Download or read book The End of Epistemology as We Know It written by Brian Talbot and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Epistemology is the philosophical study of how we should form our beliefs. It is one of the central areas of philosophical inquiry and has been so for as long as there have been philosophers. The End of Epistemology As We Know It challenges the views and methodology of almost every epistemologist, both historical and contemporary. In a call for radical reform of how epistemology is practiced and a rethinking of conventional wisdom in this area, Brian Talbot puts forward new epistemic norms that differ significantly from the norms of mainstream epistemic theories.
Download or read book Epistemology for the Rest of the World written by Stephen Stich and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-06 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the heyday of ordinary language philosophy, Anglophone epistemologists have devoted a great deal of attention to the English word 'know' and to English sentences used to attribute knowledge. Even today, many epistemologists, including contextualists and subject-sensitive invariantists are concerned with the truth conditions of "S knows that p," or the proposition it expresses. In all of this literature, the method of cases is used, where a situation is described in English, and then philosophers judge whether it is true that S knows that p, or whether saying "S knows that p" is false, deviant, etc. in that situation. However, English is just one of over 6000 languages spoken around the world, and is the native language of less than 6% of the world's population. When Western epistemology first emerged, in ancient Greece, English did not even exist. So why should we think that facts about the English word "know," the concept it expresses, or subtle semantic properties of "S knows that p" have important implications for epistemology? Are the properties of the English word "know" and the English sentence 'S knows that p' shared by their translations in most or all languages? If that turned out to be true, it would be a remarkable fact that cries out for an explanation. But if it turned out to be false, what are the implications for epistemology? Should epistemologists study knowledge attributions in languages other than English with the same diligence they have shown for the study of English knowledge attributions? If not, why not? In what ways do the concepts expressed by 'know' and its counterparts in different languages differ? And what should epistemologists make of all this? The papers collected here discuss these questions and related issues, and aim to contribute to this important topic and epistemology in general.
Download or read book How Do We Know written by James K. Dew Jr. and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2020-11-17 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What does it mean to know something? Can we have confidence in our knowledge? Epistemology, the study of knowledge, can often seem like a daunting subject. And yet few topics are more basic to human life. We are inquisitive creatures by nature, and the unending quest for truth leads us to raise difficult questions about the quest itself. What are the conditions, sources, and limits of our knowledge? Do our beliefs need to be rationally justified? Can we have certainty? In this primer on epistemology, James Dew and Mark Foreman guide readers through this discipline in philosophy. This second edition has been expanded with new material and now serves as the first volume in IVP's Questions in Christian Philosophy series. By asking basic questions and using clear, jargon-free language, they provide an entry into one of the most important issues in contemporary philosophy. The Questions in Christian Philosophy Series features introductory textbooks that offer students a Christian perspective on the various branches of philosophy, enabling them as they seek to understand all facets of life including existence, knowledge, ethics, art, and more.
Download or read book Problems in Epistemology and Metaphysics written by Steven B. Cowan and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2020-02-06 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Problems in Epistemology and Metaphysics takes a pro and con approach to two central philosophical topics. Each chapter begins with a question: Can We Have Knowledge? How are Beliefs Justified? What is the mind? Contemporary philosophers with opposing viewpoints are then paired together to argue their position and raise problems with conflicting standpoints. Alongside an up-to-date introduction to a core philosophical stance, each contributor provides a critical response to their opponent and clear explanation of their view. Discussion questions are included at the end of each chapter to guide further discussion. With chapters covering core questions surrounding religious beliefs, scientific knowledge, truth, being and reality, this is a comprehensive introduction to debates lying at the heart of what we know, how we know it and the nature of the world we live in.
Download or read book The Epistemic Dimensions of Ignorance written by Rik Peels and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2016-12-22 with total page 227 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book provides a thorough exploration of the epistemic dimensions of ignorance: what is ignorance and what are its varieties?
Download or read book Epistemology written by Robert Audi and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-09-13 with total page 427 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Epistemology, or “the theory of knowledge,” is concerned with how we know what we know, what justifies us in believing what we believe, and what standards of evidence we should use in seeking truths about the world and human experience. This comprehensive introduction to the field of epistemology explains the concepts and theories central to understanding knowledge. Along with covering the traditional topics of the discipline in detail, Epistemology explores emerging areas of research. The third edition features new sections on such topics as the nature of intuition, the skeptical challenge of rational disagreement, and “the value problem” – the range of questions concerning why knowledge and justified true belief have value beyond that of merely true belief. Updated and expanded, Epistemology remains a superb introduction to one of the most fundamental fields of philosophy. Special features of the third edition of Epistemology include: a comprehensive survey of basic concepts, major theories, and emerging research in the field enhanced treatment of key topics such as contextualism, perception (including perceptual content), scientific hypotheses, self-evidence and the a priori, testimony, understanding, and virtue epistemology expanded discussion of the relation between epistemology and related fields, especially philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, and ethics increased clarity and ease of understanding for an undergraduate audience an updated list of key literature and annotated bibliography.
