Search Results

This chapter argues that contextualism should be adopted as the best epistemological theory on the grounds that it represents the most satisfactory response to philosophical scepticism. It sets out distinctive advantages that contextualism has over alternative models of knowledge. It also characterizes the key elements in a contextual model of justification.

Introduces the key question for the discussion of Ch. 7–11: Why is it that the dichotomy ‘rational versus irrational’ can be applied to empirical beliefs? It uses this question in order to develop a taxonomy of different positions regarding the sources of rational constraints upon beliefs.

This essay argues that the Pyrrhonian regress argument presupposes a Prior Grounding conception of justification. This is contrasted with a Default and Challenge structure, which leads to a contextualist picture of justification. Contextualism is said to incorporate the best features of its traditionalist rivals — foundationalism and coherentism — and also to avoid skepticism. It is argued that we should not ask which conception is really true, but instead give up epistemological realism.

This essay lays out the rationale for two principles — ascent and closure — and shows how they imply further principles of exclusion and of the criterion. These principles lead to the “Pyrrhonian Problematic”, which foundationalism and coherentism attempt to solve, and also to the clash of intuitions between internalists and externalists. It is argued that the kind of knowledge that externalists and foundationalists claim differs from the kind of knowledge that internalists and coherentists claim, and which Pyrrhonists doubt. This distinction between kinds of knowledge is traced back to Descartes’s distinction between cognitio and scientia. If this is correct, externalism and internalism might both be correct, and Pyrrhonism might turn out to be compatible with externalism.

This chapter sharpen the standard taxonomy of doxastic and nondoxastic theories, invoking two crucially orthogonal principles: the Belief Principle holds that only beliefs can serve as evidence for beliefs; the Grounds Principle holds that every justified belief must be based on evidence. Though the former principle is often cited as the central slogan of doxastic theories, it is only part of doxasticism and is actually something an externalist can embrace. The famous Sellarsian dilemma, which argues that nondoxastic experience, “the given,” cannot justify beliefs, therefore does not provide an argument for doxasticism. Rejecting doxasticism on independent grounds while accepting the Belief Principle provides a novel argument against the Grounds Principle and therefore in favor of a nonevidentialist epistemology.

Chapter 5 addresses the feasibility of Frei's likening his theological approach to the cultural ethnographer's task of "thick description." Some critics claim that Frei's borrowing from cultural anthropology results in an overly integrated and unified conception of "the church" and its practices. Others charge that his approach reduces theology to redescription of the logic internal to Christian practices, thereby eliminating the capacity to make truth claims or to correct Christian malpractice. This chapter responds to these charges, demonstrating that, rather than simply mimicking anthropological procedures, Frei's portrayal of the theological task in terms of reflexively ethnographic redescription does not forgo the ability-even the necessity-to make propositional truth claims.

Frei's appeals to the "givenness" of revelation-the claim, for instance, that all doctrines or theological assertions are directly or indirectly grounded in faith, or that faith is rational in that it seeks understanding within a set of reasons afforded by God's revelatory activity in Scripture-incur charges of "revelational foundationalism." Chapter 6 employs recent treatments of epistemic foundationalism in order to dispel charges of "crypto-foundationalism" as well as answering the equally frequent charge that talk of "rationality intrinsic to faith" implicates Frei's thought in a type of fideism.

The last three chapters have argued that there is no good reasons to doubt the possible historical truth and knowability of the incarnational narrative, but these arguments have been negative in character, with the aim of showing only that it is possible to have knowledge of such a narrative. This chapter looks at the positive accounts that might be given of how such knowledge could be actual, and to do this turns to some basic epistemological questions. It was suggested in the first chapter that one of the factors that created difficulties for the historicity of the incarnational narrative was the widespread embracement of Enlightenment epistemological thinking: the epistemologies of modernity. To have a real chance of surmounting the difficulties some sense is needed of what problems there are with the epistemologies of modernity, and what viable options there are today for understanding knowledge and reasonable belief; these issues are enormously complex, so an outline, rather than a comprehensive defence, is presented of the epistemological perspective. The different sections of the chapter are: the task of epistemology; classical foundationalism; realism and anti-realism; knowledge, justification, and warrant; externalism and internalism; foundationalism and coherentism; and epistemological virtues.

This chapter deals with the Agrippan justification trilemma. First, the account of justification that goes with the ranking-theoretic account of reasons is made explicit and related to various other accounts of justification. Thereby it becomes clear how various forms of externalism and contextualism can be accommodated in the ranking-theoretic picture. Then the chapter proceeds to the issue of the experiential belief base. Referring to perception or even direct perception does not really get at this base, since both notions are frame-relative. Hence, the chapter goes on to discuss impressions, appearances, or sense data. They come in two forms. Appearances as if p are argued to be defeasibly a priori reasons for p itself, and vice versa; this is the so-called Schein-Sein principle, which suggests a coherentist construal of the belief base. This form is to be distinguished from the demonstrative form “it appears thus to me”. The latter leads to an investigation of contents of consciousness, which are characterized by the so-called Conscious Essence principle, and of the epistemological role of those contents. The chapter arrives at a peculiar mixture of minimal externalism, strong foundationalism, and coherentism, which, however, is a strict consequence of those two principles within the ranking-theoretic account.

The chapter surveys the relevant recent literature in epistemology with two aims in minds. First, the chapter wishes to show that the account of belief revision is orthogonal to, or invariant across, the different ways in which ongoing epistemological debates might be resolved, concerning such matters as the role of experience in founding justifications, and the permissible global patterns of justificatory support (foundationalist, coherentist, or foundherentist?). Secondly, the chapter wishes to show how compatible the new account of belief revision is with various important epistemological accounts that touch on the topic of belief revision, albeit not in any great logical or computational detail. To this end, the chapter examines the writings of Sosa, BonJour, Cornman, Haack, Levi, Quine and Ullian, Harman, Klein and Gupta. This discussion should serve to situate the work for the epistemological reader

This chapter argues that the coherentism of the British Idealism, and in particular of F. H. Bradley, is importantly different from the sort of coherentism familiar in contemporary philosophy. For, while the latter is largely a theory of justification, holding that the structure of justification does not rest on any intrinsically justified beliefs, by contrast Bradley's coherentism is a test for truth, holding that we can only discover the truth by using coherence as a criterion, because we have no set of infallible beliefs against which others can be tested. It is then argued that with this distinction firmly in mind, certain traditional objections to coherentism can be re-assessed, particularly the role that experience is to play within our acquisition of knowledge.

In this Chapter I do three things: first, I focus on Sidgwick's argument for intuitionism and argue (a) contra Shaver that it is both crucial to Sidgwick and depends crucially on his nonnaturalism, and (b) that it is a powerful argument for intuitionism, though not directly for the form of foundationalism Sidgwick embraces. Then, second, I turn to (what I argue is) the central puzzle in his moral epistemology: the puzzle that Methods IV ii is in a crucial way apparently inconsistent with “The Establishment of Ethical First Principles” and with Methods III. I argue against resolving the puzzle in favor of the material in IV ii and thus taking Sidgwick to be (more of) a coherentist; and I suggest a resolution of the puzzle compatible with my foundationalist reading of Sidgwick. But I suggest that the puzzle is hard to resolve, and that, though previous commentators have not presented it fully, it helps explain the controversy over Sidgwick's moral epistemology. Third, I defend my favored moderate foundationalist interpretation of Sidgwick's moral epistemology.