Truls Ljungström’s Reviews > An Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge > Status Update

analytisk syntetisk distinktion

The Problem of the Criterion, Roderick Chisholm identifies two main questions in the theory of knowledge:
A What do we know? What is the extent of our knowledge?
B How are we to decide whether we know? What are the criteria of
knowledge?

skeptikism: (1) One cannot be certain about what the external world is like. (2) One knows that p only if one is certain that p.
(3) Therefore, one cannot know what the external world is like.

ccording to Sosa, the justification of a belief is a matter of its coherence with other beliefs, including coherence with one’s principles about what it is reasonable or permissible to believe. In contrast, the aptness of a belief is a matter of the intellectual virtue that yields it. Apt beliefs are reliably formed beliefs.

Reliabilism holds, roughly, that whether a belief is epistemically justified is a function of its being the product of a reliable cognitive process. Virtue epistemologists hold, roughly, that a belief enjoys the positive epistemic status of being ‘‘apt’’ if it is the product of a truth conducive intellectual virtue.

Perhaps we might formulate the preceding line of thought as follows:
(1) Beliefs are the only things we can appeal to in order to justify our beliefs. (2) If beliefs are the only things we can appeal to in order to justify our
beliefs, then beliefs are the only sources of justification. (3) Therefore, beliefs are the only sources of justification.

Coherentists deny that there are any justified basic beliefs and deny that nondoxastic experiences can be sources of epistemic justifi- cation. In the last chapter, we considered one argument against the view that nondoxastic experiences can be sources of justification.

nondoxastic experience

foundationalism
(3)All justificational chains must either: (i) terminate in a belief that is not justified, (ii) be infinitely long, (iii) be circular, or (iv) terminate in a justified basic belief.
(4) Options (i), (ii), and (iii) are impossible.
(5) Therefore, option (iv) is true — some justificational chains terminate in
justified basic beliefs.

Gettier