Reasons for belief

By Audi, Robert

Reasons for believing something are one or another kind of ground for believing it. Some grounds provide evidence for a belief; others explain it; some are consciously known, ...

Perception

By Logue, Heather

If you want to get to grips with philosophy of perception, the best place to start is M.G.F. Martin’s entry on (you guessed it) perception! ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

Mechanism, in modern philosophy

By MacIntosh, Jack

Mechanism is the view that the material world is composed of small particles (corpuscles, or atoms), whose motion, size, shape, and various arrangements and clusterings provide the theoretical ...

Marxist philosophy of science

By Miller, Richard W.

Marx’s approach to science is an intriguing combination of respect for the natural sciences and empirical inquiry, determination to go beyond the description of regularities among observable phenomena, ...

Agnosticism

By Rowe, William L.

In the popular sense, an agnostic is someone who neither believes nor disbelieves in God, whereas an atheist disbelieves in God. In the strict sense, however, agnosticism is ...

Authority

By Green, Leslie

The notion of authority has two main senses: expertise and the right to rule. To have authority in matters of belief (to be ’an authority’) is to have ...

Memory, epistemology of

By Conee, Earl

Memory appears to preserve knowledge, but there are epistemic questions about how this could be. Memory is fallible, and empirical research has identified various ways in which people ...

Evidence

By Gardiner, Georgi

Evidence is a sign or indication of what is true. ...

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 ...

Rationality and cultural relativism

By Simon, Lawrence H.

Under what conditions may we judge the practices or beliefs of another culture to be rationally deficient? Is it possible that cultures can differ so radically as to ...

Science and values

The relationship between science and values is a complex one, with values having the potential to influence science either positively or negatively (see Values). On the positive side, ...

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). ...

Putnam, Hilary (1926–2016)

Putnam’s work spans a broad spectrum of philosophical interests, yet nonetheless reflects thematic unity in its concern over the question of realism. The dynamic nature of Putnam's thought ...

Epistemic infinitism

By Aikin, Scott

If you believe something rationally, you believe it for a reason. And that reason can’t just be any old reason. You’ve got to rationally hold it as a ...

A posteriori

By Moser, Paul K.

A prominent term in theory of knowledge since the seventeenth century, ‘a posteriori’ signifies a kind of knowledge or justification that depends on evidence, or warrant, from sensory ...

Rational beliefs

By Cherniak, Christopher

To the extent that a belief is rational, it ought to be held, other things being equal; irrational beliefs should not be held. From traditional epistemological perspectives, the ...

Foundationalism

By Sosa, Ernest

Some foundationalists are rationalists who rely on intuition and deduction. Others are empiricists, in a broad sense, and accept observation and induction or abduction or yet other ways ...

Epistemology of education

By Siegel, Harvey

Philosophical thinking about education has always been centrally concerned with epistemological matters, alongside metaphysical, moral and social/political concerns. The most basic question concerns the epistemic aims of education: ...

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 ...

A posteriori

A prominent term in theory of knowledge since the seventeenth century, ‘a posteriori’ signifies a kind of knowledge or justification that depends on evidence, or justification, from sensory ...

Cognitive pluralism

Cognitive pluralism refers to the very different ways in which people engage in cognitive activity in general, and reasoning in particular. Cognitive pluralism does not focus upon differences ...