Epistemology and Personal Identity Lecture Review

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering logic, epistemology, skeptical arguments, social epistemology, and theories of personal identity from the lecture.

Necessary condition

A condition X is necessary for Y if Y cannot be true unless X is true.

Sufficient condition

A condition X is sufficient for Y if whenever X is true, Y must also be true.

Counterexample to necessity

A case where Y is true but the proposed necessary condition X is false.

Counterexample to sufficiency

A case where X is true but Y is false, showing X does not guarantee Y.

Conceptual analysis

A set of conditions that are individually necessary and jointly sufficient for a concept.

Argument

A sequence of premises offered as reasons to accept a conclusion.

Premise

A statement offered as a reason to support a conclusion.

Conclusion

The statement that the premises of an argument are intended to support.

Valid argument

An argument in which it is impossible for all premises to be true and the conclusion false.

Invalid argument

An argument in which it is possible for all premises to be true and the conclusion false.

Sound argument

A valid argument with all true premises.

Epistemology

The philosophical study of knowledge and what justifies belief.

Gettier's justified true belief analysis

Someone knows P if and only if P is true, the person believes P, and the person is justified in believing P.

The three conditions of JTB

Truth, belief, and justification.

Gettier's first assumption

A person can be justified in believing something false.

Gettier's second assumption

Justification transfers to propositions correctly deduced from justified beliefs.

Gettier Case I: Job and ten coins

Smith believes Jones will get a job and has ten coins, but Smith gets the job and also has ten coins; Smith's belief is justified and true only through luck, challenging JTB.

Gettier Case II: Ford and Barcelona

Smith believes Jones owns a Ford and infers Jones owns a Ford or Brown is in Barcelona; Jones owns no Ford, but Brown is in Barcelona, making the disjunction true by coincidence.

Gettier's conclusion

Justified true belief is not sufficient for knowledge.

Descartes's method of doubt

Reject beliefs that admit any reason for doubt, rather than proving each belief false.

Infallibilism

The view that knowledge is incompatible with thinking the proposition might be false.

Descartes's evil demon thought experiment

A hypothetical powerful deceiver used to test certainty by systematically misleading Descartes about perception, memory, and mathematics.

Descartes's Cogito

I think, therefore I am.

Moore's proof of an external world

Here is one hand; here is another hand; therefore two hands exist and external things exist.

Moore's three requirements for rigorous proof

The premise differs from the conclusion, the premise is known to be true, and the conclusion follows from it.

External things (Moore)

Things met with in space that can exist independently of being experienced, such as bodies and shadows.

Things merely presented in space (Moore)

Items such as after-images and pains, which depend on a mind.

Fallibilism

The view that knowledge can be possible without absolute certainty or proof that error is impossible.

Cohen's contextualism

The view that whether someone knows a proposition depends on the epistemic standards in the speaker's context.

Contextually relevant possibilities

Possibilities that must be ruled out under the standards of a particular conversation.

The skeptical paradox

The conflict among three plausible claims: knowledge implies knowing skeptical alternatives are false; we do not know those alternatives are false; and we know ordinary facts.

Deductive closure

The principle that if someone knows P, they also know what can be validly inferred from P.

Nguyen's epistemic bubble

A network where relevant voices are left out, often accidentally.

Nguyen's echo chamber

A community in which outside sources are actively discredited and members are taught to distrust them.

Nguyen's social-epistemic reboot

Suspending beliefs, especially beliefs about whom to trust, and rebuilding one's epistemic framework.

Vavova's irrelevant influence

A factor that shapes a belief but has no bearing on whether the belief is true.

Good Independent Reason Principle

Revise confidence in P to the extent that good independent reasons suggest you are mistaken about P.

Dutilh Novaes's genealogical anxiety

Worry that discovering the origins of one's own beliefs may undermine them.

Genealogical debunking

Someone else criticizing beliefs because of their origins.

Dutilh Novaes's three-tiered model

A model of belief influence consisting of attention, choice, and engagement.

Conditions for a trustworthy informant

Competence and benevolence.

Epistemic agency

The limited ability to influence how one forms and revises beliefs.

Locke's definition of person

A thinking, intelligent being capable of considering itself as itself at different times and places.

Locke's theory of personal identity

Personal identity consists in sameness of consciousness extending back to past thoughts and actions.

Forensic term

Locke's characterization of person, meaning personal identity determines the assignment of responsibility, merit, reward, and punishment.

Hume's bundle theory

The theory that the mind is a changing bundle or collection of perceptions rather than a persisting substance.

Hume's theatre analogy

The comparison of the mind to a theatre where perceptions pass, though we have no knowledge of a separate stage.

Hume's republic analogy

The comparison where a republic retains its identity despite changes in members and laws, illustrating the supposed identity of the self.

The five aggregates

Form, sensation, ideas, mental formations, and consciousness.

Nagasena's chariot analogy

An analogy demonstrating that names can legitimately designate arrangements of parts without referring to an additional permanent essence.

Nagasena's conventional designation

A person is named on account of the aggregates being present, without a separate permanent self.

Parfit's divided-brain thought experiment

A thought experiment where a brain is divided and transplanted into two bodies, challenging identity because numerical identity cannot hold with two successors.

What matters in survival (Parfit)

Psychological continuity and connectedness rather than strict numerical identity.

Parfit's Q-memory

A memory-like relation that does not assume the rememberer is identical to the person who originally had the experience.

Parfit's psychological connectedness

Direct psychological relations such as memories, intentions, and character traits.

Parfit's psychological continuity

Overlapping chains of psychological connectedness over time.

Parfit's successive selves

Different stages of a person's life described as past and future selves with varying degrees of psychological connectedness.