Metaphysics and Epistemology: A Guided Anthology 1st Edition by Stephen Hetherington, ISBN-13: 978-1118542583

Description

Metaphysics and Epistemology: A Guided Anthology 1st Edition by Stephen Hetherington, ISBN-13: 978-1118542583

[PDF eBook eTextbook]

• Publisher: ‎ Wiley-Blackwell; 1st edition (September 10, 2013)
• Language: ‎ English
• ‎480 pages
• ISBN-10: ‎ 1118542584
• ISBN-13: ‎ 978-1118542583

Metaphysics and Epistemology: A Guided Anthology presents a comprehensive introductory overview of key themes, thinkers, and texts in metaphysics and epistemology.

Balancing classic with contemporary readings from centuries of philosophical reflection on reality and knowledge, carefully edited selections focus on essential elements of each concept and argument. Themes explored include philosophical ideas on the basic nature of the world and of ourselves, on the underlying nature of knowledge, and on fundamental ways we may―or may not―gain knowledge. Phenomena discussed include the physical world, causation, minds, properties, truth, persons, God, free will, fate, evidence, belief, observation, innateness, reason, doubt, fallibility, and more. Provocative and influential ideas from the annals of philosophy are brought sharply into focus through succinct excerpts by great thinkers ranging from Plato and Aristotle to Descartes, Kant, and Russell. Accessible and authoritative, Metaphysics and Epistemology: A Guided Anthology offers illuminating insights into the origins, development, and core ideas relating to the universal philosophical pursuit of the nature of knowledge and of reality.

Table of Contents:

Front Matter

Contents

Source Acknowledgments

Preface and Acknowledgments

Introduction

Part I The Philosophical Image

1 Life and the Search for Philosophical Knowledge

Book V

Book VII

2 Philosophical Questioning

The Value of Philosophy

3 Philosophy and Fundamental Images

I. The Philosophical Quest

II. The Manifest Image

III. Classical Philosophy and the Manifest Image

IV. The Scientific Image

V. The Clash of the Images

VII. Putting Man into the Scientific Image

4 Philosophy as the Analyzing of Key Concepts

Analytical Philosophy

Two Analogies

Note

5 Philosophy as Explaining Underlying Possibilities

Coercive Philosophy

Philosophical Explanations

Explanation versus Proof

Philosophical Pluralism

Part II Metaphysics Philosophical Images of Being

How Is the World at all Physical?

6 How Real Are Physical Objects?

Appearance and Reality

7 Are Physical Objects Never Quite as They Appear To Be?

8 Are Physical Objects Really Only Objects of Thought?

Note

9 Is Even the Mind Physical?

The Concept of a Mental State

The Problem of the Secondary Qualities

Note

10 Is the Physical World All There Is?

I. The Knowledge Argument for Qualia

II. The Modal Argument

III. The “What is it like to be” Argument

IV. The Bogey of Epiphenomenalism

Notes

How Does the World Function?

11 Is Causation Only a Kind of Regularity?

Of the Idea of Necessary Connexion

Part I

Part II

Note

12 Is Causation Something Singular and Unanalyzable?

Notes

How Do Things Ever Have Qualities?

13 How Can Individual Things Have Repeatable Qualities?

14 How Can Individual Things Not Have Repeatable Qualities?

I. Nominalism versus Realism

II. Varieties of Nominalism

III. Can Predicates Determine Properties?

IV. Predicate Nominalism and Two Infinite Regresses

V. Predicates and Possible Predicates

VI. Predicate Nominalism and Causality

Note

References

How Are There Any Truths?

15 Do Facts Make True Whatever Is True?

16 Are There Social Facts?

Social and Institutional Reality

Observer-Dependency and the Building Blocks of Social Reality

The Distinction Between Observer-Independent and Observer-Dependent

A Simple Model of the Construction of Institutional Reality

The Example of Money

How Institutional Reality Can Be So Powerful

17 Is There Only Personally Decided Truth?

How Is There a World At All?

