Knowledge and reasoning

• Grant number: 15/02419-4
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: September 01, 2015
• End date: February 29, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Philosophy - Epistemology
• Agreement: Coordination of Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES)
• Principal Investigator: Marco Antonio Caron Ruffino
• Grantee: Rodrigo Martins Borges
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This project aims to answer the question raised first by Plato in the Theaetetus: if one is to know that something is the case on the basis of reasoning, how justified in believing the premises of one's reasoning does one need to be? I launch a detailed defense of the following answer to this question: everything else being equal, one knows the conclusion of one's inference if and only if one knows all the propositions the conclusion depends on. I call this view Knowledge from Knowledge - or KFK, for short. This is not the orthodox view of inferential knowledge in epistemology and a major task of the project will be to demonstrate the advantages of KFK over the orthodox view. Another important task to be taken up by the project is developing a knowledge norm of theoretical inference. This knowledge norm will be modeled after the knowledge norm of practical inference and will illuminate the normativity of knowledge-yielding reasoning. With respect to the ÿrst task, I will show that KFK explains all the relevant philosophical data better than the orthodox view. Pursuing this goal will lead to development of new philosophical tools such as a theory of epistemic dependence. Pursuing the second major task of the project will bring new light to the issue of the normativity of reasoning, one that is not so closely related to the alleged normativity of Logic, but, rather, is more closely related to the normativity of knowledge itself. The hope is that the project will break new ground in the epistemological research about reasoning and knowledge, stimulating new and original work on those topics. The present project moves the discussion on those topics forwards while, at the same time, being situated in the current epistemological tradition. (AU)