The “happy fish” passage in the Zhuangzi 莊子 is often interpreted as endorsing some form of perspectivism which precludes objective claims of knowledge and displaces the significance of human perspectives. Relativism has gained particular currency in contemporary readings. However, this essay aims to show the limited explanatory power of such relativist positions, with focus on Chad Hansen’s “perspectival relativism” and Lea Cantor’s “species relativism.” I will also offer a new, “transitional contextualist” reading, which intends to demonstrate that Zhuangzi’s utterance is (...) grounded in his epistemic context and that Huizi’s 惠子 disputation arises from his changing of the epistemic context, from one with quotidian “low standards” to one with “high-standards” skeptical demands. I further argue that when “wandering” (you 遊) is understood as a freedom from one’s partial perspective, it becomes clear how Zhuangzi analogizes a parallel with the fish’s “wandering” through a continuity between his “world” and that of the fish. (shrink)

In this work we present an epistemic analysis of time phenomenon using the mathematical machinery of information theory and modular theory. By adopting limited commitment to the ontology of time evolution, and instead by mainly relying on the information that is in principle accessible to the observer, we find that the most primary aspect of the temporal experience, the perceived distinctiveness across the states of the world, emerges as a purely epistemic function. By analyzing the mathematical properties of this epistemic (...) function, we interpret it to be in principle insensitive to any ontic state of the world, which leads to the conclusion that the observer is subject to temporal experience irrespective of whether the underlying state of the world is dynamical or invariant. On the ground of the presented analysis, we also provide a solution to the conceptual challenge of non-equilibrium phenomena that faces the thermal time hypothesis. (shrink)

Contemporary discussions of epistemological skepticism - the view that we do not and cannot know anything about the world around us - focus very much on a certain kind of skeptical argument involving a skeptical scenario (a situation familiar from Descartes’ First Meditation). According to the argument, knowing some ordinary proposition about the world (one we usually take ourselves to know) requires knowing we are not in some such skeptical scenario SK; however, since we cannot know that we are not (...) in SK we also cannot know any ordinary proposition. One of the most prominent skeptical scenarios is the brain-in-the-vat-scenario: An evil scientist has operated on an unsuspecting subject, removed the subject’s brain and put it in a vat where it is kept functioning and is connected to some computer which feeds the brain the illusion that everything is “normal”. This paper looks at one aspect of this scenario after another – envatment, disembodiment, weird cognitive processes, lack of the right kind of epistemic standing, and systematic deception. The conclusion is that none of these aspects (in isolation or in combination) is of any relevance for a would-be skeptical argument; the brain-in-the-vat-scenario is irrelevant to and useless for skeptical purposes. Given that related scenarios (e.g., involving evil demons) share the defects of the brain-in-the-vat-scenario, the skeptic should not put any hopes on Cartesian topoi. (shrink)

Deep disagreements concern our most basic and fundamental commitments. Such disagreements seem to be problematic because they appear to manifest epistemic incommensurability in our epistemic systems, and thereby lead to epistemic relativism. This problem is confronted via consideration of a Wittgensteinian hinge epistemology. On the face of it, this proposal exacerbates the problem of deep disagreements by granting that our most fundamental commitments are essentially arationally held. It is argued, however, that a hinge epistemology, properly understood, does not licence epistemic (...) incommensurability or epistemic relativism at all. On the contrary, such an epistemology in fact shows us how to rationally respond to deep disagreements. It is claimed that if we can resist these consequences even from the perspective of a hinge epistemology, then we should be very suspicious of the idea that deep disagreements in general are as epistemologically problematic as has been widely supposed. (shrink)

Two of the most orthodox ideas in epistemology are fallibilism and purism. According to the fallibilist, one can know that a particular claim is true even though one’s justification for that claim is less than fully conclusive. According to the purist, knowledge does not depend on practical factors. Fallibilism and purism are widely assumed to be compatible; in fact, the combination of these views has been called the ‘ho-hum,’ obvious, traditional view of knowledge. But I will argue that fallibilism and (...) purism are incompatible. The best explanation for fallibilism requires one to reject purism, while maintaining purism should lead one to reject fallibilism. It follows that the orthodox view of knowledge is deeply mistaken. (shrink)

