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p.1 Epistemologists are primarily interested in questions about the nature of knowledge and the principles governing rational belief... It is the epistemologist's business to try to develop a general theory stating the conditions under which people have knowledge and rational beliefs.
[JLJ - Here is where the problems begin. A living being is at all times in a predicament, and must by his or her very nature make decisions at every moment on how to 'go on'. This requires out of necessity that we occasionally use tricks that work, or which ought to work, or when pressured, which might work or which could work. This whole process tells almost nothing about what this person believes, or even what he or she knows for certain. One adopts a practical scheme out of necessity - hopefully wise necessity - and executes that scheme, quite often thinking little about the scheme until it no longer works, when we must begin scheming again. And so it goes. Perhaps knowledge and belief are adopted according to the scheme for going on that we out of necessity have grasped.]
p.41 It is the possession of evidence that is the mark of a justified belief. We will call this the evidential theory of justification, or evidentialism.
p.49 The Infinite Regress Argument... begins with the observation that what makes a belief justified, at least in the typical case, are other beliefs or reasons.
p.52 Foundationalism involves two fundamental claims:
F1. There are justified basic beliefs.
F2. All justified nonbasic beliefs are justified in virtue of their relation to justified basic beliefs.
p.60 The central idea of coherentist theories of justification is that every justified belief is justified by virtue of its relations to other beliefs. In other words, no beliefs are foundational or basic.
p.64 Coherence, whatever exactly it is, is a property that a system of beliefs may have to a greater or lesser degree... One thing that adds to the coherence of a system is the fact that it contains beliefs that constitute explanations for other beliefs in the system.
p.68 the key idea of coherentism is that whether one belief is justified depends only upon the believer's other beliefs.
p.71 Modest foundationalists think that our basic beliefs are typically beliefs about the world around us, beliefs about the things that we see or otherwise sense.
p.81-82 The temperature surrounding the thermometer and the pressure in the air around the barometer cause the measuring devices to be in particular states or conditions... In some ways we are like elaborate thermometers. When we are in the presence of a red object with our eyes open and sufficient light available, we see a red object... There is a causal process... culminating in the belief that there is a red object present.
[JLJ - Evolution has seen to it that our perceptions are sensitively correlated with important survival- and social-related characteristics present, and we properly sense them and their related implications in our current predicament.]
p.85 Edgar knows that Allan has taken a fatal dose of a poison that has no antidote. Enough time has passed so that Edgar knows that Allan is dead.
[JLJ - This is pretty much a presumption that society will not accept. Where human life is in question, we must err on the presumption that a mistake of some kind has been made, until more evidence is in place that we are not somehow deceiving ourselves. Today's society would call Allan a 'missing person' or a person 'possibly in need of immediate medical attention', perhaps even until a very long time has passed. People reach out to people - friends, relatives, neighbors, so that we can presume only that something might have happened to Allan. We are acting irriationally if we go around 'knowing' that he is dead. People wanted by the police have faked their deaths in order to avoid prosecution. Edgar cannot reasonably 'know' that Allan is dead, until more proof is offered.]
p.85 The truth is that knowledge... requires justified belief.
[JLJ - 'Knowledge' requires nothing more than a 'feeling' that a 'useful trick' that has 'worked' many times for us in the past, is working yet again, once more, as it always has done, with little evidence to the contrary, and that the clever tests that we frequently use to separate cases where it works from those where it does not work, indicate that it is working, without fail, by a wide margin. We simply know. It is part of our human nature to sniff out knowledge claims, in order to 'go on', and to say we 'know' implies only that our practical and effective classification scheme has so informed us, a scheme that we 'know' leads us to 'know'.]
p.90 Philosophers are divided about whether Smith knows that he is seeing a barn in this situation.
[JLJ - The old 'barn facade' problem. This is one reason that 'knows' is vague and ought not to be picked apart in such detail. 'Knows' means 'appears to be, enough to guide action if necessary and where a trick is not suspected, but not in all cases, and not where more detailed proof is required or suggested.']
p.95 In some cases, a person uses a reliable process but has no reason to think that it is reliable. The belief should seem to the person like a mere hunch.
[JLJ - Here we have a 'trick that usually works' combined with a person deciding on how to 'go on,' in a predicament. One does not have to believe in a hunch in order to use it in order to go on. One merely uses it, because one has to do something. Consider a man down on his luck, out of money, with no future that he can foresee. He is invited by a friend to join a criminal gang, which robs houses for money. This man does not have to believe that such a lifestyle is correct, he merely selects it in order to 'go on,' perhaps telling himself that it is only for a short while, and that he will repay all victims once his luck changes. When confronted with 'tricks that might or usually work'', a predicament, and an opportunity, ethics are often challenged and overruled.]
p.112 Skeptics think that we cannot have knowledge (about some topic or other).
[JLJ - Perhaps, but substitute 'practical knowledge' and watch a skeptic grow quiet, and watch this argument go away.]
p.153 Contextualists in epistemology think that the word "knows"... In different settings, the word has different standards for application.
[JLJ - "knows" is a kind of social statement where one broadcasts to others how he or she is prepared to guide their action, in the current predicament.]
p.157 On the basis of a large body of research into the ways people form beliefs, some philosophers conclude that people are systematically irrational.
[JLJ - Not if the goal of living is a kind of 'reveling' in the present, guided by relevant, practical, past actions and sensitive, wise premonitions. Rationality, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Life is too short, and opportunity too fleeting, to be rational at all times, and in all places. Realistically, much of our life is spent in cycles of action and rest, where we wisely or otherwise invest our energy in action cycles that aim to have a practical payback, but we also live a dream we may or may not achieve. We practically pre-decide and take short cuts of all kinds - ethical and moral ones of course - but always open to the possibility of error. Who among us does not dream of a happier life of ease, or a reward of some kind, or a victory in a competition? Who does not take steps to follow a dream, in a direction that ultimately might lead nowhere? A clock is ticking, and there is a life to be lived. We ponder, we feel, we dream, then act in ways that make sense to us, at the time and place of the predicament we find ourselves in. You can call that irrational if you like.]
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