A Contemporary Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge Ebook

Total Page:16

File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb

A Contemporary Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge Ebook EPISTEMOLOGY: A CONTEMPORARY INTRODUCTION TO THE THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE PDF, EPUB, EBOOK Robert Audi | 432 pages | 01 Oct 2010 | Taylor & Francis Ltd | 9780415879231 | English | London, United Kingdom Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge PDF Book Shaun Nichols , University of Utah with S. Suppose I merely see the bird but pay no attention to it because I am utterly intent on what we are discussing. Sign in to Purchase Instantly. Kulkarni, S. And how can I know the many things I need to know in life, such as that my family and friends are trustworthy, that I can control my behavior and can thus partly determine my future, and that the world we live in at least approximates the structured reality portrayed by common sense and science? Greenough University of St. In clear, masterful prose, Audi covers all the main topics in epistemology If I know that something is so, then, of course, it is true, whereas I can justifiedly believe something that is false. Lopes and M. Josh rated it it was ok Apr 08, Mele, eds. Gendler, J. Preyer and G. Suppose I see the bird so briefly and distractedly that I do not see it as anything in particular; still, my visual impression of it has some feature or other by which I am justified in believing something of the bird, if only that it is a moving thing. Michael A. Greenough, eds. Chignell, A. This point presumably explains why my visual experience— what occupies my visual consciousness—is the same whether I am hallucinating the field or really seeing it. Keim-Campbell, M. Nov 18, Farhan Niazi rated it it was ok Shelves: philosophy-textbooks. Unlike the latter, it denies that all sensory experience is of some object. Appraisal of the sense-datum approach Let us focus first of all squarely on the argument from hallucination, whose conclusion suggests that what is directly seen in visual perception of external objects is a set of sense-data. Some features of the site may not work correctly. I could also still believe, regarding the field I see—and perhaps conceive as sand artificially covered with something green—that it is rectangular. Hatzimoysis, ed. I want to discuss further what perception is first and, later, to illustrate in new ways how it grounds what it does. It is justificationally grounded in that experience because the experience, or at least some element in the experience, justifies my holding the belief. Other Editions Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge Writer Kunke This leads to the disc Some sections were dense sledding, like the one on sense perception. In many parts of the book, justification and knowledge are discussed separately; but they are also interconnected at many points. Just a moment while we sign you in to your Goodreads account. As we shall see in Chapter 7, these structural questions take us into the area where epistemology and the philosophy of mind overlap. NYU also has some other outstanding philosophers who, though epistemology might not be among their current main area of research, would be very good to work with there. This is an object of or about which I believe something, say that it is rectangular. Moreover, the sense-datum view postulates the same sort of direct object for ordinary perception, illusion, and hallucination, whereas the theory of appearing does not offer a uniform account of their direct objects and must explain why entities like sense-data do not occur in normal perception as well as in empty hallucination. Other Epistemology sites 1. Knowledge of facts, or propositional knowledge, can be contrasted to practical knowledge, which includes knowledge of how to drive a car or knowledge of how to play baseball. Kim , Epistemology: An Anthology Blackwell, This suggests another visual principle, which might be called an epistemic principle, since it states a condition for the visual generation of knowledge: at least normally, if I see that a thing such as a field has a property say is rectangular , I visually know that it has it. Imagine that we are talking excitedly and a bird flies quickly across my path. For one thing, it incorporates much reflective common sense. The writing is intended to be as simple and concrete as possible for a philosophically serious introduction that does not seek simplicity at the cost of falsehood. Finally, consider my belief that if the spruce is taller than the maple and the maple is taller than the crab apple, then the spruce is taller than the crab apple. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. One may prefer as some philosophers do to say that we do not see such things but are only visually acquainted with them. It seems altogether natural to believe these things given the kind of experience I had, and I think I justifiedly believed them. To appreciate it better, let us first consider how it takes perception to be indirect. Trivia About Epistemology: A C However, as we just said traditionally the focus of epistemology has been on propositional knowledge. There are also some subsections that most readers can probably scan, or even skip, without significant loss in comprehending the main points of the relevant chapter. Sep 18, Muhammad Shemyal Nisar rated it really liked it. These sources are commonly taken to provide raw materials for inductive generalizations, as where observations and memories about roses yield a basis for generalizing about their needs. Jul 29, Landon W rated it it was amazing. James R. Here the main question is what constitutes perception, philosophically speaking. Preston, ed. So can our senses always be trusted? Skip to search form Skip to main content You are currently offline. Shelves: philosophy. Books by Robert Audi. Westphal, ed. The theory also does justice to the view that things are not always as they appear. Unlike the latter, it denies that all sensory experience is of some object. If I can see a bird without believing anything about or of it, I still can see it to be something or other, and my perceptual circumstances are such that I might readily both come to believe something about it and see that to be true of it. After all, just because, when I do see something, I see it by seeing some property or aspect of it, we may not conclude that I see it as having this property or aspect. Erneling and D. Pojman, ed. Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge Reviews But I might just as easily slump back in my chair and mumble that I wish I had seen it. My underlying belief here is that if one thing is taller than a second and the second taller than a third, then the first is taller than the third. Epistemological problems and theories are often interconnected with problems and theories in the philosophy of mind; nor are these two fields of philosophy easily separated a point that may hold, if to a lesser extent, for any two central philosophical fields. This suggests another visual principle, which might be called an epistemic principle, since it states a condition for the visual generation of knowledge: at least normally, if I see that a thing such as a field has a property say is rectangular , I visually know that it has it. And do I not know these things—say that there is a lawn before me and a car on the road beyond it—on the same basis on which I justifiedly believe them, for instance on the basis of what I see and hear? Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible To feeling as to sight? Get a FREE membership video! Tooley University of Colorado, Boulder Phil. PHGA My perception of the bird gives me a ready basis for this much knowledge and justification, even if the perception occurs in a way that does not cause me to believe say that there is a bird before me. Hoffmann, ed. In exploring these domains, Chapter 9 in effect applies some of the epistemological results of the earlier chapters. It is a perceptible object. Chisholm Open-Court Add to Wishlist. Other Epistemology sites. Moreover, the field apparently must cause my visual experience if I am to see it. George Alcaraz rated it really liked it May 27, It will, however, help non-professional readers prepare for a critical study of that literature, contemporary as well as classical. Surely I could have maintained, regarding each of the things I have said I justifiedly believed through perception, that I also knew it. But where an unobtrusive object I see—as opposed to one blocking my path—has no particular relation to what I am doing, perhaps my visual impressions of it are simply a basis for forming beliefs about it should the situation call for it, and it need not produce any belief if my concerns and the direction of my attention give the object no significance. There is a great deal more to be said about each of these sources of belief, justification, and knowledge and about what it is for them to ground what they do ground. If you haven't heard of record-smashing singer and songwriter Mariah Carey, is there any hope for you? Sosa, ed. Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge Read Online References Publications referenced by this paper.
Recommended publications
  • Curriculum Vitae of Alvin Plantinga
    CURRICULUM VITAE OF ALVIN PLANTINGA A. Education Calvin College A.B. 1954 University of Michigan M.A. 1955 Yale University Ph.D. 1958 B. Academic Honors and Awards Fellowships Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, 1968-69 Guggenheim Fellow, June 1 - December 31, 1971, April 4 - August 31, 1972 Fellow, American Academy of Arts & Sciences, 1975 - Fellow, Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship, 1979-1980 Visiting Fellow, Balliol College, Oxford 1975-76 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowships, 1975-76, 1987, 1995-6 Fellowship, American Council of Learned Societies, 1980-81 Fellow, Frisian Academy, 1999 Gifford Lecturer, 1987, 2005 Honorary Degrees Glasgow University, l982 Calvin College (Distinguished Alumni Award), 1986 North Park College, 1994 Free University of Amsterdam, 1995 Brigham Young University, 1996 University of the West in Timisoara (Timisoara, Romania), 1998 Valparaiso University, 1999 2 Offices Vice-President, American Philosophical Association, Central Division, 1980-81 President, American Philosophical Association, Central Division, 1981-82 President, Society of Christian Philosophers, l983-86 Summer Institutes and Seminars Staff Member, Council for Philosophical Studies Summer Institute in Metaphysics, 1968 Staff member and director, Council for Philosophical Studies Summer Institute in Philosophy of Religion, 1973 Director, National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar, 1974, 1975, 1978 Staff member and co-director (with William P. Alston) NEH Summer Institute in Philosophy of Religion (Bellingham, Washington) 1986 Instructor, Pew Younger Scholars Seminar, 1995, 1999 Co-director summer seminar on nature in belief, Calvin College, July, 2004 Other E. Harris Harbison Award for Distinguished Teaching (Danforth Foundation), 1968 Member, Council for Philosophical Studies, 1968-74 William Evans Visiting Fellow University of Otago (New Zealand) 1991 Mentor, Collegium, Fairfield University 1993 The James A.
