BonJour on coherentism

BonJour argues that to have justified belief you need to have good reasons that your belief is true. Otherwise, you are epistemically irresponsible. BonJour rejects basic account of strong foundationalism, which claims that there are self-justified beliefs that do not depend on other beliefs. For instance, I possess the belief that the wall is white. […]

Chisholm on knowledge as self-justified beliefs

According to the regress argument, any proposition requires a justification. However, any justification itself requires support. This means that any proposition whatsoever can be infinitely questioned. N (Regress) → C → B → A Chisholm, as an internalist and a foundationalist, claims that there are some foundational propositions that are self-justified. C (Foundation) → B […]

Nozick’s tracking account of knowledge

Robert Nozick states that in order to know we need to satisfy the following four conditions: S knows that p iff p is true, S believes that p, If it weren’t that case that p, then S wouldn’t believe that p, If it were the case that p then S would believe that p. This […]

Harman’s account of knowledge

The Gettier problem has shown that knowledge is not simply justified true belief. This leads to the following principle P: reasoning that essentially involves false conclusions, intermediate or final, cannot give knowledge. So, we cannot argue from the false intermediate conclusion. Undermining evidence Gilbert Harman builds into this principle a new condition Q: one may […]

Goldman and Dretske on knowledge

Alvin Goldman makes another hypothesis to the traditional account of knowledge for the fact that Smith cannot be said to know P. What makes P true is the fact that Brown is in Barcelona, but this fact has nothing to do with Smith’s believing P. That is, there is no causal connection between the fact […]

Gettier’s objection to traditional account of knowledge

The traditional account of knowledge is as follows: P is true (truth) S believes that P (belief) S is justified in believing that P (justification) For instance, we can say that I know that it snowed if and only if: It really snowed, and I believe that it snowed, and I am justified in believing […]

Russell’s account of knowledge

Bertrand Russell’s account of knowledge is one of the forms of Cartesian skepticism. Russell claims that we can never truly know the physical object itself without knowing all its relations and all its qualities. Knowing something would mean knowing all the facts of which a thing is a constituent. From which we would deduce that […]

Moore’s proof of an external world

Moore’s argument is a defense against radical skepticism of Descartes. Here is one hand. Here is another hand. Therefore, two human hands exist at this moment. Thus, external objects exist. Translating this reasoning by Descartes argument, we will get the following: If I know that I am sitting by the fire, then I know that […]