Externalism, Warrant, and the Question of Relativism

Pneuma ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 94-114
Author(s):  
Yoon Shin
Keyword(s):  
Reformed Epistemology ◽  
Contemporary Epistemology

Abstract According to James K.A. Smith, contemporary epistemology is overly focused on the noetic. Smith offers a counter-epistemology drawn from pentecostal spirituality that is narrative, affective, and embodied. Richard Davis and Paul Franks criticize this model and argue that it succumbs to story-relativism and arbitrariness. This article defends Smith against their critiques through three steps. First, it exposits Smith’s narrative, affective epistemology in order to identify areas that are relevant to their critiques. Second, it outlines and analyzes their critiques, reveals areas in which they fundamentally misunderstand Smith, and presents their commitment to epistemological objectivism. Finally, utilizing Alvin Plantinga’s externalist warrant model, it argues that Plantinga’s Reformed epistemology can assist Smith’s epistemology in consistent ways. If the following argument is successful, then Smith’s postmodern pentecostal epistemology can be reimagined as an externalist epistemology that overcomes the charges of relativism and arbitrariness.

Religious Knowledge and the Virtues of the Mind

2020 ◽  
pp. 207-227
Author(s):  
Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski
Keyword(s):  
Religious Knowledge ◽  
Reformed Epistemology ◽  
Almost All ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Contemporary Epistemology

This chapter objects to three features of Reformed Epistemology, two of which are connected with its Calvinist inspiration and one of which was a feature of most contemporary epistemology at the time. First, like almost all contemporary American epistemology, Reformed Epistemology focuses on individual beliefs—where by a “belief” is meant a particular state of believing, not the proposition believed—and it searches for the properties of a belief that convert it into knowledge. Second, Reformed Epistemology is largely externalist. Third, an important motivation driving externalist theories is the desire to avoid skepticism; in fact, this is one of its most attractive features. Reformed epistemology is externalist and nonvoluntarist; it is individualistic rather than communally based; and it makes the element of belief that converts it into knowledge a property of the belief rather than of the believer. The approach here is Aristotelian in spirit and differs from the Reformers in all three respects.

When Is True Belief Knowledge?

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Foley
Keyword(s):  
True Belief ◽  
Theory Of Knowledge ◽  
Central Problem ◽  
Significant Aspect ◽  
Coming To Know ◽  
Contemporary Epistemology ◽  
What Matters

A woman glances at a broken clock and comes to believe it is a quarter past seven. Yet, despite the broken clock, it really does happen to be a quarter past seven. Her belief is true, but it isn't knowledge. This is a classic illustration of a central problem in epistemology: determining what knowledge requires in addition to true belief. This book finds a new solution to the problem in the observation that whenever someone has a true belief but not knowledge, there is some significant aspect of the situation about which she lacks true beliefs—something important that she doesn't quite “get.” This may seem a modest point but, as the book shows, it has the potential to reorient the theory of knowledge. Whether a true belief counts as knowledge depends on the importance of the information one does or doesn't have. This means that questions of knowledge cannot be separated from questions about human concerns and values. It also means that, contrary to what is often thought, there is no privileged way of coming to know. Knowledge is a mutt. Proper pedigree is not required. What matters is that one doesn't lack important nearby information. Challenging some of the central assumptions of contemporary epistemology, this is an original and important account of knowledge.

Is all knowledge prepositional?

2005 ◽  
Vol 48 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 7-19
Author(s):  
Miroslava Andjelkovic
Keyword(s):  
Propositional Knowledge ◽  
The Other ◽  
Infinite Regress ◽  
Important Distinction ◽  
Knowing How ◽  
The Asymmetry ◽  
Contemporary Epistemology

This paper deals with a criticism of Ryle's claim that the so called Intellectualist legend leads to an infinite regress. Critics have attempted to show that Ryle's argument cannot even get off the ground since its two basic premises cannot be true at the same time. In the paper I argue that this objection is based on a misinterpretation of Ryle's argumentation, which is complex and consists of two arguments, not of a single one as it is claimed. One of Ryle's argument attacks the thesis that an intelligent act is an indirect result of propositional knowledge, while the other, which I call the Asymmetry argument, claims that not every manifestation of knowledge that is accompanied with the manifestation of knowing how. In the paper I argue that both Ryle's arguments are valid and resistant to recent critique so it can be said that Ryle's distinction between knowledge that and knowing how is still an important distinction within contemporary epistemology.

Good Reasoning and Evidence-Based Epistemology

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
J.D. Trout
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Resources ◽  
Evidence Based ◽  
Reasoning Strategies ◽  
Good Reasoning ◽  
Naturalistic Theory ◽  
Normative Standards ◽  
Contemporary Epistemology

In early epistemology, philosophers set standards on how to reason and on what counts as knowledge. These normative standards still form a core of work in contemporary epistemology, but much objectively excellent reasoning still doesn’t meet these epistemological standards, and sometimes these standards lead reasoning astray. Improving decisions about health and happiness may require developing even better reasoning strategies than are now available through contemporary epistemology. One naturalistic theory of good reasoning—Strategic Reliabilism—holds that excellent reasoning efficiently allocates cognitive resources to robustly reliable reasoning strategies, all applied to significant problems. This contrasts with the traditional normative theories in epistemology that drew their inspiration from intuitions.

