the oxford handbook of epistemology

506 613 0
the oxford handbook of epistemology

Đang tải... (xem toàn văn)

Tài liệu hạn chế xem trước, để xem đầy đủ mời bạn chọn Tải xuống

Thông tin tài liệu

The Oxford Handbook of Epistemology Preface Epistemology, also known as the theory of knowledge, will flourish as long as we deem knowledge valuable. We shall, I predict, continue to value knowledge, if only for its instrumental value: it gets us through the day as well as the night. Indeed, it's hard to imagine a stable person, let alone a stable society, indifferent to the real difference between genuine knowledge and mere opinion, even mere true opinion. The study of knowledge, then, has a very bright future. In the concept-sensitive hands of philosophers, epistemology focuses on the nature, origin, and scope of knowledge. It thus examines the defining ingredients, the sources, and the limits of knowledge. Given the central role of epistemology in the history of philosophy as well as in contemporary philosophy, epistemologists will always have work to do. Debates over the analysis of knowledge, the sources of knowledge, and the status of skepticism will alone keep the discipline of epistemology active and productive. This book presents some of the best work in contemporary epistemology by leading epistemologists. Taken together, its previously unpublished essays span the whole field of epistemology. They assess prominent positions and break new theoretical ground while avoiding undue technicality. My own work on this book has benefited from many people and institutions. First, I thank the nineteen contributors for their fine cooperation and contributions in the face of numerous deadlines. Second, I thank Peter Ohlin, Philosophy Editor at Oxford University Press, for helpful advice and assistance on many fronts. Third, I thank my research assistant, Blaine Swen, for invaluable help in putting the book together. Finally, I thank Loyola University of Chicago for providing an excellent environment for my work on the project. P. K. M. Chicago, Illinois June 2002 Contents Introduction 3 1. Conditions and Analyses of Knowing , Robert K. Shope, University of Massachusetts, Boston 25 2. The Sources of Knowledge , Robert Audi, University of Nebraska, Lincoln 71 3. A Priori Knowledge , Albert Casullo, University of Nebraska, Lincoln 95 4. The Sciences and Epistemology , Alvin I. Goldman, Rutgers University 144 5. Conceptual Diversity in Epistemology , Richard Foley, New York University 177 6. Theories of Justification , Richard Fumerton, University of Iowa 204 7. Internalism and Externalism , Laurence BonJour, University of Washington, Seattle 234 8. Tracking, Competence, and Knowledge , Ernst Sosa, Brown University and Rutgers University 264 9. Virtues in Epistemology , John Greco, Fordham University 287 10. Mind and Knowledge , John Heil, Davidson College 316 11. Skepticism , Peter Klein, Rutgers University 336 12. Epistemological Duties , Richard Feldman, University of Rochester 362 13. Scientific Knowledge , Philip Kitcher, Columbia University 385 14. Explanation and Epistemology , William G. Lycan, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill 408 15. Decision Theory and Epistemology , Mark Kaplan, Indiana University 434 16. Embodiment and Epistemology , Louise M. Antony, Ohio State University 463 17. Epistemology and Ethics , Noah Lemos, De Pauw University 479 18. Epistemology in Philosophy of Religion , Philip L. Quinn, University of Notre Dame 513 19. Formal Problems about Knowledge , Roy Sorensen, Dartmouth College 539 Introduction Paul K. Moser 1. Representative Distinctions and Debates Epistemology, characterized broadly, is an account of knowledge. Within the discipline of philosophy, epistemology is the study of the nature of knowledge and justification: in particular, the study of (a) the defining components, (b) the substantive conditions or sources, and (c) the limits of knowledge and justification. Categories (a)–(c) have prompted traditional philosophical controversy over the analysis of knowledge and justification, the sources of knowledge and justification (in the case, for instance, of rationalism vs. empiricism), and the status of skepticism about knowledge and justification. Epistemologists have distinguished some species of knowledge, including: propositional knowledge (that something is so), nonpropositional knowledge of something (for instance, knowledge by acquaintance, or by direct awareness), empirical (a posteriori) propositional knowledge, nonempirical (a priori) propositional knowledge, and knowledge of how to do something. Recent epistemology has included controversies over distinctions between such species, for example, over (i) the relations between some of these species (for example, does knowledge-of reduce somehow to knowledge-that?) and (ii) the viability of some of these species (for instance, is there really such a thing as, or even a coherent notion of, a priori knowledge?). A posteriori knowledge is widely regarded as knowledge that depends for its end p.3 supporting ground on some specific sensory or perceptual content. In contrast, a priori knowledge is widely regarded as knowledge that does not depend for its supporting ground on such experiential content. The epistemological tradition stemming