Habermas for Humanists

If only Boghossian's eminently reasonable book were required reading for every freshman considering entrance into the humanities-the next generation of lay-people would be saved from the uncomprehending repetition of relativist slogans, and future scholars would be kept from mounting baroque, ineffectual attempts at their defense. Fear of Knowledge is engaging, easy to read, and hard to dispute. It's a satisfying work for those in the choir who will enjoy seeing written on the page precisely what we would say to constructivists were we endowed with Boghossian's rhetorical elegance. And a great many in the po-mo congregation can expect the book sent to them as suggested reading by their more analytically minded colleagues. I've already ordered a few in an attempt to stave off inane conversations I would otherwise certainly face this holiday season. [2] Boghossian begins by addressing a relativistic claim he calls equal validity, 'that there are many radically different yet "equally valid" ways of knowing the world, with science being just one of them' (p. 2). As Boghossian surely realizes, this first gloss on things is not entirely helpful, as on one natural reading 'equal validity' is thoroughly unobjectionable. A player's knowledge of baseball is radically different from a sports statistician's, which is in turn quite different from a physicist's; but each way of knowing has its own kind of value or validity. Nevertheless, as the example Boghossian uses to illustrate his target thesis makes clear, asserting that conflicting theories are equally valid borders on incoherence. The Cheyenne River Sioux may be right that humans descended from 'Buffalo people' (p. 1) or the scientific community may be right that we instead evolved from non-human primates, but if validity is supposed to involve truth, these explanations can't both be valid and they can't both constitute items of knowledge. Because one cannot know something that isn't true those who retain their conviction in the traditional Sioux story just do not know the origins of our species. Happily, though, these conclusions needn't lead us into dogmatism, as they say nothing about how we should engage those Native Americans (along with the overwhelming majority of U.S. citizens) who continue to reject evolutionary theory. We can recognize the conceptual problems with alethic relativism without shouldering a duty to convince everyone of everything we know to be true. [3] Bohossian's second opponent denies epistemic objectivity by arguing c January 18, 2007, Ars Disputandi. If you would like to cite this article, please do so as follows:

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.

Common sense and the pursuit of science both assume that there is a stable external reality including things, animals, and other people whose properties cannot be altered merely by our wishing that they were different, or by how we define them, and that we come to understand these properties by experience and reasoning. While absolute certainty can never be attained, at least some closer approximation to the truth can be reached by the successive elimination of errors.

Diogenes, 2011

An art work, created by Korean artist Paik Nam-june called "Descartes" may be found exhibited at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Gwachun, a town adjacent to Seoul. The work seems to be saying: "My brain processes digitally, therefore I am". Paik represents Descartes, the philosopher of Rationalist Dualism, as a robot of Physicalist Digitalism. As Paik's digital processes threaten to displace Descartes' mental processes, the work poses the question of how long the human mind will be considered an essential part of human existence. Whereas Descartes articulated the long-held dualist tradition of the West through his rationalist discourse, Paik has been at the forefront of attempts in the art world to show the ubiquity and plasticity of digital languages through his video art works. In this article I will focus on how the monistic epistemology of logocentrism gives way to pluralistic epistemologies, and will explore the implications that this change might have for new directions in the humanities. The condition of knowledge, absolute or communal Many of us are familiar with Plato's Metaphor of the Cave and the Biblical passage: "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free". Both of these propositions seem to presuppose a special notion of knowledge-namely, what may be called "knowledge as the mirror of reality". This is the view that what we experience in this world are mere phenomena and that genuine reality lies outside the world of experience. What proceed from these phenomena are doxastic conjectures, which lead to never-ending debate and confusion. However, if only we could reach true reality, this would provide us with a holistic system of knowledge, which could unite the entire human race and set us all free at last. Western tradition suggests there are two routes which may lead to this reality: reason and religion. But intellectual communities under the influence of Descartes preferred pursuing the former to the latter, believing that reason can lead humanity away from the manifold and mutable appearances of the world towards a simple reality governed by a transparent logical order. We can name this view "a realistic theory of knowledge". A contemporary version of this theory is the tripartite model of knowledge as "justified true belief". The central idea of this theory is that a true belief can be transformed into knowledge by

