The prevailing view among social scientists is that the psyche and the social reside in such disparate domains that their proper study demands markedly incompatible analytical and theoretical approaches. Over the last decade, scholars have begun to challenge this view. In this innovative work, George Cavalletto moves this challenge forward by connecting it to theoretical and analytical practices of the early 20th century. His analysis of key texts by Sigmund Freud, Max Weber, Theodor Adorno and Norbert Elias shows that they crossed the psycho-social divide in ways that can help contemporary scholars to re-establish an analytical and theoretical understanding of the inherent interconnection of these two domains. This book will particularly interest scholars and students in sociology and social psychology, especially those in the fields of social theory, the sociology of emotion, self and society, and historical sociology.

The central task of phenomenology is to investigate the nature of consciousness and its relations to objects of various types. The present book introduces students and other readers to several foundational topics of phenomenological inquiry, and illustrates phenomenology's contemporary relevance. The main topics include consciousness, intentionality, perception, meaning, and knowledge. The book also contains critical assessments of Edmund Husserl's phenomenological method. It argues that knowledge is the most fundamental mode of consciousness, and that the central theses constitutive of Husserl's "transcendental idealism" are compatible with metaphysical realism regarding the objects of thought, perception, and knowledge. Helpful tools include introductions that help the reader segue from the previous chapter to the new one, chapter conclusions, and suggested reading lists of primary and some key secondary sources. Key Features: Elucidates and engages with contemporary work in analytic epistemology and philosophy of mind Provides clear prose explanations of the necessary distinctions and arguments required for understanding the subject Places knowledge at the center of phenomenological inquiry

Trust is pervasive in our lives. Both our simplest actions - like buying a coffee, or crossing the street - as well as the functions of large collective institutions - like those of corporations and nation states - would not be possible without it. Yet only in the last several decades has trust started to receive focused attention from philosophers as a specific topic of investigation. The Routledge Handbook of Trust and Philosophy brings together 31 never-before published chapters, accessible for both students and researchers, created to cover the most salient topics in the various theories of trust. The Handbook is broken up into three sections: I. What is Trust? II. Whom to Trust? III. Trust in Knowledge, Science, and Technology The Handbook is preceded by a foreword by Maria Baghramian, an introduction by volume editor Judith Simon, and each chapter includes a bibliography and cross-references to other entries in the volume.

Scientists studying the burning of stars, the evolution of species, DNA, the brain, the economy, and social change, all frequently describe their work as searching for mechanisms. Despite this fact, for much of the twentieth century philosophical discussions of the nature of mechanisms remained outside philosophy of science. The Routledge Handbook of Mechanisms and Mechanical Philosophy is an outstanding reference source to the key topics, problems, and debates in this exciting subject and is the first collection of its kind. Comprising over thirty chapters by a team of international contributors, the Handbook is divided into four Parts: Historical perspectives on mechanisms The nature of mechanisms Mechanisms and the philosophy of science Disciplinary perspectives on mechanisms. Within these Parts central topics and problems are examined, including the rise of mechanical philosophy in the seventeenth century; what mechanisms are made of and how they are organized; mechanisms and laws and regularities; how mechanisms are discovered and explained; dynamical systems theory; and disciplinary perspectives from physics, chemistry, biology, biomedicine, ecology, neuroscience, and the social sciences. Essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy of science, the Handbook will also be of interest to those in related fields, such as metaphysics, philosophy of psychology, and history of science.

This book offers two novel claims about Wittgenstein's views and methods on perception as explored in the Philosophical Investigations. The first is an interpretive claim about Wittgenstein: that his views on sensation and perception, including his critique of private language, have their roots in his reflections on sense-datum theories and on what Hymers calls the misleading metaphor of phenomenal space. The second is a major philosophical claim: that Wittgenstein's critique of the misleading metaphor of phenomenal space is of ongoing relevance to current debates concerning first-person authority and the problem of perception because we are still tempted to draw inferences about the phenomenal that only apply to the physical. Many contemporary discussions of these topics are thus premised on the very confusions Wittgenstein sought to dispel. This book will appeal to Wittgenstein scholars who are interested in the Philosophical Investigations and to philosophers of perception who may think that Wittgenstein's views are mistaken, irrelevant, or already adequately appreciated.

