Advanced Epistemology and Metaphysics

I invite you to visit me during my office hours and to talk with me via telephone or e-mail. I always welcome your comments and questions, and I am exceptionally happy to talk with you about the course material or about other philosophical or administrative matters.

Department office: ST 522

Department phone: 818.677.2757

Text: Knowledge and Lotteries, John Hawthorne (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 2004).

Other readings available on-line or as handouts

Aims of the Course:  This course is organized around an epistemological puzzle—the lottery puzzle—that exposes a tension between various ordinary knowledge claims and our apparent failure to know whether someone will lose a lottery.  In its starkest form, the puzzle is this: we think we don’t know that a particular lottery ticket will be a loser, yet we normally count ourselves as knowing all sorts of things that entail that its holder will not suddenly acquire a large fortune.  We will explore various proposed solutions to this puzzle, as well as issues concerning the nature and significance of knowledge.  In the process, we will have an opportunity to explore some noteworthy topics in semantics.

Attendance: Since you are responsible for any and all material presented in class, and since each class represents an important opportunity to discuss the material, regular attendance is essential to doing well in the course. Furthermore, attending class will help you to do better on the exams as well as on the other assignments.

The deadline this semester for dropping a course with only the instructor’s signature is Friday, February 17. After this date, according to CSUN’s regulations, withdrawals will require additional approvals and can be obtained only for “serious and compelling reasons” and provided that there is “no viable alternative”. See CSUN’s Schedule of Classes and Catalog Supplement, online at http://www.csun.edu/a&r/soc/. If you enroll in a course and do not officially drop it, you will remain enrolled and will receive a grade, even if you never attend. There are no “automatic” drops, and I cannot drop you from any of my classes.

Students with Disabilities: If you have a disability, please identify yourself to me and to the University so that we can reasonably accommodate your learning and the preparation and evaluation of the work that you must do for this course. Please contact the Center on Disabilities, Student Services Building, Room 110, 818.677.2684 (Fax: 818.677.4932; E-mail: [email protected]). For more information, visit the COD’s website at the following address: http://www.csun.edu/cod.

Evaluation: Your final grade in the course will be based on the following:

Paper

Thesis statement, due March 16^th

Outline, due March 30^th

First version, due April 18^th

Comments, due April 25^th

Second version, due May 11^th

11%

13%

15%

28%

Presentations

2 presentations, due as indicated on

the Schedule

12%

Essays

3 one-page essays, due as indicated

on the Schedule

12%

Grades: I will use the plus/minus grading system. Letter grades are assigned according to the following system:

100-92% = A	86-83% = B	76-73% = C	66-63% = D
91-90% = A-	82-80% = B-	72-70% = C-	62-60% = D-
89-87% = B+	79-77% = C+	69-67% = D+	59-0% = F

I encourage verbal participation in lectures, in office hours, or by phone, as well as participation via e-mail. Such participation can benefit you in a number of ways: it will help you to gain a deeper understanding of the material and will thus help you to perform better on the exams. Furthermore, if your final grade falls just short of some higher grade, the quality of your verbal participation will be considered as grounds for improving your final grade.

Cheating and Plagiarism: I consider academic dishonesty a very serious issue. If you are unclear about what constitutes academic dishonesty or about the possible repercussions of and penalties for acts of academic dishonesty, please consult the California State University, Northridge Student Conduct Code (see pp. 530-531 of CSUN’s 2004-2006 Undergraduate and Graduate Catalog). You’ll find links to the Code and other helpful resources at the following address: http://www.csun.edu/~studaff/student_conduct.html. Moreover, I subscribe to and will enforce California State University, Northridge’s Policies on Nondiscrimination and Student Conduct, which include its policy on Academic Dishonesty and the Faculty Policy on Academic Dishonesty, as they are stated on pages 529-533 of its 2004-2006 Undergraduate and Graduate Catalog.

