The Theory of Knowledge (Part 2)

1. General Notes:

   • Chapter 5 - Justification and Beyond (pg. 77)

     • Justification, Truth, and Defeat (pg. 77)

       • "genuine knowledge requires not only truth and belief, but also that the satisfaction of the belief condition be appropriately related to the satisfaction of truth condition" (pg. 77)

         • "that is, on the traditional approach, genuine knowledge requires that a knower have an 'adequate indication' that a believed proposition is true" (pg. 77)

         • "[it] is evidence indicating that a proposition is true" (pg. 77)

       • "we may distinguish between deductive and inductive justification" (pg. 78)

       • "justification differs from truth, which does not change with changes in evidence. Your beliefs about what is true may change with changing evidence, but it does not follow that the truth concerning what you believe itself changes too" (pg. 79)

     • Inferential Justification and the Regress Problem (pg. 79)

       • The Regress Problem (pg. 80)

         • "some skeptics have used a regress argument to contend that we are not justified in believing any proposition implying the existence of the external world" (pg. 80)

         • "the fundamental skeptical worry underlying the regress argument is this: if one's belief that external objects exist is supposedly justified on the basis of another belief, how is the latter allegedly justifying belief itself justified?" (pg. 80)

           • "we [thus] seem threatened by endless regress of required justifying beliefs" (pg. 80)

         • "contemporary epistemologists have offered four general replies to the regress problem" (pg. 81)

       • Epistemic Infinitism (pg. 81)

         • "states that regresses of inferential justification are infinite, but that this does not undermine genuine justification" (pg. 81)

         • "no matter how far back we go in an endless regress of inferential justification, we find beliefs that are only conditionally justified: that is, justified if, and only if, their supporting beliefs are justified" (pg. 81-82)

           • "at every moment in the endless chain, according to skeptics, we find a belief that is merely conditionally justified, and not actually justified" (pg. 82)

       • Epistemic Coherentism (pg. 82)

         • "the view that all justification is a system dependent in virtue of 'coherence relations' among beliefs" (pg. 82)

         • "[coherentists] claim that all justification of beliefs depend on coherence within a system of beliefs" (pg. 82)

         • "typically we can trace the specific reasons for our beliefs only through a short line of justifying beliefs, or inferential justifications. We quickly arrive at rather general beliefs deeply entrenched in our basic view of the world, a view that seems to be justified largely by the way its constituent beliefs 'hang together' as a coherent comprehensive portrait of the world" (pg. 82-83)

           • "such beliefs lead rather to a network of beliefs" (pg. 83)

           • "we evidently rely on broad portraits of how things generally are in order to support claims about specific situations" (pg. 83)

         • "[whereas] a coherence theory of truth…aims to specify the meaning of 'truth' or the essential nature of truth…a coherence theory of justification, in contrast, aims to explain the…kind of justification essential to knowledge" (pg. 83)

           • "the nature of logical entailment [is when] one belief logically entails another if the truth of the first guarantees the truth of the second" (pg. 84)

           • "explanatory coherence relations obtain when some of our beliefs effectively explain why some other of our beliefs are true" (pg. 84)

         • "epistemic coherentism implies that the justification of any belief depends on that belief's coherence relations with other beliefs" (pg. 85)

           • "such coherentism is thus system oriented, emphasizing the role of interconnectedness of beliefs" (pg. 85)

       • Epistemic Foundationalism and Reliabilism (pg. 86)

         • "foundationalism about epistemic justification states that such justification has two tiers:" (pg. 86)

           • "some instances of justification are non-inferential, or foundational" (pg. 86)

             • "a non-inferential…belief is justified…[not] by means of inference from or dependence on other beliefs…[but] in virtue of its special relation to one's perceptual experience, which is not itself a belief" (pg. 86)

           • "other instances of justification are inferential, or non-foundational" (pg. 86)

         • "foundationalists typically characterize a non-inferentially justified, foundational belief as a belief whose epistemic justification does not derive from other beliefs" (pg. 88)

           • "we thus should avoid a confusion of (a) what a belief's justification derives from and (b) what the causal basis of a belief's existence is" (pg. 88)

         • "proponents of foundational justification by reliable origins hold that non-inferential justification depends on belief-forming sources…[which] is called epistemic reliabilism" (pg. 89)

           • "reliabilism…invokes the reliability, or truth conduciveness, of a belief's source" (pg. 89)

             • "many reliabilists divide over what exact 'kind' and 'degree' of truth conduciveness confers epistemic justification" (pg. 89)

