Contemporary Debates in Epistemology: Syllabus

TOC: [ Texts ] [ Requirements ] [ Website ] [ Tentative Schedule ]


Texts
The seminar will consist (primarily) in reading and discussing the recent collection Contemporary Debates in Epistemology. Some other readings will be made available in electronic format on this page – either in HTML or Adobe PDF format.

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Requirements

• Seminar Paper (70%)
  • The seminar paper is the main work required and counts toward 80% of your semester's grade.
  • Papers can be on virtually any subject that is relevant to this seminar. I encourage you to come up with your own topic, but I am happy to make recommendations if you get stuck.
  • Everyone should email me with a proposed topic by April 1. That email should (1) describe the problem your seminar paper will tackle, (2) suggest what sort of solution you hope to be able to defend, (3) list the most important texts that you think you will need to study, and (4) explain why you decided to tackle this problem. Obviously, it is hard to answer these questions before you have finished (or even begun) your papers. But it is important to take a stab at answering them, even if it turns out that your guesses as to where you are going turn out to be off the mark.
  • Seminar papers should be 12–15 double-spaced pages in length. Much shorter papers probably will not engage the issues with sufficient detail, depth, and care. Longer papers are fine, but not if they could have been shorter without loss. Seminar papers are due on Wednesday, May 6 (our last seminar meeting). Incompletes will be granted only for good reasons.
  • Further comments on writing seminar papers will be posted on the web.
    
    
• Seminar Presentation (20%)
  • Students who are enrolled in the seminar for credit are all required to give one seminar presentation during the semester, which will count for one-fifth of your semester's grade.
  • Seminar presentations will typically consist in articulating some specific issue that arises in the assigned reading for the particular meeting of the seminar, clarifying and relating the views on this issue that are defended in the readings, and offering a tentative conclusion concerning how the issue should be addressed.
  • Seminar presentations should be roughly 20 minutes in length. (If they were written out, they would be roughly six double-spaced pages.) The goal is to make a clear and useful presentation to the seminar that will help to focus the discussion that follows, not to write a second briefer paper. Seminar presentations may be interrupted with questions, and seminar presenters should lead the ensuing discussion.
  • In many cases seminar presentations will be on the same topic as the seminar paper. But this is not necessary, and those who give presentations early in the semester may well decide to focus on different questions in their seminar papers.
  • Students should have an outline of their presentations ready a week in advance and should discuss their outlines with me. These outlines/handouts will be distributed in the seminar and posted on the seminar website.
  • In this seminar, it will be possible to do a "debate-style" presentation with another student in the course (or with yourself!). Our text is structured that way, which makes it pretty easy.
    
    
• Seminar Participation (10%).
  • Participation in discussion in the seminar will count for 10% of your semester grade, though only in unusual circumstances will poor participation lower your grade.
  • Discussion is a crucial part of a seminar. Though I hope that I will have some useful insights and perspectives to offer, each member of the seminar should come each week armed with questions, comments, etc. of their own.
  • I will use the course notes & handouts page to post occasional questions and puzzles of my own, which I hope will further stimulate discussion. [I will also use that space to post student presentation handouts.]

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Website
Current course information can be found on the course web site, at:

http://fitelson.org/epistemology/

The home page of our website is reserved mainly for announcements. The purpose of the other pages on our website should be self–explanatory. You should keep an eye on the course website, as it will be updated with materials and announcements pertaining to the course.

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Tentative Schedule (subject to change – so stay tuned)

Week 2 (1/28): Is Knowledge Closed Under Known Entailment?

• Required Readings
  • Chapter 2 of our text (Dretske vs Hawthorne)
• Further Reading
  • Luper, The Epistemic Closure Principle (SEP entry)
  • Vogel, Are There Counterexamples to the Closure Principle?
  • Audi, Chapter 6 of Epistemology, A Contemporary Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge
  • Feldman, In Defence of Closure
  • Audi, Deductive Closure, Defeasibility and Scepticism: A Reply to Feldman
  • Shogenji, The Degree of Epistemic Justification and the Conjunction Fallacy
  • Lewis, Elusive Knowledge

Week 3 (2/4): Is Knowledge Contextual?

