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1
Vahid, Hamid. Epistemic Justification and the Skeptical Challenge. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2005. http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/9780230596214.
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Baldassarri, Fabrizio. Epistemic Practices and Plant Classification in Premodern European Botanical Knowledge. Nieuwe Prinsengracht 89 1018 VR Amsterdam Nederland: Amsterdam University Press, 2025. https://doi.org/10.5117/9789463728072.
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This volume aims to uncover the diverse approach to plants in the Renaissance and seventeenth century that paved the way for a definition of botany as a fully-fledged discipline. Its scope expands beyond the natural historical interest in collections and the fabrication of materia medica: moving from Varchi, Matthioli and Bauhin to Locke, Pinelli, and Linnaeus, among others, the contributions collected here connect practical and theoretical features, dealing with the challenges that characterized any involvement with plants. The authors focus on the linguistic shortcomings, problems in authenticating specimens, and efforts to establish new botanical geographies to favour trades, as well as the pursuits of new methodologies, artisanal technologies, and chymical experiments with plants. Botany thus emerges as a suitable discipline to disclose the complexities and challenges of early modern science in general.
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Vahid, Hamid. Epistemic Justification and the Skeptical Challenge. Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
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Vahid, H. Epistemic Justification and the Skeptical Challenge. Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
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5
Vahid, Professor Hamid, and Hamid Professor Vahid. Epistemic Justification and the Skeptical Challenge. Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.
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6
Smithson, Robert. A New Epistemic Argument for Idealism. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198746973.003.0002.
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Many idealists have challenged realism on epistemic grounds. The worry is that, if it is possible for truths about ordinary objects to outstrip our experiences in the ways that realists typically suppose, we could never be justified in our beliefs about objects. In response, philosophers have offered a variety of proposals to defend the epistemology of our object judgments under the assumption of realism. This chapter offers a new type of epistemic argument against realism to which these standard responses do not apply. In addition to raising a challenge for realism, the epistemology of object judgments has implications for how the idealist should develop her own positive metaphysical view. The second half of the chapter discusses how the idealist should understand the dependence between objects and our experiences if she is to secure epistemic advantages over the realist.
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Goldberg, Sanford C. Epistemic Responsibility in Social Context. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198793670.003.0008.
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This chapter addresses a host of worries that one might have about this book’s account of epistemic propriety and epistemic responsibility. Chief among these are worries about the threat of social relativism in epistemic assessment, the threat of an overly context-sensitive account of epistemic propriety and epistemic responsibility, the challenge to vindicate that one can be epistemically responsible even while alone on a desert island (and so when systematically isolated from others), and the lack of engagement in the book’s account of epistemic responsibility with any discussion of doxastic voluntarism or doxastic control. The author concludes that none of the worries should lead us to reject the proposal on offer.
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Goodin, Robert E., and Kai Spiekermann. An Epistemic Theory of Democracy. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198823452.001.0001.
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One attractive feature of democracy is its ability to track the truth by information aggregation. The formal support for this claim goes back to Condorcet’s famous jury theorem. However, the theorem has often been dismissed as a mathematical curiosity because the assumptions on which the theorem is based are demanding. Such quick dismissals tend to misunderstand the original theorem. They also fail to appreciate how Condorcet’s assumptions can be weakened to obtain jury theorems that are readily applicable in the real world. The first part of the book explains the original theorem and its various extensions and introduces results to deal with the challenge of voter dependence. Part II considers opportunities to make democracies perform better in epistemic terms by improving voter competence and diversity, by dividing epistemic labour, and by preceding voting with deliberation. In the third part, political practices are looked at through an epistemic lens, focusing on the influence of tradition, following opinion leaders or cues, and on settings in which the electorate falls into diverging factions. Part IV analyses the implications for the structures of government. While arguing against the case for epistocracy, the use of deliberation and expert advice in representative democracy can lead to improved truth-tracking, provided epistemic bottlenecks are avoided. The final part summarizes the results and explores how epistemic democracy might be undermined, using as case studies the Trump and Brexit campaigns.
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Goldman, Alvin I. Gettier and the Epistemic Appraisal of Philosophical Intuition. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198724551.003.0013.
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Gettier’s 1963 paper was enormously influential. Virtually all epistemologists agreed with Gettier that the JTB analaysis was mistaken. But this conclusion evidently depended on the reliability of the shared intuitions of Gettier’s and his philosophical contemporaries about the epistemological examples described in his chapter. How reliable are such intuitions? Today many philosophers challenge the reliability of classification intuitions. How are such challenges to be addressed, and what can we learn about the comparative reliability of putative experts (e.g. philosophers) and laypersons? Here it is proposed that philosophers can study this with the help of psychological techniques—including not only interview techniques of the kind utilized by experimental philosophers but other experimental techniques as well. Ways to investigate intuition’s reliability are illustrated.
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Snow, Nancy E. Adaptive Misbeliefs, Value Trade-Offs, and Epistemic Responsibility. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198779681.003.0003.
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Snow focuses on a class of beliefs that have been called ‘adaptive misbeliefs’—beliefs that are false or ungrounded, but nevertheless helpful for action—and argues that they are not epistemically justified by the greater pragmatic value they accrue for the believer. She then argues that this verdict remains even if the greater value is epistemic value rather than pragmatic value. This work is consonant with earlier work critical of epistemic consequentialism concerning epistemic trade-offs, but adds to it by rendering it plausible that there are actual cases of adaptive misbelief that instantiate such problematic trade-offs. Snow also adds that we should be able to not only judge whether an agent’s belief is justified, but also whether the agent is believing responsibly or irresponsibly. If she’s right about this, then it is a further challenge for the epistemic consequentialist to say something about this sort of epistemic verdict.
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Chang, Hasok. Epistemic iteration and natural kinds: Realism and pluralism in taxonomy. Edited by Kenneth S. Kendler and Josef Parnas. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/med/9780198796022.003.0029.
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Psychiatry can benefit from methods of handling the challenge of evolving and shifting taxonomy that have been effective in other areas. Epistemic iteration creates successive stages of knowledge in order to attain certain goals. Inquiry can begin in the absence of assured foundations, using the results to correct and refine its starting point. If the iterative process converges, the pattern may be regarded as cumulative progress. But what if convergence is to a “local minimum, ” not to the best answer? I propose that all local minima should be appreciated as achievements with realist significance. A field like medicine or social care seems to require a unified taxonomic framework for the effective coordination of action, so it may be best to maintain one system as the official framework for action while fostering research in multiple systems, until another system shows itself to be clearly superior to the official one.
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Douglas, Heather. Values in Science. Edited by Paul Humphreys. Oxford University Press, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199368815.013.28.
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After describing the origins and nature of the value-free ideal for science, this chapter details three challenges to the ideal: the descriptive challenge (arising from feminist critiques of science, which led to deeper examinations of social structures in science), the boundary challenge (which questioned whether epistemic values can be distinguished from nonepistemic values), and the normative challenge (which questioned the ideal qua ideal on the basis of inductive risk and scientific responsibility). The chapter then discusses alternative ideals for values in science, including recent arguments regarding epistemic values, arguments distinguishing direct from indirect roles for values, and arguments calling for more attention to getting the values right. Finally, the chapter turns to the many ways in which values influence science and the importance of getting a richer understanding of the place of science within society in order to address the questions about the place of values in science.
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Bari, Abdallah. Subtle Challenges of Big Data: Diving into Big Data Epistemic Challenges. Independently Published, 2017.
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Herzog, Lisa. The Use of Knowledge in Organizations. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198830405.003.0006.
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This chapter analyses the challenges for a responsible handling of knowledge in organizations, in which, as spaces of divided labour, divided knowledge needs to be integrated into processes of joint work. Gaps in the transmission of knowledge can create dangerous moral challenges. Another moral challenge, however, is the disrespect often shown to individuals as bearers of knowledge. The hierarchical structures of organizations present obstacles both to the smooth transmission of knowledge, and to a culture of respect for various kinds of knowledge. These two issues are closely intertwined, making ‘knowledge management’ a deeply moral affair, and creating the imperative to develop and maintain a supportive epistemic culture in organizations.
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Benton, Matthew A., and Jonathan L. Kvanvig, eds. Religious Disagreement and Pluralism. Oxford University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198849865.001.0001.
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This volume explores many issues at the intersection of the epistemology of disagreement and religious epistemology. Epistemological questions about the significance of disagreement have advanced in concert with broader developments in social epistemology concerning testimony, the nature of expertise and epistemic authority, the role of institutions, group belief, and epistemic injustice, among others. During this period, related issues in the epistemology of religion have re-emerged as worthy of new consideration, and available to be situated with new conceptual tools. Does disagreement between, and within, religions, challenge the rationality of religious commitment? How should religious adherents think about exclusivist, inclusivist, and pluralist frameworks as applied to religious truth, or to matters of salvation or redemption? This volume engages in careful reflection on religious diversity and disagreement, offering ways to balance epistemic humility with personal conviction. Recognizing the place of religious differences in our social lives, it provides renewed efforts at how best to think about truths concerning religion.
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Love, Alan C. Evo-Devo and the Structure(s) of Evolutionary Theory. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199377176.003.0005.
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Many researchers have argued that evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo) constitutes a challenge to standard evolutionary theory, requiring the explicit inclusion of developmental processes that generate variation and attention to organismal form (rather than adaptive function). An analysis of these developmental-form challenges indicates that the primary concern is not the inclusion of specific content but the epistemic organization or structure of evolutionary theory. Proponents of developmental-form challenges favor moving their considerations to a more central location in evolutionary theorizing, in part because of a commitment to the value of mechanistic explanation. This chapter argues there are multiple legitimate structures for evolutionary theory, instead of a single, overarching or canonical organization, and different theory presentations can be understood as idealizations that serve different investigative and explanatory goals in evolutionary inquiry.
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Epistemic Challenges in a Modern World: From "fake News" and "post Truth" to Underlying Epistemic Challenges in Science-Based Risk-societies. Lit Verlag, 2020.
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Bergmann, Michael. Radical Skepticism and Epistemic Intuition. Oxford University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192898487.001.0001.
