Knowledge and evidence

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 70 (2):452–458 (2005)
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Abstract

Most of us, tacitly or explicitly, embrace a more or less Cartesian conception of our epistemic condition. According to such a conception, "what we have to go on" in learning about the world is, on the one hand, that which is a priori accessible to us, and, on the other, the inner experiences - visual imagery, tactile sensations, recollective episodes and so on - that pop into our Carte- sian theaters. One of the central themes of Knowledge and its Limits is that this picture is fundamentally wrong. Williamson suggests that we should embrace the thesis that our body of evidence at a given time is all and only that which we know. Call this the "E=K thesis." If the E=K thesis is correct, then what we have to go on is both more and less than the Cartesian picture would suggest: more because its domain extends outwards in space, and for- wards and backwards in time; less because that which is unknown about our experiential life is excluded. In what follows, I shall identify and briefly discuss a number of themes connected to the E=K thesis.

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John Hawthorne
Australian Catholic University

Citations of this work

Are We Luminous?Amia Srinivasan - 2013 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 90 (2):294-319.
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References found in this work

Knowledge and its limits.Timothy Williamson - 2000 - New York: Oxford University Press.

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