Learning from Our Mistakes: Epistemology for the Real World

In Learning from Our Mistakes: Epistemology for the Real World, William J. Talbott provides a new framework for understanding the history of Western epistemology and uses it to propose a new way of understanding rational belief that can be applied to pressing social and political issues. Talbott's new model of rational belief is not a model of a theorem prover in mathematics – It is a model of a good learner. Being a good learner requires sensitivity to clues, the imaginative ability to generate alternative explanatory narratives that fit the clues, and the ability to select the most coherent explanatory narrative. Sensitivity to clues requires sensitivity not only to evidence that supports one's own beliefs, but also to evidence that casts doubt on them. One of the most important characteristics of a good learner is the ability to correct mistakes. From this model, Talbott articulates nine principles that help to explain the difference between rational and irrational belief. Talbott contrasts his approach with the approach of historically important philosophers, including Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant, Wittgenstein, and Kuhn, as well as with a range of contemporary approaches, including pragmatism, Bayesianism, and naturalism. On the basis of his model of rational belief, Talbott articulates a new theory of prejudice, which he uses to help diagnose the sources of inequity in the U.S. criminal justice system, as well as to provide insight into the proliferation of tribal and fascist epistemologies based on alt-facts and alt-truth. Learning from Our Mistakes offers a new lens through which to interpret the history of Western epistemology and analyze the complicated social and political phenomena facing us today.

Table of Contents:
Part I. The Proof Paradigm and the Causal Revolution in Epistemology Introduction Chapter 1. The Proof Paradigm Chapter 2. Two Crises for the Proof Paradigm in the Enlightenment Chapter 3. The End of the Proof Paradigm? Chapter 4. The Causal Revolution in Epistemology Part II. A New Way of Understanding Epistemic Rationality Chapter 5. An Alternative to the Proof Paradigm for Ground-Level Rationality Chapter 6. Two More Principles of Epistemic Rationality Part III. And Epistemic Irrationality Chapter 7. Epistemology for the Real World: Prejudices and Other Kinds of Epistemically Irrational Biased Beliefs Chapter 8. Internally Inconsistent, Self-refuting, and Self-Undermining Views Part IV. More on Epistemic Rationality Chapter 9. Bayesian Accounts of Epistemic Rationality Chapter 10. An Alternative to the Proof Paradigm for Metacognitive Rationality Chapter 11. Necessity and Universality Chapter 12. The Evolutionary Naturalist Challenge to the Reliability of Particular Epistemic Judgments Part V. Clarifications, Responses to Objections, and Conclusion Chapter 13. Clarifications and Objections Conclusion Appendix A Appendix B References

About the Author :
William J. Talbott is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Washington, Seattle. He teaches and has published articles in epistemology; moral and political philosophy, including the philosophy of human rights; rational choice theory; and the philosophy of law. He is the author of a book on reliabilist epistemology, The Reliability of the Cognitive Mechanism and two books in the philosophy of human rights: Which Rights Should Be Universal? and Human Rights and Human Well-Being (both OUP).

Review :
"William Talbott offers a fundamentally new way of thinking about epistemic rationality, one that seems to me to constitute a third alternative to the ultimately frustrating demands of traditional internalism (growing out of what he describes as the "proof paradigm") and the sterile and unsatisfying externalist approach. On Talbott's view, the essence of epistemic rationality, rather than proof from unassailable premises or mere third-person evaluation, is the capacity to rationally correct one's own mistakes. Developing and elaborating this idea yields many rich insights into both the history of western epistemology and a wide range of issues, both epistemological and topical. It seems to me to offer a real and urgently needed antidote to the cognitive and epistemological chaos that presently afflicts our society." -- Lawrence BonJour, University of Washington (Emeritus) "This is a strikingly original book... Talbott has insightful things to say about the nature of prejudice, the faults with Bayesian approaches to rationality, the significance of self-undermining theories, the epistemological significance of higher-order belief, the role of experience in rationality, the importance of necessity and universality in a theory of rationality, and much more besides. Every epistemologist should read this book." -- Hilary Kornblith, University of Massachusetts, Amherst "Talbott's sophisticated theory of rationality is wide-ranging and innovative, and should interest any serious epistemologist." -- Alvin Goldman, Rutgers University, Emeritus, and U. C. Berkeley