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Radical Skepticism and Epistemic Intuition rejects argument-based attempts to resist radical skepticism and advocates, instead, for noninferential intuition-based commonsense resistance inspired by the eighteenth-century Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid. The book begins by setting aside closure-based arguments for radical skepticism and focusing on the more fundamental underdetermination arguments, which highlight the problematic gap between our evidence and our beliefs that are based on that evidence despite their truth being underdetermined by it. The rejected argument-based response to skepticism aims to provide good noncircular arguments from the evidence on which we base our ordinary beliefs (e.g. our perceptual and memory beliefs) to the conclusion that those beliefs are true or at least probable. Part I of the book finds all such anti-skeptical arguments wanting. Part II lays out and defends a unique version of the commonsense Reid-inspired response to radical skepticism, with two distinctive features. The first is its self-conscious, explicit, and extensive reliance on epistemic intuitions, which are seemings about the nature and exemplification of epistemic goods (such as justification or knowledge). The second is that it is ecumenical in the sense that it can be endorsed without difficulty by both internalists and externalists in epistemology. Part III of the book responds to objections to the commonsense reliance on epistemic intuitions proposed in Part II, with special attention given to challenges from underdetermination, epistemic circularity, disagreement, and experimental philosophy.
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Arias-Gutiérrez, Ruth. Plurinationality and Epistemic Justice: The Challenges of Intercultural Education in Ecuadorian Amazonia. Palgrave Macmillan, 2024.
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Krohn, Wolfgang. Interdisciplinary Cases and Disciplinary Knowledge. Edited by Robert Frodeman. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198733522.013.5.
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“Interdisciplinary Cases and Disciplinary Knowledge: Epistemic Challenges of Interdisciplinary Research” provides a conceptual framework of interdisciplinarity in the context of contemporary philosophy of science and social epistemology. It describes a widespread tension between the interdisciplinary commitment to complex real-world problems and the disciplinary strategies to build simplified models. While real-world problems call for highly specific and context-sensitive solutions, disciplinary problems serve as exemplars of more a general type. The epistemological challenge of interdisciplinarity is to relate knowledge about complex and singular cases with knowledge about generalized concepts and causalities. This relationship calls for a combination between the “humanistic” ideal of understanding the individual case, and the “scientific” search for common features of different cases. In practice interdisciplinary projects find ways to bridge causal explanation and the concern for the case. An epistemological attempt is made to conceptually integrate the search for universally applicable knowledge and idiographic richness.
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Khalifa, Kareem, Jared Millson, and Mark Risjord. Inference to the Best Explanation. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198746904.003.0006.
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Many epistemologists take Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) to be “fundamental.” For instance, Lycan (1988, 128) writes that “all justified reasoning is fundamentally explanatory reasoning.” Conee and Feldman (2008, 97) concur: “fundamental epistemic principles are principles of best explanation.” Call them fundamentalists. They assert that nothing deeper could justify IBE, as is typically assumed of rules of deductive inference, such as modus ponens. We will argue that the (explanatory) pluralism adopted by the leading theorists of the best explanation—philosophers of science—undermines fundamentalism. Section 1 clarifies fundamentalism’s key tenets. Section 2 presents pluralism’s challenge to fundamentalism. Section 3 considers a potential fundamentalist reply to this challenge. Sections 4 through 6 canvass the leading candidates for developing this fundamentalist reply, showing each to be unsatisfactory.
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Hutchison, Katrina, Catriona Mackenzie, and Marina Oshana, eds. Social Dimensions of Moral Responsibility. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190609610.001.0001.
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Philosophical theorizing about moral responsibility has recently taken a “social” turn, marking a shift in focus from traditional metaphysical concerns about free will and determinism. Yet despite this social turn, the implications of structural injustice and inequalities of power for theorizing about moral responsibility remain surprisingly neglected in philosophical literature. Recent theories have attended to the interpersonal dynamics at the heart of moral responsibility practices, and the role of the moral environment in scaffolding agential capacities. However, they assume an overly idealized conception of agency and of our moral responsibility practices as reciprocal exchanges between equally empowered and situated agents. The essays in this volume systematically challenge this assumption. Leading theorists of moral responsibility, including Michael McKenna, Marina Oshana, and Manuel Vargas, consider the implications of oppression and structural inequality for their respective theories. Neil Levy urges the need to refocus our analyses of the epistemic and control conditions for moral responsibility from individual to socially extended agents. Leading theorists of relational autonomy, including Catriona Mackenzie, Natalie Stoljar, and Andrea Westlund develop new insights into the topic of moral responsibility. Other contributors bring debates about moral responsibility into dialogue with recent work in feminist philosophy, and topics such as epistemic injustice, implicit bias and blame. Collectively, the essays in this volume reorient philosophical debates about moral responsibility in important new directions.
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Guerra Hernandez, Hector. Estudos africanos: abordagens e possibilidades heurísticas de uma área em construção interdisciplinar. Brazil Publishing, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.31012/978-65-990565-1-2.
