green numbers give full details.     |    back to list of philosophers     |     expand these ideas

Ideas of Martin Kusch, by Text

[British, fl. 2002, Professor of Philosophy and Sociology of Science at the University of Cambridge.]

2002 Knowledge by Agreement
Intro p.1 Communitarian Epistemology says 'knowledge' is a social status granted to groups of people
Intro p.12 Testimony does not just transmit knowledge between individuals - it actually generates knowledge
Intro p.13 Vindicating testimony is an expression of individualism
Ch. 4 p.30 Some want to reduce testimony to foundations of perceptions, memories and inferences
Ch. 4 p.32 Testimony won't reduce to perception, if perception depends on social concepts and categories
Ch. 4 p.38 Testimony is reliable if it coheres with evidence for a belief, and with other beliefs
Ch. 4 p.42 Omniscience is incoherent, since knowledge is a social concept
Ch. 4 n7 p.37 A foundation is what is intelligible, hence from a rational source, and tending towards truth
Ch. 5 p.49 Testimony is an area in which epistemology meets ethics
Ch. 5 p.49 Communitarianism in epistemology sees the community as the primary knower
Ch. 5 p.50 Myths about lonely genius are based on epistemological individualism
Ch. 5 p.52 Powerless people are assumed to be unreliable, even about their own lives
Ch. 5 p.55 We can have knowledge without belief, if others credit us with knowledge
Ch. 8 p.94 The coherentist restricts the space of reasons to the realm of beliefs
Ch. 8 p.99 Individualistic coherentism lacks access to all of my beliefs, or critical judgement of my assessment
Ch. 8 p.99 Foundations seem utterly private, even from oneself at a later time
Ch. 8 p.100 Justification depends on the audience and one's social role
Ch. 9 p.107 Process reliabilism has been called 'virtue epistemology', resting on perception, memory, reason
Ch. 9 p.112 Our experience may be conceptual, but surely not the world itself?
Ch.10 p.121 Individual coherentism cannot generate the necessary normativity
Ch.11 p.148 Private justification is justification to imagined other people
Ch.11 p.152 To be considered 'an individual' is performed by a society
Ch.11 p.161 Cultures decide causal routes, and they can be critically assessed
Ch.11 p.163 Natural kinds are social institutions
Ch.16 p.229 Tarskians distinguish truth from falsehood by relations between members of sets
Ch.17 p.233 Correspondence could be with other beliefs, rather than external facts
Ch.19 p.274 Methodological Solipsism assumes all ideas could be derived from one mind
Ch.19 p.276 Often socialising people is the only way to persuade them