Category: Epistemology

Skepticism:

• Skepticism Overview - surveys the various rational responses one could make to epistemological skepticism. See also my essay.


• Skepticism and the Matrix - outlines the problem of skepticism, and a possible response (precursor to my more general post on semantic contextualism)


• I notice that philosopher David Chalmers has some similar ideas about the Matrix.


• Skepticism and Possible Worlds - this post examines Nozick's response to skepticism, why it fails, and how Keith DeRose improved it by adding (epistemic) contextualist features.


• Sensitivity, Dreams, and the Cogito - Just because the dreamer doesn't know that they're dreaming, doesn't mean that we don't know that we're not.

Other Epistemology:

• Gettier Cases via Skepticism - How we can use the "brain in a vat" scenario to shed doubt on the JTB analysis of knowledge.


• Objects of Perception - Do we perceive real objects, or just mental ones?


• Externalist Internalism - If we separate knowledge from justification, then we could be externalists about the former whilst retaining internalism for the latter.


• The Structure of Justification - foundationalism vs. coherentism.


• Feeling Justified - Can emotions count as evidence?


• Evidence, Knowledge, and Proof - Does science deal in proof? Can we prove empirical facts? Perhaps we can answer 'yes' if we tie proof to knowledge rather than certainty.


• Lottery and Fallibility Paradoxes - and resolving them through appeal to 'degrees of belief'.