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Scholars presently engaged in African History have to face obstacles inherent to the constraints which involve academic production and its regimens of truth. It is in the circle of academic debates that one may grasp the lack of epistemic autonomy not only in defining our own historical questions, but also our heuristic models and approaches. Being able to call into question such regimens of truth which sustain the production of knowledge about the African continent is contingent on the critical reframing of epistemic vantage points, in spite of the recognition that that the very conceptual frameworks and categorization systems remain embedded in Western epistemology. Critically grasping this fact represents a challenge of daunting proportions. Therefore, to make historical sense of African societies' constitutive processes it is imperative to provincialize the political historicism which insists in placing the State as a definitive, rational and consolidated form of political organization. The analytical gaze deployed in this book intends to set out of the inverse perspective by focusing upon processes of social mobility, associativism and conflict management as constitutive elements of these societies. It is posited that it is possible to approach these processes out of the usual paradigms of modern states - either colonial or contemporary - in order to build heuristic perspectives conducive to the uplifting of social agency and autonomy of African historical processes.
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Kiesewetter, Benjamin. An Evidence-Relative Account of Reasons. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198754282.003.0008.
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Chapter 8 develops a theory of how claims about what an agent ought or has reason to do are sensitive to this agent’s evidence, which preserves the plausible ideas that reasons are facts and that reasons can be discovered in deliberation and disclosed in advice. The first part introduces the philosophical debate over the normative relevance of epistemic circumstances, clarifies the thesis, and argues for it (8.1–8.4). The second part discusses the main challenge for the view, which is to account for practices (most notably advice) in which ‘ought’ is geared to information that is better than the agent’s present evidence (8.5). It is argued that this challenge can be met by accounting for the distinction between synchronic and diachronic reasons, that is, reasons for acting immediately and reasons for acting at some later time, and realizing the different ways in which such reasons are sensitive to evidence (8.6–8.8).
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Weintraub, Ruth. Scepticism about Inference to the Best Explanation. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198746904.003.0012.
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Scepticism about inference to the best explanation is far less often discussed than scepticism about another ampliative form of inference, enumerative induction. Both of these inference forms are widely used, and scepticism about either can pose an important challenge. This chapter aims to redress the imbalance by giving scepticism about inference to the best explanation the attention it, too, deserves. The chapter’s conclusion is that inference to the best explanation, even to the observable, may be in a worse epistemic position than enumerative induction. The reason for this is that there are sceptical arguments that target inference to the best explanation which do not have inductive analogues, but the converse is not true.
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Brad Wray, K. The Impact of Collaboration on the Epistemic Cultures of Science. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190680534.003.0006.
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This chapter examines how collaborative research affects the epistemic cultures of science. It begins by arguing that some groups of scientists hold views that are irreducibly the views of the group. The chapter also examines some normative issues that have arisen in the epistemic cultures of science. First, it considers how collaborative research threatens to erode the traditional notion of authorship in science. Second, it examines how collaborative research in science affects refereeing. The chapter argues that the norms of authorship and the refereeing practices have not developed to address the challenges encountered in the cultures of science where collaborative research is commonplace.
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Theurer, Karina, and Wolfgang Kaleck, eds. Dekoloniale Rechtskritik und Rechtspraxis. Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG, 2020. http://dx.doi.org/10.5771/9783748903628.
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The first collection of key texts on post- and decolonial legal theory and TWAIL in German translation. The theoretical portion of the book is supplemented by practice-based reflections from activists and lawyers, which serve to consider, add to or challenge the theoretical approaches. These links to specific struggles for law, power, social justice, material equality and resources can help to show the extent to which contemporary situations of exploitation and inequality are an expression or consequence of historically contingent power dynamics, and the extent to which they can be read in light of processes of colonisation. The book, which seeks to challenge epistemic violence, is meant to spark critical debate on its contents and more. It aims to further productive dialogues and unsettle ostensibly settled fundamental assumptions, including those from the sphere of legal theory. With contributions by Antony Anghie, Makau Mutua, Bhupinder Chimni, Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Maria Lugones, Martti Koskenniemi, Anne Orford, Tarcila Rivera Zea, Colin Gonsalves, Alejandra Ancheita, Simon Masodzi Chinyai, Rupert Hambira, Kamutuua Hosea Kandorozu, Wolfgang Kaleck, Karina Theurer
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Brown, Jessica. Undermining Defeat. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198801771.003.0006.
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This chapter examines the challenge posed to undermining defeat by ‘level-splitting’ views according to which it is sometimes rational for one to be in in epistemically akratic combination of states, say, maintaining the belief that p while also holding that one’s evidence does not support that p. This chapter argues against such level-splitting views by developing arguments already in the literature that such views lead to problematic practical and theoretical reasoning. It then turns to examine and reject arguments for level-splitting views based on 1) the possibility of justified false beliefs about one’s epistemic standing; and 2) the possibility of evidence being misleading about itself. Together with chapter 5, this chapter completes the defence of the phenomenon of defeat, and thus of the conclusion that closure fails because of defeat quite independently of the debate between infallibilism and fallibilism.
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Henderson, Andrea. Geometry. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198809982.003.0002.
