Two defenses of epistemic impurism
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15448/1984-6746.2019.3.35108Keywords:
Epistemic Impurism, Epistemology, Inductive Risk, Philosophy of Science.Abstract
One of the basis of the epistemic tradition is the idea that practical interests do not relate with the truth conditions of knowledge ascription sentences. We will call this thesis of purism, and impurism the thesis that practical factors are constitutive of truth conditions of knowledge ascriptions sentences. In the first part we will discuss Heather Douglas’ impurist view, based on the “inductive risk” notion. For that we will
clarify what is inductive risk, arguing how it requires the idea that practical factors influence on epistemic justification. In the second part we will discuss the defense of “pragmatic encroachment” impurist principles, that is: (a) if a subject knows a proposition, then this proposition is able to figure as practical reason for this subject;
(b) knowledge changes with practical factors. At the end of this article we will trace some conclusions about how these two impurist views are related.
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