Download or read book Groundless Belief written by Michael Williams and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-12-08 with total page 215 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Inspired by the work of Wilfrid Sellars, Michael Williams launches an all-out attack on what he calls "phenomenalism," the idea that our knowledge of the world rests on a perceptual or experiential foundation. The point of this wider-than-normal usage of the term "phenomenalism," according to which even some forms of direct realism deserve to be called phenomenalistic, is to call attention to important continuities of thought between theories often thought to be competitors. Williams's target is not phenomenalism in its classical sense-datum and reductionist form but empiricism generally. Williams examines and rejects the idea that, unless our beliefs are answerable to a "given" element in experience, objective knowledge will be impossible. Groundless Belief was first published in 1977. This second edition contains a new afterword in which Williams places his arguments in the context of some current discussions of coherentism versus the Myth of the Given and explains their relation to subsequent developments in his own epistemological views.
Download or read book Groundless Belief written by Michael Williams and published by . This book was released on 1977 with total page 181 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Groundless Belief written by Williams and published by Wiley-Blackwell. This book was released on 1977-09-01 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Faith after Foundationalism written by D.Z. Phillips and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-05-02 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Foundationalism is the view that philosophical propositions are of two kinds, those which need supporting evidence, and those which in themselves provide the evidence which renders them irrefutable. This book, originally published 1988, describes the battle between foundationalism, which places belief in God in the first category, and various other approaches to the problem of faith – ‘Reformed Epistemology’, hermeneutics; and sociological analysis. In the concluding section of the book, an examination of concept formation in religious belief is used to reinterpret the gap between the expressive power of language and the reality of God.
Download or read book James s Will To Believe Doctrine written by James C.S. Wernham and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 1997-06-06 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1896 William James published an essay entitled The Will to Believe, in which he defended the legitimacy of religious faith against the attacks of such champions of scientific method as W.K. Clifford and Thomas Huxley. James's work quickly became one of the most important writings in the philosophy of religious belief. James Wernham analyses James's arguments, discusses his relation to Pascal and Renouvier, and considers the interpretations, and misinterpretations, of James's major critics. Wernham shows convincingly that James was unaware of many destructive ambiguitities in his own doctrines and arguments, although clear and consistent in his view that our obligation to believe in theism is not a moral but a prudential obligation -- a foolish-not-to-believe doctrine, rather than a not-immoral-to-believe one. Wernham also shows that the doctrine is best read as affirming the wisdom of gambling that God exists, a notion which James failed to distinguish from believing and which, among other things, he explicitly identified with faith. James's pragmatism, a theory concerning the meaning of truth, is shown to be quite distinct from the doctrine of The Will to Believe. In concentrating on a careful analysis of this doctrine of the will-to-believe, Wernham not only makes a major contribution to understanding James's philosophy, but also clarifies issues in the philosophy of religion and in the analysis of belief and faith.
Download or read book Wittgenstein and Natural Religion written by Gordon Graham and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2014-09-18 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gordon Graham presents a radically innovative study of Wittgenstein's philosophy, in relation to the age-old impulse to connect ordinary human life with the transcendent reality of God. He offers an account of its relevance to the study of religion that is completely different to the standard version of 'Wittgensteinian philosophy of religion' expounded by both its adherents and critics. Graham goes on to revitalize the philosophy of 'true religion', an alternative, though not a rival, to the lively philosophical theology of Plantinga and Swinburne that currently dominates the subject. This alternative style of philosophy of religion has equally deep historical roots in the philosophical works of Spinoza, Hume, Schleiermacher, and Mill. At the same time, it is more easily connected to the psychological, sociological, and anthropological studies of William James, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber, Mircea Eliade, and Mary Douglas. Graham uses Wittgenstein's conception of philosophy to argue in favour of the idea that 'true religion' is to be understood as human participation in divine life.
Download or read book Essays on Skepticism written by Anthony Brueckner and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-08-19 with total page 409 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Anthony Brueckner is recognized as one of the leading contemporary investigators of the problem of skepticism. This collection brings together Brueckner's most important work in this area, providing a connected and comprehensive guide to the complex state of play on this intensively studied area of philosophy.
Download or read book Rational Belief written by Robert Audi and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-07-01 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Rational Belief provides conceptions of belief and knowledge, offers a theory of how they are grounded, and connects them with the will and thereby with action, moral responsibility, and intellectual virtue. A unifying element is a commitment to representing epistemology-which is centrally concerned with belief-as integrated with a plausible philosophy of mind that does justice both to the nature of belief and to the conditions for its formation and regulation. Part One centers on belief and its relation to the will. It explores our control of our beliefs, and it describes several forms belief may take and shows how beliefs are connected with the world outside the mind. Part Two concerns normative aspects of epistemology, explores the nature of intellectual virtue, and presents a theory of moral perception. The book also offers a theory of the grounds of both justification and knowledge and shows how these grounds bear on the self-evident. Rationality is distinguished from justification; each clarified in relation to the other; and the epistemological importance of the phenomenal-for instance, of intuitional experience and other "private" aspects of mental life-is explored. The final section addresses social epistemology. It offers a theory of testimony as essential in human knowledge and a related account of the rational resolution of disagreements.
Download or read book Scientific Theology Reality written by Alister E. McGrath and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2002-11-01 with total page 382 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The second volume of an extended and systematic exploration of the relation between Christian theology and the natural sciences, focussing on the examination and defense of theological realism
Download or read book Reflection and the Stability of Belief written by Louis E. Loeb and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2010 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A unifying theme of Loeb's work is epistemological - that Descartes and Hume advance theories of knowledge that rely on a substantial 'naturalistic' component, adopting one or another member of a cluster of psychological properties of beliefs as the goal of inquiry and the standard for assessing belief-forming mechanisms. Thus Loeb shows a surprising affinity between the epistemologies of the two figures -- surprising because they are often thought of as polar opposites in this respect. Descartes and Hume are unique in that their philosophical texts are accessible beyond just a narrow audience in the history of philosophy; their ideas continue to be a vital part of the field at large. This volume will thus appeal to advanced students and scholars not just in the history of early modern philosophy but in epistemology and other core areas of the discipline.
