A long-standing objection to the correspondence theory of truth is that it is bound to make truth epistemically inaccessible and knowledge impossible. This sort of objection has led many philosophers to espouse anti-realism by subscribing to some kind of epistemic theory of truth. The aim of this thesis is to reject the standard objection against correspondence truth by arguing (i) that no reasonable version of the epistemic theory of truth is going to make truth epistemically more accessible than correspondence truth, and (ii) that in the framework of a naturalistic epistemology correspondence truth can prove sufficiently accessible to our cognitive efforts. Chapter 1 spells out the content of various claims which are usually described as 'realist' and investigates their connections with correspondence and epistemic truth. Chapter 2 introduces the 'inaccessibility' argument against correspondence truth, discusses Hilary Putnam's 'Brains in a vat' purported refutation of 'external' realism, and argues that ceteris paribus, every epistemic theory of truth falling short of strict verificationism will fail to make truth epistemically more accessible than a correspondence theory can. Chapter 3 provides a discussion of epistemological internalism. It gives an account of the appeal of epistemological internalism on philosophers in the Cartesian tradition and describes two major theoretical problems it has to face. Chapter 4 focuses on externalist accounts of knowing which make room (or can be modified so as to make room) for the possibility that human beings have, at least in certain circumstances, knowledge of their knowledge. Robert Nozick's 'tracking' analysis of factual knowledge and Fred Dretske's 'information-theoretic' analysis of (perceptual) knowledge are extensively discussed. Chapter 5 addresses the charge that purely externalist (i.e., naturalistic) accounts of knowing ought to be seen, in Laurence Bonjour's phrase, 'as simply abandoning the traditional idea of epistemic justification or rationality and along with it anything resembling the traditional conception of knowledge'. This leads to a wider discussion of the role and character of epistemic justification in our argumentative practices. Chapter 6 contains a discussion of various sorts of 'naturalized' epistemologies and identifies the 'naturalistic' claims one must be prepared to subscribe to in order to support the thesis that correspondence truth is something human beings can rationally pursue. Finally, a model-theoretic approach to the analysis of the comparative concept of verisimilitude is presented in the Appendix.

How can we claim to know and even tenaciously hold in science what we might possibly doubt. Standard methodologies of science have not answered this question persuasively. They either propose an answer that misrepresents science or they propose an irrational approach to science. The reason for these two extreme positions is that the accounts of science in these methodologies are based on a false ideal of objectivism - an assumption that the success of science as a branch of human knowledge is based on it being objective in the sense of being impersonal. Michael Polanyi propounds a theory of tacit knowledge, and I claim that this theory provides the best answer to the above question in that it represents scientific activity accurately and rationally. Polanyi rebuttals the false ideal of objectivism/impersonalism in scientific knowledge with a richer account of actual scientific practice. I show that he restores heuristics, and accounts for the role of skill without thereby succumbing to psychologism/subjectivism. I explore Collins and Pinch's claim that controversy is central to scientific progress, and critically examine Mwamba's book length study of Polanyi. I tackle the objections made by the Popperians (notably Alan Musgrave) to Polanyi's theory and the alternative methodology provided by Imre Lakatos/Elie Zahar. I argue that Popperianistic methodologies present incomplete accounts of science. Instead, understanding the nature and functions of tacit knowledge provides a richer epistemology of science. Further, the theory provides grounds for re-tackling the perennial problem of skepticism. In the theory, every act of knowledge is a skilful act and whenever we can point out that we know, we affirm our ways of knowing. Thus removed from the false ideal of objectivism, we are closer to resolving skepticism. The thesis is also an introduction to the still nascent philosophy of Michael Polanyi to analytic philosophy. It is akin to but not identical with Thomas Kuhn's philosophy of science.

To be learnable, words must contribute something that is pretty stable across contexts. But equally, words must also be flexible enough to be able to stretch, in a principled way, to cover new cases. Similarly, to be effective for communication, the information that words encode must be robust enough and flexible enough to help us achieve a wide variety of goals. It is argued that truth conditions, and information understood in terms of truth conditions, cannot satisfy these requirements. A replacement for the truth conditional model is suggested based on a statistically grounded conception of semantic information. Informally, this can be understood in terms of reasonable expectations (what it is reasonable to believe, given the words that were used). Formally, this semantic information is captured using probabilistic and information theoretic tools. Vagueness, understood in terms of borderline cases, is argued to be a byproduct of making the above learning and communication requirements central. Vagueness, understood as our ability to be vague with words, is given an information theoretic explanation. Finally, the account is defended with respect to some of the philosophical problems and puzzles found in the vagueness literature.

