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.

Philosophers have said less than is needed about the nature of premature death, and about the badness or otherwise of that death for the one who dies. In this paper, premature death’s nature is clarified in Epicurean terms. And an accompanying argument denies that we need to think of such a death as bad in itself for the one who dies. Premature death’s nature is conceived of as a death that arrives before ataraxia does. (Ataraxia’s nature is also clarified. It is a pervasive inner peace that is a kind of purity and completeness in how one is living.) Whatever harm we might attribute to a premature death is better attributed to a life’s being lived at that time without ataraxia. The paper ends by explaining how its Epicurean account, more so than comparativist or narrativist accounts, could allow a person to know that her death will not be premature

Where is the justificatory boundary between a true belief's not being knowledge and its being knowledge? Even if we put to one side the Gettier problem, this remains a fundamental epistemological question, concerning as it does the matter of whether we can provide some significant defence of the usual epistemological assumption that a belief is knowledge only if it is well justified. But can that question be answered non-arbitrarily? BonJour believes that it cannot be -- and that epistemology should therefore abandon the concept of knowledge. More optimistically, this paper does attempt to answer that question, by applying -- and thereby refining -- a non-absolutist theory of knowledge.

Gettier problems or cases are named in honor of the American philosopher Edmund Gettier, who discovered them in 1963. They function as challenges to the philosophical tradition of defining knowledge of a proposition as justified true belief in that proposition. The problems are actual or possible situations in which someone has a belief that is both true and well supported by evidence, yet which — according to almost all epistemologists — fails to be knowledge. Gettier’s original article had a dramatic impact, as epistemologists began trying to ascertain afresh what knowledge is, with almost all agreeing that Gettier had refuted the traditional definition of knowledge. They have made many attempts to repair or replace that traditional definition of knowledge, resulting in several new conceptions of knowledge and of justificatory support. In this respect, Gettier sparked a period of pronounced epistemological energy and innovation — all with a single two-and-a-half page article. There is no consensus, however, that any one of the attempts to solve the Gettier challenge has succeeded in fully defining what it is to have knowledge of a truth or fact. So, the force of that challenge continues to be felt in various ways, and to various extents, within epistemology. Sometimes, the challenge is ignored in frustration at the existence of so many possibly failed efforts to solve it. Often, the assumption is made that somehow it can — and will, one of these days — be solved. Usually, it is agreed to show something about knowledge, even if not all epistemologists concur as to exactly what it shows

For a while now, there has been much conceptual discussion about the respective natures of knowledge-that and knowledge-how, along with the intellectualist idea that knowledge-how is really a kind of knowledge-that. Gilbert Ryle put in place most of the terms that have so far been distinctive of that debate, when he argued for knowledge-how's conceptual distinctness from knowledge-that. But maybe those terms should be supplemented, expanding the debate. In that spirit, the conceptual option of practicalism has recently entered the fray. Practicalism conceives anew the nature of knowledge-that, as being a kind of knowledge-how. In this paper we enlarge upon this conceptual suggestion. We draw from an ancient Chinese text, the Analects of Confucius, explaining how it lends some support to practicalism