PY3001: EPISTEMOLOGY

ADDITIONAL READING: SEMINAR BY SEMINAR (for seminars 1-5).

Lecturer: Patrick Greenough (lectures 1-6)

Please note

The additional seminar readings detailed below are not intended to be exhaustive (the anthologies listed in the course outline each have excellent bibliographies in each of the subject areas of epistemology). Rather, this list comprises the range of texts that have been used in constructing the first part of this course together with texts that I think you are both useful and readily available. Some of these texts will be explicitly mentioned in lectures, while others play a rather more background role. Don’t be put off by the number of texts you will find under this heading. While you are expected to read beyond the set reading where this is appropriate, typically, should you do so, you will only need to consult one or two extra texts (per week) in order to facilitate your understanding of the course material.

The additional reading is given in a recommended reading order (most useful first).

Email me (or arrange to see me) if you need help with selecting and obtaining any relevant reading

Some Background Reading for the Gettier Problem:

Edmund Gettier (1963): 'Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?', Analysis 23, pp. 121-23.

Richard Feldman (1973): 'All Alleged Defect in Gettier Counterexamples', Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 52, pp. 68-9.

Stephen Hetherington (1996): 'The Gettier Problem', Chapter 5 of his Knowledge Puzzles, Boulder: Westview Press.

Jonathan Dancy (1985): Introduction to Contemporary Epistemology, Ch. 2.

Stephen Hetherington (1996): 'False Evidence', Chapter 11 of his Knowledge Puzzles, Boulder: Westview Press.

Linda Zagzebski (1999): 'What is Knowledge?' in Greco and Sosa The Blackwell Guide to Epistemology, Oxford: Blackwells.

Weatherson, B. (2003). ‘What Good are Counterexamples?’. Philosophical Studies, 115: pp. 1-31

William G Lycan (forthcoming): 'On the Gettier Problem problem', in Epistemology Futures, edited by Stephen Hetherington, Oxford: OUP.

Peter Klein (1993): ‘The Gettier Problem’, entry in Dancy and Sosa’s Companion to Epistemology

Linda Zagzebski (1994); 'The Inescapability of Gettier Problems', The Philosophical Quarterly, 44, pp. 65-73.

Robert K. Shope (2002): 'Conditions and Analyses of Knowing', in The Oxford Handbook of Epistemology, edited by Paul K. Moser, Oxford: OUP.

Laurence Bonjour (2002): 'The Concept of Knowledge', ch.3 of his Epistemology: Classic Problems and Contemporary Responses, Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, pp. 27-52.

Robert K. Shope (1993): ‘Propositional Knowledge’, entry in Dancy and Sosa’s Companion to Epistemology.

Robert Audi (1998): 'The Analysis of Knowledge', Ch. 8 of his Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge, pp. 213-243.

Michael Williams (2001): Problems of Knowledge: A Critical Introduction to Epistemology, Ch. 1-4, pp. 13-57.

Keith Lehrer (2000): 'The Analysis of Knowledge', Ch.1 of his The Theory of Knowledge, 2nd edition, pp. 1-24, Boulder: Rowman and Littlefield.

C. Sartwell (1991): ‘Knowledge is Merely True Belief’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 28, pp. 157-65.

C. Sartwell (1992): ‘Why Knowledge is Merely True Belief’, Journal of Philosophy, 89, pp.167-80.

William G Lycan (1994): ‘Sartwell’s Minimalist Analysis of Knowing’. Philosophical Studies, 73, pp. 1-3.

Some Background Reading on intuitions and the Gettier Problem:

DePaul, M., and Ramsey, W. (eds.) 1998. Rethinking Intuition: The Psychology of Intuition and its Role in Philosophical Inquiry. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield.

Shaun Nichols, Stephen Stich, and Jonathan M. Weinberg (2003): Metaskepticism: Meditations in Ethno-Epistemology, in S. Luper (ed.) The Skeptics, Aldershot: Ashgate.

Tamar Szabó Gendler (forthcoming): "The Real Guide to Fake Barns: A Catalogue of Gifts for Your Epistemic Enemies" (with John Hawthorne) Philosophical Studies.

Ernest Sosa (2005): A Defense of Intuitions.

Jonathan M. Weinberg & Stephen Stich 'Jackson's Empirical Assumptions'.

Jonathan M. Weinberg, Shaun Nichols & Stephen Stich (2001): Normativity & Epistemic Intuitions, Philosophical Topics, 29, 1 & 2, pp. 429-460 (pdf).

