The fecund growth of open source knowledge goods in the global communicative environment underlines their public good character. Once knowledge goods are disseminated, their cost and price tend towards zero. It is now obvious (as apparent in recent OECD policy documents) that commercial research and trade in intellectual property capture only a small fraction of open source knowledge, which is expanding even more rapidly than global markets. But for policy makers this poses the problem of how to (...) assign stable and defensible value to free floating knowledge goods. Across the world, research universities have been positioned in a networked competition of institutions with globally mobile personnel and converging goals and organizational cultures. In rapid time global university ranking and the associated technologies of publication and citation ordering and counting have proved potent in arranging status, assigning value and shaping behaviours in higher education. We find that public goods are readily annexed to the longer-standing projects of producing university status and sustaining an imperial global geo-politics of knowledge. Here the relation between status production and free open source cultural production is not so much a contradiction as an antinomy. These issues are discussed in the light of the flourishing and fall of the lowland city-states of the Maya in Mesoamerica, a notable example of a status economy and of the interplay between status reproduction and cultural goods, a dynamic only partly nested in economic production. The article reviews the rankings technologies, led by the Shanghai Jiao Tong University research metrics, the global strategies of university executives, changing national policies on universities and research, and the aggregation of these effects in the emerging `arms race' in investment in innovation. (shrink)

The theory of rough sets starts with the notion of an approximation space , which is a pair ( U , R ), U being the domain of discourse, and R an equivalence relation on U . R is taken to represent the knowledge base of an agent, and the induced partition reflects a granularity of U that is the result of a lack of complete information about the objects in U . The focus then is on approximations of (...) concepts on the domain, in the context of the granularity. The present article studies the theory in the situation where information is obtained from different sources. The notion of approximation space is extended to define a multiple-source approximation system with distributed knowledge base , which is a tuple , where N is a set of sources and P ranges over all finite subsets of N . Each R P is an equivalence relation on U satisfying some additional conditions, representing the knowledge base of the group P of sources. Thus each finite group of sources and hence individual source perceives the same domain differently (depending on what information the group/individual source has about the domain), and the same concept may then have approximations that differ with the groups. In order to express the notions and properties related with rough set theory in this multiple-source situation, a quantified modal logic LMSAS D is proposed. In LMSAS D , quantification ranges over modalities, making it different from modal predicate logic and modal logic with propositional quantifiers. Some fragments of LMSAS D are discussed and it is shown that the modal system KTB is embedded in LMSAS D . The epistemic logic is also embedded in LMSAS D , and cannot replace the latter to serve our purpose. The relationship of LMSAS D with first and second-order logics is presented. Issues of expressibility, axiomatization and decidability are addressed. (shrink)

Nelson, L. The impossibility of the "Theory of knowledge."--Moore, G. E. Four forms of skepticism.--Lehrer, K. Skepticism & conceptual change.--Quine, W. V. Epistemology naturalized.--Rozeboom, W. W. Why I know so much more than you do.--Price, H. H. Belief and evidence.--Lewis, C. I. The bases of empirical knowledge.--Malcolm, N. The verification argument.--Firth, R. The anatomy of certainty.--Chisholm, R. M. On the nature of empirical evidence.--Meinong, A. Toward an epistemological assessment of memory.--Brandt, R. The epistemological status of memory beliefs.--Malcolm, N. (...) A definition of factual memory.--Martin, C. B. and Deutscher, M. Remembering.--Ayer, A. J. Basic propositions.--Reichenbach, H. Are phenomenal reports absolutely certain?--Goodman, N. Sense and certainty.--Lewis, C. I. The given element in empirical knowledge.--Alston, W. Varieties of privileged access.--Schlick, M. The foundation of knowledge.--Russell, B. Epistemological premisses, basic propositions, and factual premisses.--Firth, R. Coherence, certainty, and epistemic priority.--Sellars, W. Empiricism and the philosophy of mind.--Quinton, A. The foundations of knowledge. (shrink)

This is a collection of twenty-four articles evenly divided among five topical areas: skepticism, sensory perception, memory, self-knowledge, and the foundations of empirical knowledge. With the exception of an article by Meinong, all the selections belong to the twentieth century and, except for four other articles, to the past thirty years. The selections in each of the five parts compliment one another in content and are arranged chronologically. For example, the section entitled "Contemporary Skepticism" begins with Leonard Nelson’s (...) "The Impossibility of the ‘Theory of Knowledge'," moves into Moore’s early criticism and Lehrer’s recent defense of skepticism, examines Quine’s attempt to convert epistemology into psychology, and concludes with Rozeboom’s "Why I Know So Much More Than You Do." A similar format is followed in each of the other four sections. Many of the selections have never before appeared in an anthology. For example, the valuable Reichenbach-Goodman-Lewis 1952 debate on phenomenalism and the foundations of knowledge appears in its entirety. (shrink)