Biologists, climate scientists, and economists all rely on models to move their work forward. In this book, Stephen M. Downes explores the use of models in these and other fields to introduce readers to the various philosophical issues that arise in scientific modeling. Readers learn that paying attention to models plays a crucial role in appraising scientific work. This book first presents a wide range of models from a number of different scientific disciplines. After assembling some illustrative examples, Downes demonstrates how models shed light on many perennial issues in philosophy of science and in philosophy in general. Reviewing the range of views on how models represent their targets introduces readers to the key issues in debates on representation, not only in science but in the arts as well. Also, standard epistemological questions are cast in new and interesting ways when readers confront the question, "What makes for a good (or bad) model?" All examples from the sciences and positions in the philosophy of science are presented in an accessible manner. The book is suitable for undergraduates with minimal experience in philosophy and an introductory undergraduate experience in science. Key features: The book serves as a highly accessible philosophical introduction to models and modeling in the sciences, presenting all philosophical and scientific issues in a nontechnical manner. Students and other readers learn to practice philosophy of science by starting with clear examples taken directly from the sciences. While not comprehensive, this book introduces the reader to a wide range of views on key issues in the philosophy of science.

Winner of the hegelpd-prize 2022 Contemporary philosophical discourse has deeply problematized the possibility of absolute existence. Hegel's Foundation Free Metaphysics demonstrates that by reading Hegel's Doctrine of the Concept in his Science of Logic as a form of Absolute Dialetheism, Hegel's logic of the concept can account for the possibility of absolute existence. Through a close examination of Hegel's concept of self-referential universality in his Science of Logic, Moss demonstrates how Hegel's concept of singularity is designed to solve a host of metaphysical and epistemic paradoxes central to this problematic. He illustrates how Hegel's revolutionary account of universality, particularity, and singularity offers solutions to six problems that have plagued the history of Western philosophy: the problem of nihilism, the problem of instantiation, the problem of the missing difference, the problem of absolute empiricism, the problem of onto-theology, and the third man regress. Moss shows that Hegel's affirmation and development of a revised ontological argument for God's existence is designed to establish the necessity of absolute existence. By adopting a metaphysical reading of Richard Dien Winfield's foundation free epistemology, Moss critically engages dominant readings and contemporary debates in Hegel scholarship. Hegel's Foundation Free Metaphysics will appeal to scholars interested in Hegel, German Idealism, 19th- and 20th-century European philosophy, metaphysics, epistemology, and contemporary European thought.

Common sense philosophy holds that widely and deeply held beliefs are justified in the absence of defeaters. While this tradition has always had its philosophical detractors who have defended various forms of skepticism or have sought to develop rival epistemological views, recent advances in several scientific disciplines claim to have debunked the reliability of the faculties that produce our common sense beliefs. At the same time, however, it seems reasonable that we cannot do without common sense beliefs entirely. Arguably, science and the scientific method are built on, and continue to depend on, common sense. This collection of essays debates the tenability of common sense in the face of recent challenges from the empirical sciences. It explores to what extent scientific considerations-rather than philosophical considerations-put pressure on common sense philosophy. The book is structured in a way that promotes dialogue between philosophers and scientists. Noah Lemos, one of the most influential contemporary advocates of the common sense tradition, begins with an overview of the nature and scope of common sense beliefs, and examines philosophical objections to common sense and its relationship to scientific beliefs. Then, the volume features essays by scientists and philosophers of science who discuss various proposed conflicts between commonsensical and scientific beliefs: the reality of space and time, about the nature of human beings, about free will and identity, about rationality, about morality, and about religious belief. Notable philosophers who embrace the common sense tradition respond to these essays to explore the connection between common sense philosophy and contemporary debates in evolutionary biology, neuroscience, physics, and psychology.

