KURT SYLVAN
ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR, UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHAMPTON (UK)
PH.D., RUTGERS UNIVERSITY (NEW BRUNSWICK, NJ, USA)
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EPISTEMOLOGY
SPRING 2015          

Meets Mondays from 2-3 in 65/1143
and Tuesdays from 2-4 in 2/1039

SCHEDULE OF READINGS

For each week, the readings divide into required and optional 
further readings.  I include the optional readings just in case you 
find the topic especially interesting and would like to write a paper 
on it or simply learn more.  You are not at all expected to read them.

Many required readings are in Epistemology: An Anthology, 2nd 
Edition (eds. Sosa, Kim, Fantl and McGrath), which you should buy

Part 1: The Gettier Problem

Week 1 – The Gettier Problem and Attempted Solutions in the 60s-70s

Required
Gettier, E.  “Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?” (in E:AA)
Zagzebski, L.  “The Inescapability of Gettier Problems” (in E: AA)

Optional Further Reading
Clark, M.  “Knowledge and Grounds"
Goldman, A.  "A Causal Theory of Knowing"
Lehrer, K. and Paxson, T.  “Knowledge: Undefeated Justified True Belief”
Harman, G.  Selections from Thought (in E:AA)
Klein, P. “Knowledge, Causality, and Defeasibility”
Lycan, W.  “The Gettier Problem Problem”   NET
Chisholm, R.  Selection from The Theory of Knowledge, 3rd Edition
Ichikawa, J. and Steup, M.  "The Analysis of Knowledge"   SEP
Hetherington, S.  "Gettier Problems"   IEP

Week 2 – Attempted Solutions in the 80s + New Spins: Sensitivity and Tracking

Required
Nozick, R.  Selections from Philosophical Explanations (in E:AA)
Roush, S.  Selections from Tracking Truth

Optional Further Reading
Comesana, J.  “Knowledge and Subjunctive Conditionals”
Kripke, S.  "Nozick on Knowledge"
Briggs, R. and Nolan, D. “Mad, Bad, and Dangerous to Know”
Briggs, R. and Nolan, D.  “Epistemic Dispositions”
Black, T. and Murphy, P.  “In Defense of Sensitivity”
Becker, K. and Black, T.  The Sensitivity Principle in Epistemology   BUY
DeRose, K.  “Solving the Skeptical Problem”
DeRose, K.  “Insensitivity is Back, Baby!”

Weeks 3 and 4 – Attempted Solutions in the 90s and 2000s: Safety and Virtue Epistemology

Required
Sosa, E.  “How to Defeat Opposition to Moore” (in E:AA)
Sosa, E.  Selections from Apt Belief and Reflective Knowledge: A Virtue Epistemology

Optional Further Reading
Comesana, J.  “Unsafe Knowledge"
Brogaard, B.  “Can Virtue Reliabilism Explain the Value of Knowledge?”
DeRose, K.  “Sosa, Safety, Sensitivity, and Skeptical Hypotheses”
Lackey, J.  “Why We Don’t Deserve Credit for Everything We Know”
Miracchi, L.  “Competence to Know”
Pritchard, D.  “Apt Performance and Epistemic Value”
Pritchard, D. “Anti-Luck Virtue Epistemology”
Turri, J. “Manifest Failure: The Gettier Problem Solved”

Part 2: The Structure of Justification and Knowledge

Week 5 – Introducing Foundationalism and Coherentism

Required
BonJour, L.  “Can Empirical Knowledge Have a Foundation?” (in E:AA)
Sosa, E.  “The Raft and the Pyramid” (in E:AA)

Optional Further Reading
Alston, W. “Two Types of Foundationalism”
Alston, W. “Has Foundationalism Been Refuted?”
Bergmann, M. “What’s Not Wrong with Foundationalism”
Davidson, D.  "A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge"
Foley, R. “Being Knowingly Incoherent”
Fumerton, R.  “Foundationalist Theories of Epistemic Justification”   SEP
Fumerton, R.  Selections from Epistemology
Klein, P. and Warfield, T. “What Price Coherence?"
Klein, P.  “The Virtues of Inconsistency”
Kvanvig, J.  “Coherentism and Justified Inconsistent Beliefs: A Solution”
Poston, T. “Basic Reasons and First Philosophy: A Coherentist View of Reasons”
Pryor, J. “There Is Immediate Justification”

Week 6 – Moderate Coherentism and Haack’s Hybrid View

Required
Elgin, C.  “Holism, Coherence and Tenability"
Haack, S.  “A Foundherentist Theory of Empirical Justification” (in E:AA)

Optional Further Reading
Aune, B. “Haack’s Evidence and Inquiry”
BonJour, L. “Haack on Justification and Experience”
Dancy, J.  "Coherence Theories"
Dancy, J.  "Coherence, Justification, and Knowledge"
Dancy, J.  "Can an Empiricist Be a Coherentist?"
Haack, S. “Reply to BonJour”
Foley, R.  “Chisholm and Coherence”
McGrew, L. and McGrew, T.  “Foundationalism, Probability, and Mutual Support”
Tramel, P. “Haack’s Foundherentism is a Foundationalism”
Sosa, E.  “The Coherence of Virtue and the Virtue of Coherence”
Sosa, E. “Equilibrium in Coherence?”
Sosa, E.  "Reflective Knowledge in the Best Circles"
Van Cleve, J.  “Can Coherence Generate Warrant Ex Nihilo?”

