Aristotle's ethical writings are among the most influential in the history of Western thought. Key to these writings is the idea that some people better understand how they should act in order to lead successful lives as part of their communities. Their knowledge is called practical wisdom (phronēsis). Some of what Aristotle says suggests that this kind of knowledge is intuitive or unreflective, but at other times it seems abstruse and theoretical. -/- Aristotle's Practical Epistemology presents a (...) novel interpretation of Aristotle's influential account of practical wisdom (phronēsis) by situating the topic within his broader theory of ethical knowledge. Interpreters have long struggled to make sense of the disparate features Aristotle seems to attribute to practical wisdom, particularly its role in bringing about individual choices and actions in the domain of ethical action, of theoretical wisdom (sophia) and craft (tekhnē). Dhananjay Jagannathan contends that these features can be united when we see that phronēsis is a distinctively practical form of understanding. (shrink)

This book takes a theoretical enterprise in Christian philosophy of religion and applies it to Buddhism, thus defending Buddhism and presenting it favorably in comparison. Chapters explore how the claims of both Christianity and Theravada Buddhism rest on people's experiences, so the question as to which claimants to religious knowledge are right rests on the evidential value of those experiences. The book examines mysticism and ways to understand what goes on in religious experiences, helping us to understand whether it is (...) good grounds for religious belief. The author argues that religious language in both Christian and Buddhist traditions is intelligible as factual discourse, and so reports of mystical experience are true or false. The book contends that those experiences can be fruitfully thought of as perceptual in kind and that they are therefore good prima facie grounds for religious belief, in the absence of defeating conditions. The work goes on to explore Christian and Buddhist testimony and how the likelihood of self-deception, self-delusion, imaginative elaboration and the like constitutes a defeating condition. It is shown that this defeater has less scope for operation in the Buddhist case than in the Christian case, and therefore Theravada Buddhism is better grounded. This work will appeal to students and scholars of philosophy and philosophy of religion, and those interested in the study of religious experience. (shrink)

Jason Stanley presents a startling and provocative claim about knowledge: that whether or not someone knows a proposition at a given time is in part determined by his or her practical interests, i.e. by how much is at stake for that person at that time. In defending this thesis, Stanley introduces readers to a number of strategies for resolving philosophical paradox, making the book essential not just for specialists in epistemology but for all philosophers interested in philosophical methodology. (...) Since a number of his strategies appeal to linguistic evidence, it will be of great interest to linguists as well. (shrink)

In this original and controversial book Professor Rawls argues that Durkheim's The Elementary Forms of Religious Life is the crowning achievement of his sociological endeavour and that since its publication in English in 1915 it has been consistently misunderstood. Rather than a work on primitive religion or the sociology of knowledge, Rawls asserts that it is an attempt by Durkheim to establish a unique epistemological basis for the study of sociology and moral relations. By privileging social practice over beliefs and (...) ideas, it avoids the dilemmas inherent in philosophical approaches to knowledge and morality that are based on individualism and the tendency to privilege beliefs and ideas over practices, both tendencies that dominate western thought. Based on detailed textual analysis of the primary text, this book will be an important and original contribution to contemporary debates on social theory and philosophy. (shrink)

The aim of this essay is to provide a philosophical discussion of Frederick Douglass's thought in relation to Christianity. I expand upon the work of Bill E. Lawson and Frank M. Kirkland—who both argue that there are Kantian features present in Douglass as it relates to his conception of the individual—by arguing that there are similarities between Douglass and Kant not only concerning the relationship between morality and Christianity, but also concerning the nature of the soul. Specifically, I try to (...) show that the moral weakness of slaveholding Christianity that Douglass attacked is found in the ecclesial formation of the slaveholding Christian church; it is a formation that begins with epistemology, but ignores ethics. I conclude, in part, that both Douglass and Kant reject a Cartesian psychological dualism in favor of a conception of the soul that is more attentive to one's moral development. (shrink)

