ST ALBERT INSTITUTE FOR HIGHER EDUCATION FAYIT

LECTURE NOTES: 200 LEVELS

EPISTEMOLOGY I

COMPILED BY

REV. FR.
WILLIAMS, FIDELIS YAKUNAT

COURSE OUTLINE

1. INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS EPISTEMOLOGY?

- Why is Epistemology Important?
2. THE NOTION OF KNOWLEDGE
- What Is Knowledge?
- The Process of Human Knowledge
3. The Analysis of Knowledge
4. Knowledge as Justified True Belief
- The Truth Condition
- The Belief Condition
- The Justification Condition
5. WHAT IS JUSTIFICATION?
- Deontological and Non-Deontological Justification
- Evidence vs. Reliability
- Internal vs. External
- Kinds of Justification
6. THE STRUCTURE OF KNOWLEDGE AND JUSTIFICATION

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 - Foundationalism
- Coherentism
- Why Foundationalism?
- Why Coherentism?
7. SOURCES OF KNOWLEDGE AND JUSTIFICATION
- Perception
- Introspection
- Memory
- Reason
- Testimony
- Lightweight Knowledge
8. THE PROBLEM OF PERCEPTION
- Introduction
- The Argument from Illusion
- The Argument from Hallucination
- Theories of Perception
a. The Sense-Datum Theory
i. Indirect Realism and Phenomenalism
ii. Objections to the Sense-Datum Theory
b. The adverbial theory
i. Objections to the Adverbial Theory
c. The Intentionalist Theory
i.. Objections to the Intentionalist Theory
d. The Disjunctivist Theory
i. Objections to Disjunctivism
9. TRUTH
- The Principal Problem
- What Sorts of Things are True (or False)?
- Correspondence Theory
- Tarski's Semantic Theory
- Coherence Theories/ Objections
- Pragmatic Theories
- Deflationary Theories
10. SCEPTICISM

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INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS EPISTEMOLOGY?
Epistemology is the study of the nature and scope of knowledge and justified
belief. It analyzes the nature of knowledge and how it relates to similar
notions such as truth, belief and justification. It also deals with the means of
production of knowledge, as well as skepticism about different knowledge
claims. It is essentailly about issues having to do with the creation and
dissemination of knowledge in particular areas of inquiry.
The term is derived from the Greek epistēmē (“knowledge”) and logos
(“reason”), and accordingly the field is sometimes referred to as the theory of
knowledge. Epistemology has a long history, beginning with the ancient
Greeks and continuing to the present. Along with metaphysics, logic, and
ethics, it is one of the four main branches of philosophy, and nearly every
great philosopher has contributed to it.
Epistemology is one of the core areas of philosophy. It has been primarily
concerned with propositional knowledge, that is, knowledge that
such-and-such is true, rather than other forms of knowledge, for example,
knowledge how to such-and-such. As the study of knowledge, epistemology is
concerned with the following questions: What are the necessary and
sufficient conditions of knowledge? What are its sources? What is its
structure, and what are its limits? As the study of justified belief, epistemology

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aims to answer questions such as: How we are to understand the concept of
justification? What makes justified beliefs justified? Is justification internal or
external to one's own mind?
Understood more broadly, epistemology is about issues having to do with the
creation and dissemination of knowledge in particular areas of inquiry.
There is a vast array of views about propositional knowledge, but one
virtually universal presupposition is that knowledge is true belief, but. For
example, lucky guesses or true beliefs resulting from wishful thinking are not
knowledge. Thus, a central question in epistemology is: what must be added
to true beliefs to convert them into knowledge?
The defining questions of epistemology include the following:
1. What is the nature of propositional knowledge, knowledge that a particular
proposition about the world is true?
To know a proposition, we must believe it and it must be true, but something
more is required, something that distinguishes knowledge from a lucky guess.
Let's call this additional element ‘warrant’. A good deal of philosophical work
has been invested in trying to determine the nature of warrant.
2. How can we gain knowledge?
We can form true beliefs just by making lucky guesses. How to gain
warranted beliefs is less clear. Moreover, to know the world, we must think
about it, and it is unclear how we gain the concepts we use in thought or what
assurance, if any, we have that the ways in which we divide up the world using
our concepts correspond to divisions that actually exist.
3. What are the limits of our knowledge?
Some aspects of the world may be within the limits of our thought but beyond
the limits of our knowledge; faced with competing descriptions of them, we
cannot know which description is true. Some aspects of the world may even
be beyond the limits of our thought, so that we cannot form intelligible
descriptions of them, let alone know that a particular description is true.

Why is Epistemology Important?

Epistemology is important because it is fundamental to how we think. Without
some means of understanding how we acquire knowledge, how we rely upon
our senses, and how we develop concepts in our minds, we have no coherent
path for our thinking. A sound epistemology is necessary for the existence of
sound thinking and reasoning — this is why so much philosophical literature
can involve seemingly arcane discussions about the nature of knowledge.
Questions Asked in Epistemology:
1. What can we know?
2. How can we know it?
3. Why do we know some things, but not others?
4. How do we acquire knowledge?
5. Is knowledge possible?
6. Can knowledge be certain?

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7. How can we differentiate truth from falsehood?
8. Why do we believe certain claims and not others?

THE NOTION OF KNOWLEDGE

The question of knowledge is very central in Epistemology. Thus we have to
know what we mean when we say we ‘know’ something. Unless this is
understood it will be impossible for us to rule out erroneous theories based on
misconceptions of what it is to know something.

What Is Knowledge?
Knowledge is the awareness and understanding of particular aspects of
reality. It is the clear, lucid information gained through the process of reason
applied to reality. The traditional approach is that knowledge requires three
necessary and sufficient conditions, so that knowledge can then be defined
as "justified true belief":
The word to ‘know’ is an ambigeous word. We say we ‘know’ in many senses,
for example , i can say that i know Kaduna, or Kano or that i know Mr. Okeke
or James.In this case i mean iam familiar with the places and people
mentioned. I may also use the word to indicate experience, like when i say i
know pain or what dificult times means. Knowing may yet means mastery of a
special form of competence (e.g driving a car).
From these instances. We see that we can pin point instances of knowledge
but we cannot really define it. And Bittle confirms this by saying ; “ just
because it is a primary act of experience the idea of knowledge eludes every
effort at an exact definition in his words, “to know’’ is on a par with “to see’’,”to
taste,’’ “to touch,’’ to imagine.’’ “to will,’’ He went on to say that it is useless to
try to explain to a man born blind what “colour is or even seeing is.
This idea of knowledge is good as it goes. However, we cannot reduce
knowledge to merely subjective states of man’s being. Certain conditions
must be fulfilled before that which one claims to know becomes
knowledge.Hamlyn sees it thus: “one condition of being said to know
something is that what one claim to know must be the case; If it is an object
that one claims to know, this must exist, and if what one claims to know is
formulable in a proposition, this must be true.’’ He went further to give three
conditions for knowledge.I know a thing if:
1. I believe it

2. I had grond on which to base the belief and

3. The belief was true.

It would seem, judging from these conditions, that knowledge involves a kind
of claim to certainty. This is why, perhaps, the most widely accepted definition
of knowledge has been that which describes it as a “justified true belief.’’

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It must be remarked immediately that it is not easy or necessary that
complete certainty of a statement’s truth be had; the best we can achieve is a
very strong ground for thinking it true. So it may sometimes happen that our
grounds are insufficcient, and what is claimed true is false; this does not
mean that one’s claim lacks justification; it merely means that one’s claim
was mistaken.

THE PROCESS OF HUMAN KNOWLEDGE

In the process of acquiring human knowledge three essential elements enter

into it, namely, the knowing subject, the known object and the mental act of
knowing (cognition). In knowing there is a union of the object and the subject,
possesion of or unity of the knower and the known, according to St. Thomas
Aquinas. The subject lives the object, it grasps the object in a mysterious way.
It is a “unitive act’’ in as much as it brings the object and the subject in contact
with each other, thereby rendering the object “present’’ to the subject and
making the subject “aware’’ of this presence of the object. By this union the
knower and the known no longer constitute two separate realities,extrinsic to
one another, but as respectively implied in a casual notion that in some way
indentified them, since the action is in the receipient and constitutes its
perfection as recipient.

Before the union, however, the object is merely an “object-in-itself’’ but

through and in the act of knowing it becomes an object to the mind.’’ And it is
by becoming “an object to the mind “ that a thing becomes known. Some how
or other the external physical object must become united to the mind of the
subject by means of the congnitioned act and be presented to the ego as an
“object –in-the-mind’’ in order that it can become known by the subject; in
other words, the object must become “intra-mental’’ and intra-subjective
before it can be known. The process that makes this possible is described by
Aristothe and Thomas Aquinas as the process of abstraction. And Aristothe
described this process by first maintaining that all knowledge is acquired
through sense perception or sensation; and it is the first step in the process of
acquiring knowledge. Beside the five senses there is also the ‘common sense
which, as it were, synthesizes what we perceive separately with the separation
sense organs and accounts for certain aspects of perception( for example the
perception of duration,motion,etc), which cannot be accounted for by any of
the five senses. Next, the imagination produces images of objects of

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sensation. These images (phantasmata) are particular images of particular
objects as they are perceived through the senses. The intellect now begins to
work on these images. Here Aristothe divides the intellect into two: active and
passive intellect. The active intellect illuminates the images and removes
from them all particular characteristics leaving only the essences or the forms.
In other words the active intellect extracts from them the essences of the
objects they represent, removing from them all particular traits such as size,
height,colour, etc., in short all accidental determinations. The active intellect
then impresses these essences on the passive intellect. The passive intellect
is therefore, a receiving entity, it has the potentiality to receive and to become
what it receives in an immaterial way. In receiving the essences of the images
impressed on it by the active intellect, the passive intellect is transformed into
that which it receives and thus we have abstrait ideas, or concepts.

