Duncan Pritchard

_What is this thing called Philosophy?_ is the definitive textbook for all who want a thorough introduction to the field. It introduces philosophy using a question-led approach that reflects the discursive nature of the discipline. Edited by Duncan Pritchard, each section is written by a high-profile contributor focusing on a key area of philosophy, and contains three or four question-based chapters offering an accessible point of engagement. The core areas of philosophy covered are: Ethics Political Philosophy Aesthetics Epistemology Philosophy of Mind Metaphysics Philosophy of Science Philosophy of Religion The Meaning of Life. The accompanying Routledge companion website features valuable online resources for both instructors and students including links to audio and video material, multiple-choice questions, interactive flashcards, essay questions and annotated further reading. This is the essential textbook for students approaching the study of philosophy for the first time.

This paper examines Linda Zagzebski’s account of rationality, as set out in her rich, wide-ranging, and important book, Epistemic Authority: A Theory of Trust, Authority, and Autonomy in Belief. We briefly describe the account that she offers and then consider its plausibility. In particular, in the first section we argue that a number of Zagzebski’s claims with regard to rationality require more support than she offers for them. Moreover, in the second section, we contend that far from offering Zagzebski a quick way of dealing with radical scepticism, her account of rationality actually seems to be particularly vulnerable to this problem.

In this article I return to an argument that I presented in earlier work to the effect that virtue epistemology is at worse false and at best unmotivated. In the light of recent responses to this argument from such figures as John Greco, Guy Axtell, and Kelly Becker, I here re-state and re-evaluate this argument. In the process the original argument is refined and supplemented in key respects and some of the main charges against it are shown to be unfounded. Nevertheless, I also argue that at least one of the objections to the original argument—due to Becker—may well be on the right lines, and I draw some conclusions in this regard.

There are parallels between certain responses to local epistemological scepticism about religious belief and an influential reply to radical epistemological scepticism. What ties both accounts together is that they utilise, either implicitly or explicitly, a “hinge” proposition thesis which maintains that the pivotal beliefs in question are immune to sceptical attack even though they lack sufficient epistemic grounds. It is argued that just as this strategy lacks any anti-sceptical efficacy in the context of the radical sceptical debate, so it offers no defence against a localised scepticism regarding religious belief either. What the defender of religious belief should do, it is claimed, is re-examine the manner in which a commitment to the doctrine of epistemological internalism underlies the sceptical attack.

I argue that the notion of reflective epistemic luck raises important questions about the centrality to epistemology of a conception of justification that demands that one is able to take cognitive responsibility for one’s beliefs. I take a critical look at some of the recent ‘virtue epistemologies’ that have been put forward in the recent literature which define knowledge in terms of the epistemic virtues and cognitive faculties. More specifically, I contrast broadly externalist construals of the virtue-theoretic thesis—such as the ‘agent reliabilism’ advanced, for example, by Ernest Sosa and John Greco—with virtue epistemologies that roughly fall into the internalist camp—in particular, ‘neo-Aristotelian’ theories, such as the view defended by Linda Zagzebski. I claim that in each case a key part of the motivation for offering such a view lies in a desire to eliminate a species of epistemic luck that is thought to be left uneliminated by rival theories of knowledge. In general, I claim that externalists and internalists in epistemology often speak past one another precisely because they are concerned with these different types of epistemic luck, and that disambiguating the species of epistemic luck at issue in this debate can help us to find a way of reconciling both internalist and externalist intuitions about knowledge. I conclude by arguing that once the ambiguous role of epistemic luck in the development of these virtue epistemological theories is made explicit, then the motivation to offer a specifically virtue-theoretic theory of knowledge subsides.

This essay offers a rearticulation and defence of the modal account of luck that the author developed in earlier work . In particular, the proposal is situated within a certain methodology, a component of which is paying due attention to the cognitive science literature on luck ascriptions. It is shown that with the modal account of luck properly articulated it can adequately deal with some of the problems that have recently been offered against it, and that the view has a number of attractions over competing proposals, such as the lack of control account

A certain conception of the relevance of virtue epistemology to the philosophy of education is set out. On this conception, while the epistemic goal of education might initially be promoting the pupil's cognitive success, it should ultimately move on to the development of the pupil's cognitive agency. A continuum of cognitive agency is described, on which it is ultimately cognitive achievement, and thus understanding, which is the epistemic goal of education. This is contrasted with a view on which knowledge is the epistemic goal

It is nowadays taken for granted that the core radical sceptical arguments all pivot upon the principle that the epistemic operator in question is 'closed' under known entailments. Accordingly, the standard anti-sceptical project now involves either denying closure or retaining closure by amending how one understands other elements of the sceptical argument. However, there are epistemic principles available to the sceptic which are logically weaker than closure but achieve the same result. Accordingly the contemporary debate fails to engage with the sceptical problem in its strongest form

In a recent, and influential, article, Crispin Wright maintains that a familiar form of scepticismwhich finds its core expression in Descartes’ dreaming argumentcan be defused (or, to use Wright’s own parlance, “imploded”), by showing how it employs self-defeating reasoning. I offer two fundamental reasons for rejecting Wright’s ‘implosion’ of scepticism. On the one hand, I argue that, even by Wright’s own lights, it is unclear whether there is a sceptical argument to implode in the first place. On the other, I claim that even on the supposition that Wright has indeed succeeded in setting-up such an argument, he nevertheless fails to follow-through with an adequate response. A diagnosis of the failure of Wright’s approach is then given in the context of the wider sceptical debate.