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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Decolonizing Nationalism: Reading Nkrumah And Nyerere’S Pan-African Epistemology, Jesse Benjamin
Decolonizing Nationalism: Reading Nkrumah And Nyerere’S Pan-African Epistemology, Jesse Benjamin
Jesse Benjamin
Using the perspective of intellectual history, this essay explores the lives and philosophies of Julius K. Nyerere and Kwame Nkrumah, heads of state in Tanzania and Ghana, respectively, as well as philosophers, activists, and Pan-African leaders throughout their lifetimes. The central focus is on their concepts and practices of nationalism, and their attempts to transcend the confines of colonial, Western epistemologies in formulating new African social practices. Their concepts of African socialism, pan-Africanism, and neo-colonialism are examined closely. Their lived experiences with injustice in Africa and the Black Atlantic shaped their perspectives. Their unfinished work bequeathed to us tools for …
Dretske On Knowledge Closure, Steven Luper
The Knower, Inside And Out, Steven Luper
The Knower, Inside And Out, Steven Luper
Steven Luper
Adherents of the epistemological position called internalism typically believe that the view they oppose, called externalism, is such a new and radical departure from the established way of seeing knowledge that its implications are uninteresting. Perhaps itis relatively novel, but the approach to knowledge with the greatest antiquity is the one that equates it withcertainty, and while this conception is amenable to the demands of the internalist, it is also a non-starter in the opinion of almost all contemporary epistemologists since obviously it directly implies that we know nothing about the world. Perhaps skepticism is correct, but there are conceptions …
Epistemic Relativism, Steven Luper
Doxastic Skepticism, Steven Luper
Doxastic Skepticism, Steven Luper
Steven Luper
In “A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge,” Donald Davidson offers a n attempt to refute skepticism, a n attempt that is an expansion of the dense argument in part 1 of “The Method of Truth in Metaphysics” for the claim that “massive error about the world is simply unintelligible.”’ To help in his attack, he presses into service tightly interrelated theories about belief and meaning. In particular, he relies on the claim that ideal interpreters, who are fully informed and charitable, must attribute t o a speaker what are by their lights largely true beliefs. I argue that this …