Folk epistemologies

Universal or specific folk epistemologies? Methodological implications for cognitive science and analytic philosophy

Principal investigator: Krzysztof Sękowski

Funded by the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education, grant DI2017 001347.

Folk epistemologies, or everyday theories of knowledge, are studied within two rapidly developing research programmes. The epistemological theories programme (ET), pursued mainly in developmental psychology, investigates the development of everyday theories of knowledge and, in particular, the influence of social factors on them. The epistemic intuitions programme (EI) is pursued primarily within experimental philosophy. It examines everyday intuitions about the conditions under which an epistemic state, particularly knowledge, can be attributed to someone.

The nature of folk epistemologies matters, first, because some researchers (Spicer 2010; Hardy-Vallée and Dubreuil 2010) have proposed developing a model that incorporates the assumptions and findings of both programmes. An important question is whether such a unification is possible in light of findings suggesting, for example, cross-cultural differences in epistemic intuitions.

The project is theoretical and does not involve new empirical studies. It will, however, include a meta-analysis of existing research on folk epistemologies, addressing whether they are universal or specific. The findings will help identify methodological implications for cognitive science, particularly developmental psychology, experimental philosophy and cultural anthropology. These concern external and criterion validity, as well as the relationship between cultural anthropology and cognitive science.

A second context is metaphilosophical. Some experimental philosophers use findings of variation in philosophical intuitions to criticise the methodology of analytic philosophy. They argue that philosophers appeal to particular intuitions in their arguments, and that variation associated with philosophically irrelevant factors, such as age, gender or cultural background, undermines those arguments. This raises three questions: whether the reported differences genuinely occur; what might explain them if they do; and whether studies demonstrating such differences really challenge philosophical methodology. It is not obvious that experimental philosophers assign intuitions the role they actually play in philosophical methodology, or that the intuitions they investigate correspond to those invoked by philosophers.

The project will reconstruct the principal lines of argument in this debate and critically assess them in light of earlier work on the concept of intuition in experimental philosophy and on the universal or specific nature of folk epistemologies, including epistemic intuitions. It will also examine the concept of intuition itself and its role in philosophical methodology.