An Analysis of Alvin Goldman’s Naturalized Epistemology

This work, “An Analysis of Alvin Goldman’s Naturalistic Epistemology,” aims at presenting the contributions of Alvin Goldman in am epistemic bent. As a branch of philosophy, epistemology has significantly advanced right from the classic, medieval, modern, and contemporary epochs. The effects of postmodernist thinkers’ radical approach to philosophy are evident in almost all philosophy branches. With the notion of doing epistemology through science championed by W.V.O. Quine, Alvin Goldman, John Kuhn, and some other scholars have raised objections and counter objections to such a deconstructionist mindset within the epistemic circle. Expectedly, these naturalistic epistemologists had discontinuity with one another in their positions. Goldman is concerned with such traditional epistemological problems as developing an adequate theoretical understanding of knowledge and justified believing. This paper shows that in his naturalistic discontinuity with Quine, Alvin Goldman did not conceive epistemology as part of science the same way Quine conceived it. Goldman’s view that answering traditional epistemological questions requires both a priori philosophy and the application of scientific results. Goldman’s naturalism is the view that epistemology “needs help” from science. His primary concern is in the area of traditional epistemological problems, including developing an adequate theoretical understanding of knowledge and justified believing. In this paper, I see Goldman’s divergence in the opinion of his naturalistic epistemology with Quine and other naturalistic epistemologists not as a problem but indeed part of epistemic consolidation. In the course of this work, analytic, evaluation, library research, and descriptive methods as well as internet materials, were employed.

J. L. Austin e Alvin Goldman: Conhecimento Empírico e Alternativas Relevantes

Nosso objetivo neste ensaio é discutir o conhecimento empírico a partir das teorias de John L. Austin e Alvin Goldman. Para tal, argumentaremos que a definição tradicional do conhecimento (crença, verdadeira justifica) é insuficiente para tratar de conhecimento empírico. Defenderemos que o modo adequado de analisar o conhecimento empírico deve levar em conta a habilidade do sujeito epistêmico de discriminar a proposição empírica p de alternativas relevantes para o caso.

Gettiering Goldman

This paper examines the causal theory of knowledge put forth by Alvin Goldman in his 1967 paper “A Causal Theory of Knowing.” Goldman contends that a justified, true belief is knowledge if and only ifit is causally connected to the fact that makes it true. This paper provides examples, however, of justified, true beliefs with such causal connections that are clearly not knowledge. The paper further shows that attempts to salvage the causal theory are unsatisfactory.

Confiabilismo, Justificação e Virtudes

Este trabalho tem como propósito principal discutir duas propostas epistêmicas diferentes, ambas sob o título de confiabilismo. A primeira delas, o confiabilismo simples desenvolvido por Alvin Goldman, tem como objetivo central oferecer uma caracterização adequada do elemento justificacional presente na definição tradicional de conhecimento. A proposta de Goldman tem como desafio inicial responder apropriadamente à demanda gettieriana apresentada alguns anos antes, além de corrigir alguns problemas mais centrais que afetaram sua teoria causal do conhecimento. No entanto, a proposta externalista do confiabilismo simples de Goldman enfrentou alguns ataques sérios à sua noção de justificabilidade. Três desses ataques se tornaram mais célebres na literatura recente: o problema da generalidade, o problema da metaincoerência e o problema do novo gênio maligno. Cada uma a seu modo estabeleceu desafios reais à proposta confiabilista inicial. A segunda teoria confiabilista que iremos discutir consiste em uma reformulação da proposta goldmaniana, na figura do confiabilismo das virtudes – ou perspectivismo das virtudes, desenvolvido e defendido princicpalmente por Ernest Sosa, em uma série de trabalhos bastantes influentes na epistemologia contemporânea. Nestes trabalhos, Sosa foi capaz de inserir a noção de virtudes intelectuais no debate epistemológico recente, trazendo para o centro do debate externalista uma ideia de formação responsável de crenças, ao mesmo tempo em que tentou responder apropriadamente aos desafios mais centrais enfrentados pelo confiabilismo original. Na primeira parte do artigo apresentaremos a primeira dessas teorias para, logo em seguida, na segunda parte, oferecer um tratamento da reformulação sosiana da proposta confiabilista e uma defesa dessa proposta como mais adequada para lidar com algumas das demandas básicas de uma teoria da justificação apropriada.

