Abstract

This book aims to provide second- or third-year college-level philosophy students with an introduction to the main topics currently discussed by Anglo-American philosophers under the label of "theory of knowledge." The book has three main parts: Part I focuses on scepticism, Gettier-style counterexamples to the traditional justified-true-belief analysis of knowledge, and Robert Nozick's 1981 version of the conditional theory of knowledge. Part II focuses on the disagreement between foundationalists and coherentists over the nature of justification. And Part III discusses, in a general manner, several specific forms of knowledge: perceptual knowledge, knowledge based on memory, knowledge based on induction, and a priori knowledge. The book concludes with a brief chapter asking, but not really answering, the question whether epistemology is possible in light of the notorious problem of the criterion and Quine's doubts about constructing a "first philosophy" prior to science.