Elizabeth Anscombe is well-known for her insistence that there are absolutely prohibited actions, though she is somewhat obscure about why this is so. Nonetheless, I contend in this paper that Anscombe is more concerned with the epistemology of absolute prohibitions, and that her thought on connatural moral knowledge - which resembles moral intuition - is key to understanding her thought on moral prohibitions. I shall identify key features of Anscombe's moral epistemology before turning to investigate its sources, examining (...) the roots of connaturality in Aquinas and comparing it with rationalist ethical intuitionism, which Anscombe differs from in rejecting "good" as a simple, non-natural property. I then develop a two-stage argument about absolute prohibition: The first will be loosely Thomistic, while the second will suggest how Anscombe's absolute prohibitions can be seen as a continuation of Wittgenstein's anti-scepticism in On Certainty. I develop an account of absolute prohibitions as a form of Wittgensteinian hinge proposition - they are not the conclusions of deductive arguments, but the foundations for intelligibility in action. (shrink)

Gila Sher approaches knowledge from the perspective of the basic human epistemic situation—the situation of limited yet resourceful beings, living in a complex world and aspiring to know it in its full complexity. What principles should guide them? Two fundamental principles of knowledge are epistemic friction and freedom. Knowledge must be substantially constrained by the world (friction), but without active participation of the knower in accessing the world (freedom) theoretical knowledge is impossible. This requires a grounding (...) of all knowledge, empirical and abstract, in both mind and world, but the fall of traditional foundationalism has led many to doubt the viability of this ‘classical’ project. Sher challenges this skepticism, charting a new foundational methodology, foundational holism, that differs from others in being holistic, world-oriented, and universal (i.e., applicable to all fields of knowledge). Using this methodology, Epistemic Friction develops an integrated theory of knowledge, truth, and logic. This includes (i) a dynamic model of knowledge, incorporating some of Quine’s revolutionary ideas while rejecting his narrow empiricism, (ii) a substantivist, non-traditional correspondence theory of truth, and (iii) an outline of a joint grounding of logic in mind and world. The model of knowledge subjects all disciplines to demanding norms of both veridicality and conceptualization. The correspondence theory is robust and universal yet not simplistic or naive, admitting diverse forms of correspondence. Logic’s grounding in the world brings it in line with other disciplines while preserving, and explaining, its strong formality, necessity, generality, and normativity. (shrink)

Few recent developments in information technology have been as hyped as blockchain, the first implementation of which was the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. Such hype furnishes ample reason to be skeptical about the promise of blockchain implementations, but I contend that there’s something to the hype. In particular, I think that certain blockchain implementations, in the right material, social, and political conditions, constitute excellent bases for common knowledge. As a case study, I focus on trust in election outcomes, where the ledger (...) records not financial transactions but vote tallies. I argue that blockchain implementations could foster warranted trust in vote tallies and thereby trust in the democratic process. Finally, I argue that if the promise of blockchain implementations as democratic infrastructure is to be realized, then democracies first need to ensure that these material, social, and political conditions obtain. (shrink)

We study shared intentions in what we call “loose groups”. These are groups that lack a codified organizational structure, and where the communication channels between group members are either unreliable or not completely open. We start by formulating two desiderata for shared intentions in such groups. We then argue that no existing account meets these two desiderata, because they assume either too strong or too weak an epistemic condition, that is, a condition on what the group members know and believe (...) about what the others intend, know, and believe. We propose an alternative, pooled knowledge, and argue that it allows formulating conditions on shared intentions that meet the two desiderata. (shrink)

This chapter explores an unappreciated psychological dimension of intellectual humility. In particular, I argue there is a plausible connection between intellectual humility and epistemic egocentrism. Epistemic egocentrism is a well-known cognitive bias – often called ‘the curse of knowledge’ – whereby an agent attributes his or her own mental states to other people. I hypothesize that an individual who exhibits this bias is more likely to possess a variety of traits that are characteristic of intellectual humility. This is surprising (...) because intellectual humility is often regarded as an antidote to cognitive biases, whereas I claim that a particular cognitive bias (namely, the curse of knowledge) may help foster an intellectual virtue. (shrink)

In this discussion note, I put forth an argument from the factivity of knowledge for the conclusion that knowledge is epistemic certainty. If this argument is sound, then epistemologists who think that knowledge is factive are thereby also committed to the view that knowledge is epistemic certainty.

