Duncan Pritchard
Dados Biográficos
| ID | 965536 |
|---|---|
| NOME | Duncan Pritchard |
| PRENOMES | Duncan |
| SOBRENOME | Pritchard |
| ASSINATURA | PRITCHARD D |
| AFILIAÇÕES | University of California, Irvine |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5997-0752 |
| VERIFICADO | Sim |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 77 |
| TOTAL DE CITAÇÕES | 194 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 70 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 7 |
| PRIMEIRO ANO DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2001 |
| ANO MAIS RECENTE DE PUBLICAÇÃO | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 8 |
The Safety Versus Sensitivity Debate Revisited
It is widely accepted that there is a modal condition on knowledge. There are two main candidates in the literature: safety and sensitivity. My goal in this paper is to revisit this debate in the context of anti-risk epistemology. This approach is meant to offer an independent way of determining the modal condition on knowledge (i.e., as opposed to simply pitching modal conditions against one another and seeing which one accommodates the wider ra…
Virtuous Arguing With Conviction and Humility
Can one enter into an argument with one’s intellectual equals in good faith if one regards the matter in hand as already settled? Adopting such an attitude looks very much like taking a dogmatic stance, in that one is closing one’s mind to counterarguments in advance. Dogmatism is, of course, an intellectual vice. Moreover, such dogmatism seems morally problematic, in that one is failing to treat one’s adversary with due respect. While there is c…
Epistemic Role Models
A liberal account of epistemic exemplarity for education is developed. Building on recent work in virtue epistemology, it is argued that the standard view of epistemic role models as exceptionally virtuous and imitable agents faces significant pedagogical limitations. We propose expanding this conception in two directions: by including enkratic exemplars, who demonstrate virtuous conduct despite inner conflict and thus qualify as exemplars despit…
Axiological hinge commitments
In his final notebooks, published posthumously as On Certainty , Wittgenstein set forth a radical picture of the structure of rational evaluation, one that has arational hinge commitments at its heart. Much of the focus of discussion of hinge commitments has been on the commonsense, Moorean, factual commitments that fall into this class (such as that one has hands, one’s name is such-and-such, and so on). But on a plausible rendering of the Wittg…
Religious Hinge Commitments and Ideology
In his final notebooks, published as On Certainty, Wittgenstein articulated a radical conception of the structure of rational evaluation, one that had arational hinge commitments at its heart. This proposal has recently been extended to the religious case, in the form of quasi-fideism, which treats basic religious commitments as being hinge commitments. My interest in this paper is how religious hinge commitments relate to one's fundamental ideol…
Expertise
Epistemic virtue in higher education
Epistemic virtues are character traits conducive to principled ways of thinking, leading to a life of flourishing. Recent years have witnessed an emergence of theoretical accounts describing how they develop. However, few if any studies have conducted rigorous empirical investigation into the mechanisms of intellectual virtue development. In this study, we review several significant frameworks before utilizing a randomized, pretest/posttest contr…
Understanding and veritism
My interest is in an apparent tension between two epistemological theses. The first is veritism , which is roughly the claim that truth is the fundamental epistemic good. The second is the idea that understanding is the proper goal of inquiry. The two theses seem to be in tension because the former seems to imply that the proper goal of inquiry should be truth rather than understanding. And yet there is a strong prima facie case to be made for th…
Sosa on scepticism and the background
Sosa’s influential work on virtue epistemology includes an intriguing proposal about background commitments, which he in turn relates to the Wittgensteinian notion of a hinge commitment. A critique is offered of Sosa’s proposal, particularly with regard to how he aims to apply it to the problem of radical scepticism. In light of this critique, an alternative conception of hinge commitments is offered that enables them to play a very different rol…
Beliefs, delusions, hinge commitments
It is argued that in order to properly engage with the debate regarding the ethics of belief one first needs to determine the nature of the propositional attitude in question. This point is illustrated by discussing a related topic from social philosophy, broadly conceived, concerning the nature of, and inter-relationship between, delusions and the Wittgensteinian notion of a hinge commitment. Are we to understand either or both of these notions …
