Feasibilist Epistemology

The 17th Cologne Summer School in Philosophy (CSSiP) on

Feasibilist Epistemology

takes place in Cologne from August 19 to August 23, 2024. Our special guest will be Maria Lasonen-Aarnio (University of Helsinki).

The Cologne Summer School is an annual, week-long event at which leading epistemologists present their current work in a series of lectures, defend their views against critical comments, and discuss their work with participants. The Summer School mainly aims at professional philosophers and graduate students, but anyone is welcome to apply.

Lasonen-Aarnio’s work in epistemology has more recently grown into a general normative approach she calls feasibilist. Many theorists agree that we need normative assessments that focus on how things are with the epistemic agent rather than how things pan out in the world. A dominant assumption has been that accommodating such a more “subjective” level of normativity will require taking into account the limits of an agent’s perspective on the world. Perspectivists, however, need not be internalists. Feasibilism seeks more subjective norms by taking into account limits on the ways in which human agents can choose, act, and believe – and in particular, on the dispositions that they can feasibly manifest. Lasonen-Aarnio’s epistemological implementation of feasibilism deploys two tiers of epistemic assessment. In addition to assessing whether a belief is true or constitutes knowledge, for instance, we can assess whether it is formed and retained by manifesting good dispositions. On her preferred view, reasonable beliefs are formed by manifesting dispositions that are among the most knowledge-conducive feasible ones.

This summer school will focus on the following topics:

• higher-order evidence and defeat
• norms on suspending judgment
• the internalism-externalism divide
• consequentism in epistemology
• guidance and blame
• structural incoherence and akrasia
• non-ideal epistemology.

The summer school is free but limited to 50 participants, who will be selected on the basis of motivation and qualification. Online application is possible through April 15. Please supply a short letter that sketches your academic background and main motivation for participating in the Summer School. If you are interested in giving a brief presentation (approx. 20 minutes) related toLasonen-Aarnio’swork, please also send an abstract of no more than 1,000 words. We will inform you about the result of your application soon after the deadline.