In English, we use the word "I" to express thoughts that we have about ourselves, and we use the reflexive pronouns "himself" and "herself" to attribute such thoughts to others. Philosophers and linguists call such thoughts, and the statements we use to express them, de se. De se thoughts and statements, although they appear often in our day-to-day lives, pose a series of challenging problems for both linguists and philosophers. This interdisciplinary volume examines the structure of de se thought, various (...) issues concerning the semantics and pragmatics of our discourse about it, and also what it reveals about how humans think about themselves and the world around them. (shrink)

Group polarization—roughly, the tendency of groups to incline towards more extreme positions than initially held by their individual members— has been rigorously studied by social psychol- ogists, though in a way that has overlooked important philosophical questions about this phenomenon which remain unexplored. Two such salient questions are metaphysical and epistemological, respectively. From a metaphysical point of view, can group polarization, understood as an epistemic feature of a group, be reduced to epistemic features of its individual members? Relatedly, from an (...) epistemological point of view, is group polarization best understood as a kind of cognitive bias or rather in terms of intellectual vice? This book taxonomizes this possibility space by comparing four models which combine potential answers to the metaphysical and epistemological questions. The models we consider are: group polarization as a collective bias, a summation of individual epistemic vices; a summation of individual biases; and a collective epistemic vice. We defend a collective vice model of group polarization over the competing alternatives. (shrink)

An unprecedented and comprehensive demonstration of the numerous connections between the philosophies of Plato and Plotinus, their epistemologies, metaphysics, and ethics, including the argument that if Plotinus is a mystic, so is Plato—addressing criticisms in English scholarship to this view throughout.

This collection of essays, first published two decades ago, presents central feminist critiques and analyses of natural and social sciences and their philosophies. Unfortunately, in spite of the brilliant body of research and scholarship in these fields in subsequent decades, the insights of these essays remain as timely now as they were then: philosophy and the sciences still presume kinds of social innocence to which they are not entitled. The essays focus on Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hobbes, Rousseau, and Marx; on (...) the 'adversary method' model of philosophic reasoning; on principles of individuation on philosophical ontology and philosophy of language; on individualistic assumptions in psychology; functionalism in sociological and biological theory; evolutionary theory; the methodology of political science; and conceptions of objective inquiry in the sciences. In taking insights of both Liberal and Marxian women's movements into the purportedly most abstract and value-free areas of Western thought, these essays chart sexist and androcentric assumptions, claims and practices in the cognitive, technical cores of Western sciences and their philosophies. They begin to identify the distinctive aspects of women's experiences and locations in male-supremacist social structures which can provide resources needed for the creation of post-androcentric thinking in research, scholarship, and public policy. Such uses of feminist insights remain controversial today, and even among some feminists. These authors were all junior researchers and scholars two decades ago; today many are among the most distinguished senior scholars in their fields. Their work here provides a splendid opportunity for upper-level undergraduate and graduate students in philosophy and the social sciences to explore some of the most intriguing and controversial challenges to disciplinary projects and to public policy today. (shrink)

This volume is devoted to Lewis's work in metaphysics and epistemology. Topics covered include properties, ontology, possibility, truthmaking, probability, the mind-body problem, vision, belief, and knowledge. The purpose of this collection, and the volumes that precede and follow it, is to disseminate more widely the work of an eminent and influential contemporary philosopher. The volume will serve as a useful work of reference for teachers and students of philosophy.

Most philosophers of mathematics try to show either that the sort of knowledge mathematicians have is similar to the sort of knowledge specialists in the empirical sciences have or that the kind of knowledge mathematicians have, although apparently about objects such as numbers, sets, and so on, isn't really about those sorts of things as well. Jody Azzouni argues that mathematical knowledge really is a special kind of knowledge with its own special means of gathering evidence. He analyses the linguistic (...) pitfalls and misperceptions philosophers in this field are often prone to, and explores the misapplications of epistemic principles from the empirical sciences to the exact sciences. What emerges is a picture of mathematics both sensitive to mathematical practice, and to the ontological and epistemological issues that concern philosophers. (shrink)

