I argue that the Standard View of ignorance is at odds with the claim that knowledge entails truth. In particular, if knowledge entails truth then we cannot explain away some apparent absurdities that arise from the Standard View of ignorance. I then discuss a modified version of the Standard View, which simply adds a truth requirement to the original Standard View. I show that the two main arguments for the original Standard (...) View fail to support this modified view. (shrink)

Given the significant exculpatory power that ignorance has when it comes to moral, legal, and epistemic transgressions, it is important to have an accurate understanding of the concept of ignorance. According to the Standard View of factual ignorance, a person is ignorant that p whenever they do not know that p, while on the New View, a person is ignorant that p whenever they do not truly believe that p. On their own though, neither of these (...) accounts explains how ignorance can often be a degreed notion—how we can sometimes be slightly ignorant, quite ignorant, or completely ignorant that p. In this paper, I will argue that there is a route for advocates of the Standard View and the New View to accommodate the gradability of ignorance. On the view I defend, ‘ignorant’ picks out everyone that is ignorant to some degree, making it possible that ignorance can be both degreed and characterized as a lack of knowledge or true belief. Even though we can be ignorant to a greater or lesser extent, the only way to avoid being ignorant that p is to know or truly believe. (shrink)

Rik Peels has once again forcefully argued that ignorance is not equivalent to the lack or absence of knowledge. In doing so, he endeavors to refute the Standard View of Ignorance according to which they are equivalent, and to advance what he calls the “New View” according to which ignorance is equivalent (merely) to the lack or absence of true belief. I defend the Standard View against his new attempted refutation.

Rik Peels has forcefully argued that, contrary to what is widely held, ignorance is not equivalent to the lack or absence of knowledge. In doing so, he has argued against the Standard View of Ignorance according to which they are equivalent, and argued for what he calls “the New View” according to which ignorance is equivalent (merely) to the lack or absence of true belief. In this paper, I defend the Standard View against Peels’s latest (...) case for the New View. (shrink)

Knowledge and Ignorance of Self in Platonic Philosophy is the first volume of essays dedicated to the whole question of self-knowledge and its role in Platonic philosophy. It brings together established and rising scholars from every interpretative school of Plato studies, and a variety of texts from across Plato's corpus - including the classic discussions of self-knowledge in the Charmides and Alcibiades I, and dialogues such as the Republic, Theaetetus, and Theages, which are not often enough mined for insights about (...) this crucial philosophical topic. The rich variety of readings and hermeneutical methods allows for an encompassing view of the relevant scholarly debates. The volume is intended to serve as a standard resource for further research on Plato's treatment of self-knowledge, and will highlight the relevance of Plato's thought to contemporary debates on selfhood, self-reflection and subjectivity. (shrink)

An ingenious argument – we may call it the Argument from Excuse – purports to show that the Standard View of Ignorance is false and the New View of Ignorance is true. On the former, ignorance is lack of knowledge; on the latter, ignorance is lack of true belief. I defend the Standard View by arguing that the Argument from Excuse is unsound. I also argue that an implication of my case is that Factual (...) Ignorance Thesis (FIT) is false. According to FIT, whenever an agent A acts from factual ignorance, A is morally blameworthy (culpable) for the act only if A is morally blameworthy (culpable) for the ignorance from which A acts. (shrink)

One of the most venerable and enduring intuitions in epistemology concerns the relationship between true belief and knowledge. Famously articulated by Socrates, it holds that true belief does not suffice for knowledge. I discuss a matching intuition about ignorance according to which true belief does not suffice for the absence of ignorance. I argue that the latter intuition undercuts the New View of Ignorance and supports the Standard View of Ignorance.

Knowledge and Ignorance of Self in Platonic Philosophy is the first volume of essays dedicated to the whole question of self-knowledge and its role in Platonic philosophy. It brings together established and rising scholars from every interpretative school of Plato studies, and a variety of texts from across Plato's corpus - including the classic discussions of self-knowledge in the Charmides and Alcibiades I, and dialogues such as the Republic, Theaetetus, and Theages, which are not often enough mined for insights about (...) this crucial philosophical topic. The rich variety of readings and hermeneutical methods allows for an encompassing view of the relevant scholarly debates. The volume is intended to serve as a standard resource for further research on Plato's treatment of self-knowledge, and will highlight the relevance of Plato's thought to contemporary debates on selfhood, self-reflection and subjectivity. (shrink)

I argue against the Standard View of ignorance, according to which ignorance is defined as equivalent to lack of knowledge, that cases of environmental epistemic luck, though entailing lack of knowledge, do not necessarily entail ignorance. In support of my argument, I contend that in cases of environmental luck an agent retains what I call epistemic access to the relevant fact by successfully exercising her epistemic agency and that ignorance and non-ignorance, contrary to what the Standard (...) class='Hi'>View predicts, are not modal in the sense that knowledge is. After responding to objections, I conclude by sketching an alternative account of ignorance centered on the notions of epistemic access and epistemic agency. (shrink)

Keith DeRose presents, develops, and defends original solutions to two of the stickiest problems in epistemology: skeptical hypotheses and the lottery problem. He deploys a powerful version of contextualism, the view that the epistemic standards for the attribution of knowledge vary with context.