from Immanuel Kant proposes that the supporting ground for a priori knowledge comes solely from purely intellectual processes called “pure reason” or “pure understanding.” In this tradition, knowledge of logical truths is a standard case of a priori knowledge, whereas knowledge of the existence or presence of physical objects is a standard case of a posteriori knowledge. An account of a priori knowledge should explain what the relevant purely intellectual processes are and how they contribute to nonempirical knowledge. Analogously, an account of a posteriori knowledge should explain what sensory or perceptual experience is and how it contributes to empirical knowledge. Even so, epistemologists have sought an account of propositional knowledge in general, that is, an account of what is common to a priori and a posteriori knowledge. Ever since Plato's Theaetetus, epistemologists have tried to identify the essential, defining components of propositional knowledge. These components will yield an analysis of propositional knowledge. An influential traditional view, inspired by Plato and Kant among others, is that propositional knowledge has three individually necessary and jointly sufficient components: justification, truth, and belief. On this view, propositional knowledge is, by definition, justified true belief. This tripartite definition has come to be called “the standard analysis.” (See the essay by Shope on this analysis.) Knowledge is not just true belief. Some true beliefs are supported merely by lucky guesswork and thus are not knowledge. Knowledge requires that the satisfaction of its belief condition be “appropriately related” to the satisfaction of its truth condition. This is one broad way of understanding the justification condition of the standard analysis. We might say that a knower must have adequate indication that a known proposition is true. If we understand such adequate indication as a sort of evidence indicating that a proposition is true, we have adopted a prominent traditional view of the justification condition: justification as evidence. Questions about justification attract much attention in contemporary epistemology. Controversy arises over the meaning of “justification” as well as over the substantive conditions for a belief's being justified in a way appropriate to knowledge. An ongoing controversy has emerged from this issue: Does epistemic justification, and thus knowledge, have foundations, and, if so, in what sense? The key question is whether some beliefs (a) have their epistemic justification noninferentially (that is, apart from evidential support from any other beliefs), and (b) supply epistemic justification for all justified beliefs that lack such noninferential justification. Traditional foundationalism, represented in different ways by, for example, Aristotle, Descartes, Bertrand Russell, C. I. Lewis, and Roderick Chisholm, offers an affirmative answer to this issue. (See the essay by Fumerton on foundationalism.) end p.4 Foundationalists diverge over the specific conditions for noninferential justification. Some identify noninferential justification with self-justification. Others propose that noninferential justification resides in evidential support from the nonconceptual content of nonbelief psychological states: for example, perception, sensation, or memory. Still others understand noninferential justification in terms of a belief's being “reliably produced,” that is, caused and sustained by some nonbelief belief-producing process or source (for instance, perception, memory, or introspection) that tends to produce true rather than false beliefs. Such a view takes the causal source and sustainer of a belief to be crucial to its foundational justification. Contemporary foundationalists typically separate claims to noninferential, foundational justification from claims to certainty. They typically settle for a modest foundationalism implying that foundational beliefs need not be indubitable or infallible. This contrasts with the radical foundationalism often attributed to Descartes. A prominent competitor against foundationalism is the coherence theory of justification, that is, epistemic coherentism. This view implies that the justification of any belief depends on that belief's having evidential support from some other belief via coherence relations such as entailment or explanatory relations. An influential contemporary version of epistemic coherentism states that evidential coherence relations among beliefs are typically explanatory relations. The general idea is that a belief is justified for you so long as it either best explains, or is best explained by, some member of the system of beliefs that has maximal explanatory power for you. Contemporary epistemic coherentism is holistic; it finds the ultimate source of justification in a system of interconnected beliefs or potential beliefs. A problem for all versions of coherentism that aim to explain empirical justification is the isolation objection. According to this objection, coherentism entails that you can be epistemically justified in accepting an empirical proposition that is incompatible with, or at least improbable given, your total empirical evidence. The key assumption of this objection is that your total empirical evidence includes nonconceptual sensory and perceptual content, such as pain you feel or something you seem to see. Such content is not a belief or a proposition. Epistemic coherentism, by definition, makes justification a function solely of coherence relations between propositions, such as propositions one believes or accepts. As a result, coherentism seems to isolate justification from the evidential import of the nonconceptual content of nonbelief awareness-states. Coherentists have tried to handle this problem, but no resolution enjoys wide acceptance. Recently some epistemologists have recommended that we give up the traditional evidence condition for knowledge. They recommend that we construe the justification condition as a causal condition or at least replace the justification condition with a causal condition. The general idea is that you know that P if (a) you believe that P, (b) P is true, and (c) your believing that P is causally produced and sustained by the fact that makes P true. This is the basis of the causal theory end p.5 of knowing. It admits of various characterizations of the conditions for a belief's being produced or sustained. A causal theory owes us special treatment of our knowledge of universal propositions. Evidently, I know, for example, that all cars are manufactured ultimately by humans, but my believing that this is so seems not to be causally supported by the fact that all cars are thus manufactured. It is not clear that the latter fact causally produces any belief, let alone my belief that all cars are manufactured ultimately by humans. A causal theory of knowing must handle this problem. Another problem is that causal theories typically neglect what seems to be crucial to any account of the justification condition for knowledge: the requirement that justificational support for a belief be accessible, in some sense, to the believer. The rough idea is that one must be able to access, or bring to awareness, the justification underlying one's beliefs. The causal origins of a belief are often very complex and inaccessible to a believer. Causal theories thus face problems from an accessibility requirement on justification. Such problems will be especially pressing for a causal theorist who aims to capture, rather than dispense with, a justification condition. Internalism regarding justification preserves an accessibility requirement on what confers justification, whereas epistemic externalism rejects this requirement. Debates over internalism and externalism abound in current epistemology, but internalists do not yet share a uniform detailed account of accessibility. (See the essays by BonJour and Sosa on such debates.) The standard analysis of knowledge, however elaborated, faces a devastating challenge that initially gave rise to causal theories of knowledge: the Gettier problem. In 1963 Edmund Gettier published a highly influential challenge to the view that if you have a justified true belief that P, then you know that P. Here is one of Gettier's counterexamples to this view: Smith is justified in believing the false proposition that (i) Jones owns a Ford. On the basis of (i), Smith infers, and thus is justified in believing, that (ii) either Jones owns a Ford or Brown is in Barcelona. As it happens, Brown is in Barcelona, and so (ii) is true. So, although Smith is justified in believing the true proposition (ii), Smith does not know (ii). Gettier-style counterexamples are cases where a person has justified true belief that P but lacks knowledge that P. The Gettier problem is the problem of finding a modification of, or an alternative to, the standard analysis that avoids difficulties from Gettier-style counterexamples. The controversy over the Gettier problem is highly complex and still unsettled. (See the essay by Shope for details.) Many epistemologists take the lesson of Gettier-style counterexamples to be that propositional knowledge requires a fourth condition, beyond the justification, truth, and belief conditions. No specific fourth condition has received unanimous end p.6 acceptance, but some proposals have become prominent. The so-called “defeasibility condition,” for example, requires that justification appropriate to knowledge be “undefeated” in the sense that a specific subjunctive conditional concerning defeaters of justification be true of that justification. For instance, one defeasibility fourth condition requires of Smith's knowing that P that there be no true proposition, Q, such that if Q became justified for Smith, P would no longer be justified for Smith. So if Smith knows, on the basis of visual perception, that Mary removed books from the library, then Smith's coming to believe the true proposition that Mary's identical twin removed books from the library would not undermine the justification for Smith's belief that Mary removed the books. A different approach avoids subjunctive conditionals of that sort and contends that propositional knowledge requires justified true belief sustained by the collective totality of actual truths. This approach requires a detailed account of when justification is undermined and restored. The Gettier problem is epistemologically important. One branch of epistemology seeks a precise understanding of the nature (for example, the essential components) of propositional