Knowledge and Practical Interests

by Jason Stanley

Overview

Jason Stanley presents a startling and provocative claim about knowledge: that whether or not someone knows a proposition at a given time is in part determined by his or her practical interests, i.e. by how much is at stake for that person at that time. So whether a true belief is knowledge is not merely a matter of supporting beliefs or reliability; in the case of knowledge, practical rationality and theoretical rationality are intertwined. Stanley defends this thesis against alternative accounts of the phenomena that motivate it, such as the claim that knowledge attributions are linguistically context-sensitive (contextualism about knowledge attributions), and the claim that the truth of a knowledge claim is somehow relative to the person making the claim (relativism about knowledge).

In the course of his argument Stanley introduces readers to a number of strategies for resolving philosophical paradox, making the book essential not just for specialists in epistemology but for all philosophers interested in philosophical methodology. Since a number of his strategies appeal to linguistic evidence, it will be of great interest to linguists as well.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780199230433
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	01/06/2008
Series:	Lines of Thought
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	204
Product dimensions:	7.80(w) x 5.20(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey

Table of Contents

IntroductionChapter 1. ContextualismChapter 2. Knowledge Ascriptions and GradabilityChapter 3. Knowledge Ascriptions and Context-SensitivityChapter 4. Contextualism on the Cheap? Chapter 5. Interest-Relative InvariantismChapter 6. Interest-Relative Invariantism vs. ContextualismChapter 7. Interest-Relative Invariantism vs. RelativismChapter 8. Contextualism, Interest-Relativism, and Philosophical ParadoxChapter 9. Conclusion