On Myself And Other Less Important Subjects

Author : Caspar Hare
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691178038
Total Pages : 134 pages
Book Rating : 4.35/5 ( download)

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Download or read book On Myself, and Other, Less Important Subjects written by Caspar Hare and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-11-21 with total page 134 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Caspar Hare makes an original and compelling case for "egocentric presentism," a view about the nature of first-person experience, about what happens when we see things from our own particular point of view. A natural thought about our first-person experience is that "all and only the things of which I am aware are present to me." Hare, however, goes one step further and claims, counterintuitively, that the thought should instead be that "all and only the things of which I am aware are present." There is, in other words, something unique about me and the things of which I am aware. On Myself and Other, Less Important Subjects represents a new take on an old view, known as solipsism, which maintains that people's experiences give them grounds for believing that they have a special, distinguished place in the world--for example, believing that only they exist or that other people do not have conscious minds like their own. Few contemporary thinkers have taken solipsism seriously. But Hare maintains that the version of solipsism he argues for is in indeed defensible, and that it is uniquely capable of resolving some seemingly intractable philosophical problems--both in metaphysics and ethics--concerning personal identity over time, as well as the tension between self-interest and the greater good. This formidable and tightly argued defense of a seemingly absurd view is certain to provoke debate.

Author : Lorraine Daston
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1942130619
Total Pages : 345 pages
Book Rating : 4.11/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Objectivity written by Lorraine Daston and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2021-02-02 with total page 345 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Objectivity has a history, and it is full of surprises. In Objectivity, Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison chart the emergence of objectivity in the mid-nineteenth-century sciences — and show how the concept differs from alternatives, truth-to-nature and trained judgment. This is a story of lofty epistemic ideals fused with workaday practices in the making of scientific images. From the eighteenth through the early twenty-first centuries, the images that reveal the deepest commitments of the empirical sciences — from anatomy to crystallography — are those featured in scientific atlases: the compendia that teach practitioners of a discipline what is worth looking at and how to look at it. Atlas images define the working objects of the sciences of the eye: snowflakes, galaxies, skeletons, even elementary particles. Galison and Daston use atlas images to uncover a hidden history of scientific objectivity and its rivals. Whether an atlas maker idealizes an image to capture the essentials in the name of truth-to-nature or refuses to erase even the most incidental detail in the name of objectivity or highlights patterns in the name of trained judgment is a decision enforced by an ethos as well as by an epistemology. As Daston and Galison argue, atlases shape the subjects as well as the objects of science. To pursue objectivity — or truth-to-nature or trained judgment — is simultaneously to cultivate a distinctive scientific self wherein knowing and knower converge. Moreover, the very point at which they visibly converge is in the very act of seeing not as a separate individual but as a member of a particular scientific community. Embedded in the atlas image, therefore, are the traces of consequential choices about knowledge, persona, and collective sight. Objectivity is a book addressed to any one interested in the elusive and crucial notion of objectivity — and in what it means to peer into the world scientifically.

Author : Michael Williams
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780691011158
Total Pages : 420 pages
Book Rating : 4.5X/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Unnatural Doubts written by Michael Williams and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1996-01-11 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Unnatural Doubts, Michael Williams constructs a masterly polemic against the very idea of epistemology, as traditionally conceived. Although philosophers have often found problems in efforts to study the nature and limits of human knowledge, Williams provides the first book that systematically argues against there being such a thing as knowledge of the external world. He maintains that knowledge of the world consitutes a theoretically coherent kind of knowledge, whose possibility needs to be defended, only given a deeply problematic doctrine he calls "epistemological realism." The only alternative to epistemological realism is a thoroughgoing contextualism.

