This volume presents Rosenberg's previously published studies of the central elements and implications of Sellars' philosophy, along with three new essays that ...

Jay Rosenberg offers a systematic philosophical theory of knowledge which is specifically responsive to the fact that we always engage the world from a particular perspective within it. It consequently calls into question in a fundamental way many received understandings regarding the relationships among the concepts of knowledge, belief, justification, and truth.

Jay Rosenberg introduces Immanuel Kant's masterwork, the Critique of Pure Reason, from a "relaxed" problem-oriented perspective which treats Kant as an especially insightful practicing philosopher, from whom we still have much to learn, intelligently and creatively responding to significant questions that transcend his work's historical setting. Rosenberg's main project is to command a clear view of how Kant understands various perennial problems, how he attempts to resolve them, and to what extent he succeeds. At the same time the book is (...) an introduction to the challenges of reading the text of Kant's work and, to that end, selectively adopts a more rigorous historical and exegetical stance. Accessing Kant will be an invaluable resource for advanced students and for any scholar seeking Rosenberg's own distinctive insights into Kant's work. (shrink)

Sellars’s views on the Myth of the Given and the ontological status of secondary qualities, one would have thought, are well-known, even if not always well-understood. One would not have expected his Carus Lectures, then, to offer anything radically new and exciting. The ground that they cover is, after all, familiar—from “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind”, from “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man”, from “The Identity Approach to the Mind-Body Problem”, and from the ensuing debates with Cornman and (...) with Firth. One would not really have anticipated many surprises. But one would have been wrong. (shrink)

This book is nominally about linguistic representation. But, since it is we who do the representing, it is also about us. And, since it is the universe which we represent, it is also about the universe. In the end, then, this book is about everything, which, since it is a philosophy book, is as it should be. I recognize that it is nowadays unfashionable to write books about every thing. Philosophers of language, it will be said, ought to stick to (...) writing about language; philosophers of science, to writing about science; epis temologists, to writing about knowing; and so on. The real world, however, perversely refuses to carve itself up so neatly, and, although I recognize that the real w,orld is nowadays also unfashionable, in the end I judged that one might get closer to the truth of various matters by going along with it. So I have done so. lt was Wilfrid Sellars who initially convinced me of the virtues of this way of proceeding. At this point one normally says something like "The debt that this book owes him is immense". I would say it too, were it not to understate the case, From Wilfrid, I learned to think about things. If the upshot of my thinking tends, as it obviously does, to show a general con silience with the upshot of his, it is primarily because he is so very good at it - and he had a head start. (shrink)

Jay Rosenberg's penetrating and persuasively argued analysis of the central metaphysical and moral questions pertaining to death has been updated and revised to expand and deepen several of its key arguments and to address conceptual developments of the past fifteen years. Among the topics discussed are: Life After Death; The Limits of Theorizing; The Limits of Imagination; Death and Personhood; Values and Rights; Mercy Killing; Prolonging Life; Rational Suicide; and One's Own Death. Rosenberg's prose is lucid, lively, thoroughly absorbing, and (...) accessible to introductory-level readers. Essential reading for anyone interested in reflecting on this engaging topic. (shrink)

Based on the author's nearly 30 years' of teaching introductory philosophy — and his observations of where beginning readers run into difficulty — this compact “primer” gives readers the basic tools they need to explore philosophical reading and writing for the first time. Provides insights and strategies for helping readers get started with reading, thinking about, and discussing philosophical concepts and writing short philosophical essays about what they've been reading and thinking; includes a new chapter that illustrates techniques for probing (...) beneath the expository surface of a given question to uncover the inevitable structure of presuppositions and problems underlying it. (shrink)

Sellars’s views on the Myth of the Given and the ontological status of secondary qualities, one would have thought, are well-known, even if not always well-understood. One would not have expected his Carus Lectures, then, to offer anything radically new and exciting. The ground that they cover is, after all, familiar—from “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind”, from “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man”, from “The Identity Approach to the Mind-Body Problem”, and from the ensuing debates with Cornman and (...) with Firth. One would not really have anticipated many surprises. But one would have been wrong. (shrink)

Rosenberg concludes with a critical reassessment of widely accepted views regarding the relationships among natural languages, mathematical formalisms, and philosophical commitments. The culmination of twenty years' reflection, Beyond Formalism is an original and sophisticated book of importance to both philosophers and linguists.

