Goldman Flashcards
How does Alvin Goldman deal with the problem of knowing future events?
He says S can know about a future event p when S’s belief that p and p itself have an appropriate common cause.
Which of the following claims would Alvin Goldman agree with?
Remembering is a causal process.
What point was Goldman trying to make with his discussion of Abraham Lincoln being born in 1809?
It doesn’t matter if you can’t state your justification for a belief: you can know that p as long as your belief that p has the right kind of causal history.
Which of the following gets closest to what Goldman says about the kind of skeptic who worries that he might be just dreaming that he is looking at a fireplace, rather than actually seeing a fireplace?
The skeptic is suggesting that the dream fireplace is a relevant alternative to a real fireplace, which is not necessarily correct.
Which of the following summarizes the key elements of the story of Henry and the barn (on pages 772-73)?
Henry is seeing what is in fact a real barn, but in a district where there are many fakes.
What does Goldman’s earlier (1967) causal theory of knowledge say about the fake barn case?
According to the causal theory, Henry knows that the object is a barn.
What does Goldman count as a reliable belief-forming process?
A process that tends to produce true beliefs.
What is Goldman trying to do in this paper?
Unpack and describe the standards of epistemic justification that ordinary people typically use.
What does Goldman mean by “belief-dependent process”?
A process at least some of whose inputs are beliefs.
