Is Truth the Primary Epistemic Goal?

Is Truth the Primary Epistemic Goal?
Author: Markus Patrick Hess
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 169
Release: 2013-05-02
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3110329557

This book is focused on a problem that has aroused the most controversy in recent epistemological debate, which is whether the truth can or cannot be the fundamental epistemic goal. Traditional epistemology has presupposed the centrality of truth without giving a deeper analysis. To epistemic value pluralists, the claim that truth is the fundamental value seems unjustified. Their central judgement is that we can be in a situation where we do not attain truth but something else that is also epistemically valuable. In contrast, epistemic value monists are committed to the view that one can only attain something of epistemic value by attaining truth. It was necessary to rethink the long-accepted platitude that truth is our primary epistemic goal, once several objections about epistemic value were formulated. The whole debate is instructive for understanding how the epistemic value domain is structured.

Justification and the Truth-Connection

Justification and the Truth-Connection
Author: Clayton Littlejohn
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 279
Release: 2012-06-07
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1107016126

Presents and defends a bold new approach to the ethics of belief and to resolving the internalism-externalism debate in epistemology.

Intellectual Virtue

Intellectual Virtue
Author: Michael Raymond DePaul
Publisher: Clarendon Press
Total Pages: 308
Release: 2003
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0199219125

"Virtue ethics has attracted a lot of attention and there has been considerable interest in virtue epistemology as an alternative to traditional approaches in that field. This book fills a gap in the literature for a text that brings virtue epistemologists and virtue ethicists together."-- Back cover.

Scientific Understanding

Scientific Understanding
Author: Henk W. de Regt
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Pre
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2014-08-09
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0822971240

To most scientists, and to those interested in the sciences, understanding is the ultimate aim of scientific endeavor. In spite of this, understanding, and how it is achieved, has received little attention in recent philosophy of science. Scientific Understanding seeks to reverse this trend by providing original and in-depth accounts of the concept of understanding and its essential role in the scientific process. To this end, the chapters in this volume explore and develop three key topics: understanding and explanation, understanding and models, and understanding in scientific practice. Earlier philosophers, such as Carl Hempel, dismissed understanding as subjective and pragmatic. They believed that the essence of science was to be found in scientific theories and explanations. In Scientific Understanding, the contributors maintain that we must also consider the relation between explanations and the scientists who construct and use them. They focus on understanding as the cognitive state that is a goal of explanation and on the understanding of theories and models as a means to this end. The chapters in this book highlight the multifaceted nature of the process of scientific research. The contributors examine current uses of theory, models, simulations, and experiments to evaluate the degree to which these elements contribute to understanding. Their analyses pay due attention to the roles of intelligibility, tacit knowledge, and feelings of understanding. Furthermore, they investigate how understanding is obtained within diverse scientific disciplines and examine how the acquisition of understanding depends on specific contexts, the objects of study, and the stated aims of research.

Epistemology and the Regress Problem

Epistemology and the Regress Problem
Author: Scott Aikin
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 220
Release: 2010-11-23
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1136841903

In the last decade, the familiar problem of the regress of reasons has returned to prominent consideration in epistemology. And with the return of the problem, evaluation of the options available for its solution is begun anew. Reason’s regress problem, roughly put, is that if one has good reasons to believe something, one must have good reason to hold those reasons are good. And for those reasons, one must have further reasons to hold they are good, and so a regress of reasons looms. In this new study, Aikin presents a full case for infinitism as a response to the problem of the regress of reasons. Infinitism is the view that one must have a non-terminating chain of reasons in order to be justified. The most defensible form of infinitism, he argues, is that of a mixed theory – that is, epistemic infinitism must be consistent with and integrate other solutions to the regress problem.

A Defense of Ignorance

A Defense of Ignorance
Author: Cynthia Townley
Publisher: Lexington Books
Total Pages: 150
Release: 2011
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0739151053

This book develops new ideas in feminist epistemology by exploring diverse and sometimes positive roles for ignorance. The author argues that epistemic values cannot simply be reduced to the value of increasing knowledge and that ignorance is not merely inescapable for epistemic agents, but, rather, is valuable. She shows that ignorance-friendly epistemology offers a better descriptive and normative account of human epistemic practices. --publisher.

