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March 28, 2013 0 Comments Short URL EPISTEME, Epistemology, social epistemology episteme, epistemology, social epistemology
Group Knowledge and Group Rationality: A Judgment Aggregation Perspective
Christian List
Volume 2 / Issue 01 / June 2005, pp 25 – 38
Margaret Gilbert
Volume 1 / Issue 02 / October 2004, pp 95 – 107
Group Knowledge Versus Group Rationality: Two Approaches to Social Epistemology
Alvin I. Goldman
Volume 1 / Issue 01 / June 2004, pp 11 – 22
Is Trust an Epistemological Notion?
Gloria Origgi
Volume 1 / Issue 01 / June 2004, pp 61 – 72
Minding One’s Cognitive Systems: When Does a Group of Minds Constitute a Single Cognitive Unit?
Robert Rupert
Volume 1 / Issue 03 / February 2005, pp 177 – 188
The Epistemic Features of Group Belief
Kay Mathiesen
Volume 2 / Issue 03 / October 2006, pp 161 – 175
Roger Koppl
Volume 2 / Issue 02 / June 2006, pp 91 – 106
What’s the Point of “Knowledge” Anyway?
Christoph Kelp
Volume 8 / Issue 01 / February 2011, pp 53 – 66
The Basis of Epistemic Trust: Reliable Testimony or Reliable Sources?
Melissa A. Koenig and Paul L. Harris
March 23, 2013 0 Comments Short URL EPISTEME, social epistemology episteme, epistemology, social epistemology
This marks the first year we have published on a quarterly cycle and compared with most journals, we are up to date with no backlog: contents and abstracts
EVIDENCE AND INTUITION
Yuri Cath
Many philosophers accept a view – what I will call the intuition picture – according to which intuitions are crucial evidence in philosophy. Recently, Williamson (2004, 2007: ch. 1) has argued that such views are best abandoned because they lead to a psychologistic conception of philosophical evidence that encourages scepticism about the armchair judgements relied upon in philosophy. In this paper I respond to this criticism by showing how the intuition picture can be formulated in such a way that: (i) it is consistent with a wide range of views about not only philosophical evidence but also the nature of evidence in general, including Williamson’s famous view that E = K; (ii) it can maintain the central claims about the nature and role of intuitions in philosophy made by proponents of the intuition picture; (iii) it does not collapse into Williamson’s own deflationary view of the nature and role of intuitions in philosophy; and (iv) it does not lead to scepticism.
REGULARITY REFORMULATED
Weng Hong Tang
This paper focuses on the view that rationality requires that our credences be regular. I go through different formulations of the requirement, and show that they face several problems. I then formulate a version of the requirement that solves most of, if not all, these problems. I conclude by showing that an argument thought to support the requirement as traditionally formulated actually does not; if anything, the argument, slightly modified, supports my version of the requirement.
THREE FORMS OF INTERNALISM AND THE NEW EVIL DEMON PROBLEM
Andrew Moon
The new evil demon problem is often considered to be a serious obstacle for externalist theories of epistemic justification. In this paper, I aim to show that the new evil demon problem (‘NEDP’) also afflicts the two most prominent forms of internalism: moderate internalism and historical internalism. Since virtually all internalists accept at least one of these two forms, it follows that virtually all internalists face the NEDP. My secondary thesis is that many epistemologists – including both internalists and externalists – face a dilemma. The only form of internalism that is immune to the NEDP, strong internalism, is a very radical and revisionary view – a large number of epistemologists would have to significantly revise their views about justification in order to accept it. Hence, either epistemologists must accept a theory that is susceptible to the NEDP or accept a very radical and revisionary view.
