True Enough (Hardcover)

The development of an epistemology that explains how science and art embody and convey understanding. Philosophy valorizes truth, holding that there can never be epistemically good reasons to accept a known falsehood, or to accept modes of justification that are not truth conducive. How can this stance account for the epistemic standing of science, which unabashedly relies on models, idealizations, and thought experiments that are known not to be true? In True Enough, Catherine Elgin argues that we should not assume that the inaccuracy of models and idealizations constitutes an inadequacy. To the contrary, their divergence from truth or representational accuracy fosters their epistemic functioning. When effective, models and idealizations are, Elgin contends, felicitous falsehoods that exemplify features of the phenomena they bear on. Because works of art deploy the same sorts of felicitous falsehoods, she argues, they also advance understanding. Elgin develops a holistic epistemology that focuses on the understanding of broad ranges of phenomena rather than knowledge of individual facts. Epistemic acceptability, she maintains, is a matter not of truth-conduciveness, but of what would be reflectively endorsed by the members of an idealized epistemic community-a quasi-Kantian realm of epistemic ends.

General

Imprint:	MIT Press
Country of origin:	United States
Series:	The Mit Press
Release date:	September 2017
First published:	2017
Authors:	Catherine Z. Elgin (Professor of the Philosophy of Education)
Dimensions:	160 x 236 x 28mm (L x W x T)
Format:	Hardcover
Pages:	352
ISBN-13:	978-0-262-03653-5
Categories:	Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Topics in philosophy > Aesthetics Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Topics in philosophy > Epistemology, theory of knowledge Books > Science & Mathematics > Biology, life sciences > Life sciences: general issues > Bio-ethics Books > Philosophy > Topics in philosophy > Aesthetics Books > Philosophy > Topics in philosophy > Epistemology, theory of knowledge
LSN:	0-262-03653-3
Barcode:	9780262036535

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