Ignorance, truth, and falsehood Le Morvan, Pierre
Ratio (Oxford),
September 2022, 2022-09-00, 20220901, Volume:
35, Issue:
3
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
According to the Ignorance Factivity Thesis, for every proposition p, one is ignorant of p only if p is a truth. By contrast, according to the Ignorance Non‐Factivity Thesis, it is false that, for ...every proposition p, one is ignorant of p only if p is a truth. I argue that, on balance, the case for the latter thesis is stronger than the case for the former.
When ignorance excuses Le Morvan, Pierre
Ratio,
March 2019, 2019-03-00, 20190301, Volume:
32, Issue:
1
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
An ingenious argument – we may call it the Argument from Excuse – purports to show that the Standard View of Ignorance is false and the New View of Ignorance is true. On the former, ignorance is lack ...of knowledge; on the latter, ignorance is lack of true belief. I defend the Standard View by arguing that the Argument from Excuse is unsound. I also argue that an implication of my case is that Factual Ignorance Thesis (FIT) is false. According to FIT, whenever an agent A acts from factual ignorance, A is morally blameworthy (culpable) for the act only if A is morally blameworthy (culpable) for the ignorance from which A acts.
Refining and extending Cassam's important account of the vice of epistemic insouciance, I distinguish between expressive and receptive forms of it. Focusing on the latter, I discuss its ...perniciousness. I then delineate a virtue and a vice that have hitherto not been discussed in the literature: epistemic souciance and epistemic hypersouciance.
One of the most venerable and enduring intuitions in epistemology concerns the relationship between true belief and knowledge. Famously articulated by Socrates, it holds that true belief does not ...suffice for knowledge. I discuss a matching intuition about ignorance according to which true belief does not suffice for the absence of ignorance. I argue that the latter intuition undercuts the New View of Ignorance (according to which ignorance is the absence of true belief) and supports the Standard View of Ignorance (according to which ignorance is the absence of knowledge).
Searle on the biology of seeing Le Morvan, Pierre
Studies in history and philosophy of science. Part C, Studies in history and philosophy of biological and biomedical sciences,
October 2018, 2018-Oct, 2018-10-00, 20181001, Volume:
71
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Searle offers an account of seeing as a conscious state not constituted by the object(s) seen. I focus in this article on his biological case for this thesis, and argue that the biological ...considerations he adduces neither establish his own position nor defeat a rival object-inclusive view. I show (among other things) that taking seeing to be a biological state is compatible with its being (partially) constituted by the object(s) seen.
•Biologism is distinguished from Narrow Biologism.•One can accept Biologism without accepting Narrow Biologism.•Searle's main arguments for his views on seeing depend on an untenable Narrow Biologism.
Knowledge before Gettier Le Morvan, Pierre
British journal for the history of philosophy,
11/2017, Volume:
25, Issue:
6
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
According to a historical claim oft-repeated by contemporary epistemologists, the 'traditional' conception of knowledge prevailed in Western philosophy prior to the publication in 1963 of Edmund's ...Gettier's famous three-page article 'Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?'. On this conception, knowledge consists of justified true belief. In this article, I critically consider evidence for and against this historical claim, and conclude with a puzzle concerning its widespread acceptance.
Deploying distinctions between ignorance of p and ignorance that p (is true), and between knowledge of p and knowledge that p (is true), I address a question that has hitherto received little ...attention, namely: what is it to have knowledge of propositions? I then provide a taxonomy of ontological conceptions of the nature of propositions, and explore several of their interesting epistemological implications.
Rik Peels has once again forcefully argued that ignorance is not equivalent to the lack or absence of knowledge. In doing so, he endeavors to refute the Standard View of Ignorance according to which ...they are equivalent, and to advance what he calls the “New View” according to which ignorance is equivalent (merely) to the lack or absence of true belief. I defend the Standard View against his new attempted refutation.
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