A Companion to Epistemology

1. General Outline

I propose to divide the second edition into four parts:
- Review Essays
- Self-Portraits
- Paradoxes
- Epistemology from a to Z

Part I would consist of ten review essays on central topics in epistemology. The purpose of these essays would be to introduce the reader to the main issues within the topic at hand, and to review the relevant literature on that topic, with a particular emphasis on the past 10-15 years. Each essay may reflect, and to some extent defend, a particular point of view, but the authors would be urged to keep in mind that the primary function of these essays would be clarification and exposition. Specific topics are suggested below. In parentheses, I have suggested authors for invitation. I suggest a maximal length of 6000 words for each of these essays.

Part II would bring together 20 self-portraits of leading epistemologists. The criteria for selecting whom to invite would be as follows: The invitee should
- be at least 50 years old,
- have produced a large body of distinctively epistemological work,
- and be widely recognized and respected for distinctively epistemological contributions.

The contributors for this section should be given a limit of 3000 words.

Part III collects the various entries on paradoxes from the first edition. Each author in this section would be asked to consider updating/revising his contribution. (Should Russell's Paradox and the Liar Paradox be included? They are not distinctively epistemological. On the other hand, their inclusion would nicely round up this section.) [In light of reviewers comments, I suggest we drop this as a separate section, and incorporate the essays as A-Z entries. NGB]

Part IV would consist of the 267 entries of the first edition, as listed below. Of these, 52 are flagged with an '*'. I propose to invite the authors of flagged entries to update or rewrite their entries in light of the literature of the past 10-15 years. I also propose to add 17 new entries:
- basic beliefs
- circularity in epistemology
- closure, epistemic
- conversational implicature
- counterfactuals
- deontology, epistemic (Sharon Ryan)
- epistemology, contemporary (Bruce Russell)
- epistemology, the history of
- evidentialism (Rich Feldman or Earl Conee)
- intuition in epistemology
- knowledge and modality (Keith De Rose)
- knowledge and vagueness
- knowledge as the norm of assertion (Timothy Williamson, Duncan Prichard)
- sensitivity and safety (Noah Lemos)
- speckled hen, the problem of (Noah Lemos)
- voluntarism, doxastic (Sharon Ryan)
- zebras and cleverly disguised mules (Mylan Engel. The purpose of this entry is to ensure that there will be at least on entry in the Z section. It should briefly explain closure failure (Dretske), the relevance of the example within the contextualist literature, and perhaps the kind of skepticism that's based not on classical skeptical alternatives like the BIV hypothesis, but instead on what Hawthorne calls 'lottery propositions'.)

In the list of entries below, the new entries are highlighted by italics. I propose to include, at the beginning of this section, a list of the entries, which in each case indicates the name of the entry, its author, and the page number on which it can be found.

Since Blackwell plans to make the Companion available on-line, I would assume that the new content will initially be published on Blackwell's web site as it becomes available, and that the print version of the second edition will be produced when the on-line version is complete.