           • "[the] nonreliabilist view invokes the particular perceptual experience that underlie a foundational belief" (pg. 89)

             • "the nonreliabilist, in sharp contrast with reliabilism, allows that perceptual experience could justify a belief even if perception turned out to be unreliable" (pg. 89)

         • "a longstanding problem confronts versions of foundationalism [which] restrict non-inferential, or foundational, justification to subjective beliefs about what one 'seems' to see, hear, feel smell, or taste" (pg. 93)

           • "such subjective beliefs do not logically entail beliefs about physical objects…[as it is] always possible that one's subjective beliefs are true while the relevant beliefs about physical objects are false" (pg. 93)

       • Epistemic Contextualism (pg. 94)

         • "according to contextualism, in any context of inquiry, the people involved simply assume some propositions as starting points for their inquiry" (pg. 94)

         • "contextualists emphasize that contextually basic propositions can vary from social group to social group and from context to context" (pg. 94)

           • "a key problem for contextualism come from the view that 'unjustified' beliefs can yield epistemic justification for other beliefs" (pg. 94)

           • "if any unjustified proposition can serve as a justifier, we shall be able to justify anything we want" (pg. 94)

         • "in sum…infinitism, coherentism, foundationalism, or contextualism may offer a viable solution to the [regress] problem" (pg. 95)

     • Supplementing Justification: The Gettier Problem (pg. 95)

       • "[some] recommend…that we construe the justification condition as a causal condition" (pg. 95)

       • "in sum…we have seen that justification is subject to defeat, or undermining, in a way that truth is not" (pg. 99)

   • Chapter 6 - Sources of Knowledge (pg. 101)

     • Rationalism, Empiricism, and Innatism (pg. 101)

       • "rationalism states that nonempirical reason is the source of all knowledge, whereas empiricism states that sensory experience is the source of all knowledge" (pg. 101)

         • "basic empiricism states that we do not have knowledge of reality through the nonempirical use of reason" (pg. 102)

           • "knowledge of reality, according to basic empiricism, derives from sensory experience and from the empirical use of reason" (pg. 102)

         • "basic rationalism…affirms that such knowledge is available to us" (pg. 102)

       • "the issue is whether we can know synthetic propositions independently of sensory experience" (pg. 103)

       • "rationalists emphasize the role of reason, and empiricists emphasize the role of sensory experience" (pg. 103)

         • "let's characterize the empirical use of reason as either (a) processes of thinking about the objects of sensory experience or (b) processes of deductive or inductive reasoning from premises deriving from the former processes of thinking" (pg. 103)

     • Empiricism, Positivism, and Underdetermination (pg. 106)

       • "logical positivists who formed the Vienna Circle…[use] various analytical techniques to restrict philosophical pursuits to the advancement of 'scientific' knowledge, thereby banishing metaphysical concerns from philosophy" (pg. 107)

         • "the logical positivists' doctrines have had a lasting influence on empiricist epistemology" (pg. 107)

         • "if there is no way of telling when a proposition is true, then the proposition has no sense whatever; for the sense of a proposition is its methods of verification" - Friedrich Waismann (pg. 107)

           • "if metaphysical claims about gods, souls, essences, values, and the like lack a method of verification, one can use the verification principle to dispense with those claims as meaningless" (pg. 107)

         • "the Vienna Circle…construed the needed method of verification as a method of justification, or confirmation, in terms of observable events" (pg. 107-108)

     • Intuitions and First-Person Reports (pg. 111)

       • "epistemological arguments often begin with what philosophers call 'intuitions' about the nature of knowledge" (pg. 111)

       • "intuition…is a special faculty of perception" (pg. 112)

     • Memory (pg. 112)

       • "memory seems to have a feature of first-person privilege" (pg. 113)

       • "contribution of memory to knowledge must take account of such complex theoretical issues in the nature of memory: particularly, the reliability of memory, its vulnerability to suggestion, and the damage that can result from Misleading Postevent Information (MPI)" (pg. 114)

     • Theoretical Unification (pg. 114)

       • "the theoretical preference widely shown for explanations that unify otherwise disparate data is favorable" (pg. 116)

     • Testimony and Social Dependence (pg. 117)

       • "sometimes we must rely on others if we are to be epistemically responsible" (pg. 117)

       • "a noteworthy means of justification and knowledge is called triangulation" (pg. 118)

