Knowledge First

'Knowledge-First' constitutes what is widely regarded as one of the most significant innovations in contemporary epistemology in the past 25 years. Knowledge-first epistemology is the idea that knowledge per se should not be analysed in terms of its constituent parts (e.g., justification, belief), but rather that these and other notions should be analysed in terms of the concept of knowledge. This volume features a substantive introduction and 13 original essays from leading and up-and-coming philosophers on the topic of knowledge-first philosophy. The contributors' essays range from foundational issues to applications of this project to other disciplines including the philosophy of mind, the philosophy of perception, ethics and action theory. Knowledge First: Approaches in Epistemology and Mind aims to provide a relatively open-ended forum for creative and original scholarship with the potential to contribute and advance debates connected with this philosophical project.

According to a long tradition, questions about the nature of knowledge are to be answered by analyzing it as a species of true belief. In light of the apparent failure of this approach, knowledge first philosophy takes knowledge as the starting point in epistemology. Knowledge First? offers the first overview of this approach.

According to a long tradition, questions about the nature of knowledge are to be answered by analyzing it as a species of true belief. In light of the apparent failure of this approach, knowledge first philosophy takes knowledge as the starting point in epistemology. Knowledge First? offers the first overview of this approach.

This book combines virtue reliabilism with knowledge first epistemology to develop novel accounts of knowledge and justified belief. It is virtue reliabilist in that knowledge and justified belief are accounted for in terms of epistemic ability. It is knowledge first epistemological in that, unlike traditional virtue reliabilism, it does not unpack the notion of epistemic ability as an ability to form true beliefs but as an ability to know, thus offering a definition of justified belief in terms of knowledge. In addition, the book aims to show that this version of knowledge first virtue reliabilism serves to provide novel solutions to a number of core epistemological problems and, as a result, compares favourably with alternative versions of virtue reliabilism both in the traditionalist and in the knowledge first camp. This is the first ever book-length development of knowledge first virtue reliabilism, and it will contribute to recent debates in these two growing areas of epistemology.

In Thomas A. Stewart’s bestselling first book, Intellectual Capital, he redefined the priorities of businesses around the world, demonstrating that the most important assets companies own today are often not tangible goods, equipment, financial capital, or market share, but the intangibles: patents, the knowledge of workers, and the information about customers and channels and past experience that a company has in its institutional memory. Now in his new book, The Wealth of Knowledge, Stewart--widely acknowledged as the world’s leading expert on working with intellectual capital in today’s knowledge economy--reveals how today’s companies are applying the concept of intellectual capital into day-to-day operations to dramatically increase their success in the marketplace. Arguing that companies can make untold millions of dollars by managing knowledge more effectively--and save millions more--Stewart offers executives and managers compelling accounts of how leading companies around the world are successfully tackling the practical issues involved in today’s knowledge economy. The heart of the book is a revolutionary 4-step preocess that shows how to put intellectual capital to work to improve performance and profitablity, as well as manage knowledge processes. He goes on to discuss how companies can better utilize their current assets and enhance their knowledge resources for the future. Questioning many of the assumptions that have ruled business in the twentieth century, he addresses such critical and fundamental issues as why companies exist, how they should be organized and how people should be compensated. With his customary fearlessness and foresight, he plunges into the thick of the controversial arena of measuring and accounting, as well-an increasingly difficult task when a corporation’s assets are intangible. The Wealth of Knowledge not only sets out the latest thinking in creating and managing knowledge assets, but provides a detailed course of action for corporations trying to navigate their way in the world of knowledge economy.

The only inner-circle operative not to have been mysteriously killed, the author steps out of the shadows to give riveting testimony. Morrow--who was a CIA covert agent--reveals how he came to purchase the rifles used by Oswald and others to kill JFK. Ties into the 30th anniversary of the assassination.

Epistemology is the philosophical study of how we should form our beliefs. It is one of the central areas of philosophical inquiry and has been so for as long as there have been philosophers. The End of Epistemology As We Know It challenges the views and methodology of almost every epistemologist, both historical and contemporary. In a call for radical reform of how epistemology is practiced and a rethinking of conventional wisdom in this area, Brian Talbot puts forward new epistemic norms that differ significantly from the norms of mainstream epistemic theories.

To say that someone is aware of a fact is a commonplace expression, not at all a philosopher's term of art. It is often used to criticize, excuse, admonish, and inform others. Such uses of the expression presuppose the existence of a state of awareness that one can be in or fail to be in with regard to some fact. Here lies the phenomenon of factual awareness. It is conventional in epistemology to treat 'S is aware of the fact that p' as either expressing the same thought as 'S knows that p' or at least entailing it. Learning of the failure of conventional views is often both surprising and theoretically fruitful. This book presents a comprehensive case against the view that factual awareness just is knowledge or even essentially related to knowledge: factual awareness is not identical to, and it does not entail, knowing, being in a position to know, or being capable of knowing. It provides a systematic exploration of the relation between knowledge and factual awareness, arguing that knowledge is but one species of factual awareness and that we can understand the possession of objective reasons, the normativity of knowledge, and the nature of knowledge in terms of factual awareness. In this way, the state of factual awareness is, structurally and substantively, a more basic type of state than knowledge. If correct, this undermines a number of ways in which knowledge has been regarded as coming 'first' in recent epistemology.