Stephen Hetherington

This book encourages renewed attention by contemporary epistemologists to an area most of them overlook: ancient philosophy. Readers are invited to revisit writings by Plato, Aristotle, Pyrrho, and others, and to ask what new insights might be gained from those philosophical ancestors. Are there ideas, questions, or lines of thought that were present in some ancient philosophy and that have subsequently been overlooked? Are there contemporary epistemological ideas, questions, or lines of thought that can be deepened by gazing back upon some ancient philosophy? The answers are 'yes' and 'yes', according to this book's 13 chapters, written by philosophers seeking to enrich contemporary epistemology through engaging with ancient epistemology. Key features: Blends ancient epistemology with contemporary epistemology, each reciprocally enriching each. Conceptually sensitive chapters by scholars of ancient epistemology. Historically sensitive chapters by scholars of contemporary epistemology. Clearly written chapters, guiding readers at once through central elements both of ancient and of contemporary epistemology.

"Divided chronologically into four volumes, The Philosophy of Knowledge: A History presents the history of one of Western philosophy's greatest challenges: understanding the nature of knowledge. Each volume follows conceptions of knowledge that have been proposed, defended, replaced, and proposed anew. Knowledge in Contemporary Philosophy covers discussions about scientific knowledge, social knowledge, and self-knowledge, along with attempts to understand knowledge naturalistically, contextually, and normatively. How did contemporary epistemology begin? What shape is it now in? What future seems to await it? The past hundred or so years have included excitement, puzzlement, and apparent progress within epistemology. This volume conveys much of that philosophical ferment and energy."--Bloomsbury Publishing.

Knowledge‐fallibilism is a species of a genus that I call knowledge‐failabilism. Each is a theory of knowledge's nature. One apparent challenge to knowledge‐failabilism's truth is theprima facieabsurdity of Moorean assertions like ‘It's raining but I do not believe that it is.’ Does each such assertion convey an implicit and unfortunate contrast, even a contradiction? I argue that thisUntenable Contrast analysisfails: no such contrast is present within the speaker's perspective at the pertinent time.

This book is inspired by a single powerful question. What is it to be great as a philosopher? No single grand answer is presumed to be possible; instead, rewardingly close studies of philosophical greatness are developed. This is a scholarly yet accessible volume, blending metaphilosophy with the long history of philosophy and traversing centuries and continents. The result is a series of case studies by accomplished scholars, each chapter trying to understand and convey a particular philosopher's greatness: Lloyd P. Gerson on Plato, Karyn Lai on Zhuangzi, David Bronstein on Aristotle, Jonardon Ganeri on Buddhaghosa, Jeffrey Hause on Aquinas, Gary Hatfield on Descartes, Karen Detlefsen on du Châtelet, Don Garrett on Hume, Allen Wood on Kant, Nicholas F. Stang on Kant, Ken Gemes on Nietzsche, Cheryl Misak on Peirce, and David Macarthur on Wittgenstein. This also serves a larger philosophical purpose. Might we gain increased clarity about what philosophy is in the first place? After all, in practice we individuate philosophy partly through its greatest practitioners' greatest contributions. The book does not discuss every philosopher who has been regarded as great. The point is not to offer a definitive list of The Great Philosophers, but, rather, to learn something about what great philosophy is and might be, from illuminated examples of past greatness -- Provided by publisher.

Increasingly, epistemologists are discussing the conceptual relationships between knowledge-that and knowledge-how. This chapter argues that epistemology should also encompass a distinct concept of knowing-to. Only with the addition of knowing-to can knowledge-how ever be manifested in a particular action within a particular setting. Unlike the possibly longer-lasting knowledge-how, knowing-to is fleeting and contextual. It is inherent within what Gilbert Ryle called intelligent acting. In ordinary parlance, we talk freely of knowing-to; here, I begin investigating epistemologically this epistemic aspect of action.

The hypothesis that we are brains in a vat is one which we believe to be false. Could it possibly be true, however? Metaphysical realists accept that our believing it to be false does not entail its falsity. They also accept that if –as brains in a vat –we were to say or think “We are brains in a vat”, then we would be correct. Ever the claimed foe of the metaphysical realist, though, Hilary Putnam argues that the brains‐in‐a‐vat hypothesis cannot be true, in particular that if we were brains in a vat then we could not correctly say or think that we were like that. I will defend metaphysical realism against Putnam's argument.

Post-Gettier epistemology is increasingly modalized epistemology – proposing and debating modally explicable conditionals with suitably epistemic content (an approach initially inspired by Robert Nozick's 1981 account of knowledge), as needing to be added to 'true belief' in order to define or understand knowing's nature. This Element asks whether such modalized attempts – construed as responding to what the author calls Knowing's Further Features question (bequeathed to us by the Meno and the Theaetetus) – can succeed. The answer is that they cannot. Plato's and Aristotle's views on definition reinforce that result. Still, in appreciating this, we might gain insight into knowing's essence. We might find that knowledge is, essentially, nothing more than true belief.

This chapter contains sections titled: Gettier Situations A Counter‐Example to ‘Gettier's Official Result’ Ordinary Gettiered Knowledge A Meta‐Gettier Problem Objections Answered Gettier‐Luck as Veritic Luck? Gettier‐Luck is not Veritic Luck Gettier‐Luck is Combinatorial Luck Combinatorial Luck: Applications Knowing in a Combinatorially Lucky Way Gettier‐Holism Versus Gettier‐Partialism Combinatorial Safety Combinatorial Gradational Safety Epistemological Privilege and Epistemological Empathy Gettier Situations and Sceptical Situations Timothy Williamson.

Stephen Hetherington's prominent career within epistemology has been a series of distinctive, bold, varied and provocative arguments and ideas. Bringing together Hetherington's unique body of writing for the first time, this collection features previously published as well as new material that link his approaches to key issues including knowledge, justification, fallibility, scepticism and the Gettier Problem. Advancing our understanding of the systemic nature of Hetherington's thinking, Stephen Hetherington on Epistemology presents his distinctive perspective on some of philosophy's central questions about knowledge - an inviting blend of forensic detail and 'big picture' proposals.