The perception of intellectual life in Greek antiquity by the representatives of the European Enlightenment of the 18th century favoured the establishment of the cult of reason. Myth as a potential source of knowledge was disregarded: instead, the monopoly of truth-finding through pure rationalisation was asserted. This tendency, positing, as it did, reason in opposition to myth, did a signal disservice to the realities of intellectual life among the ancient Greeks. Nevertheless, these distortions of the Enlightenment have conditioned our (...) approach to education and have led to our privileging of reason as a mode of enquiry right up to the present day. The ancient Greek intellectuals (i.e. the pre-Socratic philosophers, the early historiographers, philosophers of the classical age) did not set myth (mythos) and reason (logos) in opposition to each other. In fact, they benefited from both as differing modes of enquiry, each in its own right and possessing its own value. Plato, in his reasoning, was much concerned with the proper use of mythical narrative. In one of his dialogues, he even coined a new term for explaining how mythical topics and motifs should be exploited as a source of knowledge. This term is mythologia, and it first occurs in Plato's Republic (394b). The present study aims to offer a corrective to traditional cliches and received wisdom about intellectual life in ancient Greece. The work proposes, and aims to reconstruct, a mental landscape in which myth and reason connect and vividly interact, and in which the concepts of mythos and logos are intertwined in the terminological network of the ancient Greek language. (shrink)

Many social epistemologists suggest that testimonies may be considered a valid source of knowledge, no less than, for instance, direct observation. In this article, I will focus on the accounts of testimonial knowledge in classical kalām and Islamic law. I will present the arguments for why Islamic philosophers and jurists believe that testimonies convey knowledge. I will address the main disagreement in Islamic philosophy regarding the nature of testimonial knowledge, whether we can apply an internalist model (...) of epistemic justification to testimonial knowledge or not. I will suggest that the best way to understand the traditional view on testimonial knowledge in Islamic philosophy and law is as “weak testimonial reliabilism”: testimonial knowledge typically results from the occurrence of certain external conditions (of which we might be unaware), even though they hold only insofar as our experience of this world tells us so, and may not hold in another possible world. (shrink)

A person’s authoritative self-knowledge about the contents of his or her own beliefs is thought to cause problems for content externalism, for it appears to yield arguments constituting a wholly non-empirical source of empirical knowledge: knowledge that certain particular objects or kinds exist in the environment. I set out this objection to externalism, and present a new reply. Possession of an externalist concept is an epistemological skill: it depends upon the subject’s possession of demonstratively-based knowledge about (...) the object or kind to which it refers. Thus, a person’s knowledge that he or she has an externalist belief, since this depends upon actually having that belief, and therefore upon possessing the relevant externist concept, presupposes knowledge about the object/kind in question, which provides a direct and perfectly empirical source of knowledge that this object/kind exists. Hence, the putatively problematic arguments do not constitute a non-empirical source of such empirical knowledge. (shrink)

This work discusses the results of importing and then attempting to Christianize the content of secular education in its available form of discourse (public knowledge), especially with regard to the sciences. The book addresses the need for Christian educators to be conscious of the sources of the content of their curricula.

Scientific knowledge-building is the consequence of a relational process, not of an utilitarian socio-economic process. Translation theory expresses the way in which science is constructed and used as a social link. In fact, translation theory contends that scientific knowledge is somehow governed by the logic of exchange. This logic of exchange would ultimately be the source of science and well being and characterize the way in which science and technology work in our contemporary world especially regarding healing processes (...) through mobilising a kind of hidden energy. (shrink)

PurposeThis paper aims to explore poverty issues in South Africa, to investigate some of the key contributions that knowledge management can make in the eradication of poverty and to suggest a strategy of knowledge management for poverty eradication in South Africa.Design/methodology/approachThis is a conceptual paper. Secondary data sources, in the form of journal articles, policy documents, newspaper articles and the internet, were consulted.FindingsThis paper contributes to the debates on moving towards an integrated poverty strategy that goes beyond (...) reducing poverty by simply raising national income. The paper advocates for a contextualised knowledge management strategy tailored to specific poverty intervention projects and communities. It also suggests that a knowledge management strategy will result in permanent investment in knowledge and the human development of people.Research limitations/implicationsGiven that this is a conceptual paper, the paper recommends empirical future studies that will implement this strategy within specific poverty-stricken communities in the country.Practical/implicationsThe paper raises awareness among policy and decision-makers of the importance of knowledge management as a tool for poverty eradication. In the knowledge economy, knowledge assets – other than the tangible assets of financial capital and local infrastructure – are the prime creator of wealth. It adds to the body of knowledge on knowledge management for poverty eradication by the World Bank and other international organisations.Social implicationsA knowledge management strategy will create an environment in which human development is attained and the minds of the poor are transformed. It will enhance policy formulation and implementation, empower the poor and create a learning organisation.Originality/valueThe paper presents a proposed strategy for knowledge management for poverty eradication in South Africa. (shrink)

This paper presents a four layer model for working with legal knowledge in expert systems. It distinguishes five sources of knowledge. Four contain basic legal knowledge found in published and unpublished sources. The fifth consists of legal metaknowledge. In the model the four basic legal knowledge sources are placed at the lowest level. The metaknowledge is placed at levels above the other four knowledge sources. The assumption is that the knowledge (...) is represented only once. The use of metaknowledge at various levels should make it possible to use the appropriate knowledge for the problem presented to the system. The knowledge has to be represented as closely to the original format as possible for this purpose. Suitable representation formalisms for the various types of knowledge in the five knowledge sources are discussed. It is not possible to indicate a best representation formalism for each knowledge source. (shrink)

