GRIPh Colloquium: Philip Kitcher

Philip Kitcher on epistemic progress

Much of human progress, though by no means all of it, comes about because people acquire knew knowledge.  This lecture will try to understand someprincipal varieties of epistemic progress. Epistemic progress occurs when one set of beliefs is replaced by another, and the later state is epistemically superior to the former one. My principal focus will be on such transitions in three domains: in our inquiries into the natural world, in our formal explorations (in mathematics and logic), and in our investigations of values (moral, ethical, and aesthetic).

Sets of beliefs don’t evolve in a disembodied space. We should begin by asking about the subjects of epistemic progress. Individual inquirers make epistemic progress; so do particular groups of people; but we also talk of “what is known” or “what we know”, and such discussions occur when we consider the progress of humanity as a whole.  They open up questions about how what we know relates to the progress of individuals,communities and societies. What social conditions must be in place if we are to make claims about human epistemic progress?

In offering different accounts for the three species of epistemic progress I consider, I shall articulate a pragmatist naturalistic account of them.  If timepermits, I shall consider how the three species I consider interact in other domains, in political progress, religious progress and educational progress.