Any theory which says that to know a truth one must believe it and one’s belief must stand in a certain causal relation to the truth itself.
For example, I know that Caesar crossed the Rubicon if his doing so caused some historian to write a book saying so, which caused my local library to buy it, which caused me to read and believe it.
The causal connection might be more complex than a simple chain, and the knower might have to make some inferences.
Objections include the case of timeless truths like those of mathematics, which do not seem to cause anything; and the possibility that the causal chain might be of the wrong sort, so that intuitively one would not say that here was a case of knowledge. (This entry ignores the distinction between facts and events).
Source:
A I Goldman, ‘A Causal Theory of Knowing’, Journal of Philosophy (1967)
Table of Contents
- 1 Videos
- 2 Related Products
- 2.1 What is Scientific Knowledge?
- 2.2 Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market: The Scholar's Edition (LvMI)
- 2.3 Causal Models: How People Think About the World and Its Alternatives
- 2.4 Our Knowledge of the External World (Routledge Classics)
- 2.5 The Poverty of Historicism (Routledge Classics)
- 2.6 A Treatise of Human Nature (Dover Philosophical Classics)
- 2.7 The Foundations of Causal Decision Theory (Cambridge Studies in Probability, Induction and Decision Theory)
- 2.8 Seeing Things as They Are: A Theory of Perception
- 2.9 Causality in Crisis?: Statistical Methods and the Search for Causal Knowledge in the Social Sciences (Studies in Science and the Humanities from the ... for Science, tEchnology, and Values, Vol 4)
- 2.10 Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (Routledge Classics)
- causal theory of memory
- causal theories of perception
- tacit knowledge
- regularity theory of causation
- causal theory of names
Videos
What is Scientific Knowledge?
- English (Publication Language)
- 328 Pages - 06/24/2019 (Publication Date) - Routledge (Publisher)
Man, Economy, and State with Power and Market: The Scholar's Edition (LvMI)
- Amazon Kindle Edition
- Rothbard, Murray N. (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 1506 Pages - 03/30/2009 (Publication Date) - Ludwig von Mises Institute (Publisher)
Causal Models: How People Think About the World and Its Alternatives
- Sloman, Steven (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 224 Pages - 04/17/2009 (Publication Date) - Oxford University Press (Publisher)
Our Knowledge of the External World (Routledge Classics)
- Russell, Bertrand (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 232 Pages - 04/09/2009 (Publication Date) - Routledge (Publisher)
The Poverty of Historicism (Routledge Classics)
- Amazon Kindle Edition
- Popper, Karl (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 178 Pages - 09/05/2013 (Publication Date) - Routledge (Publisher)
A Treatise of Human Nature (Dover Philosophical Classics)
- Amazon Kindle Edition
- Hume, David (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 482 Pages - 04/19/2012 (Publication Date) - Dover Publications (Publisher)
The Foundations of Causal Decision Theory (Cambridge Studies in Probability, Induction and Decision Theory)
- Used Book in Good Condition
- Hardcover Book
- Joyce, James M. (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 284 Pages - 04/13/1999 (Publication Date) - Cambridge University Press (Publisher)
Seeing Things as They Are: A Theory of Perception
- Amazon Kindle Edition
- Searle, John R. (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 254 Pages - 01/28/2015 (Publication Date) - Oxford University Press (Publisher)
Human Knowledge: Its Scope and Limits (Routledge Classics)
- Routledge
- Russell, Bertrand (Author)
- English (Publication Language)
- 480 Pages - 04/06/2009 (Publication Date) - Routledge (Publisher)
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