Anfechtbare Zuschreibungsbegriffe - ihre Struktur und ihre Bedeutung für Erkenntnis- und Handlungstheorie
Final Report Abstract
The essential characteristic of “Defeasible Discourse Dependent Concepts” (DDD-concepts, “anfechtbare Zuschreibungsbegriffe”) is that their content and extension are fixed by sets of default conditions and challenge conditions. The former are the conditions under which one is entitled to apply the concept by default (without any explicit reasoning required), the latter allow this entitlement to be challenged, or even defeated. In this project we investigated the structure and function of DDD-concepts, and two central philosophical concepts were analyzed in these terms. We started from the hypothesis that epistemic entitlements (perceptual and a priori) and responsibility can be defeasibly attributed to subjects under default conditions, unless some appropriate challenge occurs. One major result of the project was that the central assumptions we made about perceptual entitlement – namely, that this kind of epistemic right accrues to subjects under suitable external default conditions, and is subject to challenge or defeat under specific challenge conditions – allowed for the drawing of a fruitful contrast between different notions of epistemic entitlement discussed in contemporary epistemology. In exploring commonalities and differences between these notions of entitlement, we found it necessary to distinguish between two types (nonaccidentality entitlement and non-blameworthiness entitlement) and three degrees of entitlement (practically defeasible, stable, and conclusive entitlements). In doing so, we could outline an account of perceptual knowledge that is true to our actual epistemic practice, and incorporates both externalist and internalist traits exhibited in it. A further result was that a default and challenge model of epistemic warrant provides a fruitful way of explaining the nature and existence of a priori warrant. A defeasible form of a priori warrant can be accounted for, not by relying on any controversial notion of intellectual intuition, but instead by investigating the epistemic practice where such warrant comes to the fore. Finally, we could show that responsibility, too, can be fruitfully analyzed as a defeasible concept. The distinction between two classes of challenges allows differentiating between two aspects of responsibility, accountability and praise- or blameworthiness, which both exhibit a defeasible structure. The suggested account of responsibility takes our actual practice of ascribing responsibility seriously, and thereby highlights a feature of the concept of responsibility that is widely neglected in the contemporary debate.
Publications
- ”Empirical Indefeasibility and Nonfactuality: Assessing Field's Evaluative Approach to the A Priori" Croatian Journal of Philosophy X (2010) 183-197
Janvid, Mikael
- „Non-Relativist Contextualism about Free Will“, in European Journal of Philosophy 18.4 (2010), 567-587
Willaschek, Marcus