Systems based on symbolic knowledge have performed extremely well in processing reason, yet, remain beset with problems of brittleness in many domains. Connectionist approaches do similarly well in emulating interactive domains, however, have struggled when modelling higher brain functions. Neither of these dichotomous approaches, however, have provided many inroads into the area of human reasoning that psychology and sociology refer to as the process of practice. This paper argues that the absence of a model for the process of practise in (...) current approaches is a significant contributor to brittleness. This paper will investigate how the process of practise relates to deeper forms of contextual representations of knowledge. While researchers and developers of knowledge based systems have often incorporated the notion of context they treat context as a static entity, neglecting many connectionists’ work in learning hidden and dynamic contexts. This paper argues that the omission of these higher forms of context is one of the fundamental problems in the application and interpretation of symbolic knowledge. Finally, these ideas for modelling context will lead to the reinterpretation of situation cognition which makes a significant step towards a philosophy of knowledge that could lead to the modelling of the process of practice. (shrink)

One of the guiding ideas of virtue epistemology is to look at epistemological issue through the lens of practical philosophy. The Gettier Problem is a case in point. Virtue epistemologists, like Sosa and Greco, see the shortcoming in a Gettier scenario as a shortcoming from which performances in general can suffer. In this paper I raise some doubts about the success of this project. Looking more closely at practical philosophy, will, I argue, show that virtue epistemology (...) misconceives the significance of Gettier structures in the practical domain. (shrink)

We employ a pragmatic model of inquiry to distinguish the epistemological character of exploratory experimentation. Exploratory experimentation is not constituted by any intrinsic characteristics of an episode of experimentation but depends on the context and aims of the experiment and the ways in which these shape decisions about how the experimental inquiry is to be conducted: its tasks, resources, and aims, as well as the critical assessment of all of these. To demonstrate the usefulness of our pragmatist model, we apply (...) it to the contrast between two kinds of searches for new physics at the Large Hadron Collider. Some searches are exploratory while others target specific Beyond Standard Model hypotheses, but this contrast can be understood only by considering the relations between these searches, their aims, and the way that these aims shape their respective experimental parameters and procedures. Our approach provides a model for establishing the epistemological significance of details of experimental practice. (shrink)

Although widely recognized as founder and key figure in the current re-emergence of pragmatism, Charles Peirce is rarely brought into contemporary dialogue. In this book, Kory Sorrell shows that Peirce has much to offer contemporary debate and deepens the value of Peirce’s view of representation in light of feminist epistemology, philosophy of science, and cultural anthropology. Drawing also on William James and John Dewey, Sorrell identifies ways in which bias, authority, and purpose are ineluctable constituents of shared representation. He (...) nevertheless defends Peirce’s realistic account of representation, showing how the independently real world both constrains social representation and informs its content. Most importantly, Sorrell shows how members of a given community not only represent but transform a shared world—and how those practices of representation may, and should, be improved. (shrink)

The subject of the study is the epistemological specificity of art through the «prism» of the Paleolithic and modern eras. The focus of the research is aimed at analyzing the phenomenon of «eidetism», which is a link between modern and primitive art. The purpose of the article is to comprehend the epistemological specifics of art, which began with the «psychophysiology» of the primitive world and developed into forms of «practical philosophizing» of the modern era. The research methodology includes a (...) review of literary sources, a dialectical approach to historical and art historical reconstruction, analysis of paleopsychological data, comparative analysis, elements of systems psychology and sociology. An element of novelty is the author's position that already in the lower, early layers of its evolution, the status of art «as one of the most ancient forms of human activity» is enriched by the status of «a form of practical philosophizing». The generalization is made that the art of the XX-XXI centuries, on the one hand, abandoned both mimesis and humanism, on the other – it continued the path of «practical philosophizing» begun in ancient times, based on the perceptual-empirical method of cognition of reality. The evolution of art from its primitive origins through archaic, classical to its modern state is, at the same time, the transformation of human consciousness, and the comprehension through artistic and creative activity of one's being and place in the universe, etc. - the development of its «depth» (the content of art). This is the development of art «in breadth» (the development of artistic form): the proliferation of its types and genres, the growth of stylistic and technological polyphony, etc. As a result, «art has come a long way from its purely psychophysiological hypostasis to «practical philosophizing». Artistic and creative activity itself as a whole continues to be the most important component of the global «mechanism» of mastering reality. (shrink)

