Optional Theme: Epistemology
What is tested
Epistemology essays ask you to analyse the structure, sources and limits of knowledge. Strong answers distinguish the components of knowledge, then use counterexamples to expose weaknesses in a proposed analysis.
Core concepts
- Knowledge as justified true belief; Gettier's cases show JTB is insufficient.
- Justification: foundationalism (basic beliefs), coherentism (mutual support), reliabilism (beliefs produced by truth-conducive processes), virtue epistemology (competent beliefforming).
- Sources: rationalism versus empiricism; perception as direct realism, representative realism or idealism (Berkeley); testimony and its epistemic dependence.
- Scepticism: Descartes' dream and demon arguments, the cogito as a stopping point; Hume on induction; the a priori/a posteriori distinction.
- Truth: correspondence, coherence, pragmatic.
Worked example
"Does Gettier refute the JTB analysis?" Smith has strong evidence that Jones will get the job and has ten coins in his pocket; Smith justifiably believes "the person who will get the job has ten coins in his pocket". Smith himself gets the job and also has ten coins. The belief is true and justified but not knowledge. Reasoning: either justification is too weak (add a no-false-lemma condition) or the whole analysis is wrong and knowledge needs a causal or reliabilist condition. Evaluate: reliabilism handles the case because Smith's belief is true by luck, not by a reliable process-but reliabilism then faces the generality problem.
Traps
Defining knowledge by listing synonyms; using Gettier without stating the case's mechanics; confusing a priori with innate; treating Berkeley's idealism as denying that tables exist.