Some Problems of Epistemic Pluralism

Metaphilosophy, 2020

In this paper epistemic pluralism concerning knowledge is taken to be the claim that very different facts may constitute knowledge. The paper argues for pluralism by arguing that very different facts can constitute the knowledge-making links between beliefs and facts. If pluralism is right, we need not anxiously seek a unified account of the links between beliefs and facts that partly constitute knowledge in different cases of knowledge. The paper argues that no good reasons have been put forward in favour of believing in a unified maker of knowledge. It then appeals to the role of knowledge in order to argue that we have positive reason to embrace pluralism.

Social Science Information, 51(2), 2012

In their symposium article, Daigneault & Jacob (2012) remind us of the classical triangle of conceptual analysis: Term/Meaning/Empirical-referent. The general understanding of this triangle is that a term, the concept, is related, on the one hand, to a meaning – or a conception – through some sort of conceptual definition and, on the other hand, to the empirical world through an operational definition that ensues from the conceptual definition. Thus the triad is closed, and if we were only to be serious about defining our concepts, we would come to agree on the conceptions on which they are based and on the empirical referents to which they refer. But things are more complex than they appear. The complexity of social relations gives rise to more than one approach to conceptualizing. Here I would like to make the argument that the strategies for a sound conceptual analysis vary according to the intelligibility scheme – or the explanatory position – that one adopts. This argument is based on a remarkable book by the French sociologist, Jean-Michel Berthelot, L’Intelligence du Social (1990).1 In this conclusion I proceed in two steps: first I describe the six intelligibility schemes presented by Berthelot; and sec- ond I show how these schemes give rise to four c nceptualization strategies, which I use to compare the contributions to this symposium.

There are a number of debates that are relevant to questions concerning objectivity in science. One of the eldest, and still one of the most intensely fought, is the debate over epistemic relativism.-All forms of epistemic relativism commit themselves to the view that it is impossible to show in a neutral, non-question-begging, way that one " epistemic system " , that is, one interconnected set of epistemic standards, is epistemically superior to (all) others. I shall call this view " No-metajustification ". No-metajustification is commonly taken to deny the objectivity of standards. In this paper I shall discuss two currently popular attempts to attack " No-metajustification ". The first attempt attacks No-metajustification by challenging a particular strategy of arguing in its defence: this strategy involves the ancient Pyrrhonian " Problem of the Criterion ". The second attempt to refute No-metajustification targets its metaphysical underpinning: to wit, the claim that there are, or could be, several fundamentally different and irreconcilable epistemic systems. I shall call this assumption " Pluralism ". I shall address three questions with respect to these attempts to refute epistemic relativism by attacking No-metajustification: (i) Can the epistemic relativist rely on the Problem of the Criterion in support of No-metajustification? (ii) Is a combination of Chisholmian " particularism " (i.e. the insistence that we know lots of things) and epistemic naturalism an effective weapon against No-metajustification? And (iii) Is Pluralism a defensible assumption?

Journal of the Americal Philosophical Association, 2019

Drawing on insights from the epistemological work of the Jaina philosophers of classical India, I argue in defense of epistemic pluralism, the view that there are different but equally valid ways of knowing the world. The version of epistemic pluralism I defend is stance pluralism, a pluralism about epistemic stances or perspectives, understood to be policies or stratagems of knowing. I reject the view that the correct way to characterize epistemic pluralism is as consisting in a pluralism about epistemic systems.

Futures, 2011

academia.edu, 2019

The fundamental thesis is advanced that key notions associated with unavoidable and inherent dynamic nonlinearities, fuzziness, incompleteness, indeterminacy, inexactness, approximations, uncertainty, risks, and heterogeneity (differences, dissimilarities, varieties, diversity) in Nature (in Physical, Biological and Social Systems) constitute the central components of a New Epistemology. These notions and associated concepts form the structure of a new paradigm that cuts across all Sciences (Physical, Biological and Social) and the Humanities. In addition, and under a new perspective regarding the observer’s perception of Time and Reality, speculative behavior is introduced as a basic element of action, exercised by physical and biological agents in Nature. Actions are based on various models that agents or agencies for action either are programmed to contain or develop by experience and Evolution. In case of humans, these expectations are based on perceptions humans have about parts of Nature, covering the entire gamut, from sophisticated to overly simplistic, and even preposterous. Speculative actions are also based on these agents’ desires. In thus extending the Science of all Sciences (Epistemology) the new thesis advances and goes far beyond the Kuhnian notion of "scientific revolutions".

