The paper presents the key themes of my Extended Rationality: A Hinge Epistemology. It focuses, in particular, on the moderate account of perceptual justification, the constitutive response put forward against Humean skepticism, epistemic relativism, the closure principle, the transmission of warrant principle, as well as on the applications of the extended rationality view to the case of the principle of the uniformity of nature, testimony, and the justification of basic laws of inference.
In a perplexing passage of On Certainty (Wittgenstein 1969) Wittgenstein writes:Haven't I gone wrong and isn't Moore perfectly right? Haven't I made the elementary mistake of confusing one's thoughts with one's knowledge? Of course I don't think to myself "The earth has already existed for some time before my birth", but do I know it nevertheless? Don't I show that I know it by always drawing its consequences? (OC 397) Is Wittgenstein really retracting his criticism of the Moorean use of "to know" and conceding that, after all, we do know that the Earth has existed for a very long time, and other "hinges", as these propositions have become known in the literature? In my Moore and Wittgenstein. Scepticism, Certainty and Common Sense (Coliva 2010), I have argued that this isn't the case. In this précis, while maintaining that view, I would like to insist more than I have done before on the characteristic duplicity of hinges -i.e. their retaining a descriptive content, while playing a normative function.In the book I have contended that, with respect to the role of hinges, Wittgenstein held the view that we don't bear to them a genuinely epistemic relation, such that one could meaningfully claim to know them. I have also pointed out that he becomes more and more wary of describing that relation in other ways, e.g. as "assuming", "believing" or "being certain". For all verbs of propositional attitude suggest the idea that we may believe hinges because we have evidence for them, or that we assume them, but they may turn out to be false; or else, finally, that our certainty with respect to them is of a
Il volume presenta una posizione pluralista riguardo al tema della conoscenza dei nostri stati mentali (sensazioni, emozioni, percezioni, atteggiamenti proposizionali, ecc.). Distingue tra conoscenza in prima e in terza persona dei nostri stati mentali. Difende l'idea che vi siano un pluralità di metodi di conoscenza di sé in terza persona (dall'inferenza alla spiegazione migliore, all'induzione e alla simulazione, dalla testimonianza alla "ermeneutica"). Analizza quindi una serie di modelli epistemici recenti usati per spiegare la conoscenza di sé in prima persona (dall'affidabilismo, alle teorie di Burge, Peacocke e Moran fino all'espressivismo di Bar-On) e sostiene che non rendono conto dei tratti distintivi di quest'ultima e che solo un modello costitutivista possa farlo. Il modello costitutivista stesso, però, viene declinato diversamente a seconda del tipo di stato mentale cui si applica. Nel corso della discussione si affronta il tema del paradosso di Moore ("P ma non credo che P") e della rilevanza dei recenti studi empirici sul fallimento della conoscenza dei nostri stati mentali. In particolare, si sostiene che essi mostrano solo che molto spesso conosciamo noi stessi in terza persona e i metodi che utilizziamo possono fallire; non che non vi sia mai conoscenza di sé in prima persona
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