PRAGMATIC ENCROACHMENT: IT'S NOT JUST ABOUT KNOWLEDGE

Episteme ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 27-42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeremy Fantl ◽  
Matthew McGrath
Keyword(s):  
Epistemic Status ◽  
Pragmatic Encroachment ◽  
Epistemic Position ◽  
The Status

AbstractThere is pragmatic encroachment on some epistemic status just in case whether a proposition has that status for a subject depends not only on the subject's epistemic position with respect to the proposition, but also on features of the subject's non-epistemic, practical environment. Discussions of pragmatic encroachment usually focus on knowledge. Here we argue that, barring infallibilism, there is pragmatic encroachment on what is arguably a more fundamental epistemic status – the status a proposition has when it is warranted enough to be a reason one has for believing other things.

Knowledge, Practical Adequacy, and Stakes

2019 ◽  
pp. 234-257 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charity Anderson ◽  
John Hawthorne
Keyword(s):  
Pragmatic Encroachment ◽  
Epistemic Position ◽  
The Way

Defenses of pragmatic encroachment commonly rely on two thoughts: first, that the gap between one’s strength of epistemic position on p and perfect strength sometimes makes a difference to what one is justified in doing, and second, that the higher the stakes, the harder it is to know. It is often assumed that these ideas complement each other. This chapter shows that these ideas are far from complementary. Along the way, a variety of strategies for regimenting the somewhat inchoate notion of stakes are indicated, and some troubling cases for pragmatic encroachment raised.

Social epistemology

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frederick F. Schmitt
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Social Epistemology ◽  
Sociology Of Knowledge ◽  
Sociology Of Science ◽  
Epistemic Status ◽  
Normative Study ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Individual

Social epistemology is the conceptual and normative study of the relevance to knowledge of social relations, interests and institutions. It is thus to be distinguished from the sociology of knowledge, which is an empirical study of the contingent social conditions or causes of what is commonly taken to be knowledge. Social epistemology revolves around the question of whether knowledge is to be understood individualistically or socially. Epistemology has traditionally ascribed a secondary status to beliefs indebted to social relations – to testimony, expert authority, consensus, common sense and received wisdom. Such beliefs could attain the status of knowledge, if at all, only by being based on first-hand knowledge – that is, knowledge justified by the experience or reason of the individual knower. Since the work of the common sense Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid in the mid-eighteenth century, epistemologists have from time to time taken seriously the idea that beliefs indebted to social relations have a primary and not merely secondary epistemic status. The bulk of work in social epistemology has, however, been done since Thomas Kuhn depicted scientific revolutions as involving social changes in science. Work on the subject since 1980 has been inspired by the ‘strong programme’ in the sociology of science, by feminist epistemology and by the naturalistic epistemology of W.V. Quine. These influences have inspired epistemologists to rethink the role of social relations – especially testimony – in knowledge. The subject that has emerged may be divided into three branches: the place of social factors in the knowledge possessed by individuals; the organization of individuals’ cognitive labour; and the nature of collective knowledge, including common sense, consensus and common, group, communal and impersonal knowledge.

scholarly journals Levels of Reality

Languages ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ronald W. Langacker
Keyword(s):  
Structural Features ◽  
Epistemic Status ◽  
Clause Structure ◽  
Matrix Clause ◽  
Linguistic Structure ◽  
The Matrix ◽  
The Status ◽  
History Of ◽  
Levels Of Reality

Two fundamental aspects of conceptual and linguistic structure are examined in relation to one another: organization into strata, each a baseline giving rise to the next by elaboration; and the conceptions of reality implicated at successive levels of English clause structure. A clause profiles an occurrence (event or state) and grounds it by assessing its epistemic status (location vis-à-vis reality). Three levels are distinguished in which different notions of reality correlate with particular structural features. In baseline clauses, grounded by “tense,” the profiled occurrence belongs to baseline reality (the established history of occurrences). Basic clauses incorporate perspective (passive, progressive, and perfect), and since grounding includes the grammaticized modals, as well as negation, basic reality is more elaborate. A basic clause expresses a proposition, comprising the grounded structure and the epistemic status specified by basic grounding. At higher strata, propositions are themselves subject to epistemic assessment, in which conceptualizers negotiate their validity; propositions accepted as valid constitute propositional reality. Propositions are assessed through interactive grounding, in the form of questioning and polarity focusing, and by complementation, in which the matrix clause indicates the status of the complement.

Entitlement and the Epistemic Status of Cornerstone Beliefs

2017 ◽  
Vol 94 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 126-137
Author(s):  
Hamid Vahid
Keyword(s):  
Perceptual Experience ◽  
Epistemic Status ◽  
Pragmatic Encroachment ◽  
Crispin Wright ◽  
The Way

In a series of papers, Crispin Wright has proposed a number of arguments to show that what makes one’s perceptual experience confer justification on the beliefs it gives rise to includes having independent, non-evidential warrant (entitlement) to believe the kind of presuppositions (or ‘cornerstones’) that the skeptic highlights. It has been objected that such arguments at most show that entitlement has a pragmatic character. While sympathizing with this objection, I will argue in this paper that the kind of considerations that Wright adduces in support of the entitlement thesis can nevertheless bear on the epistemic status of cornerstone beliefs, though not in the way envisaged by Wright himself. To show this, I shall make use of the thesis of pragmatic encroachment arguing that, in addition to its practical stakes, the epistemic stakes of a belief are also relevant to its epistemic status. The consequences of the claim will then be explored for the question of the epistemic status of cornerstone beliefs which seem to show that, pace Wright, such beliefs can, after all, be evidentially warranted.

