The question of the applicability of mathematics is an epistemological issue that was explicitly raised by Kant, and which has played different roles in the works of neo-Kantian philosophers, before becoming an essential issue in early analytic philosophy. This paper will first distinguish three main issues that are related to the application of mathematics: indispensability arguments that are aimed at justifying mathematics itself; philosophical justifications of the successful application of mathematics to scientific theories; and discussions on the application of (...) real numbers to the measurement of physical magnitudes. A refinement of this tripartition is suggested and supported by a historical investigation of the differences between Kant’s position on the problem, several neo-Kantian perspectives, early analytic philosophy, and late 19th century mathematicians. Finally, the debate on the cogency of an application constraint in the definition of real numbers is discussed in relation to a contemporary debate in neo-logicism, in order to suggest a comparison not only with Frege’s original positions, but also with the ideas of several neo-Kantian scholars, including Hölder, Cassirer, and Helmholtz. (shrink)

"Notwithstanding the magisterial work of the psychologists H. H. Clark and A. Trognon, in comparison with sociology and linguistics a veritable psychology of dialogue still remains little elaborated. This paper analyses epistemological obstacles facing such an enterprise, arguing that dialogue can not be understood as a ‘window’ on the individual mind. A vision of dialogue as a process of collective thinking, with the exchange as the fundamental unit of analysis, is sketched out. Dialogue is a complex system, involving multidirectional (...) relations between situational representations, communicative action and emergent thinking. Keywords: dialogue, collective thinking, interaction analysis, methodology, complex systems. ". (shrink)

SummaryThe doctrine of Verstehen is here interpreted as a solution to the problem of other minds. The problem of other minds, which has its analogous for external perception and memory, may be put by asking: By means of what epistemic principles may we exhibit the justification we have for attributing particular thoughts and feelings to persons other than ourselves? It is suggested that such principles will refer to the phenomena of Verstehen.ResumeLa doctrine de la compréhension est interprétée ici comme une (...) solution au problème des autres psychismes, qui a son analogue pour les perceptions externes et pour la memoire et qui peut etre mis sous la forme ?une question:Quels sont les principes epistemologiques qui nous permettent de justifier notre attribution de pensées et de sentiments particuliers à des personnes autres que nous‐mêmes?≪. Ľauteur suggère que ces principes se rapporteront au phénomene de la compréhension. (shrink)

This book deals with the way in which certain "forms of knowledge" evolved in modern Chinese history and how they interacted with the mainstream intellectual and social environment. But the book is not merely about the serialization methodologies that have been used to produce history from the thought of historical personalities. First, the question of "epistemology" is set out: Does the development of "knowledge" coincide completely with the chronological serialization of historical facts? Alternatively, is it possible that the development of (...) "knowledge" itself merely derives its own meaning from within a comparatively self-sufficient and closed discourse, alienated from genuine serialization of historical facts? (shrink)

I would like to thank the editors of Philosophy East and West for courteously asking me if I would like to respond to Matthew Dasti and Stephen Phillips' very thoughtful remarks about the review I wrote of Phillips' translation and commentary on the pratyakṣa chapter of Gaṅgeśa's Tattvacintāmaṇi, prepared in collaboration with N. S. Ramanuja Tatacharya (Phillips and Tatacharya 2004). Let me begin by reaffirming what I said at the beginning of my review, that the book is "a monumental and (...) momentous achievement, one whose importance cannot be understated." I have indeed enormous admiration for the magnitude of their achievement and respect for the contribution they have made through this translation to the field of .. (shrink)

