Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-xtgtn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T06:19:22.544Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

TIME CONSTRAINTS AND PRAGMATIC ENCROACHMENT ON KNOWLEDGE

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 March 2014

Joseph Shin
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Citing some recent experimental findings, I argue for the surprising claim that in some cases the less time you have the more you know. More specifically, I present some evidence to suggest that our ordinary knowledge ascriptions are sometimes sensitive to facts about an epistemic subject's truth-irrelevant time constraints such that less (time) is more (knowledge). If knowledge ascriptions are sensitive in this manner, then this is some evidence of pragmatic encroachment. Along the way, I consider comments made by Jonathan Schaffer (2006) and Jennifer Nagel (2008, 2010) to construe a purist contextualist and a strict invariantist explanation of the data respectively, before giving reasons to resist them in favor of an account that indicates pragmatic encroachment. If successful, this may suggest a new way to argue for the controversial thesis that there is pragmatic encroachment on knowledge.

Type
Articles
Information
Episteme , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , June 2014 , pp. 157 - 180
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2014 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Baril, A. 2012. ‘Pragmatic Encroachment in Accounts of Epistemic Excellence.’ Synthese, 190: 1–24.Google Scholar
Beebe, J. and Buckwalter, W. 2010. ‘The Epistemic Side-Effect Effect.’ Mind and Language, 25: 474–98.Google Scholar
Brown, J. 2013. ‘Experimental Philosophy, Contextualism and SSI.’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 86: 233–61.Google Scholar
Brown, J. 2014. ‘Impurism, Practical Reasoning, and the Threshold Problem.’ Noûs, 48(1): 179–92.Google Scholar
Buckwalter, W. 2010. ‘Knowledge isn't Closed on Saturday: A Study in Ordinary Language.’ Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 1: 395–406.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buckwalter, W. and Schaffer, J. 2013. ‘Knowledge, Stakes and Mistakes.’ Noûs, 47: 1–34.Google Scholar
Code, L. 1987. Epistemic Responsibility. Hanover, NH: University Press of New England.Google Scholar
Cohen, S. 1988. ‘How to be a Fallibilist.’ Philosophical Perspectives, 2: 91–123.Google Scholar
DeRose, K. 1992. ‘Contextualism and Knowledge Attributions.’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 52: 913–29.Google Scholar
DeRose, K. 2009. The Case for Contextualism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
DeRose, K.. 2011. ‘Contextualism, Contrastivism, and X-Phi Surveys.’ Philosophical Studies 156: 81–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fantl, J. and McGrath, M. 2002. ‘Evidence, Pragmatics, and Justification.’ The Philosophical Review, 111: 67–94.Google Scholar
Fantl, J. and McGrath, M. 2007. ‘On Pragmatic Encroachment in Epistemology.’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 75: 558–89.Google Scholar
Fantl, J. and McGrath, M.. 2009. Knowledge in an Uncertain World. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Fantl, J. and McGrath, M.. 2011. ‘Pragmatic Encroachment.’ In Bernecker, S. and Pritchard, D. (eds), The Routledge Companion to Epistemology, pp. 558–68. New York, NY: Routledge.Google Scholar
Feltz, A. and Zarpentine, C. 2010. ‘Do You know More When it Matters Less?’ Philosophical Psychology, 23: 683–706.Google Scholar
Grimm, S.R. 2011. ‘On Intellectualism in Epistemology.’ Mind, 120: 705–33.Google Scholar
Harman, G. 1973. Thought. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Hawthorne, J. 2004. Knowledge and Lotteries. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hawthorne, J. and Stanley, J. 2008. ‘Knowledge and Action.’ Journal of Philosophy, Special Issue: Epistemic Norms, 105: 571–90.Google Scholar
Knobe, J. 2003. ‘Intentional Action and Side Effects in Ordinary Language.’ Analysis, 63: 190–3.Google Scholar
Kornblith, H. 1983. ‘Justified Belief and Epistemically Responsible Action.’ Philosophical Review, 92(1): 33–48.Google Scholar
Knobe, J. and Schaffer, J. 2012. ‘Contrastive Knowledge Surveyed.’ Noûs, 46: 675–708.Google Scholar
Kruglanski, A. and Webster, D. 1991. ‘Group Members' Reaction to Opinion Deviates and Conformists at Varying Degrees of Proximity to Decision Deadline and Environmental Noise.’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61: 212–25.Google Scholar
Kruglanski, A. and Webster, D. 1996. ‘Motivated Closing of the Mind ‘Seizing and ‘Freezing.’’ Psychological Review 103: 263–83.Google Scholar
Lewis, D. 1996. Elusive Knowledge. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 74: 549–67.Google Scholar
Lycan, W. 1977. ‘Evidence One Does not Possess.’ Australian Journal of Philosophy, 55: 114–26.Google Scholar
May, J., Sinnot-Armstrong, W., Hull, J.G. & Zimmerman, A. 2010. ‘Practical Interests, Relevant Alternatives, and Knowledge Attributions: An Empirical Study.’ Review of Philosophy and Psychology, 1: 265–73.Google Scholar
McAllister, D.W., Mitchell, T.R. & Beech, L.R. 1979. ‘Contingency-Model for the Selection of Decision Strategies – Empirical-Test of the Effects of Significance, Accountability, and Reversibility.’ Organizational Behavior and Human Performance, 24: 228–44.Google Scholar
Montmarquet, J. 1992. ‘Epistemic Virtue and Doxastic Responsibility.’ American Philosophical Quarterly, 28(4): 331–41.Google Scholar
Nagel, J. 2008. ‘Knowledge Ascriptions and the Psychological Consequences of Caning Stakes.’ Australian Journal of Philosophy, 86: 279–94.Google Scholar
Nagel, J. 2010. ‘Epistemic Anxiety and Adaptive Invariantism.’ Philosophical Perspectives, 24: 407–23.Google Scholar
Pinillos, N.Á. 2012. ‘Knowledge, Experiments and Practical Interests.’ In Brown, J. and Gerken, M. (eds), New Essays On Knowledge Ascriptions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pinillos, N.Á and Simpson, S. Forthcoming. ‘Experiment Evidence in Support of Anti-Intellectualism About Knowledge.’ In Beebe, J.A. (ed.), Advances in Experimental Epistemology. London: Bloomsbury Academic.Google Scholar
Schaffer, J. 2006. ‘The Irrelevance of The Subject: Against Subjective Sensitive Invariantism.’ Philosophical Studies, 127: 87–107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sripada, C. and Stanley, J. 2012. ‘Empirical Tests of Interest-Relative Invariantism.’ Episteme, 9: 3–26.Google Scholar
Stanley, J. 2005. Knowledge and Practical Interests. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Zagzebski, L. 1999. ‘What is Knowledge?’ In Greco, J. and Sosa, E. (eds), The Blackwell Guide to Epistemology. Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.Google Scholar