Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge, Third Edition (Routledge Contemporary Introductions to Philosophy)

Cover......Page 1
Abstract......Page 3
Title Page......Page 5
Copyright......Page 8
Contents......Page 11
Preface to the first edition......Page 15
Acknowledgments to the first edition......Page 18
Preface to the second edition......Page 20
Acknowledgments to the second edition......Page 22
Preface to the third edition......Page 23
Acknowledgments to the third edition......Page 24
Perception, belief, and justification......Page 25
Justification as process, as status, and as property......Page 26
Knowledge and justification......Page 28
Reason and rational reflection......Page 29
Basic sources of belief, justification, and knowledge......Page 30
Three kinds of grounds of belief......Page 31
Fallibility and skepticism......Page 32
Overview......Page 33
Part One: Sources of justification, knowledge, and truth......Page 37
1 Perception: Sensing, believing, and knowing......Page 40
Perceptual belief......Page 41
Perception, conception, and belief......Page 43
Propositional and objectual perception......Page 44
Perception as a source of potential beliefs......Page 46
The perceptual hierarchy......Page 48
The informational character of perception......Page 49
Seeing and seeing as......Page 50
Perceptual content......Page 51
Seeing as and perceptual grounds of justification......Page 52
Seeing as a ground of perceptual knowledge......Page 54
Notes......Page 55
Some commonsense views of perception......Page 62
Illusion and hallucination......Page 63
The theory of appearing......Page 64
The argument from hallucination......Page 65
Sense-datum theory as an indirect, representative realism......Page 67
Appraisal of the sense-datum approach......Page 69
Adverbial theories of perception......Page 71
Adverbial and sense-datum theories of sensory experience......Page 73
A sense-datum version of phenomenalism......Page 75
Adverbial phenomenalism......Page 76
Appraisal of phenomenalism......Page 78
Indirect seeing and delayed perception......Page 79
Vision and the eyes......Page 80
Notes......Page 83
3 Memory: The preservation and reconstruction of the past......Page 86
Memory and the past......Page 87
The causal basis of memory beliefs......Page 88
Three modes of memory......Page 90
The direct realist view......Page 91
Memory images......Page 92
Remembering......Page 93
The adverbial conception of memory......Page 94
Remembering, recalling, and imaging......Page 96
Remembering, imaging, and recognition......Page 98
Remembering, knowing, and being justified......Page 99
Memorial justification and memorial knowledge......Page 100
Memory as a retentional and generative source......Page 101
Notes......Page 103
Two basic kinds of mental properties......Page 108
Introspection and inward vision......Page 110
Realism about the objects of introspection......Page 111
An adverbial view of introspected objects......Page 112
The analogy between introspection and ordinary perception......Page 113
Introspective beliefs, beliefs about introspectables, and fallibility......Page 114
Infallibility, omniscience, and privileged access......Page 115
Difficulties for the thesis of privileged access......Page 117
The possibility of scientific grounds for rejecting privileged access......Page 119
The range of introspective knowledge and justification......Page 120
Consciousness as a basic source......Page 122
Notes......Page 124
Self-evident truths of reason......Page 128
The concept of self-evidence......Page 129
Two types of immediacy......Page 130
Analytic propositions......Page 131
Necessary propositions......Page 132
The analytic, the a priori, and the synthetic......Page 133
Three types of a priori propositions......Page 136
Analytic truth, concept acquisition, and necessity......Page 138
Rationalism and empiricism......Page 140
Empiricism and the genesis and confirmation of arithmetic beliefs......Page 141
Empiricism and logical and analytical truths......Page 144
Notes......Page 145
Truth by definition and truth by virtue of meaning......Page 154
Knowledge through definitions versus truth by definition......Page 155
Some difficulties and strengths of the classical view......Page 157
Meaning change and falsification......Page 158
The possibility of empirical necessary truth......Page 160
Essential and necessary truths......Page 161
Reason, experience, and a priori justification......Page 162
A priori beliefs......Page 163
Loose and strict senses of ‘a priori justification’ and ‘a priori knowledge’......Page 165
The power of reason and the possibility of indefeasible justification......Page 167
Notes......Page 169
The nature of testimony: formal and informal......Page 174
The inferentialist view of testimony......Page 175
Inferential grounds versus constraints on belief-formation......Page 177
Testimony as a source of basic belief......Page 178
The epistemology of testimony......Page 179
Knowledge and justification as products of testimony......Page 180
Testimony and memory compared......Page 181
The twofold epistemic dependence of testimony......Page 183
The indispensability of testimonial grounds......Page 185
Conceptual versus propositional learning......Page 186
Testimony as a primeval source of knowledge and justification......Page 187
Non-testimonial support for testimony-based beliefs......Page 189
Notes......Page 191
Part Two: The structure and growth of justification and knowledge......Page 197
8 Inference and the extension of knowledge......Page 200
Two related senses of ‘inference’......Page 201
Reasoned belief and belief for a reason......Page 202
Two ways beliefs may be inferential......Page 204
The basing relation: direct and indirect belief......Page 205
Confirmatory versus generative inferences......Page 206
Inference as a dependent source of justification and knowledge......Page 207
Inference as an extender of justification and knowledge......Page 208
Deductive and inductive inference......Page 209
The inferential transmission of justification and knowledge......Page 211