Download or read book Knowing Our Limits written by Nathan Ballantyne and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Changing our minds isn't easy. Even when we recognize our views are disputed by intelligent and informed people, we rarely doubt our rightness. Why is this so? How can we become more open-minded, putting ourselves in a better position to tolerate conflict, advance collective inquiry, and learn from differing perspectives in a complex world? Nathan Ballantyne defends the indispensable role of epistemology in tackling these issues. For early modern philosophers, the point of reflecting on inquiry was to understand how our beliefs are often distorted by prejudice and self-interest, and to improve the foundations of human knowledge. Ballantyne seeks to recover and modernize this classical tradition by vigorously defending an interdisciplinary approach to epistemology, blending philosophical theorizing with insights from the social and cognitive sciences. Many of us need tools to help us think more circumspectly about our controversial views. Ballantyne develops a method for distinguishing between our reasonable and unreasonable opinions, in light of evidence about bias, information overload, and rival experts. This method guides us to greater intellectual openness--in the spirit of skeptics from Socrates to Montaigne to Bertrand Russell--making us more inclined to admit that sometimes we don't have the right answers. With vibrant prose and fascinating examples from science and history, Ballantyne shows how epistemology can help us know our limits.
Download or read book The Future of Social Epistemology written by James H. Collier and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2015-12-02 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers a vital, unique and agenda-setting perspective for the field of social epistemology – the philosophical basis for prescribing the social means and ends for pursuing knowledge.
Download or read book Moral Epistemology written by Aaron Zimmerman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-06-10 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How do we know right from wrong? Do we even have moral knowledge? Moral epistemology studies these and related questions about our understanding of virtue and vice. It is one of philosophy’s perennial problems, reaching back to Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Locke, Hume and Kant, and has recently been the subject of intense debate as a result of findings in developmental and social psychology. In this outstanding introduction to the subject Aaron Zimmerman covers the following key topics: What is moral epistemology? What are its methods? Including a discussion of Socrates, Gettier and contemporary theories of knowledge skepticism about moral knowledge based on the anthropological record of deep and persistent moral disagreement, including contextualism moral nihilism, including debates concerning God and morality and the relation between moral knowledge and our motives and reasons to act morally epistemic moral scepticism, intuitionism and the possibility of inferring ‘ought’ from ‘is,’ discussing the views of Locke, Hume, Kant, Ross, Audi, Thomson, Harman, Sturgeon and many others how children acquire moral concepts and become more reliable judges criticisms of those who would reduce moral knowledge to value-neutral knowledge or attempt to replace moral belief with emotion. Throughout the book Zimmerman argues that our belief in moral knowledge can survive sceptical challenges. He also draws on a rich range of examples from Plato’s Meno and Dickens’ David Copperfield to Bernard Madoff and Saddam Hussein. Including chapter summaries and annotated further reading at the end of each chapter, Moral Epistemology is essential reading for all students of ethics, epistemology and moral psychology.
Download or read book What Can We Know written by Louis P. Pojman and published by . This book was released on 1995-01 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Compact yet more comprehensive than similar texts, WHAT CAN WE KNOW? analyzes the central topics of truth, justification ranging from skepticism to religious belief. Written in the author's friendly and conversational style without unnecessary jargon, the text makes the subject matter more accessible and inviting to students.
Download or read book Righting Epistemology written by Bredo Johnsen and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: David Hume launched a historic revolution in epistemology when he showed that our theories about the world have no probability relative to what we think of as our evidence for them, hence that the distinction between justified and unjustified theories does not lie in their different probabilities relative to that evidence. However, allies in his revolution appeared only in the 20th century, in the persons of Sir Karl Popper, Nelson Goodman and W. V. Quine. Hume's second great contribution to the field, which remains unrecognized to this day, was to propose what is now known as reflective equilibrium theory as the framework within which justified and unjustified theories are rightly distinguished. The core of this book comprises an account of these developments from Hume to Quine, an extension of reflective equilibrium theory that renders it a general theory of epistemic justification concerning our beliefs about the world, and an argument that all four of these thinkers would have endorsed that extension. In chapters on Sextus, Descartes, Wittgenstein's On Certainty, and other aspects of Hume's epistemology I defend new readings of those philosophers' writings on skepticism and note significant relationships among their views on matters bearing on the Humean revolution. Finally, in chapters on Hilary Putnam's Brains in a Vat and Fred Dretske's contextualism - the only promising version of that view - I show that both fail to rule out the possible truth of radical skeptical hypotheses. This is not surprising, since those hypotheses are in fact possible. They are not, however, of any epistemological significance, since the justification of our beliefs about the world is a function of the extent to which bodies of beliefs to which they belong are in reflective equilibrium, and no extant conception of knowledge is of any epistemological interest.
Download or read book How Do We Know written by James K. Dew Jr. and published by InterVarsity Press. This book was released on 2014-01-31 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Epistemology, the study of knowledge, can often seem like a daunting subject. In this brief introduction, James Dew and Mark Foreman guide students through the important discipline of epistemology. By asking basic questions and using clear, jargon-free language, they provide an entry into some of the most important issues in contemporary philosophy.