knowledge. Our having a precise understanding of propositional knowledge requires our having a Gettier-proof analysis of such knowledge. Epistemologists thus need a defensible solution to the Gettier problem, however complex that solution may be. Epistemologists have long debated the limits, or scope, of knowledge. The more limited we take the scope of knowledge to be, the more skeptical we are. Two influential types of skepticism are knowledge-skepticism and justification-skepticism. Unrestricted knowledge-skepticism states that no one knows anything, whereas unrestricted justification-skepticism offers the more extreme view that no one is even justified in believing anything. Some forms of skepticism are stronger than others. The strongest form of knowledge-skepticism states that it is impossible for anyone to know anything. A weaker form denies the actuality of our having knowledge, but leaves open its possibility. Many skeptics have restricted their skepticism to a particular domain of supposed knowledge: for example, knowledge of the external world, knowledge of other minds, knowledge of the past or the future, or knowledge of unperceived items. Such limited skepticism is more common than unrestricted skepticism in the history of epistemology. Arguments supporting skepticism come in many forms. (See the essays by Klein and Heil for details.) One of the most difficult is the Problem of the Criterion, a version of which was stated by the sixteenth-century skeptic Michel de Montaigne: To adjudicate [between the true and the false] among the appearances of things, we need to have a distinguishing method; to validate this method, we need to have a justifying argument; but to validate this justifying argument, we need the very method at issue. And there we are, going round on the wheel. This line of skeptical argument originated in ancient Greece, with epistemology itself. It forces us to face this question: How can we specify what we know without having specified how we know, and how can we specify how we know without having specified what we know? Is there any reasonable way out of this threatening circle? This is one of the most difficult epistemological problems, and a cogent epistemology must offer a defensible solution to it. Contemporary epistemology offers no widely accepted reply to this problem. 2. Whither Unity? Reflection on the state of contemporary epistemology leaves many bewildered. Just a sample of the kinds of epistemological theory now in circulation includes foundationalism, coherentism, contextualism, reliabilism, evidentialism, explanationism, pragmatism, internalism, externalism, deontologism, naturalism, and skepticism. These general positions do not all compete to explain the same epistemological phenomena. They do, however, all subsume remarkably diverse species of epistemological theory. Reliabilism, for example, now comes in many manifestations, including process reliabilism, indicator reliabilism, and virtue reliabilism. Likewise, foundationalism admits of considerable subsidiary variety, including radical foundationalism and modest foundationalism; and coherentism yields subjectivist and objectivist species, among many others. Within internalism, furthermore, we find access internalism, awareness internalism, and a host of additional intriguing species. Epistemological naturalism, too, offers taxonomic complexity, including for example eliminative, noneliminative, and pragmatic species. Is there any glimmer of hope for disciplinary unity within epistemology? The ideal of disciplinary unity within epistemology is obscure. Two questions enable us to clarify a bit: What exactly would it take for the discipline of epistemology to be “unified”? More to the point, what does it mean to say that epistemology is unified? Perhaps the discipline of epistemology is unified at least in virtue of its unifying philosophical questions about the analysis, sources, and limits of human knowledge. Even so, let's consider further kinds of unity. The first notion of unity is simple, even simplistic given the theoretical thickets of contemporary epistemology. The simple idea is that epistemology is unified if and only if all epistemologists agree on their theories about the analysis, sources, and limits of knowledge. Any ideal of unity using this notion, however, seems at best wishful thinking, given the turbulent history of epistemology. Expecting agreement among contemporary epistemologists is no more reasonable than expecting end p.8 agreement between, say, the deductivist rationalist Descartes and the inductivist empiricist Francis Bacon. Mere agreement, in any case, is no automatic indicator of explanatory progress or even of truth. So the simple ideal is unmotivated as well as simplistic. Clearly, the widespread disagreement in epistemology these days does not by itself recommend relativism about truth in epistemology. Objective truth in epistemology, as elsewhere, can hide behind human disagreement. The fact that philosophers are especially skilled, even if sometimes too skilled, at fostering conceptual diversity offers no real encouragement whatever to relativists. The second idea of unity is that epistemology is unified if and only if all epistemologists hold only true theories about the analysis, sources, and limits of