forthcoming in Philosophy Compass [penultimate draft .pdf file] A survey of the contemporary social constructionist landscape.

As Paul Boghossian sees it, postmodernist relativists and constructivists are paralyzed by a “fear of knowledge.” For example, they lack the courage to say, in the face of the Lakotas’ claim that their ancestors came from inside the earth, that it is a matter of known fact that their ancestors came across the Bering Strait. To avoid this, they accept the nonconfrontational view Boghossian calls..

(No abstract is available for this citation).

The following paper presents and discuses the epistemological premises of one of the relativistic expressions of the so-called constructivism i.e. the social constructionism. Firstly, we trace constructivism’s theoretical origins and later, we distinguish the main ideas of Kenneth Gergen’s social constructionist proposal. The analysis is done in the following way: (a) we analyse the epistemological premises and the philosophical problems arising from them, and (b) we analyse the problematic impact these premises have in the praxis of social sciences. Finally, we (...) conclude that the exclusion of clear philosophical distinctions inside social constructionism undermines social constructionism’s plausibility. El siguiente artículo presenta y discute los postulados epistemológicos de una de las expresiones relativistas del denominado constructivismo i.e. el construccionismo social. En primer momento, se rastrean los orígenes teóricos del constructivismo y, posteriormente, se distinguen los principales postulados del construccionismo social de Kenneth Gergen. El análisis se realiza del siguiente modo: (a) Se analizan los supuestos epistemológicos y los problemas filosóficos derivados de éstos, y (b) Se analizan las consecuencias que los postulados construccionistas tienen en la praxis que llevan a cabo las ciencias sociales. Finalmente, se concluye que la exclusión de distinciones filosóficas claras por parte del construccionismo social le resta plausibilidad al enfoque. (shrink)

In 1990 Edward Craig published a book called Knowledge and the State of Nature in which he introduced and defended a genealogical approach to epistemology. In recent years Craig’s book has attracted a lot of attention, and his distinctive approach has been put to a wide range of uses including anti-realist metaepistemology, contextualism, relativism, anti-luck virtue epistemology, epistemic injustice, value of knowledge, pragmatism and virtue epistemology. While the number of objections to Craig’s approach has accumulated, there has been no sustained (...) attempt to develop answers to these objections. In this paper we provide answers to seven important objections in the literature. (shrink)

This paper tries to motivate three desiderata for historical epistemologies: (a) that they should be reflective about the pedigree of their conceptual apparatus; (b) that they must face up to the potentially relativistic consequences of their historicism; and (c) that they must not forget the hard-won lessons of microhistory (i.e. historical events must be explained causally; historical events must not be artificially divided into internal/intellectual and external/social “factors” or “levels”; and constructed series of homogenous events must not be treated as (...) quasi-organisms). Ian Hacking’s work on styles of reasoning and Lorraine Daston’s and Peter Galison’s investigation into epistemic virtues are used to identify the costs of neglecting these desiderata. (shrink)

This critical notice concerns Duncan Pritchard's Epistemic Angst. After a summary of the book, I offer some brief critical comments on five issues: the distinction between overriding and undercutting strategies against scepticism, epistemic relativism, foundationalist hinge epistemology, the relationship between hinge propositions and evidence, and the universality of rational evaluation. Epistemic Angst is Duncan Pritchard's to-date most comprehensive attempt to defuse Cartesian epistemic scepticism. The argument builds on Pritchard's more than sixty previous publications on the same general topic. Given limitations (...) of space, this critical notice will nevertheless focus on Epistemic Angst alone. I shall also confine myself to a discussion of Pritchard's own position, leaving aside his criticisms of other views. (shrink)

This paper comments on Maria Baghramian’s ‘The Virtues of Relativism’. We agree that some relativist positions are naturally couched as ‘stances’ and that it is fruitful to connect relativism to virtue epistemology. But I find Baghramian’s preferred rendering of relativism uncharitable.

