Belief, Agency, and Knowledge

Reviews / Votes

Belief, Agency and Knowledge is a triumph. It provides a sustained defense of a truly social approach to human knowledge, one which rejects the longstanding philosophical assumption that knowing is something we do in isolation, and instead embraces the community as the starting point of any epistemological investigation. In so doing, it provides a strikingly original account of the norms of inquiry and sheds light on free belief, the pursuit of truth and the role of responsible belief in democracy. * Michael Patrick Lynch, Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at University of Connecticut * Wilfrid Sellars once said, "in characterizing an episode or a state as that of knowing... we are placing it in the logical space of reasons, of justifying and being able to justify what one says." Matthew Chrisman has done more than anybody else to make Sellar's idea about knowledge, and about epistemic evaluation more generally, both precise and plausible. His book is a pleasure to read. * Ram Neta, Professor of Philosophy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill * In Belief, Agency, and Knowledge, Matthew Chrisman aims to illuminate the nature of epistemic normativity. His main innovation lies in how he traces the source and authority of epistemic norms to our social relationship with one other in our joint effort to determine how the world is. This is a bold vision, one informed not only by recent debates in the theory of knowledge but also by themes from philosophy of mind, action theory, and political philosophy. * Sandford Goldberg, Chester D. Tripp Professor in the Humanities, Northwestern University *