Infinite regresses (e.g., event3 caused event2, event2 caused event1, ad infinitum; statement3 justifies statement2, statement2 justifies statement1, ad infinitum) have been used as premises in arguments on a great variety of topics in both Eastern and Western philosophy since ancient times. They are part of a philosopher's tool kit of argumentation. But how sharp or strong is this tool? How effectively is it used? The typical presentation of infinite regress arguments throughout history is so succinct and has so many gaps that it is often unclear how an infinite regress is derived, and why an infinite regress is logically problematic, and as a result, it is often difficult to evaluate infinite regress arguments. These prevalent consequences indicate that there is a need for a theory to re-orient our practice. After well over two thousand years of using infinite regresses as premises, one would have expected that at least some theory of infinite regress arguments would have emerged. None exists. There have been only a few articles on infinite regress arguments, but they are based on the examination of only a small number of examples, discuss only a few logical or rhetorical aspects of infinite regress arguments, and so they help to meet the need for a theory in only a limited way.

Given the situation, I examined many infinite regress arguments to clarify the various aspects of the derivation of infinite regresses, and explain the different ways in which certain infinite regresses are unacceptable. My general approach consisted of collecting and evaluating as many infinite regress arguments as possible, comparing and contrasting many of the formal and non-formal properties, looking for recurring patterns, and identifying the properties that appeared essential to those patterns. The six chapters of this book gradually emerged from this approach. Two very general questions guided this work: (1) How are infinite regresses generated in infinite regress arguments? (2) How do infinite regresses logically function in an argument? In answering these questions I avoided as much as possible addressing the philosophical content and historical background of the arguments examined. Due to the already extensive work done on causal regresses and regresses of justification, only a few references are made to them. However, the focus is on other issues that have been neglected, and that do contribute to a general theory of infinite regress arguments: I clarify the notion of an infinite regress; identify different logical forms of infinite regresses; describe different kinds of infinite regress arguments; distinguish the rhetoric from the logic in infinite regress arguments; and discuss the function of infinite regresses in arguments. The unexamined derivation of infinite regresses is worth deriving to discover what we have kept hidden from ourselves, improve our ways of constructing and evaluating these arguments, and sharpen and strengthen one of our argumentative tools. This work is one example of empirical logic applied to infinite regress arguments: "the attempt to formulate, to test, to clarify, and to systematize concepts and principles for the interpretation, the evaluation, and the sound practice of reasoning" (Finocchiaro, M. Arguments about Arguments, Systematic, Critical and Historical Essays in Logical Theory. P48). "

This book is the first major study of the theme of misanthropy, its history, arguments both for and against it, and its significance for us today. Misanthropy is not strictly a philosophy. It is an inconsistent thought, and so has often been mocked. But from Timon of Athens to Motoerhead it has had a very long life, vast historical purchase and is seemingly indomitable and unignorable. Human beings have always nursed a profound distrust of who and what they are. This book does not seek to rationalize that distrust, but asks how far misanthropy might have a reason on its side, if a confused reason. There are obvious arguments against misanthropy. It is often born of a hatred of physical being. It can be historically explained. It particularly appears in undemocratic cultures. But what of the misanthropy of terminally defeated and disempowered peoples? Or born of progressivisms? Or the misanthropy that quarrels with specious or easy positivities (from Pelagius to Leibniz to the corporate cheer of contemporary `total capital`)? From the Greek Cynics to Roman satire, St Augustine to Jacobean drama, the misanthropy of the French Ancien Regime to Swift, Smollett and Johnson, Hobbes, Schopenhauer and Rousseau, from the Irish and American misanthropic traditions to modern women`s misanthropy, the book explores such questions. It ends with a debate about contemporary culture that ranges from the `dark radicalisms`, queer misanthropy, posthumanism and eco-misanthropy to Houellebecq, punk rock and gangsta rap.

