Introduction to Philosophy: Epistemology

Reviewed by Luke Roelofs, Assistant Professor, University of Texas at Arlington on 4/12/24

Comprehensiveness rating: 4 see less

I don’t know if it would be possible to cover everything, and this textbook does a great job at covering a lot. It has 8 chapters, on: Defining knowledge; Nature of Justification; Rationalism vs Empiricism; External world scepticism; Epistemic Value; Formal Epistemology; Social Epistemology; Feminist Epistemologies. But there are also a fair number of striking omissions: nothing about induction or inductive skepticism, nothing about the problem of other minds, nothing about religious epistemology, nothing about memory or imagination, and the scientific method touched on only in passing. That said, each chapter is generally pretty up front about other related topics not covered.

Content Accuracy rating: 5

As best I could tell, the discussion is accurate and even-handed. I’d quibble with a few remarks (the chapter on external world scepticism casually suggests a 5% probability that the external world doesn’t exist, which seems incredibly high!) but overall nothing to object to. That said, I’m not primarily an epistemologist, so take that with a grain of salt.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 4

There are interesting differences in tone and approach between chapters. Chapters 1, 2, and 7 all strike a familiar pose: the reader is introduced to some simply-stated questions (e.g. “what is knowledge?”, “how should you respond to disagreement?”), then walked through some rival answers and their pros and cons. I think any undergrad who is interested enough in knowledge to be taking an epistemology course will find them easy to engage with. Chapter 3 seemed to me the weakest chapter, being almost entirely historical, and culminating in the Kantian doctrine of synthetic a priori judgements, which I would worry many undergrads would struggle to make relevant to themselves (and, for my part, I think I might struggle to explain to them why they should). Chapters 4 and 5 felt less organized, more like a leisurely stroll through what various people have said about various connected topics.
Chapters 6 and 8 both struck the slightly more focused tone of “here’s what philosophers are doing, and here’s the framework they’ve been building up”, albeit with a bit less presentation of questions that readers could take opposing positions on.

Clarity rating: 5

There’s a lot of terminology but the chapters do a good job of introducing and defining it. Chapter 6, on formal epistemology, sometimes felt like it was running a bit fast: students whose brains are not naturally disposed to math may need a bit of help following parts of it.

Consistency rating: 5

Everything is kept very consistent, without noticeable shifts in language or style between chapters.

Modularity rating: 5

The chapters could be taken in any order, and there are notes inserted at various points to say (this topic is addressed more in chapter X). I don’t think it would be any harder or easier to follow if you rearranged the chapters, although the introduction provides a nice narrative connecting them. There are a couple of spots where a chapter says that another chapter has already explained or introduced an idea which it hasn’t really, but they won’t affect understanding.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 5

The division into four “traditional core” topics (knowledge, justification, sources of knowledge, and scepticism) followed by four “expanded epistemology” topics (value, formal, social, feminist) works well enough. It’s a little artificial in some ways (notably, chapters 5, 6, and 7 all largely revolve around discussing pretty old dudes (James vs. Clifford on evidentialism, Bayes and Bayes’ theorem, Hume vs. Reid on testimony, etc.), so that the sense in which these are “expansions” of mainstream epistemology may be lost on many undergrads. Students interested in pursuing further study in philosophy will benefit from building up a sense of the recent history of the discipline, but for others it may just feel like a succession of topics.

Interface rating: 5

Everything is clean and clear and generally laid out in helpful ways. There’s a slightly odd quirk where most of the pictures of philosophers, generally taken from Wikipedia etc., have captions that end with “This work is in the public domain”, instead of “this image is in the public domain”, but that’s hardly important.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

No errors I could detect.

Cultural Relevance rating: 4

There’s nothing insensitive or offensive, though it is very solidly rooted in the Western tradition specifically, with only very minor references to, E.g. Indian or Chinese traditions. There are more pictures of Alvin Goldman than of women - at least until the 8th chapter, on feminist epistemologies, which is very self-consciously diverse, as befits its theme of kaleidoscopic knowledge. (Chapter 8 contains the somewhat sardonic remark that “Feminist epistemologies have often been the so-called “alternative” epistemologies that scholars of “mainstream” epistemology most readily include in discussions of epistemology as a whole, and this textbook is no exception; exploring the reasons behind that is beyond the capacity of this chapter.”)

Comments

All in all this seems a workmanlike introduction to epistemology, that’s as comprehensive as it could be in 195 pages. I’m likely to use it in teaching, but probably augmented with other resources for some topics.

Reviewed by Martin Roth, Associate Professor, Drake University on 12/31/21

Comprehensiveness rating: 4 see less

The text is fairly comprehensive, although some topics that have gotten a lot of attention recently, e.g., contextualism, are not discussed much. The glossary provided at the end is useful, but an index is conspicuously missing.

Content Accuracy rating: 5

Each chapter is knowledgeably written.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 5

Some of the material in this book is of "perennial" interest, and the content that is of more recent vintage is nonetheless well established ground in contemporary epistemology and thus will not be made obsolete any time soon. The text is organized in a way that should make for relatively easy/straightforward updates.

Clarity rating: 5

Those new to epistemology will benefit from the clear, accessible explanations of what are often recondite ideas or theories.

Consistency rating: 5

I saw no problems with consistency, and I found the learning outcomes and reflection questions provided in each chapter to be an especially nice way of creating format consistency.

Modularity rating: 5

This is one of the strongest features of the text. Chapters are fairly stand alone, and although the book is on epistemology, many of the chapters can be fruitfully used in other philosophy courses (e.g, philosophy of science) and non-philosophy courses (I think Chapter 6, "Epistemology, Probability, and Science," should be required reading for all science students!).

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 4

I did not find the division of the book into two parts (Traditional Epistemology and Expanded Epistemology) particularly helpful or well-motivated. As someone who teaches courses that touch on the history of Western epistemology, I think coherentism and externalism can be plausibly included in the section on Expanded Epistemology (since for centuries epistemology was dominated by foundationalism and internalism). However, coherentism and externalism are treated in chapters that fall in the section on Traditional Epistemology. Nonetheless, I don't think this is a substantive shortcoming.

Interface rating: 5

I found it to be a very user-friendly text.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

There were no glaring problems with grammar.

Cultural Relevance rating: 5

I found the text to be culturally inclusive, especially the chapters on Social Epistemology (Chapter 7) and Feminist Epistemologies (Chapter 8).

Comments

This is a very strong introductory textbook on the topic of epistemology, and I think students and instructors alike will appreciate many of the textbook's features. Especially noteworthy are the learning outcomes and reflection questions provided in each chapter.