knowledge. An ideal of informative truth, and truth alone, is, we may grant, above reproach for any discipline. Philosophers opposed to robust, realist truth as a philosophical goal routinely fall into a kind of self-referential inconsistency, but we cannot digress to that story here. The problem with the ideal of truth is not that it is misguided, but rather that we need guidelines for achieving it: in particular, guidelines that do not lead to the bewilderment of contemporary epistemology. More specifically, we need instruction on how pursuit of that ideal can free us from the puzzling complexity of epistemology. The needed instruction is not supplied by that noble ideal itself. Part of the problem is that many prominent positions within epistemology offer different, sometimes even conflicting, guidelines for acquiring truth. So, the unity here would be short-lived at best. A third, more promising approach recommends a kind of explanatory unity. Roughly, contemporary epistemology is unified if and only if we can correctly explain its diversity in a way that manifests common reasons for epistemologists to promote the different general positions and species of positions in circulation. We purchase unity, according to the explanatory ideal, by explaining, in terms of unifying common reasons, the kind of diversity in epistemology. The desired unity is thus that of common rationality. In particular, I shall propose that it is the unity of a kind of instrumental epistemic rationality. If we can secure this kind of unity, at least, we can begin to appreciate the value of the diversity in epistemology. Our main question is, then, just this: Why is there what seems to be unresolvable, perennial disagreement in epistemology? a. Scientism We might try to resolve or eliminate the disagreements of epistemology by taking science as our ultimate epistemological authority. This would commit us to the epistemological scientism suggested by Bertrand Russell, W. V. Quine, and others. end p.9 Quine's rejection of traditional epistemology stems from his explanatory scientism, the view that the sciences have a monopoly on legitimate theoretical explanation. Quine proposes that we should treat epistemology as a chapter of empirical psychology, that empirical psychology should exhaust the theoretical concerns of epistemologists. Call this proposal eliminative naturalism regarding epistemology. It implies that traditional epistemology is dispensable, on the ground that it is replaceable by empirical psychology. Eliminative naturalism aims for a kind of “explication” that replaces an inexact concept by an exact one. Aiming for such explication, eliminative naturalists introduce conceptual substitutes for various ordinary epistemological and psychological concepts. Quine proposes, for instance, that we replace our ordinary notion of justification with a behaviorist notion concerning the relation between sensation and theory. Quine's development of Russell's scientism collapses of its own weight, from self-defeat. Eliminative naturalism regarding epistemology is not itself a thesis of the sciences, including empirical psychology. Given this objection, eliminative naturalism regarding epistemology evidently departs from Quine's own commitment to explanatory scientism. Explanatory scientism denies that there is any cognitively legitimate philosophy prior to, or independent of, the sciences (that is, any “first philosophy”), thus implying that theorists should not make philosophical claims exceeding the sciences. Quine's own eliminative naturalism regarding epistemology seems to be an instance of philosophy prior to the sciences. Given this objection, Quine must show that his naturalized epistemology is an hypothesis of the sciences. Eliminative naturalists will have difficulty discharging this burden, because the sciences are not in the business of making sweeping claims about the status of epistemology (even if a stray individual scientist makes such claims on occasion). This may be an empirical truth about the sciences, but it is a warranted truth nonetheless, and it characterizes the sciences generally. Evidently, then, eliminative naturalism regarding epistemology, as combined with explanatory scientism, is self-defeating. A naturalist, of whatever species, should care to avoid self-defeat because the sciences do and because theoretical conflict is disadvantageous to unified explanation. Quine might try to rescue eliminative naturalism by proposing a notion of science broader than that underwritten by the sciences as standardly characterized. Such a proposal would perhaps relax the implied requirement that eliminative naturalism be an hypothesis of the sciences. This, however, would land eliminative naturalists on the horns of a troublesome dilemma: either there will be a priori constraints on what counts as a science (since actual usage of “science” would not determine the broader notion), or the broader notion of science will be implausibly vague and unregulated in its employment. In the absence of any standard independent of the sciences, we certainly need an account of which of the various so-called sciences are regulative for purposes of theory formation in epistemology. end p.10 (Astrology, for example, should be out, along with parapsychology and