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On Folk Epistemology exlpores how we ascribe knowledge to ourselves and others. Mikkel Gerken draws on both cognitive psychology and traditional philosophical reflection, while also contributing to epistemology, to lay the foundation for the study of folk epistemology.
List of contents
- Introduction
- Part I: Puzzles
- 1: Thought and talk about knowledge
- 2: Puzzling patterns of knowledge ascriptions
- 3: Theoretical responses and methodology
- 4: Arguments for strict purist invariantism
- Part II: Resources
- 5: The psychology of knowledge ascriptions
- 6: The epistemic norms of action
- 7: The epistemic norms of assertion
- 8: Cognition and communication - towards a unified account
- Part III: Diagnoses
- 9: Staging a strict purist invariantist comeback
- 10: Diagnosing salient alternative effects
- 11: Diagnosing contrast effects
- 12: Diagnosing practical factor effects
- Coda: Folk epistemology and epistemic injustice
- Appendix
About the author
Mikkel Gerken (PhD, UCLA 2007) is a Danish philosopher. His research revolves around theory of knowledge and philosophy of mind but it is often integrated with theories of language and communication, cognitive psychology, philosophy of science and philosophical methodology. Gerken was an associate professor at the University of Edinburgh before returning to his native Denmark, where he is now an associate professor at the University of Southern Denmark. He is an elected member of The Young Academy under the Royal Danish Academy of the Sciences and was awarded a Young Elite Researcher prize from the Danish Ministry of Science.
Summary
On Folk Epistemology explores how we ascribe knowledge to ourselves and others. Empirical evidence suggests that we do so early and often in thought as well as in talk. Since knowledge ascriptions are central to how we navigate social life, it is important to understand our basis for making them.
A central claim of the book is that factors that have nothing to do with knowledge may lead to systematic mistakes in everyday ascriptions of knowledge. These mistakes are explained by an empirically informed account of how ordinary knowledge ascriptions are the product of cognitive heuristics that are associated with biases. In developing this account, Mikkel Gerken presents work in cognitive psychology and pragmatics, while also contributing to epistemology. For example, Gerken develops positive epistemic norms of action and assertion and moreover, critically assesses contextualism, knowledge-first methodology, pragmatic encroachment theories and more. Many of these approaches are argued to overestimate the epistemological significance of folk epistemology. In contrast, this volume develops an equilibristic methodology according to which intuitive judgments about knowledge cannot straightforwardly play a role as data for epistemological theorizing. Rather, critical epistemological theorizing is required to interpret empirical findings. Consequently, On Folk Epistemology helps to lay the foundation for an emerging sub-field that intersects philosophy and the cognitive sciences: The empirical study of folk epistemology.
Additional text
A must read for anyone interested in thinking about folk epistemology ... I expect [Gerken's] endeavor to explain a wide variety of intuitive epistemic assessments by appealing to cognitive and communicative heuristics to have a lasting discipline-shaping impact on the empirical study of folk epistemology. ... The book will be of interest not only to epistemologists of all stripes and experimental philosophers who study folk epistemology but also to anyone interested in understanding what a philosophically astute, empirically informed engagement with the scientific study of mental state attributions can look like.
