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Full-Text Articles in Philosophy
Naturalized Human Epistemology Is Social Epistemology, Molly O'Rourke-Friel
Naturalized Human Epistemology Is Social Epistemology, Molly O'Rourke-Friel
Doctoral Dissertations
Our epistemic lives are ones of deep social dependence. Social epistemology is often understood as a subfield that stands apart from, but is compatible with, traditional individualistic approaches to epistemology. In my work I reject this view and argue instead that human epistemology is necessarily social epistemology. I argue for this as an epistemological naturalist. I understand epistemological naturalism as a commitment to the following: (a) the claim that empirical research from psychology, cognitive science, and evolutionary biology is relevant to epistemological inquiry and (b) the meta-epistemological thesis that knowledge and justification are reducible to natural phenomena. In Chapter 1 …
The Epistemic Dimensions Of Moral Responsibility And Respect, John Robison
The Epistemic Dimensions Of Moral Responsibility And Respect, John Robison
Doctoral Dissertations
What epistemic conditions must one satisfy to be morally responsible for an action or attitude? A common worry is that robust epistemic requirements would have disastrous implications for our responsibility attributing practices: we would be unable to make epistemically justified responsibility attributions, or we would be licensed to disrespectfully excuse agents for their sincerely held beliefs. Those more optimistic about robust epistemic requirements inadvertently make them too demanding to explain the moral successes of ordinary agents. The present project shows how both the pessimists and optimists rely on instructively mistaken assumptions in epistemology, ethics, and action theory, and it culminates …
Self-Knowledge, Choice Blindness, And Confabulation, Hayley F. Webster
Self-Knowledge, Choice Blindness, And Confabulation, Hayley F. Webster
Doctoral Dissertations
There are two kinds of epistemic theories about self-knowledge: the traditional account, and the inferentialist account. According to the traditional view of self-knowledge, we have privileged access to our propositional attitudes. “Privileged access” means that one can gain knowledge of one’s own propositional attitudes directly via an exclusive, first-personal method called introspection. On the other hand, the inferentialist view of self-knowledge postulates that we don’t have privileged access to our propositional attitudes and must infer or self-attribute them instead. In this thesis I argue that the traditional view of self-knowledge, which postulates that we have privileged access to our propositional …
Understanding And Its Role In Inquiry, Benjamin T. Rancourt
Understanding And Its Role In Inquiry, Benjamin T. Rancourt
Doctoral Dissertations
In this dissertation, I argue that understanding possesses unique epistemic value. I propose and defend a novel account of understanding that I call the management account of understanding, which is the view that an agent A understands a subject matter S just in case A has the ability to extract the relevant information and exploit it with the relevant cognitive capacities to answer questions in S. Since inquiry is the process of raising and answering questions, I argue that without understanding, it would be impossible to engage in successful inquiry. I argue that understanding is indispensable for effective cognition and …
Agency And Reasons In Epistemology, Luis R.G. Oliveira
Agency And Reasons In Epistemology, Luis R.G. Oliveira
Doctoral Dissertations
Ever since John Locke, philosophers have discussed the possibility of a normative epistemology: are there epistemic obligations binding the cognitive economy of belief and disbelief? Locke's influential answer was evidentialist: we have an epistemic obligation to believe in accordance with our evidence. In this dissertation, I place the contemporary literature on agency and reasons at the service of some such normative epistemology. I discuss the semantics of obligations, the connection between obligations and reasons to believe, the implausibility of Lockean evidentialism, and some of the alleged connections between agency and justification.
On Epistemic Agency, Kristoffer Hans Ahlstrom
On Epistemic Agency, Kristoffer Hans Ahlstrom
Open Access Dissertations
Every time we act in an effort to attain our epistemic goals, we express our epistemic agency. The present study argues that a proper understanding of the actions and goals relevant to expressions of such agency can be used to make ameliorative recommendations about how the ways in which we actually express our agency can be brought in line with how we should express our agency. More specifically, it is argued that the actions relevant to such expressions should be identified with the variety of actions characteristic of inquiry; that contrary to what has been maintained by recent pluralists about …