Epistemology Paper Topics

The assignment for your paper is to choose an article or book chapter from the philosophical literature and do a critical exposition of it. "Critical exposition" means a careful, accurate statement of the author's principle claims, and of his or her arguments for those claims, together with your critical evaluation of his those arguments. Your paper should run 2000 - 2500 words, typing preferred.

DUE DATES: Hand your paper in by April 23. It will be returned in one week (or so), and you can hand in a revised version by the end of finals week.

General Comments on Topics:

Do not choose something too long--you won't be able to analyze it properly. It is perfectly acceptable to choose a chapter or two of a book, or a portion of a long paper--you don't have to deal with everything in one work.

Choose a text that is about some topic in epistemology. If you aren't sure, talk to the instructor.

Choose a text from the 19th or 20th century. If you want to write on a classical source, Plato, Kant, or whatever, choose a recent article about that classical author's views. For example, the following book (and many others) contain such recent articles:

R. Kraut, The Cambridge Companion to Plato, Cambridge U. Press

You may choose unassigned articles from our textbook if they also meet the other conditions of appropriateness described here. Consult the list of assigned passages to see what is not assigned. You may consult the bibliographies in our text.

You may wish to choose a recent article in one of the following journals: Journal of Philosophy, Philosophical Review, American Philosophical Quarterly, Philosophical Studies, Mind, etc.

To find things, consider using the UCSD library. You can check from here whether or not they have something, using our library's computer system.

You may certainly choose to write on a text from a 20th century continental philosopher such as Foucault or Sartre, but, as with any other writer you choose, be sure to give clear explanations of all technical terminology that plays any important role in the arguments you discuss. Generally speaking, pick a work you are fairly sure you understand, or will understand after you work at it. If you don't understand it, you can't explain it.

Some Recent Articles and Books, Parts of Which May be Suitable

• Things not on our reading list in Moser and van der Nat, after p. 192.
• Bibliography in Moser and van der Nat, pp. 268-9, 284,317, 379-80, 415, 453.
• The following items are suggestions. You are not required to limit your choices to them, but they should give you ideas about what to choose.

Anglo-American Stuff

• M. Devitt, Realism and Truth, Blackwell, 1991. Some chapter(s).
• R. Rorty, "Pragmatism, Davidson, and Truth," in Rorty, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth, Cambridge University Press, 1991.
• W. H. F. Barnes, "The Myth of Sense Data," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, vol. 45, 1944-5; reprinted in R. J. Swartz, Perceiving, Sensing and Knowing, Anchor-Doubleday, 1965. (Also many other good articles in the Swartz volume, call # BD143 .S95 )
• R. Chisolm and R. Swartz, Empirical Knowledge: Readings from Contemporary Sources, Prentice-Hall, 1973. Some chapter.
• L. BonJour, The Structure of Empirical Knowledge, Harvard, 1985 (coherence theory of knowledge). Some chapter(s).
• F. Dretske & B. Enc, "Causal Theories of Knowledge," Midwest Studies in Philosophy IX (1984), pp. 517-528. (Also other articles in this volume)
• E. Sosa, Knowledge in Perspective: Selected Essays in Epistemology, Cambridge, 1991. Any chapter.
• A. Goldman, Epistemology and Cognition, Harvard, 1986. Some chapter.
• P. Moser, Empirical Knowledge: Readings in Contemporary Epistemology, Rowman & Littlefield, 1986. Some essay
• G. Evans, "The Causal Theory of Names," Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, supp. vol. 47 (1973)
• H. Putnam, "Do True Assertions Correspond to Reality?" or "Analytic and Synthetic," in his Mind, Language, and Reality: Philosophical Papers 2, Cambridge, 1975. Perhaps others in this volume.
• ________, Realism With a Human Face, Harvard, 1990, various chapters.
• Charles Taylor, "The Opening Arguments of Hegel's Phenomenology," in Hegel: A Collection of Critical Essays, A. MacIntyre, Ed., Doubleday, 1972.
• C. S. Peirce, "How to make our ideas clear," appears many places, for example in J. Buchler, Philosophical Writings of Peirce, Dover, 1955.
• M. Black, Problems of Analysis, Cornell U. Press, 1954, chapters in part 3, on induction.
• M. Black, "Metaphor," in his Models and Metaphors: Studies in Languge and Philosophy, Cornell U. Press, Ithaca, 1962. See also "Self-supporting Indictive Arguments," and "Can Induction be Vindicated," and "Necessary Statements and Rules" in the same volume. The last named article defends analytic truths, e.g., "Monday is the day before Tuesday."
• Some part of R. Boyd, "Metaphor and Theory Change," in Metaphor and Thought, A. Ortony, Cambridge U. Press, 1979. This responds to Black. Argues that metaphor is an important way that science accomodates itself to the causal structure of the world. Not easy.
• Some chapter of Susan Haack, Evidence and Inquiry, Blackwell's , 1993. Defends "Foundherentism." (Combination of Foundationalism and Coherentism)
• V. I. Lenin, "Does Objective Truth Exist?", Section 4, 5 & 6 of Chapter Two (or perhaps the whole chapter) in his Materialism and Empirio-Criticism: Critical Notes Concerning a Reactionary Philosophy, New York, International Publishers, 1927, and also in various other editions.

Continental Stuff

(These topics probably require some prior knowledge of the people discussed)

• S. Vogel, "New Science, New Nature: The Habermas-Marcuse Debate Revisited," in A. Feenberg & A. Hannay, The Politics of Knowledge, Indiana U. Press, 1995
• G. Gutting, Michel Foucault's Archaeology of Scientific Reason, Cambridge, 1989, Chaps 4-6
• C. Taylor, "Foucault on Freedom and Truth," in his Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Philosophical Papers 2, Cambridge, 1985.
• Alain Boyer, "Hierarchy and Truth," in l. Ferry, and A. Renaut, Why We Are Not Nietzcheans, R. De Loaiza, trans., Univ. of Chicago Press, 1997.