Presentations and One-Page Essays: You must give two presentations on your paper. The first will consist of a presentation of your thesis statement, along with, for example, a brief overview of what you plan to do in your paper. The second will consist of a presentation of (the first version of) your paper, which should include, for example, a summary of an argument from the literature or of a scholarly work that you address in your paper. There will be no make-up presentations. Also, you must submit three one-page essays over the course of the semester. Each of your three essays should be about 350-450 words in length. I will not accept late essay submissions.

Paper: The paper assignment requires you to write an essay of 3500-4200 words (or about 10-12 pages). I will at some point distribute a list of paper topics, and you may write on any one of those topics. (Along with the paper topics, I’ll distribute a list of unassigned essays or book chapters that may help you in thinking about your paper. It might be that you will be able to incorporate into your paper arguments and ideas that you find in these unassigned works.) You will complete your paper in five stages:

· On March 9^th, you must submit a thesis statement for your paper.

· On March 23^rd, you must submit an outline of your paper.

· On April 6^th, you must submit three copies of the first version of your paper. I will give each of two of these copies to another member of the class, who will then read and comment on your paper.

· On April 20^th, you must submit two copies of each set of comments, and I will give a copy to the author of each paper you’ve read. You will then revise your own paper in light of the comments you receive from me and from your peers.

· You must submit the second version of your paper no later than 11:00 a.m., 11 May 2006. I will accept no paper submitted later than this.

I will evaluate your paper, as well as your six one-page essays, on the basis of the quality of the arguments you provide in favor of your position. More specifically, your paper (a) must be well organized and readable, (b) must demonstrate your ability to provide charitable and reasonable interpretations of the philosophical arguments we encounter, (c) must demonstrate your ability to provide reasonable critical evaluations of those arguments, and (d) must demonstrate your ability to present and defend your own reasonable and persuasive philosophical argument.

Schedule
Introduction	January 31	*Introduction to the Course*
Epistemic Closure Principles	February 2	*Introduction to Epistemic Closure Principles* Luper, S., “The Epistemic Closure Principle”
	February 7	*Closure* Dretske, F., “Epistemic Operators” (This link takes you to JSTOR.) Nozick, R., Selections from Philosophical Explanations
	February 9	*Closure* Vogel, J., “Are there Counterexamples to the Closure Principle?”
	February 14	*Formulating a Closure Principle* Warfield, T. and Marian David, “Six Possible Counterexamples to One or Two Closure Principles”
	February 16	<< First One-Page Essay Due >>
	February 21	*Closure and Skepticism* Nozick, R., Selections from Philosophical Explanations Luper, S., “The Epistemic Predicament: Knowledge, Nozickian Tracking, and Skepticism” Black, T., “A Moorean Response to Brain-in-a-Vat Scepticism”
	February 23
Introducing the Puzzle	February 28
	March 2	*Introducing the Puzzle* Hawthorne, J., Chapter 1 of Knowledge and Lotteries Harman, G. and Sherman, B., “Knowledge, Assumptions, Lotteries” Pritchard, D., “Knowledge, Luck, and Lotteries”
	March 7	<< SECOND One-Page Essay Due >>
	March 9
	March 14	<< First PRESENTATION >>
Contextualism and the Puzzle	March 16	*Contextualism and the Puzzle* Hawthorne, J., Chapter 2 of Knowledge and Lotteries DeRose, K., “Solving the Skeptical Problem” Lewis, D., “Scorekeeping in a Language Game” DeRose, K., “Knowledge, Assertion and Lotteries” Cohen, S., “Contextualist Solutions to Epistemological Problems: Scepticism, Gettier, and the Lottery” Sorensen, R., “Dogmatism, Junk Knowledge, and Conditionals” Cohen, S., “Basic Knowledge and the Problem of Easy Knowledge” Black, T., “Solving the Problem of Easy Knowledge” << THESIS STATEMENT Due >>**
	March 21
	March 23
	March 28	<< SECOND PRESENTATIONS BEGIN >>
	March 30	<< OUTLINE OF PAPER Due >>
Skeptical and Moderate Invariantism	April 4	*Skeptical and Moderate Invariantism* Hawthorne, J., Chapter 3 of Knowledge and Lotteries ** Harman, G., Selections from Thought Stanley, J., “On the Linguistic Basis for Contextualism” Black, T., “A Warranted Assertability Defense of a Moorean Response to Skepticism”
	April 6
	April 11	Spring Break
	April 13	Spring Break
	April 18	<< First VERSION OF PAPER Due >>
	April 20
	April 25	<< PEER-REVIEW COMMENTS Due >>
Sensitive Moderate Invariantism	April 27	*Sensitive Moderate Invariantism* Hawthorne, J., Chapter 4 of Knowledge and Lotteries Stanley, J., Selections from Knowledge and Practical Interests
	May 2	<< THIRD One-Page Essay Due >>
	May 4
	May 9
	May 11	<< SECOND VERSION OF PAPER Due >>
	May 16
	May 18

