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This dissertation analyses the epistemology in Plato’s Meno, Phaedo and Theaetetus. It will explain how Plato constructs his thought on knowledge in those three dialogues into a coherent explanation. In the Meno and Phaedo Plato offers an outline of his epistemology. The Meno introduces Meno’s paradox, the theory of recollection and the formula “knowledge is true opinion with an explanation of the reason why”. In the Phaedo, Plato proposes recollection theory as a proof of immortality of soul and introduces the theory of Forms to make the epistemological outline complete. Although this outline of epistemology is systematic, it still has problems, such as knowledge is limited to a narrow sphere and the epistemological function of the body is denied. Theaetetus is an attempt to rethink the definitions of knowledge and to supplement the epistemological outline in the Meno and Phaedo by presenting new theories. In Theaetetus, three definitions of knowledge are discussed, namely, knowledge is perception, knowledge is true opinion, and knowledge is true opinion with an account. During the investigation of the three definitions, Plato successively supplies the detailed explanations of the process of perceiving colours, the wax block analogy, the aviary example and the discussion of the meaning and nature of the concept of account. In the progress of my study, I will also prove that not all of Socrates’ arguments about knowledge are good and strong. Those poor or weak arguments are mainly caused by employing metaphors to illustrate philosophical thought.

This thesis is about foundationalism in epistemology. It distinguishes between different forms of foundationalism and defends one particular version of this doctrine. Chapter 1 gives an account of the motivations for foundationalism, including the so-called epistemic regress argument. It criticizes recent accounts of the core doctrines of foundationalism, such as those of Michael Williams and Ernest Sosa, and proposes a different account according to which foundationalism is the view that (a) some of our beliefs must be non-inferentially justified, (b) perception is a source of non-inferential justification, and (c) perception is a basic source of such justification. Chapter 2 gives an account of traditional foundationalism and tries to identify both what is right with it and what is wrong with it. It argues that the basic insight of traditional foundationalism can be detached from some of the other doctrines with which it was associated by the traditional foundationalists. That insight concerns the role of perceptual awareness or acquaintance as a regress-terminating source of epistemic justification. Chapter 3 exploits this idea in defending a more modest form of foundationalism according to which ordinary perceptual beliefs may be foundational. Chapters 3 and 4 focus on two influential arguments against the view that ordinary beliefs about the world around us can be non- inferentially justified by perception. The first argument trades on the alleged fallibility of perceptual justification, the second on its defeasibility. It is shown that neither argument poses a genuine threat to the more modest version of foundationalism that I defend. Chapter 5 compares perception with other sources of non-inferential justification such as memory and testimony. It defends the view that perception is a privileged source of non- inferential justification, even if it isn't the only source of such justification. It also contrasts foundationalism with traditional forms of externalism such as reliabilism and explains why the latter should not be counted as a form of foundationalism.

My thesis provides an account of the nature of the senses. Many philosophers have supposed that the fact that we have different senses makes the integration of the senses problematic. In this thesis I argue that introspection reveals our perceptual experience to be amodal or unitary (that is, we cannot distinguish distinct experiences associated with each of our senses) and hence that the real problem is not how the senses are integrated with one another, but how and why we distinguish five senses in the first place. What we need is an account of what our judgements are about when we judge that we are, say, seeing something or some property. I argue that such an account cannot take any of the forms commonly supposed. Philosophers often assume that an account must appeal to differences between kinds of experience, but I argue that such differences are not sufficient to explain the way that we distinguish five senses. Nor can we explain the distinction by appealing to the different kinds of mechanism involved in perceiving, since recent cognitive psychological models of the mechanisms of perception show them to be functionally diverse in a way that undermines any correspondence between them and the five senses, and our common-sense grasp of the different mechanisms involved in perception presupposes a prior understanding of the distinction between different senses. I provide and account of the distinction that we make between the five senses, according to which the senses are not substantially distinct. Although our judgements about the senses are true, they are not judgements about kinds of thing; rather, we distinguish different ways of perceiving in terms of different, conventionally determined, kinds of perceptual interaction we can have with our environment.

