Knowledge and its place in nature / Hilary Kornblith.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kornblith, Hilary.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Knowledge, Theory of.

Naturalism.

Physical Description:

x, 189 pages ; 21 cm

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Clarendon Press ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2002.

Summary:

Hilary Kornblith argues for a naturalistic approach to investigating knowledge. Knowledge, he explains, is a feature of the natural world, and so should be investigated using scientific methods. He offers an account of knowledge derived from the science of animal behavior, and defends this against its philosophical rivals. This controversial and refreshingly original book offers philosophers a new way to do epistemology.

Contents:

1. Investigating Knowledge Itself 1

1.1 Appeals to intuition: The phenomenon 3

1.2 Bealer's account of intuition and the standard justificatory procedure 5

1.3 A naturalistic account of appeals to intuition 8

1.4 Naturalism and rules of inference 21

1.5 Naturalism and epistemic terminology 23

1.6 The autonomy of philosophy 25

2. Knowledge as Natural Phenomenon 28

2.1 Intentional idioms in the literature on animal behavior 30

2.2 Animal behavior 32

2.3 From information-bearing states to belief 37

2.4 Fear of anthropomorphism 43

2.5 A debunking explanation: What young chimpanzees know about seeing 48

2.6 From belief to knowledge 52

2.7 Knowledge as natural kind 61

2.8 Reliabilism and naturalism 63

3. Knowledge and Social Practices 70

3.1 Belief and the practice of giving and asking for reasons 74

3.2 Belief and language use 83

3.3 Knowledge and the practice of giving and asking for reasons 89

3.4 Social epistemic practices, both good and bad 95

4. Human Knowledge and Reflection 103

4.1 Reflection in Descartes 106

4.2 Internalism and the Impatient Cartesian 109

4.3 Real introspection 111

4.4 Doesn't this just show that introspection is fallible? 116

4.5 Introspection and epistemic self-improvement 120

4.6 Idealized reflection: Coherence theories 122

4.7 Idealized reflection: Foundationalist theories 132

5. Normativity and Natural Knowledge 137

5.1 A semantic source for epistemic normativity? 140

5.2 Grounding epistemic norms in desire 145

5.3 Epistemic norms as grounded in particular desires 147

5.4 Epistemic norms and the totality of things we value 150

5.5 Epistemic norms as universal hypothetical imperatives 157

5.6 Description and prescription 159

6. What Philosophy Might Be 162

6.1 Philosophical kinds and natural kinds 163

6.2 Paton's embarrassing question 170.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [178]-186) and index.

ISBN:

0199246319

OCLC:

48943501