scholarly journals Demarginalizing Standpoint Epistemology

Episteme ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Briana Toole
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Knowledge Acquisition ◽  
Pragmatic Encroachment ◽  
Traditional Epistemology ◽  
Standpoint Epistemology

Abstract Standpoint epistemology, the view that social identity is relevant to knowledge-acquisition, has been consigned to the margins of mainstream philosophy. In part, this is because the principles of standpoint epistemology are taken to be in opposition to those which guide traditional epistemology. One goal of this paper is to tease out the characterization of traditional epistemology that is at odds with standpoint epistemology. The characterization of traditional epistemology that I put forth is one which endorses the thesis of intellectualism, the view that knowledge does not depend on non-epistemic features. I then suggest that two further components – the atomistic view of knowers and aperspectivalism – can be usefully interpreted as supporting features of intellectualism. A further goal of this paper is to show that we ought to resist this characterization of traditional epistemology. I use pragmatic encroachment as a dialectical tool to motivate the denial of intellectualism, and consequently, the denial of both supporting components. I then attempt to show how it is possible to have a view, similar to pragmatic encroachment, that takes social identity, rather than stakes, to be the feature that makes a difference to what a person is in a position to know.

scholarly journals From Standpoint Epistemology to Epistemic Oppression

Hypatia ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 598-618 ◽  
Author(s):  
Briana Toole
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Knowledge Acquisition ◽  
Situated Knowledge ◽  
Epistemic Agent ◽  
Recent Interest ◽  
Standpoint Epistemology

Standpoint epistemology is committed to a cluster of views that pays special attention to the role of social identity in knowledge‐acquisition. Of particular interest here is the situated knowledge thesis. This thesis holds that for certain propositions p, whether an epistemic agent is in a position to know that p depends on some nonepistemic facts related to the epistemic agent's social identity. In this article, I examine two possible ways to interpret this thesis. My first goal here is to clarify existing interpretations of this thesis that appear in the literature but that are undeveloped and often mistakenly conflated. In so doing, I aim to make clear the different versions of standpoint epistemology that one might accept and defend.This project is of significance, I argue, because standpoint epistemology provides helpful tools for understanding a phenomenon of recent interest: epistemic oppression. My second goal is to provide an analysis that makes clear how each of the readings I put forth can be used to illuminate forms of epistemic oppression.

Group Knowledge Versus Group Rationality: Two Approaches to Social Epistemology

Episteme ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alvin I. Goldman
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Acquisition ◽  
Social Epistemology ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Versus Group ◽  
Traditional Epistemology ◽  
Group Knowledge ◽  
Alternative Approaches ◽  
Practical Life

Social epistemology is a many-splendored subject. Different theorists adopt different approaches and the options are quite diverse, often orthogonal to one another. The approach I favor is to examine social practices in terms of their impact on knowledge acquisition (Goldman 1999). This has at least two virtues: it displays continuity with traditional epistemology, which historically focuses on knowledge, and it intersects with the concerns of practical life, which are pervasively affected by what people know or don't know. In making this choice, I am not blind to the allure of alternative approaches. In this paper I explain and motivate the knowledge-centered approach by contrasting it with a newly emerging alternative that has a definite appeal of its own. According to this alternative, the chief dimension of social epistemological interest would be rationality rather than knowledge.

When Is a Moabite a Moabite? Selectivity, Stereotypes, and Identity in the Gemeindegesetz, Deut. 23:2–9 [Eng 1–8]

2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (2) ◽  
pp. 187-204
Author(s):  
Daniel C. Timmer
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Behavioral Features

Abstract This article argues that the Gemeindegesetz’s exclusion of Ammonites and Ammonites from the qahal-YHWH, like its inclusion of Edomites and Egyptians, is not based on ethnobiology or essentialist ethnicity. It draws on social identity and stereotyping theory to explore the text’s characterization of these different groups, and proposes that the salience of moral-behavioral features subordinates but does not efface ethnic and other factors. This interpretation is also integrated with approaches to identity for Israelites and non-Israelites elsewhere in Deuteronomy.

scholarly journals Learners’ Dialogical Interaction in the Service of Linguistic Knowledge Acquisition in Group Settings: Based on Contextual Factors

