Der Verfasser legt einen Kommentar vor, der allen Lesern von Humes erkenntnistheoretischen Schriften hilfreich sein wird; auch werden zentrale Aspekte seiner Moral- und Religionsphilosophie vorgefuhrt und diskutiert. Dabei wird ein Gesamtbild der Philosophie Humes entwickelt und in den Zusammenhang des zeitgenossischen europaischen Denkens gestellt. Hier bekampft der Verfasser die gelaufige Interpretation, derzufolge Hume als der konsequente Zerstorer des Empirismus gilt; Humes Ziel sei eher die Widerlegung einer Weltauffassung, die fast allen Philosophen seiner Epoche, Empiristen und Rationalisten, gemeinsam war. In einem (...) Anhang wird sein Verhaltnis zur kritischen Philosophie Kants eingehender behandelt. Auf diese Weise soll nicht nur Studenten eine Einfuhrung in die Philosophie Humes, sondern auch Spezialisten grundsatzlich neues Material geboten werden. (shrink)

The standard philosophical project of analysing the concept of knowledge has radical defects in its arbitrary restriction of the subject matter, and its risky theoretical presuppositions. Edward Craig suggests a more illuminating approach, akin to the `state of nature' method found in political theory, which builds up the concept from a hypothesis about the social function of knowledge and the needs it fulfils. Light is thrown on much that philosophers have written about knowledge, about its analysis and the (...) obstacles to its analysis, and on the debate over scepticism. It becomes apparent why many languages not only have such constructions as `knows whether' and `knows that', but also have equivalents of `knows how to' and `know' followed by a direct object. Thus the inquiry is both broadened in scope and made theoretically less fragile. (shrink)

The standard philosophical project of analysing the concept of knowledge has radical defects in its arbitrary restriction of the subject matter, and its risky theoretical presuppositions. Edward Craig suggests a more illuminating approach, akin to the `state of nature' method found in political theory, which builds up the concept from a hypothesis about the social function of knowledge and the needs it fulfils. Light is thrown on much that philosophers have written about knowledge, about its analysis and the (...) obstacles to its analysis, and on the debate over scepticism. It becomes apparent why many languages not only have such constructions as `knows whether' and `knows that', but also have equivalents of `knows how to' and `know' followed by a direct object. Thus the inquiry is both broadened in scope and made theoretically less fragile. (shrink)

Seeking to rediscover the connection between philosophy as studied in universities and those general views of man and reality which are 'philosophy' to the educated layman, Edward Craig here offers a view of philosophy and its history since the early seventeenth century. He presents this period as concerned primarily with just two visions of the essential nature of man. One portrays human beings as made in the image of God, required to resemble him as far as lies in (...) our power; the other sees us as autonomous creators of our own environment and values. The author writes with a broad sweep not encouraged by recent fashion, yet shows how textual detail which previous commentators have found opaque becomes transparent when viewed against such a background. In the final chapter he treats passages from recent work in the same way. The general conceptions which philosophical thought embodies can equally well be embodied in other media, especially literary. The author illustrates this point with German and English examples and thereby draws together disciplines often felt to be far apart. He also reveals striking similarities between Anglo-American and certain twentieth-century continental European lines of thought. (shrink)

Within a year of each other, three one-volume general dictionaries of philosophy have recently appeared; when our future colleagues in philosophy look back on the 1990s they may well think of it as the decade of reference works. But however productive these years may prove to be in this genre, clearly visible somewhere around the top of the heap will be this handy, useful, entertaining, and instructive contribution from Simon Blackburn. Its two immediate competitors are the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, (...) edited by Robert Audi, and the Oxford Companion to Philosophy, edited by Ted Honderich. No detailed comparison will be attempted here, but two points stand out as obviously giving Blackburn’s dictionary a rather different use and flavor from the others: while containing a closely comparable number of entries, it is distinctly shorter and handier in format; and it has all been written by a single author. (shrink)

Transcript of lectures delivered at the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 1996.

