The past twenty-five years have seen a major renewal of interest in the topic of a priori knowledge. In the sixteen essays collected here, which span this entire period, philosopher Albert Casullo documents the complex set of issues motivating the renewed interest, identifies the central epistemological questions, and provides the leading ideas of a unified response to them.

The major divide in contemporary epistemology is between those who embrace and those who reject a priori knowledge. Albert Casullo provides a systematic treatment of the primary epistemological issues associated with the controversy. By freeing the a priori from traditional assumptions about the nature of knowledge and justification, he offers a novel approach to resolving these issues which assigns a prominent role to empirical evidence. He concludes by arguing that traditional approaches to the a priori, which focus primarily (...) on the concepts of necessity and analyticity, are misguided. (shrink)

The past twenty-five years have seen a major renewal of interest in the topic of a priori knowledge. In the sixteen essays collected here, which span this entire period, philosopher Albert Casullo documents the complex set of issues motivating the renewed interest, identifies the central epistemological questions, and provides the leading ideas of a unified response to them.

Broadly speaking, a naturalistic approach to epistemology seeks to explain human knowledge – and justification in particular – as a phenomenon in the natural world, in keeping with the tenets of naturalism. Naturalism is typically defined, in part, by a commitment to scientific method as the only legitimate means of attaining knowledge of the natural world. Naturalism is often thought to entail empiricism by virtue of this methodological commitment. However, scientific methods themselves may incorporate a priori elements, so (...) empiricism does not follow from the methodological commitments of naturalism alone. And given a suitably-naturalistic conception of the a priori, a priori forms of justification may be compatible with naturalism generally. A priori justification is, in principle, compatible with naturalism – and hence naturalistic epistemologies – if the a priori is understood in a way that is free of some of the inessential properties that have been associated with the concept. I argue that some of the more prominent strategies for accommodating normative notions within a naturalistic framework allow for the possibility of a priori justification. These include reliabilism, instrumental rationality, and nonfactualism about justification. A priori justification thus need not be seen as standing in opposition to all naturalistic epistemologies. It is only with nonnormative naturalistic epistemologies that a priori justification per se is incompatible, and this only because the notion of justification itself has no role to play within a nonnormative approach to epistemology. (shrink)

This volume presents a series of influential essays by Paul Boghossian on the theory of content and on its relation to the phenomenon of a priori knowledge. The essays are organized under four headings: the nature of content; content and self-knowledge; knowledge, content, and the a priori; and colour concepts.

This dissertation is about a priori justification and its relationship to experiential evidence. I begin with the assumption that a priori justification is justification that is independent of experience. It has been argued that putative examples of a priori justification are implausible because they are not, in any significant sense, independent of experience. My two central claims are that (a) a subject is plausibly justified a priori in believing a proposition only if the belief is not revisable on empirical grounds, (...) which I will call the empirical unrevisability thesis; and (b) moderate rationalists can resist four empirical challenges considered by many to be decisive against the empirical unrevisability thesis. I begin by developing an account of experiential evidence that is neutral between rationalists and empiricists in order to make clear the distinction between a priori and a posteriori justification. I then argue that a moderate rationalist account of a priori justification is plausible only if the beliefs justified a priori are empirically unrevisable in a qualified sense. I then argue that four classical objections that putative cases of a priori justification are not independent of experience fail, namely, that they are revisable by some instances of contrary testimony, by mistakes in long proofs and memory, that a paradigm example of a priori knowledge was overturned by new evidence in physics, and that psychological data undermines the reliability of sources of a priori justification. I conclude that there is only one potentially threatening case, derived from neurological malfunction, and I leave the solution to this case to future research. (shrink)

