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The past twenty-five years have seen a major renewal of interest in the topic of a priori knowledge. In the sixteen essays collected here, which span this entire period, philosopher Albert Casullo documents the complex set of issues motivating the renewed interest, identifies the central epistemological questions, and provides the leading ideas of a unified response to them. Throughout the essays, Casullo offers a systematic treatment of the concept of a priori knowledge, the existence of a priori knowledge, and the relationship between a priori knowledge and the related concepts of necessary truth and analytic truth. The essays fall into three categories: six published prior to his A Priori Justification (OUP, 2003), four published after the book, and four previously unpublished papers. The first six essays provide the background and introduction to a number of the major themes of the book: the articulation and defense of the minimal conception of a priori justification, an exposition of the limitations of the traditional arguments both for and against a priori knowledge, and the relevance of empirical investigation to providing supporting evidence for the claim that there are nonexperiential sources of justification. The remaining four published essays explore diverse themes that were introduced in Casullo's previous book but not developed in detail: epistemic overdetermination, the relationship between a priori knowledge and necessary truth, testimony and a priori knowledge, and the bearing of socio-historical accounts of knowledge on the a priori. The four previously unpublished essays address issues that have either emerged or taken on more prominence in the literature on the a priori since the publication of Casullo's previous book: the evidential status of intuitions, the nature of modal knowledge, and challenges to the cogency or the significance of the a priori-a posteriori distinction.
This book is a collection of essays concerning the concept and existence of a priori knowledge, and the relationship between a priori knowledge and the related concepts of necessary truth and analytic truth.
For centuries philosophers have attached much importance to a priori knowledge, but recent work in epistemology and experimental philosophy has questioned this. Leading philosophers discuss explanations of the a priori, challenges to its existence, the status of intuition, and the justification of belief—topics at the centre of current debate.
This book provides a detailed and comprehensive account of the problem of a priori knowledge from a historical as well as a systematic perspective. The author explores Kant’s views in connection with the possibility of revision, something hardly, if at all, done in philosophical literature. Furthermore, the views of well-renowned philosophers such as Quine, Putnam, Kitcher, and Hale are discussed in detail and are put into a historical and systematic perspective. Finally, this book contains a glossary of important notions offering illuminating accounts of a priori knowledge and related notions and explains the relationship between a priori knowledge, fallibility and revision. The detailing of concepts such as ‘defeasibility’, ‘infallibility’, ‘falsifiability’ helps anyone reading philosophical literature to pin down the meaning of the terms and its implications in this context. The enriched and dual approach the author takes makes the book a very useful and lucid guide to the problem of a priori knowledge.
Content and Justification presents a series of essays by Paul Boghossian on the theory of content and on its relation to the phenomenon of a priori knowledge.Part one comprises essays on the nature of rule-following and its relation to the problem of mental content; on the intelligibility of eliminativist views of the mental; on the prospects for a naturalistic reduction of mental content; and on the currently influential view that meaning is a normative notion.Part two includes three widely discussed papers on the phenomenon of self-knowledge and its compatibility with externalist conceptions of mental content.Part three concerns the classical but ill-understood phenomenon of knowledge that is based upon knowledge of meaning or conceptual competence.Finally, part four turns its attention from general issues about mental content to an account of a specific class of mental contents. It contains two widely discussed papers on the nature of colour concepts, and colour properties.
A priori knowledge and justification have long played a prominent part in epistemology and the theory of meaning. This text offers a variety of approaches to the a priori, examining its role in different areas of philosophical enquiry.
AcknowledgementsContributors1. Introduction: The art of precise epistemology Stephen HetheringtonPart A. Epistemology as scientific?2. A problem about epistemic dependenceTim Oakley3. Accounting for commitments: A priori knowledge, ontology, and logical entailmentsMichaelis Michael4. Epistemic bootstrappingPeter Forrest5. More praise for Moore's proofRoger White6. Lotteries and the Close Shave principleJohn Collins7. Skepticism, self-knowledge, and responsibilityDavid Macarthur8. A reasonable contextualism (or, Austin reprised)A. B. Dickerson9. Questioning contextualismBrian WeathersonPart B. Understanding knowledge?10. Truthmaking and the Gettier problemAdrian Heathcote11. Is knowing having the right to be sure?André Gallois12. Knowledge by intention? On the possibility of agent's knowledgeAnne Newstead13. Gettier's theoremJohn Bigelow14. Knowledge that works: A tale of two conceptual modelsStephen Hetherington
Evidentialism is a theory of knowledge the essence of which is the traditional idea that the justification of factual knowledge is entirely a matter of evidence. The authors defend this theory, arguing evidentialism is an asset virtually everywhere in epistemology, from getting started to refuting skepticism.
Epistemology is one of the oldest, yet still one of the most active, areas of philosophical research today. There currently exists many annotated tomes of primary sources, and a handful of single-authored introductions to the field, but there is no book that captures epistemology’s dynamic growth and lively debates for a student audience. In this volume, eight leading philosophers debate four topics central to recent research in epistemology: The A Priori: C. S. I. Jenkins and Michael Devitt The A Posteriori: Richard Fumerton and Nicholas Silins The Regress of Justification: Declan Smithies and Peter Klein Skepticism: Anthony Brueckner and Ernest Sosa Ram Neta’s introduction to the volume, descriptions of each chapter, annotated bibliographies for each controversy, and supplemental guide to further controversies in epistemology (with bibliographies) help provide clearer and richer views of active controversies for all readers.
For much of the past two millennia philosophers have embraced a priori knowledge and have thought that the a priori plays an important role in philosophy itself. Philosophers from Plato to Descartes, Kant to Kripke, all endorse the a priori and engage in a priori reasoning in their philosophical discussions. Recent work in epistemology and experimental philosophy, however, has raised questions about both the existence of a priori knowledge and the centrality of the a priori for philosophy. This collection of essays aims to advance the discussion of the a priori and its role in philosophy by addressing four issues. The first is whether intuitions provide evidence for philosophical propositions, whether that evidence is a priori, and whether the results of experimental philosophy affect the evidential and a priori status of intuitions. The second is whether there are explanations of the a priori and what range of propositions can be justified and known a priori. The third is whether a priori justified beliefs are needed in order to avoid some skeptical worries. The fourth is whether certain recent challenges to the existence or significance of the a priori are successful. The contributors include a mix of young and established philosophers, including some of the most prominent voices in philosophy today.