bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Properties
Authors: Daly Chris 
Published: September 2018

Asked to describe a given tomato, you might cite its redness, its size and its age. In doing so, some philosophers would claim, you have cited some of the tomato’s properties. A property is what is variously called a feature, quality, attribute or (as some philosophers put it) a way that something is. A property is supposed to be an entity that things (including particulars, such as tomatoes or people) have.
The topic of properties is part of ontology (the study of what there is). The topic involves two key issues. The first issue concerns the nature of properties. That is, it concerns what sorts of entities properties are. One important question here is whether properties are located in space and time. Some philosophers follow Plato in thinking that properties are located in neither space nor time. Others follow Aristotle in thinking that properties are located in space and time. Another question is whether distinct individuals can literally have one and the same property. The view that they can takes properties to be repeatable entities, or universals. A rival view takes properties to be nonrepeatable entities, or particulars.
The second issue concerns the existence of properties. Given a view about the nature of properties – a view about what properties are supposed to be – there is then an issue about whether there are any such entities. The traditional debate typically took properties to be universals. Realists about universals argued that universals exist, whereas nominalists argued that they do not. With greater recognition emerging during the last century of other ways of thinking of properties, the debate about the existence of properties has become many-sided.
Philosophers who agree both about what properties are, and that properties so understood exist, may find other grounds for disagreement. This raises a subsidiary class of issues. For instance, do particulars exist in addition to properties? A given apple is edible, sweet to taste, and so on. Some philosophers argue that the apple is only a ‘bundle’ of these and other properties. Other philosophers disagree, and take the apple to be a ‘bare particular’ which has various properties, but is distinct from them. Other disagreements concern which properties exist, and how to classify them. For instance, is there a genuine distinction between so-called primary and secondary qualities? Again, is there a genuine distinction between so-called dispositional and nondispositional (or categorical) properties?
Knowledge, causal theory of
Authors: Swain Marshall 
Published: September 2018

Epistemologists have always recognized the importance of causal processes in accounting for our knowledge of things. In discussions of perception, memory and reasoning, for example, it is commonly assumed that these ways of coming to know are fundamentally causal. We perceive things and thus come to have knowledge about them via complex causal processes; memory is, at least in part, the retention of previously gained knowledge through some sort of causal process; and reasoning is a causal process that takes beliefs as inputs and generates beliefs as outputs.
A causal theory of knowledge is a form of externalism and is based on the fundamental idea that a person knows some proposition, p, only if there is an appropriate causal connection between the state of affairs that makes p true and the person’s belief in p. Although this kind of theory has roots that extend to ancient times, contemporary versions attempt to make more precise the nature of the causal connections required for knowledge. The causal theory is closely related to other forms of externalist theories, such as the conclusive reasons theory, information-theoretic views and the various forms of reliabilism.
Charity, principle of
Authors: Feldman Richard 
Published: September 2018

The principle of charity governs the interpretation of the beliefs and utterances of others. It urges charitable interpretation, meaning interpretation that maximizes the truth or rationality of what others think and say. Some formulations of the principle concern primarily rationality, recommending attributions of rational belief or assertion. Others concern primarily truth, recommending attributions of true belief or assertion. Versions of the principle differ in strength. The weakest urge charity as one consideration among many. The strongest hold that interpretation is impossible without the assumption of rationality or truth.
The principle has been put to various philosophical uses. Students are typically instructed to follow the principle when interpreting passages and formulating the arguments they contain. The principle also plays a role in philosophy of mind and language and in epistemology. Philosophers have argued that the principle of charity plays an essential role in characterizing the nature of belief and intentionality, with some philosophers contending that beliefs must be mostly true. A version of the principle has even served as a key premise in a widely discussed argument against epistemological scepticism.
Commonsensism
Authors: Chisholm Roderick M. 
Published: September 2018

‘Commonsensism’ refers to one of the principal approaches to traditional theory of knowledge where one asks oneself the following Socratic questions: (1) What can I know?; (2) How can I distinguish beliefs that are reasonable for me to have from beliefs that are not reasonable for me to have? and (3) What can I do to replace unreasonable beliefs by reasonable beliefs about the same subject-matter, and to replace beliefs that are less reasonable by beliefs that are more reasonable? The mark of commonsensism is essentially a faith in oneself – a conviction that a human being, by proceeding cautiously, is capable of knowing the world in which it finds itself.
Any inquiry must set out with some beliefs. If you had no beliefs at all, you could not even begin to inquire. Hence any set of beliefs is better than none. Moreover, the beliefs that we do find ourselves with at any given time have so far survived previous inquiry and experience. And it is psychologically impossible to reject everything that you believe. ‘Doubting’, Peirce says, ‘is not as easy as lying’. Inquiry, guided by common sense, leads us to a set of beliefs which indicates that common sense is on the whole a reliable guide to knowledge. And if inquiry were not thus guided by common sense, how would it be able to answer the three Socratic questions with which it begins?
Cognitive pluralism
Authors: Ramsey William 
Published: September 2018

