Laurence BonJour: "Can Empirical Knowledge Have a Foundation?"

Epistemology is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature, conditions, and extent of human knowledge. It asks questions like: "What is knowledge?", "What does it mean to say that someone knows, or fails to know, something?", "Does knowledge depend on context?", "What is it to be a good or responsible knower?", "What makes a belief, or disbelief, properly justified?", "Is justification internal or external to one's own mind?", "Are there limits to what we can know?", "Can we know anything at all?", and so on. A vast array of sophisticated views have been developed in response to problems such as these. Epistemology also deals with issues to do with the creation and dissemination of knowledge in particular areas of inquiry.

This is the third meetup of our series on major publications in epistemology. This week we're discussing one of the most highly-cited papers in contemporary epistemology, "Can Empirical Knowledge Have a Foundation?" by Laurence BonJour, a professor of philosophy at the University of Washington. The paper was first published in the American Philosophical Quarterly in 1978.

In the paper, BonJour challenges the view that there are empirical beliefs whose epistemic justification or warrant is somehow immediate or intrinsic.

The paper can be viewed and downloaded HERE - http://joelvelasco.net/teaching/4330/bonjour78-canempiricalknowledge.pdf

Please read as much of the paper as possible in advance of our discussion.

(For background you may also want to read the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on Epistemology - https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/epistemology/)

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Topics we hope to cover in this series include skepticism, the definition of knowledge, the structure of knowledge and justification, epistemic closure, theories of justification, epistemic virtues and responsibility, naturalized epistemology, a priori knowledge, contextualism, testimonial knowledge, self-knowledge, and social epistemology. We'll also read about the nature of knowledge in specific domains of inquiry, such as natural science, history, religion, economics, psychology, and so on.

Past reading in this series:

1. Roderick M. Chisholm, "The Myth of the Given"
2. Linda Zagzebski, "Virtues of the Mind" (selections)
3. Laurence BonJour, "Can Empirical Knowledge Have a Foundation?"

Potential future readings in this series:

• Peter D. Klein, "Human Knowledge and the Infinite Regress of Reasons"
• Edmund Gettier, "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?"
• Linda Zagzebski, "The Inescapability of Gettier Problems"
• Timothy Williamson, "A State of Mind"
• Ernest Sosa, "The Place of Truth in Epistemology"
• Robert Nozick, "Knowledge and Skepticism"
• Alvin I. Goldman, "What Is Justified Belief?"
• Laurence BonJour, "Externalist Theories of Empirical Knowledge"
• Richard Feldman and Earl Conee, "Internalism Defended"
• John Greco, "Virtues and Vices of Virtue Epistemology"
• Duncan Pritchard, "Cognitive Responsibility and the Epistemic Virtue"
• Catherine Z. Elgin, "True Enough"
• W. V. Quine, "Epistemology Naturalized"
• Jaegwon Kim, "What Is "Naturalized Epistemology?""
• Louise M. Antony, "Quine as Feminist: The Radical Import of Naturalized Epistemology"
• Hilary Putnam, "There is at Least One A Priori Truth"
• Jason Stanley, "Knowledge and Practical Interest"
• John Hawthorne, "Sensitive Moderate Invariantism"
• John MacFarlane, "The Assessment Sensitivity of Knowledge Attributions"
• Albert Casullo, "Revisability, Reliabilism, and A Priori Knowledge"
• David Lewis, "Elusive Knowledge"
• Jonathan M. Weinberg , "Normativity and Epistemic Intuitions"
• Judith Baker, "Trust and Rationality"
• Elizabeth Fricker. "Against Gullibility"
• Jennifer Lackey, "Testimonial Knowledge and Transmission"
• John McDowell, "Criteria, Defeasibility, and Knowledge"
• Linda Zagzebski, "Recovering Understanding"
• Steven L. Reynolds, "Knowing How to Believe With Justification"