On Dreaming and Being Lied To

Episteme ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 149-159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Faulkner
Keyword(s):  
Testimonial Knowledge ◽  
Sources Of Knowledge ◽  
The Way

ABSTRACTAs sources of knowledge, perception and testimony are both vulnerable to sceptical arguments. To both arguments a Moorean response is possible: both can be refuted by reference to particular things known by perception and testimony. However, lies and dreams are different possibilities and they are different in a way that undercuts the plausibility of a Moorean response to a scepticism of testimony. The condition placed on testimonial knowledge cannot be trivially satisfied in the way the Moorean would suggest. This has substantial implications for any non-sceptical epistemological theory of testimony.

PHOTOGRAPHICALLY BASED KNOWLEDGE

Episteme ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 283-297 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dan Cavedon-Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Pictorial Representation ◽  
Perceptual Knowledge ◽  
Testimonial Knowledge ◽  
Epistemic Utility ◽  
Sources Of Knowledge ◽  
Novel Approach ◽  
Aesthetic Pleasure ◽  
Foundational Issue ◽  
Do So

AbstractPictures are a quintessential source of aesthetic pleasure. This makes it easy to forget that they are epistemically valuable no less than they are aesthetically so. Pictures are representations. As such, they may furnish us with knowledge of the objects they represent. In this article I provide an account of why photographs are of greater epistemic utility than handmade pictures. To do so, I use a novel approach: I seek to illuminate the epistemic utility of photographs by situating both photographs and handmade pictures among the sources of knowledge. This method yields an account of photography's epistemic utility that better connects the issue with related issues in epistemology and is relatively superior to other accounts. Moreover, it answers a foundational issue in the epistemology of pictorial representation: ‘What kinds of knowledge do pictures furnish?’ I argue that photographs have greater epistemic utility than handmade pictures because photographs are sources of perceptual knowledge, while handmade pictures are sources of testimonial knowledge.

Kant’s Ethics

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. A. Cohen
Keyword(s):  
Human Behavior ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Moral Behavior ◽  
Moral Law ◽  
General Account ◽  
Sources Of Knowledge ◽  
Reason And Faith ◽  
Kant's Ethics ◽  
The Way

This chapter examines Immanuel Kant's ethics, and particularly his views on reason and faith. According to Thomas Aquinas, there were two avenues whereby men could come to possess knowledge: the way of reason and the way of faith, of faith in revelation. Unlike Aquinas, Kant entertains not two faculties, but a single faculty in two employments. The chapter considers Kant's motives, and what he advanced as justifications, for treating the sources of knowledge and of moral behavior not as two separate faculties, but as different employments of a single faculty, reason. It offers a general account of Kant's moral philosophy, and more specifically his account of reason and his argument that men are obliged to obey the moral law. It also suggests that the duality of obligation and motivation is present in Kant's ethics and compares Kant's ideas with those of Richard Peters regarding human behavior.

scholarly journals The Authority of Written and Oral Sources of Knowledge in Ludolf of Sudheim’s De itinere Terre Sancte

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-48
Author(s):  
Christine Gadrat-Ouerfelli
Keyword(s):  
Knowledge Production ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Holy Land ◽  
Complex Processes ◽  
Sources Of Knowledge ◽  
Written Sources ◽  
The Way

After the German priest Ludolf of Sudheim returned from the Holy Land in 1341, he wrote an account of his travels that is far more complex than scholars have assumed. Ludolf expanded the genre of pilgrimage narrative in the way he draws on written sources, such as Hethum’s Flos historiarum Terre Orientis and William of Boldensele’s Liber de quibusdam ultramarinis partibus, while blending into his narrative oral sources of knowledge picked up from his personal contacts while traveling. Pilgrimage literature has often been denigrated by scholars for being repetitive, impersonal, and lacking originality. Yet if scholars were to adopt a less historiographically presentist approach to pilgrimage writing that is more open to the values and strategies of narratives like De itinere Terre Sancte, research could meaningfully focus on what might be called the “mental library” of pilgrim-authors — the full range of written and oral resources at their disposal in the complex processes of knowledge production in pilgrimage narrative.

Reliabilism and the Testimony of Robots

2020 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 332-356
Author(s):  
Billy Wheeler ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Artificial Intelligence ◽  
Testimonial Knowledge ◽  
Sources Of Knowledge ◽  
The Difference ◽  
Legal Consequences

We are becoming increasingly dependent on robots and other forms of artificial intelligence for our beliefs. But how should the knowledge gained from the “say-so” of a robot be classified? Should it be understood as testimonial knowledge, similar to knowledge gained in conversation with another person? Or should it be understood as a form of instrument-based knowledge, such as that gained from a calculator or a sundial? There is more at stake here than terminology, for how we treat objects as sources of knowledge often has important social and legal consequences. In this paper, I argue that at least some robots are capable of testimony. I make my argument by exploring the differences between instruments and testifiers on a well-known account of knowledge: reliabilism. On this approach, I claim that the difference between instruments and testifiers as sources of knowledge is that only the latter are capable of deception. As some robots can be designed to deceive, so they too should be recognized as testimonial sources of knowledge.

