GLOSSARY 1

internalism (about justification): The view that a person's justification for a belief p is entirely a matter of evidence possessed by the person and retrievable through introspection or memory.

externalism (about justification): The view that a person's justification for a belief p includes environmental factors not necessarily known or accessible to the person, e.g., proper lighting when p is a claim about something's color.

analytic truth: A proposition (q.v.) is said to be analytic when whatever it says about something X--its subject--is contained within the concept, or idea, of what X is (e.g. `A triangle is a figure with three angles'). Compare synthetic.

synthetic truth: A proposition (q.v.) is said to be synthetic when whatever it says about something X--its subject--is not contained within the concept, or idea, of what X is (e.g. `My dog has long ears').

methodological doubt: A philosophic program that aims (1) at differentiating the degrees of warrant with which we may hold certain types of propositions, and (2) at discovering the criteria of warrant.

skepticism: A withholding of belief. Skepticism has many varieties, depending on that to which it is directed. The strongest type of skepticism asserts (inconsistently?) that nothing whatever can be known.

epistemology: Theory of knowledge.

justification (or "warrant"): The reason or support for a proposition, or theory, in question: what gives us a right to assert a claim or view. Justification, in Plato's view, ties belief down, grounds in it truth.

"clear and distinct" ideas: This is the designation given by Descartes to claims that are "self-evident" and "foundational" for a program of ordering beliefs in terms of degrees of warrant. (Cf. "basic propositions," "methodological doubt," and "foundationalism.")

Descartes' "demon": The name given to Descartes' "thought experiment" that shows that any claim about the world that is evidenced by sense experience might be false.

certainty: (Propositionally) A claim that is guaranteed true; (psychologically) an attitude towards a proposition that is for any cognizer S self-evident. According to some, a proposition p is certain for S if p is indubitable, i.e., does not admit of doubt.

basic propositions: Claims that are indubitable or certain; on certain empiricist views, claims that form the foundations of science and of all knowledge of the way the world is.

sense-data: What is immediately given in sense experiences, the objects of sense experiences (sights, sounds, touches, etc.), according to some (Cartesian) philosophers.

cogito (sum): The (Cartesian) claim that any subject S may believe with certainty that he or she (the "I") exists (so long as she is "thinking" or is "conscious").

epistemological particularism: The approach to theory of knowledge that begins with a list of bits of knowledge or types of knowledge--in answer to the question, "What do we know?" (G. E. Moore, for example, could be counted a particularist.)

epistemological methodism: The approach to epistemology that begins with criteria, canons, or principles--in answer to the question, "How do we know." (Descartes and Hume, for example, are methodists.)

infinitism: The view that series of justification need not terminate and that failure to terminate does not undermine real justification. (C. S. Peirce and E. Sosa defend this view.)

the doxastic assumption ("doxastic" = concerning belief): The assumption made by many epistemologists that justification consists exclusively in beliefs or propositions. In contrast, some epistemologists hold that experience itself, which is non-doxastic, can be a justifier.

intellectualist assumption about justification: An assumption usually attributed to Socrates that not only is justification doxastic but a person who is justified in a belief must be able to say or explain that justification to others.

correspondence theory of truth: This is a theory about the meaning of truth--not about the criteria or standards whereby we judge certain propositions to be true and others false, but about what makes (especially non-mathematical, non-logical) propositions true: namely, facts or truth-makers. For example, according to this theory what it means to say that the proposition `The Longhorn football team beat Houston in 2001' is true is that it corresponds to the fact of the Longhorns beating Houston in 2001. B. Russell says that the truth of "Desdemona loves Cassio" depends on a relation of loving holding in fact and taking Desdemona as its first term and Cassio as its second; thus would the statement mirror the fact.

coherence theory of truth: This is another theory about the meaning of truth: to say that a proposition is true is to say that it connects logically with a large body of knowledge or theory.

pragmatic theory of truth: A proposition is true if and only if it is "useful," that is, if it helps us attain our goals and unify our experience; in some versions (John Dewey), truth is said to be equivalent to "warranted assertibility" or (C. S. Peirce) to agreement in the long run among all investigators.

fallibilism: The view that no belief--or, usually, no belief about the world (as opposed to mathematical or logical entities)--is immune from revision and falsification; every belief is defeasible. (N.B. Quine is a fallibilist even about principles of logic.) As a view about justification, fallibilism is the position that as no belief about the world is immune to revision and falsification, no reason or justifier is immune from defeat.

reliabilism: The epistemological theory that a belief is justified if and only if it is produced by a cognitive process that is "reliable" (e.g., perception), that is, only if it is produced by a cognitive process that tends to produce true beliefs. This is usually counter an externalist (q.v.) theory of justification.

foundationalism: Foundationalists divide into several camps depending on, for instance, whether the propositions that are taken to form the foundations of worldly knowledge are about experiences (classical foundationalists) or physical objects (modified foundationalists). Non-doxastic foundationalists (a third group) say that sense experiences themselves, and not beliefs or propositions, are the foundations. Foundationalists try to reconstruct science and everyday knowledge such that every justified belief about the world can be justified by its relation to basic propositions or to prima facie justified observation statements, or, for non-doxastic foundationalists, though a "theory of appearing" (q.v.). That is, doxastic foundationalists see "basic propositions" or observation statements ("present psycho-physical perceptual judgments") as the ultimate propositional grounds of knowledge about the world.

theory of appearing: a position belonging to the non-doxastic camp of foundationalism according to which a person S is prima facie warranted in believing that a is F if S is appeared to by something (i.e., a) F-ly. Prima facie warrant is subject to defeat.

coherence theory of justification: According to this view, only logical and explanatory relations to other propositions provide justification for a proposition in question.

unity of science: The view, championed usually by coherentists, that science forms a unified whole, with logical connections and explanatory relations obtaining among its various branches, physics, chemistry, biology, and so on.

