This new edition of the classic Contemporary Theories of Knowledge has been significantly updated to include analyses of the recent literature in epistemology.

According to memory foundationalism, seeming to remember that P is prima facie justification for believing that P. There is a common objection to this theory: If I previously believed that P carelessly (i.e. without justification) and later seem to remember that P, then (according to memory foundationalism) I have somehow acquired justification for a previously unjustified belief. In this paper, I explore this objection. I begin by distinguishing between two versions of it: One where I seem to remember that P (...) while also seeming to remember being careless in my original believing that P and the other where I seem to remember that P while not seeming to remember my past carelessness. I argue that the former case is the real challenge for memory foundationalism. After establishing the case of unforgotten carelessness as objection to memory foundationalism, I recast memory foundationalism in way that allows it to escape this objection. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that internalistic foundationalist theories of the justification of memory belief are inadequate. Taking a discussion of John Pollock as a starting point, I argue against any theory that requires a memory belief to be based on a phenomenal state in order to be justified. I then consider another version of internalistic foundationalism and claim that it, too, is open to important objections. Finally, I note that both varieties of foundationalism fail to account for the epistemic (...) status of our justified nonoccurrent beliefs, and hence are drastically incomplete. (shrink)

both the initial justification for adopting it and the justification for retaining it provided by seeming memories. This view captures our intuitions about justification in several cases, while none of the alternative views can.

Princeton University Press, 1974. This book is out of print, but can be downloaded as a pdf file (5 MB).

Sven Bernecker presents an analysis of the concept of propositional (or factual) memory, and examines a number of metaphysical and epistemological issues crucial to the understanding of memory. -/- Bernecker argues that memory, unlike knowledge, implies neither belief nor justification. There are instances where memory, though hitting the mark of truth, succeeds in an epistemically defective way. This book shows that, contrary to received wisdom in epistemology, memory not only preserves epistemic features generated by other epistemic sources but also functions (...) as a source of justification and knowledge. According to the causal theory of memory argued for in this book, the dependence of memory states on past representations supports counterfactuals of the form: if the subject hadn't represented a given proposition in the past he wouldn't represent it in the present. The book argues for a version of content externalism whereupon the individuation of memory contents depends on relations the subject bears to his past physical or social environment. Moreover, Bernecker shows that memory doesn't require identity, but only similarity, of past and present attitudes and contents. The notion of content similarity is explicated in terms of the entailment relation. (shrink)

We call beliefs reasonable or unreasonable, justified or unjustified. What does this imply about belief? Does this imply that we are responsible for our beliefs and that we should be blamed for our unreasonable convictions? Or does it imply that we are in control of our beliefs and that what we believe is up to us? Reason Without Freedom argues that the major problems of epistemology have their roots in concerns about our control over and responsibility for belief. David Owens (...) focuses on the arguments of Descartes, Locke and Hume - the founders of epistemology - and presents a critical discussion of the current trends in contemporary epistemology. He proposes that the problems we confront today - scepticism, the analysis of knowlege, and debates on epistemic justification - can be tackled only once we have understood the moral psychology of belief. This can be resolved when we realise that our responsibility for beliefs is profoundly different from our rationality and agency, and that memory and testimony can preserve justified belief without preserving the evidence which might be used to justify it. Reason Without Freedom should be of value to those interested in contemporary epistemology, philosophy of mind and action, ethics, and the history of 17th and 18th century. (shrink)

Abstract: A person who remembers having done something has a belief that she did it from having done it. To have a belief that one did something from having done it is to believe that one did the action on the (causal) basis of having done it, where this belief (in order for one to have it) need not be (causally) based even in part on any contributor to the belief other than doing the action. The notion of a contributor (...) to a belief (as opposed to a mere facilitating cause of the belief) is explicated through a series of examples. The account of having a belief that one did something from having done it is then deployed in criticising Ginet's account of ‘memory connection’, in assessing Martin and Deutscher's causal theory of remembering, in indicating how diachronic justification functions in a nontraditional theory of memory, and in setting forth one type of psychological connectedness which, according to advocates of a psychological continuity theory of personal identity, may be employed (noncircularly) in formulating the theory, and which, according to opponents of the theory, provides a target for criticising the theory. (shrink)