THE ANALYSIS OF KNOWLEDGE

The objective of the analysis of knowledge is to state conditions that are

individually necessary and jointly sufficient for propositional knowledge.
Propositional knowledge should be distinguished from knowledge of
“acquaintance”, as obtains when Susan knows Alyssa. The relation between
propositional knowledge and the knowledge at issue in other “knowledge”
locutions in English, such as knowledge-where (“Susan knows where she is”)
and especially knowledge-how (“Susan knows how to ride a bicycle”) is
subject to some debate. The propositional knowledge that is the
analysandum of the analysis of knowledge literature is paradigmatically
expressed in English by sentences of the form “S knows that p,” where “S”
refers to the knowing subject, and “p” to the proposition that is known. A
proposed analysis consists of a statement of the following form: S knows
that p if and only if j, where j indicates the analysans: paradigmatically, a list of
conditions that are individually necessary and jointly sufficient for S to have
knowledge that p. A correct analysis of knowledge would do more than pick
out the actual extension of knowledge; even if, in actual fact, all cases
of S knowing that p are cases of j, and all cases of the latter are cases of the
former, j might fail as an analysis of knowledge. For example, it might be that
there are possible cases of knowledge without j, or vice versa. A proper
analysis of knowledge should at least be a necessary truth. Consequently,
hypothetical thought experiments provide appropriate test cases for various
analyses, as we shall see below. Even a necessary bi-conditional linking
knowledge to some state j would probably not be sufficient for an analysis of
knowledge, although just what more is required is a matter of some
controversy. According to some theorists, to analyze knowledge is literally to
identify the components that make up knowledge—compare a chemist who

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analyzes a sample for its chemical composition. On this interpretation of the
project of analyzing knowledge, the defender of a successful analysis of
knowledge will be committed to something like the metaphysical claim
that what it is for S to know p is for some list of conditions involving S and p
to obtain. Other theorists think of the analysis of knowledge as a distinctively
conceptual analysis, attempting to limn the structure of the concept of
knowledge. On one version of this way of thinking, the concept knowledge is
literally composed of more basic concepts, linked together by something like
Boolean operators; given this approach, an analysis is subject not only to
extensional accuracy, but to facts about the cognitive representation of
knowledge and other epistemic notions. In practice, many epistemologists
engaging in the project of analyzing knowledge leave these metaphilosophical
interpretive questions unresolved; attempted analyses, and counterexamples
thereto, are often proposed without its being made explicit whether the claims
are intended as metaphysical or conceptual ones. In many cases, this lack of
specificity may be legitimate, since all parties tend to agree that an analysis of
knowledge ought at least to be extensionally correct in all metaphysically
possible worlds; as we shall see, many theories have been defended and,
especially, refuted, on those terms. The attempt to analyze knowledge has
received a considerable amount of attention from epistemologists,
particularly in the late 20th Century, but no analysis has been widely accepted.
Some contemporary epistemologists reject the assumption that knowledge is
susceptible to analysis.

Knowledge as Justified True Belief: (the traditional (“tripartite”) analysis of

knowledge.)

There are three components to the traditional (“tripartite”) analysis of

knowledge. According to this analysis, justified, true belief is necessary and
sufficient for knowledge. The Tripartite Analysis of Knowledge: S knows
that p iff p is true; S believes that p; S is justified in believing that p. The
tripartite analysis of knowledge is often abbreviated as the “JTB” analysis, for
“justified true belief”.Socrates articulates the need for something like a
justification condition in Plato's Theaetetus, when he points out that ‘true
opinion’ is in general insufficient for knowledge. For example, if a lawyer
employs sophistry to induce a jury into a belief that happens to be true, this
belief is insufficiently well-grounded to constitute knowledge. Before turning
to influential twentieth-century arguments against the JTB theory, let us
briefly consider the three traditional components of knowledge in turn.

The Truth Condition

Condition (i), the truth condition, is largely uncontroversial. Most

epistemologists have found it overwhelmingly plausible that what is false

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cannot be known. For example, it is false that G. E. Moore is the author
of Sense and Sensibilia. Since it is false, it is not the sort of thing anybody
knows. Hazlett argues that “knows” is not a factive verb, on the basis of the
apparent felicity of utterances like: Everyone knew that stress caused ulcers,
before two Australian doctors in the early 80s proved that ulcers are actually
caused by bacterial infection. Hazlett's suggestion is highly controversial;
even it, however, is not meant to deny the truth condition in the tripartite
theory of knowledge. Hazlett takes these considerations about the factivity of
the English verb “knows” to motivate divorcing such semantic considerations
from knowledge, the state of traditional epistemic interest. Even though
“knows” is, according to Hazlett, not a factive verb, even he accepts that
knowledge itself is a state that can only obtain if its content is true. Another
possible avenue of resistance to the truth condition on knowledge derives
from our apparent knowledge of false empirical theories. For example, it is
intuitively plausible that Newtonian Physics is part of our overall scientific
knowledge. But Newtonian Physics is false. So is it possible to know
something false after all? In response, it is important to remember that the
JTB theory is an attempt to explicate propositional knowledge, not knowledge
by acquaintance. In what sense is Newtonian Physics part of our knowledge?
If it is merely that we're familiar with Newtonian Physics, the JTB theory is
silent; knowing Newtonian Physics in this sense doesn't require Newtonian
Physics to be true anymore than knowing Alyssa requires Alyssa to be true. If
we specify the content of our purported knowledge, the objection has much
less intuitive bite: it is not particularly plausible that we know that Newtonian
Physics is true. Additionally, we can distinguish between two
theories, T and T*, where T is Newtonian physics and T* is updated theoretical
physics at the cutting edge. T* does not literally include T as a part, but
absorbs T by virtue of explaining in which way T is useful for understanding
the world, what assumptions T is based on, where T fails, and how T must be
corrected to describe the world accurately. So we could say that, since we
know T*, we know Newtonian physics in the sense that we know how
Newtonian physics helps us understand the world and where and how
Newtonian physics fails.

The Belief Condition

The belief condition is slightly more controversial than the truth condition,
although it is certainly accepted by orthodoxy. Although initially it might seem
obvious that knowing that p requires believing that p, some philosophers have
argued that knowledge without belief is indeed possible. Suppose Walter
comes home after work to find out that his house has burned down. He says:
“I don't believe it.” Critics of the belief condition might argue that Walter
knows that his house has burned down (he sees that it has), but, as his words
indicate, he does not believe that his house has burned down. Therefore, there

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is knowledge without belief. The dominant view, however, is that Walter's
avowal of disbelief is not, strictly speaking, literally true; what Walter wishes to
convey by saying “I don't believe it” is not that he really does not believe that
his house has burned down, but rather that he finds it hard to come to terms
with what he sees. If he didn't genuinely believe it, some of his subsequent
actions, such as phoning his insurance company, would be rather mysterious.
A more serious counterexample has been suggested by Colin Radford (1966).
Suppose Albert is quizzed on English history. One of the questions is: “When
did Queen Elizabeth die?” Albert doesn't think he knows, but answers the
question correctly. Moreover, he gives correct answers to many other
questions to which he didn't think he knew the answer. Let us focus on
Albert's answer to the question about Elizabeth:(E) Elizabeth died in
1603.Radford makes the following two claims about this example: Albert
does not believe (E).Albert knows (E).Radford's intuitions about cases like
these do not seem to be idiosyncratic; Myers-Schutz & Schwitzgebel
(forthcoming) find evidence suggesting that many ordinary speakers tend to
react in the way Radford suggests. In support of (a), Radford emphasizes that
Albert thinks he doesn't know the answer to the question. He doesn't trust his
answer because he takes it to be a mere guess. In support of (b), Radford
argues that Albert's answer is not at all just a lucky guess. The fact that he
answers most of the questions correctly indicates that he has actually learned,
and never forgotten, the basic facts of English history. Since he takes (a) and
(b) to be true, Radford would argue that knowledge without belief is indeed
possible. But either of (a) and (b) might be resisted. Those who think that
belief is necessary for knowledge could deny (a), arguing that Albert does
have a tacit belief that (E), even though it's not one that he thinks amounts to
knowledge. Alternatively, one might deny (b), arguing that Albert's correct
answer is not an expression of knowledge, perhaps because, given his
subjective position, he does not have justification for believing (E). This reply
anticipates the next section, involving the necessity of the justification
condition.

The Justification Condition

Why is condition (iii) necessary? Why not say that knowledge is true belief?
The standard answer is that to identify knowledge with true belief would be
implausible because a belief might be true even though it is formed
improperly. Suppose that William flips a coin, and confidently believes on no
particular basis that it will land tails. If by chance the coin does land tails, then
William's belief was true; but a lucky guess such as this one is no knowledge.
For William to know, his belief must in some epistemic sense be proper or
appropriate: it must be justified.