scientology.) Such an account may very well take us beyond the sciences themselves, because it will be a metascientific account of the sciences and their function in regulating epistemology. To serve the purposes of eliminative naturalism, any proposed new notion of science must exclude traditional epistemology, while including epistemological naturalism, in a way that is not ad hoc. Such a strategy for escaping self-defeat demands, in any case, a hitherto unexplicated notion of science, which is no small order. Eliminative naturalists have not defended any such strategy; nor have they otherwise resolved the problem of self-defeat. That problem concerns eliminative naturalism, and not necessarily more moderate versions of epistemological naturalism. (See the essay by Goldman for a more moderate understanding of how the sciences bear on epistemology.) b. Pragmatism A cousin of eliminative naturalism is replacement pragmatism, proposed by Richard Rorty and others. This is the twofold view that (a) the vocabulary, problems, and goals of traditional epistemology are unprofitable (not “useful”) and thus in need of replacement by pragmatist successors, and (b) the main task of epistemology is to study the comparative advantages and disadvantages of the differing vocabularies from different cultures. Replacement pragmatism affirms the pointlessness and dispensability of philosophical concerns about how the world really is (and about objective truth) and recommends the central philosophical importance of what is profitable, advantageous, or useful. Since useful beliefs can be false and thereby fail to represent how the world really is, a desire for useful beliefs is not automatically a desire for beliefs that represent how the world really is. An obviously false belief can be useful to a person with certain purposes. Replacement pragmatism implies that a proposition is acceptable to us if and only if it is useful to us, that is, it is useful to us to accept the proposition. (We may, if only for the sake of argument, permit pragmatists to define “useful” however they find useful.) If, however, usefulness determines acceptability in the manner implied, a proposition will be acceptable to us if and only if it is true (and thus factually the case) that the proposition is useful to us. The pragmatist's appeal to usefulness, therefore, entails something about matters of fact, or actual truth, regarding usefulness. This is a factuality requirement on pragmatism. It reveals that pragmatism does not—and evidently cannot—avoid considerations about the real, or factual, nature of things, about how things really are. Replacement pragmatism invites a troublesome dilemma, one horn of which is self- defeat. Is such pragmatism supposed to offer a true claim about acceptability? end p.11 Does it aim to characterize the real nature of acceptability, how acceptability really is? If it does, it offers a characterization illicit by its own standard. It then runs afoul of its own assumption that we should eliminate from philosophy concerns about how things really are. As a result, replacement pragmatism faces a disturbing kind of self-defeat: it does what it says should not be done. On the other hand, if replacement pragmatism does not offer, or even aim to offer, a characterization of the real nature of acceptability, then why should we bother with it at all if we aim to characterize acceptability regarding propositions? Given the latter aim, we should not bother with it, for it is then irrelevant, useless to our purpose at hand. Considerations of usefulness, always significant to pragmatism, can thus count against replacement pragmatism itself. So, a dilemma confronts replacement pragmatism: either replacement pragmatism is self-defeating, or it is irrelevant to the typical epistemologist seeking an account of acceptability. This dilemma indicates that replacement pragmatism fails to challenge traditional epistemology. Many of us will not find a self-defeating theory “useful,” given our explanatory aims. Accordingly, the self-defeat of pragmatism will be decisive for us, given the very standards of replacement pragmatism. c. Intuitionism Many philosophers have resisted both scientism and pragmatism, looking instead to common sense or “preanalytic epistemic data” as a basis for adjudicating epistemological claims. The latter approach has attracted philosophers in the phenomenological tradition of Brentano and Husserl and philosophers in the common-sense tradition of Reid, Moore, and Chisholm. The rough idea is that we have pretheoretical access, via “intuition” or “common sense,” to certain considerations about justification, and these considerations can support one epistemological view over others. It is often left unclear what the epistemic status of the relevant preanalytic epistemic data is supposed to be. Such data, we hear, are accessed by “intuition” or by “common sense.” [...]