In this paper, I provide a defence of the New View, on which ignorance is lack of true belief rather than lack of knowledge. Pierre Le Morvan has argued that the New View is untenable, partly because it fails to take into account the distinction between propositional and factive ignorance. I argue that propositional ignorance is just a subspecies of factive ignorance and that all the work that needs to be done can be done by using the concept (...) of factive ignorance. I also defend two arguments of mine in favour of the New View against Le Morvan’s criticisms. As to the Linguistic Argument, I point out that the intuitions of the adherent of the New View about cases of true belief that fall short of knowledge are really intuitions about factive rather than propositional ignorance. As to the Excuse Argument, I argue that true belief is exculpatorily relevant: a true belief in a proposition p , where disbelief that p or suspension on p would provide at least a partial excuse, is relevant in that it renders one blameworthy for one’s action, unless further excuses hold. Finally, I reply to two closely related objections that might be levelled against the New View, namely that it seems false that one can reduce one’s ignorance by arbitrarily believing as many propositions as possible and that it seems false that an intellectually conscientious and critical person is more ignorant than an intellectually sloppy and credulous person just because the latter has more true beliefs. (shrink)

Knowledge implies the presence of a positive relation between a person and a fact. Factual ignorance, on the other hand, implies the absence of some positive relation between a person and a fact. The two most influential views of ignorance hold that what is lacking in cases of factual ignorance is knowledge or true belief, but these accounts fail to explain a number of basic facts about ignorance. In their place, we propose a novel and systematic defense of (...) the view that factual ignorance is the absence of awareness, an account that both comes apart from the dominant views and overcomes their deficiencies. Given the important role that ignorance plays in moral and legal theory and our understanding of various epistemic injustices, a precise and theoretically unproblematic account of the nature of ignorance is important not only for normative epistemology, but also for law, ethics, and applied epistemology. (shrink)

On an initially plausible view of ignorance, ignorance is equivalent to the lack or absence of knowledge-that. I argue that this view is incorrect, as lack of sufficient justification for one's true belief or lack of belief doesn't necessarily amount to ignorance. My argument rests on linguistic considerations of common uses of 'ignorant' and its cognates. The phrase 'is ignorant of', I argue, functions differently grammatically and semantically from the phrase 'does not know', when the latter is used (...) propositionally. 'Is ignorant of' does not have a genuine propositional use but is best understood as equivalent to 'is not knowledgeable of'. I further argue that 'knowledgeable' and 'ignorant' are relative gradable expressions. Relative gradables typically are associated with an implicit or explicit standard of comparison, give rise to borderline cases and trigger the Sorites Paradox in their unmarked form. From these linguistic considerations, it follows that being ignorant admits of degree, and that one can fail to be ignorant despite lacking true beliefs concerning the propositions constituting a particular subject matter. The proposed treatment of knowledgeability and ignorance of facts and subject matters lends itself to an alternative reply to the problem of skepticism, which I will call the ‘simple response’. In the final section of the paper I argue that ignorance can also reflect incompetence with respect to a particular activity. The latter, I argue, is a case of lacking a particular kind of ability-involving knowledge-how, viz. practical knowledge of how to perform the activity in question. (shrink)

Ignorance is often a perfectly good excuse. There are interesting debates about whether non-culpable factual ignorance and mistake subvert obligation, but little disagreement about whether non-culpable factual ignorance and mistake exculpate. What about agents who have all the relevant facts in view but fail to meet their obligations because they do not have the right moral beliefs? If their ignorance of their obligations derives from mistaken moral beliefs or from ignorance of the moral significance of the facts (...) they have in view, should they be excused for failing to meet their moral obligations? It is not obvious that they should. In this paper we argue that the best non-skeptical accounts of moral responsibility acknowledge that factual ignorance and mistake will diminish moral responsibility in a way that moral ignorance and mistake will not. That is because factual ignorance is often non-culpable so long as it meets certain merely procedural epistemic standards but the same is not true of moral ignorance. Our argument is that the assumption that it is gets the standards of culpability for moral ignorance wrong, and that the mistake is encouraged by the thought that culpability in general requires an instance of known wrongdoing: that acting wrongly requires de dicto unresponsiveness to one’s obligations at some stage. We deny this and conclude that, therefore, ignorance and mistaken belief are indeed often perfectly good excuses – but far less often than some philosophers claim. (shrink)

The standard view of ignorance is that it consists in the mere lack of knowledge or true belief. Duncan Pritchard has recently argued, against the standard view, that ignorance is the lack of knowledge/true belief that is due to an improper inquiry. I shall call, Pritchard’s alternative account the Normative Account. The purpose of this article is to strengthen the Normative Account by providing an independent vargument supporting it.

Rik Peels has ingeniously argued that ignorance is not equivalent to the lack or absence of knowledge. In this response, I defend the Standard View of Ignorance according to which they are equivalent. In the course of doing so, some important lessons will emerge concerning the nature of ignorance and its relationship to knowledge.

It is argued that the two main accounts of ignorance in the contemporary literature—in the terms of the lack of knowledge and the lack of true belief—are lacking in key respects. A new way of thinking about ignorance is offered that can accommodate the motivations for both of the standard views, but which in the process also avoids the problems that afflict these proposals. In short, this new account of ignorance incorporates the idea that ignorance essentially involves not just (...) the absence of a certain epistemic good, but also an intellectual failing of inquiry. It is further contended that making sense of this normative dimension to ignorance requires one to situate one’s account of ignorance within a wider epistemic axiology. (shrink)

This article offers an analysis of ignorance. After a couple of preliminary remarks, I endeavor to show that, contrary to what one might expect and to what nearly all philosophers assume, being ignorant is not equivalent to failing to know, at least not on one of the stronger senses of knowledge. Subsequently, I offer two definitions of ignorance and argue that one’s definition of ignorance crucially depends on one’s account of belief. Finally, I illustrate the relevance of my analysis by (...) paying attention to four philosophical problems in which ignorance plays a crucial role. (shrink)