- Peter Railton1 Railton's remark is accurate; contemporary philosophers almost invariably suppose that morality is more vulnerable than empirical science to scepticism. Yet David Hume apparently embraces an inversion of this twentieth century orthodoxy.2 In book I of the Treatise, he claims that the understanding, when it reflects upon itself, "entirely subverts itself" (T 1. 4.7.7; SBN 267) while, in contrast, in book III he claims that our moral faculty, when reflecting upon itself, acquires "new force" (T 3.3.6.3; SBN 619). (...) Such passages suggest Hume's view is that morality's claims on us are justified, whereas the understanding's claims are not -- that scepticism about empirical science, but not morality, is irresistible. However, this interpretation does not accurately reflect Hume's position. Indeed, any interpretation which has Hume concluding that the understanding's claims on us are not justified faces an obvious worry - it makes nonsense of the rest of his naturalistic project, including, but not limited to, his description and justification of our moral faculty. For in defending his account of our moral faculty and, perhaps more clearly, in arguing against those who believe in miracles, Hume inescapably presupposes that the understanding's claims on us are in some sense justified. In light of Hume's meticulous and enthusiastic pursuit of his larger naturalistic project, one might even be tempted to conclude that Hume never really thought his sceptical arguments were sound. It would, however, be a mistake to submit to this temptation -- to do so would be to ignore the last part of book I of the Treatise, in which Hume evidently does find such arguments to be sound. Hume is undeniably impressed by scepticism about the. (shrink)

Social Epistemology, as formulated by Steve Fuller, is based on the suggestion that rational knowledge policy must be held accountable to ‘brute facts’ about the nature of our human cognitive pursuits, whatever these may be. One difficulty for Fuller concerns the conception of the social which underwrites social epistemology. I argue that social epistemology conflates the social with human psychological properties that are available for public scrutiny and, accordingly, that social epistemology is best viewed as a (...) brand of psychologism. Though Fuller's proposal signifies an important step in the ongoing attempt by scholars to eradicate the last traces of Descartes' epistemological device of a disembodiedres cogitans, I conclude that his conception of the social is too weak to serve as the basis for a socially-embedded discipline in anything but name only. (shrink)

In current philosophical research, there is a rather one-sided focus on the foundations of proof. A full picture of mathematical practice should however additionally involve considerations about various methodological aspects. A number of these is identified, from large-scale to small-scale ones. After that, naturalism, a philosophical school concerned with scientific practice, is looked at, as far as the translations of its epistemic principles to mathematics is concerned. Finally, we call for intensifying the interaction between both dimensions of practice and (...) class='Hi'>epistemology. (shrink)

Philosophers’ traditional emphasis on theories, theoretical modeling, and explanation misguides research in philosophy of science. Articulating and applying core theories is part of scientific practice, but it is not the essence of scientific practice. Insofar as science has an essence, it is to systematically investigate and learn about what is not yet understood. This lecture analyzes genetics to articulate a broad-practice-centered approach to philosophy of science. It concludes by arguing that this approach can lead to richer, deeper, and more useful (...) philosophies of science, philosophies that can better inform science policy and the public’s understanding of science. (shrink)

The complex societal challenges of the twenty-first Century require scientific researchers and academically educated professionals capable of conducting scientific research in complex problem contexts. Our central claim is that educational approaches inspired by a traditional empiricist epistemology insufficiently foster the required deep conceptual understanding and higher-order thinking skills necessary for epistemic tasks in scientific research. Conversely, we argue that constructivist epistemologies provide better guidance to educational approaches to promote research skills. We also argue that teachers adopting a constructivist learning (...) theory do not necessarily embrace a constructivist epistemology. On the contrary, in educational practice, novel educational approaches that adopt constructivist learning theories often maintain traditional empiricist epistemologies. Philosophers of science can help develop educational designs focused on learning to conduct scientific research, combining constructivist learning theory with constructivist epistemology. We illustrate this by an example from a bachelor’s program in Biomedical Engineering, where we introduce conceptual models and modeling as an alternative to the traditional focus on hypothesis testing in conducting scientific research. This educational approach includes the so-called B&K method for constructing scientific models to scaffold teaching and learning conceptual modeling. (shrink)