Wilfrid Sellars’ conclusion in “Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind” that “the Given” is a “Myth” quickly elicited philosophical opposition and remains contentious fifty years later. William Alston has challenged that conclusion on several occasions by attempting to devise an acceptable account of perception committed to the givenness of perceived objects. His most recent challenge advances a “Theory of Appearing” which posits irreducible non‐conceptual relations, ostensibly overlooked by Sellars, e.g., of “looking red”, between the subject and the object perceived, that (...) can play a justificatory role vis‐à‐vis the corresponding beliefs, e.g., that the object is red. I argue that Alston undermines his positive plausibility arguments by first blurring and then ignoring crucial differences among various looks‐concepts, and that his own putative “phenomenal” looks‐concept demonstrably cannot play the justificatory role that he envisions for it. Both his critique of Sellars’ arguments and his own alternative proposal thus fail on all fronts. (shrink)

According to Hume, the idea of a persisting, self-identical object, distinct from our impressions of it, and the idea of a duration of time, the mere passage of time without change, are mutually supporting "fictions". Each rests upon a "mistake", the commingling of "qualities of the imagination" or "impressions of reflection" with "external" impressions (perceptions), and, strictly speaking, we are conceptually and epistemically entitled to neither. Among Kant's aims in the First Critique is the securing of precisely these entitlements. Like (...) Hume, he acknowledges the correlativity of the notions of temporal duration and persisting self-identical objects (i.e., continuant substances). Unlike Hume, however, he undertakes to establish the legitimacy or objective validity of the schematized category of substance and, correspondingly, of the representation of time as a formal unity with duration as one of its modes. (shrink)

Wilfrid Sellars' conclusion in "Empiricism and the Philosophy of Mind" that "the Given" is a "Myth" quickly elicited philosophical opposition and remains contentious fifty years later. William Alston has challenged that conclusion on several occasions by attempting to devise an acceptable account of perception committed to the givenness of perceived objects. His most recent challenge advances a "Theory of Appearing" which posits irreducible non-conceptual relations, ostensibly overlooked by Sellars, e.g., of "looking red", between the subject and the object perceived, that (...) can playa justificatory role vis-à-vis the corresponding beliefs, e.g., that the object is red. I argue that Alston undermines his positive plausibility arguments by first blurring and then ignoring crucial differencesamong various looks-concepts, and that his own putative "phenomenal" looks-concept demonstrably cannot play the justificatory role that he envisions for it. Both his critique of Sellars' arguments and his own alternative proposal thus fail on all fronts. (shrink)

Discusses epistemic foundationalism. Examines the confrontation between Wilfrid Sellars's critique of the ‘Myth of the Given’ and William Alston's defence of ‘immediate knowledge’, and explores and endorses Sellars's strong epistemic internalism and the integrated normative accounts of justification, language‐mastery, concept‐possession, and perceptual experience that support it. The proceduralist thesis that the activity of justifying is prior to the state of being justified is elucidated and defended.

During his atomistic period, Russell felt compelled to include negative facts in his ontology. In this essay, I diagnose the grounds of that compulsion, Assess the cogency of an ontology which includes negative facts, And, Finding it inadequate, Consider finally alternative solutions within the atomistic framework to the root problems of negation.

Offers an internalist and perspectivalist reading of G. E. Moore's epistemological views. Challenges Barry Stroud's influential interpretation and defends Moore's rejection of scepticism, his ‘defence of common sense’ and his ‘proof of an external world’ against Stroud's criticisms. The conception of knowledge‐yielding enquiry, as addressed to determinate questions, within a setting of defeasible agreements regarding epistemic methods, norms, and background beliefs, is worked out in greater detail.

Addresses the classical ‘justified true belief’ account of knowledge. Examines Robert Fogelin's reinterpretation of the traditional analysis as conjoining assessments of epistemic propriety and truth‐determinativeness, and the diagnosis of Gettier problems suggested by it. A perspectivalist revision of Fogelin's account is advanced, defended, and distinguished from widespread ‘contextualist’ views. Concludes with a demonstration that the revised analysis avoids various forms of scepticism.