There are a number of debates that are relevant to questions concerning objectivity in science. One of the eldest, and still one of the most intensely fought, is the debate over epistemic relativism. —All forms of epistemic relativism commit themselves to the view that it is impossible to show in a neutral, non-question-begging, way that one “epistemic system”, that is, one interconnected set of epistemic standards, is epistemically superior to others. I shall call this view “No-metajustification”. No-metajustification is commonly taken (...) to deny the objectivity of standards. In this paper I shall discuss two currently popular attempts to attack “No-metajustification”. The first attempt attacks no-metajustification by challenging a particular strategy of arguing in its defence: this strategy involves the ancient Pyrrhonian “Problem of the Criterion”. The second attempt to refute No-metajustification targets its metaphysical underpinning: to wit, the claim that there are, or could be, several fundamentally different and irreconcilable epistemic systems. I shall call this assumption “Pluralism”. I shall address three questions with respect to these attempts to refute epistemic relativism by attacking no-metajustification: Can the epistemic relativist rely on the Problem of the Criterion in support of No-metajustification? Is a combination of Chisholmian “particularism” and epistemic naturalism an effective weapon against No-metajustification? And is Pluralism a defensible assumption? (shrink)

This paper seeks to widen the dialogue between the “epistemology of peer disagreement” and the epistemology informed by Wittgenstein’s last notebooks, later edited as On Certainty. The paper defends the following theses: not all certainties are groundless; many of them are beliefs; and they do not have a common essence. An epistemic peer need not share all of my certainties. Which response to a disagreement over a certainty is called for, depends on the type of certainty in question. Sometimes a (...) form of relativism is the right response. Reasonable, mutually recognized peer disagreement over a certainty is possible.—The paper thus addresses both interpretative and systematic issues. It uses Wittgenstein as a resource for thinking about peer disagreement over certainties. (shrink)

The paper looks at challenges related to the ideas of integration and knowledge systems in extra-academic transdisciplinarity. Philosophers of science are only starting to pay attention to the increasingly common practice of introducing extra-academic perspectives or engaging extra-academic parties in academic knowledge production. So far the rather scant philosophical discussion on the subject has mainly concentrated on the question whether such engagement is beneficial in science or not. Meanwhile, there is quite a large and growing literature on extra-academic TD, mostly (...) authored by non-philosophers, seeking to develop TD research practices. We examine this literature in the light of recent discussions in pluralist philosophies of science. Some philosophical pluralists see the increase of extra-academic collaboration and participation in science as a potentially positive development. However, certain views promoted in the non-philosophical literature on extra-academic TD appear problematic in the light of the pluralistic discussions. For instance, the literature on TD appears to be overly optimistic with regard to integration, and the notion of knowledge systems used in it is problematic. We believe it would be worthwhile for scientific pluralists sympathetic to the aims of TD to look more closely into the complex settings in which extra-academic collaboration and participation happens in actual TD projects, and to offer constructive criticisms, exploiting insights developed within pluralist philosophy of science. (shrink)

In this essay, I provide normative guidelines for developing a philosophically interesting and plausible version of social constructivism as a philosophy of science, wherein science aims for social-epistemic values rather than for truth or empirical adequacy. This view is more plausible than the more radical constructivist claim that scientific facts are constructed. It is also more interesting than the modest constructivist claim that representations of such facts emerge in social contexts, as it provides a genuine rival to the scientific axiologies (...) of scientific realists and constructive empiricists. I further contrast my view with positions holding that the aims of science are context dependent, that the unit of normative analysis is the scientific community, and that the aims of science are non-epistemic social values. (shrink)

A critical review of Paul Boghossian's Fear of Knowledge. I argue that the central argument against epistemic relativism fails and that even if the arguments of Fear of Knowledge worked perfectly on their own terms, Fear of Knowledge would fail to persuade the relativistically inclined.