Introduction -- Metaphysics -- "Ostrich nominalism"' or "mirage realism"? -- Postscript to "Ostrich nominalism" or "mirage realism"? -- Aberrations of the realism debate -- Postscript to "aberrations of the realism debate" -- Underdetermination and commonsense realism -- Scientificrealism -- Postscript to "scientific realism" -- Incommensurability and the priority of metaphysics -- Postscript to "incommensurability and the priority of metaphysics" -- Global response dependency and worldmaking -- The metaphysics of nonfactualism -- The metaphysics of truth -- (...) Moral realism : a naturalistic perspective -- Natural kinds and biological realisms -- Resurrecting biological essentialism -- Epistemology -- Naturalism and the a priori -- No place for the a priori -- Intuitions -- On determining what there isn't. (shrink)

Recent work on analyticity distinguishes two kinds, metaphysical and epistemic. This paper argues that the distinction allows for a new view in the philosophy of logic according to which the claims of logic are metaphysically analytic and have distinctive modal profiles, even though their epistemology is holist and in many ways rather Quinean. It is argued that such a view combines some of the more attractive aspects of the Carnapian and Quinean approaches to logic, whilst avoiding some famous problems.

PREFACE Towards the end of his important article 'What is Phenomenology?" Adolf Reinach writes: When we wish to break with all theories and constructions in ...

The book has two parts: one metaphysical, the other epistemological. The metaphysical part is largely concerned with realism issues. It starts with realism about universals, dismissing Plato's notorious ‘one over many’ problem. Several chapters argue for a fairly uncompromisingly realist view of the external physical world of commonsense and science. Both the nonfactualism of moral noncognitivism and positivistic instrumentalism, and deflationism about truth, are found to rest on antirealisms about their subject matters that are hard to characterize. A case is (...) presented for moral realism. Various biological realisms are considered. Finally, an argument is presented for an unfashionable biological essentialism. The epistemological part of the book argues against the a priori and for a Quinean naturalism. The intuitions that so dominate ‘armchair philosophy’ are empirical not a priori. There is an emphasis throughout the book on distinguishing metaphysical issues about what there is and what it's like from semantic issues about meaning, truth, and reference. Another central theme, captured in the title, is that we should ‘put metaphysics first’. We should approach epistemology and semantics from a metaphysical perspective rather than vice versa. The epistemological turn in modern philosophy and the linguistic turn in contemporary philosophy were something of disasters. (shrink)

Based on original translations of passages from the works of three major thinkers of the classical Indian school of Advaita (Sankara, Vacaspati and Sri Harsa), but addressing issues found in Descartes, Berkeley, Hume, Kant, Wittgenstein and contemporary analytic philosophers, this book argues for a philosophical position it calls 'non-realism'. This is the view that an independent, external world must be assumed if the features of cognition are to be explained, but that it cannot be proved that there is such a (...) world, independently of an appeal to cognition itself. This position is constructed against idealist denials of externality, realist arguments for an independent world and the sceptical denial of the coherence of cognition. (shrink)

This book focuses on African metaphysics and epistemology, and is an exercise in decoloniality. The authors describe their approach to "decoloniality" as an intellectual repudiation of coloniality, using the method of conversational thinking grounded in Ezumezu logic. Focusing specifically on both African metaphysics and African epistemology, the authors put forward theories formulated to stimulate fresh debates and extend the frontiers of learning in the field. They emphasize that this book is not a project in comparative philosophy, (...) nor is it geared towards making Africa/ns the object/subjects of philosophy. Rather, the book highlights and discusses philosophical insights that have been produced from the African perspective, which the authors argue must be further developed in order to achieve decoloniality in the field of philosophy more broadly. (shrink)

The articles in this special issue of the yearbook Logical Analysis and History of Philosophy all concern, in one way or another, Hume’s epistemology and metaphysics. There are discussions of our knowledge of causal powers, the extent to which conceivability is a guide to modality, and testimony; there are also discussions of our ideas of space and time, the role in Hume’s thought of the psychological mechanism of ‘completing the union’, the role of impressions, and Hume’s argument against (...) the claim that our perceptions are ‘locally conjoined’ with any entity (namely, a soul). (shrink)

