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Problems of Knowledge Schedule

Philosophy 311

Winter/Spring 2012

Week One:

Introduction January 17:
  • Overview of course, texts, and requirements.
  • What is epistemology? What are the problems of knowledge?
  • A very brief history of epistemology from Plato to the present.
    •  January 19:
  • How can we distinguish appearance from reality?
  • What is knowledge?
  • Supplement: Doctor Who episode: "Amy's Choice".
  • In-class discussion and written reflection.
    •

    Week Two:

    Topic One: What Is Knowledge? January 24:
  • The first section of the book concerns the nature of knowledge or, to put it another way, how we use the word "knowledge".

  • Read "Preface" (pages vii-x) and Rene Descartes, "Meditations One and Two" (pages 5-14)
  • Descartes' well-known Meditations set the agenda for modern epistemology, presenting a view of knowledge as justified, true belief.
  • We will spend some time both looking at the text and trying to situate it within its historical context.
    •  January 26:
  • Read Ludwig Wittgenstein, excerpts from On Certainty (pages 14-29).
  • Wittgenstein's idiosyncratic approach focuses upon our actual practices concerning knowledge, looking at what we do with knowledge claims, how and when we raise doubts, and what we cannot sensibly question.
  • On Certainty begins with a reference to G.E. Moore's 1939 essay "Proof of an External World", in which he argues against skepticism by holding out his hand and saying "Here is one hand". Common sense tells us, he concludes, that there are external objects in the world and we know it.
    •

    Week Three:

    Topic One: What Is Knowledge? (continued) January 31:
  • Read A.J. Ayer, "The Right to Be Sure" (pages 20-25).
  • Ayer fits into the tradition of logical positivism in which, for a knowledge claim to even be meaningful, it must be weakly verifiable in principle.
  • While Ayer does not explicate his positivism in this essay, it lies in the background of his exploration of what we mean when we say we "know" something.
    •  February 2:
  • Read Catherine Z. Elgin, "Epistemology's End" (pages 26-40).
  • In this essay Elgin attempts to set out a taxonomy of various sorts of epistemology, making distinctions between Perfect Procedural Epistemology, Imperfect Procedural Epistemology, and Pure Procedural Epistemology.
    •

    Week Four:

    Topic Two: How Are Beliefs Justified? February 7 & 9:
  • In this section of the text, we will discuss accounts of knowing that analyze it in terms of "justified true belief."

  • Read William P. Alston, "Internalism and Externalism in Epistemology" (pages 45-79).
  • We'll begin by unpacking the distinction between epistemological "internalism" and "externalism," trying to figure out what it means and what's at stake in it.
    •

    Week Five:

    Topic Two: How Are Beliefs Justified? (continued) February 14:
  • Read Carl Ginet, "The General Conditions of Knowlege: Justification" (pages 79-89).
  • Ginet holds to a version of epistemological internalism.
    •  February 16:
  • Read Alvin Goldman, "What Is Justified Belief?" (pages 89-109).
  • Goldman is an epistemological externalist, a kind of "reliablist."
    •

    Week Six:

    Topic Two: How Are Beliefs Justified? (continued) February 21:
  • Read Keith DeRose, "Contextualism and Knowledge Attributions" (pages 109-123).
  • DeRose argues that the conditions under which we may say that something is known vary by context.
    •  February 23:
  • Read Lorraine Code, "Taking Subjectivity into Account" (pages 124-151).
  • Code focuses in upon the subject of knowing, the person who does the knowing, suggesting that the character of the knower is central and we can't just assume a generalized, de-contextualized "knower" as the subject of knowledge.
  • Supplement: From NPR's Morning Edition (April 6, 2009) "Shakespeare Had Roses All Wrong".
    •

    Week Seven:

    Topic Two: How Are Beliefs Justified? (continued) February 28:
  • Read Alessandra Tanesini, "The Practices of Justification" (pages 152-164).
  • Tanesini draws attention to the way in which our practices of justfying belief are rooted in the communities of knowers of which we are a part, so that epistemology itself is a political or an interventionist social practice.
    •  Topic Three: What Is the Structure of Knowledge? March 1:
  • Today we will be having a general discussion of and introduction to the questions involved in the structure of knowing.
  • The two main contenders here are some sort of "foundationalism" and some sort of "coherentism," though each of these come in a number of varieties and there are also possibilities in between these two options.
  • Part of the question here is where justification of belief stops? Is every justified belief itself justified in relation to some other justified belief? And if so, doesn't that lead to problems of infinite regress?

