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Peter D. Klein | |
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| Born | 17 September 1940 |
| Alma mater | Yale University, Colgate University |
| Era | Contemporary philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Analytic philosophy |
Main interests | Epistemology |
Peter David Klein (born September 17, 1940) is an American philosopher specializing in issues in epistemology who spent most of his career at Rutgers University.
He received a BA at Earlham College (1962), and an MA (1964) and PhD from Yale University (1966).
He taught at Colgate University as an assistant professor from 1966 to 1970. Following that, he moved to Rutgers University, where he taught as an assistant professor from 1970 to 1973, an associate professor from 1973 to 1981, and a full professor from 1981 until retiring from Rutgers in 2016. [1]
Klein is widely known for his work on skepticism. His most influential work, however, is on the nature of knowledge, where he has long defended the defeasibility theory. His recent work defends infinitism about justification. On this view, to be justified in believing P is to possess a reason R1 to believe P, and a reason R2 to believe R1, and a reason R3.....and so on, ad infinitum. Justification is, so to speak, "turtles all the way down." He has also recently advocated a picture of knowledge according to which one can have knowledge of p even if the justification for the belief of p is essentially based on false premises. Klein calls these "useful falsehoods".
Klein authored one book: Certainty: A Refutation of Skepticism (1982) (University of Minnesota Press), and co-edited Ad Infinitum: New Essays on Epistemological Infinitism (Oxford University Press) with John Turri. He has published a number of articles, chapters, and reviews in epistemology.
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. It studies the nature, origin, and scope of knowledge, epistemic justification, and various related issues. Debates in contemporary epistemology are generally clustered around four core areas:
Foundationalism concerns philosophical theories of knowledge resting upon non-inferential justified belief, or some secure foundation of certainty such as a conclusion inferred from a basis of sound premises. The main rival of the foundationalist theory of justification is the coherence theory of justification, whereby a body of knowledge, not requiring a secure foundation, can be established by the interlocking strength of its components, like a puzzle solved without prior certainty that each small region was solved correctly.
University Press |isbn=0-7486-2213-6 |date=2005 |pages=92–93}}</ref> Epistemologists often identify justification as a component of knowledge distinguishing it from mere true opinion. They study of reasons that someone holds a belief. Epistemologists are concerned with various features of belief, which include the ideas of warrant, knowledge, rationality, and probability, among others.
In epistemology, the regress argument is the argument that any proposition requires a justification. However, any justification itself requires support. This means that any proposition whatsoever can be endlessly (infinitely) questioned, resulting in infinite regress. It is a problem in epistemology and in any general situation where a statement has to be justified.
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. Pyrrhonian skepticism is a practice of suspending judgement, and skepticism in this sense 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, 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.
Edmund Lee Gettier III was an American philosopher at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is best known for his article written in 1963: "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?", which has generated an extensive philosophical literature trying to respond to what became known as the Gettier problem.
In philosophical epistemology, there are two types of coherentism: the coherence theory of truth, and the coherence theory of justification.
Laurence BonJour is an American philosopher and Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Washington.
Alvin Ira Goldman was an American philosopher who was emeritus Board of Governors Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at Rutgers University in New Jersey and a leading figure in epistemology.
Keith Lehrer is Emeritus Regent's Professor of philosophy at the University of Arizona and a research professor of philosophy at the University of Miami, where he spends half of each academic year.
Stephen P. Stich is an American academic who is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at Rutgers University, as well as an Honorary Professor in Philosophy at the University of Sheffield. Stich's main philosophical interests are in the philosophy of mind, epistemology, and moral psychology. His 1983 book, From Folk Psychology to Cognitive Science: The Case Against Belief, received much attention as he argued for a form of eliminative materialism about the mind. He changed his mind, in later years, as indicated in his 1996 book Deconstructing the Mind.
In epistemology, the Münchhausen trilemma is a thought experiment intended to demonstrate the theoretical impossibility of proving any truth, even in the fields of logic and mathematics, without appealing to accepted assumptions. If it is asked how any given proposition is known to be true, proof in support of that proposition may be provided. Yet that same question can be asked of that supporting proof, and any subsequent supporting proof. The Münchhausen trilemma is that there are only three ways of completing a proof:
Ernest Sosa is an American philosopher primarily interested in epistemology. Since 2007 he has been Board of Governors Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers University, but he spent most of his career at Brown University.
Infinitism is the view that knowledge may be justified by an infinite chain of reasons. It belongs to epistemology, the branch of philosophy that considers the possibility, nature, and means of knowledge.
Michael Williams is a British philosopher who is currently Krieger-Eisenhower Professor in the Department of Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University, noted especially for his work in epistemology.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to epistemology:
Keith DeRose is an American philosopher teaching at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, where he is currently Allison Foundation Professor of Philosophy. He taught previously at New York University and Rice University. His primary interests include epistemology, philosophy of language, philosophy of religion, and history of modern philosophy. He is best known for his work on contextualism in epistemology, especially as a response to the traditional problem of skepticism.
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.
Scott F. Aikin is an American philosopher and associate professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, where he also holds a joint appointment in Classics. He earned an M.A. in philosophy from the University of Montana in 1999 and a Ph.D. in philosophy from Vanderbilt University in 2006. His principal areas of research are epistemology, argumentation theory, ancient philosophy, and pragmatism.
Definitions of knowledge try to determine the essential features of knowledge. Closely related terms are conception of knowledge, theory of knowledge, and analysis of knowledge. Some general features of knowledge are widely accepted among philosophers, for example, that it constitutes a cognitive success or an epistemic contact with reality and that propositional knowledge involves true belief. Most definitions of knowledge in analytic philosophy focus on propositional knowledge or knowledge-that, as in knowing that Dave is at home, in contrast to knowledge-how (know-how) expressing practical competence. However, despite the intense study of knowledge in epistemology, the disagreements about its precise nature are still both numerous and deep. Some of those disagreements arise from the fact that different theorists have different goals in mind: some try to provide a practically useful definition by delineating its most salient feature or features, while others aim at a theoretically precise definition of its necessary and sufficient conditions. Further disputes are caused by methodological differences: some theorists start from abstract and general intuitions or hypotheses, others from concrete and specific cases, and still others from linguistic usage. Additional disagreements arise concerning the standards of knowledge: whether knowledge is something rare that demands very high standards, like infallibility, or whether it is something common that requires only the possession of some evidence.
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