This paper argues that knowledge is an instance of a more general and familiar normative kind—that of success through ability (or success through excellence, or success through virtue). This thesis is developed in the context of three themes prominent in the recent literature: that knowledge attributions are somehow context sensitive; that knowledge is intimately related to practical reasoning; and that one purpose of the concept of knowledge is to flag good sources of information. Wedding these (...) themes to the proposed account helps to explain a wide range of standard Gettier problems. It also helps to explain barn façade cases, which require a different kind of treatment. (shrink)

The acquisition of self-knowledge is often described as one of the main goals of philosophical inquiry. At the same time, some sort of self-knowledge is often regarded as a necessary condition of our being a human agent or human subject. Thus self-knowledge is taken to constitute both the beginning and the end of humans' search for wisdom, and as such it is intricately bound up with the very idea of philosophy. Not surprisingly therefore, the Delphic injunction 'Know (...) thyself' has fascinated philosophers of different times, backgrounds, and tempers. But how can we make sense of this imperative? What is self-knowledge and how is it achieved? What are the structural features that distinguish self-knowledge from other types of knowledge? What role do external, second- and third-personal, sources of knowledge play in the acquisition of self-knowledge? How can we account for the moral impact ascribed to self-knowledge? Is it just a form of anthropological knowledge that allows agents to act in accordance with their aims? Or, does self-knowledge ultimately ennoble the self of the subjects having it? Finally, is self-knowledge, or its completion, a goal that may be reached at all? The book addresses these questions in fifteen chapters covering approaches of many philosophers from Plato and Aristotle to Edmund Husserl or Elisabeth Anscombe. The short reflections inserted between the chapters show that the search for self-knowledge is an important theme in literature, poetry, painting and self-portraiture from Homer. (shrink)

This paper is about the role of self-knowledge in the cognitive life of a virtuous knower. The main idea is that it is hard to know ourselves because introspection is an unreliable epistemic source, and reason can be a source of insidious forms of self-deception. Nevertheless, our epistemic situation is such that an epistemically responsible agent must be constantly looking for a better understanding of her own character traits and beliefs, under the risk of jeopardizing her own status as (...) a knower, ruining her own intellectual life. (shrink)

The "incompatibility charge" argues that externalism fails to explain "self-knowledge" or the privileged knowledge that we ordinarily take ourselves to enjoy in relation to at least some of our own mental states. This dissertation attempts to provide an externalist reply to this charge. First, I suggest that the "compatibility debate" needs to be reoriented. This is because the mere internality or externality of determining factors cannot by itself explain how one can know the content determined by those factors. (...) Thus the task of explaining self-knowledge is one of explaining how we come to make these claims and where do they derive their privileged status from. Further, a story about the underlying epistemology of these claims has to be told not only by the externalists but also by the internalists. ;Chapter One introduces a distinction between two ways of understanding the epistemic privilege, namely, between "privilege in access", that consists of the way in which these claims are made and validated, and "privilege in authority", that consists of their infallibility. I argue that the epistemology underlying the phenomenon of self-knowledge can be best understood in terms of the privilege in access. ;Chapter Two turns to the incompatibility charge. I argue that the exchanges of arguments that have been taken place between the incompatibilists and the compatibilists in the literature rely on the implicit presupposition that a concept must always have an univocal and unambiguous referent and this fact should be discoverable a priori. I argue that a thorough going externalist should reject this questionable presupposition. ;Chapter Three criticizes the internalist argument that the internalists' job in accounting for self-knowledge is different from the externlaists' job. I conclude by noting that the internalist accounts have as much, if not more, difficulty in accounting for self-knowledge. ;Chapter Four suggests an externalist account of self-knowledge from the perspective of Sellars. The uniqueness of the Sellarsian account lies in the fact that it offers an interesting way of understanding the privilege of self-knowledge claims according to which though these claims enjoy non-inferential privilege, they are nonetheless defeasible and also justifiable from an independent source. (shrink)

Ethical sourcing is a crucial issue for the fashion industry, which is under intense pressure to build ethical and responsible supply chains. Despite its importance, we know little about how individual employees working in the fashion supply chain view ethical sourcing and the ethical considerations they encounter during their work. We adopted the moral agency theory to address these lacunas and conducted a longitudinal qualitative research study. We collected data from a highly heterogenous sample of employees based in the United (...) Kingdom through open-ended essays in three waves (N1 = 50, N2 = 43, N3 = 30) over 9 months that were analyzed using the grounded theory method. The analysis revealed the following themes: a contemporary outlook on boundaries, external considerations, and three levels of action for ethical considerations: Supplier, organization, and employee (i.e., individual). We offer a revitalized view of ethical sourcing as a concept from a practice perspective and discuss critical ethical issues that affect employees’ moral agency to enact ethical sourcing decisions. Our findings offer insights into avenues to advance theoretical knowledge through a comprehensive framework derived from our results. We also propose significant practical implications to promote the widespread integration of ethical sourcing. (shrink)

