Catherine Z. Elgin
Papers on Knowledge

• Disagreement in Philosophy.pdf (Synthese, 200:20(2022), 1-16.)
  Abstract: Recent philosophical discussions construe disagreement as epistemically unsettling. On learning that a peer disagrees, it is said, you should suspend judgment, lower your credence, or dismiss your peer's conviction as somehow flawed, even if you can neither identify the flaw nor explain why you think she is the party in error. Philosophers do none of these things. A distinctive feature of philosophy as currently practiced is that, although we marshal the strongest arguments we can devise,we do not expect others to agree. Nor are we dismayed when they do not. Through a survey of familiar professional practices, I argue that philosophy rightly revels in responsible disagreement. This discloses important and perhaps surprising facets of the epistemology of philosophy.
  
  
• The Function of Knowledge (Analysis Reviews, 81(1), 2021, 100-107.)
  Abstract: In What's the Point of Knowledge (Oxford 2019) Michael Hannon maintains that the concept of knowledge is grounded in our ineliminable interdependence. The concept, he holds, is designed to enable us to identify reliable informants. After explicating Hannon's position, I argue for the certification view. (See Patrick Rysiew 2012 'Epistemic Scorekeeping' Knowledge Ascriptions ed. Brown & Gerken Oxford pp. 270-294.) It holds that the function of the concept of knowledge is to fix the point where inquiry properly can stop. I show that conclusions that satisfy the certification requirement are available not just for information transfer, but also for joint action and for individual inference and action.
  
  
• The Mark of a Good Informant (Acta Analytica, 35(2020), 319-331.)
  Abstract: Edward Craig and Michael Hannon agree that the function of knowledge is to enable us to identify informants whose word we can safely take. This requires that knowers display a publicly recognizable mark. Although this might suffice for information transfer, I argue that the position that emerges promotes testimonial injustice, since the mark of a good informant need not be shared by all who are privy to the facts we seek. I suggest a way the problem might be alleviated.
  
  
• Epistemically Useful Falsehoods (Knowledge, Skepticism, and Defeat ed. Brandon Fitelson, Rodrigo Borges, Cherie Braden. Springer, 2019, pp. 25-38.)
  Abstract: In 'Useful False Beliefs', Peter Klein argues that the justification required for knowledge can contain a false belief essentially. Then the agent arrives at her conclusion via a chain of inference that includes a false belief. If her inferential path is close enough to a route that contains only truths, Klein maintains, her conclusion is justified. Still, he intimates, reliance on a falsehood is an epistemic defect, even if not a fatal one. All things considered, it is preferable to take the epistemic high road and rely only on truths. I will argue however, that sometimes inferring via a falsehood is an epistemic strength. Reliance on a falsehood enables the agent to marshal epistemic resources by excluding from her reasoning irrelevant complications that would blind her to the relation between her evidence and her conclusion.
  
  
• Reasonable Disagreement (Voicing Dissent ed. Casey Johnson. Routledge, 2018, pp. 10-21.)
  Abstract: Discussions of disagreement typically assume that if epistemic peers disagree, at least one of them has made a mistake. I will argue that this is not always so. Even if peers have the same evidence, background information, education, and reasoning abilities, they may responsibly differ over how to deploy these resources. They may, for example, assign different weights to bits of evidence, set different standards for acceptability, favor different reasoning strategies, and/or diverge in their assessments of the reliability or significance of the background information that they share. If so, disagreement among competent epistemic agents is an asset. It reveals important features of the epistemic situation and the perspectives that can responsibly be adopted toward it. The existence of such disagreements may support skepticism vis à vis the first order issue under dispute. If so, such skepticism is a virtue rather than a vice.
  
  
• Begging to Differ (The Philosopher's Magazine, 59, 2012.)
  
  
• Weaving the Web of Belief (Contemporary Debates in Epistemology 2^nd edition, ed. Matthias Steup. Malden: Blackwell, forthcoming.)
  
  
• Touchstones of History: Anscombe, Hume, and Julius Caesar (Logos & Episteme 1, 2010, 39-57.)
  
  
• Skepticism Aside (Knowledge and Skepticism ed. Joseph Keim Campell, Michael O'Rourke and Harry Silverstein. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2010, 309-324.)
  Abstract: My goal in this paper is not to defeat skepticism, but to articulate a reasonable epistemological basis for disregarding it. I argue that first, skepticism is not continuous with ordinary epistemic practice. We do not, as it were, slide down a slippery slope to skepticism simply by raising our epistemic standards. Second, skepticism is not a viable practical stance: in order to act, we must assume that skepticism is false. But third, the practical is inseparable from the theoretical, so an assumption that is mandatory for practice is at least not unreasonable for theory. The conclusion is not that skepticism is false; but that it can be epistemologically responsible to assume that skepticism is false. The fate of epistemology does not turn on defeating skepticism; for some epistemological problems we can simply set the skeptical challenge aside.
  
  
• Persistent Disagreement (Disagreement ed. Richard Feldman and Ted Warfield. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010, 53-68.)
  
  
• Non-Foundationalist Epistemology: Holism, Coherence, and Tenability (Contemporary Debates in Epistemology ed. Matthias Steup and Ernest Sosa. Boston: Blackwell, 2005, 156-167.)
  
  
• Take It From Me: The Epistemological Status of Testimony (Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, LXV, 2002, 291-308.)
  
  
• Word Giving, Word Taking (Fact and Value: Essays for Judith Jarvis Thomson, ed. Alex Byrne, Robert Stalnaker, and Ralph Wedgwood. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2001, 97-116.)