Epistemology Commons^™

What Lies In The Gray: Creative Analytic Pieces On The Formation And Evolution Of Beliefs In Masxha, Robin Mwai

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

The purpose of this project was to look at how members of Durban's Masxha township develop their belief systems and ideas about their world. This topic was developed out of a desire to better understand the factors that promote or inhibit individuals from changing their mind about topics relating to their community, society, and culture. I sought to gain a deeper understanding of the specific context of Masxha and the experiences and lives of those with whom I spoke.

To accomplish the goal of learning from lived experiences, this study employed a narrative inquiry approach. Using loosely-structured interviews involving eight …

Hume On Thick And Thin Causation, Alexander Bozzo

Dissertations (1934 -)

Hume is known for his claim that our idea of causation is nothing beyond constant conjunction, and that our idea of necessary connection is nothing beyond a felt determination of the mind. In short, Hume endorses a "thin" conception of causation and necessary connection. In recent years, however, a sizeable number of philosophers have come to view Hume as someone who believes in the existence of thick causal connections - that is, causal connections that allow one to infer a priori the effect from the cause, and vice versa. Hume doesn't wish to deny such connections, said philosopher's claim, he …

Becoming Human In The Land: An Introduction To The Special Issue Of Heritage: Landscapes, Drew Hubbell

Landscapes: the Journal of the International Centre for Landscape and Language

This introduction to the special issue of Landscapes theorizes the questions suggested by the theme, "Landscape: Heritage." Weaving personal narrative with literary criticism, cultural studies, human geography, and ecology, the essay examines the way humans become human by developing complex relationships with landscapes over time. As landscapes contain the physical traces of human habitation and development, certain narratives of human inhabitants are written and memorialized in and by those landscapes. The monumentalization of specific heritages leads to contests between human groups who require certain heritages to be memorialized, but not others. Greater awareness of one's humanity requires recovery of polyphonic …

The Strategic Naturalism Of Sandra Harding's Feminist Standpoint Epistemology: A Path Toward Epistemic Progress, Dahlia Guzman

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation considers the “strategic naturalism” of Sandra Harding’s standpoint theory in the philosophy of science, and it should be applied to epistemology. Strategic naturalism stipulates that all elements of inquiry are historically and culturally situated, and thereby subject to critical reflection, analysis, and revision. Allegiance to naturalism is de rigueur, yet there is no clear agreement on the term’s meaning. Harding’s standpoint theory reads the lack of definition as indicative of its generative possibilities for epistemic progress. The driving question is why Harding’s approach has not been considered a viable candidate for determining progress in epistemology. Beyond the fact …

Accuracy, Verisimilitude, And Scoring Rules, Jeffrey Dunn

Philosophy Faculty publications

Suppose that beliefs come in degrees. How should we then measure the accuracy of these degrees of belief? Scoring rules are usually thought to be the mathematical tool appropriate for this job. But there are many scoring rules, which lead to different ordinal accuracy rankings. Recently, Fallis and Lewis (2016) have given an argument that, if sound, rules out many of the many popular scoring rules, including the Brier score, as genuine measures of accuracy. I respond to this argument, in part by noting that the argument fails to account for verisimilitude that certain false hypotheses might be closer to …

The Problem Of Evil And The Grammar Of Goodness, Eric Wiland

Philosophy Faculty Works

I consider the two venerated arguments about the existence of God: the Ontological Argument and the Argument from Evil. The Ontological Argument purports to show that God’s nature guarantees that God exists. The Argument from Evil purports to show that God’s nature, combined with some plausible facts about the way the world is, guarantees (or is very compelling grounds for thinking) that God does not exist. Both presume that it is coherent to predicate goodness (or greatness) of God. But if Peter Geach’s claim that goodness is logically attributive is cogent, then both arguments fall to the ground.

Zhuang Zi And The Education Of The Emotions, Jeffrey Morgan

Comparative Philosophy

This paper examines and defends a conception of the education of emotions found in the Zhuang-Zi. I begin by exploring four principal features of Zhuang Zi’s philosophy as it relates to the emotions: his epistemological perspectivism, his view of the self, his ethics of wandering and natural spontaneity, and his playful non-seriousness. Together these four features allow us to discern a general orientation to the education of the emotions, including a normative account of a good emotional life as well some suggestions for a pedagogy for the development of such a life.

