Epistemology for the Rest of the World
「残りの世界」のための認識論
世界各地的認識論
세계의 나머지 부분에 대한 인식론
दुनिया के बाकी के लिए ज्ञान - मीमांसा
An International Conference on Epistemology,
Linguistic Diversity & Cultural Diversity
Since
the heyday of ordinary language philosophy, epistemologists have devoted a
great deal of attention to the English word ‘know’ and to English sentences used to
attribute knowledge. When someone says
“S knows that p”, what does the word ‘knows’ mean? What concept does it express? How should that concept be analyzed? More recently, contextualists have argued
that the truth conditions for “S knows that p,” or the proposition it
expresses, varies depending on the context of the speaker. Invariantists have used sophisticated
linguistic arguments to challenge contextualism, and some of them, the
subject-sensitive invariantists who embrace the pragmatic encroachment thesis,
have gone on to claim that the truth conditions of ‘S knows that p’ are
sensitive to factors like how important the truth of p is to S. In all of this literature, hypothetical cases
play an important role. A situation is
described, almost always in English, and then philosophers judge whether it is
true that in that situation, S knows that p, or whether saying “S knows that p”
is false, or deviant, or intuitively unacceptable. With the emergence of experimental
philosophy, it has become increasingly common to present these scenarios to
ordinary English speakers, and ask them to judge whether it’s true that S knows
that p.
But
English is just one of over 6000 languages spoken around the world. Though it is the third most common language,
it is the native language of less than 6% of the world’s population. And
when Western epistemology first emerged, in ancient Greece, English did not
exist. So why should we think that facts
about the English word “know,” the concept it expresses, or subtle semantic
properties of “S knows that p” have important implications for
epistemology?
One
possible answer invokes what might be called the “universality thesis,” which
claims that the properties of the English word “know” and the English sentence ‘S
knows that p’ that have been studied by epistemologists are shared by the translations
of these expressions in most or all languages.
If the universality thesis is true, then the Chinese and Japanese and
Korean and Hindi translations of ‘know’ all express the same concept. So when we have a good account of the concept
expressed by the English verb ‘know’ we will have a good account of the concept of knowledge. And if it is established that contextualism
is true for ‘S knows that p,’ then contextualism is true for knowledge
attributions in most languages.
If the
universality thesis turns out to be true, it will be a remarkable fact that
cries out for an explanation. But there
is currently very little reason to think that the universality thesis is true, since little or nothing is
known about the meaning and use of epistemic terms in languages other than English. What little is known looks to point in the
other direction. For example, in
Japanese there are two words used to translate ‘know’ in propositional
knowledge attributions, ‘Shitte-iru’ and ‘Wakatte-iru’, neither of which has
the same extension as ‘know’.
If the
universality thesis is false, what are the implications for epistemology? Should epistemologists study knowledge
attributions in languages other than English with the same diligence they have
shown for the study of English knowledge attributions? If not, why not? Are the concepts expressed by ‘Shitte-iru,’
‘Wakatte-iru’ and the epistemic terms in other languages as important for
epistemology as the concept expressed by ‘know’? If not, why not? If pragmatic encroachment is true for knowledge
attributions in English but not for knowledge attributions in Korean, what, if
anything, does this tell us about the questions that philosophers interested in
epistemology have been asking since the Meno? Would findings like this support Allan
Hazlett’s provocative suggestion that epistemologists should “stop looking at
linguistic phenomena altogether?”
This
conference will be bringing together philosophers, linguists, psychologists and
social scientists from Asia and the West to discuss and debate both the
empirical and the philosophical questions raised by linguistic and cultural
diversity in the epistemic domain. Does
the available evidence suggest that the universality thesis is false? If so, in what ways do the concepts expressed
by ‘know’ and its counterparts in different languages differ? What do we know, and how can we learn more,
about the workings of knowledge attributions in languages quite different from
English? And what should philosophers
interested in epistemology make of all this?
We
strongly encourage participation by philosophers, linguists and psychologists
who are knowledgeable about the languages and cultures of non-Western
countries, and of Western philosophers who are interested in epistemology for
the rest of the world.
Date and
Venue:
August 8 and
9, 2013, Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST) Tokyo Satellite
Office, Shinagawa Tokyo, Japan http://www.jaist.ac.jp/satellite/sate/eng/index.html
Organizing Committee:
Stephen
Stich, Rutgers University
Masaharu
Mizumoto, JAIST
Yukihiro Nobuhara,
Tokyo University
Eric
McCready, Aoyama Gakuin University
People
interested in presenting their work at the conference should send an Abstract
to Prof. Masaharu Mizumoto (mizumoto@jaist.ac.jp).
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