This book developed from sections of my doctoral dissertation, "The Possibility of Religious Knowledge: Causation, Coherentism and Foundationalism," Brown University, 1982. However, it actually had its beginnings much earlier when, as an undergraduate at the University of Virginia, I first read Hume's "Of Miracles" and became interested in it. (Fascinated would be too strong. ) My teacher put the following marginal comment in a paper I wrote about it: "Suppose someone told you that they had been impregnated by an angel whispering into their ear. Wouldn't you think they had gone dotty?" She had spent time in England. I thought about it. I agreed that I would not have believed such testimony, but did not think this had much to do with Hume's argument against belief in miracles. What surprised me even more was the secondary literature. I became convinced that Hume's argument was misunderstood. My main thesis is established in Part I. This explains Hume's argument against justified belief in miracles and shows how it follows from, and is intrinsically connected with, his more general metaphysics. Part II Part I. It should give the reader a more complete understanding builds on of both the structure of Hume's argument and of his crucial and questionable premises. Chapters 5 and 11 are perhaps the most technical in the book, but they are also the least necessary. They can be skipped by the reader who is only interested in Hume on miracles.

This book focuses on various concepts of space and their historical evolution. In particular, it examines the variations that have modified the notions of place, orientation, distance, vacuum, limit, bound and boundary, form and figure, continuity and contingence, in order to show how spatial characteristics are decisive in a range of contexts: in the determination and comprehension of exteriority; in individuation and identification; in defining the meaning of nature and of the natural sciences; in aesthetical formations and representations; in determining the relationship between experience, behavior and environment; and in the construction of mental and social subjectivity. Accordingly, the book offers a comprehensive review of concepts of space as formulated by Kant, Husserl, Heidegger, Einstein, Heisenberg, Penrose and Thorne, subsequently comparing them to notions developed more recently, in the current age, which Foucault dubbed the age of space. The book is divided into four distinct yet deeply interconnected parts, which explore the space of life, the space of experience, the space of science and the space of the arts.

This introduction to modality places the emphasis on the metaphysics of modality rather than on the formal semetics of quantified modal logic. The text begins by introducing students to the "de re/de dicto" distinction, conventionalist and conceptualist theories of modality and some of the key problems in modality, particularly Quine's criticisms. It then moves on to explain how possible worlds provide a solution to many of the problems in modality and how possible worlds themselves have been used to analyse notions outside modality such as properties and propositions. Possible worlds introduce problems of their own and the book argues that to make progress with these problems a theory of possible worlds is required. The pros and cons of various theories of possible worlds are then examined in turn, including those of Lewis, Kripke, Adams, Stalnaker and Plantinga.

This introduction to modality places the emphasis on the metaphysics of modality rather than on the formal semetics of quantified modal logic. The text begins by introducing students to the "de re/de dicto" distinction, conventionalist and conceptualist theories of modality and some of the key problems in modality, particularly Quine's criticisms. It then moves on to explain how possible worlds provide a solution to many of the problems in modality and how possible worlds themselves have been used to analyse notions outside modality such as properties and propositions. Possible worlds introduce problems of their own and the book argues that to make progress with these problems a theory of possible worlds is required. The pros and cons of various theories of possible worlds are then examined in turn, including those of Lewis, Kripke, Adams, Stalnaker and Plantinga.

The interest in a better understanding of what is constitutive for being a person is a concern philosophy shares with some of the sciences. The views currently discussed in evolutionary biology and in the neurosciences are very much influenced by traditional philosophical views about the self and self-knowledge, while contemporary philosophical accounts are not considered at all. Such an account will be given by an analysis of three focal elements of the use of the first-person pronoun. These elements have something to do with the faculty of taking a first-person point of view. The conceptual structure of this point of view is explained by comparing it with a second- and third-person point of view. There is an extensive discussion of various views about self-knowledge (Davidson, Bilgrami, Burge), and a new conception of authoritative self-knowledge is established. The first-person point of view is a reflexive attitude which includes various attitudes to one's past and future. These attitudes are necessarily or contingently de se. By bringing into focus the concern for one's future intentions will be discussed as an activity-based attitude, while there are other attitudes, like hope or fear, which are shaped by the acceptance of one's future situations which are not, or not completely under one's control. This view gives rise to a criticism of Frankfurt's notion of Caring.