Week 7 – Infinitism  + Beginning of Discussion of Internalism vs. Externalism

Required
Klein, P.  "Human Knowledge and the Infinite Regress of Reasons"
Fumerton, R.  "The Internalism/Externalism Controversy"

Part 3: Internalism vs. Externalism

Week 8 – Conee and Feldman's Internalism

Required
Conee, E. and Feldman, R. “Internalism Defended”
Conee, E. and Feldman, R.  “Evidentialism” (in E:AA)

Optional Further Reading
Bergmann, M.  Selections from Justification without Awareness
Feldman, R. “Justification Is Internal”
Fumerton, R. “Speckled Hens and Objects of Acquaintance”
Fumerton, R.  “Traditional (Internalist) Foundationalism” in Epistemology
Goldman, A. “The Internalist Conception of Justification”
Goldman, A. “Internalism, Externalism, and the Architecture of Justification”
Greco, J. “Justification Is Not Internal”
Lyons, J. “Evidence, Experience, and Externalism”
Poston, T. "Internalism and Externalism in Epistemology"   NET
Siegel, S.  “Cognitive Penetrability and Perceptual Justification”
Sosa, E.  Selections from Epistemic Justification

Week 9 – Externalism: Reliabilism

Required
Goldman, A.  “What Is Justified Belief?” (in E:AA)
Goldman, A. “Internalism Exposed”

Optional Further Reading
Alston, W. P. “How Think about Reliability”
Cohen, S.  “Justification and Truth”
Conee, E. and Feldman, R. “The Generality Problem for Reliabilism”
Bishop, M. “Why the Generality Problem is Everybody’s Problem"
Comesaña, J.  “A Well-Founded Solution to the Generality Problem”
Haack, S.  “The Evidence against Reliabilism”
Fumerton, R.  Selection from Metaepistemology and Skepticism
Goldman, A.  Epistemology and Cognition, Chapters 4 and 5
Goldman, A.  “Immediate Justification and Process Reliabilism”
Goldman, A. and Olson, E. “Reliabilism and the Value of Knowledge”
Vogel, J. “Reliabilism Leveled”
BonJour, L.  “Externalist Theories of Empirical Knowledge” (in E:AA)
Zagzebski, L. “From Reliabilism to Virtue Epistemology”

Part 4: Skepticism, Mooreanism, and Easy Knowledge

Week 10 – Closure, Relevant Alternatives, and Underdetermination

Required
Dretske, F.  “Epistemic Operators”
Stine, G.  “Skepticism, Relevant Alternatives, and Closure”

Optional Further Reading
Brueckner, A.  “The Stucture of the Skeptical Argument”
Cohen, S. “Two Kinds of Skeptical Argument”
Goldman, A.  "Discrimination and Perceptual Knowledge"
McCain, K. “Two Skeptical Arguments or Only One?”
Pritchard, D.  “The Structure of Sceptical Arguments”
Pritchard, D. “Recent Work on Radical Skepticism”
Pryor, J.  “The Skeptic and the Dogmatist”
Vogel, J. “Skeptical Arguments”
Williamson, T. "Scepticism and Evidence"

Week 11 – Moore’s Argument

Required
Moore, G. E.  “Proof of an External World” and “Certainty” (in E:AA)
Coliva, A.  Selection from Moore and Wittgenstein: Scepticism, Certainty, and Common Sense
Pryor, J.  “What’s Wrong with Moore’s Argument?”

Recommended
Alston, W. P. “Epistemic Circularity"
Carter, J. A. “Recent Work on Moore’s Proof”
Kelly, T. “Moorean Facts and Belief Revision, or Can the Skeptic Win?”
Lycan, W.  “Moore against the New Skeptics”
Pritchard, D. “Resurrecting the Moorean Response to the Sceptic”
Sosa, E. “Reflective Knowledge in the Best Circles”
Sosa, E. “Skepticism and our Knowledge Circle”
Sosa, E.  “Beyond Skepticism, to the Best of Our Knowledge”
Stroud, B.  “The Problem of the External World”

Week 12 – The Problem of Easy Knowledge

Required
Chisholm, R.  “The Problem of the Criterion”
Cohen, S.  “Basic Knowledge and the Problem of Easy Knowledge”

Optional Further Reading
Becker, K. “Why Reliabilism Does Not Permit Easy Knowledge”
Black, T.  “Solving the Problem of Easy Knowledge”
Brown, J. “Non-Inferential Justification and Epistemic Circularity”
Cohen, S.  “Why Basic Knowledge Is Easy Knowledge”
Kornblith, H. “A Reliabilist Solution to the Problem of Promiscuous Bootstrapping”
Sosa, E. “Easy Knowledge and the Criterion” in Reflective Knowledge
Sosa, E. “Human Knowledge, Animal and Reflective” in Reflective Knowledge
Vogel, J. “Epistemic Bootstrapping”
Wright, C.  “Frictional Coherentism?”
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