User:Dominic Mayers/sandbox/Historical context

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The new paragraph on Descartes
Some arguments used in the contemporary externalist/internalist debate in philosophy of mind refer to the relation between mind and body that Descartes introduced in the early modern period. Descartes' answers to epistemological questions are not so easily related to contemporary justificatory views in naturalized epistemology and in the epistemological counterpart of this debate in particular,  but both debates have been related and constitute together a fundamental part of contemporary epistemology and of key contemporary epistemological concepts such as virtue epistemology. Descartes is well known for his dualism, but he is mostly known for his skeptical approach. He used this approach, not to deny that the objects of sensory experiences follow precise laws that can be known, but to gain certainty in the mind side, in the cogito, and he used this as a platform to get to other truths. In that respect,  Descartes was influenced by Plato. However, Descartes argued for a different kind of dualism. The new aspect of Cartesian dualism, with no counterpart in Plato's dualism, is the existence of a real physical world behind the sensory experiences with its own laws and a real mental substance behind our mental experiences and a causal relation between these two worlds. The part of this view, which says that "the external world is real but known to us only indirectly, is called indirect realism.  In that sense, Descartes was the father of modern realism and, for realists, of modern philosophy as well.  Descartes's interactionism (interaction between the physical reality and the substance of the mind) was abandoned in the nineteenth century because of the growing popularity of philosophical mechanism.  Realism itself was not abandoned, only the coexistence of an independent substance behind the mind was abandoned.

Explaining the scope
The scope is "epistemology" one would say and the article presents all view points and only gives more weight to the mainstream view point, but we still should not claim in Wikipedia's voice that any view point presented is mainstream, because in philosophy "meanstream" is a very relative concept, relative to cultures and academic circles. There is no need to claim that. It is sufficient to name the key journals and authors that present the view. Usually, it will be easy to find other journals and known authors that present a different views and the reader can judge for himself.

The important is that the reader has the different views that lead to different scopes, even views that are not considered mainstream, because these help the reader to put the scope in context.

After a lecture of Floridi's The renaissance of epistemology and other sources, it becomes clear that a key factor is the notion of naturalism and its connection with the role of science. Floridi mentions also the rejection of idealism, but there would be no rejection of idealism, if it was not for the role of science and, nowadays, the role of science is seen by many under the name of naturalism. It's not in itself an explanation for any scope, because "naturalism" is seen in different ways depending on the view point. The scope can be explained as a kind of naturalism. The task is to explain which kind.

Another point that becomes obvious after trying to explain the scope in terms of the "renaissance" of epistemology that occurred after the analytic turn is that it is perfectly fine to consider only views that unfolded after the analytic turn, but one must accept that perhaps the most important of these recent views, as far as the scope is concerned, are recent views about past philosophies. Somehow, when contemporary philosophers discuss the scope of epistemology they often do so by referring to ancient philosophies.

Knowledge and belief being of distinct kinds
One point that is controversial in the sources regarding past philosophies is whether knowledge has always been considered a kind of belief. Understanding this controversy requires an understanding of what is meant by "kind of belief". Naïvely, one would say a belief that p is simply a state that would be knowledge that p except for a missing epistemic warrant, but that is cyclic reasoning, because it assumes that knowledge is a belief together with the missing warrant (given that the belief is true). So, what is a belief in the statement "knowledge is not a kind of belief (not even a  belief with an extra warrant)": what is the restriction on knowledge in that statement? Perhaps, a "belief that p" (even with an extra warrant) cannot be the knowledge that p because it misses a real connection with the real state of knowledge that p. In this perspective, knowledge is something that exists on its own as a reality internal to the individual, perhaps in the form of expectations or predispositions, but not necessarily as propositional knowledge. A belief that p, no matter what is the extra warrant, cannot be the knowledge that p, because the knowledge that p is something different that can become propositional knowledge by some learning or recollection process that is not the same thing as adding a separate warrant to a belief that p. In this view, an ascent to p can occur without a recollection of p and in that case, there is only a belief that p, not knowledge that p. The notion that there are different kinds of relations between a subject S and a fact associated with a proposition p is not surprising. For example, consider a situation in which a tiger is there and the proposition p is "a tiger is there". The subject can dream that the tiger is there just like it is the case in reality or the subject might actually see the tiger. These are different kinds of states in the following sense that adding an epistemic warrant to the dream would not make it the actual experience of the tiger. In the same way, beliefs and knowledge are different kinds of states and adding an epistemic warrant to a belief cannot make it a knowledge. This does not mean that one cannot pass from one state to the other, but the process is not an epistemic process. Unlike in the case of a dream, having a belief that p might actually help in the process toward knowing that p, but that does not mean that the process is entirely epistemological.

The purpose of the definition of knowledge
A point that is mentioned in different ways by philosophers such as Pierre Wagner is that "philosophers are distinguished and opposed not only by the answers they provide but also and perhaps even above all by the way in which they raise certain problems rather than others." Many approaches to knowledge accept as non problematic that knowledge does not always need justification. In fact, many approaches to knowledge accept that knowledge can even be false. For example, in the early 20th century, Delaney says, American realists proposed a model of perceptual knowledge to make sure that it could be erroneous. The problem situation that they faced is how to explain that our knowledge of the external world is some times erroneous, even possibly illusory. Somehow, a group of professional epistemologists in the late 20th century and still today confront the opposite problem situation in which it is important that knowledge is true and not only through epistemological luck. It would be interesting to understand more precisely what is this problem situation, but it is difficult. This specific form of contemporary epistemology asks the question how knowledge can satisfy this absence of epistemic luck and be immune to Gettier-like problems, but it is criticised for not properly linking the question to the history of philosophy and its traditional questions that have arisen in terms of practical concerns in other fields of inquiry.

Realism, truth, and certainty
Christian Piller discusses the view of Brentano on truth. This is an example of an empiricist that rejected the correspondence theory of truth. Paul Guyer and Rolf-Peter Horstmann in the entry Idealism of the Stanford Encyclopedia of philosophy write:

Both kinds of idealism accept "external observations" that follows the laws of nature that science discover, but they attribute different sources to these laws. The first kind of idealism says the source can only be entirely internal, because there is no external reality. The second kind says the laws depend on both the internal and the external, but what we know is never the external reality alone. Once the laws are fixed, there is no way to distinguish between these two forms of idealism. However, the kind of laws that are searched by science might depend on the kind of idealism that is adopted. The argument against the first kind of idealism is why are the laws the same as if there was an external reality. The reply is that an individual body is a convenient concept within the laws to explain the individual life, but the individual life is not within any object or body. The body is created by the laws and the life is never detached from these laws: a body is only a convenience concept in the expression of the laws. A concept cannot do anything real to real life. Often idealism is seen as synonymous with dogmatism or a belief in certainty, but a fallibilist idealism is possible. In the following passage of Elizabeth Millan, "anti-realist" could be replaced with "anti-empiricist" and "not real" with "not obtained from real experiences".

These two forms of idealism do not say they are fallible, but being based on our sensory experiences they are as fallible as any realistic theory of knowledge. James O. Bennett in 1982 argues that fallibilism is not compatible with knowledge as Justified true belief. But nowadays, fallibilism is seen as compatible with knowledge as justified true belief. Charity Henderson adds: Michael Williams makes an important distinction between the "philosophical skeptics" that say we can use what is not knowledge in a practical manner and the "radical skeptics" that say we are not entitle to use any thing as if it was knowledge. Instead of modifying the conception of what is knowledge to encompass what is used as knowledge, Williams says that the practical fallibilists are philosophical skeptics who reject the possibility of knowledge, but they do that only because the definition of knowledge requires an appropriate anti-Gettier warrant that does not exist, especially not in the case of the universal laws of nature that are most likely false, false in the following sense that they will be contradicted by more accurate laws in the future. The philosophical skeptics accept the existence of knowledge when defined differently without a required anti-Gettier warrant. Practical fallibilists do not say that they reject the possibility of knowledge. They instead say that knowledge can be false and yet useful in practice, just as we know it is the case for Newton's law of gravitation. In other words, practical fallibilists do not see themselves as skeptical, but only realistic about knowledge. They see that the skeptical argument applies to the requirement for a warrant that must be added to a belief to make it knowledge. They accept that the best evidence would still allow for the possibility that the knowledge is false and they also accept that the requirement for a warrant leads to infinite regress. Therefore, it is not clear what the following passage means: On the contrary, the philosophical skeptics did act on the skeptical argument by not adopting the requirement for an external warrant (to be added to a belief).

Also, Williams relies on a distinction between truth and certainty. This distinction makes sense when one has a theory of truth that is independent from a method of justification. Such a definition is provided when we have a language, axioms and rules of deduction, but the axioms and the rules of deductions are a part of the criterion of truth. That does not provide a criterion of truth for the axioms and the rules of deduction themselves. Someone might say that the correspondence theory of truth does not require the axioms and the rules of deduction, but that correspondence theory of truth would never come with any kind of epistemic warrant, because the basis of the criterion, the "real" external world, is not available to any epistemic criterion or warrant. If we accept a direct connection of knowledge with the external object, then it provides an ontological explanation and this was used by Brentano and many others. This explanation is rejected by many as being useless epistemologically, but it is only useless if an epistemic warrant is necessary: it is cyclic reasoning. With an independent theory of truth, certainty can be distinct from truth by being defined in terms of justification, but this independent criterion of truth does not exist for the foundation and so it does not exist. This is indirectly discussed by J. Blackmore, R. Itagaki and S. Tanaka in footnote 13 of Husserl VS. Jerusalem  in Ernst Mach's Vienna 1895-1930.

Examples of how sources discuss the scope
Neutrality requires that editors take some distance over the way sources describe their view. For example, if a source says that it covers all of epistemology, the editors cannot make Wikipedia says that this is the case in its own voice. It would be neutral that a Wikipedia article says that the source claims to cover all of epistemology. However, it might not be that interesting from the point of view of epistemology to express that neutral fact, because it is more a fact about the source than a fact about epistemology. The subtle point being made here is that the way a Wikipedia article describes its scope does not have to be verifiable and, in fact, should ideally not be verifiable, because, as just explained, the editors must take some distance over the way sources describe their view: we do not want to follow sources that claim that all epistemology is only this or that. We can use the same scope as in some sources or create our own scope, but in all cases, it must be done in a neutral manner, i.e, by attributing the main views and all pertinent related views to their sources, not by presenting them as truths. An editor might say that the scope is simply "epistemology", but the scope attributed to "epistemology" depends on the metaphysical view adopted. It would be unrealistic and not natural to try to present epistemology from all possible metaphysical views. Sources do not do that. Sources in English usually adopt the mainstream metaphysical  view adopted in English speaking countries. That does not mean we should present this view as the truth. In fact, it is hard to evaluate how mainstream a supposedly mainstream view is. Therefore, it is safer from a neutrality point of view to situate this mainstream view in its context. Besides, this approach will also be more instructive for the readers.

The original purpose of looking at the way sources present their scope was to try to locate what could be that mainstream perspective in English countries and situate it in its larger context. This failed. The first examples presented do not refer to past philosophies, because it was mistakenly thought, at first, that it was better to ignore past philosophies, but that is not the main reason why the approach failed. It failed, because as explained above, it is necessary to take a distance over the way sources describe their view. Nevertheless, these examples are presented. Hopefully other sources will discuss them and present them in a larger context.

Audi's Epistemology: A contemporary introduction to the theory of knowledge
The preface of the first edition of conceives epistemology "as the theory of knowledge and justification". A study of justification can proceed in many ways. Audi makes the scope more precise and says :  This together with the following passage clearly sets the stage Clearly, we see the scope is intended to be consistent with a form of naturalism in which knowledge is a belief that requires justification. A study of justification could proceed differently and consider a view in which "justification" is nothing more than a pragmatical satisfaction with the practical aspect of that knowledge, a satisfaction that constitutes  the bridge between the propositional side of knowledge and the "reality", which is more than what is expressed at the propositional level. This satisfaction implies that the proposition is part of a web of propositions that are also connected with that "reality" and is more than just a guess work as in the example of the way to Larissa given by Plato in the Meno dialog. This satisfaction, therefore, cannot be brought at the propositional level without creating the infinite regress that it pragmatically resolves otherwise. The book does not take this view seriously. Its section The pragmatic theory of truth does not analyse this satisfaction as if it was a satisfaction with the techne, practical or meaningful side of the knowledge. It analyses it as a satisfaction with particular outcomes of that knowledge and rejects it on the basis that it does not provide a proper analysis of knowledge as expected in the naturalistic view that is adopted by the book.

Barnett's Introduction to Philosophy: Epistemology
This is a simple case. starts with the premise that knowledge is justified true belief :

Sven Bernecker and Duncan Pritchard's The Routledge companion to Epistemology
has no global introduction to epistemology and simply mentions in the preface : This does not limit much the scope. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that the three first chapters are "Truth", "Belief" and "Epistemic justification".

Bonjour's Epistemology
never truly defines the scope of the book, but the first chapters clearly shows a view of knowledge as justified true belief and variations on it. In chapter 1, Bonjour discusses ordinary experiences of things that we think we know, thus setting the stage for knowledge to be a kind of belief. Chapter 2 is a review of Descartes approach. In chapter 3, it says : Next, after only two paragraphs, Bonjour concludes that Variations on this definition are given in the books, but they they are based on the same basic view of knowledge. The response to the pragmatic approach in chapter 12 shows that Bonjour comes back to the basic view that knowledge is belief in need of justification: The counter argument in this passage misses the point that the idea of pragmatism is that satisfaction is a primary experience that does not need justification. Of course, if that metaphysical perspective in which satisfaction is primary and does not require justification is rejected, then pragmatism is useless to avoid an infinite regress. But, this is not enough to say that there is a definitive restriction of the scope to that view. It will be useful to see how the book covers other key aspects such as naturalism versus anti-naturalism, internalism versus externalism, foundationalism versus coherentism, the problem of the criterion and skepticism in general.

Conee and Feldman's Epistemology in Borchert
The encyclopedia article is also quite straightforward regarding the scope:

Avrum Stroll Epistemology in Britannica
This encyclopedia article does not focus on the problem of justification and therefore has a different scope than the WP article Epistemology. Instead, it presents concepts, often pairs of opposite concepts: mental versus non-mental knowledge, occasional and dispositional knowledge, a priori and a posteriori knowledge, necessary and contingent propositions, analytic and synthetic propositions, tautological and signiﬁcant propositions, logical and factual propositions, description and justiﬁcation, knowledge and certainty. The specific notion of necessary a posteriori propositions is discussed. The article also discusses the origins of knowledge, while presenting yet other distinctions : innate and acquired knowledge, rationalism and empiricism. The nature of knowledge is discussed, the notion of a priori knowledge and Plato's view of knowledge as recollection is presented, but without any explicit link with the problem of justification. The last section is about Skepticism.