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Edwin Abbott’s Flatland dramatizes the implications of dethroning what Victorians regarded as the preeminent representational system: Euclidean geometry. The displacement of the singular Euclidean account of space with a multiplicity of non-referential spatial regimes did more than introduce the possibility of varying perspectives on the world; the challenge to the “sacredness” of Euclid met with resistance partly because it suggested the ideal of a transparent representational system was inherently untenable. Flatland explores the repercussions of this problem for the novel, shifting emphasis from the revelation of the content of character to focus on the vagaries of point of view. The characters are Euclidean figures shown the limitations of their constructions of the world, and epistemic certainty is unavailable because all representational systems are contingent. Abbott finds consolation for this loss of certainty in the formalist, aesthetic character of projective geometry, insisting on the beauty of signs in and of themselves.
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Disch, Lisa, and Mary Hawkesworth, eds. The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theory. Oxford University Press, 2015. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199328581.001.0001.
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The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theory provides an overview of the analytical frameworks and theoretical concepts feminist theorists have developed to challenge established knowledge. Leading feminist theorists, from around the globe, provide in-depth explorations of a diverse array of subject areas, capturing a plurality of approaches. The Handbook raises new questions, brings new evidence, and poses significant challenges across the spectrum of academic disciplines, demonstrating the interdisciplinary nature of feminist theory. The chapters offer innovative analyses of the central topics in social and political science (e.g. civilization, development, divisions of labor, economies, institutions, markets, migration, militarization, prisons, policy, politics, representation, the state/nation, the transnational, violence); cultural studies and the humanities (e.g. affect, agency, experience, identity, intersectionality, jurisprudence, narrative, performativity, popular culture, posthumanism, religion, representation, standpoint, temporality, visual culture); and discourses in medicine and science (e.g. cyborgs, health, intersexuality, nature, pregnancy, reproduction, science studies, sex/gender, sexuality, transsexuality) and contemporary critical theory that have been transformed through feminist theorization (e.g. biopolitics, coloniality, diaspora, the microphysics of power, norms/normalization, postcoloniality, race/racialization, subjectivity/subjectivation). The Handbook identifies the limitations of key epistemic assumptions that inform traditional scholarship and shows how theorizing from women’s and men’s lives has profound effects on the conceptualization of central categories, whether the field of analysis is aesthetics, biology, cultural studies, development, economics, film studies, health, history, literature, politics, religion, science studies, sexualities, violence, or war.
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Puddifoot, Katherine. How Stereotypes Deceive Us. Oxford University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780192845559.001.0001.
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Stereotypes sometimes lead us to make poor judgements of other people, but they also have the potential to facilitate quick, efficient, and accurate judgements. How can we discern whether any individual act of stereotyping will have the positive or negative effect? How Stereotypes Deceive Us addresses this question. It identifies various factors that determine whether or not the application of a stereotype to an individual in a specific context will facilitate or impede correct judgements and perceptions of the individual. It challenges the thought that stereotyping only and always impedes correct judgement when the stereotypes that are applied are inaccurate, failing to reflect social realities. It argues instead that stereotypes that reflect social realities can lead to misperceptions and misjudgements, and that inaccurate but egalitarian social attitudes can facilitate correct judgements and accurate perceptions. The arguments presented in this book have important implications for those who might engage in stereotyping and for those at risk of being stereotyped. They have implications for those who work in healthcare and those who have mental health conditions. How Stereotypes Deceive Us provides a new conceptual framework—evaluative dispositionalism—that captures the epistemic faults of stereotypes and stereotyping, providing conceptual resources that can be used to improve our own thinking by avoiding the pitfalls of stereotyping, and to challenge other people’s stereotyping where it is likely to lead to misperception and misjudgement.
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Devetak, Richard. International Relations before Critical Theory. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198823568.003.0002.
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The chapter elaborates the post-war disciplinary context from which critical international theory emerged. While most accounts start with the so-called ‘third debate’, this chapter situates its emergence in the longer story of the rise in theory’s prestige in the social sciences. It tells the story of a series of disputes over method (Methodenstreit) that paved the way not just for higher levels of theoretical abstraction, and a never vanquished humanist challenge to the scientific outlook. It was during the 1950s that the persona of the theorist was first established in international relations. In the following decades, personae of the international relations theorist evolved through academic institutionalization of certain epistemic practices and technical capabilities modelled on behaviouralist and philosophy-of-science standards. The stage was thus set for a rival, namely, critical intellectual persona to emerge in opposition to both the humanist and scientific outlooks, but in continuity with the ever-higher orders of abstraction.
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Maitra, Ishani. Lying, Acting, and Asserting. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198743965.003.0004.
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This chapter defends the intent-to-deceive conception of lying against the challenge posed by bald-faced lies. It argues that bald-faced lies aren’t lies, because they’re not assertions. The chapter begins by arguing that lies must be assertions. Next, it sketches a view of assertion according to which a constitutive rule of asserting is being responsive to evidence in a particular way. Then, focusing on two well-known examples of bald-faced lies, it argues that those speakers don’t assert anything; rather, they do something more like what an actor does. The argument thus removes an important objection to the intent-to-deceive tradition. It also offers a different way of thinking about lying. Defenders of bald-faced lies sometimes describe them as attempts to ‘go on record’. This chapter defends an alternate view according to which lying involves taking a kind of (epistemic) responsibility for the content of one’s utterance.
