Mini-Heap
Here is the latest edition of Mini-Heap: 10 recent items of interest to philosophers (and others interested in philosophy) from the Daily Nous Heap of Links.
(The Heap of Links consists partly of suggestions from readers; if you find something online that you think would be of interest to the philosophical community, please send it in for consideration for the Heap.)
- “Every well informed empiricist should be a standpoint epistemologist” — so argues Liam Kofi Bright (LSE)
- Unpopular opinion: philosophy edition — Elizabeth Piccuito (Maryland) gathers some examples
- Is philosophy as a profession harmed by findings that show that those who study moral philosophy are no more moral than anyone else? — Eric Schwitzgebel (UCR) takes up the question
- “So, what are you working on?” “Nothing.” — Mitchell Aboulafia (Manhattan College) on “the productivity syndrome” in philosophy
- Moral inquiry, moral change, and lessons from history — Elizabeth Anderson (Michigan) on the Examining Ethics Podcast
- Rawls’s real concern: “Can a society committed to the freedom and equality of its citizens… arrange social institutions [to] reliably cultivate within persons the attitudes and dispositions required for social justice?” — William Edmundson (Georgia State) talks with Robert Talisse (Vanderbilt) about Rawls, the “reticent socialist”
- “When the government or any other external power intervenes… in the university to mandate or censor its curriculum… its standards, then the autonomous judgment of the faculty is undermined, and knowledge is restricted and distorted” — Judith Butler (Berkeley) on academic freedom
- Do you dismiss x-phi work on folk intuitions because such intuitions are merely quick, unreflective responses? — If so, then these x-philosophers have a new study for you
- Do we have the right to believe whatever we want to believe? — No, says Daniel DeNicola (Gettysburg)
- Aristotle, Plato, and Thales are trending — as baby names
Re 1: If standpoint epistemology is the view that people who’ve had certain experiences are, ceteris peribus, more likely to know about certain things (viz, the objects of those experiences) than people who haven’t had those experiences, then who *isn’t* a standpoint epistemologist? Plato and Descartes both accepted that principle, right? But they’re not empiricists. Which makes me think that either standpoint epistemology is something stronger, and objection two is correct, or standpoint epistemology is completely trivial, an not an alternative to rationalism or foundationalism or any other influential epistemological program. Am I confused?
Did you read the post? It quotes a definition of standpoint epistemology. Neither Plato nor Descartes would accept it. Nor would many traditional empiricists.
Uh, yes, I read it. What tenet of standpoint theory—one that applies to LKB’s “silly thought experiment”—would Plato and Descartes reject? Also, if many traditional empiricists would reject standpoint theory, does that mean that you too think that objection two is correct?
Nobody can help me here?