Just a quick book note. Not exactly hot off the presses (a 2018 publication date) but still new-ish as philosophers reckon the passage of time. A work on epistemology rom Oxford University Press, FALLIBILISM by Jessica Brown.
Here is the description, lifted straight from the publishers' website copy:
What strength of evidence is required for knowledge? Ordinarily, we often claim to know something on the
basis of evidence which doesn't guarantee its truth. For instance, one might claim to know that one sees
a crow on the basis of visual experience even though having that experience does not guarantee that there
is a crow (it might be a rook, or one might be dreaming). As a result, those wanting to avoid philosophical
scepticism have standardly embraced "fallibilism": one can know a proposition on the basis of evidence
that supports it even if the evidence doesn't guarantee its truth. Despite this, there's been a persistent
temptation to endorse "infallibilism", according to which knowledge requires evidence that guarantees
truth. For doesn't it sound contradictory to simultaneously claim to know and admit the possibility of
error? Infallibilism is undergoing a contemporary renaissance.
Furthermore, recent infallibilists make the surprising claim that they can avoid scepticism.
Jessica Brown presents a fresh examination of the debate between these two positions. She argues that
infallibilists can avoid scepticism only at the cost of problematic commitments concerning evidence and
evidential support. Further, she argues that alleged objections to fallibilism are not compelling. She
concludes that we should be fallibilists. In doing so, she discusses the nature of evidence, evidential
support, justification, blamelessness, closure for knowledge, defeat, epistemic akrasia, practical reasoning,
concessive knowledge attributions, and the threshold problem.
Infallibilism precludes knowledge, because mistakes are always possible. Yet it is contradictory to simultaneously claim to know and admit the possibility of error. The solution is to define "knowledge" so as to admit the possibility of error. To know something is to have no reasonable basis to doubt it. That one might be dreaming is not a reasonable basis, because one who is dreaming is unable to assert knowledge. If I assert that a see a crow, then I am awake and cannot be dreaming.
ReplyDeleteCan we have knowledge of the non-existence of something, such as unicorns, flying pigs, or God? We have no evidence of the existence of such things, but it is conceivable that evidence of them could turn up, so we don't know that they do not exist. But, under my more limited definition of "knowledge," we know that they don't exist, because it is not reasonable to think that evidence of unicorns, flying pigs, or God will show up. It almost certainly would have by now if it existed.
Delete"One who is dreaming is unable to assert knowledge." Is there survey evidence on point? Do we know that no one has dreamt of, say, standing in front of a lecture hall making various knowledge claims? This looks like an empirical generalization, and (especially if we don't want to go so far as postulating a single solitary dreamer, the Cartesian nightmare!) it could use some empirical back-up. My dreamer in front of the lecture hall might have imagines himself saying, "In Moravia in the 13th century, pigs did fly."
ReplyDeleteI did not express myself clearly. I was not referring to asserting knowledge in a dream. (Of course, we can dream that we assert knowledge. I don't imagine that there is any limit to what we can dream, unless the brain imposes one.) I was referring to, while dreaming, asserting knowledge orally that an awake listener could understand.
ReplyDeleteI must, however, qualify my statement, "If I assert that I see a crow, then I am awake and cannot be dreaming. Some people talk in their sleep, and it is possible that someone asleep could verbalize "I see a crow" clearly enough for an awake listener to understand. But someone who while dreaming said "I see a crow" would not see a crow but would merely be dreaming that he saw a crow. Therefore, his assertion that he sees a crow would be false and would not constitute knowledge.
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