Inquiry into the history of practices in the manner of Foucault's philosophical genealogy requires that we distinguish between practical action, on the one hand, and mere behavior, on the other. The need for this distinction may help explicate an aspect of Foucault's philosophical genealogy that might otherwise appear misplaced, namely his attention to rationalities and its attendant conceptual material. This article shows how a genealogical attention to practice goes hand in hand with an attention to the role of the conceptual (...) within our practices. This is done by first drawing on considerations furnished by a Wittgensteinean branch in analytic philosophy recently developed by Robert Brandom. With an account of conceptual normativity and reflexivity in hand, the article turns second to a crucial site of conceptual self-transformation by drawing on work from a particular Foucauldian lineage developed in the work of Arnold Davidson. Davidson's work helps us understand the crucial status of concepts of persons for any historical inquiry into practices. (shrink)

According to the truth-conduciveness problem of coherentism, the coherence theory of justification can hardly show that coherentist justification is truth-conducive. This problem is generally conceived as the most recalcitrant problem with the coherence theory. The purpose of this paper is to show that it does not pose a serious problem for a certain version of coherentism, namely a Sellarsian explanatory coherence theory of justification combined with the deflationary theory of truth. On this version of coherentism, our epistemic goal is to (...) gradually improve our conceptual framework so as to maximize its explanatory coherence, and there is no substantial norm of truth independent of the norms of justification, so that we cannot evaluate the truth-conduciveness of a belief independently of the norms of justification. I argue that this version of coherentism can cope with the truth-conduciveness problem. (shrink)

This paper responds to the generous comments by Alexander Klein and Cheryl Misak on my “American Pragmatism and the Vienna Circle: The Early Years”. First, besides offering some clarification of my original thesis, I argue that Jerusalem was not liable to the anti-Spencerian criticisms by James that Klein adduces in the course of defending James against the charge of psychologism. Then I investigate the impact of Wittgenstein’s Ramsey-derived pragmatism, importantly foregrounded by Misak, on the Vienna Circle and argue that it (...) was mainly limited to Schlick but not recognized as pragmatist, also leaving unaffected the impact of James’s pragmatism on Frank, Hahn and Neurath specified in my original paper. That said, Klein’s and Misak’s comments add significantly to our understanding of long-neglected transatlantic philosophical connections in the early twentieth century. (shrink)

Stroud has argued for many years that skepticism is conditionally correct. We cannot, he claims, both undergo a Cartesian-style examination of the extent of our knowledge as well as avoid skepticism. One reason Stroud's position appears quite plausible is the so-called "totality condition" imposed for this kind of examination: as inquiring philosophers we are called upon to assess all of our knowledge, all at once. However, in this paper I argue that Stroud's apparent understanding of the totality condition is mistaken. (...) Evidently, Stroud thinks that honoring the totality condition amounts to imposing the strong requirement that we initially assume that we don't know anything about external reality. However, there is a weaker requirement available: that we initially not assume that we know anything about external reality. I argue i) that the weaker conception of the totality condition is most suitable for the kind of philosophical examination that Stroud seems to have in mind; and ii) that according to this same conception skepticism is not conditionally correct. (shrink)

On the standard view, pessimism is a philosophically intractable topic. Against the standard view, I hold that pessimism is a stance, or compound of attitudes, commitments and intentions. This stance is marked by certain beliefs—first and foremost, that the bad prevails over the good—which are subject to an important qualifying condition: they are always about outcomes and states of affairs in which one is personally invested. This serves to distinguish pessimism from other views with which it is routinely conflated— including (...) skepticism and nihilism—and to allow for the extent to which pessimism necessarily involves more than the intellectual endorsement of a doctrine. (shrink)

In this paper I examine a series of criticisms that have been levelled against Quine's naturalized epistemology, regarding its response to the problem of scepticism. Barry Stroud and Michael Williams, assuming that Quine wishes to refute scepticism, argue that Quine not only fails to undertake this refutation, but is also committed to theses (such as the inscrutability of reference and the underdetermination of theory by evidence) which imply versions of scepticism of their own. In Quine's defence, Roger Gibson argues that (...) Quine can succeed in showing sceptical doubts to be incoherent. But I contend that both parties of this dispute wrongly assume that Quine wishes to defeat the sceptic in a traditional way. Instead, Quine is happy to 'acquiesce' in scepticism about a certain kind of justification. No logical justification of our scientific beliefs is possible on his view. But Quine thinks that pragmatic justification is possible, and acknowledging that this is his view leads to the resolution of a number of interpretive quandaries. (shrink)

