Ned MARKOSIAN ABSTRACT: AThe topic of this paper is the familiar problem of skepticism about the external world. How can you know that you are not a brain in a vat being fooled by alien scientists? And if you can’t know that, how can you know anything about the external world? The paper assumes Evidentialism as a theory about justification, and …

Rinat M. NUGAYEV ABSTRACT: It is exhibited that maxwellian electrodynamics was created as a result of the old pre-maxwellian programmes reconciliation: the electrodynamics of Ampere-Weber, the wave theory of Young-Fresnel and Faraday’s programme. The programmes’ meeting led to construction of the whole hierarchy of theoretical objects starting from the genuine crossbreeds (the displacement current) and up to usual mongrels. After the …

Shane RYAN ABSTRACT: I argue that a Humean account can make sense of the phenomenology associated with testimonial justification; the phenomenology being that in standard cases hearers regularly simply accept a testifier’s assertions as true – hearers don’t engage in monitoring. The upshot is that a Humean account is in a better position dialectically than is usually supposed. I provide some background …

Michael HUEMER ABSTRACT: I address Moti Mizrahi’s objections to my use of the Self-Defeat Argument for Phenomenal Conservatism (PC). Mizrahi contends that other epistemological theories can be supported by parallel self-defeat arguments. I argue that the self-defeat arguments for other theories either (a) are compatible with PC and thus present no problem, or (b) have a false premise, unlike the self-defeat …

James FILLER ABSTRACT: Recently, there has been a move in contemporary epistemological philosophy toward a virtue epistemology, which sees certain character traits of the rational agent as critical in the acquisition of knowledge. This attempt to introduce virtue into epistemological investigations has, however, relied almost exclusively on an Aristotelian account of virtue. In this paper, I attempt to take a new …

B.J.C. Madison ABSTRACT: Epistemic internalism, by stressing the indispensability of the subject’s perspective, strikes many as plausible at first blush. However, many people have tended to reject the position because certain kinds of beliefs have been thought to pose special problems for epistemic internalism. For example, internalists tend to hold that so long as a justifier is available to the subject …

Frederic PETERS ABSTRACT: The equation of consciousness with qualia, of wakeful awareness with awareness-of-cognitive content (perceptions, conceptions, emotions), while intuitively attractive, and formally referenced as the primary index of consciousness by many philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists, nevertheless has significant difficulties specifying precisely what it is that distinguishes conscious from non-conscious cognition. Moreover, there is a surprisingly robust congruence of evidence to …

Benjamin W. McCRAW ABSTRACT: In this paper, I respond to an objection raised by Duncan Pritchard and Jesper Kallestrup against virtue epistemology. In particular, they argue that the virtue epistemologist must either deny that Sknows that p only if S believes that p because of S’s virtuous operation or deny intuitive cases of testimonial knowledge. Their dilemma has roots in the …

Moti MIZRAHI ABSTRACT: In this paper, I argue that Phenomenal Conservatism (PC) is not superior to alternative theories of basic propositional justification insofar as those theories that reject PC are self-defeating. I show that self-defeat arguments similar to Michael Huemer’s Self-Defeat Argument for PC can be constructed for other theories of basic propositional justification as well. If this is correct, then …

Nicholas RESCHER ABSTRACT: BIn general, scholars have viewed the mathematical detail of Plato’s Divided Line discussion in Republic VI-VII as irrelevant to the substance of his epistemology. Against this stance this essay argues that this detail serves a serious and instructive purpose and makes manifest some central features of Plato’s account of human knowledge. Download PDF