Epistemology 12 Markers

Outline philosophical scepticism and explain how reliabilism responds to it. (12)

• Philosophical scepticism = our usual methods of justification are inadequate

• Can be local or global

• Could have scepticism about knowledge of mind-independent objects or minds themselves

• Reliabilism:

• S knows that P iff:

• P is true

• S believes that P

• S’s belief that p was produced by a reliable cognitive process

• Sceptical arguments try to show that people cannot give an adequate justification of the claims they make

• The reliabilist is not affected if they do not think that ‘having a justification’ is necessary for knowledge

• Defeats evil demon (eg)

Explain how an account of epistemic virtue can be used to show why Smith lacks knowledge in one of Gettier’s original counter-examples. (12)

• Gettier cases aim to challenge the sufficiency of the tripartite definition by showing how it is possible for someone to have a JTB but not K

• P1: Smith has a justified belief that Jones will get the job

• P2: Smith has a justified belief that Jones has 10 coins in his pocket

• P3: From P1 + P2 Smith infers the following justified belief: that the person who gets the job will have 10 coins in his pocket

• P4: Unknown to Smith, Smith has 10 coins in his pocket

• P5: Smith, not Jones, gets the job

• P6: Smith had a JTB that the person who gets the job will have 10 coins in his pocket

• P7: Smith does not know that the person who gets the job will have 10 coins in his pocket

• C1: JTB are not sufficient for K

• According to accounts based on epistemic virtue, S knows that p iff:

• 1. P is true

• 2. S believes that p

• 3. S’s belief that p is a result of S successfully exercising his/her intellectual virtues

• An intellectual virtue is an intellectual skill that contributes towards getting to the truth

• Smith’s belief does not count as knowledge because his success is not the result of intellectual virtue

• It is the result of luck

Outline indirect realism and explain Berkley’s objection that mind-dependent ideas cannot be like mind-independent objects. (12)

• Indirect realists believe mind-independent objects and their properties do exist

• They believe sense data is caused by and represent them

• Sense data are the immediate objects of perception

• Berkley raises an issue relating to the ‘representation’ claim

• Berkley understands indirect realists as thinking of representation in terms of resemblance

• Berkley argues against the claim that we perceive reality indirectly via a representation

• Berkley states that he cannot understand how anything but an idea can be like an idea

• His reasoning is that something that is sensed cannot resemble something that is not and cannot be sensed

Explain one of Gettier’s original counter examples and explain how the addition of a ‘no false lemmas’ condition responds to it. (12)

• Gettier cases aim to challenge the sufficiency of the tripartite definition by showing how it is possible for someone to have a JTB but not K

• P1: Smith has a justified belief that Jones will get the job

• P2: Smith has a justified belief that Jones has 10 coins in his pocket

• P3: From P1 + P2 Smith infers the following justified belief: that the person who gets the job will have 10 coins in his pocket

• P4: Unknown to Smith, Smith has 10 coins in his pocket

• P5: Smith, not Jones, gets the job

• P6: Smith had a JTB that the person who gets the job will have 10 coins in his pocket

• P7: Smith does not know that the person who gets the job will have 10 coins in his pocket

• C1: JTB are not sufficient for K

• ‘No false lemmas’ adds a fourth necessary condition to the tripartite account

• S’s justification for believing the p must not contain any ‘false lemmas,’ or beliefs

• The belief that Jones will get the job is a false belief, so Smith does not have K

Explain Descartes’ cogito and an empiricist response to it. (12)

• The cogito is a response to the third wave of doubt

• It is a priori, and is the first foundational truth in his infallibilist quest for certainty using intuition and deduction

• ‘I think therefore I am’

• Understands himself as a thinking thing of which he has a clear and distinct idea

• Even if an evil demon is deceiving him about physical objects, the evil demon cannot about his own existence

• If he doubts his existence, he must exist to be able to doubt it

• Hume argues against this by stating that Descartes does prove the existence of the self as a thinking thing

• Rather, Hume believes that there is no thinking thing, but rather fleeting thoughts

• So Descartes only proves the existence of a thought