Thinker · TH-0053
Alvin Goldman
Alvin Goldman was an American philosopher who taught at the University of Michigan, the University of Arizona and Rutgers. He was a leading proponent…
On the Coordinates: 2.1 Theories of Knowledge · 2.3.2 Internalism vs Externalism · 2.7 Social Epistemology
Also known as Alvin Ira Goldman
1938 – 2024 · Ann Arbor, Tucson, New Brunswick (New Jersey)
Traditions: Analytic
Alvin Goldman was an American philosopher who taught at the University of Michigan, the University of Arizona and Rutgers. He was a leading proponent of process reliabilism, the externalist view that a belief is justified when it is produced by a reliable cognitive process. He also founded veritistic social epistemology, which evaluates social practices and institutions, such as testimony, the press and courts, by how well they lead people to true beliefs.
Key ideas
- A belief is justified if it is produced by a reliable belief-forming process.
- Justification can depend on factors the believer cannot access by reflection (externalism).
- Knowledge requires the ability to discriminate the truth from relevant alternatives.
- Social practices and institutions should be judged by their truth-conducive outputs.
Major works
- "A Causal Theory of Knowing" (1967)
- "What Is Justified Belief?" (1979)
- Epistemology and Cognition (1986)
- Knowledge in a Social World (1999)
In the conversation
- Question I know within ten seconds whether a room will laugh, but I can’t say how. Does that count as knowing?
- Question Norman the clairvoyant is reliably right, yet most people say he doesn’t know. Why?
- Discussion Data is not knowledge: what Dretske’s account says about my credit-scoring models
- Question My grandmother knew when rain was coming but couldn’t say how. Did she know? What is reliabilism?
- Question My model was right for the wrong reason. Which answer to Gettier explains why that matters?
- Debate Reliabilism has a machine problem: reliable prediction is not knowledge
- Question When should someone who isn’t an expert simply defer? What did al-Ghazālī say?
- Reading group Reading group: Gettier’s three pages, with Russell’s clock and Dharmottara’s mirage alongside
In the Journal
In the Coordinates
The questions of philosophy where Alvin Goldman takes a place, from The Coordinates of Thought.
- 2.1 Theories of Knowledge What has to be added to a true belief to make it knowledge?
- 2.3.2 Internalism vs Externalism Do you have to know why you know?
- 2.7 Social Epistemology Much of what you know depends on other people. What follows?