Teaching Theory of Knowledge

CONTEMPORARY SOURCES
FOR TEACHING EPISTEMOLOGY

CONTRIBUTORS:
Jack Bender, Stewart Cohen, Richard Feldman, Alan Goldman, Alvin Goldman, John Heil, Noah Lemos, G. J. Mattey, Mike Roth, Jonathan Vogel.

FOURTEEN MODULES

In this unit there are modules describing fourteen topics that are central to recent and contemporary epistemology. Each module contains a brief description of the topic and a list of readings. The topics are:

  1. The Traditional Analysis of Knowledge
  2. Skepticism
  3. The Gettier Problem
  4. Foundationalism
  5. Coherentism
  6. Reliabilism
  7. Explanationism
  8. Memory
  9. Perception
  10. A Priori Knowledge
  11. Naturalistic Epistemology
  12. Realism
  13. Rationality
  14. Epistemic Logic

These modules can be used as the basis for designing a wide variety of courses on contemporary epistemology. Some of the modules fit together into units that could easily constitute an entire course or a large portion of a course. For example, modules (4) - (7) concern theories of epistemic justification. Modules (8) - (10) concern sources of knowledge. Each module contains only a small part of the literature on its topic and could easily be expanded so that entire courses might be based on just a few of the modules Many of the anthologies mentioned contain additional readings and bibliographies that might be used for this purpose. It is also likely that some instructors will choose to use some of these modules in conjunction with topics discussed elsewhere in this booklet.