Unwanted knowledge transmission

Ólafsson, Í. A. (2023) Unwanted knowledge transmission. Synthese, 201(5), 162. (doi: 10.1007/s11229-023-04140-3)

Abstract

John Greco (2020) sets out to create a unified virtue-theoretic account of knowledge generation and transmission in his book The Transmission of Knowledge. One of the advantages of his view is that it can defend the achievement view from a known strand of counterexamples. To accomplish that, he relies on joint agency being essential to knowledge transmission. Joint agency can be characterized as a sort of interdependent and interactive cooperation between speaker and hearer that share an intention to transmit knowledge. This paper introduces the phenomenon of unwanted knowledge transmission which shows that joint agency, as Greco presents it, is not essential to knowledge transmission. Four types of unwanted knowledge transmissions will be introduced that pose threats to Greco’s account by showing that shared intention, a key characteristic of joint agency, is not present in all instances of knowledge transmission. Finally, some potential ways to defend Greco’s view will be considered and discussed.

• Item Type: Articles
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Ólafsson, Ísak Andri
• Authors: Ólafsson, Í. A.
• College/School: College of Arts & Humanities > School of Humanities > Philosophy
• Journal Name: Synthese
• Publisher: Springer
• ISSN: 0039-7857
• ISSN (Online): 1573-0964
• Published Online: 26 April 2023
• Copyright Holders: Copyright © 2023 The Author
• First Published: First published in Synthese 201(5): 162
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced under a Creative Commons License

Project Code	Award No	Project Name	Principal Investigator	Funder's Name	Funder Ref	Lead Dept
306621		A Virtue Epistemology of Trust	Joseph Carter	Leverhulme Trust (LEVERHUL)	RPG-2019-302	Arts - Philosophy