Epistemology Commons^™

Developing Sustainable Strategies: Foundations, Method, And Pedagogy, Scott Kelley

Mission and Ministry Publications

While the United Nations Principles of Responsible Management Education (PRME) is a very positive development in the horizon of management education over the last decade, there are still many significant challenges for engaging the mind of the manager in ways that will foster the values of PRME and the UN Global Compact. Responsible management education must address three foundational challenges in business education if it is to actualize the aspirations of PRME: 1) it must confront the cognitional myth that knowing is like looking, 2) it must move beyond mere analysis to systems thinking, and 3) it must transition from …

Poverty Knowledge, Coercion, And Social Rights: A Discourse Ethical Contribution To Social Epistemology, David Ingram

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

In today’s America the persistence of crushing poverty in the midst of staggering affluence no longer incites the righteous jeremiads it once did. Resigned acceptance of this paradox is fueled by a sense that poverty lies beyond the moral and technical scope of government remediation. The failure of experts to reach agreement on the causes of poverty merely exacerbates our despair. Are the causes internal to the poor – reflecting their more or less voluntary choices? Or do they emanate from structures beyond their control (but perhaps amenable to government remediation)? If both of these explanations are true (as I …

Zagzebski On Rationality, Shane Ryan, Shane Ryan

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

This paper examines Linda Zagzebski’s (2012) account of rationality, as set out in her rich, wide-ranging, and important book, Epistemic Authority: A Theory of Trust, Authority, and Autonomy in Belief. We briefly describe the account that she offers and then consider its plausibility. In particular, in the first section we argue that a number of Zagzebski’s claims with regard to rationality require more support than she offers for them. Moreover, in the second section, we contend that far from offering Zagzebski a quick way of dealing with radical scepticism, her account of rationality actually seems to be particularly vulnerable to …

State Of The Field: Why Novel Prediction Matters, P.D. Magnus, Heather Douglas

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

It has become commonplace to say that novel predictive success is not epistemically special. Its value over accommodation, if it has any, is taken to be superficial or derivative. We argue that the value of predictive success is indeed instrumental. Nevertheless, it is a powerful instrument that provides significant epistemic assurances at many different levels. Even though these assurances are in principle dispensable, real science is rarely (if ever) in the position to confidently obtain them in other ways. So we argue for a pluralist instrumental predictivism: novel predictive success is important for inferences from data to phenomena, from phenomena …

Knowledge Studies, Jay Bernstein

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

The Intellectual And Curricular Spaces Of Knowledge Studies, Jay H. Bernstein

Publications and Research

The words “knowledge” and “information” are sometimes used interchangeably, but the connection between them is complex and problematic. Knowledge is a mental product gained from engaging with information. All educational subjects, scholarly disciplines, occupations, and activities produce knowledge as well as information. Because libraries encompass potentially all subjects, professional vision in librarianship would benefit from an examination of knowledge that transcends the methods and topical concerns of individual disciplines. An interdisciplinary (or transdisciplinary) framework in which to view knowledge was pioneered in the post-Sputnik age by Fritz Machlup and Michael Polanyi. Their insights have stimulated scholars to develop research, publications, …

David-Hillel Ruben’S 'Traditions And True Successors': A Critical Reply, John N. Williams

Research Collection School of Social Sciences

No abstract provided.

Learning From Experience: A Philosophical Perspective, Ethan Landes

Lawrence University Honors Projects

This work examines philosophical solutions to David Hume’s problem of induction—a skeptical attack on our ability to learn from experience. I explore the logical, ontological, and epistemic difficulties behind the everyday assumption that the future will resemble the past. While historical solutions by philosophers such as Bertrand Russell and Karl Popper have been unsuccessful at tackling these complications, combining recent work on natural kinds and naturalistic epistemology has promise. Ultimately, I expand on work done by Howard Sankey, Hilary Kornblith, and Brian Ellis to create an account of nature and epistemology that explains why objects in nature have predictable behavior. …

A Presuppositional Rejection Of Enlightenment Evidentialism, Ethan P. Rogers

Honors Program Theses and Projects

Epistemology is concerned with the nature of knowledge, truth, and the justification of belief. Epistemology of religion considers these issues in relation to religious truth claims (e.g., whether or not it is reasonable to believe that God exists). Often, the epistemology of religion leads to inquiry into fundamental attitudes towards the criteria for justification. For example, a major strain of contemporary epistemology of religion has been characterized “as a debate over whether evidentialism applies to the belief component of faith, or whether we should instead adopt a more permissive epistemology.” Thus, whether or not evidentialism is the appropriate approach to …

Knowing Knowledge, Noel Fitzpatrick

Articles

The position of the Art Academy in relation to third level education seems to be on the agenda in a number of ways at the moment. Recently at IMMA there was a panel discussion on the topic of “Art Academy+Knowing” in the context of the I Know You exhibition which is takign place there at the moment, but also within the wider sector there seems to be a sequence of alliances between the tradition Art College and third level education. The movement towards more integration of the stand alone Art Colleges and third level education is high on the agenda …

Ralph Waldo Emerson: From Buddhism To Transcendentalism, The Beginning Of An American Literary Tradition, Irene Jue

English

No abstract provided.

