Non-knowledge should not be simply regarded as the opposite of knowledge, but as complementary to it: each derives its character and meaning from the other and from their interaction. Knowledge does not colonize the space of ignorance in the progressive march of science; rather, knowledge and ignorance are mutually shaped in social and political domains of partial, shifting, and temporal relationships. This volume's ethnographic analyses provide a theoretical frame through which to consider the production and reproduction of ignorance, non-knowledge, and secrecy, as well as the wider implications these ideas have for anthropology and related disciplines in the social sciences and humanities.

In this fascinating journey to the edge of science, Vidal takes on big philosophical questions: Does our universe have a beginning and an end or is it cyclic? Are we alone in the universe? What is the role of intelligent life, if any, in cosmic evolution? Grounded in science and committed to philosophical rigor, this book presents an evolutionary worldview where the rise of intelligent life is not an accident, but may well be the key to unlocking the universe's deepest mysteries. Vidal shows how the fine-tuning controversy can be advanced with computer simulations. He also explores whether natural or artificial selection could hold on a cosmic scale. In perhaps his boldest hypothesis, he argues that signs of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations are already present in our astrophysical data. His conclusions invite us to see the meaning of life, evolution and intelligence from a novel cosmological framework that should stir debate for years to come.

Tyler Burge presents a substantial, original study of what it is for individuals to represent the physical world with the most primitive sort of objectivity. By reflecting on the science of perception and related psychological and biological sciences, he gives an account of constitutive conditions for perceiving the physical world, and thus aims to locate origins of representational mind. Origins of Objectivity illuminates several long-standing, central issues in philosophy, and provides a wide-ranging account of relations between human and animal psychologies.

This book explores the intersection between apophaticism - negative theology - and performance. While apophaticism in literature and critical theory may have had its heyday in the heady debates about negative theology and deconstruction in the 1990s, negative ways of knowing and speaking have continued to structure conversations in theatre and performance studies around issues of embodiment, the non- and post-human, objects, archives, the ethics of otherness in intercultural research, and the unreadable and inaccessible in the work of minority artists. A great part of the history of apophaticism lies in mystic literature. With the rise of the New Age movement, which claimed historical mysticism as part of its genealogy, apophaticism has often been sidelined as spirituality rather than serious study. This book argues that the apophatic continues to exert a strong influence on the discourse and culture of Western literature and especially performance, and that by reassessing this ancient form of negative epistemology, artists, scholars, students, and teachers alike can more deeply engage forms of unknowing through what cannot be said and cannot be represented in language, on the stage, and in every aspect of social life.

This collection showcases the most influential published essays by philosopher Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski. One of the most distinguished thinkers working in epistemology today, particularly where the theory of knowledge meets ethics and the philosophy of religion, Zagzebski is well-known for broadening epistemology and refocusing it on epistemic virtue and epistemic value. Her work has greatly influenced the trajectory of contemporary epistemology, opening up new fields in analytic epistemology. The papers collected here are organized into six sections to underline the scope of her impact on six key subject areas of epistemology: (1) knowledge and understanding, (2) intellectual virtue, (3) epistemic value, (4) virtue in religious epistemology, (5) intellectual autonomy and authority, and (6) skepticism and the Gettier problem.

This volume presents 38 classic texts in formal epistemology, and strengthens the ties between research into this area of philosophy and its neighbouring intellectual disciplines. The editors provide introductions to five subsections: Bayesian Epistemology, Belief Change, Decision Theory, Interactive Epistemology and Epistemic Logic. 'Formal epistemology' is a term coined in the late 1990s for a new constellation of interests in philosophy, the origins of which are found in earlier works of epistemologists, philosophers of science and logicians. It addresses a growing agenda of problems concerning knowledge, belief, certainty, rationality, deliberation, decision, strategy, action and agent interaction - and it does so using methods from logic, probability, computability, decision and game theory. The volume also includes a thorough index and suggestions for further reading, and thus offers a complete teaching and research package for students as well as research scholars of formal epistemology, philosophy, logic, computer science, theoretical economics and cognitive psychology.

To mark the 50th anniversary of Donald Davidson's 'Actions, reasons and causes', eight philosophers with distinctive and contrasting views revisit and update the reasons/causes debate.Their essays are preceded by a historical introduction which traces current debates to their roots in the philosophy of history and social science, linking the rise of causalism to a metaphysical backlash against the linguistic turn. Both historically grounded and topical, this volume will be of great interest to both students and scholars in the philosophy of action and related areas of study.

This volume investigates the notion of reduction. Building on the idea that philosophersemploy the term 'reduction' to reconcile diversity and directionality with unity, without relying on elimination, the book offers a powerful explication of an "ontological," notion of reduction the extension of which is (primarily) formed by properties, kinds, individuals, or processes. It argues that related notions of reduction, such as theory-reduction and functional reduction, should be defined in terms of this explication. Thereby, the book offers a coherent framework, which sheds light on the history of the various reduction debates in the philosophy of science and in the philosophy of mind, and on related topics such as reduction and unification, the notion of a scientific level, and physicalism.

The book takes its point of departure in the examination of a puzzle about reduction. To illustrate, the book takes as an example the reduction of water. If water reduces to H2O, then water is identical to H2O - thus we get unity. Unity does not come at the price of elimination - claiming that water reduces to H2O, we do not thereby claim that there is no water. But what about diversity and directionality? Intuitively, there should be a difference between water and H2O, such that we get diversity. This is required for there to be directionality: in a sense, if water reduces to H2O, then H2O is prior to, or more basic than water. At least, if water reduces to H2O, then H2O does not reduce to water. But how can this be, if water is identical to H2O? The book shows that the application of current models of reduction does not solve this puzzle, and proposes a new coherent definition, according to which unity is tied to identity, diversity is descriptive in nature, and directionality is the directionality of explanation."

Violence is a central issue of contemporary society at all levels, affecting human relationships from the most intimate to the most impersonal. But what is violence? Is violence justifiable? What relevance does the fate of the victim of violence have to such questions? To address these and similar questions, this volume brings together thinkers from a wide range of philosophical backgrounds who employ a rich variety of methods, ranging from the strictly analytic to the postmodern. They explore issues such as responsibility, provocation, violation, cruelty, self-determination and deception in attempting to understand violence in relation both to the suffering of its victims and the justifications offered by its perpetrators and their supporters. In exploring these issues the essays collected in this volume explore terrorism, rape, genocide and state-sponsored violence.

One the most interesting debates in moral philosophy revolves around the significance of empirical moral psychology for moral philosophy. Genealogical arguments that rely on empirical findings about the origins of moral beliefs, so-called debunking arguments, take center stage in this debate. Looking at debunking arguments based on evidence from evolutionary moral psychology, experimental ethics and neuroscience, this book explores what ethicists can learn from the science of morality, and what they cannot. Among other things, the book offers a new take on the deontology/utilitarianism debate, discusses the usefulness of experiments in ethics, investigates whether morality should be thought of as a problem-solving device, shows how debunking arguments can tell us something about the structure of philosophical debate, and argues that debunking arguments lead to both moral and prudential skepticism. Presenting a new picture of the relationship between empirical moral psychology and moral philosophy, this book is essential reading for moral philosophers and moral psychologists alike.

This book, Philosophy of Chemistry, is dedicated to some of the general principles of philosophy of chemistry, the special branch of philosophy of science. Since the work is a collection of lectures that the Author gave at the University of Zagreb (Croatia) during the period of twenty years, the book could serve also as a university textbook in philosophy of chemistry. Philosophy of chemistry is represented through the discussion about some of the general philosophical problems such as, theory of complexity, autonomy of sciences, epistemology, falsificationism, emergence and unity of science, holism and reductionism, the problem of identity, and hierarchical structures, as well as the teleological aspects of science. The work consists from thirteen chapters where the main science-philosophical problems are represented and discussed within the historical context of the development of chemistry as a science. The book is aimed at wider academic audience interesting in the philosophy of science, and especially at university students of life sciences.

How can we advance knowledge? Which methods do we need in order to make new discoveries? How can we rationally evaluate, reconstruct and offer discoveries as a means of improving the 'method' of discovery itself? And how can we use findings about scientific discovery to boost funding policies, thus fostering a deeper impact of scientific discovery itself? The respective chapters in this book provide readers with answers to these questions. They focus on a set of issues that are essential to the development of types of reasoning for advancing knowledge, such as models for both revolutionary findings and paradigm shifts; ways of rationally addressing scientific disagreement, e.g. when a revolutionary discovery sparks considerable disagreement inside the scientific community; frameworks for both discovery and inference methods; and heuristics for economics and the social sciences.

It is widely thought that the cognitive science of religion (CSR) may have a bearing on the epistemic status of religious beliefs and on other topics in philosophy of religion. Epistemologists have used theories from CSR to argue both for and against the rationality of religious beliefs, or they have claimed that CSR is neutral vis-a-vis the epistemic status of religious belief. However, since CSR is a rapidly evolving discipline, a great deal of earlier research on the topic has become dated. Furthermore, most of the debate on the epistemic consequences of CSR has not taken into account insights from the philosophy of science, such as explanatory pluralism and explanatory levels. This volume overcomes these deficiencies. This volume brings together new philosophical reflection on CSR. It examines the influence of CSR theories on the epistemic status of religious beliefs; it discusses its impact on philosophy of religion; and it offers new insights for CSR. The book addresses the question of whether or not the plurality of theories in CSR makes epistemic conclusions about religious belief unwarranted. It also explores the impact of CSR on other topics in philosophy of religion like the cognitive consequences of sin and naturalism. Finally, the book investigates what the main theories in CSR aim to explain, and addresses the strengths and weaknesses of CSR.

This book is an exploration of what it takes for an event to count as an action. I first became interested in this topic nearly a decade ago while working on a different topic. I kept coming across philosophers making claims about the nature of action that seemed false or at least dubious to me. As a consequence I turned to the philosophy of action directly, to get to the heart of the matter. I have wrestled with this territory ever since. I hope that, with this book, I have finally earned the intuitions that put me at odds with the philosophers I was originally reading. This book develops ideas in Part Two of my doctoral dissertation, which I wrote at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada. I loved being at Queen's, for both professional and personal reasons. My thanks go to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for financial support as a doctoral candidate. Steve Leighton and Ronald de Sousa were readers for my dissertation. They provided some early and invaluable challenges to the ideas developed here. My deepest debt of gratitude is owed to David Bakhurst, my supervisor. I learned a lot from David; this book would not be the same without his help.

For the first time in history, scholars working on language and culture from within an evolutionary epistemological framework, and thereby emphasizing complementary or deviating theories of the Modern Synthesis, were brought together. Of course there have been excellent conferences on Evolutionary Epistemology in the past, as well as numerous conferences on the topics of Language and Culture. However, until now these disciplines had not been brought together into one all-encompassing conference.

Moreover, previously there never had been such stress on alternative and complementary theories of the Modern Synthesis. Today we know that natural selection and evolution are far from synonymous and that they do not explain isomorphic phenomena in the world. 'Taking Darwin seriously' is the way to go, but today the time has come to take alternative and complementary theories that developed after the Modern Synthesis, equally seriously, and, furthermore, to examine how language and culture can merit from these diverse disciplines.

As this volume will make clear, a specific inter- and transdisciplinary approach is one of the next crucial steps that needs to be taken, if we ever want to unravel the secrets of phenomena such as language and culture.

In this controversial new book O'Hear takes a stand against the fashion for explaining human behavior in terms of evolution. He contends that while the theory of evolution is successful in explaining the development of the natural world in general, it is of limited value when applied to the human world. Because of our reflectiveness and our rationality we take on goals and ideals which cannot be justified in terms of survival-promotion or reproductive advantage. O'Hear examines the nature of human self-consciousness, and argues that evolutionary theory cannot give a satisfactory account of such distinctive facets of human life as the quest for knowledge, moral sense, and the appreciation of beauty; in these we transcend our biological origins. It is our rationality that allows each of us to go beyond not only our biological but also our cultural inheritance: as the author says in the Preface, "we are prisoners neither of our genes nor of the ideas we encounter as we each make our personal and individual way through life."

This book addresses an epidemic that has developed on a global scale, and, which under the heading of "addiction," presents a new narrative about the travails of the human predicament. The book introduces phenomenological motifs, such as desire, embodiment, and temporality, to uncover the existential roots of addiction, and develops Martin Heidegger's insights into technology to uncover the challenge of becoming a self within the impulsiveness and depersonalization of our digital age. By charting a new path of philosophical inquiry, the book allows a pervasive, cultural phenomenon, ordinarily reserved to psychology, to speak as a referendum about the danger which technology poses to us on a daily basis. In this regard, addiction ceases to be merely a clinical malady, and instead becomes a "signpost" to exposing a hidden danger posed by the assimilation of our culture within a technological framework.

In this book, Andrea Clausen intends to reconcile Kripke's point according to which conceptual content has to be considered as being constituted by social, normative practice - by a process of mutual assessments - with the view that the content of empirical assertions has to be conceived as objective. She criticizes approaches that explicate content-constitutive practice in non-normative terms, namely in terms of sanctioning behavior (Haugeland, Pettit, Esfeld). She also rejects a pragmatist reading of Heidegger that proceeds from thoroughly normative but pre-conceptual practice. She develops and defends a particular reading of an approach that conceives normative, conceptually articulated practice - giving and asking for reasons - as primitive (Brandom, McDowell).

This volume is a collation of original contributions from the key actors of a new trend in the contemporary theory of knowledge and belief, that we call "dynamic epistemology." It brings the works of these researchers under a single umbrella by highlighting the coherence of their current themes, and by establishing connections between topics that, up until now, have been investigated independently. It also illustrates how the new analytical toolbox unveils questions about the theory of knowledge, belief, preference, action, and rationality, in a number of central axes in dynamic epistemology: temporal, social, probabilistic and even deontic dynamics.