Recently Robert B. Talisse has put forth a socio-epistemic justification of liberal democracy that he believes qualifies as a public justification in that it purportedly can be endorsed by all reasonable individuals. In avoiding narrow restraints on reasonableness, Talisse argues that he has in fact proposed a justification that crosses the boundaries of a wide range of religious, philosophical and moral worldviews and in this way the justification is sufficiently pluralistic to overcome the challenges of reasonable pluralism familiar from Rawls. (...) The fascinating argument that Talisse furthers is that when cognitively functional individuals reflect on some of their most basic epistemic commitments they will come to see that, in virtue of these commitments, they are also committed to endorsing key liberal democratic institutions. We argue that the socio-epistemic justification can be reasonably rejected on its own terms and thus fails as a public justification approach. This point is made by illustrating the significance of deep epistemic disagreements in liberal democracies. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Ethics & the Environment 12.2 (2007) 125-127MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]Whither Environmental Philosophy?Dale JamiesonBy most reasonable standards, environmental philosophy has been an enormous success since its beginnings in the 1970s. Courses in the subject are now taught around the world, there are many opportunities for publishing, there are two dedicated graduate programs, and there are even some jobs in the field.Yet these marks of success mask some problems. Environmental (...) philosophy is fragmented along many dimensions and there are no widely shared standards of competence. The available jobs often go to surprising candidates whose skills and interests are extremely diverse. Too much publication appears in "specialist" journals, unnoticed by anyone but other contributors. Unconstructive debates, often reminiscent in tone, substance, and rancor of the old and new left, linger. In light of all this, I am no longer surprised when I meet people active in environmental studies and causes who claim to be environmental ethicists but who are almost entirely ignorant of the academic field that bears the name.It is well known that the environment suffers because it is not a well-bounded domain (like the economy, for example), but is rather multi-dimensional and implicated in almost every area of human choice and action. This problem is reproduced in environmental philosophy, [End Page 125] which impinges on many fields, disciplines, and areas of inquiry, but is still struggling to find its own boundaries and identity.One of the core challenges for environmental philosophy is to understand its audience and to whom it is responsible. Historically, the field grew out of the discipline of philosophy, but many who consider themselves environmental philosophers are hostile to the discipline as it is currently practiced. They don't read the journals, go to the conferences, or try very hard to integrate their concerns into the discipline as a whole. Another possible home for environmental philosophy is environmental studies which is a self-consciously interdisciplinary field. Trouble is, environmental studies has many of the same problems as environmental philosophy without even a home discipline to secede from or rebel against. It also carries the added burden of delivering a respectable major to large numbers of eager, but often intellectually impatient, undergraduates. Perhaps one day environmental philosophy will be absorbed into an expanded field of bioethics, which increasingly sees itself as concerned not only with medicine, but with health, a concept that many believe applies broadly across the biosphere.Some put their faith in "public philosophy" or the "policy turn." I can hardly object. When pluralism, pragmatism and inherent value were all the rage in environmental philosophy, I was writing about climate change, zoos, and preserving urban landmarks. Yet it must be acknowledged that with the exception of Peter Singer (whom many would not consider an environmental philosopher), those who have touched the public most deeply in recent years have largely been writing about traditional philosophical concerns rather than about applied, practical, or interdisciplinary problems. Some examples: Paul Boghossian's critique of relativism was favorably reviewed in much of the popular press, including The Wall Street Journal. Anthony Appiah's Cosmopolitanism won the Arthur Ross Book Award from the highly influential Council on Foreign Relations. Books on free will and the philosophy of religion are everywhere; Daniel Dennett has almost become a household name. Most strikingly of all is Harry Frankfurt's On Bullshit, originally a critique of deconstruction delivered to a Yale seminar in the 1980s, which beginning in 2005 spent 26 weeks on the New York Times best seller list. It's enough to make you wonder what relevance is and whether it's really relevant.What is to be done? For fear of sounding like a third-rate marriage [End Page 126] counselor, the field needs communication and good will. These are the necessary building blocks for constructing a common sense of identity. The signs are encouraging but equivocal. The June conference in Colorado, now entering its fifth year, has been an important forum for communication, as has the International Society for Environmental Ethics meetings held in conjunction with the divisional meetings of... (shrink)

