Empirical Justification

Empirical Justification PDF Author: P.K. Moser
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400945264
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
Broadly speaking, this is a book about truth and the criteria thereof. Thus it is, in a sense, a book about justification and rationality. But it does not purport to be about the notion of justification or the notion of rationality. For the assumption that there is just one notion of justification, or just one notion of rationality, is, as the book explains, very misleading. Justification and rationality come in various kinds. And to that extent, at least, we should recognize a variety of notions of justification and rationality. This, at any rate, is one of the morals of Chapter VI. This book, in Chapters I-V, is mainly concerned with the kind of justification and rationality characteristic of a truth-seeker, specifically a seeker of truth about the world impinging upon the senses: the so-called empirical world. Hence the book's title. But since the prominent contemporary approaches to empirical justification are many and varied, so also are the epistemological issues taken up in the following chapters. For instance, there will be questions about so-called coherence and its role, if any, in empirical justification. And there will be questions about social consensus (whatever it is) and its significance, or the lack thereof, to empirical justification. Furthermore, the perennial question of whether, and if so how, empirical knowledge has so-called founda tions will be given special attention.

Empirical Justification

Empirical Justification PDF Author: P.K. Moser
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN: 9400945264
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Get Book Here

Book Description
Broadly speaking, this is a book about truth and the criteria thereof. Thus it is, in a sense, a book about justification and rationality. But it does not purport to be about the notion of justification or the notion of rationality. For the assumption that there is just one notion of justification, or just one notion of rationality, is, as the book explains, very misleading. Justification and rationality come in various kinds. And to that extent, at least, we should recognize a variety of notions of justification and rationality. This, at any rate, is one of the morals of Chapter VI. This book, in Chapters I-V, is mainly concerned with the kind of justification and rationality characteristic of a truth-seeker, specifically a seeker of truth about the world impinging upon the senses: the so-called empirical world. Hence the book's title. But since the prominent contemporary approaches to empirical justification are many and varied, so also are the epistemological issues taken up in the following chapters. For instance, there will be questions about so-called coherence and its role, if any, in empirical justification. And there will be questions about social consensus (whatever it is) and its significance, or the lack thereof, to empirical justification. Furthermore, the perennial question of whether, and if so how, empirical knowledge has so-called founda tions will be given special attention.

The Structure of Empirical Knowledge

The Structure of Empirical Knowledge PDF Author: Laurence BonJour
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674262158
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
How must our knowledge be systematically organized in order to justify our beliefs? There are two options—the solid securing of the ancient foundationalist pyramid or the risky adventure of the new coherentist raft. For the foundationalist like Descartes each piece of knowledge can be stacked to build a pyramid. Not so, argues Laurence BonJour. What looks like a pyramid is in fact a dead end, a blind alley. Better by far to choose the raft. Here BonJour sets out the most extensive antifoundationalist argument yet developed. The first part of the book offers a systematic exposition of foundationalist views and formulates a general argument to show that no variety of foundationalism provides an acceptable account of empirical justification. In the second part he explores a coherence theory of empirical knowledge and argues that a defensible theory must incorporate an adequate conception of observation. The book concludes with an account of the correspondence theory of empirical truth and an argument that systems of empirical belief which satisfy the coherentist standard of justification are also likely to be true.

Truth and Justification

Truth and Justification PDF Author: Jürgen Habermas
Publisher: John Wiley & Sons
ISBN: 0745695000
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 355

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Book Description
In this important new book, Jürgen Habermas takes up certain fundamental questions of philosophy. While much of his recent work has been concerned with issues of morality and law, in this new work Habermas returns to the traditional philosophical questions of truth, objectivity and reality which were at the centre of his earlier classic book Knowledge and Human Interests. How can the norms that underpin the linguistically structured world in which we live be brought into step with the contingency of the development of socio-cultural forms of life? How can the idea that our world exists independently of our attempts to describe it be reconciled with the insight that we can never reach reality without the mediation of language and that 'bare' reality is therefore unattainable? In Knowledge and Human Interests Habermas answered these questions with reference to a weak naturalism and a transcendental-pragmatic realism. Since then, however, he has developed a formal pragmatic theory which is based on an analysis of speech acts and language use. In this new volume Habermas takes up the philosophical questions of truth, objectivity and reality from the perspective of his linguistically-based pragmatic theory. The final section addresses the limits of philosophy and reassesses the relation between theory and practice from a perspective that could be described as 'post-Marxist'. This volume, now available in paperback as well, by one of the world's leading philosophers will be essential reading for students and scholars of philosophy, social theory and the humanities and social sciences generally.

A Theory of System Justification

A Theory of System Justification PDF Author: John T. Jost
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674244656
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 402

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Book Description
A leading psychologist explains why nearly all of us—including many of those who are persecuted and powerless—so often defend the social systems that cause misery and injustice. Why do we so often defend the very social systems that are responsible for injustice and exploitation? In A Theory of System Justification, John Jost argues that we are motivated to defend the status quo because doing so serves fundamental psychological needs for certainty, security, and social acceptance. We want to feel good not only about ourselves and the groups to which we belong, but also about the overarching social structure in which we live, even when it hurts others and ourselves. Jost lays out the wide range of evidence for his groundbreaking theory and examines its implications for our communities and our democracy. Drawing on twenty-five years of research, he provides an accessible account of system justification theory and its insights. System justification helps to explain deep contradictions, including the feeling among some women that they don’t deserve the same salaries as men and the tendency of some poor people to vote for policies that increase economic inequality. The theory illuminates the most pressing social and political issues of our time—why has it been so hard to combat anthropogenic climate change?—as well as some of the most intimate—why do some black children prefer white dolls to black ones and why do some people stay in bad relationships? Jost’s theory has far-reaching implications, and he offers numerous insights that political activists and social justice advocates can use to promote change.

