AQA A LEVEL PHILOSOPHY Essay Plans - EPISTEMOLOGY
A* Level Essay Plans which are concise and easy to understand.
Written by a student predicted 4A*, with an offer to study Philosophy & Economics at the LSE.
Very helpful to write a top grade essay.
Will be focussing on propositional knowledge – define propositional knowledge.
Def JTB
Thesis:
Outline of theory
Outline JTB – define belief, truth, justification. Belief: mental state representing one’s
version of reality (can be true or false). Truth: statement which corresponds with reality.
Justification makes truth more likely and less coincidental so intuitively is logical; they were
reasoned.
Mention that to be a credible theory, each condition needs to be individually necessary and
jointly sufficient – define each necessary and sufficient (e.g., can’t just have true belief).
Para 1:
- Outline Gettier case.
Response:
Knowledge = JTB + no false lemmas.
No false lemmas means that the justification is based of no false premises.
It matches intuition well because it allows us to know lots of things but rules out
propositions with weaker justification.
It copes well with the Gettier case: Smith does not have knowledge because one of his
premises (Jones will get the job) is false, therefore his justification is invalid. It highlights how
there is no connection between the belief’s truth and its justification (there is a false reason
to support the belief).
Response:
Barn County Case: man is driving on a road, and every barn beside him is just a façade (not a
real barn). However, the one barn he does look at is real. He looks at the barn (P1),
therefore concludes the barn exists. Intuitively it seems that he doesn’t know the barn was
there, it seems very coincidental but satisfies JTB+ No false lemmas.
Para 2: Reliabilism:
Knowledge = True Belief + Formed by a reliable cognitive process (equal to justification)
Reliable = one which generally produces true beliefs
Examples of reliable cognitive processes: testimony (Learning from others), perception
(sensory), memory, deductive inferences (reason)
Rather than infallibilism where justification guarantees truth, a reliable cognitive process is
sufficient for truth.
Externalism: don’t need 1st person experience to have knowledge. Allows for belief forming
methods do not be reflectively accessible (unlike infallibilism), but as long as they generally
form correct beliefs one has knowledge. This allows children and animals to have
knowledge.
Issue:
- Fake Barn County Case: Barney uses reliable cognitive process (vision) and therefore has
knowledge according to reliabilism.
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