Extended knowledge and autonomous belief

Bibliographic Data

ID21335670
AuthorsDuncan Pritchard (0000-0002-5997-0752, Department of Philosophy, University of California, Irvine, CA, USA, corresponding author)
Year2023
Pages1-12
Publication date2023-07-20
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueInquiry (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-174X • E-ISSN: 1502-3923
PublisherInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/0020174x.2023.2238291
OpenAlexW4384926677
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited37

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 the subject. Carter’s solution is to argue that we need to impose an additional autonomy condition on knowledge that excludes such cases of non-autonomous knowledge. In response, two points of criticism are offered. First, that when extended knowledge is properly understood, virtue-theoretic accounts of knowledge can already exclude non-autonomous knowledge without the need of an additional epistemic condition. Second, that the cases that Carter offers of putatively non-autonomous knowledge involve the inclusive folk notion of belief rather than the more restrictive notion of belief that is relevant to epistemology (K-apt belief). Once it is recognized that the belief condition on knowledge concerns this more restrictive notion, then we already have the means to exclude cases of non-autonomous knowledge (regardless of which theory of knowledge one favors)

Agency (philosophy) · Autonomy · Cognition · Cognitive science · Criticism · Epistemology · Political science · Subject (documents) · Computer Science · Embodied and Extended Cognition · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Philosophy · Psychology · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment

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