Luck, Value, and Commitment comprises eleven new essays which engage with, or take their point of departure from, the influential work in moral and political philosophy of Bernard Williams (1929-2003).
The claim that contemporary analytic philosophers rely extensively on intuitions as evidence is almost universally accepted in current meta-philosophical debates and it figures prominently in our self-understanding as analytic philosophers.
David Bostock presents a critical appraisal of Bertrand Russell's philosophy from 1900 to 1924--a period that is considered to be the most important in his career.
Emma Borg examines the relation between semantics (roughly, features of the literal meaning of linguistic items) and pragmatics (features emerging from the context within which such items are being used), and assesses recent answers to the fundamental questions of how and where to draw the divide between the two.
Reliabilist accounts of knowledge are widely seen as having the resources for blocking sceptical arguments, since these arguments appear to rely on assumptions about the nature of knowledge that are rendered illegitimate by reliabilist accounts.
For fifty years Hubert Dreyfus has addressed an astonishing range of issues in the fields of phenomenology, existentialism, cognitive science, and the philosophical study of mind.
In both science and philosophy, the twentieth century saw a radical breakdown of certainty in the human worldview, as quantum uncertainty and linguistic ambiguity destroyed the comfortable certitudes of the past.
To be a 'commonsense realist' is to hold that perceptual experience is (in general) an immediate awareness of mind-independent objects, and a source of direct knowledge of what such objects are like.
In both science and philosophy, the twentieth century saw a radical breakdown of certainty in the human worldview, as quantum uncertainty and linguistic ambiguity destroyed the comfortable certitudes of the past.
To be a 'commonsense realist' is to hold that perceptual experience is (in general) an immediate awareness of mind-independent objects, and a source of direct knowledge of what such objects are like.
It's an obvious enough observation that the standards that govern whether ordinary speakers will say that someone knows something vary with context: What we are happy to call "e;knowledge"e; in some ("e;low-standards"e;) contexts we'll deny is "e;knowledge"e; in other ("e;high-standards"e;) contexts.
Kant's introduction of a distinctive form of philosophical investigation and proof, known as transcendental, inaugurated a new philosophical tradition.
This volume of uncollected essays by Barry Stroud explores central issues and ideas in the work of individual philosophers, ranging from Descartes, Berkeley, Locke, and Hume to Quine, Burge, McDowell, Goldman, Fogelin, and Sosa in our own day.
David Henderson and Terence Horgan set out a broad new approach to epistemology, which they see as a mixed discipline, having both a priori and empirical elements.
This book is the first systematic treatment of 'responsibilist' or character-based virtue epistemology, an approach to epistemology that focuses on intellectual character virtues like open-mindedness, fair-mindedness, inquisitiveness, and intellectual courage, rigor, and carefulness.
At least since Locke, philosophers and psychologists have usually held that concepts arise out of sensory perceptions, thoughts are built from concepts, and language enables speakers to convey their thoughts to hearers.
It is widely believed that people have privileged and authoritative access to their own thoughts, and many theories have been proposed to explain this supposed fact.
Fourteen newly commissioned essays trace the historical development of the distinction between primary and secondary qualities, which lies at the intersection of issues in metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of perception.
The Architecture of Theology presents a fresh reading of Christian theology, re-interpreting discussions of theological method and considering them in light of contemporary philosophical debates.
In this scientific 'Credo', Peter Atkins considers the universal questions of origins, endings, birth, and death to which religions have claimed answers.
In this scientific 'Credo', Peter Atkins considers the universal questions of origins, endings, birth, and death to which religions have claimed answers.
On the traditional Cartesian picture, knowledge of one's own internal world -- of one's current thoughts and feelings -- is the unproblematic foundation for all knowledge.
Descartes's philosophy has had a considerable influence on the modern conception of the mind, but many think that this influence has been largely negative.
