Epistemic Expressivism: A Normative Account of Epistemic Ascriptions

Andrés Soria Ruiz

In this work, I develop an expressivist approach to the analysis of knowledge ascriptions. Expressivism is a philosophical position that attempts to explain the meaning of various kinds of natural language expressions, rejecting that their communicative function is to describe how the world is. I wish to apply this form of analysis to a certain family of expressions, namely, those we use to ascribe knowledge. Thus, epistemic expressivism holds that knowledge ascriptions do not express factual relations between a subject and some propositional content. Rather, we use them to express our acceptance of systems of epistemic norms that change from context to context. In this work, I scrutinize two recent attempts (Chrisman 2007, Field 2009) at applying this mode of analysis to the attribution of knowledge. I argue that epistemic expressivism is more successful than its theoretical competitors –such as epistemic contextualism or invariantism– in explaining a certain array of phenomena. However, it also faces a number of problems, some of which constitute important challenges for its position. Finally, I argue that the expressivist approach conveys a sensibly relativistic picture of knowledge, which reflects our epistemic practices more accurately and which can also be positively applied in order to enrich our democratic practices.

Epimenides

Desarrollado por Global PC DI