Alvin Goldman | |
|---|---|
 Goldman in 1966 | |
| Born | (1938-10-01)October 1, 1938 Brooklyn, New York, U.S. |
| Died | August 4, 2024(2024-08-04) (aged 85) |
| Education | |
| Thesis | Action (1965) |
| Doctoral advisor | Paul Benacerraf |
| Philosophical work | |
| Era | Contemporary philosophy |
| Region | Western philosophy |
| School | Analytic Foundationalism |
| Main interests | Epistemology,philosophy of action |
| Notable ideas | Causal theory of knowledge,social epistemology,externalist foundationalist theory of justification |
Alvin Ira Goldman (October 1, 1938 – August 4, 2024) was an American philosopher who was emeritus Board of Governors Professor ofPhilosophy andCognitive Science atRutgers University inNew Jersey and a leading figure inepistemology.
Goldman earned his BA fromColumbia University and PhD fromPrinceton University and previously taught at theUniversity of Michigan (1963–1980), theUniversity of Illinois, Chicago (1980–1983) and theUniversity of Arizona (1983–1994). He joined the Rutgers faculty in 1994[1] and retired in 2018.[2]
Goldman was married to the ethicistHolly Martin Smith. He died on August 4, 2024, at the age of 85.[3]
Goldman did influential work on a wide range of philosophical topics, but his principal areas of research wereepistemology,philosophy of mind, andcognitive science.
Goldman's early book,A Theory of Human Action (a revised version of his Ph.D. thesis), presents a systematic way of classifying and relating the many actions we perform at any time. Its influence was broad and can be found in, among other writings, John Rawls's bookA Theory of Justice. Goldman's early work in action theory soon gave way to work in other branches of philosophy, most influentially epistemology.
Goldman's accounts of knowledge and justified belief, using notions like causation and reliability instead of normative concepts like permissibility and obligation, contributed to a philosophical approach that came to be known in the 1970s asnaturalized epistemology. (UnlikeW.V.O. Quine's version of naturalized epistemology, however, Goldman's retains a traditional focus on questions of justification.) Goldman's view emerged initially as part of the efforts in the 1960s to find a "fourth" condition in response to theGettier challenge to the account of knowledge as "justified true belief." In his 1967 paper, "A Causal Theory of Knowing", Goldman proposed that knowledge amounts to the true belief appropriately caused by the fact that makes it true. Later, he claimed knowledge amounts to true belief that is produced by a reliable process.[4]
Goldman described his "naturalistic" approach to epistemology as splitting "epistemology (individual epistemology, anyway) into two parts...
Goldman latterly focused his epistemological efforts on questions ofsocial epistemology, of the different social mechanisms through which knowledge is transmitted in society. His work in social epistemology dealt with the law (especially evidence), voting, and media, among other topics. He attempted to provide (in his words) a less radical view of social epistemology than those suggested bycultural theorists andpostmodernists under that name. His approach used tools ofanalytic philosophy especiallyformal epistemology to analyze problems in social knowledge. Some of this work is summarized in his bookKnowledge in a Social World.
Goldman devoted significant time to showing how research in cognitive science is relevant to a variety of branches of philosophy including epistemology. Much of this work appears in his booksEpistemology and Cognition,Philosophical Applications of Cognitive Science, andSimulating Minds.
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