Note: Everything in this syllabus, including the reading assignments, and the paper assignments and due dates, is subject to revision. I will announce any and all revisions in class and, in general, do my best to make sure that everyone knows about revisions. If you miss class, you must nevertheless submit assignments according to any revisions that I make to the Schedule. You should either make sure that you don’t miss class or find a sure way of becoming aware of any revisions that I make to the Schedule or to the syllabus.

Supplemental Materials

Foundationalism

Alston, William P. 1976. “Has foundationalism been refuted?” Philosophical Studies 29: 287-305.
Alston, William P. 1976. “Two types of foundationalism” The Journal of Philosophy 73: 165-185.
Audi, Robert. 2003. “Contemporary modest foundationalism,” in Louis P. Pojman, ed., The Theory of Knowledge: Classical and Contemporary Readings, 3^rd ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
Chisholm, Roderick M. 1977. Theory of Knowledge, 2^nd ed. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Oakley, I. T. 1976. “An argument for scepticism concerning justified belief” American Philosophical Quarterly 13: 226-237.

Oakley criticizes foundationalism, arguing that there are no basic beliefs.

Pryor, James. 2000. “The skeptic and the dogmatist” Noûs 34: 517-549.

Coherentism

Bender, John W., ed. 1989. The Current Status of the Coherence Theory. Dordrecht and Boston: Kluwer.
BonJour, Laurence. 1976. “The coherence theory of empirical knowledge” Philosophical Studies 30: 281-312.
BonJour, Laurence. 1985. The Structure of Empirical Knowledge. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Harman, Gilbert. 1970. “Induction,” in Marshall Swain, ed., Induction, Acceptance, and Rational Belief. Dordrecht: D. Reidel.
Harman, Gilbert. 1984. “Positive versus negative undermining in belief revision” Noûs 18: 39-49.
Harman, Gilbert. 1986. Change in View. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Lehrer, Keith. 1974. Knowledge. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lehrer, Keith. 1999. “Knowledge, skepticism and coherence” Philosophical Perspectives 13, Epistemology. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
Lehrer, Keith. 2000. Theory of Knowledge, 2^nd ed. Boulder: Westview Press.

The Relevant Alternatives Theory

Cohen, Stewart. 1991. “Skepticism, relevance, and relativity,” in Brian P. McLaughlin, ed., Dretske and His Critics. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
DeRose, Keith. 1996. “Relevant alternatives and the content of knowledge attributions” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 56: 193-197.
Dretske, Fred. 1970. “Epistemic operators” Journal of Philosophy 67: 1007-1023.
Heller, Mark. 1989. “Relevant alternatives” Philosophical Studies 55: 23-40.
Heller, Mark. 1995. “The simple solution to the problem of generality” Noûs 29: 501-515.
Heller, Mark. 1999. “Relevant alternatives and closure” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 77: 196-208.
Pryor, James. Online lecture notes on relevant alternatives theories. Click here.
Shatz, David. 1981. “Reliability and relevant alternatives” Philosophical Studies 39: 393-408.
Shuger, Scott. 1983. “Knowledge and its consequences” American Philosophical Quarterly 20: 217-225.
Sosa, Ernest. Forthcoming. “Relevant alternatives, contextualism included.”

