Epistemic Entitlement

For most of the twentieth century, philosophers have explored the nature and extent of our knowledge-especially our knowledge of the world grounded in sense-perceptual experience. Can we be sure that our experience of the world is enough to ground our knowledge of an external reality? Are our everyday beliefs about our world warranted well enough for knowledge? What if we're all in The Matrix? This volume collects cutting-edge essays, written by leading philosophers, which address these fundamental questions about our place in the world. Through sustained reflection on two kinds of warrants—entitlements and justifications—they all seek to understand the nature and extent of our knowledge. Even if we were not able to justify our knowledge of the external world, we are nevertheless entitled to our view of external reality.

What entitles you to claims about your perceivable environment? Matthiessen suggests that it is neither your experience, nor the reliability of your cognitive processes, but rather your being in the right kind of perceptual situation.

What entitles you to claims about your perceivable environment? Matthiessen suggests that it is neither your experience, nor the reliability of your cognitive processes, but rather your being in the right kind of perceptual situation.

Is it possible for belief or acceptance to be epistemically justified or rational without evidence? Non-evidentialism says, “Yes”. This original edited collection explores the tenability of non-evidentialism as a response to epistemological scepticism and examines potential applications within social psychology, psychiatry, and mathematics.

For anyone looking to better understand the topics at the centre of contemporary epistemology, The Bloomsbury Companion to Epistemology presents a valuable guide. This up-to-date Companion covers all the fundamental questions asked by epidemiologists today - areas that have continued to attract interest historically as well as topics that have emerged more recently as active areas of research. Fifteen specially-commissioned essays from a respected team of experts reveal where important work continues to be done in the area and the new directions the field is taking, such as: • Foundationalism by Daniel Howard-Snyder • Coherentism by Jonathan Kvanvig • Proper Functionalism by Kenneth Boyce and Alvin Plantinga • Evidentialism by Richard Feldman and Andrew Cullison • Experimental Epistemology by James R. Beebe Clearly written and featuring a detailed list of resources, glossary and a fully annotated bibliography, The Bloomsbury Companion to Epistemology introduces some of the most exciting topics in contemporary analytic philosophy.

Even though important developments within 20th and 21st century philosophy have widened the scope of epistemology, this has not yet resulted in a systematic meta-epistemological debate about epistemology’s aims, methods, and criteria of success. Ideas such as the methodology of reflective equilibrium, the proposal to "naturalize" epistemology, constructivist impulses fuelling the "sociology of scientific knowledge", pragmatist calls for taking into account the practical point of epistemic evaluations, as well as feminist criticism of the abstract and individualist assumptions built into traditional epistemology are widely discussed, but they have not typically resulted in the call for, let alone the construction of, a suitable meta-epistemological framework. This book motivates and elaborates such a new meta-epistemology. It provides a pragmatist, social and functionalist account of epistemic states that offers the conceptual space for revised or even replaced epistemic concepts. This is what it means to "refurbish epistemology": The book assesses conceptual tools in relation to epistemology’s functionally defined conceptual space, responsive to both intra-epistemic considerations and political and moral values.

This volume collects twelve essays by Sanford C. Goldberg on the topic of social epistemology. The collection falls into two halves: the first half develops a proposal for a programme for social epistemology, its animating vision, foundational questions, and core concepts; the other half focuses on applications of this programme to particular topics. Goldberg characterizes the research programme as the exploration of the epistemic significance of other minds. This programme is dedicated to an examination of the various ways in which we depend epistemically on others, and to describe the proper way to evaluate beliefs according to the sort of dependence they exhibit. It thus provides the basis for identifying and characterizing various dysfunctions of our epistemic communities. The programme is put into practice by exploring such topics as the epistemic agency exhibited in inquiry, the practices that constitute news coverage, the basis for allegations of what we or others should have known, how reliance on another's testimony contrasts with reliance on an instrument, our reliance on others as consumers of testimony, and the epistemic significance of non-epistemic social norms--moral, political, professional, or relationship-based.

This volume brings together new essays on virtue epistemology, one of the leading approaches in the theory of knowledge.