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Added by: Nick NovelliIntroduction: Moral testimony has been getting a bad name in the recent literature. It has been argued that while testimony is a perfectly fine source for nonmoral belief, there's something wrong with basing one's moral beliefs on it. This paper argues that the bad name is undeserved: Moral testimony isn't any more problematic than nonmoral testimony.Comment: This is a very good, easy to understand article on moral epistemology. The examples used are clear and well-presented, and it would be suitable even for students with no previous experience with moral epistemology. As the issue addressed, moral testimony, is a central one, this article would be recommended for an introductory course in moral epistemology.Spaulding, Shannon. Mind Misreading2016, Philosophical Issues 26 (1): 422-440.
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Added by: Andrea BlomqvistAbstract: Most people think of themselves as pretty good at understanding others' beliefs, desires, emotions, and intentions. Accurate mindreading is an impressive cognitive feat, and for this reason the philosophical literature on mindreading has focused exclusively on explaining such successes. However, as it turns out, we regularly make mindreading mistakes. Understanding when and how mind misreading occurs is crucial for a complete account of mindreading. In this paper, I examine the conditions under which mind misreading occurs. I argue that these patterns of mind misreading shed light on the limits of mindreading, reveal new perspectives on how mindreading works, and have implications for social epistemology.Comment: Unlike most papers in the mindreading debate, this paper focuses on the cases in which we fail to mindread. It relates these cases to self-awareness, and suggests how this could be explored to shed light on peer disagreement and epistemic injustice. This paper would fit in well in a social cognition syllabus.Srinivasan, Amia. Are we luminous?2015, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research: 90 (2): 294-319.
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Added by: Jie GaoAbstract: Since its appearance over a decade ago, Timothy Williamson's anti-luminosity argument has come under sustained attack. Defenders of the luminous overwhelmingly object to the argument's use of a certain margin-for-error premise. Williamson himself claims that the premise follows easily from a safety condition on knowledge together with his description of the thought experiment. But luminists argue that this is not so: the margin-for-error premise either requires an implausible interpretation of the safety requirement on knowledge, or it requires other equally implausible assumptions. In this paper I bolster the margin-for-error premise against these attacks by recasting Williamson's own two-part defence, the first part intended to work on the assumption that there is no constitutive connection between the phenomenal and the doxastic, and the second intended to work without this assumption. Pace various luminists, I argue that the appeals to safety needed for Williamson's two-part defence are plausible. I also argue that all that is needed to generate the margin-for-error premise from these safety conditions is an empirical assumption about the kinds of creatures we are: that is, creatures whose beliefs are structured by certain dispositions. By recasting the anti-luminosity argument in this way, we can understand what is really at stake in the debate about luminosity: that is, whether we are luminous.Comment: In this paper, Sirinivasan defends Williamson's anti-luminosity argument against a general criticism having to do with a certain margin-for-error premise. It is good for teaching upper-level undergraduate or Masters courses on topics of self-knowledge, epistemic externalism or luminosity.Srinivasan, Amia. Feminism and Metaethics2016, in Mcpherson, Tristram and Plunkett, David (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Metaethics, Routledge 2016
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Added by: Giada FratantonioAbstract: Feminism is first and foremost a political project: a project aimed at the liberation of women and the destruction of patriarchy. This project does not have a particular metaethics; there is no feminist consensus, for example, on the epistemology of moral belief or the metaphysics of moral truth. But the work of feminist philosophers - that is, philosophers who identify with the political project of feminism, and moreover see that political project as informing their philosophical work - raises significant metaethical questions: about the need to rehabilitate traditional moral philosophy, about the extent to which political and moral considerations can play a role in philosophical theorizing, and about the importance of rival metaethical conceptions for first-order political practice. I discuss some of the contributions that feminist philosophy makes to each of these questions in turn. I hope to call attention to the way in which feminist thought bears on traditional topics in metaethics (particularly moral epistemology and ethical methodology) but also to how feminist thought might inform metaethical practice itself.Comment: The author discusses some contributions that feminist philosophy can make to some questions on metaethics. Can be used for a course on feminism.Srinivasan, Amia. Normativity without Cartesian Privilege2015, Philosophical Issues: 25 (1): 273-299.