Wittgenstein has written a great number of remarks relevant to aesthetical issues: he has questioned the relation between aesthetics and psychology as well as the status of our norms of judgment; he has drawn philosophers' attention to such topics as aspect-seeing and aspect-dawning, and has brought insights into the nature of our aesthetic reactions. The examination of this wide range of topics is far from being completed, and the purpose of this book is to contribute to such completion. It gathers both papers discussing some of Wittgenstein's most provocative and intriguing statements on aesthetics, and papers bringing out their implications for art critic and art history, as well as their significance to epistemology and to the study of human mind.

The philosophical issues raised by perception make it one of the central topics in the philosophical tradition. Debate about the nature of perceptual knowledge and the objects of perception comprises a thread that runs through the history of philosophy. In some historical periods the major issues have been predominantly epistemological and related to scepticism, but an adequate understanding of perception is important more widely, especially for metaphysics and the philosophy of mind. For this reason Barry Maund provides an account of the major issues in the philosophy of perception that highlights the importance of a good theory of perception in a range of philosophical fields, while also seeking to be sensitive to the historical dimension of the subject. The work presents chapters on forms of natural realism; theories of perceptual experience; representationalism; the argument from illusion; phenomenological senses; types of perceptual content; the representationalist/intentionalist thesis; and adverbialist accounts of perceptual experience. The ideas of, among others, Austin, Dretske, Heidegger, Millikan, Putnam and Robinson are considered and the reader is given a philosophical framework within which to consider the issues.

The philosophical issues raised by perception make it one of the central topics in the philosophical tradition. Debate about the nature of perceptual knowledge and the objects of perception comprises a thread that runs through the history of philosophy. In some historical periods the major issues have been predominantly epistemological and related to scepticism, but an adequate understanding of perception is important more widely, especially for metaphysics and the philosophy of mind. For this reason Barry Maund provides an account of the major issues in the philosophy of perception that highlights the importance of a good theory of perception in a range of philosophical fields, while also seeking to be sensitive to the historical dimension of the subject. The work presents chapters on forms of natural realism; theories of perceptual experience; representationalism; the argument from illusion; phenomenological senses; types of perceptual content; the representationalist/intentionalist thesis; and adverbialist accounts of perceptual experience. The ideas of, among others, Austin, Dretske, Heidegger, Millikan, Putnam and Robinson are considered and the reader is given a philosophical framework within which to consider the issues.

The issue of relativism looms large in many contemporary discussions of knowledge, reality, society, religion, culture and gender. Is truth relative? To what extent is knowledge dependent on context? Are there different logics? Do different cultures and societies see the world differently? And is reality itself something that is constructed? This book offers a path through these debates. O'Grady begins by clarifying what exactly relativism is and how it differs from scepticism and pluralism. He then examines five main types of cognitive relativism: alethic relativism, logical relativism, ontological relativism; epistemological relativism, and relativism about rationality. Each is clearly distinguised and the arguments for and against each are assessed. O'Grady offers a welcome survey of recent debates, engaging with the work of Davidson, Devitt, Kuhn, Putnam, Quine, Rorty, Searle, Winch and Wittgenstein, among others, and he offers a distinct position of his own on this hotly contested issue.

This revised and updated edition of a standard work provides a clear and authoritative survey of the Western tradition in metaphysics and epistemology from the Presocratics to the present day. Aimed at the beginning student, it presents the ideas of the major philosophers and their schools of thought in a readable and engaging way, highlighting the central points in each contributor's doctrines and offering a lucid discussion of the next-level details that both fills out the general themes and encourages the reader to pursue the arguments still further through a detailed guide to further reading. Whether John Shand is discussing the slow separation of philosophy and theology in Augustine, Aquinas and Ockham, the rise of rationalism, British empiricism, German idealism or the new approaches opened up by Russell, Sartre and Wittgenstein, he combines succinct but insightful exposition with crisp critical comment. This new edition will continue to provide students with a valuable work of initial reference.