Educating for Virtuous Intellectual Character and Valuing Truth
This paper explores the thesis that the overarching goal of education is to cultivate virtuous intellectual character. It is shown how finally valuing the truth is central to this theory on account of how such valuing is pivotal to intellectual virtues. This feature of the proposal might be thought to be problematic for a number of reasons. For example, it could be argued that truth is not valuable, that insisting on valuing the truth in educatio…
Understanding Deep Disagreement
The axiological account of deep disagreements is described and defended. This proposal understands this notion in terms of the existential importance of the topic of disagreement. It is argued that this account provides a straightforward explanation for the main features of deep disagreements. This proposal is then compared to the contemporary popular view that deep disagreements are essentially hinge disagreements – i.e. disagreements concerning…
Extended knowledge and autonomous belief
Adam Carter has recently presented a novel puzzle about extended knowledge – i.e. knowledge that results from extended cognitive processes. He argues that allowing for this kind of knowledge on the face of it entails that there could be instances of knowledge that are simply ‘engineered’ into the subject. The problem is that such engineered knowledge does not look genuine given that it results from processes that bypass the cognitive agency of th…
The Cambridge Handbook of Religious Epistemology
The Cambridge Handbook of Religious Epistemology, the first to appear on the topic, introduces the current state of religious epistemology and provides a discussion of fundamental topics related to the epistemology of religious belief. Its wide-ranging chapters not only survey fundamental topics, but also develop non-traditional epistemic theories and explore the religious epistemology endorsed by non-Western traditions. In the first section, Fai…
Hinge commitments and trust
According to the innovative account of the structure of rational evaluation offered by Wittgenstein in his final notebooks, published as On Certainty , our rational practices necessarily presuppose arational hinge commitments. These are everyday, apparently mundane, commitments that we are optimally certain of, but which in virtue of the ‘hinge’ role that they play in our rational practices cannot themselves enjoy rational support. Granted that t…
Epistemic Explanations
A new book by Ernest Sosa is always an event. In a philosophical age where much of the focus is on piecemeal issues, Sosa has forged ahead with a novel virtue-theoretic treatment of a range of core questions in epistemology that is self-consciously systematic. Note that ‘epistemology’ is here broadly conceived. Indeed, a key part of the Sosa project has been to enlarge the reach of mainstream epistemology and thereby draw out connections with oth…
Exploring Quasi-Fideism
Quasi-fideism and epistemic relativism
Quasi-fideism accounts for the rationality of religious belief by embracing the idea that a subject’s most fundamental religious commitments are essentially arational. It departs from standard forms of fideism, however, by contending that this feature of religious commitment does not set it apart from belief in general. Indeed, the quasi-fideist maintains, in keeping with the Wittgensteinian hinge epistemology that underlies the view, that it is …
Inculcating curiosity
There has recently been a great deal of theoretical interest in the relevance of the intellectual virtues for education, including undergraduate education. This study introduces a novel online module, as part of a larger university-wide initiative, to introduce and potentially inculcate intellectual virtue in students. Using a non-experimental pretest/posttest design, we report pilot results on student satisfaction with the module and gains acros…
Hinge commitments and common knowledge
In defence of the modal account of legal risk
This paper offers an articulation and defence of the modal account of legal risk in light of a range of objections that have been proposed against this view in the recent literature. It is argued that these objections all trade on a failure to distinguish between the modal nature of risk more generally, and the application of this modal account to particular decision-making contexts, such as legal contexts, where one must rely on a restricted bod…
Truth, Inquiry, Doubt
What is the relationship between inquiry and doubt? Understanding this relationship involves confronting a range of questions. These include: what is required to motivate inquiry, what does it take to legitimately settle inquiry, and what is the goal of inquiry (is this just whatever legitimately settles inquiry, or can it be something distinct)? These questions will be approached via the consideration of an influential proposal regarding the rel…
