Knowledge First

Abstract

“Knowledge-First” constitutes what is widely regarded as the most significant innovation in contemporary epistemology in the past twenty-five years. Knowledge-first epistemology is (in short) the idea that knowledge per se is an epistemic kind with theoretical importance that is not derivative from its relationship to other epistemic kinds such as rationality. Knowledge-first epistemology is rightly associated with Timothy Williamson in light of his influential book, Knowledge and Its Limits (KAIL). In KAIL, Williamson suggests that although knowing might be characterized as a very general kind of factive mental state, meeting the conditions for knowing is not constitutively explained by meeting the conditions for anything else, e.g. justified true belief. Accordingly, knowledge is conceptually and metaphysically prior to other cognitive and epistemic kinds. In this way, the concept know is a theoretical primitive. The status of know as a theoretical primitive makes it particularly suitable for using it to make substantive constitutive and causal explanations of a number of other phenomena, including the nature of belief, the nature of evidence, and the success of intentional actions. One of the principal virtues of the knowledge-first approach in epistemology is the way that it connects epistemology to other areas in philosophy. This virtue explains in part some of the wide-ranging impact the knowledge-first approach has had over the past decade or so, and it is a virtue that this volume shares. Specifically, the volume explores not merely the knowledge-first approach in epistemology, but also its ramifications for a variety of areas in philosophy, including the philosophy of mind and cognitive science, the philosophy of action, and value theory.