Publication date: 29 September 2016 Source: Author: Samy S. Abu Naser, Mazen J. Al Shobaki, Youssef M. Abu Amuna This paper aims to measure knowledge management maturity in higher education institutions to determine the impact of knowledge management on high performance. Also the study aims to compare knowledge management maturity between universities and intermediate colleges. This study was applied on five higher education institutions in Gaza strip, Palestine. Asian productivity organization model was applied to measure Knowledge (...) Management Maturity. Second dimension which assess high performance was developed by the authors. The controlled sample was. Several statistical tools were used for data analysis and hypotheses testing, including reliability correlation using Cronbach’s alpha, “ANOVA”, Simple Linear Regression and Step Wise Regression. The overall findings of the current study shows that maturity level is in the second level. Findings also support the main hypothesis and it is sub- hypotheses. The most important factors effecting high performance are: Processes, knowledge management leadership, People, knowledge management Outcomes. Furthermore the current study is unique by the virtue of its nature, scope and way of implied investigation, as it is the first comparative study between universities and intermediate colleges in Gaza Strip that explores the status of knowledge management maturity using the Asian productivity Model. (shrink)

Many of our sources of knowledge only afford us knowledge that is inexact. When trying to see how tall something is, or to hear how far away something is, or to remember how long something lasted, we may come to know some facts about the approximate size, distance or duration of the thing in question but we don’t come to know exactly what its size, distance or duration is. In some such situations we also have some pointed (...) knowledge of how inexact our knowledge is. That is, we can knowledgeably pinpoint some exact claims that we do not know. We show that standard models of inexact knowledge leave little or no room for such pointed knowledge. We devise alternative models that are not afflicted by this shortcoming. (shrink)

The term “know” is one of the ten most common verbs in English, and yet a central aspect of its usage remains mysterious. Our willingness to ascribe knowledge depends not just on epistemic factors such as the quality of our evidence. It also depends on seemingly non-epistemic factors. For instance, we become less inclined to ascribe knowledge when it’s important to be right, or once our attention is drawn to possible sources of error. Accounts of this phenomenon (...) proliferate, but no consensus has been achieved, decades of research notwithstanding. Alexander Dinges offers a fresh examination of this ongoing debate. After reviewing and complementing relevant data from both armchair and experimental philosophy, he assesses extant accounts of this data including semantic, metaphysical, pragmatic, doxastic as well as more recent psychological accounts. Against this background, he offers a novel psychological account based on the idea that non-epistemic factors affect estimates of probability. (shrink)

This article aims to provide a structural analysis of the problems related to the easy knowledge problem. The easy knowledge problem is well known. If we accept that we can have basic knowledge via a source without having any prior knowledge about the reliability or accuracy of this source, then we can acquire knowledge about the reliability or accuracy of this source too easily via information delivered by the source. Rejecting any kind of basic (...) class='Hi'>knowledge, however, leads into an infinite regress and, plausibly, to skepticism. The article argues that the third alternative, accepting basic knowledge but rejecting easy knowledge, entails closure failure. This is obviously the case for deductive bootstrapping, but, notably, the problem also arises for inductive bootstrapping. Hence, the set of problems related to the easy knowledge problem has the structure of a trilemma. We are forced to accept easy knowledge, closure failure, or skepticism. (shrink)

A satisfactory theory of linguistic communication must explain how it is that, through the interpersonal exchange of auditory, visual, and tactile stimuli, the communicative preconditions for the acquisition of testimonial knowledge regularly come to be satisfied. Without an account of knowledge-yielding communication this success condition for linguistic theorizing is left opaque, and we are left with an incomplete understanding of testimony, and communication more generally, as a source of knowledge. This paper argues that knowledge-yielding communication should (...) be modelled on knowledge itself. It is argued that knowledge-yielding communication occurs iff interlocutors coordinate on truth values in a non-lucky and non-deviant way. This account is able to do significant explanatory work: it sheds light on the nature of referential communication, and it allows us to capture, in an informative way, the sense in which interlocutors must entertain similar propositions in order to communicate successfully. (shrink)

Radical skepticism is the view that we know nothing or at least next to nothing. Nearly no one actually believes that skepticism is true. Yet it has remained a serious topic of discussion for millennia and it looms large in popular culture. What explains its persistent and widespread appeal? How does the skeptic get us to doubt what we ordinarily take ourselves to know? I present evidence from two experiments that classic skeptical arguments gain potency from an interaction between two (...) factors. First, people evaluate inferential belief more harshly than perceptual belief. Second, people evaluate inferential belief more harshly when its content is negative (i.e., that something is not the case) than when it is positive (i.e., that something is the case). It just so happens that potent skeptical arguments tend to focus our attention on negative inferential beliefs, and we are especially prone to doubt that such beliefs count as knowledge. That is, our cognitive evaluations are biased against this specific combination of source and content. The skeptic sows seeds of doubt by exploiting this feature of our psychology. (shrink)

