This work, written from a neo-Pyrrhonian perspective, is an examination of contemporary theories of knowledge and justification. It takes ideas primarily found in Sextus Empiricus's Outlines of Pyrrhonism, restates them in a modern idiom, and then asks whether any contemporary theory of knowledge meets the challenges they raise. The first part, entitled "Gettier and the Problem of Knowledge," attempts to rescue our ordinary concept of knowledge from those philosophers who have assigned burdens to it that it cannot bear. Properly understood, (...) Fogelin shows that the concept of knowledge is unproblematic. The second part of this study, called "Agrippa and the Problem of Justification," examines Agrippa's contribution to Pyrrhonism, a systematic reduction of its procedures which came to be known as the "Five Modes Leading to the Suspension of Belief." These modes present a completely general procedure for refuting any claim a dogmatist might make. Though largely unnoticed, there is, according to Fogelin, an uncanny resemblance between problems posed by Agrippa's "Five Modes" and those that contemporary epistemologists address under the heading of a theory of justification. Fogelin examines the strongest contemporary theories of justification--in both foundationalist and anti-foundationalist forms. The conclusion is that recent philosophical writings on justification have made no significant progress in responding to the Pyrrhonian problems these writings have addressed. (shrink)

In this updated edition of his brief, engaging book, Robert J. Fogelin examines figures of speech that concern meaning-irony, hyperbole, understatement, similes, metaphors, and others-to show how they work and to explain their attraction.

This collection of essays on themes in the work of John Locke , George Berkeley , and David Hume , provides a deepened understanding of major issues raised in the Empiricist tradition. In exploring their shared belief in the experiential nature of mental constructs, The Empiricists illuminates the different methodologies of these great Enlightenment philosophers and introduces students to important metaphysical and epistemological issues including the theory of ideas, personal identity, and skepticism. It will be especially useful in courses (...) devoted to the history of modern philosophy. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Hume's Essays on Happiness John Immerwahr The second volume of Hume's Essays, Moral and Political (1742) includes a set offour pieces on the sects, that naturally form themselves in the world. These essays, "The Epicurean," "The Stoic," "The Platonist," and "The Sceptic,"refer to the ancient philosophical schools, but their main purpose, according to Hume, is to describe four different ideas ofhuman life and ofhappiness. There is little discussion (...) ofthese works in the Hume literature, but Hume himself seemed to be rather fond of them. Although several early essays were dropped from later editions, this set reappears in every version of the Essays. Hume also invested unusual care in crafting these essays, "polishingthe sentences with such precision," according to Green and Grose, "that the subsequent editions made scarcely an alteration in their language." In this article I will argue that these essays do play a significant role in Hume's overall philosophical strategy, and that a close reading ofthem helps us fill out important aspects of Hume's moral philosophy. An Attractive Reading of the Four Essays In one of the few detailed discussions of these essays, Robert Fogelin presents one reading that has a good deal of initial plausibility. Fogelin's interpretation has several main points. First, he dismisses the importance of the first three essays and asserts that "despite certain particular points of agreement," these essays are "not expressive ofHume's own position." Secondly, he argues that the final essay, "The Sceptic," does represent Hume's own position, and that in this essay Hume presents himself"under the thinnest possible disguise." In effect, Fogelin'sinterpretation is that"The Sceptic"canbe profitably readinisolationfrom the first three. Finally, Fogelin sees "The Sceptic" as having roughly the same function as the Treatise ofHuman Nature. He sees "The Sceptic" as another technical philosophical work where Hume tries, in a somewhat different way, to work out the relationship between scepticism, morality, and the passions. It is not hard to see what makes this type of interpretation plausible. On stylistic grounds alone, there are reasons to dismiss the first three essays and focus attention primarily on "The Sceptic." The first three are quite brief and are written in a rhetorical and flowery style, whereas "The Sceptic" is longer (as long as the other three essays combined) and returns to Hume's normal prose style. Substantively, Volume XV Number 2 307 JOHN IMMERWAHR there are many doctrines in "The Sceptic" which, as Fogelin correctly points out, are reminiscent of Hume's other philosophical works. An Alternative Reading Despite the plausibility of this reading, I will defend an alternative interpretation. First, I will argue that the essays are intended to be read as a set. The four essays constitute a philosophical dialogue that consists offour closely related speeches; it is misleading to read one of the speeches out of the context of the dialogue as a whole. Secondly, I will try to show that none of the speakers represents Hume's own position. From Hume's point of view, all of the speeches make important points but also contain significant errors. Finally, I will argue that the purpose of these popular essays is different from the goal of technical philosophical works such as the Treatise. While the Treatise is intended to describe and analyze human nature, the purpose ofthese essays is therapeutic rather than analytic; they are designed to change rather than to inform the reader. In the next three sections I discuss these claims in detail. I. Hume's First Dialogue Taken together, the four essays can be read as Hume's first (but by no means last) effort in dialogue writing. The evidence that they were intended by Hume as a dialogue is drawn from what Hume says about them, from internal evidence, and from a comparison with their classical model, the dialogues of Cicero. For the most part, Hume wanted his readers to see his Essays as stand-alone pieces. In the Advertisement for the first volume Hume warns his readers that they must not look for any Connexion among these Essays, but must consider each ofthem as a Work apart. But both in the Advertisement to the second volume (where... (shrink)

Robert John Ackermann deals decisively with the problem of relativism that has plagued post-empiricist philosophy of science. Recognizing that theory and data are mediated by data domains (bordered data sets produced by scientific instruments), he argues that the use of instruments breaks the dependency of observation on theory and thus creates a reasoned basis for scientific objectivity. Originally published in 1985. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the (...) distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905. (shrink)

Through close textual analysis, Ackermann (philosophy, U. of Massachusetts, Amherst) exposes the underlying unity and consistency in Nietzsche's thought. He challenges the common view that Nietzsche's work can best be understood as a collection of isolated insights and that each of several discrete periods of thought are based on a different set of values. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

One PANORAMA T, HE LIFE of Wittgenstein was quite different from the lives of most of those who later extolled him as perhaps the major philosopher of the ...

Since the decidedly bleak beginning of the twenty-first century, art practice has become increasingly politicized. Yet, few sustained defenses of the avant-garde have been put forward. Revolutionary Time and the Avant-Garde is the first book of its kind to look at the legacy of the avant-garde in relation to the deepening crisis of capitalist non-reproduction. An invigorating revitalization of the Frankfurt School legacy, Roberts's book is unique in its penetrating definition and defense of the avant-garde idea, providing a refined conceptual (...) set of tools that critically engages with the most advanced art theorists of our day, such as Hal Foster, Andrew Benjamin, Alain Badiou, Jacques Ranciere, Paolo Virno, Claire Bishop, Michael Hardt, and Toni Negri. (shrink)

Met lit. opg. Met reg. The author argues that the rupture of post-modernism with the critical culture of modernism, realism and Marxism is in the ligt of the still determining power of many of the aims and concerns of the modernist and realist projects. Also included is a description of the production, distribution and criticism of the visual arts in Britain since the late 1970s and the rise of Thatcherism.

The law-governed world-picture -- A remarkable idea about the way the universe is cosmos and compulsion -- The laws as the cosmic order : the best-system approach -- The three ways : no-laws, non-governing-laws, governing-laws -- Work that laws do in science -- An important difference between the laws of nature and the cosmic order -- The picture in four theses -- The strategy of this book -- The meta-theoretic conception of laws -- The measurability approach to laws -- What (...) comes where -- In defense of some received views -- Some assumptions that will be in play -- The laws are propositions -- The laws are true -- The logically contingent consequences of the laws are laws themselves -- At least some laws are metaphysically contingent -- The meta-theoretic conception of laws -- Laws of nature, laws of science, laws of theories -- The first-order conception versus the meta-theoretic conception -- What is a law of nature? -- Some examples of meta-theoretic accounts -- The virtues of the meta-theoretic conception -- Weighing the virtues and shortcomings of the meta-theoretic conception -- An epistemological argument for the meta-theoretic conception of laws -- The discoverability thesis, the governing thesis, and the first-order conception -- The main argument -- The objection from bad company -- The objection from inference to the best explanation -- The objection from bayesianism -- The objection from contextualist epistemology -- The objection from the threat of inductive skepticism -- Laws, governing, and counterfactuals -- Where we are now -- What would things have to be like in order for the laws of nature to govern the universe? -- Lawhood, inevitability, counterfactuals -- What is it for a proposition to be inevitably true? -- What is it for a whole class of propositions to be inevitably true? -- What is it for lawhood to confer inevitability? -- NP and supporting counterfactuals -- The worry about context-variability -- A solution and a look ahead -- When would the laws have been different? -- Where we are now -- The God cases -- Other counterexamples to NP -- A moral-theoretic counterexample to NP -- Scientific contexts and non-scientific contexts -- Scientific God cases? -- Lewisian non-backtracking counterexamples -- Where things stand now -- How could science show that the laws govern? -- Why the law-governed world-picture must include the science-says-so thesis -- What is extra-scientific? -- How can the science-says-so thesis be true? -- NP as a consequence of the presuppositions in any scientific context -- Np as true in all possible scientific contexts -- But how could it be so? -- Attack of the actual-factualists -- Measurement and counterfactuals -- Where we are now -- Measurements, reliability, counterfactuals -- A general principle that captures the relation between measurement and counterfactuals -- What we can learn about lawhood from what we have learned about the counterfactual commitments of science -- A first-order account of laws or a meta-theoretic account of laws? -- What methods are presupposed to be legitimate measurement procedures? -- Why we must adopt a meta-theoretic account of laws -- What lawhood is -- Where we are now -- The measurability account of laws -- Brief review of the case for the mal -- A note about hedged laws -- How plausible is the mal? -- What if we don't care about the law-governed world-picture? -- Newton's God and Laplace's demon -- Beyond humean and non-humean -- Two views of laws -- Humean supervenience and the meta-theoretic conception -- Alleged counterexamples to humean supervenience -- Governing and non-trivial necessity -- How the mal lets us have it all -- Humeanism? non-humeanism? -- What is the significance of the idea of the law-governed universe? -- Where in the world are the laws of nature? -- Appendix: The mal in action : a few examples -- Of scientific theories and their laws -- Newton's theory as a paradigm example -- Classical special-force laws -- Geometrical optics and one of its laws -- Local deterministic field theories. (shrink)

The book is not a history of photography, but a history of the theories of photography.

Often when a new scientific theory is introduced, new terms are introduced along with it. Some of these new terms might be given explicit definitions using only terms that were in currency prior to the introduction of the theory. Some of them might be defined using other new terms introduced with the theory. But it frequently happens that the standard formulations of a theory do not define some of the new terms at all; these terms are adopted as primitives. The (...) audience is expected to come to grasp the meanings of the primitive terms by learning the role they play in the theory and its applications. I shall call such new and undefined terms, as well as new terms that are defined using them, theoretical terms. 1 If T is a theory, the T-terms are the theoretical terms introduced by T. A theoretical term need not be a word new to human language; it might be an old term that is employed in a new and specialized sense, not equivalent to any of its familiar senses; e.g. “color” in quantum chromodynamics. (shrink)

Looking at the emergence recently of a New Hegelianism (Badiou, Bhaskar, Jameson, Žižek), in which Hegel’s dialectic is variously reassessed for its political and philosophical resistance to the prevailing ‘weak nihilisms’ of left and right, I argue with Žižek and Jameson against Badiou and Bhaskar for Hegel as, essentially, a philosopher of the ‘productive return’ and failure. In this sense, what emerges is a picture of Hegel as a profoundly nonlinear historical thinker, in which loss, dissolution, breakdown and the excremental (...) prevail. This means that the received notion of Hegel as a crude historicist is deeply problematic. But, more importantly, it means that Hegelian dialectic can find a renewed anti-teleological and non-synchronistic identity within the Marxist tradition. Content Type Journal Article Category Article Pages 72-98 Authors John Roberts, University of Wolverhampton Journal Journal of Critical Realism Online ISSN 1572-5138 Print ISSN 1476-7430 Journal Volume Volume 12 Journal Issue Volume 12, Number 1 / 2013. (shrink)

