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Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. It is considered a major subfield of contemporary philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics. Epistemologists study the nature, origin, and scope of knowledge, epistemic justification, the rationality of belief, and various related issues. Debates in epistemology are generally clustered around four core areas:
- The philosophical analysis of the nature of knowledge and the conditions required for a belief to constitute knowledge, such as truth and justification
- Potential sources of knowledge and justified belief, such as perception, reason, memory, and testimony
- The structure of a body of knowledge or justified belief, including whether all justified beliefs must be derived from justified foundational beliefs or whether justification requires only a coherent set of beliefs
- Philosophical skepticism, which questions the possibility of knowledge, and related problems, such as whether skepticism poses a threat to our ordinary knowledge claims and whether it is possible to refute skeptical arguments
In its most common sense, philosophical methodology is the field of inquiry studying the methods used to do philosophy. But the term can also refer to the methods themselves. It may be understood in a wide sense as the general study of principles used for theory selection, or in a more narrow sense as the study of ways of conducting one's research and theorizing with the goal of acquiring philosophical knowledge. Philosophical methodology investigates both descriptive issues, such as which methods actually have been used by philosophers, and normative issues, such as which methods should be used or how to do good philosophy.
Skepticism, also spelled scepticism in British English, is a questioning attitude or doubt towards knowledge claims that are seen as mere belief or dogma. For example, if a person is skeptical about claims made by their government about an ongoing war, then the person doubts that these claims are accurate. In such cases, skeptics normally recommend not disbelief but suspension of belief, i.e. maintaining a neutral attitude that neither affirms nor denies the claim. This attitude is often motivated by the impression that the available evidence is insufficient to support the claim. Formally, skepticism is a topic of interest in philosophy, particularly epistemology. More informally, skepticism as an expression of questioning or doubt can be applied to any topic, such as politics, religion, or pseudoscience. It is often applied within restricted domains, such as morality, atheism, or the supernatural. Some theorists distinguish "good" or moderate skepticism, which seeks strong evidence before accepting a position, from "bad" or radical skepticism, which wants to suspend judgment indefinitely.
Philosophical skepticism is a family of philosophical views that question the possibility of knowledge. It differs from other forms of skepticism in that it even rejects very plausible knowledge claims that belong to basic common sense. Philosophical skeptics are often classified into two general categories: Those who deny all possibility of knowledge, and those who advocate for the suspension of judgment due to the inadequacy of evidence. This distinction is modeled after the differences between the Academic skeptics and the Pyrrhonian skeptics in ancient Greek philosophy. In the latter sense, skepticism is understood as a way of life that helps the practitioner achieve inner peace. Some types of philosophical skepticism reject all forms of knowledge while others limit this rejection to certain fields, for example, to knowledge about moral doctrines or about the external world. Some theorists criticize philosophical skepticism based on the claim that it is a self-refuting idea since its proponents seem to claim to know that there is no knowledge. Other objections focus on its implausibility and distance from regular life.
Knowledge is a form of awareness or familiarity. It is often understood as awareness of facts or as practical skills, and may also mean familiarity with objects or situations. Knowledge of facts, also called propositional knowledge, is often defined as true belief that is distinct from opinion or guesswork by virtue of justification. While there is wide agreement among philosophers that propositional knowledge is a form of true belief, many controversies in philosophy focus on justification. This includes questions like whether justification is needed at all, how to understand it, and whether something else besides it is needed. These controversies intensified due to a series of thought experiments by Edmund Gettier and have provoked various alternative definitions. Some of them deny that justification is necessary and suggest alternative criteria. Others accept that justification is an essential aspect and formulate additional requirements.
The epistemic virtues, as identified by virtue epistemologists, reflect their contention that belief is an ethical process, and thus susceptible to intellectual virtue or vice. Some epistemic virtues have been identified by W. Jay Wood, based on research into the medieval tradition. Epistemic virtues are sometimes also called intellectual virtues.
Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski is an American philosopher. She is the Emerita George Lynn Cross Research Professor, as well as Emerita Kingfisher College Chair of the Philosophy of Religion and Ethics, at the University of Oklahoma. She writes in the areas of epistemology, philosophy of religion, and virtue theory.
Experimental philosophy is an emerging field of philosophical inquiry that makes use of empirical data—often gathered through surveys which probe the intuitions of ordinary people—in order to inform research on philosophical questions. This use of empirical data is widely seen as opposed to a philosophical methodology that relies mainly on a priori justification, sometimes called "armchair" philosophy, by experimental philosophers. Experimental philosophy initially began by focusing on philosophical questions related to intentional action, the putative conflict between free will and determinism, and causal vs. descriptive theories of linguistic reference. However, experimental philosophy has continued to expand to new areas of research.