JUSTIFICATION AS ‘WOULD-BE’ KNOWLEDGE
Aidan McGlynn
In light of the failure of attempts to analyse knowledge as a species of justified belief, a number of epistemologists have suggested that we should instead understand justification in terms of knowledge. This paper focuses on accounts of justification as a kind of ‘would-be’ knowledge. According to such accounts a belief is justified just in case any failure to know is due to uncooperative external circumstances. I argue against two recent accounts of this sort due to Alexander Bird and Martin Smith. A further aim is to defend a more traditional conception, according to which justification is a matter of sufficiently high evidential likelihood. In particular, I suggest that this conception of justification offers a plausible account of lottery cases: cases in which one believes a true proposition – for example that one’s lottery ticket will lose – on the basis of probabilistic evidence.
EVIDENCE OF EVIDENCE AND TESTIMONIAL REDUCTIONISM
William D. Rowley
An objection to reductionism in the epistemology of testimony that is often repeated but rarely defended in detail is that there is not enough positive evidence to provide the non-testimonial, positive reasons reductionism requires. Thus, on pain of testimonial skepticism, reductionism must be rejected. Call this argument the ‘Not Enough Evidence Objection’ (or ‘NEEO’). I will defend reductionism about testimonial evidence against the NEEO by arguing that we typically have non-testimonial positive reasons in the form of evidence about our testifier’s evidence. With a higher-level evidence principle borrowed from recent work on the epistemology of disagreement, I argue that, granting some plausible assumptions about conversational norms, the NEEO is unsound.
THE DANGERS OF USING SAFETY TO EXPLAIN TRANSMISSION FAILURE: A REPLY TO MARTIN SMITH
Chris Tucker
Many epistemologists hold that the Zebra Deduction (the animals are zebras, so they aren’t cleverly disguised mules) fails to transmit knowledge to its conclusion, but there is little agreement concerning why it has this defect. A natural idea is, roughly, that it fails to transmit because it fails to improve the safety of its conclusion. In his ‘Transmission Failure Explained’, Martin Smith defends a transmission principle which is supposed to underwrite this natural idea. There are two problems with Smith’s account. First, Smith’s argument for his transmission principle relies on a dubious premise (§1). Second, even if his transmission principle is true, Smith shows neither that it prevents the Zebra Deduction from transmitting knowledge to its conclusion, nor that it secures the natural idea (§2). I suspect that the failures of Smith’s account will be instructive for anyone who wants to connect transmission failure with a failure to enhance the safety, reliability or probability of one’s conclusion.
December 16, 2012 0 Comments Short URL EPISTEME, Epistemology, Internalism and externalism, Knowledge, Philosophy, social epistemology, Theory of justification, Truth episteme, epistemology
Volume 9 – Issue 03 – September 2012
HIGHER-ORDER EPISTEMIC ATTITUDES AND INTELLECTUAL HUMILITY
Allan Hazlett
RELIABILISM: HOLISTIC OR SIMPLE?
Jeffrey Dunn
GROUP AGENCY AND EPISTEMIC DEPENDENCY
Aaron Dewitt
CONSTRUCTIVIST AND ECOLOGICAL MODELING OF GROUP RATIONALITY
Gerald Gaus
EPISTEMOLOGY IN GROUP AGENCY: SIX OBJECTIONS IN SEARCH OF THE TRUTH
Fabrizio Cariani
HOW TO BE A REDUNDANT REALIST
Kurt L. Sylvan
THE NORMATIVE STANDING OF GROUP AGENTS
Rachael Briggs
EPISTEME SYMPOSIUM ON GROUP AGENCY: REPLIES TO GAUS, CARIANI, SYLVAN, AND BRIGGS
Christian List and Philip Pettit
November 6, 2012 0 Comments Short URL collective intentionality, EPISTEME, Epistemology, group rationality, Jeffrey Dunn, John Scalzi, Philip Pettit, Philosophy, Psychology, social epistemology, Social science epistemology
New issue now available featuring symposium on Christian List and Phillip Pettit.
HIGHER-ORDER EPISTEMIC ATTITUDES AND INTELLECTUAL HUMILITY
Allan Hazlett
RELIABILISM: HOLISTIC OR SIMPLE?