The thesis is concerned with ideas of 'normality'. What does it mean to be normal, either for the discourses which aim to define this (for example, the human sciences), or for the human subject who is both originator and object of all such attempts? The thesis tries to think the 'normal' as that which is essentially indebted - albeit in an unacknowledged way - to the term which would seem to name the subversion of it, that of the' abnormal'. 'Abnormality' is read throughout as connoting a plurality of 'threats' to what is normal: to error, irrationality, pathology and madness. The first part of the thesis is interested in scientific norms. By elaborating and developing the key terms of French epistemologist Gaston Bachelard's defence of the objectivity of scientific discourse, it is argued that the rationality of scientific norms depends upon their periodic subjection to a deformation (an unnorming) in moments of creative revision. A similar thought emerges through the second chapter, where, following the work of philosopher of medicine Georges Canguilhem, it is argued that what is 'normal' for human beings is precisely to risk one's existing forms of normality through flights into an abnormality of which pathology (including mental illness) is an irreducible risk. The second part of the thesis considers the relationship of literature to normality. Is what is normal for literature that it creatively suspend forms of normality? The third chapter considers this question through Derrida's work on the relation ofliterature to law and aporia. In the final chapter, Bessie Head's novel A Ouestion of Power is read as producing a profound questioning of ideas about what it is to be (mentally, culturally) normal, through the inscription of experiences which refuse simply to be normalised by any scientific, medical or literary expectations

Knowledge is contagious, at least in the sense that the testimony of others can, on occasions, be a source of knowledge. Theories of the epistemology of testimony attempt to account for this, and one can discern two broad themes emerging from the currently burgeoning literature. The first is an inferentialist conception, according to which the justification for testimonial-based beliefs is a form of inductive reasoning, involving appeal to the general reliability of testimony established either as a result of past experience or through a priori reasoning. The second is a transmission conception, according to which the original, non-testimonial justification for the belief is transmitted to the recipient through the act of learning from testimony. In the first part of the thesis, I argue that both conceptions are inadequate. The inferentialist conception fails to distinguish, as I argue it must, between the epistemology of testimony, and other instances of learning from others. The transmission conception ignores the central role that the notion of a perspective plays in epistemic practices. Further, both conceptions fail to take seriously the rich epistemic resources provided by an adequate account of the distinct, experiential state that one enters into as a result of understanding an act of testimony. In the second part of the thesis, I provide just such a rich conception of testimonial experience. Firstly, I defend an account of the epistemic role of perceptual experiential states. Secondly, I defend a parallel between perceptual and testimonial experiential states that allow for a similarity in epistemic role. Thirdly, I develop an account of the act of understanding others that is congenial to the notion of testimonial experience. The 'contagion' metaphor is particularly appropriate in light of the conception that emerges, allowing as it does for an epistemically direct account of acquiring knowledge through testimony.

In this thesis I defend an account of analyticity against some well known objections. I defend a view of analyticity whereby an analytic truth is true by definition, and that logical connectives may be defined by their inference rules. First I answer objections that the very idea of truth-by-definition is metaphysically flawed (things are true because of the world, not definition, it seems). More importantly, I respond to objections that no theory of definitions by inference rules (i.e. implicit definitions) can be given that does not allow spurious definitions (e.g. the `definition' of Prior's connective tonk). I shall argue that demanding normalisation (a.k.a. harmony) of definitional inference rules is a natural and well motivated solution to these objections. I conclude that a coherent account of implicit definition can be given as the basis of an account of analyticity. I then produce some logical results showing that we can give natural deduction rules for complex and interesting logical systems that satisfy a normal form theorem. In particular, I present a deduction system for classical logic that is harmonious (i.e. deductions in it normalise), and show how to extend and enhance it to include strict conditionals and empty reference. Also I discuss two areas where our reasoning and classical logic appear not to match: general conditional reasoning, and reasoning from contradictions. I present a general theory of conditionals (along the lines of Lewis' closest-possible-world account) and I suggest that the logic of conditionals is not entirely analytic. Also, I discuss issues surrounding the ex falso rule and conclude that everything really does follow from a contradiction. Finally I suggest a positive theory of when and how the implicit definitions are made that define our logical language.

The main point of this thesis is to show the relation between the concept of truth and the concept of intention. In Chapter 1 I give an account of what various writers have conceived the problem of truth to be, and have maintained that there are several different concepts of truth and that a complete philosophical discussion of the problem should explain and display the connections between the various concepts of truth and all other concepts to which they are related. Of these, the main problem that I have selected is that of the relation between the general concept of truth and the concept of intention, and asserted that this can best be understood by a consideration of the ways in which these concepts function in the course of linguistic activities. In the second chapter I have discussed what it is that is true-or-false, and have claimed that this is best identified as a sentence, which I have defined as a set of sounds or marks uttered by a human being in the course of a linguistic activity. True-or-false sentences are a sub-class of sentences, and are those sentences uttered in stating, asserting, denying, etc. Chapter III is a working out of the concept of "linguistic intention", which is defined as an intention which can only be achieved by the utterance of a sentence. The existence at some time of a linguistic intention is a necessary condition of linguistic meaningfulness, and in chapter IV I have argued that it is not a sufficient condition. Finally, I have claimed that the truth of a sentence uttered in stating, etc., can only be explained by considering the complex activities of which it forms a part, e.g. doing science. The truth of a sentence, when it is true, is constituted by the success of a linguistic intention, but linguistic intentions are not self-justifying, and their nature and what is involved in their success can only be understood in the wider context of scientific and other human purposes in talking.

Although Hume's Treatise and Enquiry have usually been supposed to be concerned with metaphysical problems his statement of his object, his treatment of the problems he raises and the nature of the development from the Treatise to the Enquiry, suggest that his investigation should be regarded as epistemological, that is to say as concerned with investigation of the nature of what is apprehended by the different mental activities, perceiving, believing, knowing etc., which may be called accusatives, and with the relation of these accusatives to an external world. Such problems are regarded as being of particular importance by many contemporary philosophers. This interpretation implies that a discussion of Hume's philosophy must take the form of a consideration ox the light he throws on the nature of the accusatives to which he refers. It is first necessary, however, to distinguish between a sensation, which is not an accusative, and a perception. This distinction is of importance for Hume, even though he failed to make it, because it enables us to see firstly, that even the simplest accusative consists of distinguishable elements, and secondly that if there is a non-accusative sensation it can only be described in terms of something independent of mind and so does not concern the epistemologist. Hume's epistamological argument concerns the nature of simple impressions and simple ideas, of complex impressions and complex ideas, and the relation of the complex to the simple; the nature of the common sense object as it is apprehended by means of impressions or by means of ideas either of memory or imagination; the nature of concepts, the accusatives which though not themselves perceptions are apprehended as a result of perceptions. He also gives an account of propositions, which may be accusatives either of belief or of knowledge. Finally he shows how these analyses of accusatives enable us to estimate the validity of the evidence of our faculties concerning an external world.

The metaphysical dispute purporting to be about the ultimate nature of material things waged by Berkeley against Locke has these puzzling features: 1. It is irresolvable; both conclusions are designed to be logically fortified against refutation - by fact, common sense belief, or ordinary linguistic use. Thus each becomes logically necessary. 2. Nevertheless the contestants appeal to plain facts and ordinary speech in support of their theories, which thus appear to be empirical hypotheses. 3. The Locke-Berkeley dispute, although irresolvable, persists, and recurs in some twentieth century disputation about the material world and our knowledge of it. A detailed study of selected metaphysical texts reveals these eccentric characteristics. The hypothesis is offered that they appear eccentric only if we expect metaphysics to be like the natural sciences, philology, or plain description of empirical situations. I claim to explain points 1-3 as follows: 1. The dispute is irresolvable, and its conclusions a priori true in terms of the respective systems, because metaphysicians do not provide or describe ordinary information about the world or about language, but interpret it in accordance with a specific motive, determined by non-philosophical interest, and in the service of a general attitude which is expressed in a theory about how the world ought to be described. Redefinitions and special interpretations give an a priori air to the conclusions, but the dispute is basically a clash of attitude. 2. The metaphysical views look empirical because they arise from matter-of-fact considerations, and present a 'picture' of what the material world really is, though neither a description nor a scientific explanation. 3. The dispute is persistent, because the attitudes involved in its expression are common outlooks, which have been evident in western philosophy since the Ancient Greek Philosophers. It is also persistent because clashes of attitude can never be conclusively settled. The nature of a metaphysical view becomes clearer if we think about it by analogy with a work of art, rather than by analogy with a scientific hypothesis, a commonsense description, or a philological account.