The dialogue between internalists who maintain a belief is a case of knowledge when that which justifies the belief is within the agent's first-person perspective and externalists who maintain epistemic justification can be in part, or entirely, outside the agent's first-person perspective has been part of the epistemological literature for some time with one side usually attempting to show how the other side is mistaken. Edward Craig argues the internalist/externalist debate is flawed from the outset. Specifically, both internalism and externalism (...) should be incorporated into the correct analysis of knowledge once we revamp that project. The epistemological project, according to Craig, is a practical explication of what both our epistemological practices and the concept of knowledge do for us. My purpose here is to evaluate this proposal, as well as Ram Neta's attempt to generalize this proposal to cover all epistemic appraisals, in light of the internalism/externalism debate. I argue the Craig/Neta proposal does not actually 'solve' the internalism/externalism debate, but rather pushes it back a level or assumes that one side is correct; hence, the Craig/Neta proposal is not an adequate 'solution' to the internalism/externalism debate. (shrink)

Computer simulations are widely used within the area of building science research. Building science research deals with the physical phenomena that affect buildings, including heat and mass transfer, lighting and acoustic transmission. This wide usage of computer simulations, however, is characterized by a divergence in thought on the composition of an epistemological framework that may provide guidance for their deployment in research. This paper undertakes a fundamental review of the epistemology of computer simulations within the context of the philosophy (...) of science. Thereafter, it reviews the epistemological framework within which computer simulations are used in practice within the area of building science research. A comparison between the insights obtained from the realms of theory and practice is made, which then interrogates the adequacy of the epistemological approaches that have been employed in previously published simulation-based research. These insights may help in informing a normative composition of an adequate epistemological framework within which computer simulation-based building science research may be conducted. (shrink)

There are countless occasions when we find people’s thought or action intelligible, or anticipate what they will think or do, or are at least unsurprised by what they think or do, despite our having little if any information about their attitudes other than what we can gather from their situation and non-verbal behaviour. This article explores the role of practices, conceived as essentially rule-governed activities, is making this possible. Consideration is given to practicies for the use of words.

Berichte zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Volume 45, Issue 3, Page 397-414, September 2022.

Anscombe thought that practical knowledge – a person’s knowledge of what she is intentionally doing – displays formal differences to ordinary empirical, or ‘speculative’, knowledge. I suggest these differences rest on the fact that practical knowledge involves intention analogously to how speculative knowledge involves belief. But this claim conflicts with the standard conception of knowledge, according to which knowledge is an inherently belief-involving phenomenon. Building on John Hyman’s account of knowledge as the ability to use a fact as (...) a reason, I develop an alternative, two-tier, epistemology which allows that knowledge might really come in a belief-involving and an intention-involving form. (shrink)

The question of rationality and of its role in human agency has been at the core of pragmatist concerns since the beginning of this movement. While Peirce framed the horizon of a new understanding of human reason through the idea of inquiry as aiming at belief-fixation and James stressed the individualistic drives that move individuals to action, it is in Dewey’s writing that we find the deepest understanding of the naturalistic and normative traits of rationality considered as the qualifying attribute (...) of human agency. Recent developments in moral and political philosophy as well as in general pragmatist scholarship have shown a renewal of interest in the role of human reason in agency, both with respect to control of conduct (decisions about how to act) and with respect to normative attitudes (considerations of what is good and right). In this article I will examine some features of Dewey’s epistemology which are particularly promising for the elaboration of a theory of practical rationality based on pragmatist sources. In particular, I will focus on Dewey’s notion of “judgment of practice” in order to frame a distinctively Deweyan approach to practical rationality. In order to point out the specificity of Dewey’s epistemological framework, I will refer to it as an “epistemology of practice”i. The aim of this article is to clarify the epistemological meaning of the concepts of articulation and transformation, that Dewey places at the heart of his theory of inquiry. Part of my argument consists in showing that through these notions Dewey aimed at broadening the conception of rationality, bringing it beyond the reach of the standard notions of analysis and synthesis and of induction, deduction, and abduction. Once the specificity of Dewey’s conception of rationality will have been demonstrated, I will proceed to show some of its implications in the explanation of the rationality of human agency with reference to practical reasoning and value assessment. I will then conclude the article by drawing some implications of Dewey’s theory of judgment for a broader epistemology based upon the acknowledgment of the primacy of practice. (shrink)