Available online; click here.

Vogel, Jonathan. 1999. “The New Relevant Alternatives Theory” Philosophical Perspectives 13, Epistemology: 155-180.
Yourgrau, Palle. 1983. “Knowledge and relevant alternatives” Synthese 55: 175-190.

Lewis’ Relevant Alternatives Theory and Related Issues

Black, Tim. 2003. “The relevant alternatives theory and missed clues” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 81: 96-106.

Available online; click here.

Cohen, Stewart. 1998. “Contextualist solutions to epistemological problems: Scepticism, Gettier, and the lottery” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 76: 289-306.
DeRose, Keith. “Single scoreboard semantics”

Available online; click here.

Hawthorne, John. 2002. “Lewis, the lottery and the preface” Analysis 62: 242-251.
Lewis, David. 1979. “Scorekeeping in a language game” Journal of Philosophical Logic 8: 339-359.
Lewis, David. 1996. “Elusive knowledge” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 74: 549-567.
Oakley, I.T. 2001. “A skeptic’s reply to Lewisian contextualism” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 31: 309-332.
Schaffer, Jonathan. 2001. “Knowledge, relevant alternatives and missed clues” Analysis 61: 202-208

Subjunctive Conditionals Theories and Epistemic Closure

Audi, Robert. 1995. “Deductive closure, defeasibility and scepticism: A reply to Feldman” Philosophical Quarterly 45: 494-499.
Bogdan, R.J. 1985. “Cognition and epistemic closure” American Philosophical Quarterly 22: 55-63.
Brueckner, Anthony. 1985. “Losing track of the sceptic” Analysis 45: 103-104.
Brueckner, Anthony. 1985. “Skepticism and epistemic closure” Philosophical Topics 13: 89-117.
Brueckner, Anthony. 1985. “Transmission for knowledge not established” Philosophical Quarterly 35: 193-196.
Brueckner, Anthony. 1991. “Unfair to Nozick” Analysis 51: 61-64.
Brueckner, Anthony L. 1984. “Why Nozick is a sceptic” Mind 93: 259-264.
Brueckner, Anthony L. 1987. “Begging the skeptic’s question” Philosophia 17: 523-529.
Cohen, Stewart. 1987. “Knowledge, context, and social standards” Synthese 73: 3-26.
Cohen, Stewart. 1988. “How to be a fallibilist,” in James Tomberlin, ed., Philosophical Perspectives 2: Epistemology. Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview.
Cohen, Stewart. 1999. “Contextualism, skepticism, and the structure of reasons,” in James Tomberlin, ed., Philosophical Perspectives 13: Epistemology. Atascadero, CA: Ridgeview.
Craig, Edward. 1989. “Nozick and the sceptic: The thumbnail version” Analysis 49: 161-162.
Dretske, Fred. 1971. “Conclusive reasons” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 49: 1-22.
Dretske, Fred. 1972. “Contrastive statements” Philosophical Review 81: 411-430.
Feldman, Richard. 1995. “In defense of closure” Philosophical Quarterly 45: 487-494.
Forbes, Graeme. 1984. “Nozick on skepticism” The Philosophical Quarterly 34: 43-52.
Fumerton, Richard. 1987. “Nozick’s epistemology,” in Steven Luper-Foy, ed., The Possibility of Knowledge: Nozick and His Critics. Totawa: Rowman & Littlefield.
Garrett, B.J. 1983. “Nozick on knowledge” Analysis 43: 181-184.
Garrett, Brian. 1999. “A sceptical tension” Analysis 59: 205-206.
Johnsen, Bredo C. 1989. “Nozick on scepticism, II” Philosophia 19: 61-62.
Kirkham, Robert L. 1984. “Does the Gettier problem rest on a mistake?” Mind 93: 501-513.
Klein, Peter. 1981. Certainty: A Refutation of Skepticism. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
Klein, Peter. 1987. “On behalf of the skeptic,” in Steven Luper-Foy, ed., The Possibility of Knowledge: Nozick and His Critics. Totawa: Rowman & Littlefield.
Klein, Peter. 1995. “Skepticism and closure: Why the evil genius argument fails” Philosophical Topics 23: 213-236.
Kroon, Frederick W. 1986. “Philosophical explanations and sceptical intuitions” The Philosophical Quarterly 36: 391-395.
Luper-Foy, Steven. 1984. “The epistemic predicament: Knowledge, Nozickian tracking, and skepticism” Australasian Journal of Philosophy 62: 26-49.
Luper-Foy, Steven (ed.) 1987. The Possibility of Knowledge: Nozick and His Critics. Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield.

