal of clarifying the nature of debate between metaphysicians and empiricists, and more specifically, between (...) scientific realists and empiricist antirealists. Despite van Fraassen’s assertion to the contrary, voluntarism leads to a form of epistemic relativism. Rather than stifling debate, however, this ‘stance’ relativism places precise constraints on possibilities for constructive engagement between metaphysicians and empiricists, and thus distinguishes, in broad terms, paths along which this debate may usefully proceed from routes which offer no hope of progress. Author Keywords: Empiricism; Metaphysics; Scientific realism; Voluntarism; Rationality; Relativism. (shrink)

After Wesley Salmon’s causal-mechanical stance on explanation in the 1980s, the ontic-epistemic debate of scientific explanations appeared to be resolved in the philosophy of science. However, since the twenty-first century, this debate has been rekindled among philosophers who focus on mechanistic explanations. Nevertheless, its issues have evolved, necessitating scrutiny of the new trends in this debate and a comparison with the original controversy between Carl Hempel and Salmon. The primary objective of this paper is to elucidate three categorical dimensions (...) in the ontic-epistemic debates, spanning from the original to the recent controversies. Subsequently, it will explore why the conception of explanation is linked to representations, what conditions are necessary for linguistic expressions to be explanatory, and what roles norms play in explanation. Consequently, contrary to the common stereotype, it will be argued that mechanistic explanations are more likely to be epistemic rather than ontic. (shrink)

This study, by means of conversation analysis, comprehensively illuminates the advisee’s acceptance of advice in Chinese phone-in counseling for family problems from the perspective of Epistemics, and reveals advisee’s type of management of the epistemic status relationship as well as the epistemic stances during executing the management. The study finds that the advisee tacitly approved of the asymmetric relationship of epistemic status between an adviser and himself/herself when accepting advice; that this type of relationship management can (...) be executed through four kinds of epistemic stances; that these stances actually reflect the advisee’s positioning of asymmetric relationship of knowledge distribution of both parties. This study investigates the acceptance of advice from the perspective of Epistemics, which can extend the theoretical perspective of the researches on responses to advice and give new illumination of the advisory interaction. (shrink)