Download or read book Studies in the Philosophy of Logic and Knowledge written by Timothy John Smiley and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Eleven papers by distinguished British and American philosophers are brought together in this volume. Five of the contributors engage in effect in a running debate about knowledge. How does knowledge relate to evidence? How reliable need one be to have knowledge? Once sceptical doubt has been introduced is there any untainted evidence to show that it is misplaced? Does verificationism succeed in showing that scepticism is untenable? Or is there a natural propensity for belief which explains why we are not in fact sceptics? The other six tackle questions about logic and its relation to language. Can one give a 'realist' account of logical truth without supposing that logic has a subject-matter? How do theories of descriptions fare when tested by their handling of functions? How can indirect speech report someone's use of words like 'this'? Does our language count for or against adopting second-order logic? These papers, given in the British Academy Philosophical Lectures series, are all examples of recent philosophy at its best.
Download or read book A Series of Discourses on the Principles of Religious Belief as Connected with Human Happiness and Improvement written by Robert Morehead and published by . This book was released on 1809 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Ethics of Belief and Beyond written by Sebastian Schmidt and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-04-03 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume provides a framework for approaching and understanding mental normativity. It presents cutting-edge research on the ethics of belief as well as innovative research beyond the normativity of belief—and towards an ethics of mind. By moving beyond traditional issues of epistemology the contributors discuss the most current ideas revolving around rationality, responsibility, and normativity. The book’s chapters are divided into two main parts. Part I discusses contemporary issues surrounding the normativity of belief. The essays here cover topics such as control over belief and its implication for the ethics of belief, the role of the epistemic community for the possibility of epistemic normativity, responsibility for believing, doxastic partiality in friendship, the structure and content of epistemic norms, and the norms for suspension of judgment. In Part II the focus shifts from the practical dimensions of belief to the normativity and rationality of other mental states—especially blame, passing thoughts, fantasies, decisions, and emotions. These essays illustrate how we might approach an ethics of mind by focusing not only on belief, but also more generally on debates about responsibility and rationality, as well as on normative questions concerning other mental states or attitudes. The Ethics of Belief and Beyond paves the way towards an ethics of mind by building on and contributing to recent philosophical discussions in the ethics of belief and the normativity of other mental phenomena. It will be of interest to upper-level students and researchers working in epistemology, ethics, philosophy of action, philosophy of mind, and moral psychology.
Download or read book Resilience in a VUCA world written by Annette Potgieter and published by AOSIS. This book was released on 2023-03-01 with total page 190 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book sheds light on how humans deal with adversity, especially in uncertain and turbulent times, as seen during the COVID-19 pandemic. Resilience theory has become popular in scholarly discourse, and the term is difficult to define as so many opinions exist. This book aims to engage critically with resilience theory as a scholarly debate from the unique vantage point of the world of social work as well as theology. This specific aspect of originality contributes to the generation of new knowledge in the broad field of social sciences and humanities. The inception of the book stems from an interdisciplinary conference held at Hugenote Kollege, Wellington, where scholars from social work as well as theology engaged in a discourse on resilience. Professor Adrian van Breda, a specialist in resilience theory and from the social work department of the University of Johannesburg, was one of the keynote speakers, inspiring scholars to understand what is meant by resilience. Professor Yolanda Dreyer from the University of Pretoria and a seasoned theologian and prolific writer on trauma and resilience, was also a keynote speaker, providing insights from a theological perspective. The collaboration between these two fields of thought is unique and rendered new insights into engaging with resilience. Different methodologies and perspectives from researchers are prevalent as contributors are from different scholarly fields. The book ranges from linguistical, liturgical, philosophical, practical, autoethnographical, anthropological, sociological, and online methodological approaches contributing to ways to deal with traumatic, turbulent and trying times. The book is divided into four main themes that stood out from the results obtained at the conference, namely, (1) religious imagination and resilience, (2) communities and resilience, (3) online teaching and resilience, and (4) the resilience of philosophical questions.
Download or read book Methodology and Moral Philosophy written by Jussi Suikkanen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-31 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many ethicists either accept the reflective equilibrium method or think that anything goes in ethical theorizing as long as the results are plausible. The aim of this book is to advance methodological thinking in ethics beyond these common attitudes and to raise new methodological questions about how moral philosophy should be done. What are we entitled to assume as the starting-point of our ethical inquiry? What is the role of empirical sciences in ethics? Is there just one general method for doing moral philosophy or should different questions in moral philosophy be answered in different ways? Are there argumentative structures and strategies that we should be encouraged to use or typical argumentative patterns that we should avoid? This volume brings together leading moral philosophers to consider these questions. The chapters investigate the prospects of empirical ethics, outline new methods of ethics, evaluate recent methodological advances, and explore whether different areas of moral philosophy are methodologically continuous or independent of one another. The aim of Methodology and Moral Philosophy is to make moral philosophers more self-aware and reflective of the way in which they do moral philosophy and also to encourage them to take part in methodological debates.
Download or read book An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion written by K. Neilson and published by Springer. This book was released on 1982-12-09 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature written by Richard Rorty and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 30 years ago Richard Rorty argued that philosophers had developed an unhealthy obsession with the notion of representation: comparing the mind to a mirror that reflects reality. The book now stands as a classic of 20th-century philosophy.
