scholarly journals The Scientific Weltanschauung: (Anti-)naturalism in Dilthey, Jaspers and Analytic Philosophy

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas J. Spiegel
Keyword(s):  
True Belief ◽  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Theory Of Knowledge ◽  
Wilfrid Sellars ◽  
Philosophical Naturalism ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
First Order ◽  
Scientific Image ◽  
Ontological Naturalism ◽  
Belief Theory

Abstract Different forms of methodological and ontological naturalism constitute the current near-orthodoxy in analytic philosophy. Many prominent figures have called naturalism a (scientific) image (Sellars, W. 1962. “Philosophy and the Scientific Image of Man.” In Wilfrid Sellars, Science, Perception, Reality, 1–40. Ridgeview Publishing), a Weltanschauung (Loewer, B. 2001. “From Physics to Physicalism.” In Physicalism and its Discontents, edited by C. Gillett, and B. Loewer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Stoljar, D. 2010. Physicalism. Routledge), or even a “philosophical ideology” (Kim, J. 2003. “The American Origins of Philosophical Naturalism.” Journal of Philosophical Research 28: 83–98). This suggests that naturalism is indeed something over-and-above an ordinary philosophical thesis (e.g. in contrast to the justified true belief-theory of knowledge). However, these thinkers fail to tease out the host of implications this idea – naturalism being a worldview – presents. This paper draws on (somewhat underappreciated) remarks of Dilthey and Jaspers on the concept of worldviews (Weltanschauung, Weltbild) in order to demonstrate that naturalism as a worldview is a presuppositional background assumption which is left untouched by arguments against naturalism as a thesis. The concluding plea is (in order to make dialectical progress) to re-organize the existing debate on naturalism in a way that treats naturalism not as a first-order philosophical claim, but rather shifts its focus on naturalism’s status as a worldview.

Intuitions

Philosophy ◽  
2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Ichikawa ◽  
Ernest Sosa
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
True Belief ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Theory Of Knowledge ◽  
Hypothetical Case ◽  
Belief Theory ◽  
Contemporary Work

Philosophy often proceeds via appeals to intuition. In a prototypical instance, a theory is rejected on the basis of its counterintuitive verdict about a real or hypothetical case. A famous example is Edmund Gettier’s rejection of the justified “true belief” theory of knowledge; the dominant view was that knowledge was equivalent to justified true belief, but Gettier provided thought experiments involving subjects with beliefs derived from justified falsehoods, which happened by luck to be true—these thought experiments generally gave rise to intuitions to the effect that they described cases of justified true belief without knowledge. And on this basis, 20th-century epistemologists generally rejected the justified true belief theory. In recent decades, significant metaphilosophical attention has turned to such uses of intuitions in philosophy. What are intuitions? In what sense do arguments such as Gettier’s rely on the use of intuitions? Why should we trust them? What can they show us? This entry focuses on contemporary work on these and related topics.

The Gettier Case and Intuition

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jessica Brown
Keyword(s):  
Subject Matter ◽  
True Belief ◽  
Theory Of Knowledge ◽  
Gettier Case ◽  
Central Theme ◽  
Philosophical Debate ◽  
Common Criticism ◽  
Belief Theory ◽  
Recent Debate

It is standard to describe philosophers as appealing to intuitions about cases as evidence for or against philosophical theories. However, the method of appealing to intuitions about cases has been widely criticized in recent philosophical debate. One central theme of this recent debate is that intuitions are ‘too psychological’ to provide evidence for the relevant philosophical theories which have a non-psychological subject matter (e.g. Deutsch, Kornblith, Williamson). I assess this criticism by focusing on philosophers’ use of the Gettier case to reject the Justified True Belief theory of knowledge. In more detail, I distinguish several senses in which it has been claimed that intuitions are ‘too psychological’, and argue that none of them support this common criticism of using intuitions as evidence in philosophy.

When Is True Belief Knowledge?

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Foley
Keyword(s):  
True Belief ◽  
Theory Of Knowledge ◽  
Central Problem ◽  
Significant Aspect ◽  
Coming To Know ◽  
Contemporary Epistemology ◽  
What Matters

A woman glances at a broken clock and comes to believe it is a quarter past seven. Yet, despite the broken clock, it really does happen to be a quarter past seven. Her belief is true, but it isn't knowledge. This is a classic illustration of a central problem in epistemology: determining what knowledge requires in addition to true belief. This book finds a new solution to the problem in the observation that whenever someone has a true belief but not knowledge, there is some significant aspect of the situation about which she lacks true beliefs—something important that she doesn't quite “get.” This may seem a modest point but, as the book shows, it has the potential to reorient the theory of knowledge. Whether a true belief counts as knowledge depends on the importance of the information one does or doesn't have. This means that questions of knowledge cannot be separated from questions about human concerns and values. It also means that, contrary to what is often thought, there is no privileged way of coming to know. Knowledge is a mutt. Proper pedigree is not required. What matters is that one doesn't lack important nearby information. Challenging some of the central assumptions of contemporary epistemology, this is an original and important account of knowledge.