Skeptical puzzles and arguments often employ knowledge-closure principles . Epistemologists widely believe that an adequate reply to the skeptic should explain why her reasoning is appealing albeit misleading; but it’s unclear what would explain the appeal of the skeptic’s closure principle, if not for its truth. In this paper, I aim to challenge the widespread commitment to knowledge-closure. But I proceed by first examining a new puzzle about failing to know—what I call the New Ignorance Puzzle . This puzzle resembles (...) to the Old Ignorance Puzzle , although it does not involve a closure principle. It instead centers on the standard view of ignorance, a highly intuitive principle stating that ignorance is merely a failure to know. In Sects. 2 and 3, I argue that the best way to solve the New Ignorance Puzzle is to reject the standard view of ignorance and to explain away its appeal via conversational implicature. I then use this solution to the New Ignorance Puzzle as a way of explaining why knowledge-closure principles would seem true, and why abominable conjunctions would seem abominable, even if such principles were false . The upshot is a new way of explaining why the skeptic’s reasoning is appealing albeit misleading. (shrink)

Within debates concerning responsibility for ignorance the distinction between moral and factual ignorance is often treated as crucial. Many prominent accounts hold that while factual ignorance routinely exculpates, moral ignorance never does so. The view that there is an in-principle distinction between moral and factual ignorance has been referred to as the “Asymmetry Thesis.” This view stands in opposition to the “Parity Thesis,” which holds that moral and factual ignorance are in-principle similar. The Parity (...) Thesis has been closely aligned with volitionist accounts of moral responsibility, whereas the Asymmetry Thesis has been closely aligned with Quality of Will accounts. Two central questions are at work here: how ignorance excuses, and whether it excuses in the same way for both moral and factual ignorance. I will argue that these questions have often been confused in the present debate, and once we have distinguished more clearly between them, it seems that Quality of Will accounts are compatible with the Parity Thesis. And more generally: that the distinction between moral and factual ignorance is far less important in debates about responsibility for ignorance than it has often appeared. (shrink)

Could it be right to convict and punish defendants using only statistical evidence? In this paper, I argue that it is not and explain why it would be wrong. This is difficult to do because there is a powerful argument for thinking that we should convict and punish defendants using statistical evidence. It looks as if the relevant cases are cases of decision under risk and it seems we know what we should do in such cases (i.e., maximize expected value). (...) Given some standard assumptions about the values at stake, the case for convicting and punishing using statistical evidence seems solid. In trying to show where this argument goes wrong, I shall argue (against Lockeans, reliabilists, and others) that beliefs supported only by statistical evidence are epistemically defective and (against Enoch, Fisher, and Spectre) that these epistemic considerations should matter to the law. To solve the puzzle about the role of statistical evidence in the law, we need to revise some commonly held assumptions about epistemic value and defend the relevance of epistemology to this practical question. (shrink)

This paper explores some consequences of Lewis’s (Australas J Philos 74(4):549–567, 1996) understanding of how knowledge is compartmentalized. It argues, first, that he underestimates how badly it impacts his view. When knowledge is compartmentalized, it lacks at least one of two essential features of Lewis’s account: (a) Elusiveness—familiar skeptical possibilities, when relevant, are incompatible with everyday knowledge. (b) Knowledge is a modality—when a thinker knows that p, there is no relevant possibility where p is false. Lewis proposes compartmentalized knowledge (...) to keep treating knowledge as a modality while mitigating one of its unrealistic epistemological implications: In normal modal epistemic logic (and standard possible world semantics), a thinker always counts as knowing the strongest proposition that follows from the set of all the individual propositions that this thinker knows. Lewis’s compartmentalization proposal is that thinkers merely know the conjunctions of propositions that are known in each of, but not across, their compartments. The irony is that in avoiding overblown knowledge the view now allows for thinkers to attend to skeptical error possibilities and yet knowledge is present. The account avoids inflation of knowledge in one sense only to acquire another type of knowledge the view denies subjects can have. This problem motivates an inspection of knowledge accounts whose intra-compartment closure principles are weaker than those that are valid in normal modal-logic. The conclusion is that some formulations of closure can avoid the challenge Lewis’s view faces. Nevertheless, even these closure principles pose a barrier—perhaps an implausible barrier—for knowledge of ignorance. Even when the reasoning supporting the lack of knowledge is sound, a subject cannot always know she doesn’t know. Interestingly, this obstacle is one that knowledge of knowledge doesn’t seem to face. (shrink)

