The Oxford Handbook of Epistemology

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1 Oxford Scholarship Online You are looking at 1-10 of 21 items for: booktitle : handbook phimet The Oxford Handbook of Epistemology Paul K. Moser (ed.) Item type: book DOI: / This book includes 19 essays on the theory of knowledge by leading philosophers in the field. Its essays cover all the key areas in the field while making original contributions. Written in a manner accessible to advanced undergraduates as well as graduate students and professionals in philosophy, the book explains the main ideas and problems of contemporary epistemology while avoiding technical detail. Contributing to contemporary debates over the analysis, sources, and limits of human knowledge, the book represents such central topics as the nature of epistemic justification, the Gettier problem, skepticism, epistemic rationality, the internalism externalism debate, scientific knowledge, a priori knowledge, virtues in epistemology, epistemological duties, epistemology and ethics, mind and knowledge, the role of explanation in knowledge, epistemology in the philosophy of religion, and formal problems about knowledge. The various discussions share a concern for conceptual clarity and argumentative rigor in epistemology. The book ends with substantial bibliography on epistemology. Introduction Paul K. Moser DOI: / Page 1 of 5

2 Conditions and Analyses of Knowing Robert K. Shope DOI: / In Conditions and Analyses of Knowledge, Robert Shope focuses on the conditions that must be satisfied for a person to have knowledge, specifically knowledge that something is so. Traditionally, knowledge has been analyzed in terms of justified true belief. Shope addresses philosophers disagreements concerning the truth and belief conditions. After introducing the justification condition, he presents challenges that have provoked several attempts to replace or to supplement the justification condition for knowledge. Shope presents and assesses several of these, including early causal theories, the nonaccidentality requirement, reliable process and conditional analyses, the reliableindicator analysis, the conclusive reasons analysis, defeasibility analyses, analyses in terms of cognitive or intellectual virtues, and proper functionalism as well as his own account of knowledge. The Sources of Knowledge Robert Audi DOI: / In The Sources of Knowledge, Robert Audi distinguishes what he calls the four standard basic sources by which we acquire knowledge or justified belief: perception, memory, consciousness, and reason. With the exception of memory, he distinguishes each of the above as a basic source of knowledge (a source that yields knowledge or justified belief without positive dependence on another source). Audi contrasts basic sources with nonbasic sources, concentrating on testimony. After clarifying the relationship between a source and a ground, or what it is in virtue of which one knows or justifiedly believes, Audi evaluates the basic sources individual and collective autonomy as well as their vulnerability to defeasibility. He also examines the relationship of coherence to knowledge and justification, noting the distinction between a negative dependence on incoherence and a positive dependence on coherence. Page 2 of 5

3 A Priori Knowledge Albert Casullo DOI: / In A Priori Knowledge, Albert Casullo asks whether there is a priori knowledge. He ultimately defines a priori knowledge as true belief with a priori justification, where a belief is a priori justified if it is nonexperientially justified. Armed with this definition, Casullo evaluates several traditional arguments for and against the existence of a priori knowledge. He concludes that the traditional arguments reach an impasse by arguing on a priori grounds that the opposite position is deficient. A successful way to defend a priori knowledge, he argues, would be to find empirical evidence that supports the existence of nonexperiential sources of justification. The Sciences and Epistemology Alvin I. Goldman DOI: / In The Sciences and Epistemology, Alvin Goldman argues that epistemology and the sciences should remain distinct yet cooperative. He presents several examples that illustrate the relevance of science to epistemology. Drawing from work in psychology, he proposes that science can shed light on epistemic achievements by contributing to our understanding of the nature and extent of human cognitive endowments. He suggests, in addition, that psychology can also contribute to our understanding of the sources of knowledge. Finally, Goldman argues that some specific projects in epistemology can receive important contributions from psychology, economics, and sociology. Page 3 of 5

4 Conceptual Diversity in Epistemology Richard Foley DOI: / In Conceptual Diversity in Epistemology, Richard Foley reflects on such central topics in epistemology as knowledge, warrant, rationality, and justification, with the purpose of distinguishing such concepts in a general theory. Foley uses warrant to refer to that which constitutes knowledge when added to true belief and suggests that rationality and justification are not linked to knowledge by necessity. He proceeds to offer a general schema for rationality. This schema enables a distinction between rationality and rationality all things considered. Foley proposes how these concepts can work together in a system that provides the necessary materials for an approach to epistemology that is clarifying, theoretically respectable, and relevant to our actual lives. Theories of Justification Richard Fumerton DOI: / In Theories of Justification, Richard Fumerton begins an overview of several prominent positions on the nature of justification by isolating epistemic justification from nonepistemic justification. He also distinguishes between having justification for a belief and having a justified belief, arguing that the former is conceptually more fundamental. Fumerton then addresses the possibility that justification is a normative matter, suggesting that this possibility has little to offer as a concept of epistemic justification. He also critically examines more specific attempts to capture the structure and content of epistemic justification. These include traditional foundationalism and variants thereof, externalist versions of foundationalism, contextualism, coherentism, and mixed theories which combine aspects of coherentism and foundationalism. Page 4 of 5

5 Internalism and Externalism Laurence Bonjour DOI: / In Internalism and Externalism, Laurence BonJour suggests that the contemporary epistemological debate over internalism and externalism concerns the formulation of the justification or warrant condition in an account of knowledge. The internalist requires that for a belief to meet this condition, all of the necessary elements must be cognitively accessible to the believer, whereas the externalist claims that at least some such elements do not need to be accessible to the believer. BonJour gives an overview of this dispute. He suggests that the opposition between the two views is less straightforward than has usually been thought. He proposes, in addition, that each of them has valuable roles to play in major epistemological issues, even though the internalist approach is more fundamental in an important way. Tracking, Competence, and Knowledge Ernest Sosa DOI: / In Tracking, Competence, and Knowledge, Ernest Sosa notes that in attempting to account for the conditions for knowledge, externalists have proposed that the justification condition be replaced or supplemented by the requirement that a certain modal relation be obtained between a fact and a subject's belief concerning that fact. While assessing attempts to identify such a relation, he focuses on an account labeled Cartesiantracking, which accounts for the relation in the form of two conditionals. (A) If a person S believes a proposition P P (B) P S believes P. Sosa suggests that (B) be abandoned as a requirement, and that (A), equipped with his modifications, can offer promising results in connection with skepticism. He argues that modified (A) coupled with the requirement that S's belief be virtuous can illuminate the nature of propositional knowledge. Page 5 of 5

5AANA009 Epistemology II 2014 to 2015

5AANA009 Epistemology II 2014 to 2015 Credit value: 15 Module tutor (2014-2015): Dr David Galloway Assessment Office: PB 803 Office hours: Wednesday 3 to 5pm Contact: david.galloway@kcl.ac.uk Summative