Relying on others : an essay in epistemology / Sanford C. Goldberg.

Author
Goldberg, Sanford, 1967- [Browse]
Format
Book
Language
English
Published/​Created
Oxford : Oxford University Press, ©2010.
Description
x, 217 pages ; 23 cm

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Firestone Library - Stacks BD161 .G65 2010 Browse related items Request

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    Subject(s)
    Summary note
    This book concerns the role others play in our attempts to acquire knowledge of the world. Two main forms of this reliance are examined: testimony cases, where a subject aims to acquire knowledge through accepting what another tells her; and cases involving "coverage," where a subject aims to acquire knowledge of something by reasoning that if things were not so she would have heard about it by now. It is argued that these cases challenge some cherished assumptions in epistemology. Testimony cases challenge the assumption, prominent in reliabilist epistemology, that the processes through which beliefs are formed never extend beyond the boundaries of the individual believer. And both sorts of case challenge the idea that, insofar knowledge is a cognitive achievement, it is an achievement that belongs to the knowing subject herself. The book uses results of this sort to question the broadly individualistic orthodoxy within reliabilist epistemology, and to explore what a non-orthodox reliabilist epistemology would look like. The resulting theory is a social-reliabilist epistemology -- one that results from the application of reliabilist criteria to situations in which belief-fixation involves epistemic reliance on others.
    Bibliographic references
    Includes bibliographical references (p. [200]-211) and index.
    Contents
    • 1. Testimony and Individualist Individualism
    • 2. Orthodox Reliabilism and the Epistemic Significance of Testimony
    • 3. Process and Environment in Testimonial Belief-Formation
    • 4. Epistemic Reliance and the Extendedness Hypothesis
    • 5. Objections to the Extendedness Reliability
    • 6. If that were true I would have heard about it by now
    • 7. Reliabilism as Social Epistemology.
    ISBN
    • 9780199593248 ((hbk.))
    • 0199593248 ((hbk.))
    LCCN
    2010930305
    OCLC
    615842467
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