Both traditional and naturalistic epistemologists have long assumed that the examination of human psychology has no relevance to the prescriptive goal of traditional epistemology, that of providing first-person guidance in determining the truth. Contrary to both, I apply insights about the psychology of human perception and concept-formation to a very traditional epistemological project: the foundationalist approach to the epistemic regress problem. I argue that direct realism about perception can help solve the regress problem and support a foundationalist account of justification, (...) but only if it is supplemented by an abstractionist theory of concept-formation, the view that it is possible to abstract concepts directly from the empirically given. Critics of direct realism like Laurence BonJour are correct that an account of direct perception by itself does not provide an adequate account of justification. However a direct realist account of perception can inform the needed theory of concept-formation, and leading critics of abstractionism like McDowell and Sellars, direct realists about perception themselves, fail to appreciate the ways in which their own views about perception help fill gaps in earlier accounts of abstractionism. Recognizing this undercuts both their objections to abstractionism and (therefore) their objections to foundationalism. (shrink)

This paper argues that formal models of coherence are useful for constructing a legal epistemology. Two main formal approaches to coherence are examined: coherence-based models of belief revision and the theory of coherence as constraint satisfaction. It is shown that these approaches shed light on central aspects of a coherentist legal epistemology, such as the concept of coherence, the dynamics of coherentist justification in law, and the mechanisms whereby coherence may be built in the course of legal decision-making.

But it’s not the mere fact that the RA theorist needs an account of ‘ruling out’ and ‘relevance’ that has tended to lead people to regard the RA approach with suspicion. In itself, this simply means that the RA theorist has some further work to do; and what theorist doesn’t? No; the principal source of scepticism regarding the ability of the RA theorist to come up with a complete and satisfactory account of knowing stems, rather, from an unhappiness with the (...) specific elaborations of the core RA claim that various theorists have offered; for these elaborations have typically involved some rather controversial claims and/or assumptions, and it is against these claims/assumptions that the bulk of the criticism of the whole RA approach has been directed. (shrink)

In On Certainty, Wittgenstein formulates several criticisms against skepticism about our knowledge of the external world. My goal is to show that Wittgenstein does not here offer a convincing answer to the skeptical problem. First, I will present a strong version of the problem, understanding it as a paradoxical argument. In the second part, I will introduce and raise problems for two pragmatic responses against skepticism that appear in On Certainty. Finally, I will present some of Wittgenstein’s logical criticisms against (...) skepticism, which may initially be considered strong, because they seem to refute some skeptical assumptions. They concern Wittgenstein’s ideas that it is logically impossible to doubt and to be mistaken about Moorean propositions, and that these propositions don’t have a truth-value. But even these, I intend to show, do not really challenge skepticism, for they are not well grounded. (shrink)

Feminist standpoint theory remains highly controversial: it is widely advocated, used to guide research and justify its results, and yet is also vigorously denounced. This essay argues that three such sites of controversy reveal the value of engaging with standpoint theory as a way of reflecting on and debating some of the most anxiety-producing issues in contemporary Western intellectual and political life. Engaging with standpoint theory enables a socially relevant philosophy of science.

The paper proposes with Davidson that the talk of metaontology is literally meaningless, but with Wittgenstein that it is so in a way that grants a unique type of insight. More specifically, it argues both that Davidson’s arguments have a cogency that is hard to dismiss, and also that, since his own arguments are metaontological, they are self-referential, and consequently in turn undermine their own meaning as well. The paper argues further that metaontological statements cannot be avoided. Consequently, this kind (...) of statement constitutes an unavoidable self-referential paradox that means what it also excludes as capable of meaning. The result is a reinstatement of the meaning of ontological insight and in fact, the paper argues, a deep enrichment and also a particularly cogent justification of it. In addition, the logical peculiarity of the paradox involved has further useful consequences for the outcome of this justification, including a mutually illuminating commonality with some versions of metaethics. (shrink)