Ignorance and Normativity
In the contemporary epistemological literature, ignorance is normally understood as the absence of an epistemic standing, usually either knowledge or true belief. It is argued here that this way of thinking about ignorance misses a crucial ingredient, which is the normative aspect of ignorance. In particular, to be ignorant is not merely to lack the target epistemic standing, but also entails that this is an epistemic standing that one ought to h…
Omniscience and ignorance
God’s omniscience generates certain puzzles, not least regarding how such omniscience is compatible with human free will. One option in this regard is to impose limitations on the scope of God’s knowledge, but that then poses the further question of how such limitations can be compatible with God’s nature as a perfect being. I offer a novel way of approaching these questions, which appeals to what I claim is an independently motivated distinction…
Intellectual humility and the epistemology of disagreement
It is widely accepted that one strong motivation for adopting a conciliatory stance with regard to the epistemology of peer disagreement is that the non-conciliatory alternatives are incompatible with the demands of intellectual character, and incompatible with the virtue of intellectual humility in particular. It is argued that this is a mistake, at least once we properly understand what intellectual humility involves. Given some of the inherent…
Anti-luck epistemology
Cognitive ability and the extended cognition thesis
The Structure of Sceptical Arguments
Journal Article The Structure of Sceptical Arguments Get access Duncan Pritchard Duncan Pritchard University of Stirling Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 55, Issue 218, January 2005, Pages 37–52, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0031-8094.2005.00383.x Published: 16 December 2004
Knowledge‐How and Cognitive Achievement
According to reductive intellectualism, knowledge‐how just is a kind of propositional knowledge (e.g., Stanley & Williamson 2001; Stanley 2011 a , 2011 b ; Brogaard, 2008a, 2008b, 2009, 2011, 2009, 2011). This proposal has proved controversial because knowledge‐how and propositional knowledge do not seem to share the same epistemic properties, particularly with regard to epistemic luck. Here we aim to move the argument forward by offering a posit…
Epistemic Virtue and the Epistemology of Education
A certain conception of the relevance of virtue epistemology to the philosophy of education is set out. On this conception, while the epistemic goal of education might initially be promoting the pupil's cognitive success, it should ultimately move on to the development of the pupil's cognitive agency. A continuum of cognitive agency is described, on which it is ultimately cognitive achievement, and thus understanding, which is the epistemic goal …
McDowell and the New Evil Genius
Defusing epistemic relativism
Epistemic Dependence
The goal of this paper is to explore and defend the epistemic dependence of knowledge⎯roughly, the dependence of one's knowledge on factors outwith one's cognitive agency⎯and to situate this thesis within a wider framework for thinking about knowledge, one on which knowledge demands both cognitive agency and extra-agential factors.It is argued that the epistemic dependence thesis comes in both positive (knowledge-enabling) and negative (knowled…
Epistemic Angst
Support is canvassed for a novel solution to the sceptical problem regarding our knowledge of the external world. Key to this solution is the claim that what initially looks like a single problem is in fact two logically distinct problems. In particular, there are two putative sceptical paradoxes in play here, which each trade on distinctive epistemological theses. It is argued that the ideal solution to radical scepticism would thus be a biscopi…
Anti-risk epistemology and negative epistemic dependence
Support is canvassed for a new approach to epistemology called anti-risk epistemology. It is argued that this proposal is rooted in the motivations for an existing account, known as anti-luck epistemology, but is superior on a number of fronts. In particular, anti-risk epistemology is better placed than anti-luck epistemology to supply the motivation for certain theoretical moves with regard to safety-based approaches to knowledge. Moreover, anti…
Anti-luck virtue epistemology and epistemic defeat
Wittgenstein and the groundlessness of our believing
Greco on Knowledge
I discuss John Greco's paper ‘What's Wrong with Contextualism?’, in which he outlines a theory of knowledge which is virtue-theoretic while also being allied to a form of attributor contextualism about ‘knows
Hinge commitments and common knowledge
Hinge commitments and trust