There are propositions that upon understanding them it seems that one can “just see” that they are necessary or impossible. A commonly discussed example is the claim that it is not possible for an object to be red and green all over at the same time. My purpose in this paper is to account for how it is that such beliefs are justified. I begin by criticizing a suggestion defended lately by Laurence BonJour and others. BonJour argues that because these (...) beliefs are necessarily true external factors are irrelevant to their epistemic status. This is how BonJour can defend a foundationalist account of the a priori while at the same time attacking foundationalism with respect to empirical knowledge. I argue that this view of the a priori is mistaken. External factors are relevant even in the case of those a priori beliefs it seems we can just see to be true. I defend an alternative account of the justification of such beliefs. I argue that these beliefs may be justified in virtue of their being the products of a basic belief-forming mechanism one has no reason to distrust. In particular, I argue that this approach can be employed to account for the non-inferential justification of a priori beliefs without falling prey to the line of objections BonJour lodges against other forms of foundationalism. (shrink)

Epistemology has recently witnessed a number of efforts to rehabilitate rationalism, to defend the existence and importance of a priori knowledge or warrant construed as the product of rational insight or apprehension (Bealer 1987; Bigelow 1992; BonJour 1992, 1998; Burge 1998; Butchvarov 1970; Katz 1998; Plantinga 1993). This effort has sometimes been coupled with an attack on naturalistic epistemology, especially in BonJour 1994 and Katz 1998. Such coupling is not surprising, because naturalistic epistemology is often associated with thoroughgoing empiricism (...) and the rejection of the a priori. In this paper, however, I shall present a conception of naturalistic epistemology that is entirely compatible with a priori justification or knowledge. The resulting conception, I claim, gives us a better appreciation of the respective merits of the rational and the empirical, as well as a better understanding of how moderate epistemological naturalism comports, at least in principle, with moderate rationalism. This paper defends moderate rationalism; but it does not defend everything rationalists have often wanted, only what it is reasonable to grant them. (shrink)

Laurence BonJour's (1985) coherence theory of empirical knowledge relies heavily on a traditional foundationalist theory of a priori knowledge. He argues that a foundationalist, rationalist theory of a priori justification is indispensable for a coherence theory. BonJour (1998) continues this theme, arguing that a traditional account of a priori justification is indispensable for the justification of putative a priori truths, the justification of any non-observational belief and the justification of reasoning itself. While BonJour's indispensability arguments have received some (...) critical discussion (Gendler 2001; Harman 2001; Beebe 2008), no one has investigated the indispensability arguments from a coherentist perspective. This perspective offers a fruitful take on BonJour's arguments, because he does not appreciate the depth of the coherentist alternative to the traditional empiricist-rationalist debate. This is surprising on account of BonJour's previous defense of coherentism. Two significant conclusions emerge: first, BonJour's indispensability arguments beg central questions about an explanationist form of coherentism; second, BonJour's original defense of coherentism took on board certain assumptions that inevitably led to the demise of his form of coherentism. The positive conclusion of this article is that explanatory coherentism is more coherent than BonJour's indispensability arguments assume, and more coherent than BonJour's earlier coherentist epistemology. (shrink)

The distinction between a priori and a posteriori knowledge has been the subject of an enormous amount of discussion, but the literature is biased against recognizing the intimate relationship between these forms of knowledge. For instance, it seems to be almost impossible to find a sample of pure a priori or a posteriori knowledge. In this paper, it will be suggested that distinguishing between a priori and a posteriori is more problematic than is often suggested, and that (...) a priori and a posteriori resources are in fact used in parallel. We will define this relationship between a priori and a posteriori knowledge as the bootstrapping relationship. As we will see, this relationship gives us reasons to seek for an altogether novel definition of a priori and a posteriori knowledge. Specifically, we will have to analyse the relationship between a priori knowledge and a priori reasoning , and it will be suggested that the latter serves as a more promising starting point for the analysis of aprioricity. We will also analyse a number of examples from the natural sciences and consider the role of a priori reasoning in these examples. The focus of this paper is the analysis of the concepts of a priori and a posteriori knowledge rather than the epistemic domain of a posteriori and a priori justification. (shrink)