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Lightweight Knowledge

Some epistemologists have suggested that there may be multiple senses of

the term ‘knowledge’, and that not all of them require all three elements of the
tripartite theory of knowledge. For example, some have argued that there is, in
addition to the sense of ‘knowledge’ gestured at above, another, weak sense
of ‘knowledge’, that requires only true belief. This view is sometimes
motivated by the thought that, when we consider whether someone knows
that p, or wonder which of a group of people know that p, often, we are not at
all interested in whether the relevant subjects have beliefs that are justified;
we just want to know whether they have the true belief. For example, as
Hawthorne points out, one might ask how many students know that Vienna is
the capital of Austria; the correct answer, one might think, just is the number
of students who offer ‘Vienna’ as the answer to the corresponding question,
irrespective of whether their beliefs are justified. Similarly, if you are planning
a surprise party for Eugene and ask whether he knows about it, ‘yes’ may be
an appropriate answer merely on the grounds that Eugene believes that you
are planning a party. The data here are open to interpretation. One option is to
suppose that there is a lightweight sense of knowledge that requires only true
belief; another is to decline to accept the intuitive sentences as true at face
value. Even among those epistemologists who think that there is a lightweight
sense of ‘knows’ that does not require justification, most typically admit that
there is also a stronger sense which does, and that it is this stronger state
that is the main target of epistemological theorizing about knowledge.

WHAT IS JUSTIFICATION?

When we discuss the nature of justification, we must distinguish between two

different issues: First, what do we mean when we use the word ‘justification’?
Second, what makes beliefs justified? It is important to keep these issues
apart because a disagreement on how to answer the second question will be
a mere verbal dispute, if the disagreeing parties have different concepts of
justification in mind. So let us first consider what we might mean by
‘justification’ and then move on to the non-definitional issues.

Deontological and Non-Deontological Justification

How is the term ‘justification’ used in ordinary language? Here is an example:

Tom asked Martha a question, and Martha responded with a lie. Was she
justified in lying? Jane thinks she was, for Tom's question was an
inappropriate one, the answer to which was none of Tom's business. What
might Jane mean when she thinks that Martha was justified in responding
with a lie? A natural answer is this: She means that Martha was under no
obligation to refrain from lying. Due the inappropriateness of Tom's question,

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it wasn't Martha's duty to tell the truth. This understanding of justification,
commonly labeled deontological, may be defined as follows: S is justified in
doing x if and only if S is not obliged to refrain from doing x. Suppose, when
we apply the word justification not to actions but to beliefs, we mean
something analogous. In that case, the term ‘justification’ as used in
epistemology would have to be defined this way: Deontological Justification
(DJ) S is justified in believing that p if and only if S believes that p while it is
not the case that S is obliged to refrain from believing that p. What kinds of
obligations are relevant when we wish to assess whether a belief, rather than
an action, is justified or unjustified? Whereas when we evaluate an action, we
are interested in assessing the action from either a moral or a prudential point
of view, when it comes to beliefs, what matters is the pursuit of truth. The
relevant kinds of obligations, then, are those that arise when we aim at having
true beliefs. Exactly what, though, must we do in the pursuit of this aim?
According to one answer, the one favored by evidentialists, we ought to
believe in accord with our evidence. For this answer to be helpful, we need an
account of what our evidence consists of. According to another answer, we
ought to follow the correct epistemic norms. If this answer is going to help us
figure out what obligations the truth-aim imposes on us, we need to be given
an account of what the correct epistemic norms are. The deontological
understanding of the concept of justification is common to the way
philosophers such as Descartes, Locke, Moore and Chisholm have thought
about justification. Today, however, the dominant view is that the
deontological understanding of justification is unsuitable for the purposes of
epistemology. Two chief objections have been raised against conceiving of
justification deontologically. First, it has been argued that DJ presupposes
that we can have a sufficiently high degree of control over our beliefs. But
beliefs are akin not to actions but rather things such as digestive processes,
sneezes, or involuntary blinkings of the eye. The idea is that beliefs simply
arise in or happen to us. Therefore, beliefs are not suitable for deontological
evaluation. To this objection, some advocates of DJ have replied that lack of
control over our beliefs is no obstacle to using the term ‘justification’ in its
deontological sense. Others have argued that it's a mistake to think that we
can control our beliefs any less than our actions. According to the second
objection to DJ, deontological justification does not tend to ‘epistemize’ true
beliefs: it does not tend to make them non-accidentally true. This claim is
typically supported by describing cases involving either a benighted, culturally
isolated society or subjects who are cognitively deficient. Such cases involve
beliefs that are claimed to be epistemically defective even though it would not
seem that the subjects in these cases are under any obligation to refrain from
believing as they do. What makes the beliefs in question epistemically
defective is that they are formed using unreliable and intellectually faulty
methods. The reason why the subjects, from their own point of view, are not
obliged to believe otherwise is that they are either cognitively deficient or live

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in a benighted and isolated community. DJ says that such beliefs are justified.
If they meet the remaining necessary conditions, DJ-theorists would have to
count them as knowledge. According to the objection, however, the beliefs in
question, even if true, could not possibly qualify as knowledge, due to the
epistemically defective way they were formed. Consequently, DJ must be
rejected. Those who reject DJ use the term ‘justification’ in a technical sense
that deviates from how the word is ordinarily used. The technical sense is
meant to make the term suitable for the needs of epistemology. But how are
we then to conceive of justification? What does it mean for a belief to be
justified in a non-deontological sense? Recall that the role assigned to
justification is that of ensuring that a true belief isn't true merely by accident.
Let us say that this is accomplished when a true belief instantiates the
property of proper probabilification. We may, then, define non-deontological
justification as follows: Non-Deontological Justification (NDJ) S is justified in
believing that p if and only if S believes that p on a basis that properly
probabilifies S's belief that p. If we wish to pin down exactly what
probabilification amounts to, we will have to deal with a variety of tricky
issues. For now, let us just focus on the main point. Those who prefer NDJ to
DJ would say that probabilification and deontological justification can diverge:
it's possible for a belief to be deontologically justified without being properly
probabilified. This is just what cases involving benighted cultures or
cognitively deficient subjects are supposed to show.

Evidence vs. Reliability

What makes justified beliefs justified? According to evidentialists, it is the

possession of evidence. What is it, though, to possess evidence for believing
that p? Some evidentialists would say it is to be in a mental state that
represents p as being true. For example, if the coffee in your cup tastes sweet
to you, then you have evidence for believing that the coffee is sweet. If you
feel a throbbing pain in your head, you have evidence for believing that you
have a headache. If you have a memory of having had cereal for breakfast,
then you have evidence for a belief about the past: a belief about what you ate
when you had breakfast. And when you clearly "see" or "intuit" that the
proposition "If Jack had more than four cups of coffee, then Jack had more
than three cups of coffee" is true, then you have evidence for believing that
proposition. In this view, evidence consists of perceptual, introspective,
memorial, and intuitional experiences, and to possess evidence is to have an
experience of that kind. So according to this evidentialism, what makes you
justified in believing that p is your having an experience that represents p as
being true. Many reliabilists, too, would say that the experiences mentioned in
the previous paragraph matter. However, they would deny that justification is
solely a matter of having suitable experiences. Rather, they hold that a belief

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is justified if, and only if, it results from cognitive origin that is reliable: an
origin that tends to produce true beliefs and therefore properly probabilifies
the belief. Reliabilists, then, would agree that the beliefs mentioned in the
previous paragraph are justified. But according to a standard form of
reliabilism, what makes them justified is not the possession of evidence, but
the fact that the types of processes in which they originate — perception,
introspection, memory, and rational intuition — are reliable.

Internal vs. External

In contemporary epistemology, there has been an extensive debate on

whether justification is internal or external. Internalists claim that it is internal;
externalists deny it. How are we to understand these claims? To understand
what the internal-external distinction amounts to, we need to bear in mind that,
when a belief is justified, there is something that makes it justified. Likewise,
if a belief is unjustified, there is something that makes it unjustified. Let's call
the things that make a belief justified or unjustified J-factors. The dispute
over whether justification is internal or external is a dispute about what the
J-factors are. Among those who think that justification is internal, there is no
unanimity on how to understand the concept of internality. We can distinguish
between two approaches. According to the first, justification is internal
because we enjoy a special kind of access to J-factors: they
are always recognizable on reflection. Hence, assuming certain further
premises, justification itself is always recognizable on reflection. According to
the second approach, justification is internal because J-factors are always
mental states. Let's call the former accessibility internalism and the
latter mentalist internalism. Externalists deny that J-factors meet either one
of these conditions. Evidentialism is typically associated with internalism, and
reliabilism with externalism. Let us see why. Evidentialism says, at a
minimum, two things: E1 Whether one is justified in believing p depends on
one's evidence regarding p. E2 One’s evidence consists of one's mental states.
By virtue of E2, evidentialism is obviously an instance of mentalist internalism.
Whether evidentialism is also an instance of accessibility internalism is a
more complicated issue. The conjunction of E1 and E2 by itself implies
nothing about the recognizability of justification.