When did historians begin to put quotation marks around the wordreal? There are many examples of this habit and some of them will be set forth as evidence in what follows. But before doing so we might ask a preliminary question: What are the quotation marksthemselvessupposed to mean? Today we find them so familiar they hardly need to be written and they are more frequently consigned to the everyday repertoire of silent gesture: two fingers on either hand clutch at the (...) air as if they meant to tickle the flanks of the invisible beast between them. The popular term is “scare-quotes,” a pun on the word “scarecrow.” Its etymology is revealing: just as a mere representation of a body in a field may scare off birds, so too scare-quotes permit someone to deploy a word without sincere commitment to what it normally means. But further reflection tells us that the effects are not so similar after all: To use a term without sincerity robs it of its original meaning and holds up its lifeless corpse to ridicule. The more knowing sort of crow can settle on the shoulder of the figure on the pole precisely because it recognizes that such a sorry excuse for a man can in fact harm no one. Similarly when one putsrealityin quotation marks we are put in mind of the living concept but we are immediately alerted to the fact that, for the user at least, the new term enjoys no metaphysical prestige. How did this happen? When and why did the single most privileged word in the entire lexicon of metaphysics begin to lose its authority such that in certain spheres of intellectual sophistication its sincere use would only seem an embarrassment and a sign of naïveté? (shrink)

This paper discusses conceptual relativism. The main focus is on the contrasting ideas of Wittgenstein and Davidson, with Quine, Kuhn, Feyerabend and Hacker in supporting roles. I distinguish conceptual from alethic and ontological relativism, defend a distinction between conceptual scheme and empirical content, and reject the Davidsonian argument against the possibility of alternative conceptual schemes: there can be conceptual diversity without failure of translation, and failure of translation is not necessarily incompatible with recognizing a practice as linguistic. Conceptual relativism may (...) be untenable, but not for the hermeneutic reasons espoused by Davidson. (shrink)

Algunos críticos de la ciencia afirman que es sólo un punto de vista entre otros, sin alguna autoridad epistémica especial. No obstante, en este artículo se defiende que la idea de que la investigación científica involucra una perspectiva o punto de vista no impone una restricción a su ideal de objetividad. Primero se presentan algunas aclaraciones sobre la noción de punto de vista, luego se atiende al concepto de objetividad científica, y por último se enfrentan algunos desafíos que se desprenden (...) de la noción de punto de vista y amenazan rasgos de la objetividad científica vinculados con su autoridad epistémica. -/- Some critics of science claim that it is only a point of view among others, lacking any special epistemic authority. However, this paper contends that conceiving scientific inquiry as something that involves a perspective or a point of view does not pose a constraint on its ideal of objectivity. We first put forward some clarifications on the notion of point of view, followed by some observations on scientific objectivity; finally, we face some of the challenges that rise from the notion of point of view and threaten features of scientific objectivity tied to its epistemic authority.]. (shrink)

If folk science means individuals having well worked out mechanistic theories of the workings of the world, then it is not feasible. Laypeople’s explanatory understandings are remarkably coarse, full of gaps, and often full of inconsistencies. Even worse, most people overestimate their own understandings. Yet recent views suggest that formal scientists may not be so different. In spite of these limitations, science somehow works and its success offers hope for the feasibility of folk science as well. The success of science (...) arises from the ways in which scientists learn to leverage understandings in other minds and to outsource explanatory work through sophisticated methods of deference and simplification of complex systems. Three studies ask whether analogous processes might be present not only in laypeople but also in young children and thereby form a foundation for supplementing explanatory understandings almost from the start of our first attempts to make sense of the world. (shrink)

For the larger part of modern western intellectual history, it has been assumed that the study of morality and religion requires special methodology, insulated from, and in some important aspects incongruent with, the scientific method commonly used in the realm of natural sciences. Furthermore, even if it would be granted that moral and religious behavior is amendable to scientific analysis, the prospects of using evolutionary theory in particular to do the heavy lifting in explanation of these phenomena have been bleak, (...) since many scholars doubted that a biological theory could possibly offer any valuable contribution. Recent advances in the fields of Evolutionary Ethics and Cognitive Science of Religion disprove both claims, emphasizing empirically founded explanations, demonstrating extraordinarily high degree of methodological consilience, and revealing utmost importance of the application of evolutionary theory in fields of study once deemed to be exclusive domains of social sciences and philosophy. (shrink)