In recent years many influential philosophers have advocated that philosophy is an a priori science. Yet very few epistemology textbooks discuss a priori knowledge at any length, focusing instead on empirical knowledge and empirical justification. As a priori knowledge has moved centre stage, the literature remains either too technical or too out of date to make up a reasonable component of an undergraduate course. Edwin Mares book aims to rectify this. This book seeks to make accessible to (...) students the standard topics and current debates within a priori knowledge, including necessity and certainty, rationalism, empiricism and analyticity, Quine's attack on the a priori, Kantianism, Aristotelianism, mathematical knowledge, moral knowledge, logical knowledge and philosophical knowledge. (shrink)

How should we understand good philosophical inquiry? Ernest Sosa has argued that the key to answering this question lies with virtue-based epistemology. According to virtue-based epistemology, competences are prior to epistemic justification. More precisely, a subject is justified in having some type of belief only because she could have a belief of that type by exercising her competences. Virtue epistemology is well positioned to explain why, in forming false philosophical beliefs, agents are often less rational than it is possible to (...) be. False philosophical beliefs are often unjustified—and the agent is thereby less rational for having them—precisely because these beliefs could not be formed by exercising competences. But, virtue epistemology is not well positioned to explain why, in failing to form some true philosophical beliefs, agents are less rational than it is possible to be. In cases where agents fall short by failing to believe philosophical truths, the problem is not that they believe things they shouldn’t, but that they lack beliefs they ought to have. We argue that Timothy Williamson's recent critique of the a priori/a posteriori distinction falls prey to similar problem cases. Williamson fails to see that a type of belief might be a priori justified if and only if, even without any special confirming experiences, agents fall short by failing to have this type of belief. We conclude that there are types of beliefs that are deeply a priori justified for any agent regardless of what epistemic competences the agent has. However, we also point out that this view has a problem of its own: it appears to make the acquisition of a priori knowledge too easy. We end by suggesting that a move back towards virtue-based epistemology is necessary. But in order for this move to be effective, epistemic competences will have to be understood very differently than in the reliabilist tradition. (shrink)

The paper argues that, although a distinction between a priori and a posteriori knowledge (or justification) can be drawn, it is a superficial one, of little theoretical significance. The point is not that the distinction has borderline cases, for virtually all useful distinctions have such cases. Rather, it is argued by means of an example, the differences even between a clear case of a priori knowledge and a clear case of a posteriori knowledge may be superficial ones. (...) In both cases, experience plays a role that is more than purely enabling but less than strictly evidential. It is also argued that the cases at issue are not special, but typical of a wide range of others, including knowledge of axioms of set theory and of elementary logical truths. Attempts by Quine and others to make all knowledge a posteriori (‘empirical’) are repudiated. The paper ends with a call for a new framework to be developed for analysing the epistemology of cognitive uses of the imagination. (shrink)

Alvin Goldman’s contributions to contemporary epistemology are impressive—few epistemologists have provided others so many occasions for reflecting on the fundamental character of their discipline and its concepts. His work has informed the way epistemological questions have changed (and remained consistent) over the last two decades. We (the authors of this paper) can perhaps best suggest our indebtedness by noting that there is probably no paper on epistemology that either of us individually or jointly have produced that does not in its (...) notes and references bear clear testimony to the influence of Professor Goldman’s arguments. The present paper is no exception (and this would be a particularly inapt place to break with our tradition of indebtedness). Professor Goldman has produced a series of discussions that we find particularly important for coming to terms with the venerable idea that there may be truths that can be known a priori (Goldman 1992a, 1992b, 1999). We do not altogether follow his lead, while he draws on the idea that a priori justification has something to do with innateness or processess, we prefer to accentuate the idea that a priori justification turns on a conceptually grounded truths and access via acquired conceptual competence (at least in many significant philosophical cases). Still, in developing our understanding we have been aided by much that Professor Goldman says regarding concepts, conceptual competence, and related psychological processes. The influences should become progressively clear, particularly in the later sections of this paper. What would it take for there to be a priori knowledge or justification? We can begin by reflecting on a widely agreed on answer to this question—one that purports to identify something that would at least be adequate for a priori justification. The answer will then serve as one anchor for the present investigation, a bit of shared ground on which empiricists and rationalists can, and typically do, agree.. (shrink)