Next, let us consider why reliabilism is an externalist theory. Reliabilism says

that the justification of one's beliefs is a function of, not one's evidence, but
the reliability of one's belief sources such as memorial, perceptual and
introspective states and processes. Whereas the sources might qualify as
mental, their reliability does not. Therefore, reliabilists reject mentalist
internalism. Moreover, if the justification of one's beliefs is determined by the
reliability of one's belief sources, justification will not always be recognizable
on reflection. Hence reliabilists reject access internalism as well.

14
Kinds of Justification

It is worth noting that one might distinguish between two importantly different
notions of justification, standardly referred to as “propositional justification”
and “doxastic justification.” (Sometimes “ex ante” justification and “ex post”
justification, respectively). Unlike that between internalist and externalist
approaches to justification, the distinction between propositional and
doxastic justification does not represent a conflict to be resolved; it is a
distinction between two distinct properties that are called ‘justification’.
Propositional justification concerns whether a subject has sufficient reason to
believe a given proposition; doxastic justification concerns whether a given
belief is held appropriately. One common way of relating the two is to suggest
that propositional justification is the more fundamental, and that doxastic
justification is a matter of a subject's having a belief that is appropriately
responsive to or based on her propositional justification. The precise relation
between propositional and doxastic justification is subject to controversy, but
it is uncontroversial that the two notions can come apart. Suppose that Ingrid
ignores a great deal of excellent evidence indicating that a given
neighborhood is dangerous, but superstitiously comes to believe that the
neighborhood is dangerous when she sees a black cat crossing the street.
Since forming beliefs on the basis of superstition is not an epistemically
appropriate way of forming beliefs, Ingrid's belief is not doxastically justified;
nevertheless, she does have good reason to believe as she does, so she does
have propositional justification for the proposition that the neighborhood is
dangerous. Since knowledge is a particularly successful kind of belief, it is
doxastic justification that is more closely related to knowledge, and it is this
notion that appears in the traditional tripartite theory.

THE STRUCTURE OF KNOWLEDGE AND JUSTIFICATION

The debate over the structure of knowledge and justification is primarily one
among those who hold that knowledge requires justification. From this point
of view, the structure of knowledge derives from the structure of justification.
We will, therefore, focus on the latter.

Foundationalism

According to foundationalism, our justified beliefs are structured like a

building: they are divided into a foundation and a superstructure, the latter
resting upon the former. Beliefs belonging to the foundation are basic. Beliefs
belonging to the superstructure are nonbasic and receive justification from
the justified beliefs in the foundation.

15
 Coherentism

Foundationalism says that knowledge and justification are structured like a

building, consisting of a superstructure that rests upon a foundation.
According to coherentism, this metaphor gets things wrong. Knowledge and
justification are structured like a web where the strength of any given area
depends on the strength of the surrounding areas. Coherentists, then, deny
that there are any basic beliefs. As we saw in the previous section, there are
two different ways of conceiving of basicality. Consequently, there are two
corresponding ways of construing coherentism: as the denial of doxastic
basicality or as the denial of epistemic basicality. Consider first coherentism
as the denial of doxastic basicality: Doxastic Coherentism Every justified
belief receives its justification from other beliefs in its epistemic
neighborhood.

Why Foundationalism?

The main argument for foundationalism is called the regress argument. It's an
argument from elimination. With regard to every justified belief, B1, the
question arises of where B1's justification comes from. If B1 is not basic, it
would have to come from another belief, B2. But B2 can justify B1 only if B2 is
justified itself. If B2 is basic, the justificatory chain would end with B2. But if
B2 is not basic, we need a further belief, B3. If B3 is not basic, we need a
fourth belief, and so forth. Unless the ensuing regress terminates in a basic
belief, we get two possibilities: the regress will either loop back to B1 or
continue ad infinitum. According to the regress argument, both of these
possibilities are unacceptable. Therefore, if there are justified beliefs, there
must be basic beliefs. This argument suffers from various weaknesses. First,
we may wonder whether the alternatives to foundationalism are really
unacceptable.

Why Coherentism?

Coherentism is typically defended by attacking foundationalism as a viable

alternative. To argue against privilege foundationalism, coherentists pick an
epistemic privilege they think is essential to foundationalism, and then argue
that either no beliefs, or too few beliefs, enjoy such a privilege. Against
experiential foundationalism, different objections have been advanced. One
line of criticism is that perceptual experiences don't have propositional
content. Therefore, the relation between a perceptual belief and the
perceptual experience that gives rise to it can only be causal. Consider again,
however, the hat example from above. When you see the hat and it looks blue
to you, doesn't your visual experience — its looking blue to you — have the

16
propositional content that the hat is blue? It would seem it does. If it does,
there seems to be no reason to deny that your perceptual experience can play
a justificatory role. Another line of thought is that, if perceptual experiences
have propositional content, they cannot stop the justificatory regress because
they would then be in need of justification themselves. That, however, appears
to be a strange thought. In our actual epistemic practice, we never demand of
others to justify the way things appear to them in their perceptual experiences.
Indeed, such a demand would seem absurd. Suppose I ask you: "Why do you
think that the hat is blue?" You answer: "Because it looks blue to me." There
are sensible further questions I might ask at that point. For instance, I might
ask: "Why do you think its looking blue to you gives you a reason for thinking it
is blue?" Or I might ask: "Couldn't you be mistaken in believing it looks blue to
you?" The latter question might irritate you, but it would not be illegitimate.
After all, we can reasonably doubt that introspective beliefs about how things
appear to us are infallible. But now suppose I ask you: "Why do you suppose
the perceptual experience in which the hat looks blue to you is justified?" In
response to that question, you should accuse me of misusing the word
‘justification’. I might as well ask you what it is that justifies your headache
when you have one, or what justifies the itch in your nose when you have one.
The latter questions, you should reply, would be as absurd as my request for
stating a justifying reason for your perceptual experience.

SOURCES OF KNOWLEDGE AND JUSTIFICATION

Beliefs arise in people for a wide variety of causes. Among them, we must list
psychological factors such as desires, emotional needs, prejudice, and biases
of various kinds. Obviously, when beliefs originate in sources like these, they
don't qualify as knowledge even if true. For true beliefs to count as knowledge,
it is necessary that they originate in sources we have good reason to consider
reliable. These are perception, introspection, memory, reason, and testimony.
Let us briefly consider each of these.

Perception

Our perceptual faculties are our five senses: sight, touch, hearing, smelling,
and tasting. We must distinguish between an experience that can be
classified as perceiving that p (for example, seeing that there is coffee in the
cup and tasting that it is sweet), which entails that p is true, and a perceptual
experience in which it seems to us as though p, but where p might be false.
Let us refer to this latter kind of experience as perceptual seemings. The
reason for making this distinction lies in the fact that perceptual experience is
fallible. The world is not always as it appears to us in our perceptual

17
experiences. We need, therefore, a way of referring to perceptual experiences
in which p seems to be the case that allows for the possibility of p being false.
That's the role assigned to perceptual seemings. So some perceptual
seemings that p are cases of perceiving that p, others are not. When it looks
to you as though there is a cup of coffee on the table and in fact there is, the
two states coincide. If, however, you hallucinate that there is a cup on the
table, you have perceptual seeming that p without perceiving that p.

Introspection

Introspection is the capacity to inspect the, metaphorically speaking, "inside"

of one's mind. Through introspection, one knows what mental states one is in:
whether one is thirsty, tired, excited, or depressed. Compared with perception,
introspection appears to have a special status. It is easy to see how a
perceptual seeming can go wrong: what looks like a cup of coffee on the table
might be just be a clever hologram that's visually indistinguishable from an
actual cup of coffee. But could it be possible that it introspectively seems to
me that I have a headache when in fact I do not? It is not easy to see how it
could be. Thus we come to think that introspection has a special status.
Compared with perception, introspection seems to be privileged by virtue of
being less error prone. How can we account for the special status of
introspection? First, it could be argued that, when it comes to introspection,
there is no difference between appearance and reality; therefore, introspective
seemings are necessarily successful introspections. According to this
approach, introspection is infallible. Alternatively, one could view introspection
as a source of certainty. Here the idea is that an introspective experience
of p eliminates all possible doubt as to whether p is true. Finally, one could
attempt to explain the specialness of introspection by examining the way we
respond to first-person reports: typically, we attribute a special authority to
such reports. According to this approach, introspection is incorrigible. Others
are not, or at least not typically, in a position to correct first-person reports of
one's own mental states. Introspection reveals how the world appears to us in
our perceptual experiences. For that reason, introspection has been of special
interest to foundationalists.