This paper explores Kant’s account of propositional content and its implications for the relationship between his notions of knowledge (Wissen) and cognition (Erkenntnis). While previous commentators commonly read Kant as holding a Fregean theory of propositional content, in this paper I argue that Kant’s theory of propositional content aligns more closely with Peter Hanks’ recent account. According to my reading, Kant holds that individual acts of judging are both ontologically and explanatorily prior to propositions or Kantian judgments (Urteil). Furthermore, (...) on my reading, acts of judging for Kant are acts of assertively predicating a property of an object rather than merely acts of neutral predication. This reading challenges the lately popular view that Kant’s notions of knowledge and cognition are not only distinct but also disjunct. I instead suggest that we should regard Kantian knowledge that requires cognitions as its grounds as a species of Kantian cognitions. (shrink)

While many scholars join in the call for an experiential shift in thinking and living, it is not always clear how it could be done. Recent environmental philosophy has illuminated the significance of re-animating human–environment relations on an experiential level for endeavouring a new (or renewed) ethical, experiential, and, indeed, existential stance of the human as part of the environed embodiment. In relation to this call, I explore embodied critical thinking (ECT) as a tool for recognising, revitalising, and reflecting embodied, (...) enactive, and embedded thinking that comes from a felt sense. Thus, this chapter employs some of the TAE (Thinking at the Edge) steps for ECT research as a practical approach to facilitating and embracing a new way of thinking that is crucial for reconnecting humans with their lived environments, but also for emancipating research practices to enable research that goes out from such a renewed connectivity. In particular, the chapter traces the application of Eugene Gendlin’s move of instancing to showcase the use of embodied knowing and felt sense in environmental contexts. Thus, it showcases how, in fundamental ways that speak directly to and from our embodied embeddedness, ECT has an emancipatory impact in ways that resonate with lived experiences. (shrink)

The threshold problem is the task of adequately answering the question: “Where does the threshold lie between knowledge and lack thereof?” I start this paper by articulating two conditions for solving it. The first is that the threshold be neither too high nor too low; the second is that the threshold accommodate the significance of knowledge. In addition to explaining these conditions, I also argue that it is plausible that they can be met. Next, I argue that many (...) popular accounts of knowledge cannot meet them. In particular, I lay out a number of problems that standard accounts of knowledge face in trying to meet these conditions. Finally, near the end of this paper, I argue that there is one sort of account that seems to evade these problems. This sort of account, which is called a cluster account of knowledge, says that knowledge is to be accounted for in terms of truth, belief and a cluster of epistemic properties and also that knowledge doesn’t require having all members of the cluster, but merely some subset. (shrink)

I explain why, from the perspective of knowledge-centric anti-luck epistemology, objective act consequentialist theories of ethics imply skepticism about the moral status of our prospective actions and also tend to be self-defeating, undermining the justification of consequentialist theories themselves. For according to knowledge-centric anti-luck epistemology there are modal anti-luck demands on both knowledge and justification, and it turns out that our beliefs about the moral status of our prospective actions are almost never able to satisfy these demands (...) if objective act consequentialism is true. This kind of applied moral skepticism introduces problematic limits on our ability to use objective act consequentialism’s explanatory power as evidence for its truth. This is, in part, a product of higher-order defeat as I explain in the final section. There is, however, a silver lining for objective act consequentialists. For there is at least one type of objective act consequentialism, prior existence consequentialism, that is poised to avoid at least some of the epistemic problems discussed in this paper. (shrink)

In this article, I propose to integrate indigenous knowledges in the Philosophy for/with Children theory and practice. I make the claim that it is possible to treat indigenous knowledges, not only as topics for philosophical dialogues with children but as presuppositions of the philosophical activity itself within the Community of Inquiry. Such integration is important for at least three (3) reasons: First, recognizing indigenous ways of thinking and seeing the world informs us of other non-dominant forms of knowledges, methods to (...) produce knowledge and criteria to determine knowledge. Second, the dominance of western standards of producing and determining knowledge, especially in non-western societies, needs to be reduced, balanced and informed by local knowledges and experiences. And third, indigenous knowledges reinforce a culturally responsive P4wC that responds to the challenges arising in multicultural and ethnically diverse classrooms. There are two (2) possible intersections where such integration may take place, namely: a) Epistemology, where I claim that the integration of a “presentational epistemology” immanent in indigenous patterns of thinking provides a counterweight to Lipman’s strong adherence to analytic-representational epistemology, and b) Pedagogy, which takes shape in an “indigenized” Community of Inquiry that highlights the values of interconnectedness, situatedness and relationality. (shrink)

This paper discusses the definition and sources of knowledge according to Ibn 'Arabi, the leading Sufi master of Andalusia (Muslim Spain).

