Knowledge and its Place in Nature
Hilary Kornblith
Abstract
Argues that conceptual analysis should be rejected in favour of a more naturalistic approach to epistemology. There is a robust natural phenomenon of knowledge; knowledge is a natural kind. An examination of the cognitive ethology literature reveals a category of knowledge that does both causal and explanatory work. It is argued that knowledge in this very sense is what philosophers have been talking about all along. Rival accounts of knowledge that are more demanding—requiring either that certain social conditions be met or that an agent engage in some sort of reflection—are discussed in deta ... More
Keywords: animals, cognitive ethology, conceptual analysis, epistemology, Hilary Kornblith, knowledge, natural kind, naturalistic epistemology, normativity, philosophy
Bibliographic Information
| Print publication date: 2002 | Print ISBN-13: 9780199246311 |
| Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2003 | DOI:10.1093/0199246319.001.0001 |
