J. Adam Carter - This Is Epistemology

This Is Philosophy, Second editionSteven D. Hales

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J. ADAM CARTER AND CLAYTON LITTLEJOHN

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The authors are grateful to Steven D. Hales for his encouragement, support, and patience during the completion of this book, and to three anonymous referees whose extensive comments on the initial version of the manuscript have improved the final version greatly.

This Is Epistemology was written between 2014 and 2020, and the narrative arc that emerged reflects a range of epistemological topics that the authors themselves (sometimes collectively, sometimes individually) hold near and dear. The result is, we hope, a more comprehensive and apt picture of epistemology than either of us would have presented individually.

Adam would like to thank those epistemologists who have shaped his own reading of the lay of the land in epistemology. There are many, but two who stand out in particular are Duncan Pritchard and Ernest Sosa. Both have been in different ways invaluable guides. In addition, Adam would like to thank Chris Kelp and Mona Simion for very helpful discussion, Clayton Littlejohn for being a great co‐author throughout, and Emma C. Gordon for years of loving support (especially during the chapter on the a priori, which was trying for us both).

Clayton would like to thank his students, colleagues, and former teachers for philosophical conversation, Steven Hales for encouragement, and Amy Revier for her support. He also wants to thank his co‐author for his excellent work on this project.

I.1If you catch an epistemologist in a pithy moment, and you ask “So, what is epistemology?” they might say something like this: “Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that concerns the nature and scope of human knowledge.” This isn't a bad answer. Epistemologists do care about what knowledge is (i.e. its nature ). As a case in point, just look at their track record: since about the early 1960s, epistemologists have left a paper trail that includes just about every attempt you can think of to fill in this blank: 1

S knows that p if and only if 2 ________.

So, epistemologists clearly do care (a lot – that's decades of effort!) about what knowledge is, about its nature. In case you're wondering, for the purposes of the above puzzle, “S” can be any person (including yourself) and “p” can be any proposition. A “proposition” – the kind of thing we assert and deny, and which is capable of being true and false – is often represented by a “that” clause; 3 for example, you might know that it is raining or that Scotland is north of England . Filling in the above blank requires specifying the necessary and sufficient conditions for anyone's knowing any proposition – viz. the conditions for propositional knowledge .

I.2Does the puzzle seem easy? Prior to a famous paper in the early 1960s at least, 4 the following answer to the puzzle seemed good enough:

A subject, S, knows that a proposition, p , is true iff (i) p is true, (ii) S believes that p , and (iii) S is justified in believing that p (e.g. believes p on the basis of good reasons).

The problem – which most all epistemologists now agree – is that the above answer is in fact not good enough! We won't spoil the fun of why just yet (hint: see Chapter 5), and the cases that demonstrate this are admittedly a bit tricksy. But the short of it is this: knowledge requires something more than just true belief that is backed by good reasons. It is, to put it very mildly, annoying to not have a clear view of what this “extra thing” is. And epistemologists have been working hard to find it – while, as we'll see, some more pessimistic (or, perhaps, realistic, depending on one's perspective) epistemologists have suggested it's a mistake even to try to dismantle knowledge into its constituent parts. 5

I.3The above project, at any rate, is an example of the more general idea that epistemology is “about” the nature of knowledge. We also noted that a perfectly typical answer to the “What is epistemology?” question mentions the scope of knowledge, apart from its nature. What's this about?