The Internet is like a new country, with a growing population of millions of well educated citizens. If it wants to keep track of its own cultural achievements in real time, it will have to provide itself with an infostructure like a virtual National Library system. This paper proposes that institutions all over the world should take full advantage of the new technologies available, and promote and coordinate such a global service. This is essential in order to make possible a (...) really efficient management of human knowledge on a global scale. (shrink)

A theory of knowledge is the explanation of things in terms of the possibilities and capabilities of the human way of knowing. The human knowledge is the representation of the things apprehended sensitively either through the senses or intuition. A theory of knowledge concludes about the reality of the things studied. As such it is a priori speculation, based on synthetic a priori statements. Its conclusions constitute interpretation, that is, hermeneutics. Linguistics as the science studying real language, (...) that is, the language spoken, reverts to human subjects in as much as they speak, say and know. Language thus must be studied as a theory of knowledge. (shrink)

This chapter investigates Spinoza's conception of reason, focusing on (i) the difference between reason and the imagination, and (ii) the difference between reason and intuitive knowledge. The central interpretive debate this chapter considers is about the scope of rational cognition. Some commentators have argued that it is only possible to have rational cognition of properties that are universally shared, whereas intuitive knowledge may grasp the essences of particular individuals. Another prominent interpretation is that reason differs from intuition only (...) in virtue of its form or manner of apprehension, and not in virtue of the content or ideas it apprehends. However, authors on both sides of the debate have held that reason is incapable of grasping singular things. After summarizing the debate, this chapter presents an argument that Spinozan reason is not blind to particulars: it is (at least sometimes) capable of grasping the causal structure that characterizes an individual. (shrink)

Self, person, and identity are among the concepts most central to the way humans think about themselves and others. It is often natural in biology to use such concepts; it seems sensible to say, for example, that the job of the immune system is to attack the non-self, but sometimes it attacks the self. But does it make sense to borrow these concepts? Don’t they only pertain to persons, beings with sophisticated minds, and perhaps even souls? I argue that if (...) we focus on the every-day concepts of self and identity, and set aside loftier concepts found in religion, philosophy, and psychology that are applicable, at most, to humans, we can see that self and identity can be sensibly applied widely in biology. (shrink)

Inventing novel knowledge to solve problems is a crucial, creative, mechanism employed by humans, to extend their range of action. In this talk, I will show how commonsense reasoning plays a crucial role in this respect. In particular, I will present a cognitively inspired reasoning framework for knowledge invention and creative problem solving exploiting TCL: a non-monotonic extension of a Description Logic (DL) of typicality able to combine prototypical (commonsense) descriptions of concepts in a human-like fashion. The proposed (...) approach has been tested both in the task of goal-driven concept invention and has additionally applied within the context of serendipity-based recommendation systems. I will present the obtained results, the lessons learned, and the road ahead of this research path. (shrink)

This chapter lays out a case that with the proper perspective on the place of epistemology within normative inquiry more generally, it is possible to appreciate what was on the right track about some of the early approaches to the analysis of knowledge, and to improve on the obvious failures which led them to be rejected. Drawing on more general principles about reasons, their weight, and their relationship to justification, it offers answers to problems about defeat and the conditional (...) fallacy that plagued early defeasibility analyses of knowledge and offers a sketch of a contemporary alternative that is motivated by the idea that knowledge requires the right kind of “match” between objective and subjective factors. (shrink)

In _The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory_, David Chalmers poses an interesting and powerful challenge to materialism or physicalism. Further, he goes a long way towards providing a proof by example that the rejection of materialism need not commit one to scientifically suspicious “ghost in the machine” doctrines, but can be wedded to a generally naturalistic perspective. As an (as yet) unpersuaded physicalist and functionalist, his case against physicalism seems an appropriate target for criticism. However, it would (...) be beyond the scope of the present paper—or anything of similar length—to attempt a full-scale reply. A full-scale reply could be executed in brief compass only if Chalmers were guilty of (and rested his case entirely upon) some relatively simple mistake. But he does not. If he is mistaken, the mistakes are more subtle and difficult to bring to light. Instead, I shall outline the essentials of his case against materialism, attempt to point to one problem that appears to infect his views and argue that, if his position is to be acceptable, he needs to deal with it more adequately than he has so far. (shrink)