The_ Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy_ is the most ambitious international philosophy project in many years. Edited by Edward Craig and assisted by thirty specialist subject editors, the REP consists of ten volumes of the world's most eminent philosophers writing for the needs of students and teachers of philosophy internationally. The REP is a project on an unparalleled scale: Over 2000 entries ranging from 500 to 15,000 words in length - thematic, biographical and national 10 volumes consisting of over (...) 5 million words of text plus considerable bibliographic material A Chief Editor and thirty specialist Subject Editors from across the world Over 1200 authors from all over the world. The importance of the REP is not to be found just in the sheer size of the project but also in its breadth of subject matter. It covers: The core of most Anglo-American philosophy - the metaphysical, epistemological and logical questions The usual menu of ethics, political philosophy and the history of philosophy The philosophy of other cultures - from Chinese, Arabic and Jewish philosophy to the philosophy of Africa and Latin America The most impressive range of authors have been gathered together on this unique project: William Alston, Roderick Chisolm, Fred Dretske, Joel Feinberg, Sandra Harding, Larry Laudan, Martha Nussbaum, Richard Popkin, Richard Rorty, Alan Ryan, Gyatri Chakravorty Spivak, Stephen Stich, Patrick Suppes and Bernard Williams, to name just a few. Also available online: www.rep.routledge.com. (shrink)

Edward Craig; XII*—The Practical Explication of Knowledge, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Volume 87, Issue 1, 1 June 1987, Pages 211–226, https://doi.

How ought we to live? What really exists? How do we know? This book introduces important themes in ethics, knowledge, and the self, via readings from Plato, Hume, Descartes, Hegel, Darwin, and Buddhist writers. It emphasizes throughout the point of doing philosophy, explains how different areas of philosophy are related, and explores the contexts in which philosophy was and is done.

How should we live? What really exists? And how do we know for sure? In this lively and engaging study, Edward Craig argues that learning philosophy is merely a matter of broadening and deepening what most of us do already. But he also shows that philosophy is no mere intellectual pastime: thinkers such as Plato, the Buddhist sages, Descartes, Hobbes, Hume, Hegel, Darwin, Mill, and de Beauvoir responded to real needs and events—and many of their concerns shape our (...) daily lives. (shrink)

Chapter 5 aims to understand the contemporary philosophical climate in terms of a dominant philosophy, and argues that it is found in the ‘Agency Theory’, or ‘Practice Ideal’: the thesis that we are the creators of our own environment and values, that the realities which we meet with are the works of man. Craig argues that from about 1780, ‘activity’, ‘practice’ and similar concepts began to come to the fore, and provided new solutions of metaphysical and epistemological problems. The (...) idea was to some extent anticipated in writers of the eighteenth century: in Pascal’s famous wager on the existence of God the value of truth has receded, and considerations of what serves a certain purpose have come to regulate belief; Hume saw in our imagination, not in our reason, the governing, and essentially active, principle that supports our beliefs; finally Kant’s transcendental idealism not only provided the key concept of ‘the world as we experience it’ that incorporated both concepts and impressions, but amounted to the claim that the world of our experience is of our own making. But the real rise of the Agency Theory took place in the nineteenth century: Marx and Engels, rejecting both theistic and idealist metaphysics, set up a new ideal for man, who was to be the free architect and builder of his own social world, in virtue of his grasp of the laws governing society and the processes of social change; following Peirce, William James and other American Pragmatists argued that belief is primarily an instrument for the attainment of our goals, and that man is fully autonomous, his creations subject to no controls or standards other than those which he himself imposes; Nietzsche, the most vociferous champion of agency and creativity, affirmed the idea, and constructed his account of reality, truth, and knowledge, and his aspirations for man around it. (shrink)

The Shorter REP presents the very best of the acclaimed ten volume Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy in a single work. By selecting and presenting--in full--the most important entries for the beginning philosopher and truncating the rest of the entries to survey the breadth of the field, The Shorter REP will be the only desk reference on philosophy that anyone will need. Comprising over 900 entries and covering the major philosophers and philosophical topics, The Shorter REP includes the following special features: (...) *Over 130 comprehensive, in-depth entries as they appear in the ten volume Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy *Unrivalled coverage of major philosophers, themes, movements and periods making the volume indispensable for any student or general reader *Revised versions of many of the most important entries, including fresh suggestions for further reading *Over 20 brand new entries on important new topics *Entries by many leading philosopherssuch as Bernard Williams, Martha Nussbaum, Richard Rorty, Onora O'Neill, T.M.Scanlon and Anthony Appiah. (shrink)

