Browsing by Subject "Traditional epistemology"
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Item Knowledge and social identity(2018-10-08) Toole, Briana Marie; Dogramaci, Sinan; Buchanan, Ray; Sosa, David; Antony, Louise; Schoenfield, MiriamThere is a tension, allegedly, between traditional epistemology and standpoint epistemology. Traditional epistemologists, on the one hand, hold that knowledge is sensitive to epistemic (truth-conducive) features alone. By contrast, standpoint epistemologists argue that knowledge, in some cases, is sensitive to non-epistemic features related to the agent's social identity. My goal here is to vindicate this thesis. Though the thesis of standpoint epistemology is controversial, it plays an important role in illuminating a phenomenon that emerges in our epistemic practices - epistemic oppression. Epistemic oppression occurs when an epistemic agent is excluded from the practices of knowledge production. If the aim of epistemology is to bring us closer to truth, then any practice that subverts this aim ought to be thoroughly investigated. However, as I will argue, our capacity to root out epistemic oppression is limited to the extent that we continue operating within the traditional epistemological framework. In this dissertation, I will argue that the traditional epistemologist can either acquiesce to the standpoint epistemologist's claim that knowledge is sensitive to non-epistemic features related to an agent's social identity, or consider social identity an epistemic feature. I further clarify the standpoint thesis, and examine why standpoint epistemology is able, where traditional epistemology fails, to understand epistemic oppression. I close by considering applications of the thesis to other questions in epistemology, with a particular eye towards issues in the peer disagreement literatureItem Suspension, coherence, and credence(2022-05-06) del Rio, Andrew Emmanuel; Sosa, David, 1966-; Dogramaci, Sinan; Schoenfield, Miriam; Sorensen, Roy; Kelly, ThomasThis dissertation is a collection of three papers, “Why undermining evolutionary debunkers is not enough,” “Absence of evidence against belief as credence one,” and “Suspending belief in credal accounts.” The role of suspension—the agnostic’s attitude that sits between belief and disbelief—is central in each paper. The first paper demonstrates that though mere undermining of the evolutionary debunker is a tempting response to their argument, it requires suspension on a premise. That is incoherent with belief in the other premise and disbelief in the conclusion. Therefore, mere undermining does not make believing we have moral knowledge epistemically permissible. The second paper demonstrates that Jane Friedman’s objection to an account of suspension as credence between 0 and 1 relies on equivocation or a false premise. Friedman’s objection entails that suspension on p is rationally permissible while one is maximally confident that not-p. I argue that these two attitudes are incoherent and so her objection fails. The third paper demonstrates that suspension should not be thought of as a credence of any kind whether precise or imprecise. Unique problems are associated with every possible credal account of suspension. This means that a traditional picture of belief, suspension, and disbelief cannot be reduced to a credal picture. Suspension is either fundamental or should be eliminated.