    [Show full text]
  • Isaac E. Choi 291 Edwards Street New Haven, CT 06511 [email protected]
    Isaac E. Choi 291 Edwards Street New Haven, CT 06511 [email protected] Academic Positions Visiting Fellow, Rivendell Institute, Yale University, 2015–2017 Adjunct Instructor of Philosophy, Sacred Heart University, Fairfield, CT, 2016–2017 Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Oxford, 2014–2015 New Insights and Directions for Religious Epistemology project, led by John Hawthorne Junior Research Fellow, Somerville College, University of Oxford, 2014–2015 Research and Technical Assistant for Alvin I. Goldman, Rutgers University, 2013–2014 Editorial Assistant, Episteme, A Journal of Social Epistemology, Rutgers University, 2007–2011 Editor: Alvin I. Goldman Education Ph.D. in Philosophy, 2013 University of Notre Dame Dissertation: Epistemic Expertise: Its Nature and Appraisal Directors: Alvin Plantinga, Ted A. Warfield Additional Committee Members: Robert Audi, Alvin I. Goldman (Rutgers University), Leopold Stubenberg Visiting Graduate Student in Philosophy, 2007–2008 Rutgers University Th.M. in Philosophy and Theology, 2002, and M.Div., 2000 Princeton Theological Seminary A.B. in Chemistry, magna cum laude with highest honors in concentration, 1995 Harvard College Areas of Specialization Epistemology, Philosophy of Religion Areas of Competence Metaphysics, Philosophy of Science, Religion and Science, Logic, Ethics, Bioethics 2 Publications “Infinite Cardinalities, Measuring Knowledge, and Probabilities in Fine Tuning Arguments,” forthcoming in Knowledge, Belief, and God: New Insights in Religious Epistemology, edited by Matthew A. Benton, John Hawthorne, and Dani Rabinowitz. Oxford: Oxford University Press. “Is Petitionary Prayer Superfluous?” Oxford Studies in Philosophy of Religion 7 (2016): 32–62. Review of Pascal’s Wager: Pragmatic Arguments and Belief in God, by Jeff Jordan, Religious Studies Review 35 (March 2009): 33.
    [Show full text]
  • Experience and Foundationalism in Audi's the Architecture of Reason
    Philosophy and Phenomenological Research Vol. LXVII, No. 1, July 2003 Experience and Foundationalism in Audi’s The Architecture of Reason WALTER SINNOTT-ARMSTRONG Dartmouth College Robert Audi’s The Architecture of Reason is a magnificent consolidation of decades of original work by a masterful philosopher. Its scope is impressive, as it covers both theoretical and practical reason in a slim volume. More impressive yet is its coherence, for Audi reveals a unified structure shared by what many philosophers assume to be disparate fields. In this short comment, I will focus on just a few aspects of Audi’s pri- mary analogies between theoretical and practical reason. He argues that “reason, conceived as a general human capacity, is, as Kant thought, unified. It is unified above all by its grounding, directly or through belief, in experi- ence, sensory, introspective, memorial, and reflective.” (233; cf. ix, 16, 80, 222) Audi’s structural thesis, then, is that good reasoning always has some foundation. His substantive thesis is that the foundation is always some experience. Hence his subtitle, “The Structure and Substance of Rationality”. 1 - Experience Audi admits “some differences between theoretical and practical reason”, but he claims that “none of them undermines the main analogies.” (193) It is not clear what it takes to undermine an analogy. Still, his main analogy regarding substance depends on a wide concept of experience, so his analogy seems problematic if his notion of experience is not adequately unified. One striking difference between the experiences that are said to ground theoretical reason and those said to ground practical reason concerns time.
    [Show full text]
  • Reasons, Practical Reason, and Practical Reasoning
    © Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2004, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. Ratio (new series) XVII 2 June 2004 0034–0006 REASONS, PRACTICAL REASON, AND PRACTICAL REASONING Robert Audi Abstract The concepts of reasons as supporting elements, of practical reason as a capacity, and of practical reasoning as a process are central in the theory of action. This paper provides a brief account of each. Several kinds of reason for action are distinguished. Prac- tical reason is characterized both as a capacity whose exercise is largely constituted by a kind of responsiveness to reasons and as governed by certain normative principles; and practical reasoning is described as a kind of mental process in which reasons figure as premises and, from those premises, a practical conclusion is drawn. Much of the paper undertakes two related tasks: to distinguish the main kinds of practical reasoning and the associated criteria of assessment and to formulate some important substantive princi- ples of practical reason. These principles yield criteria of several sorts: logical, inferential, epistemic, and material. On the theory presented, although any (non-basic) intentional act can be grounded in practical reasoning, the same acts can be performed for the relevant reason(s) without being so grounded, and in either case their rationality depends on adequate support by the reason(s). One kind of reason is commonly thought to be captured by Kantian hypothetical imperatives. The final sections explore what constitutes a hypothetical imperative and what other princi- ples are needed to account for practical rationality. A major con- clusion is that in the domain of practical reason, if there are no categorical imperatives, there are no hypothetical imperatives either.
    [Show full text]
  • The Radical Ethics of Legal Rhetoricians
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by ValpoScholar Valparaiso University Law Review Volume 32 Number 1 Fall 1997 pp.93-103 Fall 1997 The Radical Ethics of Legal Rhetoricians Jack L. Sammons Follow this and additional works at: https://scholar.valpo.edu/vulr Part of the Law Commons Recommended Citation Jack L. Sammons, The Radical Ethics of Legal Rhetoricians, 32 Val. U. L. Rev. 93 (1997). Available at: https://scholar.valpo.edu/vulr/vol32/iss1/4 This Commentary is brought to you for free and open access by the Valparaiso University Law School at ValpoScholar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Valparaiso University Law Review by an authorized administrator of ValpoScholar. For more information, please contact a ValpoScholar staff member at [email protected]. Sammons: The Radical Ethics of Legal Rhetoricians Commentary THE RADICAL ETHICS OF LEGAL RHETORICIANS JACK L. SAMMONS* I want to take seriously a claim that legal practitioners frequently made some twenty years ago, but one that fell into disrepute when academic legal ethicists took over the subject of legal ethics. The claim is that good lawyering is good ethics. This claim makes ethics a descriptive task, the description in question being a description of good lawyering. Of course, such a description of lawyering must come from, or at least start within, the practice.' Thus far I mean to say nothing more than that the excellences of lawyering, similar to the excellences of baseball, must be defined within the practice. Through the playing of baseball, we come to know that disciplined attention by a fielder to each batter is an excellence of the sport requiring certain knowledge, skills, and virtues, some of which are the abilities to maintain a calm temperament, to forget prior bad plays quickly, to avoid criticism of teammates for mistakes, and so forth.
    [Show full text]
  • Robert Audi, the ARCHITECTURE of REASON: the STRUCTURE and SUBSTANCE of RATIONALITY
    Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers Volume 22 Issue 3 Article 12 7-1-2005 Robert Audi, THE ARCHITECTURE OF REASON: THE STRUCTURE AND SUBSTANCE OF RATIONALITY W. Jay Wood Follow this and additional works at: https://place.asburyseminary.edu/faithandphilosophy Recommended Citation Wood, W. Jay (2005) "Robert Audi, THE ARCHITECTURE OF REASON: THE STRUCTURE AND SUBSTANCE OF RATIONALITY," Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers: Vol. 22 : Iss. 3 , Article 12. DOI: 10.5840/faithphil200522312 Available at: https://place.asburyseminary.edu/faithandphilosophy/vol22/iss3/12 This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at ePLACE: preserving, learning, and creative exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers by an authorized editor of ePLACE: preserving, learning, and creative exchange. BOOK REVIEWS 381 The Architecture of Reason: The Structure and Substance of Rationality by Robert Audi. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. xvi +286. $19.95 (paper). W. JAY WOOD, Wheaton College Robert Audi’s book The Architecture of Reason offers an impressively comprehensive and systematic account of the structure of rationality that unifies the theoretical rationality of reason and the practical rationality of action and desire. It draws together many of the themes Audi has devel- oped in earlier works such as Action, Intention, and Reason (1993), and The Structure of Justification (1993). Though the book covers a wide expanse of philosophical terrain—e.g. contemporary epistemology, meta-ethics, and moral psychology—it is nevertheless rich with examples and replete with helpful, nuanced distinctions.
    [Show full text]
  • Reassessing Religion's Place in a Liberal Democracy Brian Stiltner Sacred Heart University, [email protected]
    Sacred Heart University DigitalCommons@SHU Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies Faculty Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies Publications 10-2000 Reassessing Religion's Place in a Liberal Democracy Brian Stiltner Sacred Heart University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/rel_fac Part of the Ethics in Religion Commons, and the Political Science Commons Recommended Citation Stiltner, Brian, "Reassessing Religion's Place in a Liberal Democracy" (2000). Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies Faculty Publications. Paper 4. http://digitalcommons.sacredheart.edu/rel_fac/4 This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies at DigitalCommons@SHU. It has been accepted for inclusion in Philosophy, Theology and Religious Studies Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@SHU. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Volume 26 Number 4 / October 2000 Religious Studies Review/ 819 on the destructive aspects of religion, although they admit that reli- REASSESSING RELIGION’S PLACE gion is no panacea for a democracy. This rise of a more balanced IN A LIBERAL DEMOCRACY and appreciative account of religion’s role in liberal democracy bodes well for both liberal political theory and Christian public the- RELIGION AND CONTEMPORARYLIBERALISM ology. In this essay, I will consider several works that are represen- Edited by Paul J. Weithman tative of this trend. The literature relevant to the debate about reli- Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997 gion and liberalism is immense; my limiting principle here is to Pp. viii + 315. Cloth, $48.00, __paper, $23.00.
    [Show full text]
  • Read the Preface
    MAR-31-2010 10:25 She rri Katz Working Without a Net A Study of Egocentric Epistemology RICHARD FOLEY New York Oxford OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1993 Oxford University Press Oxford New York Toronto Delhi Bombay Calcutta Madras· Karachi Kuala Lumpur Singapore Hong Kong Tokyo Nairobi Das es Salaam Cape Town Melbourne Auckland Madrid and associated companies in Berlin Ibadan Copyright © 1993 by Richard Foley Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 200 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016 Oxford is a registered (trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of his publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, to any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Foley. Richard Working without a net: a study of egocentric epistemology / Richard Foley. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-19-.507699-0 1. Knowledge, Theory of. 2. Descartes, Rene, 1596—1650. I. Tittle. tz BD161.F58 1992 12[—dc20 91-48108 a K i r r e h S 10:25 0 -201 24 6 8 9 7 5 3 1 R-31 Printed in the United States of America MA on acid-free paper Preface Part of the fascination of philosophy is the way topics blend into one another You are writing on what you take to be a well-defined topic, but to your surprise you soon find yourself writing about something that antecedently would have seemed to have been a quite different topic. This is the experience I had with this book.
    [Show full text]
  • Moral Perception Defended
    Moral Perception Defended Robert Audi University of Notre Dame Abstract This paper outlines my theory of moral perception, extends the theory beyond its previous statements, and defends it from a number of objections posed in the lit- erature. The paper distinguishes the perceptible from the perceptual; develops a structural analogy between perception and action; explains how moral percep- tion, despite its normative status, can be causal in the way appropriate to genuine perception; clarifies the respects in which moral perception is representational; and indicates how it provides an objective basis for moral knowledge. In the light of this account of moral perception, its presentational character is described, par- ticularly the phenomenological integration between our moral sensibility and our non-moral perception of the various kinds of natural properties that ground moral properties. The complexity of this integration raises the question whether moral perception is inferential and thereby quite different from ordinary perception. This question is answered by clarifying the notion of inference and by pursuing an analogy between moral perception and perception of emotion. Aesthetic percep- tion is also considered as, within limits, instructively analogous to moral percep- tion. The final parts of the paper explore the role of cognitive penetration and cognitive attitudes such as belief and judgment in relation to moral perception; the conceptual and developmental aspects of moral perception; and the latitude my overall account of it allows in the epistemology and ontology of ethics. Keywords: action-perception analogy, cognitive penetration, consequentiality, in- ference, moral knowledge, moral phenomenology, observability, perceptibility, phenomenological integration, representation. The topic of perception is crucial for many fields of philosophy.