18 Has the World Been Designed by God?

19 Is God’s Existence Knowable Purely Conceptually?

Chapter II

That God truly exists

Chapter III

That God cannot be thought not to exist

Chapter IV

How ‘the fool said in his heart’ what cannot be thought

Chapter V

That God is whatever it is better to be than not to be and that, existing through Himself alone, He Makes all other beings from nothing

Chapter XV

How He is greater than can be thought

Chapter XX

That He is before and beyond even all eternal things

Chapter XXII

That He alone is what He is and who He is

A Reply to the Foregoing by a Certain Writer On Behalf of the Fool

[By Gaunilo]

A Reply to the Foregoing by the Author of the Book in Question

20 Has This World Been Actualized by God from Among All Possible Worlds?

21 Does This World Exist Because It Has Value Independently of God?

The Riddle of Existence

Optimalism and Evaluative Metaphysics

Axiological Explanation: How Optimalism Works

The Problem of How Value can have Explanatory Efficacy: Overcoming Some Objections

The Value Efficacy Objection and the Theological Aspect

Value Naturalism

Sidestepping Theology

Notes

22 Can Something Have Value in Itself?

How Are Persons Persons?

23 Is Each Person a Union of Mind and Body?

Of the Existence of Material Things, and of the Real Distinction between the Soul and Body of Man

24 Is Self-Consciousness what Constitutes a Person?

Of Identity and Diversity

25 How Strictly Does Self-Consciousness Constitute a Person?

Notes

26 Are Persons Constituted with Strict Identity At All?

What We Believe Ourselves To Be

Simple Teletransportation and the Branch-Line Case

Why Our Identity Is Not What Matters

Divided Minds

What Happens When I Divide?

What Matters When I Divide?

Notes

27 Are We Animals?

What Animalism Says

Why Animalism is Unpopular

The Thinking-Animal Argument

Alternative One: There Are No Human Animals

Alternative Two: Human Animals Can’t Think

Alternative Three: You Are Not Alone

Hard Choices

What it would Mean if we were Animals

How Do People Ever Have Free Will and Moral Responsibility?

28 Is There No Possibility of Acting Differently To How One Will in Fact Act?

29 Could Our Being Entirely Caused Coexist with Our Acting Freely?

Of Liberty and Necessity

Part I

Part II

30 Would Being Entirely Caused Undermine Our Personally Constitutive Emotions?

Note

31 Is a Person Morally Responsible Only for Actions Performed Freely?

Note

32 Is Moral Responsibility for a Good Action Different to Moral Responsibility for a Bad Action?

How Could a Person Be Harmed by Being Dead?

33 Is It Impossible To Be Harmed by Being Dead?

34 Is It Impossible To Be Harmed by Being Dead at a Particular Time?

Note

35 Would Immortality Be Humanly Possible and Desirable?

Notes

36 Can a Person be Deprived of Benefits by Being Dead?

Epicurus’s Argument Against the Evil of Death

The Fallacy in the New Version

How Death Can Be Bad for the One Who Dies

Further Readings for Part II

Part III Epistemology Philosophical Images of Knowing

Can We Understand What It Is to Know?

37 Is Knowledge a Supported True Belief?

38 When Should a Belief be Supported by Evidence?

I. The Duty of Inquiry

39 Is Knowledge a Kind of Objective Certainty?

Knowing as Having the Right to be Sure

40 Are All Fallibly Supported True Beliefs Instances of Knowledge?

Notes

41 Must a True Belief Arise Aptly, if it is to be Knowledge?

Notes

42 Must a True Belief Arise Reliably, if it is to be Knowledge?

I

Notes

43 Where is the Value in Knowing?

Knowledge from Outside

Knowledge from Inside

Notes

44 Is Knowledge Always a Virtuously Derived True Belief?

High-grade and low-grade knowledge

Notes

Can We Ever Know Just through Observation?