The significance of informed consent in research involving humans has been a topic of active debate in the last decade. Much of this debate, we submit, is predicated on an ideology of individualism. We draw on our experiences as anthropologists working in Western and non Western (Iban) health care settings to present ethnographic data derived from diverse scenes in which consent is gained. Employing classical anthropological ritual theory, we subject these observational data to comparative analysis. Our article argues that the (...) individualist assumptions underlying current bioethics guidelines do not have universal applicability, even in Western research settings. This is based on the recognition that the social world is constitutive of personhood in diverse forms, just one of which is individualistic. We submit that greater attention must be paid to the social relations the researcher inevitably engages in when conducting research involving other people, be this in the context of conventional medical research or anthropological field work. We propose, firstly, that the consenting process continues throughout the life of any research project, long after the signature has been secured, and secondly, that both group and individual dimensions of consent, and the sequence in which these dimensions are addressed, should be carefully considered in all cases where consent is sought. (shrink)

Christopher Southgate offers a remarkable evolutionary theodicy that includes six affirmations and arguments; together they form a unique and very persuasive proposal which he terms a “compound evolutionary theodicy.” Here I summarize the arguments and offer critical reflections on them for further development, with an emphasis on the ambiguity in the goodness of creation; the role of thermodynamics in evolutionary biology; the challenge of horrendous evil in nature; and the theological response to theodicy in terms of eschatology, with its own (...) severe challenge from cosmology. (shrink)

Accession Number: ATLA0001712257; Hosting Book Page Citation: p 579-595.; Language(s): English; General Note: Bibliography: p 594-595.; Issued by ATLA: 20130825; Publication Type: Essay.

This article argues that the word ψυχαγωγία and its cognates which are found in the writings of Philodemus retain a semantic connection to the domain of magic and are best translated in terms of ‘enchantment’ rather than the more generic sense of ‘entertainment’.

While the use of so-called idealizations in science has been widely recognized for many years, the philosophical problems that arise from this use have received relatively little attention. Even a cursory reading of the philosophical literature devoted to these problems reveals that the following questions remain unanswered: In general, what, if any, are the distinguishing characteristics of idealizations? More specifically, do idealizations have any distinguishing syntactic or semantic characteristics? In addition to these questions there exist the following pragmatic questions, questions (...) relating to the ways in which idealizations are used in science: How are idealizations used in explanations?. Do these explanations have any peculiar characteristics—characteristics not shared by deductive-nomological explanations? If we assume that idealizations are false or “do not obtain,” how is it that they can have any explanatory power?. Further, there are questions of more general philosophic concern. How do the problems of idealizations relate to those of simplicity, for an idealization seems to be, in some sense, a type of simplification? How do the problems of ideal laws and theories relate to the general problems of scientific laws and theories? (shrink)

Critical realism has been an important advance in social science methodology because it develops a qualitative theory of causality which avoids some of the pitfalls of empiricist theories of causality. But while there has been ample work exploring the relationship between critical realism and qualitative research methods there has been noticeably less work exploring the relationship between dialectical critical realism and qualitative research methods. This seems strange especially since the founder of the philosophy of critical realism, Roy Bhaskar, employs and (...) develops a range of dialectical concepts in his later work in order to extend the main tenets of critical realism. The aim of this paper is to draw on Bhaskar's later work, as well as Marxism, to reorient a critical realist methodology towards a dialectical approach for qualitative research. In particular, the paper demonstrates how dialectical critical realism can begin to provide answers to three common criticisms made against original critical realist methodology: that the qualitative theory of causal powers and structures developed by critical realists is problematic; that critical realist methodology contains values which prove damaging to empirical research; and that critical realists often have difficulties in researching everyday qualitative dilemmas that people face in their daily lives. (shrink)