bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Memory, epistemology of
Authors: Conee Earl 
Published: September 2018

Memory appears to preserve knowledge, but there are epistemic questions about how this could be. Memory is fallible, and empirical research has identified various ways in which people systematically misremember. Even wholesale error seems possible: Russell (1927) proposed that it is logically possible for the world to have sprung into existence five minutes ago, complete with spurious ostensible memories of earlier times. In light of such possibilities, some sceptics argue that memory cannot yield knowledge.
Assuming that memory provides knowledge, there are serious epistemic issues about how it does this. For instance, does some introspectible quality of remembering provide distinctive evidence for what is remembered, or is it some other feature of memory that secures the epistemic justification needed for knowledge? How readily recollectible must a proposition be in order for it to be known while it is not being recalled? Does a full retention in memory of a previous basis for knowing something assure continuing knowledge of it? Does forgetting an original basis for knowing without replacing it imply a loss of knowledge?
Phenomenalism
Authors: Fumerton Richard 
Published: September 2018

On its most common interpretation, phenomenalism maintains that statements asserting the existence of physical objects are equivalent in meaning to statements describing sensations. More specifically, the phenomenalist claims that to say that a physical object exists is to say that someone would have certain sequences of sensations were they to have certain others. For example, to say that there is something round and red behind me might be to say, in part, that if I were to have the visual, tactile and kinaesthetic (movement) sensations of turning my head I would seem to see something round and red. If I were to have the sensations of seeming to reach out and touch that thing, those sensations would be followed by the familiar tactile sensations associated with touching something round.
Rather than talk about the meanings of statements, phenomenalists might hold that the fact that something red and round exists just is the fact that a subject would have certain sequences of sensations following certain others. The phenomenalist’s primary motivation is a desire to avoid scepticism with respect to the physical world. Because many philosophers tied the meaningfulness of statements to their being potentially verifiable, some phenomenalists further argued that it is only by reducing claims about the physical world to claims about possible sensations that we can preserve the very intelligibility of talk about the physical world.
There are very few contemporary philosophers who embrace phenomenalism. Many reject the foundationalist epistemological framework which makes it so difficult to avoid scepticism without phenomenalism. But the historical rejection of the view had more to do with the difficulty of carrying out the promised programme of translation.
Reliabilism
Authors: Goldman Alvin I. 
Published: September 2018

Reliabilism is an approach to the nature of knowledge and of justified belief. Reliabilism about justification, in its simplest form, says that a belief is justified if and only if it is produced by a reliable psychological process, meaning a process that produces a high proportion of true beliefs. A justified belief may itself be false, but its mode of acquisition (or the way it is subsequently sustained) must be of a kind that typically yields truths. Since random guessing, for example, does not systematically yield truths, beliefs acquired by guesswork are not justified. By contrast, identifying middle-sized physical objects by visual observation is presumably pretty reliable, so beliefs produced in this manner are justified. Reliabilism does not require that the possessor of a justified belief should know that it was reliably produced. Knowledge of reliability is necessary for knowing that a belief is justified, but the belief can be justified without the agent knowing that it is.
A similar reliabilist account is offered for knowledge, except that two further conditions are added. First, the target belief must be true and, second, its mode of acquisition must rule out all serious or ‘relevant’ alternatives in which the belief would be false. Even an accurate visual identification of Judy does not constitute knowledge unless it is acute enough to exclude the possibility that it is her twin sister Trudy instead.
One major virtue of reliabilism is its ability to secure knowledge against threats of scepticism. In place of excessive requirements often proposed by sceptics, reliabilism substitutes more moderate conditions. People do not need infallible or certainty-producing processes to have justified beliefs, according to reliabilism, only fairly reliable ones. Processes need not exclude radical alternatives like Descartes’ evil demon in order to generate knowledge; they need only exclude realistic possibilities like the presence of an identical twin.
Social epistemology
Authors: Schmitt Frederick F. 
Published: September 2018

Social epistemology is the conceptual and normative study of the relevance to knowledge of social relations, interests and institutions. It is thus to be distinguished from the sociology of knowledge, which is an empirical study of the contingent social conditions or causes of what is commonly taken to be knowledge. Social epistemology revolves around the question of whether knowledge is to be understood individualistically or socially.
Epistemology has traditionally ascribed a secondary status to beliefs indebted to social relations – to testimony, expert authority, consensus, common sense and received wisdom. Such beliefs could attain the status of knowledge, if at all, only by being based on first-hand knowledge – that is, knowledge justified by the experience or reason of the individual knower.
Since the work of the common sense Scottish philosopher Thomas Reid in the mid-eighteenth century, epistemologists have from time to time taken seriously the idea that beliefs indebted to social relations have a primary and not merely secondary epistemic status. The bulk of work in social epistemology has, however, been done since Thomas Kuhn depicted scientific revolutions as involving social changes in science. Work on the subject since 1980 has been inspired by the ‘strong programme’ in the sociology of science, by feminist epistemology and by the naturalistic epistemology of W.V. Quine. These influences have inspired epistemologists to rethink the role of social relations – especially testimony – in knowledge. The subject that has emerged may be divided into three branches: the place of social factors in the knowledge possessed by individuals; the organization of individuals’ cognitive labour; and the nature of collective knowledge, including common sense, consensus and common, group, communal and impersonal knowledge.
Virtue epistemology
Authors: Zagzebski Linda 
Published: September 2018

‘Virtue epistemology’ is the name of a class of theories that focus epistemic evaluation on good epistemic properties of persons rather than on properties of beliefs. The former or some interesting subset of the former are called intellectual virtues. Some of these theories propose that the traditional concepts of justification or knowledge can be analysed in terms of intellectual virtue, whereas others maintain that these traditional concepts are defective or uninteresting and it is desirable to replace them with the notion of an intellectual virtue. In all these theories, epistemic evaluation rests on some virtuous quality of persons that enables them to act in a cognitively effective and commendable way. Simple reliabilism may be treated either as a precursor to virtue epistemology or as an early form of it. Later versions add requirements for virtue intended to capture the idea that it is a quality which makes an epistemic agent subjectively responsible as well as objectively reliable.
Proponents of virtue epistemology claim a number of advantages. It is said to bypass disputes between foundationalists and coherentists on proper cognitive structure, to avoid sceptical worries, to avoid the impasse between internalism and externalism and to broaden the range of epistemological enquiry to include such neglected epistemic values as understanding and wisdom. Some theorists argue that the real virtue of virtue epistemology is the way it permits us to redefine the central questions of epistemology. In addition, since virtue epistemology can be blended with virtue ethics, it holds out the promise of a unified theory of value.
Experimental philosophy
Authors: Mallon Ron , Nichols Shaun , Wysocki Tomasz 
Published: September 2018

Experimental philosophy is not a philosophy; it is a method that is supposed to contribute to philosophical inquiry. Characteristically, experimental philosophers use empirical techniques to investigate philosophically significant intuitions about hypothetical and actual cases. An intuition, in this context, is normally understood as a spontaneous judgment about the case. Like noninferential perceptual judgments, they simply occur rather than being a product of conscious reasoning to the conclusion.
Intuitions play a key role in much philosophical theorizing. The attempt to provide a conceptual analysis or definition for important philosophical concepts, e.g. knowledge, meaning, responsibility, has long been a major theoretical concern in philosophy. One prominent philosophical view holds that the meaning of our concepts is given by the folk theory (or set of common-sense beliefs) in which the concepts are embedded. Intuitions about cases are thought to reveal the contours of the folk theory and the meaning of the concept. As a result, in pursuing conceptual analyses, many philosophers rely on intuitions about cases to descry the folk theories in which those concepts are embedded.
In addition to their role in conceptual analysis, philosophers invoke intuitions as evidence for substantive philosophical claims, perhaps in much the same way as empirical scientists invoke observation as evidence. For instance, the intuition that it is wrong to push one man in front of a speeding trolley to save five others is invoked as evidence that utilitarianism does not give the right theory of how we ought to act. Similarly, intuitions are used to support substantive claims about knowledge, meaning and responsibility.
When philosophers use intuitions - whether in the service of conceptual analysis or in the effort to establish a more substantive philosophical claim - the traditional methodology looks a priori. That is, one arrives at one’s judgments without relying on evidence from sensory perception. For instance, to analyze the concept intentional a philosopher might consult their intuitions about whether the concept applies in various actual and possible circumstances, and a condition of adequacy upon the definition is that it best conforms to these intuitions. In contrast, experimental philosophers use experimental techniques to study intuitions about philosophically important concepts.
Ignorance
Authors: Peels Rik 
Published: September 2018

Until recently, epistemology has largely neglected ignorance, focusing on knowledge and what is necessary for knowledge, such as epistemic justification. However, over the last 20 years or so the tendency to neglect ignorance has changed, especially in several debates at the intersection of ethics and epistemology. This may come as a surprise, as one might think that ignorance is simply the absence of knowledge and that since the philosophical literature displays an extensive discussion on knowledge, ignorance does not deserve significant philosophical attention. However, it turns out to be philosophically challenging to spell out exactly what ignorance is and that even if it is absence of knowledge, ignorance merits philosophical attention of its own in a wide variety of philosophical debates.
Ignorance is an important concept in at least four different philosophical areas. First, in epistemology, the core questions regarding ignorance are what the nature of ignorance is, what varieties of ignorance there are, and whether ignorance has any epistemic value. Several issues in the philosophy of religion, such as negative theology, which says that we are inevitably ignorant of the divine, also touch on ignorance.
Second, there are moral dimensions to ignorance. Some philosophers have argued that certain moral virtues, such as modesty, entail ignorance. Ignorance can be a moral excuse. And the fact that ignorance itself sometimes excuses one for one’s ignorance leads to the so-called tracing problem (see §4 below).
Third, the concept of ignorance plays a significant role both in criminal and civil law and, as a result of that, in the philosophy of law. Ignorance can provide a legal exculpation: because one was ignorant, one did not commit a crime in the first place. Ignorance can be a legal excuse: one did commit a crime, but one is not guilty for it because one was ignorant. And ignorance can count as an inculpation: one is culpable for committing a crime because of one’s ignorance.
Fourth, several topics in social philosophy and the philosophy of science involve the notion of ignorance. Agnotology is the study of ignorance or doubt that is intentionally induced or maintained by the government or influential business companies. An example is the ignorance brought about by the tobacco industry about the effects of smoking. Social forces and hermeneutical frameworks make certain interpretations of and by minority groups possible or impossible and, thereby, lead people to remain ignorant about them. Debates about privacy refer to the obligation of other people to remain ignorant about certain facts about one’s personal life, especially since the considerable increase of possibilities for removing such ignorance by accessing a person’s traces in the digital world. Quite a few philosophers of technology have argued that societies should aim at collective ignorance regarding particular technologies that have been or might be developed, such as possibilities for making weapons of mass destruction, given the enormous potential social harms involved.
Matter
Authors: Shapere Dudley 
Published: September 2018

Viewed as arising within the framework of a more general theory of substance, philosophical treatments of matter have traditionally revolved around two issues: (1) The nature of matter: what are the distinguishing characteristics of matter or material substance(s) that define it and distinguish it from other substances, if any? (2) The problem of elements: do material things consist of elementary substances, or are there always further constituents? One possible view is that there is no fundamental level – that there are always further constituents, ingredients of ingredients. However, the view most often held by both philosophers and scientists has been that there are indeed fundamental elements out of which material things are made. Once this view is adopted, the question arises as to what they are and what properties distinguish them.
These two issues were introduced, though only gradually, in ancient Greek philosophy. A significant turn came about in the seventeenth century, in which the work of Descartes and Newton led to a picture of matter as passive, inert and dead as opposed to minds and forces, both of which were conceived as being ‘active’. Many philosophical problems and doctrines have been formulated in terms of this distinction. However, later developments in science, especially in the twentieth century, have brought about such profound changes that classical concepts of matter are no longer viable. These new developments profoundly alter the statements of philosophical doctrines and problems traditionally associated with matter.
Newton, Isaac (1642–1727)
Authors: Harper William L. , Smith George E. 
Published: September 2018

Newton is best known for having invented the calculus and formulated the theory of universal gravity – the latter in his Principia, the single most important work in the transformation of natural philosophy into modern physical science. Yet he also made major discoveries in optics, and put no less effort into alchemy and theology than into mathematics and physics.
Throughout his career, Newton maintained a sharp distinction between conjectural hypotheses and experimentally established results. This distinction was central to his claim that the method by which conclusions about forces were inferred from phenomena in the Principia made it ’possible to argue more securely concerning the physical species, physical causes, and physical proportions of these forces’. The law of universal gravity that he argued for in this way nevertheless provoked strong opposition, especially from such leading figures on the Continent as Huygens and Leibniz: they protested that Newton was invoking an occult power of action-at-a-distance insofar as he was offering no contact mechanism by means of which forces of gravity could act. This opposition led him to a tighter, more emphatic presentation of his methodology in the second edition of the Principia, published twenty-six years after the first. The opposition to the theory of gravity faded during the fifty to seventy-five years after his death as it fulfilled its promise on such issues as the non-spherical shape of the earth, the precession of the equinoxes, comet trajectories (including the return of ’Halley’s Comet’ in 1758), the vagaries of lunar motion and other deviations from Keplerian motion. During this period the point mass mechanics of the Principia was extended to rigid bodies and fluids by such figures as Euler, forming what we know as ’Newtonian’ mechanics.
Newton, Isaac (1642–1727)
Authors: Biener Zvi 
Published: September 2018

