Jonathan L. Kvanvig

The standard view concerning types of theories of justification is that there are two types of theories: foundational and coherence theories. Foundationalism is generally taken to be what I call Minimal Foundationalism, which is a weaker form of foundationalism than Classical Foundationalism. I argue that this taxonomical scheme is inadequate since it fails to separate theories that are intuitively different, and it places some theories that are avowedly of one sort in the other type of theory. ;A different classification scheme depending on a distinction between subjectivity and objectivity is then offered. That distinction concerns whether what a person thinks, or is able to think on simple reflection, concerning his having met certain conditions for justification affects his justification. The two possible effects are that the satisfaction of a condition for justification entails that a person is able to think that this condition is satisfied, and that a person's ability to think that a condition is satisfied entails that that condition is satisfied. Thus, the most subjective theory possible is when a mutual entailment relation holds between these conditions and a person's possible thoughts about these conditions. I then show how this classification scheme is able to properly characterize many actual theories of justification, and how it can enlighten one as to the nature of different sorts of theories. ;The major task undertaken is to show that a completely subjective theory of justification is adequate to that sort of justification relevant to knowledge. A completely subjective theory of justification claims that it is logically necessary and sufficient for a belief to be justified that, roughly, the person is able to think on simple reflection that the belief is justified. It is defended that when this sort of justification is undefeated and occurs with true belief, knowledge is the result. Thus, contrary to the major views concerning knowledge in the history of philosophy, quite an extensive degree of subjectivity in justification is compatible with out intuitions concerning knowledge

This chapter explores the different grounds for accepting the claim that all truths are knowable, the assumption central to the derivation of Fitch’s result. It argues that although there is no compelling argument for holding that all truths are knowable, there are various positions in which this feature of semantic anti-realism fits naturally; rejecting this puts serious tension into a broad range of philosophical outlooks, including theism and physicalism. In the end, the paradox should be felt by everyone, even those who do not accept the knowability claim, because the heart of the paradox is not simply in what is implied by the knowability claim, but in a lost logical distinction between what is actual and what is possible.

This chapter examines the logical structure of the knowability paradox, presenting the details of the proofs that underlie the paradox, and clarifying which elements of these proofs give rise to paradox. It argues that there is no simple and obvious logical mistake in the derivation of the knowability result. A paradox has deep significance only if it arises from plausible premises. Those in question in Fitch’s proof are the claim of epistemic modesty, that some truths will never be known, and the knowability principle that all truths are knowable. Although the second claim does not have the same intuitive pull as the first, there are substantive grounds in its favour; grounds that some hold show that all truths are knowable, but which show at the very least that it is plausible to maintain that all truths are knowable.

Ernest Sosa's latest epistemology remains a version of virtue epistemology, and I argue here that it faces two central problems, pressing a point I have made elsewhere, that virtue epistemology does not present a complete answer to the problem of the value of knowledge. I will press this point regarding the nature of knowledge through variations on two standard Gettier examples here. The first is the Fake Barn case and the second is the Tom Grabit case. I will argue that Sosa's latest virtue epistemology fails to handle either case acceptably, and that as a result, cannot explain the value that knowledge has over that of the sum of any of its proper subparts. La última epistemología de Ernest Sosa continúa siendo una versión de epistemología de las virtudes, y siguiendo con una idea que ya planteé en otra parte, aquí argumento que afronta dos problemas centrales: que la epistemología de las virtudes no presenta una respuesta completa al problema del valor del conocimiento. Insistiré en esta idea sobre la naturaleza del conocimiento mediante variaciones de dos ejemplos estándares tipo Gettier. El primero es el caso del granero falso y el segundo es el caso de Tom Grabit. Argumentaré que la última epistemología de las virtudes de Sosa no maneja ninguno de estos casos de forma aceptable, y en consecuencia no puede explicar el valor que tiene el conocimiento por encima del de la suma de cualesquiera de sus propias partes.

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.

A dispute in epistemology has arisen over whether some class of things epistemic (things known or justified, for example) is closed under some operation involving the notion of what follows deductively from members of this class. Very few philosophers these days believe that if you know that p, and p entails q, then you know that q. But many philosophers think that something weaker holds, for instance that if you know that p, and p entails q, then you are in a position to know that p, or if you know that p and you competently deduce p from q, then you know that q. However there are some considerations tracing back to Wittgenstein’s On Certainty and some early work by Fred Dretske that suggests even these weaker principles are false.

One response to the preface paradox—the paradox that arises when each claim in a book is justified for the author and yet in the preface the author avers that errors remain—counsels against the preface belief. It is this line of thought that poses a problem for any view that places a high value on intellectual humility. If we become suspicious of preface beliefs, it will be a challenge to explain how expressions of fallibility and intellectual humility are appropriate, whether voiced verbally or encoded mentally. Moreover, banning expressions of intellectual humility is especially disturbing in our context, for such a preface claim is just the sort of expression of intellectual humility that is supposed to provide a barrier to the costly damage that can be done by zealous faith found in various forms of fundamentalism. The goal is thus to find a way to express humility without engendering paradox.