WHAT EPISTEMIC VALUES SHOULD WE RECLAIM FOR RELIGION AND SCIENCE? A RESPONSE TO J. WESLEY ROBBINS

Abstract. Postmodernism in science rejects and deconstructs the cultural dominance of especially the natural sciences in our time. Although it presents the debate between religion and science with a promising epistemological holism, it also seriously challenges attempts to develop a meaningful relationship between science and religion. A neopragmatist perspective on religion and science is part of this important challenge and eminently reveals the problems and reduction that arise when pragmatist criteria alone are used to construct a holism that renounces any demarcation between different areas of rationality. In this pragmatist vision for a holist culture, the cognitive resources of rationality are bypassed in such a way that a meaningful interaction between theology and science becomes impossible.     

What is an expert?

Experts play an important role in society, but there has been little investigation about the nature of expertise. I argue that there are two kinds of experts: those whose expertise is a function of what theyknow (epistemic expertise), or what theydo (performative expertise). Epistemic expertise is the capacity to provide strong justifications for a range of propositions in a domain, while performative expertise is the capacity to perform a skill well according to the rules and virtues of a practice. Both epistemic and performative experts may legitimately disagree with one another, and the two senses are conceptually and logically distinct.     

Socialising epistemic risk: On the risks of epistemic injustice

Epistemic risk is of central importance to epistemology nowadays: one common way in which a belief can fail to be knowledge is by being formed in an epistemically risky way, that is, a way that makes it true by luck. Recently, epistemologists have been expanding this rather narrow conception of risk in every direction, except arguably the most obvious one—to enable it to accommodate the increasingly commonplace thought that knowledge has an irreducibly social dimension. This paper fills this lacuna by bringing issues of epistemic injustice to bear on epistemic risk. In particular, it draws on the phenomenon of white ignorance, to sketch a more social notion of epistemic risk, on which the interests of one's epistemic community partly determine whether a belief-forming procedure is epistemically risky.     

“I don't know but I know who to ask”: 12‐month‐olds actively seek information from knowledgeable adults

Active social communication is an effective way for infants to learn about the world. Do pre‐verbal and pre‐pointing infants seek epistemic information from their social partners when motivated to obtain information they cannot discover independently? The present study investigated whether 12‐month‐olds (N = 30) selectively seek information from knowledgeable adults in situations of referential uncertainty. In a live experiment, infants were introduced to two unfamiliar adults, an Informant (reliably labeling objects) and a Non‐Informant (equally socially engaging, but ignorant about object labels). At test, infants were asked to make an impossible choice—locate a novel referent among two novel objects. When facing epistemic uncertainty—but not at other phases of the procedure—infants selectively referred to the Informant rather than the Non‐Informant. These results show that pre‐verbal infants use social referencing to actively and selectively seek information from social partners as part of their interrogative communicative toolkit. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at https://youtu.be/23dLPsa-fAY     

Victim’s innocence, social categorization, and the threat to the belief in a just world

This research studies people’s reactions to the suffering of victims, examining the hypothesis of the belief in a just world (BJW) (Lerner, 1980) according to which the awareness of innocent victims threatens people’s BJW, and extending the scope of BJW theory to intergroup contexts. An implicit measure of the threat to the BJW (Hafer, 2000a) is used in this research. After participants viewed a videotaped film containing the victimization story they performed an emotional modified Stroop task. Study 1 examined the threat to the BJW as function of the innocence of the victim at an interpersonal level of analysis. Results show that only the innocent victim threatens the observer’s BJW. Study 2 examined the threat to the BJW as function of the victim’s group and of the victim’s innocence. Results show that an ingroup victim threatens the participant’s BJW more than a victim belonging to an outgroup.     

“PURE” VERSUS “PRACTICAL” EPISTEMIC JUSTIFICATION

Abstract: In this article I distinguish a type of justification that is “epistemic” in pertaining to the grounds of one's belief, and “practical” in its connection to what act(s) one may undertake, based on that belief. Such justification, on the proposed account, depends mainly on the proportioning of “inner epistemic virtue” to the “outer risks” implied by one's act. The resulting conception strikes a balance between the unduly moralistic conception of William Clifford and contemporary naturalist virtue theories.     

Finite Reasons Without Foundations

This article develops a theory of reasons that has strong similarities to Peter Klein's infinitism. The view it develops, Framework Reasons, upholds Klein's principles of avoiding arbitrariness (PAA) and avoiding circularity (PAC) without requiring an infinite regress of reasons. A view of reasons that holds that the “reason for” relation is constrained by PAA and that PAC can avoid an infinite regress if the “reason for” relation is contextual. Moreover, such a view of reasons can maintain that skepticism is false by the maintaining that there is more to epistemic justification than can be expressed in any reasoning session. One crucial argument for Framework Reasons is that justification depends on a background of plausibility considerations. The final section of the article applies this view of reasons to Michael Bergmann's argument that any nonskeptical epistemology must embrace epistemic circularity.     

Introduction

This introduction presents selected proceedings of a two‐day meeting on the regress problem, sponsored by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) and hosted by Vanderbilt University in October 2013, along with other submitted essays. Three forms of research on the regress problem are distinguished: metatheoretical, developmental, and critical work.     

The Epistemic Criterion: A Response to Michael Hand

This article is a response to Michael Hand’s critique in this issue of my response to his use of the epistemic criterion as the sole means for identifying whether or not an issue should be identified as controversial. I argue that he has misunderstood my intention in suggesting that I was seeking to replace the epistemic criterion. Rather my purpose was to challenge his over-confidence in the decisiveness of reason and to temper his use of the epistemic criterion by suggesting it needed to embrace ethical concerns.     

Measuring Epistemic Curiosity in Young Children

Epistemic curiosity (EC) is the desire to obtain new knowledge capable of either producing positive experiences of intellectual interest (I‐type) or of reducing undesirable conditions of informational deprivation (D‐type). Although researchers acknowledge that there are individual differences in young children's epistemic curiosity, there are no existing measures to assess the I‐ and D‐type constructs of EC in early childhood. The aim of this study was to develop and validate parent‐report scales that reliably assessed early expressions of I‐ and D‐ type EC in young children. To develop the I/D‐Young Children (I/D‐YC) scales, 16 potential items were administered to 316 parents of children aged 3 to 8. These items were adaptations of an existing adult self‐report measure of EC as well as newly developed items. Confirmatory factor analyses demonstrated that a 10‐item 2‐factor (5 I‐type, 5 D‐type) model had the best fit. Construct validity analyses and psychometric data indicated that our newly developed I/D‐YC scales are valid and reliable measures of individual differences in early expressions of I‐ and D‐type EC. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.