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Johnson, L. Syd M. The Ethics of Uncertainty. Oxford University Press, 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/med/9780190943646.001.0001.
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Disorders of consciousness (DoCs) raise difficult and complex questions about the value of life for persons with impaired consciousness, the rights of persons unable to make medical decisions, and our social, medical, and ethical obligations to patients whose personhood has frequently been challenged and neglected. Recent neuroscientific discoveries have led to enhanced understanding of the heterogeneity of these disorders and patients, and focused renewed attention on the disturbingly high rate of misdiagnosis. This book examines the entanglement of epistemic and ethical uncertainty in DoCs and other medical contexts, and how they interact to create both epistemic and ethical risks. Philosopher and bioethicist L. Syd M Johnson pulls together multiple threads—the ontological mysteries of consciousness, medical uncertainty about unconsciousness, ableist bias, withdrawal of treatment in neurointensive care, and the rarely questioned view that consciousness is essential to personhood and moral status. Johnson challenges longstanding bioethical dogmas about DoC patients, and argues for an ethics of uncertainty for contexts where there is a need for decisive action in the presence of unavoidable uncertainty. The ethics of uncertainty refocuses ethical inquiry concerning persons with DoCs, placing less emphasis on their contested personhood, and more on inductive risk and uncertainty, on respect for autonomy, and especially on epistemic justice, and the duties of privileged epistemic agents. It is an approach with applications beyond brain injury, encouraging an expansive and humane approach that enables surrogate decision makers facing fraught, complex, risky choices to fulfill their obligations as moral and epistemic agents.
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Fairweather, Abrol, and Carlos Montemayor. Virtue Epistemology and Psychology. Edited by Nancy E. Snow. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199385195.013.16.
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This chapter examines connections between virtue epistemology and psychology. The authors’ interest is thus to explain, understand, and evaluate virtue theoretic forms of epistemic psychology. Section I provides a brief overview of virtue epistemology; section II then discusses the two main types of virtue epistemological theories currently on offer (responsibilism and reliabilism). Section III examines empirical challenges to responsibilism from social psychology (epistemic situationism) and some lines of response. Section IV concludes by showing that a pressing problem for virtue reliabilism, namely providing an adequate account of epistemic agency, can be resolved by utilizing recent empirical work in the psychology of attention. The authors defend an empirically informed account of epistemic agency suitable for virtue reliabilism.
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Siegel, Harvey. Cultivating Reason. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190682675.003.0001.
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The Western philosophical tradition has historically valorized the cultivation of reason as a fundamental intellectual ideal. This ideal continues to be defended by many as educationally basic. However, recent philosophical work has challenged it on several fronts, including worries stemming from relativistic tendencies in the philosophy of science, the apparent ubiquity of epistemic dependence in social epistemology, and broad critiques of objectionable hegemony launched from feminist and postmodernist perspectives. This chapter briefly reviews the historical record, connects the cultivation of reason to the educational ideal of critical thinking, spells out the latter ideal, and evaluates these challenges. It ends by sketching a general, “transcendental” reply to all such critiques of reason.
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Gerken, Mikkel. Against Knowledge-First Epistemology. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198716310.003.0003.
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This chapter attacks, on several fronts, what is often cited as a theoretical advantage to regarding knowledge as a theoretical primitive—namely, that knowledge can be used to reductively analyse other epistemic phenomena. It suggests that proponents of such an approach commit a similar mistake to the one that they charge their opponents with—viz., the mistake of seeking to reductively analyse basic epistemic phenomena in terms of other allegedly more basic or fundamental phenomena. After leveling this charge against reductionist brands of knowledge-first epistemology, the chapter takes the knowledge norm of assertion as its critical focus and challenges non-reductionist brands of knowledge-first epistemology. It concludes by articulating an alternative to knowledge-first methodology: that is labeled ‘equilibristic epistemology’. According to equilibristic epistemology there isn’t a single epistemic phenomenon or concept that is ‘first’. Rather, there are a number of basic epistemic phenomena that are not reductively analysable although they may be co-elucidated in a non-reductive manner.
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Beebe, James R. Does Skepticism Presuppose Explanationism? Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198746904.003.0011.
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Explanationist (or abductivist) responses to skepticism maintain that our commonsense beliefs about the external world can be rationally preferred to skeptical hypotheses on the grounds that the former provide better explanations of our sensory experiences than the latter. This kind of response to radical skepticism has never enjoyed widespread acceptance in the epistemological community due to concerns about the epistemic merits of inference to the best explanation and appeals to the explanatory virtues. Against this tide of skepticism about explanationism, the chapter argues that traditional skeptical challenges rest upon central explanationist tenets and thus that one cannot harbor doubts about the general class of explanationist responses to skepticism while at the same time granting the force of the skeptical challenges they seek to answer. This chapter also shows how explanationist principles do a better job than epistemic closure and underdetermination principles in articulating the structure and force of skeptical challenges.
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de Melo-Martín, Inmaculada, and Kristen Intemann. Dissent and Its Discontents. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190869229.003.0001.
