Full textRead freeSee used
Nagel, Jennifer. Knowledge Ascription and the Psychological Consequences of Changing Stakes
2008, Australasian Journal of Philosophy 86: 279-294.
Added by: Jie Gao
Abstract: Why do our intuitive knowledge ascriptions shift when a subject's practical interests are mentioned? Many efforts to answer this question have focused on empirical linguistic evidence for context sensitivity in knowledge claims, but the empirical psychology of belief formation and attribution also merits attention. The present paper examines a major psychological factor (called "need-for-closure") relevant to ascriptions involving practical interests. Need-for-closure plays an important role in determining whether one has a settled belief; it also influences the accuracy of one's cognition. Given these effects, it is a mistake to assume that high- and low-stakes subjects provided with the same initial evidence are perceived to enjoy belief formation that is the same as far as truth-conducive factors are concerned. This mistaken assumption has underpinned contextualist and interest-relative invariantist treatments of cases in which contrasting knowledge ascriptions are elicited by descriptions of subjects with the same initial information and different stakes. The paper argues that intellectualist invariantism in fact yields the best treatment of such cases.

Comment: Nagel is one of the prominent epistemologists who bring relevant psychological researches to philosophical debates. In this paper, Nagel proposes a psychological account of intuitive judgments of pair of cases that are used to motivate subject sensitive invariantism. The paper is very useful for courses on methodology of philosophy and teachings on pragmatic encroachment in courses on epistemology.

Export citation in BibTeX format

Export text citation

View this text on PhilPapers

Export citation in Reference Manager format

Export citation in EndNote format

Export citation in Zotero format


Share on Facebook
Share on LinkedIn
Share by Email

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *