|
Books > Philosophy > Topics in philosophy > Epistemology, theory of knowledge
Indian thought is well known for diverse philosophical and
contemplative excursions into the nature of selfhood. Led by
Buddhists and the yoga traditions of Hinduism and Jainism, Indian
thinkers have engaged in a rigorous analysis and
reconceptualization of our common notion of self. Less understood
is the way in which such theories of self intersect with issues
involving agency and free will; yet such intersections are
profoundly important, as all major schools of Indian thought
recognize that moral goodness and religious fulfillment depend on
the proper understanding of personal agency. Moreover, their
individual conceptions of agency and freedom are typically nodes by
which an entire school's epistemological, ethical, and metaphysical
perspectives come together as a systematic whole. Free Will,
Agency, and Selfhood in Indian Philosophy explores the contours of
this issue, from the perspectives of the major schools of Indian
thought. With new essays by leading specialists in each field, this
volume provides rigorous analysis of the network of issues
surrounding agency and freedom as developed within Indian thought.
Is truth objective or relative? What exists independently of our
minds? This book is about these two questions. The essays in its
pages variously defend and critique answers to each, grapple over
the proper methodology for addressing them, and wonder whether
either question is worth pursuing. In so doing, they carry on a
long and esteemed tradition - for our two questions are among the
oldest of philosophical issues, and have vexed almost every major
philosopher, from Plato, to Kant to Wittgenstein. Fifteen eminent
contributors bring fresh perspectives, renewed energy and original
answers to debates which have been the focus of a tremendous amount
of interest in the last three decades both within philosophy and
the culture at large.
Susanne Bobzien presents the definitive study of one of the most important intellectual legacies of the ancient Greeks: the Stoic theory of causal determinism. She reconstructs the theory and discusses how the Stoics (third century BC to second century AD) justified it, and how it relates to their views on possibility, action, freedom, moral responsibility, and many other topics. She demonstrates the considerable philosophical richness and power that these ideas retain today.
In this incisive new monograph one of Britain's most eminent
philosophers explores the often overlooked tension between
voluntariness and involuntariness in human cognition. He seeks to
counter the widespread tendency for analytic epistemology to be
dominated by the concept of belief. Is scientific knowledge
properly conceived as being embodied, at its best, in a passive
feeling of belief or in an active policy of acceptance? Should a
jury's verdict declare what its members involuntarily believe or
what they voluntarily accept? And should statements and assertions
be presumed to express what their authors believe or what they
accept? Does such a distinction between belief and acceptance help
to resolve the paradoxes of self-deception and akrasia? Must people
be taken to believe everything entailed by what they believe, or
merely to accept everything entailed by what they accept? Through a
systematic examination of these problems, the author sheds new
light on issues of crucial importance in contemporary epistemology,
philosophy of mind, and cognitive science.
The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Perception is a survey by
leading philosophical thinkers of contemporary issues and new
thinking in philosophy of perception. It includes sections on the
history of the subject, introductions to contemporary issues in the
epistemology, ontology and aesthetics of perception, treatments of
the individual sense modalities and of the things we perceive by
means of them, and a consideration of how perceptual information is
integrated and consolidated. New analytic tools and applications to
other areas of philosophy are discussed in depth. Each of the
forty-five entries is written by a leading expert, some
collaborating with younger figures; each seeks to introduce the
reader to a broad range of issues. All contain new ideas on the
topics covered; together they demonstrate the vigour and innovative
zeal of a young field. The book is accessible to anybody who has an
intellectual interest in issues concerning perception.
The Clarendon Aristotle Series is designed for both students and
professionals. It provides accurate translations of selected
Aristotelian texts, accompanied by incisive commentaries that focus
on philosophical problems and issues, The volumes in the series
have been widely welcomed and favourably reviewed. Important new
titles are being added to the series, and a number of
well-established volumes are being reissued with revisions and/or
supplementary material. Christopher Shields presents a new
translation and commentary of Aristotle's De Anima, a work of
interest to philosophers at all levels, as well as psychologists
and students interested in the nature of life and living systems.