  • Read Roderick Chisholm, "The Myth of the Given" (pages 169-186).
  • In this selection Chisholm is trying to unpack the notion that, in a foundationalist view of the structing of knowing, one has to finally end explanations in a set of beliefs that are, in some sense, simple "given."
    •

    Week Eight:

    March 6 & 8:
  • No Class - Spring Break
    •

    Week Nine:

    Topic Three: What Is the Structure of Knowledge? (continued) March 13:
  • Read Ernest Sosa, "The Raft and the Pyramid" (pages 187-210).
  • Sosa is using images of a "raft" and a "pyramid as way of trying to explain the differences between coherentism and foundationalism, respectively.
  • He first focuses in upon coherentism and its critique of foundationalism, addressing the "regress argument".
  • Then he turns to substantive foundationalism and the dilemmas it is thought to generate.
    •  March 15:
  • Read Laurence BonJour, "The Elements of Coherentism" (pages 210-231).
  • BonJour is attempting to explicate a positive account of epistemological coherentism (which is not the same as coherentism about truth).
    •

    Week Ten:

    Topic Three: What Is the Structure of Knowledge? (continued) March 20:
  • Read Hans Georg Gadamer, "The Hermeneutic Circle" (pages 232-247).
  • Gadamer's approach is in the continental tradition of philosophical hermeneutics, the study of the interpretation of texts in order to understand meaning.
  • Supplement: “The Magic of Personal Transformation” from The Ultimate Harry Potter and Philosophy: Hogwarts for Muggles, Gregory Bassham, editor, in The Blackwell Philosophy and Pop Culture Series (Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley & Sons, 2010).
    •  Topic Four: What Is Naturalized Epistemology? March 22:
  • Today we'll review some of what we've covered already and then move into the question of what is called "naturalized epistemology."
  • Naturalized epistemology turns the epistemological project around by putting scientific descriptions of knowing prior to epistemology.
  • That is to say, the question of naturalized epistemology is one of describing the sorts of events that go on in the brain and nervous system connecting perceptual input with epistemic output.

  • Read W.V.O. Quine, "Epistemology Naturalized" (pages 253-265).
  • Quine seems to want to make epistemology a particular branch of science.
    •

    Week Eleven:

    Topic Four: What Is Naturalized Epistemology? (continued) March 27:
  • Read Jaegwon Kim, "What Is 'Naturalized Epistemology'?" (pages .
  • Kim replies to Quine's outlook by suggesting that, in its attempt at scientific description, its leaves out the fundamentally prescriptive and evaluative task of epistemology.
  • While affirming much of Quine's position, Kim nonetheless argues for the conclusion that the normative project of epistemology can continue as a relatively independent project.
    •  March 29:
  • Read Phyllis Rooney, "Putting Naturalized Epistemology to Work" (pages 285-305).
  • This essay by Rooney explores some of the intersections between naturalized and feminist epistemology, but also with some criticisms for naturalized approaches, especially concerning the nature of the relationship between the social and the individual.
  • Supplement: From The New Yorker (December 13, 2010), "The Truth Wears Off".
    •

    Week Twelve:

    Topic Five: What Is Truth?
    April 3:
  • Today we will be transitioning to issues concerning truth.
  • Modern accounts of truth once focused in upon the notion of correspondence, but such approaches have more recently collapsed into what are sometimes called "deflationary" accounts of truth.
  • Furthermore, it is often thought that truth is primarily a matter of metaphysics or ontology rather than epistemology.
  • Nevertheless, if "truth" is something that pertains to statements (or thoughts or the like), there are substantive questions about just what sorts of statements are capable of bearing truth value, how that possibility arises and is sustained, the interconnection between those considerating and knowing, as well as the problem of relativism.

