§-Topic

Epistemology

5 dot points, in syllabus order. Each dot point has a focused answer, with exam-style questions and worked answers where available.

Where does knowledge come from and can scepticism be answered?

Contrast rationalism and empiricism and evaluate responses to sceptical doubt

Rationalism holds reason is the chief source of knowledge, empiricism holds experience is. Descartes' method of doubt raises scepticism, answered variously by the cogito, empiricism and Kant. The dot point asks you to evaluate these.

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What justifies our confidence that the future will resemble the past, and can inductive reasoning be rationally defended?

Explain Hume's problem of induction and evaluate proposed responses including Popper's falsificationism and pragmatic vindication

Hume argued that we have no non-circular justification for believing that unobserved cases will resemble observed ones. This threatens all of science. Responses range from Popper's falsificationism to pragmatic and probabilistic defences of inductive reasoning.

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What does it mean for a belief or statement to be true?

Compare correspondence, coherence and pragmatic theories of truth and evaluate their strengths and difficulties

Theories of truth try to say what truth consists in. The correspondence theory ties truth to matching reality, the coherence theory to fitting a system of beliefs, and the pragmatic theory to what works in inquiry. Each captures part of our concept and faces objections.

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Does perception give us direct knowledge of mind-independent objects, or only of our own sensory experiences?

Compare direct realism, indirect realism and idealism as theories of perception and evaluate the problem of the external world

Theories of perception ask what we are directly aware of when we perceive. Direct realism, indirect realism and idealism give rival answers, each pressed by the argument from illusion and by the sceptical problem of the external world.

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What is knowledge and is justified true belief enough to have it?

Analyse the justified true belief account of knowledge and evaluate the Gettier objection

The traditional analysis defines knowledge as justified true belief. Gettier cases show this is not sufficient, prompting responses such as the no-false-lemmas, reliabilist and virtue accounts. The dot point asks you to evaluate them.

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