scholarly journals La filosofia com a ciència teòrica: la proposta de Timothy Williamson

2021 ◽  
Vol 67 ◽  
pp. 259-265
Author(s):  
Manel Pau
Keyword(s):  
Timothy Williamson

Timothy Williamson defensa que la filosofia és una ciència teòrica que s’ocupa d’investigar sobre la realitat, d’obtenir coneixement, i que ho fa construint teories, confrontant-les amb l’evidència, d’una manera sistemàtica, disciplinada i socialment organitzada, com les altres ciències. En aquest article es compara aquesta posició, d’una banda, amb la que considera que la filosofia és una reflexió de segon ordre sobre la ciència, la moral, la política, l’art…; i, de l’altra, amb la concepció de la filosofia com a guia de la vida, com a recerca de la saviesa pràctica.

Knowledge First

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Adam Carter ◽  
Emma C. Gordon ◽  
Benjamin W. Jarvis
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Theoretical Background ◽  
Contemporary Research ◽  
Timothy Williamson ◽  
Research Themes ◽  
New Directions ◽  
Individual Contributions ◽  
The Individual

In this introductory chapter, the volume’s editors provide a theoretical background to the volume’s topic and a brief overview of the papers included. The chapter is divided into five parts: Section 1 explains the main contours of the knowledge-first approach, as it was initially advanced by Timothy Williamson in Knowledge and its Limits. In Sections 2–3, some of the key philosophical motivations for the knowledge-first approach are reviewed, and several key contemporary research themes associated with this approach in epistemology, the philosophy of mind and elsewhere are outlined and briefly discussed. The volume’s papers are divided into two broad categories: foundational issues and applications and new directions. Section 4 discusses briefly the scope and aim of the volume as the editors have conceived it, and Section 5 offers an overview of each of the individual contributions in the volume.

scholarly journals Necessitism, Contingentism, and Lewisian Modal Realism

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cristina Nencha
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
David Lewis ◽  
Modal Realism ◽  
Timothy Williamson ◽  
Restricted Quantification

AbstractNecessitism is the controversial thesis that necessarily everything is necessarily something, namely that everything, everywhere, necessarily exists. What is controversial about necessitism is that, at its core, it claims that things could not have failed to exist, while we have a pre-theoretical intuition that not everything necessarily exists. Contingentism, in accordance with common sense, denies necessitism: it claims that some things could have failed to exist. Timothy Williamson is a necessitist and claims that David Lewis is a necessitist too. The paper argues that, granted the assumptions that lead to interpret the Lewisian as a necessitist, she can preserve contingentist intuitions, by genuinely agreeing with the folk that existence is contingent. This is not just the uncontroversial claim that the Lewisian, as a result of the prevalence of restricted quantification in counterpart theoretic regimentations of natural language, can agree with the folk while disagreeing with them in the metaphysical room. Rather, this is the claim that it is in the metaphysical room that the Lewisian can endorse the intuitions lying behind contingentism.

scholarly journals Realism and Knowledge First. Interview with Timothy Williamson

2022 ◽  
Vol 19 (3) ◽  
pp. 175-204
Author(s):  
I. E. Pris
Keyword(s):  
A Priori ◽  
Gettier Problem ◽  
Traditional Epistemology ◽  
Timothy Williamson ◽  
Skeptical Problem ◽  
Ill Posed ◽  
The Right ◽  
Metaphysical Realist ◽  
First Interview ◽  
The Gettier Problem

The renowned British philosopher Timothy Williamson talks about his philosophical views and main lines of research. Williamson is a metaphysical realist in a broad sense. Fir him there are true or false answers to questions about all aspects of reality. Classical logic is a universal true theory. Knowledge-first epistemology is an alternative to the traditional belief-first epistemology. The former takes the concept of knowledge as a basic concept, explaining other epistemic concepts, including belief, in its terms, whereas the latter does the opposite. Knowledge, not truth, is the fundamental epistemic good. The Gettier problem and the skeptical problem that arise within traditional epistemology are ill posed and therefore cannot be solved. Hybrid epistemological theories do not satisfy the principles of simplicity and beauty and are refuted by counter-examples. Epistemic contextualism is problematic, and relativism violates the semantics of the phenomena being explained. Knowledge does not entail knowledge about knowledge. Knowledge-how is a kind of knowledge-that. The distinction between a priori and a posteriori is superficial, and there are no analytical truths. The concept of qualia is unhelpful for solving the problems related to consciousness. The so-called “hard problem” of consciousness points to an area of conceptual confusions in which we do not know how to reason properly. Speculative metaphysics is quite a respectable enterprise. But progress in metaphysics is not automatic; it requires the right methodology.

Internal and External Objects of Cognition

2019 ◽  
pp. 95-130
Author(s):  
Michael Ayers
Keyword(s):  
Natural Language ◽  
Detailed Analysis ◽  
Timothy Williamson ◽  
External Objects ◽  
The World ◽  
Philosophical Task

Detailed analysis is conducted of the different constructions in which ‘know’, ‘believe’, ‘see’, and cognate verbs appear in ordinary or natural language, of their functions and of the relations and differences between them: e.g. noun-clauses of the form ‘that P’ serve different purposes after each of these classes of verb, partly reflected in the proposition–fact distinction—although ‘facts’ are ontologically unsuited to be what it is in the world we know. Some relevant views of Timothy Williamson (e.g. ‘e=k’) are discussed. The emphasis in current epistemology on the ‘know/see that P’ construction is criticized—no construction, and no use of the term ‘evidence’, is philosophically best, since it is no accident that we have them all. The philosophical task is to understand how they work together—the footprints in language of our cognitive relation to reality, manifestations of what knowledge, belief, and perception are.

