Pragmatic encroachment on knowledge?

• Main Author: Wong, Don Wei Wen
• Other Authors: Olav Benjamin Vassend
• Format: Final Year Project
• Language: English
• Published: Nanyang Technological University 2021
• Subjects: Humanities::Philosophy
• Online Access: https://hdl.handle.net/10356/147351
• Institution: Nanyang Technological University

Much debate has centred around the contentious idea that having knowledge is a matter that is at least partly dependent on some non-truth connected factors, as in our non-epistemic, practical reasons or aims. This is the notion of pragmatic encroachment on knowledge. This view of knowledge has been contested by an opposing camp of anti-pragmatism or intellectualism which sees the matter of having knowledge as being solely dependent on truth-connected factors in that of epistemic reasons. In this essay, I will respond to the dichotomy that separates pragmatism and anti-pragmatism or intellectualism— both theses offer key insights on different levels that we should account for. This response makes a distinction between the levels of posing a meta-epistemological account of the nature of knowledge and a normative epistemological account of norms of belief. That is, the two theses are right on the claim of “dependency” on different levels. This essay will thus argue that on the one hand, pragmatism better explains the nature of knowledge than does the view of anti-pragmatism. On the other hand, owing to the epistemically valuable goal of truth acquisition, it is argued that anti-pragmatism or intellectualism as a norm of belief should not be made dispensable.