{"id":2158,"date":"2026-02-23T15:37:45","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T15:37:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cful.letras.ulisboa.pt\/lancog\/?p=2158"},"modified":"2026-02-23T15:37:45","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T15:37:45","slug":"seminar-series-in-analytic-philosophy-2025-26-session-16","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cful.letras.ulisboa.pt\/lancog\/seminar-series-in-analytic-philosophy-2025-26-session-16\/","title":{"rendered":"Seminar Series in Analytic Philosophy 2025-26: Session 16"},"content":{"rendered":"

Primitivist Views of Belief and Knowledge<\/strong><\/p>\n

Pascal Engel (EHESS, Paris)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

27 February 2026, 16:00 (Lisbon Time \u2013 WET)<\/p>\n

Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa<\/p>\n

Sala Mattos Rom\u00e3o [C201.J] (Departamento de Filosofia)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Abstract:\u00a0<\/strong>Two theses about belief and knowledge have dominated contemporary analytic philosophy: (A) Knowledge is a kind of higher-grade belief; (B) Propositional attitudes are relations to propositions. Both theses have been criticized: (A) by those defending the \u201cknowledge first\u201d program in epistemology, who claim that any definition of knowledge is bound to be circular and that knowledge is \u201cprime\u201d, and (B) by Arthur Prior and some phenomenologists, who have claimed that belief should not be understood as a relation between an attitude (or a mode) and a proposition, but only the entertaining of a content. On this view, sometimes called \u201cprenectivist\u201d, there are no attitudes as ordinarily construed: there are only kinds of contents, which determine in which kind of attitude a subject is at a given moment.<\/p>\n

Let us call these views about knowledge and belief\u00a0primitivist<\/em>: knowledge cannot be decomposed as a conjunction of true belief and some other factor, and belief is not relational, but only the instantiation a certain kind of content. The arguments in favour of the knowledge first view are well known, and I shall not rehearse them, except the circularity argument. The (B) view of belief can also be labelled \u201cbelief is prime\u201d. I shall in particular ask whether they both give priority to objects rather than propositions. Both views have the consequences that belief and knowledge are very different kinds of states.<\/p>\n

One version of the (A) view is that knowledge is basically objectual knowledge (knowing Sintra, knowing Pessoa) rather than knowledge that (knowing that Sintra is not far from Lisboa). It is basically Russell\u2019s notion of\u00a0acquaintance.\u00a0<\/em>Recently a version of the knowledge first program has been defended by Maria Rosa Antognazza (2024), who argues, on historical grounds, that knowledge is an undefinable form of assent or grasping of objects.\u00a0 The primitivist version of the (B) view is defended among others, by Uriah Kriegel (2022).<\/p>\n

I would like to defend several objections to these primitivist conceptions of knowledge and belief. One can agree with the primitivist conception of knowledge without agreeing that (a) the fact that any definition of knowledge is circular entails that knowledge cannot be characterized by certain marks (sensitivity, safety, reliability) which do not amount to justified belief, (b) the fact that a long historical tradition has accepted a view of knowledge as a primitive state graspable by intuition does not imply that there is no room for a notion of knowledge as belief plus a justificatory factor, (c) that there is an important difference between objectual knowledge by acquaintance and propositional knowledge by description does not entail that the latter is based on the latter, (d) that the non-attitudinal and non-relational view of belief has many problems and fails to be a genuine alternative to the relational view.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This event is funded by Portuguese national funds through FCT \u2013 Funda\u00e7\u00e3o para a Ci\u00eancia e a Tecnologia, I.P., within the project UID\/00310\/2025, Centro de Filosofia da Universidade de Lisboa (https:\/\/doi.org\/10.54499\/UIDB\/00310\/2025<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Primitivist Views of Belief and Knowledge Pascal Engel (EHESS, Paris)   27 February 2026, 16:00 (Lisbon Time \u2013 WET) Faculdade de Letras de Lisboa Sala Mattos Rom\u00e3o [C201.J] (Departamento de Filosofia)   Abstract:\u00a0Two theses about belief and knowledge have dominated contemporary analytic philosophy: (A) Knowledge is a kind of higher-grade belief; (B) Propositional attitudes are […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":4,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"","activitypub_status":"federate","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2158","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cful.letras.ulisboa.pt\/lancog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2158","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cful.letras.ulisboa.pt\/lancog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cful.letras.ulisboa.pt\/lancog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cful.letras.ulisboa.pt\/lancog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cful.letras.ulisboa.pt\/lancog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2158"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cful.letras.ulisboa.pt\/lancog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2158\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2159,"href":"https:\/\/cful.letras.ulisboa.pt\/lancog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2158\/revisions\/2159"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cful.letras.ulisboa.pt\/lancog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2158"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cful.letras.ulisboa.pt\/lancog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2158"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cful.letras.ulisboa.pt\/lancog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2158"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}