Contemporary Theories of Knowledge

by John L. Pollock

Designed as a text for advanced philosophy students, this book introduces the reader to the fundamental issues and approaches in the field of epistemology. The author provides a critical survey and assessment of all major competing theories of knowledge - foundations theories, coherence theories, direct realism, reliabilism and probabilism. Pollock clarifies the dinstinguishing features of each theory and analyzes the arguments supporting or refuting them. He makes a strong case for a particular theory - the nondoxastic internalist theory of direct realism - as the most logically defensible.

Genres: Philosophy

434 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 1987

About the author

John L. Pollock is Regents Professor of Philosophy and Research Professor of Cognitive Science at the University of Arizona.

Reviews

[Zo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good combination of textbook style overview with substantive, and persuasive, reasoning of its own. I think Pollock's theory is largely on the right track, though he perhaps doesn't acknowledge how easily it can be collapsed with other theories, or how similar it is to people who came before him. Approaching things from a naturalistic and engineering perspective as he does really helps map out the problem-space. I think his main contention about the necessity of accepting nondoxastic-->doxastic "reasons" is certainly true, but what is in need of interrogation is when we don't accept such transitions, how such transitions operate, and how to articulate the relationship between nonconceptual and conceptual content. Those are all incredibly difficult questions that are perhaps more in need of the right formulation than an "answer," but I think they are the tasks left if one agrees with Pollock's "internalist non-doxastic" approach.

[Bernard English · Rating 3 out of 5]

First thing I noticed is that Pollock has categorized the theories he will discuss especially clearly. Surprisingly, that's not what I found in some other philosophy books.

He doesn't do it too often, but at some critical points he uses facts about brains or psychology to shoot down an argument. For example when he cites the brain's limited capacity for information processing. In one case (p. 168), he claims the natural process under discussion "can be clarified by psychological investigation." Elsewhere, he approvingly states there is one internalist system which "gives epistemology much firmer roots in psychology" than some other theories do.

I'm all for empirical research, but I cannot quite see what his guidelines are for invoking actual facts about the brain or psychology into epistemological arguments. On p. 171 he writes that the question of which epistemic norms are used are in some cases not best answered by performing laboratory experiments. Perhaps, but I think he should have clearly spelled out more broadly at the outset when to defer to the results of laboratory experiments and when one can safely remain on a more philosophical plane. Otherwise readers may wonder why they shouldn't just read about the latest research in cognitive sciences.

[Lulu]

Level 3 - epistemology

[Jeff · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an excellent book, so much so that I have put it back on my “Top 40” favorite books. The contents is presented in clear, understandable language, and the authors do an excellent job of explaining the nature of knowledge and why they advocate the specific theory that they do—an internalism based on direct realism.

For my own part, I believe human knowledge is objective in the sense that (1) it is based on objective reality, (2) it can be recorded for future use, and thus (3) it can be universally available to all sentient creatures. However, all knowledge per se is inherently subjective because it comes from the attempts of sentient beings to understand and make sense of their subjective experiences of reality. The pursuit of knowledge is thoroughly subjective and requires the active participation of the pursuer. Without sentient life, there is no true knowledge.

[[Name Redacted] · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had much the same problem with this that I had with Sven Bernecker & Fred Dretske's "Knowledge: Readings in Contemporary Epistemology" -- interesting attempts to overcome the epistemological skeptics' arguments, but nothing more substantive than arguments which essentially come down to "Well, it scares us to think that we may not be able to know that we know anything...so let's just ASSUME that we do!". As a skeptic myself, I found that sort of assumption transparently disingenuous and unsatisfying.

[Richard Williams]

Contemporary Theories of Knowledge by John L. Pollock (1987)