SummaryThe doctrine of Verstehen is here interpreted as a solution to the problem of other minds. The problem of other minds, which has its analogous for external perception and memory, may be put by asking: By means of what epistemic principles may we exhibit the justification we have for attributing particular thoughts and feelings to persons other than ourselves? It is suggested that such principles will refer to the phenomena of Verstehen.ResumeLa doctrine de la compréhension est interprétée ici comme une (...) solution au problème des autres psychismes, qui a son analogue pour les perceptions externes et pour la memoire et qui peut etre mis sous la forme?une question:Quels sont les principes epistemologiques qui nous permettent de justifier notre attribution de pensées et de sentiments particuliers à des personnes autres que nous‐mêmes?≪. Ľauteur suggère que ces principes se rapporteront au phénomene de la compréhension. (shrink)

Most current work in epistemology deals with the evaluation and justification of information already acquired. In this book, Jaakko Hintikka instead discusses the more important problem of how knowledge is acquired in the first place. His model of information-seeking is the old Socratic method of questioning, which has been generalized and brought up-to-date through the logical theory of questions and answers that he has developed. Hintikka also argues that philosophers' quest for a definition of knowledge is ill-conceived and that (...) the entire notion of knowledge should be replaced by the concept of information. He offers an analysis of the different meanings of the concept of information and of their interrelations. The result is a new and illuminating approach to the field of epistemology. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Ifá Defined Ifá Divination The Process of Divination.

Questions are relevant to epistemology because they formulate cognitive goals, they are used to elicit information, they are used in Socratic reflection and knowledge sentences often have indirect question complements. The paper explores what capacities we must possess if we are to understand questions and identify and evaluate potential answers to them. The later sections explore different ways in which these matters depend upon pragmatic and other contextual considerations.

A paper in this journal by Fraser MacBride, ‘Can Ante Rem Structuralism Solve the Access Problem?’, raises important issues concerning the epistemological goals and burdens of contemporary philosophy of mathematics, and perhaps philosophy of science and other disciplines as well. I use a response to MacBride's paper as a framework for developing a broadly holistic framework for these issues, and I attempt to steer a middle course between reductive foundationalism and extreme naturalistic quietism. For this purpose the notion of (...) entitlement is invoked along the way, suitably modified for the present anti-foundationalist setting. (shrink)

ABSTRACT According to G.E. Moore’s ‘Open Question’ argument, moral facts cannot be reduced or analyzed in non-normative natural terms. Does the OQA apply equally in the epistemic domain? Does Moore’s argument have the same force against reductionist accounts of epistemic facts and concepts? In a recent article, Daniel Greco has argued that it does. According to Greco, an epistemological version of the OQA is just as promising as its moral cousin, because the relevant questions in epistemology are just (...) as ‘open’ as those in ethics. In this paper, I offer a two-part reply to Greco. First, I argue that his argument in favor of the openness of epistemology is not persuasive. Second, I offer a case against the openness of epistemology. Unlike claims linking natural and moral properties, claims linking natural and epistemological properties do give rise to closed questions. An epistemological OQA is therefore not as promising as its moral cousin. (shrink)

Epistemology: 5 Questions is a collection of short interviews based on 5 questions presented to some of the most influential and prominent scholars in epistemology. We hear their views on epistemology with particular emphasis on the intersection between mainstream and formal approaches to the field, the aim, scope, the future direction of epistemology and how their work fits in these respects.

Social Epistemology: 5 Questions is a collection of interviews with some of the world's most influential scholars working on social epistemology from a range of disciplinary perspectives. We hear their views on social epistemology; its aim, scope, use, broader intellectual environment, future direction, and how the work of the interviewees fits in these respects. Interviews with David Bloor, Cristina Bicchieri, Richard Bradley, Lorraine Code, Hans van Ditmarsch, Miranda Fricker, Steve Fuller, Sanford Goldberg, Alvin Goldman, Philip Kitcher, Martin Kusch, Jennifer (...) Lackey, Helen E. Longino, Philip Petit, Erik Olsson, Frederick Schmitt. (shrink)