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Added by: Jie GaoSummary: This paper aims to explore the implication of rejecting Cartesianism for our relationship to the normative realm. It is argued that it implies that this relationship is more fraught than many would like to think. Without privileged access to our own minds, there are no norms that can invariably guide our actions, and no norms that are immune from blameless violation. This will come as bad news to those normative theorists who think that certain central normative notions - e.g. the ethical ought or epistemic justification - should be cashed out in terms of subjects' mental states precisely in order to generate norms that are action-guiding and immune from blameless vi- olation. Meanwhile Anti-Cartesianism might come as good news to those normative theorists who resist cashing out norms in terms of mental states. For Anti-Cartesnianism implies that no norms - however closely tied to the mental - can be perfectly action-guiding or totally immune from blameless violation. More generally, once we have accepted that our relationship to our own minds lacks the perfect intimacy promised by Cartesianism, we are, for better or worse, left with the view that the normative realm is suffused with ignorance and bad luck.Comment: This is a good paper for teachings on epistemic normativity, more specifically on normative externalism. Having pre-knowledge on epistemic internalism and extermalism would be helpful in understanding this paper, but not necessarily required.Steingart, Alma. A Group Theory of Group Theory: Collaborative Mathematics and the ‘Uninvention’ of a 1000-page Proof2012, Social Studies of Science, 42(2): 185-213.
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Added by: Fenner Stanley TanswellAbstract: Over a period of more than 30 years, more than 100 mathematicians worked on a project to classify mathematical objects known as finite simple groups. The Classification, when officially declared completed in 1981, ranged between 300 and 500 articles and ran somewhere between 5,000 and 10,000 journal pages. Mathematicians have hailed the project as one of the greatest mathematical achievements of the 20th century, and it surpasses, both in scale and scope, any other mathematical proof of the 20th century. The history of the Classification points to the importance of face-to-face interaction and close teaching relationships in the production and transformation of theoretical knowledge. The techniques and methods that governed much of the work in finite simple group theory circulated via personal, often informal, communication, rather than in published proofs. Consequently, the printed proofs that would constitute the Classification Theorem functioned as a sort of shorthand for and formalization of proofs that had already been established during personal interactions among mathematicians. The proof of the Classification was at once both a material artifact and a crystallization of one community’s shared practices, values, histories, and expertise. However, beginning in the 1980s, the original proof of the Classification faced the threat of ‘uninvention’. The papers that constituted it could still be found scattered throughout the mathematical literature, but no one other than the dwindling community of group theorists would know how to find them or how to piece them together. Faced with this problem, finite group theorists resolved to produce a ‘second-generation proof’ to streamline and centralize the Classification. This project highlights that the proof and the community of finite simple groups theorists who produced it were co-constitutive–one formed and reformed by the other.Comment (from this Blueprint): Steingart is a sociologist who charts the history and sociology of the development of the extremely large and highly collaborative Classification Theorem. She shows that the proof involved a community deciding on shared values, standards of reliability, expertise, and ways of communicating. For example, the community became tolerant of so-called “local errors” so long as these did not put the main result at risk. Furthermore, Steingart discusses how the proof’s text is distributed across a wide number of places and requires expertise to navigate, leaving the proof in danger of uninvention if the experts retire from mathematics.Sullivan, Shannon, Nancy Tuana (eds). Race and the Epistemologies of Ignorance2007, State University of New York Press
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Added by: Simon Fokt, Contributed by: Yoko Arisaka
Publisher's Note: Offering a wide variety of philosophical approaches to the neglected philosophical problem of ignorance, this groundbreaking collection builds on Charles Mills’s claim that racism involves an inverted epistemology, an epistemology of ignorance. Contributors explore how different forms of ignorance linked to race are produced and sustained and what role they play in promoting racism and white privilege. They argue that the ignorance that underpins racism is not a simple gap in knowledge, the accidental result of an epistemological oversight. In the case of racial oppression, ignorance often is actively produced for purposes of domination and exploitation. But as these essays demonstrate, ignorance is not simply a tool of oppression wielded by the powerful. It can also be a strategy for survival, an important tool for people of color to wield against white privilege and white supremacy. The book concludes that understanding ignorance and the politics of such ignorance should be a key element of epistemological and social/political analyses, for it has the potential to reveal the role of power in the construction of what is known and provide a lens for the political values at work in knowledge practices.
