Agenda

Speaker: Hasok Chang
Hans Rausing Professor of History and Philosophy of Science, Cambridge University

There is widespread recognition that no items of knowledge are true beyond doubt. If that is the case, how can we rely on our knowledge?

How can we improve on it? A qualified notion of trust enables us to engage in epistemic inquiries based on uncertain assumptions, and yet use what we learn in order to modify and improve on those assumptions. This process, named ‘epistemic iteration’, will be the specific focus of this talk.

Chair: Eleonora Montuschi

Abstract:
Foundationalism is dead: there are no items of knowledge that are true beyond doubt, against which other knowledge-claims can be judged. This is a widespread recognition among those who have thought carefully about knowledge and its justification. But if we do not have well-established propositions against which we can judge other propositions, how is it that we can improve our knowledge, or even know whether we have made improvements (even if we manage to do it by accident)? There is no widely agreed answer to this question.

In my study of the development of thermometers (Inventing Temperature: Measurement and Scientific Progress, 2004) I advanced the notion of “epistemic iteration”, a process in which we launch our inquiry knowingly on an uncertain basis, and use what we learn in that inquiry in order to modify and improve our starting assumptions. Since then, epistemic iteration has come to be seen as a very broadly applicable notion, both by myself and by various other philosophers. Generally speaking, epistemic iteration may be the only way in which we can make epistemic progress in a world without foundations.

At the core of the process of epistemic iteration is a kind of trust: relying on something provisionally while admitting the possibility of doubt. This trust is not blind faith, and it is not probabilistic betting, either. It is a commitment (akin to what Polanyi stressed) that enables our epistemic activities, comparable to the kind of trust we place in our fellow citizens and our institutions that allows society to function and develop.