         • "it suggests that if we come to the same conclusion by diverse methods then the probability that this convergence is a coincidence may be correspondingly lower and perhaps even rationally negligible" (pg. 118)

       • "the social dependence of knowledge helps us greatly in acquiring significant truths, and methods such as triangulation protect us from having too many false beliefs" (pg. 122)

   • Chapter 7 - Rationality (pg. 123)

     • Preliminary Distinctions (pg. 123)

       • "portrayed broadly, rationality is reasonableness" (pg. 123)

       • "we can illuminate relations between epistemology and the theory of rationality by examining…deduction, induction, normative and descriptive assessment, bias, and sensitivity to cultural and social context" (pg. 126)

     • Rational Inference: Normative and Descriptive (pg. 127)

       • "all inductive arguments are deductively invalid" (pg. 130)

       • Principle of Instrumental Rationality - "if you intend that a situation, X, occur and you believe, in agreement with your evidence, that another situation, Y, is the most effective means to X, then you rationally should aim to have Y occur" (pg. 130)

     • Consistency and Wayward Beliefs (pg. 132)

       • "our mental states have contents, and those contents represent the world in a certain way. To explain someone else's behavior, thereby identifying a rationale for it, we must characterize the contents of that person's mental states" (pg. 132)

       • "philosophers widely agree that we should hold beliefs that are at least consistent, particularly that we should not embrace contradictory views" (pg. 133)

       • "the attribution of beliefs and preferences to others challenges us to translate their language into language we can understand" (pg. 133)

     • Rationality and Decision Under Uncertainty (pg. 135)

       • "Herbert Simon has faulted modern decision theory on the grounds that humans rarely have available the facts, consistent preferences, and reasoning power required by standard decision theory. He contends that human rationality is 'bounded' in that it [often] does not require utility maximization or even consistency" (pg. 136)

       • Base-Rate Fallacy (pg. 138)

         • "for the support of a causal claim…we need to compare the relative frequency of [a] property in the population to the frequency of that property in the general population. The latter measure is called the base rate" (pg. 138)

         • "we might find that 14 percent of commercial pilots suffer heart disease and conclude that commercial piloting and heart disease are causally related…but [find that] the heart disease of the general population is 12 percent, [thus,] our conclusion would be the result of what is called the base-rate fallacy" (pg. 138)

       • Availability Bias (pg. 139)

         • "when reasoning causally, we typically draw from a body of experiences that has not been organized with accurate statistical representation" (pg. 139)

         • "memory allows only certain experiences to be retained, most often because they are especially memorable or available" (pg. 139)

         • "one of the most powerful influences prompting an availability bias is the phenomenon of framing" (pg. 140)

           • "framing is the process whereby a problem is presented to an audience, preparing them to see a certain range of possible options, solutions, evidential bearing, and so on" (pg. 140)

       • Confirmation Bias (pg. 140)

         • "researchers who expected to see a certain phenomenon tended to overestimate the frequency of confirming instances of their hypothesis" (pg. 141)

       • Judgement Under Uncertainty and Task Demands (pg. 141)

         • "our rationality consists in our having [such] rules, [but] not in our always performing in ways that display rational judgement" (pg. 146)

   • Chapter 8 - Skepticism (pg. 149)

     • Some Species of Skepticism (pg. 149)

       • "the more restricted we take the scope to be, the more skeptical we are. So, if we restrict knowledge to claims about our subjective experiences…we are very skeptical" (pg.149)

         • Knowledge Skepticism

           • "unrestricted knowledge skepticism implies that no one knows anything" (pg. 149)

         • Justification Skepticism

           • "no one is even justified in believing anything" (pg. 150)

       • "more moderately, a knowledge skeptic might hold that we simply do not know anything with certainty, where certainty is either indubitability, infallibility, or irreversibility" (pg. 150)

     • Some Skeptical Arguments (pg. 151)

       • "how can we specify what we know without having specified how we know" (pg. 152)

         • "it seems that an identification of a particular case of knowledge requires your having general standards for when a belief counts as knowledge. In addition, your having general standards for when a belief counts as knowledge apparently depends on your having already identified and examined particular cases of knowledge" (pg. 153)

       • "particularism begins with particular cases of knowledge that we can identify, and uses these to infer answers to general questions of how we know" (pg. 153)

       • "an view opposing particularism is called methodism" (pg. 154)

         • "it begins with an answer to the general question of how we know, by specifying the general methods by which we acquire knowledge" (pg. 154)

