Jonathan L. Kvanvig

This chapter explores the challenge to the proof of Fitch’s results presented by intuitionism, and the prospects of this viewpoint in avoiding the paradox that results. It argues that adopting intuitionistic principles of reasoning will not help avoid the paradox. It merely changes what is paradoxical from a lost distinction between known truth and knowable truth, to a lost distinction between unknown truth and unknowable truth. Since paradox remains in both cases, the solution to the paradox must be found elsewhere.

Motivated by Plantinga's work, fourteen prominent philosophers have written new essays investigating Plantingian warrant and its contribution to contemporary epistemology. The resulting collection, representing a broad array of views, not only gives readers a critical perspective on Plantinga's landmark work, but also provides in one volume a clear statement of the variety of approaches to the nature of warrant within contemporary epistemology and to the connections between epistemology and metaphysics.

The point of this essay by Jonathan Kvanvig is to draw three threads into a common cord to show what a fully fallibilistic approach to rationality ought to look like. The three threads concern what it is for rationality to be perspectival, why rational disagreement can always arise even when controls are in place for total evidence and competency, and why fallibility does not fly in the face of a strong preference for full unity in an account of normativity. The goal then is to provide an account of normativity that has no need of an independent notion of excusability (though of course there will still be excusable actions and beliefs) and no tendency to sniff the air for the scent of irrationality when people disagree.

The view I've been defending in the theory of justification I have termed ‘propositionalism’. It counsels beginning inquiry into the nature of justification by adopting a particular form of evidentialism, according to which the first task is to describe the abstract relation of evidencing that holds between propositional contents. Such an approach has a variety of implications for the theory of justification itself, and many of the motivations for the view are of a standard internalist variety. Some of these motivations will be described in due course, but there is also a further motivation to mention here as well. Such a theory, beyond enabling a theory to satisfy typical internalist strictures, also allows a strong relationship between the theory of justification and more standard confirmation theory where claims are confirmed and disconfirmed by information gleaned from experiments and other sources. It is a natural and pleasing result if confirmation theory can be embedded within the theory of justification developed in the context of more traditional epistemology.

One of the central claims of Williamson's ground-breaking epistemology is the claim that knowledge is the norm of assertion. This chapter contends that this viewpoint is mistaken. It first explains Williamson's path to the conclusion he holds, identifying the two major arguments that he uses to support his claim that knowledge is the norm of assertion. It summarizes the _prima facie_ case for an alternative view, and then addresses the tension between this _prima facie_ case and Williamson's arguments. The chapter argues that a proper resolution of the conflict results in a denial of the idea that knowledge is the norm of assertion. Instead, to the extent that appropriate assertion is subject to epistemic constraints, those constraints have to do with justification rather than knowledge.

I came to epistemology through an interest in the concept of rationality, and especially through the attacks on the rationality of religious believers. My thoughts at the time focused on the disappointing quality of the arguments for and against religious belief, and I recall being astonished at the time that philosophers capable of such penetrating insight in other areas had nothing that seemed either penetrating or original. The defenders sounded too much like mere apologists for the faith, and the attackers arid and dull, with both sides often exuding a scent of intellectual dishonesty.

There are two different kinds of theories of the concept of epistemic defeat. One theory begins with propositional relationships, only by implication describing what happens in the context of a noetic system. Such a theory places inforrmation about defeat up front, not informing us of how the defeat relationships play out in the context of actual belief, at least not initially. The other theory takes a back door to the concept of defeat, assuming a context of actual belief and an entire noetic system, and describing defeat in terms of what sort of doxastic and noetic responses would be appropriate to the addition of particular pieces of information. Where the house is the noetic structure itself, the front door approach characterizes the concept of defeat in terms of the propositional contents a belief might have, thus characterizing defeat at the front door. The backdoor approach characterizes defeat in terms of what leaves the house, in terms of beliefs that exit the noetic system in response to changes to it, in terms of what the staff of a well-run household kicks out the backdoor for making a mess of things. Alvin Plantinga’s theory of epistemic defeat is a back-door theory, and here I will argue that his theory and approaches like it will be unable to explicate accurately the concept of epistemic defeat. I will argue that a front door approach is needed rather than a back door approach

representations, for the unconditioned transcendent surpasses every possible conception of a being, including even the conception of a Supreme Being... It is the religious function of atheism ever to remind us that the religious act has to do with the unconditioned transcendent, and that the representations of the Unconditioned are not objects concerning whose existence.., a discussion would be possible. The word >God= involves a double meaning: it connotes the unconditioned transcendent, the ultimate, and also an object somehow endowed with qualities and actions. The first is not figurative or symbolic, but is rather in the strictest sense what it is said to be. The second, however, is really symbolic, figurative. = Tillich=s view on transcendence is a quite radical view. However, his view serves to illustrate two things: (i) the importance of the concept of transcendence in discussions about God, and (ii) the implications for religious language resulting from God..

THE DOCTRINE OF omniscience has been understood in two ways. Roughly, it has been taken either as the claim that God knows all that is true (Geach, Kvanvig 1986) or as the claim that God knows all that can be known (Swinbume; Mavrodes). The first construal I shall call the traditional construal, and the second I shall call a limited construal. Though the traditional construal would seem to be the natural one to hold, considerations of the analogy between the best construals of the doctrine of omnipotence have suggested to some that a limited construal is prefera)1e. In particular, some have claimed that one should be careful to construe the doctrine of omnipotence, not as the..