In discussions of practical reason we often encounter the view that a fact is a reason for an agent to act only if the fact is capable of moving the agent to act. This view figures centrally in many philosophical controversies, and while taken for granted by some, it is vigorously disputed by others. In this essay I show that if the disputed position is correctly interpreted, it is well armored against stock objections and implied by a premise that (...) is not only plausible, but generally accepted by the position's critics. (shrink)

This article is concerned with the relationship between scientific practice and the metaphysics of laws of nature and natural properties. I begin by examining an argument by Michael Townsen Hicks and Jonathan Schaffer that an important feature of scientific practice—namely, that scientists sometimes invoke non-fundamental properties in fundamental laws—is incompatible with metaphysical theories according to which laws govern. I respond to their argument by developing an epistemology for governing laws that is grounded in scientific practice. This epistemology is (...) of general interest for non-Humean theories of laws, for it helps to explain our epistemic access to non-Humean theoretical entities such as governing laws or fundamental powers. (shrink)

In this paper, I contend that a crucial historical precedent for contemporary interest in virtue epistemology is to be found in Leibniz-Wolffian rationalism. For philosophers from Wolff to Lessing, epistemology was thoroughly normative; that is, the task of epistemology was not to describe knowledge, but set rules for the amelioration of knowledge. Such a normative stance was transferred into cognate disciplines, such as aesthetics, as well. I further argue that after Kant’s Copernican revolution in philosophy in 1781 (...) strands of this normative epistemology lived on in both Schiller’s aesthetics and Maimon’s reworking of transcendental idealism. Finally, I suggest some provisional reasons for considering Kant’s epistemology a break with this tradition. (shrink)

This chapter uses Strategic Reliabilism to resolve two debates about whether certain experimental findings demonstrate deep and systematic failures of human reasoning. It illustrates one of the main benefits of the current approach to epistemology: it can be used to adjudicate disputes that arise in psychology that are, at bottom, normative epistemological disputes about the nature of good reasoning.

Transcendental arguments offer a particularlypowerful strategy for combating skepticism. Such arguments, after all, attempt to show thata particular skepticism is not simply mistakenbut inconsistent or self-refuting. Whilethus tempting to philosophers struggling withskepticism of various sorts, the boldconclusions of these arguments have longrendered them suspicious in the eyes of many. In fact, in a famous paper from 1968 BarryStroud develops what is often taken to be adecisive case against transcendental argumentsin general.Recent work in the area of practical reason,however, suggests that (...) such arguments stillhave their defenders. Theorists such as JamesDreier and Christine Korsgaard have reliedexplicitly on transcendental arguments tojustify certain principles of practical reason. Can such arguments overcome Stroud's objection? In what follows, I argue that they can. However effective Stroud's general criticismmay be in other areas, it does not apply in therealm of practical reason. Nevertheless, thereare strict limits on how far transcendentalarguments can take us. In particular, despiteKorsgaard's efforts, they cannot succeed inestablishing a rational foundation formorality. (shrink)

Defenders of pragmatic encroachment in epistemology hold that practical factors have implications for a belief’s epistemic status. Paradigm defenders of pragmatic encroachment have held—to state their positions roughly— that whether someone’s belief that p constitutes knowledge depends on the practical reasons that she has (Stanley 2005), that knowing p is necessary and sufficient for treating p as a reason for action (Hawthorne and Stanley 2008), or that knowing p is sufficient for reasonably acting as if p (Fantl (...) and McGrath 2009: 66). Although their defenders may not always pose their theses in the language of practical reasons, the idea of a practical reason is central to each of these views. Yet there remain issues concerning the nature and basis of practical reasons on which defenders of pragmatic encroachment have not taken a position, including—as I will explain—the issue of whether internalism or externalism about reasons is true. It may be thought that the position the defender of pragmatic encroachment takes on this does not make a difference to the truth or falsity of her main thesis. In this chapter, I will show that it does matter, in the sense that her view will generate different verdicts about cases depending on whether she endorses internal- ism or externalism about reasons. Given the role of cases in providing intui- tive support for or against the theory, this, in turn, makes a difference to the plausibility of pragmatic encroachment. (shrink)

