Basic Knowledge

我们可以通过推理来认识某件事，作为结论，从我们知道的前提出发。相信结论是有根据的，因为相信前提是有根据的。在这种情况下，我们可以很自然地说，对前提的渴望已经转化为结论了。然而，这似乎不能为所有知识的获取提供一个通用的模型，即使许多知识是基于原因的。因为推理需要前提，似乎为了知道一个人的前提是可靠的，他必须，反过来，为他们找到理由。以此类推，直到无穷。如果所有的知识都建立在推理的基础上，推理的过程就永远无法开始。因此，我们似乎被迫承认一类基本知识。看来，基本知识需要没有清晰的理由支持，因此，在某种程度上，它的保证并不依赖于我们对其他任何事情的保证。这种思路在传统和当代哲学中都提出了一些最具挑战性和最有趣的难题。首先也是最重要的是，是什么将值得尊敬的基本知识与非理性或武断的信念区分开来？看来，知识应该包括以理智负责的方式形成的信念；但是，一个人如何对自发形成的信念承担责任，而没有理由的基础结构？在理由如此之多的地方，似乎也没有任何监管的余地。该项目将通过回顾我们思想不同领域的基础知识的不同可能模型，包括感性知识、记忆知识、基本数学和逻辑知识以及心理自我知识，寻求详细阐述和测试这一怀疑挑战的答案。本书将全面探讨关于我们的知识的两种截然不同的概念之间的争论：内在主义，它认为知识是由某种形式的反思可证实的保证所支持的真实信念；外在主义认为，知识所需要的只是满足某些其他条件，而反思并不总是能够证明这些条件，例如，所采用的信念形成方法的可靠性。我们将特别关注这一哲学领域最近的一个重要观点，即搜查令需要不同的证据，这可以是所谓的理性权利问题。我们的发现的一个关键测试领域，项目的后期阶段将集中于此，将是基本先验知识的棘手问题：这种知识，似乎是基本逻辑和数学的特征，在这种知识中，经验和来自其他已知事实的推断都不起任何作用。

We can come to know something by reasoning to it, as a conclusion, from premises that we know. Belief in the conclusion is warranted because belief in the premises is warranted. In such a case, it is natural to say that the wan-ant for the premises is transmitted to the conclusion. However this cannot, it seems, provide a general model for the acquisition of all knowledge, even if much knowledge is based on reasons. For reasoning needs premises, and it seems that in order to know that one's premises are secure, one must, In turn, have reasons for them. And so on ad Infinitum. If all knowledge is based on reasons, the process of reasoning can never get started. We therefore seem to be forced to acknowledge a category of basic knowledge. Basic knowledge, it appears, will need to be unsupported by articulate reasons, and therefore warranted in a way that does not depend on our having a warrant for anything else. This train of thought raises some of the most challenging and intriguing puzzles in both traditional and contemporary philosophy. First and foremost, what distinguishes respectable basic knowledge from irrational or arbitrary belief? Knowledge, it seems, should involve belief formed in an intellectually responsible fashion; but how does one exercise responsibility on beliefs that are formed spontaneously, without a substructure of reasons? Where reasons give out so, it seems, does any scope for policing. The project will seek both to elaborate and to test answers to this sceptical challenge by reviewing different possible models for basic knowledge in different areas of our thought, including perceptual knowledge, knowledge by memory, basic mathematical and logical knowledge, and psychological self-knowledge. The work will be informed by, and will be concerned to address, the debate between two very different conceptions of our knowledge in the round: internalism, which holds that knowledge is true belief supported by some form of reflectively certifiable warrant; and externalism, which holds that all that's needed for knowledge is that certain other conditions be met, which reflection cannot always certify - for example, the reliability of the belief-forming method employed. Special attention will be given to a recent important Idea in this area of philosophy, namely that warrant need variably require evidence - that it can be a matter of what's called rational entitlement. A crucial test area for our findings, on which the late stages of the project will concentrate, will be the vexed issue of basic a priori knowledge: the kind of knowledge, seemingly characteristic of fundamental logic and mathematics, in which neither experience nor inference from other known facts plays any role.