Author : Helen E. Longino
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691209758
Total Pages : 274 pages
Book Rating : 4.53/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Science as Social Knowledge written by Helen E. Longino and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2020-03-31 with total page 274 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conventional wisdom has it that the sciences, properly pursued, constitute a pure, value-free method of obtaining knowledge about the natural world. In light of the social and normative dimensions of many scientific debates, Helen Longino finds that general accounts of scientific methodology cannot support this common belief. Focusing on the notion of evidence, the author argues that a methodology powerful enough to account for theories of any scope and depth is incapable of ruling out the influence of social and cultural values in the very structuring of knowledge. The objectivity of scientific inquiry can nevertheless be maintained, she proposes, by understanding scientific inquiry as a social rather than an individual process. Seeking to open a dialogue between methodologists and social critics of the sciences, Longino develops this concept of "contextual empiricism" in an analysis of research programs that have drawn criticism from feminists. Examining theories of human evolution and of prenatal hormonal determination of "gender-role" behavior, of sex differences in cognition, and of sexual orientation, the author shows how assumptions laden with social values affect the description, presentation, and interpretation of data. In particular, Longino argues that research on the hormonal basis of "sex-differentiated behavior" involves assumptions not only about gender relations but also about human action and agency. She concludes with a discussion of the relation between science, values, and ideology, based on the work of Habermas, Foucault, Keller, and Haraway.

Author : Richard W. Miller
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 9780691020457
Total Pages : 632 pages
Book Rating : 4.50/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Fact and Method written by Richard W. Miller and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1987 with total page 632 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this bold work, of broad scope and rich erudition, Richard Miller sets out to reorient the philosophy of science. By questioning both positivism and its leading critics, he develops new solutions to the most urgent problems about justification, explanation, and truth. Using a wealth of examples from both the natural and the social sciences, Fact and Method applies the new account of scientific reason to specific questions of method in virtually every field of inquiry, including biology, physics, history, sociology, anthropology, economics, psychology, and literary theory. Explicit and up-to-date analysis of leading alternative views and a wealth of examples make it an ideal introduction to the philosophy of science, as well as a powerful attempt to change the field. Like the works of Hempel, Reichenbach, and Nagel in an earlier generation, it will challenge, instruct, and help anyone with an interest in science and its limits. For the past quarter-century, the philosophy of science has been in a crisis brought on by the failure of the positivist project of resolving all basic methodological questions by applying absolutely general rules, valid for all fields at all times. Professor Miller presents a new view in which what counts as an explanation, a cause, a confirming test, or a compelling case for the existence of an unobservable is determined by frameworks of specific substantive principles, rationally adopted in the light of the actual history of inquiry. While the history of science has usually been the material for relativism, Professor Miller uses arguments of Darwin, Newton, Einstein, Galileo, and others both to undermine positivist conceptions of rationality and to support the positivists' optimism that important theoretical findings are often justifiable from all reasonable perspectives.

Author : Lynne Rudder Baker
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400886937
Total Pages : 192 pages
Book Rating : 4.37/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Saving Belief written by Lynne Rudder Baker and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2017-03-14 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This stimulating book critically examines a wide range of physicalistic conceptions of mind in the works of Jerry A. Fodor, Stephen P. Stich, Paul M. Churchland, Daniel C. Dennett, and others. Part I argues that intentional concepts cannot be reduced to nonintentional (and nonsemantic) concepts; Part II argues that intentional concepts are nevertheless indispensable to our cognitive enterprises and thus need no foundation in physicalism. As a sustained challenge to the prevailing interpretation of cognitive science, this timely book fills a large gap in the philosophical literature. It is sure to spark controversy, yet its clarity makes it attractive as a text in upper-level undergraduate and graduate courses in philosophy of mind and cognitive science. Saving Belief should be read by philosophers, psychologists, and others interested in the philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, and cognitive science. Originally published in 1988. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Author : Meir Dan-Cohen
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199985200
Total Pages : 273 pages
Book Rating : 4.03/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Normative Subjects written by Meir Dan-Cohen and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Combining constructivist and hermeneutical themes, this book explores normative aspects of human self creation seen as a matter of fixing and elaborating the values and norms that shape human identity, individually and collectively.