In his recently published 1975–76 seminar on Life Death (§3), Jacques Derrida offers a severe critique of French epistemologists and philosophers of life. On Derrida’s view, they do not seem to be concerned with the question of the metaphoricity of metaphor but, rather, by taking the epistemological cut between (inadequate) metaphors and (adequate) concepts for granted, they explain the scientific process as a movement of critical rectification of metaphors by concepts. Moreover, they do not engage with Nietzsche seriously. Here (...) I build on this last point to examine the project of accounting for the very condition of the scientific process that Derrida puts forward in ‘White Mythology’ (1971) and Life Death. My reading hypothesis is that this project rests on Derrida’s original interpretation of Nietzsche’s Darwinian-type genesis of thinking, according to which selective reproduction consists in the metaphoricity of metaphor. (shrink)

While there has been a great deal of recent interest in parallels between metaethics and metaepistemology, there has been little discussion of epistemological analogues of the open question argument. This is somewhat surprising—the general trend in recent work is in the direction of emphasizing the continuity between metaethics and metaepistemology, and to treat metanormative questions as arising in parallel in these two normative domains. And while the OQA has been subjected to a wide variety of objections, it is (...) still influential in metaethics. In this paper, I aim to show that an epistemological version of the OQA is just as promising as its moral cousin. That's not to say that I'll unqualifiedly endorse either argument. Rather, my aim is to show that there is just as strong a prima facie case for an OQA in metaepistemology as there is in metaethics—I leave open whether the ultima facie case collapses. (shrink)

The question of authenticity centers in the lives of women of color to invite and restrict their representative roles. For this reason, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and Uma Narayan advocate responding with strategic essentialism. This paper argues against such a strategy and proposes an epistemic understanding of the question of authentic- ity. The question stems from a kernel of truth—the connection between experience and knowledge. But a coherence theory of knowledge better captures the sociality and the holism of experience and knowledge.

Though concerned with knowledge, this article begins with unknown political events that are ignored by the culture and educational practices of the societies in whose name the events took place. The questions that these events raise indicate a relation of epistemology with ethics and education that complicates some theoretical and managerial attitudes to knowledge. This relation, along with Richard Smith’s notion of knowingness, will frame an exploration of virtue-epistemologies that contests epistemic exaggerations of the knower as accomplished virtuous character. (...) The article emphasizes the need for a normative epistemology that critically invigorates the educational aim of transmitting knowledge and submits it to ethico-political considerations. (shrink)

The aim of the present paper is to describe the fundamental epistemic ruptures, which occurred during the history of physics. Our approach is based on the reconstruction of the changes in the formal language of a particular physical discipline. We take into account aspects like the analytic, expressive or explanatory power, as well as analytic and expressive boundaries. One of the main results of our reconstruction is a new interpretation of Kant’s famous antinomies of pure reason. If we are prepared (...) to relativise some of Kant’s antinomies, and instead of ascribing them to reason as such we relate them to the language of physics, it is possible to show, that these antinomies are relevant even for modern physics. Taking the form of a phenomenon, that we call the expressive boundaries of language are the antinomies a universal feature of all physical theories. This shows, that Kant in his antinomies pointed to a remarkable epistemological fact. (shrink)

In this short conversation, I will engage Jonathan Chimakonam’s essay entitled “The knowledge Question in African Philosophy: A Case for Cogno-Normative Epistemology” published as the chapter four of [Atuolu Omalu: Some Unanswered Questions in Contemporary African Philosophy]. I will identify the major submissions of the essay and engage them critically with the aim of opening new vistas of thought. My method will be conversationalim. Keywords : Conversational philosophy, Jonathan Chimakonam, African philosophy, epistemology, cogno-normative.