45 Is All Knowledge Ultimately Observational?

Of The Origin of Ideas

46 Is There a Problem of Not Knowing that One Is Not Dreaming?

47 What Is It Really to be Seeing Something?

I

II

III

IV

V

VI

VII

X

Notes

48 Is There a Possibility of Being a Mere and Unknowing Brain in a Vat?

Brains in a Vat

Magical Theories of Reference

The Case of the Brains in a Vat

Brains in a Vat (Again)

The Premisses of the Argument

Note

49 Is It Possible to Observe Directly the Objective World?

Notes

References

Can We Ever Know Innately?

50 Is It Possible to Know Innately Some Geometrical or Mathematical Truths?

51 Is There No Innate Knowledge At All?

No Innate Principles in the Mind

No Innate Practical Principles

Other Considerations Concerning Innate Principles, Both Speculative and Practical

Of Ideas in General, and their Original

Can We Ever Know Just through Reflection?

52 Is All Knowledge Ultimately Reflective?

53 Can Reflective Knowledge Be Substantive and Informative?

I. The Distinction between Pure and Empirical Knowledge

II. We are in Possession of Certain Modes of a priori Knowledge, and even the Common Understanding is never without them

III. Philosophy Stands in Need of a Science which shall Determine the Possibility, the Principles, and the Extent of all a priori Knowledge

IV. The Distinction between Analytic and Synthetic Judgments

V. In all Theoretical Sciences of Reason Synthetic a priori Judgments are contained as Principles

VI. The General Problem of Pure Reason

VII. The Idea and Division of a Special Science, under the Title “Critique of Pure Reason”

Note

54 Is All Apparently Reflective Knowledge Ultimately Observational?

Of Demonstration, and Necessary Truths

The Same Subject Continued

55 Is Scientific Reflection Our Best Model for Understanding Reflection?

Some Consequences of Four Incapacities

How to Make Our Ideas Clear

I

II

IV

Note

56 Are Some Necessities Known through Observation, Not Reflection?

Notes

Can We Know in Other Fundamental Ways?

57 Is Knowing-How a Distinct Way of Knowing?

58 Is Knowing One’s Intention-in-Action a Distinct Way of Knowing?

Notes

59 Is Knowing via What Others Say or Write a Distinct Way of Knowing?

1. Testimony and Testimony-Based Belief

2. Transmission of Epistemic Properties

3. Non-Reductionism and Reductionism

60 Is Knowing through Memory a Distinct Way of Knowing?

Memory

Can We Fundamentally Fail Ever To Know?

61 Are None of our Beliefs More Justifiable than Others?

What Scepticism Is

Of the Sceptic

Of the Principles of Scepticism

Does the Sceptic dogmatize?

Do the Sceptics abolish Appearances?

Of the Criterion of Scepticism

What is the End of Scepticism?

Of the general Modes leading to Suspension of Judgement

Concerning the Ten Modes

62 Are None of Our Beliefs Immune from Doubt?

63 Are We Unable Ever To Extrapolate Justifiedly Beyond Our Observations?

Sceptical Doubts Concerning the Operations of the Understanding

Part I

Part II

Can Skeptical Arguments Be Escaped?

64 Can We Know at Least Our Conscious Mental Lives?

Of the Nature of the Human Mind; and that it is more easily known than the Body

65 Can We Know Some Fundamental Principles by Common Sense?

Principles Taken for Granted

Of Common Sense

Of first Principles in General

The first Principles of contingent Truths

Notes

66 Do We Know a Lot, but Always Fallibly?

III

V

VI

VII

VIII

IX

X

XVI

67 Is It Possible to have Knowledge even when Not Knowing that One Is Not a Brain in a Vat?

Conditions for Knowledge

Skepticism

Skeptical Results

Nonclosure

Notes

Further Readings for Part III

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