The Unity of Reason

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Richard H. Popkin, José R. Maia Neto

"Skepticism: An Anthology offers selections from many of the major Western philosophers who have grappled with the two main questions of epistemology: What can we know? and How do we know it? The skeptical tradition questioned the veracity of many knowledge claims and the means by which that knowledge was supposedly obtained in order to reach the core of what could truly be known. This volume contains the principal texts of the skeptical tradition from its origins in antiquity to contemporary philosophy. Selections include the writings of both well-known philosophers of the Western tradition - such as Montaigne, Descartes, Pascal, Locke, Hume, Voltaire, Diderot, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, James, Wittgenstein, Feyerabend, and Fogelin - and lesser-known but influential philosophers including Hervet, Charron, Sanchez, Gassendi, Crousaz, Schulze, and Shestov - who either advanced skeptical views or dealt with skeptical issues in order to confront some specific problems in philosophy or religion. The editors' introduction to the origins, kinds, and significance of philosophical skepticism places the readings in their appropriate historical contexts. Richard H. Popkin and Jose R. Maia Neto have also added brief discussions about each philosopher and the selections included in the anthology, plus a selected bibliography, which lists the main secondary literature on ancient, modern, and contemporary skepticism." "This collection is an introduction to an enduring and profoundly influential school of thought as well as stimulating reading for anyone interested in gaining a better understanding of humankind's unending desire to learn more about itself and the world."--Jacket.

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Ernest Sosa

In this book, Ernest Sosa explains the nature of knowledge through an approach first originated by him, known as virtue epistemology. Here he provides the first comprehensive account of his views on epistemic-normativity as a form of performance normativity on two levels. On a first level is found the normativity of the apt performance, whose success manifests the performer's competence. On a higher level is found the normativity of the meta-apt performance, -which manifests not necessarily first-order skill or competence but rather the reflective good judgment required for proper risk assessment. Sosa develops this bi-level account in multiple ways, by applying it to issues much disputed in recent epistemology: epistemic agency, how knowledge is normatively related to action, the knowledge norm of assertion, and the Meno problem as to how knowledge exceeds merely true belief. A full chapter is devoted to how experience should be understood if it is to figure in the epistemic competence that must be manifest in the truth of any belief apt enough to constitute knowledge. Another takes up the epistemology of testimony from the performance-theoretic perspective. Two other chapters are dedicated to comparisons with ostensibly rival views, such as classical internalist foundational-ism, a knowledge-first view, and attributor contextualism. The book concludes with a defense of the epistemic circularity inherent in meta-aptness and thereby in the full aptness of knowing full well. --Book Jacket.

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Katalin Farkas

"Descartes's philosophy has had a considerable influence on the modern conception of the mind, but many think that this influence has been largely negative. The main project of The Subject's Point of View is to argue that discarding certain elements of the Cartesian conception would be much more difficult than critics seem to allow, since it is tied to our understanding of basic notions, including the criteria for what makes someone a person, or one of us. The crucial feature of the Cartesian view defended here is not dualism - which is not adopted - but internalism. Internalism is opposed to the widely accepted externalist thesis, which states that some mental features constitutively depend on certain features of our physical and social environment. In contrast, this book defends the minority internalist view, which holds that the mind is autonomous, and though it is obviously affected by the environment, this influence is merely contingent and does not delimit what is thinkable in principle."--BOOK JACKET.

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[edited by] Ronald Barnett and Anne Griffin

This study questions whether it is possible to identify a justified, secure and coherent base for our knowledge of the world and of ourselves. Science no longer enjoys an unquestioned pre-eminence in providing objective knowledge, and the social improvement brought about through rational thought has been recently attacked by postmodernism. Higher education is therefore placed in a precarious position, based as it is on the acquisition of knowledge and understanding. This book explores the various dimensions of this crisis of confidence in science and higher education, showing how thinkers in the various disciplines are reacting to this challenge, and how they are re-evaluating the basis of their forms of enquiry.