We present a family of counter-examples to David Christensen's Independence Criterion, which is central to the epistemology of disagreement. Roughly, independence requires that, when you assess whether to revise your credence in P upon discovering that someone disagrees with you, you shouldn't rely on the reasoning that lead you to your initial credence in P. To do so would beg the question against your interlocutor. Our counter-examples involve questions where, in the course of your reasoning, you almost fall for (...) an easy-to-miss trick. We argue that you can use the step in your reasoning where you caught the trick as evidence that someone of your general competence level likely fell for it. Our cases show that it's permissible to use your reasoning about disputed matters to disregard an interlocutor's disagreement, so long as that reasoning is embedded in the right sort of explanation of why she finds the disputed conclusion plausible, even though it's false. (shrink)

Clinical equipoise has been proposed as an ethical principle relating uncertainty and moral leeway in clinical research. Although CE has traditionally been indicated as a necessary condition for a morally justified introduction of a new RCT, questions related to the interpretation of this principle remain woefully open. Recent proposals to rehabilitate CE have divided the bioethical community on its ethical merits. This paper presents a new argument that brings out the epistemological difficulties we encounter in justifying CE as (...) a principle to connect uncertainty and moral leeway in clinical ethics. The argument proposes, first, that the methodology of hypothetical retrospection is applicable to the RCT design and that it can accommodate uncertainty. As currently understood, however, HR should give up its reliance on the assumption of uncertainty transduction, because the latter assumes the principle of indifference, which does not accommodate uncertainty in the right way. The same principle is then seen to distort also the received interpretations of CE. (shrink)

Nozick’s contribution to the epistemology of the last half of the twentieth century includes addressing the question of whether knowledge is closed under known implication. I argue that the question of closure provides a serious obstacle to Nozickian approaches to epistemology.

Nozick’s contribution to the epistemology of the last half of the twentieth century includes addressing the question of whether knowledge is closed under known implication. I argue that the question of closure provides a serious obstacle to Nozickian approaches to epistemology.

Students of epistemology will be able to learn about and assess a wider range of epistemological issues than any other existing anthology can currently provide.

This article surveys the state of the literature on Hume’s epistemology, focusing on treatments of what has come to be known as the ‘Kemp Smith problem’, that is, the problem of reconciling Hume’s scepticism with his naturalism. It first surveys the literature on this issue with regard to the Treatise, moving on to briefly compare the Treatise and the Enquiry in virtue of their epistemological frameworks, before finally examining the literature with regard to the first Enquiry.

As a high school student, I rediscovered Hume’s problem of induction on my own. For a while, I was horrified. I thought, “We cannot know anything!” After a couple of weeks I calmed down and reasoned that there had to be something wrong with my thinking, and that led me quickly to the realization that good reasons need not be deductive, and to the discovery of defeasible reasoning. From there it was a short jump to a more general interest in (...) how rational cognition works. I am interested in rational cognition in general. Epistemology is one constituent of rational cognition, practical cognition (rational decision making) another. Much of the work on rational cognition begins with the supposition that only ideal agents can be truly rational. Real agents have limited powers of reasoning and limited memory capacity. It is often supposed that such resource-bounded agents can only approximate rationality, and that as philosophers we should confine our attention to ideal agents. If one wishes, one can of course define “rationality” in this way, but this has never been what interested me. We come to philosophy wondering what we should believe, what we should do, and how we should go about deciding these matters. These are questions about ourselves, with all of our cognitive limitations. For example, it is often claimed that ideal agents, with unlimited cognitive powers, should believe all of the logical consequences of their beliefs. But we, as real resource-bounded agents, cannot do that, so that is not something we should do. What I want to know is how I, as a real agent, should go about deciding what to believe and what to do. Thus my topic is real rationality as opposed to ideal rationality. In the realm of practical decision making, I have explored this distinction at great length in my recent book (2006). Here I will focus on its implications for epistemology. For many years epistemology was derailed by the Gettier problem.. (shrink)

In this commentary, I ask six questions concerning the implications of Philipp Berghofer’s experience-first approach for the epistemology of science, in general, and that of quantum mechanics, in particular. His responses will deepen my comprehension of his ideas. I also anticipate that these questions will aid him in further refining and strengthening his arguments.