According to the innovative account of the structure of rational evaluation offered by Wittgenstein in his final notebooks, published as On Certainty , our rational practices necessarily presuppose arational hinge commitments. These are everyday, apparently mundane, commitments that we are optimally certain of, but which in virtue of the ‘hinge’ role that they play in our rational practices cannot themselves enjoy rational support. Granted that t…
Wright contra McDowell on perceptual knowledge and scepticism
Axiological hinge commitments
In his final notebooks, published posthumously as On Certainty , Wittgenstein set forth a radical picture of the structure of rational evaluation, one that has arational hinge commitments at its heart. Much of the focus of discussion of hinge commitments has been on the commonsense, Moorean, factual commitments that fall into this class (such as that one has hands, one’s name is such-and-such, and so on). But on a plausible rendering of the Wittg…
Beliefs, delusions, hinge commitments
It is argued that in order to properly engage with the debate regarding the ethics of belief one first needs to determine the nature of the propositional attitude in question. This point is illustrated by discussing a related topic from social philosophy, broadly conceived, concerning the nature of, and inter-relationship between, delusions and the Wittgensteinian notion of a hinge commitment. Are we to understand either or both of these notions …
In defence of the modal account of legal risk
This paper offers an articulation and defence of the modal account of legal risk in light of a range of objections that have been proposed against this view in the recent literature. It is argued that these objections all trade on a failure to distinguish between the modal nature of risk more generally, and the application of this modal account to particular decision-making contexts, such as legal contexts, where one must rely on a restricted bod…
Intellectual virtues and the epistemic value of truth
Educating for Intellectual Humility and Conviction
It is argued that two plausible goals of the educational enterprise are (i) to develop the intellectual character, and thus the intellectual virtues, of the student, and (ii) to develop the student's intellectual self-confidence, such that they are able to have conviction in what they believe. On the face of it, however, these two educational goals seem to be in tension with one another, at least insofar as intellectual humility is a genuine inte…
Propositional epistemic luck, epistemic risk, and epistemic justification
If a subject has a true belief, and she has good evidence for it, and there’s no evidence against it, why should it matter if she doesn’t believe on the basis of the good available evidence? After all, properly based beliefs are no likelier to be true than their corresponding improperly based beliefs, as long as the subject possesses the same good evidence in both cases. And yet it clearly does matter. The aim of this paper is to explain why, and…
Omniscience and ignorance
God’s omniscience generates certain puzzles, not least regarding how such omniscience is compatible with human free will. One option in this regard is to impose limitations on the scope of God’s knowledge, but that then poses the further question of how such limitations can be compatible with God’s nature as a perfect being. I offer a novel way of approaching these questions, which appeals to what I claim is an independently motivated distinction…
Extended cognition, assistive technology and education
Anti-luck epistemology and pragmatic encroachment
Meta-Epistemological Constraints on Anti-Sceptical Theories
Radical Scepticism, Epistemological Externalism, and Closure
Many of the proposals put forward to answer the radical sceptical paradox in the recent literature have involved either blocking the sceptic's highly intuitive use of the ‘closure’ principle that knowledge is closed under known entailment or, equally implausibly, ‘contextualizing’ the knowledge operator. In contrast, it is argued here that an externalist theory of knowledge, properly understood, holds the key to meeting the sceptical paradox in a…
McKinsey Paradoxes, Radical Scepticism, and the Transmission of Knowledge across Known Entailments
Some Recent Work in Epistemology
Journal Article Some Recent Work in Epistemology Get access A Priori Justification. By Albert Casullo(Oxford UP, 2003. Pp. xiii + 249. Price £35.00.)Epistemic Justification: Internalism vs Externalism, Foundations vs Virtues. By Laurence BonJour Ernest Sosa(Oxford: Blackwell, 2003. Pp. xii + 240. Price £50.00. h/b, £16.99 p/b.)New Essays on Semantic Externalism and Self‐Knowledge. Edited by Susana Nuccetelli(MIT Press, 2003. Pp. vii + 317. Price …
Epistemology A-Z
Epistemic Luck