This article surveys the output of contemporary Italian philosophers and distinguishes three principal ways of approaching their intellectual endeavor: denial, the “evil-queen syndrome,” and compliance. Philosophers in a state of denial seem unaware of the loss in status that Italian philosophy as an academic discipline suffers in international forums. The evil-queen syndrome concerns the habit of compiling surveys of past philosophies, focusing on traditions of which one considers oneself the privileged inheritor. Compliance—in its commendable aspect—refers to the growing number of (...) philosophers who participate in international debates, whose forums are for the most part Anglo-American peer-refereed journals. This article urges a less subservient intellectual attitude, capable of contributing new ideas and arguments to the international philosophical forum. (shrink)

The starting point of the following inquiry addresses John Searle’s and Ian Hacking’s most prominent critique of contemporary “constructionism” in the 1990s. It is stimulated by the astonishing fact that neither Hacking nor Searle take into account Peter Berger’s and Thomas Luckmann’s classical essay and sociological masterpiece The Social Construction of Reality in their contributions. Critically revisiting Searle’s and Hacking’s critique on the so-called constructivist approach, the article demonstrates that both authors have failed to put forth a sociologically valid understanding (...) of the approach in question. The following analysis aims to deconstruct the conceptualizations offered by Searle and Hacking, and to reconstruct and defend the original sense of the term “social construction” as most prominently introduced by Berger and Luckmann to sociology, and social sciences in general. (shrink)

Standpoint theory is an explicitly political as well as social epistemology. Its central insight is that epistemic advantage may accrue to those who are oppressed by structures of domination and discounted as knowers. Feminist standpoint theorists hold that gender is one dimension of social differentiation that can make such a difference. In response to two longstanding objections I argue that epistemically consequential standpoints need not be conceptualized in essentialist terms, and that they do not confer automatic or comprehensive epistemic privilege (...) on those who occupy them. Standpoint theory is best construed as conceptual framework for investigating the ways in which socially situated experience and interests make a contingent difference to what we know (well), and to the resources we have for determining which knowledge claims we can trust. I illustrate the advantages of this account in terms of two examples drawn from archaeological sources. (shrink)

Relativists about knowledge ascriptions think that whether a particular use of a knowledge-ascribing sentence, e.g., “Keith knows that the bank is open” is true depends on the epistemic standards at play in the assessor’s context—viz., the context in which the knowledge ascription is being as- sessed for truth or falsity. Given that the very same knowledge-ascription can be assessed for truth or falsity from indefinitely many perspectives, relativism has a striking consequence. When I ascribe knowledge to someone (e.g., when I (...) say that, at a particular time, “Keith knows that the bank is open”), what I’ve said does not get a truth-value absolutely, but only relatively. If this semantic thesis about the word “knows” and its cognates is true, what implications would this have for epistemology, the philosophical theory of knowledge? e present aim will be to engage with this mostly unexplored question, and then to consider how the epistemological conclusions drawn might bear on the plausibility of a relativist semantics for “knows”. (shrink)

Since the time of Plato, relativism has been attacked as a self-refuting theory. Today, there are two basic kinds of argument that are used to show that global relativism is logically incoherent: first, a direct descendent of the argument Plato uses against Protagoras, called the peritrope; and, second, a more recent argument that relativism leads to an infinite regress. Although some relativist theories may be formulated in such a way as to be susceptible to these arguments, there are other versions (...) of relativism that are impervious to these charges of incoherence. First the arguments against relativism will be stated. Next, a radical form of global relativism with assessment sensitivity is introduced, RR. Finally, it is shown how RR can be defended against the challenges of the peritrope and the regress. No attempt is made to defend RR as a plausible theory; however, the usual attempts to show the logical incoherence of radical forms of global relativism fail. (shrink)

