Knowledge as Acceptable Testimony

Knowledge as Acceptable Testimony PDF Author: Steven L. Reynolds
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108190855
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
Standard philosophical explanations of the concept of knowledge invoke a personal goal of having true beliefs, and explain the other requirements for knowledge as indicating the best way to achieve that goal. In this highly original book, Steven L. Reynolds argues instead that the concept of knowledge functions to express a naturally developing kind of social control, a complex social norm, and that the main purpose of our practice of saying and thinking that people 'know' is to improve our system for exchanging information, which is testimony. He makes illuminating comparisons of the knowledge norm of testimony with other complex social norms - such as those requiring proper clothing, respectful conversation, and the complementary virtues of tact and frankness - and shows how this account fits with our concept of knowledge as studied in recent analytic epistemology. His book will interest a range of readers in epistemology, psychology, and sociology.

Knowledge as Acceptable Testimony

Knowledge as Acceptable Testimony PDF Author: Steven L. Reynolds
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108190855
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Get Book Here

Book Description
Standard philosophical explanations of the concept of knowledge invoke a personal goal of having true beliefs, and explain the other requirements for knowledge as indicating the best way to achieve that goal. In this highly original book, Steven L. Reynolds argues instead that the concept of knowledge functions to express a naturally developing kind of social control, a complex social norm, and that the main purpose of our practice of saying and thinking that people 'know' is to improve our system for exchanging information, which is testimony. He makes illuminating comparisons of the knowledge norm of testimony with other complex social norms - such as those requiring proper clothing, respectful conversation, and the complementary virtues of tact and frankness - and shows how this account fits with our concept of knowledge as studied in recent analytic epistemology. His book will interest a range of readers in epistemology, psychology, and sociology.

Learning from Words

Learning from Words PDF Author: Jennifer Lackey
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191614564
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
Testimony is an invaluable source of knowledge. We rely on the reports of those around us for everything from the ingredients in our food and medicine to the identity of our family members. Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in the epistemology of testimony. Despite the multitude of views offered, a single thesis is nearly universally accepted: testimonial knowledge is acquired through the process of transmission from speaker to hearer. In this book, Jennifer Lackey shows that this thesis is false and, hence, that the literature on testimony has been shaped at its core by a view that is fundamentally misguided. She then defends a detailed alternative to this conception of testimony: whereas the views currently dominant focus on the epistemic status of what speakers believe, Lackey advances a theory that instead centers on what speakers say. The upshot is that, strictly speaking, we do not learn from one another's beliefs - we learn from one another's words. Once this shift in focus is in place, Lackey goes on to argue that, though positive reasons are necessary for testimonial knowledge, testimony itself is an irreducible epistemic source. This leads to the development of a theory that gives proper credence to testimony's epistemologically dual nature: both the speaker and the hearer must make a positive epistemic contribution to testimonial knowledge. The resulting view not only reveals that testimony has the capacity to generate knowledge, but it also gives appropriate weight to our nature as both socially indebted and individually rational creatures. The approach found in this book will, then, represent a radical departure from the views currently dominating the epistemology of testimony, and thus is intended to reshape our understanding of the deep and ubiquitous reliance we have on the testimony of those around us.

Knowledge as Acceptable Testimony

Knowledge as Acceptable Testimony PDF Author: Steven Reynolds (Associate Professor of Philosophy)
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781108202862
Category : PHILOSOPHY
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description


The Epistemology of Testimony

The Epistemology of Testimony PDF Author: Jennifer Lackey
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199276005
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
Publisher Description

The Transmission of Knowledge

The Transmission of Knowledge PDF Author: John Greco
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108472621
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 227

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Book Description
This book examines the relations and structures which enable and inhibit the sharing of knowledge within and across epistemic communities.

Testimony

Testimony PDF Author: C. A. J. Coady
Publisher: Clarendon Press
ISBN: 0191519987
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 328

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Book Description
The role of testimony in the getting of reliable belief or knowledge is a central but neglected epistemological issue. Western philosophical tradition has paid scant attention to the individual thinker's reliance upon the word of others; yet we are in fact profoundly dependent on others for a vast amount of what any of us claims to know. Professor Coady begins by exploring the nature and depth of our reliance upon testimony, addressing the complex definitional puzzles surrounding the idea. He analyses the tradition of debate on the topic in order to reveal the epistemic individualism which has given rise to an illusory ideal of `autonomous knowledge', and to gain a deeper understanding of the issues. He concludes this part of the book by showing what a feasible justification of testimony as a source of knowledge could be. In the second half of the book the author uses this new view of testimony to challenge certain widespread assumptions in the fields of history, mathematics, psychology, and law.

Achieving Knowledge

Achieving Knowledge PDF Author: John Greco
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 0521193915
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
Argues that knowledge is a kind of achievement, exploring questions of what it is and what kind of value it has.

An Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge

An Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge PDF Author: Noah Marcelino Lemos
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780511649042
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 244

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Book Description
Providing a clear and accessible introduction to epistemology or the theory of knowledge, this book discusses some of the main theories of justification, including foundationalism, coherentism, reliabilism, and virtue epistemology.

Witness Testimony Evidence

Witness Testimony Evidence PDF Author: Douglas Walton
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139468804
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 15

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Book Description
Recent work in artificial intelligence has increasingly turned to argumentation as a rich, interdisciplinary area of research that can provide new methods related to evidence and reasoning in the area of law. Douglas Walton provides an introduction to basic concepts, tools and methods in argumentation theory and artificial intelligence as applied to the analysis and evaluation of witness testimony. He shows how witness testimony is by its nature inherently fallible and sometimes subject to disastrous failures. At the same time such testimony can provide evidence that is not only necessary but inherently reasonable for logically guiding legal experts to accept or reject a claim. Walton shows how to overcome the traditional disdain for witness testimony as a type of evidence shown by logical positivists, and the views of trial sceptics who doubt that trial rules deal with witness testimony in a way that yields a rational decision-making process.

Attributing Knowledge

Attributing Knowledge PDF Author: Jody Azzouni
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0197508812
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 481

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Book Description
"The word "know" is revealed as vague, applicable to fallible agents, factive and criterion transcendent. It is invariant in its meaning across contexts and invariant relative to different agents. Only purely epistemic properties affect its correct application-not the interests of agents or those who attribute the word to agents. These properties enable "know" to be applied correctly-as it routinely is-to cognitive agents ranging from sophisticated human knowers, who engage in substantial metacognition, to various animals, who know much less and do much less, if any, metacognition, to nonconscious mechanical devices such as drones, robots, and the like. These properties of the word "know" suffice to explain the usage phenomena that contextualists and subject-sensitive invariantists invoke to place pressure on an understanding of the word that treats its application as involving no interests of agents, or others. It is also shown the factivity and the fallibilist-compatibility of the word "know" explains Moorean paradoxes, the preface paradox, and the lottery paradox. A fallibility-sensitive failure of knowledge-closure is given along with a similar failure of rational-belief closure. The latter explains why rational agents can nevertheless believe A and B, where A and B contradict one another. A substantial discussion of various kinds of metacognition is given-as well as a discussion of the metacognition literature in cognitive ethology. An appendix offers a new resolution of the hangman paradox, one that turns neither on a failure of knowledge closure nor on a failure of KK"--