• Required Readings
  • Chapter 3 of our text (Conee vs Cohen)
• Further Reading
  • Rysiew, Epistemic Contextualism (SEP entry)
  • DeRose, Contextualism: An Explanation and Defense
  • Lewis, Elusive Knowledge
  • MacFarlane, The Assessment Sensitivity of Knowledge Attributions
  • MacFarlane, Semantic Minimalism and Non-Indexical Contextualism

Week 4 (2/11): Can Skepticism be Refuted?

• Required Readings
  • Chapter 5 of our text (Vogel vs Fumerton)
• Further Readings
  • Vogel, Cartesian Skepticism and Inference to the Best Explanation
  • Fumerton, Induction and Reasoning to the Best Explanation
  • Fumerton, Skepticism and Reasoning to the Best Explanation
  • Leite, An Empirical Response to External World Skepticism
  • Some Further Readings on IBE:
    • Harman, The Inference to the Best Explanation, The Philosophical Review, Vol. 74, No. 1. (Jan., 1965), pp. 88–95.
    • Lipton, Inference to the Best Explanation, Chapter 4 of his Inference to the Best Explanation.
    • van Fraassen, Inference to the Best Explanation: Salvation by Laws?, pp. 130 –150 (Chapter 6) of Laws and Symmetry, Clarendon Press, 1989. [you can download the notes and bibliography for van Fraassen's book here]
    • Ladyman, Douven, Horsten, van Fraassen, A Defence of Van Fraassen's Critique of Abductive Inference: Reply to Psillos, The Philosophical Quarterly, Vol. 47, No. 188. (Jul., 1997), pp. 305–321.
  • Fumerton, The Structure of Skeptical Arguments
  • Foley, Three Attempts to Refute Skepticism and Why They Fail
  • Stroud, Skepticism and the Possibility of Knowledge
  • Audi, Chapter 10 of Epistemology, A Contemporary Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge
  • Williamson, Scepticism
  • Schiffer, Evidence = Knowledge: Williamson’s Solution to Skepticism
  • Pryor, The Skeptic and the Dogmatist
  • White, Problems for Dogmatism

Week 5 (2/18): Is there a priori Knowledge?

• Required Readings
  • Chapter 8 of our text (Bonjour vs Devitt)
• Further Readings
  • Russell, A Priori Knowledge and Justification (SEP entry)
  • Audi, Chapter 4 of Epistemology, A Contemporary Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge
  • Casullo, A Priori Knowledge (from the Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
  • Hawthorne, A Priority and Externalism
  • New Essays on the A Priori (Boghossian and Peacocke, eds.)
    
    • Kitcher, A Priori Knowledge Revisited
    • Peacocke, Explaining the A Priori: The Programme of Moderate Rationalism
    • Boghossian, Knowledge of Logic

Week 6 (2/25): Is Infinitism the Solution to the Regress Problem?

• Required Readings
  • Chapter 11 of our text (Ginet vs Klein)
• Further Readings
  • Audi, Chapter 7 of Epistemology, A Contemporary Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge
  • Fantl, Modest Infinitism
  • Turri, On the Regress Argument for Infinitism
  • Gillett, Infinitism Redux? A Response to Klein
  • Peijnenburg, Infinitism Regained

Week 7 (3/4): Can Beliefs Be Justified through Coherence Alone?

• Required Readings
  • Chapter 10 of our text (Elgin vs van Cleve)
• Further Readings
  • Kvanvig, Coherentist Theories of Epistemic Justification (SEP entry)
  • Firth, Coherence, Certainty, and Epistemic Priority
  • Audi, Chapter 7 of Epistemology, A Contemporary Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge
  • Shogenji, Justification by Coherence from Scratch
  • Huemer, Probability and Coherence Justification
  • Olsson, Against Coherence

Week 8 (3/11): Is There Immediate Justification?

