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McCain and Moretti develop a new appearance/seemings-based theory of epistemic justification. This theory, Phenomenal Explanationism, takes as a reasonable starting point the idea that how things appear provides evidence about how the world is. However, unlike other appearance-based theories, Phenomenal Explanationism does not rely on an overly simplistic account of evidential support where things appearing a particular way is sufficient for rationally believing they are that way. Instead, Phenomenal Explanationism takes the insight that appearances are evidence and imbeds it into a broader explanationist framework. In this broader framework the world appearing a particular way provides sufficient justification for believing the world is that way just in case the world being the way it appears best explains the total evidence. Although Phenomenal Explanationism draws inspiration from Phenomenal Conservatism and explanationist theories, it is superior to both in that it offers a satisfying, complete theory of epistemic justification.

Whereas we may think that knowledge requires certainty, this is not the case. We may be psychologically certain about something and still be wrong because of faults in our perception, because we are deceived, or because of reasoning errors. Epistemic certainty is impossible to achieve because we cannot be epistemically certain about anything. Fortunately, neither epistemic nor psychological certainty is a requirement for knowledge. Rather, what knowledge requires is good, solid evidence on the basis of which we can make choices and decisions. The better the evidence is, the better the choices and decisions can be. Thus, we can lead our lives successfully by relying on good evidence. We can certainly live with uncertainty.

People strive for certainty due to an inherent desire for it. Uncertainty seems to be stressful in the same unconscious manner as anger and fear. We cannot really control this feeling, and we feel relaxed only when we feel certain about what we know or about what we should anticipate. However, our world is filled with uncertainty and so are most aspects of our life. Therefore, instead for looking for certainty where it does not exist, we had better learn to appreciate uncertainty and learn to live and deal with it. Education could play a major role here. But a major shift is necessary from the current educational practice of providing yes or no answers to one that would educate people to understand and deal with risk and uncertainty.

Data from studies conducted to determine acceptance rates for evolution are often misleading. The questions that are asked and compared to one another do not always give an authentic picture of respondents' views. Quite often, polls, such as those by IPSOS, Gallup, and PEW, also run together questions asking respondents' beliefs in concepts like God with questions asking respondents' beliefs about concepts like evolution. The two are distinct and should not be confused. One might believe in evolution while having wrong beliefs about it, whereas someone else might decide not to believe in evolution while having accurate beliefs about it. Distinguishing between " belief in" and " belief about" might help remove an unrecognized confounding element from these studies.

Explanationism is an attractive family of theories of epistemic justification. In broad terms, explanationism is the idea that what a person is justified in believing depends on their explanatory position. At its core, explanationism involves commitment to the claim that the fact p would best explain a body of evidence if p were true is itself evidence that p is true. In slogan form: explanatoriness is evidentially relevant. Despite its plausibility, explanationism has been criticized for various reasons. This chapter strengthens the case for explanationism by defending it from a recent attack by Elliott Sober and William Roche.

Explaining phenomena is a primary goal of science. Consequently, it is unsurprising that gaining a proper understanding of the nature of explanation is an important goal of science education. In order to properly understand explanation, however, it is not enough to simply consider theories of the nature of explanation. Properly understanding explanation requires grasping the relation between explanation and understanding, as well as how explanations can lead to scientific knowledge. This article examines the nature of explanation, its relation to understanding, and how explanations are used to generate scientific knowledge via inferences to the best explanation. Studying these features and applications of explanation not only provides insight into a concept that is important for science education in its own right, but also sheds light on an aspect of recent debates concerning the so-called consensus view of nature of science (NOS). Once the relation between explanation, understanding, and knowledge is clear, it becomes apparent that science is unified in important ways. Seeing this unification provides some support for thinking that there are general features of NOS of the sort proposed by the consensus view and that teaching about these general features of NOS should be a goal of science education.

