The Possibility of Knowledge

This book is about how-possible questions in epistemology. A howpossible question asks how something is, or was, possible. Such questions aren’t necessarily philosophical. Students of British politics might wonder how it was possible for John Major to become Prime Minister in 1990 but this is a question for historians and political scientists rather than for philosophers. The how-possible questions that are of philosophical interest are metaphysical, ethical, or epistemological. So, for example, a philosopher might ask how freedom of the will is possible or how evil is possible or how knowledge is possible. The latter is an example of an epistemological how-possible question. The following chapters are about how this question arises and what a good answer to it would look like. The basic idea is very simple. We start by assuming that knowledge is possible but then come across apparent obstacles to its existence or acquisition. So the question is: how is knowledge, or knowledge of some specific kind, possible given the various factors that make it look impossible? On this account, how-possible questions are obstacledependent. Sceptics are people who think that the obstacles to knowledge are insuperable and that knowledge is therefore impossible. If we don’t want to end up as sceptics we will have to show that the alleged obstacles are unreal or that they can be overcome. Either way, it is the perceived obstacle that gives the how-possible question its bite. What would be an example of an obstacle to knowledge? It’s easier to get a sense of the problem in relation to particular kinds of knowledge, say knowledge of the external world. This kind of knowledge isn’t possible for us unless we have ways of knowing something about the external world, that is, viable sources of knowledge of the world around us. The absence of such sources would therefore be one obstacle. If this is the obstacle that triggers the how-possible question then it looks as though an effective response is going to have to operate at several
different levels: at one level, it is going to have to show that we do have at our disposal genuine ways or means of knowing about the external world. Second, any apparent obstacles to the acquisition of knowledge by the proposed means will need to be dealt with. Third, an account might be given of what makes it possible for us to come to know things about the world around us by these suggested means

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