Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge, 3rd Edition

Routledge Contemporary Introductions to Philosophy

by Robert Audi

Epistemology, or the theory of knowledge, is concerned with how we know what we know, what justifies us in believing what we believe, and what standards of evidence we should use in seeking truths about the world and human experience. This comprehensive introduction to the field of epistemology explains the concepts and theories central to understanding knowledge. Along with covering the traditional topics of the discipline in detail, Epistemology explores emerging areas of research. The third edition features new sections on such topics as the nature of intuition, the skeptical challenge of rational disagreement, and the value problem the range of questions concerning why knowledge and justified true belief have value beyond that of merely true belief. Updated and expanded, Epistemology remains a superb introduction to one of the most fundamental fields of philosophy.

Special features of the third edition of Epistemology include:


a comprehensive survey of basic concepts, major theories, and emerging research in the field enhanced treatment of key topics such as contextualism, perception (including perceptual content), scientific hypotheses, self-evidence and the a priori, testimony, understanding, and virtue epistemology expanded discussion of the relation between epistemology and related fields, especially philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and ethics increased clarity and ease of understanding for an undergraduate audience an updated list of key literature and annotated bibliography.

Genres: Philosophy, Nonfiction, Science, Academic, Textbooks, Logic

432 pages, Paperback

First published November 20, 1997

Reviews

[Farhan Niazi · Rating 2 out of 5]

This review is from the perspective of a general reader, not someone specializing in philosophy.

Epistemology, a core field of philosophy, has bearing on your views about other topics. I came to this book after finishing a very readable introduction to the topic An Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge
As a general reader, more interested in issues related to justification and skepticism, this book was not as useful for me as Lemos's book. This is because it begins with and spends considerable time on sources of knowledge, as opposed to the structure and analysis of it, even though there is a short introduction to those concepts in the beginning. I found that rather odd but still kept reading. This brings me to the next criticism: there were some useful insights but over all the author spent too much time on issues and distinctions i couldn't bring myself to care about. The writing is quite dense, much more so than Lemos's, and i believe that many parts could have been explained more simply. When i got to the more interesting parts on justification and skepticism, there weren't a very many new insights and the crux of it i had already covered in Lemos's book (this wasn't a criticism by the way).
i couldn't bring myself to finish the book owing to my interests, the writing style and the excessive detail so i skimmed through the later parts and read some topics that seemed interesting. Overall, i cant say this was a satisfactory introduction.
Keep in mind that i am a general reader with specific interests within this topic and a desire to avoid needless distinctions that confuse more than they enlighten. If you are a specialist or you care more about detailed coverage of certain topics that are probably not very interesting for the general reader, perhaps you will find the book useful. For the purposes of an introductory survey i think Lemos's book is much better.

[Maureen Bellwoar · Rating 1 out of 5]

this book is the biggest pain in my ass. a few years ago when i started college and was studying philosophy i had to take epistemology 101. This book was the one we had to read from for class.....it was an insane choice by my teacher. Audi is NOT a good introduction source for epistemology. the book is fine im sure but only if you have a background in epistemology. The students were a bunch of freshmen who are either taking epistemology to get there one philosophy requirement or taking it because they are at the beginning of studying philosophy in school. Audi is not the right source for this. to further complicate things, the teacher did not agree with much of what Audi wrote. So between being befuddled about the book and trying to reconcile what the teacher was telling us it was a horrible class. For a long time even hearing the name Audi would give me instant stress. that term was horrible because of this book. I would spend hours trying to understand just one concept, and i would have dreams where all i could think about was justified true belief. they were nightmares. .....
............
Im sure this book would be great if read in the proper context....like graduate school!

[Jacob Aitken · Rating 4 out of 5]

Some sections were dense sledding, like the one on sense perception. Still, even those sections were worth it. I found his discussion on John Locke very clear and introductory, allowing one to move to a reading of Locke himself. In the first few chapters Audi is trying to show that memory, perception, and testimony serve as sources of belief, if not intended to serve as foundations.

Audi gives us a fine discussion on justified, true belief and the architecture of knowledge. This leads to the discussion of internalism vs. externalism and how that entails/shapes other beliefs.

The two chapters on skepticism were good and the reader is aware of all the problems as a result: problem of other minds; problem of induction, etc. He ends with a decent (if inadequate at points) rebuttal to skepticism: if skepticism is true, can I know that I am thinking about skepticism? He offers a positive defense of common-sense (though not necessarily the Reidian variety). one does not have to have the KK principle: knowing entails knowing that one knows. This leads to an infinite regress.