Cognitive pluralism refers to the very different ways in which people engage in cognitive activity in general, and reasoning in particular. Cognitive pluralism does not focus upon differences in belief systems or cultural attitudes; instead, it refers to the different ways in which cognitive agents process information, engage in problem solving and form and update their beliefs. It is about differences in how people think, not what they think (though these two are often closely related).
There are a variety of ways in which cognitive pluralism can be articulated. Broadly speaking, it is commonly divided into the categories of descriptive pluralism and prescriptive or normative pluralism. Descriptive pluralism involves the empirical claim that differences in reasoning strategies exist between different cognitive agents or systems, while normative pluralism involves the evaluative claim that there are different good ways to go about the business of reasoning. Both sorts of pluralism can be contrasted with cognitive monisms that claim, descriptively, there is little diversity in reasoning strategies, or, prescriptively, that only one type of reasoning strategy is optimal. As might be expected, the difference between pluralistic and monistic views varies along a continuum, depending upon the amount of pluralism promoted or denied.
Knowledge and justification, coherence theory of
Authors: Bonjour Laurence 
Published: September 2018

Coherence theories of justification represent one main alternative to foundationalist theories of justification. If, as has usually been thought, possessing epistemic justification is one necessary condition (along with truth and perhaps others) for a belief to constitute knowledge, then a coherence theory of justification would also provide the basis for a coherence theory of knowledge. While some proponents of coherence theories have restricted the scope of the theory to empirical justification, others have applied it to all varieties of epistemic justification. (There are also coherence theories of meaning and of truth, as well as coherence theories of ethical or moral justification.)
The initial contrast between coherence theories and foundationalist theories arises in the context of the epistemic regress problem. It is obvious that the justification of some beliefs derives from their inferential relations to other, putatively justified beliefs, and that the justification of these other beliefs may depend on inferential relations to still further beliefs, and so on, so that a potential regress of epistemic justification looms, with scepticism as the threatened outcome. The foundationalist solution to this problem is that one arrives sooner or later at basic or foundational beliefs: beliefs that are epistemically justified, but whose justification does not derive from inferential relations to any further beliefs and so brings the regress to an end. The defining tenet of a coherence theory of justification is the rejection of this foundationalist solution, the coherentist insisting that any belief (of the kinds to which the theory is applied) depends for its justification on inferential relations to other beliefs and eventually to the overall system of beliefs held by the believer in question. According to the coherentist, the justification of this system of beliefs is logically prior to that of its component beliefs and derives ultimately from the coherence of the system, where coherence is a matter of how tightly unified or interconnected the system is by virtue of inferential connections (including explanatory connections) between its members.
Contrary to what this might seem to suggest, coherence theories do not deny that sensory observation or perception plays an important role in justification. What they deny is that this role should be construed in a foundationalist way, insisting instead that the justification of observational beliefs ultimately derives also from considerations of coherence. Specific coherence theories may also add other requirements for justification, thereby departing from a pure coherentism, while still avoiding foundationalism.
While the idea of a coherence theory has often played the role of a dialectical foil, developed theories of this kind are relatively rare and are often in serious disagreement among themselves. In this way, coherentism is much less a unified view with standard, generally accepted features, than is foundationalism.
Deductive closure principle
Authors: Becker Kelly 
Published: September 2018

The deductive closure principle is based on the thought that one straightforward way to extend one’s knowledge is to competently deduce some proposition from one or more propositions that one already knows. G.E. Moore (1939) appears to presume this in his proof of an external world. Updating Moore’s proof to incorporate the more recent rhetorical device of a brain-in-a-vat (BIV), from his putative knowledge that he has hands and his knowledge that his having hands entails that he is not merely a BIV being fed experiences, through electrodes, of having hands, Moore deduces and therefore claims to know that he is not a BIV. A natural sceptical reply also exploits the idea that one can extend one’s knowledge through deduction. The sceptic will say, for example, that Moore does not know that he is not a brain-in-a-vat (BIV), for if he were his experience would be no different to what it actually is. Moore does know, however, that if he has hands then he is not (just) a BIV. Therefore, Moore does not even know that he has hands, for if he did, he could deduce and come to know that he is not a BIV, but that is not something he can know because, again, his vat experiences would be indistinguishable from normal ones.
The idea that knowledge can always be extended through competent deduction from known premises – which implies that knowledge is deductively closed under known entailment – raises at least three philosophical questions. First, what general principle best captures this phenomenon? Due primarily to risk arising from the fallibility of belief-forming processes including deduction, there is reason to question even the most plausible formulations of closure. Second, are there any counterexamples to the principle or constraints on its application? Some philosophers claim that a properly formulated closure principle admits of exceptions, even if deduction is assumed to be infallible. Third, how might a theory of knowledge that upholds a robust (exceptionless) closure principle achieve anti-sceptical results?.
Empiricism
Authors: Alston William P. 
Published: September 2018

