The Structure Of Empirical Knowledge

How must our knowledge be systematically organized in order to justify our beliefs? There are two options—the solid securing of the ancient foundationalist pyramid or the risky adventure of the new coherentist raft. For the foundationalist like Descartes each piece of knowledge can be stacked to build a pyramid. Not so, argues Laurence BonJour. What looks like a pyramid is in fact a dead end, a blind alley. Better by far to choose the raft. Here BonJour sets out the most extensive antifoundationalist argument yet developed. The first part of the book offers a systematic exposition of foundationalist views and formulates a general argument to show that no variety of foundationalism provides an acceptable account of empirical justification. In the second part he explores a coherence theory of empirical knowledge and argues that a defensible theory must incorporate an adequate conception of observation. The book concludes with an account of the correspondence theory of empirical truth and an argument that systems of empirical belief which satisfy the coherentist standard of justification are also likely to be true.

The subtitle of this book should be read as a qualification as much as an elaboration of the title. If the goal were completeness, then this book would have included essays on the work of other philosophers such as Wilfrid Sellars, Nicholas Rescher, Donald Davidson, Gilbert Harman and Michael Williams. Although it would be incorrect to say that each of these writers has set forth a version of the coherence theory of justification and knowledge, it is clear that their work is directly relevant, and reaction to it could easily fill a companion volume. This book concentrates, however, on the theories of Keith Lehrer and Laurence BonJour, and I doubt that any epistemologist would deny that they are presently the two leading proponents of coherentism. A sure indication of this was the ease with which the papers in this volume were solicited and delivered. The many authors represented here were willing, prepared, and excited to join in the discussion of BonJour's and Lehrer's recent writings. I thank each one personally for agreeing so freely to contribute. All of the essays but two are published for the first time here. Marshall Swain's and Alvin Goldman's papers were originally presented at a symposium on BonJour's The Structure of Empirical Knowledge at the annual meeting of the Central Division of the American Philosophical Association, Chicago, Illinois, in April, 1987.

Grounding Concepts tackles the issue of arithmetical knowledge, developing a new position which respects three intuitions which have appeared impossible to satisfy simultaneously: a priorism, mind-independence realism, and empiricism. Drawing on a wide range of philosophical influences, but avoiding unnecessary technicality, a view is developed whereby arithmetic can be known through the examination of empirically grounded concepts. These are concepts which, owing to their relationship to sensory input, are non-accidentally accurate representations of the mind-independent world. Examination of such concepts is an armchair activity, but enables us to recover information which has been encoded in the way our concepts represent. Emphasis on the key role of the senses in securing this coding relationship means that the view respects empiricism, but without undermining the mind-independence of arithmetic or the fact that it is knowable by means of a special armchair method called conceptual examination. A wealth of related issues are covered during the course of the book, including definitions of realism, conditions on knowledge, the problems with extant empiricist approaches to the a priori, mathematical explanation, mathematical indispensability, pragmatism, conventionalism, empiricist criteria for meaningfulness, epistemic externalism and foundationalism. The discussion encompasses themes from the work of Locke, Kant, Ayer, Wittgenstein, Quine, McDowell, Field, Peacocke, Boghossian, and many others.

In The Philosophical Structure of Historical Explanation, Paul A. Roth resolves disputes persisting since the nineteenth century about the scientific status of history. He does this by showing why historical explanations must take the form of a narrative, making their logic explicit, and revealing how the rational evaluation of narrative explanation becomes possible. Roth situates narrative explanations within a naturalistic framework and develops a nonrealist (irrealist) metaphysics and epistemology of history—arguing that there exists no one fixed past, but many pasts. The book includes a novel reading of Thomas S. Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, showing how it offers a narrative explanation of theory change in science. This book will be of interest to researchers in historiography, philosophy of history, philosophy of science, philosophy of social science, and epistemology.

Philosophers have traditionally used conceptual analysis to investigate knowledge. Hilary Kornblith argues that this is misguided: it is not the concept of knowledge that we should be investigating, but knowledge itself, a robust natural phenomenon, suitable for scientific study. Cognitive ethologists not only attribute intentional states to non-human animals, they also speak of such animals as having knowledge; and this talk of knowledge does causal and explanatory work withintheir theories. The account of knowledge which emerges from this literature is a version of reliabilism: knowledge is reliably produced true belief.This account of knowledge is not meant merely to provide an elucidation of an important scientific category. Rather, Kornblith argues that knowledge, in this very sense, is what philosophers have been talking about all along. Rival accounts are examined in detail and it is argued that they are inadequate to the phenomenon of knowledge (even of human knowledge).One traditional objection to this sort of naturalistic approach to epistemology is that, in providing a descriptive account of the nature of important epistemic categories, it must inevitably deprive these categories of their normative force. But Kornblith argues that a proper account of epistemic normativity flows directly from the account of knowledge which is found in cognitive ethology. Knowledge may be properly understood as a real feature of the world which makes normative demands uponus.This controversial and refreshingly original book offers philosophers a new way to do epistemology.

Based on the formal concept of "knowledge structures" originally proposed by Jean-Claude Falmagne and Jean-Paul Doignon, this book contains descriptions of methodological developments and experimental investigations as well as applications for various knowledge domains. The authors address three main topics: * theoretical issues and extensions of Doignon & Falmagne's theory of knowledge structures; * empirical validations of specific problem types and knowledge domains, such as sentence comprehension, problem solving in chess, inductive reasoning, elementary mathematical reasoning, and others; and * application of knowledge structures in various contexts, including knowledge assessment, intelligent tutoring systems, and motor learning. Unlike most other approaches in the literature in cognitive psychology, this book provides both a rigorous mathematical formulation of knowledge-related psychological concepts and its empirical validation by experimental data.

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"[Goldman's] theory of knowing is novel, powerful and yet fairly simple. His attack on skepticism is as persuasive and as well worked-out as any I know."--William Gregory Lycan, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill "In both conception and execution this is a fine book. . . . Goldman's treatment is fresh and invigorating."--Frederick Schmitt, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign "[Goldman's] theory of knowing is novel, powerful and yet fairly simple. His attack on skepticism is as persuasive and as well worked-out as any I know."--William Gregory Lycan, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill