EPISTEMOLOGY Identity,” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 41 Le temps retrouvé A la recherche du temps perdu, Le temps retrouvé 43 Untimely Meditations, By Duncan Pritchard 44 45 Essays and Lectures as best I can the actual methodology employed by analytical 46 view there has been a tendency in the recent debate about the 47 He does not, of course, give reason the same place in our nature as Kant does (he replaces M The Gay Science is that analytical philosophers do when they do philosophy, and this is especially Le temps retrouvé, Le Côté de Guermantes particular, I claim that once we understand the methodology actually employed 51 To the Lighthouse by analytical epistemologists properly then we will see that it is not as exposed 1 A Sketch of the Past, 53 A Sketch of the Past 54 Proust holds that one is for the most part completely closed down by habit: “habit hides almost the whole universe from us throughout our lives,” Le temps retrouvé, 55 56 Collected Tales, Sketches, Speeches – As we will see below, I think this way of describing the methodology of 57 Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler’s Ninth Sympthony (London: Routledge, the philosophical data provided by intuition, I still think we need to recognise The Myth Makers, Much of the focus when it comes to the role of intuition in epistemology is on our intuitive responses to cases, where we are asked to form an intuitive extensional intuitions
Duncan Pritchard joined the University of Edinburgh’s philosophy department in 2007 as the new Chair in Epistemology. His work covers a range of questions in epistemology, including epistemic value, testimony, radical skepticism, and virtue epistemology. His books include (Oxford University Press, 2005), (co-authored with Adrian Haddock and Alan Millar, Oxford University Press, 2010), and (Oxford University Press, 2012). He is currently writing a book on radical skepticism, which is due to be published by Princeton University Press.
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Call this class of intuitions general intuitions Within any one domain, such as epistemology, there will inevitably be that the agent lacks knowledge, and thus that the extension of this term does not instance, have an intuition about the intension of a term which is called into There is much more to the role of intuition in epistemology than tension that will need to be resolved, perhaps by highlighting an important ambiguity in the intensional intuition or by showing that the extensional input to epistemology is that provided by our intuitions regarding the intension intensional intuitions Similarly, one might be led by one’s intensional and extensional Here are some claims about knowledge which might plausibly be intuitions might lead one to adopt a particular account of knowledge, but one might then realise that this account is unable to accommodate an important general intuition about knowledge, such as the putative general intuition noted p entails p S’s knowledge that p entails that S believes that p S’s knowledge that p entails that S is in possession of reasons for thinking that p S’s knowledge that p entails that S’s belief that p is not true simply as a The foregoing reminds us that intuitions are not set in stone but are S’s knowledge that p is the result of S’s exercise of a relevant cognitive instead highly defeasible, even when we consider them only in the light of other intuitions (we will consider some non-intuitive data that is part of the This list is clearly not exhaustive, and nor are all the claims on this list beyond think we should regard all of our intuitions as individually defeasible, I also think suggest that some intuitions will be less defeasible than others, and some classes As an illustration of this point, notice that our most deep-seated agents lack knowledge in cases where the proposition believed by the agent is many of our most fundamental intensional intuitions about this term would be unlikely to count as a theory of knowledge between the relevant extensional and intensional intuitions when it comes to knowledge on which it was not factive, did not entail belief, particularly since there seem to be cases where our extensional and intensional There is a further type of intuitive data which is relevant here, a kind at here is that our most basic intensional intuitions about a concept play the role of intuitive data which is closely related to intensional intuitions but ultimately of picking out the very thing that we are trying to understand, and hence we can also have general intuitions about that term which are neither about its Call our most deep-seated intensional intuitions about a concept, intensional platitudes mere true belief is often cited as an important epistemological intuition, but while this intuition is clearly about knowledge, it does not fall into either of the en masse Other intuitions of this sort could be that 3 4
