Knowledge, Certainty, and Skepticism

Waterman, John Philip; Gonnerman, Chad; Yan, Karen; Alexander, Joshua

doi:10.1093/oso/9780190865085.003.0009

Cited by 3 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…However, although all the past attempts to confirm WNS's findings failed, there are reasons to expect differences between Indians and Westerners regarding the Zebra Case. These reasons come from another study concerning differences in sensitivity to skeptical pressure between participants from India, China and the USA (Waterman et al 2018) (for our arguments that the Zebra Case is a skeptical pressure case, but not a typical Gettier case, see Sect. 4.).…”

Section: Reasons To Expect Cross-cultural Differences In Epistemic Intuitionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Western Skeptic vs Indian Realist. Cross-Cultural Differences in Zebra Case Intuitions

2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The cross-cultural differences in epistemic intuitions reported by Weinberg, Nichols and Stich (2001; hereafter: WNS) laid the ground for the negative program of experimental philosophy. However, most of WNS’s findings were not corroborated in further studies. The exception here is the study concerning purported differences between Westerners and Indians in knowledge ascriptions concerning the Zebra Case, which was never properly replicated. Our study replicates the above-mentioned experiment on a considerably larger sample of Westerners (n = 211) and Indians (n = 204). The analysis found a significant difference between the ethnic groups in question in the predicted direction: Indians were more likely to attribute knowledge in the Zebra Case than Westerners. In this paper, we offer an explanation of our result that takes into account the fact that replications of WNS’s other experiments did not find any cross-cultural differences. We argue that the Zebra Case is unique among the vignettes tested by WNS since it should not be regarded as a Gettier case but rather as a scenario exhibiting skeptical pressure concerning the reliability of sense-perception. We argue that skepticism towards perception as a means of gaining knowledge is a trope that is deeply rooted in Western epistemology but is very much absent from Classical Indian philosophical inquiry. This line of reasoning is based on a thorough examination of the skeptical scenarios discussed by philosophers of the Indian Nyaya tradition and their adversaries.

show abstract

Section: Reasons To Expect Cross-cultural Differences In Epistemic Intuitionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Western Skeptic vs Indian Realist. Cross-Cultural Differences in Zebra Case Intuitions

2021

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Lastly, some researchers have found evidence that supports contextualism in related judgments about knowledge ascription (Alexander, Gonnerman, and Waterman 2014; see also Buckwalter and Schaffer 2015;Waterman, Gonnerman, Yan, and Alexander in press, for replication and cross cultural variation). These researchers presented participants with two vignettes developed by Nagel (2010) varying the salience of error possibilities about seeing a red object.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Epistemic Contextualism and Linguistic Behavior

Buckwalter¹

2017

The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Contextualism

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Epistemic contextualism is the theory that "knows" is a context sensitive expression. As a linguistic theory, epistemic contextualism is motivated by claims about the linguistic behavior of competent speakers. This chapter reviews evidence in experimental cognitive science for epistemic contextualism in linguistic behavior. This research demonstrates that although some observations that are consistent with epistemic contextualism can be confirmed in linguistic practices, these observations are also equally well explained both by psychological features that do not provide support for contextualism and by rival theories that are inconsistent with contextualism. I conclude that the motivation for epistemic contextualism is underdetermined by existing experimental evidence, yielding little reason to accept it as an account of our actual linguistic practices. * This is the penultimate version of a paper to appear in J. J. Ichikawa (Ed.), The Routledge Handbook of Epistemic Contextualism. Please cite the final, published version. 2 Any statement can be held true come what may, if we make drastic enough adjustments elsewhere in the system. -Willard Van Orman Quine

show abstract

Concept Revision, Concept Application and the Role of Intuitions in Gettier Cases

Sękowski

2022

Episteme

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The aim of the paper is to determine the role of intuitions in Gettier cases. Critics of the Method of Cases argue that arguments developed within this method contain a premise that is justified by its intuitiveness; they also argue that intuitions are unreliable sources of evidence. By contrast, Max Deutsch argues that this critique is unsound since intuitions do not serve as evidence for premises. In Gettier cases, an intuitive premise is justified by other arguments called G-Grounds. I propose a different view on the role of intuition in Gettier cases. I introduce a distinction between concept-revision arguments and concept-application arguments. On the basis of this distinction and Craig's and Spicer's distinction between intuitions of intension and intuitions of extension, I show that (1) intuitions of extension do not serve as evidence for any G-Grounds; (2) intuitions of intension do play an evidential role for all G-Grounds, but (3) in the case of G-Grounds which are used as concept-application arguments, they are a poor source of evidence, while (4) in the case of G-Grounds used as concept-revision arguments, they could be a reliable source of evidence if they are intuitions of intension of a speaker immersed in philosophical discourse.

show abstract

Knowledge, Certainty, and Skepticism

Cited by 3 publications

References 0 publications

Western Skeptic vs Indian Realist. Cross-Cultural Differences in Zebra Case Intuitions

Western Skeptic vs Indian Realist. Cross-Cultural Differences in Zebra Case Intuitions

Epistemic Contextualism and Linguistic Behavior

Concept Revision, Concept Application and the Role of Intuitions in Gettier Cases

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About