Miranda Fricker's important study of epistemic injustice is focussed primarily on testimonial injustice and hermeneutic injustice. It explores how agents' capacities to make assertions and provide testimony can be impaired in ways that can involve forms of distinctively epistemic injustice. My paper identifies a wider range of forms of epistemic injustice that do not all involve the ability to make assertions or offer testimony. The paper considers some examples of some other ways in which injustice can prevent someone from participating (...) in inquiry. (shrink)

This book is available either individually, or as part of the specially-priced Arguments of the Philosphers Collection.

This book provides a clear and comprehensive introduction to the work of Willard van Orman Quine, the most important and influential American philosopher of the post-war period. An understanding of Quine's work is essential for anyone who wishes to follow contemporary debates in the philosophy of language, the philosophy of mind and metaphysics. Hookway traces the development of Quine's work from his early criticisms of logical positivism and empiricism to his more recent theories about mind and meaning. He gives particular (...) attention to Quine's controversial arguments concerning the indeterminacy of translation, comparing Quine's views with those of Davidson, Putnam and others. Hookway concludes by offering a critical appraisal of Quine's approach and of some of his fundamental philosophical commitments. This lucid and balanced study will be essential reading for students of philosophy. It will also be invaluable for students in the social sciences and other disciplines who are looking for a clear introduction to Quine's ideas. (shrink)

Christopher Hookway presents a series of studies of themes from the work of the great American philosopher and pragmatist, Charles S. Peirce (1839-1913). These themes center on the question of how we are to investigate the world rationally. Hookway shows how Peirce's ideas about this continue to play an important role in contemporary philosophy.

Christopher Hookway presents a series of essays on the work of Charles Sanders Peirce (1839-1913), the 'founder of pragmatism' and one of the most important and original American philosophers.

Scepticism is a subject which has preoccupied philosophers for two thousand years. This book presents an historical perspective on scepticism by considering contrasting views, such as those of Sextus Empiricus, Descartes and Hume, on why scepticism is important. With its historical perspective and analysis of contemporary discussions, _Scepticism_ provides a broad focus on the subject, differing from other discussions of the topic in the importance it attaches to scepticism both in Greek thought and in pre-twentieth century views generally.

This chapter points out that standard versions of virtue epistemology accept and are motivated by the same central problems in epistemology — such as analyzing the concepts of knowledge and justification, and addressing skeptical challenges — which motivate contemporary epistemology. The only significant difference is that virtue epistemology claims that the concepts of knowledge and justification must be analyzed in terms of virtues. What motivates virtue ethicists, however, is not what is motivating other ethicists. The contemporary census amongst ethicists has (...) a different set of problems than the ones motivating virtue ethicists. Virtue epistemologists should mount a similar challenge to their contemporaries: instead of focusing on static states such as beliefs and evaluating whether or not they are justified, they should focus their efforts on evaluating and regulating the activities of inquiry and deliberation, and the role which virtues play in such evaluation and regulation. (shrink)

Introduction Quine was born in. He studied as a graduate student at Harvard, and apart from short visits to Oxford, Paris and other centres of learning, ...

Ethics studies the evaluation of actions, agents and their mental states and characters from a distinctive viewpoint or employing a distinctive vocabulary. And epistemology examines the evaluation of actions (inquiries and assertions), agents (believers and inquirers), and their states (belief and attitudes) from a different viewpoint. Given this common concern with evaluation, we should surely expect there to be considerable similarities between the issues examined and the ideas employed in the two areas. However, when we examine most textbooks in ethics (...) and epistemology, this expectation is not fulfilled. Of course, the vocabularies of evaluation are different: in ethics, we are concerned with issues of right and wrong, virtue and vice, moral obligation, and so on; and in epistemology, it is most commonly assumed that we are interested in whether states count as knowledge or as justified beliefs, with whether beliefs and strategies of belief formation are rational. (shrink)

(1994). Cognitive virtues and epistemic evaluations. International Journal of Philosophical Studies: Vol. 2, No. 2, pp. 211-227. doi: 10.1080/09672559408570791.

Questions are relevant to epistemology because they formulate cognitive goals, they are used to elicit information, they are used in Socratic reflection and knowledge sentences often have indirect question complements. The paper explores what capacities we must possess if we are to understand questions and identify and evaluate potential answers to them. The later sections explore different ways in which these matters depend upon pragmatic and other contextual considerations.

Some fundamental epistemic norms govern the conduct of the activity of inquiry and the progress of theoretical deliberation. We monitor our deliberations by raising questions about how they should be conducted and about how effectively they have been carried out. Such questions ‘occur’ to us: we are often passive recipients of them. The paper discusses what determines when questions should occur to us and it investigates how far these observations can be seen as threatening our freedom of mind. These phenomena (...) help us to see the role of states such as virtues in epistemic evaluation. (shrink)

Pragmatists challenge a sharp separation of issues of theoretical and practical rationality. This can encourage a sort of anti-realism: our classifications and theories are shaped by our interests and practical concerns. However, it need not do this. A more fundamental theme is that cognition is itself an activity, the attempt to solve problems and discover truths effectively and responsibly. Evidence has to be collected, experiments have to be devised and carried out, dialogues must be engaged in with fellow inquirers, decisions (...) must be made about when we have scrutinized our opinions enough to trust our results. Even if our goals are “purely cognitive,” the attempt to achieve them through inquiry and deliberation is an activity. The normative standards that guide its conduct, like those governing any activity, will include standards of practical rationality. Indeed, we might suggest that a belief isjustifiedso long as it is the product of responsible, well-executed inquiry. (shrink)

Christopher Hookway; I *—The Presidential Address: Questions of Context, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 96, Issue 1, 1 June 1996, Pages 1–16, h.