       • "skeptics raise general questions about the reliability, or truth conduciveness, of our cognitive sources, such as perception, memory, and introspection" (pg. 154)

   • Chapter 9 - Epistemology and Explanation (pg. 165)

     • Origins of Contemporary Epistemology (pg. 165)

       • "all support from experience, [Bertrand] Russell claims, presupposes logical principles" (pg. 169)

         • Russell holds the 'all knowledge which asserts existence is empirical, and the only a priori knowledge concerning existence is hypothetical, giving connexions among things that exist or may exist, but not giving actual experience'" (pg. 169)

     • Explanation and Knowledge (pg. 173)

       • Explanatory Knowledge (pg. 173)

         • "descriptive knowledge is characterized by Aristotle as knowledge that something is the case, whereas explanatory knowledge is knowledge why something is the case" (pg. 173)

       • Inference to the Best Explanation (pg. 177)

         • "our intuitions may be theory dependent in that they can be shaped by our prior beliefs about the nature of the world, specifically about the nature of causation. Our judgements about explanation will be constrained by what we believe exists in the world to operate as causal agents" (pg. 178)

         • "rationality is often determined only relative to some basic worldview, or ontology. Specification of rational or justified belief often presupposes a basic metaphysical framework" (pg. 179)

         • "the study of abduction…highlights the central importance of explanatory hypotheses in our knowledge of the world, including knowledge of ourselves and other people as knowers" (pg. 182)

2. Further Readings:

   • Theaetetus, by Plato [The Theaetetus of Plato - Google Books]

   • Posterior Analytics, by Aristotle [Aristotle's Posterior Analytics - Google Books]

   • Philosophical Investigations, by L. Wittgenstein

   • Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, by R. Rorty

   • Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind, by W. Sellars

   • Science, Perception and Reality, by W. Sellars

   • Philosophical Perspectives: Metaphysics and Epistemology, by W. Sellars

   • Two Dogmas of Empiricism, by W. V. Quine [Quine51.pdf (uzh.ch)]

   • Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, by D. Hume [Enquiry (mcmaster.ca)]

   • Unified Theories of Cognition, by A. Newell

   • Human Problem Solving, by A. Newell

   • Models of Thought, by H. A. Simon

   • Administrative Behavior, by H. A. Simon

   • A Defense of Common Sense, by G. E. Moore [A Defense of Common Sense (ditext.com)]

   • Belief, Truth, and Knowledge, by D. M. Armstrong

   • The Structure of Justification, by R. Audi

   • The Adapted Mind, by J. Barkow

   • The Nature of Thought, by B. Blanshard

   • The Structure of Empirical Knowledge, by L. BonJour

   • Theory of Knowledge, by R. Chisholm

   • The Dialogue of Reason, by L. J. Cohen

   • Perception, Common Sense, and Science, by L. J. Cohen

   • Skepticism, Justification, and Explanation, by L. J. Cohen

   • Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation, by D. Davidson

   • The Language of Thought, by J. Fodor

   • Representations, by J. Fodor

   • Modularity of Mind, by J. Fodor

   • The Theory of Epistemic Rationality, by R. Foley

   • How We Know What Isn't So, by T. Gilovich

   • Empirical Knowledge, by A. Goldman

   • Epistemology and Recognition, by A. I. Goldman

   • Change in View, by G. Harman

   • Theory of Knowledge, by K. Lehrer

   • An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuations, by C. I. Lewis

   • The Nature of Judgement, by G. E. Moore

   • Knowledge and Evidence, by P. K. Moser

   • Semantic and Necessary Truth, by A. Pap

   • Contemporary Theories of Knowledge, by J. Pollock

   • Theories and Things, by W. V. Quine

   • Pursuit of Truth, by W. V. Quine

   • The Problems of Philosophy, by B. Russell

   • Philosophy, B. Russell

   • An Inquiry into Meaning and Truth, by B. Russell

   • Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits, by B. Russell

   • Action, Knowledge, and Reality, ed. By H. N. Castaneda

   • Reason in Human Affairs, by H. Simon

   • Thinking, ed. By D. Osherson & E. Smith

   • Rationality and Relativism, ed. By M. Hollis & S. Lukes

   • Philosophical Investigations, by L. Wittgenstein

   • On Certainty, by L. Wittgenstein

   • Belief: Form, Content, and Function, ed. By R. J. Bogdan

   • Knowledge and Belief, by A. P. Griffiths

   • Human Knowledge and Human Nature, by P. Carruthers