At the time I wrote my original review (Schultz 2010) of the books by Sokal (2008), Boghossian (2006), and Smith (2006), I did not know that I would have the opportunity to reply to their responses to my review. Nevertheless, I value the occasion this offers to correct errors and respond to their commentary. Let me say, first of all, that Alan Sokal is quite correct in pointing out that the citation from Donna Haraway which I attribute to him is (...) incorrect. I realize now that I copied that version of the citation from an earlier working notes file for the review. I should have verified that the copied version was identical to the citation in the Beyond the Hoax text (Sokal 2008) before I sent off the review. That I did not do so is an error that I deeply regret, and for which I apologize. In line with this, I also apologize for, and retract, my observations in the review about the omitted passages in the citation, for which Sokal obviously was not responsible. So, does consideration of the full quotation by Donna Haraway in any way affect the rest of my critique? Not at all, as it happens, because the focus of the rest of my remarks is on the way Sokal treats this passage by Haraway. That is, he presents the excerpt to readers in isolation, and makes no effort to.. (shrink)

A decade after the ‘‘Sokal Hoax,’’ Alan Sokal and Paul Boghossian still claim that postmodern arguments are incoherent attacks on reason and truth. However, both also continue to mischaracterize ‘‘constructivist’’ epistemology, to engage in highly problematic logical gymnastics to defend their own views, and to ignore changes in philosophy of science and science studies since 1996. I offer a brief description of my own, rather different understanding of postmodern science criticism in order to contextualize my dissatisfaction with Sokal and Boghossian’s (...) arguments, and to highlight the value of cross-subfield anthropological collaboration based on the constructivist perspective articulated by Barbara Herrnstein Smith. Downloaded by [New York University] at 03:33 19 July 2011.. (shrink)

In this essay I consider the relationship between Heidegger’s famous “turn” and realism. I begin with Heidegger’s critique of the problem of an external world, and I describe how this critique anticipates New Realism. I then provide a reconstruction of Heidegger’s self-critique of Being and Time, showing how this work exhibits a higher-order antirealism. Next, I show how Heidegger’s turn is motivated by the inadequacy of this earlier anti-realism. In his philosophy of the event he moves towards a realist ontology (...) by developing concepts such as “destiny”, which he understands to be independent of human attitudes. Nevertheless, Heidegger ultimately falls back into an anti-realism, because Being still remains dependent upon the involvement of human beings. I therefore conclude this essay by briefly arguing for my own version of New Realism, according to which objects are meaningful in a way that is independent of our attitudes towards them. (shrink)

In this essay I try to give some overall statements in order to show that new realism is to be understood as a kind of positive philosophy. Against constructivism, I argue that there is a prevalence of the objects themselves on our understanding of them because reality offers a resistance to our attempt to grasp it depending on its level of dependence from our own understanding, which is different in the case of natural objects, ideal object and social object. This (...) negativity leads to an ontological necessity of facticity. In the second part of this paper I will describe – through the exposition of three key concepts of new realism, i.e. “unamendability”, “interaction” and “affordance” – an ascending path for which the negative and the resistance turn into positivity. (shrink)

This paper aims at discussing a quite specific aspect of Husserl’s phenomenology, i.e., the notion of synthesis of identification, and the role it plays in the arguments set forward in the Fifth Cartesian Meditation during the discussion of the constitution of the other, hence of the monadological inter-subjectivity. The case will be made for considering the very heart of the Meditation to be what we will refer to as Husserl’s “transcendental argument”, consisting in the claim that there can be only (...) one inter-subjectivity, hence, the “world” being the correlate of the transcendental monadological inter-subjectivity, only one real and actual world. This will also give us the opportunity to critically approach a series of views lately held by some leading figures of the “continental” and “analytic” tradition, which, as the first part of the essay will show, pursue views directly opposed to Husserl’s. (shrink)