Approximation involves representing things in ways that might be close to the truth but are nevertheless false. Given the widespread reliance on approximations in science and everyday life, here we ask whether it is conceptually possible for false approximations to qualify as knowledge. According to the factivity account, it is impossible to know false approximations, because knowledge requires truth. According to the representational adequacy account, it is possible to know false approximations, if they are close enough to the (...) truth for present purposes. In this paper, we adopt an experimental methodology to begin testing these two theories. When an agent provides a false and practically inadequate answer, both theories predict that people will deny knowledge. But the theories disagree about an agent who provides a false but practically adequate answer: the factivity hypothesis again predicts knowledge denial, whereas the representational adequacy hypothesis predicts knowledge attribution. Across two experiments, our principal finding was that people tended to attribute knowledge for false but practically adequate answers, which supports the representational adequacy account. We propose an interpretation of existing findings that preserves a conceptual link between knowledge and truth. According to this proposal, truth is not necessary for knowledge, but it is a feature of prototypical knowledge. (shrink)

The problem of self-knowledge has been thoroughly discussed in the context of traditional epistemology. In parallel to the traditional approach to epistemology, Radically Embodied Cognitive Science (RECS) has emerged in the last 30 years as a genuine contender in its field. According to RECS, the unity of analysis of cognitive processes is the dynamics between brain, body and environment. In this paper, I advance a RECS approach to self-knowledge, which immediately suggests that knowing oneself is a matter of (...) knowing what one’s body can do. I then turn to resistance training, particularly weightlifting, and argue that it offers a paradigmatic case of self-knowledge in RECS’s terms. More precisely, resistance training allows the trainee to achieve knowledge of themselves in a fundamentally practical manner—and doing so is transformative of the kind of actions they are capable of. (shrink)

One interesting aspect of the Hwang-case has been the way in which this affair was assessed by academic journals such as Nature. Initially, Hwang’s success was regarded as evidence for the detrimental effects of research ethics, slowing down the pace of research in Western countries. Eventually, however, Hwang’s debacle was seen as evidence for the importance of ethics in the life sciences. Ironically, it was concluded that the West maintains its prominence in science (as a global endeavour) precisely because it (...) has its ethics in place. Bioethics was now seen as an indispensable part of quality control. In this article, I will claim that the Hwang case rather reveals that there is no reason for complacency and that there are substantial challenges awaiting us. They have to do with major transformations in the way knowledge is produced and research in the life sciences is conducted (such as the increase in pace and scale, globalisation and the growing importance of ICT and bioinformation). These transformations call for a different kind of bioethics. The focus must shift from duties of autonomous researchers concerning visible research subjects (“micro-ethics”) to responsibilities of institutionalised research networks in managing and processing large amounts of bioinformation (“macro-ethics”). Concepts such as transparency, reliability and benefit-sharing will become more important than concepts such as informed consent. Basically, it is a resurgence of the tension between the Kantian and the Hegelian view of ethics. The contours of macro-ethics will be elaborated notably as it is emerging in bioethical debates over biobanking and genetic databanks. (shrink)

There is a virtual consensus in contemporary epistemology that knowledge must be reliably produced. Everyone, it seems, is a reliabilist about knowledge in that sense. I present and defend two arguments that unreliable knowledge is possible. My first argument proceeds from an observation about the nature of achievements, namely, that achievements can proceed from unreliable abilities. My second argument proceeds from an observation about the epistemic efficacy of explanatory inference, namely, that inference to the best explanation seems (...) to produce knowledge, even if it isn't reliable. I also propose a successor to standard versions of reliabilism, which I call ‘ecumenical reliabilism’. Ecumenical reliabilism is consistent with unreliably produced knowledge and helps explain why unreliably produced knowledge is possible. (shrink)

Researchers have debated whether knowledge or certainty is a better candidate for the norm of assertion. Should you make an assertion only if you know it's true? Or should you make an assertion only if you're certain it's true? If either knowledge or certainty is a better candidate, then this will likely have detectable behavioral consequences. I report an experiment that tests for relevant behavioral consequences. The results support the view that assertability is more closely linked to (...) class='Hi'>knowledge than to certainty. In multiple scenarios, people were much more willing to allow assertability and certainty to come apart than to allow assertability and knowledge to come apart. (shrink)

