Analytic Epistemology

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What is knowledge?

What is knowledge, and under what conditions is knowledge produced? What is epistemic rationality, and under what conditions is epistemic rationality (the rationality of mental states, such as belief and doubt) produced? These are some of the questions proposed by the Epistemology of Reasoning project, coordinated by Professor Claudio de Almeida of the Research Group in Analytic Epistemology, which he chairs. These questions seek to elucidate some features of human cognition that are not addressed elsewhere by scientific research.

To question, provoke, and remove individuals from their comfort zones are some of the goals of a qualified team of researchers who are strongly involved in the ongoing debate within the English-speaking epistemological tradition. This team includes professors, master’s and doctoral students of philosophy, the social sciences, physics, law, and theology.

Affiliated with the Graduate Program in Philosophy at PUCRS, the group maintains a longstanding and intense collaboration with researchers at Rutgers University (USA), whose philosophy department ranks first in epistemology according to The Philosophical Gourmet, the foremost ranking institution for philosophy in the English-speaking world. The group’s leadership in its field in the Brazilian community is due to the high quality of its events and publications, some of them in English, on the group’s main research topics: the epistemologies of reasoning, memory, testimony, and disagreement; theories of knowledge; theories of epistemic rationality; and skepticism.

Among the events organized by the group, the international colloquia on epistemology are the most notable. The third colloquium, in 2010, brought to Brazil philosophers such as Alvin Goldman and Ernest Sosa, from Rutgers University, William Lycan, from the University of North Carolina (USA), and Jennifer Lackey, from Northwestern University (USA). Earlier colloquia included, among others, professors Fred Dretske, Peter Klein, Richard Foley, Keith Lehrer, Richard Feldman, Stewart Cohen, John Pollock, some of the most influential figures in the field. One of the goals of the group is to bring epistemology closer to cognitive psychology and neuroscience.