Inductive transmission and probabilistic inference......Page 212
Some inferential transmission principles......Page 215
Deductive transmission of justification and knowledge......Page 217
Degrees and kinds of deductive transmission......Page 219
Memorial preservation of inferential justification and inferential knowledge......Page 221
Notes......Page 223
Inferential chains and the structure of belief......Page 230
Infinite inferential chains......Page 231
Circular inferential chains......Page 232
The epistemic regress problem......Page 234
Infinite epistemic chains......Page 235
Circular epistemic chains......Page 236
Epistemic chains terminating in belief not constituting knowledge......Page 237
Epistemic chains terminating in knowledge......Page 238
The epistemic regress argument......Page 239
Foundationalism and coherentism......Page 240
Patterns of justification......Page 241
A coherentist response to the regress argument......Page 242
Coherence and explanation......Page 245
Coherence as an internal relation among cognitions......Page 246
Coherence and the a priori......Page 248
Coherence and the mutually explanatory......Page 249
Epistemological versus conceptual coherentism......Page 250
Coherence, incoherence, and defeasibility......Page 251
Positive and negative epistemic dependence......Page 252
The process versus the property of justification......Page 253
Beliefs, dispositions to believe, and grounds of belief......Page 254
Justification, knowledge, and artificially created coherence......Page 255
Moderate foundationalism......Page 256
The role of coherence in moderate foundationalism......Page 257
Moderate foundationalism and the charge of dogmatism......Page 258
Notes......Page 260
Part Three: The nature and scope of justification and knowledge......Page 267
Knowledge and justified true belief......Page 270
Dependence on falsehood as an epistemic defeater of justification......Page 272
Knowledge and certainty......Page 274
Knowing and knowing for certain......Page 275
Knowing and making certain......Page 276
Naturalistic accounts of the concept of knowledge......Page 277
Knowledge as appropriately caused true belief......Page 278
Knowledge as reliably grounded true belief......Page 279
Reliable grounding and a priori knowledge......Page 280
The specification problem......Page 281
Reliability and defeat......Page 283
Relevant alternatives and epistemological contextualism......Page 285
Notes......Page 288
The apparent possibility of clairvoyant knowledge......Page 294
Natural knowledge......Page 295
Internalism and externalism in epistemology......Page 296
Some varieties of internalism and externalism......Page 298
The overall contrast between internalism and externalism......Page 299
Internalist and externalist versions of virtue epistemology......Page 301
Some apparent problems for virtue epistemology......Page 303
The internality of justification and the externality of knowledge......Page 304
Justification, knowledge, and truth......Page 305
Why is knowledge preferable to merely true belief?......Page 306
The value of knowledge compared with that of justified true belief......Page 308
The correspondence theory of truth......Page 310
Minimalist and redundancy accounts of truth......Page 311
The coherence theory of truth......Page 312
The pragmatic theory of truth......Page 313
Concluding proposals......Page 314
Notes......Page 316
Scientific knowledge......Page 322
The focus and grounding of scientific knowledge......Page 323
Scientific imagination and inference to the best explanation......Page 324
The role of deduction in scientific practice......Page 326
Fallibilism and approximation in science......Page 327
Scientific knowledge and social epistemology......Page 328
Social knowledge and the idea of a scientific community......Page 330
Relativism and noncognitivism......Page 332
Preliminary appraisal of relativist and noncognitivist views......Page 335
Ethical intuitionism......Page 337
Kantian rationalism in moral epistemology......Page 339
Utilitarian empiricism in moral epistemology......Page 340
Kantian and utilitarian moral epistemologies compared......Page 341
Religious knowledge......Page 343
Evidentialism versus experientialism......Page 344
The perceptual analogy and the possibility of direct theistic knowledge......Page 345
Problems confronting the experientialist approach......Page 346
Justification and rationality, faith and reason......Page 349
Acceptance, presumption, and faith......Page 350
Notes......Page 352
Perfectly realistic hallucination......Page 358
Two competing epistemic ideals: believing truth and avoiding falsehood......Page 359
Some dimensions and varieties of skepticism......Page 360
Skepticism about direct knowledge and justification......Page 361
Inferential knowledge and justification: the problem of induction......Page 362
The problem of other minds......Page 364
The egocentric predicament......Page 367
Three kinds of infallibility......Page 368
Knowledge and fallibility......Page 369
Uncertainty......Page 371
Knowing, knowing for certain, and telling for certain......Page 372
Entailment as a requirement for inferential justification......Page 374
Knowing and showing......Page 375
Notes......Page 377
Negative versus positive defenses of common sense......Page 382
Epistemic and logical possibility......Page 383
Entailment, certainty, and fallibility......Page 385
Epistemic authority and cogent grounds......Page 386
Exhibiting knowledge versus dogmatically claiming it......Page 388
Refutation and rebuttal......Page 389
Prospects for a positive defense of common sense......Page 390
A case for justified belief......Page 391
The regress of demonstration......Page 393
A circularity problem......Page 394
The challenge of rational disagreement......Page 395
Epistemic parity......Page 396
Dogmatism, fallibilism, and intellectual courage......Page 397
Skepticism and common sense......Page 398
Notes......Page 399
15 Conclusion......Page 403
Short annotated bibliography of books in epistemology......Page 413
Index......Page 423