[issue 20211210] Qbism (quantum bayesism) is a philosophical interpretation of quantum mechanics (QM) that places the agent and its expectations at the heart of theory. The QBists advocate a "subjectivist" interpretation of probabilities that allows to understand the quantum laws of Born and to eliminate certain enigmas of interpretation of the QM going "beyond" the interpretation of Copenhagen. The Ontology of Knowledge (OK) is in agreement with the main ideas of the Qbism. For the OdC indeed: -The agent is (...) the focal point of the representation -Representation is specific to the agent -There are no "states of the world" but only "states of knowledge" -There is no probability of evolution of the "state of the world" but only probabilities, for the subject, of evolution of his Knowledge. -These probabilities lead to the future actions and experiences of the agent. The aim of this article is to propose, according to the OdC, ways for an extension of the explanatory power of the QBism. (shrink)

This chapter enhances and extends a powerful and promising research program, performance-based epistemology, which stands at the crossroads of many important currents that one can identify in contemporary epistemology, including the value problem, epistemic normativity, virtue epistemology, and the nature of knowledge. Performance-based epistemology offers at least three outstanding benefits: it explains the distinctive value that knowledge has, it places epistemic evaluation into a familiar and ubiquitous pattern of evaluation, and it solves the Gettier problem. But extant versions (...) of performance-based epistemology have been the object of serious criticism. This chapter shows how to meet the objections without sacrificing the aforementioned benefits. (shrink)

A plausible principle about the felicitous use of indicative conditionals says that there is something strange about asserting an indicative conditional when you know whether its antecedent is true. But in most contexts there is nothing strange at all about asserting indicative conditionals like ‘If Oswald didn’t shoot Kennedy, then someone else did’. This paper argues that the only compelling explanation of these facts requires the resources of contextualism about knowledge.

This paper closes a gap in joint acceptance accounts of the mental life of groups by presenting a theory of group self-knowledge in the joint acceptance framework. I start out by presenting desiderata for a theory of group self-knowledge. Any such theory has to explain the linguistic practice of group avowals, and how self-knowledge can play a role in practical and moral considerations. I develop an account of group self-knowledge in the joint acceptance framework that can (...) explain these desiderata. I argue that a group has self-knowledge of its own attitude A if and only if (i) the operative members jointly accept that the group has attitude A; and (ii) that joint acceptance is non-deviantly caused by the operative group members’ belief that the members jointly accepted attitude A; and (iii) the group has attitude A. Together (i) to (iii) give us conditions for a group having a justified, non-lucky, true belief about its own attitude. (shrink)

We often claim to know what might be—or probably is—the case. Modal knowledge along these lines creates a puzzle for information-sensitive semantics for epistemic modals. This paper develops a solution. We start with the idea that knowledge requires safe belief: a belief amounts to knowledge only if it could not easily have been held falsely. We then develop an interpretation of the modal operator in safety that allows it to non-trivially embed information-sensitive contents. The resulting theory avoids (...) various paradoxes that arise from other accounts of modal knowledge. It also delivers plausible predictions about modal Gettier cases. (shrink)

Abstract: background: Dental and oral health is an essential part of your overall health and well-being. Poor oral hygiene can lead to dental cavities and gum disease, and has also been linked to heart disease, cancer, and diabetes. Maintaining healthy teeth and gums is a lifelong commitment. The earlier you learn proper oral hygiene habits — such as brushing, flossing, and limiting your sugar intake — the easier it’ll be to avoid costly dental procedures and long-term health issues. (Healthline, n.d.) (...) Objectives The main goal of this expert system is to get the appropriate diagnosis of disease and the correct treatment by presenting suggestions on Tooth Problems to the user by asking about symptoms. (shrink)

I report two experiments studying the relationship among explicit judgments about what people see, know, and should assert. When an object of interest was surrounded by visibly similar items, it diminished people’s willingness to judge that an agent sees, knows, and should tell others that it is present. This supports the claim, made by many philosophers, that inhabiting a misleading environment intuitively decreases our willingness to attribute perception and knowledge. However, contrary to stronger claims made by some philosophers, inhabiting (...) a misleading environment does not lead to the opposite pattern whereby people deny perception and knowledge. Causal modeling suggests a specific psychological model of how explicit judgments about perception, knowledge, and assertability are made: knowledge attributions cause perception attributions, which in turn cause assertability attributions. These findings advance understanding of how these three important judgments are made, provide new evidence that knowledge is the norm of assertion, and highlight some important subtleties in folk epistemology. (shrink)

