In this paper, I seek an account of the nature of epistemic intuition. Given the resources of Dual-Process Theory in Psychology, I argue that the intuitions of elite epistemologists, such as Fred Dretske, are not a priori, pre-theoretic, insights. Instead, they are a posteriori insights into the phenomena of knowledge, not the concept of knowledge. Dretske intuitions are technical, modal intuitions about hypothetical counterfactual cases using System II reflections. Such intuitions depended on thinking about the implications of laws of nature in particular circumstances and were used to defend Dretske’s reliable indicator account of knowledge. That account suggested that one must have conclusive reasons when one has empirical knowledge that P.

Kant and previous philosophers in the modern philosophy have inquired into the limit of human knowledge, so the limitation of knowledge is the result of a basic view of the Critical philosophy. According to most of the modern philosophers, before one wants to attempt to know God, the essence of being, etc., he or she must first investigate the capacity of knowledge itself in order to see whether it is able to accomplish such an attempt. Hegel criticizes this view in the Encyclopedia, section 10. He claims that the task to examine knowledge before using it is based on a false analogy with tools. If one does not want to fool oneself with words, it is easy to see that other instruments can be investigated and criticized without using them in the particular work for which they were designed. But the investigation of knowledge can only be performed by an act of knowledge.

Socrates, Plato and Aristotle are still important for thinking humans; but computers, TV, telephones or automobiles were not existing in their age. For the sake of elasticity in my tripartite subject, a pseudo-philosopher E.G. (“eye-glasser”) and his friends supplied presentation assistance. Mosaic of facts can transpire in their conversation, I think. In a nutshell, a search towards roots and nature of ‘virtual reality’ is conducted first. Then, the role of imagination on knowledge is discussed somehow. Connections and interactions among life, mind and artifacts are touched on thereafter. ‘Mirroring’ metaphor is mentioned as useful. A distinction between ‘knowledge’ and ‘human knowledge’ seemed hopeful, in this quasi-essay inquiry. Wisdom is distinguished from abundance/crowdedness of ‘knowledge’. Effects of ‘virtual reality’ on society is questioned. Some properties of ‘human knowledge’ are stated, then: Knowledge needs to be learnt, understood, and interiorized/internalized. In its circumstances, an aspect of human knowledge is relevance, in addition to “truth + belief + justification”. And also, ‘truth’ is important for human knowledge; it may come to light first or last (as in the Socrates-case).

Interaction and motion produce change. Change produces time (past–future) relation. Changes and interchanges develop differences (effects). Changes and differences unite and divide the two frames of time the past and the future, in the present. The relational effect of change in time is expressed in motion and in the information it produces. The time relation develops in patterns which are alternations (interchanges) and repetitions (replications). Alternations (interchanges) produce external conditions. Replications (reproductions) produce internal conditions. The alternating and recurring patterns of change, the respective external and internal conditions they develop and the information they produce configures evolution inorganic, organic, biological and human. Using this information the human mind converts sensory actions to motor reactions (kinetics) and so manages human interactions. Human interactions, kinetics and derivative information organize the human mind, develop intelligence and determine human logic (reason) and psychology (emotion). Information is extended into communication (language) and organized into knowledge. Knowledge develops into technology and economy which are used by human beings for the management and organization of their interactions and the development of personal and community life, culture and civilization.

This paper analyzes the conceptual principle of all-encompassing unity in the context of global trends of the modern civilization and scientific cognition, with special emphasis placed on the axiological character of the nature of this principle. Structural elements of this principle are identified and their profound connection with the axiological world of the man is described. It is demonstrated that the conceptual principle of all-encompassing unity representatively accumulates in itself both super-complex natural composition of the Universum in the unity of hologramity and matricity properties and spiritual components: faith, hope, love. In such understanding, the conceptual principle of all-encompassing unity is such symphonic ensemble of the developing man’s cognitive and spiritual practices in the cosmic and natural Universum in which his ethical essential fundamentals and fragile complexity of varying-quality substantive nature reveal themselves most fully. From this point of view, faith, hope and love are defined as the man’s spiritual vectors in his temporal (the past, the present and the future) life environment, implicitly entwined into the principle and its supporting goal-motivated benchmarks.

