Epistemic Obligations
Epistemic Obligations

Author: Bruce R. Reichenbach

Publisher:

Published: 2012

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9781602586239

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Questions of belief, and agency over personal belief, abound as individuals claim to have the right to believe whatever they so choose. In a carefully constructed argument, Bruce Reichenbach contends that while individuals have direct control over belief, they are obligated to believe--and purposely seek--the truth. Though the nature of truth and belief is an oft-debated topic, Reichenbach moves beyond surface-level persuasions to address the very core of what constitutes a human right. These epistemic obligations are critical, as the influence of belief is evident throughout society, from law and education to religion and daily decision-making. Grounding his argument in practical case studies, Reichenbach deftly demonstrates the necessity of moral accountability and belief.

Epistemic Duties
Epistemic Duties

Author: Kevin McCain

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2020-10-11

Total Pages: 446

ISBN-13: 0429638620

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There are arguably moral, legal, and prudential constraints on behavior. But are there epistemic constraints on belief? Are there any requirements arising from intellectual considerations alone? This volume includes original essays written by top epistemologists that address this and closely related questions from a variety of new, sometimes unexpected, angles. It features a wide variety of positions, ranging from arguments for and against the existence of purely epistemic requirements, reductions of epistemic requirements to moral or prudential requirements, the biological foundations of epistemic requirements, extensions of the scope of epistemic requirements to include such things as open-mindedness, eradication of implicit bias and interpersonal duties to object, to new applications such as epistemic requirements pertaining to storytelling, testimony, and fundamentalist beliefs. Anyone interested in the nature of responsibility, belief, or epistemic normativity will find a range of useful arguments and fresh ideas in this cutting-edge anthology. Chapter 14 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF at http://www.taylorfrancis.com under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND) 4.0 license.

Responsible Belief
Responsible Belief

Author: Rik Peels

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017

Total Pages: 289

ISBN-13: 0190608110

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This book develops and defends a theory of responsible belief. The author argues that we lack control over our beliefs, but that we can nonetheless influence them. It is because we have intellectual obligations to influence our beliefs that we are responsible for them.

Epistemic Care
Epistemic Care

Author: Casey Rebecca Johnson

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2023-02-24

Total Pages: 96

ISBN-13: 1000834905

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This book uses the framework of care ethics to articulate a novel theory of our epistemic obligations to one another. It presents an original way to understand our epistemic vulnerabilities, our obligations in education, and our care duties toward others with whom we stand in epistemically vulnerable relationships. As embodied and socially interdependent knowers, we have obligations to one another that are generated by our ability to care – that is, to meet each other’s epistemic vulnerabilities. The author begins the book by arguing that the same motivations that moved social epistemologists away from individualistic epistemology should motivate a move to a care-based theory. The following chapters outline our epistemic care duties to vulnerable agents, and offer criteria of epistemic goodness for communities of inquiry. Finally, the author discusses the tension between epistemic care and epistemic paternalism. Epistemic Care will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in social epistemology, ethics, feminist philosophy, and philosophy of education.

Epistemic Responsibility
Epistemic Responsibility

Author: Lorraine Code

Publisher: State University of New York Press

Published: 2020-11-01

Total Pages: 344

ISBN-13: 1438480512

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Having adequate knowledge of the world is not just a matter of survival but also one of obligation. This obligation to "know well" is what philosophers have termed "epistemic responsibility." In this innovative and eclectic study, Lorraine Code explores the possibilities inherent in this concept as a basis for understanding human attempts to know and understand the world and for discerning the nature of intellectual virtue. By focusing on the idea that knowing is a creative process guided by imperatives of epistemic responsibility, Code provides a fresh perspective on the theory of knowledge. From this new perspective, Code poses questions about knowledge that have a different focus from those traditionally raised in the two leading epistemological theories, foundationalism and coherentism. While not rejecting these approaches, this new position moves away from a primary concentration on determinate products and towards an examination of ever-changing processes. Arguing that knowledge never exists as an ungrounded abstraction but rather emerges through dialogue between variously authoritative "knowers" situated within particular social and historical contexts, she draws extensively on examples from lived social experience to illustrate the ways in which human beings have long tried to recognize and meet their epistemic responsibilities. This edition of Epistemic Responsibility includes a new preface from Lorraine Code.

