DEC SEMINAR ǀ Jérome Dokic and Joëlle Proust will host a new seminar on Cognitive Epistemology

COGNITIVE EPISTEMOLOGY

Instructors : Jérome Dokic, Joëlle Proust 

This seminar will study the status and functional role of normative evaluations involved in the elaboration of knowledge, both at the individual and at the collective level. It is open to EHESS and ENS students and PhDs.

Day and time : Two Mondays per month, 15:00-17:00

Frequency : 12 sessions total (two per month), starting October 9, 2023

Location : Seminar room of the Pavillon Jardin, ENS

Object of the seminar :

Epistemology traditionally aims to provide an account of our concept of knowledge, based on folk psychology and conceptual analysis. Cognitive epistemology aims rather to investigate, on the basis of scientific evidence, how our cognitive equipment allows for reliably extracting and processing information about the environment. A classical objection raised against this aim is that a descriptive investigation cannot account for normative recommendations. A teleo-functional analysis, however, can causally explain why evaluative mechanisms are constitutive and uneliminable components of cognitive actions. The seminar will examine the various forms of truth-conduciveness at work in the individual and social mechanisms that allow individual and collective agents to reliably seek, evaluate and share information, across phylogeny, ontogeny, and cultural accumulation.