Throughout her work, Audre Lorde maintains that her self-preservation in the face of oppression depends on acting from the recognition and valorization of her feelings as a deep source of knowledge. This claim, taken as a portrayal of agency, poses challenges to standard positions in ethics, epistemology, and moral psychology. This article examines the oppositional agency articulated by Lorde’s thought, locating feeling, poetry, and the power she calls “the erotic” within her avowed project of self-preservation. It then explores the (...) implications of taking seriously Lorde’s account, particularly for theorists examining ethics and epistemology under nonideal social conditions. For situations of sexual intimacy, for example, Lorde’s account unsettles prevailing assumptions about the role of consent in responsibility between sexual partners. I argue that obligations to solicit consent and respect refusal are not sufficient to acknowledge the value of agency in intimate encounters when agency is oppositional in the way Lorde describes. (shrink)

Keith DeRose and Stewart Cohen object to the fallibilist strand of pragmatic invariantism regarding knowledge ascriptions that it is committed to non-cancelable pragmatic implications. I show that this objection points us to an asymmetry about which aspects of the conveyed content of knowledge ascriptions can be canceled: we can cancel those aspects that ascribe a lesser epistemic standing to the subject but not those that ascribe a better or perfect epistemic standing. This situation supports the infallibilist strand of (...) pragmatic invariantism according to which knowledge semantically requires absolute certainty but this claim is often pragmatically weakened: it turns out that exactly those aspects of the conveyed content are cancelable that this view claims are pragmatic. I also argue that attributor contextualism and relativism do not have an alternative explanation of this phenomenon. (shrink)

The paper deals with an argument reported by Razi (d. 1210) that was used to attempt to refute the immateriality of human nature. This argument is based on an epistemic asymmetry between our self-knowledge and our knowledge of immaterial things. After some preliminary remarks, the paper analyzes the structure of the argument in four steps. From a methodological point of view, the argument is similar to a family of epistemological arguments (notably, the Cartesian argument from doubt) and is (...) vulnerable to the same objection that can be raised against that form of reasoning. The last section points out that the argument can be used indirectly to highlight the weakness in some arguments for the claim that there is something immaterial in human beings. (shrink)

Knowledge-first theories of justification are theories of justification that give knowledge priority when it comes to explaining when and why someone has justification for an attitude or an action. The emphasis of this article is on knowledge-first theories of justification for belief. As it turns out, there are a number of ways of giving knowledge priority when theorizing about justification, and what follows is a survey of more than a dozen existing options that have emerged in (...) the early 21st century since the publication of Timothy Williamson’s *Knowledge and Its Limits*. This article traces several of the general theoretical motivations that have been offered for putting knowledge first in the theory of justification. This is followed by an examination of existing knowledge-first theories of justification and their standing objections. These objections are largely, but not exclusively, concerned with the extensional adequacy of knowledge-first theories of justification. There are doubtless more ways to give knowledge priority in the theory of justified belief than are covered here, but the survey is instructive because it highlights potential shortcomings that would-be knowledge-first theorists of justification may wish either to avoid or else to be prepared with a suitable error theory. This entry concludes with a reflection about the extent to which the short history of, arguably, failed attempts to secure an unproblematic knowledge-first account of justified belief has begun to resemble the older Gettier dialectic. (shrink)

Mark Schroeder has recently proposed a new analysis of knowledge. I examine that analysis and show that it fails. More specifically, I show that it faces a problem all too familiar from the post-Gettier literature, namely, that it is delivers the wrong verdict in fake barn cases.

The opinion defended in this paper is that the interrelationships between the phenomena of data and information can provide a strong basis for analyzing knowledge as a quantified and qualified construction. As other models (e.g., Augusto’s General Theory of Knowledge) suggest, it is important to distinguish knowledge from both data and information in the complicated trio composed of data, information, and knowledge (DIK). However, data and information can be combined into informative data. Taking into account quantified (...) and qualified informative data, I speak here of quantified and qualified knowledge structures. (shrink)

Knowledge is widely thought to entail belief. But Radford has claimed to offer a counterexample: the case of the unconfident examinee. And Myers-Schulz and Schwitzgebel have claimed empirical vindication of Radford. We argue, in defense of orthodoxy, that the unconfident examinee does indeed have belief, in the epistemically relevant sense of dispositional belief. We buttress this with empirical results showing that when the dispositional conception of belief is specifically elicited, people’s intuitions then conform with the view that knowledge (...) entails (dispositional) belief. (shrink)