Nsukka Journal of Humanities, 2014

The history of thought in the West has greatly been defined by the epistemological trend that claims that the subject knows the objects of thought without being involved; that neutral, a historical, and unbiased account of knowledge was possible, especially by way of logic and the positivist sciences. In this mode of knowing, objectivity has always been the keynote. All other things could only be explained in terms of reason. For several centuries, any opposition to this form of understanding has been widely resisted. In our times, this very opposition has gained ascendancy in post-structuralism. Post-structuralists do not generally buy into the idea of grand knowledge by the subject founded upon transcendental platforms. They deny the idea of neutral reason, which was based upon the subject’s rational powers and announced a rival epistemic mode, namely epistemology without a subject. In order to checkmate the supposed excesses of Post-structuralism, Jurgen Habermas moved to the defence of the subject (and object) by way of his logic of communicative reason. This paper seeks to depict the weakness in western thought instantiated by Habermasian logic and the necessary participation of emotions in any holistic knowledge.

This review is a critical evaluation of the main points of Steven D. Hales’ significant book: Relativism and the Foundations of Philosophy. To that end, I will first summarize his major line of argument pointing out to the richness and significance of the book. After that, I will argue that Hales’ account of intuition is subject to the challenge shown by some recent works written on the topic, and that it postulates a concept of knowledge that opposes Gettier’s one, without arguing why it is so. And, I will show that except rational intuition, none of the methods adopted by Hales are adequate to acquire beliefs about philosophical propositions. Next, I will argue that his method of wide reflective equilibrium is committed to foundationalism and conservatism, and that all what his criticism of skepticism show is that skepticism is true. Also, I will try to show that his form of perspectival relativism is committed to the problem of infinitum; it is incompatible with his foundationalism. It is powerless regarding some forms of skepticism, sharing the same source with some others. It is not progressive, and not perspectival enough regarding Goldman’s view, naturalists’ view, and its alternatives. And, if it is perspectival enough, then it refutes itself.

Metaphilosophy, vol. 46 (2015), pp. 213-234., 2015

The view that the subject matter of epistemology is the concept of knowledge is faced with the problem that all attempts so far to define that concept are subject to counterexamples. As an alternative, this paper argues that the subject matter of epistemology is knowledge itself rather than the concept of knowledge. Moreover, knowledge is not merely a state of mind but rather a certain kind of response to the environment that is essential for survival. In this perspective, the paper outlines an answer to four basic questions about knowledge: What is the role of knowledge in human life? What is the relation between knowledge and reality? How is knowledge acquired? Is there any a priori knowledge?

Human Knowing: Our Hopes and Our Limits ©Harold I. Brown I have invoked, although not copied, Russell's (1948) title because I aim to pursue a traditional part of epistemology that has fallen into neglect in recent decades, but do so in a contemporary context. This is the project that Hume described, with his usual eloquence, in the Introduction to his Treatise of Human Nature: "'Tis evident, that all the sciences have a relation, greater or less, to human nature; and that however wide any of them may seem to run from it, they still return back by one passage or another.

manuscript, forthcoming, 2006

Science & Education, 2017

This article discusses how to deal with the relations between different cultural perspectives in classrooms, based on a proposal for considering understanding and knowledge as goals of science education, inspired by Dewey's naturalistic humanism. It thus combines educational and philosophical interests. In educational terms, our concerns relate to how science teachers position themselves in multicultural classrooms. In philosophical terms, we are interested in discussing the relations between belief, understanding, and knowledge under the light of Dewey's philosophy. We present a synthesis of Dewey's theory of inquiry through his naturalistic humanism and discuss its implications for the concepts of belief, understanding, and knowledge, as well as for the goals of science teaching. In particular, we highlight problems arising in the context of possible conflicts between scientific and religious claims in the school environment that result from totalitarian positions. We characterize an individual's position as totalitarian if he or she takes some way of thinking as the only one capable of expressing the truth about all that exists in the world, lacks open-mindedness to understand different interpretative perspectives, and attempts to impose her or his interpretation about the facts to others by violent means or not. From this stance, any other perspective is taken to be false a priori and, accordingly, as a putative target to be suppressed or adapted to the privileged way of thinking. We argue, instead, for a more fallibilist evaluation of our own beliefs and a more respectful appraisal of the diversity of students' beliefs by both students and teachers.