Epistemic Agency

Ce texte explore le rôle du sujet dans la théorie des savoirs situés de Donna J. Haraway et de Lorraine Code. Il examine la tension entre l'approche individualiste et l'approche collective dans les épistémologies féministes. Nous y soutenons que les savoirs situés permettent de concilier la dimension individuelle du sujet avec une perspective politique et collective, tout en évitant une critique anti-individualiste qui nierait l'agentivité personnelle. Cette approche offre des critères de responsabilité épistémique individuelle et s'intéresse plus aux actions du sujet qu'à son essence.

The ways in which we interact with healthcare institutions and contribute to understandings of health and illness are influenced by uneven and often invisible power relations in the social world. One of the key mechanisms that dictate how healthcare interacts in the sociopolitical arena is the distribution of epistemic power. This chapter offers an in-depth examination of the unique epistemic injustices that arise in the medical context, within both somatic and psychiatric

Science and engineering practices are intended to engage students authentically in the work that scientists and engineers do in order to provide opportunities for meaningful engagement in disciplinary work, including design-based learning. Meaningful engagement, particularly for sensemaking purposes, requires a shift in who is leading the classroom community's intellectual work, from the teacher to the students. When students are positioned with the intellectual responsibility of producing and evaluating ideas, there is potential for them to act with epistemic agency. Enacting epistemic agency involves socially negotiated framing and power dynamics. The purpose of this study is to determine the ways in which gendered power dynamics influence the negotiation of epistemic agency in a design-based learning context. Using a qualitative case study methodology, student negotiations of epistemic and positional framing from a mixed-gender group were observed. Transcripts from their discourse during two design challenges were mapped, and focal group interviews were holistically analyzed to understand students' perceptions and navigation of epistemic and positional framings in a design-based learning context and to understand how power dynamics influence these negotiations. Students understood the epistemic goals of the design challenges to involve designing solutions to real-world problems. During the first challenge, the group distributed positions of epistemic authority among the members. However, the group experienced a change in composition, resulting in changed power dynamics and epistemic oppression. These findings have implications regarding the critical impact that classroom culture and interactional practices might have on students' epistemic agency, especially considering their multiple identity markers.

This chapter is about the production of war knowledge through the narrative and embodied epistemic agency of ‘insurgent women,’ i.e. the ex-guerrillera fighters and ex-clandestine militants of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc-ep) here referred to as the farianas. First, the chapter reflects on the epistemic silences and absences that surround the category of insurgent women through the Women, Peace and Security Agenda and feminist praxis, and in the Colombian context. Second, the chapter delves into the epistemic embodied agency of insurgent women by exposing three ways in which the farianas’ war knowledge contests typical understandings of reincorporation and peace, reclaiming both narrative and embodied forms of epistemic agency: by recovering their posture as insurgent women, by proposing their own feminist views in reincorporation and by narrating their insurgent memories.

Infallibilism is the view that a belief cannot be at once warranted and false. In this essay we assess three nonpartisan arguments for infallibilism, arguments that do not depend on a prior commitment to some substantive theory of warrant. Three premises, one from each argument, are most significant: (1) if a belief can be at once warranted and false, then the Gettier Problem cannot be solved; (2) if a belief can be at once warranted and false, then its warrant can be transferred to an accidentally true belief; (3) if a belief can be at once warranted and false, then it can be warranted and accidentally true. We argue that each of these is either false or no more plausible than its denial. Along the way, we offer a solution to the Gettier Problem that is compatible with fallibilism. Mere true belief is not knowledge. Warrant is that, whatever precisely it is, (enough of which) makes the difference between knowledge and mere true belief. We will call the view that a belief cannot be ...

Traditional normative theories of belief in epistemology presume that belief-forming includes a reflective component and a mental agency component. Beliefs are regarded as conscious doxastic attitudes with propositional contents. Let`s call this view the Transcendental View about Belief (TVB). First, I argue that reputed norms of belief as the truth norm, the knowledge norm and the rationality norm all incorporate TVB. Further, I argue that the empirical evidence concerning belief-forming collected in the last two decades by Rüdiger Seitz, Hans-Ferdinant Angel, Raymond Paloutzian and their colleagues suggests that primal beliefs do not correspond to the description provided by TVB. Primal beliefs are byproducts of perceptive and affective type 1 processing. As such, they are non-propositional multilayer relational states of a cognitive system S that do not presuppose conscious awareness. Thus, I sustain that TVB is normatively inadequate, because it is descriptively false. I presume that a good normative account of beliefs should be able to accommodate primal beliefs and provide a norm of primal belief. I conclude by attempting to outline such positive account.

