When Is True Belief Knowledge? / / Richard Foley.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Princeton University Press eBook-Package Backlist 2000-2013
• VerfasserIn: Foley, Richard,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2012]; ©2012
• Year of Publication: 2012
• Edition: Course Book
• Language: English
• Series: Princeton Monographs in Philosophy ; 38
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (168 p.)

A woman glances at a broken clock and comes to believe it is a quarter past seven. Yet, despite the broken clock, it really does happen to be a quarter past seven. Her belief is true, but it isn't knowledge. This is a classic illustration of a central problem in epistemology: determining what knowledge requires in addition to true belief. In this provocative book, Richard Foley finds a new solution to the problem in the observation that whenever someone has a true belief but not knowledge, there is some significant aspect of the situation about which she lacks true beliefs--something important that she doesn't quite "get." This may seem a modest point but, as Foley shows, it has the potential to reorient the theory of knowledge. Whether a true belief counts as knowledge depends on the importance of the information one does or doesn't have. This means that questions of knowledge cannot be separated from questions about human concerns and values. It also means that, contrary to what is often thought, there is no privileged way of coming to know. Knowledge is a mutt. Proper pedigree is not required. What matters is that one doesn't lack important nearby information. Challenging some of the central assumptions of contemporary epistemology, this is an original and important account of knowledge.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- I. The Basic Idea -- Chapter 1. An Observation -- Chapter 2. Post-Gettier Accounts of Knowledge -- Chapter 3. Knowledge Stories -- Chapter 4. Intuitions about Knowledge -- Chapter 5. Important Truths -- Chapter 6. Maximally Accurate and Comprehensive Beliefs -- Chapter 7. The Beetle in the Box -- Chapter 8. Knowledge Blocks -- Chapter 9. The Theory of Knowledge and Theory of Justified Belief -- II. Puzzles and Questions -- Chapter 10. The Value of True Belief -- Chapter 11. The Value of Knowledge -- Chapter 12. The Lottery and Preface -- Chapter 13. Reverse Lottery Stories -- Chapter 14. Lucky Knowledge -- Chapter 15. Closure and Skepticism -- Chapter 16. Disjunctions -- Chapter 17. Fixedness and Knowledge -- Chapter 18. Instability and Knowledge -- Chapter 19. Misleading Defeaters -- Chapter 20. Believing That I Don't Know -- Chapter 21. Introspective Knowledge -- Chapter 22. Perceptual Knowledge -- Chapter 23. A Priori Knowledge -- Chapter 24. Collective Knowledge -- III. The Structure of Epistemology -- Chapter 25. A Look Back -- Chapter 26. Epistemology within a General Theory of Rationality -- Chapter 27. The Core Concepts of Epistemology -- Notes -- Index