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This introductory chapter presents the philosophical approach used in this book to deal with the problematic epistemic and social consequences of some scientific dissent. It challenges approaches to this problem that focus on finding criteria to identify what the authors have termed normatively inappropriate dissent (NID), and it calls for a reframing of the problem that highlights some of the epistemic and social conditions actually contributing to making NID more damaging: scientific institutions and practices that undermine warranted public trust in science and a misunderstanding of the role of science in policy making. It also offers an overview of the book and specifically describes each of the chapters.
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Abraham, William J., and Frederick D. Aquino, eds. The Oxford Handbook of the Epistemology of Theology. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199662241.001.0001.
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This Handbook examines and articulates what counts as appropriate epistemic evaluation in theology. Part I focuses on some of the epistemic concepts that have been traditionally employed in theology (e.g. knowledge of God, revelation and scripture, reason and faith, experience, and tradition). Part I also considers concepts that have not received sufficient epistemological attention in theology (e.g. saints, authority, ecclesial practices, spiritual formation, and discernment). Part II concentrates on epistemic concepts that have received significant attention in contemporary epistemology and can be related to theology (e.g. understanding, wisdom, testimony, virtue, evidence, foundationalism, realism/antirealism, scepticism, and disagreement). Part III offers examples from key figures in the Christian tradition and investigates the relevant epistemological issues and insights in the work of these writers, as well as recognizing the challenges of connecting insights from contemporary epistemology with the subject of theology proper, namely, God. Part IV centres on five emerging areas that warrant further epistemological consideration: liberation theology, continental philosophy, modern Orthodox writers, feminism, and Pentecostalism.
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Blome-Tillmann, Michael. The Semantics of Knowledge Attributions. Oxford University Press, 2022. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198716303.001.0001.
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This monograph offers a critical overview of the current debate on The Semantics of Knowledge Attributions. It falls into five main parts. In Part I, the book introduces the reader to the literature on ‘knowledge’-attributions by outlining the historical roots of the debate and providing an in-depth discussion of epistemic contextualism. After examining the advantages and disadvantages of the view, Part II offers a detailed investigation of epistemic impurism (or pragmatic encroachment views), while Part III is devoted to a careful examination of epistemic relativism. Part IV then discusses two different types of strict invariantism (psychological and pragmatic), while the final part of the book, Part V, is devoted to Presuppositional Epistemic Contextualism—a version of contextualism that is argued to provide a more powerful and elegant account of the semantics of ‘knowledge’-attributions than many of its competitors. Each of the views discussed in this book is outlined in detail by offering a clear and precise account of the main principles underlying each view and how they aim to explain the pertinent data and resolve philosophical puzzles and challenges. The book also provides charts outlining the relations between the positions discussed and offers suggestions for further readings.
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Shiffrin, Seana Valentine. Sincerity and Institutional Values. Princeton University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.23943/princeton/9780691157023.003.0007.
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This chapter examines freedom of speech and sincerity in relation to institutions and institutional roles, using the university as a prime example. It first challenges the idea that mere declarations that one is suspending the context of truthfulness are sufficient to justify doing so, and illustrates the defects of this idea through a discussion of the doctrine of puffery in contract law. It then makes the case that an institution's epistemic ends may preclude lies in their service by citing the example of the police. It also explores the concept of academic freedom and misrepresentations in the university, focusing on the issue of lying to research subjects. The chapter argues that universities have distinctive epistemic goals that in turn provide an independent basis for academic freedom, as well as a special source of criticism of the use of misrepresentation as a tool of academic research.
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Wikforss, Åsa. Incomplete Understanding of Concepts. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199935314.013.49.
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This article discusses the thesis that a subject can have a concept, think thoughts containing it, that she incompletely understands. The central question concerns how to construe the distinction between having a concept and understanding it. Two important versions of the thesis are distinguished: a metasemantic version and an epistemic version. According to the first, the subject may have concept C without being a fully competent user, in virtue of deference to other speakers or to the world. According to the second, the subject may have a concept without being able to provide a proper explication of it. It is argued that whereas the epistemic version is plausible, the metasemantic version faces some challenges. First, it needs to be explained precisely how deference enables a speaker to have C. Second, metasemantic incomplete understanding is in tension with the idea that concepts serve to capture the subject’s cognitive perspective.
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El-Shaarawi, Nadia, and Stéphanie Larchanché, eds. Migration and Health: Challenging the Borders of Belonging, Care, and Policy. Berghahn Books, 2022. http://dx.doi.org/10.3167/9781800735019.
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Despite the centrality of migration in our contemporary world, scholarship on mobility and health frequently separates migrants according to legal status, country of origin, destination, or health concern. Yet people on the move and health systems face challenges and opportunities that transcend these boundaries, including border fortification, neoliberal agendas, and climate change. This volume explores these epistemic borders, recognizing the necessity of a new conversation about migration and health. Each of the empirically grounded chapters introduces readers to pressing questions of migration and health in diverse social, political, and geographical settings.
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Anderson, Charity. Putting Fallibilism to Work. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198758709.003.0002.
