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.

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.

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.

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.

Anti-luck Epistemology, Pragmatic Encroachment, and True Belief

2011 ◽  
Vol 41 (4) ◽  
pp. 485-503 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nathan Ballantyne
Keyword(s):  
True Belief ◽  
Pragmatic Encroachment ◽  
Contemporary Epistemology

Two common theses in contemporary epistemology are that ‘knowledge excludes luck’ and that knowledge depends on ‘purely epistemic’ factors. In this essay, I shall argue as follows: given some plausible assumptions, ‘anti-luck epistemology,’ which is committed to the fi rst thesis, implies the falsity of the second thesis. That is, I will argue that anti-luck epistemology leads to what has been called ‘pragmatic encroachment’ on knowledge. Anti-luck epistemologists hoping to resist encroachment must accept a controversial thesis about true beliefora dubious claim about luck and value and interests.

How to Do Things with Austin

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Kaplan
Keyword(s):  
True Belief ◽  
Pragmatic Encroachment ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
Insurmountable Obstacle

Provides another argument for the thesis that, far from presenting an insurmountable obstacle to the project of constructive epistemology, the deployment of Austin’s requirement of fidelity enables us to find new solutions to epistemological problems; deploys Austin’s fidelity requirement to argue that neither our having a justified belief P, nor our having a justified true belief that P, is sufficient for P to count as part of our evidence—it is necessary that we know that P; that our decisions, as to what we know, have methodological import; that, as a consequence, it cannot be of any moment, to a properly conducted inquiry into what it takes for a person to know that P, what naïve respondents say about cases (including the cases cited in support of the Pragmatic Encroachment Thesis—the thesis that whether we know that P depends on whether we are prepared to act on P).

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.

Putting Fallibilism to Work

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charity Anderson
Keyword(s):  
Prima Facie ◽  
Pragmatic Encroachment ◽  
Epistemic Position ◽  
Reason For Action

The principle that when one knows p, one is in a good enough epistemic position to treat p as a reason for action is used to motivate pragmatic encroachment. When combined with fallibilism, this principle (Sufficiency) results in the rejection of purism, the view that pragmatic factors are irrelevant to knowledge. Fallibilism, purism, and Sufficiency each have substantial prima facie intuitive support; and yet the three seem to form an inconsistent triad. The author of this chapter challenges the account of reasons that underlies one prominent way of arguing for Sufficiency and then she delineates a position that manages to avoid the trilemma.

Pragmatic Encroachment and Theistic Knowledge

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
True Belief ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Pragmatic Encroachment ◽  
Set Up

If knowledge is sensitive to practical stakes, then whether one knows depends in part on the practical costs of being wrong. When considering religious belief, the practical costs of being wrong about theism may differ dramatically between the theist (if there is no God) and the atheist (if there is a God). This chapter explores the prospects, on pragmatic encroachment, for knowledge of theism (even if true), and of atheism (even if true), given two types of practical costs: namely, by holding a false belief, or by missing out on a true belief. These considerations set up a more general puzzle of epistemic preference when faced with the choice between two beliefs, only one of which could become knowledge.

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