The second edition of Jack Crumley’s An Introduction to Epistemology strikes a balance between the many issues that engage contemporary epistemologists and the contributions of the major historical figures. He shows not only how philosophers such as Descartes, Hume, Locke, Berkeley, and Kant foreground the contemporary debates, but also why they deserve consideration on their own terms. A substantial revision of the first edition, the second edition is even more accessible to students. The new edition includes recent work on contextualism, evidentialism, externalism and internalism, and perceptual realism; as well, the chapter on coherence theory is substantially revised, reflecting recent developments in that area. New to this second edition is a chapter on feminist epistemology, which includes discussions of major positions and themes, such as feminist empiricism, feminist standpoint epistemology, postmodern epistemology, and feminist critiques of objectivity. It presents the important contributions of philosophers such as Sandra Harding, Helen Longino, Genevieve Lloyd, and others. Each chapter ends with a list of study questions and readings for further study.

This book develops new techniques in formal epistemology and applies them to the challenge of Cartesian skepticism. It introduces two formats of epistemic evaluation that should be of interest to epistemologists and philosophers of science: the dual-component format, which evaluates a statement on the basis of its safety and informativeness, and the relative-divergence format, which evaluates a probabilistic model on the basis of its complexity and goodness of fit with data. Tomoji Shogenji shows that the former lends support to Cartesian skepticism, but the latter allows us to defeat Cartesian skepticism. Along the way, Shogenji addresses a number of related issues in epistemology and philosophy of science, including epistemic circularity, epistemic closure, and inductive skepticism.

The Handbook of Epistemic Cognition brings together leading work from across disciplines, to provide a comprehensive overview of an increasingly important topic: how people acquire, understand, justify, change, and use knowledge in formal and informal contexts. Research into inquiry, understanding, and discovery within academic disciplines has progressed from general models of conceptual change to a focus upon the learning trajectories that lead to expert-like conceptualizations, skills, and performance. Outside of academic domains, issues of who and what to believe, and how to integrate multiple sources of information into coherent and useful knowledge, have arisen as primary challenges of the 21st century. In six sections, scholars write within and across fields to focus and advance the role of epistemic cognition in education. With special attention to how researchers across disciplines can communicate and collaborate more effectively, this book will be an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the future of knowledge and knowing. Dr. Jeffrey A. Greene is an associate professor of Learning Sciences and Psychological Studies in the School of Education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Dr. William A. Sandoval is a professor in the division of Urban Schooling at the UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies. Dr. Ivar Bråten is a professor of Educational Psychology at the Faculty of Educational Sciences at the University of Oslo, Norway.

This book examines all verses of the Quran involving knowledge related concepts. It begins with the argument that an analysis of the Quranic concept of ignorance points to epistemic virtues that can pave our way towards gaining knowledge and/or understanding. It deals with the Quranic concepts of perceptual, rational, and revelatory knowledge as well as understanding and wisdom in the light of recent discussions in Western analytic epistemology. It also argues that the relevant Quranic verses seem to involve concept of an epistemic conscience whose proper exercise can yield knowledge or understanding. While not overlooking the Quranic emphasis on revelation as a source of knowledge, the book draws our attention to a remarkable overlap between some strains of contemporary virtue epistemology and Quranic approach to knowledge. It shows that the Quranic verses suggest a progressive sequence from propositional knowledge to understanding to wisdom.

This book shows that classic Chinese philosophy is as rational as Western approaches dealing with the problems of logic, epistemology, language analysis, and linguistic topics from a philosophical point of view. It presents detailed analyses of rational and methodological features in Confucianism, Taoist philosophy, and the School of Names as well as Mohist approaches in classical Chinese philosophy, especially in regard to ideas of valid knowledge. The authors also provide new arguments against cultural relativism and antirational movements like religious fundamentalism that do not pay due attention to what all human beings have in common— to cultural universals.

This is the first volume dedicated solely to the topic of epistemological disjunctivism. The original essays in this volume, written by leading and up-and-coming scholars on the topic, are divided into three thematic sections. The first set of chapters addresses the historical background of epistemological disjunctivism. It features essays on ancient epistemology, Immanuel Kant, J.L. Austin, Edmund Husserl, and Ludwig Wittgenstein. The second section tackles a number contemporary issues related to epistemological disjunctivism, including its relationship with perceptual disjunctivism, radical skepticism, and reasons for belief. Finally, the third group of essays extends the framework of epistemological disjunctivism to other forms of knowledge, such as testimonial knowledge, knowledge of other minds, and self-knowledge. Epistemological Disjunctivism is a timely collection that engages with an increasingly important topic in philosophy. It will appeal to researches and graduate students working in epistemology, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of perception.

This book is concerned with the conditions under which epistemic reasons provide justification for beliefs. The author draws on metaethical theories of reasons and normativity and then applies his theory to various contemporary debates in epistemology. In the first part of the book, the author outlines what he calls the dispositional architecture of epistemic reasons. The author offers and defends a dispositional account of how propositional and doxastic justification are related to one another. He then argues that the dispositional view has the resources to provide an acceptable account of the notion of the basing relation. In the second part of the book, the author examines how his theory of epistemic reasons bears on the issues involving perceptual reasons. He defends dogmatism about perceptual justification against conservatism and shows how his dispositional framework illuminates certain claims of dogmatism and its adherence to justification internalism. Finally, the author applies his dispositional framework to epistemological topics including the structure of defeat, self-knowledge, reasoning, emotions and motivational internalism. The Dispositional Architecture of Epistemic Reasons demonstrates the value of employing metaethical considerations for the justification of beliefs and propositions. It will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in epistemology and metaethics.

Duncan Pritchard offers an original defence of epistemological disjunctivism. This is an account of perceptual knowledge which contends that such knowledge is paradigmatically constituted by a true belief that enjoys rational support which is both factive and reflectively accessible to the agent. In particular, in a case of paradigmatic perceptual knowledge that p, the subject's rational support for believing that p is that she sees that p, where this rational support is both reflectively accessible and factive (i.e., it entails p). Such an account of perceptual knowledge poses a radical challenge to contemporary epistemology, since by the lights of standard views in epistemology this proposal is simply incoherent. Pritchard's aim in Epistemological Disjunctivism is to show that this proposal is theoretically viable (i.e., that it does not succumb to the problems that it appears to face), and also to demonstrate that this is an account of perceptual knowledge which we would want to endorse if it were available on account of its tremendous theoretical potential. In particular, he argues that epistemological disjunctivism offers a way through the impasse between epistemic externalism and internalism, and also provides the foundation for a distinctive response to the problem of radical scepticism.

Moral judgments attempt to describe a reality that does not exist, so they are all false. This is the moral error theory, a deeply troubling yet plausible view that is now one of the canonical positions in moral philosophy. The most compelling argument against it is the argument from analogy. According to this, the moral error theory should be rejected because it would seriously compromise our practice of making epistemic judgments-judgments about how we ought to form and revise our beliefs in light of our evidence-and could undermine systematic thought and reason themselves. Christopher Cowie provides a novel assessment of the recent attention paid to this topic in moral philosophy and epistemology. He reasons that the argument from analogy fails because moral judgments are unlike judgments about how we ought to form and revise our beliefs in light of our evidence. On that basis, a moral error theory does not compromise the practice of making epistemic judgments. The moral error theory may be true after all, Cowie concludes, and if it is then we will simply have to live with its concerning consequences.

This book features original essays by leading epistemologists that address questions related to epistemic dilemmas from a variety of new, sometimes unexpected, angles. It seems plausible that there can be "no win" moral situations in which no matter what one does one fails some moral obligation. Is there an epistemic analog to moral dilemmas? Are there epistemically dilemmic situations—situations in which we are doomed to violate an epistemic requirement? If there are, when exactly do they arise and what can we learn from them? The contributors to this volume cover a wide variety of positions on epistemic dilemmas. The coverage ranges from discussions of the nature of epistemic dilemmas to arguments that there are no such things to suggestions for how to resolve (or at least live with) epistemic dilemmas to proposals for how thinking about epistemic dilemmas can be used to inform theorizing in other areas of epistemology. Epistemic Dilemmas will be of interest to scholars and advanced students in epistemology working on the nature of justification and evidential support, higher-order requirements, or suspension of judgment.