“I don't know whether I can say that having a career in philosophy has turned out as I imagined, since in many ways I had little idea of what such a life would be like. But philosophy is still tremendously exciting to me, and the opportunity to think, and talk, and write about these issues has been wonderful.” ThinkingKnowsWayWritingLittlesHas BeensStillsI CanIdeasPhilosophyWould BeOpportunityCareersIssuesWonderfulExciting Author:Hilary Kornblith
“Work on causal theories of knowledge - early work by Armstrong, and Dretske, and Goldman - seemed far more satisfying. As I started to see the ways in which work in the cognitive sciences could inform our understanding of central epistemological issues, my whole idea of what the philosophical enterprise is all about began to change. Quine certainly played a role here, as did Putnam's (pre-1975) work in philosophy of science, and the exciting developments that went on in that time in philosophy of mind.” WayMindIdeasPhilosophyWholeUnderstandingRolesIssuesTheoryDevelopmentExcitingPhilosophicalEnterpriseSatisfyingCognitivePhilosophy Of ScienceArmstrongCognitive ScienceEarly WorkTheory Of Knowledge Author:Hilary Kornblith
“It started becoming clear to me how one might have views about the nature of mind and of knowledge which are empirically informed. This way of thinking about philosophical theorizing makes sense of how philosophy might be a legitimate intellectual activity, in a way that a good deal of the armchair philosophy, I believe, cannot.” ThinkingWayMindBelievePhilosophyMightI BelieveViewsDealsClearBecomingActivityIntellectualPhilosophicalMake SenseWay Of ThinkingArmchairs Author:Hilary Kornblith
“The experimentalists think that we can only get at our concepts by way of empirical investigation, while the armchair philosophers think that we can skip the experiments and figure things out from our armchairs. What they have in common, however, is regarding our concepts as the targets of philosophical theorising, and I just don't think that, in the vast majority of cases, the subject matter of philosophy has our concepts as its target.” ThinkingWayMatterPhilosophyCommonCasesSubjectsFiguresConceptsPhilosophicalMajorityPhilosopherExperimentsTargetInvestigationSubject MatterSkipArmchairs Author:Hilary Kornblith
“I am concerned about epistemic normativity, and I don't think that it is just a hangover from a priori and armchair approaches. Some ways of forming beliefs are better than others, and epistemologists of all stripes, I believe, have a legitimate interest in addressing the issue of what makes some of these ways better than others.” ThinkingWayBelieveBeliefI BelieveInterestIssuesApproachConcernedHangoverStripesArmchairs Author:Hilary Kornblith
“Externalists reject any such view. I think that the idea that we can tell, simply by way of reflection, whether our beliefs are justified, is deeply commonsensical. More than that, the idea that responsible epistemic agents ought to reflect on their beliefs, and hold them only if they somehow pass muster, is utterly natural.” IfsThinkingWayIdeasBeliefNaturalViewsOughtReflectionResponsibleAgentsRejectsJustifiedMuster Author:Hilary Kornblith
“I do think that an understanding of contemporary work in the cognitive sciences has a profound effect on how one views the workings of the mind. It doesn't work the way we pretheoretically think it does. Such an understanding, of course, should have a large effect on one's views in philosophy of mind, but also in epistemology.” ThinkingWayShouldMindDoePhilosophyCoursesUnderstandingViewsEffectsShould HaveProfoundContemporaryCognitiveEpistemologyCognitive Science Author:Hilary Kornblith
“One of the goals of scientific theorising is to develop concepts which are adequate to the phenomena under study. In my view, things should work the same way in epistemology. We want to know what knowledge actually amounts to, not what our folk concept of knowledge is, since, just as with our pretheoretical concept of acidity, it might contain all sorts of misunderstandings and leave out all manner of important things.” KnowsWayWantShouldImportantMightGoalViewsStudyAmountConceptsImportant ThingsFolksMisunderstandingAdequateEpistemology Author:Hilary Kornblith
“No one would suggest that we can adequately investigate what makes something an acid, or what makes something aluminum, by bringing our pretheoretical intuitions about these things into reflective equilibrium by way of armchair theorising.” WayIntuitionAcidEquilibriumArmchairsAluminum Author:Hilary Kornblith
“But there is no doubt that my own views on this are, in quite a number of ways, very different from those of Quine.” WayDifferentMy OwnViewsNumbersDoubtNo Doubt Author:Hilary Kornblith
“There is a worry that many have expressed that, on the naturalistic way of approaching philosophical questions, philosophy will somehow be co-opted by science. I'm not much worried about this.” WayPhilosophyWorryPhilosophicalWorriedPhilosophical Questions Author:Hilary Kornblith
“No one worries terribly much about who the questions belong to, or whether a given contribution is really philosophy or, instead, properly nothing but science. Perhaps another way to put this is that, although I think that knowledge is a natural kind, I don't think that philosophy is.” ThinkingWayKindPhilosophyGivenNaturalWorryContributionAnother Way Author:Hilary Kornblith
“In my view, philosophers have shown a great deal more respect for the first-person point of view than it deserves. There's a lot of empirical work on the various psychological mechanisms by way of which the first-person point of view is produced, and, when we understand this, I believe, we can stop romanticising and mythologising the first-person perspective.” WayFirstsBelievePersonsI BelieveViewsDealsPerspectiveDeservePhilosopherVariousPoint Of ViewPsychologicalMechanismFirst PersonThis I Believe Author:Hilary Kornblith
