Epistemology Commons^™

Exteriority And Authenticity: A Trope On Østrem’S “Interiority And Authenticity”: Author As Scholar & Artist, Nils Holger Petersen

UNIversitas: Journal of Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity

Østrem establishes an intimate connection between personal, individual experience - and memory - and the wider scope of a historical narrative basing his account among other things on Hayden White's thought. I will take my point of departure in the two following well-known statements from White's Tropics of Discourse:

• Many historians continue to treat their "facts" as though they were "given" and refuse to recognize, unlike most scientists, that they are not so much found as constructed by the kinds of questions which the investigator asks of the phenomena before him. It is the same notion of objectivity that …

In Defense Of The Objective Epistemic Approach To Argumentation, John Biro, Harvey Siegel

Philosophy Articles and Papers

In this paper we defend a particular version of the epistemic approach to argumentation. We advance some general considerations in favor of the approach and then examine the ways in which different versions of it play out with respect to the theory of fallacies, which we see as central to an understanding of argumentation. Epistemic theories divide into objective and subjective versions. We argue in favor of the objective version, showing that it provides a better account than its subjectivist rival of the central fallacy of begging the question. We suggest that the strengths of the objective epistemic theory of …

The Modal Gap: The Objective Problem Of Lessing's Ditch(Es) And Kierkegaard's Subjective Reply, Matthew A. Benton

SPU Works

This essay expands upon the suggestion that Lessing's infamous ‘ditch’ is actually three ditches: temporal, metaphysical, and existential gaps. It examines the complex problems these ditches raise, and then proposes that Kierkegaard's Fragments and Postscript exhibit a similar triadic organizational structure, which may signal a deliberate attempt to engage and respond to Lessing's three gaps. Viewing the Climacean project in this way offers an enhanced understanding of the intricacies of Lessing's rationalist approach to both religion and historical truth, and illuminates Climacus's subjective response to Lessing.

Review: The End Of Wisdom: A Reappraisal Of The Historical And Canonical Function Of Ecclesiastes, Donald L. Fowler

SOR Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

"Will A Man Rob God?" (Malachi 3:8): A Study Of Tithing In The Old And New Testaments, Andreas J. Kostenberger, David A. Croteau

SOR Faculty Publications and Presentations

Is tithing, that is, giving ten percent of one's income, obligatory for Christians? This first in a series of two articles investigates this question by studying all references to tithing in Scripture. The discussion commences with OT references to tithing prior to the giving of the Mosaic Law, then in the Mosaic Low, the historical, and the prophetic books. This is followed by a study of the three major NT passages on tithing. This article concludes that none of the OT or NT passages can legitimately be used to argue for the continuation of tithing in the new covenant period.

Review: Encountering The Divine: Theophany In Biblical Narrative, James A. Borland

SOR Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

The Problem Of Comparing Different Cultural Or Theoretical Frameworks: Davidson, Rorty, And The Nature Of Truth, Jeremy Barris

Humanities Faculty Research

In comparing very different cultural, theoretical, or methodological standpoints, the nature of truth itself becomes a problem. If the standpoints have different conceptions of truth, a comparative approach that respects both involves the contradiction of conflicting legitimate claims to truth. But if we reject this contradiction, we eliminate the possibility that standpoints can have legitimately different conceptions of truth. And with that we reject the sense of a genuine comparison in this respect, rather than a reading of one framework in the light of the other. Davidson and Rorty have mounted especially powerful arguments against the very sense of this …

Character, Reliability, And Virtue Epistemology, Jason Baehr

Philosophy Faculty Works

Standard characterizations of virtue epistemology divide the field into two camps: virtue reliabilism and virtue responsibilism. Virtue reliabilists think of intellectual virtues as reliable cognitive faculties or abilities, while virtue responsibilists conceive of them as good intellectual character traits. I argue that responsibilist character virtues sometimes satisfy the conditions of a reliabilist conception of intellectual virtue, and that consequently virtue reliabilists, and reliabilists in general, must pay closer attention to matters of intellectual character. This leads to several new questions and challenges for any reliabilist epistemology.

Review Of Duncan Pritchard, Epistemic Luck, Jason Baehr

Philosophy Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Review Of Michael Depaul & Linda Zagzebski, Intellectual Virtue: Perspectives From Ethics And Epistemology, Jason Baehr

Philosophy Faculty Works

No abstract provided.

Pascal Was No Fideist, David J. Baggett

SOR Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Taking Facts Seriously–Again, William Twining

Journal of Legal Education

No abstract provided.

Hormone Research As An Exemplar Of Underdetermination, P.D. Magnus

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

Debates about the underdetermination of theory by data often turn on specific examples. Many cases are invoked often enough that they become familiar, even well-worn. Here I consider one such commonplace: the connection between prenatal hormone levels and gender-linked childhood behavior. Since Helen Longino's original discussion of this case a decade-and-a-half ago, it has become become one of the stock examples of underdetermination. However, the case is not genuinely underdetermined. We can easily imagine a possible experiment to decide the question. The fact that we would not perform this experiment is a moral, rather than epistemic, point. Further, I argue …

Reports Relating To The Fifty-Sixth Annual Meeting Of The Society, James A. Borland

SOR Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Review: Systematic Theology: Prolegomena, James A. Borland

SOR Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Hints And Guesses: Discerning Value, Richard Liddy

Department of Religion Publications

No abstract provided.

