Knowing, Checking, and Other Epistemic Standings

Project manager: Guido Melchior

Duration: 01.10.2020 - 31.03.2026

Funded by: FWF (Austrian Science Fund)

Third-party funded project (§§ 26-28 UG) (ongoing)

 

Project description:

This project is a follow-up project to the FWF stand-alone project The Skeptical Perspective, 2016- 2020, in which Guido Melchior authored the monograph Knowing and Checking: An Epistemological Investigation, Routledge 2019 (KC), which fulfills three main tasks.

  1. (1) It breaks new scientific ground by developing the first comprehensive epistemic theory of checking.

  2. (2) It provides a new explanation of intractable epistemic problems, such as the skeptical problem, by means of a theory of checking, rather than, as usual, by means of a theory of knowledge.

  3. (3) It settles a lively epistemological debate by arguing that sensitivity is necessary for checking but not for knowledge, thus finding a new home for the much-discussed modal principle of sensitivity.

This follow-up project will further develop KC's novel approach in several directions. It will further establish this approach as a theory in its own right, extend it to other epistemic phenomena such as distinguishing and testing, and develop KC's methodological approach into a fully-fledged meta-epistemological theory. The research aims of this project are.

  1. (1) To compare the central theses of KC with rival approaches and defend them against existing and future objections;

  2. (2) To find new applications of the sensitivity principle, including theories of discrimination and testing;

  3. (3) To further develop the methodological approach of a knowledge-to-last-knowledge theory from KC and to find further applications.

Accordingly, this research project fulfills three main tasks:

  1. (1) It develops and establishes the sensitivity-based theory of checking as a theory in its own right;

  2. (2) It provides original sensitivity-based theories of discrimination and testing;

  3. (3) It develops a novel meta-epistemological approach, namely knowledge-to-last

    epistemology.