GRIPh Colloquium Michael Beany

Michael Beaney: Towards a deep epistemology: knowing in historical and cross-cultural context

In this talk, drawing on a paper co-authored with Karyn Lai for the recent special issue of the British Journal for the History of Philosophy (33.6), I argue the case for a cross-cultural and interlinguistic epistemology, rooted in careful attention to the linguistic phenomenology of our uses of epistemic terms. In particular, I reject the supposedly ’standard’ definition of knowledge as justified true belief as philosophically misguided and historically and cross-culturally misinformed. In most historical periods and cultures, ‘knowing' and ‘believing’ were seen as quite distinct, with knowing (rightly) accorded primacy. I also argue that the distinction between knowing-that and knowing-how, which has obsessed analytic epistemology for far too long, blocks us from seeing the richness of our talk of ‘knowing’, with all sorts of other constructions that need equal consideration, such as ‘know as’, ‘know to’, ‘know through', as well as all the 'know-wh’ constructions. I offer a picture of our epistemic mindscape, as sketched in chapter 1 of my recent, open access book, The Joy of Chinese Philosophy, in which all these constructions find their place in the web of elaborations that constitutes our knowing practices. You will come to know me as a fierce critic of contemporary analytic epistemology.