Inequality is an effect of much concern for economists and policy makers. Inequality gives rise to poverty, a phenomenon still troubling the world economy, characterized by a gap wherein the standard deviation between the rich and the poor is too high. Various factors are attributed to the growing inequality, but one which is often overlooked is misallocation of knowledge resources. In this paper, we reinforce the concept of knowledge as being a capital resource. Following this, by using a (...) simple model, we attempt to explain inequality borne out of its heterogeneous allocation and its discrete nature of distribution as a capital resource. The effect being that, lack of access to quality education for those who need it most creates a phenomenon which we call Knowledge Resource Inequality (KRI). (shrink)

I begin by criticizing reductionist knowledge-first epistemology according to which knowledge can be used to reductively analyze other epistemic phenomena. My central concern is that proponents of such an approach commit a similar mistake to the one that they charge their opponents with. This is the mistake of seeking to reductively analyze basic epistemic phenomena in terms of other allegedly more fundamental phenomena. I then turn to non-reductionist brands of knowledge-first epistemology. Specifically, I consider the knowledge (...) norms of assertion and contrast them with an alternative that I have developed elsewhere (Gerken 2011, 2012a, 2013b, 2014, 2015a, 2015c, MS). On the basis of the critical discussion, I question whether a knowledge-first program that is both plausible and distinctive has been identified. On a more positive note, I sketch the contours of an alternative that I label ‘equilibristic epistemology.’ According to this approach, 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 analyzable although they may be co-elucidated in a non-reductive manner. This approach preserves some grains of truth in knowledge-first epistemology. For example, it preserves the idea that knowledge can be taken to be explanatorily basic and unanalyzable. However, since no single epistemic phenomenon is first, knowledge is not first. (shrink)

We think we have lots of substantial knowledge about the future. But contemporary wisdom has it that indeterminism prevails in such a way that just about any proposition about the future has a non-zero objective chance of being false.2, 3 What should one do about this? One, pessimistic, reaction is scepticism about knowledge of the future. We think this should be something of a last resort, especially since this scepticism is likely to infect alleged knowledge of the (...) present and past. One anti-sceptical strategy is to pin our hopes on determinism, conceding that knowledge of the future is unavailable in an indeterministic world. This is not satisfying either: we would rather not be hostage to empirical fortune in the way that this strategy recommends. A final strategy, one that we shall explore in this paper, is one of reconciliation: knowledge of a proposition is compatible with a subject’s belief having a non-zero objective chance of error.4 Following Williamson, we are interested in tying knowledge to the presence or absence of error in close cases, and so we shall explore the connections between knowledge and objective chance within such a framework. We don’t want to get tangled up here in complications involved in attempting to formulate a necessary and sufficient condition for knowledge in terms of safety. Instead, we will assume the following rough and ready necessary condition: a subject knows P only if she could not easily have falsely believed P.5 Assuming that easiness is to be spelt.. (shrink)

The United States Fish and Wildlife Service in Alaska, USA, conducted a species status assessment for a petition to list the Alexander Archipelago wolf (Canis lupus ligoni) under the Endangered Species Act in 2020-2022. This federal undertaking could not be adequately prepared without including the knowledge of Indigenous People who have a deep cultural connection with the subspecies. Our objective is to communicate the authoritative expertise and voice of the Indigenous People who partnered on the project by demonstrating how (...) their knowledge contributed to the species status assessment. The Indigenous knowledge applied in the assessment is the cultural and intellectual property of those who have shared it. We employed rapid appraisal research to expeditiously develop a preliminary and qualitative understanding of Indigenous People's cultural and ecological knowledge of Alexander Archipelago wolves. We used semi-directed interviewing and inductive coding from grounded theory for text analysis. Indigenous knowledge contributed to the agency's understanding of the Alexander Archipelago wolf in Southeast Alaska and helped the agency with their classification decision. Indigenous research partners explained the rich cultural significance and position of wolves in Tlingit society and described human–wolf relationships and ecological interactions. The agency used a single-species assessment approach based in species ecology and conservation biology, whereas the Indigenous wolf experts applied a multi-species, community ecology approach based in a sociocultural context of balance and respect. The Indigenous wolf experts successfully addressed knowledge gaps identified by the agency. The partners were challenged by a short regulatory timeframe that did not allow for comprehensive study of Indigenous knowledge and constrained review and feedback by Indigenous experts. The United States Fish and Wildlife Service learned that its assessment framework was not designed to account for an Indigenous worldview. To level the playing field, the agency and Indigenous experts should discuss how to co-develop an assessment framework that equitably applies both perspectives. (shrink)