Cognitive developmental evidence is sometimes conscripted to support ''naturalized epistemology'' arguments to the effect that a general epistemic stance leads children to build theory-like accounts of underlying properties of kinds. A review of the evidence suggests that what prompts conceptual acquisition is not a general epistemic stance but a series of category-specific intuitive principles that constitute an evolved ''natural metaphysics''. This consists in a system of categories and category-specific inferential processes founded on definite biases in prototype formation. Evidence (...) for this system provides a better understanding of the limited ''plasticity'' of ontological commitments as well as a computationally plausible account of their initial state, avoiding ambiguities about innateness. This may provide a starting point for a ''naturalized epistemology'' that takes into account evolved properties of human conceptual structures. (shrink)

Current health care standards, in many countries, Australia included, are regrettably poor. Surprisingly, practitioners and treating teams alike in mental health and disability sectors, in particular, make far too many basic care-related mistakes, in addition to the already abundant diagnostic mistakes that cause and amplify great harm. In part, too many practitioners also fail to distinguish adverse effects for what they are and all too often treat adverse effects, instead, as comorbidities. Diagnostic failures are dangerous, the result of which generates (...) and perpetuates harms that are extremely costly in terms of patient welfare, in addition to the financial burden placed on everyone. In this essay, I contend that the authority bestowed upon psychiatry is misplaced. Subsequently, this misplaced authority affects the governing and investigatory institutions reliant and informed by psychiatry. The examination process undertaken in this investigation traces the metaphysics of psychiatric disorders relative to the Diagnostic-Statistical-Manual (DSM) in all its iterations and to the epistemological construction process that serves to underpin the fundamentals of psychiatric practice. There exists a crisis of confidence in psychiatric practice and I urge drastic reform be undertaken to arrest the damage. (shrink)

Cognitive developmental evidence is sometimes conscripted to support ''naturalized epistemology'' arguments to the effect that a general epistemic stance leads children to build theory-like accounts of underlying properties of kinds. A review of the evidence suggests that what prompts conceptual acquisition is not a general epistemic stance but a series of category-specific intuitive principles that constitute an evolved ''natural metaphysics''. This consists in a system of categories and category-specific inferential processes founded on definite biases in prototype formation. Evidence (...) for this system provides a better understanding of the limited ''plasticity'' of ontological commitments as well as a computationally plausible account of their initial state, avoiding ambiguities about innateness. This may provide a starting point for a ''naturalized epistemology'' that takes into account evolved properties of human conceptual structures. (shrink)

Both science and philosophy are interested in questions of ontology- questions about what exists and what these things are like. Science and philosophy, however, seem like very different ways of investigating the world, so how should one proceed? Some defer to the sciences, conceived as something apart from philosophy, and others to metaphysics, conceived as something apart from science, for certain kinds of answers. This book contends that these sorts of deference are misconceived. A compelling account of ontology must (...) appreciate the ways in which the sciences incorporate metaphysical assumptions and arguments. At the same time, it must pay careful attention to how observation, experience, and the empirical dimensions of science are related to what may be viewed as defensible philosophical theorizing about ontology. The promise of an effectively naturalized metaphysics is to encourage beliefs that are formed in ways that do justice to scientific theorizing, modeling, and experimentation. But even armed with such a view, there is no one, uniquely rational way to draw lines between domains of ontology that are suitable for belief, and ones in which it would be better to suspend belief instead. In crucial respects, ontology is in the eye of the beholder: it is Informed by underlying commitments with implications for the limits of inquiry, which inevitably vary across rational inquirers. As a result, the proper scope of ontology is subject to a striking form of voluntary choice, yielding a new and transformative conception of scientific ontology. (shrink)

This is a collection of twenty-five papers and reviews by the leading analytic philosopher of our time. It adds to the papers on metaphysics and epistemology to be found in his previous two-volume collection published by Oxford University Press. One previously unpublished paper—“Why Conditionalize?”—is included. Australasian philosophers may note with some pride that eleven of the pieces were first published in the Australasian Journal of Philosophy.