The book records a series of philosophical exchanges between its authors, amounting to a debate extended over more than fifteen years. Its subject matter is the nature and scope of reason. A central case at issue is basic logical knowledge, and the justification for basic deductive inferences, but the arguments range far more widely, at stake the distinctions between analytic and synthetic, and between a priori and a posteriori. The discussion naturally involves problems about the conditions for linguistic understanding (...) and competence, and what it might be to grasp a concept or to have an intuition. Since reason is central to philosophical method, there are associated implications for how philosophy itself works, or should work. In particular, the discussion raises fundamental concerns about how to approach epistemology. -/- . (shrink)

We focus on Timothy Williamson’s recent attack on the epistemological significance of the a priori–a posteriori distinction, and offer an explanation of why, fundamentally, it does not succeed. We begin by setting out Williamson’s core argument, and some of the background to it and move to consider two lines of conciliatory response to it—conciliatory in that neither questions the central analogy on which Williamson's argument depends. We claim, setting aside a methodological challenge to which Williamson owes an answer, that no (...) satisfactory such reconciliation is in prospect. Rather, as we then argue, —and it is on this that we base our overall negative assessment of his argument—Williamson’s core analogy is flawed by an oversight. We conclude with some brief reflections on Williamson’s ideas about the imagination as a source of knowledge. Our principal conclusion is only that Williamson’s argument fails to perform as advertised. A constructive case for confidence, to the contrary, that the intuitive contrast between a priori and a posteriori reflects something of fundamental epistemological significance is prefigured in our final section, but will not be elaborated here. (shrink)

On rationalist infallibilism, a wide range of both (i) analytic and (ii) synthetic a priori propositions can be infallibly justified (or absolutely warranted), i.e., justified to a degree that entails their truth and precludes their falsity. Though rationalist infallibilism is indisputably running its course, adherence to at least one of the two species of infallible a priori justification refuses to disappear from mainstream epistemology. Among others, Putnam (1978) still professes the a priori infallibility of some category (i) propositions, while Burge (...) (1986, 1988, 1996) and Lewis (1996) have recently affirmed the a priori infallibility of some category (ii) propositions. In this paper, I take aim at rationalist infallibilism by calling into question the a priori infallibility of both analytic and synthetic propositions. The upshot will be twofold: first, rationalist infallibilism unsurprisingly emerges as a defective epistemological doctrine, and second, more importantly, the case for the a priori infallibility of one or both categories of propositions turns out to lack cogency. (shrink)

Most current theories of meaning and mental content accept externalism. One of its forceful exponents is Ruth Garrett Millikan. She argues that externalism leads to the abandonment of "the last myth of the given", that is, of the idea that identity of meaning and mental content is somehow unproblematically given to us, and that we can easily recognize the sameness of meaning and mental content. If one refuses such a "mythical" giveness or meaning rationalism, one has to admit that there (...) is no logical possibility known a priori . The paper tries to show that even if one abandons meaning rationalism one can still hold that there are logical possibilities known a priori . The claim is defended by arguing that a priori knowledge is not completely independent from experience and does not demand the absolute transparency of meaning from the first-person point of view. A priori knowledge requires only a priori justification, that is, such a justification that is based merely on relations between meanings or contents. (shrink)

This book examines a main theme in religious epistemology, namely, the possibility of knowledge of God. Most often philosophers consider the rationality or justification of propositional belief about God, particularly beliefs about the existence and nature of God; and they will assess the conditions under which, if there is a God, such propositional beliefs would be knowledge, particularly in light of counter-evidence or the availability of religious disagreement. This book surveys such familiar areas, then turns toward newer and (...) less-developed terrain: interpersonal epistemology, namely what it is to know another person. It then explores the prospects for understanding what it might take to know God relationally, the contours of which are significant for many theistic traditions. (shrink)

