The Scope of Knowledge
The far more difficult problem is that an inference to the best explanation defeats the sceptic only if we can defend the principle that underlies such inference against sceptical challenge. We must be able...
The Scope of Knowledge
I must admit that I have never seen three people or objects that disconfirm the example regarding tallness, but imagine the following possible world. Imagine a world with only three rods and one observer...
The Scope of Knowledge
A yet more contemporary response, contextualism, builds upon the previous one by agreeing that we do not know that we do not occupy sceptical worlds even though we do retain knowledge in ordinary contexts....
The Scope of Knowledge
In the first section we utilised intuitions about when knowledge is had in order to derive an account of its nature. This might seem to beg the question against the sceptic by guaranteeing that...
The Nature of Knowledge – 2
Let us review some of the examples that were problematic for the rival accounts of knowledge. When there is misleading evidence I am just lucky not to have noticed, then what explains my belief...
The Nature of Knowledge – 1
If justification is irrelevant to knowledge, we may wonder at the epistemologist’s obsession with the notion. There are several explanations. One is that, while ordinary knowers need not be able to defend their claims...
The Nature of Knowledge
Knowledge is the goal of belief. It is what belief aims to be, or, more precisely, what we aim at in believing. There may be some types of belief, for example religious, for which...
The Subjects of Philosophy
This section gives a thumbnail sketch of the subjects of philosophy discussed in this book. The book is not exhaustive of philosophy, but it can fairly be said that all the core areas are...
Beyond The Factual
Philosophy is not usually concerned with gathering facts. That can be left to other disciplines such as science, or history, or psychology or anthropology. The reason for this is twofold. First, philosophy usually deals...
Timelessness
It is not uncontentious to say that philosophical problems are timeless. To some it looks like an excuse for examining problems which in fact can have no answer because there is something wrong in...
The Problems of Philosophy
Here is a list of some of the most commonly addressed and most basic philosophical problems. Do not worry too much about how one would address these questions as a philosopher – just look...