The concept of epistemic injustice, characterized by discrimination and exclusion within the epistemic sphere, manifests in various ways depending on the nature of epistemic interactions and the contextual social environment. It is of interest to analyze this phenomenon in the educational context, given the focus on individuals as generators and transmitters of knowledge. While this concept has gained wide recognition and utilization in academic circles, the growing variety of related terms and typologies has led to a certain degree of fragmentation in the field. To address this fragmentation, this study aims to systematize and interconnect these concepts by proposing a comprehensive taxonomy tailored to the educational context. Using meta-analysis and content analysis methods, this research identifies core areas of interest and prominent scholars in the field of epistemic injustice within the educational context. Building upon this foundation, the study formulates a taxonomy encompassing the diverse typologies of epistemic injustice delineated in academic discourse related to the educational context. This effort seeks to facilitate the practical application of these concepts in education and the development of strategies and policies conducive to cultivating more equitable and just environments in contemporary society.

Actions can be morally right while lacking moral worth. Kant's prudent shopkeeper, for example, treats his customers fairly only to maximise his long-term profit. Although he's doing the right thing, his actions have no moral worth. It has been suggested that the shopkeeper's actions lack moral worth because they are only accidentally right. Moral worth excludes luck. But how should we understand the relevant notion of non-accidental rightness? To answer this question, this thesis utilises a striking analogy between moral worth and knowledge. Just as actions can be right without having moral worth, beliefs can be true without amounting to knowledge. For instance, guessing the correct outcome of a fair lottery makes for a true belief, but not knowledge. This lack of knowledge has often been explained by the fact that the belief is only accidentally true. Knowledge excludes luck. The notion of epistemic luck has received much attention in the last decades. This thesis draws on the insights from the epistemic literature to clarify the relevant notion of non-accidental rightness in the moral domain. In doing so, two necessary conditions for nonaccidental rightness are identified. An action is non-accidentally right only if (i) the action is reliably right; and (ii) the agent has control over the action's rightness. 2 Kant correctly identifies this gap when he suggests that an action can be "in accordance with duty [...] without having genuine moral worth" (4:398). Throughout this thesis, I use the term 'right' to cover mandatory actions. 3 For Kant's original case, see the first section of his Groundwork (4:397f.). 4 Isserow discusses a similar case (2018: 3). See also Archer (2016: 241). 'moral worth' and 'moral praiseworthiness' interchangeably. It's helpful to contrast the moral worth (or moral praiseworthiness) of an action with four related but different notions. First, we must distinguish the praiseworthiness of an action from the praise it actually receives. 7 Many praiseworthy actions never receive the praise 5

How does Kant’s False Subtlety of the Four Syllogistic Figures contribute to the Critique of Pure Reason? I find it has three levels of argument. First, Kant debunks the notion that formal validity is a divine logical necessitation which logic should pursue as an esoteric game. Second, Kant argues that the rules of deductive inference are not based on Leibnizian metaphysical principles but on spontaneous acts of judgment. Third, Kant argues that these rules of inference based on acts of judgment are the highest rules of inference: Leibnizians presuppose them when trying to derive them from a higher principle. However, this raises a critical problem. Separated from dogmatic metaphysics, inference is an independent but merely subjective syntax of logical thought. What justifies its objectivity? If we recognize how the Critique begins with this problem of logic, we can read it as a treatise on logic as much as on metaphysics.

When our moral views are based on the moral views of another, we are in a state of deference to that person. There are philosophers who think that such a state is not ideal. Sarah Sarah McGrath1 defends moral deference arguing that it is no different than nonmoral deference. It is natural for us to accept the moral views of others even if we have not critically examined the views for ourselves. Our actions are often justified by the views of expert testimony, say when a Supreme Court justice rules on a case based on the testimony of a scientific expert.2 However, this assumes one direction of fit between emotion and moral judgment, which is a narrow understanding of how we can know moral facts. While such an understanding may or may not be true in the non-moral realm, there are significant differences between the moral and non-moral claims. Most important among these differences is how we feel about them. This means that our understanding of how we come to know moral facts may be too narrow.

This is an encyclopedia entry written for the Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy. It provides an overview of the concept of and literature surrounding "group agency" from the perspective of analytic philosophy. It begins with an introduction to agency in its most general sense before examining agency in the social world. Next, group agency as a research field is presented in the context of the problem of collective intentionality. Here, accounts of group intentions are presented, before moving into considerations on structure and metaphysics of group agents. Then, the features of and conditions for group agency are clarified, as well as its relation to rationality and mind. The entry closes with heterodox views of group agency and a description of group agency’s lasting relevance to law and social philosophy.

