Philosophical Scepticism and the Conditions of Thought PDF Download

Author: Jonathan Levett
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Author: Barry Stroud
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198247613
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 294

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He author argues that the sceptical thesis is motivated by a persistent philosophical problem that calls the very possibility of knowledge about the external world into question, and that the sceptical thesis is the only acceptable answer to this problem as traditionally posed.

Author: Donald C. Ainslie
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199593868
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 301

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Provides a sustained interpretation of Part 4 of Book 1 of Hume's Treatise, arguing that Hume uses our reactions to the sceptical arguments as evidence in favor of his model of the mind.

Author: Peter Unger
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 9780191519697
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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In this controversial volume (originally published in 1975) Peter Unger suggests that, not only can nothing ever be known, but no one can ever have a reason at all for anything. A consequence of this is that we cannot have any realistic emotional ties: it can never be conclusively said that someone is happy or sad about anything. Finally he argues that no one can ever say, let alone believe, that anything is the case. In order to get beyond this apparent bind - and this condition of ignorance - Unger proposes a radical departure from the linguistic and epistemological systems we have become accustomed to. Epistemologists, as well as philosophers of mind and language will undoubtedly find in this study of the limitations of language an invaluable philosophical perspective.

Author: Penelope Maddy
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190618698
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 265

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How do you know the world around you isn't just an elaborate dream, or the creation of an evil neuroscientist? If all you have to go on are various lights, sounds, smells, tastes and tickles, how can you know what the world is really like, or even whether there is a world beyond your own mind? Questions like these -- familiar from science fiction and dorm room debates -- lie at the core of venerable philosophical arguments for radical skepticism: the stark contention that we in fact know nothing at all about the world, that we have no more reason to believe any claim -- that there are trees, that we have hands -- than we have to disbelieve it. Like non-philosophers in their sober moments, philosophers, too, find this skeptical conclusion preposterous, but they're faced with those famous arguments: the Dream Argument, the Argument from Illusion, the Infinite Regress of Justification, the more recent Closure Argument. If these can't be met, they raise a serious challenge not just to philosophers, but to anyone responsible enough to expect her beliefs to square with her evidence. What Do Philosophers Do? takes up the skeptical arguments from this everyday point of view, and ultimately concludes that they don't undermine our ordinary beliefs or our ordinary ways of finding out about the world. In the process, Maddy examines and evaluates a range of philosophical methods -- common sense, scientific naturalism, ordinary language, conceptual analysis, therapeutic approaches -- as employed by such philosophers as Thomas Reid, G. E. Moore, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and J. L. Austin. The result is a revealing portrait of what philosophers do, and perhaps a quiet suggestion for what they should do, for what they do best.

Author: J. van der Zande
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9401734658
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 655

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In the early 1980s the late Charles B. Schmitt and I discussed the fact that so much new research and new interpretations were taking place concerning various areas of modem skepticism that we, as pioneers, ought to organize a conference where these new findings and outlooks could be presented and discussed. Charles and I had both visited the great library at Wolfenbiittel, and were most happy when the Herzog August Bibliothek agreed to host the first conference on the history of skepticism, in 1984 (published as Skepticism from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, ed. R. H. Popkin and Charles B. Schmitt [Wiesbaden, 1987, Wolfenbiitteler For schungen, vol. 35]) Charles and I projected a series of later conferences, the first of which would deal with skepticism and irreligion in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Unfortunately, however, Charles died suddenly in 1986, while lecturing in Padua. Subsequent to his death Constance Blackwell, his companion of many years, established the Foundation for Intellectual History to support research and publica tion on topics in the history of ideas that continued Schmitt's interests. One of the first ventures was to arrange and fund the already planned conference on skepticism and irreligion in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. After many difficulties and problems, the conference was sponsored and funded by the Foundation for Intel lectual History, one of its first public activities. It was held at the lovely facilities of the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Studies in Wassenaar in 1990.

