Epistemic Authority and Its Critics

Fundamentalism and Epistemic Authority

I will discuss three questions in my paper: 1. What are the essential elements of fundamentalism? 2. What is the role of authority as a source of fundamentalism? 3. What is the role of trust in the spreading of fundamentalism? For each question I will outline a possible answer from a special theoretical point of view. What is " fundamentalism " ? There is an ongoing discussion about this questi...

Negotiating Epistemic Authority

Why do we trust what other people say, and form beliefs on the basis of their speech? One answer: they are taken to have epistemic authority. Intuitively this means that the other person (or institution, or group) is taken to be authoritative in what they say, at least with respect to a particular domain. Here, we want to claim that there are (at least) two varieties of epistemic authority, one...

Democracy and Its Critics

Authority, Social Change, and Education: A Response to Dewey's Critics

In this paper, I want to examine and challenge certain criticisms of Dewey's conception of authority. These criticisms are, broadly speaking, of two species. The first set of criticisms involves what critics have labeled Dewey's "strong" authority. These critics, the so-called "Illinois Revisionists," argue that embedded in Dewey's social and educational philosophy are assumptions about authori...

Keynes' Law and Its Critics*

Keynes' Law and Its Critics. Critics of Keynes' "fundamental psychological law" that the rate of current consumption declines with increases in current income claimed it was incomplete, produced incorrect predictions and emphasized the wrong spending behavior. These objections involve confusion over the effects of individual and average data on spending estimates. When data types are carefully ...