Scientific realism is a central, long-standing, and hotly debated topic in philosophy of science. Debates about scientific realism concern the very nature and extent of scientific knowledge and progress. Scientific realists defend a positive epistemic attitude towards our best theories and models regarding how they represent the world that is unobservable to our naked senses. Various realist theses are under sceptical fire from scientific antirealists, e.g. empiricists and instrumentalists. The different dimensions of the ensuing debate centrally connect to numerous other topics in philosophy of science and beyond. The Routledge Handbook of Scientific Realism is an outstanding reference source - the first collection of its kind - to the key issues, positions, and arguments in this important topic. Its thirty-four chapters, written by a team of international experts, are divided into five parts: Historical development of the realist stance Classic debate: core issues and positions Perspectives on contemporary debates The realism debate in disciplinary context Broader reflections In these sections, the core issues and debates presented, analysed, and set into broader historical and disciplinary contexts. The central issues covered include motivations and arguments for realism; challenges to realism from underdetermination and history of science; different variants of realism; the connection of realism to relativism and perspectivism; and the relationship between realism, metaphysics, and epistemology. The Routledge Handbook of Scientific Realism is essential reading for students and researchers in philosophy of science. It will also be very useful for anyone interested in the nature and extent of scientific knowledge.

This book explores the complex relationship between the philosophical schools of idealism and pragmatism. Idealism is the older tradition, with roots in Plato and Platonism, and has been developed in a myriad of forms. At heart, it holds that reality is either mind-like, or is contained in the mind. Pragmatism is a newer school, traceable to the work of philosophers such as C.S. Peirce and William James in the mid-nineteenth century. It offers a distinctive account of meaning, knowledge, and metaphysics which stresses our place as agents within the world. While these two schools have often been set at odds with one another, it is increasingly recognized that idealism and pragmatism share some important common ground, and that their respective histories have been intertwined. The contributions to this volume, by leading international scholars, put these debates in a new light by studying the interrelation across a range of thinkers and issues, including Kant, Schelling, Hegel, Royce, Renouvier and Collingwood on the one side, and Peirce, James, Dewey and Brandom on the other. This book was first published as a special issue of the British Journal for the History of Philosophy.

This volume presents twelve original papers on constructivism - some sympathetic, others critical - by a distinguished group of moral philosophers. 'Kantian constructivism holds that moral objectivity is to be understood in terms of a suitably constructed social point of view that all can accept. Apart from the procedure of constructing the principles of justice, there are no moral facts.' So wrote John Rawls in his highly influential 1980 Dewey lectures 'Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory'. Since then there has been much discussion of constructivist understandings, Kantian or otherwise, both of morality and of reason more generally. Such understandings typically seek to characterize the truth conditions of propositions in their target domain in maximally metaphysically unassuming ways, frequently in terms of the outcome of certain procedures or the passing of certain tests, procedures or tests that speak to the distinctively practical concerns of deliberating human agents living together in societies. But controversy abounds over the interpretation and the scope as well as the credibility of such constructivist ideas. The essays collected here reach to the heart of this contemporary philosophical debate, and offer a range of new approaches and perspectives.

Our finances, politics, media, opportunities, information, shopping and knowledge production are mediated through algorithms and their statistical approaches to knowledge; increasingly, these methods form the organizational backbone of contemporary capitalism. Revolutionary Mathematics traces the revolution in statistics and probability that has quietly underwritten the explosion of machine learning, big data and predictive algorithms that now decide many aspects of our lives. Exploring shifts in the philosophical understanding of probability in the late twentieth century, Joque shows how this was not merely a technical change but a wholesale philosophical transformation in the production of knowledge and the extraction of value. This book provides a new and unique perspective on the dangers of allowing artificial intelligence and big data to manage society. It is essential reading for those who want to understand the underlying ideological and philosophical changes that have fueled the rise of algorithms and convinced so many to blindly trust their outputs, reshaping our current political and economic situation.

A Virtue Epistemology presents a new approach to some of the oldest and most gripping problems of philosophy, those of knowledge and skepticism. Ernest Sosa argues for two levels of knowledge, the animal and the reflective, each viewed as a distinctive human accomplishment. By adopting a kind of virtue epistemology in line with the tradition found in Aristotle, Aquinas, Reid, and especially Descartes, he presents an account of knowledge which can be used to shed light on different varieties of skepticism, the nature and status of intuitions, and epistemic normativity.

Philosophers have long been concerned about what we know and how we know it. Increasingly, however, a related question has gained prominence in philosophical discussion: what should we believe and why? This volume brings together twelve new essays that address different aspects of this question. The essays examine foundational questions about reasons for belief, and use new research on reasons for belief to address traditional epistemological concerns such as knowledge, justification and perceptually acquired beliefs. This book will be of interest to philosophers working on epistemology, theoretical reason, rationality, perception and ethics. It will also be of interest to cognitive scientists and psychologists who wish to gain deeper insight into normative questions about belief and knowledge.

John Cottingham explores central areas of Descartes's rich and wide-ranging philosophical system, including his accounts of thought and language, of freedom and action, of our relationship to the animal domain, and of human morality and the conduct of life. He also examines ways in which his philosophy has been misunderstood. The Cartesian mind-body dualism that is so often attacked is only a part of Descartes's account of what it is to be a thinking, sentient, human creature, and the way he makes the division between the mental and the physical is considerably more subtle, and philosophically more appealing, than is generally assumed. Although Descartes is often considered to be one of the heralds of our modern secular worldview, the 'new' philosophy which he launched retains many links with the ideas of his predecessors, not least in the all-pervasive role it assigns to God (something that is ignored or downplayed by many modern readers); and the character of the Cartesian outlook is multifaceted, sometimes anticipating Enlightenment ideas of human autonomy and independent scientific inquiry, but also sometimes harmonizing with more traditional notions of human nature as created to find fulfilment in harmony with its creator.

Each of us, right now, is having a unique conscious experience. Nothing is more basic to our lives as thinking beings and nothing, it seems, is better known to us. But the ever-expanding reach of natural science suggests that everything in our world is ultimately physical. The challenge of fitting consciousness into our modern scientific worldview, of taking the subjective feel of conscious experience and showing that it is just neural activity in the brain, is among the most intriguing explanatory problems of our times. In this book, Josh Weisberg presents the range of contemporary responses to the philosophical problem of consciousness. The basic philosophical tools of the trade are introduced, including thought experiments featuring Mary the color-deprived super scientist and fearsome philosophical zombies . The book then systematically considers the space of philosophical theories of consciousness. Dualist and other non-reductive accounts of consciousness hold that we must expand our basic physical ontology to include the intrinsic features of consciousness. Functionalist and identity theories, by contrast, hold that with the right philosophical stage-setting, we can fit consciousness into the standard scientific picture. And mysterians hold that any solution to the problem is beyond such small-minded creatures as us. Throughout the book, the complexity of current debates on consciousness is handled in a clear and concise way, providing the reader with a fine introductory guide to the rich philosophical terrain. The work makes an excellent entry point to one of the most exciting areas of study in philosophy and science today.

Education and Free Will critically assesses and makes use of Spinoza's insights on human freedom to construe an account of education that is compatible with causal determinism without sacrificing the educational goal of increasing students' autonomy and self-determination. Offering a thorough investigation into the philosophical position of causal determinism, Dahlbeck discusses Spinoza's view of self-determination and presents his own suggestions for an education for autonomy from a causal determinist point of view. The book begins by outlining the free will problem in education, before expanding on a philosophical understanding of autonomy and how it is seen as an educational ideal. It considers Spinoza's determinism and discusses his denial of moral responsibility. Later chapters consider the relationship between causal determinism and autonomy, the educational implications of understanding free will and how free will can be utilised as a valuable fiction in education. This book will be of great interest to academics and postgraduate students in the field of education, especially those with an interest in moral education and philosophy of education. It will also be of interest to those in the fields of philosophy and psychology and specifically those focusing on the free will problem, on Spinoza studies, and on the relation between moral psychology and external influence.

The book contains analyses and interpretations of multidimensional perspectives in philosophical, economical and psychological research on imagination. The authors analyse Russian (N. Bierdiajew) and French philosophy and anthropology (G. Bachelard, G. Durand), German conceptions (I. Kant's, F. Baader's, F. Schiller 's or Heideggerian interpretations) of the role of imagination in art, science and sociopolitical domains. Image and imagination play the main role in the contemporary social world. It is investigated by psychology, sociology and political sciences, and many subdisciplines of philosophy have their own traditions in approaches to image and imagination problem. The authors try to integrate the results of these research efforts.

This collection brings together in translation the finest postwar German-language scholarship on Nietzsche's philosophy, ranging over his concept of irony, his thoughts on music, his relation to the pre-Socratics, his concept of truth, and numerous other topics. Many of the essays appear in English here for the first time, and all are newly translated for the volume.