Judging by our folk appraisals, then, knowledge and action are intimately related. The theories of rational action with which we are familiar leave this unexplained. Moreover, discussions of knowledge are frequently silent about this connection. This is a shame, since if there is such a connection it would seem to constitute one of the most fundamental roles for knowledge. Our purpose in this paper is to rectify this lacuna, by exploring ways in which knowing something is related (...) to rationally acting upon it, defending one particular proposal against anticipated objections. (shrink)

Is knowledge justified true belief? Most philosophers believe that the answer is clearly ‘no’, as demonstrated by Gettier cases. But Gettier cases don’t obviously refute the traditional view that knowledge is justified true belief (JTB). There are ways of resisting Gettier cases, at least one of which is partly successful. Nevertheless, when properly understood, Gettier cases point to a flaw in JTB, though it takes some work to appreciate just what it is. The nature of the flaw helps (...) us better understand the nature of knowledge and epistemic justification. I propose a crucial improvement to the traditional view, relying on an intuitive and independently plausible metaphysical distinction pertaining to the manifestation of intellectual powers, which supplements the traditional components of justification, truth and belief. (shrink)

Here I advance a unified account of the structure of the epistemic normativity of assertion, action, and belief. According to my Teleological Account, all of these are epistemically successful just in case they fulfill the primary aim of knowledgeability, an aim which in turn generates a host of secondary epistemic norms. The central features of the Teleological Account are these: it is compact in its reliance on a single central explanatory posit, knowledge-centered in its insistence that knowledge sets (...) the fundamental epistemic norm, and yet fiercely pluralistic in its acknowledgment of the legitimacy and value of a rich range of epistemic norms distinct from knowledge. Largely in virtue of this pluralist character, I argue, the Teleological Account is far superior to extant knowledge-centered accounts. (shrink)

Modalists think that knowledge requires forming your belief in a “modally stable” way: using a method that wouldn't easily go wrong, or using a method that wouldn't have given you this belief had it been false. Recent Modalist projects from Justin Clarke-Doane and Dan Baras defend a principle they call “Modal Security,” roughly: if evidence undermines your belief, then it must give you a reason to doubt the safety or sensitivity of your belief. Another recent Modalist project from Carlotta (...) Pavese and Bob Beddor defends “Modal Virtue Epistemology”: knowledge is a belief that is maximally modally robust across “normal” worlds. We'll offer new objections to these recent Modalist projects. We will then argue for a rival view, Explanationism: knowing something is believing it because it's true. We will show how Explanationism offers a better account of undermining defeaters than Modalism, and a better account of knowledge. (shrink)

How should we understand knowledge-how – knowledge how to do something? And how is it related to knowledge-that – knowledge that something is the case? In this paper, I will discuss a very important and influential aspect of this question, namely the claim – dubbed ‘Intellectualism’ by Gilbert Ryle – that knowledge-how can be reduced to knowledge-that. Recently, Jason Stanley and Timothy Williamson have tried to establish Intellectualism with the aid of linguistic considerations. This (...) project – Linguistic Intellectualism – will be criticized on three levels. First, I will reconstruct and object to Stanley and Williamson’s positive argument in favour of Intellectualism. Second, I will assess their view of the relationship between knowledge-how and practical ability and argue that their stance is not well-motivated. Third, I will discuss their criticism of Ryle’s objection against Intellectualism. After distinguishing between different versions of Ryle’s argument, I will show that its strongest version is both immune to the objection by Stanley and Williamson and a decisive argument against their own theory. Given that Intellectualism fails for these three reasons, I finally draw on a broader reading of Ryle in order to develop the beginnings of a positive account of knowledge-how and its relationship to knowledge-that. (shrink)

In the philosophical literature on mental states, the paradigmatic examples of mental states are beliefs, desires, intentions, and phenomenal states such as being in pain. The corresponding list in the psychological literature on mental state attribution includes one further member: the state of knowledge. This article examines the reasons why developmental, comparative and social psychologists have classified knowledge as a mental state, while most recent philosophers--with the notable exception of Timothy Williamson-- have not. The disagreement is traced back (...) to a difference in how each side understands the relationship between the concepts of knowledge and belief, concepts which are understood in both disciplines to be closely linked. Psychologists and philosophers other than Williamson have generally have disagreed about which of the pair is prior and which is derivative. The rival claims of priority are examined both in the light of philosophical arguments by Williamson and others, and in the light of empirical work on mental state attribution. (shrink)