This collection offers new essays by eminent scholars on Wittgenstein's third masterpiece, "On Certainty." Although Wittgenstein's language, and the problems he deals with--the nature of basic beliefs, epistemic foundationalism, knowledge, certainty, skepticism--are here much closer to traditional philosophy, the exploratory and nonlinear character of "On Certainty" make it a difficult work to penetrate. These essays probe deep into the work from four different approaches: the framework reading; the transcendental reading; the therapeutic reading; and the epistemic reading. This is the first collection ever devoted to "On Certainty," and will prove an invaluable tool to scholars and students of Wittgenstein who have thus far only fleetingly ventured beyond Philosophical Investigations.

Late Antique Epistemology explores the techniques used by late antique philosophers to discuss truth. Non-rational ways to discover truth, or to reform the soul, have usually been thought inferior to the philosophically approved techniques of rational argument, suitable for the less philosophically inclined, for children, savages or the uneducated. Religious rituals, oracles, erotic passion, madness may all have served to waken courage or remind us of realities obscured by everyday concerns. What is unusual in the late antique classical philosophers is that these techniques were reckoned as reliable as reasoned argument, or better still. Late twentieth century commentators have offered psychological explanations of this turn, but only recently had it been accepted that there might also have been philosophical explanations, and that the later antique philosophers were not necessarily deluded.

During the summer of 1986 one of the co-editors was a fellow at the Summer Institute in Epistemology held at the University of Colorado in Boulder. It was there that the idea for this volume was born. It was clear from the discussions taking place at the i Institute that works such as Robert Nozick's Philosophical Explanations and Barry 2 Stroud's The Significance of Philosophical Scepticism were beginning to have an impact and it was also clear that the debate over the issues surrounding skepticism had not gone away nor were they about to go away. Thinking that a new crop might be ready for harvest, the co-editors sent out a letter of inquiry to a long list of potential contributors. The letter elicited an overwhelmingly positive response to our inquiry from philosophers who were either writing something on skepticism at the time or who were willing to write something specifically for our volume. Still others told us that they had recently written something and if we were to consider previously published manuscripts they would permit us to consider their already published work. Out of all this material, the co-editors have put together the present collection. We believe that this anthology is not only suitable for graduate seminars but for advanced undergraduate classes as well.

Kulp provides a thorough examination of John Dewey's influential arguments against traditional theories of knowledge; in particular against a traditional spectator theory of knowledge, the thesis that knowing is fundamentally a passive beholding relation between the knower and the object known. Kulp presents Dewey's arguments with unusual clarity, but, ultimately, finds them deficient. He also lays the basis for a defense of a spectator theory of having knowledge, a basis that incorporates important considerations about introspective knowledge. American philosophers have recently revived their interest in Dewey's work. Such philosophers as well as students and scholars involved with the study of American thought and schools of philosophy will find Kulp's book extremely useful.

Speech Acts, Mind, and Social Reality - these are the main topics in the work of John R. Searle, one of the leading philosophical figures of the present times. How language is based on intentionality, how intentionality in turn is to be explicated by means of distinctions discovered in Speech Act Theory, and how language and intentionality are both related to social facts and institutions - these are questions to be tackled in this volume. The contributions result from discussions on and with John R. Searle, containing Searle's own latest views - including his seminal ideas on Rationality in Action. The collection provides a good basis for advanced seminar debates in Philosophy of Language, Philosophy of Mind, and Social Philosophy, and will also stimulate some further research on all of the three main topics.

Leibniz's optimalistic cosmology is one of the most controversial--and least appreciated--sectors of his philosophical system. How can contingency figure in a context where all truth is seen as analytic? Why should the best of possibilities be realized? And how can omni-necessitation be averted if an omni-benevolent deity must create the best possible world? Moreover, how can this supposedly best of possible worlds contain so much suffering and evil? Then too, how can there be a best, anyway, seeing that anything can be improved upon? And how can an imperfect creature of limited intelligence possibly hope to fathom such cosmic mysteries? All these questions convey objections to Leibnizian ideas that have been made repeatedly over many years. In actual fact, however, Leibniz anticipated them all. The aim of the present book is to lend plausibility to how he set about it.

