Hartman, Peter
Senior Fellow: October 2023–February 2024
Research Project: The Epistemic Role of Cognitive Skills in Scholastic Philosophy (1250–1650)
Scepticism about the external world took on a particularly forceful form during the late Scholastic period, where divine omnipotence came to be centred in debates about the mind and reality. While most Scholastics responded to this sceptical worry by limiting divine power (e.g., by appealing to divine goodness), some, instead of attempting to defuse the challenge, accepted it and used it as a way of testing different theories in different domains. If a theory entailed scepticism, then that theory needed to be revised. This project—part of a broader book project on moral and cognitive abilities in Scholastic philosophy (1250–1650)—concerns the following two domains where this strategy of using the sceptical hypothesis to limit our theorising was put to use: the issue of the ontological status of mental acts on the one hand and the issue of the justification of our beliefs on the other. It will argue that a distinctive “skills-first” theory of cognition emerged from this strategy, which rejected infallibilism about justification and embraced a kind of reliabilism about knowledge. On this view, a belief is justified insofar as it is reliably produced by a suitable (acquired) cognitive skill, such as the skill of distinguishing breeds of cattle.
Peter Hartman is Associate Professor at Loyola University, Chicago, Department of Philosophy.