Shussett, Daniel. 2024. “Group Agency.” In M. Sellers & S. Kirste (Eds.), Encyclopedia of the Philosophy of Law and Social Philosophy. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6730-0_1151-1

In an online environment rich in unmediated content, the ability to evaluate sources of knowledge for credibility is a key component of digital literacy. However, most instruction on judging the accuracy and reliability of information relies on giving students checklists of criteria and this has only fl eeting changes to skills and behavior. To have the fl exibility to productively participate in a society awash with emerging and disruptive forms of knowledge creation and distribution, students need to be taught the skills to collaboratively develop their own criteria for evaluating the validity of information. This paper describes a formative intervention, based on Vygotskian principles, in which students confront contradictions in their practice as a stimulus for their learning and development. A second stimulus is provided by the collaborative creation of a mediating conceptual artifact, a tool for accuracy and reliability of digital information, which is reformulated and applied...

Hard to say what knowledge is. The more this concept is discussed, the more divergent opinions are. Epistemology is the theory of knowledge, and one of the characteristic questions of epistemology concerns what all the myriad kinds of knowledge we ascribe to ourselves have in common. A major distinction between different types of knowledge is descriptive, declarative, or propositional knowledge (which requires a greater degree of intellectual sophistication on the part of the knowledge seeker) and knowledge or skill knowledge. For a description, statement, or assertion to be knowledge, it must be a belief, be true, and be justified. A statement of faith is an expression of belief in someone or something. Belief must be true to be knowledge. Plato, in the Gorgias, argues that faith is the most frequently invoked bearer of truth. In many of Plato's dialogues, such as the Meno and especially the Theaetetus, Socrates regards knowledge as true belief explained or defined in some way. Justification for belief involves a good reason for doing so. The definition of knowledge as justified true belief was widely accepted until 1960, when the American philosopher Edmund Gettier provoked major widespread discussion.

DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.11276.59528

The aim of the paper is to state a version of epistemic expressivism regarding knowledge, and to suggest how this expressivism about knowledge explains the value of knowledge. The paper considers how an account of the value of knowledge based on expressivism about knowledge responds to the Meno Problem, the Swamping Problem, and a variety of other questions that pertains to the value of knowledge, and the role of knowlegde in our cognitive ecology.

Children’s evaluations of moral and epistemic agents crucially depend on their discerning that an agent’s actions were performed intentionally. Here we argue that children’s epistemic and moral judgments reveal practices of forgiveness and blame, trust and mistrust, and objection or disapproval and that such practices are supported by children’s monitoring of the situational constraints on agents. Inherent in such practices is the understanding that agents are responsible for actions performed under certain conditions but not others. We discuss a range of situational constraints on children’s early epistemic and moral evaluations and clarify how these situational constraints serve to support children’s identification of intentional actions. By monitoring the situation, children distinguish intentional from less intentional action and selectively hold epistemic and moral agents accountable. We argue that these findings inform psychological and philosophical theorizing about attributi...

The COVID-19 pandemic and social unrest offer an opportunity to clarify what learning is and rethink how to design and assess a “good” school. Schools — online, hybrid, or in-person — should foster learning for all students. Yet, too often, schools paradoxically act as both drivers of equity and reproducers of inequities, both inviting and foreclosing certain types of learning. Maxine McKinney de Royston, Carol Lee, Na’ilah Suad Nasir, and Roy Pea argue that a good school takes an expansive understanding of learning and recognizes learning as fundamentally cultural and rooted in human systems of power and ideology.

The COVID-19 pandemic and social unrest offer an opportunity to clarify what learning is and rethink how to design and assess a “good” school. Schools — online, hybrid, or in-person — should foster learning for all students. Yet, too often, schools paradoxically act as both drivers of equity and reproducers of inequities, both inviting and foreclosing certain types of learning. Maxine McKinney de Royston, Carol Lee, Na’ilah Suad Nasir, and Roy Pea argue that a good school takes an expansive understanding of learning and recognizes learning as fundamentally cultural and rooted in human systems of power and ideology.

The mechanisms of selection, assimilation and transmission at work in cultural accumulation need to include evaluative processes for detecting informational lacunae and repair mechanisms. Novelty, interest, learnability of alternative concepts and practices need to be permanently monitored at the individual and at the group level. It is proposed that the evaluative mechanisms that control cultural accumulation are themselves subject to cultural evolution. This article outlines a plausible sequence of evolutionary steps from curiositybased exploration to inquisitive communication and to collective epistemic deliberation. Procedural metacognition, based on affective monitoring, regulates curiosity and early forms of inquisitive communication. Explicit metacognition, based on transmitted concepts, rules and practices regulates collective epistemic deliberation. It successively expands across cultures the epistemic sensitivity to a range of distinct norms such as evidentiality, consistency, explanatory power and consensuality.