Douglas Husak’s book is an intelligent, wide-ranging exploration of the legal principle ‘ignorance of law is no excuse’. This principle is one of the few pieces of legal doctrine known by many regular folks, along with the criminal standard of proof ‘beyond a reasonable doubt’. The traditional approach to the doctrine might be explained in this way: in some cases, ignorance of the law fails to excuse offenders from culpability because as a matter of policy we feel they ought (...) to have known the law governing their behaviour. Placing upon citizens the responsibility to know the law is good policy because it may increase both knowledge of law (by inspiring persons considering questionable action to investigate legal rules, etc.) and law-abiding behaviour (by dissuading those who discover their possible act is illegal from acting). Although many believe the criminal law’s primary purpose is state-imposed backwards-looking ‘just deserts’ for moral wrongs, the law also serves to accomplish forward-looking aims such as enhancing moral agency and decreasing crime. From this perspective, the principle that ignorance of the law does not excuse contributes to rule of law and social order by encouraging awareness of legal rules. Husak’s position on ignorance of law is sometimes difficult to discern amongst the detailed critique and commentary on competing views that occupy most of the first 100 pages. In the end, Husak bucks a forward-looking account of the principle and concludes that ignorance of the law – or more exactly, ignorance of the law related to ignorance of the morality underpinning the law – ought to serve as an excuse to criminal guilt in most cases. Further, he claims ignorance of law ought to excuse in the same way that that ignorance of an important fact regarding one’s crime excuses. That he is mistaken regarding an important fact about his crime matters to a defendant’s blameworthiness – e.g. if the defendant kills in self-defence, mistaking the toy gun their victim is carrying with a real gun. A person who honestly believes they are in immediate danger from an armed aggressor is less than fully blameworthy for killing that aggressor even if they were mistaken about the threat. Similarly, knowledge or ignorance that some act is morally wrong clearly matters to moral blameworthiness, says Husak: other things being equal, a person who is ignorant of the moral wrongness of her act is less blameworthy than someone who is aware that what she is doing is wrong. Where ignorance of that an action violates a criminal law is related to ignorance regarding the morality of the act, a person is less than fully culpable. (shrink)

A standard view would suggest that research is a neutral apolitical activity. It neutralizes external pressures by its fidelity to robust scientific methods. However, politics is an inevitable part of human knowledge. Our knowledge of the world is always mediated by human priorities. What matters is therefore a contested and political debate rather a neutral accumulation of factual data. How researchers manage this varies. Research paradigms are one way in which research engages with knowledge. They frame knowledge (...) within epistemological and ontological philosophies. In this paper, I will explore this view in relation to neo‐positivism, qualitative research, Foucault and critical realism. I will argue that if nursing knowledge is to be effective it needs to acknowledge the political, particularly in the context of neoliberalism. Healthcare systems are having to cope with a social world increasingly dominated by market fundamentalism, extreme levels of inequality and a rise in xenophobia. These forces are undermining the provision of ethically sound health care, misdirecting research practice and contributing to a discourse of dehumanization. These forces need to be challenged politically and I will argue that epistemologically diverse approaches, alongside a realist ontology can provide a way forward for nursing research. (shrink)

There is a debate on the nature of ignorance in contemporary epistemology. The standard view holds that ignorance is the lack of knowledge, while the new view contends that ignorance is the lack of true belief. Rather than taking a side in this dispute, Pritchard recently offers a new proposal according to which ignorance essentially involves not just the absence of a certain epistemic good, but also an intellectual failing of inquiry. We argue that Pritchard’s new proposal (...) advances the discussion of ignorance by incorporating insight from virtue epistemology, and hence the normative dimension of ignorance is properly noticed. Crucially, ignorance is no longer a mere static cognitive state, but also reflects the quality of inquiry and inquirers’ obligations. However, the new proposal faces two problems. First, current formulation is incomplete so that it cannot ground the epistemic blame that Pritchard requires. More details must be filled in. Second, his view would label all ignorance as normatively negative, and therefore locutions such as virtuous ignorance, blameless ignorance and the positive value of ignorance would be wrong. (shrink)

My goal in this paper is to show that Kant’s prohibition on certain kinds of knowledge of things-in-themselves is motivated less by his anti-soporific encounter with Hume than by his new view of the distinction between “real” and “logical” modality, a view that developed out of his reflection on the rationalist tradition in which he was trained. In brief: at some point in the 1770’s, Kant came to hold that a necessary condition on knowing a proposition is that (...) one be able to prove that all the items it refers to are either really possible or really impossible. Most propositions about things-in-themselves, in turns out, cannot meet this condition. I conclude by suggesting that the best interpretation of this modal condition is as a kind of coherentist constraint. (shrink)

Ignorance about political related issues has long been considered a threat to democracy. This paper revolves around the concept of political ignorance, focusing especially on Ilya Somin’s book Democracy and Political Ignorance and going beyond his standpoint in two ways. First of all, it moves away from the notion of factual knowledge by showing that political ignorance cannot be limited to a matter of information quality. On the contrary, it shows that ignorance concerns the formation of opinions about political (...) facts, which are the bricks with which disagreement is built. Then, using the insights of the Moral Foundation Theory by Jonathan Haidt and his colleagues, the paper argues that moral intuitions represent an additional source of bias that current research on the problem of voters’ ignorance should address. While Somin argues that biased moral values are the outcome of ignorance, Moral Foundation Theory suggests that moral intuitions are a robust determinant of people’s political views as they make factual knowledge partially irrelevant and also make people with different moral minds unable to understand the basis of reciprocal factual argumentations. (shrink)

Ignorance about political related issues has long been considered a threat to democracy. This paper revolves around the concept of political ignorance, focusing especially on Ilya Somin’s book Democracy and Political Ignorance and going beyond his standpoint in two ways. First of all, it moves away from the notion of factual knowledge by showing that political ignorance cannot be limited to a matter of information quality. On the contrary, it shows that ignorance concerns the formation of opinions about political (...) facts, which are the bricks with which disagreement is built. Then, using the insights of the Moral Foundation Theory by Jonathan Haidt and his colleagues, the paper argues that moral intuitions represent an additional source of bias that current research on the problem of voters’ ignorance should address. While Somin argues that biased moral values are the outcome of ignorance, Moral Foundation Theory suggests that moral intuitions are a robust determinant of people’s political views as they make factual knowledge partially irrelevant and also make people with different moral minds unable to understand the basis of reciprocal factual argumentations. (shrink)