Cardinal Martini On Bernard Lonergan: Bernard Lonergan At The Service Of The Church, Richard Liddy

Department of Religion Publications

No abstract provided.

Epistemological Practice And The Internalism/Externalism Debate, James Mcbain

Faculty Submissions

The dialogue between internalists who maintain a belief is a case of knowledge when that which justifies the belief is within the agent’s first-person perspective and externalists who maintain epistemic justification can be in part, or entirely, outside the agent’s first-person perspective has been part of the epistemological literature for some time with one side usually attempting to show how the other side is mistaken. Edward Craig argues the internalist/externalist debate is flawed from the outset. Specifically, both internalism and externalism should be incorporated into the correct analysis of knowledge once we revamp that project. The epistemological project, according to …

Review: There Shall Be No Poor Among You: Poverty In The Bible, Donald L. Fowler

SOR Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Foucault And Habermas, David Ingram

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

The article is a comprehensive comparison of Foucault and Habermas which focuses on their distinctive styles of critical theory. The article maintains that Foucault's virtue ethical understanding of aesthetic self-realization as a form of resistance to normalizing practices provides counterpoint to Habermas's more juridical approach to institutional justice and the critique of ideology. The article contains an extensive discussion of their respective treatments of speech action, both strategic and communicative, and concludes by addressing Foucault's understanding of parrhesia as a non-discursive form of truth-telling.

The Discourse Beneath: Emotional Epistemology In Legal Deliberation And Negotiation, Erin Ryan

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Empiricism, Edward N. Martin

SOR Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.

Epistemic Analysis And The Possibility Of Good Informants, James Mcbain

Faculty Submissions

Edward Craig has proposed that epistemology should eschew traditional

conceptual analysis in favor of what he calls “conceptual synthesis.” He

proposes we start not from the finding of necessary and sufficient conditions

that match our intuitions; rather we start from considerations on what the

concept of knowledge does for us. In this paper I will explore one aspect of

Craig’s proposal – the good informant. It is this aspect that is central to

Craig’s epistemic method and perhaps most problematic. I will evaluate this

concept by first articulating three initial worries that some have had about

the concept and then …

The Mystery Of Lonergan, Richard Liddy

Department of Religion Publications

No abstract provided.

On Skepticism About Case-Specific Intuitions, James Mcbain

Faculty Submissions

Moral theorizing is often characterized as beginning from our intuitions about ethical cases. Yet, while many applaud, and even demand, this methodology, there are those who reject such a methodology on the grounds that we cannot treat people’s intuitions about ethical cases as evidence for or against moral theories. Recently, Shelly Kagan has argued that the reliance upon case-specific intuitions in moral theorizing is problematic. Specifically, he maintains that the practice of using intuitions about cases lacks justification and, hence, we ought to be skeptical about the evidential weight of moral intuitions. This leads Kagan to conclude that we ought …

Portals To Knowledge: Confluence And Conflict Between Enlightenment And Postmodern Currencies, Benjamin G. Lanier-Nabors

Reconstruction: Studies in Contemporary Culture

[Editors' Introduction]

In order to provide any viable critique of twenty-first-century discourses -- whether signified by late capitalism, epistemological hegemony, cultural domination, or globalization (the catch-word for all of these) -- one must not employ an ahistorical or static lens; alternatively, one must dredge up and analyze the sediments that underlie current discourses, and many of these sediments are found in the eighteenth century. More specifically, by reading the thoughts of such writers as Joseph Addison and Jonathan Swift, one is forced to read the links and antipathies between the discursive economies of epistemology -- philosophical, scientific, and economic -- …

The Epistemic Availability Of Transcendental Self-Experience: Husserl And The Paradox Of The Pure Ego, Shiloh Whitley

Honors Capstone Projects and Theses

No abstract provided.

Intelligence And Weapons Of Mass Destruction, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

The author discusses the ramifications of the lack of epistemological underpinnings from which the rightness or wrongness regarding WMD in Iraq can be constructed and adjudicated.

Epistemology And Education: An Incomplete Guide To The Social-Epistemological Issues, Harvey Siegel

Philosophy Articles and Papers

Recent work in epistemology has focused increasingly on the social dimensions of knowledge and inquiry. Education is one important social arena in which knowledge plays a leading role, and in which knowledge-claims are presented, analyzed, evaluated, and transmitted. Philosophers of education have long attended to the epistemological issues raised by the theory and practice of education (along with the moral, metaphysical, social-political, and mind/language issues so raised). While historically philosophical issues concerning education were treated alongside other philosophical issues, in recent times the former set of issues have been largely neglected by philosophers working in the core areas of the …

The Thomistic Cosmological Argument, W. David Beck

SOR Faculty Publications and Presentations

No abstract provided.