Can a naturalist earn the right to talk of a shared empirical world? Hume famously thought not, and contemporary stipulative naturalists infer from this inability that the demand is somehow unnatural. The critical naturalist, by contrast, claims to earn that right. In this paper, I motivate critical naturalism, arguing first that stipulative naturalism is question begging, and second, that the pessimism it inherits from Hume about whether the problem can be solved is misplaced. Hume's mistake was to mis-identify exemplary contexts (...) of thought: thought is a kind of action, better exemplified at the backgammon table or the dinner party than in the study. By earning the right to this environment-involving conception of thought, the critical naturalist can address, rather than avoid, the explanatory problem Hume uncovered. (shrink)

1. Quassim Cassam's subtle book, The Possibility of Knowledge, 1 contains many insights. My goal here is not to attempt to give a sense of all that this book has to offer – which I suspect would be foolhardy in the extreme – but rather to explore one particular central theme of this book that I find especially interesting – viz. the application of the ‘multi-level’ response to ‘how possible?’ questions that Cassam offers to the problem of radical scepticism.2. A (...) central contention of Cassam's book is that we should re-cast sceptical problems in terms of ‘how possible?’ questions. Although it is not a sceptical problem that Cassam examines himself , consider how this re-casting would work as regards the problem of free will. The relevant ‘how possible?’ question would be: " How is free will possible?" There are two features of ‘how possible?’ questions that are important for our purposes. The first is that they are by their nature challenging in that they imply that there is a standing obstacle to the possibility in question. In the case of , this obstacle is the familiar one concerning determinism. The second is that they do not presuppose that the target thing – in this case free will – is impossible; rather, they simply ask how such a thing could be possible.These two features of ‘how possible?’ questions impose constraints on what would constitute a satisfactory response to such a question. On the one hand, it would clearly be pointless to respond to such a question by simply insisting – on the basis of commonsense, say – that the target thing is possible, since the question was not suggesting …. (shrink)

In this paper a candidate for a rational reconstruction of skeptical arguments is presented and defended against a competitor called ‘The Argument from Ignorance’. On the basis of this defense, Michael Williams’ claims that foundationalism and epistemological realism serve as presuppositions for skepticism are criticized. It is argued that rejecting these two theses, as his version of contextualism does, is not sufficient for answering the skeptical challenge.

There is a long-standing view in epistemology that perception is a way of knowing. There is a less long-standing but increasingly popular view that knowledge attributions have a relativist semantics. I discuss three things here. First, I show that it is a consequence of the logic of RKA that WOK and RKA are incompatible. Second, I argue that, even if WOK is incompatible with the main rivals to RKA, this is not a consequence of the logics of these views. RKA (...) comes with a hitherto unobserved philosophical consequence that its main rivals do not come with. Third, I consider some responses to the effect that it does not matter that RKA comes with this consequence, and argue that they are all unsatisfactory as they stand. I conclude that, at the very least, the onus is placed on relativists to engage with more epistemology than they currently do to show that we do not need to worry about the incompatibility of WOK and RKA. I conclude with some suggestions about the broader relevance and implications of this paper. (shrink)

An epistemological how-possible question asks how knowledge, or knowledge of some specific kind, is possible. The main contention of Duncan Pritchard‟s stimulating comments is that what I call „explanatory minimalism‟ appears to offer us just what we are seeking when we ask such a question. This looks like a problem for me given that I defend a version of explanatory anti-minimalism. Pritchard outlines a version of minimalism inspired by the writings of John McDowell and does not find it obvious that (...) this position is lacking in any relevant respect. Nor do I. My minimalism is moderate rather than extreme but Pritchard‟s objections to anti-minimalism are objections to extreme anti-minimalism. Indeed, his comments do not seem to me to have any direct bearing on what I take to be the fundamental disagreement between minimalism and anti-minimalism. (shrink)

I present the arguments Hegel puts forward in favor of this rather challenging account of skepticism. In Section 2, I discuss the celebrated conception of “self-fulfilling skepticism” of the Phenomenology of Spirit that is supposed to overcome untrue types of cognition in order to promote “absolute knowing.” In Section 3, I debate Hegel’s more advanced view according to which genuine skepticism must be construed as dialectic.

