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Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Contemporary philosophers consider it a major subfield of philosophy, along with ethics, logic, and metaphysics, which are more ancient subdivisions of philosophy. There are different views on the relation between epistemology, natural sciences and these ancient divisions of philosophy: William Alston considers that it has historically always been a part of cognitive psychology. Quine viewed epistemology as a chapter of psychologySect.1.1 whereas Russell viewed it as a mix of psychology and logic. In contrast, Popper, Carnap and others in the Vienna circle considered that only objective or intersubjective knowledge should be studied in epistemology.
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.
Internalism and externalism are two opposite ways of integration of explaining various subjects in several areas of philosophy. These include human motivation, knowledge, justification, meaning, and truth. The distinction arises in many areas of debate with similar but distinct meanings. Internal–external distinction is a distinction used in philosophy to divide an ontology into two parts: an internal part concerning observation related to philosophy, and an external part concerning question related to philosophy.
Justification is the property of belief that qualifies it as knowledge rather than mere opinion. Epistemology is the study of reasons that someone holds a rationally admissible belief. Epistemologists are concerned with various epistemic features of belief, which include the ideas of warrant, knowledge, rationality, and probability, among others.
Rationality is the quality of being guided by or based on reason. In this regard, a person acts rationally if they have a good reason for what they do or a belief is rational if it is based on strong evidence. This quality can apply to an ability, as in a rational animal, to a psychological process, like reasoning, to mental states, such as beliefs and intentions, or to persons who possess these other forms of rationality. A thing that lacks rationality is either arational, if it is outside the domain of rational evaluation, or irrational, if it belongs to this domain but does not fulfill its standards.
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.
In philosophical epistemology, there are two types of coherentism: the coherence theory of truth; and the coherence theory of justification.
In philosophy, a distinction is often made between two different kinds of knowledge: knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description. Whereas knowledge by description is something like ordinary propositional knowledge, knowledge by acquaintance is familiarity with a person, place, or thing, typically obtained through perceptual experience. According to Bertrand Russell's classic account of acquaintance knowledge, acquaintance is a direct causal interaction between a person and some object that the person is perceiving.
Ethical intuitionism is a view or family of views in moral epistemology. It is foundationalism applied to moral knowledge, the thesis that some moral truths can be known non-inferentially. Such an epistemological view is by definition committed to the existence of knowledge of moral truths; therefore, ethical intuitionism implies cognitivism.
Virtue epistemology is a current philosophical approach to epistemology that stresses the importance of intellectual and specifically epistemic virtues. Virtue epistemology evaluates knowledge according to the properties of the persons who hold beliefs in addition to or instead of the properties of the propositions and beliefs. Some advocates of virtue epistemology also adhere to theories of virtue ethics, while others see only loose analogy between virtue in ethics and virtue in epistemology.
In the philosophy of religion, Reformed epistemology is a school of philosophical thought concerning the nature of knowledge (epistemology) as it applies to religious beliefs. The central proposition of Reformed epistemology is that beliefs can be justified by more than evidence alone, contrary to the positions of evidentialism, which argues that while non-evidential belief may be beneficial, it violates some epistemic duty. Central to Reformed epistemology is the proposition that belief in God may be "properly basic" and not need to be inferred from other truths to be rationally warranted. William Lane Craig describes Reformed epistemology as "One of the most significant developments in contemporary religious epistemology ... which directly assaults the evidentialist construal of rationality."
Naturalized epistemology is a collection of philosophic views concerned with the theory of knowledge that emphasize the role of natural scientific methods. This shared emphasis on scientific methods of studying knowledge shifts focus to the empirical processes of knowledge acquisition and away from many traditional philosophical questions. There are noteworthy distinctions within naturalized epistemology. Replacement naturalism maintains that traditional epistemology should be abandoned and replaced with the methodologies of the natural sciences. The general thesis of cooperative naturalism is that traditional epistemology can benefit in its inquiry by using the knowledge we have gained from the cognitive sciences. Substantive naturalism focuses on an asserted equality of facts of knowledge and natural facts.
Laurence BonJour is an American philosopher and Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Washington.
Basic beliefs are, under the epistemological view called foundationalism, the axioms of a belief system.