In the paper, I present the basis for a pragmatic, contextualist and inferentialist strategy for understanding the concept of degrees of justification. I argue that each context has certain inferential criteria in order to do correct assertions, and that there are different standards of justification for an assertion to be regarded as highly, moderately or poorly justified in that context. What is a high, medium or low standard of justification is relative to the community in which certain inferential practices take place. Finally, I identify the methods of justification that in every social context confer different degrees of justification to certain assertions.

This paper defends the view that the primary necessary ontological conditions for any existents and for their knowledge are individual pure (“mere”) possibilities. As being such conditions, pure possibilities exist absolutely independently of actualities, possible worlds, or minds. Pure possibilities are exempt from spatiotemporal and causal restrictions or conditions, whereas any actuality is inescapably subject to them. Each actuality is an actualization of an individual pure possibility, which also serves as its identity. The existence of individual pure possibilities is necessary because it is ontologically indispensable for the existence of anything, possible or actual, and because there are some existents instead of nothing. Ignoring or not acknowledging relevant pure possibilities may result in overlooking their actualities without recognizing or identifying them and, thus, this has hindered the progress of science and knowledge. Hence, the knowledge of actual possibilities, too, depends on their pure possibilities.

Virtue epistemologists like Ernest Sosa and John Greco have attempted to explain why knowledge is more valuable than mere true belief. In this talk I demonstrate that both of their accounts fail so profoundly that it is difficult to see how virtue epistemology alone contains the resources to explain the value of knowledge. According to the virtue theoretic approach, knowledge is a kind of success from ability. Knowledge constitutes a competent epistemic performance, and some performances are better than others; not better because they are more accurate, but better because they exhibit the skill of the performer. It is in this way that the performance of knowledge is better than the lucky success of mere true belief. I will show that the Sosa/Greco model entails the false result that the blind review of scholarship should be abolished. This entailment is, by modus tollens, a counterexample to their view. Since it is often held that a comprehensive theory of knowledge ought to explain the value question, the failure of virtue epistemology to do so is a black mark against the virtue approach altogether.

First, ‘Is Justified True Belief Knowledge’ is imprecise but Gettier is explicit that ‘know’ is analysed as the definiendum is ‘S knows that P’. Second, Gettier does not misrepresent (a) as Plato’s definition as the expressions used are ‘Plato considers’ and ‘seems to accept’. Third, Gettier is not mistaken to apply Plato’s definition to propositions since propositional knowledge is a species of Plato’s definition. Fourth, for Plato true belief temporally precedes an account. ‘Jones owns a Ford’ is never a true opinion, hence no account for it can be given. The counterexample is reconstructed with temporality built into it. Fifth, Gettier does not fail to establish the equivalence of ‘believe’, ‘accepts’ and ‘sure’ in the three versions as this is implicitly established in the shifts made in the paper. Sixth, ‘entails’ logically is used only when the entailing proposition is true, but in the counterexamples a false proposition is taken to imply a true one. ‘Entail’ is to be taken in the ordinary sense of implies. Seventh, in Case I, the implication is preserved with the proper representation: (Gj & Tj) → (y)[Gy ↔ (y=j)], which implies ($x){(Gx & Tx) → (y)[Gy ↔ (y=x)]}’. Eighth, the counterexample is reworked to avoid the objection that justification for p and justification for q may not be sufficient justification for ‘p & q’.

Social epistemology presents now a multiplicity of approaches, more or less closely connected with philosophical analysis of knowledge. Taken as primarily philosophical approach, it seeks at least general definition. I suppose that socio-epistemological analysis essentially consists in contextualizing problems and problematizing contexts. No other manifestations of cognition but problems deserve philosophical attention. And it is context that endows a problem with meaning. At the same time different context theories in the social sciences and humanities demonstrate two polar trends – an explanatory power of context and endless regress of contextual explanation. Further I will dwell upon this main challenge for social epistemology, which even justifying the autonomy of its own, cannot ignore these scientific developments.

