Epistemology

This course investigates the philosophical views of one of the most prominent philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century, Donald Davidson.  We will focus on his later work, which is not so widely discussed as his earlier work, and which revolves around the articulation and defence of his triangulation argument, an argument that purports to shed light on the nature and possibility of language and thought.  We will discuss and assess the plausibility of various interpretations of the argument, exploring its implications for how we conceive of the relationship between mind and world.  Readings will include papers by Davidson and responses by his critics. (B) (III)

The concept of alienation is central to the practical philosophy of Hegel and Marx. Following the work of the latter, the notion became a basic critical concept of social theory: under certain social conditions human agents are said to be alienated from their own agency. When the notion of alienation is discussed in contemporary analytic action theory and ethics, it tends to appear primarily as a tension or contradiction within the mind: as an estrangement from one’s own desires or from demands, norms, or ideals one is aware of. This internalization stands in stark contrast to the considerations that appear under that heading in the work Hegel and Marx. Here, the whole discussion is framed through the idea that one can only know one’s own agency through its realization in the world. Consequently, the problem of alienation appears as the impossibility of seeing oneself in one’s work.

Given the conceptual frameworks on offer in contemporary analytic action theory, it is not clear whether one can make sense of a critique of social conditions along these lines. The current debate on knowledge of one’s own actions divides into two main camps. The one side defines the human condition as one where one necessarily encounters one’s deeds just like other events in world: as alien and given from without. The other side defines intentional action as necessarily known by its subject from within or self-consciously. In consequence, there seems to be no space for a critique of alienation: either because it seems inevitable or because it seems impossible. One of the central questions of the seminar will be how one has to understand human agency such that alienation is conceivable.

On closer inspection, what Marx’ calls “alienation” seems to be ultimately a privation of the kind of practical knowledge that Aristotle calls “practical wisdom” (phronesis) and the correlated form of agency that he calls praxis. We will discuss Marx’ account in relation to Aristotle’s and Hegel’s developments of these concepts as well as in relation the discussion of practical reasoning, practical knowledge, and practical truth in the work of contemporary philosophers such as G.E.M. Anscombe, Philippa Foot, Christine Korsegaard, Gilbert Ryle, and Michael Thompson. Marx famously distinguishes four dimensions of alienation: the workers is said to be alienated (1) from their products, (2) from the act of production, (3) from the human form of life, and (4) from their fellow human beings. We will consider the respective practical categories and the correlated forms of practical cognition. (I) (III)

In one of his most widely read pieces of writing—the chapter of his Essay Concerning Human Understanding called “Of Identity and Diversity”—John Locke writes: “[S]ince consciousness always accompanies thinking, and ‘tis that, that makes every one to be, what he calls self; and thereby distinguishes himself from all other thinking things, in this alone consists personal Identity, i.e. the sameness of rational Being: And as far as this consciousness can be extended backwards to any past Action or Thought, so far reaches the Identity of that Person…”  Locke’s account of personal identity has puzzled, annoyed, and inspired readers since it was published in the second edition of his Essay, in 1694. One aim of this course will be to find a coherent reading of it, one that considers objections that later writers—most famously Butler and Reid—made to it as well as some recent readings of it. Part of the point of this endeavor will be to see what, if anything, we still can learn from Locke concerning what a person is. A second aim of the course will be to arrive at an understanding of consciousness that makes sense in light of what we’ve learned about persons and personal identity from Locke. (III)

In this seminar we will explore a set of interrelated topics in the philosophy of action. These include: the purposive structure of practical reason, the nature of the relationship between means and ends, the idea of ‘practical inference’, and the place of causation in the understanding of intentional agency. Course readings comprise a manuscript by the course instructor in conjunction with a constellation of primarily contemporary writings on these topics. (III)

