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Reliabilism
Reliabilism, a category of theories in the philosophical discipline of epistemology, has been advanced as a theory both of justification and of knowledge. Process reliabilism has been used as an argument against philosophical skepticism, such as the brain in a vat thought experiment. Process reliabilism is a form of epistemic externalism. Overview A broadly reliabilist theory of knowledge is roughly as follows: Given that ''p'' stands for any proposition (such as, ''the sky is blue''), then one knows that ''p'' if and only if ''p'' is true, one believes that ''p'' is true, and one has arrived at the belief that ''p'' is true through some ''reliable process.'' A broadly reliabilist theory of justified belief can be stated as follows: One has a justified belief that ''p'' if, and only if, the belief is the result of a reliable process. Moreover, a similar account can be given (and an elaborate version of this has been given by Alvin Plantinga) for such notions as 'warrante ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Internalism And Externalism
Internalism and externalism are two opposite ways of integrating and explaining various subjects in several areas of philosophy. These include human motivation, knowledge, justification, meaning, and truth. The distinction arises in many areas of debate with similar but distinct meanings. Internal–external distinction is a distinction used in philosophy to divide an ontology into two parts: an internal part concerning observation related to philosophy, and an external part concerning question related to philosophy. Internalism is the thesis that no fact about the world can provide reasons for action independently of desires and beliefs.Giuseppina D'Oro"Collingwood, psychologism and internalism,"''European Journal of Philosophy'' 12(2):163–177 (2004). Externalism is the thesis that reasons are to be identified with objective features of the world. Moral philosophy Motivation In contemporary moral philosophy, motivational internalism (or moral internalism) is the view that ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Justified True Belief
Definitions of knowledge aim to identify the essential features of knowledge. Closely related terms are conception of knowledge, theory of knowledge, and analysis of knowledge. Some general features of knowledge are widely accepted among philosophers, for example, that it involves cognitive success and epistemic contact with reality. Despite extensive study, disagreements about the nature of knowledge persist, in part because researchers use diverging methodologies, seek definitions for distinct purposes, and have differing intuitions about the standards of knowledge. An often-discussed definition asserts that knowledge is justified true belief. Justification means that the belief fulfills certain norms like being based on good reasons or being the product of a reliable cognitive process. This approach seeks to distinguish knowledge from mere true beliefs that arise from superstition, lucky guesses, or flawed reasoning. Critics of the justified-true-belief view, like Edmund Ge ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epistemology
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that examines the nature, origin, and limits of knowledge. Also called "the theory of knowledge", it explores different types of knowledge, such as propositional knowledge about facts, practical knowledge in the form of skills, and knowledge by acquaintance as a familiarity through experience. Epistemologists study the concepts of belief, truth, and justification to understand the nature of knowledge. To discover how knowledge arises, they investigate sources of justification, such as perception, introspection, memory, reason, and testimony. The school of skepticism questions the human ability to attain knowledge while fallibilism says that knowledge is never certain. Empiricists hold that all knowledge comes from sense experience, whereas rationalists believe that some knowledge does not depend on it. Coherentists argue that a belief is justified if it coheres with other beliefs. Foundationalists, by contrast, maintain th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Knowledge
Knowledge is an Declarative knowledge, awareness of facts, a Knowledge by acquaintance, familiarity with individuals and situations, or a Procedural knowledge, practical skill. Knowledge of facts, also called propositional knowledge, is often characterized as Truth, true belief that is distinct from opinion or guesswork by virtue of Justification (epistemology), justification. While there is wide agreement among philosophers that propositional knowledge is a form of true belief, many controversies focus on justification. This includes questions like how to understand justification, whether it is needed at all, and whether something else besides it is needed. These controversies intensified in the latter half of the 20th century due to a series of thought experiments called ''Gettier cases'' that provoked alternative definitions. Knowledge can be produced in many ways. The main source of empirical knowledge is perception, which involves the usage of the senses to learn about ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alvin Goldman