In all its forms, empiricism stresses the fundamental role of experience. As a doctrine in epistemology it holds that all knowledge is ultimately based on experience. Likewise an empirical theory of meaning or of thought holds that the meaning of words or our concepts are derivative from experience. This entry is restricted to epistemological empiricism. It is difficult to give an illuminating analysis of ‘experience’. Let us say that it includes any mode of consciousness in which something seems to be presented to the subject, as contrasted with the mental activity of thinking about things. Experience, so understood, has a variety of modes – sensory, aesthetic, moral, religious and so on – but empiricists usually concentrate on sense experience, the modes of consciousness that result from the stimulation of the five senses.
It is obvious that not all knowledge stems directly from experience. Hence empiricism always assumes a stratified form, in which the lowest level issues directly from experience, and higher levels are based on lower levels. It has most commonly been thought by empiricists that beliefs at the lowest level simply ‘read off’ what is presented in experience. If a tree is visually presented to me as green I simply ‘register’ this appearance in forming the belief that the tree is green. Most of our beliefs – general beliefs for example – do not have this status but, according to empiricism, are supported by other beliefs in ways that eventually trace back to experience. Thus the belief that maple trees are bare in winter is supported by particular perceptual beliefs to the effect that this maple tree is bare and it is winter.
Empiricism comes in many versions. A major difference concerns the base on which each rests. A public version takes beliefs about what we perceive in the physical environment to be directly supported by experience. A phenomenalist version supposes that only beliefs about one’s own sensory experience are directly supported, taking perceptual beliefs about the environment to get their support from the former sort of beliefs. The main difficulties for a global empiricism (all knowledge is based on experience) come from types of knowledge it is difficult to construe in this way, such as mathematical knowledge.
Feminist epistemology
Authors: Code Lorraine 
Published: September 2018

The impact of feminism on epistemology has been to move the question ‘Whose knowledge are we talking about?’ to a central place in epistemological inquiry. Hence feminist epistemologists are producing conceptions of knowledge that are quite specifically contextualized and situated, and of socially responsible epistemic agency. They have elaborated genealogical/interpretive methods, have advocated reconstructions of empiricism, have articulated standpoint positions and have demonstrated the potential of psychosocial and post-structural analyses to counter the hegemony of epistemological master narratives. In these reconfigured epistemologies, feminists have argued that the cognitive status and circumstances of the knower(s) are central among conditions for the possibility of knowledge. They have demonstrated the salience, in evaluating any epistemic event, of the social arrangements of power and privilege by which it is legitimated or discredited.
Feminists are engaged at once in critical projects of demonstrating the privilege-sustaining, androcentric character of ‘the epistemological project’ in most of its received forms, and in transformative projects of reconstructing methodologies and justificatory procedures so as to eradicate their oppressive, exclusionary effects. They have shown that, in late-twentieth-century western philosophy, the circumstances of mature white men continue to generate prevailing ideals and norms of ‘human nature’, while the ideals of reason, objectivity and value-neutrality around which most mainstream theories of knowledge are constructed, like the knowledge they legitimate, tacitly validate affluent male experiences and values. Scientific knowledge, which is still an overwhelmingly male preserve, stands as the regulative model of objective epistemic authority; and the experiences and values of non-male, non-white and otherwise differently placed knowers typically have to accommodate themselves, Procrustean-style, to an idealized scientific and implicitly masculine norm, or risk dismissal as inconsequential, aberrant, mere opinion.
In engaging with these issues, most feminists – like many other participants in ‘successor epistemology’ projects – retain a realist commitment to empirical evidence, while denying that facts or experiences ‘speak for themselves’ and maintaining that most truths are as artefactual as they are factual. Questions of cognitive authority and answerability thus figure as prominently as issues of epistemic warrant in these projects, where feminists are concentrating less on formal, universal conditions for making and justifying knowledge ‘in general’ than on the specificities of knowledge construction. Hence these inquiries are often interdisciplinary, producing detailed analyses of everyday knowledge-making and of scientific or social scientific inquiry; drawing out their gendered and other locational implications. In these projects feminists are showing that avowedly engaged, politically committed investigations can yield well-warranted conclusions.
Induction, epistemic issues in
Authors: Kaplan Mark 
Published: September 2018

