1

Epistemology’s Paradox (Rowman & Littlefield, 1992)

My first book argued -- as a piece of epistemology -- that it is impossible to develop a rationally coherent theory of knowledge, even of epistemic justification. That sounds confronting. Does it imply that all epistemological thinking, including itself, must fail? In a sense, yes. Is that worrying? It might be.

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A short paper that succinctly conveys some of the spirit and thinking animating that book is my 2010 ‘Elusive epistemological justification’. It is a revised version of a 1992 paper called ‘Lacking Knowledge and justification by theorising about them’, a paper that was cited by David Lewis in note 1 of his noted 1996 paper ‘Elusive knowledge’.)

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2

Good Knowledge, Bad Knowledge (Clarendon [Oxford University] Press, 2001)

Having set that challenge, in my first book, to any attempt to theorise about knowledge or its kin, my next book also set a challenge. Its confrontational sub-title was On Two Dogmas of Epistemology. Those two dogmas are knowledge-absolutism and justificationism. The book argues that each of them might be false.

The first dogma insists that all knowledge is absolute, denying that it is possible to know even a specific fact or truth more, or less, well, with knowledge admitting of grades or degrees. The second dogma assures us that any instance of knowledge must include some good epistemic justification, such as good evidence.

But I develop an alternative model of knowledge, on which we discard those two dogmas. (a) I call the model knowledge-gradualism. It admits the possibility of there being better, or worse, knowledge even of a specific fact. This model has significant benefits. It allows us to defuse some sceptical arguments, perhaps along with the Gettier Problem. (b) I also argued that once we admit the possibility of grades or degrees of knowing, we should allow the conceptual possibility of there being a worst possible grade or degree of knowing. And that, I argue, would be what is often called a mere true belief: it would be a true belief that lacks all justificatory support. How often does this arise? Maybe not often. Is it what we usually want from knowledge? Not usually. Is it therefore not knowledge? Not if this book is correct.

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3

How to Know (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011)

My next book continued that spirit of questioning some theses that seem to be central to contemporary epistemological theorising. This time, I concentrated upon a further aspect of how we are generally told to conceive of knowledge. I argued that all knowledge is knowledge-how -- practical knowledge, knowledge how to do something. It is not uncommon for epistemologists to argue either that (a) knowledge-that and knowledge-how are (metaphysically) different kinds of knowledge, or that (b) all knowledge-how is a kind of knowledge only insofar as it involves, or even is, some form of knowledge-that. I offer another conceptual option -- that all knowledge-that is a kind of knowledge only insofar as it is (and hence involves) some form of  knowledge-how. As I said, all knowing is practical, in the sense of being some or other complex of abilities or skills. 

And then, because abilities or skills in general admit of grades or degrees, this move -- I call it knowledge-practicalism -- provides new support for the key idea present in Good Knowledge, Bad Knowledge (above). That key idea was  knowledge-gradualism, and it becomes even more plausible if this book is correct in its main idea. In short,   knowledge-practicalism begets knowledge-gradualism.

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4

Knowledge and the Gettier Problem (Cambridge University Press, 2016)

For some time (starting in the 1990s), I had been arguing, in several papers, for what I saw as fundamental, yet ignored, failings in how epistemologists were engaging with the challenge that had supposedly been set for them in 1963 by Edmund Gettier, with his famous paper on how not to define knowing. I found it difficult, though, to do justice to how deeply embedded those failings were within post-Gettier  attempts to understand the nature of knowledge. So I wrote this book. I see those failings as afflicting post-Gettier epistemology in large ways, ones that cannot be evaluated by a mere consulting of one's ‘intuitions’, for example, in response to imagined ‘cases’.

The book is thus a detailed argument for post-Gettier epistemology's being built upon some basic mistakes. Those mistakes undermine all of the many kinds of theory (of knowledge) that have been championed in response to Gettier's famous challenge. The failings are methodological and metaphysical. 

That might suggest a book in which readers are guided, in standard fashion, through one post-Gettier theory of knowledge after another, fault being found with each in turn, and consequent frustration being expressed. Not so, though: the book is an attack on the foundations -- methodological and metaphysical, as I said -- of post-Gettier theories of knowledge. And this is established via a general ‘ master argument’, showing that none of the ways in which epistemologists have sought to explain what ‘goes wrong’ within a Gettier case succeeds: none of (epistemic) luck, safety, sensitivity, or virtue does so, in particular. How could that be so? The problem begins with how epistemologists have formulated, from the outset, the challenge of understanding ‘Gettier cases’ and what we need to explain in response to them.

The book includes a critical chapter on the usual reliance on ‘intuitions’ as a way of engaging with Gettier’s challenge. It ends with a compatibilist proposal, showing how, even if any Gettiered belief is not knowledge, knowledge can still be a kind of justified true belief.

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5

Defining Knowledge (Cambridge University Press, 2022)

Some ancient Greek philosophy -- both Socratic and Aristotelian -- meets some current epistemology. Conflict ensues. Who wins? Ah, wouldn't we all like to know? What I can say is that some highly noticeable strands in current epistemology should become a little less purely current, and a little more welcomely ancient. Epistemologists need to attend more carefully to something that is methodologically implied by their oft-cited focus on (what I call) Knowing's Further Features question: what else, if anything, must a belief be, other than true, if it is to be knowledge? Answer: much much less than is standardly claimed. Indeed, does a belief need only to be true, if it is to be knowledge? I wend my way towards that resting-place, by looking, with gratitude, at some scholarly writing on Socratic  analysis, and some on Aristotle on definition. I argue that a notable strain of contemporary epistemology has long overlooked some key constraints, methodological in origin and metaphysical in outcome, on how we should approach the challenge of defining what it is to know a fact or truth. ('But hasn't Timothy Williamson shown us that we do not need to meet that challenge of finding a conceptual analysis of knowledge?' Alas, I do not believe so, as I explain along the way, in this discussion.) 

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6

Stephen Hetherington on Epistemology: Knowing, More or Less (Bloomsbury, 2024) -- (edited by J.J. Joaquin and Mark Dacela)

I call this more a polygraph than a monograph; yet where else on this page does it best belong? It gathers together some of my previously published papers, along with two newly written chapters. Wait a moment, though: there is also an interview with my, by JJ and Mark, the book's excellent editors. It was they who conceived of this book's existence in the first place; it is they who close the book by asking me some questions about aspects of my epistemological efforts - along with a few questions reminding me that, yes, I have also been an actual person along the way. Childhood? It's there. Early philosophy studies? Also there. Start of my career? Why not? And then we plunge into some epistemology. Happy as a pig in muck: who could ask for anything more?

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