Moral relativism is often rejected on grounds that it is either descriptively inadequate, at best, or self-defeating, at worst. In this essay, I swim against the predominant anti-relativistic philosophical tide. My minimal aim is to show that relativism is neither descriptively inadequate nor self-defeating. My maximal aim is to outline the beginnings of an argument that relativism is a truth resting on deep facts about the human normative predicament. And I shall suggest that far from being a source of cultural (...) degeneracy, the fact of relativism has the potential to ground a culture that is deeply life-affirming. My argument against the twin charges of descriptive inadequacy and self- defeat turns on a distinction between tolerant and intolerant relativism. I concede that many of the standard arguments against relativism do have force against tolerant relativism. But against intolerant relativism, those arguments are entirely unavailing. The crucial difference between the tolerant and intolerant relativist is that although the intolerant relativist agrees with the tolerant relativist that norms are relative, she insists that agents are sometimes entitled to hold others to norms by which they are not bound. I shall argue that just because the intolerant relativist allows that we are sometimes entitled to hold others to norms by which we are bound but they are not, she is able to escape both the charge of descriptive inadequacy and the charge of self- defeat. In particular, I shall show that the intolerant relativist has a coherent and satisfying account of the nature of moral disagreement and moral argument. Establishing the ultimate truth of relativism, however, would take more than showing that one form of relativism escapes certain standard arguments against relativism. Though I do not pretend to conclusively discharge the burden of showing that relativism is true in the space of this essay, I do sketch the beginnings of an account of what I call the bindingness of norms that has intolerant relativism as more or less straight-forward downstream consequence. If there are independent grounds for accepting that account of bindingness, then there are independent grounds for accepting intolerant moral relativism. (shrink)

The dissertation examines the nature and epistemic implications of epistemic source circularity. An argument exhibits this type of circularity when at least one of the premises is produced by a belief source the conclusion says is legitimate, e.g. a track record argument for the legitimacy of sense perception that uses premises produced by sense perception. In chapter one I examine this and several other types of circularity, identifying relevant similarities and differences between them. In chapter two I discuss the differences (...) between internalist and externalist analyses of justification. I examine in detail foundationalist and non-foundationalist versions of internalism, and go on to consider how one might characterize externalism: either negatively, by denying particular internalist theses, or positively, in terms of a theory offering different conditions for justification. I discuss the views of reliabilist foundationalists at length. In chapter three I present the internalist objection to externalism that the latter mistakenly permit one to be justified in believing the conclusion of an epistemic source circular inference. I explain the externalists' response that it is not in virtue of their externalism that they permit epistemic source circularity but rather their foundationalism; thus, internalist foundationalists must permit epistemic source circularity as well. I evaluate the positions of several internalists, most of them explicitly foundationalists, and argue that they too cannot avoid permitting epistemic source circularity. In the final chapter I consider whether such circularity is vicious, even though both internalist and externalist foundationalists permit it. I argue that one can sustain an objection to epistemic source circularity by imposing a non-question-begging requirement on justification and explain how respecting this requirement leads one to a non-foundationalist view. I conclude by considering the objection that question-begging leads to a certain arbitrariness in belief formation that should give the foundationalist pause when it comes to determining, at the beginning of inquiry, which beliefs are justified and which are not. The dissertation is primarily concerned with making clear the possible skeptical and non-skeptical positions one can take towards epistemic source circularity. I do not argue for the truth of a particular metaepistemology. (shrink)

Toulmin’s DWC model recognizes a plurality of argument cultures through the thesis of field dependency: that the normative features of arguments vary from one field to the next. Yet, little consensus exists concerning the nature and foundations of argument fields. This paper explores the question of whether Toulminian fields have any useful role to play in the epistemic evaluation of arguments.