"warrant-transfer" principles: Principles postulated by foundationalists/phenomenalists to ground observation statements in basic propositions.

observation statements: "Present psycho-physical perceptual judgments," e.g. `I see a chair here now.'

Plato's account of "knowledge": A person S knows a proposition p if and only if (1) p is true, (2) S believes p, and (3) S is warranted in believing p.

necessary and sufficient conditions: If a proposition, or fact, A is a necessary condition for another proposition, or fact, B, then we may reason from the truth or obtaining of B to the truth or obtaining of A. (For example, the presence of fire--or the truth of `There is fire here'--guarantees the presence of oxygen--or the truth of `There is oxygen here.') If a proposition, or fact, A is a sufficient condition for another proposition, or fact, B, then we may reason from the truth or obtaining of A to the truth or obtaining of B. (For example, a person's swallowing a large glass of strychnine--or the truth of `S has just swallowed a large glass of strychnine'--guarantees that the person will die--or the truth of `S will die.') Some philosophers see the point of a philosophic "analysis" (or logos) of a concept to be provision of necessary and sufficient conditions. Logically, such an account would be an equivalence.

the "Gettier problem": A set of counterexamples to Plato's logos of knowledge that shows that although the three conditions the Greek philosopher lists may be each necessary for knowledge, taken together they are not sufficient.

counterexample: An instance that contradicts a generalization; e.g., "All elephants have tusks" is refuted by an example of an elephant without tusks.

ontology: Theory about what exists, or the broad types of things that may rightly be said to be.

idealism: This is the ontological view that everything that exists is in some sense "mental."

esse est percipi: "To be is to be perceived." The central slogan, or banner, of the ontological subjectivists sometimes called phenomenalists.

realism about physical objects: The ontological view that physical objects exist independently of perception.

naive realism: The ontological view that things are exactly as they appear. (Many philosophers believe this view is refuted by the "argument from illusion.")

causal realism: A phenomenalist view that statements about physical objects are justified in virtue of being the best explanations of statements about sense data. According to this view, what we directly experience are sense data, but physical objects exist (esse is NOT percipi), being posited to explain why our sense data occur.

solipsism: The extreme ontological position that only the first-person subject and her (!) subjective states are real.

intersubjectivity: One criterion for the reality, or objectivity, of a thing. For example, if the table in Waggener 421 may rightly be said to be real, it must be available to the experience of everyone who has the suitable perceptual capacities.

proposition: The bearer of the "truth-values" (a) truth and (b) falsity; the information conveyed by a declarative sentence; what is said by all sentences (in all languages) that say the same thing.

knowledge a priori: Knowledge had apart from experience (e.g., of mathematical and logical truths).

knowledge a posteriori: Knowledge acquired through experience (e.g., Phillips's hair is gray).

deduction: Reasoning according to principles of logic (e.g., if we know that the disjunction A or B is true and that B is false, then we can reason by deduction that A is true). Deduction is defined as guaranteeing the truth of the conclusion, given premises that are true.

induction: Reasoning from the data of experience to a conclusion (usually universal in scope) that the data do not conclusively establish (e.g., from seeing that 403 rubies are red, one may reason by induction that all rubies are red).

a necessary truth: A proposition whose falsity cannot be imagined; one true in "all possible worlds" (e.g., 2 + 3 = 5).

a contingent truth: A proposition that could conceivably be false (e.g., "Perry is Governor").

infinite regress: A fault in a theory that, for example, tries to account for something or other but is unable to do so without regressing to another claim, ad infinitum. (A benign regress is an infinite series where, e.g., an earlier member in the series does not depend on our knowledge of a later member, e.g., the truth regress, "It is true that Bush is President; a vicious regress is otherwise, e.g., the justification regress according to some.)

a truth-maker: A fact, event, or state of affairs that would make a proposition about it true.

isolation argument: A standard objection against coherentism as a theory of justification: isolating a belief that originates in an immediate experience, we can invent cases where it would not cohere with other things known but appears nevertheless to be justified.

doxastic ascent: A standard objection against foundationalism as a theory of justification: there has to be a reason to regard a belief or experience (or whatever) as foundational, and ipso facto there is no end to the justification regress.

evolutionary epistemology ("epistemology naturalized"): The view, similar to coherentism about justification, that human knowledge is to be explained in relation to the whole of science which is integrated, in particular, by evolutionary theory, with the result that epistemology disappears or becomes a branch of anthropology or psychology and medical science.

the normative: That which concerns norms or canons of right behavior and judgment.