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The principle that when one knows p, one is in a good enough epistemic position to treat p as a reason for action is used to motivate pragmatic encroachment. When combined with fallibilism, this principle (Sufficiency) results in the rejection of purism, the view that pragmatic factors are irrelevant to knowledge. Fallibilism, purism, and Sufficiency each have substantial prima facie intuitive support; and yet the three seem to form an inconsistent triad. The author of this chapter challenges the account of reasons that underlies one prominent way of arguing for Sufficiency and then she delineates a position that manages to avoid the trilemma.
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Kreitmair, Karola V., and Mildred K. Cho. The neuroethical future of wearable and mobile health technology. Oxford University Press, 2017. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198786832.003.0005.
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Wearable and mobile health technology is becoming increasingly pervasive, both in professional healthcare settings and with individual consumers. This chapter delineates the various functionalities of this technology and identifies its different purposes. It then addresses the ethical challenges that this pervasiveness poses in the areas of accuracy and reliability of the technology, privacy and confidentiality of data, consent, and the democratization of healthcare. It also looks at mobile mental health apps as a case study to elucidate the discussion of ethical issues. Finally, the chapter turns to the question of how this technology and the associated “quantification of the self” affect traditional modes of epistemic access to and phenomenological conceptions of the self.
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Pittard, John. Disagreement, Deference, and Religious Commitment. Oxford University Press, 2019. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780190051815.001.0001.
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The striking extent of religious disagreement suggests that religious conviction is very often the result of processes that do not reliably produce true beliefs. For this reason, many have argued that the only rational response to religious disagreement is to adopt a religious skepticism that eschews confident religious belief. This book contests this conclusion, explaining how it could be rational to maintain confident religious (or irreligious) belief even in the face of persistent disagreement. Part I argues against the commitment to rigorous epistemic impartiality that underlies the case for disagreement-motivated religious skepticism, while also critiquing highly sanguine approaches to disagreement that allow for an unproblematic privileging of one’s first-person perspective. According to the position defended in part I, justified confidence in the face of religious disagreement is likely to require that one have rational insight into reasons that favor one’s outlook. It is argued that many of the rational insights that are crucial to assessing religious outlooks are not achievable through analytical reasoning but only through having the right sort of emotional experiences. Part II considers the implications for religious commitment of accepting the impartiality requirement favored by “disagreement skeptics.” Challenges are raised to the assumption that a commitment to rigorous epistemic impartiality rules out confident religious belief. But it is further argued that such a commitment would likely make it irrational to pursue one’s favored form of religious life and might lead to normative uncertainty that would prevent rational engagement in any religious or irreligious way of life whatsoever.
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Halpin, Harry. Solving the Frame Problem Socially. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198801764.003.0014.
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The question of how technology impacts the existing forms of epistemology and forms a new kind of socially extended epistemology deserves a thorough philosophical investigation. Traditionally, epistemology has been bound to a vision of knowledge as internal beliefs justified via logical inference. This view was externalized by artificial intelligence research into knowledge representation. Yet historically this form of research has failed, with knowledge representation being unable to cope with the Frame Problem: How to capture a changing and fluid world in a formal system that can be mechanized? Today, people use search engines, tagging, and social media to leave an enactive “social trail” through the vast amount of information, creating new kinds of distributed and extended knowledge that challenges traditional theories of epistemology. This shaping of the epistemic environment allows humans to socially solve the Frame Problem and extend the bounds of knowledge via technological means.
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Hasan, Ali. In Defense of Rationalism about Abductive Inference. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198746904.003.0010.
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Laurence BonJour and more recently James Beebe have argued that the best way to defend the claim that abduction or inference to the best explanation is epistemically justified is the rationalist view that it is justified a priori. However, rationalism about abduction faces a number of challenges. This chapter focuses on one particular, highly influential objection, that there is no interpretation of probability available which is compatible with rationalism about abduction. The rationalist who wants to maintain a strong connection between epistemic justification and probability would do best to rely on a Keynesian interpretation of probability. However, the latter is vulnerable to Ramsey’s famous criticism that we do not seem to perceive or be aware of such probabilities. The chapter argues that Ramsey’s criticism is unsuccessful, and that there are good reasons to be optimistic about our ability to have access to probabilities relevant to abductive inference.
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Henderson, Leah. Bayesianism and IBE. Oxford University Press, 2018. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198746904.003.0016.
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Different views have been proposed about how Inference to the Best Explanation (IBE) and Bayesianism might be compatible with one another. One is a hybrid view, according to which explanatory considerations play a role in driving the Bayesian machinery. Another is an ‘emergent compatibilist’ view, in which an independently motivated Bayesian model of IBE is provided, so that explanatory considerations emerge from the Bayesian machinery rather than driving it. Specific scientific arguments can serve as test cases for these general views. The chapter argues that the case of Williams’ argument against group selection, discussed by Elliott Sober, is better understood with the emergent compatibilist picture, than with the hybrid view. This analysis of the case challenges Elliott Sober’s claim that the epistemic significance of appeals to the explanatory virtue of parsimony is highly case-specific. Instead, a more unified picture of IBE and its connection to Bayesianism is suggested.