Alvin Ira Goldman (born 1938) is an American philosopher who is Emeritus Board of Governors Professor of

Philosophy Philosophy (from , ) is the systematized study of general and fundamental questions, such as those about existence, reason, knowledge, values, mind, and language. Such questions are often posed as problems to be studied or resolved. Some ...

and Cognitive Science at

Rutgers University Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a Public university, public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's ...

New Jersey New Jersey is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern regions of the United States. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York; on the east, southeast, and south by the Atlantic Ocean; on the west by the Delaware ...

and a leading figure in

epistemology Epistemology (; ), or the theory of knowledge, is the branch of philosophy concerned with knowledge. Epistemology is considered a major subfield of philosophy, along with other major subfields such as ethics, logic, and metaphysics. Episte ...

Education and career

Goldman earned his BA from

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...

and PhD from

Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial Colleges, fourth-oldest ins ...

and previously taught at the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

(1963–1980), the

University of Illinois, Chicago The University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) is a public research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its campus is in the Near West Side community area, adjacent to the Chicago Loop. The second campus established under the University of Illinois sy ...

(1980–1983) and the

University of Arizona The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a public land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it was the first university in the Arizona Territory. T ...

(1983–1994). He joined the Rutgers faculty in 1994 and retired in 2018. He is married to the ethicist

Holly Martin Smith Holly Martin Smith (also known as Holly S. Goldman) is Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. Her publications focus on questions in normative ethics, moral responsibility and structural questions com ...

Philosophical work

Goldman has done influential work on a wide range of philosophical topics, but his principal areas of research are

philosophy of mind Philosophy of mind is a branch of philosophy that studies the ontology and nature of the mind and its relationship with the body. The mind–body problem is a paradigmatic issue in philosophy of mind, although a number of other issues are addre ...

, 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 classifying and relating the many actions we perform at any time. Its influence was broad and can be found in, among other writings, John Rawls's book ''

A Theory of Justice ''A Theory of Justice'' is a 1971 work of political philosophy and ethics by the philosopher John Rawls (1921-2002) in which the author attempts to provide a moral theory alternative to utilitarianism and that addresses the problem of distributiv ...

''. Goldman's early work in action theory soon gave way to work in other branches of philosophy, most influentially epistemology.

Epistemology

Goldman's accounts of knowledge and justified belief, using notions like causation and reliability instead of normative concepts like permissibility and obligation, contributed to a philosophical approach that came to be known in the 1970s as

naturalized epistemology Naturalized epistemology (a term coined by W. V. O. Quine) is a collection of philosophic views concerned with the theory of knowledge that emphasize the role of natural scientific methods. This shared emphasis on scientific methods of studying kn ...

. (Unlike

W.V.O. Quine Willard Van Orman Quine (; known to his friends as "Van"; June 25, 1908 – December 25, 2000) was an American philosopher and logician in the analytic tradition, recognized as "one of the most influential philosophers of the twentieth century" ...

's version of naturalized epistemology, however, Goldman's retains a traditional focus on questions of justification.) Goldman's view emerged initially as part of the efforts in the 1960s to find a "fourth" condition in response to the

Gettier Edmund Lee Gettier III (; October 31, 1927 – March 23, 2021) was an American philosopher at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is best known for his short 1963 article "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?", which has generated an exten ...

challenge to the account of knowledge as "justified true belief." In his 1967 paper, "

A Causal Theory of Knowing "A Causal Theory of Knowing" is a philosophical essay written by Alvin Goldman in 1967, published in ''The Journal of Philosophy''. It is based on existing theories of knowledge in the realm of epistemology, the study of philosophy through the scope ...

", Goldman proposed that knowledge amounts to true belief appropriately caused by the fact that makes it true. Later, he claimed knowledge amounts to true belief that is produced by a reliable process. Goldman has described his "naturalistic" approach to epistemology as splitting "epistemology (individual epistemology, anyway) into two parts.... The first part is dedicated to the 'analytic' task of identifying the criteria, or satisfaction conditions, for various normative epistemic statuses. With respect to the normative status of justifiedness (of belief), the proposed criterion is the reliability of the belief-forming processes by which the belief is produced. Defense of this criterion of justifiedness was not based on scientific psychology, but rather a familiar form of armchair methodology. The second part is the task where science enters the picture. Psychological science is required to identify the kinds of operations or computations available to the human cognizer, how well they work when operating on certain inputs and under certain conditions." More recently, Goldman has focused his epistemological efforts on questions of

social epistemology Social epistemology refers to a broad set of approaches that can be taken in epistemology (the study of knowledge) that construes human knowledge as a collective achievement. Another way of characterizing social epistemology is as the evaluation o ...

, of the different social mechanisms through which knowledge is transmitted in society. His work in social epistemology has dealt with the law (especially evidence), voting and media, among other topics. He attempts to provide (in his words) a less radical view of social epistemology than those suggested by cultural theorists and

postmodernists Postmodernism is an intellectual stance or mode of discourseNuyen, A.T., 1992. The Role of Rhetorical Devices in Postmodernist Discourse. Philosophy & Rhetoric, pp.183–194. characterized by skepticism toward the " grand narratives" of moderni ...

under that name. His approach uses tools of

analytic philosophy Analytic philosophy is a branch and tradition of philosophy using analysis, popular in the Western world and particularly the Anglosphere, which began around the turn of the 20th century in the contemporary era in the United Kingdom, United Sta ...

especially

formal epistemology Formal epistemology uses formal methods from decision theory, logic, probability theory and computability theory to model and reason about issues of epistemological interest. Work in this area spans several academic fields, including philosophy, ...

to analyze problems in social knowledge. Some of this work is summarized in his book ''Knowledge in a Social World''.

Other work

Goldman has devoted significant time to showing how research in cognitive science is relevant to a variety of branches of philosophy including epistemology. Much of this work appears in his books ''Epistemology and Cognition'', ''Philosophical Applications of Cognitive Science'', and ''Simulating Minds''.

Bibliography

* ''Action'' (1965) * "

" in ''

The Journal of Philosophy ''The Journal of Philosophy'' is a monthly peer-reviewed academic journal on philosophy, founded in 1904 at Columbia University. Its stated purpose is "To publish philosophical articles of current interest and encourage the interchange of ideas, ...

'' v. 64 (1967), pp. 357–372. * ''A Theory of Human Action'' (1970) * "Epistemics: The Regulative Theory of Cognition," ''The Journal of Philosophy'' 75 (1978) pp. 509–523. * "What is Justified Belief?" in ''Justification and Knowledge'' (1979), pp. 1–23. * ''Epistemology and Cognition'' (1986) * ''Liaisons: Philosophy Meets the Cognitive and Social Sciences'' (1991) * ''Philosophical Applications of Cognitive Science'' (1993) * ''Readings in Philosophy and Cognitive Science'' (editor), (1993) * ''Knowledge in a Social World'' (1999) * ''Pathways to Knowledge: Private and Public'' (2004) * ''Simulating Minds'' (2006) * ''Joint Ventures: Mindreading, Mirroring, and Embodied Cognition'' (2013)

References

External links

Alvin Goldman's home page

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on reliabilism, written by Goldman

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on naturalised epistemology, relevant to Goldman
{{DEFAULTSORT:Goldman, Alvin 20th-century American philosophers 21st-century American philosophers Living people 1938 births Princeton University alumni Philosophers from Michigan Philosophers from Arizona Philosophers from Texas Epistemologists University of Michigan faculty University of Arizona faculty Rutgers University faculty Action theorists Philosophers of mind