Tutorials

knowledge and reality

Knowledge and Reality Tutorials

Recommended Books

Anthologies

Introductions

Tutorial topics (provisional)

  1. Knowledge

  2. Scepticism

  3. The Problem of Induction

  4. Perception

  5. Necessity and Possibility

  6. Causation

  7. Change and Persistence

  8. Personal Identity

1  Knowledge

If knowledge is not justified true belief, what is it?

Reading

Ayer, The Problem of Knowledge, Ch. 1, pp. 7-35.
* E. L. Gettier, `Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?', Analysis 23 (1963): 121-3. Reprinted in Griffiths (ed.), Knowledge and Belief, and in Bernecker and Dretske (eds).
* Goldman, `A Causal Theory of Knowing', Journal of Philosophy 64 (1967): 357-72. Reprinted in Pappas and Swain (eds) Essays on Knowledge and Justification, and in Bernecker and Dretske (eds).
* Armstrong, Belief, Truth and Knowledge (CUP, 1973), pp.162-83. Reprinted as `The Thermometer Model of Knowledge', in Bernecker and Dretske (eds.).
* Robert Nozick, Philosophical Explanations (Harvard University Press, 1981), pp. 167-78. Excerpts reprinted in Bernecker and Dretske, Huemer, Sosa and Kim, DeRose and Warfield, and in J. Dancy (ed.). (Most of these will include pp. 197-211, which concerns Nozick's application of his analysis to the problem of scepticism: that's the topic for next week.)
* BonJour, `Externalist Theories of Empirical Knowledge', Midwest Studies in Philosophy 5 (1980): 53-73. Reprinted in Bernecker and Dretske.
Timothy Williamson, Knowledge and its Limits (OUP, 2000), Chs 1, 4, 5 and 7.

Additional reading

Dancy, Chs 2 & 3.
Williams, Chs 1-4.

Further reading

Michael Ayers, Locke vol. 1 (Routledge, 1991), Ch. 15.
Edward Craig, Knowledge and the state of nature (OUP, 1990), §§ I-X.
Timothy Williamson, Knowledge and its Limits (OUP, 2000), Chs 2 and 3.
Other papers from Bernecker and Dretske, Part I and II, Huemer, Part 3, §8, and Sosa and Kim, Part VII.

2  Scepticism

Do you know that you're not a brain in a vat?

Reading

* Descartes, Meditations on First Philosophy, Meditation I.
Keith DeRose, `Introduction' in DeRose and Warfield (eds), Skepticism: a contemporary reader (OUP, 1999).
* Stroud, The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism (OUP 1984), Chapters. 1 and 2, pp. 1-82.
* G. E. Moore, `Proof of an External World', Proceedings of the British Academy 25 (1946). Reprinted in Huemer (ed.) and in Moore's Philosophical Papers (Allen & Unwin 1959), pp.127-50.
* Robert Nozick, Philosophical Explanations (Harvard University Press, 1981), pp. 197-211. Excerpts reprinted in Bernecker and Dretske, Huemer, Sosa and Kim, DeRose and Warfield, and in Dancy (ed.), Perceptual Knowledge (OUP).
* H. Putnam, Reason Truth and History (CUP 1981), Ch. 1 (`Brains in a Vat'). Reprinted in Huemer, and in Bernecker and Dretske.
David Lewis, `Elusive Knowledge', Australasian Journal of Philosophy 74 (1996): 549-67. Reprinted in Lewis's Papers in Metaphysics and Epistemology (CUP, 1999), in Bernecker and Dretske, and in DeRose and Warfield.

Further reading

Steven Luper, `The Epistemic Closure Principle', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Zalta (ed.), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/closure-epistemic/.
Timothy Williamson, Knowledge and its Limits (OUP, 2000), Chs 7 and 8. See, also, his `Scepticism and Evidence', Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 60 (2000), available via Poiesis.
Fred Dretske, `Epistemic Operators', Journal of Philosophy 67 (1970): 1007-23. Reprinted in DeRose and Warfield.
Keith DeRose, `Solving the Skeptical Problem' Philosophical Review 104 (1995): 1-52. Reprinted in Sosa and Kim.

3  The Problem of Induction

Can we justify our inductive inferences? Do we need to?

Reading

* David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book 1, Part III, esp. §§6 & 11-14.
David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, §§ 4 and 5.
* Bertrand Russell, The Problems of Philosophy, Ch. 6. Reprinted in Swinburne (ed.) The Justification of Induction (OUP, 1974) and in Bernecker and Dretske (eds).
* Nelson Goodman, Fact, Fiction and Forecast, pp. 72-83. Reprinted in Bernecker and Dretske, and in Huemer.
* P. F. Strawson, Introduction to Logical Theory, Ch. 9, Part 2. (Or, if you can't get hold of that: 'On Justifying Induction', Philosophical Studies 9 (1958).)
* John Foster, `Induction, Explanation and Natural Necessity', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 83 (1983): 87-101. Reprinted in Huemer.
David Armstrong, What Is a Law of Nature?, (CUP, 1983), pp. 52-9.
* David Papineau, Philosophical Naturalism (Blackwell, 1993), Ch. 5.
Hans Reichenbach, `The Pragmatic Justification of Induction' in Experience and Prediction: An Analysis of the Foundation and the Structure of Knowledge (Chicago University Press, 1938). Selections reprinted in Bernecker and Dretske.
Karl Popper, Objective Knowledge (Clarendon Press, 1972), Ch. 1.
David Deutsch, The Fabric of Reality (Penguin, 1997), Ch. 7.

Further reading

Brian Skyrms, Choice and Chance, 4th edition (Wadsworth, 2000), Chs 3 & 4.
Gilbert Harman, `The Inference to the Best Explanation' Philosophical Review 74 (1965): 88-95.
John Foster, The Divine Lawmaker The Divine Lawmaker (OUP, 2004), Chs 1-4.
D. H. Mellor ,`The warrant of induction', in his Matters of metaphysics (CUP, 1991), Ch. 15. Also available at: http://www.dar.cam.ac.uk/ dhm11/Inaugural.html.
W. V. Quine, `Natural Kinds' in his Ontological Relativity and Other Essays.
Christopher Peacocke, The Realm of Reason The Realm of Reason (OUP, 2003), Ch. 5.
Colin Howson, Hume's Problem (OUP, 2000).

4  Perception

Reading

M. G. F. Martin, `Perception' in Grayling (ed.) Philosophy 1: A Guide Through the Subject (OUP, 1995), pp. 26-43. (See, also, his article in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy.)
* A. J. Ayer, The Problem of Knowledge (Penguin, 1956), Ch. 3. OR: The Central Questions of Philosophy (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1973), Chs 4 & 5.
* J. L. Austin, Sense and Sensibilia (OUP, 1962).
* H. P. Grice, `The causal theory of perception', Proceedings of The Aristotelian Society, Supp. Vol., 35 (1961): 121-52. Reprinted in his Studies in the Way of Words (Harvard University Press, 1989), in Dancy (ed.) Perceptual Knowledge (OUP), in Warnock (ed.) The Philosophy of Perception (OUP, 1967), and in Bernecker and Dretske.
J. L. Mackie, Problems from Locke (OUP, 1976), Ch. 2.
* P. F. Strawson, `Perception and its objects', in G. F. Macdonald (ed.) Perception and Identity. Reprinted in Noë and Thompson (eds) Vision and Mind (MIT Press, 2002), in Dancy (ed.) and in Bernecker and Dretske (eds).
Paul Snowdon, `Perception, vision, and causation', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 81 (1980-1), 175-92. Reprinted in Noë and Thompson, and in Dancy.

Further reading

Michael Huemer, `Sense-Data', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.) http://www.seop.leeds.ac.uk/entries/sense-data/.
Laurence BonJour, `Epistemological Problems of Perception', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.) http://www.seop.leeds.ac.uk/entries/perception-episprob/.
David Lewis, `Veridical Hallucination and Prosthetic Vision', Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 58 (1980): 239-249. Reprinted in his Philosophical Papers, vol. 2, in Noë and Thompson, and in Dancy.
Paul Snowdon and Howard Robinson, `The Objects of Perceptual Experience', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supp. Vol., 64 (1990): 121-50.
John Campbell, Reference and Consciousness (OUP, 2002), Ch. 6.
T. W. Child, Causality, Interpretation and the Mind (OUP, 1994), Ch. 5.
Philosophical Studies, July-September 2004, Volume 120, Issue 1-3.
Howard Robinson, Perception (Routledge, 1994), esp. Chs II, III, V & VI.
John Foster, The Nature of Perception (OUP, 2000).
A. D. Smith, The Problem of Perception (Harvard University Press, 2002).
John McDowell, `Criteria, Defeasibility, and Knowledge', Proceedings of the British Academy 68 (1982): 455-79. Reprinted in Dancy (ed.).

5  Necessity and Possibility

"Kerry might have won the election." How should sentences like this be understood? Should one appeal to the notion of possible worlds in analyzing such sentences? If so, what are possible worlds?

Reading

E. J. Lowe, A Survey of Metaphysics (OUP, 2002), Chs 5-7.
Quine, `Reference and Modality' in his From a Logical Point of View (Harvard University Press, 1953). (OR see his `Notes on Existence and Necessity', Journal of Philosophy 40 (1943): 113-127.)
* A. Plantinga, The Nature of Necessity (OUP, 1974), Chs 1 and 2. Reprinted in Kim and Sosa (eds).
* R. Chisholm, `Identity through Possible Worlds: Some Questions', Noûs 1 (1967): 1-8. Reprinted in Loux (ed.) The Possible and The Actual (Cornell University Press, 1979) and in Kim and Sosa (eds).
S. Kripke, Naming and Necessity (Blackwell, 1980), esp. Preface and Lecture I, pp. 34-53, 76-8.
* R. Adams, `Primitive Thisness and Primitive Identity', Journal of Philosophy 76 (1979): 5-26. Reprinted in Kim and Sosa (eds).
* D. Lewis, On the Plurality of Worlds, Ch 4. Initial sections are reprinted as `Counterparts or Double Lives?' in Kim and Sosa (eds).

On the nature of Possible Worlds

D. Lewis Counterfactuals (Harvard University Press, 1973; Blackwell 2000), Ch. 4, part one. Reprinted in Loux (ed.). Or, Ch. 1 of his On the Plurality of Worlds, esp. §§1-3 and 6-9.
R. Stalnaker, `Possible Worlds', Noûs 10 (1976): 65-75. Reprinted in Honderich and Burnyeat (eds) Philosophy as it, and in Loux (ed.) The Possible and the Actual (Cornell University Press, 1979).
Armstrong, `The Nature of Possibility', Canadian Journal of Philosophy 16 (1986). Reprinted in Kim and Sosa (eds). Or his A Combinatorial Theory of Possibility (CUP, 1989); selections reprinted in Crane and Farkas (eds).

Further reading

A. Plantinga, `Transworld Identity or Worldbound Individuals?' in Munitz (ed.) Logic and Ontology (NYU Press, 1973). Reprinted in Loux (ed.) and in his Essays in the Metaphysics of Modality (OUP, 2003).
Peter van Inwagen, `Plantinga on trans-world identity' in Tomberlin and van Inwagen (eds) Alvin Plantinga (Kluwer, 1985), pp. 101-20. Reprinted in his Ontology, Identity and Modality (CUP, 2001).
Robert Adams, `Theories of Actuality', Noûs 8 (1974): 211-31.
Plantinga, `Actualism and Possible Worlds', Theoria 42 (1976): 139-60. Reprinted in his Essays in the Metaphysics of Modality (OUP, 2003).
Kit Fine, `Essence and Modality', Philosophical Perspectives 8 (1994): 1-16.
Gideon Rosen, `Modal Fictionalism' Mind 99 (1990): 327-354.
Theodore Sider, `The Ersatz Pluriverse', Journal of Philosophy 99 (2002): 279-315. Preprint available: http://fas-philosophy.rutgers.edu/ sider/.
Colin McGinn, `Modal Reality' in Healey (ed.) Reduction, Time, and Reality (CUP, 1981). Reprinted in his Knowledge and Reality: Selected Essays (OUP, 1999).
David Wiggins, Sameness and Substance Renewed (CUP, 2001), esp. Ch. 4.

Other on-line resources

For more reading, see Ted Sider's annotated online biography.

6  Causation

Can we explain causation in non-causal terms?

Reading

* J. L. Mackie, `Causes and Conditions', American Philosophical Quarterly 2 (1965): 245-64. Reprinted in Kim and Sosa (eds) and in Sosa and Tooley (eds), Causation (OUP, 1993).
* David Lewis, `Causation', Journal of Philosophy 70 (1973): 556-67. Reprinted with postscript in his Collected Papers, Vol. 2, (OUP, 1986).
* Jaegwon Kim, `Causes and Counterfactuals', Journal of Philosophy 70 (1973): 570-572. Reprinted in Sosa and Tooley (eds).
Anscombe, `Causality and Determination' in Sosa and Tooley (eds). (This is an extract of Anscombe's Causality and Determinism (CUP, 1971).)
* Wesley Salmon, `Causality: Production and Propagation', in Proceedings of the Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association (1980), Vol. 2, pp. 49-69. Reprinted in Sosa and Tooley (eds). OR `Causal Connections' in Kim and Sosa (eds) (an extract from Salmon's Scientific Explanation and the Causal Structure of the World (Princeton University Press, 1984)).

Events vs. Facts

Donald Davidson, `Causal Relations' Journal of Philosophy 64 (1967): 691-703. Reprinted in his Essays on Actions and Events (OUP, 1980).
D. H. Mellor, The Facts of Causation (Routledge, 1999). Selections reprinted in Crane and Farkas (eds).

Further reading

David Lewis, `Causation as Influence', Journal of Philosophy 97 (2000): 182-97.
Peter Menzies, `Counterfactual Theories of Causation', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.),
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-counterfactual/.
Phil, Dowe, `Causal Processes', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.),
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/causation-process/.
Wesley Salmon, `Causality without Counterfactuals', Philosophy of Science, 61 (1994): 297-312.
J. L. Mackie, The Cement of the Universe, 2nd edn, (OUP, 1980), esp. Chs 1 and 2.
John Campbell, Reference and Consciousness (OUP, 2002), Ch. 12.
Collins, Hall, & Paul (eds), Causation and Counterfactuals (MIT Press, 2001).

7  Change and Persistence

Reading

E. J. Lowe, A Survey of Metaphysics (OUP, 2002), Chs 17, 2, 3 and 4.

On time

* J. M. E. McTaggart, `The Unreality of Time', Mind 17 (1908): 457-74. OR Ch. 33 of his The Nature of Existence (`The Unreality of Time') reprinted in Le Poidevin and MacBeath (eds) The Philosophy of Time (OUP, 1993), and in Crane and Farkas (eds).
* Prior, `Changes in Events and changes in things', in his Papers on Time and Tense (OUP, 1968). Reprinted in Le Poidevin and MacBeath (eds) and in Crane and Farkas (eds).
* Donald C. Williams, `The Myth of Passage', Journal of Philosophy 48 (1951): 457-72.

On change and persistence

Katherine Hawley, `Temporal Parts', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.),
http://www.seop.leeds.ac.uk/entries/temporal-parts/.
* Roderick Chisholm, `Identity Through Time.' Extract from his Person and Object (Open Court, 1976), reprinted in Kim and Sosa (eds), and in Crane and Farkas (eds).
Quine, `Identity, Ostension, and Hypostasis', Journal of Philosophy 47 (1950): 621-32. Reprinted in van Inwagen and Zimmerman (eds) Metaphysics (Blackwell, 1998) and in Kim and Sosa (eds).
* D. Lewis, On the Plurality of Worlds (Blackwell, 1986), pp. 202-5. Reprinted in Crane and Farkas (eds), pp. 552-9.
* Judith Jarvis Thomson, `Parthood and identity across time', Journal of Philosophy 80 (1983): 201-20. Reprinted in Kim and Sosa (eds).
* Mark Heller, The Ontology of Physical Objects (CUP, 1990), Ch. 1. Reprinted as `Temporal parts of four-dimensional objects' in Kim and Sosa (eds). OR Theodore Sider, Four Dimensionalism (OUP, 2001), Chs 1 & 4.
Dean Zimmerman, `Temporary Intrinsics and Presentism', in van Inwagen and Zimmerman (eds) Metaphysics: The Big Questions (Blackwell, 1998), pp. 206-19.

Further reading

On time

Thomas Crisp, `Presentism', in Loux and Zimmerman (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics (OUP, 2003).
Michael Rea, `Four Dimensionalism', in Loux and Zimmerman (eds) The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics (OUP, 2003). Pre-print available: http://www.nd.edu/ mrea/.
Theodore Sider, Four Dimensionalism (OUP, 2001), Ch. 2.
Michael Dummett, `A Defense of McTaggart's Proof of the Unreality of Time', Philosophical Review, Vol. 69 (1960): 497-504.
E. J. Lowe, `The Indexical Fallacy in McTaggart's Proof of the Unreality of Time', Mind 96 (1987): 62-70.
Robin Le Poidevin and D. H. Mellor, `Time, Change, and the `Indexical Fallacy' ', Mind 96 (1987): 534-8.

On change and persistence

Theodore Sider, Four Dimensionalism (OUP, 2001).
M. Johnston and G. Forbes, `Is there a problem about persistence?', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supp. Vol., 61 (1987): 107-35.
P. Simons and J. Melia, `Continuants and Occurents', Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supp. Vol., 74 (2000): 59-92; doi: 10.1111/1467-8349.00063 and doi: 10.1111/1467-8349.00064.
E. J. Lowe, `Tense and Persistence' in Le Poidevin (ed.) Questions of Time and Tense (OUP, 1998).
Trenton Merricks, `Endurance and Indisceribility', Journal of Philosophy 91 (1994): 165-84.

8  Personal Identity

Could you survive the transplantation of your brain to a new body? Does answering "yes" commit you to denying that you are identical with a human animal?

Reading

* Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, Book II, Ch. 27. Available online via Past Masters.
* Bernard Williams, `The Self and the Future', Philosophical Review 79 (1970): 161-80. Reprinted in his Problems of the Self (CUP, 1973), in Martin and Barresi (eds), Personal Identity (Blackwell, 2003), and in Kim and Sosa (eds).
David Lewis, `Survival and Identity', in A. Rorty (ed.), The Identities of Persons (University of California Press, 1976), pp. 17-40. Reprinted in his Philosophical Papers, Vol. 1, and in Martin and Barresi (eds).
* Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (OUP, 1984), Ch. 12. Reprinted in Martin and Barresi (eds).
* Paul Snowdon, `Persons, Animals , and Ourselves', in Gill (ed.), The Person and the Human Mind (OUP, 1990), pp. 83-107. Reprinted in Crane and Farkas (eds), pp.578-96.
Eric Olson, `Personal Identity', The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.), http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-personal/.

Further reading

Eric Olson, The Human Animal: Personal Identity without Psychology (OUP 1997), Ch. 5.
Michael Ayers, Locke: Epistemology and Ontology, Vol. 2 (Ontology), (Routledge, 1991), Chs 22-25.
David Wiggins, Sameness and Substance Renewed (CUP, 2001), Ch. 7.
Ted Sider, Four Dimensionalism (OUP, 2001), pp. 188-208.
Harold Noonan, Personal Identity, 2nd edn, (Routledge, 2003).
Derek Parfit, `Lewis, Perry, and What Matters', in A. Rorty (ed.), The Identities of Persons (University of California Press, 1976), pp. 91-107.
Mark Johnston, `Human Beings', Journal of Philosophy 84 (1987): 59-83. Reprinted in Kim and Sosa (eds).
Dean Zimmerman, `Material People', in Loux and Zimmerman (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Metaphysics (OUP, 2003), pp. 491-526.
B. Garrett, Personal Identity and Self-Consciousness (Routledge, 1998).


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