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Evidentialism
Evidentialism is a thesis in epistemology which states that one is justified to believe something if and only if that person has evidence which supports said belief. Evidentialism is, therefore, a thesis about which beliefs are justified and which are not. For philosophers Richard Feldman and Earl Conee, evidentialism is the strongest argument for justification because it identifies the primary notion of epistemic justification. They argue that if a person's attitude towards a proposition fits their evidence, then their doxastic attitude for that proposition is epistemically justified. Feldman and Conee offer the following argument for evidentialism as an epistemic justification: (EJ) Doxastic attitude ''D'' toward proposition ''p'' is epistemically justified for ''S'' at ''t'' if and only if having ''D'' toward ''p'' fits the evidence. For Feldman and Conee one's doxastic attitude is justified if it fits one's evidence. EJ is meant to show the idea that justification is cha ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Epistemology
Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that examines the nature, origin, and limits of knowledge. Also called "the theory of knowledge", it explores different types of knowledge, such as propositional knowledge about facts, practical knowledge in the form of skills, and knowledge by acquaintance as a familiarity through experience. Epistemologists study the concepts of belief, truth, and justification to understand the nature of knowledge. To discover how knowledge arises, they investigate sources of justification, such as perception, introspection, memory, reason, and testimony. The school of skepticism questions the human ability to attain knowledge while fallibilism says that knowledge is never certain. Empiricists hold that all knowledge comes from sense experience, whereas rationalists believe that some knowledge does not depend on it. Coherentists argue that a belief is justified if it coheres with other beliefs. Foundationalists, by contrast, maintain th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Richard Feldman (philosopher)
Richard Feldman is an American philosopher and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Rochester. He is known for his works on epistemology Epistemology is the branch of philosophy that examines the nature, origin, and limits of knowledge. Also called "the theory of knowledge", it explores different types of knowledge, such as propositional knowledge about facts, practical knowle .... Feldman served as interim president of the University of Rochester from 2018-2019. Books * ''Reason and Argument'', Prentice-Hall, 1993; 2nd Edition, 1999. * ''Epistemology'', Prentice Hall (Foundations of Philosophy Series), 2003. * ''Evidentialism'', with Earl Conee, Oxford University Press, 2004. * ''The Good, The Right, Life and Death'', edited with Jason Raibly, Kris McDaniel, and Michael E. Zimmerman, Ashgate, 2006. * ''Disagreement'', edited with Ted A. Warfield, Oxford University Press, 2010. References External links Feldman at the University of Rochester Living ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Faith
Faith is confidence or trust in a person, thing, or concept. In the context of religion, faith is " belief in God or in the doctrines or teachings of religion". According to the Merriam-Webster's Dictionary, faith has multiple definitions, including "something that is believed especially with strong conviction", "complete trust", "belief and trust in and loyalty to God", as well as "a firm belief in something for which there is no proof". Religious people often think of faith as confidence based on a perceived degree of warrant, or evidence, while others who are more skeptical of religion tend to think of faith as simply belief without evidence. In the Roman world, 'faith' (Latin: ) was understood without particular association with gods or beliefs. Instead, it was understood as a paradoxical set of reciprocal ideas: voluntary will and voluntary restraint in the sense of father over family or host over guest, whereby one party willfully surrenders to a party who could harm b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Regress Argument
Infinite regress is a philosophical concept to describe a series of entities. Each entity in the series depends on its predecessor, following a recursive principle. For example, the epistemic regress is a series of beliefs in which the justification of each belief depends on the justification of the belief that comes before it. An infinite regress argument is an argument against a theory based on the fact that this theory leads to an infinite regress. For such an argument to be successful, it must demonstrate not just that the theory in question entails an infinite regress but also that this regress is ''vicious''. There are different ways in which a regress can be vicious. The most serious form of viciousness involves a contradiction in the form of ''metaphysical impossibility''. Other forms occur when the infinite regress is responsible for the theory in question being implausible or for its failure to solve the problem it was formulated to solve. Traditionally, it was of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Reid
Thomas Reid (; 7 May (Julian calendar, O.S. 26 April) 1710 – 7 October 1796) was a religiously trained Scotland, Scottish philosophy, philosopher best known for his philosophical method, his #Thomas_Reid's_theory_of_common_sense, theory of perception, and its wide implications on epistemology, and as the developer and defender of an Agent causality, agent-causal theory of free will. He also focused extensively on ethics, Action theory (philosophy), theory of action, philosophy of language, language and philosophy of mind. He was the founder of the Scottish School of Common Sense and played an integral role in the Scottish Enlightenment. In 1783 he was a joint founder of the Royal Society of Edinburgh. A contemporary of David Hume, Reid was also "Hume's earliest and fiercest critic". Life Reid was born in the manse at Strachan, Aberdeenshire, on 26 April 1710, the son of Lewis Reid (1676–1762) and his wife Margaret Gregory, first cousin to James Gregory (mathematician), J ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Presbyterian
