Description

For courses in Epistemology.

Introduction to contemporary epistemology. Content is organized around “The Standard View”-the view that we do know most of the things reflective common sense tells us we know. Skepticism is discussed as only one of several objections to the view.

Features

• A careful, balanced blend of survey AND analysis-Provides clear neutral depictions of major extant theories; but the author offers carefully reasoned explanations when he disagrees with a position under discussion.

• Organized around “The Standard View”-Rather than around skepticism. Discusses skepticism later in the book, as one of several objections to “The Standard View.”

  • Helps keep students focused on key questions in epistemology.

• Sophisticated yet accessible approach.

  • Makes difficult concepts clear without oversimplifying them.

• Discussion of relativism and the possibility of rational disagreement.

  • Introduces students to an important topic of dispute in epistemological studies.

Table of Contents

I. INTRODUCTION.

1. Epistemological Questions.

II. THE STANDARD VIEW.

2. The Traditional Analysis of Knowledge.
3. Modifying the Traditional Analysis of Knowledge.
4. Evidentialist Theories of Knowledge and Justification.
5. Nonevidentialist Theories of Knowledge and Justification.

III. CHALLENGES TO THE STANDARD VIEW.

6. Skepticism (I).
7. Skepticism (II).
8. Epistemology and Science.
9. Epistemological Relativism.

Back Cover

Many of the problems of philosophy are of such broad relevance to human concerns, and so complex in their ramifications, that they are in one form or another perennially present. In the course of time, they yield to philosophical study and may be reexamined by each age in the light of its broader scientific knowledge and deepened ethical and religious experience. Thus, one who approaches the study of philosophy in the hope of understanding the best of what it affords will look for both fundamental interpretations and contemporary achievements.

Written by a group of distinguished philosophers, the Foundations of Philosophy Series aims to exhibit some of the main problems in the various fields of philosophy as they stand at the present stage of philosophical inquiry.

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