Richard Foley (philosopher)
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Richard Foley | |
|---|---|
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| Born | February 12, 1947 (age 78) |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | Brown University (Ph.D.) Miami University (BA and MA) |
| Academic work | |
| Era | Contemporary philosophy |
| School or tradition | Analytic philosophy |
| Institutions | New York University
Rutgers University University of Notre Dame |
| Main interests | Epistemology |
Richard Foley is an American philosopher and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy at New York University.[1] He has made contributions to epistemology, the field of philosophy concerned with the theory of justified (or rational) belief and the theory of knowledge.
Philosophical work
Foley is known for defending foundationalism as a theory of justified belief, but his version is more subjective than traditional versions.[2] He develops his theory as an instance of a general conception of rationality that is instrumentalist.[3] Our actions, decisions, intentions, plans, strategies, etc. are rational insofar as we would regard them as effective means to valuable goals were we to be ideally reflective. Analogously, beliefs are justified to the degree that on ideal reflection we would regard them as adequately promoting a distinctly intellectual goal, that of now having accurate beliefs.[4] In his latest book, Foley argues that practical, ethical, and political values are also relevant for determining when we are justified in adopting new beliefs or revising existing ones. On this view, issues in epistemology are not isolated from practical, ethical, and political issues.[5]
Foley is also known for his arguments against coherentism and reliabilism as theories of justified belief.[6] Against coherentism, he draws upon the lottery paradox and the preface paradox to argue that it's possible for obviously inconsistent beliefs to be justified. Against reliabilism, he maintains that one's current evidence about the reliability of the processes leading to one's beliefs is relevant to whether they are justified, but this evidence, like most other evidence, is fallible. The actual reliability of the processes is thus not a strictly necessary condition of justified belief.
In his work on the relationship between belief and probabilistic degrees of confidence (or credences), Foley introduced a thesis that he named the "Lockean Thesis." It asserts that belief is a matter of having a sufficiently high degree of confidence, and rational belief is rationally having a degree of confidence above the threshold required for belief. The Lockean Thesis has important and widely discussed implications for the logic of belief.[7][8][9][10]
Foley's contributions to the theory of knowledge challenge standard solutions to the Gettier Problem. Edmund Gettier's counterexamples against justified true belief accounts of knowledge[11] prompted numerous proposals about a fourth condition that when added to justification, truth, and belief avoids Gettier problems.[12] Foley, by contrast, maintains that the problems can be avoided by detaching the theory of knowledge from the theory of justified belief. We know something if we believe it, it is true, and we don't lack important information about it.[13][14][15]
References
- ↑ "Richard Foley". as.nyu.edu. Retrieved 2025-03-09.
- ↑ Feldman, Richard (1 September 1989). "Foley's Subjective Foundationalism," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 50, no. 1, pp. 149–58. https://doi1.org/10.2037/2108116
- ↑ Kelly, Thomas (29 May 2003). "Epistemic Rationality as Instrumental Rationality: A Critique." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 66, no. 3, pp. 612–40. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1933-1592.2003.tb00281.x
- ↑ Alston, William (1 September 1989). "Foley's Theory of Epistemic Rationality." Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 50, no. 1, pp. 135–47. https://doi.org/10.2307/2108115
- ↑ Foley, Richard (10 May 2024). Epistemology with a Broad and Long View, Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/9780197772812.001.0001
- ↑ Swain, Marshall (1 September 1989). "On Richard Foley's Theory of Epistemic Rationality," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 50, no. 1, pp. 159–68. https://doi.org/10.2307/2108117
- ↑ Demey, Lorenz (20 May 2012). "Contemporary Epistemic Logic and the Lockean Thesis," Foundations of Science, vol. 18, no. 4, pp. 599–610. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10699-012-9292-9
- ↑ Hawthorne, J. (9 January 2009). "The Lockean Thesis and the Logic of Belief," in Huber, F., Schmidt-Petri, C. (eds) Degrees of Belief. Synthese Library, vol 342, pp. 49-74, Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9198-8_3
- ↑ Hawthorne, J. and Bovens, L. (1 April 1999). "The Preface, the Lottery, and the Logic of Belief," Mind, vol. 108, no. 430, pp. 241–64. https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/108.430.241
- ↑ Shaffer, Michael (24 July 2018). "Foley's Threshold View of Belief and the Safety Condition on Knowledge," Metaphilosophy, vol. 49, no. 4, pp. 589-594. https://doi.org/10.1111/meta.12312.
- ↑ Gettier, Edmund (1 June 1963). "Is Justified True Belief Knowledge?" Analysis, 23, pp. 121-123. https://doi.org/10.2307/3326922
- ↑ Hetherington, Stephen (1 November 2018). The Gettier Problem, Cambridge University Press. https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/gettier-problem/34835111D609F198CDB7DCCCD89EEACF#fndtn-information
- ↑ Booth, Anthony Robert (17 December 2010). "The Theory of Epistemic Justification and the Theory of Knowledge: A Divorce," Erkenntnis, vol. 75, no. 1, pp. 37–43. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-010-9264-9
- ↑ Hannon, Michael (13 December 2013). "Is Knowledge True Belief Plus Adequate Information?" Erkenntnis, vol. 79, no. 5, pp. 1069–76. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10670-013-9593-6
- ↑ Warenski, L. (19 December 2014). "When Is True Belief Knowledge? By Richard Foley," Mind, vol. 123, no. 491, pp. 894–98. https://doi.org/10.1093/mind/fzu103
External links
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