Craig 3
From Paradigm-Based Explanation to Pragmatic Genealogy
Mind 129 (515): 683–714. 2020. doi:10.1093/mind/fzy083
Why would philosophers interested in the points or functions of our conceptual practices bother with genealogical explanations if they can focus directly on paradigmatic examples of the practices we now have? This paper offers three reasons why the genealogical approach earns its keep and formulates criteria for determining when it is called for.
explanation, functions, genealogy, history, historiography, methodology
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How Genealogies Can Affect the Space of Reasons
Synthese 197 (5): 2005–2027. 2020. doi:10.1007/s11229-018-1777-9
Attempts to derive reasons from claims about the genesis of something are often said to commit the genetic fallacy—they conflate genesis and justification. One way for genealogies to side-step this objection is to focus on the functional origins of practices. But this invites a second objection, which maintains that attempts to derive current from original function suffer from continuity failure—the conditions in response to which something originated no longer obtain. This paper shows how normatively ambitious genealogies can steer clear of both problems.
genealogy, Bernard Williams, Craig, epistemology, normativity, space of reasons
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Genealogy and Knowledge-First Epistemology: A Mismatch?
The Philosophical Quarterly 69 (274): 100–120. 2019. doi:10.1093/pq/pqy041
Timothy Williamson’s knowledge-first epistemology holds that the concept of knowledge is primitive and explanatorily fundamental. This seems to leave little room for attempts to give a genealogical explanation of the concept of knowledge, much less ones that explain the formation of the concept of knowledge in terms of the concept of belief, as E.J. Craig does. Yet I argue that Craig’s genealogy of the concept of knowledge not only is compatible with knowledge-first epistemology, but actually lends succour to it.
Craig, epistemology, genealogy, methodology, Williams, knowledge-first epistemology
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