Simply stated, this book bridges the gap between statistics and philosophy. It does this by delineating the conceptual cores of various statistical methodologies (Bayesian/frequentist statistics, model selection, machine learning, causal inference, etc.) and drawing out their philosophical implications. Portraying statistical inference as an epistemic endeavor to justify hypotheses about a probabilistic model of a given empirical problem, the book explains the role of ontological, semantic, and epistemological assumptions that make such inductive inference possible. From this perspective, various statistical methodologies are characterized by their epistemological nature: Bayesian statistics by internalist epistemology, classical statistics by externalist epistemology, model selection by pragmatist epistemology, and deep learning by virtue epistemology. Another highlight of the book is its analysis of the ontological assumptions that underpin statistical reasoning, such as the uniformity of nature, natural kinds, real patterns, possible worlds, causal structures, etc. Moreover, recent developments in deep learning indicate that machines are carving out their own "ontology" (representations) from data, and better understanding this-a key objective of the book-is crucial for improving these machines' performance and intelligibility. Key Features Without assuming any prior knowledge of statistics, discusses philosophical aspects of traditional as well as cutting-edge statistical methodologies. Draws parallels between various methods of statistics and philosophical epistemology, revealing previously ignored connections between the two disciplines. Written for students, researchers, and professionals in a wide range of fields, including philosophy, biology, medicine, statistics and other social sciences, and business. Originally published in Japanese with widespread success, has been translated into English by the author.

This is the first book to explore the connections and interactions between social epistemology and epistemic relativism. The essays in the volume are organized around three distinct philosophical approaches to this topic: 1) foundational questions concerning deep disagreement, the variability of epistemic norms, and the relationship between relativism and reliabilism; 2) the role of relativistic themes in feminist social epistemology; and 3) the relationship between the sociology of knowledge, philosophy of science, and social epistemology. Recent trends in social epistemology seek to rectify earlier work that conceptualized cognitive achievements primarily on the level of isolated individuals. Relativism insists that epistemic judgements or beliefs are justified or unjustified only relative to systems of standards-there is not neutral way of adjudicating between them. By bringing together these two strands of epistemology, this volume offers unique perspectives on a number of central epistemological questions. Social Epistemology and Relativism will be of interest to researchers working in epistemology, feminist philosophy, and the sociology of knowledge.

In Oughts and Thoughts, Anandi Hattiangadi provides an innovative response to the argument for meaning scepticism set out by Saul Kripke in Wittgenstein on Rules and Private Language. Kripke asks what makes it the case that anybody ever means anything by any word, and argues that there are no facts of the matter as to what anybody ever means. Kripke's argument has inspired a lively and extended debate in the philosophy of language, as it raises some of the most fundamental issues in the field: namely, the reality, privacy, and normativity of meaning. Hattiangadi argues that in order to achieve the radical conclusion that there are no facts as to what a person means by a word, the sceptic must rely on the thesis that meaning is normative, and that this thesis fails. Since any 'sceptical solution' to the sceptical problem is irremediably incoherent, Hattiangadi concludes that there must be a fact of the matter about what we mean. In addition to providing an overview of the debate on meaning and content scepticism, Hattiangandi presents a detailed discussion of the contributions made by Simon Blackburn, Paul Boghossian, Robert Brandom, Fred Dretske, John McDowell, and Crispin Wright, among others, to the controversy surrounding Kripke's argument. The issues considered include the normativity of meaning and its relation to the normativity of moral judgments, reductive and non-reductive theories of meaning, deflationism about truth and meaning, and the privacy of meaning.

The problem of skepticism about knowledge of the external world has been the centrepiece of epistemology since Descartes. In the last 25 years, there has been a keen focus of interest on the problem, with a number of new insights by the best contemporary epistemologists and philosophers of mind. Anthony Brueckner is recognized as one of the leading contemporary investigators of the problem of skepticism.
Essays on Skepticism collects Brueckner's most important work in this area, providing a connected and comprehensive guide to the complex state of play on this intensively studied area of philosophy. The guiding questions of this volume are: Can we have knowledge of the external world of things outside our minds? Can we have knowledge of the internal world of our own contentful mental states? The work divides into four sections: I. Transcendental Arguments against Skepticism; II. Semantic Answers to Skepticism; III. Self-knowledge; IV. Skepticism and Epistemic Closure.