Experimental studies in metacognition indicate that a variety of norms are used by humans and some non-human agents to control and monitor their cognitive performances, such as accuracy, comprehensiveness, intelligibility, coherence, relevance, or consensus. This diversity of epistemic norms motivates a revision of the concept of acceptance. First, there are different forms of acceptance, corresponding to the specific epistemic norm(s) that constitute(s) them. Furthermore, acceptances need to include a strategic component, from which the epistemic component is insulated, whose function is to adjust the epistemic output to expected utility. Experimental evidence suggests that this twotiered analysis of acceptance is empirically adequate. Relevance to AI is briefly discussed. Acceptance and its Norms Intelligent agency requires an ability to control and monitor one's cognitive states, e.g. retrieve memories, check one's perceptions or one's utterances. The aim of cognitive...

cited works by ernest sosa xi I would like to thank Ernest Sosa and all of our contributors for their participation in the project. Thanks also to Ernest LePore, the editor of the series, and to Daniel Breyer, who was a great help with various aspects of the book, including the index. It has been a pleasure working with such an outstanding group of philosophers. Volumes such as this one are always a kind of tribute to the philosopher under discussion-it goes without saying that not everyone's work merits or receives this sort of attention. This volume turned out to be a tribute to Ernest Sosa the person, as well. I say this on the basis of the wonderful response by our contributors. I can't imagine that it has ever been so easy to bring together such an outstanding group of philosophers, so eager to participate in the project and so generous in their efforts. This has been a great celebration of Ernie and his work. preface xiii introduction xv Introduction: Motivations for Sosa's Epistemology Over the last four decades, Ernest Sosa has defended a complex and penetrating theory of knowledge-one that has consequences for every important issue raised in recent epistemology, and for many related issues as well. The essays in this volume, for example, address Sosa's positions regarding the nature of knowledge, internalism and externalism about justification, skepticism, foundationalism and coherentism, and the nature of intellectual virtue, but also his positions regarding realism, internalism and externalism about mental states, and the nature of reference. I will not try to summarize Sosa's views here, or to otherwise give them adequate treatment. This I leave to the volume's capable contributors, who provide both useful summaries and critical discussions of many aspects of Sosa's work in their essays. Rather, in this introduction I will reconstruct what, it seems to me, are some of the most important arguments motivating Sosa's general position in epistemology. I take this general position to be "externalist," in that it makes positive epistemic status depend on factors relevantly external to the knower. Furthermore, Sosa's general view is correctly characterized as a virtue theory, in that it adopts a distinctive direction of analysis. Specifically, it defines the evaluative properties of beliefs in terms of the evaluative properties (or virtues) of believers. Finally, Sosa's view places central importance on the notion of an epistemic perspective, where this is understood as a set of second-order beliefs about one's first-order beliefs and the reliability of their sources. Hence the label "virtue perspectivism" for Sosa's view. 1 Three Options in Epistemology It is fair to say that Sosa sees three broad options available in epistemology-not in the sense that these are the only ones logically possible, but in the sense that these are the ones deemed most plausible by those, past and present, who have thought carefully about relevant matters. The options are these: Classical foundationalism. The central idea is that one knows only what is obvious and what can be deductively proved from the obvious. Descartes's rationalism is an example, xvi introduction since "he concludes that we know only what we intuit or deduce: that our acceptance of a true proposition can have the epistemic justification (authority, warrant, status, call it what you will) required for knowledge only if it is either itself a rational intuition or the outcome of a logical deduction from nothing but rational intuitions as ultimate premises." 1 Hume's theory also counts, however, since he accepts as knowledge only what can be proved "on the basis of what is obvious at any given moment through reason or experience" (KP, 166-7). Coherentism. The coherentist rejects the idea of foundational knowledge, or knowledge that is not dependent on further knowledge for its evidence. The central idea is that all knowledge (justified belief, warranted belief) depends on further beliefs for its status as such. More specifically, a belief qualifies as knowledge in virtue of its membership in a sufficiently coherent and comprehensive system of beliefs. Reliabilism. A belief qualifies as knowledge (justified, warranted) in virtue of its deriving from a reliable (truth-conducive) process. Since some reliable processes depend on further beliefs for their inputs and some do not, there is no bar in principle to foundational knowledge. In fact, reliabilism is best understood as a kind of foundationalism. "Every bit of knowledge still lies atop a pyramid of knowledge. But the building requirements for pyramids are now less stringent. A belief may now join the base not only through perfectly reliable rational intuition but also through introspection, perception, or memory. And one may now erect a superstructure on such a basis not only by deduction but also by induction, both enumerative and hypothetical or explanatory" (KP, 89). Sosa levels several objections against the first two options, some of them quite traditional. For example, classical foundationalism is criticized for allowing too narrow a foundation to preserve the bulk of ordinary knowledge, and coherentism is criticized for failing to assign a proper role to experience in the justification of belief. Such objections can be both powerful and instructive, especially in the versions that Sosa formulates. I will ignore these here, however, and instead focus on a different series of objections raised by Sosa. These latter are aimed not so much at technical flaws or theoretical lacunae, but at the very motivations for the two positions. Properly understood, I believe, these objections help us to recognize, and to some extent reconceive, what is at issue in the dispute among competing options in epistemology. 