Achieving Knowledge
A Virtue-Theoretic Account of Epistemic Normativity

Argues that knowledge is a kind of achievement, exploring questions of what it is and what kind of value it has.

John Greco (Author)

9780521193917, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 22 April 2010

216 pages, 2 tables
23.5 x 15.6 x 1.5 cm, 0.478 kg

"...Achieving Knowledge is a very competent addition to the literature, clearly meriting the attention of the growing number of epistemologists concerned with questions of value, virtue and justification... Achieving Knowledge is fundamentally an attempt to integrate competing intuitions concerning epistemic normativity into a single unifying theory..."
--Michael-John Turp, University of Durham, UK, Philosophy in Review

When we affirm (or deny) that someone knows something, we are making a value judgment of sorts - we are claiming that there is something superior (or inferior) about that person's opinion, or their evidence, or perhaps about them. A central task of the theory of knowledge is to investigate the sort of evaluation at issue. This is the first book to make 'epistemic normativity,' or the normative dimension of knowledge and knowledge ascriptions, its central focus. John Greco argues that knowledge is a kind of achievement, as opposed to mere lucky success. This locates knowledge within a broader, familiar normative domain. By reflecting on our thinking and practices in this domain, it is argued, we gain insight into what knowledge is and what kind of value it has for us.

Preface
Part I. Epistemic Normativity: 1. Knowledge as success from ability
2. Against deontology
3. Against internalism
4. Against evidentialism
Part II. Problems for Everyone: 5. The nature of knowledge
6. The value of knowledge
7. Knowledge and context
8. The Pyrrhonian problematic
Part III. Problems for Reliabilism: 9. The problem of strange and fleeting processes
10. The problem of defeating evidence
11. The problem of easy knowledge
Bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Philosophy: epistemology & theory of knowledge [HPK]