Memory

Memory is the capacity to retain knowledge acquired in the past. What one
remembers, though, need not be a past event. It may be a present fact, such
as one's telephone number, or a future event, such as the date of the next
elections. Memory is, of course, fallible. Not every instance of taking oneself
to remember that p is an instance of actually remembering that p. We should
distinguish, therefore, between remembering that p (which entails the truth
of p) and seeming to remember that p (which does not entail the truth

18
of p).One issue about memory concerns the question of what distinguishes
memorial seemings from perceptual seemings or mere imagination. Some
philosophers have thought that having an image in one's mind is essential to
memory, but that would appear to be mistaken. When one remembers one's
telephone number, one is unlikely to have an image of one's number in one's
mind. The distinctively epistemological questions about memory are these:
First, what makes memorial seemings a source of justification? Is it a
necessary truth that, if one has a memorial seeming that p, one has thereby
prima facie justification for p? Or is memory a source of justification only if, as
coherentists might say, one has reason to think that one's memory is reliable?
Or is memory a source of justification only if, as externalists would say, it is in
fact reliable? Second, how can we respond to skepticism about knowledge of
the past? Memorial seemings of the past do not guarantee that the past is
what we take it to be. We think that we are a bit older than just five minutes,
but it is logically possible that the world sprang into existence just five
minutes ago, complete with our dispositions to have memorial seemings of a
more distant past and items such as apparent fossils that suggest a past
going back millions of years. Our seeming to remember that the world is older
than a mere five minutes does not entail, therefore, that it really is. Why, then,
should we think that memory is a source of knowledge about the past?

Reason

Some beliefs would appear to be justified solely by the use of reason.

Justification of that kind is said to be a priori: prior to any kind of experience.
A standard way of defining a priori justification goes as follows:
A Priori Justification S is justified a priori in believing that p if and only if S's
justification for believing that p does not depend on any experience. Beliefs
that are true and justified in this way (and not somehow "gettiered") would
count as instances of a priori knowledge. What exactly counts as experience?
If by ‘experience’ we mean just perceptual experiences, justification deriving
from introspective or memorial experiences would count as a priori. For
example, I could then know a priori that I'm thirsty, or what I ate for breakfast
this morning. While the term ‘a priori’ is sometimes used in this way, the strict
use of the term restricts a priori justification to justification
derived solely from the use of reason. According to this usage, the word
‘experiences' in the definition above includes perceptual, introspective, and
memorial experiences alike. On this narrower understanding, paradigm
examples of what I can know on the basis of a priori justification are
conceptual truths (such as "All bachelors are unmarried"), and truths of
mathematics, geometry and logic. Justification and knowledge that is not a
priori is called ‘a posteriori’ or ‘empirical’. For example, in the narrow sense of
‘a priori’, whether I'm thirsty or not is something I know empirically (on the
basis of introspective experiences), whereas I know a priori that 12 divided by

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3 is 4.Several important issues arise about a priori knowledge. First, does it
exist at all? Skeptics about apriority deny its existence. They don't mean to
say that we have no knowledge of mathematics, geometry, logic, and
conceptual truths. Rather, what they claim is that all such knowledge is
empirical. Second, if a priori justification is possible, exactly how does it come
about? What makes a belief such as "All bachelors are unmarried" justified
solely on the basis of reason? Is it an unmediated grasp of the truth of this
proposition? Or does it consist of grasping that the proposition
is necessarily true? Or is it the purely intellectual experience of "seeing" (with
they "eye of reason") or "intuiting" that this proposition is true (or necessarily
true)? Or is it, as externalists would suggest, the reliability of the cognitive
process by which we come to recognize the truth of such a proposition? Third,
if a priori knowledge exists, what is its extent? Empiricists have argued that a
priori knowledge is limited to the realm of the analytic, consisting of
propositions of a somehow inferior status because they are not really "about
the world". Propositions of a superior status, which convey genuine
information about world, are labeled synthetic. a priori knowledge of synthetic
propositions, empiricists would say, is not possible. Rationalists deny this.
They would say that a proposition such as "If a ball is green all over, then it
doesn't have black spots" is synthetic and knowable a priori. A fourth question
about the nature of a priori knowledge concerns the distinction between
necessary and contingent truths. The received view is that whatever is
known a priori is necessarily true, but there are epistemologists who disagree
with that.

Testimony

Testimony differs from the sources we considered above because it isn't

distinguished by having its own cognitive faculty. Rather, to acquire
knowledge of p through testimony is to come to know that p on the basis of
someone's saying that p. "Saying that p" must be understood broadly, as
including ordinary utterances in daily life, postings by bloggers on their
web-logs, articles by journalists, delivery of information on television, radio,
tapes, books, and other media. So, when you ask the person next to you what
time it is, and she tells you, and you thereby come to know what time it is,
that's an example of coming to know something on the basis of testimony.
And when you learn by reading the Washington Post that the terrorist attack in
Sharm el-Sheikh of July 22, 2005 killed at least 88 people, that, too, is an
example of acquiring knowledge on the basis of testimony. The
epistemological puzzle testimony raises is this: Why is testimony a source of
knowledge? An externalist might say that testimony is a source of knowledge
if and only if it comes from a reliable source. But here, even more so than in
the case of our faculties, internalists will not find that answer satisfactory.
Suppose you hear someone saying ‘p’. Suppose further that person is in fact

20
utterly reliable with regard to the question of whether p is the case or not.
Finally, suppose you have no evidential clue whatever as to that person's
reliability. Wouldn't it be plausible to conclude that, since that person's
reliability is unknown to you, that person's saying ‘p’ does not put you in a
position to know that p? But if the reliability of a testimonial source is not
sufficient for making it a source of knowledge, what else is needed? Thomas
Reid suggested that, by our very nature, we accept testimonial sources as
reliable and tend to attribute credibility to them unless we encounter special
contrary reasons. But that's merely a statement of the attitude we in fact take
toward testimony. What is it that makes that attitude reasonable? It could be
argued that, in one's own personal experiences with testimonial sources, one
has accumulated a long track record that can be taken as a sign of reliability.
However, when we think of the sheer breadth of the knowledge we derive
from testimony, one wonders whether one's personal experiences constitute
an evidence base rich enough to justify the attribution of reliability to the
totality of the testimonial sources one tends to trust. An alternative to the
track record approach would be to declare it a necessary truth that trust in
testimonial sources is justified. This suggestion, alas, encounters the same
difficulty as the externalist approach to testimony: it does not seem we can
acquire knowledge from sources the reliability of which is utterly unknown to
us.

THE PROBLEM OF PERCEPTION

Sense-perception—the awareness or apprehension of things by sight, hearing,

touch, smell and taste—has long been a preoccupation of philosophers. One
pervasive and traditional problem, sometimes called “the problem of
perception”, is created by the phenomena of perceptual illusion and
hallucination: if these kinds of error are possible, how can perception be what
it intuitively seems to be, a direct and immediate access to reality? The
present discussion about how these possibilities of error challenge the
intelligibility of the phenomenon of perception, and how the major theories of
perception in the last century are best understood as responses to this
challenge.

Introduction

The central problem of perception: how to reconcile some apparently obvious

truths about our experience of the world with the possibility of certain kinds of
perceptual error. On an intuitive conception, perceptual experience is (what
we shall call) “openness to the world”. But this apparent fact of openness is
threatened by the existence of certain actual or possible
phenomena—typically known as illusions or hallucinations. Hence
philosophical theories of perception need to respond to this threat by giving

21
an account of perception which preserves what they take to be the central,
important or essential features of perception.The structure of the problem is
simple: perception seems intuitively to be openness to the world, but this fact
of openness is threatened by reflection on illusions and hallucinations.
Therefore perception, as we ordinarily understand it, seems to be impossible.
The arguments which give rise to this problem can be divided into two: the
arguments from illusion and from hallucination.

The Argument from Illusion

An illusion here may be defined, with A.D. Smith, as “any perceptual situation
in which a physical object is actually perceived, but in which that object
perceptually appears other than it really is” (Smith 2002: 23). For example, a
white wall in yellow light can look yellow; a sweet drink can taste sour if one
has just eaten something sweeter; a quiet sound can seem loud if it is very
close to you; and so on. In these cases it is not necessary that one is deceived
into believing that things are other than they are; so illusion in this sense need
not involve deception. One can know that one is experiencing an illusion when
it is happening. Many things have been called “the argument from illusion”.
But the basic idea (which some trace back to Hume 1748) normally involves
the following steps: When one is subject to an illusion, it seems to one that
something has a quality, F, which the real ordinary object supposedly being
perceived does not actually have. When it seems to one that something has a
quality, F, then there is something of which one is aware which does have this
quality. Since the real object in question is, by hypothesis, not-F, then it
follows that in cases of illusion, either one is not aware of the real object after
all, or if one is, one is aware of it only “indirectly” and not in the direct,
unmediated way in which we normally take ourselves to be aware of objects.
There is no non-arbitrary way of distinguishing, from the point of view of the
subject of an experience, between the phenomenology of perception and
illusion. Therefore there is no reason to suppose that even in the case of
genuine perception one is directly or immediately aware of ordinary objects.
Therefore our normal view about what perceiving is—sometimes called “naïve
realism” or “direct realism”—is false. So perception cannot be what we
normally think it is. The argument as presented is a negative one. Its
conclusion is that the things of which we are perceptually aware are not the
ordinary objects in the external world which we naturally take ourselves to be
aware of. Of course, many philosophers have moved from this to a further
conclusion that since we are always aware of something in perceptual
experience, what we are aware of is another kind of object, a “non-ordinary”
object (sometimes called a “sense-datum”). The intended conclusion of the
argument is reached by assuming
(a) the existence of illusions in the above sense;
(b) the claim that when it seems as if something is F, there is something

22
which is F; and (c) Leibniz's law of the indiscernibility of identicals.
Leibniz's Law is relevant because the argument envisages a situation where
something has a perceptible property which the ordinary public object does
not have. For if object A has a property which object B does not have, then
they cannot be identical. The most controversial assumption in the argument
is the claim that when one is perceptually aware of something's having
quality F, then there is something of which one is aware which does have this
quality. Howard Robinson has usefully labelled this assumption the
“Phenomenal Principle”:If there sensibly appears to a subject to be something
which possesses a particular sensible quality then there is something of
which the subject is aware which does possess that sensible quality. This
principle, though not always made explicit, is essential to the argument. For
without it, there is little temptation to conclude that in the case of an illusion
we are aware of any object at all. However, it may be asked why we should
accept this Phenomenal Principle. Many philosophers have taken it to be
obvious. H.H. Price, for example, says that “When I say ‘this table appears
brown to me’ it is quite plain that I am acquainted with an actual instance of
brownness”. Perhaps it will be conceded that if there really is an instance of
brownness here, then there must be some object which instantiates
brownness. But someone could also resist the step from (i) to (ii) by saying
that in the case of an illusion, there is only an appearance of brownness, not
an instantiation of it.