In Wisdom, Knowledge, and Management, the second volume of the series Churchman's Legacy and Related Works, the editors draw contributions from leading systems thinkers inspired by the works of C West Churchman. The Systems Approach and Its Enemies (C. West Churchman, 1979) is one of Churchman's most significant works. In this particular writing he displayed two main tendencies, that he was a Skeptic and that he showed Socratic Wisdom. In Wisdom, Knowledge, and Management, the editors seeks to follow up on these two themes and reveal how modern authors interpret Churchman's ideas, apply them to their own line of thinking and develop their own brand of Systemics. Several authors re-interpret Churchman's thinking and several others apply this holistic discourse to practical applications. It is very significant that the authors are a very cosmopolitan group: hailing from Sweden, Australia, Spain, South Korea, Argentina and USA. Interestingly, the contribution from the South Korean author, Yu Jae E, applies conceptual tools from the French contemporary writer, Deleuze. Additionally, Darek M. Eriksson's chapter applies the epistemology of Jean-Louis Le Moigne. modern authors, and in particular Churchman, to ideas spawned two thousands years ago among the Ancient Greeks. This effort should show the reach of Churchman's intellectual power and demonstrates cross-fertilization across borders and continents. It could not have happened without the Internet.

Containing three previously unpublished papers by W.V. Quine as well as historical, exegetical, and critical papers by several leading Quine scholars including Hylton, Ebbs, and Ben-Menahem, this volume aims to remedy the comparative lack of historical investigation of Quine and his philosophical context.

In The Concealed Art of the Soul, Jonardon Ganeri presents a variety of perspectives on the nature of the self as seen by major schools of classical Indian philosophy.
For Indian thinkers, a philosophical treatise about the self should not only reveal the truth about the nature of the soul, but should also engage the reader in a process of study and contemplation that will eventually lead to self-transformation. By combining careful attention to philosophical content and sensitivity to literary form, Ganeri deepens our understanding of some of the greatest works in Indian literary history. His magisterial survey includes the Upanisads, the Buddha's discourses, the epic Mahabharata, and the writings of Candrakirti, whose work was later to provide the foundation for Tibetan Buddhism.
Ganeri argues that many Western theories of selfhood are not only present in, but are developed to high degree of sophistication in these writings, and that there are other ideas about the self found in the work of classical Indian thinkers which present-day analytic philosophers have not yet begun to explore.
Scholars and students of philosophy and religious studies, particularly those with an interest in Indian and Western conceptions of the self, will find this book fascinating reading.

What is the actual basis of terms such as "goal," "function," and "for the sake of"? Can these teleological concepts be validly applied to non-conscious biological processes such as the heartbeat, plant growth, and cellular metabolism? Does the behavior of any inanimate objects, natural or man-made, qualify as goal-directed? To resolve these issues, Harry Binswanger provides a unique approach combining factual and epistemological considerations. If human purposeful action is the paradigm case of goal-directed action, then regarding a non-purposeful process as goal-directed means taking it to be causally similar to purposeful action. Accordingly, to determine the proper extent of teleological concepts, Binswanger provides an analysis of purposeful action and a point-by-point comparison of the features of purposeful action to those of vegetative and inanimate processes. He concludes that natural selection, in adapting actions to ends with survival value, does make all living action qualify as goal-directed, and that no inanimate process qualifies. An appendix compares Binswanger's views with those of Larry Wright and Andrew Woodfield.

This volume is the first systematic and thorough attempt to investigate the relation and the possible applications of mereology to contemporary science. It gathers contributions from leading scholars in the field and covers a wide range of scientific theories and practices such as physics, mathematics, chemistry, biology, computer science and engineering. Throughout the volume, a variety of foundational issues are investigated both from the formal and the empirical point of view.

The first section looks at the topic as it applies to physics. The section addresses questions of persistence and composition within quantum and relativistic physics and concludes by scrutinizing the possibility to capture continuity of motion as described by our best physical theories within gunky space times.

The second part tackles mathematics and shows how to provide a foundation for point-free geometry of space switching to fuzzy-logic. The relationbetween mereological sums and set-theoretic suprema is investigated and issues about different mereological perspectives such as classical and natural Mereology are thoroughly discussed.

The third section in the volume looks at natural science. Several questions from biology, medicine and chemistry are investigated. From the perspective of biology, there is an attempt to provide axioms for inferring statements about part hood between two biological entities from statements about their spatial relation. From the perspective of chemistry, it is argued that classical mereological frameworks are not adequate to capture the practices of chemistry in that they consider neither temporal nor modal parameters.

The final part introduces computer science and engineering. A new formal mereological framework in which an indeterminate relation of part hood is taken as a primitive notion is constructed and then applied to a wide variety of disciplines from robotics to knowledge engineering. A formal framework for discrete mereotopology and its applications is developed and finally, the importance of mereology for the relatively new science of domain engineering is also discussed."