The Yogācāra Theory Of Three Natures: Internalist And Non-Dualist Interpretations, Matthew Mackenzie

Comparative Philosophy

According to Vasubandhu’s Trisvabhāvanirdeśa or Treatise on the Three Natures, experiential phenomena can be understood in terms of three natures: the constructed (parikalpita), the dependent (paratantra), and the consummate (pariniṣpanna). This paper will examine internalist and anti-internalist or non-dualist interpretations of the Yogācāra theory of the three natures of experience. The internalist interpretation is based on representationalist theory of experience wherein the contents of experience are logically independent of their cause and various interconnected cognitive processes continually create an integrated internal world-model that is transparent to the cognitive system that creates and uses it. …

Lying, Accuracy, And Credence, Matthew A. Benton

SPU Works

Traditional definitions of lying require that a speaker believe that what she asserts is false. Sam Fox Krauss (Analysis, 2017) seeks to jettison the traditional belief requirement in favour of a necessary condition given in a credence-accuracy framework, on which the liar expects to impose the risk of increased inaccuracy on the hearer. He argues that this necessary condition importantly captures nearby cases as lies which the traditional view neglects. I argue, however, that Krauss's own account suffers from an identical drawback of being unable to explain nearby cases; and even worse, that account fails to distinguish cases …

God And Interpersonal Knowledge, Matthew A. Benton

SPU Works

Recent epistemology offers an account of what it is to know other persons. Such views hold promise for illuminating several issues in philosophy of religion, and for advancing a distinctive approach to religious epistemology. This paper develops an account of interpersonal knowledge, and clarifies its relation to propositional and qualitative knowledge. I then turn to our knowledge of God and God's knowledge of us, and compare my account of interpersonal knowledge with important work by Eleonore Stump on "Franciscan" knowledge. I examine how interpersonal knowledge may figure in liturgical practice, in diffusing the problem of divine hiddenness, and in motivating …

Knowledge, Hope, And Fallibilism, Matthew A. Benton

SPU Works

Hope, in its propositional construction "I hope that p," is compatible with a stated chance for the speaker that not-p. On fallibilist construals of knowledge, knowledge is compatible with a chance of being wrong, such that one can know that p even though there is an epistemic chance for one that not-p. But self-ascriptions of propositional hope that p seem to be incompatible, in some sense, with self-ascriptions of knowing whether p. Data from conjoining hope self-ascription with outright assertions, with first- and third-person knowledge ascriptions, and with factive predicates suggest a problem: when …

Knowing How Without Knowing That, Ian Harmon

Faculty & Staff Scholarship

Intellectualism is the view that knowing how to do something amounts to knowing that something is the case. Anti-intellectualism is the view that knowing how consists in certain sorts of abilities or dispositions. In this paper I offer arguments against two versions of intellectualism. Stanley and Williamson (2001) hold that propositional knowledge is both necessary and sufficient for know-how. Against their view, I argue that there are cases in which such knowledge is insufficient. Bengson and Moffett (2012) argue that propositional knowledge is necessary, but not sufficient for knowhow. Rather, they hold that knowing how requires meeting a further condition, …

Now You See Me: A Black Feminist Autoethnographic Poetic Polemic Of Radical Reflexivity And Critical Arts-Based Inquiry, Myntha Anthym

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation is an autoethnographic poetic illness narrative based on the author's year-long ordeal with unrelenting undertreated chronic pain. The project is grounded in the epistemological tradition of Black Feminist Thought and presented in alignment with the emergent methodological paradigm of critical arts-based inquiry. The purpose of the project is for the author to develop and articulate a radical reflexive praxis within the paradigm of critical arts-based inquiry while demonstrating the value of lived experience as a source of knowledge and poetry as a method of inquiry in revealing subjugated truths about the experiences of marginalized people. The dissertation lives …

Infinite Cardinalities, Measuring Knowledge, And Probabilities In Fine-Tuning Arguments (Chapter 5 Of Knowledge, Belief, And God: New Insights In Religious Epistemology), Isaac Choi