Observations

*Ironically, sometimes Audi’s endnotes are more enlightening than the main argument themselves.

*The book end with a wonderful annotated bibliography (the inclusion of which is what separates great books from good books).

*The section on testimony was quite good. He did note Reid’s contributions and he did deal with Plantinga, but I think his chapter would have been stronger if Audi reworked the argument to say that one is warranted by having a prima-facie credulity in testimony until sufficient defeaters prove otherwise.

*Sometimes when the narrative appears to get bogged down in highly technical details, Audi will rescue the argument with a subsequently fine chapter. This keeps the reader from despairing.

*As every reviewer has noted, the prose is painful. To be fair I am not sure how this could have been otherwise. This is a highly technical and advanced (the subtitle notwithstanding) book on a specific subset of philosophy. It’s going to be hard reading no matter what.

[John Turlockton · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very badly written. He explains concepts very badly using very imprecise language, he then uses those poorly defined concepts as the basis for the book, using them again and again without explaining them clearly. Despite being inadequate in the previously mentioned area, he is very longwinded and boring in the rest of the book, going over and over parts which are actually quite simple and don't need to be complicated as he does. An Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge by Noah Lemos is far better, better written, more concise and much better explained.

[David · Rating 1 out of 5]

I thought the era of philosophers sitting in armchairs trying very hard to understand reality and the mind just by thinking about it were over. After all, we spent millennia doing this and didn’t really get anywhere, and then sciences as diverse as physics and psychology started establishing things that philosophers had been arguing over for all those millennia (what is vision, what is life, what are the heavens, how does memory work, etc.). Daniel Dennett memorably describes consciousness as a “user illusion” in From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds, a reminder that introspection doesn’t lead to real knowledge (and was appropriately abandoned by psychologists starting around the mid 1800s).

But apparently I was wrong about those armchairs being abandoned.

Audi happily goes on and on (and on and on) about perception and memory without engaging in any psychology or neurology. As a result, it’s all just bullshit, much like Locke’s tabula rasa view of the mind. However, Locke had the excuse that when he was working there was no science of psychology. Audi has no excuse.

I am all in favor of analyzing things closely when doing so can lead to a deeper and more general understanding. Working through mathematical proofs rather than just applying the results, analyzing the logical structure of math itself, thinking about equations of motion rather than just playing catch… this is all good and justifiable effort if you want to more deeply understand those things.

Philosophers can be useful in undertaking or provoking such analyses. Scientists are often not reflective enough, or they’re too narrowly focused. Philosophers can poke us to clarify, dig deeper, and synthesize more broadly.

However. So much philosophy is just people standing around flapping their arms in an attempt to fly, which hasn’t worked for 3000 years and isn’t working now, but boy do they have deeply sophisticated discussions about the concept of flying. (Let me explain to you the difference between perceptual flying, propositional flying, and objectual flying. Now let’s muse about Gettier’s problem about dreaming that you’re flying while actually on a plane. Oh, ignore those scientists and engineers who actually got us into the air and say flapping the arms doesn’t help. Their “flying” is unsophisticated.)

If you’re interested in an introduction to epistemology, Nagel’s Knowledge: A Very Short Introduction is vastly superior to Audi’s book. Even better, engage with the philosophers who bothered to engage with science, such as Patricia Churchland, Daniel Dennett, Tania Lombrozo, and David Chalmers.

As an example of the stupidity in this book, consider the distinction between propositional and objectual beliefs. It’s bizarre. Audi says that two-year-old Susie can have an objectual belief that a tachistoscope is making noise (she can believe of the tachistoscope that it’s making noise), but she cannot believe that the tachistoscope is making noise (propositional belief) because she doesn’t know what a tachistoscope is (pp. 19–20). This fails to make sense in several ways. First, Audi takes a belief-first approach to epistemology, so he can’t ground is his ideas of belief on ideas of knowledge, because this would be a knowledge-first approach. Second, the dichotomous distinction between the two types of belief makes no sense. How well does Susie need to know what a tachistoscope is to transition between the two types of belief? Is knowing the name enough? Most of us wouldn’t call this any real kind of knowledge, but presumably that’s all most adults would know about a tachistoscope. Maybe knowing what it’s used for? But then how to distinguish it from another device that can do the same thing?

I’m reviewing the third edition.

[miso miso · Rating 3 out of 5]

kind of tortuous but good. had to read it for my philosophy class.

