Peter D. Klein

Peter D. Klein
Peter D. Klein
Born	1940
Alma mater	Yale University, Colgate University
Era	Contemporary philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Analytic philosophy
Main interests	Epistemology

Peter David Klein (born September 17, 1940) is an American

philosopher specializing in issues in epistemology who spent most of his career at Rutgers University

.

Education and career

He received a

PhD from Yale University

(1966).

He taught at Colgate University as an assistant professor from 1966 to 1970. Following that, he moved to Rutgers University, where he taught as an assistant professor from 1970 to 1973, an associate professor from 1973 to 1981, and a full professor from 1981 until retiring from Rutgers in 2016.^[1]

Philosophical work

Klein is widely known for his work on

justification. On this view, to be justified in believing P is to possess a reason R1 to believe P, and a reason R2 to believe R1, and a reason R3.....and so on, ad infinitum. Justification is, so to speak, "turtles all the way down

." He has also recently advocated a picture of knowledge according to which one can have knowledge of p even if the justification for the belief of p is essentially based on false premises. Klein calls these "useful falsehoods".

Klein authored one book: Certainty: A Refutation of Skepticism (1982) (University of Minnesota Press), and co-edited Ad Infinitum: New Essays on Epistemological Infinitism (Oxford University Press) with John Turri. He has published a number of articles, chapters, and reviews in epistemology.