Showing posts with label Alvin-Goldman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Alvin-Goldman. Show all posts

Thursday, August 7, 2014

From Natural (or Naturalized) to Social Epistemology

I've been reading an anthology called Naturalizing Epistemology (1986) edited by Hilary Kornblith.

   "Naturalizing" epistemology has been heavily identified with W.V.O. Quine (author of the 2 first articles in Naturalizing Epistemology).

   Others draw parallels between naturalized epistemology and the much earlier philosophy of pragmatism, or John Dewey in particular, as in Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society Vol. 32, No. 4, Fall, 1996, "Dewey, Quine, and Pragmatic Naturalized Epistemology".  Or see Stich 1993 "Naturalizing Epistemology: Quine, Simon and the Prospects for Pragmatism".  The title alludes to Herb Simon, the Nobel Laureate (Economics), Turing Prize winner, cognitive psychologist, AI pioneer, etc.

Naturalized epistemology, like many other intellectual approaches has a strong and a weak program, or position.  The strong might be represented by Quine's "Why not settle for psychology".

Thursday, June 5, 2014

Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk by Massimo Pigliucci

I just finished listening to the Audible.com edition of
 Nonsense on Stilts: How to Tell Science from Bunk The book does quite a thorough job of covering the many ways facts and science lose out in the popularity wars.  Also, it mentioned many issues and people I've thought about over the years, and made strong connections to my most recent thinking.

So I went to look at the author's blog, http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/ only to find he ended it 3 months ago (in March 2014).

Monday, September 3, 2012

Practical Epistemology Recycled

[Originally posted April 2010, but has been reworked a couple of times.  The original (with some comments) is at  http://therealtruthproject.blogspot.com/2010/04/practical-epistemology.html]

Wikipedia defines epistemology as "the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope of knowledge". Traditionally it has led to questions like whether we can really know anything, and discussing the qualities of different kinds of knowledge like logical or mathematical knowledge.

How much attention has been paid, however, to the question "Who can I trust?" -- perhaps far and away the most important epistemological question that anyone can ask.