Two trends have emerged in recent work from the Frankfurt School: the first involves a reconsideration of immanent critique’s basic commitments and viability for critical social theory, while the second involves an effort to introduce temporal considerations for social interaction into critical theorizing to help make sense of the phenomenon of social acceleration. This article contributes to these ongoing discussions by investigating whether social systems theory, in which temporal relations play a primary role, can be integrated with immanent critique. If (...) such a synthesis were successful, it would promise to unify two distinct forms of social theorizing that have often been taken to be orthogonal or incommensurate since the debate between Luhmann and Habermas in the 1970s. The investigation proceeds in three parts: first, the article delineates immanent critique’s conditions of success; second, using these conditions, it identifies potential points of contact between social systems theorizing and immanent critical forms of analysis, while exemplifying these commonalities via a case study; finally, the article argues that, although immanent critique is not a strict method of analysis or investigation, its success conditions preclude social systems theory on the grounds that the latter approach cannot anchor itself within the context of analysis in the way ‘immanent critique’ requires. (shrink)

The goal of this dissertation is to offer a practice-based account of intentionality. My aim is to examine what sort of practices agents have to engage in so as to count as talking and thinking about the way the world is – that is, what sort of practices count as representational. Representational practices answer to the way the world is: what is correct within such practices depends on the way things are, rather than on the attitudes of agents. An account (...) of representation must explain how such objective standards of correctness are introduced in human practices: one must explain how the world gets to have a say in what is correct in human discursive practices. Roughly, my proposal is that human discursive practices become responsive to the way things are by virtue of involving practical interactions with the world. The outcomes of these interactions depend on the way the world is and the evaluation of such outcomes contributes to determining which moves within the practice count as correct. Due to our practical engagement with the environment, thus, the world gets to constrain discursive practices. In order to flesh out my proposal, I develop a practice-based characterization of intentional or representational content. On this sort of approach, expressing intentional contents is seen as a matter of playing a certain role in relevant practices, rather than as a matter of engaging in some word-world relation. The expression of content, thus, is explained in terms of use. In particular, I adopt an inferentialist perspective, according to which discursive moves express contents because of their role in practices of giving and asking for reasons. I investigate how practical engagement with the environment introduces friction with the world in these practices of giving and asking for reasons. One of the main conclusions reached in the dissertation is that defeasibility is an essential feature of objective representational practices – so that attributions of representational correctness are revisable in an open-ended way. The discussion of defeasible reasoning – and of the way in which defeasibility shapes human representational practices – is a central point of this dissertation. (shrink)

The provenance of “naturalized epistemology,” so called, is too recent for the hand of Quine not to be still heavily upon it. But like its older relative, “naturalism,” it is an idea rich enough to be coveted, and protean enough to be claimed, by diverse comers with different things in mind. While Quine's version of naturalized epistemology of science inevitably furnishes the backdrop for current discussion of naturalizing moral epistemology, it is important to pause over what “naturalized epistemology” can and (...) should mean in ethics. To what extent is Quine's example of an epistemologyofscience that helps itselfto sciencethe model for understanding knowledge of and in morality? Does it require a view of moral knowledge as reducible to, or in a fundamental way furnished by, science? Or a view of moral theory as sciencelike in some way? I argue that the appropriate analogy is instead a holistic and reflexive epistemology of morality that helps itself to moral judgments and standards seen as answerable to the experience of the kinds of shared lives they make possible and necessary. This approach neither privileges nor rejects wholesale what scientific inquiries might have to say. (shrink)

With dying increasingly becoming a medicalised experience in old age, we are witnessing a shift from concern over death itself to an interest in dying ‘well’. Fierce discussions about end-of-life decision making and the permissibility of medical intervention in dying, discursively structured around the notion of a ‘good’ death, are evidence of this shift. This article focuses on ‘autonomy’ and ‘dignity’ as key signifiers in these discussions. Rather than being fully fixed and stable, both signifiers are contingent and carry a (...) variety of meanings within different discursive projects. The article aims to distinguish the varieties of these signifiers by elaborating existing theoretical perspectives on autonomy and dignity, and also, starting from a perspective on mass media as sites of meaning production and contestation, to study the contingency of autonomy and dignity in Belgian newspaper coverage of four prominent euthanasia cases. By means of a discourse-theoretical textual analysis, this study exposes a dominant—yet contested—articulation of rational-personal autonomy and of dignity in external terms as something that can be obtained, retained or lost, rather than in terms of intrinsic human integrity. These logics of representation reflect a more general late modern dominance of liberal autonomy and of dignity as being closely connected to self-identity, but at the same time result in limited visibility of alternative ways of experiencing an autonomous and dignified death. (shrink)