In this work we investigate the feasibility of the project of showing that a certain kind of generalisations that philosophers call 'Epistemic Principles', which state conditions for the achievement of epistemic goods such as justifications and entitlements, fulfil general conditions for their correctness. First, we identify the veritistic commitments underlying the project it is argued that some common interpretations of such commitments are mistaken and a minimal interpretation of them is outlined. The minimal interpretation is then defended against some charges of explanatory deficits. We explicate how the project of showing that an epistemic principle is correct is motivated and constrained by the veritistic commitments expounded in the first chapter. Then we show how a form of epistemic circularity constitutes a major obstacle for that project. We discuss several forms of circularity and argue that only one of them threatens the project, we explain the exact nature of the obstacle it poses for the project. Then we examine various strategies that attempt to avert the obstacle some by freeing the project from the veritistic commitments that constrain it, others by constructing an allegedly apriori way of carrying out the project, without giving up its initial veritistic commitments, and still another by reconceptualising the very explanatory goal of the project. All of them are examined in detail and found unsatisfactory. However, it is argued that the doubt that our results cast on the feasibility of the project does not warrant a generalised pessimism about the possibility of obtaining philosophical knowledge concerning epistemic principles, for the results that sustain that doubt constitute themselves knowledge of epistemic principles.

This thesis investigates how fable picture books represent and construct reality through language and image. To this end, it draws on a social semiotic view of language and other semiotic modes .(Halliday, 1978; Kress and van Leeuwen, 1996), and provides a first systematic account of the .1 1(. discursive practices involved in the representation of reality on structural, intermodal and ideological levels of fable picture books. Using a dataset of six picture books featuring contemporary versions of the Aesopic fable "The Tortoise and the Hare", the present thesis explores similarities and differences in representation by developing a three-level methodological framework. In the first level of analysis, the fable picture books are analysed in terms of their generic structure (Hasan, 1984), which reveals significant links between text and image in the introductory stages of character representation. The second level of analysis expands on Kress and van Leeuwen's (1996, 2006) theory of multimodal communication and explores in more detail the visual representations of characters in the dataset, and makes use of a ,~ system of Balance, as proposed by Painter et al. (2011) to explain composition patters in fable picture books. Finally, the third level unpacks ideological meanings by means of a multimodal Social Actor analysis (van Leeuwen, 2008) and a study of characters' Appearance and Manifestation (painter et aI, 2013). The present study therefore makes an original contribution to a growing body of critical studies on the visual narrative and attests that picture books in .general should be analysed multimodally, due to the equal importance of images and text in the processes of meaning-making. It is hoped that the results of this research will be relevant to teachers using fable picture books in their pedagogical practices, as well as to children's book authors and editors interested in the discourse of fables.

The main thesis of this work is that to know is to grasp the truth by means of certain truth-conducive procedures which are socially-designed for the pooling of information and which we acquire through enculturation. The category of knowledge is the product of our social nature and its constitutive norms are regulative rules of our pervasive testimonial practice which are responsibly developed through time by the epistemic community for the promotion of truth. The account of knowledge derived from these inherently social norms is reliabilist, responsibilist and social. The particular combination of reliabilism and responsibilism fostered by the socio-historical nature of the norms resolves various standard issues within the theory of knowledge. The account also provides an epistemology that is truly social. -- After the first preliminary chapter sets up the project to be undertaken and method to be employed, the second chapter introduces a practical explication of the concept of knowledge which rests on the testimonial practice and from which a plausible hypothesis about the nature of knowledge is derived. Given this explication and hypothesis, we consider the nature of this practice in some detail. The next three chapters explore some refinements and consequences of the account promoted by those considerations. The third chapter notes that a fallibilist approach to knowledge that allows us to halt both infallibilism-based and closure-based scepticisms is motivated, as well as a classical invariantist approach. The fourth chapter exploits the aforesaid responsibilism to handle some worries associated with reliabilism. It also considers more general issues, such as the Gettier and value problems. The final chapter closes by adverting to the kind of wide-ranging social epistemology offered.

Using interviews with first time women activists who took part in the 1997 Manchester Airport Runway 2 protest, this thesis explores the construction of stories and knowledge in the process of interview research. As well as the 'topic' of journeys to activism, this project includes an interrogation of the boundaries of 'facts' and 'fictions' and the way knowledge is constructed and presented in academia. Working within a 'feminist framework' and taking seriously issues of referentiality and representation, this thesis argues for an integrated approach to academic writing which refuses binaries of facts/fictions, researcher/researched and self/other and explores ways of foregrounding the researcher as constructor rather than presenter of knowledge.

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