Within the evidence-based medicine construct, clinical expertise is acknowledged to be both derived from primary experience and necessary for optimal medical practice. Primary experience in medical practice, however, remains undervalued. Clinicians’ primary experience tends to be dismissed by EBM as unsystematic or anecdotal, a source of bias rather than knowledge, never serving as the “best” evidence to support a clinical decision. The position that clinical expertise is necessary but that primary experience is untrustworthy in clinical decision-making is epistemically incoherent. (...) Here we argue for the value and utility of knowledge gained from primary experience for the practice of medicine. Primary experience provides knowledge necessary to diagnose, treat, and assess response in individual patients. Hierarchies of evidence, when advanced as guides for clinical decisions, mistake the relationship between propositional and experiential knowledge. We argue that primary experience represents a kind of medical knowledge distinct from the propositional knowledge produced by clinical research, both of which are crucial to determining the best diagnosis and course of action for particular patients. (shrink)

How can we identify and estimate workers’ tacit knowledge? How can we design a personnel mix aimed at improving and speeding up its transfer and development? How is it possible to implement tacit knowledge sustainable projects in remote areas? In order to answer these questions, it is necessary to distinguish between types of tacit knowledge, to establish what they allow for and to consider their sources. It is also essential to find a way of managing the (...) tacit knowledge ‘stock’ and distribution within the workforce. In short, a conceptual framework is needed to manage tacit knowledge. Based on previous works and 2 years of action research, this paper introduces such a framework and describes its partial application to support the pre-operational training and hiring in a large industrial plant in Brazil. Two contributions emerge from the research. First, the concept of ‘levels of similarity’ is introduced as a means to qualify the experience of workers and estimate the associated tacit knowledge. Second, the capability of carrying out three types of judgement properly and speedily is put forward as being a core ability of those who possess what has been called ‘collective tacit knowledge’ (Collins in Organ Stud 28(2):257–262, 2007). In practical terms, the results indicate the opportunity for companies to capitalize on the experience and tacit knowledge of their workers in a systematic way and with due recognition. Ultimately, positive impacts are expected in their absorptive capacity as well as in their management and human resources systems, accident prevention, productivity and the development of sustainable projects in remote areas. (shrink)

Sometimes, realizing an ethically desirable outcome X will generate disutility for some whose very cooperation is necessary to realizing X, either in the form of material or social costs, or the abnegation of some of their values or personal principles. How does one gain their assent? Seeing one's way through such cases may hinge on one’s ability to make plausible first-pass predictions of how others will react to one’s interventions with them. In other words, one should know not simply the (...) warrant of one’s reasons in favor of X, but also how such reasons will be received when issued forth in one’s voice and from one's person. I call this me-knowledge— knowing the ‘me’ as seen from the perspective of a particular other. Drawing on classical Chinese sources, I argue that such knowledge is crucial to enhance one's efficacy in the world. (shrink)

Reliabilism is a theory that countenances basic knowledge, that is, knowledge from a reliable source, without requiring that the agent knows the source is reliable. Critics (especially Cohen 2002 ) have argued that such theories generate all-too-easy, intuitively implausible cases of higher-order knowledge based on inference from basic knowledge. For present purposes, the criticism might be recast as claiming that reliabilism implausibly generates cases of understanding from brute, basic knowledge. I argue that the easy (...) class='Hi'>knowledge (or easy understanding) criticism rests on an implicit mischaracterization of the notion of a reliable process. Properly understood, reliable processes do not permit the transition from basic knowledge to understanding based on inference. (shrink)

Studies of local knowledge and farmer participatory research tend to focus on raising crops and livestock. Little attention is given to processing and marketing farm products, an important source of income for rural households, particularly women.This article presents the case of an investigation into processing and marketing of milk products by agropastoral Fulani women, which revealed how the women under stand local market forces and recognize important social and even local political functions of their marketing activities. However, it also (...) revealed the limits of their knowledge about how the local economy interlinks with national and international economies.Reasons are examined why the study did not lead to local technical and institutional development in dairying. Differentiation is made between two types of research: “extractive” research to provide information for development planners and academics; and participatory or “enriching” research, in which data collection, analysis, and reporting are done with rural people, to use in their own problem-solving. It is argued that “enriching” research should be aimed at increasing rural people's present knowledge, so that they can better understand and cope with external influences on their activities. They could then better defend their own interests against the macroplanning State.Finally, the ethics of documenting the research results are questioned. Documentation of conventional research is primarily for empowerment and enrichment of the extractive economic and academic systems. But there is also a danger that wider dissemination of results of participatory research and local knowledge will not benefit the rural participants but rather strengthen the information base of planners, so that they can better manipulate local economies. (shrink)

We often talk about knowledge being transmitted via testimony. This suggests a picture of testimony with striking similarities to memory. For instance, it is often assumed that neither is a generative source of knowledge: while the former transmits knowledge from one speaker to another, the latter preserves beliefs from one time to another. These considerations give rise to a stronger and a weaker thesis regarding the transmission of testimonial knowledge. The stronger thesis is that each speaker (...) in a chain of testimonial transmission must know that p in order to pass this knowledge to a hearer. The weaker thesis is that at least the first speaker must know that p in order for any hearer in the chain to come to know that p via testimony. I argue that both theses are false, and hence testimony, unlike memory, can be a generative source of knowledge. (shrink)

