Introspection, epistemology of

By Kornblith, Hilary

If we wish to know what is going on in someone else’s mind, we must observe their behaviour; on the basis of what we observe, we may sometimes ...

Introspection, psychology of

By Von Eckhardt, Barbara

Introspection is the process of directly examining one’s own conscious mental states and processes. Since the seventeenth century, there has been considerable disagreement on the scope, nature and ...

Empiricism

By Alston, William P.

In all its forms, empiricism stresses the fundamental role of experience. As a doctrine in epistemology it holds that all knowledge is ultimately based on experience. Likewise an ...

Epistemology

Epistemology has been traditionally concerned with questions about the nature, value, and scope of knowledge, together with other questions that arise in relation to these. Hence, another name ...

Belief and knowledge

By Luper, Steven

It is often said that for people to know that such and such is the case, they must have something like a belief that such and such is ...

Searle, John (1932–)

By Lepore, Ernie

John Searle was a pupil of J.L. Austin at Oxford in the 1950s. He is the Mills Professor of Mind and Language at the University of California, Berkeley, ...

Consciousness

By Lormand, Eric

Philosophers have used the term ‘consciousness’ for four main topics: knowledge in general, intentionality, introspection (and the knowledge it specifically generates) and phenomenal experience. This entry discusses the ...

Epistemology

Epistemology is one of the core areas of philosophy. It is concerned with the nature, sources and limits of knowledge. Epistemology has been primarily concerned with propositional knowledge, ...

Epistemology

By Klein, Peter D.

Epistemology is one of the core areas of philosophy. It is concerned with the nature, sources and limits of knowledge (see Knowledge, concept of). There is a vast ...

Introspection, psychology of

Introspection is the process of directly examining one’s own conscious mental states and processes. Since the seventeenth century, there has been considerable disagreement on the scope, nature and ...

Rationalism

By Markie, Peter J.

Rationalism is the view that reason, as opposed to, say, sense experience, divine revelation or reliance on institutional authority, plays a dominant role in our attempt to gain ...

Qualia

In contemporary discussions in the philosophy of mind, the terms quale and qualia (plural) are most commonly used to denote features of our conscious mental states ...

Testimony

By Gelfert, Axel

In contemporary epistemology, ‘testimony’ is used as an umbrella term to refer to all those instances where we form a belief, or acquire knowledge, on the basis of ...

Intersubjectivity

By Spaulding, Shannon

Intersubjectivity is the shared or mutual understanding among agents. Edmond Husserl first developed the concept of intersubjectivity as a critique of René Descartes’ problem of other minds. Husserl ...

Gettier problem

By Shope, Robert K.

The expression ‘the Gettier problem’ refers to one or another problem exposed by Edmund Gettier when discussing the relation between several examples that he constructed and analyses of ...

Unconscious mental states

By Rey, Georges

Unconscious phenomena are those mental phenomena which their possessor cannot introspect, not only at the moment at which the phenomenon occurs, but even when prompted (‘Do you think/want/…?’). ...