The Crisis of Testimony in Historiography

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-70
Author(s):  
Jonas Ahlskog
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Paul Ricoeur ◽  
Ethical Dimension ◽  
Current Idea ◽  
Recent Discussion ◽  
Testimonial Knowledge ◽  
20Th Century History ◽  
Hayden White ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

Abstract The essay examines the recent discussion about a “crisis of testimony” in historiography. Central to this discussion is the question of how it is possible for human testimony to convey information about the limit experiences of 20th century history. Given that the credibility of testimony is assessed by appealing to our previous understanding of what is credible, testimony to limit experiences risks being dismissed as unbelievable or implausible. This issue has recently been addressed in the work of Paul Ricoeur, Hayden White and Gert-Jan van der Heiden among others. In the first part of this essay, I show that the current idea of a crisis of testimony is a consequence of focusing too exclusively on the content of extraordinary testimony. I argue that such a focus has affinities with David Hume’s reductionist understanding of testimonial knowledge; even though the authors discussed cannot properly be labelled reductionists themselves. In the second part of the essay, I open up the issue of extraordinary testimony from a perspective that places the relationship between the speaker and the addressee at the heart of testimonial knowledge. My aim is to show that if we attend to the way in which testimonial knowledge involves dependence on the authority of another person, then the current idea of a crisis of testimony will dissolve itself. In conclusion, I argue that there is an important ethical dimension to the question of understanding extraordinary testimony.

The Epistemology of Reading and Interpretation

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
René van Woudenberg
Keyword(s):  
Human Activities ◽  
Knowledge Sources ◽  
Sources Of Knowledge ◽  
Textual Interpretation ◽  
Meaning Interpretation ◽  
The Way

Reading and textual interpretation are ordinary human activities, performed inside as well as outside academia, but precisely how they function as unique sources of knowledge is not well understood. In this book, René van Woudenberg explores the nature of reading and how it is distinct from perception and (attending to) testimony, which are two widely acknowledged knowledge sources. After distinguishing seven accounts of interpretation, van Woudenberg discusses the question of whether all reading inevitably involves interpretation, and shows that although reading and interpretation often go together, they are distinct activities. He goes on to argue that both reading and interpretation can be paths to realistically conceived truth, and explains the conditions under which we are justified in believing that they do indeed lead us to the truth. Along the way, he offers clear and novel analyses of reading, meaning, interpretation, and interpretative knowledge.

scholarly journals Does art therapy need a theory? Considerations on terminology, models and paradigms of art therapy

2021 ◽  
Vol 24 (4) ◽  
pp. 23-50
Author(s):  
Wita Szulc
Keyword(s):  
Art Therapy ◽  
World Literature ◽  
Critical Approach ◽  
Chronological Order ◽  
Polish Literature ◽  
Sources Of Knowledge ◽  
The World ◽  
The Status ◽  
Theoretical Foundations ◽  
The Way

The author discusses Polish publications on the theoretical foundations of art therapy published in Poland in chronological order and confronts them with the world literature of Art Therapy. One of theproblems discussed in this paper is plagiarism in the Polish literature on Art Therapy, which is an obstacle on the way to Art Therapy achieving the status of science. The article covers such issues as sources of knowledge about Art Therapies, terminology, types, models and paradigms of Arts therapy. The aim of this article is to draw attention to the need for a critical approach to the available and disseminated sources of knowledge about the theory.

Epistemology of Belief

2020 ◽  
Vol 57 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-237
Author(s):  
Alina O. Kostina ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
Belief System ◽  
Belief Formation ◽  
Social Bias ◽  
Epistemic Agent ◽  
Testimonial Knowledge ◽  
Current Trends ◽  
Sources Of Knowledge ◽  
Internal Experience ◽  
Contemporary Epistemology

The following article discovers current trends of contemporary epistemology, related to epistemic agent and his/her activities. A number of issues raised here describe internal experience of the agent, such as (in)voluntary nature of belief formation, trust in one’s faculties of perception, correspondence of formed beliefs to evidence, demarcation between purely epistemic and pragmatic rationality. Another part of the issues is related to external experiences of the agent. The most crucial among them are: blameworthiness of the agent’s belief system, limited intake of testimonial knowledge as a result of social bias; epistemic disagreement and “epistemic peers” as the sources of knowledge or additional pressure from the environment. The author considers virtue epistemology as a new way of performing normativity.

Self-sacrifice for in-group's history: A diachronic perspective

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maria Babińska ◽  
Michal Bilewicz
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Psychology ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Emotional Events ◽  
Reciprocal Process ◽  
The Way

AbstractThe problem of extended fusion and identification can be approached from a diachronic perspective. Based on our own research, as well as findings from the fields of social, political, and clinical psychology, we argue that the way contemporary emotional events shape local fusion is similar to the way in which historical experiences shape extended fusion. We propose a reciprocal process in which historical events shape contemporary identities, whereas contemporary identities shape interpretations of past traumas.

What is the purpose of cognition?

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aba Szollosi ◽  
Ben R. Newell
Keyword(s):  
Infinite Number ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
The Way

Abstract The purpose of human cognition depends on the problem people try to solve. Defining the purpose is difficult, because people seem capable of representing problems in an infinite number of ways. The way in which the function of cognition develops needs to be central to our theories.

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