• Required Readings
  • Chapter 9 of our text (Pryor vs Williams)
• Further Readings
• Fumerton, Foundationalist Theories of Epistemic Justification (SEP entry)
• Goldman, Immediate Justification and Process Reliabilism
• van Cleve, Foundationalism, Epistemic Principles, and the Cartesian Circle
• Korcz, The Epistemic Basing Relation (SEP entry)

Week 9 (3/18): Does Perceptual Experience Have Conceptual Content?

• Required Readings
  • Chapter 8 of our text (1st ed.) (Brewer vs Byrne)
• Further Readings
  • Bermúdez and Cahen, Nonconceptual Mental Content (SEP entry)
  • Peacocke, Does Perception have a Nonconceptual Content?
  • Ginsborg, Empirical concepts and the content of experience
  • Hopp, Conceptualism and the Myth of the Given

Week 10 (4/1): Is Justification Internal?

• Required Readings
  • Chapter 13 of our text (Greco vs Feldman)
• Further Readings
  • Fumerton, Internalist and Externalist Foundationalism
  • Pappas, Internalist vs Externalist Conceptions of Epistemic Justification (SEP entry)
  • Conee and Feldman, Internalism Defended
  • Goldman, Internalism Exposed
  • Comesaña, We Are (Almost) All Externalists Now
  • Hawthorne, A Priority and Externalism
  • Cruz and Pollock, The Chimerical Appeal of Epistemic Externalism
  • Korcz, The Epistemic Basing Relation (SEP entry)

Week 11 (4/8): Is Truth the Primary Epistemic Goal?

• Required Readings
  • Chapter 14 of our text (Kvanvig vs David)
• Further Readings
  • Zagzebski, Epistemic Value Monism
  • DePaul, Value Monism in Epistemology
  • Sosa, The Place of Truth in Epistemology
  • Firth, Epistemic Merit, Intrinsic and Instrumental
  • Maitzen, Our Errant Epistemic Aim
  • Wedgewood, The Aim of Belief
  • Shah, How Truth Governs Belief
  • Owens, Does Belief Have an Aim?
  • Humberstone, Direction of Fit

Week 12 (4/15): Is Justified Belief Responsible Belief?

• Required Readings
  • Chapter 11 of our text (1st ed.) (Foley vs Wolterstorff)
• Further Readings
  • Greco, Internalism and Epistemically Responsible Belief
  • Goldman, Internalism Exposed
  • Korblith, Justified Belief and Epistemically Responsible Action
  • Pappas, Internalist vs Externalist Conceptions of Epistemic Justification (SEP entry)

Week 13 (4/29): Does Evidence = Knowledge?

• Required Readings
  • Williamson, Evidence
  • Comesaña and Kantin, Is Evidence Knowledge?
• Further Readings
  • Schiffer, Evidence = Knowledge: Williamson’s Solution to Skepticism
  • Joyce, Williamson on Evidence and Knowledge
  • Williamson, Knowledge as Evidence

Week 14 (4/22): Is (All) Evidence Propositional?

• Required Readings
  • Neta, What Evidence Do You Have?
  • Feldman, Having Evidence
• Further Readings
  • Williamson, Evidence
  • Williamson, Knowledge as Evidence
  • Titelbaum, Not Enough There There

Week 15 (5/6): Is Logic Normative for Thought?

• Required Readings
  • Harman, Chapters 1 and 2 of Change in View
  • Field, What is the Normative Role of Logic? (lecture notes -- here is the paper)
• Further Readings
  • Field, Pluralism in Logic
  • Field, Apriority as an Evaluative Notion
  • MacFarlane, In What Sense (if any) is Logic Normative for Thought?
  • Titelbaum, Not Enough There There

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