Presbyterianism is a historically Reformed Protestant tradition named for its form of church government by representative assemblies of elders, known as "presbyters". Though other Reformed churches are structurally similar, the word ''Presbyterian'' is applied to churches that trace their roots to the Church of Scotland or to English Dissenter groups that were formed during the English Civil War, 1642 to 1651. Presbyterian theology typically emphasises the sovereignty of God, the authority of the Scriptures, and the necessity of grace through faith in Christ. Scotland ensured Presbyterian church government in the 1707 Acts of Union, which created the Kingdom of Great Britain. In fact, most Presbyterians in England have a Scottish connection. The Presbyterian denomination was also taken to North America, Australia, and New Zealand, mostly by Scots and Scots-Irish immigrants. Scotland's Presbyterian denominations hold to the Reformed theology of John Calvin and his ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Hume
David Hume (; born David Home; – 25 August 1776) was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist, and essayist who was best known for his highly influential system of empiricism, philosophical scepticism and metaphysical naturalism. Beginning with '' A Treatise of Human Nature'' (1739–40), Hume strove to create a naturalistic science of man that examined the psychological basis of human nature. Hume followed John Locke in rejecting the existence of innate ideas, concluding that all human knowledge derives solely from experience. This places him with Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and George Berkeley as an empiricist. Cranston, Maurice, and Thomas Edmund Jessop. 2020 999br>David Hume" ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Retrieved 18 May 2020. Hume argued that inductive reasoning and belief in causality cannot be justified rationally; instead, they result from custom and mental habit. We never actually perceive that one event causes another but only experience ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Truth Value
In logic and mathematics, a truth value, sometimes called a logical value, is a value indicating the relation of a proposition to truth, which in classical logic has only two possible values ('' true'' or '' false''). Truth values are used in computing as well as various types of logic. Computing In some programming languages, any expression can be evaluated in a context that expects a Boolean data type. Typically (though this varies by programming language) expressions like the number zero, the empty string, empty lists, and null are treated as false, and strings with content (like "abc"), other numbers, and objects evaluate to true. Sometimes these classes of expressions are called falsy and truthy. For example, in Lisp, nil, the empty list, is treated as false, and all other values are treated as true. In C, the number 0 or 0.0 is false, and all other values are treated as true. In JavaScript, the empty string (""), null, undefined, NaN, +0, −0 and false are ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Robert Nozick
Robert Nozick (; November 16, 1938 – January 23, 2002) was an American philosopher. He held the Joseph Pellegrino Harvard University Professor, University Professorship at Harvard University,"Robert Nozick, 1938–2002". ''Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association'', November 2002: 76(2). and was president of the American Philosophical Association. He is best known for his book ''Anarchy, State, and Utopia'' (1974), a libertarianism, libertarian answer to John Rawls' ''A Theory of Justice'' (1971), in which Nozick proposes his minimal state#Philosophy, minimal state as the only justifiable form of government. His later work ''Philosophical Explanations'' (1981) advanced notable epistemological claims, namely his counterfactual theory of knowledge. It won Phi Beta Kappa society's Ralph ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Causal Theory Of Knowledge
"A Causal Theory of Knowing" is a philosophical essay written by Alvin Goldman in 1967, published in ''The Journal of Philosophy''. It is based on existing theories of knowledge in the realm of epistemology, the study of philosophy through the scope of knowledge. The essay attempts to define knowledge by connecting facts, beliefs and knowledge through underlying and connective series called causal chains. It provides a causal theory of knowledge. A causal chain is repeatedly described as a sequence of events for which one event in a chain causes the next. According to Goldman, these chains can only exist with the presence of an accepted fact, a belief in the fact, and a cause for the subject to believe the fact. The essay also explores the ideas of perception and memory through the use of the causal chains and the concept of knowledge. Background The essay is regarded as an improvement and rebuttal of Edmund Gettier, Edmund Gettier's "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?", which is ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Coherentism
In philosophical epistemology, there are two types of coherentism: the coherence theory of truth, and the coherence theory of justification (also known as epistemic coherentism). Coherent truth is divided between an anthropological approach, which applies only to localized networks ('true within a given sample of a population, given our understanding of the population'), and an approach that is judged on the basis of universals, such as categorical sets. The anthropological approach belongs more properly to the correspondence theory of truth, while the universal theories are a small development within analytic philosophy. The coherentist theory of justification, which may be interpreted as relating to either theory of coherent truth, characterizes epistemic justification as a property of a belief only if that belief is a member of a coherent set. What distinguishes coherentism from other theories of justification is that the set is the primary bearer of justification. As an e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Reliabilism
Reliabilism, a category of theories in the philosophical discipline of epistemology, has been advanced as a theory both of justification and of knowledge. Process reliabilism has been used as an argument against philosophical skepticism, such as the brain in a vat thought experiment. Process reliabilism is a form of epistemic externalism. Overview A broadly reliabilist theory of knowledge is roughly as follows: Given that ''p'' stands for any proposition (such as, ''the sky is blue''), then one knows that ''p'' if and only if ''p'' is true, one believes that ''p'' is true, and one has arrived at the belief that ''p'' is true through some ''reliable process.'' A broadly reliabilist theory of justified belief can be stated as follows: One has a justified belief that ''p'' if, and only if, the belief is the result of a reliable process. Moreover, a similar account can be given (and an elaborate version of this has been given by Alvin Plantinga) for such notions as 'warrante ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
