Download or read book Empirical Justification written by P.K. Moser and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Broadly speaking, this is a book about truth and the criteria thereof. Thus it is, in a sense, a book about justification and rationality. But it does not purport to be about the notion of justification or the notion of rationality. For the assumption that there is just one notion of justification, or just one notion of rationality, is, as the book explains, very misleading. Justification and rationality come in various kinds. And to that extent, at least, we should recognize a variety of notions of justification and rationality. This, at any rate, is one of the morals of Chapter VI. This book, in Chapters I-V, is mainly concerned with the kind of justification and rationality characteristic of a truth-seeker, specifically a seeker of truth about the world impinging upon the senses: the so-called empirical world. Hence the book's title. But since the prominent contemporary approaches to empirical justification are many and varied, so also are the epistemological issues taken up in the following chapters. For instance, there will be questions about so-called coherence and its role, if any, in empirical justification. And there will be questions about social consensus (whatever it is) and its significance, or the lack thereof, to empirical justification. Furthermore, the perennial question of whether, and if so how, empirical knowledge has so-called founda tions will be given special attention.

Download or read book Empirical Justification written by Paul K. Moser and published by . This book was released on 1985-11-30 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book The Structure of Empirical Knowledge written by Laurence BonJour and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 1988-03-15 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How must our knowledge be systematically organized in order to justify our beliefs? There are two options—the solid securing of the ancient foundationalist pyramid or the risky adventure of the new coherentist raft. For the foundationalist like Descartes each piece of knowledge can be stacked to build a pyramid. Not so, argues Laurence BonJour. What looks like a pyramid is in fact a dead end, a blind alley. Better by far to choose the raft. Here BonJour sets out the most extensive antifoundationalist argument yet developed. The first part of the book offers a systematic exposition of foundationalist views and formulates a general argument to show that no variety of foundationalism provides an acceptable account of empirical justification. In the second part he explores a coherence theory of empirical knowledge and argues that a defensible theory must incorporate an adequate conception of observation. The book concludes with an account of the correspondence theory of empirical truth and an argument that systems of empirical belief which satisfy the coherentist standard of justification are also likely to be true.

Download or read book Skepticism Justification and Explanation written by E. Cornman and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a manuscript that was virtually complete when James W. Cornman died. Most of the chapters were in final form, and all but the last had been revised by the author. The last chapter was in handwritten form, and the concluding remarks were not finished. Swain took charge of the proofreading and John L. Thomas compiled the indices with the assistance of Lehrer. It is our opinion that this manuscript, like the other books Cornman published, is one of exceptional scholarly and philo sophical importance. As do all of his philosophical publications, this work reflects Cornman's great love for philosophy and his commitment to the search for truth. Every serious student and author of epistemology will benefit from and admire the thorough scholarship and rigorous argumentation they will find herein. It has been our privilege to partici pate in the preparation of the manuscript for the philosophical public. KEITH LEHRER MARSHALL SWAIN IX INTRODUCTION INTRODUCTION TO EPISTEMOLOGICAL SKEPTICISM Many philosophers try to refute skepticism, but few try to give a precise characterization of the thesis they attack. My first aim, consequently, is to characterize skepticism, or, more precisely, several species of skepticism. Then I shall choose those species I wish to consider and justify my choice. To begin, let me distinguish what I shall call "epistemological skepticism" from the thesis I shall call "ontological nihilism" and from what is believed by someone whom I shall call an "ontological skeptic".

Download or read book Essays on A Priori Knowledge and Justification written by Albert Casullo and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2012-02-20 with total page 367 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a collection of essays concerning the concept and existence of a priori knowledge, and the relationship between a priori knowledge and the related concepts of necessary truth and analytic truth.