Download or read book What to Believe Now written by David Coady and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2012-01-17 with total page 231 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What can we know and what should we believe about today's world? What to Believe Now: Applying Epistemology to Contemporary Issues applies the concerns and techniques of epistemology to a wide variety of contemporary issues. Questions about what we can know-and what we should believe-are first addressed through an explicit consideration of the practicalities of working these issues out at the dawn of the twenty-first century. Coady calls for an 'applied turn' in epistemology, a process he likens to the applied turn that transformed the study of ethics in the early 1970s. Subjects dealt with include: Experts-how can we recognize them? And when should we trust them? Rumors-should they ever be believed? And can they, in fact, be a source of knowledge? Conspiracy theories-when, if ever, should they be believed, and can they be known to be true? The blogosphere-how does it compare with traditional media as a source of knowledge and justified belief? Timely, thought provoking, and controversial, What to Believe Now offers a wealth of insights into a branch of philosophy of growing importance-and increasing relevance-in the twenty-first century.
Download or read book Good Knowledge Bad Knowledge written by Stephen Hetherington and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 2001-10-18 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is knowledge? How hard is it for a person to have knowledge? Good Knowledge, Bad Knowledge confronts contemporary philosophical attempts to answer those classic questions, by identifying and arguing against two fundamental epistemological presumptions. Can there be both better and worse knowledge of some fact? Can you improve your knowledge of a particular fact? Can there be especially bad knowledge of a specific fact? Epistemologists routinely answer these questions with a resounding 'No'. But Stephen Hetherington argues that those standard answers are mistaken. The result is a theory of knowledge that is unique in conceiving of knowledge in a non-absolutist way. The theory offers new solutions to many traditional epistemological puzzles, including various kinds of scepticism, the Gettier challenge, and the problem of the criterion. It also offers a fresh way of using G. E. Moore's anti-sceptical gambit, along with reinterpretations of the epistemic roles of fallibility, luck, relevance, and dogmatism. And what can we know about knowledge? The role of intuition in shaping epistemological thought about knowledge is critically examined. Anyone working on epistemology will enjoy this original and challenging work.
Download or read book Tell Me Something I Don t Know Dialogues in Epistemology written by Michael Veber and published by Broadview Press. This book was released on 2018-02-28 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Tell Me Something I Don’t Know is a collection of original dialogues in epistemology, suitable for student readers but also of interest to experts. Familiar problems, theories, and arguments are explored: second-order knowledge, epistemic closure, the preface paradox, skepticism, pragmatic encroachment, the Gettier problem, and more. New ideas on each of these issues are also offered, defended, and critiqued, often in humorous and entertaining ways.
Download or read book After Certainty written by Robert Pasnau and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-11-10 with total page 400 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: No part of philosophy is as disconnected from its history as is epistemology. After Certainty offers a reconstruction of that history, understood as a series of changing expectations about the cognitive ideal that beings such as us might hope to achieve in a world such as this. The story begins with Aristotle and then looks at how his epistemic program was developed through later antiquity and into the Middle Ages, before being dramatically reformulated in the seventeenth century. In watching these debates unfold over the centuries, one sees why epistemology has traditionally been embedded within a much larger sphere of concerns about human nature and the reality of the world we live in. It ultimately becomes clear why epistemology today has become a much narrower and specialized field, concerned with the conditions under which it is true to say, that someone knows something. Based on a series of lectures given at Oxford University, Robert Pasnau's book ranges widely over the history of philosophy, and examines in some detail the rise of science as an autonomous discipline. Ultimately Pasnau argues that we may have no good reasons to suppose ourselves capable of achieving even the most minimal standards for knowledge, and the final chapter concludes with a discussion of faith and hope.
Download or read book Contemporary Debates in Epistemology written by Blake Roeber and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2024-02-26 with total page 391 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The perfect introduction to contemporary epistemology, completely overhauled for its third edition In Contemporary Debates in Epistemology, pairs of specially commissioned essays defend opposing views on some of today’s most compelling epistemological issues and problems. Offering a unique blend of accessibility and originality, this timely volume brings together fresh debates on hotly contested issues to provide readers with the opportunity to engage in comparative analysis of constantly changing and developing epistemological concepts. Now in its third edition, Contemporary Debates in Epistemology features up-to-date coverage of the latest developments in the field. Entirely new essays examine questions of epistemic normativity and knowledge, the relationship between belief and credence, the possibility of internalist epistemology, epistemic instrumentalism, norms of assertion, the use of thought experiments in epistemology, and more. Presents a rigorous yet accessible introduction to the major topics in contemporary epistemology Contains head-to-head chapters offering forceful advocacy of opposing philosophical stances Focuses on core areas of epistemology Uses a lively debate format that sharply defines the issues and encourages further discussion All-new chapters provide fully updated coverage of new and emerging topics in epistemology Part of the Wiley-Blackwell Contemporary Debates in Philosophy series, Contemporary Debates in Epistemology, Third Edition, remains an essential resource for advanced undergraduate philosophy majors, graduate students in philosophy, and epistemologists who want to keep current with contemporary epistemological debates.