The article starts with two skeptical questions : can we trust what our senses suggest about an external world and how do we know the world is the same in one mind as in other minds. These questions could have been used to suggest an idealistic solution to the problem of justification such as the existence of some inter-subjective a priori knowledge that is shared by the different minds. But the article sets the stage clearly and, in a way that is a bit at odd with the section on the origin of knowledge, says instead that the faculty of reason of the mind is as fallible as its sensory experiences. Following that introduction, Stroll says that  This is used to introduce a distinction between knowing-how and knowing that. After that, the article is more about knowing that, i.e., about propositional knowledge. Knowing-how is more related to the ontological or metaphysical nature of knowledge. The article says that the metaphysical or ontological interpretation of propositional knowledge is out of its scope in the following phrase :

and makes the two following  claims : The problem of universals is indeed an important part of the basic question regarding the ontological nature of knowledge, but not much is being said by pointing that out. Karl Popper and, more recently, John Turri, would disagree with the last sentence. The article presents concepts and pairs of concepts, but does not discuss related fundamental issues of justification or reasons why it would not be needed. For example, in the following passage, knowledge is not a mental state, but is nevertheless something that belongs to an individual subject, not some idealistic a priori ideas or forms or some evolutionary expectations or dispositions. A possible exception is the concept of certainty as presented by Moore, say Stroll,  as follows: something is only certain if it is known by a subject, but that is  not sufficient. Moreover, something can be certain without all subjects knowing it. This suggests that, maybe, certainty in Moore's view is not something owned by an individual, but certainty is not knowledge anyway. Similarly, a priori, analytic, tautological and logical knowledge are normally inter-subjective notions. However, a priori knowledge is not presented as a possible solution to the problem of justification: by definition one has the knowledge a priori without the need for a process of justification, only a process of recollection or of learning, which is different from a process of justification, is needed. The section on the origin of knowledge can also be seen as another exception, because it discusses the nature of knowledge in terms of innate versus acquired knowledge and rationalism versus empiricism, but, again, the link with the problem of justification is not discussed. The key point is that the problem of justification is not the subject of this article. It is only briefly mentioned that descriptions and justification are two sorts of epistemological task. Stroll says But the article does not discuss these questions.

David A. Truncellito's Epistemology in Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
The scope of the encyclopedia article of Truncellito is easily seen from its table of contents. The section Kinds of knowledge distinguishes between propositional knowledge and other kinds of knowledge, knowing-how, acquaintance knowledge, etc. and says that "In what follows, we will be concerned only with propositional knowledge" and, within that kind of knowledge, distinguishes between a priori and a posteriori knowledge as well as between individual and collective knowledge. The notion of collective knowledge is said to be the subject of social epistemology, which is not covered in the article. The second section is about the nature of propositional knowledge and presents it as justified true belief : its three first subsections are about belief, truth and justification respectively. Its last subsection is about the Gettier problem. The third section is about justification and discusses the usual oppositions internalism versus externalism and foundationalism versus coherentism. The fourth and last subsection before the conclusion is about the origin of knowledge and skepticism. Personal note : it's interesting that skepticism is at the end as a part of the "Extent of human knowledge", because the original purpose of skepticism is not to restrict the extent of human knowledge, but to remove limitations that we have about human knowledge and is not the end, but the beginning of an enquiry about what that knowledge can be.

Matthias Steup's Epistemology in Stanford Encyclopedia of philosophy
limits its scope from the start as follows.

John Greco's Introduction to the Blackwell Guide to Epistemology
Greco's introduction defines the scope of the book in terms of three main questions: The emphasis is on the use of questions, not answers:   Hopefully, we will obtain more precisions about the approach taken to discuss the questions, i.e., about its scope, when we consider the summary of the 17 chapters of the book.

Summary of Michael Williams on Skepticism
Greco describes Williams's response to skepticism as follows: It remains to see how William explains that we have the appropriate beliefs in a given context. Popper too emphasized the importance of the context, which contains unchallenged assumptions for the time being and he spoke of evolutionary expectations and predispositions as a part of that context. But, see the position of Williams on the distinction between radical skepticism and philosophical skepticism.

Summary of Paul K. Moser on Realism, Objectivity, and Skepticism
Greco describes Moser's view on Realism, Objectivity, and Skepticism as follows:

It will be interesting what concept of pragmatism is considered by Moser, because I have the impression that some forms of pragmatism do avoid the skeptical challenge.

Summary of Linda Zagzebski on What Is Knowledge?
In Greco's summary, Zagzebski explains that the Gettier problem cannot be avoided unless the justification or normative component of knowledge entails truth and that, consequently, she defines a notion of intellectual virtue that, by definition, does just that. It seems an easy solution to the Gettier problem, but the notion of intellectual virtue must have been criticized as being some kind of metaphysical super power.

