This Is Epistemology

An Introduction

J. Adam Carter, Clayton Littlejohn

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9781118336823
• eBook ISBN: 9781119680376
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Epistemology in Philosophy

What is knowledge? Why is it valuable? How much of it do we have (if any at all), and what ways of thinking are good ways to use to get more of it? These are just a few questions that are asked in epistemology, roughly, the philosophical theory of knowledge. This is Epistemology is a comprehensive introduction to the philosophical study of the nature, origin, and scope of human knowledge. Exploring both classic debates and contemporary issues in epistemology, this rigorous yet accessible textbook provides readers with the foundation necessary to start doing epistemology.  

Organized around 11 key subtopics, and assuming no prior knowledge of the subject, this volume exposes readers to diverse, often contentious perspectives—guiding readers through crucial debates including Hume's problem of induction, Descartes' engagement with radical skepticism, rationalist and empiricist evaluations of a priori justification, and many more. The authors avoid complex technical terms and jargon in favor of an easy-to-follow, informal writing style with engaging chapters designed to stimulate student interest and encourage class discussion. Throughout the text, a wealth of up-to-date references and links to online resources are provided to enable further investigation of an array of epistemological topics.  

A balanced and authoritative addition to the acclaimed This is Philosophy series, This is Epistemology is a perfect primary textbook for philosophy undergraduates, and a valuable resource for general readers with interest in this important branch of philosophy.  

1
THE REGRESS PROBLEM

1.1 Introduction: A Thought Experiment

^1.1 Imagine that a team of scientists develops a device that can scan your brain and record everything you believe. You put on the special helmet, the device scans your brain, and the scientists print it all out so you can take home Your Book of Beliefs. Thumbing through the pages, you come across many beliefs you expected to find in Your Book of Beliefs. You also discover some beliefs you didn't expect to find in there – for example, beliefs that play a role in guiding your behavior but which are for the first time being brought to your attention for critical inspection.¹ For better or worse, none of your beliefs has escaped detection by this remarkable helmet (not even the embarrassing ones).

^1.2 Your Book of Beliefs is, in one sense at least, very useful. You find out, once and for all, everything you believe – which is very helpful to know! But you realize something important is missing. You notice there is nothing anywhere in Your Book of Beliefs that tells you which of your beliefs are actually worth keeping and which ought to be abandoned.

^1.3 If you've read a bit of psychology, you probably know that certain kinds of beliefs can be helpful to have simply because thinking about them makes you feel better about yourself, allows you to cope effectively with stressful experiences, etc. Such beliefs might be good to have simply because having them helps us get by.

^1.4 While it might be nice to know which beliefs can help you to get by or find peace, the very fact that you're reading an epistemology book suggests you might not care only about whether your beliefs are useful to you in this way. If you have an inquiring mind, you might also be interested in having beliefs that actually match up with how things are, regardless of whether having them makes you feel happy or comfortable or helps you cope.

^1.5 Let's assume you're like this, and so you want to work out which of your beliefs are worth keeping and which ought to be abandoned from the specific point of view (the epistemic point of view of interest in epistemology) where what matters is things like getting to the truth and having knowledge. That is, you want to sort your epistemically justified beliefs from your epistemically unjustified beliefs – and not to have them have them unhelpfully lumped all together (as they presently are in the book the scientists have given you).

^1.6 So you begin creating a new book: Your Book of (Epistemically) Justified Beliefs.² Unfortunately, the scientists who created the helmet are simply not willing or able to help you fill out this second book. (They say that, as scientists, they are “in the business of describing, not evaluating”.) When they scan your brain, the helmet is simply unable to detect things anything that philosophers call normative – like good and bad, right and wrong, justified and unjustified.³ It simply includes in the book whatever beliefs you in fact do have, for better or worse. If you want to know which beliefs from Your Book of Beliefs belong in Your Book of Justified Beliefs (where being “justified” is a normative matter), you need to do some epistemology, which is the area of philosophy that studies this kind of thing. Epistemology, if done well, can help you figure out not only which (if any) beliefs you have are epistemically justified, but also which ones are known, and even how much knowledge you have.

^1.7 But where to start? Here it helps to take things slowly. In order to figure out which beliefs from Your Book of Beliefs should make it in to Your Book of Justified Beliefs, you'll obviously need to apply some kind of sorting method.⁴

^1.8 Fortunately, you already have a decent grip – before doing much or any epistemology – of which beliefs of yours seem already like the best candidates for justified beliefs (and which ones don't). Looking through Your Book of Beliefs, you notice the first two entries as:

B1 (Belief 1). Rental prices will continue to increase in London in the coming year.

B2. There are ghosts.

You are fairly confident that B1 is justified and that B2 is not, and this is helpful because if whatever sorting method or rule you apply doesn't get these rather easy cases right, it's – like flipping a coin – probably not a very good way to sort the justified from the unjustified beliefs.⁵

^1.9 At any rate, it seems like something must account for why B1 and B2 differ in their being justified.⁶ In a bit more detail, B1 must have some feature that B2 lacks, and this feature must surely account for the difference in justification.

^1.10 This basic idea – that any difference in justification must be explained by some other difference that is not itself just a difference in justification – is an instance of a more general philosophical principle which is helpful for thinking about normative matters. Call it the Principle of Sufficient Difference.⁷

Principle of Sufficient Difference: if there is some normative difference between X and Y, there must be some further non‐normative difference between X and Y that is responsible for this normative difference: that is, there must be some non‐normative feature F such that (i) X has F, (ii) Y lacks F, and (iii) this difference is responsible for the normative difference between X and Y.

Note that the Principle of Sufficient Difference is not itself a full‐blown method for determining which of your beliefs are justified. But it is a principle that any good method you apply with that aim in mind will have to respect. (Consider that a method that did not respect this principle would have to allow, for example, that two beliefs could have all the same properties with the exception that one of them is justified and the other is not. But that would be quite a pill to swallow.)

^1.11 Back to business. With the Principle of Sufficient Difference in hand (along with an intuitive sense that B1 is justified and B2 is not), can you think of any difference between B1 and B2 that might plausibly account for why B1 is justified and B2 is not? If so, you're in a good position to appeal to this very difference when proposing a method for sorting your justified from your unjustified beliefs.⁸

^1.12 But what might such a feature be? What seems to favorably distinguish your belief that rental prices will continue to increase in London in the coming year from your belief that there are ghosts? As you look through the pages of Your Book of Beliefs, you notice a good candidate for such a feature: you find various other entries that support B1. By ‘support’ here, what is meant is: entries that might serve as premises of good arguments, arguments that support B1. For example, you come across these entries:

• B645. There will not be an increase in the supply of housing in London during the coming year.
• B646. There will be increased demand for housing in London during the coming year.
• B87. Price will increase if there is an increase in demand without an increase in supply...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 THE REGRESS PROBLEM
• 2 PERCEPTION
• 3 THE A PRIORI
• 4 INFERENCE
• 5 ON KNOWING THE TRUTH
• 6 MEMORY
• 7 TESTIMONY
• 8 KINDS OF KNOWLEDGE
• 9 INTERNALISM VS. EXTERNALISM
• 10 THE ETHICS OF BELIEF
• 11 SKEPTICISM
• References
• Index
• End User License Agreement