The paper outlines a view of normativity that combines elements of relativism and expressivism, and applies it to normative concepts in epistemology. The result is a kind of epistemological anti-realism, which denies that epistemic norms can be (in any straightforward sense) correct or incorrect; it does allow some to be better than others, but takes this to be goal-relative and is skeptical of the existence of best norms. It discusses the circularity that arises from the fact that we need (...) to use epistemic norms to gather the facts with which to evaluate epistemic norms; relatedly, it discusses how epistemic norms can rationally evolve. It concludes with some discussion of the impact of this view on "ground level" epistemology. (shrink)

This paper presents a systematic challenge to the viability of revisionary metaphysics. The challenge is to provide epistemic grounds on which one might justifiably believe that a revisionary-metaphysical theory in some area is more likely to be true than its competitors. I argue that upon close examination, the main candidates for providing such grounds — empirical evidence, intuition, and the theoretical virtues — all turn out to be unsatisfactory.

The philosophy of modality investigates necessity and possibility, and related notions--are they objective features of mind-independent reality? If so, are they irreducible, or can modal facts be explained in other terms? This volume presents new work on modality by established leaders in the field and by up-and-coming philosophers. Between them, the papers address fundamental questions concerning realism and anti-realism about modality, the nature and basis of facts about what is possible and what is necessary, the nature of modal knowledge, modal (...) logic and its relations to necessary existence and to counterfactual reasoning. The general introduction locates the individual contributions in the wider context of the contemporary discussion of the metaphysics and epistemology of modality. (shrink)

How are we to understand religion? It is undeniable that religion, and religious motivations, have played a very large role in shaping world events. As such, the question of how to understand religion has become increasingly urgent. At one extreme are those who adopt a comprehensive scientific naturalism. They approach religious beliefs and practices in such a way as to reduce them to nonreligious social or psychological factors; for them religion is part of an ideology or an infantile wish projection (...) that must be outgrown. At the other extreme are many of the religious believers themselves, who take their own religion as absolute truth and take themselves to be in a privileged epistemic position to apprehend it. Both extremes are dangerous: the first because it fails to take both religion and the religious drive seriously, and so ignores an integral facet of human life; the second because it is exemplary of the dangers of religion itself, which can take absolutist and Manichean forms. When religion does take such a form, it degenerates into idolatry, for it mistakes what must always remain a finite and conditioned apprehension of the transcendent for the transcendent ground itself. Often coupled with such a mistake comes a failure to recognize the validity of other perspectives, as well as a violent exclusion of everything that is other or unfamiliar. (shrink)

This paper presents an account of the understanding of statements involving metaphysical modality, together with dovetailing theories of their truth conditions and epistemology. The account makes modal truth an objective matter, whilst avoiding both Lewisian modal realism and mind-dependent or expressivist treatments of the truth conditions of modal sentences. The theory proceeds by formulating constraints a world-description must meet if it is to represent a genuine possibility. Modal truth is fixed by the totality of the constraints. To understand modal (...) discourse is to have tacit knowledge of the body of information stated in these constraints. Modal knowledge is attained by evaluating modal statements in accordance with the constraints. The question of the general relations between modal truth and knowability is also addressed. The paper includes a discussion of which modal logic is supported by the presented theory of truth conditions for modal statements. (shrink)

Classic inductive skepticism–the epistemological claim that we have no good reason to believe that the unobserved resembles the observed–is plausibly everyone’s lot, whether or not they embrace Hume’s metaphysical claim that distinct existents are “entirely loose and separate”. But contemporary advocates of a Humean metaphysic accept a metaphysical claim stronger than Hume’s own. I argue that their view plausibly gives rise to a radical inductive skepticism–according to which we are downright irrational in believing as we do about the unobserved–that we (...) don’t otherwise have reason to accept. The Metaphysical Neo-Humean is in an epistemological quagmire all her own. (shrink)