2020 ◽  
Vol 10 (11) ◽  
pp. 1376
Author(s):  
Huanjie Wang
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Knowledge Acquisition ◽  
Communicative Competence ◽  
Contextual Factors ◽  
Linguistic Knowledge ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Group Settings

This paper highlights some connections between dialogical interaction and knowledge acquisition in group settings. In learners’ quest to develop communicative competence and self-identity or social identity and acquire knowledge, dialogical interaction is applied to three contexts of knowledge-acquiring process where learners’ identity, learners’ mindset, learners’ rapport, learners’ communicative competence and learners’ knowledge are involved. Simply speaking, learners in collaborative contexts tend to share existing knowledge to generate potential knowledge; learners in competitive contexts are inclined to build knowledge, learners in cohesive contexts just use knowledge as a tool to organize knowledge. However, it is contended that dialogues are supposed to be explicitly regarded as part of the knowledge-acquiring process. There is a tendency to enable more effective knowledge acquisition through communicative talk, especially dialogues, in the interactive contexts with scaffoldings, tutoring or even intervention.

Theoretical Responses and Methodology

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mikkel Gerken
Keyword(s):  
Critical Points ◽  
Pragmatic Encroachment ◽  
Knowledge Ascriptions ◽  
Intuitive Judgments ◽  
Theoretical Considerations

Chapter 3 begins with a partial taxonomy of the theoretical responses to the puzzling patterns of knowledge ascriptions. This includes a characterization of pragmatic encroachment that captures a wide variety of views. Moreover, the main lines of argument from the various effects on knowledge ascriptions to unorthodox theories of knowledge are sketched. The chapter concludes with a discussion of methodology. Some critical points are set forth against DeRose’s methodology of the straightforward. On a positive note, some principles of an alternative equilibristic methodology are articulated. According to this methodology, it is sometimes reasonable to revise our intuitive judgments in the light of theoretical considerations.

Social epistemology

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alessandra Tanesini
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Acquisition ◽  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Social Epistemology ◽  
Social Contexts ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
Social Dimensions ◽  
New Paradigm ◽  
Peer Disagreement ◽  
Traditional Epistemology ◽  
Area Of Concern

Social epistemology encompasses the study of the social dimensions of knowledge acquisition and transmission (Palermos and Pritchard 2013), the evaluation of beliefs and belief-forming mechanisms in their social contexts for their truth-related or veritistic features (Goldman 1999; Goldman and Blanchard 2016), and the study of the epistemic significance of other minds (Goldberg 2016a). The relation of social epistemology to traditional epistemology, as pursued in the analytic tradition, is also a matter of debate (Palermos and Pritchard 2013). Philosophers working in critical and cultural studies of science understand social epistemology as an interdisciplinary framework for the study of knowledge from historical, cultural, and sociological perspectives (Fuller 1988). They propose that this approach should supplant traditional epistemology. Philosophers trained within the analytic approach consider social epistemology to mark an expansion of more traditional accounts. It would either be a new branch of epistemology, or offer a new paradigm for its pursuit (Goldman 1999). A useful lens through which to understand some social dimensions of knowledge acquisition and transmission is to think of these dimensions as relations of epistemic dependence. Starting from Descartes, epistemologists have often praised exclusive self-reliance in knowledge acquisition as an ideal. Social epistemology is the study of those ways of gaining and communicating knowledge where the subject is not self-reliant but dependent on other agents or on tools that scaffold or extend her cognitive abilities (Pritchard 2010; Sterelny 2010; Palermos and Prichard 2013). Thus, testimony (Gelfert 2014), expert testimony (Goldman 2011), and peer disagreement (Kelly 2005) have been extensively studied by social epistemologists. Another area of concern for social epistemology is the impact of individuals’ social identities, roles, or locations on their epistemic lives. These impacts are diverse; for example, they affect which experiential knowledge individuals are likely to acquire; their ability to access evidence or information; and the amount of credibility that they are granted as informants (Fricker 2007). This social dimension of knowledge has been long studied by feminist epistemologists, and it has been at the core of lively debates about epistemic injustice (Fricker 2007). Two additional branches of social epistemology study systems and institutions designed to facilitate knowledge transmission acquisition and collectives such as groups or teams as epistemic agents. Researchers working in these areas are concerned with collective and distributed knowledge, with the division of epistemic labor, and with the effects of the Internet on knowledge and understanding. Finally, and most recently, social epistemologists have become concerned with the obverse of knowledge: ignorance. Some of the pioneering work in this area has been carried out by feminist epistemologists and critical race theorists concerned with what they perceive as systemic features of epistemic communities which were instrumental in the widespread preservation of ignorance about a vast array of inconvenient truths (Mills 2007; Tuana 2006).