Summary of Laurence BonJour on The Dialectic of Foundationalism and Coherentism
To help understand Bonjour's view on the foundationalism/coherentism debate, which comes next, a parenthesis must be open about the internalism/externalism debate, because Bonjour makes reference to it.

A parenthesis on the internalism/externalism debate
In particular, one must consider the possibility that the internal/external division, which is adopted in both internalism and externalism, might be understood in a way that brings  a very incomplete description of knowledge. This internal/external division is abstractly seen in terms of a theory of correspondence: the propositional knowledge, which is considered internal, is said to be true if and only if it corresponds to the external reality. From a naturalist point of view, this linguistic view of knowledge is incomplete. It is misleading to consider that the personal experience of knowledge is well represented as the proposition p. In the sentence "S knows that p", "knows that p" corresponds to something in the reality, something that can interact with the rest of reality. I don't think what is being said here is controversial. In other words, I doubt any epistemologist makes the mistake to identify the formal proposition p to the complete true nature of knowledge that p. The mistake occurs when one insists that an epistemic justification can be provided in terms of an extra warrant added to the proposition p alone, because this hardly what is going on in the brain. Contextualism addresses the issue by representing the actual complete knowledge as p together with a context C, which is a set of propositions. However, this only displaces the original problem with p toward an equivalent problem with K = p + C: how do we justify K? The hope of  philosophers such as Lakatos was that we could define a conjectural initial K that includes an inductive principle that allows K to grow given additional basic observations, but no satisfactory conjectural inductive principle was found. So, the question how do we justify every new K remains.

In what follows, p is considered, but what is said applies to K as well. What is often implicit in the internal/external division is that p (or K) is a complete description of the internal knowledge in the following sense that we can explain its connection with reality using other propositions that could eventually be explained using cognitive science. That is speculation. Speculations are fine—in the scientific method, they are called conjectures, but we should judge all possible speculations for their explanatory value. It is speculation because the other physical aspects of that experience of knowledge are actually a part of the "internal" experience of the subject. They are not only a part of the external thing that is experienced. It is speculation to say that one can use propositional knowledge, some K' greater than K, to fully describe the actual physical experience that is conveniently represented by the proposition p (or K), especially if it is assumed that the propositional link between this "internal" propositional knowledge K' and reality comes from contemporary cognitive science. The correspondence theory of truth correctly expresses the view that the knowledge p is not the external reality, but something that is false if it does not correspond to a part of that reality and is true otherwise. This includes the understanding that the true nature of knowledge that p is only a part of the totality of knowledge about reality, but even though this true nature of knowledge that p is accepted as limited, that does not mean that p itself describes the totality of that limited true nature of knowledge that p.

This is weirdly related to the notion of primary versus secondary knowledge of Ayers and Antognazza: the existence of secondary knowledge suggests that there are aspects in the true nature of knowledge that p that are not expressed in p.  It is also related to Ryle's view that know-how cannot be reduced to propositional knowledge, but the point goes in the opposite direction here and uses a very broad notion of know-how: there is a kind of know-how within the true nature of know-that. It is more related to how Russell used the notion  of knowledge by acquaintance: for Russell knowledge by acquaintance was the part of the nature of propositional knowledge that made the connection with reality, a point that is not often mentioned. Here, it is further said that every aspect of propositional knowledge not only symbols of things, but also symbols for relations, etc. require acquaintance that cannot be fully described by propositions. It is the opposite of intellectualism about know-how: it is a non-intellectualism about propositional knowledge. It might be related to knowledge-what of Peter Gärdenfors 1 & Andreas Stephens. It might be what Hanna explains, but using a different terminology. It may be Pavese's point when he asks in the entry Knowledge-how in SEP "is knowledge-how an altogether distinct kind of knowledge, different from knowledge-that?" It seems related to Williams's contextualist theory of knowledge and justification that was mentioned above. It is also related to Stanley and Williamson's point when they write: "Knowing how to imagine red and knowing how to recognize red are both examples of knowledge-that." However, Cathrine V. Felix and Andreas Stephens seem to have an anti-thesis: knowledge that would be located in the frontal cortex, but not knowledge-how.

Laurence Bonjour's view
After this parenthesis, Bonjour's view is presented. To do.

Other examples
Many other examples could be provided, including examples that refer to past philosophies. They must be considered. However, it is important to consider other sources that put this into context.

Contemporary epistemology can be attributed
Some of the subsections below are criticisms of contemporary epistemology. These criticisms imply that contemporary epistemology can be attributed: what is criticized is the work of professional epistemologists that shared a common background that made sustained communication among them possible. The purpose is not to criticize, but to associate contemporary epistemology to a group. An apology of contemporary epistemology directed toward such a group would have played the same purpose.

Pascal Engel responding to criticism
It should be noted, however, that Engel considered criticisms from Philip Kitcher, but Kitcher criticized very specific aspects. He criticized the lack of considerations for the history of science, which is especially needed to link questions to their sources. Kitcher also defends the position that history is needed to respond to an extreme instrumentalism: the skeptical conclusion that, with equal title to truth, justification, and knowledge, there could have been rival sequences of claims about nature that would have offered incompatible pictures of our world. He also says that history is useful to understand how we came to accept logical axioms as evident. Apparently, they were not always evident.