Alvin Ira Goldman (October 1, 1938 – August 4, 2024) was an American philosopher who was emeritus Board of Governors Professor of Philosophy and Cognitive Science at Rutgers University in New Jersey and a leading figure in epistemology. Education and career Goldman earned his BA from Columbia University and PhD from Princeton University and previously taught at the University of Michigan (1963–1980), the University of Illinois, Chicago (1980–1983) and the University of Arizona (1983–1994). He joined the Rutgers faculty in 1994 and retired in 2018. Goldman was married to the ethicist Holly Martin Smith. He died on August 4, 2024, at the age of 85. Philosophical work Goldman did influential work on a wide range of philosophical topics, but his principal areas of research were epistemology, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science. Action theory Goldman's early book, ''A Theory of Human Action'' (a revised version of his Ph.D. thesis), presents a systematic way of classif ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alvin Plantinga
Alvin Carl Plantinga (born November 15, 1932) is an American analytic philosophy, analytic philosopher who works primarily in the fields of philosophy of religion, epistemology (particularly on issues involving theory of justification, epistemic justification), and logic. From 1963 to 1982, Plantinga taught at Calvin University before accepting an appointment as the John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He later returned to Calvin University to become the inaugural holder of the Jellema Chair in Philosophy. A prominent Christian philosopher, Plantinga served as president of the Society of Christian Philosophers from 1983 to 1986. He has delivered the Gifford Lectures twice and was described by ''Time (magazine), Time'' magazine as "America's leading orthodox Protestant philosopher of God". In 2014, Plantinga was the 30th most-cited contemporary author in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. A fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Scienc ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Philosophical Analysis
Philosophical analysis is any of various techniques, typically used by philosophers in the analytic tradition, in order to "break down" (i.e. analyze) philosophical issues. Arguably the most prominent of these techniques is the analysis of concepts, known as conceptual analysis. Method of analysis While analysis is characteristic of the analytic tradition in philosophy, what is to be analyzed (the ''analysandum'') often varies. In their papers, philosophers may focus on different areas. One might analyze linguistic phenomena such as sentences, or psychological phenomena such as sense data. However, arguably the most prominent analyses are written on concepts or propositions and are known as ''conceptual analysis''. A.C. Ewing distinguished between two forms of philosophical analysis. The first is "what the persons who make a certain statement usually intend to assert" and the second "the qualities, relations and species of continuants mentioned in the statement". As an illustr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Externalism
Externalism is a group of positions in the philosophy of mind which argues that the conscious mind is not only the result of what is going on inside the nervous system (or the brain), but also what ''occurs'' or ''exists'' outside the subject. It is contrasted with internalism which holds that the mind emerges from neural activity alone. Externalism is a belief that the mind is not just the brain or functions of the brain. There are different versions of externalism based on different beliefs about what the mind is taken to be. Externalism stresses factors external to the nervous system. At one extreme, the mind could ''possibly'' depend on external factors. At the opposite extreme, the mind ''necessarily'' depends on external factors. The extreme view of externalism argues either that the mind is ''constituted by'' or ''identical with'' processes partially or totally external to the nervous system. Another important criterion in externalist theory is to which aspect of the mind ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Belief
A belief is a subjective Attitude (psychology), attitude that something is truth, true or a State of affairs (philosophy), state of affairs is the case. A subjective attitude is a mental state of having some Life stance, stance, take, or opinion about something. In epistemology, philosophers use the term "belief" to refer to attitudes about the world which can be either truth value, true or false. To believe something is to take it to be true; for instance, to believe that snow is white is comparable to accepting the truth of the proposition "snow is white". However, holding a belief does not require active introspection. For example, few individuals carefully consider whether or not the sun will rise tomorrow, simply assuming that it will. Moreover, beliefs need not be ''occurrent'' (e.g., a person actively thinking "snow is white"), but can instead be ''dispositional'' (e.g., a person who if asked about the color of snow would assert "snow is white"). There are various ways tha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Brandom
Robert Boyce Brandom (; born March 13, 1950) is an American philosopher who teaches at the University of Pittsburgh. He works primarily in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind and philosophical logic, and his academic output manifests both systematic and historical interests in these topics. His work has presented "arguably the first fully systematic and technically rigorous attempt to explain the meaning of linguistic items in terms of their socially norm-governed use ("meaning as use", to cite the Wittgensteinian slogan), thereby also giving a non-representationalist account of the intentionality of thought and the rationality of action as well." Brandom is broadly considered to be part of the American pragmatist tradition in philosophy. In 2003 he won the Mellon Distinguished Achievement Award. Education Brandom earned his BA in 1972 from Yale University and his PhD in 1977 from Princeton University, under Richard Rorty and David Kellogg Lewis. His doctoral thesis was ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
