MA Examination in Epistemology – May 2008
Study Questions
1."The skeptic repudiates science because it is vulnerable to illusion on its own showing; and my only criticism of the skeptic is that he is overreacting." What objection to skepticism is Quine lodging when he criticizes skeptics for overreacting? Explain whether this objection is, or is not, an adequate response to skeptical challenges.
2.We must depend on memory for much of our knowledge, yet memory is notoriously sometimes unreliable. How do we know when memory is reliable? If your answer is that we never know, then what is one to say about our knowledge, including our knowledge of times in the past when our senses have deceived us?
3."We know some things non-inferentially or directly or immediately because it is impossible that all our knowledge be based on inference." What support can be given for this claim? Is it, in final analysis, tenable?
4.C. D. Broad called the unsatisfactory state of Hume's problem of induction "the scandal of western philosophy." What is Hume's problem? Why is (or isn't) its state unsatisfactory?
5.Gödel’s famous incompleteness theorems together entail that we have no effective means of indicating which sentences in the first-order language of arithmetic, or any extension of that language, are true. What does this say about our knowledge of arithmetic and number theory? In particular, do we know what we are referring to when we even so much as speak of “the sentences in the first-order language of arithmetic that are true”?
6.There is considerable disagreement over whether it is important to solve the Gettier problem, and attention has shifted to the question what the existence of the Gettier problem means for epistemology. What does the Gettier problem mean for epistemology, and what direction should epistemology take in the future as a consequence?
7.Could our knowledge of our own mental states be a matter of inner perception or inner scanning understood by analogy with external perception? Could such a view possibly do justice to the kind of first-person authority we think we enjoy? If not, is there any alternative?
8."We know that it must be possible to define material things in terms of sensecontents, because it is only by the occurrence of certain sensecontents that the existence of any material thing can ever be in the least degree verified." (Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic) Explain and criticize.
9.It seems, for any standard skeptical hypothesis (e.g. bain-in-a-vat, dreaming, virtual reality) that we can imagine evidence that would count in favor of the truth of the hypothesis. Could the lack of any actual evidence to this effect give us good reason to suppose that the hypothesis is false? What, if any, response to Humean skepticism about the external world can the line of thought indicated by this question give us?
10.Virtually everyone grants that any knowledge achieved in the sciences is provisional, always subject to revision in future research. Nevertheless, some would say that 'provisional knowledge' is a contradiction in terms, that a claim can be knowledge only if the possibility of future information refuting it has been ruled out. Is 'provisional knowledge' a contradiction in terms? If you think yes, explain not only why, but where that leaves the supposed knowledge achieved in the sciences. If you think not, explain not only why not, but also what criterion a claim has to meet to be knowledge in place of the criterion of ruling out all possibility of future refutation.
11.Why has the argument from analogy drawn so much criticism as a response to other minds? Is there a better alternative?
12.Causal theories of knowledge are supposed to differentiate between those beliefs that are knowledge and those that are not. Can such theories do so for mathematical knowledge? Explore the ramifications of your answer.