The volume provides a full translation of the complete work,
together with a comprehensive commentary. While sensitive to
philological and textual matters, the commentary addresses itself
to the philosophical reader who wishes to understand and assess
Aristotle's accounts of the soul and body; perception; thinking;
action; and the character of living systems. It aims to present
controversial aspects of the text in a neutral, fair-minded manner,
so that readers can come to be equipped to form their own
judgments. This volume includes the crucial first book, which the
original translation in the Clarendon Aristotles Series omitted.
Adrian Bardon's A Brief History of the Philosophy of Time is a
short yet thorough introduction to the history, philosophy, and
science of the study of time-from the pre-Socratic philosophers
through Einstein and beyond. Its treatment is roughly
chronological, starting with the ancient Greek philosophers
Heraclitus and Parmenides and proceeding through the history of
Western philosophy and science up to the present. Using
illustrations and keeping technical language to a minimum, A Brief
History of the Philosophy of Time covers subjects such as time and
change, the experience of time, physical and metaphysical
approaches to the nature of time, the direction of time,
time-travel, time and freedom of the will, and scientific and
philosophical approaches to eternity and the beginning of time.
Bardon brings the resources of over 2500 years of philosophy and
science to bear on some of humanity's most fundamental and enduring
questions.
Self-knowledge is the focus of considerable attention from
philosophers: Knowing Our Own Minds gives a much-needed overview of
current work on the subject, bringing together new essays by
leading figures. Knowledge of one's own sensations, desires,
intentions, thoughts, beliefs, and other attitudes is
characteristically different from other kinds of knowledge, such as
knowledge of other people's mental attributes: it has greater
immediacy, authority, and salience. The first six chapters examine
philosophical questions raised by these features of self-knowledge.
The next two look at the role of our knowledge of our own
psychological states in our functioning as rational agents. The
third group of essays examine the tension between the distinctive
characteristics of self-knowledge and arguments that psychological
content is externally-socially and environmentally-determined. The
final pair of chapters extend the discussion to knowledge of one's
own language. Together these original, stimulating, and closely
interlinked essays demonstrate the special relevance of
self-knowledge to a broad range of issues in epistemology,
philosophy of mind, and philosophy of language.
A scholarly edition of Essay Concerning Human Understanding by P.
H. Nidditch. The edition presents an authoritative text, together
with an introduction, commentary notes, and scholarly apparatus.
This is the third volume of philosophical writings by Donald
Davidson. He presents a selection of his work on knowledge, mind,
and language from the 1980s and the 1990s. We all have knowledge of
our own minds, knowledge of the contents of other minds, and
knowledge of the shared environment. Davidson examines the nature
and status of each of these three sorts of knowledge, and the
connections and differences among them. Along the way he has
illuminating things to say about truth, human rationality, and the
relations between language, thought, and the world.
Rae Langton offers a new interpretation and defence of Kant's
doctrine of things in themselves. Kant distinguishes things in
themselves from phenomena, and in so doing he makes a metaphysical
distinction between intrinsic and relational properties of
substances. Kant says that phenomena-things as we know them-consist
'entirely of relations', by which he means forces. His claim that
we have no knowledge of things in themselves is not idealism, but
epistemic humility: we have no knowledge of the intrinsic
properties of substances. This humility has its roots in some
plausible philosophical beliefs: an empiricist belief in the
receptivity of human knowledge and a metaphysical belief in the
irreducibility of relational properties. Langton's interpretation
vindicates Kant's scientific realism, and shows his
primary/secondary quality distinction to be superior even to
modern-day competitors. And it answers the famous charge that
Kant's tale of things in themselves is one that makes itself
untellable.
Colin Howson offers a solution to one of the central, unsolved problems of Western philosophy, the problem of induction. In the mid-eighteenth century David Hume argued that successful prediction tells us nothing about the truth or probable truth of the predicting theory. Howson claims that Hume's argument is correct, and examines what follows about the relation between science and its empirical base.