The Argument from Hallucination

A hallucination in this sense is an experience which seems exactly like a

perception of a real, mind-independent object, but where there is no
mind-independent object of the relevant kind being perceived. Like illusions,
hallucinations in this sense do not necessarily involve deception. And nor
need they be like the real hallucinations suffered by the mentally ill, drug-users
or alcoholics. They are rather supposed to be merely possible events:
experiences which are indistinguishable for the subject from a genuine
perception of an object. For example, suppose I am now having a visual
experience of a snow-covered churchyard. The assumption that hallucinations
are possible means that I could have an experience which is subjectively
indistinguishable—that is, indistinguishable by the subject, “from the
inside”—from a veridical perception of a snow-covered churchyard, but where
there is in fact no churchyard which I am perceiving at all. The perception and
the subjectively indistinguishable hallucination are experiences of essentially
the same kind. Therefore it cannot be that the essence of the perception
depends on the objects being experienced, since essentially the same kind of
experience can occur in the absence of the objects. Therefore the ordinary
conception of perceptual experience—which treats experience as dependent
on the mind-independent objects around us—cannot be correct.

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Theories of Perception

In this section we will consider the leading theories of perception of the last
hundred years: the sense-datum theory, the adverbial theory, the intentional
theory and the disjunctive theory. These theories are understood here as
responses to the problem of perception as posed above.

a. The Sense-Datum Theory

The sense-datum theory holds that when a person has a sensory experience,
there is something of which they are aware. What the subject is aware of is
the object of experience. The object of experience is that which is given to the
senses, or the sense-datum: this is how the term “sense-datum” was
introduced by many writers. The standard version of the theory takes the
argument from illusion to show that a sense-datum, whatever else it may be,
cannot be an ordinary physical object. The early sense-datum theorists (like
Moore 1914) considered sense-data to be mind-independent, but non-physical
objects. Later theories treat sense-data as mind-dependent entities and this is
how the theory is normally understood in the second half of the twentieth
century. The conception of perception which most sense-data theories
propose is as a relation to a non-physical object. This relation is the relation of
“being given” or “sensing”. The relational conception of perception is
sometimes called an “act-object” conception, since it posits a distinction
between the mental “act” of sensing, and the “object” which is sensed. It is
straightforward to show how this theory deals with the arguments from
illusion and hallucination. The sense-datum theory treats all phenomenal
properties—properties which determine the phenomenal character of an
experience—as properties of the immediate object of experience. So, when in
the case of an illusion, an external object appears to have a property which it
does not have in reality, the theory says that some other object, a
sense-datum, really does have this property. A similar move is made in the
case of hallucination. Perceptions and subjectively indistinguishable
hallucinations share their phenomenal character. This means that they share
their phenomenal properties: the properties which determine what it is like to
have an experience of this character. Assuming the Phenomenal Principle, the
conclusion is drawn that these properties must be instantiated in an object of
the same kind: a sense-datum. So the sense-datum theory retains the claim
discussed in §2.1, that experiences depend on their objects; but it denies that
these objects are the ordinary, mind-independent objects we normally take
ourselves to be experiencing.

i. Indirect Realism and Phenomenalism

24
The sense-datum theory need not deny that we are presented with objects as
if they were ordinary, public, mind-independent objects. But it will insist that
this is an error. The things we take ourselves to be aware of are actually
sense-data, although this may only be apparent on philosophical reflection.
This is an important point, since it shows that the sense-datum theories are
not simply refuted by pointing to the phenomenological fact that the objects
of experience seem to be the ordinary things around us. A consistent
sense-data theorist can accept this fact, but insist that the objects of
experience are really sense-data. The sense-datum theory can say, however,
that we are indirectly aware of ordinary objects: that is, aware of them by
being aware of sense-data. A sense-datum theorist who says this is known as
an indirect realist or representative realist, or as someone who holds
a representative theory of perception. A theorist who denies that we are aware
of mind-independent objects at all, directly or indirectly, but only of sense-data,
is known as a phenomenalist or an idealist about perception. The difference
between indirect realism and idealism is not over any specific thesis about
perception. The difference between them is over the metaphysical issue of
whether there are any mind-independent material objects at all. Idealists, in
general, hold that all objects and properties are mental or mind-dependent.
There are many forms of idealism, and many arguments for these different
forms, and there is no room for an extensive discussion of idealism here.
What is important in this context is that idealists and indirect realists can
agree about the nature of perception considered in itself, but will normally
disagree on grounds independent of the philosophy of perception about
whether the mind-dependent sense-data are all there is. Hence, idealism and
indirect realism are grouped together here as “the sense-datum theory” since
they agree about the fundamental issue in the philosophy of perception.

ii. Objections to the Sense-Datum Theory

The sense-datum theory was much discussed in the first half of the
20th century. It was widely rejected in the second half of the 20th century,
though it still had its occasional champions in this period. A number of
objections have been made to the theory. Some of these objections are
objections specifically to the indirect realist version of the sense-datum theory:
for example, the claim that the theory gives rise to an unacceptable “veil of
perception” between the mind and the world. The idea is that the sense-data
“interpose” themselves between perceivers and the mind-independent objects
which we normally take ourselves to be perceiving, and therefore leaves our
perceptual, cognitive and epistemic access to the world deeply problematic if
not impossible. In response to this, the indirect realist can say that sense-data
are the medium by which we perceive the mind-independent world, and no
more create a “veil of perception” than the fact that we use words to talk
about things creates a “veil of words” between us and the things we talk

25
about.

TRUTH

Philosophers are interested in a constellation of issues involving the concept

of truth. A preliminary issue, although somewhat subsidiary, is to decide what
sorts of things can be true. Is truth a property of sentences (which are
linguistic entities in some language or other), or is truth a property of
propositions (nonlinguistic, abstract and timeless entities)? The principal
issue is: What is truth? It is the problem of being clear about what you are
saying when you say some claim or other is true. The most important theories
of truth are the Correspondence Theory, the Semantic Theory, the Deflationary
Theory, the Coherence Theory, and the Pragmatic Theory. They are explained
and compared here. Whichever theory of truth is advanced to settle the
principal issue, there are a number of additional issues to be addressed: Can
claims about the future be true now? Can there be some algorithm for finding
truth – some recipe or procedure for deciding, for any claim in the system of,
say, arithmetic, whether the claim is true? Can the predicate "is true" be
completely defined in other terms so that it can be eliminated, without loss of
meaning, from any context in which it occurs? To what extent do theories of
truth avoid paradox? Is the goal of scientific research to achieve truth?

The Principal Problem

The principal problem is to offer a viable theory as to what truth itself consists
in, or, to put it another way, "What is the nature of truth?" To illustrate with an
example – the problem is not: Is it true that there is extraterrestrial life? The
problem is: What does it mean to say that it is true that there is extraterrestrial
life? Astrobiologists study the former problem; philosophers, the latter. This
philosophical problem of truth has been with us for a long time. In the first
century AD, Pontius Pilate (John 18:38) asked "What is truth?" but no answer
was forthcoming. The problem has been studied more since the turn of the
twentieth century than at any other previous time. In the last one hundred or
so years, considerable progress has been made in solving the problem. The
three most widely accepted contemporary theories of truth are [i]
the Correspondence Theory ; [ii] the Semantic Theory of Tarski and
Davidson; and [iii] the Deflationary Theory of Frege and Ramsey. The
competing theories are [iv] the Coherence Theory , and [v] the Pragmatic
Theory.

What Sorts of Things are True (or False)?

Although we do speak of true friends and false identities, philosophers believe

26
these are derivative uses of "true" and "false". The central use of "true", the
more important one for philosophers, occurs when we say, for example, it's
true that Montreal is north of Pittsburgh. Here, "true" is contrasted with "false",
not with "fake" or "insincere". When we say that Montreal is north of
Pittsburgh, what sort of thing is it that is true? Is it a statement or a sentence
or something else, a "fact", perhaps? More generally, philosophers want to
know what sorts of things are true and what sorts of things are false. This
same question is expressed by asking: What sorts of things have (or bear)
truth-values? The term "truth-value" has been coined by logicians as a generic
term for "truth or falsehood". To ask for the truth-value of P, is to ask whether
P is true or whether P is false. "Value" in "truth-value" does not mean
"valuable". It is being used in a similar fashion to "numerical value" as when
we say that the value of "x" in "x + 3 = 7" is 4. To ask "What is the truth-value of
the statement that Montreal is north of Pittsburgh?" is to ask whether the
statement that Montreal is north of Pittsburgh is true or whether it is false.
(The truth-value of that specific statement is true.)