David Hume (1711–1776) was born in Scotland and attended Edinburgh University. In 1734, after a brief spell in a merchant's office in Bristol, he went to France to write A Treatise of Human Nature, published anonymously in 1739 (Books I and II) and 1740 (Book III). An Abstract, also anonymous and written as if by someone other than the author of the Treatise, appeared about the same time, and provides an invaluable account, in a brief compass, of what Hume thought (...) most important about the Treatise. The Treatise was not well received, and Hume was unsuccessful in his candidature for the chair of moral philosophy at Edinburgh. He rewrote Book I of the Treatise, adding a controversial discussion of miracles and providence; and a revision of this was published as An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding in 1748. His Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, which was a rewriting of Book III of the Treatise, was published in 1751, and his Dissertation on the Passions, corresponding to Book II of the Treatise, but with significant omissions, such as the account of the psychological mechanism of sympathy, in 1757. In 1752 he had been made keeper of the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh, and wrote his History of England which, at the time, brought him more approbation than his philosophy. During this time, he wrote the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, published posthumously in 1779. In 1763 he became secretary to the British Embassy in Paris. He returned to London in 1766, and a year later was Undersecretary of State. In 1769 he returned to Edinburgh and worked on final editions of his writings, and on an autobiography, dated 18 April 1776, a few months before his death. (shrink)

I. Two topics given prominence in the early sections of Hume's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding are those of thought and belief. Of each Hume asks two questions. One, which we might call the constitutive question: what exactly is it to have a thought, or to hold a belief?—and another, which we may call the genetic question: how do we come by our thoughts, or our capacity to think them, and how do we come to believe that certain of these thoughts (...) are true? In this lecture I shall be considering the detail of Hume's answers to these questions; but first I want to say a little about why they should have loomed large for him at all. (shrink)

Professor Lehrer’s coherence theory makes play with the metaphor of a key-stone arch. The metaphor is graphic, but it may cause card-carrying foundationalists to give a little private smile. After all, no key-stone in the history of architecture ever kept even a single brick up unless the walls were already standing firmly on something solid. So there you have a reason, if you needed one, for not letting the metaphor affect your preferences as to which style of epistemology to accept—not (...) if you are hoping to be worthy of your own trust. (shrink)

Objectivization forces the requirement of a high likelihood that an informant will be right if she is to be classified as a good one, but this does not, argues Craig, equal 1, for that figure has little basis in practical life. Nevertheless, the example of a lottery, and, in particular, the claim that one will not win, brings closer to our real experience the idea that one may not always be advised to act on information that has a chance (...) of less than 1 of being true. A similar push towards this stringent idea is sometimes exerted by the wish to draw inferences from multiple premises and to be able to rely on the result. However, though real situations can require a very high likelihood, they do not force us to set it at 1; that final push comes from reflection lying outside the framework of everyday practice. (shrink)

Discusses scepticism of the kind exemplified by Descartes's deceitful demon thought experiment, and argues that we need to find the seeds of both scepticism itself and of the resistance to it in the everyday concept of knowledge. Operating with the explicated concept, this means attributing to it a suitable degree of objectivization. Peter Unger's argument for scepticism, which suggests that the objectivization involved is absolute, is rejected on the grounds that there are no identifiable practical factors that would push the (...) process that far and that the suggestion leaves the extent of the resistance to scepticism a mystery. Craig concludes that the explicated concept reflects practical factors that cause objectivization to stop short of scepticism but that the very impetus of objectivization also pushes us towards it. (shrink)

In this chapter, Craig shows how the Image of God doctrine works as an interpretative tool. Applied to the philosophy of Hume, it helps to illuminate textual detail that would otherwise not be fully intelligible, and it modifies, sometimes reverses, the received view of his philosophy. Craig argues that, in combining a sceptical epistemology with a thoroughgoing naturalism, Hume aimed at nothing less than the destruction of the doctrine of the image of God, and substituted for it an (...) anthropology which looked not to the divine but to the natural world for its methods and results. This claim is supported by detailed analyses of Hume’s epistemology, ontology, and philosophy of mind. (shrink)

The author distinguishes between informants and sources of information, and argues that the concept of knowledge is tied to the former and not the latter. The distinction is then used to cast light on the necessity of the belief condition for knowledge and on comparativism, the view that a person might be said to know p in circumstances in which the alternative is q, but not to know p if the alternatives include r. Goldman's famous papier‐mâché barn thought experiment is (...) also discussed. Craig concludes that where belief is lacking or knowledge appears comparativistic, the subject does not have genuine knowledge, for she is a mere potential source of information, not an informant. (shrink)

The concept of knowledge is a concept formed and operated by active beings who need to direct their activity. This, according to Craig, explains two features associated with the concept of knowledge: the fact that we want true beliefs, and the fact that we actively seek the truth and therefore try to ‘track’ it, rather than merely hoping to hit it.