Download or read book Pyrrhonian Reflections on Knowledge and Justification written by Robert J. Fogelin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1994-09-22 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work, written from a neo-Pyrrhonian perspective, is an examination of contemporary theories of knowledge and justification. It takes ideas primarily found in Sextus Empiricus's Outlines of Pyrrhonism, restates them in a modern idiom, and then asks whether any contemporary theory of knowledge meets the challenges they raise. The first part, entitled "Gettier and the Problem of Knowledge," attempts to rescue our ordinary concept of knowledge from those philosophers who have assigned burdens to it that it cannot bear. Properly understood, Fogelin shows that the concept of knowledge is unproblematic. The second part of this study, called "Agrippa and the Problem of Justification," examines Agrippa's contribution to Pyrrhonism, a systematic reduction of its procedures which came to be known as the "Five Modes Leading to the Suspension of Belief." These modes present a completely general procedure for refuting any claim a dogmatist might make. Though largely unnoticed, there is, according to Fogelin, an uncanny resemblance between problems posed by Agrippa's "Five Modes" and those that contemporary epistemologists address under the heading of a theory of justification. Fogelin examines the strongest contemporary theories of justification--in both foundationalist and anti-foundationalist forms. The conclusion is that recent philosophical writings on justification have made no significant progress in responding to the Pyrrhonian problems these writings have addressed.

Download or read book On Moral Certainty Justification and Practice written by J. Hermann and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-06-23 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Taking inspiration from the later Wittgenstein, On Moral Certainty, Justification and Practice explores the practical basis of human morality. It offers an account of moral certainty, which it links with a view of moral competence. Drawing on everyday examples, it is shown how morality is grounded in action, not in reasoning.

Download or read book A Historical and Systematic Perspective on A Priori Knowledge and Justification written by Ivette Fred-Rivera and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2022-08-10 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a detailed and comprehensive account of the problem of a priori knowledge from a historical as well as a systematic perspective. The author explores Kant’s views in connection with the possibility of revision, something hardly, if at all, done in philosophical literature. Furthermore, the views of well-renowned philosophers such as Quine, Putnam, Kitcher, and Hale are discussed in detail and are put into a historical and systematic perspective. Finally, this book contains a glossary of important notions offering illuminating accounts of a priori knowledge and related notions and explains the relationship between a priori knowledge, fallibility and revision. The detailing of concepts such as ‘defeasibility’, ‘infallibility’, ‘falsifiability’ helps anyone reading philosophical literature to pin down the meaning of the terms and its implications in this context. The enriched and dual approach the author takes makes the book a very useful and lucid guide to the problem of a priori knowledge.

Download or read book Meaning and Justification An Internalist Theory of Meaning written by Gabriele Usberti and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2023-07-28 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume develops a theory of meaning and a semantics for both mathematical and empirical sentences inspired to Chomsky’s internalism, namely to a view of semantics as the study of the relations of language not with external reality but with internal, or mental, reality. In the first part a theoretical notion of justification for a sentence A is defined, by induction on the complexity of A; intuitively, justifications are conceived as cognitive states of a particular kind. The main source of inspiration for this part is Heyting’s explanation of the intuitionistic meaning of logical constants. In the second part the theory is applied to the solution of several foundational problems in the theory of meaning and epistemology, such as Frege’s puzzle, Mates’ puzzle about synonymy, the paradox of analysis, Kripke’s puzzle about belief, the de re/de dicto distinction, the specific/non-specific distinction, Gettier’s problems, the paradox of knowability, and the characterization of truth. On a more general philosophical level, throughout the book the author develops a tight critique of the neo-verificationism of Dummett, Prawitz and Martin-Löf, and defends a mentalist interpretation of intuitionism.

Download or read book Scepticism and Perceptual Justification written by Dylan Dodd and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2014-05-01 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the hardest problems in the history of Western philosophy has been to explain whether and how experience can provide knowledge (or even justification for belief) about the objective world outside the experiencer's mind. A prominent brand of scepticism has precisely denied that experience can provide such knowledge. How, for instance (these sceptics ask) can I know that my experiences are not produced in me by a powerful demon (or, in a modern twist on that traditional Cartesian scenario, by a supercomputer)? This volume, originating from the research project on Basic Knowledge recently concluded at the Northern Institute of Philosophy, presents new essays on scepticism about the senses written by some of the most prominent contemporary epistemologists. They approach the sceptical challenge by discussing such topics as the conditions for perceptual justification, the existence of a non-evidential kind of warrant and the extent of one's evidence, the epistemology of inference, the relations between justification, probability and certainty, the relevance of subjective appearances to the epistemology of perception, the role that broadly pragmatic considerations play in epistemic justification, the contents of perception, and the function of attention. In all these cases, the papers show how philosophical progress on foundational issues can improve our understanding of and possibly afford a solution to a historically prominent problem like scepticism.