An infinite regress is an infinite series of entities governed by a recursive principle that determines how each entity in the series depends on or is produced by its predecessor. In the epistemic regress, for example, a belief is justified because it is based on another belief that is justified. But this other belief is itself in need of one more justified belief for itself to be justified and so on. An infinite regress argument is an argument against a theory based on the fact that this theory leads to an infinite regress. For such an argument to be successful, it has to demonstrate not just that the theory in question entails an infinite regress but also that this regress is vicious. There are different ways in which a regress can be vicious. The most serious form of viciousness involves a contradiction in the form of metaphysical impossibility. Other forms occur when the infinite regress is responsible for the theory in question being implausible or for its failure to solve the problem it was formulated to solve. Traditionally, it was often assumed without much argument that each infinite regress is vicious but this assumption has been put into question in contemporary philosophy. While some philosophers have explicitly defended theories with infinite regresses, the more common strategy has been to reformulate the theory in question in a way that avoids the regress. One such strategy is foundationalism, which posits that there is a first element in the series from which all the other elements arise but which is not itself explained this way. Another way is coherentism, which is based on a holistic explanation that usually sees the entities in question not as a linear series but as an interconnected network. Infinite regress arguments have been made in various areas of philosophy. Famous examples include the cosmological argument, Bradley's regress and regress arguments in epistemology.
Metaepistemology is the branch of epistemology and metaphilosophy that studies the underlying assumptions made in debates in epistemology, including those concerning the existence and authority of epistemic facts and reasons, the nature and aim of epistemology, and the methodology of epistemology.
In epistemology, phenomenal conservatism (PC) holds that it is reasonable to assume that things are as they appear, except when there are positive grounds for doubting this.
Robert N. Audi is an American philosopher whose major work has focused on epistemology, ethics, rationality and the theory of action. He is O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, and previously held a chair in the business school there. His 2005 book, The Good in the Right, updates and strengthens Rossian intuitionism and develops the epistemology of ethics. He has also written important works of political philosophy, particularly on the relationship between church and state. He is a past president of the American Philosophical Association and the Society of Christian Philosophers.
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.
Religious epistemology broadly covers religious approaches to epistemological questions, or attempts to understand the epistemological issues that come from religious belief. The questions asked by epistemologists apply to religious beliefs and propositions whether they seem rational, justified, warranted, reasonable, based on evidence and so on. Religious views also influence epistemological theories, such as in the case of Reformed epistemology.
References
- ↑ "Doctoral Dissertations, 1974". The Review of Metaphysics . 28 (1): 166–189. 1974. ISSN 0034-6632. JSTOR 20126618.
- 1 2 Richard Fumerton Curriculum Vitae, available via The University of Iowa
- 1 2 3 4 5 DePaul, Michael R. (2015). "Richard Fumerton". In Audi, Robert (ed.). The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy (Third ed.). New York: Cambridge University Press. pp. 397–398. ISBN 978-1-139-05750-9.
- ↑ Visser, Daniel (2011). Thinking about Law. Siber Ink. p. 66. ISBN 978-1-920025-80-9.
- 1 2 "Richard Fumerton | Department of Philosophy | College of Liberal Arts & Sciences". The University of Iowa. Retrieved 2021-05-24.
- 1 2 3 4 5 Pritchard, Duncan; Ranalli, Chris (2016). "On Metaepistemological Scepticism" (PDF). In Bergmann, Michael; Coppenger, Brett (eds.). Intellectual Assurance: Essays on Traditional Epistemic Internalism. Oxford University Press.
Since at least the mid-1990s, there has been a wave of 'anti-externalist' replies to externalist responses to scepticism. Richard Fumerton has been one of the most influential figures in this wave, and alongside Barry Stroud his contributions to this debate are the most well-known. Indeed, one often finds Fumerton and Stroud being jointly identified as defenders of a position known as 'metaepistemological scepticism'.
- ↑ Mulugeta, Mikael (2016-01-27). "Talking political philosophy and freedom". Iowa Now. Retrieved 2021-05-24.
- ↑ "Richard Fumerton". Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs. Georgetown University . Retrieved 2021-05-24.
- ↑ Fumerton, Richard (2010). "Twenty Epistemological Self-profiles: Richard Fumerton". In Dancy, Jonathan; Sosa, Ernest; Steup, Matthias (eds.). A Companion to Epistemology (2nd ed.). Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 139–143. ISBN 978-1-4051-3900-7.
- ↑ Barnes, Gordon (2003). "Resurrecting Old–Fashioned Foundationalism". Philosophical Books. 44 (1): 53–62. doi:10.1111/1468-0149.00281. ISSN 0031-8051.
- ↑ Ranalli, Chris (2015). Meta-Epistemological Scepticism: Criticisms and a Defence (PDF) (PhD thesis). The University of Edinburgh. pp. 1-2.
- ↑ Foley, Richard (1990). "Fumerton's Puzzle" . Journal of Philosophical Research. 15: 109–113. doi:10.5840/jpr_1990_10. ISSN 1053-8364.
- 1 2 Foley, Richard (1991). "Audi on Practical Reasoning". Behavior and Philosophy. 19 (2): 59–72. ISSN 1053-8348. JSTOR 27759255.
- 1 2 Ye, Ru (2015). "Fumerton's Puzzle for Theories of Rationality". Australasian Journal of Philosophy. 93 (1): 93–108. doi:10.1080/00048402.2014.955862. ISSN 0004-8402. S2CID 171046040.