The entry is intended as an advanced introduction to the topic of knowledge-how. It starts with a list of overviews, monographs and collections, followed by selected 20th century discussions. The last two sections contain sources pertaining to Ryle's own work on the topic as well as work by other influential thinkers, and themes that are sometimes associated with knowledge-how. The remaining seven sections survey the contemporary literature on knowledge-how from three perspectives: (i) generic desiderata for accounts (...) of knowledge-how, (ii) specific topics that are already well-entrenched in the tradition of particular subdisciplines and (iii) second-order controversy regarding distinct assumptions and tools employed by the debaters. (shrink)

In some lottery situations, the probability that your ticket's a loser can get very close to 1. Suppose, for instance, that yours is one of 20 million tickets, only one of which is a winner. Still, it seems that (1) You don't know yours is a loser and (2) You're in no position to flat-out assert that your ticket is a loser. "It's probably a loser," "It's all but certain that it's a loser," or even, "It's quite certain that it's (...) a loser" seem quite alright to say, but, it seems, you're in no position to declare simply, "It's a loser." (1) and (2) are closely related phenomena. In fact, I'll take it as a working hypothesis that the reason "It's a loser" is unassertable is that (a) You don't seem to know that your ticket's a loser, and (b) In flat-out asserting some proposition, you represent yourself as knowing it.1 This working hypothesis will enable me to address these two phenomena together, moving back and forth freely between them. I leave it to those who reject the hypothesis to sort out those considerations which properly apply to the issue of knowledge from those germane to that of assertability. Things are quite different when you report the results of last night's basketball game. Suppose your only source is your morning newspaper, which did not carry a story about the 1 game, but simply listed the score, "Knicks 83, at Bulls 95," under "Yesterday's Results." Now, it doesn't happen very frequently, but, as we all should suspect, newspapers do misreport scores from time to time. On several occasions, my paper has transposed a result, attributing to each team the score of its opponent. In fact, that your paper's got the present result wrong seems quite a bit more probable than that you've won the lottery of the above paragraph. Still, when asked, "Did the Bulls win yesterday?", "Probably" and "In all likelihood" seem quite unnecessary. "Yes, they did," seems just fine.. (shrink)

This paper is about the role of self-knowledge in the cognitive life of a virtuous knower. The main idea is that it is hard to know ourselves because introspection is an unreliable epistemic source, and reason can be a source of insidious forms of self-deception. Nevertheless, our epistemic situation is such that an epistemically responsible agent must be constantly looking for a better understanding of her own character traits and beliefs, under the risk of jeopardizing her own status as (...) a knower, ruining her own intellectual life. (shrink)

(*This paper was awarded the Elisabeth and Werner Leinfellner Award 2017 for outstanding contributions.) -/- This paper provides an explanation of the skeptical puzzle. I argue that we can take two distinct points of view towards representations, mental representations like perceptual experiences and artificial representations like symbols. When focusing on what the representation represents we take an attached point of view. When focusing on the representational character of the representation we take a detached point view. From an attached point of (...) view, we have the intuition that we can know that p simply by using the representation and without having prior knowledge about the reliability of the source that delivers the representation. When taking a detached point of view, we tend to think that we must have this kind of prior knowledge. These two conflicting intuitions about knowledge and representations provide the basis for our intuition of immediate perceptual knowledge on the one hand and for the skeptical intuition of underdetermination on the other hand. (shrink)

This paper discusses the implications for public participation in science opened by the sharing of information via electronic media. The ethical dimensions of information flow and control are linked to questions of autonomy, authority and appropriate exploitation of knowledge. It argues that, by lowering the boundaries that limit access and participation by wider active audiences, both scientific identity and practice are challenged in favor of extra-disciplinary and avocational communities such as scientific enthusiasts and lay experts. Reconfigurations of hierarchy, mediated (...) by new channels of information flow, are increasingly visible at the interface between professional and non-professional practice. Setting the scene by surveying the role of the media in defining twentieth-century contexts of lay science, the paper illustrates the appropriation and recuperation of scientific authority being played out in two contemporary models of active public engagement: so-called “citizen science” and varieties of “crowd-sourced science”. Both participatory models are increasingly reliant on information exchange via social media, but may be implemented to support distinctly different societal goals and beneficiaries. (shrink)

Drug discovery traditionally has occurred behind closed doors in for-profit corporations hoping to develop best-selling medicines that recoup initial research investment, sustain marketing infrastructures, and pass on healthy returns to shareholders. Only corporate Pharma has the man- and purchasing-power to synthesize the thousands of molecules needed to find a new drug and to conduct the clinical trials that will make the drug legal. Against this view, individual physician-scientists have suggested that the promise of applied genomics work calls for a new (...) form of social organization in order to speed the generation and understanding of new therapeutics. Recent successes in open source drug discovery show it is possible to produce valuable, empirically adequate, and sustainable collective beliefs without secrecy, proprietary attitudes, initial cooperation from Pharma, or outsized monetary incentives. After reviewing and differentiating these successes, I diagnose the source of this healthy new epistemic strategy. (shrink)

This Chapter discusses the questions of (8.1) Acquiring moral beliefs and knowledge: normal cases, (8.2) cases of missing knowledge, (8.3), Moral disagreements.

