Metaphysics/Epistemology

The Epistemological Spectrum: At the Interface of Cognitive Science and Conceptual Analysis

David K. Henderson, Terence Horgan

This book argues for several dramatic breaks with the epistemological tradition, while also arguing for significant continuity with epistemology as it has come to be practiced. At ... More

This book argues for several dramatic breaks with the epistemological tradition, while also arguing for significant continuity with epistemology as it has come to be practiced. At important junctures, the book finds a way of “going between” the commonly conceived epistemological alternatives. The result is both a retentive and a revisionary account of various matters: (i) of the character of a priori reflective inquiry, (ii) of conceptual analysis as a form of a priori inquiry and as a cornerstone of philosophical methodology, (iii) of reliabilism, (iv) of epistemological internalism and epistemological externalism, (v) of epistemically relevant, evidence-sensitive, cognitive processes, (vi) of both epistemic foundationalism and coherentism, and (vii) of the role of a priori, a posteriori, and empirical elements within epistemological theorizing itself. “The epistemological spectrum” comprises inquiry ranging from a priori reflection on concepts such as epistemic justification and knowledge to richly empirical work within cognitive science. The conceptual truths regarding justification (for one example) serve to orient a fitting naturalized epistemology, while empirical information is necessarily involved in arriving at determinate specification of what processes are fitting and justificatory of beliefs. The book argues for this “big-tent” understanding of naturalized epistemology. It also illustrates it while arriving at a distinctive form of reliabilism, an importantly expansive view of the range and character of information on which human epistemic agents can and must rely, and a principled way of reconciling what are commonly thought to be incompatible positions such as foundationalism and coherentism. Less

Epistemology: New Essays

Quentin Smith (ed.)

This book offers a view of the current state of play in epistemology in the form of twelve chapters by some of the philosophers who have most influenced the course of debates in recent ... More

This book offers a view of the current state of play in epistemology in the form of twelve chapters by some of the philosophers who have most influenced the course of debates in recent years. Topics include epistemic justification, solipsism, scepticism, and modal, moral, naturalistic, and probabilistic epistemology. Such approaches as reliabilism, evidentialism, infinitism, and virtue epistemology are here developed further by the philosophers who pioneered them. Less

Epistemology and the Psychology of Human Judgment

Michael A Bishop, J. D. Trout

This book presents a new approach to epistemology (the theory of human knowledge and reasoning). Its approach aims to liberate epistemology from the scholastic debates of standard ... More

This book presents a new approach to epistemology (the theory of human knowledge and reasoning). Its approach aims to liberate epistemology from the scholastic debates of standard analytic epistemology, and treat it as a branch of the philosophy of science. The approach is novel in its use of cost-benefit analysis to guide people facing real reasoning problems and in its framework for resolving normative disputes in psychology. Based on empirical data, the book shows how people can improve their reasoning by relying on Statistical Prediction Rules (SPRs). It then develops and articulates the positive core of the book. The view presented — Strategic Reliabilism — claims that epistemic excellence consists in the efficient allocation of cognitive resources to reliable reasoning strategies, applied to significant problems. The last third of the book develops the implications of this view for standard analytic epistemology; for resolving normative disputes in psychology; and for offering practical, concrete advice on how this theory can improve real people's reasoning. Less

The Epistemology of Resistance: Gender and Racial Oppression, Epistemic Injustice, and the Social Imagination

José Medina

This book explores the epistemic side of oppression, focusing on racial and sexual oppression and their interconnections. It elucidates how social insensitivities and imposed silences ... More

This book explores the epistemic side of oppression, focusing on racial and sexual oppression and their interconnections. It elucidates how social insensitivities and imposed silences prevent members of different groups from interacting epistemically in fruitful ways—from listening to each other, learning from each other, and mutually enriching each other’s perspectives. Medina’s epistemology of resistance offers a contextualist theory of our complicity with epistemic injustices and a social connection model of shared responsibility for improving epistemic conditions of participation in social practices. Through the articulation of a new interactionism and polyphonic contextualism, the book develops a sustained argument about the role of the imagination in mediating social perceptions and interactions. It concludes that only through the cultivation of practices of resistance can we develop a social imagination that can help us become sensitive to the suffering of excluded and stigmatized subjects. Drawing on Feminist Standpoint Theory and Critical Race Theory, this book makes contributions to social epistemology and to recent discussions of testimonial and hermeneutical injustice, epistemic responsibility, counter-performativity, and solidarity in the fight against racism and sexism. Less

The Epistemology of Testimony

Jennifer Lackey, Ernest Sosa (eds)

How do we acquire knowledge from either the spoken or written word of others? This is the question at the center of The Epistemology of Testimony, a collection of essays devoted to the ... More

How do we acquire knowledge from either the spoken or written word of others? This is the question at the center of The Epistemology of Testimony, a collection of essays devoted to the epistemological issues that arise from an examination of testimonial knowledge. Despite its historical neglect, recent years have seen an explosion of interesting and innovative philosophical work on this topic. This book builds on and further develops this work by bringing together new papers by some of the leading scholars in the field. Since this volume is the only collection of papers on testimony strictly within the analytic tradition, it represents a new and significant contribution to this fertile epistemological literature. Less

Essays in the Metaphysics of Mind

Jaegwon Kim

This book is a collection of 14 essays; 11 of these have been previously published and three are new. All but one of them have been written since 1993 when my essay collection ... More