Philosophy or Auto-Anthropology?

2019 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 26-28
Author(s):  
Daniel C. Dennett ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Computer Modeling ◽  
Evolutionary Theory ◽  
Empirical Work ◽  
The Other ◽  
Theoretical Physics ◽  
Experimental Physics ◽  
Timothy Williamson ◽  
Working Out ◽  
Armchair Philosophy

Timothy Williamson is mainly right, I think. He defends armchair philosophy as a variety of armchair science, like mathematics, or computer modeling in evolutionary theory, economics, statistics, and I agree that this is precisely what philosophy is, at its best: working out the assumptions and implications of any serious body of thought, helping everyone formulate the best questions to ask, and then leaving the empirical work to the other sciences. Philosophy – at its best – is to other inquiries roughly as theoretical physics is to experimental physics. You can do it in the armchair, but you need to know a lot about the phenomena with which the inquiry deals.

scholarly journals Prime Cuts and the Method of Recombination

Episteme ◽  
2020 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
David-Hillel Ruben
Keyword(s):  
Analytic Philosophy ◽  
Specific Information ◽  
Timothy Williamson

Abstract Whether some condition is equivalent to a conjunction of some (sub-) conditions has been a major issue in analytic philosophy. Examples include: knowledge, acting freely, causation, and justice. Philosophers have striven to offer analyses of these, and other concepts, by showing them equivalent to such a conjunction. Timothy Williamson offers a number of arguments for the idea that knowledge is ‘prime’, hence not equivalent to or composed by some such conjunction. I focus on one of his arguments: the requirement that such conjuncts must be freely recombinable. Although there has been a great deal of discussion of Williamson's arguments, the flaw I describe has gone unnoticed. Williamson's argument is expressed in terms of conditions, and cases of the condition. Does the condition include specific information, or is the specific information only part of the case? His argument equivocates between more and less general specifications of the conditions. Once this distinction is clarified, his argument can be seen to be vitiated by this conflation. Neither option yields a sound argument for Williamson's desired conclusion.

scholarly journals First-order modal logic in the necessary framework of objects

2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (4-5) ◽  
pp. 584-609 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Fritz
Keyword(s):  
Modal Logic ◽  
Model Theory ◽  
Consequence Relations ◽  
Possible World ◽  
Logical Constants ◽  
First Order ◽  
Timothy Williamson ◽  
Infinite Sets ◽  
Infinite Set ◽  
First Order Modal Logic

AbstractI consider the first-order modal logic which counts as valid those sentences which are true on every interpretation of the non-logical constants. Based on the assumptions that it is necessary what individuals there are and that it is necessary which propositions are necessary, Timothy Williamson has tentatively suggested an argument for the claim that this logic is determined by a possible world structure consisting of an infinite set of individuals and an infinite set of worlds. He notes that only the cardinalities of these sets matters, and that not all pairs of infinite sets determine the same logic. I use so-called two-cardinal theorems from model theory to investigate the space of logics and consequence relations determined by pairs of infinite sets, and show how to eliminate the assumption that worlds are individuals from Williamson's argument.

scholarly journals What Counts as Evidence for a Logical Theory?

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (7) ◽  
pp. 250 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ole Thomassen Hjortland
Keyword(s):  
Classical Logic ◽  
A Priori ◽  
Scientific Theories ◽  
Alternative Account ◽  
Logical Theory ◽  
Crucial Question ◽  
Indispensability Arguments ◽  
Timothy Williamson ◽  
Graham Priest ◽  
Number Of Authors

Anti-exceptionalism about logic is the Quinean view that logical theories have no special epistemological status, in particular, they are not self-evident or justified a priori. Instead, logical theories are continuous with scientific theories, and knowledge about logic is as hard-earned as knowledge of physics, economics, and chemistry. Once we reject apriorism about logic, however, we need an alternative account of how logical theories are justified and revised. A number of authors have recently argued that logical theories are justified by abductive argument (e.g. Gillian Russell, Graham Priest, Timothy Williamson). This paper explores one crucial question about the abductive strategy: what counts as evidence for a logical theory? I develop three accounts of evidential confirmation that an anti-exceptionalist can accept: (1) intuitions about validity, (2) the Quine-Williamson account, and (3) indispensability arguments. I argue, against the received view, that none of the evidential sources support classical logic.

scholarly journals ¿Puede el conocimiento ser un estado mental?

2014 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-201
Author(s):  
Florencia Rimoldi
Keyword(s):  
Timothy Williamson

En Knowledge and its Limits, Timothy Williamson argumenta a favor de la tesis fuerte de que el conocimiento es un estado mental (CEMf), ofreciendo una caracterización del conocimiento según la cual es "la actitudfactiva estativa más general". Dicha caracterización es central una vez que se considera que los estados perceptivos son también actitudes factivas estativas. Esta propuesta ha sido discutida ampliamente en la literatura. En este trabajo argumento en contra de (CEMf) a partir de una crítica novedosa que parte de las herramientas mismas que Williamson usa a su favor. Para ello argumentaré, en distintas etapas, que los estados perceptivos no son actitudes factivas estativas. La crítica en cuestión no se limita a mostrar la falsedad de la caracterización del conocimiento en términos de actitudes factivas estativas, sino que también muestra la implausibilidad de (CEMf).

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