Arguing about Knowledge

What is knowledge? What are the sources of knowledge? What is the value of knowledge? What can we know?
Arguing About Knowledge offers a fresh and engaging perspective on the theory of knowledge. This comprehensive and imaginative selection of readings examines the subject in an unorthodox and entertaining manner whilst covering the fundamentals of the theory of knowledge. It includes classic and contemporary pieces from the most influential philosophers from Descartes, Russell, Quine and G.E. Moore to Richard Feldman, Edward Craig, Gilbert Harman and Roderick Chisholm. In addition, students will find fascinating alternative pieces from literary and popular work such as Lewis Caroll, Jorges Luis Borges and Paul Boghossian.
Each article selected is clear, interesting and free from unnecessary jargon. The editors provide lucid introductions to each section in which they give an overview of the debate and outline the arguments of the papers. Arguing About Knowledge is an inventive and stimulating reader for students new to the theory of knowledge.

Duncan Pritchard is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh, UK. He is the author of What Is This Thing Called Knowledge? (Routledge, 2006).
Ram Neta is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA

1. What is knowledge? 1. A. J. Ayer, The Problem of Knowledge 2. Edmund Gettier, Is Knowledge Justified True Belief? 3. Keith Lehrer, Knowledge, Truth and Evidence 4. Robert Nozick, Philosophical Explanations 2. What is the value of knowledge? 5. Plato, The Meno 6. Jonathan Kvanvig, The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding 7. Linda Zagzebski, The Source of the Epistemic Good 8. John Greco, The Value Problem 3. What evidence do we have? 9. Roderick Chisholm, "Appear", "Take", and "Evident" 10. Roderick Firth, Ultimate Evidence 11. W. V. Quine, Posits and Reality 12. Richard Feldman, Having Evidence 4. How should we distribute our confidence? 13. Mark Kaplan, Decision Theory as Philosophy 14. Adam Elga, Self-Locating Belief and the Sleeping Beauty Problem 15. Paul Hoffman, The Man Who Loved Numbers 5. What is it to be justified in believing something? 16. Alvin Goldman, What is Justified Belief? 17. Earl Conee & Richard Feldman, Evidentialism 18. William Alston, An Internalist Externalism 19. Lewis Carroll, What the Tortoise Said to Achilles 6. What is the structure of justification and knowledge? 20. Laurence Bonjour, Can Empirical Knowledge Have a Foundation? 21. Laurence Bonjour, Toward a Defense of Empirical Foundationalism 22. Peter Klein, Human Knowledge and the Infinite Regress of Reasons 23. Ernest Sosa, The Raft and the Pyramid: Coherence versus Foundations in the Theory of Knowledge 7. What is the nature of the epistemic ‘ought’? 24. William K. Clifford, The Ethics of Belief 25. William James, The Will to Believe 26. Roderick Chisholm, The Ethics of Belief 27. William Alston, The Deontological Conception of Epistemic Justification 28. Richard Fumerton, Epistemic Justification and Normativity 29. Edward Craig, Knowledge and the State of Nature 8. What are the sources of knowledge? 30. Bertrand Russell, On Induction 31. Robert Audi, The Place of Testimony in the Fabric of Knowledge and Justification 32. Roderick Chisholm, Theory of Knowledge 33. William Alston, Perceptual Knowledge 9. What can we know? 34. Jorge Luis Borges, The Circular Ruins 35. Roderick Chisholm, The Problem of the Criterion 36. René Descartes, Meditation One 37. O. K. Bouwsma, Descartes’s Evil Genius 38. G. E. Moore, Certainty 39. Peter Unger, An Argument for Skepticism 40. David Lewis, Elusive Knowledge 10. Is knowledge in the eye of the beholder? 41. Luigi Pirandello, Right You Are If You Think You Are 42. Peter Winch, Understanding a Primitive Society 43. Paul Boghossian, What the Social Hoax Ought to Teach Us 44. Michael Williams, Why (Wittgensteinian) Contextualism is Not Relativism