2 Against the Argumentative Account of Justification Standing behind various arguments for coherentism, and behind various objections to foundationalism, is what Sosa calls the "argumentative account of justification" (KP, 253). According to Donald Davidson, "What distinguishes a coherence theory is simply the claim that nothing can count as a reason for holding a belief except another belief. Its partisan rejects as unintelligible the request for a ground or source of justification of another ilk." 2 According to Richard Rorty, "nothing counts as justification unless by reference to what we already accept, and there is no way to get outside our beliefs and our language so as to find some test other than coherence." 3 Such reasoning at once makes foundational beliefs absurd and coherentism the only live option in sight. Right introduction xvii behind such reasoning, Sosa suggests, is the following argumentative conception of justification (AJ): (a) that for a belief to be justified is for the believer to justify it or to have justified it; and (b) that for one to justify a belief (really, successfully) is for one correctly and seriously to use considerations or reasons in its favor. But why accept (AJ)? Of course one can point to common usage, and insist that to justify is to bring reasons in favor. And if that does not work, one can simply stipulate accordingly. However, Sosa points out, neither of these strategies will give the coherentist what he wants. For in that case it remains possible that some knowledge is not justified, and so nothing so far counts against foundationalism or in favor of coherentism. The substantive issue is raised again by talking about epistemic authority (or warrant, or aptness), and by asking whether all epistemic authority requires argumentative justification. Moreover, Sosa argues, the argumentative account is in trouble as an account of epistemic authority in general. For to "correctly" use reasons in favor is surely to use justified reasons in favor, and in that case we are faced with a vicious regress. If a belief is knowledge only by being justified, and if being justified requires being based on further justified reasons, then there will be no end to the process of justifying. A natural response by the coherentist is to say that justification ends in coherence: that ultimately a belief is justified not by further reasons brought in its favor, but by its membership in a coherent system of reasons. An alternative response is to say that justification ends with what our peers let us say: that ultimately a belief is justified because it meets the standards that society plus context fix in place. But either response gives up the argumentative account of justification, and the idea that epistemic authority is always won by virtue of giving reasons. On the contrary, each response specifies an alternative basis for justification (coherence or social standards), and in doing so enters into a dispute with the foundationalist on equal footing. In other words, each response claims that something else, not justified reasons, is the ultimate source of epistemic authority. xviii introduction Suppose S and TwinS live lives indistinguishable physically or psychologically, indistinguishable both intrinsically and contextually, on Earth and Twin-Earth respectively. Surely there can then be no belief of S epistemically justified without a matching belief held by TwinS with equal epistemic justification. Epistemic justification must accordingly supervene upon or derive from physical or psychological properties of the subject of belief, properties either intrinsic or contextual. (KP, 110) An important aim of epistemology, Sosa reasons, is to specify the non-evaluative basis of supervenience, thus allowing a special sort of insight into the nature of justification and knowledge. In this respect, coherentists and foundationalists share a common goal: to specify such a basis in relatively simple and complete terms. It is from this perspective that the argumentative account of justification seems clearly hopeless. According to (AJ), for one to justify a belief is for one "correctly and...

The New Demon World Objection claims that reliabilist accounts of justification are mistaken because there are justified empirical beliefs at demon worlds—worlds at which the subjects are systematically deceived by a Cartesian demon. In this paper, I defend strongly verific (but not necessarily reliabilist) accounts of justification by claiming that there are two ways to construct a theory of justification: by analyzing our ordinary concept of justification or by taking justification to be a theoretic term defined by its role in the theory of knowledge. The former route is not promising because of the splintered nature of our ordinary concept of justification—or perhaps because there is no single such concept. On the other hand, if justification is defined by the role it plays in the theory of knowledge, then there is good reason to think that justification must be strongly truth-conductive since the term was introduced by Edmund Gettier to play the primary role in converting true b...