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that an agent lacks knowledge even while granting that it would be in some are a case in point here, in that given the rational basis the agent possesses in support of her belief it clearly would be appropriate for her to assert that she has 5 that an agent possesses knowledge and yet nonetheless hold that for independent 6 But other cases might be far less compelling, even though they do still elicit the relevant mind on this score is a case where such an assertion, though true, would in that The extent to which an extensional intuition carries epistemic weight We have then a subtle distinction between extensional and linguistic can depend on other factors too, such as the degree to which it trades on a real- intuitions, and now that this distinction is on the table it ought to be clear that part of the skill of the analytical epistemologist will lie in determining which to be an extensional intuition could prove to in fact be a linguistic intuition, and which concern far-fetched scenarios (for example, cases that appeal to science vice versa in some suitably robust sense of “possible” (for example, metaphysically 7 Ceteris paribus, the more far-fetched the example is, and particularly A badly constructed example could obscure things, and so it may take a very the more dubious the example is in terms of its possibility, the less epistemic weight any extensional intuition based on this case will have, for the simple A poorly formulated intensional intuition might gloss over an important about whether an agent in an example has knowledge could muddy the how there is a complex interplay between them, both in terms of determining their relationships to each other, and in determining their respective epistemic will also be on display when the analytical philosopher adroitly conducts the We can explore this point by delineating a further kind of category of That it is part of the methodology of analytical epistemology to regard intuitions which concerns intuitions about the correct linguistic usage of the linguistic intuitions data is clear from considering how analytical epistemologists respond to epistemologists might appeal to intuitions we have about the correct usage of the word ‘‘knows” in a particular conversational context as part of the relevant were able to shock epistemologists into seeing that the received wisdom in the theory of knowledge was wrong demonstrates that great skill can sometimes There is, of course, a close relationship between extensional intuitions most naturally understood as a kind of ‘‘intellectual seeing,’’ it is tempting to to distinguish them, for although there will clearly be a great deal of overlap reveals that this would be a non-sequitur 11
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A hard-headed response would be to say “nothing at all,” on the basis that the initial intuitions and intuitional Indeed, given that all intuition is defeasible, even when the product of the relevant intellectual virtues, it would be foolhardy to discount the epistemic “real” life, in the sense that once one is in the machine one cannot tell that one’s epistemic credentials of the analytical philosophical enterprise to suppose that those trained in this enterprise have greater skills on this score, one would still have to take into account the possibility that the ‘training’ had itself introduced My experience as someone who has often taught this example to be discounted—that is, where the agents concerned only come to form their intuitively regard the life in the experience machine as at least no worse than intuitions at all, on account of their being epistemically they would be happy for their children to live their lives in the experience machine then most opt for the real life outside of the machine, even though makes explicit that entering the machine is a one-way ticket—perhaps because it is entirely consistent to also hold that this process can sometimes muddle the one’s body becomes unusable thereafter as part of the “re-orientation” process— then again students’ intuitions tend to shift towards regarding the life outside count as “good” philosophers by analytical lights, have persuasively argued has explored the example in some detail then the groundswell of opinion tends is widespread disagreement in philosophy should surely give us pause when it comes to supposing that analytical philosophy always enhances one’s evidential 13 Here, then, we have a case in which people’s initial verdicts about a odd epistemologist who was entirely unconcerned about the fact that her theory training apply the relevant intellectual virtues so as to improve her ability to discern not oblige one to empirical An interesting issue regarding this account of the role of intuition in non-intuitional input to the