Pragmatic Encroachment

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew McGrath
Keyword(s):  
Pragmatic Encroachment ◽  
Epistemic Position ◽  
General Kind

The thesis of pragmatic encroachment about knowledge holds that whether a subject knows that p can vary due to differences in practical stakes, holding fixed the strength of the subject’s epistemic position with respect to p. Accepting pragmatic encroachment about knowledge brings with it a significant explanatory burden: if knowledge varies with the stakes, why does knowledge show so many signs of staying fixed with variations in the stakes? This chapter argues that explanatory burdens of this general kind are harder to avoid than is commonly thought: even if you deny the stakes-sensitivity of knowledge, you will be stuck accepting the stakes-sensitivity of other statuses which, like knowledge, show the same signs of staying fixed with variations in the stakes. The chapter discusses two such statuses: reason-worthiness and emotion-worthiness. If the arguments succeed, then, the problems of pragmatic encroachment are everyone’s problems.

scholarly journals The status of qualia in naturalistic theories of consciousness

2020 ◽  
pp. 192-202
Author(s):  
Ekaterina V. Uskova ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Mental States ◽  
The Other ◽  
Evolutionary Approach ◽  
Epistemic Status ◽  
Ontological Status ◽  
Analytical Philosophy ◽  
The Status ◽  
The One ◽  
The Brain

The article analyzes naturalistic theories of consciousness in the framework of analytical philosophy. The choice of these theories is due to the monistic interpretation of consciousness in them. This position seems, on the one hand, to be logically sound, and, on the other hand, to have sufficient explanatory power. However, there are weaknesses in this position, some of which are considered in the article. One of the obvious difficulties for any theory of consciousness, especially the naturalistic one, is the interpretation of qualia or the qualitative scope of our mental states. Scientists are faced with such questions as: «Why does it even exist?» and «What is its practical meaning?» We find possible answers to them in the theories of J. Searle, N. Humphrey, and F. Peters. Each of them agrees that consciousness is generated by the brain, but they differ in the interpretation of its ontological status. Nevertheless, their understanding of the epistemic status of consciousness is similar: correlation of views on consciousness from the position of the 3rd and 1st person is always problematic. At the same time, both consciousness itself and its qualitative scope can and should be explained within the framework of the evolutionary approach. It is obvious that none of the naturalistic theories of consciousness has yet given answers to all questions (if it is even possible), but the search for these answers, in our opinion, should be carried out precisely within this approach.

scholarly journals MEMORY COMPATIBILISM: PRESERVING AND GENERATING POSITIVE EPISTEMIC STATUS

2019 ◽  
Vol 60 (143) ◽  
pp. 457-481
Author(s):  
Tiegue Vieira Rodrigues
Keyword(s):  
Epistemic Status ◽  
The Status ◽  
Epistemological Debate ◽  
Epistemic Role

ABSTRACT The contemporary epistemological debate regarding the epistemic role of memory is dominated by the dispute between two different views: memory preservationism and memory generativism. While the former holds that memory only preserves the epistemic status already acquired through another source, the latter advocates that there are situations where memory can function as a generative epistemic source. Both views are problematic and have to deal with important objections. In this paper, I suggest a novel argument for granting memory the status of a generative source of justification and knowledge that overcomes objections raised for both preservationism and generativism. I shall call this view Memory Compatibilism. I argue that the proposed view better explains the generative epistemic character of memory.

scholarly journals Two Shapes of Pragmatism

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Léna Mudry
Keyword(s):  
The Other ◽  
Epistemic Rationality ◽  
Practical Reasons ◽  
Epistemic Status ◽  
Ethics Of Belief ◽  
Pragmatic Encroachment ◽  
The Ethics Of Belief

Abstract The ethics of belief is concerned with the question of what we should believe. According to evidentialism, what one should believe is determined by evidence only. Pragmatism claims that practical considerations too can be relevant. But pragmatism comes in two shapes. According to a more traditional version, practical considerations can provide practical reasons for or against belief. According to a new brand of pragmatism, pragmatic encroachment, practical considerations can affect positive epistemic status, such as epistemic rationality or knowledge. In the literature, the distinction between the two versions of pragmatism is not always made. If it is mentioned, it is quickly put aside. Sometimes, it is simply overlooked. As evidentialists face two distinct pragmatist challenges, they must get clearer on the distinction. But it matters for pragmatists too. As I see it, if one accepts one version of pragmatism, one should reject the other. This paper’s goals are to get clearer on the distinction and argue that both pragmatisms are independent. Accepting one version does not commit one to accept the other. Moreover, even if both pragmatisms tend to be neutral toward one another, I will argue that traditional pragmatism has good reasons to reject pragmatic encroachment and vice versa.

scholarly journals Pragmatic Encroachment and Context Externalism

2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 165-174
Author(s):  
David Coss ◽  
Keyword(s):  
True Belief ◽  
Pragmatic Encroachment ◽  
Epistemic Position ◽  
Epistemic Context ◽  
Case Based

Pragmatic Encroachment (PE hereafter), sometimes called ‘antiintellectualism,’ is a denial of epistemic purism. Purism is the view that only traditional, truth-relevant, epistemic factors determine whether a true belief is an instance of knowledge. According to anti-intellectualists, two subjects S and S*, could be in the same epistemic position with regards to puristic epistemic factors, but S might know that p while S* doesn’t if less is at stake for S than for S*. Motivations for rejecting purism take two forms: case-based and principle-based arguments. In considering both approaches, I argue that PE is best viewed as externalist about epistemic contexts. That is to say, I claim that what determines a subject’s epistemic context is external to her mind.

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