Responsibility: The Epistemic Condition
Responsibility: The Epistemic Condition

Author: Philip Robichaud

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017-06-16

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 0191085227

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Philosophers have long agreed that moral responsibility might not only have a freedom condition, but also an epistemic condition. Moral responsibility and knowledge interact, but the question is exactly how. Ignorance might constitute an excuse, but the question is exactly when. Surprisingly enough, the epistemic condition has only recently attracted the attention of scholars. This volume sets the agenda. Sixteen new essays address the following central questions: Does the epistemic condition require akrasia? Why does blameless ignorance excuse? Does moral ignorance sustained by one's culture excuse? Does the epistemic condition involve knowledge of the wrongness or wrongmaking features of one's action? Is the epistemic condition an independent condition, or is it derivative from one's quality of will or intentions? Is the epistemic condition sensitive to degrees of difficulty? Are there different kinds of moral responsibility and thus multiple epistemic conditions? Is the epistemic condition revisionary? What is the basic structure of the epistemic condition?

Towards a Liberatory Epistemology
Towards a Liberatory Epistemology

Author: Deborah K. Heikes

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2019-05-06

Total Pages: 212

ISBN-13: 3030164853

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This book offers a compelling examination of our moral and epistemic obligations to be reasonable people who seek to understand the social reality of those who are different from us. Considering the oppressive aspects of socially constructed ignorance, Heikes argues that ignorance produces both injustice and epistemic repression, before going on to explore how our moral and epistemic obligations to be understanding and reasonable can overcome the negative effects of ignorance. Through the combination of three separate areas of philosophical interest- ignorance, understanding, and reasonableness- Heikes seeks to find a way to correct for epistemological and moral injustices, satisfying needs in feminist theory and critical race theory for an epistemology that offers hope of overcoming the ethical problem of oppression.

The Epistemic Life of Groups
The Epistemic Life of Groups

Author: Michael S. Brady

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016-03-03

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 0191077747

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Social epistemology has been flourishing in recent years, expanding and making connections with political philosophy, virtue epistemology, philosophy of science, and feminist philosophy. The philosophy of the social world too is flourishing, with burgeoning work in the metaphysics of the social world, collective responsibility, group action, and group belief. The new philosophical vista now more clearly presenting itself is collective epistemology--the epistemology of groups and institutions. Groups engage in epistemic activity all the time--whether it be the active collective inquiry of scientific research groups or crime detection units, or the evidential deliberations of tribunals and juries, or the informational efforts of the voting population in general--and yet in philosophy there is still relatively little epistemology of groups to help explore these epistemic practices and their various dimensions of social and philosophical significance. The aim of this book is to address this lack, by presenting original essays in the field of collective epistemology, exploring these regions of epistemic practice and their significance for Epistemology, Political Philosophy, Ethics, and the Philosophy of Science.

Knowledge, Truth, and Duty
Knowledge, Truth, and Duty

Author: Matthias Steup

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2001

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 0195128923

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This text examines epistemic duty, doxastic voluntarism, the normativity of justification, internalism versus externalism, truth as the epistemic goal, and scepticism and the search for justification.

Refurbishing Epistemology
Refurbishing Epistemology

Author: Dominique Kuenzle

Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG

Published: 2017-06-26

Total Pages: 390

ISBN-13: 3110524651

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Even though important developments within 20th and 21st century philosophy have widened the scope of epistemology, this has not yet resulted in a systematic meta-epistemological debate about epistemology’s aims, methods, and criteria of success. Ideas such as the methodology of reflective equilibrium, the proposal to "naturalize" epistemology, constructivist impulses fuelling the "sociology of scientific knowledge", pragmatist calls for taking into account the practical point of epistemic evaluations, as well as feminist criticism of the abstract and individualist assumptions built into traditional epistemology are widely discussed, but they have not typically resulted in the call for, let alone the construction of, a suitable meta-epistemological framework. This book motivates and elaborates such a new meta-epistemology. It provides a pragmatist, social and functionalist account of epistemic states that offers the conceptual space for revised or even replaced epistemic concepts. This is what it means to "refurbish epistemology": The book assesses conceptual tools in relation to epistemology’s functionally defined conceptual space, responsive to both intra-epistemic considerations and political and moral values.