How to Know: A Practicalist Conception of Knowledge - Hardcover

Hetherington, Stephen

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0470658126 ISBN 13: 9780470658123

Publisher: Blackwell Pub, 2011

Synopsis

Some key aspects of contemporary epistemology deserve to be challenged, and How to Know does just that. This book argues that several long-standing presumptions at the heart of the standard analytic conception of knowledge are false, and defends an alternative, a practicalist conception of knowledge.

• Presents a philosophically original conception of knowledge, at odds with some central tenets of analytic epistemology
• Offers a dissolution of epistemology’s infamous Gettier problem ― explaining why the supposed problem was never really a problem in the first place.
• Defends an unorthodox conception of the relationship between knowledge-that and knowledge-how, understanding knowledge-that as a kind of knowledge-how.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Some key aspects of contemporary epistemology deserve to be challenged, and How to Know does just that. This book argues that several long-standing presumptions at the heart of the standard analytic conception of knowledge are false, and defends an alternative view. The result is a new conception of knowledge, according to which: knowledge is a kind of knowledge-how; Gettiered knowledge is possible (and so we may set aside epistemology’s long-standing Gettier problem); knowledge admits of degrees or grades; and knowledge might not have to include epistemically justified belief. This is a distinctively practicalist conception of knowledge: knowledge is a complex ability, able to be stronger or weaker without having to be justificatory. On this view, knowledge is as knowledge can do.

About the Author:

Stephen Hetherington is Professor of Philosophy at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. He has previously published six books, mostly in epistemology. These include Good Knowledge, Bad Knowledge (2001), Reality? Knowledge? Philosophy! (2003), Self-Knowledge (2007), and Yes, But How Do You Know? (2009). He has also edited two books, including Epistemology Futures (2006).

About this edition

• Publisher: Blackwell Pub
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 0470658126
• ISBN 13: 9780470658123
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 260