What is knowledge? Why do we want it? Is knowledge possible? How do we get it? What about other epistemic values like understanding and certainty? Why are so many epistemologists worried about luck? In ON EPISTEMOLOGY Linda Zagzebski situates epistemological questions within the broader framework of what we care about and why we care about it. Questions of value shape all of the above questions and explain some significant philosophical trends: the obsession with answering the skeptic, (...) the flight from realism, and the debate between naturalism and anti-naturalism. THE WADSWORTH PHILOSOPHICAL TOPICS SERIES (under the general editorship of Robert Talisse, Vanderbilt University) presents readers with concise, timely, and insightful introductions to a variety of traditional and contemporary philosophical subjects. With this series, students of philosophy will be able to discover the richness of philosophical inquiry across a wide array of concepts, including hallmark philosophical themes and themes typically underrepresented in mainstream philosophy publishing. Written by a distinguished list of scholars who have garnered particular recognition for their excellence in teaching, this series presents the vast sweep of today's philosophical exploration in highly accessible and affordable volumes. These books will prove valuable to philosophy teachers and their students as well as to other readers who share a general interest in philosophy. Important Notice: Media content referenced within the product description or the product text may not be available in the ebook version. (shrink)

The cognition of quantum processes raises a series of questions about ordering and information connecting the states of one and the same system before and after measurement: Quantum measurement, quantum in-variance and the non-locality of quantum information are considered in the paper from an epistemological viewpoint. The adequate generalization of ‘measurement’ is discussed to involve the discrepancy, due to the fundamental Planck constant, between any quantum coherent state and its statistical representation as a statistical ensemble after measurement. Quantum (...) in-variance designates the relation of any quantum coherent state to the corresponding statistical ensemble of measured results. A set-theory corollary is the curious in-variance to the axiom of choice: Any coherent state excludes any well-ordering and thus excludes also the axiom of choice. However the above equivalence requires it to be equated to a well-ordered set after measurement and thus requires the axiom of choice for it to be able to be obtained. Quantum in-variance underlies quantum information and reveals it as the relation of an unordered quantum “much” (i.e. a coherent state) and a well-ordered “many” of the measured results (i.e. a statistical ensemble). It opens up to a new horizon, in which all physical processes and phenomena can be interpreted as quantum computations realizing relevant operations and algorithms on quantum information. All phenomena of entanglement can be described in terms of the so defined quantum information. Quantum in-variance elucidates the link between general relativity and quantum mechanics and thus, the problem of quantum gravity. The non-locality of quantum information unifies the exact position of any space-time point of a smooth trajectory and the common possibility of all space-time points due to a quantum leap. This is deduced from quantum in-variance. Epistemology involves the relation of ordering and thus a generalized kind of information, quantum one, to explain the special features of the cognition in quantum mechanics. (shrink)

As well as including the classic papers from the history of epistemology, this distinctive, wide-ranging anthology provides essential coverage of key contemporary challenges to that tradition.

As well as including the classic papers from the history of epistemology, this distinctive, wide-ranging anthology provides essential coverage of key contemporary challenges to that tradition.

This paper explores the coexistence of more apologetic and of more systematic considerations in the _Āpta-mīmāṁsā_ (ĀMī), _Investigation on authority_, of the Jain author Samantabhadra (530–590). First, this treatise offers a relevant case study to investigate the transition from a conception in which the reliability criterion of an authoritative discourse is the authoritative character of its utterer, to a conception in which the criteria of validity and soundness of the discourse itself are foremost. Second, Samantabhadra is one of the first (...) authors to undertake to logically prove the omniscience of the Jain teachers. And third, he links these questions to the celebrated Jain epistemological theory of non-one-sidedness. (shrink)