Ignorance about political related issues has long been considered a threat to democracy. This paper revolves around the concept of political ignorance, focusing especially on Ilya Somin’s book Democracy and Political Ignorance and going beyond his standpoint in two ways. First of all, it moves away from the notion of factual knowledge by showing that political ignorance cannot be limited to a matter of information quality. On the contrary, it shows that ignorance concerns the formation of opinions about political (...) facts, which are the bricks with which disagreement is built. Then, using the insights of the Moral Foundation Theory by Jonathan Haidt and his colleagues, the paper argues that moral intuitions represent an additional source of bias that current research on the problem of voters’ ignorance should address. While Somin argues that biased moral values are the outcome of ignorance, Moral Foundation Theory suggests that moral intuitions are a robust determinant of people’s political views as they make factual knowledge partially irrelevant and also make people with different moral minds unable to understand the basis of reciprocal factual argumentations. (shrink)

Jonathan Jenkins Ichikawa has presented a series of examples that are meant to spell trouble for Presuppositional Epistemic Contextualism. In this short article I aim to establish two things. First, I argue that even if Ichikawa’s examples were viable counterexamples to PEC, they would not threaten the key ideas underlying the account in my 2009 article ‘Knowledge and Presuppositions’. The philosophically interesting work that is done in that article remains unaffected by Ichikawa’s alleged counterexamples. In the second part of the (...) paper, I argue that the examples are not in fact successful counterexamples to PEC. The data emerging from Ichikawa’s examples can be accounted for within the framework of PEC. (shrink)

Keith DeRose presents, develops, and defends original solutions to two of the stickiest problems in epistemology: skeptical hypotheses and the lottery problem. He deploys a powerful version of contextualism, the view that the epistemic standards for the attribution of knowledge vary with context.

On two standard views of vagueness, vagueness as to whether Harry is bald entails that nobody knows whether Harry is bald—either because vagueness is a type of missing truth, and so there is nothing to know, or because vagueness is a type of ignorance, and so even though there is a truth of the matter, nobody can know what that truth is. Vagueness as to whether Harry is bald does entail that nobody clearly knows that Harry is bald and (...) that nobody clearly knows that Harry is not bald. But it does not entail that nobody knows that Harry is bald or that nobody knows that Harry is not bald. Hence, the two standard views of vagueness are mistaken. (shrink)

Epistemic contextualism is the view that the truth-conditions for knowledge attributions can vary across contexts as a result of shifting epistemic standards. According to Keith DeRose, the “chief bugaboo of contextualism has been the concern that the contextualist is mistaking variability in the conditions of..

The ‘Standard View’ regarding computer-based medical diagnostic decision support programs is that, while such systems may be useful adjuncts to human decision-making, they cannot replace human diagnosticians. Mazoué (1990) disputes this viewpoint. He notes that human diagnosis is prone to a variety of errors, and claims that the processes of data collection for diagnosis and the intellectual task of making a diagnosis are independent. Mazoué believes that recent progress in computer-based diagnosis has been encouraging enough to consider the (...) concept of “human-assisted computer diagnosis”. This commentary explains why the Standard View should remain standard. Diagnosis is a complex process more involved than producing a nosological label for a set of patient descriptors. Efficient and ethical diagnostic evaluation requires a broad knowledge of people and of disease states. The state of the art in computer-based medical diagnosis does not support the optimistic claim that people can now be replaced by more reliable diagnostic programs. (shrink)

Did Donald Davidson agree with G.E.M. Anscombe that action requires a distinctive form of agential awareness? The answer is No, at least according to the standard interpretation of Davidson’s account of action. A careful study of Davidson’s early writings, however, reveals a much more subtle conception of the role of agential belief in action. While the role of the general belief in Davidson’s theory is familiar and has been much discussed, virtually no attention has been paid to the singular (...) belief. This essay makes a start on remedying this neglect. I begin, in section 1, by examining Davidson’s claim that for a desire or belief to rationalize and cause an action it must have a suitable generality. It must, he says, be ‘logically independent’ of the action itself. While he was clear about this requirement in the case of the desire that forms part of a person’s primary reason, I show in section 2 that his early treatment of belief confuses general and singular beliefs. This confusion reflects his failure clearly to distinguish the two roles belief can play in his account of action: as rationalizing cause and as agential awareness. Somewhat surprisingly, though, after he carefully drew the distinction and announced that intentional action requires practical knowledge, he pretty much ignored it. This may explain why some have assumed that Davidson parted ways with Anscombe on this. But a careful study of their writings shows that in fact they held remarkably similar views on the nature and need for practical knowledge. (shrink)

The principle of Counter-Closure embodies the widespread view that when a proposition is believed solely as the conclusion of single-premise deduction, it can be known only if the premise is also known. I raise a problem for the compatibility of Jason Stanley's Interest-Relative Invariantism (IRI) with Counter-Closure. I explore the landscape of options that might help Stanley resolve this tension and argue that a trilemma confronts Stanley: he must either (i) renounce a key intuition that lies at the foundation (...) of his view; or (ii) admit into his epistemology an IRI-specific novel brand of Gettier case; or (iii) abandon Counter-Closure. (shrink)

