Knowledge and Reality: Classic and Contemporary Readings

1. What Is Knowledge?

Meno (excerpt), Plato . Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?, Edmund Gettier.

2. Skepticism.

Outlines of Pyrrhonism (excerpts), Sextus Empiricus. A Treatise of Human Nature (excerpt), David Hume. In Defence of Common Sense: Coherence versus Foundations in the Theory of Knowledge, G.E. Moore. Elusive Knowledge (excerpts), David Lewis. A Defense of Skepticism, Peter Unger.

3. Foundationalism, Coherentism, Reliabilism, and Virtue Epistemology.

The Raft and the Pyramid, Ernest Sosa. A Version of Foundationalism, Roderick Chisholm. A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge, Donald Davidson. What Is Justified Belief?, Alvin I. Goldman. Contra Reliabilism, Carl Ginet. Knowledge and Intellectual Virtue, Ernest Sosa.

4. The A Priori.

An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (excerpts), John Locke. On What Is Independent of Sense and of Matter, Leibniz. Skeptical Solution of These Doubts, David Hume. Introduction to The Critique of Pure Reason, Immanuel Kant. Two Dogmas of Empiricism, W.V.O. Quine. Lecture I, Saul Kripke. A Priori Knowledge, Philip Kitcher. Analyticity Reconsidered, Paul Boghossian.

5. Identity, Change, and Causation.

Fragments, Heraclitus. Fragments, Parmenides. Paradoxes, Zeno. The Republic (excerpt), Plato. Categories, Aristotle. Physics, Aristotle. Metaphysics, Aristotle. Identity, Ostension and Hypostasis (excerpt), W.V.O. Quine. Of the Idea of a Necessary Connection, David Hume. The New Riddle of Induction, Nelson Goodman.

6. Universals and Particulars.

Parmenides (excerpts), Plato. Criticisms of the Theory of the Forms (excerpts), Aristotle. On the Universal, William of Ockham. Empiricism, Semantics and Ontology, Rudolf Carnap. Statements about Universals, Frank Jackson. “Ostrich Nominalism” or “Mirage Realism”?, Michael Devitt. Against “Ostrich Nominalism”: A Reply to Michael Devitt, D. M. Armstrong. The Metaphysic of Abstract Particulars, Keith Campbell.

7. Sensory Perception and the External World.

Meditations on First Philosophy, Rene Descartes. Of Power, John Locke. Dialogues I and II between Hylas and Philonius, George Berkeley. Idealism, Bertrand Russell. Sense and Sensibilia (excerpt), J.L. Austin. Brains in Vats, William Poundstone. How Are Hallucinations Possible?, Daniel Dennett. A Naturalistic Defense of Realism, Michael Devitt.