ArgumentThis article uses four historical case studies to address epistemological issues related to the animal model of human diseases and its use in medical research on human diseases. The knowledge derived from animal models is widely assumed to be highly valid and predictive of reactions by human organisms. In this contribution, I use three significant historical cases of failure (ca. 1890, 1960, 2006), and a closer look at the emergence of the concept around 1860/70, to elucidate core assumptions related (...) to the specific practices of animal-human knowledge transfer, and to analyze the explanations provided by historical actors after each of the failures. Based on these examples, I argue that the epistemological status of the animal model changed from that of a helpful methodological tool for addressing specific questions, but with precarious validity, to an obligatory method for the production of strong knowledge on human diseases. As a result, there now exists a culture of biomedical research in human disease that, for more than a century, has taken the value of this methodological tool as self-evident, and more or less beyond question. (shrink)

Investigating the nature of our apparent physical reality is a profound challenge. Our models from physics, while powerful, do not treat reality per se. The famous painter Paul Gaugin articulated the relevant existential questions famously in a grand painting - questions that also give the painting its title: D’où venons-nous? Que sommes-nous? Où allons-nous? People of religious faith, of course, assume that one can know the ultimate truth of reality, and, then, know the answers to these questions. (...) But even in such a case, there is the issue of how a believer has obtained their faith, through a revelatory or other epistemological process. Joseph Campbell grasped the difficulty of framing the key questions, noting that, “the transcendent is unknowable and unknown. God is transcendent, finally, of anything like the name ‘God.’ God is beyond names and forms.” This metaphysical puzzle concern, in part, models. Physics uses models, and such models are powerful tools: they allow us to navigate through the physical reality we live in, and manipulate aspects of it. However, the models do not lead humanity closer to any ultimate truth, or even give us a clue that there might be an ultimate truth. The problem of using models and talking about reality can be viewed in a new way however, using certain structures in Chinese philosophy. The ancient Dao De Jing states: “The heavens and the earth are not partial to institutionalized morality”. We can extend that to say, “The universe is not partial to institutionalized models”. (shrink)

George W. Roberts; III—Some Questions in Epistemology, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 70, Issue 1, 1 June 1970, Pages 37–60, https://doi.org/10.

This volume presents new work on infinitism, the view that there are no foundational reasons for beliefs--an ancient view in epistemology, now growing again in popularity. Leading epistemologists illuminate its strengths and weaknesses, and address questions new and old about justification, reasoning, responsibility, disagreement, and trust.

Many current problems surrounding science revolve around the complex epistemological framework that shapes a new vision of knowledge about reality. The traditional epistemological positions are characterized by the explanation of nature by means of concatenated facts; that is, as bricks attached to each other giving shape to the edifice of science. A conception of this nature showed that the idea of certainty was nothing more than a mere illusion, opening the way, on the contrary, to the idea of (...) the uncertainty of knowledge based on the descriptions of quantum physics, also a product of the non-reductionist conception of reality, thus criticizing the specular representation. This article addresses the main problems surrounding the critical conceptions that the emerging epistemology reveals about knowledge, pointing towards a much more complex vision of reality. (shrink)

A primary dimension of our engagement with fictional works of art – paradigmatically literary, dramatic, and cinematic narratives – is figuring out what is true in such representations, what the facts are in the fictional world. These facts include not only those that ground any genuine understanding of a story – say, that it was his own father whom Oedipus killed – but also those that may be missed in even a largely competent reading, say, that Emma Bovary's desires and (...) dissatisfactions are fed by reading romance novels. (shrink)

In this thesis I provide a survey over different approaches to second-order logic and its interpretation, and introduce a novel approach. Of special interest are the questions whether second-order logic can count as logic in some proper sense of logic, and what epistemic status it occupies. More specifically, second-order logic is sometimes taken to be mathematical, a mere notational variant of some fragment of set theory. If this is the case, it might be argued that it does not have (...) the "epistemic innocence" which would be needed for, e.g., foundational programmes in mathematics for which second-order logic is sometimes used. I suggest a Deductivist conception of logic, that characterises logical consequence by means of inference rules, and argue that on this conception second-order logic should count as logic in the proper sense. (shrink)