The paper offers an explanation of what reasons for belief are, following Paul Grice in focusing on the roles of reasons in the goal-directed activity of reasoning. Reasons are particularly salient considerations that we use as indicators of the truth of beliefs and candidates for belief. Reasons are distinguished from enabling conditions by being things that we should be able to attend to in the course of our reasoning, and in assessing how well our beliefs are supported. The final section (...) argues that epistemic virtues have a role in enabling us to identify reasons and explores this by reference to the example of being observant. (shrink)

Appeal to the idea of an epistemic virtue promises insight into our practices of epistemic evaluation through employing a distinctive view of the ways in which we formulate and respond to reasons. Traits of ‘epistemic character’ guide our reasoning and reflection, and can be responsible for various forms of irrationality. One component of such a view is that emotions, sentiments and other affective states are far more central to questions of epistemic rationality than is commonly supposed. This paper explains why (...) this is so, and then illustrates the value of this way of looking at the matter by considering two particular examples: the role of states of doubt in regulating our deliberations and inquiries; and the character of our response to some distinctive kinds of irrationality. This will involve a brief discussion of some forms of epistemic akrasia. (shrink)

Each volume in the Purdue University Press Series in the History of Philosophy examines the fundamental ideas of a single philosopher, presenting one basic text by the thinker in question, and supplementing this by “a very thorough and up-to-date commentary.” The format is most successful when a reasonably short classic work containing the subject’s most important claims can be found. We might expect it to work much less well with a thinker like Peirce, serious study of whose work cannot avoid (...) taking seriously a large number of different papers and lectures: good reasons can be found for regarding any selection of a basic text unsatisfactory. It is thus a pleasure to report that Douglas Anderson met this challenge with considerable success. The commentary is of very high quality; and his choice of texts, although initially surprising, works very well. (shrink)

The paper explores Quine's ?naturalized epistemology?, investigating whether its adoption would prevent the description or vindication of normative standards standardly employed in regulating beliefs and inquiries. Quine's defence of naturalized epistemology rejects traditional epistemological questions rather than using psychology to answer them. Although one could persuade those sensitive to the force of traditional epistemological problems only by employing the kind of argument whose philosophical relevance Quine is committed to denying, Quine can support his view by showing how scientific inquiry need (...) not confront any evaluative issues which cannot be addressed in naturalistic terms. A survey of Quine's own epistemological writings supports this account of his position: naturalized epistemology, it is argued, requires acceptance of the shallowness of epistemic reflection, and traditional epistemology employs general epistemic norms and principles which Quine endeavours to show that we can do without. The closing sections of the paper argue that Quine can consistently resist recent criticisms by Alvin Plantinga in spite of the fact that an unsympathetic reader could reasonably be unimpressed by this resistance. Finally, an attempt is made to understand the normative role of Quine's empiricism and of his claim that prediction is the checkpoint of inquiry. (shrink)

It has been said that, after the fall of modernism, Hermann Lotze (1817-81) reigned as the single most influential philosopher in Germany, perhaps the world” (Sullivan 2008: 2). It is now not easy to take such claims about Lotze seriously, and historical surveys of nineteenth century philosophy treat him as a marginal figure, if they mention him at all. Part of the explanation of this change in his standing becomes clear if we accept Sullivan’s helpful observation that Lotze was a (...) ‘prominent... (shrink)

William James’s paper “The Will to Believe” defends some distinctive and controversial views about the normative standards that should be adopted when we are reflecting upon what we should believe. He holds that, in certain special kinds of cases, it is rational to believe propositions even if we have little or no evidence to support our beliefs. And, in such cases, he holds that our beliefs can be determined by what he calls “passional considerations” which include “fear and hope, prejudice (...) and passion, imitation and partisanship, the circumpressure of our caste and set” (1897: 9). On most occasions “we find ourselves believing, we hardly know how or why.” When James allows passional considerations a major role in determining the rationality of belief and argues that it is rational to form beliefs in advance of the evidence, he can easily be understood as holding that belief can be responsible when it is not warranted by epistemological norms. Belief can be rational and responsible when the reasons which support it are entirely prudential or practical. The question I am concerned with here is: how far can James’s argument in “The Will to Believe” be understood as an application of some views which are genuinely epistemological? One question we can ask about these views is: how far are they an application of a distinctively pragmatist approach to epistemological concerns about when belief is justified? One possibility is that James is making some original contributions to epistemology which may have echoes in contemporary epistemology. I shall argue that this interpretation of James’s argument is more plausible than it at first appears. (shrink)

This volume, derived from the Royal Institute of Philosophy 1992 conference, brings together some of the leading figures in the burgeoning field of cognitive science to explore current and potential advances in the philosophical understanding of mind and cognition. Drawing on work in psychology, computer science and artificial intelligence, linguistics and philosophy, the papers tackle such issues as concept acquisition, blindsight, rationality and related questions as well as contributing to the lively debates about connectionism and neural networks. The collection as (...) a whole reflects the theoretical and methodological dynamism of this interdisciplinary field. (shrink)

This paper examines Honderich's attempt to make sense of the widespread view that acceptance of determinism undermines reason and knowledge. Since I am largely in sympathy with Honderich's approach to these issues, the paper develops a theme suggested by his discussion and disagrees with some details of the focus of his argument rather than challenging the general principles he employs. After introducing the issue and sketching Honderich's version of the argument from determinism to scepticism, I present an alternative which is (...) closer to traditional patterns of sceptical argument. The concluding sections compare the two arguments and the anti?determinist assumptions about agency and the self which each employs: scepticism results from determinism against the background of a conception of rationality and justification which supports a Cartesian approach to epistemology and an internalist theory of justification. (shrink)