Compatibilism combines an externalist view of mental content with a doctrine of privileged self‐knowledge. The essay presents a reductio of compatibilism by arguing that if compatibilism were true, we would be in a position to know certain facts about the world a priori, facts that no one can reasonably believe are knowable a priori. Whether this should be taken to cast doubt on externalism or privileged self‐knowledge is not discussed. Consideration is given to the ’empty case’—the case in (...) which a thinker expresses what he takes to be a genuine thought concerning a natural kind but where there is in fact no relevant natural kind, so that the putative natural kind term fails to refer. It is argued that, in such a case, on an externalist conception of natural kind terms, the thinker is deluded in taking himself to be expressing a complete thought, and that such delusions are not compatible with privileged self‐knowledge. (shrink)

I argue that you can have a priori knowledge of propositions that neither are nor appear necessarily true. You can know a priori contingent propositions that you recognize as such. This overturns a standard view in contemporary epistemology and the traditional view of the a priori, which restrict a priori knowledge to necessary truths, or at least to truths that appear necessary.

Traditional rationalist approaches to a priori epistemology have long been looked upon with suspicion for positing a faculty of rational intuition capable of knowing truths about the world apart from experience. Conceptualists have tried to fill this void with something more empirically tractable, arguing that we know a priori truths due to our understanding of concepts. All of this theorizing, however, has carried on while neglecting an entire cross section of such truths, the grounding claims that we know a priori. (...) Taking a priori grounding into account poses a significant challenge to conceptualist accounts of a priori knowledge, as it is unclear how merely understanding conceptual connections can account for knowledge of grounding. The fact that we do know some grounding truths a priori, then, is a significant mark in traditional rationalism’s favor, and the next frontier for those who aim to eliminate the mystery surrounding a priori knowledge. (shrink)

This paper attempts to shed light on three sets of issues that bear directly on our understanding of Locke and Kant. The first is whether Kant believes Locke merely anticipates his distinction between analytic and synthetic judgments or also believes Locke anticipates his notion of synthetic a priori cognition. The second is what should we as readers of Kant and Locke should think about Kant’s view whatever it turns out to be, and the third is the nature of Kant’s justification (...) for the comparison he draws between his philosophy and Locke’s. I argue (1) that Kant believes Locke anticipates both the analytic-synthetic distinction and Kant’s notion of synthetic a priori cognition, (2) that the best justification for Kant’s claim draws on Locke’s distinction between trifling and instructive knowledge, (3) that the arguments against this claim developed by Carson, Allison, and Newman fail to undermine it, and (4) that Kant’s own justification for his claim is quite different from what many commentators have thought it was (or should have been). (shrink)