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but as we saw above, that is also the case with the rest of the input to a theory of a priori route to gaining an a theory of knowledge, so we also accord some weight to the fact that other Here Craig asks us to imagine a “state of nature” in which creatures with very similar interests and cognitive capacities to our own, and who occupy similar empirical data that is relevant to the epistemological enterprise, it follows that epistemologists have an interest in the careful and systematic collection of this a priori the kinds of heuristics and biases that blur human reasoning, and which would nature, although it does not seem to fall into any of the categories of intuitive undoubtedly play a role in generating some of the intuitive responses given by 14 Knowledge of these heuristics and biases would therefore be essential There will be other forms of data that epistemologists can appeal to in constructing a theory of knowledge—for example, relevant work done by A second way in which a more informed and systematic collection of lexeme, which means that it is one of the few terms that appears in all known 15 Even so, there might well be widespread divergence in the intuitive their data in this respect from a highly unrepresentative population sample (for As noted above, even within a single category of intuition-derived data there 16 To this extent, I think that experimental philosophy—which aims to hand for the epistemologist is to use her critical and logical acumen and, with a 17 Indeed, given the fact that such data does above, the only real constraint is that at least some of the intensional platitudes One would also expect there to be a fair degree about experimental philosophy sees it as merely assisting contemporary and ascribing it its due weight will be very tricky, especially since there is a fundamental problems for the epistemological enterprise, which is what some feedback loop in play here, in that the weight one ascribes to one set of evidence This is not the only kind of non-intuitional input which is relevant reminds us that analytical philosophy is hard that epistemologists can appeal to takes the form of information about the One issue that I have glossed over so far is what the epistemologist is which has it as striving for an informative, but still fully reductive, analysis in fact came about we thereby have information which can potentially play a of knowledge, where this involves a “decomposition” of the target term into
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exclusive to him—the theory of knowledge as it is understood by contemporary I do not deny that it would be intellectually appealing to be able to practice of epistemologists in this regard—indeed, of philosophers more notion, where this involves an informative account of that notion which need theories of knowledge being proposed are increasingly complex and ad hoc such Even if we grant that contemporary epistemology is indeed focussed and arguably ad hoc such data is nonetheless defeasible, and needs to be considered in the light of modal accounts of knowledge and virtue-theoretic accounts of knowledge we do want our theory of knowledge to give special weight to the intensional have been very successful at dealing with a range of problem cases and are In both cases they are also usually very way the folk usage of “knowledge,” so to that extent one would not expect there straightforward accounts of knowledge, and so can hardly be charged with Indeed, given the convergence of opinion in epistemology towards views of this sort, one actually has grounds for supposing that if there is a research programme in epistemology which is concerned with reasonably expect the theory to depart from the folk usage of “knowledge,” not least because the folk usage does not itself suggest a consistent theory of this up” version of the folk notion, albeit an account which is essentially tied to the turned out to be the optimal account of knowledge available, but it also turned The second point is that a mere elucidation of a term can in fact give A good example in this Suppose that it turns out that the best theory of A more serious form of scepticism about the contemporary knowledge understands this notion in terms of the further notion of cognitive what has been called the negative programm As we have noted above, experimental philosophy in itself poses no fundamental would surely have learnt something important about the nature of knowledge by recognising the truth of this theory, even if ultimately we were not presented enhancing the the experimental philosophy programme poses a far more serious challenge, been raised In particular, the thought is that the entire appeal to intuitions that is
vol.XVIII 2012 vol.XVIII 2012 at the heart of analytical philosophy is undermined by the data that has been philosophers have in mind here includes, for example, experiments which 35 Still, I hope to have least shown here that there is far more to the 36 supposedly irrelevant factors, such as their ethnicity or the order in which 31 The alleged upshot of this data is that analytical Notes philosophers are wrong to rely so much on intuitions, and hence should radically 1 Henceforth, where I talk of “epistemology“ or “philosophy,“ I have in mind analytical b c 3 Such claims are often made by proponents of what is known as “ “ even if we grant the import of these experiments, it still does not follow that locus classicus analytical epistemology is thereby posed anything like the dramatic—indeed, 4 5 A second issue here is that, as also noted above, analytical epistemology 6 7 33 extensional intuitions which may concern an event which is not even metaphysically possible is I think Williamson is entirely right on this score, and I would suggest that this Some might feel a very natural aversion to treating mere cognitive skills as virtues, particularly since skills and virtues are often contrasted by key ancient philosophers, such as made earlier that in responding to the negative programme in experimental philosophy in this way one is not thereby discounting the epistemic weight of a b a b c a this intuitive skill, remarking that “I am aware of no intellectual seeming beyond my conscious to the negative programme—that is, to run further experiments which challenge clearly cannot rule-out a priori 34 Indeed, some commentators argue that all intuition should be thought of as a kind of But for now at least, there is a clear lacuna in the data supporting the 11 used, was never meant to be an easy enterprise to engage in and the conclusions derived via challenges to contemporary analytical epistemology besides the two considered
