Abstract

Reflection on the state of contemporary epistemology leaves many of us bewildered and baffled. Without naming personal names, let's mention just a sample of the kinds of epistemological theory now in circulation; foundationalism, coherentism, contextualism, reliabilism, evidentialism, explanationism, pragmatism, internalism, externalism, deontologism, naturalism, skepticism. These general positions do not all compete to explain the same epistemological phenomena, and for this we should always be grateful. They do, however, all subsume remarkably diverse species of epistemological theory. For example, reliabilism now comes in many manifestations, including process reliabilism, indicator reliabilism, and virtue reliabilism. Likewise, foundationalism admits of considerable subsidiary variety, including radical foundationalism and modest foundationalism; and coherentism yields subjectivist and objectivist species, among many others. Within internalism, furthermore, we find access internalism, awareness internalism, and a host of additional intriguing species. Not to be outdone, epistemological naturalism, too, offers taxonomic complexity, including for example eliminative, noneliminative, and pragmatic species.