Author: Robert H. Myers
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 113464129X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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According to many commentators, Davidson’s earlier work on philosophy of action and truth-theoretic semantics is the basis for his reputation, and his later forays into broader metaphysical and epistemological issues, and eventually into what became known as the triangulation argument, are much less successful. This book by two of his former students aims to change that perception. In Part One, Verheggen begins by providing an explanation and defense of the triangulation argument, then explores its implications for questions concerning semantic normativity and reductionism, the social character of language and thought, and skepticism about the external world. In Part Two, Myers considers what the argument can tell us about reasons for action, and whether it can overcome skeptical worries based on claims about the nature of motivation, the sources of normativity and the demands of morality. The book reveals Davidson’s later writings to be full of innovative and important ideas that deserve much more attention than they are currently receiving.

Author: Bryan Frances
Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand
ISBN: 0199282137
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 222

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In epistemology the nagging voice of the sceptic has always been present. Over the last thirty years or so philosophers have thought of several promising ways to counter the radical sceptic: for instance, facts about the reliability of our cognitive processes, principles determining which possibilities must be ruled out in order to have knowledge, and principles regarding the context-sensitivity of knowledge attributions. In this entertaining and provocative book, Bryan Frances presents a new argument template for generating new kinds of radical scepticism, ones that hold even if all the clever anti-sceptical fixes defeat the traditional sceptic. Not only is the argument schema novel, but the sceptical consequences are entirely unexpected. Although the new sceptic concludes that we don't know that fire engines are red, that we sometimes have pains in our knees, or even that we believe that fire engines are red or that knees sometimes throb, he admits that we know millions of exotic truths such as the fact that black holes exist. You can know about the existence of black holes, but not about the colour of your shirt or even about what you believe regarding the colour of your shirt. The new sceptical arguments proceed in the usual way (here's a sceptical hypothesis; you can't neutralize it, you have to be able to neutralize it to know P; so you don't know P), but the sceptical hypotheses plugged into it are 'real live' scientific-philosophical hypotheses often thought to be actually true, such as error theories about belief, colour, pain location, and character traits. Frances investigates the questions, 'Under what conditions do we need to rule out these error theories in order to know things inconsistent with them?' and 'Can we rule them out?' Particular attention is paid to recent methods used to counter the traditional sceptic. Sharp, witty, and fun to read, Scepticism Comes Alive will be highly provocative for anyone interested in knowledge and its limits.

Author: Neil Gascoigne
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317489713
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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The history of scepticism is assumed by many to be the history of failed responses to a problem first raised by Descartes. While the thought of the ancient sceptics is acknowledged, their principle concern with how to live a good life is regarded as bearing little, if any, relation to the work of contemporary epistemologists. In "Scepticism" Neil Gascoigne engages with the work of canonical philosophers from Descartes, Hume and Kant through to Moore, Austin, and Wittgenstein to show how themes that first emerged in the Hellenistic period are inextricably bound up with the historical development of scepticism. Foremost amongst these is the view that scepticism relates not to the possibility of empirical knowledge but to the possibility of epistemological theory. This challenge to epistemology itself is explored and two contemporary trends are considered: the turn against foundationalist epistemology and towards more naturalistic conceptions of inquiry, and the resistance to this on the part of non-naturalistically inclined philosophers. In contextualizing the debate in this way Gascoigne equips students with a better appreciation of the methodological importance of sceptical reasoning, an analytic understanding of the structure of sceptical arguments, and an awareness of the significance of scepticism to the nature of philosophical inquiry.

Author: John Koethe
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501731734
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 174

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"The problem of philosophical scepticism is not so much what to say about the view itself (there being a consensus that it should be rejected), but rather what to say about the arguments that purport to yield it. And since these arguments involve claims and principles concerning notions like knowledge and possibility, it is difficult to see how to explore the arguments without exploring these notions too."—from the Introduction How do we address philosophical arguments whose conclusions contradict our commonsense knowledge? For example: a logically impeccable argument that concludes that you cannot know that you are at this very moment reading a description of a book of philosophy. That is the problem of philosophical scepticism. Scepticism, Knowledge, and Forms of Reasoning is an attempt to resolve how best to respond to such vexing arguments, a matter on which there is no consensus among contemporary philosophers. Rather than denying the premises of such arguments or simply declaring them invalid, John Koethe delves into what such arguments reveal about the nature of reasoning itself. He suggests that there is nothing straightforwardly wrong with sceptical arguments, and that in recognizing this while at the same time honoring our commonsense convictions about knowledge, we confront profound questions about the very nature of reasoning.