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

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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