Contemporary Responses to Scepticism

University of London Philosophy B.A.

Intercollegiate Lectures 2006-07

Epistemology and Methodology Paper

Topics and key readings:

Sceptical hypotheses and sceptical arguments

Anthony Brueckner. "The Structure of the Skeptical Argument." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 54 (1994): 827-35.

Closure

Fred Dretske. "Epistemic Operators." Journal of Philosophy 67 (1970): 1007-23.

Robert Nozick. Philosophical Explanations. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1981 (read pp. 167-187, 197-217).

Contextualism

Keith DeRose. "Solving the Skeptical Problem." Philosophical Review 104 (1995): 1-52.

Dogmatism

James Pryor. "The Skeptic and the Dogmatist." Noûs 34 (2000): 517-49.

Safety and sensitivity

Duncan Pritchard. "Sensitivity, Safety, and Anti-Luck Epistemology." forthcoming in The Oxford Handbook of Scepticism, edited by John Greco, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Knowledge and reasons

Laurence BonJour. "Externalist Theories of Empirical Knowledge." In Midwest Studies in Philosophy, Vol. V: Studies in Epistemology, edited by Peter French, Theodor Uehling, Jr. and Howard K. Wettstein, 53-73. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1980.

[Alternatively: Laurence BonJour. The Structure of Empirical Knowledge. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1985, Chapter 3.]

William P. Alston. "What's Wrong with Immediate Knowledge?" Synthese 55 (1983): 73-95.

Lecture slides

1. Introduction

2. Closure. Dretske

3. Closure. Nozick

4. DeRose's Contextualism

5. Pryor's Dogmatism

6. Safety

 

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