Knowledge and Belief
25th Anniversary Conference and Reunion
October 14 - 15, 2005
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statement | speakers | schedule
Conference Statement
The relationship between knowledge and belief is contested ground. Some would argue that what we call knowledge is a form of belief: that knowledge should be given no privileged position. Others would argue that belief is subordinate to knowledge and should be subjected to critique from what is known. Alongside epistemological and political questions about knowledge and belief, the renewed power of religion in our own time also raises questions about the relationship of knowledge and belief historically.
While some scholars separate the objects of belief and knowledge into discrete domains, protected by category, language game, or contest from one another, there are no commonly accepted norms for adjudication among these positions that currently operate in either the academic or the wider public sphere. This interdisciplinary conference encourages participants to seek common ground for discussion but also to explore the diverse valences at which the terms knowledge and belief operate in different disciplines.
This conference welcomes discussion of how we arrived at this contested place and what it means. In the tradition of the Stanford Humanities Center, the conference offers a context that transcends the boundaries of specialization, time and place.
Questions to Consider:
- What counts as knowledge? What counts as belief? What counts as evidence for each? Is science the paradigm of knowledge? Is religion the paradigm of belief? What forms of inquiry and what subjects have been privileged? Who is entitled to seek what kinds of knowledge and who has the access to the power that knowledge and belief confer? When, and with what consequences?
- What types of knowledge should we include in thinking about its relation to belief (e.g. scientific, artistic, the "local" knowledge of anthropological observation, historical knowledge, knowledge of ourselves, and of others)?
- Similarly, what types of belief should we include (e.g. religious, political, philosophical) in thinking about knowledge?
- What is the status of belief and/or knowledge as a basis for action and judgment? Can we live or function without belief?
- What would a history of the relation between knowledge and belief look like?
- What are the differences in the logical status and practical application of these two categories? How are these categories embedded in specific social practices, contexts, and networks of power?
- What uses have scholars made of the knowledge produced in the academy to maintain or subvert power relations? How does this knowledge shape ideas about attitudes toward belief? How are the relations inflected by different cultures, genders, ethnicities?
- How have the arts and the humanities addressed these tensions between knowledge and belief in the past, not only in the West but across cultures?
- How do we expect the humanities and arts to be transformed in the next generation by the conceptions of knowledge and belief we hold in the present?
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