[Jay · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very poorly written, which I will typically forgive when it comes to treatments of complex topics, but in this case the writing is so imprecise and sloppy that it borders on seeming laziness. A big part of philosophy is, or at least should be, clarifying concepts that are otherwise confused in the minds of the general public. I’m not sure that Audi has clarified most of the de novo terms he introduces (to replace perfectly good, accepted terms of art in philosophy) in his own mind, even. The final nail in the coffin is that the text is riddled with errors, either direct or of omission. I got to the part where he absolutely butchers Berkeley’s phenomenalism and mis-defines the term irrealism (which he uses interchangeably with idealism), and could go no further. What a waste of time. I’m just happy that I have enough of a background in philosophy that I could recognize that waste as early as I did. For those who haven’t, caveat emptor.

[Blunt Of Mercia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Since I already knew the outline of the subject, I skimmed through this for an hour or two so as to test its waters. I would not recommend partaking of them, for they suffer from two grave errors — or pollutants, if you will.
Firstly, an informal style, which is ugly and hard to follow. Secondly, the stylistic over-simplification characteristic of the television era. This latter is the gravest of errors, for philosophy, when explained well, is fiendishly simple; but when poorly, it is of the sort of punishment proscribed by the phrase 'cruel and unusual.'

Can there be anything so demeaning to the dignity of a reader as this combination?
It assumes stupidity. It assumes blindness to beauty. What does it not assume? other than to teach?

Could there be a shallower, less important subject for the mind of man to spend his too few hours on? The history of philately perhaps?

"The postage stamp 1967-1994, 1500pp. of Jonas Dryasdust," would be a more edifying, more wholesome publication.

[Berk · Rating 1 out of 5]

This is one of the worst books I have read in recent years. The author's remarkable ability to make even the most interesting arguments sound tedious shines through his otherwise unremarkable prose...

The only consolation from having wasted several hours reading this POS is that it validated my high standards for adding anything to my reading list; I shouldn't have made an exception for this book.

[Stephen Bedard · Rating 4 out of 5]

A good solid introduction to epistemology. If you are looking to get an idea of the current discussions on knowledge, this is a great place to start.

[brooke · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not really the easiest introduction book to understand.

[Saleh · Rating 3 out of 5]

من أهم الكتب في بابه وأشهرها لكن ترجمة إسلام سعد تحتاج إلى ترجمة للأسف، احفظ مالك واقصد كتبا أخرى في نفس الباب ككتاب محمود زيدان وصلاح إسماعيل.

[Muhammad Shemyal Nisar · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very good and at times very dense a book for the introduction to the subject as well as for refreshing your knowledge for those who have been out of touch for some time

[Rachael · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an excellent and useful review of epistemology. Audi slowly builds a case for moderate foundationalism while overviewing other major positions and ending with a critique of skepticism. On the way he gives an accounting of what counts as basic (non inferential knowledge) including perceptual beliefs, from introspection, reason and memory. A sort of secondary non inferential source is from testimony. Then he talks about the overall architecture of our noetic system, comparing and foundationalism and coherentism and suggesting a moderate foundationalism taking into account extra factors such as coherence as potential defeaters. He also includes a fascinating chapter applying these concepts to the possibility of scientific, ethical and religious knowledge.

[Landon W · Rating 5 out of 5]

Best single volume introductory survey of epistemology that I know of. Audi writes clearly and cogently, and covers an impressive breadth of topics. The book is weak in the area of social epistemology, but that is forgivable as it was authored before the current explosion of interest in that area. I would still recommend it as an excellent starting point for anyone with a serious interest in analytic epistemology.

[Paul · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very good introduction to epistemology from one of the leading philosophers of our day. My only complaint with the book, really, and it is subjective, is that I do not like Audi's writing style.

[Christian · Rating 3 out of 5]

There are better texts on the subject, but it is a great gateway resource for writing papers and a more in-depth text than most others I've seen. It is clearly not for philosophy beginners, and a very basic knowledge of epistemology is almost required to get through the book.

[Jeffrey · Rating 2 out of 5]

Confusing and muddled, even with my good grades in epistemology I couldn't understand this book about 75% of the time. The clarity of explanation is simply lacking when it comes to the deep issues in the field.

[Quentin · Rating 2 out of 5]

It could have been one-third the size--it is too prolix. It could have been more concise and thus more clear. However, it actually is an excellent introduction to epistemology if you have the time and patience; I had the time as well as patience.

[Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

I remember disagreeing with a lot of what Audi had to say, but even so, it was a useful introduction to the topic.

[Craig Bolton]

Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge Contemporary Introductions to Philosophy) by Robert Audi (2002)

[Alexandre Guay · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bon livre d'introduction à la théorie de la connaissance et à la position d'Audi sur le sujet.