Metaphysics and Epistemology
This domain tests whether you can separate two questions that sound alike: what is there, and how could we know? Prompts typically ask you to classify a position, run a thought experiment, or catch an argument sliding from one question to the other.
The metaphysical map
- Ontology: which categories are fundamental - objects, properties, events, tropes, possible worlds.
- Persistence: endurance (an object is wholly present at each time) versus perdurance (it has temporal parts).
- Composition and vagueness: when do parts make a whole; the Sorites puzzle; special composition.
- Modality and causation: necessity versus contingency; regularity, counterfactual and interventionist accounts of cause.
The epistemological map
The standard analysis is knowledge as justified true belief. Gettier cases show JTB is not sufficient: the belief is true and justified, yet true only by luck. Standard repairs are a no-false-lemma condition, safety (in nearby worlds the belief is not false), sensitivity, and virtue reliabilism.
- Internalism: justification must be accessible to the subject (foundationalism, coherentism).
- Externalism: justification depends on reliable processes, whether or not the subject can cite them.
- Sources: perception, memory, testimony, reason, introspection. Testimony raises reductionism versus anti-reductionism.
- Scepticism: global (brain in a vat, evil demon) versus local (other minds, induction).
Worked example
Smith and Jones both apply for a job. Smith has strong evidence that Jones will get it and that Jones has ten coins in his pocket. Smith therefore believes: the person who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket. Unknown to Smith, he himself gets the job and he also has ten coins. The belief is true, justified and believed - yet not knowledge, because its justification runs through a false premise. Repair attempt: add a no-essential-false-lemma condition. Safety test: in nearby worlds Smith's evidence is identical but the belief is false, so the belief is unsafe.
Traps that cost marks
- Treating justified as true, or true as known.
- Confusing epistemic possibility (for all I know) with metaphysical possibility (how things could be).
- Offering reliabilism against the sceptic without noting the internalist objection that it begs the question.
- Conflating substance dualism with property dualism, or realism about truth with realism about universals.