Below you’ll find our course schedule along with links to the readings for each class session.
The week’s readings are to be completed before that week’s session. You’re not expected to complete the optional readings, but you can take a look at them if you’re interested – they’ll provide additional context for the week’s topic of discussion. You may also find them useful if you decide to write your paper on that topic.
(Note: in order to access any of the linked readings on this page, you must be (i) logged in to your University account and (ii) enrolled in this course (or otherwise explicitly granted access by me). You can log in here.)
Some of the readings are from Richard Feldman’s 2003 textbook Epistemology, available here. The rest are linked below. (All of these files can also be accessed via the Content link in the menu panel of our course’s Blackboard page).
You can join each week’s session via the Webex link in the menu panel of our course’s Blackboard page.
Note: our schedule is subject to revision as the semester progresses, but I’ll keep this version current. I’ll also post class notes after each week’s session.
Wednesday 6 October: Course introduction
Reading:
- Epistemology, Chapters 1 & 2
In-class resources:
- Vegetarianism argument (A map for this argument)
- Week 1 lecture notes
Wednesday 13 October: Conditions on knowledge and the Gettier problem
Readings:
- Edmund L. Gettier, “Is justified true belief knowledge?”, 1963
- Epistemology, Chapter 3
- Linda Zagzebski, “The inescapability of Gettier problems”, 1994
Optional readings:
- Alvin Goldman, “A causal theory of knowing”, 1967
- William G. Lycan, “On the Gettier Problem problem”, 2006
You should also familiarize yourself with MindMup’s Argument Visualization mode, which you can access here. (Click the “Create on Google Drive” button.)
In-class resources:
Discussion chair: Brett Topey
Wednesday 20 October: Knowledge, luck, tracking
Readings:
- Robert Nozick, excerpt from Chapter 3 of Philosophical Explanations, 1981
- Epistemology, Chapter 5: Introduction, Section I, & Section II
Optional readings:
- Robert Nozick, additional excerpt from Chapter 3 of Philosophical Explanations, 1981
- Ernest Sosa, “How to defeat opposition to Moore”, 1999
In-class resources:
Discussion chairs: Mason Kreidler & Emily Williamson
Wednesday 27 October: Knowledge as basic
Reading:
- Timothy Williamson, “Is knowing a state of mind?”, 1995
Optional reading:
- Elizabeth Fricker, “Is knowing a state of mind? The case against”, 2009
In-class resources:
Discussion chairs: Mahmut Kamadan & Simon Fischer
Wednesday 3 November: Is knowledge important?
Readings:
- Mark Kaplan, “It’s not what you know that counts”, 1985
- Timothy Williamson, “Knowledge as evidence”, 1997
Optional reading:
- Laurence BonJour, “The myth of knowledge”, 2010
In-class resources:
Discussion chairs: Aubrey Martin & Christoph Buchsteiner
Wednesday 10 November: Agrippa’s trilemma and the structure of justification
Readings:
- Epistemology, Chapter 4: Introduction, Section I, Section II, & Section III
- Michael Williams, “Agrippa’s trilemma”, 2001
Optional reading:
- Peter Klein, “Human knowledge and the infinite regress of reasons”, 1999
In-class resources:
Discussion chairs: María Parra
Wednesday 17 November: Positive coherentism
Readings:
- Epistemology, Chapter 4: Section IV
- Laurence BonJour, “The elements of coherentism”, 1985
Optional readings:
- Peter Klein & Ted Warfield, “What price coherence?”, 1994
- Tomoji Shogenji, “Why does coherence appear truth-conducive?”, 2007
In-class resources:
- Week 7 lecture notes
- Laurence BonJour, “In search of coherentism”, 2003
- In class I mentioned that BonJour argues in later work that coherentism is in fact hopeless. This is the work I had in mind.
Discussion chairs: Luca Weber & Lukas Lautischer
Wednesday 24 November: A modest (internalist) foundationalism?
Readings:
- Epistemology, Chapter 4: Section V
- Alvin Goldman, “Internalism exposed”, 1999
- Richard Feldman & Earl Conee, excerpts from “Internalism defended”, 2001
- You should read the parts of the paper that are responding directly to Goldman: Sections III.A2, III.A3, & III.B1 (on pp. 7–13). The rest of the paper is optional.
In-class resources:
Discussion chair: Konrad Suchodolski
Wednesday 1 December: Negative coherentism and epistemic conservatism
Readings:
- Gilbert Harman, “Skepticism and foundations”, 2003
- Hamid Vahid, “Varieties of epistemic conservatism”, 2004
Optional readings:
- David Christensen, “Conservatism in epistemology”, 1994
- Gilbert Harman, “Rationality”, 1999
In-class resources:
Discussion chairs: Christian Odenwald & Sarah Fischbacher
Wednesday 15 December: A middle way?
Readings:
- Susan Haack, “A foundherentist theory of empirical justification”, 1999
- Laurence BonJour, “Haack on justification and experience”, 1997
Optional readings:
- Susan Haack, “Reply to BonJour”, 1997
- Peter Tramel, “Haack’s foundherentism is a foundationalism”, 2008
In-class resources:
Discussion chair: Michael Huemer
Wednesday 22 December: Externalist foundationalism
Readings:
- Epistemology, Chapter 5: Section III
- Jonathan Vogel, “Reliabilism leveled”, 2000
- James Van Cleve, “Is knowledge easy – or impossible? Externalism as the only alternative to skepticism”, 2003
Optional readings:
- Alvin Goldman, “What is justified belief?”, 1979
- Hilary Kornblith, “A reliabilist solution to the problem of promiscuous bootstrapping”, 2009
In-class resources:
Discussion chairs: Ufuk Kaya & Inji Rustamova
Wednesday 12 January: Bootstrapping and external world skepticism
Readings:
- Epistemology, Chapter 6: Section III.D
- G. E. Moore, excerpt from “Proof of an external world”, 1939
- Stewart Cohen, “Basic knowledge and the problem of easy knowledge”, 2002
Optional reading:
- James Pryor, “The skeptic and the dogmatist”, 2000
In-class resources:
Discussion chairs: Cornelia Mayer & Kilian Wehner
Wednesday 19 January: Rule-circularity, induction, and the justification of rules
Readings:
- Epistemology, Chapter 7: Section I
- David Papineau, “Reliabilism, induction and skepticism”, 1992
- You should read Section II, which discusses the problem of induction. The rest of the paper is optional.
Optional reading:
- David Enoch & Joshua Schechter, “How are basic belief-forming methods justified?”, 2008
In-class resources:
Discussion chairs: Anna Prömer & Akram Shatalebi
Wednesday 26 January: Course wrap-up
Reading:
- Hilary Putnam, “Brains in a vat”, 1981
Optional readings:
- Janet Folina, “Realism, skepticism, and the brain in a vat”, 2016
- Anthony Brueckner, “Brains in a vat”, 1986
In-class resources:
Discussion chairs: Diletta Caregnato & Emma Dallapè