Download or read book The Reliability of the Cognitive Mechanism written by William J. Talbott and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-06-05 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1990. Examining epistemic justification, truth and logic, this book works towards a holistic theory of knowledge. It discusses evidence, belief, reliability and many philosophical theories surrounding the nature of true knowledge. A thorough Preface updates the main work from when it was written in 1976 to include theories ascendant in the ‘80s.

Download or read book Restoring the Foundations of Epistemic Justification written by Steven Porter and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2006-11-06 with total page 185 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Foundationalism, as a theory of justification and knowledge, is often associated with Enlightenment rationality, the Cartesian thirst for certainty, and the modern assumption of the objectivity and universality of reason. Because of these associations, scholars in various fields have disdained foundationalism in favor of some sort of non-foundationalist/post-modern approach to knowledge and justification. This present book is one piece of a much wider conversation that hopes to motivate a renewed look at foundationalism. Of course, the foundationalism on offer has settled down quite a bit from its surly forbears. This more mild-mannered foundationalism suggests that our beliefs about reality can be held with confidence and yet these beliefs remain open to criticism and revision. It is this type of epistemology that provides a constructive basis for investigation and research while nevertheless encouraging a cognitive humility about our claims to possess truth.

Download or read book Fault Tracing Against Quine Duhem written by Sam Mitchell and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2020-09-21 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It is widely believed in philosophy of science that nobody can claim that any verdict of science is forced upon us by the effects of a physical world upon our sense organs and instruments. The Quine-Duhem problem supposedly allows us to resist any conclusion. Views on language aside, Quine is supposed to have shown this decisively. But it is just false. In many scientific examples, there is simply no room to doubt that a particular hypothesis is responsible for a refutation or established by the observations. Fault Tracing shows how to play independently established hypotheses against each other to determine whether an arbitrary hypothesis needs to be altered in the light of (apparently) refuting evidence. It analyses real examples from natural science, as well as simpler cases. It argues that, when scientific theories have a structure that prevents them from using this method, the theory looks wrong, and is subject to serious criticism. This is a new, and potentially far-reaching, theory of empirical justification.

Download or read book Justification and Knowledge written by G. S. Pappas and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-12-06 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With one exception, all of the papers in this volume were originally presented at a conference held in April, 1978, at The Ohio State University. The excep tion is the paper by Wilfrid Sellars, which is a revised version of a paper he originally published in the Journal of Philosophy, 1973. However, the present version of Sellars' paper is so thoroughly changed from its original, that it is now virtually a new paper. None of the other nine papers has been published previously. The bibliography, prepared by Nancy Kelsik, is very extensive and it is tempting to think that it is complete. But I believe that virtual com pleteness is more likely to prove correct. The conference was made possible by grants from the College of Human ities and the Graduate School, Ohio State University, as well as by a grant from the Philosophy Department. On behalf of the contributors, I want to thank these institutions for their support. I also want to thank Marshall Swain and Robert Turnbu~l for early help and encouragement; Bette Hellinger for assistance in setting up the confer ence; and Mary Raines and Virginia Foster for considerable aid in the pre paration of papers and many other conference matters. The friendly advice of the late James Cornman was also importantly helpful. April,1979 GEORGE S. PAPPAS ix INTRODUCTION The papers in this volume deal in different ways with the related issues of epistemic justification or warrant, and the analysis of factual knowledge.

Download or read book A Priori Justification written by Albert Casullo and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2003 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The topic of a priori knowledge has been central to analytic philosophy for the past two centuries. Casullo's book, based on previously published and unpublished work, systematically addresses questions that have, since Kant, formed the core of the debate.

Download or read book Research Methodology written by Khan and published by APH Publishing. This book was released on 2011 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book A Priori Justification written by Albert Casullo and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2003-03-13 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The major divide in contemporary epistemology is between those who embrace and those who reject a priori knowledge. Albert Casullo provides a systematic treatment of the primary epistemological issues associated with the controversy. By freeing the a priori from traditional assumptions about the nature of knowledge and justification, he offers a novel approach to resolving these issues which assigns a prominent role to empirical evidence. He concludes by arguing that traditional approaches to the a priori, which focus primarily on the concepts of necessity and analyticity, are misguided.