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

This paper deals with two different problems in which infinity plays a central role. I first respond to a claim that infinity renders counting knowledge-level beliefs an infeasible approach to measuring and comparing how much we know. There are two methods of comparing sizes of infinite sets, using the one-to-one correspondence principle or the subset principle, and I argue that we should use the subset principle for measuring knowledge. I then turn to the normalizability and coarse tuning objections to fine-tuning arguments for the existence of God or a multiverse. These objections center on the difficulty of talking about the …

Making Implicit Methods Explicit: Trade Press Analysis In The Political Economy Of Communication, Thomas F. Corrigan

Communication Studies Faculty Publications

The political economy of communication (PEC) situates media systems and practices in their structural and historical contexts; however, PEC scholars rarely articulate or justify their research methods. To address this oversight, this article explains how PEC scholars use trade publications to study media industries, practices, policy making, and discourses thereof. Following a critical realist approach, PEC researchers “burrow down” in trade press advertisements and reports and “listen in” to the frank, insider discussions therein. This article evaluates the trade press against Scott’s four “quality control criteria” for documentary sources—authenticity, credibility, representativeness, and meaning. Trade publications employ daunting industry jargon, and …

A New Peircean Response To Radical Skepticism, Justin Remhof

Philosophy Faculty Publications

The radical skeptic argues that I have no knowledge of things I ordinarily claim to know because I have no evidence for or against the possibility of being systematically fed illusions. Recent years have seen a surge of interest in pragmatic responses to skepticism inspired by C.S. Peirce. This essay challenges one such influential response and presents a better Peircean way to refute the skeptic. The account I develop holds that although I do not know whether the skeptical hypothesis is true, I still know things I ordinarily claim to know. It will emerge that although this reply appears similar …

Locke On Empirical Knowledge, Nathan Rockwood

Philosophy Faculty Publications

This paper explores two related issues concerning LockeÕs account of epistemic justification for empirical knowledge. One issue concerns the degree of justification needed for empirical knowledge. Commentators almost universally take Locke to hold a fallibilist account of justification, whereas I argue that Locke accepts infallibilism. A second issue concerns the nature of justification. Many (though not all) commentators take Locke to have a thoroughly internalist conception of justification for empirical knowledge, whereas I argue that he has a (partly) externalist conception of justification: it is the fact that sensation is caused by an external object that justifies our belief in …

Reasons To Realize That We Can’T Really Know About Unrealized Possibilities, Joseph Klein

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The chief purpose of this essay is to defend the position that we do not have knowledge of unrealized possibilities. I do this first by laying out some basic concepts concerning modality. Then, I use these ideas to show that modal knowledge has sometimes been assumed without sufficient justification. Next, I provide my own argument that we have no access to such knowledge based on our understanding of evolutionary development. Finally, I discuss some potential implications for this argument and propose one way that we could reinterpret modal intuitions to explain why we came to think we had modal knowledge …

A Critical Examination Of Understanding’S Characteristics: Why, In A Sense, Understanding Is Unique, Christopher Becker

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Is understanding a unique kind of epistemic state or simply another word for knowledge? Recently, there is a dispute in the literature between those, non-reductionists, who argue that we cannot reduce understanding to knowledge. Sliwa and Khalifa, two reductionists, on the other hand, argue that understanding is basically just another word for knowledge (if we are fairly comparing the two). After considering the dialectic between non-reductionists and reductionists, undogmatically, I argue that Sliwa's arguments in favor of reductionism fail. Sliwa's analytical argument in defense of reductionism is unsuccessful because a special kind of understanding, subjective understanding, can be independent of …

Language, Literacy, And Conscientização In American Public Schools, Julie Ward

Theses and Dissertations

Language, Literacy, and Conscientização in American Public Schools synthesizes poststructural language theory to critique literacy teaching and assessment norms in American public schools in order to theorize a pedagogy of racial and economic justice that embraces globalization and immigration. Chapter I creates a theoretical framework for language that rests firmly on both Lev Vygotsky’s and Jacques Lacan’s sociohistorical approach to language acquisition and language use. Mikhail Bakhtin’s work demonstrates the heteroglossic nature of discourse, while Antonio Gramsci politicizes this framework through an understanding of hegemony. Chapter II sketches ethnographic research on teaching practices of various American communities, focusing on ideology …