Knowledge, Dexterity, and Attention

Knowledge, Dexterity, and Attention
Author: Abrol Fairweather
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 205
Release: 2017-05-18
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1107089824

This title provides the first thorough defense of a naturalized virtue epistemology.

Knowledge from a Human Point of View

Knowledge from a Human Point of View
Author: Ana-Maria Crețu
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 164
Release: 2019-11-29
Genre: Science
ISBN: 3030270416

This open access book – as the title suggests – explores some of the historical roots and epistemological ramifications of perspectivism. Perspectivism has recently emerged in philosophy of science as an interesting new position in the debate between scientific realism and anti-realism. But there is a lot more to perspectivism than discussions in philosophy of science so far have suggested. Perspectivism is a much broader view that emphasizes how our knowledge (in particular our scientific knowledge of nature) is situated; it is always from a human vantage point (as opposed to some Nagelian "view from nowhere"). This edited collection brings together a diverse team of established and early career scholars across a variety of fields (from the history of philosophy to epistemology and philosophy of science). The resulting nine essays trace some of the seminal ideas of perspectivism back to Kant, Nietzsche, the American Pragmatists, and Putnam, while the second part of the book tackles issues concerning the relation between perspectivism, relativism, and standpoint theories, and the implications of perspectivism for epistemological debates about veritism, epistemic normativity and the foundations of human knowledge.

The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding

The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding
Author: Jonathan L. Kvanvig
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 234
Release: 2003-08-21
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1139442287

Epistemology has for a long time focused on the concept of knowledge and tried to answer questions such as whether knowledge is possible and how much of it there is. Often missing from this inquiry, however, is a discussion on the value of knowledge. In The Value of Knowledge and the Pursuit of Understanding Jonathan Kvanvig argues that epistemology properly conceived cannot ignore the question of the value of knowledge. He also questions one of the most fundamental assumptions in epistemology, namely that knowledge is always more valuable than the value of its subparts. Taking Platos' Meno as a starting point of his discussion, Kvanvig tackles the different arguments about the value of knowledge and comes to the conclusion that knowledge is less valuable than generally assumed. Clearly written and well argued, this 2003 book will appeal to students and professionals in epistemology.

Pentecostal Rationality

Pentecostal Rationality
Author: Simo Frestadius
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 241
Release: 2019-11-14
Genre: Religion
ISBN: 0567689395

This book not only articulates a tradition-specific Pentecostal rationality of Biblical Pragmatism, but also provides the first intellectual history of a major British classical Pentecostal denomination: the Elim Pentecostal Church. Pentecostal theologians increasingly acknowledge that their theological methodology should be informed by a Pentecostal rationality, epistemology and theological hermeneutics. Simo Frestadius offers such a Pentecostal rationality from a Foursquare perspective. Frestadius first analyses and evaluates some of the main contemporary Pentecostal rationalities and epistemologies to date, with a particular emphasis on the works of Amos Yong and James K.A. Smith and L. William Oliverio Jr., before proposing that Alasdair MacIntyre's tradition-focused and historically-minded narrative approach is conducive in providing a more tradition-constituted Pentecostal rationality. Utilising the methodological insights of MacIntyre, the book then provides a philosophically informed historical narrative of a major British Pentecostal tradition, namely, the Elim Foursquare Gospel Alliance, by exploring its underlying context and roots as a classical Pentecostal movement, its emergence as a religious tradition, and its two major 'epistemological crises'. Based on this historical narration and analysis, it is argued that Elim's tacit Pentecostal rationality is best defined as Pentecostal Biblical Pragmatism in a Foursquare Gospel framework. This form of rationality is then developed vis-à-vis Elim's Pentecostal concept of truth, biblical hermeneutics, and pragmatic epistemic justification in dialogue with William P. Alston. In doing the above, the book not only articulates a tradition-specific Pentecostal rationality of Biblical Pragmatism but also provides the first intellectual history of a major British classical Pentecostal denomination.