Final Exam Review

Theory of Knowledge

Prof. McCormick

Your final exam will be on Monday, May 19^th at 12:45-2:45.  It will be closed book and closed notes.  It will have three parts.

Part I.  Terms:  you will be given 5-8 of these terms.  You should a) give a brief (one sentence) definition, b) give an example where possible, and c) name the relevant philosopher.  (15 points)

coherentism

foundationalism

basic beliefs

inferential justification

non-inferential justification

fallibilism

pragmatism

doxastic states

non-doxastic states

reliabilism

neo-foundationalism

doxastic voluntarism

doxastic involuntarism

externalism

internalism

cognitive transparency

defeasibility

eliminative materialism

Part II.  You will be given 4-8 quotes from authors we have read and asked to identify the authors.  (10 points)

Audi (week 8)

Bonjour

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy Entry on Coherentist Theories of Justification

Bishop and Trout, handout from Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment

Bishop and Trout, "The Pathologies of Standard Analytic Epistemology."

Weinberg:  Review of Bishop and Trout

Goldman, 260-272

Lehrer, 273-286

Churchland,  "What Happens to Reliabilism When It Is Liberated from the Propositional Attitudes?" 

Plantinga's Warrant and Proper Function selections.

Part III.  In this section you will be given 4 of these questions and asked to answer 3 of them.  Make your answers and clear, legible, and thorough as possible.  (75 points)

1.  How does Goldman address Gettier style counterexamples?

2.  What is naturalized epistemology?  How does it differ in its approach to the question of knowledge?  How does this approach differ from classical approaches to epistemology like Descartes?

3.  What evidence did we consider for the conclusion that humans are by nature poor reasoners?  Does the evidence support the view? Why or why not? 

4.  Why is Classical Foundationalism self-referentially incoherent (according to Plantinga)? 

5.  What are Plantinga's 3rd and 4th conditions for warrant?  What do they mean?  What problems for his account of warrant do you see? 

6.  Present and explain the major features of a coherent system of beliefs according to BonJour.   What are the problems associated with this theory of justification?

7.  Audi gives an argument for a particular kind of foundationalism.  What is that argument, and what makes his version different from classical foundationalism?  What are the problems for this view? 

8.  What is there to recommend Bishop and Trout’s approach to analyzing justification over “Standard Analytic Epistemology”?  What does their approach offer that SAE does not?  What does SAE offer that their approach does not? 

9.  What is Ameliorative Psychology and how do Bishop and Trout propose to incorporate epistemology into it? 

10.  What’s chauvinistic about SAE according to Bishop and Trout?

11.  What is the shift towards externalism in epistemology in the 20^th century?  How does alter our accounts of what it is to have knowledge?  What problems or issues with internalism does it allege to solve?  What are the problems associated with it? 

12.  On page 101, Churchland gives a diagram that represents the relations between concepts on his view.  From his perspective, what are concepts, beliefs, ideas, and their relationships?  How should we understand these entities as he sees it? 

13.  If we adopt reliabilism that has been liberated from propositional attitudes, as Churchland suggests, what are the implications for epistemology?  What difficulties or problems do you see with this approach?