Commentators regularly attribute to Frege realist, idealist, and quietist responses to metaphysical questions concerning the abstract objects he calls ‘thoughts’. But despite decades of effort, the evidence offered on behalf of these attributions remains unconvincing. I argue that Frege deliberately avoids commitment to any of these positions, as part of a metaphysical separatist policy motivated by the fact that logic is epistemologically autonomous from metaphysics. Frege’s views and arguments prove relevant to current attempts to argue for epistemological autonomy, particularly (...) that of ethics. (shrink)

It is shown that the program of naturalizing of epistemology, that is, the program of the whole substitution of epistemology for sciences or for the humanities is not realizable. Naturalized epistemology includes metaphysical (in Kant’s sense: synthetic, speculative, a priori) claims which save its partly autonomous philosophical status. The result presented in the paper does not exclude the naturalizing program. It leads, instead, to a modified, attenuated version of it—such one which permits to open epistemology by (...) transferring it in multi-facet vivid philosophical investigations juxtaposed with science and the humanities. The postulated attenuated version of naturalizing does not result in destroying epistemology as a special philosophical domain of investigations, not substitutable for sciences. (shrink)

Though science and philosophy take different approaches to ontology, metaphysical inferences are relevant to interpreting scientific work, and empirical investigations are relevant to philosophy. This book argues that there is no uniquely rational way to determine which domains of ontology are appropriate for belief, making room for choice in a transformative account of scientific ontology.

Indian Epistemology and Metaphysics introduces the reader to new perspectives on Indian philosophy based on philological research within the last twenty years. Concentrating on topics such as perception, inference, skepticism, consciousness, self, mind, and universals, some of the most notable scholars working in classical Indian philosophy today examine core epistemological and metaphysical issues. Philosophical theories and arguments from a comprehensive range of Indian philosophical traditions (including the Nyaya, Mimamsa, Saiva, Vedanta, Samkhya, Jain, Buddhist, materialist and skeptical traditions, as (...) well as some 20th century thought) are covered. The contributors to this volume approach the topics from both a philosophical and a philological perspective. They demonstrate the importance of the subject matter for an understanding of Indian thought in general and they highlight its wider philosophical significance. By developing an appreciation of classical Indian philosophy in its own terms, set against the background of its unique assumptions and historical and cultural development, Indian Epistemology and Metaphysics is an invaluable guide to the current state of scholarship on Indian philosophy. It is a timely and much-needed reference resource, the first of its kind. (shrink)

Epistemology and metaphysics as described by Socrates is the crux of this article. Socrates here is all set to assess the wisdom of the candidates. He goes about arguing as to who is wiser and the various aspects of wisdom. He also elaborates on wisdom as a virtue. The article further harps on the idea of what counts as knowledge and also highlights the differences between Socratic Ignorance and Complete Ignorance.

It is widely supposed that evolutionary debunking arguments against morality constitute a type of epistemological objection to our moral beliefs. In particular, the debunking force of such arguments is not supposed to depend on the metaphysical claim that moral facts do not exist. In this paper I argue that this standard epistemological construal of EDAs is highly misleading, if not mistaken. Specifically, I argue that the most widely discussed EDAs all make key and controversial metaphysical claims about the nature of (...) morality or the possibility of moral truth that belie their apparently epistemological character. I show that the debunking force of these EDAs derives largely from metaphysical claims about morality and their implications for the possibility of moral reduction, rather than from epistemological worries associated with the existence of an causal/non-moral explanation of our moral judgments. The paper briefly concludes with a dilemma that I believe confronts all EDAs such as those discussed in this paper: either such arguments are unsound, or else they prove too much, debunking our knowledge of science and the external world, as well as morality. (shrink)

_Metaphysics and Epistemology: A Guided Anthology_ presents a comprehensive introductory overview of key themes, thinkers, and texts in metaphysics and epistemology. Presents a wide-ranging collection of carefully excerpted readings on metaphysics and epistemology Blends classic and contemporary works to reveal the historical development and present directions in the fields of metaphysics and epistemology Provides succinct, insightful commentary to introduce the essence of each selection at the beginning of chapters which also serve to inter-link (...) the selected writings. (shrink)