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Epistemic Pluralism: From Systems to Stances

Part of: Non-Western Philosophies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2019

JONARDON GANERI Open the ORCID record for JONARDON GANERI [Opens in a new window]
JONARDON GANERI*
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Abstract

Drawing on insights from the epistemological work of the Jaina philosophers of classical India, I argue in defense of epistemic pluralism, the view that there are different but equally valid ways of knowing the world. The version of epistemic pluralism I defend is stance pluralism, a pluralism about epistemic stances or perspectives, understood to be policies or stratagems of knowing. I reject the view that the correct way to characterize epistemic pluralism is as consisting in a pluralism about epistemic systems.

Keywords

epistemic pluralismJaina philosophyPaul Boghossianstance
Type
Articles
Information
Journal of the American Philosophical Association , Volume 5 , Issue 1 , Spring 2019 , pp. 1 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © American Philosophical Association 2019 

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Footnotes

I thank the following for their feedback on earlier versions of this essay: Miranda Fricker, Duncan Pritchard, Paul Boghossian, Annalisa Coliva, Karine Chemla, Mizumoto Masaharu, Bana Bashour, Monika Kirloskar-Steinbach, Timothy Williamson, and Stephen Stich. I have presented some of the ideas in workshops at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (Paris), Azim Premji University (Bangalore), Japan Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (Kanazawa), and the University of California, Irvine, and I thank all the audiences for their comments.

This article is the third in a special series of commissioned articles on non-Western philosophies. The second article ‘The Thought Experimental Method: Avicenna's Flying Man Argument’, by Peter Adamson and Fedor Benevich, appeared in Volume 4, Issue 2, pp. 147–164.

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