The question of how to reason well is an important normative question,one which ultimately motivates some of our interest in the more abstracttopic of the principles of practical reason. It is this normative questionthat I propose to address by arguing that given the goal of an importantkind of deliberation, we will deliberate better if we develop certainvirtues. I give an account of the virtue of stability and I argue thatstability makes reasoners reason better. Further,I suggest at the end of (...) the paper that an account of virtues thatconduce to good reasoning might go a long way toward answering someof the traditional questions about the principles ofpractical reason. (shrink)

The present paper studies Ernst Mach’s experimental work with “spark waves” and other types of shock waves, which brought him to the 1887–88 famous schlieren photographs of supersonic phenomena triggered by bullets shot at high speed. Against what it is traditionally argued, I show (1) that Ernst Mach’s visualization attempts do not depend on his commitment to any particular philosophical doctrine about the role of sensations as the foundation of empirical science, and (2) that his inclination toward experimental research may (...) have crucially contributed to the development of his epistemological and ontological views. (shrink)

Anscombean accounts claim that intentional action is essentially characterized by an agent's practical knowledge of what she is doing. Such accounts are threatened by cases in which an agent seemingly fails to know what she is doing because of a mistake in the performance. It thus seems that such accounts are incompatible with the factivity of practical knowledge. We argue that Anscombean accounts should not be defended, as has recently been suggested, by drawing on familiar anti‐skeptical strategies from (...) epistemology, but rather by attending closely to the specifically practical character of agential knowledge. (shrink)

From the perspective of world philosophy, one phenomenon of the 20th century is quite intriguing. Certain philosophers in China as well as in the West, finding the traditional conception of epistemology too narrow-minded, argued that its scope should be expanded. The Chinese way of expanding epistemology might be called the metaphysical approach, and the Western way the practical approach. In this article, I will first give an outline of both approaches and then try to demonstrate that a (...) substantial dialogue can be created between them. By focusing on the problem of the articulation of what we know, I will make the metaphysical approach and the practical approach engage each other and thus prove to be mutually complementary. (shrink)

This article is intended to revive, through a critical reinterpretation, the bio-psychosocial model of George Engel. Engel’s first description in 1977, was very broad, encompassing too many aspects of medicine. In his later work, he focused his model as an epistemology for clinical medicine. However, what medicine mostly retained were minor aspects of the 1977 article, namely a multi-factorial approach to the etiology of diseases and a call to complement biomedicine with a psychosocial concern in order to re-humanize medicine. (...) We suggest that, properly understood as a clinical epistemology, Engel’s model retains its transformative potential for contemporary medicine.Our discussion begins with a.. (shrink)

This paper explores how chemists are transforming their own current background in order to act upon the world without jeopardizing life. In this respect, I will envisage science as both a system of propositions and a set of engaged practices. The scrutiny of chemical innovations will allow me to query the concepts of paradigm and that of scientific community . In doing so, I will connect the philosophy of science with the philosophy of technology so as to think about our (...) relation with the world. (shrink)

According to evidentialist views, credence in a proposition p should be proportional to the degree of evidential support that one has in favor of p. However, empirical evidence suggests that our credences are systematically sensitive to practical factors. In this article, I provide a cost–benefit analysis of credences' practical sensitivity. The upshot of this analysis is that credences sensitive to practical factors fare better than practically insensitive ones along several dimensions. All things considered, our credences should be (...) sensitive to practical factors. (shrink)

One consequence of the later Wittgenstein's influential critique of epistemological foundationalism has been to convince many contemporary philosophers that the ideal of universal and necessary cognitive grounds for moral or political norms is illusory. Recent neo-Wittgensteinian accounts of practical reason attempt to formulate a conception of a post-foundational politics in which a political ethos can be legitimate, rational or just even if its informing practices and cognitive standards lack foundational justification. Against these appropriations of Wittgenstein, I argue that his (...) account challenges foundationalism only by generating epistemological relativism at both the first-order level of belief systems and at the second-order level of the comparative evaluation of first-order belief systems and their non-comparable forms of justification. The result is a polytheism of forms of reason which imperils the methodological ideal of a non-relativistic practice of moral-political criticism. (shrink)