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Disagreements (epistemology)
The issue of peer disagreement in epistemology discusses the question of how a person should respond when he learns that somebody else with the same body of knowledge disagrees with them. Types of disagreements Epistemologists distinguish between two types of disagreements. One type is disagreements about facts. For instance, a disagreement about the question whether earth is spherical or flat. The second type of disagreements is about a proposed course of action, for example, whether one should travel to Italy or Greece. This philosophical discussion is mainly about “peer disagreement”. This is the case where the two disputants are ''epistemic peers'' -- they have roughly the same capabilities in terms of information and intelligence. Responses to disagreements The schools of thought about the right way to respond to a disagreement are the Conciliatory School and the Steadfast school. Different philosophers provide different reasons for each of these schools. The Concili ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epistemology
Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics. Epistemologists study the nature, origin, and scope of knowledge, epistemic justification, the rationality of belief, and various related issues. Debates in epistemology are generally clustered around four core areas: # The philosophical analysis of the nature of knowledge and the conditions required for a belief to constitute knowledge, such as truth and justification # Potential sources of knowledge and justified belief, such as perception, reason, memory, and testimony # The structure of a body of knowledge or justified belief, including whether all justified beliefs must be derived from justified foundational beliefs or whether justification requires only a coherent set of beliefs # Philosophical skepticism, which questions the possibili ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Uniqueness Thesis (epistemology)
The uniqueness thesis is “the idea that a body of evidence justifies at most one proposition out of a competing set of propositions (e.g., one theory out of a bunch of exclusive alternatives) and that it justifies at most one attitude toward any particular proposition.” The types of attitudes towards a proposition, are: believing, disbelieving, and suspending judgment. The uniqueness thesis claims that, given a body of evidence, one of these attitudes is the rationally justified one. The justification referred to in this thesis is epistemic justification. Stewart Cohen, following Christensen, suggests alternative interpretation of ‘attitude’. Attitude is described by credence, which is the degree of belief in a certain proposition, also referred to as subjective bayesian probability”. The denial of the Uniqueness Thesis is also referred to as “Permissivism” Controversy The uniqueness thesis is false for some epistemic views. For example, it is obviously false fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Concepts In Epistemology
Concepts are defined as abstract ideas. They are understood to be the fundamental building blocks of the concept behind principles, thoughts and beliefs. They play an important role in all aspects of cognition. As such, concepts are studied by several disciplines, such as linguistics, psychology, and philosophy, and these disciplines are interested in the logical and psychological structure of concepts, and how they are put together to form thoughts and sentences. The study of concepts has served as an important flagship of an emerging interdisciplinary approach called cognitive science. In contemporary philosophy, there are at least three prevailing ways to understand what a concept is: * Concepts as mental representations, where concepts are entities that exist in the mind (mental objects) * Concepts as abilities, where concepts are abilities peculiar to cognitive agents (mental states) * Concepts as Fregean senses, where concepts are abstract objects, as opposed to mental obje ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