The birthday of Chisholm
Nathan Ballantyne describes professional epistemology:

Floridi on analytic philosophy becoming a scholastic movement
In 1996, in Scepticism and the Foundation of Epistemology, Floridi expresses the view that analytic philosophy had become a scholastic movement.

In 2011, in The Philosophy of Information, he explains in details what he means by "scholasticism" in professional philosophy.

Husserl points to the seed of the problem
It was not seen as a problem by Kant or Descartes, because they considered that reason would fill the gap, but the lack of certainty and the possibility of epistemic luck was found to be a serious problem. There is no solution to this problem unless one adopts a different metaphysical perspective with no builtin gap. Husserl decided that we must reject the gap as being pure speculation. It might seem for some philosophers that this corresponds to rejecting reality, but there is no rejection of any reality in Husserl's philosophy. On the contrary, Husserl placed knowledge within reality and the process of knowledge was reality experienced by individuals and open to study by sciences in the usual manner—not with a new kind of science. It's simply a more natural perspective on the existing science, a perspective that refuses to postulate a gap that can only creates philosophical problems. Stroll continues :

Absence of semantic in Floridi's philosophy of information
Floridi in The Philosophy of Information (2011) wrote: Interestingly, two pages later, Floridi  adds: In the first passage, just as in Stroll's account of Husserl, Floridi understood the problem of the gap created by a separate semantic provided by an external reality, so he wrote "reality is the totality of information (notice the crucial absence of ‘semantic’)." Of course, Floridi knows that structured data can never in itself be the reality, even if we consider the totality of it. The data miss an important dynamical aspect : it is an inert reality, not the complete reality with its dynamic. Perhaps, Floridi has in mind some autonomy of the data in the same way as Popper saw some autonomy in the third world, but that autonomy is limited to deductive logic, because, otherwise, some metaphysical dynamic out of science is attributed to the data.

In the second passage, he is concerned by this dynamical reality that is separated from structured data. Husserl's approach does not have the same issue, because Husserl was interested in knowledge, knowledge that is reality. The price to pay, which maybe Husserl did not acknowledge, is that this knowledge is not perfectly owned by a man, not an ordinary man anyway. However, the ordinary man is not necessarily completely estranged from it. It is something that truly exists on its own and can be progressively recollected and learned. Unlike what Floridi correctly wrote in the case of information, real knowledge is something that the mind wish to acquire for its own sake, because there is truly no gap, no external reality to worry about, with that knowledge, if we can perfectly get it. True knowledge in that perspective might only be an ideal, but if we can still get closer and closer to it, then it's a practical concept. This was Popper's view. He admitted that we don't have true knowledge and that true knowledge was only an idealistic goal.

Popper's philosophy regarding the nature of objective knowledge requires a form of dialectic to explain its progress. Popper compares scientific knowledge to a building with its foundation going deep into a swamp. In this analogy, the foundation can go deeper into the swamp when needed, but this dialectical process cannot be explained within the building. This dialectical process plays the role of the recollection process in Plato: the knowledge is somehow there in the swamp and is recollected by the dialectical process. It is what Einstein called the creative process of science that does not follow a fixed path. Perhaps, Floridi has something similar in mind.

The influence of Quine's naturalism on analytic philosophy
Arran Gare wrote a paper, a manifesto, that proposes a new kind of naturalism, a "speculative naturalism". What interest me first here is how Gare describes the influence of Quine's naturalism on analytic philosophy. As a side note, Gare sees interesting oppositions: Usually, idealism is opposed to realism, not to naturalism. Also, it is the first time I see the opposition analytic versus speculative. It is true that naturalism is often opposed to speculative and that there is no reason for that: after all, speculations are simply conjectures and there is nothing more natural than conjectures in science. Anyway, Gare says I suspect that "transcend any naturalistic explanation" means that there is no associated technology. In ancient Greek philosophy, this violates the rule that episteme should always be associated with techne. However, it is not so obvious that idealism violates that rule. In fact, Plato is the primary example of an idealist and he would not violate that rule. Anyway, that does not invalidate the view point that Quine's naturalism strongly influenced analytic philosophy. Gare continues:

There is nothing offensive here. Even the "computational model of the mind and brain" is also not an issue. That computational model is not known (assuming it even exists), because that would provide a known inductive mechanism for the growth of knowledge in our minds, a mechanism that is not known. To put it in another way, there are perhaps laws of nature that fix the behaviour of our brains and minds, but we don't know them and postulating their existence is not a big epistemological constraint. In particular, it is not opposed to an evolutionary theory that includes innate predispositions and expectations or to a theory of recollection of a priori knowledge. In order to explicitly oppose an evolutionary theory or a theory of recollection of knowledge, one would have to speculate about these laws of nature. Perhaps, some philosophers did speculate while claiming that these speculations were reasonable assumptions, but they don't seem reasonable to me, if they open the door to scepticism regarding the possibility of knowledge.

