LanCog seminar: Pascal Engel on primitivist views of belief and knowledge
Ricardo Santos
SEMINAR SERIES IN ANALYTIC PHILOSOPHY
2025-26: Session 16
Primitivist Views of Belief and Knowledge
Pascal Engel (EHESS, Paris)
27 February 2026, 16:00 (Lisbon Time – WET)
Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa
Sala Mattos Romão [C201.J] (Departamento de Filosofia)
Abstract: According to the primitivist views about knowledge and belief, knowledge cannot be decomposed as a conjunction of true belief and some other factor, and belief is not relational, but only the instantiation a certain kind of content. I would like to defend several objections to these primitivist conceptions of knowledge and belief. One can agree with the primitivist conception of knowledge without agreeing that (a) the fact that any definition of knowledge is circular entails that knowledge cannot be characterized by certain marks (sensitivity, safety, reliability) which do not amount to justified belief, (b) the fact that a long historical tradition has accepted a view of knowledge as a primitive state graspable by intuition does not imply that there is no room for a notion of knowledge as belief plus a justificatory factor, (c) that there is an important difference between objectual knowledge by acquaintance and propositional knowledge by description does not entail that the latter is based on the latter, (d) that the non-attitudinal and non-relational view of belief has many problems and fails to be a genuine alternative to the relational view.
All are welcome, in-person!