Confronting the scientific revolution's dismissal of Aristotle's physics and epistemology, Nathan R. Colaner revives this foundational philosopher's work to expose within it the underpinnings of modern philosophers' most common intuitions about knowledge. After Aristotle's picture of reality had been judged obsolete by the physics of the scientific revolution, modern Western epistemologists fumbled along with doctrines that had little to do with everyday life. These included Descartes' notion of the evil genius, Hume's claim that we can't know anything that we are not presently observing, and Kant's rescue of knowledge in the context of idealism. In Aristotle on Knowledge of Nature and Modern Skepticism, Colaner articulates a notion of knowledge that is characteristically Aristotelian without being dependent on his metaphysics. Simultaneously, Colaner places Aristotle in dialogue with modern thinkers to create a bridge between classical and modern philosophy and reinstate Aristotle's prominence in the discipline of epistemology.

This book introduces students and other interested readers to the philosophical study of skepticism, a central and long-standing subject in philosophy. The first three chapters cover knowledge, providing the necessary foundation for introducing skepticism in the book's final three chapters. Throughout, the volume addresses basic questions in these two areas, such as: What are the differences between the three types of knowledge: direct knowledge, knowledge by ability, and propositional knowledge? What is the Gettier problem and why does it resist easy solutions? Why do philosophers still talk about Rene Descartes' techniques for raising doubts about what we can know but have largely forgotten Descartes' attempts to answer these doubts? How do we know that we're not just brains in a vat? Is Pyrrhonian skepticism-the idea that we know absolutely nothing-ultimately self-refuting? With a glossary of key terms and suggestions for further reading, Skepticism: The Basics is an ideal starting point for anyone seeking a lively and accessible foray into the study of epistemology. Key Features and Benefits: Cover both traditional topics - like the tripartite conception of knowledge - and emerging issues, like knowledge-first epistemology and concessive responses to inductive skepticism Demystifies an area where beginners frequently get stuck: the difference between common-sense skepticism and philosophical skepticism Clearly explains the important contributions from historical and contemporary thinkers, like Descartes, Hume, Popper, Quine, Dretske, Strawson, Nozick, and Sosa

This volume presents a series of essays which investigate the nature of intellectual inquiry: what its aims are and how it operates. The starting-point is the work of the American Pragmatists C. S. Peirce and John Dewey. Inquiry according to Peirce is a struggle to replace doubt by true belief. Dewey insisted that the transformation was from an indeterminate situation to a determinate or non-problematic one. So Isaac Levi's subject is changes in doxastic commitments, which may involve changes in attitudes or changes in situations in which attitudes are entangled. The question what justifies modification of doxastic commitments is a normative one, and so may not be understandable in purely naturalistic terms.

In a globalized neo-colonial world an insidious and often debilitating crisis of knowledge not only continues to undermine the quality of research produced by scholars but to also perpetuate a neo-colonial and oppressive socio-cultural, political economic, and educational system. The lack of attention such issues receive in pedagogical institutions around the world undermines the value of education and its role as a force of social justice. In this context these knowledge issues become a central concern of critical pedagogy. As a mode of education that is dedicated to a rigorous form of knowledge work, teachers and students as knowledge producers, anti-oppressive educational and social practices, and diverse perspectives from multiple social locations, critical pedagogy views dominant knowledge policies as a direct assault on its goals. Knowledge and Critical Pedagogy: An Introduction takes scholars through a critical review of the issues facing researchers and educators in the last years of the first decade of the twenty-first century. Refusing to assume the reader's familiarity with such issues but concurrently rebuffing the tendency to dumb down such complex issues, the book serves as an excellent introduction to one of the most important and complicated issues of our time.

This volume addresses the history and epistemology of early modern cosmology. The authors reconstruct the development of cosmological ideas in the age of 'scientific revolution' from Copernicus to Leibniz, taking into account the growth of a unified celestial-and-terrestrial mechanics. The volume investigates how, in the rise of the new science, cosmology displayed deep and multifaceted interrelations between scientific notions (stemming from mechanics, mathematics, geometry, astronomy) and philosophical concepts. These were employed to frame a general picture of the universe, as well as to criticize and interpret scientific notions and observational data. This interdisciplinary work reconstructs a conceptual web pervaded by various intellectual attitudes and drives. It presents an historical-epistemological unified itinerary which includes Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Huygens, Newton and Leibniz. For each of the scientists and philosophers, a presentation and commentary is made of their cosmological views, and where relevant, outlines of their most relevant physical concepts are given. Furthermore, the authors highlight the philosophical and epistemological implications of their scientific works. This work is helpful both as a synthetic overview of early modern cosmology, and an analytical exposition of the elements that were intertwined in early-modern cosmology. This book addresses historians, philosophers, and scientists and can also be used as a research source book by post-graduate students in epistemology, history of science and history of philosophy.

Written by one of the masters of the foundation of measurement, Louis Narens' new book thoroughly examines the basis for the measurement-theoretic concept of meaningfulness and presents a new theory about the role of numbers and invariance in science. The book associates with each portion of mathematical science a subject matter that the portion of science is intended to investigate or describe. It considers those quantitative or empirical assertions and relationships that belong to the subject matter to be meaningful (for that portion of science) and those that do not belong to be meaningless.
The first two chapters of the "Theories of Meaningfulness" introduce meaningfulness concepts, their place in the history of science, and some of their traditional applications. The idea that meaningfulness will have different, but interrelated uses is then introduced. To provide formal descriptions of these, the author employs a powerful framework that incorporates pure mathematics, provides for qualitative objects and relations, and addresses the relationships between qualitative objects and pure mathematics. The framework is then applied to produce axiomatic theories of meaningfulness, including generalizations and a new foundation for the famous Erlanger Program of mathematics. The meaningfulness concept is further specialized with the introduction of intrinsicness, which deals with meaningful concepts and relations that are lawful and qualitativeness, which is concerned with qualitative concepts. The concept of empiricalness is then introduced to distinguish it from meaningfulness and qualitativeness.
The failure to distinguish empiricalness from meaningfulness and qualitativeness has produced much confusion in the foundations of science literature and has generated many pseudo-controversies. This book suggests that many of these disappear when empiricalness is intersected with the other concepts to produce "meaningful and empirical relations," "empirical laws," and "qualitative and empirical concepts."
A primary goal of this book is to show that the new theories of meaningfulness and intrinsicness developed in this book are not only descriptive but are also potent. Asserting that they do more than codify already existing concepts the book:
*works out logical relationships between meaningfulness concepts that were previously unrecognized;
*clarifies certain well-known and important debates by providing rich languages with new concepts and technical results (theorems) that yield insights into the debated issues and positions taken on them; and
*provides new techniques and results in substantive scientific areas of inquiry.
This book is about the role of mathematics in science. It will be useful to those concerned with the foundations of science in their respective fields. Various substantive examples from the behavioral sciences are presented.

This book addresses a growing concern as to why Psychology, now more than a hundred years after becoming an independent research area, does not yet meet the basic requirements of a scientific discipline on a par with other sciences such as physics and biology. These requirements include: agree ment on definition and delimitation of the range of features and properties of the phenomena or subject matter to be investigated; secondly, the development of concepts and methods which unambiguously specify the phenomena and systematic investigation of their features and properties. A third equally important requirement, implicit in the first two, is exclusion from enquiry of all other mattes with which the discipline is not concerned. To these requirements must then be added the development of basic assumptions about the nature of what is under investigation, and of principles to account for its properties and to serve as a guide as to what are relevant questions to ask and theories to develop about them."

Suppose that a congenitally blind person has learned to distinguish and name a sphere and a cube by touch alone. Then imagine that this person suddenly recovers the faculty of sight. Will he be able to distinguish both objects by sight and to say which is the sphere and which the cube? This was the question which the Irish politician and scientist William Molyneux posed in 1688 to John Locke. Molyneux's question has intrigued a wide variety of intellectuals for three centuries. Those who have attempted to solve it include Berkeley, Reid, Leibniz, Voltaire, La Mettrie, Condillac, Diderot, M ller, Helmholtz, William James and Gareth Evans. This book is the first comprehensive survey of the history of the discussion about Molyneux's problem. It will be of interest to historians of both philosophy and psychology.

In Rawls, Dewey and Constructivism, Eric Weber examines and critiques John Rawls' epistemology and the unresolved tension - inherited from Kant - between Representationalism and Constructivism in Rawls' work. Weber argues that, despite Rawls' claims to be a constructivist, his unexplored Kantian influences cause several problems. In particular, Weber criticises Rawls' failure to explain the origins of conceptions of justice, his understanding of "persons" and his revival of Social Contract Theory. Drawing on the work of John Dewey to resolve these problems, the book argues for a rigorously constructivist approach to the concept of justice and explores the practical implications of such an approach for Education.

Does the real world, defined as a world of objects that exist independent of human interests, concerns, and cognitive activities, really exist? Jan Westerhoff argues that we have good reason to believe it does not. His discussion considers four main facets of the idea of the real world, ranging from the existence of a separate external and internal world (comprising various mental states congregated around a self), to the existence of an ontological foundation that grounds the existence of all the entities in the world, and the existence of an ultimately true theory that provides a final account of all there is. As Westerhoff discusses the reasons for rejecting the postulation of an external world behind our representations, he asserts that the internal world is not as epistemically transparent as is usually assumed, and that there are good reasons for adopting an anti-foundational account of ontological dependence. Drawing on conclusions from the ancient Indian philosophical system of Madhyamaka Buddhism, Westerhoff defends his stance in a purely Western philosophical framework, and affirms that ontology, and philosophy more generally, need not be conceived as providing an ultimately true theory of the world.

This is this, this ain't something else, this is this -Robert De Niro, Deerhunter his book may to some extent be viewed as the continuation of my T Doctoral thesis Epistemology, Methodology and Reliability. The dissertation was, first of all, a methodological study of the reliable performance of the AGM-axioms (Alchourr6n, Gardenfors and Makin son) of belief revision. Second of all the dissertation included the first steps toward an epistemology for the limiting convergence of knowledge for scientific inquiry methods of both discovery and assessment. The idea of methodological reliability as a desirable property of a scientific method was introduced to me while I was a visiting Ph. D. -student at the Department of Philosophy, Carnegie Mellon University in Pitts burgh, Pennsylvania, USA in 1995-96. Here I became acquainted with formal learning theory. Learning theory provides a variety of formal tools for investigating a number of important issues within epistemology, methodology and the philosophy of science. Especially with respect to the problem of induc tion, but not exclusively. The Convergence of Scientific Knowledge-a view from the limit utilizes a few concepts from formal learning theory to study problems in modal logic and epistemology. It should be duely noted that this book has virtually nothing to do with formal learning theory or inductive learning problems."

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Things are particulars and their qualities are universals, but do universals have an existence distinct from the particular things describable by those terms? And what must be their nature if they do? This book provides a careful and assured survey of the central issues of debate surrounding universals, in particular those issues that have been a crucial part of the emergence of contemporary analytic ontology. The book begins with a taxonomy of extreme nominalist, moderate nominalist, and realist positions on properties, and outlines the way each handles the phenomena of predication, resemblance, and abstract reference. The debate about properties and philosophical naturalism is also examined. Different forms of extreme nominalism, moderate nominalism, and minimalist realism are critiqued. Later chapters defend a traditional realist view of universals and examine the objections to realism from various infinite regresses, the difficulties in stating identity conditions for properties, and problems with realist accounts of knowledge of abstract objects. In addition, the debate between Platonists and Aristotelians is examined alongside a discussion of the relationship between properties and an adequate theory of existence. The book's final chapter explores the problem of individuating particulars. The book makes accessible a difficult topic without blunting the sophistication of argument required by a more advanced readership.

The number of manuscripts produced in the Indian sub-continent is astounding and is the result of a massive enterprise that was carried out over a vast geographical area and over a vast stretch of time. Focusing mainly on areas of Northern India and Nepal between 800 to 1300 CE and on manuscripts containing Sanskrit texts, the present study investigates a fundamental and so far rarely studied aspect of manuscript production: visual organisation. Scribes adopted a variety of visual strategies to distinguish one text from another and to differentiate the various sections within a single text (chapters, sub-chapters, etc.). Their repertoire includes the use of space(s) on the folio, the adoption of different writing styles, the inclusion of symbols of various kind, the application of colours ('rubrication'), or a combination of all these. This study includes a description of these various strategies and an analysis of their different implementations across the selected geographical areas. It sheds light on how manuscripts were produced, as well as on some aspects of their employment in ritual contexts, in different areas of India and Nepal.