Jeffrey Dunn
GROUP AGENCY AND EPISTEMIC DEPENDENCY Aaron Dewitt
CONSTRUCTIVIST AND ECOLOGICAL MODELING OF GROUP RATIONALITY
Gerald Gaus
EPISTEMOLOGY IN GROUP AGENCY: SIX OBJECTIONS IN SEARCH OF THE TRUTH
Fabrizio Carrion
HOW TO BE A REDUNDANT REALIST
Kurt L. Sylvan
THE NORMATIVE STANDING OF GROUP AGENTS
Rachael Briggs
SYMPOSIUM ON GROUP AGENCY: REPLIES TO GAUS, CARIANI, SYLVAN, AND BRIGGS
Christian List and Philip Pettit
October 5, 2012 0 Comments Short URL collective intentionality, Deductive closure, EPISTEME, Epistemology, group agency, Jeffrey Dunn, Philip Pettit, Philosophy, Psychology, Reliabilism, social epistemology, Social science epistemology
Check out the freely available symposium on Pragmatic Encroachment. Also there is a critical notice of Sandy Goldberg’s Relying on Others (sadly not free) that:
focuses on the book’s central claim, the extendedness hypothesis, according to which the processes relevant for assessing the reliability of a hearer’s testimonial belief include the cognitive processes involved in the production of the testimony.
September 16, 2012 0 Comments Short URL Cognition, EPISTEME, Epistemology, Extended Mind, Externalism, Philosophy of mind, social epistemology, Social science, testimony sandy goldberg
Now available.
July 12, 2012 0 Comments Short URL EPISTEME, Epistemology, social epistemology episteme, epistemology, Formal Social Epistemology
Yet another strong Wiley title. David Coady also did a fine job of guest editing EPISTEME for a themed issue on Conspiracy Theories (aside from Harry Frankfurt’s little book where else would a title in mainstream academia have the word “shit” so prominent – see Pete Mandik’s paper).
June 6, 2012 0 Comments Short URL David Hume, EPISTEME, Epistemology, Jason Stanley, Knowledge, Knowledge Management, social epistemology conspiracy theories, David Coady, episteme, epistemology, evidence, expertise, pete mandik, social epistemology, testimony, Wikipedia
Two free discussion papers from EPISTEME 9:1
EMPIRICAL TESTS OF INTEREST-RELATIVE INVARIANTISM
Chandra Sekhar Sripada and Jason Stanley
According to Interest-Relative Invariantism, whether an agent knows that p, or possesses other sorts of epistemic properties or relations, is in part determined by the practical costs of being wrong about p. Recent studies in experimental philosophy have tested the claims of IRI. After critically discussing prior studies, we present the results of our own experiments that provide strong support for IRI. We discuss our results in light of complementary findings by other theorists, and address the challenge posed by a leading intellectualist alternative to our view.
PRAGMATIC ENCROACHMENT: IT’S NOT JUST ABOUT KNOWLEDGE
Jeremy Fantl and Matthew McGrath
There is pragmatic encroachment on some epistemic status just in case whether a proposition has that status for a subject depends not only on the subject’s epistemic position with respect to the proposition, but also on features of the subject’s non-epistemic, practical environment. Discussions of pragmatic encroachment usually focus on knowledge. Here we argue that, barring infallibilism, there is pragmatic encroachment on what is arguably a more fundamental epistemic status – the status a proposition has when it is warranted enough to be a reason one has for believing other things.
May 31, 2012 0 Comments Short URL EPISTEME, Epistemology, Jason Stanley, Jeremy Fantl, Knowledge, Matthew McGrath, social epistemology episteme
The new issue of EPISTEME, our first with CUP, is now available.
April 5, 2012 0 Comments Short URL Cambridge University Press, Cognitive science, EPISTEME, Epistemology, Knowledge, Philosophy of mind, social epistemology, Social Sciences, Stigmergy alvin goldman, episteme, epistemic systems, epistemics, epistemology, social epistemology