Brian Weatherson (typescript): Intuitions and Meanings.

Tim Williamson (forthcoming): Philosophical Intuitions and Scepticism about Judgement, Dialectica 58.

Tim Williamson (forthcoming): "Armchair Philosophy, Metaphysical Modality and Counterfactual Thinking"

Seminar 1. (week 2): Evidence One Does Not Possess.

Set Reading:

John Pollock (1986): Contemporary Theories of Knowledge, pp. 180-93.

Additional Reading:

Stephen Hetherington (1996): 'Defeasibility', Chapter 9 of his Knowledge Puzzles, Boulder: Westview Press.
Stephen Hetherington (1996): 'Social Defeasibility', Chapter 10 of his Knowledge Puzzles, Boulder: Westview Press.
Keith Lehrer. and Thomas Paxman (1969): ‘Knowledge: Undefeated Justified True Belief’, Journal of Philosophy, reprinted in the Bernecker and Dretske anthology Knowledge, OUP, 2000.
Gilbert Harman (1973): Thought. (Selections are reprinted in the Sosa and Kim Anthology Epistemology.)
William Lycan (1977); 'Evidence one does not Possess', Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 55, pp. 114-126.
Peter Klein (1980): 'Misleading Evidence and the Restoration of Justification', Philosophical Studies, 37, pp. 81-89.
Stewart Cohen (1981): 'Defeasibility and Background Beliefs', Philosophical Studies, 39, pp. 263-274.
Steven Levy (1978): 'Misleading Defeaters', Journal of Philosophy , 78, pp. 739-742.
Steven Levy (1977): 'Defeasibility Theories of Knowledge', Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 7, pp. 115-123.
David Annis (1973): 'Knowledge and Defeasibility', Philosophical Studies, 74, pp. 199-202.
Robert Shope (1983): The Analysis of Knowing: A Decade of Research, Princeton University Press, (This book is the most detailed account of all the responses to Gettier up to 1982. It’s dry, but admirably comprehensive and instructive.)

Seminar 2. (week 3): Thermometers, Barometers, and Truth-tracking: Reliabilism from Russell to Nozick.

Set Reading:

Robert Nozick (1981): 'Knowledge', from his Philosophical Explanations, pp. 172-85.

Additional Reading:

Stewart Cohen (1992): 'Relevant Alternatives', in Dancy and Sosa (eds): A Companion to Epistemology, Blackwells.
Alvin Goldman (1992): 'Reliabilism', in Dancy and Sosa (eds): A Companion to Epistemology, Blackwells.
Jonathan Dancy (1985): Introduction to Contemporary Epistemology, Chapter Three, first two sections.
Stephen Hetherington (1996): 'Surface Reliability', Chapter 6 of his Knowledge Puzzles, Boulder: Westview Press.
Stephen Hetherington (1996): 'Underlying Reliability', Chapter 7 of his Knowledge Puzzles, Boulder: Westview Press.
Colin McGinn (1984): 'The Concept of Knowledge', Midwest Studies in Philosophy, ix, and reprinted as essay 1 of his Knowledge and Reality: Selected Essays, Oxford: OUP.
Stephen Luper-Foy (ed.) (1987): The Possibility of Knowledge: Nozick and his Critics, Rowman and Littlefield.
Alvin Plantinga (1993): Warrant: The Current Debate, OUP, Ch. 9.
Richard Foley (1985):'What's wrong with Reliabilism', The Monist , 68, and reprinted in Bernecker and Dretske's anthology, Knowledge: Reading in Contemporary Epistemology, pp. Oxford: OUP.
Kent Bach (1985): ‘A Rationale for Reliabilism’, The Monist, 68, and in Bernecker and Dretske’s anthology Knowledge, pp. 199-213, OUP, 2000.
Earl Conee and Richard Feldman (1998): ‘The Generality Problem for Reliabilism’, Philosophical Studies 89, also appears in the Sosa and Kim's anthology Epistemology, pp. 372-386, Oxford: Blackwells, 2000.
Mark Heller (1995): 'The Simple Solution to the Problem of Generality', Nous, 29, pp. 501-515.
Alvin Goldman (1976): ‘Discrimination and Perceptual Knowledge’, Journal of Philosophy 73, and reprinted in Bernecker and Dretske's anthology, Knowledge: Reading in Contemporary Epistemology, OUP.
Fred Dretske (1971): 'Conclusive Reasons', Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 49, pp.1-22, and reprinted as Essay One in his Perception, Knowledge and Belief, Cambridge: CUP.
David Armstrong (1973): ‘The Thermometer Model of Knowledge’, from his Belief, Truth, and Knowledge in excerpted in the Bernecker and Dretske anthology Knowledge, OUP, 2000.
Alvin Goldman (1986): Epistemology and Cognition, Harvard University Press, ch.3-4.
Alvin Goldman (1988): ‘Strong and Weak Justification’, in James Tomberlin Philosophical Perspectives, Vol. 2, Epistemology, pp. 51-69.
Alvin Goldman (1967): ‘A Causal Theory of Knowing’, Journal of Philosophy 64, and anthologised many times.