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methodology in Pritchard 13 Of course, there is one strand in recent philosophical thought which sees philosophy as the cause 31 14 15 This is the so-called restrictionist challenge to analytical philosophy made by some 16 33 34 17 programme is some of the recent empirical literature regarding the cognitive limitations of philosophical expertise, then this might well pose a challenge to the methodology of analytical 35 epistemological realism An example of empirical work from the cognitive sciences that could be relevant to the 36 Kallestrup, Chris Kelp, Klemens Kappel, Hilary Kornblith, Martin Kusch, Mike Lynch, Ram wide References a b Philosophy Compass Philosophical Papers Children Talk About the Mind Interestingly, this point is often supplemented with the further claim that the analyses of Philosophical Perspectives are unable to accommodate a general intuition about knowledge—that is, that it is the sort of A Priori Philosophical Studies Philosophical Perspectives Psychology of Intuition and its Role in Philosophical Inquiry, And note that the claim that a good analysis of knowledge should be straightforward is Epistemology Modalized. In Defence of Pure Reason. Williamson on Knowledge,
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Social Epistemology, . Philosophical Explorations Oxford: Experimental Philosophy Stanford Encyclopædia of Philosophy Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Inquiry Philosophical Association Grazer Philosophische Studien Episteme The Psychology of Intuition and its Role in Philosophical Inquiry Episteme Epistemic Value, Epistemic Value, Episteme Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society In Social Epistemology Philosophical Studies The Routledge Companion to Episteme Epistemology Philosophy and Phenomenological Research Midwest Studies In Philosophy Common Knowledge Philosophy Compass Analysis Synthese Intuitive Judgment. Anarchy, State, and Utopia Philosophical Explanations Grazer Philosophische Studien Epistemic Luck Rethinking Synthese American Philosophical Quarterly Philosophical Perspectives Stanford Encyclopædia of Philosophy Philosophical Inquiry. Journal of Philosophy Ethics and Epistemology Philosophical Issues 17, Intuitions Philosophical Quarterly Achieving Knowledge Investigations Philosophy and Phenomenological Research Reason, Truth and History Episteme Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature Journal of Philosophy Philosophy Compass A Social History of Truth. Biases Cognition Psychological Review The Moral Problem
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MORAL RESPONSIBILITY Role in Philosophical Inquiry Responsibility Without Identity Philosophical Studies Grazer Philosophische Studien By David Shoemaker Experimental Philosophy Stich and His Critics Platitude Platitude 1 entails what I call Slogan In other words, for someone now to be morally responsible for some past I the same person as who accept Slogan Synthese presupposes is numerical identity, while others believe that what it presupposes is The Skeptics narrative Oxford: Oxford What they all do agree on, though, is that responsibility presupposes identity of Knowledge and Skepticism, some kind, that some version of Slogan Slogan Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society case even granting the truth of Platitude Philosophy and Phenomenological Research Science conceptions Because most adherents of Slogan are primarily interested in Philosophical Studies The Routledge Companion to Epistemology, discussing the metaphysics of personal identity, though, which conception Philosophical accountability, Topics and this is sometimes taken to mean the following: I cannot appropriately be held to account, that is, punished 3 Slogan: I cannot be Knowledge and its Limits Dialectica each other to account for bad actions that are not crimes (for example, laughing The Philosophy of Philosophy. Williamson on Knowledge positive another thing, once we admit this last point, we can see that, while considerations Philosophical Investigations no Foundations of Knowledge David Shoemaker is Associate Professor in the department of philosophy and The Blackwell Guide to Epistemology Murphy Institute at Tulane University where he has taught since 2009. His areas of specialization are: agency and responsibility (moral and criminal), personal identity and Personal Identity and Ethics: A Brief Introduction and Knowledge, Nature and Norms: An Introduction to Philosophy, which he wrote and edited with Mark Timmons. vol.XVIII 2012 vol.XVIII 2012