Correspondence Theory

We return to the principal question, "What is truth?" Truth is presumably what

valid reasoning preserves. It is the goal of scientific inquiry, historical research,
and business audits. We understand much of what a sentence means by
understanding the conditions under which what it expresses is true. Yet the
exact nature of truth itself is not wholly revealed by these remarks.
Historically, the most popular theory of truth was the Correspondence Theory.
First proposed in a vague form by Plato and by Aristotle in his Metaphysics,
this realist theory says truth is what propositions have by corresponding to a
way the world is. The theory says that a proposition is true provided there
exists a fact corresponding to it. In other words, for any proposition p, p is true
if and only if p corresponds to a fact. The theory's answer to the question,
"What is truth?" is that truth is a certain relationship—the relationship that
holds between a proposition and its corresponding fact. Perhaps an analysis
of the relationship will reveal what all the truths have in common. Consider
the proposition that snow is white. Remarking that the proposition's truth is
its corresponding to the fact that snow is white leads critics to request an
acceptable analysis of this notion of correspondence. Surely the
correspondence is not a word by word connecting of a sentence to its
reference. It is some sort of exotic relationship between, say, whole
propositions and facts. In presenting his theory of logical atomism early in the
twentieth century, Russell tried to show how a true proposition and its
corresponding fact share the same structure. Inspired by the notion that
Egyptian hieroglyphs are stylized pictures, his student Wittgenstein said the
relationship is that of a "picturing" of facts by propositions, but his
development of this suggestive remark in his Tractatus

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Logico-Philosophicus did not satisfy many other philosophers, nor after
awhile, even Wittgenstein himself. And what are facts? The notion of a fact as
some sort of ontological entity was first stated explicitly in the second half of
the nineteenth century. The Correspondence Theory does permit facts to be
mind-dependent entities. McTaggart, and perhaps Kant, held such
Correspondence Theories.

Coherence Theories

The Correspondence Theory and the Semantic Theory account for the truth of
a proposition as arising out of a relationship between that proposition and
features or events in the world. Coherence Theories (of which there are a
number), in contrast, account for the truth of a proposition as arising out of a
relationship between that proposition and other propositions. Coherence
Theories are valuable because they help to reveal how we arrive at our truth
claims, our knowledge. We continually work at fitting our beliefs together into
a coherent system. For example, when a drunk driver says, "There are pink
elephants dancing on the highway in front of us", we assess whether his
assertion is true by considering what other beliefs we have already accepted
as true, namely, Elephants are gray. This locale is not the habitat of elephants.
There is neither a zoo nor a circus anywhere nearby. Severely intoxicated
persons have been known to experience hallucinations. But perhaps the most
important reason for rejecting the drunk's claim is this: Everyone else in the
area claims not to see any pink elephants. In short, the drunk's claim fails to
cohere with a great many other claims that we believe and have good reason
not to abandon. We, then, reject the drunk's claim as being false (and take
away the car keys). Specifically, a Coherence Theory of Truth will claim that a
proposition is true if and only if it coheres with ___. For example, one
Coherence Theory fills this blank with "the beliefs of the majority of persons in
one's society". Another fills the blank with "one's own beliefs", and yet another
fills it with "the beliefs of the intellectuals in one's society". The major
coherence theories view coherence as requiring at least logical consistency.
Rationalist metaphysicians would claim that a proposition is true if and only if
it "is consistent with all other true propositions". Some rationalist
metaphysicians go a step beyond logical consistency and claim that a
proposition is true if and only if it "entails (or logically implies) all other true
propositions". Leibniz, Spinoza, Hegel, Bradley, Blanshard, Neurath, Hempel
(late in his life), Dummett, and Putnam have advocated Coherence Theories of
truth.

Pragmatic Theories

A Pragmatic Theory of Truth holds (roughly) that a proposition is true if it is

useful to believe. Peirce and James were its principal advocates. Utility is the

28
essential mark of truth. Beliefs that lead to the best "payoff", that are the best
justification of our actions, that promote success, are truths, according to the
pragmatists. The problems with Pragmatic accounts of truth are counterparts
to the problems seen above with Coherence Theories of truth. First, it may be
useful for someone to believe a proposition but also useful for someone else
to disbelieve it. For example, Freud said that many people, in order to avoid
despair, need to believe there is a god who keeps a watchful eye on everyone.
According to one version of the Pragmatic Theory, that proposition is true.
However, it may not be useful for other persons to believe that same
proposition. They would be crushed if they believed that there is a god who
keeps a watchful eye on everyone. Thus, by symmetry of argument, that
proposition is false. In this way, the Pragmatic theory leads to a violation of
the law of non-contradiction, say its critics. Second, certain beliefs are
undeniably useful, even though – on other criteria – they are judged to be
objectively false. For example, it can be useful for some persons to believe
that they live in a world surrounded by people who love or care for them.
According to this criticism, the Pragmatic Theory of Truth overestimates the
strength of the connection between truth and usefulness. Truth is what an
ideally rational inquirer would in the long run come to believe, say some
pragmatists. Truth is the ideal outcome of rational inquiry. The criticism that
we don't now know what happens in the long run merely shows we have a
problem with knowledge, but it doesn't show that the meaning of "true"
doesn't now involve hindsight from the perspective of the future. Yet, as a
theory of truth, does this reveal what "true" means?

SCEPTICISM

Epistemology in the process of reflecting on the human capacity to know

philosophers come across some difficulties arising from the limitation of the
knowing faculty of man; and this gives rise to skepticism. The term
“skepticism” is derived from the Greek noun “skeptikoi” whose verb
“skeptesthai” means “to consider” or “to look about carefully.”1 Etymologically
then, the term is a positive attitude, for it is a very worthy thing to consider
things before judgment. So skepticism in a broad sense may be merely the
attitude of questioning any assumption or conclusion about knowledge. The
skeptic reminds us of man’s fallibility, of the weakness of our senses and
intellectual faculties. It is in response to it that philosophy tries to justify
our knowledge. We therefore need to look into the skeptical arguments.
THE SKEPPTICAL ARGUMENTS

1
"Skepticism." Microsoft® Student 2009 [DVD]. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2008.

29
 The whole skeptical arguments revolve round certain factors. These
factors tickle the skeptics and it is based on them that they try to develop a
battery of argument to show that certain and conclusive knowledge is
unattainable. These factors are:
1. The infallibility/fallibility controversy of knowledge. The infallibility
principle says that what we call knowledge must be infallible. But the
skeptics deny and disprove it by showing how our knowledge is fallible.

2. The ego predicament argument. Here knowledge appears to be

subjective; and the individual is the master and judge of what he calls
his knowledge. He is caged and bottled in his knowledge and cannot
escape to the other egos.

3. The possibility of pervasive error. Descartes here argues that it may be

possible that we are under the guidance of an evil genius or under
hallucination. In this case, all our knowledge may be false. If the senses
can deceive us, why not always.

4. The impossibility of foundation for our knowledge and justification.

Here, there is the problem of method. Whatever method we have needs
another one to justify it. And it goes on that way. There is an idea of
infinite regress. Hence the foundation needed in knowledge and for our
justification is not there.

5. Argument from relativism: Some skeptics, the pyrrhonists in particular,

argue that each view put forward on a philosophical problem is no
more or less probable than the contrary views; any argument that
supports any particular doctrine is matched by arguments that refute it.

So skepticism in a philosophical and narrow sense becomes the attitude of

one whom, for some reasons questions the validity and conclusiveness of
what others regard as knowledge.
KINDS OF SKEPTICISM AND THERE PROPONENTS
1. UNIVERSAL (EXAGGERATED) SKEPTICISM

Protagoras of Abdera (485-415) is generally considered the first of the

sophists (practioners or professors of wisdom). They were well known with
rhetoric and antilogy. Antilogy means arguing validly for both sides of a
disputed issue, which implies relativism. Protagoras is famous for the saying
“man is the measure of all things: of things that are, that they are, of things
that are not, that they are not.” This is a classic statement of relativism. But a
deeper interpretation of this statement reveals nihilism and skepticism: if man
is the measure of all things, it means that there are no objective standards by

30
which actions could be evaluated; and if there are no objective standards,
there could be no question of knowing them. Thus Protagoras brand of
sophism involves skepticism.
Another fellow is Gorgias. In his book titled On Being, he applied Eleatic
argument-form but reached three conclusions utterly opposed to Eleatic
views. His conclusions were: that nothing exists; if anything exists, it could
not be thought or known; if anything existed or could be thought or known, it
could not be communicated. Here, Gorgias outlines the essence of classical
skepticism, the attitude of “imperturbability and complete suspension of
judgment.”
We can also include Xenophanes among this group. For him, “no man knows
or will ever know the truths about the gods or the things I speak of.” So for
him, everything ‘seems.’ The academic skeptics have complete doubt when
they hold that the senses and our reasons are unreliable, and that we posses
no guaranteed criterion or stand for determining which of our judgment is true
or false. As absolute skepticism, it denies that man can even have probability,
i.e. justified opinion about reality.2
1. MITIGATED (MODERATE) SKEPTICISM

