Goldman Alvin I(ra) (b.1938), American philosopher who has made notable contributions to action theory, naturalistic and social epistemology, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science. He has persistently urged the relevance of cognitive and social science to problems in epistemology, metaphysics, the philosophy of mind, and ethics. A Theory of Human Action (1970) proposes a causal theory of action, describes the generative structure of basic and non-basic action, and argues for the compatibility of free will and determinism. In ‘Epistemics: The Regulative Theory of Cognition’ (1978), he argued that traditional epistemology should be replaced by ‘epistemics’, which differs from traditional epistemology in characterizing knowledge, justified belief, and rational belief in light of empirical cognitive science. Traditional epistemology has used a coarse-grained notion of belief, taken too restrictive a view of cognitive methods, offered advice for ideal cognizers rather than for human beings with limited cognitive resources, and ignored flaws in our cognitive system that must be recognized if cognition is to be improved. Epistemologists must attend to the results of cognitive science if they are to remedy these deficiencies in traditional epistemology. Goldman later developed epistemics in Epistemology and Cognition (1986), in which he developed a historical, reliabilist theory of knowledge and epistemic justification and employed empirical cognitive science to characterize knowledge, evaluate skepticism, and assess human cognitive resources. In Liaisons: Philosophy Meets the Cognitive and Social Sciences (1992) and in Knowledge in a Social World (1999), he defended and elaborated a veritistic (i.e., truth-oriented) evaluation of communal beliefprofiles, social institutions, and social practices (e.g., the practice of restricting evidence admissible in a jury trial). He has opposed the widely accepted view that mental states are functional states (‘The Psychology of Folk Psychology,’ Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 1993) and defended a simulation theory of mental state attribution, on which one attributes mental states to another by imagining what mental state one would be in if one were in the other’s situation (‘In Defense of the Simulation Theory,’ 1992). He has also argued that cognitive science bears on ethics by providing information relevant to the nature of moral evaluation, moral choice, and hedonic states associated with the good (e.g., happiness) (‘Ethics and Cognitive Science,’ 1993). See also ACTION THEORY, COGNITIVE SCIENCE , EPISTE – MOLOGY, RELIABILISM , SIMULATION THEORY, SOCIAL EPISTEMOLOGY. F.F.S.