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The paper outlines the model of controversy spaces. The model of controversy spaces integrates two different elements of the dialectical tradition. On the one hand, dialectics in its ancient meaning: the practice of controversial dialogue. On the other hand, the model incorporates dialectics understood as a pattern of change in intellectual history, based on the confrontation between opposite standpoints. I will be argued in this paper, the dialectical tradition was almost completely left aside in modernity and substituted by a monolectic (...) approach. The model that will be outlined below aims at overcoming this view by focusing on the emergence, development and transformation of controversy spaces. (shrink)

Teresa believes in God. Maggie’s wife believes that the Earth is flat, and also that Maggie should be home from work by now. Anouk—a cat—believes it is dinner time. This dissertation is about what believing is: it concerns what, exactly, ordinary people are attributing to Teresa, Maggie’s wife, and Anouk when affirming that they are believers. Part I distinguishes the attitudes of belief that people attribute to each other (and other animals) in ordinary life from the cognitive states of belief (...) theoretically posited by (some) cognitive scientists. Part II defends the view that to have an attitude of belief is to live—to be disposed to act, react, think, and feel—in a pattern that an actual belief attributor identifies with taking the world to be some way. Drawing on scientific, scholarly, and literary sources of evidence, How Beliefs are like Colors provides a framework for research on belief across the humanities and sciences of the mind. (shrink)

In this paper, I propose a new way to integrate historical accounts of social interaction in scientific practice with philosophical examination of scientific knowledge. The relation between descriptive accounts of scientific practice, on the one hand, and normative accounts of scientific knowledge, on the other, is a vexed one. This vexatiousness is one instance of the gap between normative and descriptive domains. The general problem of the normative/descriptive divide takes striking and problematic form in the case of social aspects of (...) scientific knowledge. With respect to this issue, history and philosophy of science appear starkly incompatible. I show how this dualism can be overcome, drawing on social action theory and the recent history of cellular immunology. (shrink)

This dissertation is on infinite regress arguments in philosophy. Its main goals are to explain what such arguments from many distinct philosophical debates have in common, and to provide guidelines for using and evaluating them. Two theories are reviewed: the Paradox Theory and the Failure Theory. According to the Paradox Theory, infinite regress arguments can be used to refute an existentially or universally quantified statement (e.g. to refute the statement that at least one discussion is settled, or the statement that (...) discussions are settled only if there is an agreed-upon criterion to settle them). According to the Failure Theory, infinite regress arguments can be used to demonstrate that a certain solution fails to solve an existentially or universally quantified problem (e.g. to demonstrate that a certain solution fails to settle all discussions, or that it fails to settle even one discussion). In the literature, the Paradox Theory is fairly well-developed, and this dissertation provides the Failure Theory with the same tools. (shrink)

A ideia de que certas categorias, propriedades, eventos, ou factos, são construídos socialmente tem sido defendida nas ciências sociais e humanidades desde meados do século xx. Nas últimas décadas, vários filósofos da tradição analítica começaram a dedicar mais atenção à possibilidade de que haja tipos de coisas construídas socialmente. A ideia complementa outra ideia relativamente consensual hoje em dia: a de que existem tipos naturais, mas que nem tudo o que existe constitui um tipo natural. São particularmente interessantes os tipos (...) de coisas que parecem naturais, mas que se argumenta serem na realidade construídos socialmente. Nesta entrada, identifico o papel que as teses construtivistas têm no progresso social e político, distingo entre várias formas de construtivismo teoricamente interessantes – causal e constitutivo, e discuto três objecções à ideia do construtivismo factual. (shrink)

El impacto de la obra de Thomas Samuel Kuhn se debe, en gran parte, al énfasis con que este autor destacó la relevancia de factores externos al conocimiento científico en el desarrollo de la práctica científica. Pero también las consecuencias relativistas y subjetivistas que se desprenden de muchas de las posiciones que defendió en sus primeras publicaciones contribuyeron con la amplia difusión de sus ideas. No obstante, en sus últimos escritos, Kuhn parece haber matizado algunas de sus concepciones más radicales. (...) En este trabajo, se formulan algunas observaciones críticas sobre su obra. Se argumenta, además, que las modificaciones posteriormente introducidas por este autor sólo constituyen alteraciones parciales de las tesis más extremas que caracterizan su obra. (shrink)