One of the key supposed 'platitudes' of contemporary epistemology is the claim that knowledge excludes luck. In this book, Duncan Pritchard argues that we do not need to choose between these two austere alternatives, since a closer examination of what is involved in the notion of epistemic luck reveals varieties of luck that are compatible with knowledge possession and varieties that aren't. Moreover, Pritchard shows that a more nuanced understan…
Epistemological Contextualism
Epistemological contextualism has become one of the most important and widely discussed new proposals in the theory of knowledge. This special issue contributes to the debate by bringing together some of the main participants to provide a state‐of‐the‐art discussion of the proposal. Here we offer a brief overview of the contextualist position, describe some of the main lines of criticism that have been levelled against the view, and present a sum…
The Structure of Sceptical Arguments
Journal Article The Structure of Sceptical Arguments Get access Duncan Pritchard Duncan Pritchard University of Stirling Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Philosophical Quarterly, Volume 55, Issue 218, January 2005, Pages 37–52, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0031-8094.2005.00383.x Published: 16 December 2004
Duncan PRITCHARV, Epistemic Luck
Anti-luck epistemology
McDowell and the New Evil Genius
Greco on Knowledge
I discuss John Greco's paper ‘What's Wrong with Contextualism?’, in which he outlines a theory of knowledge which is virtue-theoretic while also being allied to a form of attributor contextualism about ‘knows
Knowledge, Understanding and Epistemic Value
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Safety-Based Epistemology
This paper explores the prospects for safety-based theories of knowledge in the light of some recent objections.
Williamson on knowledge
Wright contra McDowell on perceptual knowledge and scepticism
Defusing epistemic relativism
The Nature and Value of Knowledge
The three parts of the book comprise three distinct investigations under a common theme: enquiry into inter-relationships between issues about the nature of knowledge and issues about the value of knowledge. The first investigation provides an analysis of problems concerning the value of knowledge and a critical examination of responses to these by virtue epistemologists. The book finds virtue-theoretic accounts wanting and argues that there is a…
Social Epistemology
Recent epistemology has reflected a growing interest in the social dimension of the subject. This volume presents new work by leading philosophers on a wide range of topics in social epistemology, such as the nature of testimony, the epistemology of disagreement, and the social genealogy of the concept of knowledge
Cognitive ability and the extended cognition thesis
The Case for Contextualism
Book Review| July 01 2011 The Case for Contextualism: Knowledge, Skepticism, and Context DeRose, Keith, The Case for Contextualism: Knowledge, Skepticism, and Context. vol. 1. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009fpage. xiii + 288 pp. Robin McKenna; Robin McKenna Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Duncan Pritchard Duncan Pritchard Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google The Philosophical Review (2011) …
Epistemological Disjunctivism
Duncan Pritchard offers an account of perceptual knowledge arguing that it is paradigmatically constituted by true belief that enjoys rational support which is reflectively accessible to the agent. This resolves the issue between intermalism and externalism, and poses a radical challenge to contemporary epistemology.
Anti-Luck Virtue Epistemology
It is argued that there are two ‘master’ intuitions about knowledge⎯an anti-luck intuition and an ability intuition⎯and that these impose distinct epistemic demands. It is claimed that recognising this fact leads one towards a new proposal in the theory of knowledge⎯anti-luck virtue epistemology⎯which can avoid the problems that afflict other theories of knowledge. This proposal is motivated in contrast to two other ways of thinking about knowl…
Wittgenstein and the groundlessness of our believing
Rorty, Williams, and Davidson
We revisit an important exchange on the problem of radical skepticism between Richard Rorty and Michael Williams. In his contribution to this exchange, Rorty defended the kind of transcendental approach to radical skepticism that is offered by Donald Davidson, in contrast to Williams’s Wittgenstein-inspired view. It is argued that the key to evaluating this debate is to understand the particular conception of the radical skeptical problem that is…
Philosophy (70 obras) · Epistemology (68 obras) · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics (65 obras) · Philosophy and Theoretical Science (37 obras) · Computer Science (30 obras) · Metaphysics (26 obras) · Philosophy of science (25 obras) · Philosophy of language (24 obras) · Psychology (24 obras) · Sociology (23 obras)