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Philosophers

Mortimer Adler
Rogers Albritton
Alexander of Aphrodisias
G.E.M.Anscombe
Thomas Aquinas
Aristotle
David Armstrong
Augustine
A.J.Ayer
Mark Balaguer
William Belsham
Isaiah Berlin
Bernard Berofsky
Susanne Bobzien
George Boole
F.H.Bradley
C.D.Broad
C.A.Campbell
Joseph Keim Campbell
Carneades
Ernst Cassirer
Roderick Chisholm
Chrysippus
Cicero
Randolph Clarke
Samuel Clarke
Donald Davidson
Democritus
Daniel Dennett
René Descartes
Richard Double
Fred Dretske
John Earman
Laura Waddell Ekstrom
Epictetus
Epicurus
John Martin Fischer
Owen Flanagan
Philippa Foot
Alfred Fouilleé
Harry Frankfurt
Richard L. Franklin
Carl Ginet
Nicholas St. John Green
Ian Hacking
Ishtiyaque Haji
Stuart Hampshire
Georg W.F. Hegel
Martin Heidegger
R.E.Hobart
Thomas Hobbes
David Hodgson
Shadsworth Hodgson
Ted Honderich
Pamela Huby
David Hume
William James
Robert Kane
Immanuel Kant
Tomis Kapitan
Christine Korsgaard
Keith Lehrer
Gottfried Leibniz
Leucippus
C.I.Lewis
David Lewis
John Locke
John R. Lucas
Lucretius
Hugh McCann
Colin McGinn
Michael McKenna
Alfred Mele
John Stuart Mill
Dickinson Miller
G.E.Moore
Thomas Nagel
Friedrich Nietzsche
P.H.Nowell-Smith
Robert Nozick
William of Ockham
Timothy O'Connor
Charles Sanders Peirce
Derk Pereboom
Steven Pinker
Plato
Karl Popper
H.A.Prichard
Willard van Orman Quine
Frank Ramsey
Ayn Rand
Thomas Reid
Charles Renouvier
Nicholas Rescher
Josiah Royce
Bertrand Russell
Paul Russell
Gilbert Ryle
T.M.Scanlon
Moritz Schlick
Arthur Schopenhauer
John Searle
Henry Sidgwick
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong
J.J.C.Smart
Saul Smilansky
Michael Smith
Galen Strawson
Peter Strawson
Eleonore Stump
Richard Taylor
Kevin Timpe
Peter van Inwagen
Manuel Vargas
John Venn
Kadri Vihvelin
G.H. von Wright
R. Jay Wallace
Ted Warfield
Roy Weatherford
Alfred North Whitehead
David Widerker
David Wiggins
Ludwig Wittgenstein
Susan Wolf

Scientists

Margaret Boden
Neils Bohr
Ludwig Boltzmann
Max Born
Stephen Brush
Arthur Holly Compton
Abraham de Moivre
John Eccles
Arthur Stanley Eddington
Albert Einstein
Richard Feynman
A.O.Gomes
Joshua Greene
Jacques Hadamard
Martin Heisenberg
Werner Heisenberg
Pierre-Simon Laplace
David Layzer
Ernst Mach
Henry Margenau
James Clerk Maxwell
Ernst Mayr
Jacques Monod
Steven Pinker
Max Planck
Henri Poincaré
Erwin Schrödinger
Herbert Simon
B. F. Skinner
William Thomson (Kelvin)
John von Neumann
Daniel Wegner
Steven Weinberg
 
Infinite Regress
Plato in the Theatetus (200D-201C) defined knowledge as justified true belief. Justification was providing some reasons (λόγος or συλλογισμῶ), a rational explanation for the belief. True opinion accompanied by reason is knowledge. (δόξαν ἀληθῆ μετὰ λόγου ἐπιστήμην εἶναι) (202C)

The infinite regress arises when we ask what are the justifications for the reasons themselves.

If the reasons count as knowledge, they must be justified with reasons for the reasons.

The problem of the infinite regress was a critical argument of the Skeptics in ancient philosophy.

Sextus Empiricus tells us there are two basic Pyrrhonian modes or tropes that lead the skeptic to suspension of judgment (ἐποχῆ):

They [skeptics] hand down also two other modes leading to suspension of judgement. Since every object of apprehension seems to be apprehended either through itself or through another object, by showing that nothing is apprehended either through itself or through another thing, they introduce doubt, as they suppose, about everything. That nothing is apprehended through itself is plain, they say, from the controversy which exists amongst the physicists regarding, I imagine, all things, both sensibles and intelligibles; which controversy admits of no settlement because we can neither employ a sensible nor an intelligible criterion, since every criterion we may adopt is controverted and therefore discredited.

And the reason why they do not allow that anything is apprehended through something else is this: If that through which an object is apprehended must always itself be apprehended through some other thing, one is involved in a process of circular reasoning or in regress ad infinitum. And if, on the other hand, one should choose to assume that the thing through which another object is apprehended is itself apprehended through itself, this is refuted by the fact that, for the reasons already stated, nothing is apprehended through itself. But as to how what conflicts with itself can possibly be apprehended either through itself or through some other thing we remain in doubt, so long as the criterion of truth or of apprehension is not apparent, and signs, even apart from demonstration, are rejected.
(Outlines of Pyrrhonism, Loeb Library, R.G.Bury tr., 1.178-79)

The skeptic can always ask a philosopher for justifying reasons. When those reasons are given, he can demand their justification, and this in turn leads to an infinite regress of justifications.

The endless controversy and disagreement of all philosophers cautions us against accepting any of their arguments as knowledge.

Second only to Kant 's "scandal" that philosophers cannot logically prove the existence of the external world, it is scandalous that professional philosophers to this day are in such profound disagreement about what it means to know something.

Epistemologists may not all be wrong, but how many of them are likely to be right?

This is especially dismaying for those epistemologists who still see a normative role for philosophy that could provide a foundation, perhaps even a priori, for scientific or empirical a posteriori knowledge.

In recent years, professional epistemologists have been reduced to quibbling over "Gettier problems" - clever sophistical examples and counterexamples that defeat the reasoned justifications for true beliefs.

Following some unpublished work of Gregory O'Hair, David Armstrong identifies and diagrams several possible ways to escape Plato's infinite regress, including:

  • Skepticism - knowledge is impossible

  • The regress is infinite but virtuous

  • The regress is finite, but has no end (Coherence view)

  • The regress ends in self-evident truths (Foundationalist view)

  • Non-inferential credibility, such as direct sense perceptions

  • Externalist theories (O'Hair is the source of the term "externalist")

  • Causal view (Ramsey)

  • Reliability view (Ramsey)
For Teachers
For Scholars

Chapter 3.7 - The Ergod Chapter 4.2 - The History of the Knowledge Problem
Part Three - Value Part Five - Problems
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