Explaining Knowledge

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
State Of The Art ◽  
The State ◽  
Methodological Aspect ◽  
Gettier Problem ◽  
Contemporary Epistemology ◽  
The Gettier Problem

This is an edited collection of twenty-three new papers on the Gettier Problem and the issues connected with it. The set of authors includes many of the major figures in contemporary epistemology who have developed some of the well-known responses to the problem, and it also contains some younger epistemologists who bring new perspectives to the issues raised in the literature. Together, they cover the state of the art on virtually every epistemological and methodological aspect of the Gettier Problem. The volume also includes some skeptical voices according to which the Gettier Problem is not deeply problematic or some of the problems it raises are not genuine philosophical problems.

A Pragmatic Phenomenalist Account of Knowledge

Dialogue ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 47 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 565-582 ◽  
Author(s):  
Byeong D. Lee
Keyword(s):  
Social Practice ◽  
Gettier Problem ◽  
Practice Model ◽  
Robert Brandom ◽  
Contemporary Epistemology ◽  
The Gettier Problem

ABSTRACTRobert Brandom argues for a “pragmatic phenomenalist account” of knowledge. On this account, we should understand our notion of justification in accordance with a Sellarsian social practice model, and there is nothing more to the phenomenon of knowledge than the proprieties of takings-as-knowing. I agree with these two claims. But Brandom's proposal is so sketchy that it is unclear how it can deal with a number of much-discussed problems in contemporary epistemology. The main purpose of this article is to develop and defend a pragmatic phenomenalist account of knowledge by resolving those problems. I argue, in particular, that this account can accommodate both the lesson of the Gettier problem and the lesson of reliabilism simultaneously.

Virtue Epistemology as Anti-luck Epistemology

2021 ◽  
Vol 58 (4) ◽  
pp. 77-94
Author(s):  
Alexey Z. Chernyak ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Critical Analysis ◽  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
Propositional Knowledge ◽  
General Study ◽  
Intellectual Virtues ◽  
Mental Attitude ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
The Status ◽  
Veritic Luck ◽  
Contemporary Epistemology

The idea that knowledge as an individual mental attitude with certain propositional content is not only true justified belief but a belief the truth of which does not result from any kind of luck, is widely spread in contemporary epistemology. This account is known as anti-luck epistemology. A very popular explanation of the inconsistency of that concept of knowledge with the luck-dependent nature of truth (so called veritic luck taking place when a subject’s belief could not be true if not by mere coincidence) presumes that the status of propositional knowledge crucially depends on the qualities of actions that result in the corresponding belief, or processes backing them, which reflect the socalled intellectual virtues mainly responsible for subject’s relevant competences. This account known as Virtue Epistemology presumes that if a belief is true exclusively or mainly due to its dependence on intellectual virtues, it just cannot be true by luck, hence no place for lucky knowledge. But this thesis is hard to prove given the existence of true virtuous beliefs which could nevertheless be false if not for some lucky (for the knower) accident. This led to an appearance of virtue epistemological theories aimed specifically at an assimilation of such cases. Their authors try to represent the relevant situations as such where the contribution of luck is not crucial whereas the contribution of virtues is crucial. This article provides a critical analysis of the corresponding arguments as part of a more general study of the ability of Virtue Epistemology to provide justification for the thesis of incompatibility of propositional knowledge with veritic luck. It is shown that there are good reasons to doubt that Virtue Epistemology can do this.

scholarly journals Intellectual Humility, Spirituality, and Counselling

2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 279-291 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma C. Gordon
Keyword(s):  
Specific Area ◽  
Intellectual Virtue ◽  
Intellectual Humility ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Contemporary Epistemology

Although therapists often work with clients with whom they share a great many beliefs, there remain many cases where the therapist and client have very little in common. Spirituality is, especially in the latter kind of case, one specific area in which clashes and similarities may be important. However, recent evidence suggests spirituality is to a surprising extent ignored in therapy when exploring it would be therapeutically relevant and, even more, that counsellors often struggle when training to more effectively engage with client spirituality. These results are problematic, especially when taken together. In this article, I attempt to address this vexing issue in a way that brings together work on counselling and spirituality with recent discussions of intellectual virtue in contemporary epistemology. In particular, I show why it is important for the therapist to cultivate and maintain the virtue of intellectual humility with respect to spirituality in a counselling context. To this end, I explore, with reference to a particularly promising model of intellectual humility, how the therapist can be attentive to—and own—their limitations in a productive way when dealing with a wide range of spiritual backgrounds.

Sanctifying evidentialism

2009 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-76 ◽  
Author(s):  
HORACE FAIRLAMB
Keyword(s):  
Religious Experience ◽  
Rational Belief ◽  
Proper Function ◽  
Contemporary Epistemology

AbstractIn contemporary epistemology of religion, evidentialism has been included in a wider critique of traditional foundationalist theories of rational belief. To show the irrelevance of evidentialism, some critics have offered alternatives to the foundationalist approach, prominent among which is Alvin Plantinga's ‘warrant as proper function’. But the connection between evidentialism and foundationalism has been exaggerated, and criticisms of traditional foundationalism do not discredit evidentialism in principle. Furthermore, appeals to warranted belief imply that the heart of evidentialism – the proportioning of belief to rational grounds – has not been discredited but assimilated to the reliabilist view of knowledge by expanding the concept of evidence to include religious experience. In the end, the warrant concept extends the reach of evidentialism, thereby enhancing rather than diminishing its relevance for rational belief.

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