In this dissertation, I present a novel account of the components that have a peculiar epistemic role in our scientific inquiries, since they contribute to establishing a form of coordination. The issue of coordination is a classic epistemic problem concerning how we justify our use of abstract conceptual tools to represent concrete phenomena. For instance, how could we get to represent universal gravitation as a mathematical formula or temperature by means of a numerical scale? This problem is particularly pressing when (...) justification for using these abstract tools comes, in part or entirely, from knowledge which is not independent from them, thus leading to threats of circularity. Achieving coordination between some abstract conceptual tools and the concrete phenomena that they are supposed to represent is usually a complex process, which involves several epistemic components. Some of these components eventually provide stable conditions for applying those abstract representations to concrete phenomena. It is in this sense of providing certain conditions of applicability that different philosophical traditions, as well as some contemporary reappraisals, view these components as constitutive or a priori. In this work, I present a new gradualist, contextualist, and relational approach to understand these constitutive components of scientific inquiry. It is gradualist inasmuch as the degree to which some component is constitutive depends on three quantifiable features: quasi-axiomaticity, generative potential, and empirical shielding. Since the quantification of these three features impinges on the history and practice of using these components in a scientific context, my approach is a contextualist one. Finally, my approach is relational in a double sense: first, it identifies ordinal relationships among epistemic components with respect to their constitutive character; second, these relationships are relative to a scientific framework of inquiry. After introducing my account and a classic example of constitutively a priori principles, i.e., Friedman’s (2001) analysis of Newtonian mechanics, I turn to my own case studies to demonstrate the advantages of my approach. Firstly, I discuss Okasha’s (2018) view of endogenization as a pervasive theoretical strategy in evolutionary biology and suggest that the constitutive character of the core Darwinian principles progressively increases with endogenization. Secondly, I apply a conceptual distinction between two varieties or scopes of coordination – general coordination and coordination in measurement – to Ohm’s work on electrical conductivity. This distinction allows me to pinpoint to what extent components along different dimensions (e.g., instrumentation, measurement, theorising, etc.) were constitutive of the forms of coordination which Ohm relied on. Thirdly, I discuss the epistemic function of the Hardy-Weinberg principle in the history and practice of population genetics. I assess this principle in terms of my account and identify approximation and stability as two components that are highly constitutive, in that they contribute to justifying its use in population genetics. Finally, applying my account to these case studies enables me to identify at least three qualitatively different types of constitutive components: domain-specific theoretical principles, material components, and domain-independent assumptions underlying reasoning abilities. In the light of my results, I draw some general conclusions on epistemic justification and scientific knowledge. (shrink)

This chapter revisits some favorite moments in The Good Place to understand Janet's character. Philosophers distinguish between three types of knowledge: competence knowledge, acquaintance knowledge, and propositional knowledge. There are three generally accepted conditions that must be met for someone to have propositional knowledge: belief, truth, and justification. Some contemporary philosophers attempt to specify what kind of justification is required for knowledge. This contemporary debate arises as a result of conflicting interpretations of Plato's classic (...) statement about how one's beliefs must be “tied down” to the truth “by giving an account”. Perceptual knowledge is invariably interpreted via externalism. One need not be able to explain exactly how vision works and how it consequently plays a role in forming perceptual beliefs. Janet is merely a tool, and tools don't know anything because they cannot offer good reasons for how they behave. (shrink)

In recent years, several philosophers have argued that the a priori/a posteriori distinction is a legitimate distinction but does not carve at the epistemological joints and is theoretically unimportant. In this paper, I do two main things. First, I respond to the most prominent recent challenge to the significance of the a priori/a posteriori distinction – the central argument in Williamson (2013). Second, I discuss the question of what the theoretical significance of the a priori/a posteriori distinction is. -/- I (...) first present the a priori/a posteriori distinction as it is typically developed. I then turn to Williamson’s challenge to the significance of the distinction. Williamson points out that we often use the same cognitive mechanisms in coming to have a priori and a posteriori knowledge. So how could it be, asks Williamson, that there is a “deep epistemological difference” between the two? In response to this challenge, I argue that there is an important disanalogy between Williamson’s central example of a case of a priori knowledge and his central example of a case of a posteriori knowledge. Although the beliefs in the two cases are formed in similar ways, the ways in which their justification can be defeated are different. This suggests that there is an important epistemological difference between the two cases, one that cannot be captured in terms of the cognitive mechanisms used to form the beliefs. -/- Although Williamson’s argument is unsuccessful, there remains the question of just what the theoretical significance of the a priori/a posteriori distinction is. I argue that the point of the distinction is not to enable us to represent some joint in nature, but rather to help us to identify epistemological problem cases. We understand – more-or-less – the epistemology of simple perceptual knowledge. The epistemology of non-perceptual knowledge is far less clear. The purpose of labeling a case of knowledge as a priori is to claim that its epistemology should not be assimilated to the epistemology of perception. Instead, it is something of a puzzle case. -/- This proposal has an important implication. There are several ways in which a case of knowledge can be different from a simple case of perceptual knowledge. Two differences are perhaps the most important: (i) the justification of the belief does not involve phenomenality, and (ii) the belief does not stand in a causal relation to what the belief is about. When beliefs about some subject matter fit either (i) or (ii), an epistemological puzzle arises. So there is more than one kind of epistemological puzzle to solve. This suggests that there is an important theoretical role for (at least) two distinctions in the ballpark of the traditional a priori/a posteriori distinction. (shrink)