Seminar 3. (week 4): Relevant and Irrelevant Alternatives: the Reliabilist Response to the Sceptic.

Set Reading:

Robert Nozick (1981): 'Scepticism', from his Philosophical Explanations, pp.197-217.

Additional Reading:

Jonathan Dancy (1985): Introduction to Contemporary Epistemology, Chapter Three, sections 3 And 4.

Stephen Luper-Foy (ed.) (1987): The Possibility of Knowledge: Nozick and his Critics, Rowman and Littlefield.

Stephen Luper-Foy: 'The Epistemic Closure Principle', in The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy

Fred Dretske (1970): 'Epistemic Operators', The Journal of Philosophy, 67, pp. 1007-23, and reprinted as Essay Two in his Perception, Knowledge and Belief, Cambridge: CUP.

Graeme Forbes (1984): 'Nozick on Scepticism', The Philosophical Quarterly, 34, pp. 43-52.

Anthony Brueckner (1985): 'Scepticism and Epistemic Closure', Philosophical Topics, pp. 89-117.

Richard Fumerton (1995): 'Externalism and Scepticism', from his Metaepistemology and Scepticism, Lanham, MA: Rowman and Littlefield, pp. 159-81, and reprinted in Sosa and Kim's anthology Epistemology, pp. 401-412, Oxford: Blackwells, 2000.

Barry Stroud (1994): 'Scepticism, Externalism, and the Goal of Epistemology', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society: Supplementary Volume, and reprinted in his Understanding Human Knowledge, pp. 139-154, Oxford: OUP.

Barry Stroud (1984): The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism, Oxford: OUP.

Jonathan Vogel (2000): 'Reliabilism Levelled', Journal of Philosophy, 97, pp. 602-23.

Edward Craig (1989): 'Nozick and the Sceptic: The Thumbnail Version', Analysis, 49, pp. 161-162.

Crispin Wright (1983): 'Keeping Track of Nozick', Analysis, 43, pp. 134-40.

Brian Garrett (1992): 'Keeping Track of Nozick's Trackers', Analysis, 5, pp. 91-93

Anthony Brueckner (1992): 'Losing Track of Nozick', Analysis, 5, pp. 194-198.

Duncan Pritchard (2002) ‘Recent Work on Radical Skepticism’, American Philosophical Quarterly 39.

Jonathan Schaffer (2001): 'Knowledge, Relevant Alternatives, and Missed Clues', Analysis, 61, 202-208.

Mark Heller (1989): 'Relevant Alternatives', 55, pp. Philosophical Studies, 23-40.

David Shatz (1981): 'Reliability and Relevant Alternatives', Philosophical Studies, 39, pp. 393-408.

Peter Klein: 'Scepticism', in The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy

Seminar 4. (week 5): From Old Reliabilism to New Reliabilism: Better Safe than Sensitive.

Set Reading:

Ernest Sosa (1999): 'How to Defeat Opposition to Moore', in Tomberlin (ed.) Epistemology: Philosophical Perspectives 13, pp. 141-153, Oxford: Blackwells.

Additional Reading:

Ernest Sosa (2002): 'Tracking, Competence, and Knowledge', in The Oxford Handbook of Epistemology, edited by Paul K. Moser, Oxford: OUP.
Ernest Sosa (1996): 'Postscript to "Proper Functionalism and Virtue Epistemology"', in Warrant in Contemporary Epistemology, edited by J. Kvanvig, Rowman and Littlefield, 1996, pp. 271-281.
Ernest Sosa (2000): 'Contextualism and Scepticism', in Tomberlin (ed.) Philosophical Issues, Supplement to Nous, 34.
Mark Sainsbury (1997): 'Easy Possibilities', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 57, pp. 907-19.
Ernest Sosa (1999): 'How must Knowledge be Modally Related to What is Known', Philosophical Topics, 26, pp. 373-84.
Ernest Sosa (2000): 'Skepticism and Contextualism', in Sosa (ed.) Philosophical Issues 10: Scepticism, 2000.
James E Tomberlin (2000): 'Skepticism, Tracking and Warrant' in Sosa (ed.) Philosophical Issues 10: Scepticism, 2000.
Hilary Kornblith (2000): 'The Contextualist Evasion of Epistemology'.
Keith Lehrer (2000): 'Sensitivity, Indiscernibility, and Knowledge', in Sosa (ed.) Philosophical Issues 10: Scepticism, 2000.
Ernest Sosa (2000): 'Replies to Critics', in Sosa (ed.) Philosophical Issues 10: Scepticism, 2000.
Timothy Williamson (1992): ‘Inexact Knowledge’, Mind, 101, pp. 217-42.
Timothy Williamson (2000): Knowledge and Its Limits, Chapter 7, pp. 147-163.
Timothy Williamson (2000): Knowledge and Its Limits, Chapter 8, pp. 164-183.
Timothy Williamson (2000): 'Scepticism and Evidence', Philosophical and Phenomenological Research, 60, pp. 613-28.
Johnathan Vogel (1987): 'Tracking, Closure, and Inductive Knowledge', in The Possibility of Knowledge: Nozick and his Critics, edited by Stephen Luper-Foy.
Stephen Luper-Foy (1984): 'The Epistemic Predicament: Knowledge, Nozickian Tracking, and Skepticism', Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 62, pp. 26-48.
Anthony Brueckner (2002): 'Williamson's Anti-Luminosity Argument', Philosophical Studies, 110, pp. 285-293.

Seminar 5. (week 6): Good knowledge, Bad knowledge: Anti-Anti-Luck Epistemology.

Set Reading:

Stephen Hetherington (1998): 'Actually Knowing', The Philosophical Quarterly, 48, pp. 453-469.

Additional Reading:

Stephen Hetherington (2001): Good Knowledge, Bad Knowledge, Oxford: OUP.

Kent Bach: Accidental Truth and Would-be Knowledge.

Baron Reed (2000): 'Accidental Truth and Accidental Justification', The Philosophical Quarterly, 50, pp. 57-67.

Sartwell, C. (1991): 'Knowledge is Merely True Belief', American Philosophical Quarterly, 28, pp. 157-65.

Sartwell, C. (1992): 'Why Knowledge is Merely True Belief', Journal of Philosophy, 89, pp. 167-80.

Stephen Hetherington (1999): ‘Knowing Failably’, Journal of Philosophy, XCV1, No. 11.

Hamid Vahid (2001): 'Knowledge and Varieties of Epistemic Luck', Dialectica, 55, pp. 351-362.

Barbara J Hall (1994): 'On Epistemic Luck', Southern Journal of Philosophy, 32, pp. 79-84

Mylan Engel (1992): 'Is Epistemic Luck Compatible with Knowledge', Southern Journal of Philosophy, 30, pp. 59-75.

William Harper (1996): ‘Knowledge and Luck’, The Southern Journal of Philosophy 34, 273-83.

Daniel Statman (1991): 'Moral and Epistemic Luck', Ratio, 4, pp. 146-156.

Richard Foley (1984): 'Epistemic Luck and the Purely Epistemic', American Philosophical Quarterly, 21, pp. 113-124.

Duncan Pritchard (forthcoming). 'Epistemic Luck', Journal of Philosophical Research 29.

Duncan Pricthard (forthcoming): Epistemic Luck (book manuscript).

John Greco (1995): ‘A Second Paradox Concerning Responsibility and Luck’, Metaphilosophy 26, pp. 81-96.

A. Latus (2000): 'Moral and Epistemic Luck', Journal of Philosophical Research, 25.

Morillo, C. R. (1984): ‘Epistemic Luck, Naturalistic Epistemology, and the Ecology of Knowledge’, Philosophical Studies 46.

Thomas Nagel (1979): ‘Moral Luck’, in his Mortal Questions, Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.

Bernard Williams (1979): ‘Moral Luck’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 50 (supplementary volume), pp. 115-35.

Daniel Statman (ed.) (1993): Moral Luck, State University of New York Press, Albany, New York.

Guy Axtell: (2001) 'Epistemic Luck in Light of the Virtues', in Fairweather and Zagzebski (eds) Virtue Epistemology: Essays in Epistemic Virtue and Responsibility, OUP, 2001.

If you have any suggestions as to how this bibliography might be improved then please email me.

Last modified: 27th September 2004.