Recently, Dan O’Brien has argued that there are situations in which a hearer can gain testimonial knowledge from a speaker who is lying. In order to make his case, O’Brien presents two examples where a speaker lies to a hearer, but supposedly the hearer comes to have testimonial knowledge on the basis of the lying speaker’s testimony. O’Brien claims that his examples demonstrate that lies can be used to pass on knowledge in a non-inferential fashion. I argue that O’Brien is mistaken. More specifically, I argue that the hearer’s belief in the second example that O’Brien depicts fails to meet two plausible conditions for knowledge. First, the hearer’s belief fails to satisfy the requirements of the epistemic basing relation. Second, the hearer’s belief is not safe.

Whereas the previous two chapters responded to philosophical challenges to our scientific knowledge this chapter explores a more practical threat to scientific knowledge. This challenge comes from research which suggests we are subject to a number of biases and irrational processes when forming our beliefs. Numerous studies have seemingly shown that people are prone to make systematic errors of reasoning in particular kinds of cases. Some take this evidence of human irrationality to undercut our knowledge in general, and hence, our scientific knowledge as well. This chapter argues that this challenge does not pose a significant threat to our scientific knowledge. Although there is evidence for human irrationality, we have ways of keeping this sort of irrationality contained so that it does not “infect” all of our beliefs. So, while we are prone to make systematic errors in certain cases, we are aware of our proclivities, and we can take steps to counteract our natural shortcomings.

This chapter explores how we gain knowledge from other people. In particular two of the primary ways that we come to have social evidence are explored. The first is the most prevalent form of social evidence: testimony. This chapter examines some of the best explanations of how it is that we come to have knowledge via the testimony of others. The second way that we come to have social evidence is by learning of disagreements. This chapter explores the epistemic significance of disagreement as it occurs in science. In particular it discusses how we should respond when we discover that someone disagrees with us about a scientific claim. When we discover that equally informed experts in an area of science disagree we should refrain from believing one side or the other is correct until we have further deciding evidence. When novices discover that experts disagree with them concerning a scientific claim, the novices should defer to the experts.

This chapter begins by briefly recapping what has been discovered about the traditional account of knowledge throughout the previous chapters. The traditional account of knowledge holds that one has knowledge of some proposition just in case one justifiedly believes the proposition, and the proposition is true. As earlier chapters showed, believing a proposition requires having an appropriate mental representation of the proposition, being justified in believing the proposition requires believing on it on the basis of sufficiently strong evidence, and a proposition’s being true consists of it accurately describing objective reality. After the traditional account of knowledge has been made clear, a decisive objection to that account of knowledge is explained: the Gettier Problem. In addition to explaining how the Gettier Problem shows that the traditional account of knowledge is incomplete this chapter explores some promising responses to the Gettier Problem. Finally, the chapter concludes by noting that even without an answer to the Gettier Problem we can use the traditional account of knowledge as a framework for understanding scientific knowledge.

It is commonplace to distinguish between propositional justification (having good reasons for believing p) and doxastic justification (believing p on the basis of those good reasons).One necessary requirement for bridging the gap between S’s merely having propositional justification that p and S’s having doxastic justification that p is that S base her belief that p on her reasons (propositional justification).A plausible suggestion for what it takes for S’s belief to be based on her reasons is that her reasons must contribute causally to S’s having that belief. Though this suggestion is plausible, causal accounts of the basing relation that have been proposed have not fared well. In particular, cases involving causal deviancy and cases involving over-determination have posed serious problems for causal accounts of the basing relation. Although previous causal accounts of the basing relation seem to fall before these problems, it is possible to construct an acceptable causal account of the basing relation. That is, it is possible to construct a causal account of the basing relation that not only fits our intuitions about doxastic justification in general, but also is not susceptible to the problems posed by causal deviancy and causal over-determination. The interventionist account of causation provides the tools for constructing such an account. My aim is to make use of the insights of the interventionist account of causation to develop and defend an adequate causal account of the basing relation.