Evidentialism is a view about the conditions under which a person is epistemically justified in having a particular doxastic attitude toward a proposition. Evidentialism holds that the justified attitudes are determined entirely by the person's evidence. This is the traditional view of justification. It is now widely opposed. The essays included in this volume develop and defend the tradition. Evidentialism has many assets. In addition to providing an intuitively plausible account of epistemic justification, it helps to resolve the problem of (...) the criterion, helps to disentangle epistemic and ethical evaluations, and illuminates the relationship between epistemic evaluations of beliefs and the evaluation of the methods used to form beliefs. These issues are all addressed in the essays presented here. External world skepticism poses the classic problem for an epistemological theory. The final essay in this volume argues that evidentialism is uniquely well qualified to make sense of skepticism and to respond to its challenge. Evidentialism is a version of epistemic internalism. Recent epistemology has included many attacks on internalism and has seen the development of numerous externalist theories. The essays included here respond to those attacks and raise objections to externalist theories, especially the principal rival, reliabilism. Internalism generally has been criticized for having unacceptable deontological implications, for failing to connect epistemic justification to truth, and for failing to provide an adequate account of what makes basic beliefs justified. Each of these charges is answered in these essays. The collection includes two previously unpublished essays and new afterwords to five of the reprinted essays; it will be the definitive resource on evidentialism for all epistemologists. (shrink)

It is widely assumed that memory has only the capacity to preserve epistemic features that have been generated by other sources. Specifically, if S knows (justifiedly believes/rationally believes) that p via memory at T2, then it is argued that (i) S must have known (justifiedly believed/rationally believed) that p when it was originally acquired at Tl, and (ii) S must have acquired knowledge that p (justification with respect to p/rationality with respect to p) at Tl via a non-memorial source. Thus, (...) according to this view, memory cannot make an unknown proposition known, an unjustified belief justified, or an irrational belief rational--it can only preserve what is already known, justified, or rational. In this paper, I argue that condition (i) is false and, a fortiori, that condition (ii) is false. Hence, I show that, contrary to received wisdom in contemporary epistemology, memory can function as a generative epistemic source. (shrink)

A theory of occurrent factual memory is sketched out. The theory represents an alterative to the traditional theory in John L. Pollock’s Knowledge and Justification, in that it analyzes occurrently remembering that p without employing the notion of ostensible recollection that p. The latter notion, it is argued, can be understood in terms of occurrently believing (or being inclined to believe) that p. In defending his theory against nontraditional alternatives, Pollock employs arguments that conflict with his own principle of implicit (...) reasons. That principle, it is shown, sanctions cross-temporal justification of the sort presupposed by the alternative nontraditional theory. [CORRIGENDUM: Line 6 at the top of page 137 should read: memory, then if S occurrently remembers that p at t, then S, at t, has a justified (occurrent) belief that p such that (a) this belief that p constitutes, at t, S’s In lines 7–9 at the top of page 140, the sentence beginning with “For” and ending with “way” should be deleted, and in line 11 “fact” should be “face”.] . (shrink)

The purpose of this essay is to determine how we should construe the content of memories or, in other words, to determine what the intentional objects of memory are.1 The issue that will concern us is, then, analogous to the traditional philosophical question of whether perception directly puts us in cognitive contact with entities in the world or with entities in our own minds. As we shall see, there are some interesting aspects of the phenomenology and the epistemology of memory, (...) and I shall aim at a specification of the content of memories that is in accordance with those aspects of them. (shrink)