scholarly journals Concept innateness, concept continuity, and bootstrapping

2011 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 152-162 ◽  
Author(s):  
Susan Carey
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Acquisition ◽  
Conceptual Development

AbstractThe commentators raised issues relevant to all three important theses of The Origin of Concepts (henceforth TOOC). Some questioned the very existence of innate representational primitives, and others questioned my claims about their richness and whether they should be thought of as concepts. Some questioned the existence of conceptual discontinuity in the course of knowledge acquisition and others argued that discontinuity is much more common than was portrayed in TOOC. Some raised issues with my characterization of Quinian bootstrapping, and others questioned the dual factor theory of concepts motivated by my picture of conceptual development.

scholarly journals Border-crossing and the Samaritan Traveler

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Michael
Keyword(s):  
Social Identity ◽  
Social Identity Theory ◽  
Identity Theory ◽  
Postcolonial Studies ◽  
Border Crossing ◽  
Good Samaritan

Border-crossing is a defining subject in the contemporary field of postcolonial studies. Situating the parable of the Good Samaritan within this landscape, the present study engages the dynamism of border-crossing in the popular parable of the Good Samaritan. While the parable of the Good Samaritan has been studied from varieties of methodologies and perspectives, the mechanics of border markings – within the fictionality of border space – has generally escaped this study. Using social identity theory in this direction, the work probes the dynamics of group border markings in the characterization of this story – and the significance of this border polemics in the mapping of Luke-Acts. Consequently, the paper offers fresh perspectives to this popular parable in the different negotiations of border markings and the polemics of otherness in this story.

scholarly journals Wagering on Pragmatic Encroachment

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel M. Eaton ◽  
Timothy H. Pickavance
Keyword(s):  
Partial Answer ◽  
Pragmatic Encroachment ◽  
Technical Term ◽  
Practical Situation ◽  
Traditional Epistemology ◽  
Pascal’S Wager

Pragmatic encroachment, the view that knowledge is sensitive to one’s practical situation, is a marked departure from traditional epistemology. What follows from this view? This chapter gives a partial answer by defending the following conditional: If pragmatic encroachment is true, then it takes more evidence to know that atheism is true than to know that God exists. The chapter begins by introducing and unpacking the technical term ‘practical adequacy’ and then uses it to define pragmatic encroachment. It then connects this version of pragmatic encroachment and Pascal’s Wager. The connection yields an argument for the thesis of the chapter. Importantly, no stand is taken here as to whether one ought to affirm the antecedent or deny the consequent of this conditional. Maybe it takes more to know that atheism is true, but maybe this version of pragmatic encroachment is false.

Morphological Characterization of Mycobacteriophage R1

1974 ◽  
Vol 32 ◽  
pp. 254-255
Author(s):  
B. L. Soloff ◽  
T. A. Rado
Keyword(s):  
Carbon Source ◽  
Stationary Phase ◽  
Growth Phase ◽  
Minimal Medium ◽  
Morphological Characterization ◽  
Logarithmic Growth Phase ◽  
Complete Lysis ◽  
Lysogenic Culture ◽  
Logarithmic Growth

Mycobacteriophage R1 was originally isolated from a lysogenic culture of M. butyricum. The virus was propagated on a leucine-requiring derivative of M. smegmatis, 607 leu−, isolated by nitrosoguanidine mutagenesis of typestrain ATCC 607. Growth was accomplished in a minimal medium containing glycerol and glucose as carbon source and enriched by the addition of 80 μg/ ml L-leucine. Bacteria in early logarithmic growth phase were infected with virus at a multiplicity of 5, and incubated with aeration for 8 hours. The partially lysed suspension was diluted 1:10 in growth medium and incubated for a further 8 hours. This permitted stationary phase cells to re-enter logarithmic growth and resulted in complete lysis of the culture.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document