This paper offers an account of the a priori. According to this account, the fundamental notion is not that of a priori knowledge, or even of a priori justified belief, but a notion of an a priori justified inferential disposition. The rationality or justification of such a priori justified inferential dispositions is explained purely by some of the basic cognitive capacities that the thinker possesses, independently of any further experiences or other conscious mental states that the thinker happens to (...) have had. It is then shown how a priori justified inferences and beliefs can be explained on the basis of such a priori justified inferential dispositions. (shrink)

According to the Acceptance Principle, a person is entitled to accept a proposition that is presented as true (asserted) and that is intelligible to him or her, unless there are stronger reasons not to. Burge assumes this Principle and then argues that it has an apriori justification, basis or rationale. This paper expounds Burge's teleological reliability framework and the details of his a priori justification for the Principle. It then raises three significant doubts.

The definition of knowledge as justified true belief is the best we presently have. However, the canonical tripartite analysis of knowledge does not do justice to it due to a Platonic conception of a priori truth that puts the cart before the horse. Within a pragmatic approach, I argue that by doing away with a priori truth, namely by submitting truth to justification, and by accordingly altering the canonical analysis of knowledge, this is a fruitful definition. So (...) fruitful indeed that it renders the Gettier counterexamples vacuous, allowing positive work in epistemology and related disciplines. (shrink)

This title was first published in 2002. This book builds on contemporary discussion of 'mysticism' and religious experience by examining the process and content of 'religious knowing' in classical and modern Advaita. Drawing from the work of William Alston and Alvin Plantinga, Thomas Forsthoefel examines key streams of Advaita with special reference to the conditions, contexts, and scope of epistemic merit in religious experience. Forsthoefel uniquely employs specific analytical categories of contemporary Western epistemologies as heuristics to examine the cognitive dimension (...) of religious experience in Indian Vedanta. Showing the developing nuances in the analysis of religious experience in the thought of Shankara and his immediate disciples (Suresvara and Padmapada) as well as in the teaching of Ramana Maharshi, an understudied but important South Indian saint of the 20th century, this book offers a substantial contribution to studies of Indian philosophy as well as to contemporary philosophy of religion. Using the tools of exegesis and comparative philosophy, Forsthoefel argues for a careful justification of claims following religious experience, even if such claims involve, as they do in the Advaita, a paradoxical 'knowing beyond knowledge'. (shrink)

The idea that the epistemology of modality is in some sense a priori is a popular one, but it has turned out to be difficult to precisify in a way that does not expose it to decisive counterexamples. The most common precisifications follow Kripke’s suggestion that cases of necessary a posteriori truth that can be known a priori to be necessary if true ‘may give a clue to a general characterization of a posteriori knowledge of necessary truths’. The idea (...) is that whether it is contingent whether p can be known a priori for at least some broad range of sentences ‘p’. Recently, Al Casullo and Jens Kipper have discussed restrictions of such principles to atomic sentences. We show that decisive counterexamples even to such dramatically restricted Kripke-style principles can be constructed using minimal logical resources. We then consider further restrictions, and show that the counterexamples to the original principles can be turned into counterexamples to the further restricted principles. We conclude that, if there are any true restrictions of Kripke-style principles, then they are so weak as to be of little epistemological interest. (shrink)

This paper argues there are crucial points in Nietzsche’s texts where he offers a priori epistemic justification for views he believes are correct. My reading contrasts with the dominant view that Nietzsche’s philosophical naturalism is incompatible with a priori justification. My aim is to develop Nietzsche’s brand of a priori justification, show that he employs this account of justification in the texts, and suggest how it might be compatible with naturalism.

