PHILOSOPHY: Comprehensive Exam Reading List
City University of New York Graduate Center

Epistemology Comprehensive Exam Reading List

(An asterisk* indicates that the work is available, in whole or suitable abridgment, in The Theory of Knowledge: Classical and Contemporary Readings, ed. Pojman (Wadsworth Publishing, 2002.) Two asterisks** indicate that the work is available, in whole or suitable abridgment, in Knowledge: Readings in Contemporary Epistemology, eds. Bernecker and Dretske (Oxford University Press, 2000.))

Works that are available through JSTOR are linked directly to their JSTOR record (requires JSTOR access).

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  1. Scepticism
    1. B. Stroud Ch.2 The Significance of Philosophical Skepticism
    2. Wittgenstein On Certainty 1-317 (40 pgs.)
    3. Peter Unger "A Defense of Skepticism" Philosophical Review lxxx 1971
    4. G.E. Moore "Proof of an external world" in his Philosophical Papers
    5. D. Davidson "A coherence theory of truth and Knowledge"**
    6. H. Putnam "Brains in a vat"**
    7. R. Nozick "Knowledge and Scepticism"**
    8. J.L. Austin "Other minds"**
  2. The Regress and the Foundationalist-Coherentist Responses
    1. R. Chisholm "The Problem of the Criterion"*
    2. E. Sosa, "The Raft and the Pyramid"*
    3. R. Chisholm "The Directly Evident"**
    4. L. Bonjour "The Elements of Coherentism"**
    5. W. Sellars "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" in his Science, Perception, and Reality(to section X—not included)
  3. Gettier Problem/Internalism/Externalism/Closure
    1. E. Gettier "Is True Justified Belief Knowledge?"*
    2. K. Lehrer and T. Paxson "Knowledge: undefeated justified true belief"**
    3. F. Dretske "Conclusive Reasons"**
    4. R. Nozick Philosophical Explanations Ch.III (sections I and II)
    5. A. Goldman "Discrimination and perceptual knowledge"**
    6. D. Lewis "Elusive Knowledge"*
    7. M. Williams "Closure Again" (last chapter of) Unnatural Doubts (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991)
    8. F. Dretske "Précis of Knowledge and the Flow of Information"**
  4. Perception/Knowledge of the external world
    1. B. Russell "On our knowledge of the external world" Ch.III, Our Knowledge of the External World
    2. H.P. Grice "The Causal Theory of Perception" in his Studies in the Way of Words
    3. F. Dretske Knowledge and the Flow of Information Ch. 6
  5. A Prioricity
    1. W. Quine "Two Dogmas of Empiricism" in From a Logical Point of View
    2. N. Chomsky "Rules and Representations" in Behavioral and Brain Sciences 1980.
    3. Field, Hartry "Epistemological Nonfactualism and the A Prioricity of Logic" Philosophical Studies 92 1998: 1-24.
    4. T.Burge "Content Preservation" Philosophical Review (1993).
    5. S. Kripke "A Priori Knowledge, Necessity, and Contingency"**
    6. P. Kitcher "A Priori Knowledge"**
    7. P. Benacerraf "Mathematical Truth" in Philosophy of Mathematics: Selected Readings, eds. Benacerraf and Putnam
  6. Naturalism, Normativity, and Relativism
    1. W.Quine "Epistemology naturalized"**
    2. J. Kim "What is 'naturalized epistemology'?"**
    3. B. Stroud The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism, Ch.VI
    4. R. Rorty Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, Ch.VI
    5. D. Davidson "The Very Idea of a Conceptual Scheme" in his Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation
    6. T. Williamson "Knowledge and Assertion" Philosophical Review 105 (1996) and his Knowledge and its Limits, Ch. 11

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