This paper discusses two important emphases of epistemology – of virtue and vice epistemology in particular – one concerning agency and patiency, and the other concerning self-regard and other-regard. The paper offers, for the first time in the literature, a framework in which four types of epistemological work can be categorized according to their respective dual emphases: Type 1 (agent/self-regarding), Type 2 (agent/other-regarding), Type 3 (patient/self-regarding), and Type 4 (patient/other-regarding). The paper also shows how four ways of doing epistemology can be categorized in terms of these four types and draws particular attention to one dubbed other-centering.

Este artigo argumenta que uma Epistemologia da Conversação deve ser compreendida como um campo da Epistemologia Social que se dedica a investigar as normas estritamente epistêmicas que regem a interação entre duas ou mais pessoas acerca de suas crenças e outros estados epistêmicos. Uma definição elementar de conversação é: um ato comunicativo cooperativo nos quais os participantes assumem propósitos comuns e o compromisso de contribuir com declarações (asserções) relevantes. Partindo dessa definição elementar, o artigo apresenta quatro temas que deveriam ser considerados por uma Epistemologia da Conversação: a) que o desacordo é um motivo relevante para a conversação; b) que a conversação é um meio ou método de investigação em casos de desacordo entre pares; c) que as virtudes esperadas dos participantes são virtudes epistêmicas; e d) que qualquer resultado de uma conversação realizará um bem epistêmico.

Children's evaluations of moral and epistemic agents crucially depend on their discerning that an agent's actions were performed intentionally. Here we argue that children's epistemic and moral judgments reveal practices of forgiveness and blame, trust and mistrust, and objection or disapproval and that such practices are supported by children's monitoring of the situational constraints on agents. Inherent in such practices is the understanding that agents are responsible for actions performed under certain conditions but not others. We discuss a range of situational constraints on children's early epistemic and moral evaluations and clarify how these situational constraints serve to support children's identification of intentional actions. By monitoring the situation, children distinguish intentional from less intentional action and selectively hold epistemic and moral agents accountable. We argue that these findings inform psychological and philosophical theorizing about attributions of moral and epistemic agency and responsibility.

Em 1964, o jovem Ernest Sosa, então com 24 anos, conclui a tese Directives: A logico-philosophical inquiry, elaborada sob a supervisão de Nicholas Rescher, na University of Pittsburgh. Além certamente de atrair a atenção para esse jovem professor, 1 a tese teve continuidade por alguns anos em uma pesquisa sobre inferências práticas, tendo gerado um conjunto de artigos, dos quais podemos destacar "

To reach Larissa through ignorant luck is not to flourish. (Ernest Sosa) RESUMO Ernest Sosa é um dos mais importantes filósofos da contemporaneidade. Em plena atividade há mais de cinco décadas, sua obra toma agora a forma de uma teoria da normatividade télica, com a qual Sosa pretende coroar sua procura por uma "knowledge friendly epistemology". Pretendemos mostrar que esta nova forma teórica instala-se bem no conjunto de sua reflexão epistemológica, procurando Sosa agora, de modo ainda mais preciso, dar resposta, por exemplo, às questões decorrentes do problema de Gettier, da intencionalidade e das modalidades epistêmicas. Entre as novidades de sua atual formulação, analisaremos de modo mais específico neste texto alguns problemas colocados pelo exemplo do arqueiro, ao transformar-se este em um modelo teórico ilustrativo da noção de normatividade télica, bem como alguns aspectos da singular taxonomia do conhecimento feita por Sosa.

Resumo-O objetivo deste trabalho foi caracterizar os quatro principais eventos de inundação costeira ocorridos na Costa Catarinense no período 2012 a 2020, associando os dados registrados na rede maregráfica da Epagri aos sistemas atmosféricos atuantes no período. Os eventos ocorreram nos meses de outono, inverno e primavera e apresentaram características similares. Os valores mais altos de maré registrados estão entre 2,0 e 2,5m. Uma diferença encontrada entre os eventos foi o número de inundações costeiras, que variou de 1 a 4 inundações/evento. Foi observado que ciclones extratropicais, situados mais ao sul do Uruguai, provocaram 4 a 5 inundações/evento, enquanto ciclones extratropicais situados entre o Uruguai e o Rio Grande do Sul, entre 1 e 2. Considerando 42 inundações, verificou-se que o percentual de maré acima da prevista ficou entre 30-50%,

I argue that a necessary condition for being wise is: understanding how to live well. The condition, by requiring understanding rather than a wide variety of justified beliefs or knowledge, as Ryan and Whitcomb respectively require, yields the desirable result that being wise is compatible with having some false beliefs but not just any false beliefs about how to live well-regardless of whether those beliefs are justified or not. In arguing for understanding how to live well as a necessary condition for wisdom, I reject the view, proposed by both Ryan and Whitcomb, that subjects such as chemistry lies within the domain of wisdom. I show that the argued for condition yields the desirable result that being wise is not a common achievement, but that it is not something that can only plausibly be achieved in the modern era.

The Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) [Achieve, Inc. [2013]] represent a broad consensus that teaching and learning expectations must change. Rather than memorizing and reciting information, students are now expected to engage in science practices to develop a deep understanding of core science ideas. While we want to share in the optimism about NGSS, the standards are not a silver bullet for transforming science classrooms. They are, instead, another reform document designed to suggest opportunities for students to actively engage in knowledge construction themselves-to be doers of science, rather than receivers of facts. A foundational contradiction underlies these effortswhile we want students to do science, we seem to mean that students should mimic practices others have selected as important to learn, and content others have selected as foundational. As a result, students are rarely positioned with epistemic agency: the power to shape the knowledge production and practices of a community [Stroupe [2014] Science Education 98:487-516]. We argue that unless the field tackles significant questions around precisely how students can be active agents in knowledge construction, we will likely continue to implement learning environments that position students as receivers of scientific facts and practices, even as classrooms adopt NGSS. In this conceptual analysis article, we unpack the construct of "epistemic agency" and its relationship to the NGSS, using a vignette to illustrate how students are typically positioned in researcherdeveloped curricula. The vignette, which describes a seventh-grade class exploring which of two lakes is more at risk for invasion by the spiny water flea, provides an

We argue that unless teachers provide students with openings to take up some form of epistemic agency through the use of tools, and if students do not perceive and act on such openings, then the rhetoric of the Framework and Next Generation Science Standards—focused on participation in practices—is empty and aims to perpetuate the status quo of current and problematic science teaching and learning. Drawing on our own work and that of others, including the authors in this special issue of Science Education, we assert that epistemic tools and their principled use in classrooms have an important role in disrupting the status quo.

We argue that students should take on roles as epistemic agents—those who shape knowledge production and practices of a community. In this study, the research team—a science educator and two scientists—worked with a sixth‐grade teacher to provide 90 students with opportunities to take up epistemic agency over a 22‐day unit about moth ecology. We used cultural historical activity theory (CHAT) to analyze the co‐configuration of activity. During planning, tensions arose among the research team around how and why to position students as epistemic agents, while still attending to meaningful science questions. During instruction, students prompted the constant negotiation of epistemic roles and practices as they acted on shifting agentic participation structures.

Nesta tese, trato de um conjunto de teorias, aqui denominadas de epistemologias modais, que buscam explicar e/ou analisar o conhecimento a partir de condicoes ou principios contrafactuais, isto e, principios que dizem respeito ao que aconteceria em situacoes ou circunstâncias nao atuais. Inicialmente, explico a teoria do rastreamento, proposta por Robert Nozick, que utiliza dois condicionais contrafactuais, os principios da sensibilidade e aderencia, para analisar o conhecimento e tentar solucionar dificeis problemas epistemologicos, notadamente o problema do ceticismo. Apos explicar a proposta de Nozick, exponho diversas objecoes a sua teoria, que foram aqui divididas em quatro tipos: restritivas, permissivas, violacoes do principio de fecho epistemico e relativas ao modo como Nozick entende o conceito de metodo. Pretendo mostrar que o conjunto das objecoes aqui apresentadas sugere fortemente que a teoria de Nozick nao e correta. Apos tratar da teoria do rastreamento, apresento a p...

A tension in designing classroom learning involves balancing the questions and interests of students with the goals of teachers and standards. One approach to navigating this tension in science classrooms is to simultaneously support and constrain students’ questions about an observable natural phenomenon in the classroom and then take up those questions throughout a unit of instruction. Analyses of students’ questions at the start of a middle school science unit and their responses to surveys throughout the unit suggest that students perceive that their questions are indeed driving learning, suggesting the promise of supporting students’ epistemic agency through co-construction of questions, ideas, and investigations in storylines.

The aim of the present contribution is to defend a specific version of moderate skeptical invariantism, which I call Practical Skeptical Invariantism (PSI). The view is a form of skepticism to the extent that it denies knowledge of many facts that we ordinarily think or claim to know. It is moderate to the extent that it is supposed to be compatible with a quite weak, nonradical form of skepticism. According to this view, the threshold on evidential support required for knowledge should be partially fixed by the practical circumstances of the subject: someone is in a position to know a proposition p only if she would be rational to act as if p even if the practical stakes on p were maximally high. I consider and address what I take to be the most pressing problem for the view, namely, that the view can’t avoid a collapse into a radical form of skepticism. Moreover, I propose a positive argument for this view. The argument relies on the claim that judgments in high stakes are generally more reliable than in low stakes.