Virtue epistemology against the mainstream approach
John Turri and Ernest Sosa says that However, a focus on the quality of the knower or subject suggests but does not imply that the kind of knowledge that is considered is ontological. If knowledge is not ontological, it cannot be a goal in itself and this  creates a difficulty when evaluating the epistemic  virtue of the knower without an infinite regress. Therefore, for virtue epistemology to be testable, the kind of knowledge considered must be ontological, something that is part of reality and possibly valuable in itself and thus can be its own warrant.

A related point regarding the nature of analytic philosophy and the rejection of idealism
To explain the scope, it is useful to understand the origin of analytic philosophy, because, after all, epistemology renaissance occurred after the analytic turn. It was in fact a part of the analytic turn. Besides the fact that it corresponds to the emergence of the logic of quantifiers and other important advances in logic in general, what is often said is that it was a rebellion against idealism, British and also German idealism. One might hope to see an important metaphysical position in that rejection. So, it is useful to see exactly what idealist position was rejected. As the next passage shows, this rejection was not a fundamental metaphysical position: The following also suggests that it is hard to pin point a metaphysical position in analytic philosophy: This one too suggests the same thing: But there is a metaphysical position in Russell's philosophy: There seems to be an agreement that, not surprisingly, Analytic philosophy is, characterized by the use of analysis (though this is incomplete, because this did not start in the 20th century: The following says that at the time of the analytic school (not to be confused with the analytic philosophy era, in which we still are), at the least in the case of Frege, the attention was  not on the analysis of knowledge and the issue of justification, but on issue regarding meaning and understanding.

David Deutsch's dependence of justification on physics
David Deutsch in Beginning of Infinity presents an argument against the notion that a valid warrant for knowledge can be a physical process that does not work in a traditional epistemological manner such as a classical deduction. The argument, which he next rejects, goes, he says,  something like this :

Deutsch explains that, on the contrary, "if we decided that our own memory was faulty about which steps we had checked in a proof, then we would be forced to change our opinion about whether we had proved something or not. It would be no different if we changed our minds about what the laws of physics made the computer  [or a brain] do."

Berkeley's non-solipsistic idealism
Because idealism is opposed to realism (in the sense of the philosophical idea that the world is external and independent of the mind), one often considers that idealism is a form solipsism (in the sense of the philosophical idea that only one's mind is sure to exist). However, there are forms of idealism that are not solipsistic. Bennett cites Berkeley's explanation of why idealism is needed: Bennett adds that, for Berkeley, this does not imply solipsism: Bennett cites Berkeley expressing his way to reject solipsism: Bennett mentions that the conclusion does not follow from the premises. Berkeley was a religious person. It's very tempting for a religious person to see evidence in the current problematic for the existence of an independent "will or spirit". There is no need for any of that: the laws of nature suffice. The objective is very modest here, way more modest than finding evidence for an independent will or spirit or for anything whatsoever (except for knowledge, but evidence for knowledge can only be knowledge itself). It is sufficient to realize that no model for the creation of knowledge is a priori imposed upon us  and, therefore, if a given type of models leads to skepticism about knowledge, it makes sense to reject it. In addition, given that Popper's evolutionary view on knowledge with its biological predispositions and expectations is naturalistic and quite reasonable and does not suffer from skeptic attacks, it is reasonable to adopt it. It is not really a scientific theory in the Popperian sense, because it is too vague to be refutable, but Popper would say that it is a good metaphysical conjecture that may lead to a fruitful research program.

Popper and others against justification
The case of Popper is interesting, because he still was a realist. His solution was to say that we have no truth, except maybe by luck, that is we have no justified truth, but yet we have knowledge (of a different kind than justified true belief) that comes from expectations and predispositions and also that knowledge could be pragmatically accepted because of its practical value. In a way, there is no contradiction with Berkeley's argument that idealism is needed, because Popper's evolutionary view on knowledge is a kind of idealism, an idealism in which the a priori knowledge that controls sensory experiences and is the source of new propositional knowledge is the laws of nature together with the biology that occurred through a long sequence of evolutionary accidents. Popper said that it cannot and does not need to be justified no more than accidents need to be justified. There are others such as Alvin Goldman who said that justifications are not required for knowledge, but later said that he meant only that epistemic justifications are not required and also Timothy Williamson who adopted a view in which knowledge is first and unanalysable.

The American realism of the early 20th century
Cornelius Delaney describes how the American idealism that had been proposed by Josiah Royce in the late 19th century was criticized in the early 20th century by fellow Americans. The criticism first take the form of a direct realism, the "new realism", that even rejected the need for mental states in the description of knowledge, including sensory experiences. Delaney writes The critical realists were divided about the nature of the intermediary mental state, but Delaney adds They did not suppose that the object was directly known to argue that there was no possibility of errors. On the contrary, the notion of mental states as an intermediary between the knower and the object that is directly known would not have been used if it was not for the need to explain errors.

