Author:

Keywords:

Arts & Humanities, History & Philosophy Of Science, Philosophy, History & Philosophy of Science, Psychological bias, Epistemic egocentrism, Knowledge ascriptions, Classical invariantism, SUBJECT-SENSITIVE INVARIANTISM, PSYCHOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES, CONTEXTUALISM, ASCRIPTIONS, CHILDRENS, HINDSIGHT, CURSE, 0801 Artificial Intelligence and Image Processing, 2202 History and Philosophy of Specific Fields, 2203 Philosophy, 5002 History and philosophy of specific fields, 5003 Philosophy

Abstract:

Changes in conversationally salient error possibilities, and/or changes in stakes, appear to generate shifts in our judgments regarding the correct application of ‘know’. One prominent response to these shifts is to argue that they arise due to shifts in belief and do not pose a problem for traditional semantic or metaphysical accounts of knowledge (or ‘know’). Such doxastic accounts face familiar difficulties with cases where knowledge is ascribed to subjects in different practical or conversational situations from the speaker. Jennifer Nagel has recently offered an ingenious response to these problematic cases—appeal to egocentric bias. Appeal to this kind of bias also has the potential for interesting application in other philosophical arenas, including discussions of epistemic modals. In this paper, I draw on relevant empirical literature to clarify the nature of egocentric bias as it manifests in children and adults, and argue that appeal to egocentric bias is ill-suited to respond to the problem cases for doxastic accounts. Our discussion also has significant impact on the prospects for application of egocentric bias in other arenas.