
Sanford Goldberg investigates the role that others play in our attempts to acquire knowledge of the world. Two main forms of this reliance are examined: testimony cases, where a subject aims to acquire knowledge through accepting what another tells her; and cases involving "coverage", where a subject aims to acquire knowledge of something by reasoning that if things were not so she would have heard about it by now. Goldberg argues that these cases challenge some cherished assumptions in epistemology. Testimony cases challenge the assumption, prominent in reliabilist epistemology, that the processes through which beliefs are formed never extend beyond the boundaries of the individual believer. And both sorts of case challenge the idea that, insofar knowledge is a cognitive achievement, it is an achievement that belongs to the knowing subject herself. Goldberg uses results of this sort to question the broadly individualistic orthodoxy within reliabilist epistemology, and to explore what a non-orthodox reliabilist epistemology would look like. The resulting theory is a social-reliabilist epistemology -- one that results from the application of reliabilist criteria to situations in which belief-fixation involves epistemic reliance on others. Sanford Goldberg presents an important contribution both to the reliability literature in general epistemology and to the social epistemology of testimony and related topics.
This work investigates the extent to which human knowledge acquisition is dependent upon the cognitive contributions and testimony of others. Sanford C. Goldberg, a scholar in the field of epistemology, evaluates the limitations of individualistic reliabilism by examining how belief-fixation processes often extend beyond the boundaries of the solitary subject. He proposes a social-reliabilist framework that accounts for the epistemic reliance inherent in testimony and information coverage.
What You Will Find
Scope Limits
Experts recognize this text as a significant contribution to the literature on social epistemology and the reliability of belief-forming processes. Readers frequently note the academic density of the prose, which is intended for advanced students and professional philosophers.
Page Count:
219
Publication Date:
2010-01-01
Publisher:
OUP Oxford
ISBN-10:
0191615633
ISBN-13:
9780191615634
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