In A. Coliva and N. J. L. L. Pedersen (eds.): Epistemic Pluralism. Palgrave Macmillan, 2017

Sect. 1 offers some stage-setting. Pluralist views have recently attracted considerable attention in different areas of philosophy. Truth and logic are cases in hand. According to the alethic pluralist, there are several ways of being true. According to the logical pluralist, there are several ways of being valid. Sect. 2 introduces epistemic pluralism through the work of Tyler Burge, Alvin Goldman, and William Alston. In the work of these authors, we find pluralism about respectively epistemic warrant (Burge), justification (Goldman), and desiderata (Alston). Sect. 3 investigates what rationale can be given for epistemic pluralism. Drawing on the literature on truth pluralism I suggest that one rationale for adopting a pluralist view in epistemology is its wider scope. Pluralism puts one in a position to accommodate a wider range of cases of epistemic assessments. In Sect. 4 I do two things. First, I explain why the distinction between epistemic monism and epistemic pluralism is most interestingly drawn at the level of non-derivative epistemic goods. Second, I make the observation that, at a very fundamental level, the varieties of epistemic pluralism presented in Sect. 2 are not particularly pure in nature. This is because they are all combined with veritic unitarianism, i.e. the view that there are several epistemic goods but that truth is the only non-derivative one. What, other than truth, might qualify as goods of this kind? Sect. 5 offers some preliminary considerations on this question, drawing on the work of Michael DePaul and Jonathan Kvanvig. In Sect. 6 I present two kinds of collapse arguments, each meant to show that pluralism is inherently unstable. I first consider each argument in the case of truth and then transpose them to epistemology. In Sect. 7 I respond to both collapse arguments.

Reduction, Explanation and Realism, 1992

Much of philosophy is motivated by an apparent conflict between the world as it is given in experience and the world as it is given in the physical sciences 1 . Experience presents the world as coloured but a physicist's atoms have no colour. We perceive the world as beautiful or ugly, sweet or salty, happy or sad, brave or cowardly, intelligent or stupid; yet none of these properties figure in the world of the physical sciences. In the scientific world-view, the universe is an arrangement of atoms in a four-dimensional void, where the properties of sentience have no place. We might respond to this apparent conflict by thinking of experience as informed by outmoded theory; that contemporary science is the home of our best theory; and that our experience should, in time, alter to reflect our best theory. Where experience presents the world as propertied in a way which has no echo in the sciences, then we should eliminate those properties from our serious thought and talk. of colour is only one animal's imperfect cognitive response to a complex physical reflectance property, concepts of which should supersede concepts of colour. (Perhaps talk of 2 experience and cognition should themselves suffer the same fate, in which case a serious presentation of the thesis of eliminativism would have to take a different form from that which I have given it here.) Or we might adopt a deflationary strategy and interpret the properties of experience in the light of our science. What we mean by the property of being coloured red is having the disposition to reflect light of a certain wavelength in certain conditions; what we mean by 'water' is H 2 O and what we mean by 'heat' is kinetic energy of molecules. The properties of experience are reduced to the properties of science. Both of these strategies give science the upper hand: the world of experience must reduce to the world of the physical sciences or else be eliminated. Both strategies take a priori positions on what counts as good explanation: if it's good it must be continuous with explanation in the physical sciences. But why give science the upper hand? Science deserves

Journal for General Philosophy of Science, 2021

I examine situations in which we say that different subjects have 'different', 'competing', or 'conflicting understandings' of a phenomenon. In order to make sense of such situations, we should turn our attention to an often neglected ambiguity in the word 'understanding'. Whereas the notion of understanding that is typically discussed in philosophy is, to use Elgin's terms, tethered to the facts, there is another notion of understanding that is not tethered in the same way. This latter notion is relevant because, typically, talk of two subjects having 'different', 'competing', or 'conflicting understandings' of a phenomenon does not entail any commitment to the proposition that these subjects understand the phenomenon in the tethered sense of the word. This paper aims, first, to analyze the non-tethered notion of understanding, second, to clarify its relationship to the tethered notion, third, to explore what exactly goes on when 'different', 'competing', or 'conflicting understandings' clash and, fourth, to discuss the significance of such situations in our epistemic practices. In particular, I argue for a version of scientific pluralism according to which such situations are important because they help scientific communities achieve their fundamental epistemic goals-most importantly, the goal of understanding the world in the tethered sense.

Philosophia, 2016

In an attempt to address some long-standing issues of epistemology, Hilary Kornblith proposes that knowledge is a natural kind the identification of which is the unique responsibility of one particular science: cognitive ethology. As Kornblith sees it, the natural kind thus picked out is knowledge as construed by reliabilism. Yet the claim that cognitive ethology has this special role has not convinced all critics. The present article argues that knowledge plays a causal and explanatory role within many of our more fruitful current theories, diverging from the reliabilist conception even in disciplines that are closely related to cognitive ethology, and thus still dealing with knowledge as a natural as opposed to a social phenomenon, where special attention will be given to cognitive neuroscience. However, rather than discarding the natural kind approach altogether, it is argued that many of Kornblith’s insights can in fact be preserved within a framework that is both naturalist and pluralist.