    [Show full text]
  • Conflicts Empiricism Gene R
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Indiana University Bloomington Maurer School of Law Maurer School of Law: Indiana University Digital Repository @ Maurer Law Articles by Maurer Faculty Faculty Scholarship 2001 Conflicts Empiricism Gene R. Shreve Indiana University Maurer School of Law, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/facpub Part of the Conflict of Laws Commons, and the Jurisprudence Commons Recommended Citation Shreve, Gene R., "Conflicts Empiricism" (2001). Articles by Maurer Faculty. Paper 481. http://www.repository.law.indiana.edu/facpub/481 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Faculty Scholarship at Digital Repository @ Maurer Law. It has been accepted for inclusion in Articles by Maurer Faculty by an authorized administrator of Digital Repository @ Maurer Law. For more information, please contact [email protected]. CONFLICTS EMPIRICISM GENE R. SHREVE* The topic of this symposium, "American Conflicts of Law at the Dawn of the 21st Century," is an important one, and I am grateful to Dean Symeonides and to the staff of the Willamette Law Review for the invitation to participate. Not long ago, I co- ordinated another symposium that addressed American conflicts law at the turn of the century.' My position as editor required me to maintain a distance from any particular topic raised in that symposium. One topic-empirical research in conflict of laws- especially intrigued me, and I am delighted to have an opportu- nity now to weigh in on that topic with some thoughts of my own.
    [Show full text]
  • Construction, Reduction, and the Nature of Epistemology
    Theoria 24, 2009, 134-146. CONSTRUCTION AND COGNITION Catherine Z. Elgin Abstract:The Structure of Appearance presents a phenomenalist system which constructs enduring visible objects out of qualia. Nevertheless Goodman does not espouse phenomenalism. Why not? In answering this question this paper explicates Goodman’s views about the nature and functions of constructional systems, the prospects of reductionism, and the character of epistemology. In The Structure of Appearance, Nelson Goodman presents a well worked out phenomenalist system which constructs enduring visible objects out of qualia. Nevertheless Goodman does not espouse phenomenalism. This is not because he considers his system somehow defective or inadequate. Although details remain to be filled in, he considers his system viable. And he believes his constructional methods could readily yield extensions to other sensory realms. So the question arises, why isn’t Goodman a phenomenalist? Answering this question sheds light on Goodman’s views about the nature and functions of constructional systems, the prospects of reductionism, and the character of epistemology. Phenomenalism The idea behind phenomenalism is this: Since all knowledge of the external world depends on observation, it should be possible to rigorously derive all knowable truths about the external world from truths about observations -- truths that refer only to what is sensory. Philosophers such as Russell and Moore were convinced that this possibility could be realized.1 But although they were committed to the reality and importance of sense data, they did not attempt to create the systematic constructions that would show 1 just how sense data constitute knowledge of the external world. No one claims that the basic units of a phenomenalist system – qualia, or sense data, or Elementarerlebnisse (hereafter ‘erlebs’), or whatever – are the stuff of common sense.
    [Show full text]
  • 3 "Re-Thinking Hobbes's Materialistic and Mechanistic Projects "
    "Re-thinking Hobbes's Materialistic and Mechanistic Projects " ROBERTARP I. Introduction In this paper I shall attempt to show that, despite his intention to formulate a thoroughly reductionistic and mechanistic philosophical system, Hobbes actu- ally fails on both accounts. First, I argue that Hobbes fails to be a consistent ontological reductionist, but his attempts at applying methodological reduction- ism fair much better. Then, I argue that Hobbes fails to be a strict mechanist since at times he seems to implicitly endorse the very Aristotelian/Scholastic categories he has explicitly rejected. Again, Hobbes's methodology appears mechanistic given its Galilean scope; however, his metaphysical views betray his views concerning the physics of the universe. In the end I maintain that such inconsistency, oversight and contradiction in his system is to be expected since Hobbes was, at once, philosopher and philosophical theologian existing on the cusp of the Scholastic and Modem worlds. II. Hobbes's materialistic project A. Materialism, Mechanism, Ontology and Methodology At the outset it is important to define and distinguish versions of materialism and mechanism.' A materialist thinks that all aspects of reality can be account- ed for in material terms. In the Oxford Dictionary of Philosophy Simon Blackburn defines materialism as the "view that the world is entirely composed of matter."2 Thomas Spragens saddles Hobbes with materialism when he claims ' I would like to thank the following persons for their valued criticisms, insights and support in the formulationof this paper: Richard Dees, Douglas Jesseph, Jack Marler, George Terzis and Catherine Wilson. 2 Simon Blackburn, The OxfordDictionary of Philosophy.(Oxford: Oxford UniversityPress, 1996), p.
    [Show full text]