4. The analysis of knowledge

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Nagel
Keyword(s):  
True Belief ◽  
Causal Theory ◽  
False Belief ◽  
Theory Of Knowledge ◽  
Classical Analysis ◽  
Alvin Goldman ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Analysis Of Knowledge

‘The analysis of knowledge’ begins with Edmund Gettier who challenged the ‘classical analysis of knowledge’ that equates knowledge with justified true belief. His no-false-belief proposal had some flaws. Alvin Goldman then proposed the causal theory of knowledge: experience-based knowledge that requires the knower to be appropriately causally connected to a fact. Goldman went on to launch a fresh analysis of knowledge, focused on reliability. Reliabilism is when knowledge is true belief that is produced by a mechanism likely to produce true belief. But can knowing be analysed at all? The relationship between knowing and believing is considered in the knowledge-first and belief-first movements of epistemology.

Norbert Elias’s contribution to Andrew Linklater’s contribution to International Relations

2017 ◽  
Vol 43 (4) ◽  
pp. 654-670 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Mennell
Keyword(s):  
International Relations ◽  
Sociological Theory ◽  
Theoretical Orientation ◽  
Theory Of Knowledge ◽  
English School ◽  
Short Term ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Norbert Elias

AbstractAndrew Linklater’s projected trilogy of books for Cambridge University Press rests distinctively on the work of the sociologist Norbert Elias (1897–1990). Linklater is creating a powerful theoretical orientation for the field of International Relations by synthesising the ideas of Martin Wight and the ‘English School’ of IR with those of Elias. Though Elias is best known for his theory of civilising processes – on which Linklater draws most prominently – his writings are far more extensive. In particular, his sociological theory of knowledge and the sciences underlies Linklater’s recent writings, even if that is not immediately apparent on a cursory reading. This article spells out some of the ‘Eliasian infrastructure’ that may not be familiar to many of Linklater’s readers. It also discusses ways in which common misunderstandings of Elias’s ideas may lead to parallel misunderstandings of Linklater’s. The article concludes by asking whether, even if Linklater’s vision of the growth of ‘cosmopolitan responsibility’ may prove correct in the long term, we may nevertheless be experiencing something of a (possibly short-term) reversal towards ‘cosmopolitan irresponsibility’.

scholarly journals Kant, the Philosophy of Mind, and Twentieth-Century Analytic Philosophy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anil Gomes
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Wilfrid Sellars ◽  
Critical Writings ◽  
The Way

This chapter provides a background to the essays in Kant and the Philosophy of Mind. In the first part of the chapter, some of the issues in the philosophy of mind which are addressed in Kant’s Critical writings are summarised. The second part charts some of the ways in which that discussion influenced twentieth-century analytic philosophy of mind, with particular focus on the way in which Kant’s writings were taken up in the work of Wilfrid Sellars and P.F. Strawson. Finally, some of the themes which characterise Kantian approaches in the philosophy of mind are identified.

Knowing Full Well

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ernest Sosa
Keyword(s):  
Risk Assessment ◽  
Virtue Epistemology ◽  
True Belief ◽  
Epistemic Normativity ◽  
Epistemic Circularity ◽  
Good Judgment ◽  
Epistemic Agency ◽  
First Order ◽  
Knowledge Norm ◽  
Epistemic Competence

This book explains the nature of knowledge through an approach originated by the author years ago, known as virtue epistemology. The book provides a comprehensive account of the author's 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. The book 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 foundationalism, 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.

Knowledge, defeasibility theory of

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marshall Swain
Keyword(s):  
True Belief ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Theory Of Knowledge ◽  
Gettier Cases ◽  
Ethical Concept ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Analysis Of Knowledge

Based upon an analogy with the legal and ethical concept of a defeasible, or prima facie, obligation, epistemic defeasibility was introduced into epistemology as an ingredient in one of the main strategies for dealing with Gettier cases. In these cases, an individual’s justified true belief fails to count as knowledge because the justification is defective as a source of knowledge. According to the defeasibility theory of knowledge, the defect involved can be characterized in terms of evidence that the subject does not possess which overrides, or defeats, the subject’s prima facie justification for belief. This account holds that knowledge is indefeasibly justified true belief. It has significant advantages over other attempts to modify the traditional analysis of knowledge in response to the Gettier examples. Care must be taken, however, in the definition of defeasibility.

scholarly journals Hegel’s Revival in Analytic Philosophy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Willem A. deVries
Keyword(s):  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Conceptual Structure ◽  
Proper Treatment ◽  
John Mcdowell ◽  
Wilfrid Sellars ◽  
Space And Time ◽  
American Philosophy ◽  
Anglo American

Analytic philosophy is rediscovering Hegel. This chapter examines a particularly strong thread of new analytic Hegelianism, sometimes called ‘Pittsburgh Hegelianism’, which began with the work of Wilfrid Sellars. In trying to bring Anglo-American philosophy from its empiricist phase into a more sophisticated, corrected Kantianism, Sellars moved in substantially Hegelian directions. Sellars’s work has been extended and revised by his Pittsburgh colleagues John McDowell and Robert B. Brandom. The sociality and historicity of reason, the proper treatment of space and time, conceptual holism, inferentialism, the reality of conceptual structure, the structure of experience, and the nature of normativity are the central concerns of Pittsburgh Hegelianism.

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