Beginner book suggestion on epistemology

[Budric]

Hi everyone,
I'm somewhat of a long time lurker on various forums such as this one and decided to post. As I understand epistemology is the study of knowledge, and why or if you can know something to be true. Are there any good books/sites(reputable) for beginners on the subject? I'd like to get some arguments for certain views on truth etc.

For example I'm thinking of questions such as what an axiom is and why is it self evident, and why the law of non contradiction should hold (is this an axiom too?). I guess I'd like some solid stuff to disprove extreme skepticism or Pyrronism (sp?).

My only problem is short attention span. A while ago I was assigned some reading by Aristotle in a course. I just couldn't read that style of writing. Reading and re-reading every sentense to try and understand what's going on, in the end being told that it was about his wacky ideas on physics. So any "modern" books would be nice.

 

[Yahweh]

The Philosopher's Toolkit, which is described as a great introductory book to logic and philosophy.

Flat Earth Round Earth, and interesting book tackling the complicated topic of epistemology, reasons for valuing a single testable hypothesis than an infinite number of untestable ad hoc explanations, and unique insight into why we should believe things based on evidence and logic. Oh, and its a children's book.

 

[Eleatic Stranger]

For example I'm thinking of questions such as what an axiom is and why is it self evident, and why the law of non contradiction should hold (is this an axiom too?).

It has been a while since my last logic course (ok, ok, 6 months - but I'm repressing), but an axiom doesn't have to be self evident. It's just something we all agree on.

The law of noncontradiction, as far as I can tell (is this a standard usage? I'm not sure), just means that contradictory sentences can't be true in a formal system. This allows you to make reductio proofs. (I don't believe it counts as an axiom, though, in most formal systems, but rather it's a theorem or a couple theorems or whathaveyou.)

(In other words, if someone proposes a theorem or something in your system, and you show that it's possible to derive, say, "P & ~P" using that theorem(er, in nonlogictalk that should be read as "Sentence P is true and it is not the case that Sentence P", then you're in a position to say: "(that theorem) -> (P & ~P)" (if that theorem is true, then (and as above)). Now, any reasonable person would just stop there and say, "Ah, so if you hold that theorem, then you're committed to saying something insane. So you can't be committed to that theorem. ", but we're not talking about reasonable people - we're talking about logicians. To conclude that the theorem is wrong you need to be able to just assert ~(anything contradictory goes here), which in that case allow for a neat Modus Tollens, and you could deny the theorem.)

So that would be, I think, what you're referring to as the law of noncontradiction. Of course, if it wasn't you've just waded through a bunch of logic to no avail - sorry about that.