Knowledge E-Book

Ian Evans

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 419

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

Introductions to the theory of knowledge are plentiful, but none introduce students to the most recent debates that exercise contemporary philosophers. Ian Evans and Nicholas D. Smith aim to change that. Their book guides the reader through the standard theories of knowledge while simultaneously using these as a springboard to introduce current debates. Each chapter concludes with a “Current Trends” section pointing the reader to the best literature dominating current philosophical discussion. These include: the puzzle of reasonable disagreement; the so-called "problem of easy knowledge" the intellectual virtues; and new theories in the philosophy of language relating to knowledge.

Chapters include discussions of skepticism, the truth condition, belief and acceptance, justification, internalism versus externalism, epistemic evaluation, and epistemic contextualism. Evans and Smith do not merely offer a review of existing theories and debates; they also offer a novel theory that takes seriously the claim that knowledge is not unique to humans. Surveying current scientific literature in animal ethology, they discover surprising sophistication and diversity in non-human cognition. In their final analysis the authors provide a unified account of knowledge that manages to respect and explain this diversity. They argue that animals know when they make appropriate use of the cognitive processes available to animals of that kind, in environments within which those processes are veridically well-adapted.

Knowledge is a lively and accessible volume, ideal for undergraduate and post-graduate students. It is also set to spark debate among scholars for its novel approaches to traditional topics and its thoroughgoing commitment to naturalism.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Title page