This paper discusses Ernest Sosa's account of knowledge and epistemic normativity. The paper has two main parts. The first part identifies places where Sosa's account requires supplementation if it is going to capture important epistemic phenomena. In particular, additional theoretical resources are needed to explain (i) the way in which epistemic aims are genuinely good aims, and (ii) the way in which some forms of reasoning can be epistemically better than others even when they are equally conducive to attaining the truth. The second part focuses on Sosa's claim that there is a kind of belief -- judgmental belief -- that doesn't merely aim at truth but also aims at aptness, and that this kind of belief is central to our mental lives. The paper raises several concerns about this part of Sosa's account, including the concern that aiming at aptness is overly self-directed, and so is more closely tied to vice than epistemic virtue.

Religious disagreement, like disagreement in science, stands to deliver important epistemic benefits. But religious communities tend to frown on it. A salient reason is that, whereas scientists should be neutral toward the topics they discuss, religious believers should be loyal to God; and religious disagreement, they argue, is disloyal. For it often involves discussion with people who believe more negatively about God than you do, putting you at risk of forming negative beliefs yourself. And forming negative beliefs about someone, or even being open to doing so, is disloyal. A loyal person, says the objector, should instead exhibit doxastic partiality, doing her best to believe positively about the other party even at the cost of accuracy. I discuss two arguments from doxastic partiality that aim to show that religious disagreement is typically disloyal. I argue that even given doxastic partiality, religious disagreement is not typically disloyal, and can in fact be loyal. But then I argue that doxastic partiality is false. A superior form of loyalty is epistemically oriented: concerned with knowing the other party as she really is. This opens up new ways in which religious disagreement for the sake of learning about God can be loyal to him.

I explore the strengths of Rorty's liberal ironist as a model for twenty-first-century peacemaking. I review the anti-foundationalist, anti-essentialist, and fallibilist commitments underlying Rorty's project and show how understanding these three commitments helps foreground the community-widening, solidarity-building elements of the provocatively titled "ethnocentrism" that drives liberal irony. Without a good grasp of these commitments, Rorty's rhetorical urging of ethnocentrism can be mistaken either as too weak, that is, as a collapse into relativistic refusal to be responsive to any ethical and epistemic commitments at all, or as overstated and imperialistic, that is, as an endorsement of pernicious ethical and epistemic patterns, including settler colonialist violence. Rorty characterizes his view as anti-antiethnocentrism, which I argue, demands a commitment to peace understood as a literacy or phronesis, a skill-set about which we need discipline and strategy. We ought to be liberal ironist peace warriors. It is a self-description that carries with it more ethical weight than is sometimes imagined, at the same time that it demands epistemic humility. It will come as no surprise to the pragmatists among us, that it also requires practice and the building of new habits.

Most philosophers of religion subscribe to some variety of religious realism: they believe that religious statements aim at capturing a mind-independent reality and are true precisely if they successfully do so. Curiously, most religious realists also believe that at least some of our religious beliefs are rationally justified. In this paper, I argue that these positions are actually at odds with each other. Religious realists should rather be religious skeptics. I first argue that realism always implies the possibility of our beliefs being false. Then, I develop a Copernican argument to show that we have no reason to believe that we are in an epistemically privileged position where we could be confident that our particular belief is justified while all competing beliefs are not. This seems impossible for two reasons: (a) From a probabilistic point of view (adopting a principle of mediocrity), it is highly unlikely that current humans have the maximum of epistemic capacities possible. Rather, our ability to understand reality is limited, so we should expect at least some parts of religious reality to remain unknown to us. (b) From a deep-time perspective, humanity has not pondered religious questions for long. We are probably still in the early stages of our cognitive evolution, and so we should treat our religious beliefs as provisional and open to revision.

Adoption of online teaching platforms for reaching learners and including technologies in lesson delivery was never so crucial before the Pandemic. The shift from regular classroom teaching to distant learning during the pandemic presented many challenges to educators. This study explored the correlation between teachers’ digital competency and their self-efficacy during distant teaching. This research employed a quantitative approach, and a questionnaire was administered to a sample of teaching staff from Karachi's southern region. 155 respondents participated in this research including 85 Nursery teachers and 70 from lower primary level(I–II). The questionnaire included questions on factors for digital competency and teachers’ self-efficacy in separate sections. The digital competency section assessed teachers' proficiency in using digital tools, platforms, and technologies relevant to online teaching. The self-efficacy section measured teachers' beliefs in their capab...