Sentimentalist Epistemology

情感主義的知識論

Michael Slote

《哲學與文化》 41卷3期 (2014/03) Pp. 17-45

摘要

情緒在知態的證成中所扮演的角色，比我們以往所瞭解的還要具有核心地位。例如，開放心胸這個德性在德性知識論的文獻中經常被提及，但它卻還不曾被指出，開放心胸要求一種對於他人意見與論證的感同身受，這是來自於對與自己意見相左觀點的某種程度上智性的「同情」。而信念本身所蘊含的偏好某種看事情的方式，這裡的偏好本身也是一種情緒或情感，就像我們偏好某個政黨，或偏好某個姪子一樣。信念不僅蘊含著情緒，並且以一種新弗列格主義的用詞，它也可以被視為滿足的情緒狀態，這種狀態來自於當一個滿足的命題滿足一個不滿足的普遍偏好之脈絡。但是知識論需要告訴我們，日常信念如何能在我們熟悉的懷疑論面前獲得證成，而且可以用感同身受的想法來幫助我們完成這個工作。任何站在懷疑論的基礎之上的人，總是堅持質疑在他們人生中的每一個關係與情緒，這正好表現出他們缺乏對於生命所帶給他們生活方式的一種感受力，這可被視為一種實際上不理性的形式。但是同樣地，因為知識論中懷疑論所提出之懷疑，而質疑知覺或記憶的信念，也是對於我們自己自然存在的信念所產生的無感，某個意義上來說，這也是知態上較不理性的。依此理路，我們正朝向一種情感主義的知識論。

關鍵字

情感主義 ； 感受 ； 情緒 ； 弗列格 ； 心胸開放

並列摘要

Emotion plays a more central role in epistemic justification than we have previously realized. For example, the virtue of open-mindedness is frequently spoken of in the literature of virtue epistemology, but it hasn't been pointed out that open-mindedness requires an empathic receptivity to the opinions and arguments of others that results in some degree of intellectual ”sympathy” with views that differ from one's own. And belief itself involves favoring one way of seeing things over others, and favoring here is an emotion or affect just as much as it is when we favor one political party or nephew over another. Belief not only involves emotion, but can be seen, in neo-Fregean terms, as the saturated emotional state that results when a saturated proposition saturates an unsaturated general context of favoring.But epistemology needs to tell us how ordinary beliefs can be justified in the face of familiar skeptical doubts, and we can make use of the idea of receptivity to help us accomplish this. A person who on skeptical grounds insists on questioning every relationship and emotion in their life shows a lack of receptivity to what life has brought their way, and that counts as a form of practical irrationality. But by the same token, to question ordinary perceptual or memory beliefs because of the doubts raised by epistemological skepticism is to be unreceptive to one's own naturally existing beliefs in a way that is epistemically less than rational.We are well on our way toward a sentimentalist epistemology.

並列關鍵字

Sentimentalism ； Receptivity ； Emotion ； Frege ； Open-Mindedness