The Appearance of Ignorance develops and champions contextualist solutions to the puzzles of skeptical hypotheses and of lotteries. It is argued that, at least by ordinary standards for knowledge, we do know that skeptical hypotheses are false, and that we’ve lost the lottery. Accounting for how it is that we know that skeptical hypotheses are false and why it seems that we don’t know that they’re false tells us a lot, both about what knowledge is and how knowledge attributions work. (...) Along the way, the following are all explained and defended: Moorean methodological approaches to skepticism, on which one seeks to defeat, rather than refute, the skeptic; contextualist responses to skepticism; contextualist substantive Mooreanism; the basic safety approach to knowledge and the double-safety picture of what knowledge is; insensitivity accounts of various appearances of ignorance; the closure principle for knowledge; and the claim that our knowledge that we are not brains in vats is a priori, despite its being knowledge of a deeply contingent fact. (shrink)

In this short paper, I outline a non-standard account of what it feels like to have an intuition. According to this account, intuitive contents are ontologically ambiguous. Because intuition alone is liable to persuade us of both motivated inferences and necessary truths, it is not a reliable source of evidence. However, we would not be able to grasp the concept of necessity without intuitions. Hence, I do not think it is any good to ignore or quarantine our intuitions when (...) forming judgments. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Philosophy and Literature 25.2 (2001) 347-350 [Access article in PDF] Book Review The Sin of Knowledge: Ancient Themes and Modern Variations, The Sin of Knowledge: Ancient Themes and Modern Variations, by Theodore Ziolkowski; xvi & 222 pp. Princeton: Princeton University Press, $29.95. After thirty-five years of teaching and administrating at Princeton University, dozens of books, and innumerable articles, the eminent Germanist Theodore Ziolkowski has turned his attention to a (...) theme appropriate for someone so immersed in the intellectual life: the sorrow and grief that accompany human knowledge. Although Ziolkowski has made great contributions in standard studies of genre (notably the elegy and the twentieth-century novel) and authors (Mann, Hesse, and Broch), he became especially well known for his theorization and implementation of thematic studies, ranging from the sublime--fictionalizations of the life of Jesus--to the humorous--talking animals in literature. The figures whom Ziolkowski has selected for analysis of the sin of knowledge are Adam, Prometheus, and Faust, each of whom he views through both an ancient and a modern lens.All three of these mythic heroes violate "divine prohibitions against the new knowledge" (p. 69). Less heroically, all of these myths treat women misogynistically. Generally, Ziolkowski sees each of these stories as having emerged in a time of crisis, when new opportunities presented humanity with knowledge both alluring and disruptive. Because these are highly elastic myths, able to provide meaning in a variety of contexts, they have all mutated in modern times. Adam's Fall comes to represent the human transition from innocence to consciousness, Prometheus becomes a symbol for socialism's promise, and Faust turns into a representative of the American way of life.Looking at the ancient legend of Adam, Ziolkowski notes that sexuality and wisdom are linked in many of the oldest texts in humanity's recorded history. The emphasis on knowledge, however, is especially strong in the Hebrew myth. While many Near Eastern traditions have stories with similarities to the Biblical account of Adam and Eve, only Hebrew mythology has the Tree of Knowledge. For Ziolkowski, the fact that this story was probably set down during the reign of King Solomon explains this emphasis on knowledge. Because the Age of Solomon was a time of unparalleled wealth and power for the Hebrews, [End Page 347] Ziolkowski argues that the tale of Adam and Eve is the kind of myth "produced by cultures that have reached a certain level of sophistication... and look back with a degree of nostalgia at an imagined simpler, happier existence" (p. 23). According to Ziolkowski, knowledge becomes a sin for the Hebrews as they come to terms with the limitations of everything that their knowledge has brought them even at the height of their power and glory.In the modern era, Ziolkowski continues, the story of Adam has become secularized, representing the transition of humanity from a state of innocence to one of consciousness. He finds references to the Fall in Voltaire's Candide, Kleist's The Broken Pitcher, E. T. A. Hoffmann's The Golden Pot, Melville's Billy Budd, and Hesse's Demian. The overall trend of these representations of the rise of consciousness has been increasingly negative, culminating in sentiments like those expressed by the East German author Günter Kunter, who argues that "our whole present misery and all the problems of industrial civilization" can be linked to "the moment when man used the first firestone as a tool, the Fall" (p. 107). As Ziolkowski concludes: "Two centuries of secularization have brought the modern Adam to a depressing end" (p. 108).Citing Nietzsche, who compared Prometheus to Adam (and Pandora to Eve), Ziolkowski looks first at Hesiod's depiction of Prometheus as a trickster and then to Aeschylus' hero. Unlike the authors of the story of Adam and Eve, though, Aeschylus depicts Prometheus' claim to divine knowledge in a positive light: "Rather than a humankind declining from a glorious golden age to the present deplorable iron age, Aeschylus sees humanity progressing by means of knowledge--the crafts, arts, and sciences--from blindness and ignorance... (shrink)

According to epistemic contextualism, the truth value of a knowledge ascription sentence varies in relation to the epistemic standard in play at its context of use. Contextualists promise a relatively conservative (dis)solution of the skeptical paradox that threatens to destroy our alleged everyday knowledge, based on our apparent inability to discard some exotic possibilities of error. The origins of the contextualist position have been traced back to some passages of Austin’s “Other Minds.” However, it is at best dubious whether (...) the alternative there explored is indeed contextualist. Austin seems to be proposing a much more radical position, one still ignored in the literature. This paper aims to develop an Austinian approach to knowledge attributions. I show how we could use the Austinian account to solve this skeptical paradox. I also respond to some important objections to this view. (shrink)