What is the kind of relation between knowledge and luck? In the past decades or so, many philosophers have been discussing the Gettier-style counterexamples in order to search for the nature of knowledge. But, they have always faced the problem of epistemic luck. What do we need to avoid the luck problem? Let knowledge be certainly true. If we do, what is the value of knowledge? In the contrary, if we couldn’t avoid the “lucky truth” in our beliefs or propositions, would we lose knowledge which we thought we possessed? I don’t think so. Because the goal of human knowledge is to make our life be better. Knowledge is a direction. We would not like to lose all of knowledge. However, the luck problem is always there. So, what can we do? Should we keep going and look for the nature of knowledge? Or, maybe we should accept the possibility of some lucky elements in our knowledge, and let justification continue to play certain role which can still make human beliefs highly probable true.

This article tries to establish the relevance of phenomenological analysis within the current epistemological edifice, in particular, with regard to certain key issues of the epistemology of our time, this last one meant as a philosophy of science. In doing so, it is primarily based, on the one hand, on certain Husserlian texts mainly those published in Logical Investigations, Formal and Transcendental Logic and the Phenomenology of Time Consciousness and, on the other, on certain developments, essentially running from the beginning of 20th century, in such diverse fields of positive science as logic and the foundations of mathematics as well as quantum mechanics. The overall argumentation serves to establish a holistic approach of the objects of knowledge, taken as material or mental ones, to the extent that they may be taken as objects in evident presentation in front of an embodied consciousness provided with certain a priori constitutional modes.

There are very few analyses of the structure of points of view. However, we can identify two general approaches. One of them assumes as a paradigm the structure of propositional attitudes. Here, points of view are understood as having an internal structure similar to the one we can find in propositional attitudes. The other approach is based on the notions of location and access. Here, the internal structure of points of view is not directly addressed. The features that are emphasised are related with the role that points of view are intended to have. Points of view would be ways of having access to the world, and to ourselves, from certain emplacements. The paper has three parts. In the first one, we present these two approaches and some interesting developments inside each one of them. In the second one, we examine more closely the relationships between the two approaches. In the third part of the paper, we defend the non-reducible relational nature and modal character of points of view obtaining some conclusions.

Epistemic value monists hold the view that virtuous agents only have one goal qua intellectual being, the truth goal: to acquire true beliefs and avoiding false ones. Monism has recently come under attack by those who think there is a plurality of intellectual values and goals. I welcome value pluralism in part because it opens up the possibility of identifying values and goals that cannot otherwise be identified in real-world virtuous agents. I go even further than some pluralists by arguing that, not only are there more values than acquiring true beliefs and avoiding false ones, but in addition, agents sometimes virtuously seek false beliefs and avoid true ones.

The causal representative theory of perception dominated theory of knowledge for hundreds of years after it was put on the map by Descartes and Locke. It is now almost extinct. How could this happen? The theory collapsed because it could not explain how we acquire knowledge of the external world, since it presupposes a causally organized system of external objects producing sensations in us. This presupposition, however, is generally recognized as true, so that the pattern of causal inference at the heart of the theory is surely justified. The theory cannot explain how we originally acquire our knowledge of the external world, but it is entitled on a second pass to correct our empirical beliefs, where necessary. This includes replacing our naive picture of the physical world with a more sophisticated scientific conception, which downgrades secondary qualities. This was, indeed, the main reason why it was originally introduced by Descartes and Locke, and has been the source of its attraction over the years.