Hermeneutics and Phenomenology in Paul Ricoeur: Between Text and Phenomenon calls attention to the dynamic interaction that takes place between hermeneutics and phenomenology in Ricoeur's thought. It could be said that Ricoeur's thought is placed under a twofold demand: between the rigor of the text and the requirements of the phenomenon. The rigor of the text calls for fidelity to what the text actually says, while the requirement of the phenomenon is established by the Husserlian call to return "to the things themselves." These two demands are interwoven insofar as there is a hermeneutic component of the phenomenological attempt to go beyond the surface of things to their deeper meaning, just as there is a phenomenological component of the hermeneutic attempt to establish a critical distance toward the world to which we belong. For this reason, Ricoeur's thought involves a back and forth movement between the text and the phenomenon. Although this double movement was a theme of many of Ricoeur's essays in the middle of his career, the essays in this book suggest that hermeneutic phenomenology remains implicit throughout his work. The chapters aim to highlight, in much greater detail, how this back and forth movement between phenomenology and hermeneutics takes place with respect to many important philosophical themes, including the experience of the body, history, language, memory, personal identity, and intersubjectivity.

Featuring more than 150 articles by more than 70 leading scholars, this is the only encyclopedia devoted to Empiricism. It is an essential source of information on particular figures, topics, and doctrines, treating the topic as a 17th- and 18th-century movement as well as a broader tendency in philosophical thought. The work demonstrates the continuity and logical development of Empiricism as an historical movement and explains the relations between the movement of the 17th and 18th centuries and the various species of empiricism that prececed and succeeded it. Of great use to scholars, students, and public library patrons are the selected bibliographies of primary and secondary sources that conclude each article.

The present Volume 4 of the Vienna Circle Yearbook is dedicated to Otto Neurath, one of the leading figures of the Vienna Circle and one of last polymaths representative of the vanished culture from which the Circle emerged. Situating Neurath's work between the topoi of Encyclopedism - as a theoretical, scientific tool of the unfinished' project of (post-) enlightenment - and Utopianism - as the resolve to work for the systematic improvement of society and science - this volume presents the most recent research as well as critical and updated surveys and assessments of Neurath's many-faceted and impressive life work. The contributions range from history and philosophy of science, epistemology, sociology and economics to pictorial statistics (ISOTYPE) and museology. Special attention is given to Neurath's methodological holism and epistemological naturalism, as well as to the interrelations of the different disciplines in Neurath's conception of the Unity of Science. Most contributors agree that the historical and systematic reconstruction of Neurath's conception of science leads to issues of crucial relevance to the ongoing task of sharpening the instrument that is science for its responsible application in the natural and social world. The volume also includes Neurath's previously unpublished full manuscript on visual education, a report on archival holdings concerning Neurath's work and a review section focusing on recent publications on Neurath and Logical Empiricism. An overview of the activities of the Institute Vienna Circle 1996/97 concludes the volume. Audience: Philosophers in general, philosophers of science and historians of science, and sociologists. The book will alsointerest scholars specialized in adult education, museology and economics.

In this book, the contributors present an overview of recent developments in philosophy of science by providing a collection of articles that together constitute a systematic and comprehensive investigation of how to understand the relation between the social sciences and democracy.

When down from the moon stepped the goddess of the night, she bid Minerva/Athene come to her. "Minerva/Athene," she said, "you sprang fully formed from the head of your father. Now all the daughters of mankind think they, too, are as rootless as you. Tonight I bid you dance, join the circle round 1 that tree glistening with the clarity of wisdom. Mother Natura and Lady Philosophia, hands together, already have begun the promenade of myth and allegory. " Still in the garb of gold and white stone, Minerva/ Athene did as she was bid and danced till dawn. Then in new light, she found herself suddenly a budding flower on a tall branch, and even more swiftly a crystalline fruit, rivaling the morning sun, refracting the light. Behold, she had grown roots, difficult to discover down in the dark of history, deep in the solid knowledge of earth. And the daughters of humankind saw and reveled in their roots. This is the story of this book, a history, long and diverse, of women thinkers and their thought. It will become a legacy for all who study it, a legacy that Heloi"se, Marie de Gournay, Sor Juana Ines de Ia Cruz, and Judith Sargent Murray among many women philosophers assured by composing lists of the names of women little acknowledged century after century. While the Hannah Arendt's, Susanne K.

