Epistemology with a Broad and Long View

Epistemology with a Broad and Long View is an original and provocative challenge to standard epistemologies that assume that the reasonability of beliefs is wholly a function of considerations indicating their current likelihood. Richard Foley argues that this view, although widely accepted, is excessively narrow.

Foley argues for a less constricted epistemology that acknowledges that, in addition to beliefs and degrees-of-confidence, intellectual commitments play a vital role in our intellectual lives; that the key issue in overseeing all these attitudes is whether it’s appropriate to revise or add to them for our purposes; and that a mixture of practical, ethical, political, social, and long-term intellectual considerations, and not just ones about current likelihood, determine what’s appropriate. On this view, there is no purely epistemic notion of reasonability. There are truth-related considerations, but except in those rare cases where there is complete certainty, they don’t determine the reasonability of our belief-like attitudes. They do so only in partnership with a broad and long range of non-truth-related considerations. Foley suggests that a failure to recognize these partnerships can result in theoretical confusion, and also can impede our ability to understand and deal with dogmatists who have unlikely or toxic views. Foley’s overriding theme is that a broad and long view is as necessary for making sense of the reasonableness or unreasonableness of our opinions, as it is for other aspects of our lives.

Richard Foley is Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at New York University. He is the former Anne and Joel Ehrenkranz Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Science and former Vice-Chancellor for Strategic Planning at New York University. Previously he was chair of the Department of Philosophy, Executive Dean of Arts and Science, and Dean of the Graduate School at Rutgers University, and prior to that Chair of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame.