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This chapter expounds the central thesis that knowledge is a relation of a mind to a fact. The discussion proceeds as follows. Section 1 argues that knowledge is not a propositional attitude. Section 2 classifies knowledge as a relation between a mind and a fact. Section 3 discusses whether the connection between knowledge and mental acts is causal or constitutive. Section 4 discusses epistemic faculties, and section 5 examines defeaters. Section 6 discusses some unsuccessful attempts to define reliability. Section 7 defines reliability as knowing if one believes, and warrant as being disposed to know if one believes. Section 8 concludes that explaining other things in terms of knowledge can be a fruitful strategy.

This chapter defends the epistemic circularity involved in meta-aptness and thereby in the full aptness of knowing full well. It begins by explaining two forms of bootstrapping: the inference from the perceptual belief that a seen surface is red to the conclusion that in so believing we are not misled by a white surface in bad light, and the inductive inference from the track record of a gauge to the conclusion that it is a reliable gauge. Each is formally valid, yet neither could possibly provide adequate justification for its conclusion. The chapter offers an explanation for why this is so, before moving on to the reliability of a competence that is not reason-involving. Finally, this chapter advances an argument in defense of trust in our epistemic faculties, one that involves circularity of a sort, and how such circularity can be considered virtuous.

This chapter offers an account of trust and its relation to the intellectual virtues. It argues that trust has both practical and epistemic forms, but both forms include elements of belief, feeling, and behavior. Epistemic self-trust and trust in others is prereflective and rationally inescapable. Epistemic self-trust is not an intellectual virtue, but it is closely connected to a host of such virtues. Many of the intellectual virtues would not be virtues at all were it not for the reasonableness of epistemic self-trust or trust in others. Some virtues are enhancements of epistemic trust and some are constraints on it. The connection also goes in the other direction because there are ways in which intellectual virtues prevent trust from becoming either excessive or deficient.