Normativity and epistemic intuitions - Weinberg, Nichols, Stitch
2 claims
A sizable group of epistemological projects would be undermined if one or more of a cluster of empirical hypotheses about epistemic intuition turns out to be true
4 projects:
The normative project: to establish norms to guide our epistemic efforts; valuational norms
The descriptive project: Epistemic Concepts and Epistemic Language
The evaluative project: how well or poorly people’s actual belief-forming practices accord with the norms specified in the normative project
The ameliorative project: presupposes that we don’t all come out with the highest possible score in the assessment produced by the Evaluative project, and how we can improve them
Epistemic romanticism and intuition-driven romanticism for normative project
Epistemic romanticism: assume something similar to romanticism — knowledge of the correct epistemic norms is implanted within us;
E.g epistemic intuitions — intuition-driven romanticism IDR as strategies: those ones 1) must take epistemic intuitions as data or input; 2) must produce a normative output about matters epistemic; 3) the output depends on input
The normativity problem
IDR & reflective equilibrium are all trying to yield output claims that putatively have normative force but they are not ideal
In Stich’s book “The Fragmentation of Reason”: 2 groups of people who reason and form beliefs in a very different way -> different epistemic intuitions — no comparability
Cultural variation in epistemic intuitions
Nisbett and Haidt: evidence suggesting East Asians and Westerners have different epistemic intuitions -> tested by the Truetemp cases and Gettier case
Sometimes we don’t know how to explain these results
There is now a substantial body of evidence suggesting that some of those empirical hypotheses are true
Variability: Epistemic intuitions may vary significantly across different cultures, demographic groups, or individual experiences. This suggests that what some perceive as self-evident or intuitively true may not be universally acknowledged.
Fallibility: Epistemic intuitions can be influenced by irrelevant factors such as framing effects, order effects, and emotional responses. This undermines their reliability as a source of epistemic authority.
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