A victory (of what sort) for strict purist invariantism? Some reflections on Gerken’s On folk epistemology: how we think and talk about knowledge

ABSTRACT

Gerken's On Folk Epistemology: How we think and talk about knowledge develops and defends strict purist invariantism about knowledge. Along the way, Gerken argues that less-orthodox competitors to strict purist invariantism are plagued by certain heretofore unrecognized or underappreciated difficulties. Given Gerken's own explicit methodological commitments, this defensive component of the book's project is dialectically crucial. By Gerken's own lights, we ought to be persuaded to embrace strict purist invariantism only if it turns out that the strict purist invariantist is better positioned than their competitors to explain the folk epistemological “inputs” to epistemic theorizing. My own goal here is to articulate some reasons to worry that Gerken's defensive efforts are less-than-fully successful. In particular, I argue that we ought to adopt a more expansive and more nuanced conception of the relevant folk epistemological “inputs.” Moreover, I suggest that, at least insofar as we have reason to embrace a kind of qualified methodological preference for theoretical explanations that vindicate our ordinary epistemic practice, we might well have good reason for favoring (certain of) the alternate theoretical explanations of these inputs that less-orthodox views of knowledge supply over the kind of explanations that Gerken convincingly argues strict purist invariantism can offer.

KEYWORDS:

• epistemology
• folk epistemology
• invariantism
• bias

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Unless, of course, they partly determine whether S believes that p or partly determine the truth value of p itself.

2 Gerken (2017: 82).

3 See, e.g. Nolfi (2019). Kim (2017), Section 4 provides a helpful survey of possible views.

4 Gerken (2017: 65).