Optional theme: Epistemology practice questions.

Locke observes that a snowball's roundness and motion belong to it whether or not anyone is looking, while its whiteness and coldness are powers in it to produce ideas in a perceiver. Which distinction is he drawing?

• Between primary qualities, which our ideas resemble, and secondary qualities, which they do not
• Between analytic judgements, which unpack a concept, and synthetic judgements, which extend it
• Between innate ideas, which the mind brings with it, and acquired ideas, which experience supplies
• Between nominal essences, which we frame, and real essences, which remain unknown to us

Answer: Between primary qualities, which our ideas resemble, and secondary qualities, which they do not

For Locke solidity, extension, figure, motion and number are in the body itself, whereas colours, sounds, tastes and temperatures are powers grounded in those qualities to produce ideas that resemble nothing in the object. The claim is about resemblance, not about illusion: secondary qualities are perfectly real powers of real bodies.

You have never met the author of an anonymous letter, yet you form beliefs about 'whoever wrote this letter'. Russell classifies your epistemic relation to that person as

• knowledge by acquaintance, since you are directly aware of the writer's mind
• knowledge by description, since it is reached only through an identifying phrase
• knowledge how, since you are exercising an inferential skill rather than stating facts
• a priori knowledge, since your belief is not grounded in any sense experience

Answer: knowledge by description, since it is reached only through an identifying phrase

For Russell we are acquainted only with what is directly presented, such as sense-data and universals, and everything else is known by descriptions built out of those items. Treating description as a weaker sort of perception blurs the point: it is a different relation, not a dimmer version of the same one.

An inquirer says that calling a hypothesis true means no more than that it is what inquiry would settle on, because it keeps working when acted upon. This account of truth is

• the correspondence theory, since working is a way of fitting the facts
• the coherence theory, since success is judged against other accepted views
• the pragmatic theory, since truth is tied to what inquiry would settle on
• the deflationary theory, since 'is true' adds nothing to asserting the claim

Answer: the pragmatic theory, since truth is tied to what inquiry would settle on

The pragmatic account, developed by Peirce and James, makes truth internal to the practice of inquiry rather than a static relation between a belief and a fact. Its standard difficulty is that a belief can be useful and false, which is why critics accuse it of changing the subject from truth to acceptability.

A young child forms reliably true beliefs about her surroundings by sight, but cannot cite any grounds for them when asked. Which account is most willing to credit her with knowledge?

• Access internalism, since the grounds of a belief must be available to the believer on reflection
• Coherentism, since her beliefs hang together with one another
• Cartesian foundationalism, since only beliefs that resist all doubt count
• Process reliabilism, since the belief was produced by a dependable faculty

Answer: Process reliabilism, since the belief was produced by a dependable faculty

Reliabilism makes justification depend on a feature of the belief's causal history that the subject need not be able to access, whereas internalist accounts require the grounds to be available to the believer. The child case is the standard pressure point between the two.

A student holds that another person's report gives him knowledge only if he has independent evidence that reports of that kind are generally reliable. In the epistemology of testimony this position is

• anti-reductionist, since hearers are entitled to trust reports by default
• coherentist, since the report is checked against the hearer's other beliefs
• externalist, since the reliability of the speaker settles the matter by itself
• reductionist, since testimonial warrant rests on induction over past reports

Answer: reductionist, since testimonial warrant rests on induction over past reports

Reductionism, associated with Hume's treatment of testimony, treats trust in others as a conclusion supported by evidence about their reliability. Anti-reductionists such as Reid hold instead that testimony is a basic source of warrant, defeasible by counter-evidence but not in need of prior credentials.

Gettier's counterexamples are standardly taken to establish which claim about the tripartite analysis?

• Truth is not a necessary condition for knowledge
• Justification is irrelevant to whether a belief amounts to knowledge at all
• The three conditions can all be met without the subject knowing
• Belief must be replaced by certainty in the analysis

Answer: The three conditions can all be met without the subject knowing

Gettier attacks sufficiency: in his cases a justified true belief is true by luck, because the justification runs through a false step or is satisfied accidentally. Reading him as an attack on the truth condition inverts the argument, since the beliefs in his cases are true.