... occurrence/obtaining of the state of affairs expressed by the proposition that h (let us henceforth symbolize this by the occurrence/obtaining of h*’) be the cause of S's believing/accepting that h,15 thereby entailing satisfaction of both the truth and belief conditions In the above case, the cause of S's believing that h is likely to be regarded as S's wishful thinking, and the occurrence of h* one of the relevant... we are calling attention to a fluke during the manifesting of the powers or susceptibilities of something: either (i) some part of the mechanism for the full manifestation of the power or susceptibility fails to obtain; or (ii) the mechanism for the manifestation of the power or susceptibility on the present type of occasion does occur but a manifestation of the power or susceptibility occurs that is... explanation of S's believing/accepting that h; or (2) the sequence of explanations of the stream of causes and effects culminating in S's believing/accepting that h at some place includes mention of the occurrence of h* Even if we understand suggestion (1) so that there can be different types of causal explanation, one of which involves the broad, everyday practice of selecting part of a situation as the. .. produced some other upshot than the end of the link) and (b) not involve ‘excessive receptivity’ (roughly, that it not be the case that the end of the link could easily have been produced by some other antecedent than the beginning of the link).16 The above example involves both types of deviance Perhaps one might also show that excessive receptivity is involved in the barn facsimiles case within the causal... illustrates the hopes of the modal logicians who developed epistemic logic with Fitch's proof for unknowables and the surprise-test paradox He considers the epistemology of proof with the help of the knower paradox One solution to this paradox is that knowledge is not closed under deduction Sorensen reviews the broader history of this maneuver along with the relevant-alternatives model of knowledge... fine-tune our understanding of the truth condition so that we speak of reality, not of truth, as the prime condition of knowledge.7 My own later analysis of knowing that as a category broad enough to allow animals and infants to know will focus on the obtaining of the state of affairs expressed by the proposition that h rather than on that proposition's being true And the state of affairs expressed by... analysis provoked very different interpretations.17 The suggestion might be applied to the case of Mr Nogot by thinking of the type of accident that consists in the intersection of two previously unconnected streams of events The stream of events that gave rise to its being true that P3: ‘Someone in the office owns a Ford,’ did not arise from a collection of earlier factors that included what produced S's... without thereby opening the new analysis to further sorts of counterexamples This improvement can be attempted by either (1) adding requirements to the three conditions of the standard analysis, or (2) substituting new requirements for one or more of the three conditions in the standard analysis Since philosophers disagree as to what species of example is labeled by ‘a Gettier-type case,’ they of course... involving the causal influence of the occurrence of the state of affairs h* (cf 1976) Goldman restricted most of his discussion to noninferential, perceptual knowledge that h He oversimplified by characterizing reliability partly in terms of the falsity of the following subjunctive conditional: if S were in a relevant possible alternative situation in which it were not the case that h, then the situation... example, theories and hypotheses that a group of scientists have made it their policy to utilize in their work, Cohen speaks of a single scientist as knowing To be good scientists, we allow for adequate open-mindedness, and at least some members of research teams need, according to Cohen, to refrain from believing the hypotheses that they employ to be true They need instead to accept the hypotheses, . over the analysis of knowledge, the sources of knowledge, and the status of skepticism will alone keep the discipline of epistemology active and productive. This book presents some of the best. illustrates the hopes of the modal logicians who developed epistemic logic with Fitch's proof for unknowables and the surprise-test paradox. He considers the epistemology of proof with the help of. approaches in the epistemology of science. He challenges arguments against the truth of the theoretical claims of science. In addition, he attempts to discover reasons for endorsing the truth of such

Ngày đăng: 05/06/2014, 11:30

Từ khóa liên quan

Mục lục

  • Preface

  • Introduction

  • 1. Representative Distinctions and Debates

  • Chapter 1 Conditions and Analyses of Knowing

  • Chapter 2 The Sources of Knowledge

  • Chapter 3 A Priori Knowledge

  • Chapter 4 The Sciences and Epistemology

  • Chapter 5 Conceptual Diversity in Epistemology

  • Chapter 6 Theories of Justification

  • Chapter 7 Internalism and Externalism

  • Chapter 8 Tracking, Competence, and Knowledge

  • Chapter 9 Virtues in Epistemology

  • Chapter 10 Theories of Justification

  • Chapter 11 Skepticism

  • Chapter 12 Epistemological Duties

  • Chapter 13 Scientific Knowledge

  • Chapter 14 Explanation and Epistemology

  • Chapter 15 Decision Theory and Epistemology

  • Chapter 16 Embodiment and Epistemology

  • Chapter 17 Epistemology and Ethics

  • Chapter 18 Epistemology in Philosophy of Religion

  • Chapter 19 Formal Problems About Knowledge

Tài liệu cùng người dùng

  • Đang cập nhật ...

Tài liệu liên quan