“This anthology brings together some very prominent philosophers to address one of the most embarrassing and blatantly ignored elephants in philosophy: ignorance. While philosophers claim to be children of Socrates, who alone was virtuous and courageous enough to recognize the fecundity of ignorance, few have really addressed it with the verve and originality displayed in the contributions to this volume. I consider it a must-have for libraries, faculty, and graduate students.” — Eduardo Mendieta, editor of The Frankfurt School on Religion: Key Writings by the Major Thinkers
Contributors include Linda Martín Alcoff, Alison Bailey, Robert Bernasconi, Lorraine Code, Harvey Cormier, Stephanie Malia Fullerton, Sarah Lucia Hoagland, Frank Margonis, Charles W. Mills, Lucius T. Outlaw (Jr.), Elizabeth V. Spelman, Shannon Sullivan, Paul C. Taylor, and Nancy Tuana.
Comment: Different chapters can be used as a reading material on situated epistemology, philosophy of race, production of knowledgeSullivan, Shannon (ed.), Tuana, Nancy (ed.). Race and Epistemologies of Ignorance2007, State Univ of New York Pr.-
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Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Corbin CovingtonPublisher's Note: Leading scholars explore how different forms of ignorance are produced and sustained, and the role they play in knowledge practices.Comment:Sznajder, Marta. Inductive Logic as Explication: The Evolution of Carnap’s Notion of Logical Probability2018, The Monist 101(4): 417–440.
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Added by: Viviane FairbankAbstract:
According to a popular interpretation, Carnap’s interpretation of probability had evolved from a logical towards a subjective conception. However Carnap himself insisted that his basic philosophical view of probability was always the same. I address this apparent clash between Carnap's self-identification and the subsequent interpretations of his work. Following its original intentions, I reconstruct inductive logic as an explication. The emerging picture is of a versatile linguistic framework, whose main function is not the discovery of objective logical relations in the object language, but the stipulation of conceptual possibilities. Within this representation, I map out the changes that the project went through. Seen from such an explication-based perspective, inductive logic becomes quite hard to categorize using the standard labels.
Comment:Tanesini, Alessandra. “Calm down, dear”: intellectual arrogance, silencing and ignorance2016, Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 90(1): 71-92.-
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Added by: Rie IzukaAbstract: In this paper I provide an account of two forms of intellectual arrogance which cause the epistemic practices of conversational turn-taking and assertion to malfunction. I detail some of the ethical and epistemic harms generated by intellectual arrogance, and explain its role in fostering the intellectual vices of timidity and servility in other agents. Finally, I show that arrogance produces ignorance by silencing others (both preventing them from speaking and causing their assertions to misfire) and by fostering self-delusion in the arrogant themselves.Comment: This article examines intellectual vices of arrogance, and its counterpart: servility. The author explains how the former vice develops the latter: culpably breaking of the norms of turn-taking of conversation locutionarily silences other conversants, and such disrespectful behavior would lead conversants to fall into a vice of intellectual servility.Tanesini, Alessandra. “Calm down, dear”: intellectual arrogance, silencing and ignorance2016, Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume 90(1): 71-92.