Intersections In Immanence: Spinoza, Deleuze, Negri, Abigail Lowe

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The connection between French philosopher Gilles Deleuze and Italian political theorist Antonio Negri has drawn attention in academic publications over the last decade. For both thinkers, the philosophical concept of immanence is central to how both respectively conceptualize the world. However, in order to consider their work with regard to a metaphysical grounding, one may benefit from turning to each thinker’s engagement with Jewish Dutch philosopher Baruch Spinoza whose immanent ontology, or monism, was indeed his Ethics. This essay concentrates on drawing out an ontological distinction between the philosophical projects of Deleuze and Negri by way of a close reading …

Removing The Classical Landmark: Assessing An Epistemology Governed By Methodological Naturalism, Kegan Shaw

Masters Theses

This paper proposes to assess the naturalist project in epistemology with an eye towards exposing the project as deficient for serving as a robust epistemological project. Epistemologists treasure a certain family of questions and burden themselves with a number of specific concerns the most important of which, I think, cannot be answered by the epistemological naturalist. Ignoring these questions, I will argue, essentially amounts to a dismissal of the principle tension that primarily motivates and properly guides epistemological theorizing. This tension is the familiar appearance vs. reality distinction and characterizes what I am calling the classical landmark or boundary-stone for …

The Untenability Of A Priori Prior Probabilities In Objective Bayesian Conditionalization, C.S. Arledge

Senior Honors Theses

The problem of theory confirmation has been an issue in the philosophy of science for decades. Many valiant attempts have been made to formulate a generally accepted criterion for determining the validity of a scientific theory. Bayesian probability theory has been utilized in numerous attempts to examine the epistemic nature of theory confirmation and Jonathan Weisberg offers a formulation of Bayesian Conditionalization that he believes to be both objective and successful.

In this paper I intend to show the defects in Weisberg’s theory of objective Bayesian confirmation by utilizing the arguments of both W.V. Quine and Bas van Fraassen to …

Epistemology In "Stalker", Travis Wheeler

Cinesthesia

No abstract provided.

Fideism, Evidentialism, And The Epistemology Of Religious Belief, Matthew P. Butcher

Dissertations

Fideism is the theory that certain propositions can be held by faith without regard to evidence. Its epistemological underpinnings are often contrasted with evidentialism - the view that one is justified in holding a belief if and only if that belief is based on sufficient undefeated evidence. Recently, John Bishop and C. Stephen Evans have each forwarded new theories of fideism that oppose evidentialism. This dissertation examines these two theories, raising problems that threaten to undermine the epistemological claims of the fideist. A version of evidentialism is then advanced that addresses the problems identified by Evans and Bishop. Particularly important …

Carruthers And Constitutive Self-Knowledge, John C. Hill

Student Publications

In his recent book, The Opacity of Mind, Peter Carruthers advances a skeptical theory of self-knowledge, integrating results from experimental psychology and cognitive science. In this essay, I want to suggest that the situation is not quite as dire as Carruthers makes it out to be. I respond to Carruthers by advancing a constitutive theory of self-knowledge. I argue that self-knowledge, so understood, is not only compatible with the empirical research that Carruthers utilizes, but also helps to make sense of these results.

The I Think, Self-Awareness And Reflexivity : A Reconstructed Kantian Model Of Self-Awareness, Jie Yin

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

I aim to explore, in this dissertation, whether Kant has a plausible view on self-awareness in his Critique of Pure Reason, and that if the answer is positive, then in what way one could best appreciate his insight; and besides that, I also want to explore how Kant's view sheds light on contemporary debate on self-awareness. I aim to consider two questions addressed by Howell (2006) as below: (A) how exactly the I think functions, designatively, to represent the self and bring it to our thought-awareness, and (B) how, theI thinK orI, a simple representation and a mere designation of …

How A Skeptical Foundationalist Might Respond To Peter Klein, Maximillian M. Muller

Global Tides

In this article I attack Peter Klein's argument for epistemic infinitism by showing that there is at least one foundational belief, and by rejecting his principle of avoiding arbitrariness.

The Cognitive Demands Of Intellectual Virtue, Jason Baehr

Philosophy Faculty Works

No abstract provided.