This entire volume is devoted to Nozick’s epistemology. The volume also contains a very helpful bibliography.

Luper-Foy, Steven. 1987. “The causal indicator analysis of knowledge” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 47: 563-587.
Luper-Foy, Steven. 2003. “Indiscernability skepticism,” in Steven Luper-Foy, ed., The Skeptics. Hampshire: Ashgate.
Martin, Raymond. 1983. “Tracking Nozick’s sceptic: A better method” Analysis 43: 28-33.
McGinn, Colin. 1999. “The concept of knowledge,” in Colin McGinn, Knowledge and Reality: Selected Essays. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Nozick, Robert. 2000. “Knowledge and skepticism,” in Ernest Sosa and Jaegwon Kim, eds., Epistemology: An Anthology. Malden: Blackwell.
Over, D.E. 1986. “Knowledge and non-constructive reasoning” The Philosophical Quarterly 36: 29-36.
Shope, Robert K. 1984. “Cognitive abilities, conditionals, and knowledge: A response to Nozick” Journal of Philosophy 81: 29-48.
Sosa, Ernest. 1999. “How to defeat opposition to Moore,” in James Tomberlin, ed., Philosophical Perspectives 13: Epistemology. Cambridge and Oxford: Blackwell.
Sosa, Ernest. 2003. “Neither contextualism nor skepticism,” in Steven Luper-Foy, ed., The Skeptics. Hampshire: Ashgate.
Stine, Gail C. 1971. “Dretske on knowing the logical consequences” Journal of Philosophy 68: 296-299.
Vogel, Jonathan. 1990. “Are there counterexamples to the closure principle?” in Michael David Roth and Glenn Ross, eds., Doubting: Contemporary Perspectives on Skepticism. Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Wright, Crispin. 1983. “Keeping track of Nozick” Analysis 43: 134-140.

Additional Materials

Armstrong, D. M. 1968. A Materialist Theory of the Mind. New York: Humanities.
Armstrong, D. M. 1973. Belief, Truth and Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Gettier, Edmund L. 1963. “Is justified true belief knowledge?” Analysis 23: 121-123.

Available online; click here.

Goldman, Alvin I. 1967. “A causal theory of knowing” The Journal of Philosophy 64: 355-372.
Harman, Gilbert. 1973. Thought. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Klein, Peter. 1971. “A proposed definition of propositional knowledge” Journal of Philosophy 68: 471-482.
Lehrer, Keith and Thomas D. Paxson, Jr. 1969. “Knowledge: Undefeated justified true belief” The Journal of Philosophy 66: 225-237.
Pryor, James. 2001. “Highlights of Recent Epistemology” British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 52: 95-124.
Russell, Bertrand. 1921. The Analysis of Mind. London: Allen & Unwin.

See pages 159-160 for Russell’s five-minute-old-world skeptical hypothesis.

Stalnaker, Robert. 1972. “Pragmatics,” in Donald Davidson and Gilbert Harman, eds., Semantics of Natural Language. Boston: D. Reidel.

Stalnaker provides a framework for linguistic pragmatics that can be used in accounting for the relevance of certain alternatives.

Unger, Peter. 1968. “An analysis of factual knowledge” Journal of Philosophy 65: 157-170.

Return to Tim Black’s Homepage Ÿ Return to Tim’s Philosophy Page