This book offers an unorthodox, systematic view of the relationships among the concepts of knowledge, truth, and justification. It articulates and defends a conception of knowledge as adequately justified belief. We correctly judge that S knows that p, whenever, from our de facto epistemic perspective, we judge S able adequately to justify his belief that p. A further ‘truth requirement’ is arguably vacuous and idle, since truth can function neither as the goal of enquiry nor as a constraining condition on any determinate epistemic policy or practice. The corresponding conception of justificat ... More

This book offers an unorthodox, systematic view of the relationships among the concepts of knowledge, truth, and justification. It articulates and defends a conception of knowledge as adequately justified belief. We correctly judge that S knows that p, whenever, from our de facto epistemic perspective, we judge S able adequately to justify his belief that p. A further ‘truth requirement’ is arguably vacuous and idle, since truth can function neither as the goal of enquiry nor as a constraining condition on any determinate epistemic policy or practice. The corresponding conception of justification is both proceduralist—what are fundamentally justified or unjustified are epistemic conducts and practices—and internalist—a person's belief is justified only to the extent that she is in a position to justify it. Enquiry is correlatively understood as always addressed to determinate questions, properly raised only within a context of defeasible, but settled background beliefs that guide and constrain the procedures and norms of epistemic activity. The theses that matter‐of‐factual knowledge both needs and has available incorrigible foundations are consequently rejected in favour of a resolute anti‐scepticism coupled with a thoroughgoing fallibilism.