This book develops a novel account of the connections between justification, understanding, and knowledge. It lays the foundation for a more systematic and interconnected treatment of these central ...notions in epistemology. The author’s key move is to show first that a specific conception of doxastic justification constitutes our best point of entry into questions pertaining to a subject’s ability to secure understanding of reality. Second, that the traditional order of analysis when it comes to the connection between understanding and knowledge should be reversed: knowledge itself is best conceived of in terms of a specific type of understanding. Rational Understanding will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in epistemology and philosophy of science. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
This work offers a provocative new historical and systematic interpretation of the epistemological doctrines of three twentieth-century giants: Husserl, Heidegger, and Merleau-Ponty. Pietersma argues ...that these three philosophers, while connected by their phenomenological doctrines, have underappreciated and interestingly-linked views on the theory of knowledge.
Why did such highly abstract ideas as truth, knowledge, or justice become so important to us? What was the point of coming to think in these terms? In The Practical Origins of Ideas, Matthieu Queloz ...presents a philosophical method designed to answer such questions: the method of pragmatic genealogy. Pragmatic genealogies are partly fictional, partly historical narratives exploring what might have driven us to develop certain ideas in order to discover what these do for us. The book uncovers an under-appreciated tradition of pragmatic genealogy which cuts across the analytic–continental divide, running from the state-of-nature stories of David Hume and the early genealogies of Friedrich Nietzsche to recent work in analytic philosophy by Edward Craig, Bernard Williams, and Miranda Fricker. However, these genealogies combine fictionalizing and historicizing in ways that even philosophers sympathetic to the use of state-of-nature fictions or real history have found puzzling. To make sense of why both fictionalizing and historicizing are called for, the book offers a systematic account of pragmatic genealogies as dynamic models serving to reverse-engineer the points of ideas in relation not only to near-universal human needs, but also to socio-historically situated needs. This allows the method to offer us explanation without reduction and to help us understand what led our ideas to shed the traces of their practical origins. Far from being normatively inert, moreover, pragmatic genealogy can affect the space of reasons, guiding attempts to improve our conceptual repertoire by helping us determine whether and when our ideas are worth having.
This book offers a defence of Wrightean epistemic entitlement, one of the most prominent approaches to hinge epistemology. It also systematically explores the connections between virtue epistemology ...and hinge epistemology. According to hinge epistemology, any human belief set is built within and upon a framework of pre-evidential propositions – hinges – that cannot be justified. Epistemic entitlement argues that we are entitled to trust our hinges. But there remains a problem. Entitlement is inherently unconstrained and arbitrary: We can be entitled to any hinge proposition under the right circumstances. In this book, the author argues that we need a non-arbitrariness clause that protects entitlement from defeat. This clause, he argues, is to require epistemic virtue. Virtuous cognitive dispositions provide the non-arbitrariness clause that protects entitlement from defeat. The epistemic character of the agent who holds a particular set of hinges tells us something about the hinges’ epistemic status. Conversely, epistemic virtues are cognitive dispositions and capacities that rely on hinge propositions – without trusting in some hinges, we would be unable to exercise our virtues. Trust Responsibly will appeal to scholars and advanced students working on epistemology, Wittgenstein, and virtues.
This book develops a novel account of the connections between justification, understanding, and knowledge. It lays the foundation for a more systematic and interconnected treatment of these central ...notions in epistemology. The author’s key move is to show first that a specific conception of doxastic justification constitutes our best point of entry into questions pertaining to a subject’s ability to secure understanding of reality. Second, that the traditional order of analysis when it comes to the connection between understanding and knowledge should be reversed: knowledge itself is best conceived of in terms of a specific type of understanding. Rational Understanding will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in epistemology and philosophy of science. The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
Descartes thought that we could achieve absolute certainty by starting with radical doubt. He adopts this strategy in the Meditations on First Philosophy, where he raises sweeping doubts with the ...famous dream argument and the hypothesis of an evil demon. But why did Descartes think we should take these exaggerated doubts seriously? And if we do take them seriously, how did he think any of our beliefs could ever escape them? Janet Broughton undertakes a close study of Descartes's first three meditations to answer these questions and to present a fresh way of understanding precisely what Descartes was up to. Broughton first contrasts Descartes's doubts with those of the ancient skeptics, arguing that Cartesian doubt has a novel structure and a distinctive relation to the commonsense outlook of everyday life. She then argues that Descartes pursues absolute certainty by uncovering the conditions that make his radical doubt possible. She gives a unified account of how Descartes uses this strategy, first to find certainty about his own existence and then to argue that God exists.Drawing on this analysis, Broughton provides a new way to understand Descartes's insistence that he hasn't argued in a circle, and she measures his ambitions against those of contemporary philosophers who use transcendental arguments in their efforts to defeat skepticism. The book is a powerful contribution both to the history of philosophy and to current debates in epistemology.
Rorty emprenderá un ingente intento por superar el paradigma epistemológico, pretendiendo abandonar la imagen platónica heredada de la filosofía y poniendo de relieve la urgencia de resolver ...problemas prácticos que suceden en nuestros días, ya sea en lo concerniente a nuestra relación con otros o con nosotros mismos.El viraje filosófico al que estamos a punto de asistir no tratará sin más de poner atención a los problemas actuales que nos acucian, sino que se consolidará como un ejercicio continuo de desmontaje de los problemáticos supuestos ontológicos y epistemológicos en los que las teorías del canon Platón-Kant podrían haber estado ancladas durante un amplio periodo de tiempo en nuestra historia.Para esta labor, Rorty emprenderá una doble lectura de Heidegger: se servirá de él para narrar su relato anti-epistemológico y, a su vez, invertirá la propuesta del pensador alemán desde un lugar antagónico para mostrar que Heidegger sigue aprisionado en la matriz platónica.Planteamientos como el fomento de la solidaridad humana, la evitación de la crueldad, así como otras propuestas de carácter político y práctico responden en este pensador al resultado de una fuerte crítica de ciertas cosmovisiones tradicionales que han arrojado problemáticas metáforas de nosotros mismos y de cómo pensarnos en nuestros días.
This book develops a novel account of the connections between justification, understanding, and knowledge. It lays the foundation for a more systematic and interconnected treatment of these central ...notions in epistemology.The author’s key move is to show first that a specific conception of doxastic justification constitutes our best point of entry into questions pertaining to a subject’s ability to secure understanding of reality. Second, that the traditional order of analysis when it comes to the connection between understanding and knowledge should be reversed: knowledge itself is best conceived of in terms of a specific type of understanding.Rational Understanding will appeal to scholars and advanced students working in epistemology and philosophy of science.The Open Access version of this book, available at www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license.
This book goes beyond a simple study of Newman’s thought and work and seeks to apply his deductions to modern value conflicts. Although it will be of particular relevance to academic readers with ...some prior knowledge of Newman’s works, it may also be of wider interest to students of history, philosophy, theology and spirituality. More generally, its unusual focus on Newman’s epistemology and philosophical deductions, and how these relate to present-day dilemmas, should also attract interest from his many non-academic followers and devotees.
