Epistemic value and fortuitous truth

Authors

  • Colin Cheyne University of Otago

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5007/%25x

Abstract

Why are the conditions for propositional knowledge so difficult to discover or devise in this post-Gettier age? Why do not most epistemologists agree on roughly the same analysis as they appear to have done in the pre-Gettier paradise? I argue that the problem lies in that fact that the epistemologists' intuitive concept of knowledge appeals to desiderata that probably cannot
be satisfied. Unfortunately, if we abandon some of these desiderata, it is difficult to settle on a concept of knowledge which is not too remote from our initial intuitions. I suggest that epistemology may be better off without the concept of knowledge. There are plenty of other interesting notions for us to be going on with.

Author Biography

Colin Cheyne, University of Otago

Colin studied mathematics at Otago and then taught high school mathematics for some years. He returned to Otago and completed a series of degrees in philosophy before joining the department in 1992. His research is mostly in epistemology and the philosophy of mathematics. He is the author of Knowledge, Cause, and Abstract Objects: Causal Objections to Platonism (Kluwer, 2001).

Published

1997-01-01

Issue

Section

Articles