Knowledge and justification
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Scepticism, Existentialism and Faith
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"Faith is possible because knowledge is not certain."Is this a true point? Let us now consider the possibility of global scepticism. As the student's knowledge of philosophy increases, he or she will be familiarised with a host of powerful sceptical arguments. For example, there is no agreement among philosophers that there are such things as sense-data – primary constituents of experience that can act as the foundation to knowledge. Empiricists on the other hand deny the existence of universals and claim that general knowledge and meaning is abstracted from sense-experience. Russell proposed the following sceptical argument: how do we know that we were not created five minutes ago complete with all our memories? In the film Blade Runner certain androids have been manufactured complete with inbuilt memory chips that give them the illusion of having had a real past, which they have not had. How do we know that this outlandish possibility is not our own? Scepticism abounds with arguments that challenge our assurance of having knowledge.
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Contents of
Knowledge and justification
1 The distinction between knowledge and belief
2 Unsound, invalid, possible world and fallacy
3 Counterexample, exposing a fallacy
4 Belief and doubt
5 Believing that and knowing that
6 Knowledge and certainty - the tripartite definition of knowledge
7 True, justified belief
8 Plato: The Theaetetus
9 Plato: Forms
10 The possibility of scepticism and categories of belief
11 Global scepticism
12 The Argument from Authority
13 Valid argument, inference and justification
14 Chain of deductive inferences, self-evident truths
15 Sense experience, empiricism
16 The dialectic method, thesis and antithesis
17 Rationalism and empiricism; the Discourse on the Method
18 The Cogito, Reason and Rational Insight
19 Bertrand Russell, Acquaintance
20 Universals, Forms
21 Scepticism, Existentialism and Faith
22 The evil genius argument
23 Existentialism
24 Soren Kierkegaard - Fear and Trembling - the Absurd
25 Foundation for Knowledge
26 Theory of Knowledge, Epistemology and Metaphysics
27 Rationalism, Mathematics and Logic, Innateness
28 Innate Ideas
29 The a priori
30 Truth by convention, Hume and the Method of Doubt
31 Hume and the distinction between belief and knowledge
32 Hume and the definition of belief
33 Truth as a logical operator on sentences
34 The correspondence theory of truth
35 Wittgenstein: On Certainty
36 Wittgenstein and the coherence theory of truth
37 William James and Pragmatism
38 W.V.O. Quine, pragmatism and the Two Dogmas of Empiricism
39 Postivism and pragmatism
40 Pragmatism and utilitarianism
41 Pragmatism and religiion
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