Isaac Newton is best known as a mathematician and physicist. He invented the calculus, discovered universal gravitation and made significant advances in theoretical and experimental optics. His master-work on gravitation, the Principia, is often hailed as the crowning achievement of the scientific revolution. His significance for philosophers, however, extends beyond the philosophical implications of his scientific discoveries. Newton was an able and subtle philosopher, working at a time when science was not yet recognized as an activity distinct from philosophy. He engaged with the work of Rene Descartes and G.W. Leibniz, and showed sensitivity to the work of John Locke, Francis Bacon, Pierre Gassendi and Henry More, to name just a few. In his time, Newton was not perceived as a scientific outsider, but as an active and knowledgeable participant in philosophical debates.
Nevertheless, Newton’s work helped precipitate the separation of physics from philosophy. The Principia defined a programme for physical research that persists to this day, but its early reception, particularly among Cartesians and Leibnizians, was difficult. To defend this programme from criticism, Newton and his successors portrayed their work as essentially autonomous from the philosophical demands of their contemporaries, thus creating modern science.
Even without the Principia, Newton’s place in history would have been guaranteed by his work in optics and mathematics. Newton discovered that white light was composed of rays from the entire visible spectrum and ingeniously measured a microscopic property of light that he called ‘fits’, a forerunner to our ‘wavelength’. His work in pure mathematics was ground-breaking: he invented the calculus (independently of Leibniz) and advanced both algebra and analytic geometry. His overall success in natural philosophy, which in his hands was applied mathematics, was largely due to his unparalleled skill as a mathematician.
Newton also engaged in activities that belong to neither modern science nor modern philosophy. His work on biblical chronology, interpretation of ancient prophecies and alchemy took up much of his intellectual efforts, but this work was largely ignored in the century after his death by an Enlightenment ideology occupied with painting its own past. Newton was partly responsible for this historiographical blindspot. He kept most of his ‘esoteric’ beliefs, such as his rejection of the Trinity, hidden. He promoted a public image that placed him in the tradition of Galileo and Huygens, figures more narrowly focused on physico-mathematics than he was.
Observation
Authors: Kosso Peter 
Published: September 2018

Observation is of undeniable importance in the empirical sciences. As the source of information from the world itself, observation has the role of both motivating and testing theories. Playing this role requires more than just opening our eyes and letting nature act upon us. It requires a careful attention to the information conveyed from the world so that an observation is meaningful. Scientific observation, in other words, is more than a physical act of sensation; it must be an epistemic act as well, with sufficient meaning and credibility to contribute to knowledge. A report of an observation, therefore, must be more than a ‘Yes, I see’. It must describe just what is seen, ‘I see that ______¯‘.
This obligation to make observation relevant to theory suggests that there is an essential influence of background theories on the observations themselves. The theories we believe or wish to test tell us which observations to make. And describing the results of observations, that is, bringing out their informational content, will always be done in the language of the conceptual and theoretical system already in place. For these reasons, observation is said to be indelibly theory-laden. And the influence of background beliefs is even greater in cases of indirect observation where machines, like microscopes and particle detectors, are used to produce images of the objects of observation. Here, the reliability of the machines, and hence the credibility of the observation, must be based on a theoretical understanding of the interactions that are the links in the chain of information.
The influence of theory on observation is often seen as a threat to the objectivity of the process of testing and verification of theories, and hence of science in general. If theories are allowed to, indeed required to, select their own evidence and then to give meaning and credibility to the observations, the testing process seems to be unavoidably circular and self-serving. Observation that is theory-laden would guarantee success. But a look at the history of science shows that it does not. There are plenty of cases of observations that are used to disconfirm theories or at least undermine the theorist’s confidence. Perhaps there is a kind of observation that is not influenced by scientific theory and can serve as a common, objective source of information to put theories to a rigorous and meaningful test. Or perhaps all scientific observation does bear the influence of background scientific theories, but not necessarily of the theory the observation is being used to test. This independence between the theories that support an observation and the theory for which the observation serves as evidence can break the circle in the process of testing and perhaps restore objectivity.