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Added by: Rie IzukaAbstract: In this paper I provide an account of two forms of intellectual arrogance which cause the epistemic practices of conversational turn-taking and assertion to malfunction. I detail some of the ethical and epistemic harms generated by intellectual arrogance, and explain its role in fostering the intellectual vices of timidity and servility in other agents. Finally, I show that arrogance produces ignorance by silencing others (both preventing them from speaking and causing their assertions to misfire) and by fostering self-delusion in the arrogant themselves.Comment: This article examines intellectual vices of arrogance, and its counterpart: servility. The author explains how the former vice develops the latter: culpably breaking of the norms of turn-taking of conversation locutionarily silences other conversants, and such disrespectful behavior would lead conversants to fall into a vice of intellectual servility. This paper works well in teaching individual vice to undergrads, it does not require any prior knowledge of virtue epistemology, hence, perfect for introductory course of virtue epistemology.Tanesini, Alessandra. An introduction to Feminist Epistemologies1998, Wiley-Blackwell
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Added by: Giada Fratantonio
Publisher's Note: Could gender, race, and sexuality be relevant to knowledge? Although their positions and arguments differ in several respects, feminists have asserted that science, knowledge, and rationality cannot be severed from their social, political, and cultural aspects. This book presents a comprehensive introduction to feminist epistemologies situated at the intersection of philosophical, sociological, and cultural investigations of knowledge. It provides several critiques of more traditional approaches, and explores the alternatives proposed by feminists. In particular, this book contains extensive discussions of topics such as objectivity, rationality, power, and subject. Drawing on a variety of sources, the author also argues that when knowledge is conceived in terms of practices, it becomes possible to see it as normative and socially constituted."
Comment:Tanesini, Alessandra. Teaching Virtue Changing Attitudes2016, Logos and Episteme 7(4): 503-527.-
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Added by: Rie IzukaAbstract: In this paper I offer an original account of intellectual modesty and some of its surrounding vices: intellectual haughtiness, arrogance, servility and self-abasement. I argue that these vices are attitudes as social psychologists understand the notion. I also draw some of the educational implications of the account. In particular, I urge caution about the efficacy of direct instruction about virtue and of stimulating emulation through exposure to positive exemplars.Comment: This article examins an intellecutal vice of arrogance, and also touches upon the issue of how to teach virtues. This paper works well in teaching individual vice to undergrads, it does not require any prior knowledge of virtue epistemology, hence, perfect for introductory course of virtue epistemology.Tanesini, Alessandra. Teaching Virtue: Changing Attitudes2016, Logos and Episteme 7(4): 503-527.
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Added by: Rie IzukaAbstract: In this paper I offer an original account of intellectual modesty and some of its surrounding vices: intellectual haughtiness, arrogance, servility and self-abasement. I argue that these vices are attitudes as social psychologists understand the notion. I also draw some of the educational implications of the account. In particular, I urge caution about the efficacy of direct instruction about virtue and of stimulating emulation through exposure to positive exemplars.Comment: This article examines the intellectual vice of arrogance, and also touches upon the issue of how to teach virtues. The author is urging caution about the efficacy of exemplarism: a popular view on the education for virtues, and instead offers an alternative method of teaching virtues: self-affirmation.Tao, Terence. What is good mathematics?2007, Bulletin of the American Mathematical Society, 44(4): 623-634.
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Added by: Fenner Stanley TanswellAbstract: Some personal thoughts and opinions on what “good quality mathematics” is and whether one should try to define this term rigorously. As a case study, the story of Szemer´edi’s theorem is presented.Comment (from this Blueprint): Tao is a mathematician who has written extensively about mathematics as a discipline. In this piece he considers what counts as “good mathematics”. The opening section that I’ve recommended has a long list of possible meanings of “good mathematics” and considers what this plurality means for mathematics. (The remainder details the history of Szemerédi’s theorem, and argues that good mathematics also involves contributing to a great story of mathematics. However, it gets a bit technical, so only look into it if you’re particularly interested in the details of the case.)Can’t find it?Contribute the texts you think should be here and we’ll add them soon!
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Sliwa, Paulina. In defense of moral testimony
2012, Philosophical Studies 158 (2): 175-195.