IConsider the skeptic about the external world. Let's straightaway concede to such a skeptic that perception gives us no conclusive or certain knowledge about our surroundings. Our perceptual justification for beliefs about our surroundings is always defeasible-there are always possible improvements in our epistemic state which would no longer support those beliefs. Let's also concede to the skeptic that it's metaphysically possible for us to have all the experiences we're now having while all those experiences are false. Some philosophers dispute this, but I do not. The skeptic I want to consider goes beyond these familiar points to the much more radical conclusion that our perceptual experiences can't give us any knowledge or even justification for believing that our surroundings are one way rather than another.One might go about grappling with such a skeptic in two different ways. The ambitious anti-skeptical project is to refute the skeptic on his own terms, that is, to establish that we can justifiably believe and know such things as that there is a hand, using only premises that the skeptic allows us to use. The prospects for this ambitious anti-skeptical project seem somewhat dim.The modest anti-skeptical project is to establish to our satisfaction that we can justifiably believe and know such things as that there is a hand, without contradicting obvious facts about perception. This is not easy to do, for the skeptic can present us with arguments from premises we find intuitively acceptable to the conclusion that we cannot justifiably believe or know such things. So we have a problem: premises we find plausible seem to support a conclusion we find unacceptable. The modest anti-skeptical project attempts to diagnose and defuse those skeptical arguments; to show how to retain as many of our pretheoretical beliefs about perception as possible, without accepting the premises the skeptic needs for his argument. Since this modest anti-skeptical project just NOÛS 34:4~2000! 517-549
This article surveys work in epistemology since the mid-1980s. It focuses on (i) contextualism about knowledge attributions, (ii) modest forms of foundationalism, and (iii) the internalism/externalism debate and its connections to the ethics of belief. 1 Contextualism 1.1 Contextualism and relevant alternatives theories 1.2 Ruling an alternative out 2 Modest forms of foundationalism 3 The internalism/externalism debate 3.1 Simple Internalism and Access Internalism 3.2 Internalism about inferences and grounds 3.3 A spectrum of views 4 The ethics of belief 4.1 What does it mean to say that justi®cation is`normative'? 4.2 Justi®cation, warrant, and epistemic blamelessness 4.3 How should one's ethics of belief aect one's views about the internalism/ externalism debate? The period from the mid-1970s through the mid-1980s was a period of bold new positions in epistemology. We can group the major developments of that period under three headings: (i) relevant alternatives theories of knowledge came on the scene; (ii) foundationalism made a comeback , and the debate between foundationalists and coherentists intensi®ed; and (iii) we saw the development of externalist theories of knowledge and justi®cation, most prominently Goldman's reliabilist account of justi®cation ([1979], [1986], Chs 4±5) and Nozick's account of knowledge ([1981], Ch. 3). 1 This paper surveys what has been happening in epistemology since those developments. I will not attempt to address all the important recent work in epistemology; but will focus on the issues that seem to me to have occupied Brit. J. Phil. Sci. 52 (2001), 95±124 & British Society for the Philosophy of Science 2001 1 I won't be able to discuss Nozick in this survey, but his account of knowledge has been an important topic during the past twenty years. (See Forbes [1984]; McGinn [1984]; Goldman [1986], Ch. 3; Luper-Foy [1987]; Plantinga [1988]; Fumerton [1995], Ch. 4; and DeRose [1995] for some of the critical literature.) Kripke has a well-known discussion of Nozick's account of knowledge, but unfortunately this remains unpublished. James Pryor 2 Other issues that have been prominent recently, but which I lack the space to discuss, include: renewed interest in the topic of a priori justi®cation (see fn. 14 for references); Sosa's work on virtue epistemology (see [1991]) and the development of this ®eld (for surveys, see Axtell [1997]; Greco [1993], [1999]); how externalism about content aects one's capacities for self-knowledge (this is discussed in some recent collections: Ludlow and Martin [1998]; Wright et al. [1998]; Boghossian and Peacocke [2001]); and a greater attention to testimony and to social aspects of knowledge more generally (for an overview, see Fuller [1996] and Schmitt [1999]). 3 For recent defenses of Contextualism, see: Unger ([1986]); Cohen ([1987], [1988], [1999]); Heller ([1989], [1999a]); DeRose ([1992], [1995]); and Lewis ([1996]). For criticism, see Schier ([1996]); Feldman ([1999a]); and Vogel ([1999]). DeRose ([1999]) gives a useful overview of the ®eld. Co...
made especially helpful contributions to the end result. Thanks also to Marinus Ferreira for making the diagrams. 2 We might call it "disabling." 3 Sometimes this is called "overriding" or "rebutting" evidence. Since opposing is a matter of degree, the terminology I'm suggesting is better. Depending on how the example is filled out, you may end up trusting Ernie on balance more than you do Orna; but so long as her testimony has even some impact on your credence in H, it will have opposed Ernie's testimony. 4 Another term sometimes used is "undercutting."
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