This unique introduction fully engages and clearly explains pragmatism, an approach to knowledge and philosophy that rejects outmoded conceptions of objectivity while avoiding relativism and subjectivism. It follows pragmatism's focus on the process of inquiry rather than on abstract justifications meant to appease the skeptic. According to pragmatists, getting to know the world is a creative human enterprise, wherein we fashion our concepts in terms of how they affect us practically, including in future inquiry. This book fully illuminates that enterprise and the resulting radical rethinking of basic philosophical conceptions like truth, reality, and reason. Author Cornelis de Waal helps the reader recognize, understand, and assess classical and current pragmatist contributions-from Charles S. Peirce to Cornel West-evaluate existing views from a pragmatist angle, formulate pragmatist critiques, and develop a pragmatist viewpoint on a specific issue. The book discusses: Classical pragmatists, including Peirce, James, Dewey, and Addams; Contemporary figures, including Rorty, Putnam, Haack, and West; Connections with other twentieth-century approaches, including phenomenology, critical theory, and logical positivism; Peirce's pragmatic maxim and its relation to James's Will to Believe; Applications to philosophy of law, feminism, and issues of race and racism.

This book is focused on a problem that has aroused the most controversy in recent epistemological debate, which is whether the truth can or cannot be the fundamental epistemic goal. Traditional epistemology has presupposed the centrality of truth without giving a deeper analysis. To epistemic value pluralists, the claim that truth is the fundamental value seems unjustified. Their central judgement is that we can be in a situation where we do not attain truth but something else that is also epistemically valuable. In contrast, epistemic value monists are committed to the view that one can only attain something of epistemic value by attaining truth. It was necessary to rethink the long-accepted platitude that truth is our primary epistemic goal, once several objections about epistemic value were formulated. The whole debate is instructive for understanding how the epistemic value domain is structured.

This last one out of four volumes by Richard Ned Lebow in this book series focuses on various fields of social sciences and their connection to international politics. The author writes about topics in psychology, tragedy, and ethics. All of these fields are being put into relation with political aspects, especially international relations.

The notion of truth has become much discussed in philosophy over the last few decade, with many senior figures grappling with the relativist and constructivist notions of truth popular in other parts of the academy. It continues to be a subject enjoying vibrant debate. Despite the varieties of views on truth, most of the discussion has agreed that truth has a uniform, stable nature, ranging across the boundaries of human knowledge. The editors and contributors to this volume challenge this very basic assumption, putting forth the idea of what is called alethic pluralism - that there is more than one way of being true. While it is uncontroversial that there are different kinds of truth (moral truth, scientific truth etc), these pluralist views propose that truth itself can vary and that bearers of truth can literally be true in different ways. This volume presents new essays by some of the world's leading philosophers to explore this new view and its implications for the philosophy of language, epistemology, metaphysics, and logic.

Intuitionistic type theory can be described, somewhat boldly, as a partial fulfillment of the dream of a universal language for science. This book expounds several aspects of intuitionistic type theory, such as the notion of set, reference vs. computation, assumption, and substitution. Moreover, the book includes philosophically relevant sections on the principle of compositionality, lingua characteristica, epistemology, propositional logic, intuitionism, and the law of excluded middle. Ample historical references are given throughout the book.

Pluriverse, the final work of the American poet and philosopher Benjamin Paul Blood, was published posthumously in 1920. After an experience of the anaesthetic nitrous oxide during a dental operation, Blood came to the conclusion that his mind had been opened, that he had undergone a mystical experience, and that he had come to a realisation of the true nature of reality. This title is the fullest exposition of Blood's esoteric Christian philosophy-cum-theology, which, though deemed wildly eccentric by commentators both during his lifetime and later in the twentieth century, was nonetheless one of the most influential sources for American mystical-empiricism. In particular, Blood's thought was a major inspiration for William James, and can be seen to prefigure the latter's concept of Sciousness directly.

Having enjoyed more than twenty years of development, feminist epistemology and philosophy of science are now thriving fields of inquiry, offering current scholars a rich tradition from which to draw. In addition to a recognition of the power of knowledge itself and its effects on women s lives, a central feature of feminist epistemology and philosophy of science has been the attention they draw to the role of power dynamics within knowledge-seeking practices and the implications of these dynamics for our understandings of knowledge, science, and epistemology.
"Feminist Epistemology and Philosophy of Science: Power in Knowledge" collects new works that address today s key challenges for a power-sensitive feminist approach to questions of knowledge and scientific practice. The essays build upon established work in feminist epistemology and philosophy of science, offering new developments in the fields, and representing the broad array of the feminist work now being done and the many ways in which feminists incorporate power dynamics into their analyses.

It is convenient to divide the theory of knowledge into three sets of problems: 1. the nature of knowledge, certainty and related notions, 2. the nature and validi ty of the sources of knowledge, and 3. answers to skeptical arguments. The first set includes questions such as: What is it to know that something is the case? Does knowledge imply certainty? If not, how do they differ? What are the con ditions of knowledge? What is it to be justified in accepting something? The sec ond deals with the ways in which knowledge can be acquired. Traditional sources have included sources of premisses such as perception, memory, in trospection, innateness, revelation, testimony, and methods for drawing conclu sions such as induction and deduction, among others. Under this heading, philosophers have asked: Does innateness provide knowledge? Under what con ditions are beliefs from perception, testimony and memory justified? When does induction yield justified belief? Can induction itself be justified? Debates in this area have sometimes led philosophers to question sources (e. g., revela tion, innateness) but usually the aim has been to clarify and increase our understanding of the notion of knowledge. The third class includes the peren nial puzzles taught to beginning students: the existence of other minds, the problem of the external world (along with questions about idealism and phenomenalism), and more general skeptical problems such as the problem of the criterion. These sets of questions are related."

John Sallis has been at the cutting edge of the Continental philosophical tradition for almost half a century, and it is largely due to his contributions that we have come to understand "Continental" as designating an original philosophical, not a geographical, tradition. His work, with its uncommon scholarly rigor, has come to define the best of that tradition and to expand its horizons in creative ways through a genuine philosophical imagination. The essays gathered here are dedicated to assessing Sallis' contribution and to indicating some of the ways in which his works might shape the future of philosophy.

What do philosophy and computer science have in common? It turns out, quite a lot! In providing an introduction to computer science (using Python), Daniel Lim presents in this book key philosophical issues, ranging from external world skepticism to the existence of God to the problem of induction. These issues, and others, are introduced through the use of critical computational concepts, ranging from image manipulation to recursive programming to elementary machine learning techniques. In illuminating some of the overlapping conceptual spaces of computer science and philosophy, Lim teaches the reader fundamental programming skills and also allows her to develop the critical thinking skills essential for examining some of the enduring questions of philosophy. Key Features Teaches readers actual computer programming, not merely ideas about computers Includes fun programming projects (like digital image manipulation and Game of Life simulation), allowing the reader to develop the ability to write larger computer programs that require decomposition, abstraction, and algorithmic thinking Uses computational concepts to introduce, clarify, and develop a variety of philosophical issues Covers various aspects of machine learning and relates them to philosophical issues involving science and induction as well as to ethical issues Provides a framework to critically analyze arguments in classic and contemporary philosophical debates

The trilogy Forms of Representation in the Aristotelian Tradition investigates how Aristotle and his ancient and medieval successors understood the relation between the external world and the human mind. It gives an equal footing to the three most influential linguistic traditions - Greek, Latin, and Arabic - and offers insightful interpretations of historical theories of perception, dreaming, and thinking. This second volume focuses on dreaming and analyses some of the most prominent problems connected to dreams as representations. The contributions in this volume address the core Aristotelian texts and their reception, up to and including contemporary scientific discourse on dreaming.