W&M Featured Events
[PAST EVENT] Philosophy Colloquium: Keith Lehrer (Arizona & Miami), "Defensible Knowledge and Exemplars of Truth"
Access & Features
- Open to the public
Keith Lehrer, Regent's Professor emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Arizona and a Research Professor of Philosophy at the University of Miami in Florida, will present a talk on truth and how know it, called "Defensible Knowledge and Exemplars of Truth." Professor Lehrer is the author of 7 books - on topics ranging over truth, mind, knowledge, and art - and the author of over 170 articles. All are invited!
An abstract of the talk is here:
Defensible Knowledge and Exemplars of Truth
Defensible Knowledge of S is undefeated defensibility or justification of something accepted by S. A defense or justification is undefeated by error if and only if it is sustained in a system, the ultrasystem U of S, in which all states that contain error are deleted. U is thus a truth sustained system. The truth connection required by U for empirical claims is supported by exemplar representation, resulting from a process of exemplarization. When the experience is exemplarized, it represents, refers to and is true of the experience. This is reflexive exemplar representation. The exemplar may be extended to represent external qualities, and external objects. However, exemplar representation remains part of the meaning of the description of such qualities and objects and therefore, a fallible part of the evidence for the existence of them.
Reflexive exemplarization shows us something about what truth itself is like as it reflexively closes the gap between the vehicle of representation and what it represents. We at the same time may experience something about what the meaning and evidence are like. Exemplarized truth connected in an explanatory loop brings the represented world into the system of defensible representation and what it is like.
Contact
Joshua Gert [[jngert]] or Laura Ekstrom [[lwekst]]