Consider the following:
- (1) Emeralds have been regularly dug up and observed for centuries; while there are still emeralds yet to be observed, every one observed so far has been green.
It is easy to see why we regard (1) as evidence, if true, that:
- (2) Every emerald observed up until 100 years ago was green.
(1) logically implies (2): there is no way (1) could be true without (2) being true as well. It is less easy to see why we should think that (1), if true, is any evidence at all that:
- (3) All hitherto unobserved emeralds are green as well.
(1) does not logically imply (3): it is consistent with (1) that (3) be false – that the string of exclusively green emeralds is about to come to an end. None the less, we do regard (1) as evidence, if true, that (3). What, if anything, justifies our doing so?
To answer this question would be to take a first step towards solving what is known as the ‘problem of induction’. But only a first step. There is, at least on the surface, a wide variety of arguments that share the salient features of the argument from (1) to (3): their premises do not logically imply their conclusions, yet we think that their premises, if true, constitute at least some evidence that their conclusions are true. A fully fledged solution to the problem of induction would have to tell us, for each of these arguments, what justifies our regarding its premises as evidence that its conclusion is true. Still, the question as to how this step might be taken has been the focus of intense philosophical scrutiny, and the approaches outlined in this entry have been among the most important.
Information theory and epistemology
Authors: Dretske Fred 
Published: September 2018

The mathematical theory of information (also called communication theory) defines a quantity called mutual information that exists between a source, s, and receiver, r. Mutual information is a statistical construct, a quantity defined in terms of conditional probabilities between the events occurring at r and s. If what happens at r depends on what happens at s to some degree, then there is a communication ‘channel’ between r and s, and mutual information at r about s. If, on the other hand, the events at two points are statistically independent, there is zero mutual information.
Philosophers and psychologists are attracted to information theory because of its potential as a useful tool in describing an organism’s cognitive relations to the world. The attractions are especially great for those who seek a naturalistic account of knowledge, an account that avoids normative – and, therefore, scientifically unusable – ideas such as rational warrant, sufficient reason and adequate justification. According to this approach, philosophically problematic notions like evidence, knowledge, recognition and perception – perhaps even meaning – can be understood in communication terms. Perceptual knowledge, for instance, might best be rendered in terms of a brain (r) receiving mutual information about a worldly source (s) via sensory channels. When incoming signals carry appropriate information, suitably equipped brains ‘decode’ these signals, extract information and thereby come to know what is happening in the outside world. Perception becomes information-produced belief.
Internalism and externalism in epistemology
Authors: Vahid Hamid 
Published: September 2018

The internalism/externalism debate in epistemology is primarily concerned with the conditions or factors by virtue of which beliefs acquire the status of being epistemically justified. Internalism holds that these justification-conferring factors must all be ‘internal’ to the subject’s perspective on the world. However, depending on how the notion of internal is understood, internalism ap-pears in different forms. Access internalism, the most common form of internalism, holds that the justification-conferring factors must be reflectively accessible to the subject, such that he is able to find, with regard to the beliefs he holds, whether they are justified. Internalism captures the pre-theoretic intuition that having justification for a belief is a matter of having good reasons for that belief. It also treats the problem of scepticism seriously and explains why it has its source in internalism. Internalism has, however, faced two important objections: (1) it has been objected that internalism fails to deliver a genuinely truth-conducive conception of justification; and (2) that no available account of the access requirement could provide it with a viable basis to realize its aspirations.
In an externalist account of justification, some justification-conferring factors of a belief are per-mitted to fall outside the subject’s ken and beyond the reach of the subject’s reflective access. Externalism can plausibly explain why justified beliefs are likely to be true; but by losing sight of the subject’s perspective, externalism fails to appreciate the force of the sceptical challenge. Ex-ternalists have had a hard time explaining the widely shared intuition that beliefs formed in de-mon world scenarios enjoy as much justification as they do when formed in (phenomenologically identical) normal circumstances. In the face of such challenges, both the internalist and external-ist accounts have made significant compromises, in view of which a pluralistic approach to the question of epistemic justification has become a live option.