A mental state, or a mental property, is a state of mind of a person. Mental states comprise a diverse class, including perception, pain/pleasure experience, belief, desire, intention, emotion, and memory. There is controversy concerning the exact definition of the term. According to epistemic approaches, the essential mark of mental states is that their subject has privileged epistemic access while others can only infer their existence from outward signs. Consciousness-based approaches hold that all mental states are either conscious themselves or stand in the right relation to conscious states. Intentionality-based approaches, on the other hand, see the power of minds to refer to objects and represent the world as the mark of the mental. According to functionalist approaches, mental states are defined in terms of their role in the causal network independent of their intrinsic properties. Some philosophers deny all the aforementioned approaches by holding that the term "mental" refers to a cluster of loosely related ideas without an underlying unifying feature shared by all. Various overlapping classifications of mental states have been proposed. Important distinctions group mental phenomena together according to whether they are sensory, propositional, intentional, conscious or occurrent. Sensory states involve sense impressions like visual perceptions or bodily pains. Propositional attitudes, like beliefs and desires, are relations a subject has to a proposition. The characteristic of intentional states is that they refer to or are about objects or states of affairs. Conscious states are part of the phenomenal experience while occurrent states are causally efficacious within the owner's mind, with or without consciousness. An influential classification of mental states is due to Franz Brentano, who argues that there are only three basic kinds: presentations, judgments, and phenomena of love and hate.
John Andrew Leslie is a Canadian philosopher and writer.
Epistemology or theory of knowledge is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and scope (limitations) of knowledge. It addresses the questions "What is knowledge?", "How is knowledge acquired?", "What do people know?", "How do we know what we know?", and "Why do we know what we know?". Much of the debate in this field has focused on analyzing the nature of knowledge and how it relates to similar notions such as truth, belief, and justification. It also deals with the means of production of knowledge, as well as skepticism about different knowledge claims.
Barry Stroud was a Canadian philosopher and professor at the University of California, Berkeley. Known especially for his work on philosophical skepticism, he wrote about David Hume, Ludwig Wittgenstein, the metaphysics of color, and many other topics.
Jennifer Lackey is an American academic; she is the Wayne and Elizabeth Jones Professor of Philosophy at Northwestern University. Lackey is known for her research in epistemology, especially on testimony, disagreement, memory, the norms of assertion, and virtue epistemology. She is the author of Learning from Words: Testimony as a Source of Knowledge and of numerous articles and book chapters. She is also co-editor of The Epistemology of Testimony and The Epistemology of Disagreement: New Essays.
Jennifer Nagel is a Canadian philosopher at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on epistemology, philosophy of mind, and metacognition. She has also written on 17th century (Western) philosophy, especially John Locke and René Descartes.
Alan Richard White was an analytic philosopher who worked mainly in epistemology, the philosophy of mind, and, latterly, legal philosophy. Peter Hacker notes that he was "the most skillful developer of Rylean ... ideas in philosophical psychology" and that "if anyone surpassed Austin in subtlety and refinement in the discrimination of grammatical differences, it was White." Richard Swinburne remarks that "during the heyday of 'ordinary language philosophy' no tongue practised it better."
Philosophy of conspiracy theories is the academic study by philosophers of the phenomenon and history of conspiracy theories. A conspiracy theory has been defined as an explanation for an event or situation that invokes a conspiracy by sinister and powerful groups, often political in motivation, or more narrowly a conspiracy where other explanations are more probable. The term has a negative connotation, implying that the appeal to a conspiracy is based on prejudice or insufficient evidence.
Nature Red in Tooth and Claw: Theism and the Problem of Animal Suffering is a 2008 book by Michael J. Murray, which explores animal suffering throughout evolutionary history as a natural evil, within the context of the problem of evil. The title of the book references a famous and oft-quoted phrase from the poem "In Memoriam A.H.H." by Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
A Luxury of the Understanding: On the Value of True Belief is a 2013 book by Allan Hazlett in which the author offers an analysis of the problem of the value of belief.
A Critical Introduction to Skepticism is a 2014 book by Allan Hazlett in which the author offers an introduction to skepticism.
Sanford Goldberg is an American philosopher and Chester D. Tripp Professor in the Humanities at Northwestern University. He is known for his works on epistemology, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind.
References
- ↑ Whiting, Daniel (2016). "Review of A Luxury of the Understanding: On the Value of True Belief". Mind. 125 (499): 918–922. doi:10.1093/mind/fzv217. ISSN 0026-4423. JSTOR 43904390.
- ↑ Ahlstrom-Vij, Kristoffer (1 April 2018). "A Luxury of the Understanding: On the Value of True Belief". The Philosophical Review. 127 (2): 237–240. doi:10.1215/00318108-4326647.
- ↑ Bondy, Patrick (March 2015). "A Luxury of the Understanding: On the Value of True BeliefALLAN HAZLETT Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013; 320 pp.; $84.00 (hardback)". Dialogue. 54 (1): 202–204. doi:10.1017/S0012217314000419. ISSN 0012-2173. S2CID 171058914.
- ↑ Borghini, Andrea (3 April 2015). "A Critical Introduction to Skepticism by Allan Hazlett". Australasian Journal of Philosophy. 93 (2): 408–409. doi:10.1080/00048402.2014.969750. ISSN 0004-8402. S2CID 170562109.
- ↑ Howell, Robert (1 November 2013). "Review of Art and Abstract Objects". Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews. ISSN 1538-1617.
- ↑ Greene, Richard (2015). "A Critical Introduction to Skepticism, by Allan Hazlett". Teaching Philosophy. 38 (2): 243–246. doi:10.5840/teachphil201538237.
- ↑ Turri, John (2011). "Mythology of the Factive". Logos & Episteme. 2 (1): 141–150. doi:10.5840/logos-episteme20112155. ISSN 2069-0533.
- ↑ Reed, Baron (December 2016). "Having to do with Knowledge". Episteme. 13 (4): 549–554. doi:10.1017/epi.2016.30. ISSN 1742-3600. S2CID 171535777.