The A Priori in Philosophy

The A Priori in Philosophy PDF Author: Albert Casullo
Publisher:
ISBN: 0199695334
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 326

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Book Description
For centuries philosophers have attached much importance to a priori knowledge, but recent work in epistemology and experimental philosophy has questioned this. Leading philosophers discuss explanations of the a priori, challenges to its existence, the status of intuition, and the justification of belief—topics at the centre of current debate.

Epistemology: Contemporary Readings

Epistemology: Contemporary Readings PDF Author: Michael Huemer
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134512716
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 636

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Book Description
This comprehensive anthology draws together classic and contemporary readings by leading philosophers on epistemology. Ideal for any philosophy student, it will prove essential reading for epistemology courses, and is designed to complement Robert Audi's textbook Epistemology: A Contemporary Introduction (Routledge, 1998). Themes covered include, perception, memory, inductive inference, reason and the a priori, the architecture of knowledge, skepticism, the analysis of knowledge, testimony. Each section begins with an introductory essay, guiding students into the topic. Includes articles by: Russell, Hume, Berkeley, Malcolm, Quine, Carnap, J.L. Austin, Pollock, Nozick, Putnam, G.E. Moore, Huemer, Reid, Plato, BonJour, Coady, Carroll, Fumerton, Edwards, Foster, Howson, Urbach, Stove, Empiricus, Oakley, Alston, Gettier, Clark, Goldman, Lehrer, Paxson, DeRose, Dretske, Klein and Chisholm

Oxford Studies in Epistemology Volume 4

Oxford Studies in Epistemology Volume 4 PDF Author: Tamar Szabó Gendler
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0199672709
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 359

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Book Description
This work is a major biennial volume offering a regular snapshot of state-of-the-art work in this important field of epistemology.

The Right to Justification

The Right to Justification PDF Author: Rainer Forst
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231147082
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
Contemporary philosophical pluralism recognizes the inevitability and legitimacy of multiple ethical perspectives and values, making it difficult to isolate the higher-order principles on which to base a theory of justice. Rising up to meet this challenge, Rainer Forst, a leading member of the Frankfurt School's newest generation of philosophers, conceives of an "autonomous" construction of justice founded on what he calls the basic moral right to justification. Forst begins by identifying this right from the perspective of moral philosophy. Then, through an innovative, detailed critical analysis, he ties together the central components of social and political justice--freedom, democracy, equality, and toleration--and joins them to the right to justification. The resulting theory treats "justificatory power" as the central question of justice, and by adopting this approach, Forst argues, we can discursively work out, or "construct," principles of justice, especially with respect to transnational justice and human rights issues. As he builds his theory, Forst engages with the work of Anglo-American philosophers such as John Rawls, Ronald Dworkin, and Amartya Sen, and critical theorists such as Jürgen Habermas, Nancy Fraser, and Axel Honneth. Straddling multiple subjects, from politics and law to social protest and philosophical conceptions of practical reason, Forst brilliantly gathers contesting claims around a single, elastic theory of justice.

A Priori Revisability in Science

A Priori Revisability in Science PDF Author: Boris D. Grozdanoff
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443861766
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 195

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Book Description
The most influential rationalist model of scientific knowledge is arguably the one formulated recently by Michael Friedman. The central epistemic claim of the model concerns the character of its fundamental principles which are said to be independent from experience. Friedman’s position faces the modern empiricist challenge: he has to explain how the principles could still be a priori if they change under empirical pressure. This book provides a contemporary account of the epistemic character of the principles, addressing recent work on the a priori in modern analytic epistemology. Its main thesis is that at least some principles within natural science are not empirically but a priori revisable. A Priori Revisability in Science formulates a general notion of epistemic revisability and extracts two kinds of specific revisabilities: the traditional empirical one and the suggested novel a priori revisability. It presents the argument that the latter is as vital as the former and even so within natural science. To demonstrate this, the author analyzes two case studies – one from the history of geometry and one from the history of physics – and shows that the revisions were a priori. The result of this is two-fold. First, a genuine alternative of empirical revisability is developed, and not just for traditional a priori domains like mathematics, but for the natural sciences as well. Second, a new mechanism for the dynamics of science is suggested, the a priori dynamics, at the core of which the scientific knowledge sometimes evolves through non-empirical moves.

Rule-Following and Realism

Rule-Following and Realism PDF Author: Gary Ebbs
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674034414
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 386

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Book Description
Through detailed and trenchant criticism of standard interpretations of some of the key arguments in analytical philosophy over the last sixty years, this book arrives at a new conception of the proper starting point and task of the philosophy of language. To understand central topics in the philosophy of language and mind, Gary Ebbs contends, we must investigate them from our perspective as participants in shared linguistic practices; but our efforts at adopting this participant perspective are limited by our lingering loyalties to metaphysical realism (the view that we can make objective assertions only if we can grasp metaphysically independent truth conditions) and scientific naturalism (the view that it is only within science that reality can be identified and described). In Rule-Following and Realism, Ebbs works to loosen the hold of these views by exposing their roots and developing a different way of looking at our linguistic practices. Reexamining and extending influential arguments by Saul Kripke, W. V. Quine, Rudolf Carnap, Hilary Putnam, and Tyler Burge, Ebbs presents systematic redescriptions of our linguistic practices that transform our understanding of such central topics as rule-following, the analytic-synthetic distinction, realism, anti-individualism, the division of linguistic labor, self-knowledge, and skepticism.