This book is a collection of 14 essays; 11 of these have been previously published and three are new. All but one of them have been written since 1993 when my essay collection Supervenience and Mind appeared. Essays used in the monographs, Mind in a Physical World and Physicalism, Or Something Near Enough, have been excluded. The book begins with four essays on emergence and related issues; in one way or another, each of these essays raises difficulties for the idea of emergence. In particular, the last essay casts serious doubt on the intelligibility of the very idea of ontological emergence (distinguished from epistemological emergence). These essays are followed by two essays on explanation of action. Both stress the centrality and priority of the agent's first‐person point of view in understanding actions. The second of the two, which is new, develops an agent‐centered normative account of action explanation, in opposition to the prevailing third‐person approaches such as the causal and nomological models. The next group of four essays addresses various issues about explanation, such as explanatory realism, explanatory exclusion, reduction and reductive explanation, and what a philosophical theory of explanation should be like. Mental causation and physicalism are the concerns of the next three papers. One of these examines Donald Davidson's defense of mental causation within his anomalous monism. Another discusses Sydney Shoemaker's recent analysis of realization (the “subset view”) and his defense of mental causation. The last essay of the book addresses the issue of laws in the special sciences, offering three arguments to show that there are no such laws. The first begins with a consideration of Davidson's argument for the claim that there are no strict laws about the mental; the second builds on J.J.C. Smart's observations on biology and its relation to physics; and the third is based on my earlier work on multiple realization. Less

Essays in the Metaphysics of Modality

Alvin Plantinga

Matthew Davidson (ed.)

This book is a collection of my essays, dating from 1969, concerning the metaphysics of modality. The first two chapters are a defense of the idea of modality de re against criticisms ... More

This book is a collection of my essays, dating from 1969, concerning the metaphysics of modality. The first two chapters are a defense of the idea of modality de re against criticisms from William Kneale and W. V. Quine, and an elaboration on the notions of possible worlds and essences. In the third chapter, I conclude that the Theory of Worldbound Individuals is false, even when fortified with Counterpart Theory. Chapter 4 contains an argument for the conclusion that there neither are, nor could have been, possible but nonexistent objects. In the next chapter, I develop this theme in greater detail and argue for the compatibility of actualism – i.e., the view that there neither are, nor could have been, any nonexistent objects – and possible worlds. Both Chs. 6 and 7 contain an account of the relationship between proper names and essences, my view being that proper names express essences and that sometimes different proper names for the same object express different essences of that object. The end of Ch. 7 and all of Ch. 8 are an examination of existentialism (the theory that propositions and states of affairs ontologically depend on their subjects) and arguments against it. In Ch. 9, I defend my theory of modality against objections raised by John Pollock. In Ch. 10, I sketch out what the commitments of modal realism are, and argue that David Lewis's modal theory is not a modal realist theory. Finally, in the concluding chapter I argue that propositions cannot be concrete objects. Less

Essays on a Priori Knowledge and Justification: Essays

Albert Casullo

There has been a major renewal of interest in the topic of a priori knowledge over the past twenty-five years. The sixteen essays in this collection, which span this entire period, ... More

There has been a major renewal of interest in the topic of a priori knowledge over the past twenty-five years. The sixteen essays in this collection, which span this entire period, document the complex set of issues motivating the renewed interest, identify the central epistemological questions, and provide the leading ideas of a unified response to them. They offer a systematic treatment of the concept of a priori knowledge, the existence of a priori knowledge, and the relationship between a priori knowledge and the related concepts of necessary truth and analytic truth. The essays fall into three categories: six published prior to my 〉i〈A Priori Justification〉/i〈 (Oxford University Press, 2003), four published after it, and four previously unpublished. The first six essays provide the background and an introduction to a number of the major themes of 〉i〈A Priori Justification〉/i〈: the articulation and defense of the minimal conception of a priori justification, an exposition of the limitations of the traditional arguments both for and against a priori knowledge, and the relevance of empirical investigation to providing supporting evidence for the claim that there are nonexperiential sources of justification. The remaining four published essays explore diverse themes that were introduced in 〉i〈A Priori Justification〉/i〈 but not developed in detail: epistemic overdetermination, the relationship between a priori knowledge and necessary truth, testimony and a priori knowledge, and the bearing of sociohistorical accounts of knowledge on the a priori. The four previously unpublished essays address issues that have either emerged or taken on more prominence in the literature on the a priori since the publication of 〉i〈A Priori Justification〉/i〈: the evidential status of intuitions, the nature of modal knowledge, and challenges to the cogency or the significance of the a priori–a posteriori distinction. Less

Essays on Kant

Henry E. Allison

This volume contains a collection of seventeen essays which have been previously published on Kant and an addendum to one of these essays that is here published for the first time. ... More

This volume contains a collection of seventeen essays which have been previously published on Kant and an addendum to one of these essays that is here published for the first time. Although these essays cover virtually the full spectrum of the author's work on Kant, ranging from his epistemology, metaphysics, and moral theory to his views on teleology, political philosophy, the philosophy of history, and the philosophy of religion, most of them revolve around three basic themes: the nature of transcendental idealism, freedom of the will, and the purposiveness of nature. The first two of these have been the foci of the author's work on Kant since its inception and the essays dealing with them in this volume are intended as clarifications, elaborations, and further developments of what the author has said on these topics elsewhere. Among their major new elements is the introduction of a significant comparative dimension, which is intended both to place Kant's views in their historical context and to explore their contemporary relevance. To this end, Kant's views are contrasted with those of his major predecessors and immediate successors, as well as present‐day philosophers. The concept of the purposiveness of nature is the major contribution of the third Critique (Critique of the Power of Judgment) to Kant's “critical” philosophy and one the main concerns of the essays dealing with it is to demonstrate its central place in Kant's thought. Less