Devoted to an explicit exploration of the relationships between knowledge and truth. Opens with a critique of reliabilist externalist views of epistemic justification and defends the characteristically pragmatist conclusion that truth cannot function as the goal of enquiry. What is arguably wanted is not truth but objectivity, and C. S. Peirce's appeal to the ‘abductive’ method of science, as a fallible and inter‐subjective means of fixing beliefs, yields a useful analysis of the latter notion.

Offers a critical assessment of Descartes's arguments for external‐world scepticism. Even granted charitable exegetical concessions, the arguments prove to be neither intuitive nor compelling. The same holds true for contemporary sceptical reasonings in the Cartesian style, including those based on epistemic ‘closure principles’ and our inability to rule out particular sceptical scenarios.

Critically addresses the notion of certainty that ostensibly attaches to immediate experience in consequence of its radical subjectivity. Neither Descartes's cogito nor Kant's notion of ‘inner sense’ issues in substantial incorrigible beliefs. Both rather yield either judgements that are trivially ‘infallible’ by virtue of making no truth‐claim or reports of perceptual experiences that do not exclude the possibility of error. The illusion of subjective incorrigibility results from the fact that ordinary judgements of appearance combine both of these aspects.

I develop one account of propositions as pictures sharing logical form with what they depict. Two concepts of simplicity in the "tractatus" are then isolated. Since characterization of sachverhalten as configurations of referential simples does not entail their inferential simplicity, By rejecting the tractarian theory of inference, I retain the picture theory without commitment to atomistic ontology. Interpretation of inference as performance then gives rise to a second sense of picturing.

Richard Rorty, Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity,, Cambridge University Press,, pp. 201+xvi ____________, Objectivity, Relativism, and Truth,, Philosophical Papers Volume 1, Cambridge University Press,, pp. 226+x. ____________, Essays on Heidegger and Others,, Philosophical Papers Volume 2, Cambridge UniversityPress,, pp. 202+x. Alan R. Malachowski, ed., Reading Rorty,, Basil Blackwell,, pp. 384+xiv.

I begin by tracing some of the confusions regarding levels and reduction to a failure to distinguish two different principles according to which theories can be viewed as hierarchically arranged — epistemic authority and ontological constitution. I then argue that the notion of levels relevant to the debate between symbolic and connectionist paradigms of mental activity answers to neither of these models, but is rather correlative to the hierarchy of functional decompositions of cognitive tasks characteristic of homuncular functionalism. Finally, I (...) suggest that the incommensurability of the intentional and extensional vocabularies constitutes a strongprima facie reason to conclude that there is little likelihood of filling in the story of Bechtel''s missing level in such a way as to bridge the gap between such homuncular functionalism and his own model of mechanistic explanation. (shrink)

: Rorty rejects the idea of a “permanent and neutral matrix of heuristic concepts”. The claim of privilege, however, is separable from the aim of universality, and this idea can be transposed into a regulative ideal, while still preserving the unique intellectual mission of a discipline of philosophy. Rorty’s own positive picture of “edifying philosophy” in contrast is arguably irresponsible and grounded in misreadings both of the epistemology of science and of episodes in the history of philosophy, especially the contributions (...) of Kant. (shrink)

Beginning with Descartes' caution not “imprudently” to “take some other object in place of myself”, I consider first the problems of self-identification confronted by various amnesiacs , both ordinary and Cartesian. Noting that cogitationes as such do not individuate, I proceed to examine conclusions drawn from certain sorts of “body-switching” thought experiments. This, in turn, gives rise to a general critique of “psychological connectedness” or “unity of consciousness” as a candidate criterion of personal identity. I conclude that our ability to (...) apply any notion of personal identity is parasitic upon the existence of a conceptual apparatus for individuating, identifying, and reidentifying objects. Finally, I argue that, if ‘person’ is a proper sortal predicate to begin with, Descartes' res cogitans cannot be understood as a species of the genus res , distinct from res extensa and only problematically in “interaction” with it. Cartesian dualism is a multiply untenable doctrine. (shrink)