In Contradiction advocates and defends the view that there are true
contradictions (dialetheism), a view that flies in the face of
orthodoxy in Western philosophy since Aristotle. The book has been
at the center of the controversies surrounding dialetheism ever
since its first publication in
1987. This second edition of the book substantially expands upon
the original in various ways, and also contains the author's
reflections on developments over the last two decades. Further
aspects of dialetheism are discussed in the companion volume, Doubt
Truth to be a Liar, also published by
Oxford University Press in 2006.
Now in a new edition, this volume updates Davidson's exceptional
Inquiries into Truth and Interpretation (1984), which set out his
enormously influential philosophy of language. The original volume
remains a central point of reference, and a focus of controversy,
with its impact extending into linguistic theory, philosophy of
mind, and epistemology. Addressing a central question--what it is
for words to mean what they do--and featuring a previously
uncollected, additional essay, this work will appeal to a wide
audience of philosophers, linguists, and psychologists.
Paul Horwich's main aim in Reflections on Meaning is to explain how
mere noises, marks, gestures, and mental symbols are able to
capture the world--that is, how words and sentences (in whatever
medium) come to mean what they do, to stand for certain things, to
be true or false of reality. His
answer is a groundbreaking development of Wittgenstein's idea that
the meaning of a term is nothing more than its use. While the
chapters here have appeared as individual essays, Horwich has
edited them to make a continuous argument, focused on articulating
and developing an important new conception
of language.
In Everything Ancient Was Once New, Emalani Case explores
Indigenous persistence through the concept of Kahiki, a term that
is at once both an ancestral homeland for Kanaka Maoli (Hawaiians)
and the knowledge that there is life to be found beyond Hawai'i's
shores. It is therefore both a symbol of ancestral connection and
the potential that comes with remembering and acting upon that
connection. Tracing physical, historical, intellectual, and
spiritual journeys to and from Kahiki, Emalani frames it as a place
of refuge and sanctuary, a place where ancient knowledge can
constantly be made anew. It is in Kahiki, she argues, and in the
sanctuary it creates, that today's Kanaka Maoli can find safety and
reprieve from the continued onslaught of settler colonial violence,
while also confronting some of the often uncomfortable and
challenging realities of being Indigenous in Hawai'i, in the
Pacific, and in the world. Each chapter of the book engages with
Kahiki as a shifting term, employed by Kanaka Maoli to explain
their lives and experiences to themselves at different points in
history. In doing so, Everything Ancient Was Once New proposes and
argues for reactivated and reinvigorated engagements with Kahiki,
each supporting ongoing work aimed at decolonizing physical and
ideological spaces, and reconnecting Kanaka Maoli to other peoples
and places in the Pacific region and beyond in ways that are both
purposeful and meaningful. In the book, Kahiki is therefore traced
through pivotal moments in history and critical moments in
contemporary times, explaining that while not always mentioned by
name, the idea of Kahiki was, and is, always full of potential. In
writing that is both personal and theoretical, Emalani weaves the
past and the present together, reflecting on ancient concepts and
their continued relevance in movements to protect lands, waters,
and oceans; to fight for social justice; to reexamine our
responsibilities and obligations to each other across the Pacific
region; and to open space for continued dialogue on what it means
to be Indigenous both when at home and when away. Combining
personal narrative and reflection with research and critical
analysis, Everything Ancient Was Once New journeys to and from
Kahiki, the sanctuary for reflection, deep learning, and continued
dreaming with the past, in the present, and far into the future.
Stephen Schiffer presents a groundbreaking account of meaning and
belief, and shows how it can illuminate a range of crucial problems
regarding language, mind, knowledge, and ontology. He introduces
the new doctrine of 'pleonastic propositions' to explain what the
things we mean and believe
are. He discusses the relation between semantic and psychological
facts, on the one hand, and physical facts, on the other; vagueness
and indeterminacy; moral truth; conditionals; and the role of
propositional content in information acquisition and explanation.
This radical new treatment of meaning
will command the attention of everyone who works on fundamental
questions about language, and will attract much interest from other
areas of philosophy.
|
You may like...
SNMP Mastery
Michael W Lucas
Hardcover
R1,024
R920
Discovery Miles 9 200
|