In this course, we will examine the psychological bases of knowledge and inquire into their wider epistemological significance. Our guiding aim is to understand
some of the ways in which our reliance on intuition, heuristics, and gut feelings shape our attitudes toward “fake news”—or deliberate misinformation and manipulation—in its many guises. Three questions will guide our investigation. First, how should insights about the rationality (or lack thereof) of gut feelings inform the way we think about fundamental issues in epistemology? We will consider, for example, justification, the nature of evidence, the reliability of testimony, and intellectual virtues and
vices. Second, might some of the reasoning biases that are typically deemed irrational be, at least in some contexts, rational? Third, insofar as our gut feelings do produce irrational behavior, what lessons should we draw about our own thinking and the ways in which we evaluate and engage in discourse? What normative principles might we adopt that both (a) give due place to our deep dependence upon gut feelings and (b) help mitigate their potentially pernicious effects? (B)

Philosophers have long drawn inspiration for their views about the nature of human cognition, the structure of language, and the foundations of knowledge, from developments in the field of artificial intelligence. In recent years, the study of artificial intelligence has undergone a remarkable resurgence, in large part owing to the invention of so-called “deep” neural networks, which attempt to instantiate models of cognitive neurological development in a computational setting. Deep neural networks have been successfully deployed to perform a wide variety of machine learning tasks, including image recognition, natural language processing, financial fraud detection, social network filtering, drug discovery, and cancer diagnoses, to name just a few. While, at present, the ethical implications of these new and powerful systems are a topic of much philosophical scrutiny, the epistemological significance of deep learning has garnered significantly less attention.

In this course, we will attempt to understand and assess some of the bold epistemological claims that have been made on behalf of deep neural networks. To what extent can deep learning be represented within the framework of existing theories of statistical and causal inference, and to what extent does it represent a new epistemological paradigm? Are deep neural networks genuinely theory-neutral, as it is sometimes claimed, or does the underlying architecture of these systems encode substantive theoretical assumptions and biases? Without the aid of a background theory or statistical model, how can we, the users of a deep neural network, be in a position to trust the reliability of its predictions? In principle, are there any cognitive tasks with respect to which deep neural networks are incapable of outperforming human expertise? Do recent developments in artificial intelligence shed any new light on traditional philosophical questions about the capacity of machines to act intelligently, or the computational and mechanistic bases of human cognition? (B) (II)

In this course we will explore some of the central questions in epistemology and metaphysics. In epistemology, these questions will include: What is knowledge? What facts or states justify a belief? How can the threat of skepticism be adequately answered? How do we know what we (seem to) know about mathematics and morality? In metaphysics, these questions will include: What is time? What is the best account of personal identity across time? Do we have free will? We will also discuss how the construction of a theory of knowledge ought to relate to the construction of a metaphysical theory-roughly speaking, what comes first, epistemology or metaphysics? (B)

For each second of John’s life, consider the claim that he is young at that second. Many of these claims will be clearly true: he is young at all of the seconds that make up the first year of his life. Many of these claims will be clearly false: he is not young at all of the seconds that make up his 89th year. If all of these statements are either true or false, it follows that there was a last second at which it is true to say that he is young, and a first second at which it is true to say that he is not young. But that seems wild! One second can’t make the difference between a young person and an old person.

This is one of the central problems raised by the phenomenon of vagueness. This course will examine a variety of philosophical issues raised by the phenomenon of vagueness in the philosophy of language, philosophical logic, epistemology, and metaphysics. Among other things, we will discuss: the philosophical significance of vagueness, the relationship between vagueness and ignorance, decision-making under indeterminacy, and the question of whether vagueness is an essentially linguistic phenomenon. (B)

This course will cover a variety of topics at the intersection of epistemology and the philosophy of language.  Some possible topics: the relationship partial belief and full belief; self-locating belief; what it is to believe (or know) that something might be the case or that something must be the case; probabilities of conditionals and conditional probabilities. (III)

Traditionally, epistemologists have concerned themselves with the individual: What should I believe? What am I in a position to know? How should my beliefs guide my decision-making? But we can also ask each of these questions about groups. What should we -- the jury, the committee, the scientific community--believe? What can we know? How should our beliefs guide our decision-making? These are some of the questions of social epistemology Social epistemology also deals with the social dimensions of individual opinion:  How should I respond to disagreement with my peers? When should I defer to majority opinion? Are there distinctively epistemic forms of oppression and injustice?  If so, what are they like and how might we try to combat them? This class is a broad introduction to social epistemology. (B) (III)