Some philosophers have adopted both a commonsense approach to the theory of knowledge and held that some epistemic principles are knowable a priori. Roderick Chisholm is a prominent example of a philosopher who does both. In The Problem of the Criterion, Chisholm holds that in attempting to discover criteria of evidence we should begin with particular commonsense examples of knowledge, such as I know that I have two hands and I know that there are other people. According to (...) Chisholm, our knowledge of these particular epistemic facts does not depend upon our knowing criteria of evidence or knowledge. Moreover, we may reject various criteria of evidence and knowledge because they do not fit with these particular epistemic facts. Thus, according to Chisholm, we may reject the empiricist criterion of knowledge held by Locke and Hume because it implies that we do not know things that we do in fact know, because it conflicts with our commonsense epistemic beliefs. (shrink)

There are four approaches to analyzing the concept of a priori knowledge. The primary target of the reductive approach is the concept of a priori justification. The primary target of the nonreductive approach is the concept of a priori knowledge. There are two approaches to analyzing each primary target. A theory-neutral approach provides an analysis that does not presuppose any general theory of knowledge or justification. A theory-laden approach provides an analysis that does presuppose some general theory (...) of knowledge or justification (call it the background theory). Those who embrace a theory-laden analysis incur a special burden: they must separate the features of their analysis that are constitutive of the a priori from those that are constitutive of the background theory. My goal is to illustrate how the failure to separate these features leads to erroneous conclusions about the nature of a priori knowledge. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Knowledge Scepticism Concluding Remarks.

Strategic Reliabilism is a framework that yields relative epistemic evaluations of belief-producing cognitive processes. It is a theory of cognitive excellence, or more colloquially, a theory of reasoning excellence (where 'reasoning' is understood very broadly as any sort of cognitive process for coming to judgments or beliefs). First introduced in our book, Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment (henceforth EPHJ), the basic idea behind SR is that epistemically excellent reasoning is efficient reasoning that leads in a robustly reliable fashion (...) to significant, true beliefs. It differs from most contemporary epistemological theories in two ways. First, it is not a theory of justification or knowledge – a theory of epistemically worthy belief. Strategic Reliabilism is a theory of epistemically worthy ways of forming beliefs. And second, Strategic Reliabilism does not attempt to account for an epistemological property that is assumed to be faithfully reflected in the epistemic judgments and intuitions of philosophers. If SR makes recommendations that accord with our reflective epistemic judgments and intuitions, great. If not, then so much the worse for our reflective epistemic judgments and intuitions. (shrink)

This paper has two aims. The first is to criticize epistemological externalism in a way different from most other criticisms. Most criticisms claim externalism fails because it does not adequately explicate ordinary notions of knowledge and justification. Such criticisms are often unhelpful to the externalist because he may not even intend his theory to be such an explication. The criticism presented here avoids this difficulty. The other aim, achieved en route to this criticism, is to explode a dogma of (...) contemporary epistemology — that the primary end of epistemic endeavors is truth — and to bring to light the many other important goals there are for such endeavors in addition to truth. Several of these goals pertain to the power of knowledge in social contexts. The criticism ultimately made of externalism is that externalist knowledge is defective because it fails to achieve these extra-verific goals of epistemic endeavors. (shrink)

This paper responds to Goodwin Liu's argument in Volume II of this Journal that a pedagogy must be supported by an appropriate theory of knowledge, and that the epistemology which best supports the service-learning pedagogy is anti-foundational pragmatism. The author shows that Liu's characterization of the pragmatist model of knowledge does not avoid the dualism which he sees as a fault of the traditional epistemology. After suggesting a remedy to this, the author then extends Liu's argument by indicating (...) the limits to what the appropriately modified epistemological support will sanction. These limits are shown to be more restrictive than Liu suggests. The result is an improved philosophical justification of the service-learning pedagogy and some suggestions for evaluating proposed curriculum. (shrink)