Probability theory and epistemology

By Loewer, Barry

The primary uses of probability in epistemology are to measure degrees of belief and to formulate conditions for rational belief and rational change of belief. The degree of ...

Inference to the best explanation

By Vogel, Jonathan

Inference to the best explanation is the procedure of choosing the hypothesis or theory that best explains the available data. The factors that make one explanation better than ...

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 ...

Pragmatic Encroachment

By Ganson, Dorit

When Pascal entreats us to ‘Wager, then, without hesitation that He is’ upon consideration of the potential gains (all) and losses (nothing) of such a wager, we recognise ...

Venn, John (1834–1923)

By Merrill, Daniel D.

John Venn was a British symbolic logician and methodologist of science. He is known for having invented the method of Venn diagrams for judging the validity of categorical ...

Archaeology, philosophy of

By Wylie, Alison

Questions about the scientific status of archaeology have been central to field-defining debates since the late nineteenth century and have frequently involved appeals to philosophical sources. With the ...

Doubt

By Williams, Michael

Doubt is often defined as a state of indecision or hesitancy with respect to accepting or rejecting a given proposition. Thus, doubt is opposed to belief. But doubt ...

Laplace, Pierre-Simon (1749–1827)

By Gillispie, Charles C.

In company with Lagrange and Legendre, Laplace was one of the three foremost mathematicians during the half-century of French pre-eminence in science, from the 1770s into the 1820s. ...

Pascal’s wager

By Jordan, Jeff

Pascal’s wager is a type of theistic argument developed by Blaisé Pascal, a French mathematician of the seventeenth century. There are at least four versions of the wager ...

De Morgan, Augustus (1806–71)

By Merrill, Daniel D.

Augustus De Morgan was an important British mathematician and logician. Much of his logical work was directed to expanding the traditional syllogistic theory, and to meeting the objections ...

Paradoxes, epistemic

By Kvanvig, Jonathan L.

The four primary epistemic paradoxes are the lottery, preface, knowability, and surprise examination paradoxes. The lottery paradox begins by imagining a fair lottery with a thousand tickets in ...

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 ...

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, ...

Hempel, Carl Gustav (1905–1997)

By Jeffrey, R.

Hempel’s defence of Carnap’s and Neurath’s physicalism testifies to the presence of certain ‘postmodern’ themes in logical empiricism (or logical positivism): (1) a textualist turn to sentences from ...

Induction, epistemic issues in

By Kaplan, Mark

Consider the following: ...

Information theory and epistemology

By Dretske, Fred

The mathematical theory of information (also called communication theory) defines a quantity called mutual information that exists between a source, s, and receiver, r. Mutual information is ...

Justification, epistemic

By Foley, Richard

The term ‘justification’ belongs to a cluster of normative terms that also includes ‘rational’, ‘reasonable’ and ‘warranted’. All these are commonly used in epistemology, but there is no ...

Knowledge, concept of

By Klein, Peter D.

The branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and extent of human knowledge is called epistemology (from the Greek epistēmē meaning knowledge, and logos meaning theory). ...

Learning

By Glymour, Clark

Learning is the acquisition of some true belief or skill through experience. Rationalist/idealist philosophers held that the very constitution of thought guarantees that fundamental laws hold of the ...

Reliabilism

By Goldman, Alvin I.

Reliabilism is an approach to the nature of knowledge and of justified belief. Reliabilism about justification, in its simplest form, says that a belief is justified if and ...

Vision

Vision is the most studied sense. It is our richest source of information about the external world, providing us with knowledge of the shape, size, distance, colour and ...

Belief

By Jackson, Frank; Braddon-Mitchell, David

We believe that there is coffee over there; we believe the special theory of relativity; we believe the Vice-Chancellor; and some of us believe in God. But plausibly ...

Naturalized epistemology

By Luper, Steven

The term ‘naturalized epistemology’ was coined by W.V. Quine to refer to an approach to epistemology which he introduced in his 1969 essay ‘Epistemology Naturalized’. Many of the ...

Internalism and externalism in epistemology

By Alston, William P.

The internalism–externalism distinction is usually applied to the epistemic justification of belief. The most common form of internalism (accessibility internalism) holds that only what the subject can easily ...

Legal evidence and inference

By Schum, David A.

In the field of law there is a rich legacy of scholarship and experience regarding the properties, uses and discovery of evidence in inferential reasoning tasks. Over the ...