Skip to main content
Log in

What's wrong with immediate knowledge?

  • Part II: Foundationalism, Coherentism, And Epistemic Principles
  • Published:
Synthese Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Immediate knowledge is here construed as true belief that does not owe its status as knowledge to support by other knowledge (or justified belief) of the same subject. The bulk of the paper is devoted to a criticism of attempts to show the impossibility of immediate knowledge. I concentrate on attempts by Wilfrid Sellars and Laurence Bonjour to show that putative immediate knowledge really depends on higher-level knowledge or justified belief about the status of the beliefs involved in the putative immediate knowledge. It is concluded that their arguments are lacking in cogency.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Similar content being viewed by others

References

  • Alston, W. P.: 1971, ‘Varieties of Privileged Access’, Amer. Phil. Quart. 8, 223–241.

    Google Scholar 

  • Alston, W. P.: 1976a, ‘Has Foundationalism Been Refuted?’, Phil. Stud. 29, 287–305.

    Google Scholar 

  • Alston, W. P.: 1976b, ‘Two Types of Foundationalism’, Journ. Phil. 85, 165–185.

    Google Scholar 

  • Alston, W. P.: 1980, ‘Level Confusions in Epistemology’, Midwest Stud. Phil. 5, 135–150.

    Google Scholar 

  • Armstrong, D. M.: 1973, Belief, Truth, and Knowledge, London: Cambridge U. Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Aune, B.: 1967, Knowledge, Mind, and Nature, New York: Random House.

    Google Scholar 

  • Blanshard, B.: 1939, The Nature of Thought, London: George Allen & Unwin.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bonjour, L.: 1978, ‘Can Empirical Knowledge Have a Foundation?’, Amer. Phil. Quart. 15, 1–13.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bosanquet, B.: 1911, Logic or The Morphology of Knowledge, London: Oxford U. Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bradley, F. H.: 1914, Essays on Truth and Reality, Oxford: Clarendon Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bradley, F. H.: 1922, The Principles of Logic, 2nd. ed., London: Oxford U. Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Chisholm, R. M.: 1977, Theory of Knowledge, 2nd, ed., Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dewey, J.: 1938, Logic: The Theory of Inquiry, New York: Henry Holt.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dicker, G.: 1980, Perceptual Knowledge, Dordrecht: D. Reidel.

    Google Scholar 

  • Firth, R.: 1964, ‘Coherence, Certainty, and Epistemic Priority’, Journ. Phil. 61, 545–557.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goldman, A. I.: 1976, ‘Discrimination and Perceptual Knowledge’, Journ. Phil. 73, 771–791.

    Google Scholar 

  • Goldman, A. I.: 1979, ‘What Is Justified Belief?’, in G. S. Pappas (ed.), Justification and Knowledge, Dordrecht: D. Reidel.

    Google Scholar 

  • Lehrer, K.: 1974, Knowledge, London: Oxford U. Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Meyers, R. G.: 1981, ‘Sellars' Rejection of Foundations’, Phil. Stud. 39, 61–78.

    Google Scholar 

  • Peirce, C. S.: 1939, The Nature of Thought, London: George Allen & Unwin. Cambridge, MA: Harvard U. Press, Vol. V.

    Google Scholar 

  • Pollock, J. L.: 1974, Knowledge and Justification, Princeton: Princeton U. Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sellars, W.: 1963, Science, Perception, and Reality, New York: Humanities Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sellars, W.: 1975, ‘The Structure of Knowledge’, in H. N. Castaneda (ed.), Action, Knowledge, and Reality: Critical Studies in Honor of Wilfred Sellars, Indianapolis: Bobbs, Merril Co.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sellars, W.: 1979, ‘More on Givenness and Explanatory Coherence’, in G. S. Pappas (ed.), Justification and Knowledge, Dordrecht: D. Reidel.

    Google Scholar 

  • Sosa, E.: 1980, ‘The Raft and the Pyramid’, Midwest Stud. Phil. 5, 3–25.

    Google Scholar 

  • Swain, M.: 1981, Reasons and Knowledge, Ithaca, NY: Cornell U. Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Will, F. L.: 1974, Induction and Justification, Ithaca, NY: Cornell U. Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Williams, M.: 1977, Groundless Belief, New Haven: Yale U. Press.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Alston, W.P. What's wrong with immediate knowledge?. Synthese 55, 73–95 (1983). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00485374

Download citation

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00485374

Keywords

Navigation