Discusses the relative merits of local reliabilism and global reliabilism. Craig concludes that the explicated concept of knowledge implies, in nearly all cases, the idea of a wider competence on the part of the informant, even though it does not entail it. This is because, in most cases, we will trust our informant over p if and only if we believe her to be good at discerning the truth over a range of related matters.

‘Knows how to’ appears synonymous with ‘can’, and yet ‘can’ does not primarily tell us about someone's capacity as an informant, suggesting that the practical explication cannot provide an account of ‘knows how to’. Three responses are considered: the capacity sense exists only in some languages and therefore poses no problem; there is no irreducible capacity sense; the capacity sense is connected to the informational sense by the natural connection between agency and information. is favoured, on the grounds that the (...) needs of the inquirer and the apprentice, one who seeks an instructor from whom he may learn how, overlap in central cases. Craig concludes that the practical explication successfully explains both senses of ‘know’ in a unitary fashion. (shrink)

Introduces the principle of objectivization, which explains how concepts interpreted subjectively in the early stages of the state of nature, concepts that answer to the relatively immediate needs of the isolated individual, become objectivized, i.e. refer to entities that fulfil more universal needs, as the individual both becomes more reflective and finds himself in a social setting. This principle is invoked by Craig in the context of admitting that someone may know without being a good informant, for the fully (...) objectivized concept of knowledge seems not to be identifiable with the concept of a good informant, but he insists that the point and nature of the former is still best understood in terms of the latter. (shrink)

This chapter examines central philosophical themes and doctrines of twentieth century philosophy in the light of the Agency Theory. Craig argues that despite the unpopularity of philosophical visions of high generality in contemporary philosophy, the Agency Theory is the one vision, or Weltbild, on which much twentieth century philosophy explicitly or implicitly relies. It is evident in the philosophical doctrines of the Vienna Circle, with its radically emotivist accounts of value and radically conventionalist accounts of the a priori. It (...) is evident in the numerous attacks on moral realism, which invite us, instead of thinking about morality not in terms of an independent realm of moral facts that obtain independently of our thinking about them, to see ourselves as the creators of ethical value. It is evident in existentialism, with its belief in absolute human freedom and its demand for absolute moral independence, manifested in the existentialist ethics of authenticity. It is evident in the prevalence of ‘opacity’, our willing acceptance of brute facts without further explanation as long as our beliefs about those facts are reliable. Finally, the dominance of the Agency Theory is evident in epistemology, where the community has taken over many responsibilities that the individual used to have, as well as in the theory of meaning, where accounts of meaning are given in terms of the use of words in a linguistic community, as by Wittgenstein and Austin, or in terms of the speaker’s environment, as in the externalist account of meaning advocated by Putnam. But, as Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and George Orwell’s Nineteen-Eighty-Four illustrate, too much enthusiasm for human activity has its dangers. (shrink)

Considers and rejects two common explanations of the roots of scepticism. The first, that finds them in a first‐person approach to epistemology that takes as its central question ‘what do I know?’, is rejected on the grounds that first‐personalism results from thinking about certain normally ignored possibilities and gives no explanation of why they are so ignored, and therefore no adequate explanation of scepticism. The second, that scepticism is the offspring of an ‘absolute’ conception of truth, is espoused by Bernard (...) Williams and Thomas Nagel. Craig argues that since no explanation is given of why it is impossible in principle to attain the absolute conception, the only way adhering to the idea of such a conception can lead to scepticism is if we raise independently the traditional sceptical possibilities. (shrink)

The principal aim of this chapter is to document and describe the ‘dominant philosophy’ of the seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries: the doctrine that man was made in the image of God. Examining writings by thinkers such as Galileo, Descartes, Pascal, Spinoza, Leibniz, Malebranche, Newton, Clarke, and Berkeley, Craig finds that they were all committed to some version of the Similarity Thesis. Its cognitive branch, the ‘Insight Ideal’, manifests itself in the view that our logical and mathematical knowledge and (...) our knowledge of our own mental states possesses a certainty that even God cannot surpass, as well as in the, then widespread, view that we live in a world that is, in principle, fully intelligible to us. The link between the human and the divine mind is usually thought to be provided by the faculty of reason, but the Similarity Thesis has also taken the form that the human mind is in fact a part of the divine intellect. It connects with the prevalence of a contemplative or scientific ethic in which the pursuit of knowledge appears as a good in itself. Moreover, there is a version of the Image of God doctrine focusing on agency and finding expression in the view of, for example, Descartes that, at its best, the human will is as free as a will could possibly be. (shrink)

