Conference Announcement

Epistemology for the Rest of the World

「残りの世界」のための認識論

世界各地的認識論

세계의 나머지 부분에 대한 인식론

दुनिया के बाकी के लिए ज्ञान - मीमांसा

An International Conference on Epistemology, Linguistic Diversity & Cultural Diversity

 

Since the heyday of ordinary language philosophy, epistemologists have devoted a great deal of attention to the English word  ‘know’ and to English sentences used to attribute knowledge.  When someone says “S knows that p”, what does the word ‘knows’ mean?  What concept does it express?  How should that concept be analyzed?  More recently, contextualists have argued that the truth conditions for “S knows that p,” or the proposition it expresses, varies depending on the context of the speaker.   Invariantists have used sophisticated linguistic arguments to challenge contextualism, and some of them, the subject-sensitive invariantists who embrace the pragmatic encroachment thesis, have gone on to claim that the truth conditions of ‘S knows that p’ are sensitive to factors like how important the truth of p is to S.  In all of this literature, hypothetical cases play an important role.  A situation is described, almost always in English, and then philosophers judge whether it is true that in that situation, S knows that p, or whether saying “S knows that p” is false, or deviant, or intuitively unacceptable.  With the emergence of experimental philosophy, it has become increasingly common to present these scenarios to ordinary English speakers, and ask them to judge whether it’s true that S knows that p.

But English is just one of over 6000 languages spoken around the world.  Though it is the third most common language, it is the native language of less than 6% of the world’s population.   And when Western epistemology first emerged, in ancient Greece, English did not exist.  So why should we think that facts about the English word “know,” the concept it expresses, or subtle semantic properties of “S knows that p” have important implications for epistemology? 

One possible answer invokes what might be called the “universality thesis,” which claims that the properties of the English word “know” and the English sentence ‘S knows that p’ that have been studied by epistemologists are shared by the translations of these expressions in most or all languages.  If the universality thesis is true, then the Chinese and Japanese and Korean and Hindi translations of ‘know’ all express the same concept.  So when we have a good account of the concept expressed by the English verb ‘know’ we will have a good account of the concept of knowledge.   And if it is established that contextualism is true for ‘S knows that p,’ then contextualism is true for knowledge attributions in most languages. 

If the universality thesis turns out to be true, it will be a remarkable fact that cries out for an explanation.  But there is currently very little reason to think that the universality thesis is true, since little or nothing is known about the meaning and use of epistemic terms in languages other than English.  What little is known looks to point in the other direction.  For example, in Japanese there are two words used to translate ‘know’ in propositional knowledge attributions, ‘Shitte-iru’ and ‘Wakatte-iru’, neither of which has the same extension as ‘know’. 

 If the universality thesis is false, what are the implications for epistemology?  Should epistemologists study knowledge attributions in languages other than English with the same diligence they have shown for the study of English knowledge attributions? If not, why not?  Are the concepts expressed by ‘Shitte-iru,’ ‘Wakatte-iru’ and the epistemic terms in other languages as important for epistemology as the concept expressed by ‘know’?  If not, why not?  If pragmatic encroachment is true for knowledge attributions in English but not for knowledge attributions in Korean, what, if anything, does this tell us about the questions that philosophers interested in epistemology have been asking since the Meno?  Would findings like this support Allan Hazlett’s provocative suggestion that epistemologists should “stop looking at linguistic phenomena altogether?”     

 This conference will be bringing together philosophers, linguists, psychologists and social scientists from Asia and the West to discuss and debate both the empirical and the philosophical questions raised by linguistic and cultural diversity in the epistemic domain.  Does the available evidence suggest that the universality thesis is false?  If so, in what ways do the concepts expressed by ‘know’ and its counterparts in different languages differ?  What do we know, and how can we learn more, about the workings of knowledge attributions in languages quite different from English?  And what should philosophers interested in epistemology make of all this?

We strongly encourage participation by philosophers, linguists and psychologists who are knowledgeable about the languages and cultures of non-Western countries, and of Western philosophers who are interested in epistemology for the rest of the world.      

Date and Venue:

August 8 and 9, 2013, Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (JAIST) Tokyo Satellite Office, Shinagawa Tokyo, Japan  http://www.jaist.ac.jp/satellite/sate/eng/index.html

 Organizing Committee:

Stephen Stich, Rutgers University

Masaharu Mizumoto, JAIST

Yukihiro Nobuhara, Tokyo University

Eric McCready, Aoyama Gakuin University

 

People interested in presenting their work at the conference should send an Abstract to Prof. Masaharu Mizumoto (mizumoto@jaist.ac.jp). 

Comments

[Jennifer Nagel]

Hi Steve,

What an excellent idea for a conference!

I'm inclined to resist your suggestion that "little or nothing is known about the meaning and use of epistemic terms in languages other than English" -- my own impression is that actually quite a lot is known about the meaning and use of these terms in other languages (not least by the language's native speakers and philosophers). But that's of course all the more reason to have an international conference where this knowledge can be shared.

I'm also not sure your point about Japanese would defeat the interesting version of the universality hypothesis. We've also got multiple verbs for reporting propositional attitude ascriptions in English (knows that P, is aware that P, sees that P, recognizes that P...), and this doesn't rule out a common core concept (let's say, the concept of the most general factive mental state). From what I understand from the work of people like Rie Hasada, "shiru" ( 知る) used in the resultative aspect, is taken to be the default word for the most general such state in Japanese. I don't doubt that there are contexts in which other verbs are more appropriate (as in English), and it may even be the case that there are two verbs sharing the generality that matters to epistemology. The most vocal advocates of the Universality Theory (Anna Wierzbicka and Cliff Goddard) allow that some languages have two different words (or "exponents") for one of their "universal semantic primes"; it's conceivable that Hasada is wrong to suggest that "shiru" is the lone exponent of the universal KNOW in Japanese.

To focus on the most general state is not to suggest that epistemologists can't be interested in more specific factive mental states, in the properties of, say, "noticing that P" versus "being aware that P", but just to suggest that the most general condition shared by noticing that, being aware that, seeing that, etc. is of special interest, and indeed a general organizing focus of epistemology.

One thing that does seem to be universal is the distinction between factive and nonfactive verbs. It's also said to be universal that factive verbs alone directly embed questions (he knows when the party is; she knows who is invited.. etc). I'd love to have really firm cross-linguistic evidence for that latter point--the evidence I have so far all points in the direction of universality, but it's not as extensive as I'd like. Bringing together linguists and philosophers from a variety of backgrounds looks like a great way to gather evidence on universality (and I'd have an open mind about which way that evidence will end up going).

In any event, I love the idea of opening more cross-cultural channels of communication in epistemology. Kudos to you and your organizing committee for setting this up.