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To call something true is to express one’s agreement with it; to call it false is to express one’s disagreement. To paraphrase Strawson, the use of the phrase ‘is true’ (and, mutatis mutandis ‘is false’) always glances forward or backward to an actual or anticipated disagreement. An economist delivering a speech might say in the course of it, ‘It is true that the rate of inflation has been contained’  and - guess what? - that will be followed by a ‘but’ or a ‘however’. The speaker is acknowledging that the proposition about inflation is likely to be urged against him as an objection, and he is, in anticipation, conceding it.

The Redundancy Theory is in a long tradition of showing that concepts which have proved most mystifying to us, and the source often of ill-conceived and pompous grand theorizing (examples along with truth are existence and identity have mystified us because we make assumptions about the work they are doing and we don’t look at the work they are actually doing. Do that and the bubble of mystery is deflated, and with it all associated pretensions (until the next one comes along!)

Reading for Week 3: As for Week 2, and Feldman chapters 2 and 3.

Week 3
HUMR71-110 EPISTEMOLOGY AND THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE

Week 3.

Reading: Richard FELDMAN, Epistemology, Upper Saddle River NJ: Prentice-Hall/Pearson, 2003. Chapters 6 and 7.

1. The problem of Justification.

There is widespread agreement that for a person ‘X’ to know that some proposition ‘P’, then it must be he case that:

(1)  P is true,
(2)  X believes that P,
And
(3)  X is justified in believing that P.

Some analysts also add a further condition:

(4)  X is confident (sure, certain, convinced) that P.

It is true that, typically, when we claim to know that P, we do not just believe – we are confident that P. But is the confidence condition strictly necessary? Normally, when we claim to know something, we are confident that we are right. But what about when we look at the matter retrospectively? You study hard for a Geography examination. One of the questions is to name the three longest rivers in Queensland that flow into the sea. You did not anticipate this question but you have studied the rivers of Queensland pretty thoroughly. You think very hard about it and write down the three you think meet that test. You are not confident of your answer. (This is shown by the fact that, in your paper, you have crossed out a couple of rivers that you first thought of before settling on your final three.) Your friends asked you how you went in the exam. You tell them you think you did OK overall but it was pretty tough; for example I really struggled with the one about the rivers and I wouldn’t be surprised if I got it wrong. The results come out and you have done spectacularly well, including full marks for the question about the rivers. You tell your friends: “I’m really relieved – especially to find out that I really did know the names of those rivers.” (No doubt you can think of a real example of something like this from your own experience.)

Are you wrong in claiming that you knew the names of the rivers – you just didn’t think you knew them at the time? There is disagreement on this point however most intuitions of which I am aware agree that you really did know, even though you did not think you knew at the time. Why? Probably because you were本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。