The Appearance of Ignorance develops and champions contextualist solutions to the puzzles of skeptical hypotheses and of lotteries. It is argued that, at least by ordinary standards for knowledge, we do know that skeptical hypotheses are false, and that we’ve lost the lottery. Accounting for how it is that we know that skeptical hypotheses are false and why it seems that we don’t know that they’re false tells us a lot, both about what knowledge is and how knowledge attributions work. (...) Along the way, the following are all explained and defended: Moorean methodological approaches to skepticism, on which one seeks to defeat, rather than refute, the skeptic; contextualist responses to skepticism; contextualist substantive Mooreanism; the basic safety approach to knowledge and the double-safety picture of what knowledge is; insensitivity accounts of various appearances of ignorance; the closure principle for knowledge; and the claim that our knowledge that we are not brains in vats is a priori, despite its being knowledge of a deeply contingent fact. (shrink)

Igal Kvart RATIONAL ASSERTIBILITY, THE STEERING ROLE OF KNOWLEDGE, AND PRAGMATIC ENCROACHMENT Abstract In the past couple of decades, there were a few major attempts to establish the thesis of pragmatic encroachment – that there is a significant pragmatic ingredient in the truth-conditions for knowledge-ascriptions. Epistemic contextualism has flaunted the notion of a conversational standard, and Stanley's subject-sensitive invariantism (SSI) promoted stakes, each of which, according to their proponents, play a major role as pragmatic components in the truth conditions (...) of knowledge ascriptions. These conceptions were propelled first and foremost by examples of knowledge ascriptions with obvious pragmatic aspects that seemed to require a pragmatic component in the truth-conditions of knowledge ascriptions in order to be accounted for. However, if such examples can be adequately explained not by pragmatic encroachment purely pragmatically, the central role that such examples play in supporting these accounts will be undermined. I lay out here a new pragmatic account, offering a different, purely pragmatic picture that explains such examples, and much more. If such an account and its associated explanations are adequate, then much of a need or a motivation for pragmatic encroachment is undermined. Specifically, I will develop the notion of rational assertibility, appealing to rational norms (which are not Gricean) as interfacing with semantic and epistemic (and other) norms to yield assertibility simpliciter. More importantly, I will argue for a well-entrenched pragmatic profile of knowledge, the so-called steering role of knowledge. Knowledge ascriptions, or simple assertions (that don't invoke the notion of knowledge), it will be argued, play a pragmatic role of steering audiences in joint deliberational setups to the speaker's preferred action by invoking an impending practical inference leading to that preferred action, and of ignoring incompatible alternatives. The recognition of rational forces as affecting, sometimes strongly and predominantly, intuitions associated with knowledge ascriptions, has important implications to philosophical methodology regarding what count as evidence for semantic features. One such lesson calls for securing examples with no significant rational forces at play in order to establish semantic features. Another calls attention to the ill-suitability of employing assertibility by figures in examples featuring deliberational setups for such a purpose in view of the role that such assertibility plays in reflecting rational aspects of such figures, in addition to their epistemic and semantic characteristics. Still another lesson points to a specific role that audiences play in such deliberational setups. (shrink)

Knowledge is factually grounded belief. This account uses the same ingredients as the traditional analysis—belief, truth, and justification—but posits a different relation between them. While the traditional analysis begins with true belief and improves it by simply adding justification, this account begins with belief, improves it by grounding it, and then improves it further by grounding it in the facts. In other words, for a belief to be knowledge, it's not enough that it be true and justified; for a belief (...) to be knowledge, it must be justified by the facts. This account solves the Gettier problem. Gettierized beliefs fall short of knowledge because, albeit true and justified, they are not grounded in the facts. This account also elucidates why knowledge attributions are sensitive to epistemic standards. It's because whether we take a belief to be grounded in the facts is sensitive to epistemic standards. (shrink)

It is widely agreed that ignorance of fact exculpates, but does moral ignorance exculpate? If so, does it exculpate in the same way as non-moral ignorance? In this paper I will argue that on one family of views explaining exculpating non-moral ignorance also explains exculpating moral ignorance. The view can be loosely stated in the following way: ignorance counts as an excuse only if it is not the result of a failure to meet some applicable reasonable epistemic standard—call (...) this the Reasonable Epistemic Standards Thesis and call views that accept some version of this principle reasonable standards views. I argue that any plausible reasonable standards view ought to allow that moral ignorance exculpates, at least sometimes, and defend such views against the charge that they are susceptible to clear counterexamples. (shrink)

All fallibilist theories may appear to be defective, because they allegedly underestimate the security of at least some scientific knowledge and thereby leave science less defensible than it otherwise might be. When they call all scientific knowledge conjectural they may seem at first blush to underestimate the superiority of science vis a vis pseudo‐science. Fallibilists apparently fail to account for the fact that science turns theory into facts, because even “facts” are held only provisionally. This impression is false: the relatively (...) secure establishment of facts can be accounted for with a fallibilist view. After theories have been honed through sharp criticism, there is often no reason to doubt some aspects of them. These aspects are what we regard to be factual knowledge, even though these facts are also provisionally accepted as such. We then explain the newly won factual knowledge with deeper theories, which often correct our factual knowledge in spite of its apparent security. Theories of justification add nothing useful to the fallibilists' observation that science finds the best theories because it has the highest standards of criticism. Fallibilist theories today give the best account and defence of science. We may abandon the quest for some kind of assurance that goes beyond the determination that some theory can answer all known objections to it and take up more interesting problems, such as how we can find new objections and how criticism may be improved and made institutionally secure.1. (shrink)

