Knowledge without evidence

Moser, Paul K.

doi:10.1007/bf02379219

Cited by 5 publications

(6 citation statements)

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“…But there are two other perspectives that have long been considered from a philosophical viewpoint: the foundationalist view and the coherentist view. The foundationalist view (Swain, 1979;Alston, 1993;Moser, 1985Moser, , 1989) distinguishes between beliefs that are accepted without justification and those that depend on the prior acceptance of others. Such a distinction is used in truth-maintenance systems (e.g., Doyle, 1979;deKleer, 1986) for keeping track of dependencies among beliefs and to prefer the retraction of the latter ("assumptions") over the former ("premises") when contradictions are caused by new information.…”

Section: Alternative Representations Of Belief Statesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Belief change as propositional update

Elio¹

1997

Cognitive Science

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This study examines the problem of belief revision, defined as deciding which of several initially accepted sentences to disbelieve, when new information presents a logical inconsistency with the initial set. In the first three experiments, the initial sentence set included a conditional sentence, a non-conditional (ground) sentence, and an inferred conclusion drawn from the first two. The new information contradicted the inferred conclusion. Results indicated that conditional sentences were more readily abandoned than ground sentences, even when either choice would lead to a consistent belief state, and that this preference was more pronounced when problems used natural language cover stories rather than symbols. The pattern of belief revision choices differed depending on whether the contradicted conclusion from the initial belief set had been a modus ponens or modus tollens inference. Two additional experiments examined alternative model-theoretic definitions of minimal change to a belief state, using problems that contained multiple models of the initial belief state and of the new information that provided the contradiction. The results indicated that people did not follow any of four formal definitions of minimal change on these problems. The new information and the contradiction it offered was not, for example, used to select a particular model of the initial belief state as a way of reconciling the contradiction.The preferred revision was to retain only those initial sentences that had the same, unambiguous truth value within and across both the initial and new information sets. The study and results are presented in the context of certain logicbased formalizations of belief revision, syntactic and model-theoretic representations of belief states, and performance models of human deduction. Principles by which some types of sentences might be more "entrenched" than others in the face of contradiction are also discussed from the perspective of induction and theory revision.

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Section: Alternative Representations Of Belief Statesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Belief change as propositional update

Elio¹

1997

Cognitive Science

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“…My own inclination it to be pluralist and assume a kind of Wittgenstinian 'family resemblance' conception according to which there are multiple related notions (arguably, both internalist and externalist ones). At any rate, I will assume for our purposes here that someone, A, has knowledge that p if A has a true belief that p and A has a justification for believing that p that does not rely on some other false belief (see, for example, Moser 1989). This is consistent with knowledge also being true belief and/or being true belief as a result of a reliable method that is unknown to the knower.…”

Section: Epistemic Actionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Assertions, joint epistemic actions and social practices

Miller

2015

Synthese

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Important noteTo cite this publication, please use the final published version (if applicable). Please check the document version above. CopyrightOther than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons. Takedown policyPlease contact us and provide details if you believe this document breaches copyrights. We will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Synthese (2016) 193:71-94 DOI 10.1007 Abstract In this paper I provide a theory of the speech act of assertion according to which assertion is a species of joint action. In doing so I rely on a theory of joint action developed in more detail elsewhere. Here we need to distinguish between the genus, joint action, and an important species of joint action, namely, what I call joint epistemic action. In the case of the latter, but not necessarily the former, participating agents have epistemic goals, e.g., the acquisition of knowledge. It is joint epistemic action that assertion is a species of. This work is downloaded from Delft University of Technology. For technical reasons the number of authors shown on this cover page is limited to a maximum of 10. Keywords Assertion · Joint action · Epistemic actionJohn MacFarlane has usefully distinguished four different types of theories of assertion (MacFarlane 2011). 1 These are as follows. To assert is to: (i) express an attitude; (ii) make a move defined by the constitutive rules of assertion; (iii) add information to the conversational common ground; and (iv) undertake a commitment. Theorists advocating type (i) accounts include Williams (2003), Grice (1969), and Bach and Harnish (1979). The attitude expressed is belief in the case of Williams and various different audience-directed intentions in the case of Grice and Bach/Harnish. The most well-known version of type (ii) accounts is that of Williamson (1996, p. 494) according to which there is a (constitutive) knowledge rule to the effect that one must assert that 1 I note that some versions of some of these theories have overlapping characteristics. Synthese (2016) 193:71-94 p only if one knows that p. 2 Other like theories deploy a truth rule or a reasonable-tobelieve rule or some such (see, for example, Douven 2006). The most influential type (iii) account is that of Robert Stalnaker according to which an assertion "should be understood as a proposal to change the context by adding the content to the information presupposed" (Stalnaker 1999, pp. 10-11). 3 Theorists advocating type (iv) accounts include John Searle (1969) and Robert Brandom (1983, 1994. According to Brandom, for example, "In asserting a sentence, one not only licences further assertions on the part of others, but commits oneself to justifying the original claim" (1983, p. 641).Each of these four types of theories, at least in a pure form, is open to damaging objections, as ...

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“…But this is an aside: for present purposes we simply need to note the compatibility. 41 This line of argument is also suggested by the contemporary defenses of "the given" in Moser 1989 andFales 1996 (although both Moser and Fales are neutral on the existence of sense-data).…”

Section: Intentionalism and Sense-datamentioning

confidence: 93%