Throughout her work, Audre Lorde maintains that her self-preservation in the face of oppression depends on acting from the recognition and valorization of her feelings as a deep source of knowledge. This claim, taken as a portrayal of agency, poses challenges to standard positions in ethics, epistemology, and moral psychology. This article examines the oppositional agency articulated by Lorde’s thought, locating feeling, poetry, and the power she calls “the erotic” within her avowed project of self-preservation. It then explores the (...) implications of taking seriously Lorde’s account, particularly for theorists examining ethics and epistemology under nonideal social conditions. For situations of sexual intimacy, for example, Lorde’s account unsettles prevailing assumptions about the role of consent in responsibility between sexual partners. I argue that obligations to solicit consent and respect refusal are not sufficient to acknowledge the value of agency in intimate encounters when agency is oppositional in the way Lorde describes. (shrink)

It seems beyond doubt that a thinker can come to know a conclusion by deducing it from premisses that he knows already, but philosophers have found it puzzling how a thinker could acquire knowledge in this way. Assuming a broadly externalist conception of knowledge, I explain why judgements competently deduced from known premisses are themselves knowledgeable. Assuming an exclusionary conception of judgeable content, I further explain how such judgements can be informative. (According to the exclusionary conception, which I (...) develop from some remarks in Ramsey, a judgement's content is given by the hitherto live possibilities that it excludes or rules out.) I propose that the value of logic lies in its allowing us to combine different sources of knowledge, so that we can learn things that we could not learn from those sources individually. I conclude by arguing that while single-conclusion logics possess that value, multiple-conclusion logics do not. (shrink)

This paper provides a novel argument for granting memory the status of a generative source of justification and knowledge. Memory can produce justified output beliefs and knowledge on the basis of unjustified input beliefs alone. The key to understanding how memory can generate justification and knowledge, memory generativism, is to bear in mind that memory frequently omits part of the stored information. The proposed argument depends on a broadly reliabilist approach to justification.

Purpose This study investigates the impact of open-source software (OSS) on the sustainability of academic library services in Bangladesh. It aims to understand how OSS can address budget constraints, technological demands and the need for enhanced service delivery in these libraries. Design/methodology/approach An in-depth qualitative research approach was used, involving semi-structured interviews with library administrators, IT staff and librarians from various academic institutions across Bangladesh. Findings The study reveals that OSS adoption is primarily driven by financial imperatives and the need (...) for flexible, customizable solutions tailored to specific institutional needs. Key benefits identified include significant cost savings, improved customization and flexibility of services and enhanced community support and collaboration. However, challenges such as a lack of in-house technical expertise, resistance to change among staff and stakeholders and inadequate IT infrastructure impede successful OSS implementation. Practical implications To harness the full potential of OSS, academic libraries must invest in capacity building through targeted training programs, improve IT infrastructure and foster a culture of collaboration and knowledge-sharing within the library community. These strategies are essential to overcoming existing barriers and ensuring long-term sustainability. Originality/value This research contributes to the understanding of OSS’s role in enhancing the sustainability of academic library services. It provides practical recommendations for academic libraries seeking to leverage OSS for improved service delivery and operational efficiency. (shrink)

Testimony is responsible, either directly or indirectly, for much of what we know, not only about the world around us but also about who we are. Despite its relative historical neglect, recent work in epistemology has seen a growing recognition of the importance and scope of testimonial knowledge. Most of this work has focused on two central questions, which will be the main topics of this article. First, is testimonial knowledge necessarily acquired through transmission from speaker to hearer, (...) or can testimony generate epistemic features in its own right? Second, is justified dependence on testimony fundamentally basic, or is it ultimately reducible to other epistemic sources, such as perception, memory, and reason? Testimony itself is typically understood quite broadly so as to include a variety of acts of communication that are intended or taken to convey information—such as statements, nods, pointings, and so on. (For a full development of this view, see Lackey 2008.) Knowledge that is distinctively testimonial requires belief that is based or grounded in, not merely caused by, an instance of testimony. For instance, suppose that I sing “I have a soprano voice” in a soprano voice and you come to believe this entirely on the basis of hearing my soprano voice. (This is a variation of an example found in Audi 1997.) While my testimony is certainly causally relevant to the formation of your belief, the resulting knowledge is based on your hearing my soprano voice rather than on what I testified to, thereby rendering it perceptual in nature. What is of import for distinctively testimonial knowledge is that a given belief be formed on the basis of the content of a speaker’s testimony. This prevents beliefs that are formed entirely on the basis of features about a speaker’s testimony from qualifying as instances of testimonial knowledge. (shrink)

Case-based instruction is a stable feature of ethics education, however, little is known about the attributes of the cases that make them effective. Emotions are an inherent part of ethical decision-making and one source of information actively stored in case-based knowledge, making them an attribute of cases that likely facilitates case-based learning. Emotions also make cases more realistic, an essential component for effective case-based instruction. The purpose of this study was to investigate the influence of emotional case content, and (...) complementary socio-relational case content, on case-based knowledge acquisition and transfer on future ethical decision-making tasks. Study findings suggest that emotional case content stimulates retention of cases and facilitates transfer of ethical decision-making principles demonstrated in cases. (shrink)

