Autonomous Knowledge

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Adam Carter
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
True Belief ◽  
Performance Enhancement ◽  
Specific Form ◽  
Propositional Knowledge ◽  
Value Of Knowledge ◽  
New Class ◽  
And Performance

A central conclusion developed and defended throughout the book is that epistemic autonomy is necessary for knowledge (both knowledge-that and knowledge-how) and in ways that epistemologists have not yet fully appreciated. The book is divided into five chapters. Chapter 1 motivates (using a series of twists on Lehrer’s TrueTemp case) the claim that propositional knowledge requires autonomous belief. Chapters 2 and 3 flesh out this proposal in two ways, by defending a specific form of history-sensitive externalism with respect to propositional knowledge-apt autonomous belief (Chapter 2) and by showing how the idea that knowledge requires autonomous belief—understood along the externalist lines proposed—corresponds with an entirely new class of knowledge defeaters (Chapter 3). Chapter 4 extends the proposal to (both intellectualist and anti-intellectualist) knowledge-how and performance enhancement, and in a way that combines insights from virtue epistemology with research on freedom, responsibility, and manipulation. Chapter 5 concludes with a new twist on the Value of Knowledge debate, by vindicating the value of epistemically autonomous knowledge over that which falls short, including (mere) heteronomous but otherwise epistemically impeccable justified true belief.

scholarly journals ARE INTELLECTUAL VIRTUES TRUTH-RELEVANT?

Episteme ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (3) ◽  
pp. 381-392
Author(s):  
Blake Roeber
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
True Belief ◽  
Intellectual Virtue ◽  
Narrow Sense ◽  
Pragmatic Encroachment ◽  
Intellectual Virtues ◽  
Ernest Sosa ◽  
Value Of Knowledge ◽  
Wide Range

ABSTRACTAccording to attributor virtue epistemology (the view defended by Ernest Sosa, John Greco, and others), S knows that p only if her true belief that p is attributable to some intellectual virtue, competence, or ability that she possesses. Attributor virtue epistemology captures a wide range of our intuitions about the nature and value of knowledge, and it has many able defenders. Unfortunately, it has an unrecognized consequence that many epistemologists will think is sufficient for rejecting it: namely, it makes knowledge depend on factors that aren't truth-relevant, even in the broadest sense of this term, and it also makes knowledge depend in counterintuitive ways on factors that are truth-relevant in the more common narrow sense of this term. As I show in this paper, the primary objection to interest-relative views in the pragmatic encroachment debate can be raised even more effectively against attributor virtue epistemology.

scholarly journals Conhecimento sem valor?

2019 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 339-357
Author(s):  
Felipe Rocha L. Santos
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
True Belief ◽  
Theory Of Knowledge ◽  
Good Theory ◽  
Value Of Knowledge ◽  
Final Value ◽  
Contemporary Epistemology ◽  
Mere True Belief

The value problem is the problem that arises from the following reasoning: if both the knowledge and mere true belief are equally useful, then for what reason knowledge is more valuable than mere true belief. Despite being formulated initially in Plato’s Meno dialogue, the value problem seems to have received little attention since. In contemporary epistemology, the value problem became central, requiring that any good theory of knowledge should be able to explain the value of knowledge in order to be a good theory of knowledge. Recently, new demands to the value of problem arise, demanding that it should be explained not only the reason why knowledge is more valuable, but also the reason why knowledge has final value. In this paper, two answers to the value problem that have been made recently are analyzed, namely the reliabilist solution and the virtue epistemology solution, and I will conclude that both solutions fail to explain the final value of knowledge.

Internalism, Externalism, and Autonomous Belief

2021 ◽  
pp. 26-59
Author(s):  
J. Adam Carter
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Abilities ◽  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
Propositional Knowledge ◽  
Belief Condition ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
Mental Structure ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Externalist Approach

What must be the case for an autonomous belief condition on knowledge (motivated in Chapter 1) to be satisfied by a knower? Chapter 2 takes up this question by investigating whether or not the knowledge-relevant (viz., epistemic) autonomy of a belief is determined entirely by the subject’s present mental structure. What I’ll call ‘internalists’ about epistemically autonomous belief say ‘yes’, and externalists say ‘no.’ Internalism about epistemic autonomous belief turns out to be problematic for reasons entirely independent from those we might have for rejecting internalist approaches to epistemically justified belief. What is shown to fare much better is a kind of ‘history-sensitive’ externalist approach to epistemically autonomous belief. On the particular account I go in for, which draws from externalist thinking about attitudinal autonomy more generally (as well as from virtue epistemology), a belief lacks the kind of epistemic autonomy that’s needed for propositional knowledge if the subject comes to possess the belief in a way that (put simply) bypasses or pre-empts the subject’s cognitive abilities and is such that the subject lacks easy (enough) opportunities to competently shed that belief.

Know-How, Performance Enhancement, and Guidance Control

2021 ◽  
pp. 83-116
Author(s):  
J. Adam Carter
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
Performance Enhancement ◽  
Propositional Knowledge ◽  
Guidance Control ◽  
Knowing How ◽  
Know How ◽  
Apt Belief ◽  
The Devil ◽  
Performance Enhancing

If intellectualism about knowledge-how is true (and so, if knowledge-how is a species of knowledge-that), then to the extent that we need an autonomy condition on know-how, it will be (simply) an autonomy condition on know-that: a condition on propositional knowledge-apt belief. However, the anti-intellectualist—according to whom know-how is fundamentally dispositional rather than propositional—would need an entirely different story here––one that places an autonomy-related restriction not on propositional-knowledge-apt belief but, instead, on know-how-apt dispositions. Chapter 4 develops exactly this kind of restriction, by cobbling together some ideas about know-how and virtue epistemology with recent thinking in the moral responsibility literature about freedom, responsibility, and manipulation. The proposal is that one is in a state of knowing how to do something, φ‎, only if one has the skill to φ‎ successfully with guidance control, and one’s φ‎-ing exhibits guidance control (and furthermore, manifests know-how) only if one’s φ‎-ing is caused by a reasons-responsive mechanism that one owns. Unsurprisingly, the devil is in these details—and this chapter aims to spell them out in a way that rules out certain kinds of radical performance enhancing cases while not ruling out that, say, one knows how to do a maths problem when one’s performance is just mildly boosted by Adderall.

Reliabilist Virtue Epistemology

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Greco ◽  
Jonathan Reibsamen
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
True Belief ◽  
Naturalized Epistemology ◽  
Gettier Problem ◽  
Value Of Knowledge ◽  
Intellectual Abilities ◽  
Virtue Reliabilism ◽  
Virtue Responsibilism ◽  
The Gettier Problem

According to reliabilist virtue epistemology, or virtue reliabilism, knowledge is true belief that is produced by intellectual excellence (or virtue), where intellectual excellence is understood in terms of reliable, truth-directed cognitive dispositions. This chapter explains why virtue reliabilism is a form of epistemological externalism, is a moderately naturalized epistemology, and is distinct from virtue responsibilism. It explains virtue reliabilism’s answers to various forms of skepticism, its solution to the Gettier Problem, and its explanation of the value of knowledge. The chapter also describes several varieties of contemporary virtue reliabilism. Finally, it offers replies to two recently prominent objections to virtue reliabilism: that it is committed to an untenable epistemological individualism, and that there are empirical reasons to doubt whether people generally have the kinds of intellectual abilities that virtue reliabilism requires for knowledge.

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