EPISTEMOLOGY

2
Epistemology is the
What can we know? And how do we know what we know?
study (-ology) of
These questions are central to the branch of philosophy knowledge (episteme)
called epistemology. At its heart are two very important, and related concepts,
very interesting questions about being human: how are including belief,
human beings ‘hooked up’ to the world? And what justification, certainty.
It looks at the
‘faculties’ do we have that enable us to gain knowledge?
possibility and sources
In this chapter, we will look at three issues. The first is
of knowledge.
perception. A quick, common-sense answer of how we are
‘hooked up’ to the world is this: the world is made up of
physical objects that exist outside, and independently of,
our minds. We discover this physical world and gain
knowledge about it through our senses (vision, hearing,
touch, etc.). In other words, we perceive it. But is this
right? What is the best account of perception? Does it, in
fact, give us knowledge of a physical world that exists
independent of our minds? We will see that the common-
sense picture gets complicated very quickly.
The second part of the chapter steps back from the
question of how we know, to ask what knowledge is. We
will look at a famous definition of knowledge that was
widely accepted from almost the beginnings of philosophy
in Plato until 1963, when Edmund Gettier published a
paper that showed that the definition was wrong. We will
discuss some of the different responses to Gettier’s
argument.
In the third part of chapter, we return to the question
of what and how we know. We start again from the
24 Philosophy for AS

common-sense idea that we gain our knowledge through our

senses. We then ask whether there are any other ways by which
we acquire knowledge. This will lead us to talk about different
kinds of knowledge (a priori/a posteriori) and different kinds
of truth claim (analytic/synthetic, necessary/contingent). We
end with a related discussion about how we acquire our
concepts.
By the end of the chapter, you should be able to analyse,
explain, and evaluate a number of arguments for and objections
to theories about perception, about what knowledge is, and
whether we gain concepts and knowledge only through sense
experience or in other ways as well.

SYLLABUS CHECKLIST
The AQA AS syllabus for this chapter is:

I. Perception: what are the immediate objects of

perception?

A. Direct realism:
✔ the immediate objects of perception are mind-independent
objects and their properties.

Issues, including:
✔ the argument from illusion
✔ the argument from perceptual variation (Russell’s table
example)
✔ the argument from hallucinations (the possibility of
experiences that are subjectively indistinguishable from a
veridical perception)
✔ the time-lag argument.
 Epistemology 25

B. Indirect realism:
✔ the immediate objects of perception are mind-dependent
objects that are caused by and represent mind-independent
objects.

Issues, including:
✔ it leads to scepticism about the existence of the external
world (attacking ‘realism’)
● responses:
❍ external world is the ‘best hypothesis’ (Russell)
❍ coherence of the various senses (Locke)
❍ lack of choice over our experiences (Locke)
✔ it leads to scepticism about the nature of the external world
(attacking ‘representative’)
● responses:
❍ sense-data tell us of ‘relations’ between objects
(Russell)
❍ the distinction between primary and secondary
qualities (Locke)
● problems arising from the view that mind-dependent
objects represent mind-independent objects and are
caused by mind-independent objects.

C. Berkeley’s idealism:
✔ the immediate objects of perception (i.e. ordinary objects
such as tables, chairs, etc.) are mind-dependent objects
● Berkeley’s attack on the primary/secondary property
distinction
● Berkeley’s ‘master’ argument.

Issues, including:
✔ it leads to solipsism
✔ it does not give an adequate account of illusions and
hallucinations
✔ it cannot secure objective space and time
✔ whether God can be used to play the role He does.
26 Philosophy for AS

II. The definition of knowledge: what is propositional

knowledge?

A. Terminology:
✔ distinction between: acquaintance knowledge, ability
knowledge and propositional knowledge (knowing ‘of’,
knowing ‘how’ and knowing ‘that’).

B. The tripartite view:

✔ justified, true belief is necessary and sufficient for
propositional knowledge
● S knows that p only if S is justified in believing that p,
p is true and S believes that p
✔ necessary and sufficient conditions.

Issues, including:
✔ the conditions are not individually necessary:
● justification is not a necessary condition of knowledge
● truth is not a necessary condition of knowledge
● belief is not a necessary condition of knowledge
✔ cases of lucky true beliefs show that the justification
condition should be either strengthened, added to, or
replaced (i.e. Gettier-style problems).

C. Responses:
✔ strengthen the justification condition: infallibilism and the
requirement for an impossibility of doubt (Descartes)
✔ add a ‘no false lemmas’ condition (J+T+B+N)
✔ replace ‘justified’ with ‘reliably formed’ (R+T+B)
(reliabilism)
✔ replace ‘justified’ with an account of epistemic virtue
(V+T+B).
 Epistemology 27

I have reversed the

III. The origin of concepts and the nature of knowledge: order of concept
where do ideas/concepts and knowledge come from? empiricism and
knowledge empiricism
A. Knowledge empiricism:
for reasons that will
✔ all synthetic knowledge is a posteriori; all a priori knowledge become clear when
is (merely) analytic (Hume’s ‘fork’). we discuss
CONCEPT EMPIRICISM,
Issues, including: p. 132.

✔ knowledge innatism (rationalism):

● there is at least some innate a priori knowledge
(arguments from Plato and Leibniz)
● knowledge empiricist arguments against knowledge
innatism:
❍ alternative explanations (no such knowledge, in
fact based on experiences or merely analytic)
❍ Locke’s arguments against innatism
❍ its reliance on the non-natural
✔ intuition and deduction thesis (rationalism):
● we can gain synthetic a priori knowledge through
intuition and deduction (Descartes on the existence of
self, God and the external world)
● knowledge empiricist arguments against intuition and
deduction:
❍ the failure of the deductions or the analytically
true (tautological) nature of the conclusions
✔ arguments against knowledge empiricism: the limits of
empirical knowledge (Descartes’ sceptical arguments).

B. Concept empiricism:
✔ all concepts are derived from experience
● tabula rasa
● impressions and ideas
● simple and complex concepts.
 28 Philosophy for AS

Issues, including:
✔ concept innatism (rationalism): there are at least some
innate concepts
● Descartes’ ‘trademark’ argument
● other proposed examples such as universals, causation,
infinity, numbers etc.
✔ concept empiricist arguments against concept innatism:
● alternative explanations (no such concept or concept
redefined as based on experiences)
● Locke’s arguments against innatism
● its reliance on the non-natural.

I. PERCEPTION: what are the immediate objects

of perception?

In this section, we will look at three theories of perception: direct

realism, indirect realism, and idealism. By the end of the section,
you should be able to demonstrate not just knowledge, but a good
understanding, of each of the three theories, and be able to
analyse, explain, and evaluate several arguments for and against
each one.
The most obvious and immediate answer to the question ‘how
We return to talking
do we gain knowledge of what is outside our minds?’ is ‘sense
about sources of
knowledge in KNOWLEDGE experience’. Sense experiences are those given to us by our senses
EMPIRICISM, p. 96. – sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch and bodily sensations. What can
perception by sense experience tell us about the world? To answer
this question, we will need to think carefully about what this kind of
perception involves.
(We are not asking how we can know what is inside our minds.
How do you know that you are thinking what you are thinking? How
do you know that you are feeling pain when you are? These are
interesting questions, but the answers, whatever they are, are not
our concern here. We are asking about how we know what is outside
our minds.)