The mitigated skeptic admits some or quasi-truths and not others. Under this
we can identify solipsism which admits I alone exist because I know not a
world beyond myself and my ideas. This is a sort of “I-alonism.” We see this in
Berkeley’s “esse est percipi” to be is to be perceived. Even though Cicero is
regarded by many as dogmatic or exaggerated skeptic, yet, mitigated
skepticism is found in his statement:
“We are not those who in absolute negate the
existence of truth, we limit ourselves to
sustaining that every truth is united to
something that is not truth but is so familiar
with truth”3
Under this kind of skepticism we find also some subdivisions as the following:

i. SENSORY SKEPTICISM

Sensations are relative and unreliable because they are the modifications of
the knower. Therefore, sensory skepticism denies that we can have
knowledge through the senses. Some called it “angelic doubt.” These people
therefore defend intellectual knowledge. A sensory skeptic is an intellectual
optimist. Among them are people like Plato, the rationalists like Descartes,
Spinoza and Leibniz.
ii. RATIONAL SKEPTICISM

2
Glinn., J., An Introduction to Philosophy, London: B. herder Books , 1919, p. 199
3
Cicero, De Nature Devam, no. 1512

31
The conclusions of reason are for the rational skeptics contradictory and
paradoxical. Reason cannot give satisfactory knowledge. E.g., Zeno’s paradox
and Kant’s antinomies- where the same reality can be proved right and wrong
at the same time. Others we could classify under this are partial skeptics like
Ockham’s Nominalism- universal realities have no meaning, but are mere
‘factus vocis.’ It can also be seen in Hume’s sensism; and also Erasmus talks
of the futility of the intellectuals in their quest for certainty.
iii. METHODICAL SKEPTICISM

This is systematic but tentative doubt as a prelude to genuine knowledge. E.g.

Descartes methodic doubt.
iv. AGNOSTIC SKEPTICISM

The term agnosticism is derived from agnostikos (Greek for “not knowing”).
Although usually regarded as a form of skepticism, it is more limited in scope.
The ancient Greek philosopher Gorgias held a consistent agnostic view. He
asserted that nothing exists, even if it exists, it cannot be known. Even if it is
known, it cannot be communicated. Huxley in reply to those who accuse him
of materialism and atheism said that the problem of the ultimate cause of
existence is one which seems to be absolutely out of reach of my poor
powers.4 David Hume, an agnostic philosopher held that man has at his
disposal only sensual impressions and does not and cannot know where they
come from. It may be that things are behind them as the materialists assert or
God as the idealists claim. Darwin himself described his attitude to religion as
agnostic.
RELEVANCE OF SCEPTICISM
Skepticism is an epistemological problem since it denies the achievements of
epistemology. John Greco in talking about skepticism defended three theses:
that a number of historically prominent skeptical arguments make no obvious
mistakes and therefore cannot be dismissed; that the analysis of skeptical
arguments is philosophically useful and important and should therefore have
a central place in the methodology of philosophy; and that taking skeptical
arguments seriously requires us to adopt an externalist, reliabilist
epistemology.5
Skepticism can help to introduce a healthy note of caution into our study and
reflection and it can put us on guard against a too ready acceptance of
anything that is true, that is, of being credulous. Just as Clifford Barret said:
“Questioning and doubting are the basis of
man’s intellectual endeavors. For one who never
doubts what he was told or what his social
groups maintains to be true or what he himself

4
Flint., R., Agnosticism, 1903
5
Greco, J, Putting Skeptics in Their Place, Cambridge: Cambridge University press. 2000, P
1.

32
 seemed to find through perception, or other
experience scarcely can be regarded as an
intelligent individual.”6
Some doubts and critical examination of old ways help us to attain new truths
as to improve in our knowledge. “Without skeptical challenges we might
become complacent about understanding ourselves as knowledge acquiring
agents. Skeptics raise some hard questions and they have led philosophers to
make significant revisions in their thinking about acceptable methods of
knowledge acquisition. Skeptical questions about truth and evidence have
second benefit. They promote a healthy measure of epistemic humility.”7 Kant
also admitted that it was Hume’s skepticism that awoke him from his
dogmatic slumber.8

RESPONSES TO SKEPTICISM
Under this heading we consider some reactions by some philosophers to
skepticism. This will show how untenable the various stance of the
skepticism are by showing how they are not applicable in daily life or how
some of its proponents abandoned it in the end. Immanuel Kant stated the
skepticism is only a resting place for reason and not a permanent dwelling
place. For Hume himself the reality of nature and common sense helped him
refute all his skeptical positions to the extent that he felt he should burn all his
books: “nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this
philosophical melancholy”. Thomas Reid also defended common sense, by
which he meant various principles inherent in the constitution of the human
mind that regulates judgments and actions. For him, they are first principles
and need no proof, but they are not vulnerable to skeptical arguments
because it is unreasonable to demand a proof.
Martin Heidegger, for his part, claims that there is intelligible problem of our
knowledge of the external world, because we are beings who are in the world;
our knowledge of the world is made possible by various non-cognitive
relations between Dasein and things in the world. We do not have to infer the
existence of the world from data contained in consciousness, therefore, the
question the skeptics raise cannot be intelligibly asked. W. V. Quine accepts
the main outcome of Hum’s skepticism when he said: “I do not see that we
are farther along today than where Hume left us. The Humean predicament is
the human predicament.” He, therefore, suggested that epistemology instead
of searching for the ultimate foundation of knowledge, should be concerned

6
Barret., C., Philosophy: An Introductory Study Of Fundamental Problems And Attitudes, 1995,
pp. 235-236
7
Moser et al, The Theory Of Knowledge: A Thematic Introduction, New York, Oxford Univ.
Press 1998, P. 10
8
Kant, I, quoted in Lnademan, C,and Meeks, R, Philosophical Skepticism, Malden: Blackwell
pub .2003, P 390.

33
with how science actually proceeds.
The pragmatists will gladly accept the Pyrrhonist’s position since it promotes
relativism, which is in line with pragmatism. This is evident in Richart Rorty,
who claimed that we cannot establish by non-fallacious arguments a criterion
of truth. The best we can do is to appeal to the most successful methods of
justification that our community has developed where success is measured
by the production of beliefs that the members of the community find good to
believe.9

EVALUATION AND CONCLUSION

Skepticism is a theory that poses a challenge to epistemology. Its arguments
are not easily refutable. However, it contradicts itself by teaching that it is
certain there is no certainty. How could the skeptic deny the possibility of
telling or knowing the truth unless he has an idea of what is true or the truth?
The skeptic can neither express nor affirm his
adopted position: for he can neither express nor
defend his position without making affirmations
or giving some objective meaning to his
affirmations… the only position tenable to the
skeptic then is to imitate total dumbness of
plants.10
The skeptic may think that he can justify his position of skepticism. This
justification may necessarily involve a theory as to what constitute correct
reasoning, the proper method of attaining a true conclusion for all his
philosophic sophistications.
So total skepticism is self-defeating and as we have earlier said, it is itself a
declaration of certainty. Total skepticism is impossible both speculatively and
practically.

We must again admit that acquisition of truth and knowledge is often difficult
and in some particular cases it may have to be admitted that success is
unforeseeable. Yet, we do know some truth and do have some knowledge and
also a reliable means of acquiring others. In contra-distinction, skepticism is
totally negative.
The tendency of skepticism is altogether
nihilistic in response to our substantive
question. It leaves us completely empty handed.
On its approach, every position is invalid. No
one resolution of our cognitive or practical
problems has any real merit over or against

9
The ideas of these philosophers are found in Lnademan, C,and Meeks, R, Philosophical
Skepticism, Malden: Blackwell pub. 2003, PP 274-360
10
Steerbergen, F., Epistemology, P 171

34
 another. So that irresolution is the only available
course. On the basis of general principles and
without giving detailed enquiries a fighting
chance, we are but in a position of total
ignorance. Skepticism enjoins vacuity…. And
viewed from this standpoint, the decisive flaw of
skepticism is that it makes rationality itself
impossible.11
Skepticism is a radical despair about man’s intellectual ability and as such
can yield no fruitful reasoning or result in the domain of knowledge. Thus,
according to Bertrand Russell:
“Skepticism is weak man’s consolation and an
act of intellectual timidity. It recommends itself
as an antidote to worry since it doubts
everything; it raises the ignorant man to be
equal with the reputed man of learning. For the
skeptic says why worry about the future since it
is uncertain. The man of science says: I think it
is so but I am not sure. The man of intellectual
curiosity says, I don’t know how it is, but I hope
to find out. The philosophical skeptic says,
nobody knows what it is and nobody can ever
find out.”12
In conclusion one will say that even though the skeptical
arguments are so convincing, just as Kant said, skepticism is
just a rational theory but its conclusions- like those of the
pyrrhonists- can never be adopted in practice. The only
practical import of skepticism- in my estimation- is to waken
us from the slumber of dogmatism in matters of knowledge.

11
Rescher Nicholas, Pluralism Against The Demand For Consensus, Oxford:Claredon Press,
1993, Pp. 87-88
12
Russell., B., History Of Western Philosophy, London: George Allen And Union Ltd, 1976, P.
24

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