This paper defends the view that standards, which are typically social in nature, play a role in determining whether a subject has knowledge. While the argument focuses on standards that pertain to reasoning, I also consider whether there are similar standards for memory and perception.Ultimately, I argue that the standards are context sensitive and, as such, we must view attributions of knowledge as indexical. I exploit similarities between this view and a version of the relevant alternatives reply (...) to skepticism in order to defend this reply against the objection that it is ad hoc. (shrink)

This paper links two domains of recent interest in science and technology studies, complexity and ignorance, in the context of knowledge practices observed among synthetic biologists. Synthetic biologists are recruiting concepts and methods from computer science and electrical engineering in order to design and construct novel organisms in the lab. Their field has taken shape amidst revised assessments of life’s complexity in the aftermath of the Human Genome Project. While this complexity is commonly taken to be an immanent property of (...) biological systems, this article presents an epistemological view of complexity according to which complexity relates to a specific scientific theory or model and refers to that which exceeds the theory or model’s explanatory power. This epistemological view allows us to narrate a particular story about the changing relationship between biology and synthetic biology in the last decade and accounts for early knowledge practices in synthetic biology that “ignored” biology. This article further argues that while the failure of ignorance to produce clear-cut results for synthetic biologists has led practitioners back to biology, the entanglements between different pragmatic orientations and ways of knowing trouble the implications of this return for assessments of the complexity of biological systems. (shrink)

The paper is concerned with the semantics of knowledge attributions(K-claims, for short) and proposes a position holding that K-claims are contextsensitive that differs from extant views on the market. First I lay down the data a semantic theory for K-claims needs to explain. Next I present and assess three views purporting to give the semantics for K-claims: contextualism, subject-sensitive invariantism and relativism. All three views are found wanting with respect to their accounting for the data. I then propose a hybrid (...) view according to which the relevant epistemic standards for evaluating K-claims are neither those at the context of the subject (subject-sensitive invariantism), nor those at the context of the assessor (relativism), but it is itself an open matter. However, given that we need a principled way of deciding which epistemic standards are the relevant ones, I provide a principle according to which the relevant standards are those that are the highest between those at the context of the subject and those at the context of the assessor/attributor. In the end I consider some objections to the view and offer some answers. (shrink)

Objectives: To assess the knowledge and behaviour of researchers regarding criteria for authorship, and the practices of ghost and gift authorship. Design: Semidirective interviews of senior clinical researchers. Setting: University hospital. Participants: Thirty-nine main investigators of clinical research programmes. Main measurements: Awareness and use of International Committee of Medical Journal Editors (ICMJE) criteria for authorship, and perceptions about ghost and gift authorship. Results: A total of 48 protocols submitted by 42 principal investigators between 1994 and 1996 were identified. Thirty-nine investigators (...) were contacted; 37 (one of whom delegated a co-author) were interviewed between May 2002 and March 2003. Two co-authors of two principal investigators were also interviewed. In all, 42 studies were represented. The interviews lasted for 40–90 minutes and were conducted with openness and respect for confidentiality. The choice of names of co-authors did not follow the ICMJE recommendations. Half of the respondents stated they were aware of criteria for authorship and knew of ICMJE, but most of them did not cite any of the ICMJE criteria among those they applied in deciding authorship. Most of them disagreed with the obligation to meet the three criteria justifying co-authorship because they found these too rigid and inapplicable. Gift authorship was a common practice; 59% of the respondents had been a recipient of gift authorship. Twenty-five (64%) were aware of ghost authorship and the majority considered it questionable and blameworthy. Conclusions: The ICMJE criteria were ignored by clinicians at a university hospital. Ghost and gift authorship were frequent among them. There is a need for French guidelines for authorship to be prepared and implemented. (shrink)

The article deals with the development of the philosophy of France Veber, the pupil of Meinong and a main Slovene philosopher. One of the most important threads of Veber’s philosophy is the consideration of knowledge and factuality, which may be seen as a driving force of its development. Veber’s philosophical development is usually divided into three phases: the object theory phase, the phase when he created his philosophy of a person as a creature at the crossing of the natural and (...) the spiritual world, who as an active, not merely passive subject possesses her own causal powers, and the third phase, when he supplemented his earlier philosophy with the theory of a special side of our experience which he called hitting-upon-reality. It is a direct experience of reality, a special kind of intentionality, which is however fundamentally different from presentational intentionality, which alone is taken into account by object theory or phenomenology. The questions of knowledge and factuality are closely connected in Veber’s philosophy since, pace Veber, knowledge is a kind of, we may say, justified experience the object of which is a factual entity. Hence, if we want to understand what knowledge is, we must face the challenge of comprehending factuality. There are five stages to be noted in the development of his epistemology. The first two belong to his object theory phase, the third to his person phase, the fourth is characterised by his distinguishing and exploring truth and validity with regard to the thought about God, and the basis of the fifth phase lies in his theory of hitting-upon-reality. In Introduction to Philosophy and The System of Philosophy, that is in the year 1921, Veber believed that factuality was a property of the object, which we do present, but we do not present the factuality of this factuality. In 1923, in The Problems of Contemporary Philosophy and in the work Science and Religion, he already rejected such a view. There is something that makes things factual, but that is a complete unknown X. Therefore we cannot even say what kind of an entity this factuality is. Some people would probably demand the following formulation: if X is an ultimate mystery, we should not claim even that it is an entity. In The Problems of Presentation Production Veber claimed that factuality is not a property since this would lead to a regressum ad infinitum. Philosophy related internally correct experience to personal will. In T he Book about God he developed the thesis that factuality depends on the act of God. In The Question of Reality he importantly modified, developed and enriched the thesis that we do not present reality with his theory of immediate experience of factuality. (shrink)