Philosophy Department

Epistemology

The questions on these lists are provisional and subject to revision. Students should confer with the Department faculty before beginning work on any of the questions from these lists.
 

1.    Explain foundationalism and coherentism.  Will the coherentist ever have a way to decide which of two consistent and complete sets of beliefs is better (perhaps by doing some experiments)?  Will she always?  If not, is this a problem for coherentism?

2.    Explain foundationalism and coherentism.  What are the standard objections to each theory?  Is there a definitive way to defend one against the other?

3.    Gettier has argued that the traditional account of knowledge is too weak.  He has argued, that is, that justification and truth are not sufficient by themselves to make a belief knowledge.  Other philosophers have agreed with Gettier, and suggested additional criteria for knowledge in order to give a more accurate account of which beliefs really are knowledge.  In the context of Gettier’s famous essay, discuss in detail one proposal for an additional criterion for distinguishing between knowledge and mere belief.  Argue for a thesis of the form: “X’s proposal provides a satisfactory account of knowledge” or of the form “X’s proposal does not provide a satisfactory account of knowledge.”  (NOTE: if you disagree with Gettier’s thesis, do not choose this question.)

4.    According to pragmatism, some reasons are justifying in one community and not in another.  Could this be true?  What are the implications of this?  Does pragmatism seem a better theory of knowledge than foundationalism or coherentism?

5.    Some philosophers argue that Quine’s model of a naturalized epistemology does not look like epistemology at all, because it could not be normative.  What does this mean?  Why does Quine think that epistemology ought to be naturalized, anyway?  Could we naturalize epistemology without giving up normativity?

6.    Quine argues that epistemology should involve an empirical study of how people come to decide what to believe.  Pragmatist theories of assertability like those defended by Richard Rorty also claim that what counts as knowledge depends on contingent facts about how people actually go about revising their sets of beliefs.  Is pragmatism a type of naturalized epistemology?

7.    Some feminist epistemologists have argued that the standards and practices of truth-seeking (that is, epistemology itself) are not universal standards that the epistemologist strives to discover, but rather what we might call ‘local.’  What does this mean?  Is it true?  In what way can this be understood as a feminist approach?  What implications does it have for how we decide what to believe?