This chapter considers the philosophy of the years shortly before and shortly after the beginning of the nineteenth century, and in doing so illustrates the claim that the ‘dominant philosophy’ of an era can sometimes be found most clearly expressed in works of literature. The philosophy of the romantic era is characterised by one great metaphysical theme: unity, its loss and recovery. Schiller’s poem ‘Die Götter Griechenlands’, Goethe’s ballad ‘Der Fischer’, Kleist’s article ‘ Über das Marionettentheater’, and Hölderlin’s novel ‘Hyperion’, (...) Craig suggests, all illustrate a fundamental striving towards unity that is lost through knowledge and consciousness, and although they differ both in their assessment of the situation and in their reaction to it, they express a singular awareness of the deep dichotomies that characterise the intellectual climate of their time. At the most general level, the romantic vision was of the oneness of man and nature, the immanence of God in nature, and an element of divinity in man. Deeply indebted to the Image of God doctrine, yet also on the way to abandoning it, these themes inform, and in part anticipate, the systematic philosophy of Hegel. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:70 HUME'S LETTER TO STEWART A Note on a Paper by D. C. Stove In a recent paper, D. C. Stove raises an historical problem. There exists a letter, written in 1754 by Hume to John Stewart, then Professor of Natural Philosophy at Edinburgh, in which the following words occur:. „. J never asserted so absurd a Proposition, as that any thing might arise without a Cause: I only (...) maintained, that our Certainty of the Falsehood of that Proposition proceeded neither from Intuition nor Demonstration; but from another Source. Some commentators, most notably Norman Kemp-Smith, take this as telling strongly in favour of a non-sceptical reading of Hume. Stove undertakes to show beyond reasonable doubt that the claim made in the letter is in blatant contradiction with central theses of Hume's published philosophy, so that it has to be regarded as useless as evidence for the interpretation of the latter. There is a mystery as to how Hume came to say something so clearly false about what he himself had written; Stove offers certain conjectures, none of which he finds wholly satisfactory. As the conclusion of the first, exegetical, part of his article, Stove advances the thesis that Hume held the falsity of the Causal Principle to be possible in at least three senses of "possible". These senses he specifies accurately, but doesn't wish to rest anything on the detail of his specification of the third; it is important only that it be stronger than either of the preceding two. This done, he takes a look at the letter to Stewart, and says, with reference to the first part of the 71 passage quoted above: That something might begin to exist without a cause, is evidently equivalent to the proposition that it is possib Ie for something to begin to exist without a cause. That, in turn, is evidently equivalent to the proposition that the falsity of the Causal Principle is possible. (Stove's o underlining). It follows that what Hume says in the letter is simply false. It could be true only if the "might" referred to some sense of possibility even weaker than the weakest of Stove's three senses. But since that is mere self-consistency, there is no such sense. Now the argument to the contradiction relies on reading "might" as "it is possible", in some sense of those words. Stove says, as we have seen, that they are "evidently equivalent", but the equivalence is certainly not evident, and it may well be asked whether it exists at all. After all, there are English constructions with "might" which don't have modal force: "Do you think something might have happened to them without our knowing about it?" The hearer is not, of course, being asked whether it- is possible that something should have happened without their knowledge; he is being asked for his opinion on whether something actually has so happened. "Most unlikely", would be a perfectly natural and acceptable response. Again : "ïou stay here, to take care of any problem that might arise before we get back". Obviously it is not intended that the hearer should start taking precautions against all possibilities, only that he should cope with whatever actually arises, if anything. 72 This is quite normal modern usage, and I know no reason to think that it wasn't also norT.il usage in the 18th Century. Admittedly, it isn't modern philocophers ' usage - we would be very careful, in writing or; logical matters, not to use the word "might" unless it was definitely the modal proposition that we had in mind, but earlier times haven't always been so professional about their vocabulary. Certainly, if Hume, in the letter to Stewart, was denying that he had ever asserted the possibility of the falsehood of the Causal Principle it would be, as Stove shows, extremely hard to see what he could have been thinking of. But if what he meant could have been as well expressed by "I never asserted... that anything arises without a cause" then most of Stove's problems are over, for there is no 3 conflict with any of the theses (1) - (3) which he... (shrink)

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