This book investigates central issues in the philosophy of memory. Does remembering require a causal process connecting the past representation to its subsequent recall and, if so, what is the nature of the causal process? Of what kind are the primary intentional objects of memory states? How do we know that our memory experiences portray things the way they happened in the past? Given that our memory is not only a passive device for reproducing thoughts but also an active device (...) for processing stored thoughts, when are thoughts sufficiently similar to be memory-related? The Metaphysics of Memory defends a version of the causal theory of memory, argues for direct realism about memory, proposes an externalist response to skepticism about memory knowledge, and develops a contextualist account of the factivity constraint on memory. (shrink)

One difference between traditional and contemporary nontraditional theories of memory is that the former would affirm, whereas the latter would deny, that a person can be correctly described as having remembered that p solely in virtue of having knowledge the certainty of which is grounded upon the person’s present remembering. I argue that there cannot be such a case, and that what may appear to be such a case—as presented in Don Locke’s book Memory—can be explicated by a contemporary nontraditional (...) theorist without making any concessions to the traditional theorist. (shrink)

K. Lehrer and J. Richard’s analysis of remembering that p is shown to be deficient, particularly because it fails to treat factual memory as an epistemic concept. Adding a requirement concerning the subject’s past justification accommodates instances of factual memory without factual knowledge, helps explain the role of justification in remembering that p, and strengthens the analysis against certain counterexamples. The paper includes an assessment of A. Cusmariu;s definition of impure memory.

In recent decades, epistemology has witnessed the development and growth of externalist theories of knowledge and justification. Critics of externalism have focused a bright spotlight on this approach and judged it unsuitable for realizing the true and original goals of epistemology. Their own favored approach, internalism, is defended as a preferable approach to the traditional concept of epistemic justification. I shall turn the spotlight toward internalism and its most prominent rationale, revealing fundamental problems at the core of internalism and challenging (...) the viability of its most popular rationale. Although particular internalist theories such as (internalist) foundationalism and coherentism will occasionally be discussed, those specific theories are not my primary concern. The principal concern is rather the general architecture of internalism, and the attempt to justify this architecture by appeal to a certain conception of what justification consists in. (shrink)

This paper challenges the standard conception of memory as a form of knowledge. Unlike knowledge, memory implies neither belief nor justification.

For cases in which to remember that p is to have (strict) nonbasic, unmixed memory knowledge that p; in which there is at most one prior time, t, from which one remembers; in which one knew at t that p; and in which there can arise a sensible question whether one remembers that p from t — a person, B, remembers that p from t if and only if: (1) There is a set of grounds a subset of which consists (...) of (i) only those grounds B has at both t and the present for B to be sure that p, and (ii) enough such grounds to make it reasonable at both t and the present for B to be sure that p (I call any such subset a set of “adequate original grounds dating from t”), and (2) there is no time prior to t such that B has a set of adequate original grounds dating from that time. The way in which the crucial terms in this explication are being used is explained. And the explication is defended by showing how it can deal with cases that are counterexamples to explications recently offered by Malcolm and by Munsat. (shrink)

When one recalls that P, how is one justified in believing that P? I refute the three most natural answers to this question: a memory belief is not justified by a belief in the reliability of memory; a memory experience does not provide a new, foundational justification for a belief; and memory does not merely preserve the same justification a belief had when first adopted. Instead, the justification of a memory belief is a product of both the initial justification for (...) adopting it and the justification for retaining it provided by seeming memories. (shrink)

The definition of memory knowledge that p put forward in this paper is nontraditional in that the justification for the belief that p which constitutes that knowledge is not located in any memory-impression or other present state of the subject. Rather it is the subject's actual past justification for p, or a proper part thereof, that justifies this present belief that p. It is argued (1) that the notion under definition is that of knowing straight from memory, (2) that an (...) adequate definition here must take into account a difference, as to conflicting evidence one does not possess, between evidence one has forgotten and evidence one has never had, (3) that compared to Ginet's traditional definition (1975), the definition has several advantages, and (4) that the definition handles at least one type of situation where there can be memory knowledge that p without previous knowledge that p. (shrink)