This work presents both types of rationality proposed by Marcelo Dascal and analyses how they interact and complement each other. What is traditionally understood as scientific rationality is what Dascal refers to as hard rationality. Argumentation based on this form of rationality seeks the certainty, the conclusive proof. However, the philosopher broadens the concept of rationality, allowing the existence of a soft rationality, which deals in the area of opinions. Arguments built from this form of rationality seek the persuasion. Usually, Mathematics is taken as an example of hard rationality, since it is structured upon the demonstrative reasoning. Here, I show that mathematical demonstrations follow the deductive logic, deal with universals and seek proof, certainty. Thus, it is an example of hard rationality. However, when applied to particulars, it is possible to construct mathematical arguments to persuade, or highlight elements that support decision making, without determining which position is correct. These arguments are examples of soft rationality. Therefore, I want to demonstrate that both rationalities interact, and arguments build based on demonstrative logic (hard) can be used in argumentations that seek to convince (soft).

In this paper the autopoietic model of consciousness is employed to analyze dynamic being of philosophic concepts. It will be demonstrated that this being consists in permanent transformation within human mind. The autopoietic model of consciousness presupposes that consciousness builds itself anew in each moment of its duration, durée. It doesn’t rest in immobility, but persists in becoming, and so maintains permanent assimilation and production of new meanings. Autopoiesis is viewed as a process of simultaneous loss and acquiring by creative consciousness of its identity. To keep identity for consciousness means to change without cease, i.e. to lose it to some extent. A living human – empirical subject – that is subject possessing unique attributes: corporality, biographic situation, psychological and physiological features, individualized, different from others by his opportunities and abilities, belongs in a peculiar way to transcendental in E. Husserl’s sense of “pure flow of consciousness as such”. The concept of transcendental imagination is introduced to analyze phenomenon of imagination in respect of its contribution into being of philosophical concepts apart from numerous psychological characteristics of imagination.

This text presents a brief reflection on the knowing construction of the body. Displaying three key moments: The modern Cartesian (1637) proposal of rationality where the body provides knowledge against a sensitive world; the idea of ‘tabula rasa’ posed by Locke (1690) recognizing experience as the basic framework that forms the possibility of representation of the reality by man, and the phenomenological experience posed by Merleau-Ponty (1968) by incorporating perception from reality and the possibility of truth. The discussion is about the questioning that the body makes on the construction of knowledge and its own condition of truth, interweaving three paradigms about the possibilities to understand reality.

The medieval thinker Anselm of Canterbury developed an argument, called ontological argument, through which he aimed to persuade that God exists in reality. The inference that founded this argument is logically valid and its premises are true. Therefore, the thesis that “God exists” is necessarily true. However, the ontological argument proves only that the meaning of the term “God” contains, among its elements, the attribute of existence but, from here, we cannot infer that the class of the term “God” is not empty. The ontological argument leaves opened the problem that the term “God” has an empty class or not. It follows that, although the sentence “God exists” is true, (if the meaning of “God” is as in ontological argument), we cannot know if God is a real thing. For instance, if we define Santa Claus* =df “The existing Santa Claus” then, the proposition “Santa Claus* exists” is true. Despite this, the class of the term “Santa Claus*” is the same with the class of the term “Santa Claus”, being empty.

The paper is devoted to the analysis of the ascriptions of practical knowledge to the groups of agents. The analysis is based on two very general theses: 1) the intellectualist thesis that practical knowledge (‘know how’) is a kind of propositional knowledge (‘know that’) or objectual knowledge (‘know NP’), and 2) the thesis which links an individual knowledge attributions to a group knowledge attributions: If ‘s knows that p’ has the property P, then ‘G knows that p’ has the property P. Subsequently, the three kinds of a group practical knowledge are examined: two summative (or deflationary), i.e. the distributed knowledge and common knowledge, and one non-summative (or inflationary), i.e. the collective group knowledge. This leads, prima facie, to some problems for the two main intellectualist approaches: i) it seems that groups does not have ‘the practical modes of presentation’ (see: Stanley & Williamson 2001, Stanley 2011), and ii) it seems that groups does not have the objectual knowledge (see: Bengson & Moffett 2007; 2011). I end with some remarks on the possible solutions to these problems.