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Since the heyday of ordinary language philosophy, Anglophone epistemologists have devoted a great deal of attention to the English word 'know' and to English sentences used to attribute knowledge. Even today, many epistemologists, including contextualists and subject-sensitive invariantists are concerned with the truth conditions of "S knows that p," or the proposition it expresses. In all of this literature, the method of cases is used, where a situation is described in English, and then philosophers judge whether it is true that S knows that p, or whether saying "S knows that p" is false, deviant, etc. in that situation.However, English is just one of over 6000 languages spoken around the world, and is the native language of less than 6% of the world's population. When Western epistemology first emerged, in ancient Greece, English did not even exist. So why should we think that facts about the English word "know," the concept it expresses, or subtle semantic properties of "S knows that p" have important implications for epistemology? Are the properties of the English word "know" and the English sentence 'S knows that p' shared by their translations in most or all languages? If that turned out to be true, it would be a remarkable fact that cries out for an explanation. But if it turned out to be false, what are the implications for epistemology? Should epistemologists study knowledge attributions in languages other than English with the same diligence they have shown for the study of English knowledge attributions? If not, why not? In what ways do the concepts expressed by 'know' and its counterparts in different languages differ? And what should epistemologists make of all this?The papers collected here discuss these questions and related issues, and aim to contribute to this important topic and epistemology in general.
This collection of essays investigates whether the heavy reliance on the English word 'know' in contemporary epistemology limits the universal validity of the field's findings. The authors, including Eric McCready, Masaharu Mizumoto, and Stephen P. Stich, argue that the current focus on English-language knowledge attributions may be parochial. By examining how different languages express the concept of knowledge, the contributors challenge the assumption that English-based semantic properties are representative of human cognition or universal epistemological truths.
What You Will Find
Scope Limits
Scholars in the field view this collection as a necessary intervention in analytic philosophy, pushing for a more globalized approach to conceptual analysis. Readers frequently note the academic density of the prose, which requires a strong background in both formal epistemology and linguistic theory to fully grasp the arguments presented.
Page Count:
315
Publication Date:
2018-01-01
Publisher:
Oxford University Press
ISBN-10:
0190865105
ISBN-13:
9780190865108
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