Andrej Démuth on the pro and con of empiric-realism
Andrej Démuth discussed the pro and con of empiric-realism:

Andrej Démuth on the Pragmatic Approach to Knowledge
Andrej Démuth discusses also pragmatism:

The scope and relations with allied disciplines
Many sources, including encyclopedia of philosophy edited by academic institutions or traditional publishers as well as books on epistemology from well known contributors in the field say that epistemology study knowledge that is a kind of belief: a belief that is about a true proposition and that must also come with a justification. This analysis of knowledge in three parts, a belief, its truth and its justification, is often called the traditional analysis of knowledge. Putting this view within its philosophical and historical context will help the readers to understand the scope of the article.

Ledger Wood, in the entry Epistemology for the Dictionary of Philosophy, wrote "the scope of epistemology may be indicated by considering its relations to the allied disciplines." Floridi mentions that, besides a continued "emancipation from idealism", the renaissance of epistemology "was also prompted by major advances in mathematics, logic, and physics which engendered new methodological concerns." Metaphysical or ontological views, such as idealism versus realism, and new sciences such as cognitive science are particularly important. To explain the article's scope, we consider the related disciplines and ontological views in that transition or later, including how the contemporary philosophers view these relations in ancient philosophies.

Views on ancient philosophies are contemporary views
Epistemology is often discussed in terms of the view of ancient philosophers who wrote before the concept of epistemology has been created. For example, Quinton considers that "Plato’s dualistic ontology—a real world of eternal Forms contrasted with a less real world of changing sensible particulars—rests on epistemological foundations." says that, in the treatise of Aristotle called Metaphysics, "not entirely coincidentally, we find metaphysics and epistemology in close proximity." To suggest that the concept of epistemology existed way before the term was coined, mentions that "almost every major historical philosopher has considered questions about what people know and how they know it," but  mentions that this is valid in as much as Plato’s epistêmê and doxa can be respectively identified with  knowledge and belief as defined in contemporary epistemology.

Continental Philosophy on ancient Greek philosophy
In this case, we have a contemporary view on the past continental philosophy about the ancient Greek philosophy. This kind of situation are common in philosophy and it is important not to hide it. Richard Wolin in the entry Continental Philosophy in Britannica speaks about Nietzsche and presents his view on ancient Greek philosophy. But before considering Nietzche's view on ancient philosophies, let us consider Wolin's view on Nietzche. Through Wolin, Nietzche clearly expresses his view that human knowledge is nothing more than what mankind can communicate through language in which a word "is the copy in sound of a nerve stimulus." The naturalistic angle of Nietzche is also noted by other American philosophers such as Richard Schacht. Now, here is Nietzche's view on Greek's philosophy, as described by Wolin:

A contemporary view on ancient Greek philosophy
The following view is from a Ph.D. student Sattar Tahmasebi:

A view of Aristotle's secularism
Philosophers mention that Aristotle accepted the existence of the eternal soul, believed in the eternity of the world, etc. It is tempting to assume that Aristotle was a religious person of his time. Segev explains that religions as expressed in "festivals, sacrifices, libations, prayers, hymns, and statues in honor of the gods, as well as temples and altars operated by priests, civic and Panhellenic cults, divination, and oracles, were routine" in Aristotle's time. Gods existed in Aristotle's philosophy. However, for Segev, they were a secular versions of the Gods of religions. Aristotle's Gods had nothing to do with the Gods of religions, who were like humans, but eternal.

A contemporary view on Maimonides's view on Plato
Actually, I am not going to present Maimonides's view on Plato. It will enough to mention that Kenneth Seeskin points out that Mainonides's might not have read much of Plato's work directly:

The point being that, unless one is interested in Maimonides's view, the view of Maimonides might not be the best view to present to help readers understand Plato.

Bertrand Russell on Plato
Unlike Maimonides, Russell had an easy access to Plato's and Aristotle's work. In his book History of Western Philosophy, Russell does not idealize Plato: Russell's book has an entire section on Plato's Utopia. In that spirit, critical of Plato, he says It is still in this context, critical of Plato, that he writes after presenting some of his arguments: He continues his description of Plato's philosophy: His critical approach is seen in this conclusion:

Russell's view on Aristotle
Interestingly, Russell criticises Aristotle for having a view on Forms or ideas that is not so different from Plato's view:

Menn in Borchert on Aristotle
Stephen Menn says that Aristotle rejected Plato's theory of Forms, but replaced it by its own First Philosophy:

Kuhn on Aristotle cosmogony
Kuhn in The Copernican Revolution wrote:

Form in Britannica
The article Form in Britannica says:.

Aristotle in Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Also

Guy Axtell on Virtue Epistemology and Aristotle
Guy Axtell in Recent Work on Virtue Epistemology wrote:

Brian Carr on Plato and Aristotle
Brian Carr in Metaphysics: An Introduction wrote:

Gregory W. Dawes in SEP on Ancient and Medieval Empiricism
Gregory W. Dawes in the entry Ancient and Medieval Empiricism of SEP wrote:

Raymond D. Bradley on Infinite regress argument in Audi
He wrote: