Stephen Hetherington

Edmund Gettier's 1963 verdict about what knowledge is not has become an item of philosophical orthodoxy, accepted by philosophers as a genuine epistemological result. It assures us that - contrary to what Plato and later philosophers have thought - knowledge is not merely a true belief well supported by epistemic justification. But that orthodoxy has generated the Gettier problem - epistemology's continuing struggle to understand how to accommodate Gettier's apparent result within an improved conception of knowledge. In this book, Stephen Hetherington argues that none of epistemology's standard attempts to solve that problem have succeeded: he shows how subtle yet fundamental mistakes - regarding explication, methodology, properties, modality, and fallibility - have permeated those responses to Gettier's challenge. His fresh and original book outlines a new way of solving the problem, and an improved grasp of Gettier's challenge and its significance is the result. In a sense, Plato can now embrace Gettier.

Sceptics standardly argue that a person lacks knowledge due to an inability to know that some dire possibility is not being actualised in her believing that p. I argue that the usual sceptical inventory of such possibilities should include one's possibly having had some freedom in forming one's belief that p. A sceptic should conclude that wherever there might have been some such freedom, there is no knowledge that p. (This is not to say that sceptics would be correct in that conclusion. It is just to say that the usual sceptical way of thinking should welcome the possibility of some such belief-freedom as much as it routinely welcomes the possibilities of dreaming and of evil demons.)

Scepticism about external world knowledge is frequently claimed to emerge from Descartes’s dreaming argument. That argument supposedly challenges one to have some further knowledge — the knowledge that one is not dreaming that p — if one is to have even one given piece of external world knowledge that p. The possession of that further knowledge can seem espe-cially important when the dreaming possibility is genuinely Cartesian (with one’s dreaming that p being incompatible with the truth of one’s accompany-ing belief that p). But this paper shows why that Cartesian use of that possi-bility is not at all challenging. It is because that putative sceptical challenge reduces to a triviality which is incompatible with the sceptic’s having de-scribed some further piece of knowledge which is needed, if one is to have the knowledge that p.

This dissertation questions two central presuppositions of traditional normative epistemology. The first, , is that the epistemologist's epistemic subject is a person--that the epistemologist is discussing you. The second, , is that the epistemologist's methodology is one of investigative detachment--that in principle his investigation is impartially of each of us. ;My arguments rely on a distinction between the epistemic subject qua epistemologist and qua non-epistemologist. The former is interested in cognitively supporting epistemic principles, such as principles of justification, and he sees such support as necessary to his having justification or knowledge. The latter doesn't see himself this way. The one epistemic subject can proceed in either way, though not in the one context. I connect this distinction with recent work on epistemic levels. ;Against , I argue that the epistemologist can conceive of his epistemic subject only as an epistemic subject qua epistemologist. Whether he is considering what it takes for the epistemic subject to possess knowledge or justification, or whether he is considering what it takes to deprive the epistemic subject of knowledge or justification, he has to conceive of that epistemic subject as being, in that context, an epistemologist. I call this methodological limitation epistemological imperialism. ;Against , I argue that the epistemologist can conceive of the epistemic subject as the subject of the sceptic's argument, and hence as lacking knowledge or justification, only if the subject is a disembodied epistemologist . This metaphysical move converts the epistemological imperialism into what I call epistemological projectivism. Traditional normative epistemology requires the epistemologist to project his own mind onto his epistemic subject; his own mind is his epistemic subject

How might epistemology build upon its past and present, so as to be better in the future? Epistemology Futures takes bold steps towards answering that question. What methods will best serve epistemology? Which phenomena and concepts deserve more attention from it? Are there approaches and assumptions that have impeded its progress until now? This volume contains provocative essays by prominent epistemologists, presenting many new ideas for possible improvements in how to do epistemology. Contributors: Paul M. Churchland, Catherine Z. Elgin, Richard Feldman, A. C. Grayling, Stephen Hetherington, Christopher Hookway, Hilary Kornblith, Mark Kaplan, William G. Lycan, Adam Morton, Jonathan M. Weinberg, Linda Zagzebski.

Despite the problems students often have with the theory of knowledge, it remains, necessarily, at the core of the philosophical enterprise. As experienced teachers know, teaching epistemology requires a text that is not only clear and accessible, but also capable of successfully motivating the abstract problems that arise.In Knowledge Puzzles, Stephen Hetherington presents an informal survey of epistemology based on the use of puzzles to illuminate problems of knowledge. Each topic is introduced through a puzzle, and readers are invited to work their own ways toward a solution. Hetherington’s light and undogmatic style encourages class discussion and independent thought rather than the memorization of “book” answers.Covering all of the most important epistemological issues, informed by classical and contemporary literature, and rich in probing questions and suggestions for further readings, Knowledge Puzzles is a pedagogical breakthrough. Whether it is used as a main text or supplement, this lucid and engaging text will be welcomed by both teachers and students.

Taking his conceptual cue from Ernest Sosa, John Turri has offered a putative conceptual solution to the Gettier problem: Knowledge is cognitively adept belief, and no Gettiered belief is cognitively adept. At the core of such adeptness is a relation of manifestation. Yet to require that relation within knowing is to reach for what amounts to an infallibilist conception of knowledge. And this clashes with the spirit behind the fallibilism articulated by Gettier when stating his challenge. So, Turri’s form of response is irrelevant to that challenge, which was intended to pose a conceptual problem within fallibilist conceptions of knowledge. (And that failure on Turri’s part needs to be highlighted to remind epistemologists of the need to assess Gettier cases by a fallibilist standard. Although that need was described earlier by Robert Almeder, apparently his advice is being overlooked. This paper develops it anew, in a more general form.)

If any thesis is all-but-universally accepted by contemporary epistemologists, it is justificationism-the thesis that being an instance of knowledge has to include being epistemically justified in some appropriate way. If there is to be any epistemological knowledge about knowledge, a paradigm candidate would seem to be our knowledge that justificationism is true. This is a conception of a way in whichknowledge has to be robust. Nevertheless, this paper provides reason to doubt the truth of that conception. Even epistemology’s supposed conceptual core is not as epistemically unchallengeable as we might have assumed to be the case.

Of course, if infallibilism about such knowledge is true, then it is true that one can never know that one is not dreaming. But, of course, if infallibilism is true, then there is also no special difficulty posed for one’s having knowledge in general by one’s not knowing in particular that one is not dreaming: one would know either nothing or next to nothing anyway, regardless of one’s not knowing in particular that one is not dreaming. Yet epistemologists have generally regarded the challenge of knowing that one is not dreaming as being at least somewhat pivotal or special. This suggests that, although they wish not to concede that no one can know that one is not dreaming, they wish to be fallibilists about knowledge.

Philosophers talk routinely of 'Hume's problem of induction'. But the usual accompanying exegesis is mistaken in a way that has led epistemologists to conceive of 'Hume's problem' in needlessly narrow terms. They have overlooked a way of articulating the conceptual problem, along with a potential way of solving it. Indeed, they have overlooked Hume's own way. In explaining this, I will supplement Hume's insights by adapting Ryle's thinking on knowledge-how and knowledge-that. We will also see why Hume's 'sceptical solution' was a perfectly appropriate response to his 'sceptical argument' -- rather than (as is often thought by analytic epistemologists) a merely descriptive response patently missing the normative sceptical point so strikingly formulated by Hume