EPISTEMOLOGIA SOCIAL E CRITÉRIOS DA ARGUMENTAÇÃO MONOLÓGICA

Neste trabalho, argumento que uma parte do projeto de Alvin Goldman, em teoria da argumentação, lógica informal e epistemologia analítica contemporânea, pode ser entendido como uma epistemologia social veritista da argumentação monológica, e que este projeto procura responder, em parte, ao problema do propósito e da função da argumentação, defendendo por isso uma tese sobre o objetivo que a argumentação deve ter para funcionar adequadamente. Para isso, 1) apresento como esse programa trata especificamente a noção de argumentação monológica, 2) bem como os critérios necessários dessa modalidade de argumentação, procurando demonstrar a ideia do filósofo da forma pela qual a argumentação deve funcionar parapermitir que cumpra uma função veritativa. Além disso, sobre o ponto 1) argumento também que o projeto de Goldman faz parte de um projeto que tem sido chamado de abordagem epistemológica a argumentação. De forma a consubstanciar o ponto 2), discutiremos um conjunto de oito normas da boa argumentação monológica.

Truth, Thinking, Testimony, and Trust

In his recent work in social epistemology, Alvin Goldman argues that truth is the fundamental epistemic end of education, and that critical thinking is of merely instrumental value with respect to that fundamental end. He also argues that there is a central place for testimony and trust in the classroom, and an educational danger in overemphasizing the fostering of students’ critical thinking. This chapter takes issue with these claims and argues that (1) critical thinking is a fundamental end of education, independently of its instrumental tie to truth, and (2) it is critical thinking, rather than testimony and trust, that is educationally basic.

Responsibilism and the Analytic-Sociological Debate in Social Epistemology

This is the second paper in the invited collection. Dieleman provides an overview of the “state-of-the-field” debate between Analytic Social Epistemology (ASE), represented by Alvin Goldman, and what Dieleman calls the Sociological Social Epistemology (SSE), represented by Steve Fuller. In response to this ongoing debate, this paper has two related and complementary objectives. The first is to show that the debate between analytic and sociological versions of social epistemology is overly simplistic and doesn’t take into account additional positions that are available and, indeed, have been available since social epistemology was (re)introduced in the mid to late 1980s. The second is to uncover and tell a story of how Lorraine Code’s Epistemic Responsibility is one such additional position. Looking to Code's Epistemic Responsibility reveals the artificiality of the debate between analytic and sociological social epistemologists.

REPLY TO GOLDMAN: CUTTING UP THE ONE TO SAVE THE FIVE IN EPISTEMOLOGY

ABSTRACTI argue that Alvin Goldman has failed to save process reliabilism from my critique in earlier work of consequentialist or teleological epistemic theories. First, Goldman misconstrues the nature of my challenge: two of the cases he discusses I never claimed to be counterexamples to process reliabilism. Second, Goldman's reply to the type of case I actually claimed to be a counterexample to process reliabilism is unsuccessful. He proposes a variety of responses, but all of them either feature an implausible restriction on process types, or fail to rule out cases with the sort of structure that generates the worry, or both.

4. The analysis of knowledge

‘The analysis of knowledge’ begins with Edmund Gettier who challenged the ‘classical analysis of knowledge’ that equates knowledge with justified true belief. His no-false-belief proposal had some flaws. Alvin Goldman then proposed the causal theory of knowledge: experience-based knowledge that requires the knower to be appropriately causally connected to a fact. Goldman went on to launch a fresh analysis of knowledge, focused on reliability. Reliabilism is when knowledge is true belief that is produced by a mechanism likely to produce true belief. But can knowing be analysed at all? The relationship between knowing and believing is considered in the knowledge-first and belief-first movements of epistemology.

Empathy

When we see a child crying, the urge to help him and to comfort him comes to us spontaneously. We understand what he is experiencing, and feel in us something of his sadness, his distress: this is what we call empathy. This sense of the other is the fruit of our evolutionary history and is hardwired in our biology. Empathy has interested a lot of thinkers and in particular the Scottish philosophers of the Age of the Enlightenment such as Adam Smith or Hume. More recently, the philosophers Robert Gordon (St Louis, Missouri) and Alvin Goldman (Tuscon, Arizona) proposed the theory of simulation according to which when we understand the other, we simulate the other’s point of view and we use this prospective to understand the other and predict his behavior. The French neuropscyhologist Jean Decety adopted this point of view. He specifies that the empathy is the capacity to mentally simulate the subjectivity of the other, to put ourselves in the shoes of another: it lies on biological systems.