EXAM

Question 1

Basic knowledge

Answer 1

doesn’t depend
on any other statement for its
justification

Question 2

Non-basic knowledge

Answer 2

does depend
on some other statement for its
justification

Question 3

What does non-basic knowledge also require?

Answer 3

absence of defeaters

Question 4

A defeater

Answer 4

a truth
that would wipe out your
justification if you knew about it

Question 5

What do Lehrer & Paxson think Non-basic knowledge is?

Answer 5

undefeated justified
true belief

Question 6

Goldman’s new theory: reliabilism

Answer 6

Knowledge is true belief caused by a
reliable process or mechanism

Question 7

What is it for a process to be reliable?

Answer 7

A reliable mechanism discriminates
the truth of p from relevant alternatives, forming a belief when p is true, but not when those relevant alternatives obtain

Question 8

A possible world

Answer 8

a (complete) way things
are or could have been; it is a “maximally
inclusive situation”

Question 9

☐-> “box-arrow”

Answer 9

to indicate the
subjunctive (or “counterfactual” conditional)

Question 10

Robert Nozick’s basic* analysis of
knowledge

Answer 10

S knows that p if and
only if:
(1) p is true
(2) S believes that p
(3) If p were not true, S
would not believe that p
**(4) If p were true, S
would believe that p and
it would not be the case
that (S believes not-p).

Question 11

Nozick and the sceptic agree that:

Answer 11

If SK really does obtain, we don’t know any of
the things we think we know about the world
around us.

Question 12

Nozick also says:

Answer 12

We don’t track whether or
not we are in SK; so, we cannot know whether we are in SK.

Question 13

Nozick’s sensitivity
condition

Answer 13

If p were false, S
would not believe that p

Question 14

Plantinga analyses knowledge as

Answer 14

warranted true belief.

Question 15

Zagzebski gives her general recipe for Gettier cases

Answer 15

1. Describe a case of false belief
   which has that some-other-factor
   (and enough of it so that it would
   count as knowledge if the belief
   were true).
2. Now, add a stroke of luck that
   ends up making the belief true

Question 16

The core of Zagzebski’s argument against
internalist analyses:

Answer 16

‘On internalist theories
the grounds for justification are accessible to the consciousness of the believer, and
Gettier problems arise when there is
nothing wrong with the internally accessible aspects of the cognitive situation, but there is a mishap in something inaccessible to the
believer. Since justification does not
guarantee truth, it is possible for there to be a break in the connection between justification and truth, but for that connection to be regained by chance.’

Question 17

Internalism

Answer 17

justification is strictly a
function of what is available from the first-
person perspective

Question 18

Externalism

Answer 18

justification can also include factors
available from the third-person perspective (like
causal relations between you and the clock)

Question 19

Belief Independent

Answer 19

processes (like
vision) take external stimuli as inputs
and produce beliefs as outputs.

Question 20

Belief dependent

Answer 20

processes like
inference and memory take prior beliefs
as inputs and produce new beliefs as
outputs.

Question 21

Goldman’s externalist theory of
justification

Answer 21

Base, Recursive and Closure clause

Question 22

What BonJour wonders is whether
basic beliefs can be characterized in
a way that will simultaneously make
them

Answer 22

both properly basic (not
dependent on anything else) and

really epistemically justified

Question 23

Srinivasan sees internalism as making justification a
matter of your own private individual effort: “All
that is required to be internalistically justified is

Answer 23

individual conscientiousness

Question 24

To be externalistically justified
requires, in part, the cooperation of the external
world: one must have

Answer 24

an undistorted relationship
to the relevant bit of reality

Question 25

Pettigrew argues that there is no
single quality that deserves the
name of “justification”: he is a
__________ about justification.

Answer 25

pluralist

Question 26

1. Credence

Answer 26

(an epistemic term, measuring
your degree of rational confidence)

Question 27

2. Chance

Answer 27

(an ontic term, measuring
something about the world itself)

Question 28

an epistemic weapon is a means by which an agent

Answer 28

whether
an individual, dominant group, or whole society—can cause
epistemic harm to a target—whether an individual, an
oppressed group, or a whole society.

Question 29

he wants to argue that there is a
whole family of vocabulary items that
pattern with “terms of knowledge” –
we use them all the time, in useful,
familiar and systematic ways, to say
things that are literally false. This is
the family of __________

Answer 29

absolute terms

Question 30

Dretske’s core idea:

Answer 30

To know that x is
A is to know that x is A within a
framework of relevant alternatives, B,
C, and D

Question 31

An operator is fully
penetrating when it

Answer 31

‘reaches through’ to all of
the necessary
consequences of a
proposition.

Question 32

Remember that a fully
penetrating operator is one
where O(P) entails O(Q)

Answer 32

whenever P necessarily
entails Q.

Question 33

Not all sentential operators are fully
penetrating some are
___________

Answer 33

nonpenetrating

Question 34

Dretske thinks that operators like
the ones on the right are

Answer 34

really
far from penetrating – they don’t
have to go through even to the
most obvious necessary
consequences of a proposition.

Question 35

Dretske:
epistemic operators are __________

Answer 35

semi-
penetrating

Question 36

The mainstream view is to
accept the principle of

Answer 36

Closure under known
logical implication

Question 37

Closure:

Answer 37

If you know P, and
competently deduce Q from P
(while retaining knowledge
that P), then you come to
know Q.

Question 38

Does Dretske deny closure?

Answer 38

yes

Question 39

ON EXAM LEWIS DEFINITION

Answer 39

Subject S knows proposition P if and only if P holds in every possibility left uneliminated by S’s evidence