Re: "Doing" Epistemology?

[Luis Johnstone <luisjohnstone@onetel.net>]

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Greetings,


djf500 says:
"Saying that epistemologists study knowledge isn't question begging. 
Nobody needs to assume that there is such a thing as x before s/he 
studies it. The results of the study might indicate that there is no 
such thing, or that it's different to what s/he first thought. 
Phlogistonists, i'm sure, study phlogiston."

Well, of course it isn't as long as you ignore everything I said in my 
last reply about knowledge being what people possess. If I know that-P 
then that is a token of knowledge. The epistemologist is interested in 
what conditions are necessary and sufficient to make that knowledge 
possible- in other words under what possible conditions would S know that-P.
Moreover, your comparison with phlogiston is entirely disingenuous. 
Whilst such scientists were mistaken that phlogiston exists they based 
that belief upon evidence that did exist. What is question-begging is 
the assumption that 'evidence' is evidence for X. After all, how do you 
know that evidence X is evidence of phlogiston/ knowledge? Well, in the 
case of knowledge you already need some conception of what knowledge 
would be like and therefore what would count as evidence for its 
existence. But even this concedes too much to your comments because 
epistemologists are not in the business of proving that knowledge exists 
(at least not directly). Rather they are in the business of describing 
the possible conditions of knowledge. Your comments reveal a conflation 
of epistemology and ontology: to say that the conditions for knowledge 
are such and such does not entail the claim that such conditions are 
ever satisfied. As such phlogiston theorists are setting out the 
conditions which they think support the view that phlogiston exists and 
it is up to empirical investigation to see if those conditions are, in 
fact, met and the same goes for epistemology.


djf500 says:
"I agree that epistemologists do not compile encyclopedia. I didn't say 
that they do and i'm not sure how I (apparently) implied it. I said that 
epistemologists study knowledge qua knowledge, thinking that that 
implied that I agreed about this point. Studying F qua F means that you 
are studying F-ness, as it were, independently of any Fx, even if all F 
appears in Fx. All this means with regard to your original point is that 
it is coherent and correct to say that 'epistemologists study 
knowledge', because there is a sense of that sentence (as we usually use 
it) that includes 'epistemologists study knowledge qua knowledge'. You 
can doubt that analysis if you treat 'knowledge-qua-knowledge' as one 
object, but I don't know of any such thing!"

OK, let me get this straight:'
1. epistemologists studyness F'ness (I assume that would be the property 
of having knowledge?)
2. epistemologists do not compile lists of knowledge-tokens.

So I assume this means that epistemologists must study knowledge-tokens, 
right? (rather than merely listing them).
In that case how do they manage to study those tokens? How do they 
identify them? What stops them from studying tokens that are not 
knowledge and thereby constructing theories which are completely opposed 
to genuine knowledge? To use the epistemologist's jargon, their success 
or failure would be a matter of epistemic luck and therefore they do not 
know what knowledge is. Therefore, your position likens the 
epistemologist to someone whom plays the lottery in the hopes of hitting 
the jackpot- maybe they will get lucky, maybe they won't- but it's just 
luck because they don't know what the correct numbers are. Indeed, your 
failure to admit the criterion that epistemologists study possible 
conditions of knowing entails that our gambling-epistemologists are 
completely ignorant. A professional gambler might develop a system which 
marginally increase his chances of winning if he studies the possible 
conditions of winning. If he doesn't and just guesses then he's 
completely ignorant. Our epistemologist is equally ignorant if he/ she 
doesn't study the possible conditions of knowledge.


djf500 says:
"As for epistemologists not knowing what knowledge is, i'm sure there 
are a few who think that they do. Maybe they don't in fact know, but 
you'd at least have to argue with each one who thinks that s/he does 
before you could assert that!"

I suppose that I'm being naughty and slipping into internalist speak. 
Yes, it may be true that S knows that-P but I think that for the 
epistemologist there must be a different sense of 'knows'. You see, I'm 
not convinced that satisfying an epistemologists theorized conditions of 
knowing entails empirical verification. However, I think that the 
ultimate test of an epistemological theory is in some sense empirical 
evidence. I'll talk more about intuition in my next e-mail to Pete 
Wolfendale but I consider it a poor test of a theory. I'd say more but 
I'll leave it for others to discuss. Instead, I'll simply raise a couple 
of issues: if the knowledge of epistemologists is dependent upon 
empirical evidence then that knowledge is always defeasible in theory. 
In that case, how does that affect the role that some perceive for 
epistemology in philosophy?

P.S. I didn't say that you gave no formal argument (for neither did I). 
I simply meant that with each point I made I gave a motivation for 
accepting the point.

In any case, thank you for your reply :-)

Luis.


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