Epistemic Agency

Catherine Elgin (Harvard University)

Book symposium at the Department of Philosophy at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin with Catherine Z. Elgin (Harvard University), March 27th - March 29th, 2023, on her new book manuscript, “Epistemic Ecology”.

Program

• Public Lecture by Catherine Z. Elgin: “Epistemic Agency”
  Monday, March 27th, 6-8 p.m., Unter den Linden 6, room 1070

• Workshop: Tuesday, March 28th, and Wednesday, March 29th, 9 a.m., room 2249a
  For the workshop, please register in advance with [email protected]

Abstract

"This book is an investigation into epistemic ecology – the relation of individual epistemic agents to their natural and social environments … Epistemic Ecology explicates the agential epistemic stance by interweaving three themes. The first considers conditions on epistemic agency. What does it take to be an effective epistemic agent – that is someone who can act to foster her epistemic ends? It argues for an answer grounded in epistemic autonomy – the capacity of an agent to define and pursue her own epistemic ends … Moreover, social conditions have to be in place for it to be both constituted and exercised, … so the second theme concerns epistemic community. What sort of community underwrites, promotes, and benefits from epistemic agency? How is epistemic autonomy consonant with epistemic interdependence? … The third theme concerns the ways agents and communities engage with the domains they seek to understand. How do they represent the phenomena in those domains? How do they devise modes of access to those phenomena?" (Catherine Z. Elgin, Epistemic Ecology, manuscript, Chapter 1)