PHIL 228 - Epistemology

Semester Offered: Spring
1 unit(s)

A central task in the field of epistemology is to specify exactly what knowledge is: what conditions does a belief have to satisfy in order to count as knowledge? As far back as Plato, many people have thought that knowledge is justified, true belief. But in the middle of the twentieth century, epistemology experienced a crisis when it became evident that this definition of knowledge was incorrect. This discovery led to a flurry of attempts to augment or replace the definition. In this class we explore one strand of that story, leading up to the development of virtue epistemology. Instead of just trying to specify the conditions a belief must satisfy to count as knowledge, virtue epistemologists have shifted attention toward epistemically valuable traits that people can develop, such as openness to new evidence. Our major goal for the course is to determine whether this turn toward epistemic virtues can solve epistemology’s twentieth-century problems. Megan Stotts.

Two 75-minute periods.