Copyright page

1 Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge

1.1 The Theory of Knowledge: Some Disclaimers

1.2 A Preliminary Theory

1.3 What Kind of Knowledge is This?

1.4 The Truth Condition – What is Truth?

1.5 Truth, Propositions, and Information

1.6 The Belief Condition

1.7 Preface to the Warrant Condition: Internalism and Externalism

Current Trends

2 The Challenge of Skepticism

2.1 The Basic Challenge

2.2 A Closer Look at the Challenge

2.3 Necessity, a priori Truths, and the Chances of Error

2.4 Descartes’ “Cogito” as an Answer to Skepticism

2.5 The Skeptical Challenge and Knowing that One Knows

2.6 The KK-Regress

2.7 Fallibilism

2.8 The Epistemology of Disagreement

Current Trends

3 Contextualism

3.1 The Skeptical Paradox

3.2 Context Sensitivity: A Brief Foray into the Philosophy of Language

3.3 Quantifier Domains

3.4 Gradable Adjectives

3.5 “Knowledge” Contextualism

3.6 Cohen’s Internalist Contextualism

3.7 The Argument from Ordinary Language

3.8 Williamson’s Objection to Contextualism

3.9 A Final Challenge for Fallibilist Invariantism

3.10 Subject-Sensitive Invariantism

3.11 Conclusion

Current Trends

4 Warrant as Justification

4.1 Justification and Evidence

4.2 The Regress of Justification

4.3 Unjustified Foundationalism

4.4 Linear Coherentism

4.5 Infinitism

4.6 Non-Inferentialism

4.7 The Problem of the Criterion

4.8 Dogmatism and the Problem of Easy Knowledge

4.9 Our Epistemic Mission as a Part of Our Life Missions

4.10 Holistic Coherentism and Justification

4.11 Coherentism, Dogmatism, and Doxastic Inferentialism

4.12 Testimony

4.13 Holistic Coherentism and the Possibility of Animal Knowledge

Current Trends

5 Justification, Defeaters, and Basing

5.1 Defeated Justification

5.2 Defeating Defeaters

5.3 The Basing Relation

5.4 Causal Theories of Basing

5.5 Doxastic Theories of the Basing Relation

5.6 Our Own View: The Dispositional Theory

5.7 Conclusions about the Basing Relation, and Two New Challenges

5.8 Holistic Coherentism and the Basing Relation

5.9 Lehrer’s Challenge to a Basing Requirement

5.10 Conclusion, and a Worry about Justification as Warrant

Current Trends

6 Externalist Theories of Warrant

6.1 Introduction to Externalism

6.2 The Causal Theory of Warrant

6.3 Tracking Theories

6.4 Tracking Theory and Skepticism

6.5 Reliabilism

6.6 A Call for Caution about Opacity Objection

Current Trends

7 Epistemic Evaluation

7.1 Do Attributions of Knowledge Imply Value Judgments?

7.2 Evaluation by Epistemic Norms

7.3 Instrumental versus Categorical Formulations of Norms

7.4 Deontological Norms and Doxastic Voluntarism

7.5 Consequentialist Conceptions of Epistemic Norms

7.6 The Aretaic or Virtue-Theoretic Conception of Epistemic Evaluation

7.7 Sosa’s Virtue Epistemology

7.8 Plantinga’s Proper Functioning Account

7.9 Concluding Remarks

Current Trends

8 A New Theory of Knowledge, Part 1

8.1 Back to the Beginning

8.2 Five Desiderata for an Adequate Theory of Knowledge

8.3 Desiderata Deriving from Epistemic Evaluation

8.4 Epistemic Evaluation and Non-Human Animals

8.5 Proper Functioning and Other Dimensions of Evaluation

8.6 Other Desiderata

Current Trends

9 A New Theory of Knowledge, Part 2

9.1 Human Beings and the Justification Requirement

9.2 Naturalistic Evaluation

9.3 Justification as a Natural Process

9.4 Naturalism vs Supernaturalism

9.5 The Challenge

9.6 Constructing a Better Response to the Challenge

9.7 Sexual and Social Fitness

9.8 A Survey of Some Advantages of Our Account

9.9 Conclusion

Current Trends

References

Index

Copyright © Ian Evans Nicholas D. Smith 2012

The right of Ian Evans and Nicholas D. Smith to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

First published in 2012 by Polity Press

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ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-5052-4

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-5053-1(pb)

ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-6141-4 (Multi-user ebook)

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2

The Challenge of Skepticism

A man that disbelieves his own existence, is surely as unfit to be reasoned with, as a man that believes he is made of glass. There may be disorders in the human frame that may produce such extravagances, but they will never be cured by means of reasoning. … [W]ould not every sober man form the same opinion of the man who seriously doubted [his own existence] … [a]nd if he were his friend, would he not hope for his cure from physic and good regimen, rather than from metaphysic and logic?

Thomas Reid, An Inquiry Into the Human Mind on the Principles of Common Sense: 16.31–17.23

2.1 The Basic Challenge

In the first of his Meditations on First Philosophy, René Descartes considers how many things he has long taken for granted have turned out to be false. Any beliefs based on these false foundations were then rendered doubtful. Who knows, then, what other beliefs might turn out to be false and, hence, which bits of knowledge are certain and which doubtful? Descartes finds this situation – in which he can’t tell certain knowledge from doubtful opinion – unacceptable and seeks a remedy. His ultimate goal is to find something about which he can be certain, to serve as a firm foundation for knowledge. With a firm foundation in place, Descartes can rebuild a body of knowledge that is free from doubt. To achieve this end, he proposes to abandon all of his former beliefs that can be so much as doubted. Descartes’ ingenious method is to find very general grounds that call into doubt as many of his former beliefs as possible. We can call the grounds for doubt that Descartes considers skeptical scenarios: they are possible scenarios in which you don’t know what you think you know. These skeptical scenarios give rise to doubts. Descartes’ hope is that he will be able to find something that is immune from this barrage of skeptical doubt – something that survives even the most powerful of skeptical scenarios.

One skeptical scenario Descartes considers is the perceptual illusion scenario: consider that what looks like water in the distance might be nothing more than the distorting effects of heat waves; or that a straight stick can appear bent when half-submerged in water; or that the person who looks just like your friend from this distance is in fact a complete stranger; and so on. Many of your perceptual beliefs could be founded on ordinary illusions. This renders them, to some small degree at least, doubtful. But, of course, many of your beliefs are not rendered doubtful by this scenario: your mathematical beliefs, your beliefs about who you are, and your beliefs based on very clear perceptual evidence – that you are, for example, holding a book in your hand – no ordinary perceptual illusion could cause such beliefs.