What is it about knowledge that makes us value it more highly than mere true belief? This question lies at the heart of epistemology and has challenged philosophers ever since it was first posed by Plato. Michael Welbourne's examination of the historical and contemporary answers to this question provides both an excellent introduction to the development of epistemology but also a new theory of the nature of knowledge. The early chapters introduce the main themes and questions that have (...) provided the context for modern discussions. The Platonic beginnings, Cartesian individualism and the tripartite analyses of knowledge are examined in turn. In the second half of this book, the focus shifts from conceptual analysis to an examination of the social practices surrounding knowledge, placing special emphasis on the notion of testimony. The author argues originally and persuasively that our idea of knowledge has its roots in communicative practices and that thinking about how testimony works as a source of beliefs actually gives us a handle on the very idea of knowledge itself. This book will be essential reading for anyone interested in epistemology, the philosophy of language, or the intersection between the two areas. (shrink)

Genevieve Lloyd’s Spinoza is quite a different thinker from the arch rationalist caricature of some undergraduate philosophy courses devoted to “The Continental Rationalists”. Lloyd’s Spinoza does not see reason as a complete source of knowledge, nor is deductive rational thought productive of the highest grade of knowledge. Instead, that honour goes to a third kind of knowledge—intuitive knowledge (scientia intuitiva), which provides an immediate, non-discursive knowledge of its singular object. To the embarrassment of some hard-nosed (...) philosophers, intellectual intuition has an affective component; it is a form of love, and ultimately given that human beings are finite modes of God/Nature (Deus sive Natura), it is a form of the intellectual love of God (amor Dei intellectualis). Some philosophers do not know what to make of this mysterious aspect of Spinoza’s philosophy, which is nonetheless firmly anchored in a reading of Part V of the Ethics. Nonetheless, this note will insist with Lloyd’s “Reconsidering Spinoza’s Rationalism” that such doctrine is an integral part of Spinoza’s philosophy. Moreover, it will be shown that Spinoza is well aware of the limitations of reason (ratio) in gaining scientific knowledge of the world and requires intuition precisely because of the inability of reason to represent individuals in their full particularity. Imagination too has a role to play in shaping scientific knowledge, although reason performs a vital critical role in disciplining and liberating the human mind from inadequate imaginary ideas. The result is an interpretation of Spinoza’s epistemology as both rationalist and intuitionist. DOI: 10.1080/24740500.2021.1962652. (shrink)

This paper shows that the history of clinical medicine in the eighteenth century supports Paul Hoyningen-Huene’s thesis that there is a correlation between science and systematicity. For example, James Jurin’s assessment of the safety of variolation as a protection against smallpox adopted a systematic approach to the assessment of interventions in order to eliminate sources of cognitive bias that would compromise inquiry. Clinical medicine thereby became a science. I use this confirming instance to motivate a broader hypothesis, that systematicity (...) is a distinctive feature of science because systematicity is required by processes of knowledge generation that go beyond our everyday cognitive capacities, and these processes are required to produce knowledge of the kinds that science aims at. (shrink)

Critics of virtue reliabilism allege that the view cannot account for testimonial knowledge, as the acquisition of such knowledge is creditable to the testifier, not the recipient's cognitive abilities. I defend virtue reliabilism by attending to empirical work concerning human abilities to detect sincerity, certainty, and seriousness through bodily cues and properties of utterances. Then, I consider forms of testimony involving books, newspapers, and online social networks. I argue that, while discriminatory abilities directed at bodily cues and properties (...) of utterances are impotent in the face of such testimony, alternative abilities facilitate the acquisition of knowledge from these sources. (shrink)

This paper defends an approach to epistemology which treats the study of knowledge as on a par with the study of natural kinds. Knowledge is seen as a natural phenomenon subject to empirical investigation. In particular, it is argued that work in cognitive ethology is relevant to understanding the nature of knowledge, and that this approach sheds light on traditional philosophical questions about knowledge, including questions about the source of epistemic normativity.

Knowledge ascriptions depend on so-called non-traditional factors. For instance, we become less inclined to ascribe knowledge when it’s important to be right, or once we are reminded of possible sources of error. A number of potential explanations of this data have been proposed in the literature. They include revisionary semantic explanations based on epistemic contextualism and revisionary metaphysical explanations based on anti-intellectualism. Classical invariantists reject such revisionary proposals and hence face the challenge to provide an alternative account. (...) The most prominent strategy here appeals to Gricean pragmatics. This paper focuses on a slightly less prominent strategy, which is based on the idea that non-traditional factors affect knowledge ascriptions because they affect what the putative knower believes. I will call this strategy doxasticism. The full potential of doxasticism is rarely appreciated in the literature and numerous unwarranted concerns have been raised. The goal of this paper is to present the strongest form of doxasticism and then to point out the genuine limitations of this position. I also sketch a closely related, more promising account. (shrink)