  • Read Paul Horwich, "The Minimal Theory" (pages 311-321).
  • Horwich's essay represents a sustained explanation and defense of a minimalist or deflationary theory of truth.
    •  April 5:
  • This week we'll also be discussing a handout from John Milbank and Catherine Pickstock, Truth in Aquinas.
  • For Milbank and Pickstock, truth is a ontological notion and has primary reference to the relationship between things and the mind of God.
    •

    Week Thirteen:

    Topic Five: What Is Truth? (continued)
    April 10:
  • Read Ian Hacking, "Language, Truth, and Reason" (pages 322-336).
  • Hacking's essay raises questions about what sorts of statements can even have a truth-value and how the possibility of truth in roots in a variety of "styles of reasoning."
  • Note: On page 322 of the text, there is an error in which a couple crucial phrases are omitted. The penultimate paragraph on that page should read (the ommission is boldfaced below):
    My worry is about truth-or-falsehood. Consider Hamlet's maxim, that nothing's either good or bad but thinking makes it so. If we transfer this to truth and falsehood, this is ambiguous between: (a) Nothing, which is true, is true, and nothing, which is false, is false, but thinking makes it so; (b) Nothing's either true-or-false, but thinking makes it so. It is (b) that preoccupies me...
    •  April 12:
  • Read Richard Rorty, "Pragmatism, Relativism, and Irrationalism" (pages 336-348)
  • In this essay Rorty tackles the three issues mentioned in the title of the essay, that is to say, what a pragmatist approach to truth is and how it connects with relativism.
    •

    Week Fourteen:

    Topic Six: What If We Don't Know Anything at All?
    April 17:
  • This week we'll begin to consider some of the issues raised by the possibility of skepticism.
  • Early modern philosophers such as Descartes and Hume considered took the possibility of skepticism seriously as part of epistemology, either as a methodological move or as an ongoing difficulty.
  • In light of this we'll be turning to several possible responses to the skeptical challenge.

  • Read Jonathan Vogel, "Cartesian Skepticism and Inference to the Best Explanation" (pages 352-359).
  • Vogel attempts to refute skepticism using the (scientific) notion of reasong to the "best explanation."
    •  April 19:
  • Read Barry Stroud, "Skepticism and the Possibility of Knowledge" (page 360-365).
  • In this essay Stroud uses the problem of skepticism in a methodologically way (though not like Descartes) in order to shed some light on our epistemological notions.
    •

    Week Fifteen:

    Topic Six: What If We Don't Know Anything at All? (continued) April 24:
  • Read Naomi Scheman, "Othello's Doubt/Desdemona's Death: The Engendering of Scepticism" (pages 365-381).
  • The essay by Scheman takes a different approach to the skeptical question, not directly questioning or refuting skepticism, but raising issues about why skepticism has occupied philosophical reflections upon knowing, using the example of Othello to exposit her perspective.
    •  Topic Six: How Is Epistemology Political? April 26:
  • We will be finishing out this semester's consideration of epistemology by looking at some of the ways in which the problem of knowing intersects with issues of politics, power, class, race, and gender.
  • Much of the history of epistemological inquiry has been taken up with questions that seem to assume that epistemology and how it is pursued is politically neutral, as well as being neutral to issues of gender, class, and so on.

  • Read Genevieve Lloyd, "The 'Maleness' of Reason" (pages 387-391).
  • The question of "reason" is one that is closely allied with epistemology and the question of what it is rational to believe, but as Lloyd points out, the notion of "reason" itself is historically and culturally relative and mutable.
    •

    Week Sixteen:

    Topic Six: How Is Epistemology Political? (continued) May 1:
  • Read Charles W. Mills, "Alternative Epistemologies" (pages 392-410).
  • Mills outlines a number of different ways in which theories of gender, race, and class have reflected upon issues of epistemology, particularly growing out of the Marxist tradition.
    •  May 3:
  • Read Mary Tiles and Jim Tiles, "Idols of the Cave" (pages 411-439).
  • In this final essay of the book, Tiles and Tiles give a historical sketch of the development of epistemology in the modern era.
    •  Conclusion
  • Conclusion, evaluations, and any loose ends to be tied up.
    •