Abstract

Having completed the examination of competing accounts of how knowledge claims function, this chapter returns to and elaborates the account presented of them in Ch. 1. In our everyday use of knowledge claims, we rely on justificatory procedures that we have learned. Looking things up is an obvious example. Doubts also take place within justificatory procedures. We doubt things because they fail to meet certain standards. Three sorts of doubt are distinguished: hyperbolic doubts, eliminable but impractical doubts, and eliminable legitimate doubts. In daily life, we operate at the third or lowest level of scrutiny. When engaged in doing epistemology, however, philosophers tend to operate at the two higher levels of scrutiny with the result that they encounter Gettier problems or wind up in skepticism. This sets the stage for Part 2 in which various responses to skepticism are examined.