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Document Details :

Title: Les actes de connaissance. La pragmatique de la cognition et le problème épistémique de la justification
Author(s): LAVELLE, S.
Journal: Revue Philosophique de Louvain
Volume: 102    Issue: 3   Date: Août 2004   
Pages: 477-504
DOI: 10.2143/RPL.102.3.504932

Abstract :
The problem of knowledge inherited from Plato’s Theaetetus has been thought in contemporary epistemic analysis since Gettier as a problem of the justification of true belief. Now the analysis of the relationship between cognition and action makes it possible to establish that knowing always means acting, whether in view of knowledge as such, for which action appears to be a necessary condition for more than one reason, or whether in view of anything but knowledge, which appears to be a tool for numerous ends that it is the task of action to specify. Hence by drawing inspiration from the investigations of analytical philosophy into speech acts, it is possible to distinguish several types of acts of knowledge, in particular cognitive, incognitive and percognitive acts. Acts of knowledge thus make it possible to propose a pragmatic solution to the problem of Gettier, which, limited to the framework of epistemic analysis, appears as a “pseudo-problem” without a solution. Knowledge accordingly always presupposes a cognitive act, which, in function of the intention and the cognitive capacity of the subject in a given situation, assigns a value of justification to certain epistemic conditions. (Transl. by J. Dudley).

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