Challenging the ability intuition: From personal to extended to distributed belief‐forming processes.
Much of what we know results from information sources on which we epistemically rely. This fact about epistemic reliance, however, stands in tension with a very powerful intuition governing knowledge, an intuition that Pritchard (e.g., 2010) has termed the "ability intuition," the idea that a believ...
| Published in: | Philosophical Issues Vol. 32; no. 1; pp. 351 - 367 |
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| Format: | Article |
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Wiley-Blackwell
Oct2022
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=160783398&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 160783398 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 15336077 1731 jtl: Philosophical Issues issn: 15336077 maglogo: Y pubinfo: dt: Oct2022 vid: 32 iid: 1 pid: 480 pub: Wiley-Blackwell artinfo: ui: 160783398 10.1111/phis.12222 ppf: 351 ppct: 16 formats: fmt: – @attributes: type: T – @attributes: type: P size: 300KB tig: atl: Challenging the ability intuition: From personal to extended to distributed belief‐forming processes. aug: au: Shieber, Joseph affil: Lafayette College, Easton PA, , USA su: Distributed computing Causation (Philosophy) Social epistemology Intuition Information resources sug: subj: Distributed computing Causation (Philosophy) Social epistemology Intuition Information resources ab: Much of what we know results from information sources on which we epistemically rely. This fact about epistemic reliance, however, stands in tension with a very powerful intuition governing knowledge, an intuition that Pritchard (e.g., 2010) has termed the "ability intuition," the idea that a believer's "reliable cognitive faculties are the most salient part of the total set of causal factors that give rise to [their] believing the truth" (Vaesen, 2011, p. 518; compare Greco, 2003; 2009; 2010). In this paper I suggest that this tension may indeed be ineliminable. I proceed by canvassing some representative attempts to reconcile epistemic reliance and the ability intuition. In doing so, I suggest that all of these attempts founder on one or the other of two elements of what I've previously described (Shieber, 2013, 2015) as a "personalist presumption" in discussions of social epistemology: an excessive focus on (i) reliability filters within the persons who are the recipients of information or (ii) on reliable truth‐tracking and ‐conveying abilities in the persons who are the transmitters of information. In conclusion, I suggest how best to resolve the tension: by abandoning the ability intuition. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Copyright of Philosophical Issues is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. item: Philosophical Issues holder: Wiley-Blackwell dt: @attributes: year: 2022 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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