Author : Helen E. Longino
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691187010
Total Pages : 246 pages
Book Rating : 4.13/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Fate of Knowledge written by Helen E. Longino and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Helen Longino seeks to break the current deadlock in the ongoing wars between philosophers of science and sociologists of science--academic battles founded on disagreement about the role of social forces in constructing scientific knowledge. While many philosophers of science downplay social forces, claiming that scientific knowledge is best considered as a product of cognitive processes, sociologists tend to argue that numerous noncognitive factors influence what scientists learn, how they package it, and how readily it is accepted. Underlying this disagreement, however, is a common assumption that social forces are a source of bias and irrationality. Longino challenges this assumption, arguing that social interaction actually assists us in securing firm, rationally based knowledge. This important insight allows her to develop a durable and novel account of scientific knowledge that integrates the social and cognitive. Longino begins with a detailed discussion of a wide range of contemporary thinkers who write on scientific knowledge, clarifying the philosophical points at issue. She then critically analyzes the dichotomous understanding of the rational and the social that characterizes both sides of the science studies stalemate and the social account that she sees as necessary for an epistemology of science that includes the full spectrum of cognitive processes. Throughout, her account is responsive both to the normative uses of the term knowledge and to the social conditions in which scientific knowledge is produced. Building on ideas first advanced in her influential book Science as Social Knowledge, Longino brings her account into dialogue with current work in social epistemology and science studies and shows how her critical social approach can help solve a variety of stubborn problems. While the book focuses on epistemological concerns related to the sociality of inquiry, Longino also takes up its implications for scientific pluralism. The social approach, she concludes, best allows us to retain a meaningful concept of knowledge in the face of theoretical plurality and uncertainty.

Author : Richard Moran
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 0691089450
Total Pages : 242 pages
Book Rating : 4.54/5 ( download)

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Download or read book Authority and Estrangement written by Richard Moran and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2001-11-18 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since Socrates, and through Descartes to the present day, the problems of self-knowledge have been central to philosophy's understanding of itself. Today the idea of ''first-person authority''--the claim of a distinctive relation each person has toward his or her own mental life--has been challenged from a number of directions, to the point where many doubt the person bears any distinctive relation to his or her own mental life, let alone a privileged one. In Authority and Estrangement, Richard Moran argues for a reconception of the first-person and its claims. Indeed, he writes, a more thorough repudiation of the idea of privileged inner observation leads to a deeper appreciation of the systematic differences between self-knowledge and the knowledge of others, differences that are both irreducible and constitutive of the very concept and life of the person. Masterfully blending philosophy of mind and moral psychology, Moran develops a view of self-knowledge that concentrates on the self as agent rather than spectator. He argues that while each person does speak for his own thought and feeling with a distinctive authority, that very authority is tied just as much to the disprivileging of the first-person, to its specific possibilities of alienation. Drawing on certain themes from Wittgenstein, Sartre, and others, the book explores the extent to which what we say about ourselves is a matter of discovery or of creation, the difficulties and limitations in being ''objective'' toward ourselves, and the conflicting demands of realism about oneself and responsibility for oneself. What emerges is a strikingly original and psychologically nuanced exploration of the contrasting ideals of relations to oneself and relations to others.

Author : Caspar Hare
Publisher : OUP Oxford
ISBN 13 : 0191668168
Total Pages : 242 pages
Book Rating : 4.66/5 ( download)

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Download or read book The Limits of Kindness written by Caspar Hare and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-08-29 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Caspar Hare presents a novel approach to questions of what we ought to do, and why we ought to do it. The traditional way to approach this subject is to begin by supposing a foundational principle, and then work out its implications. Consequentialists say that we ought to make the world impersonally better, for instance, while Kantian deontologists say that we ought to act on universalizable maxims. And contractualists say that we ought to act in accordance with the terms of certain hypothetical contracts. These principles are all grand and controversial. The motivating idea behind The Limits of Kindness is that we can tackle some of the most difficult problems in normative ethics by starting with a principle that is humble and uncontroversial. Being moral involves wanting particular other people to be better off. From these innocuous beginnings, Hare leads us to surprising conclusions about how we ought to resolve conflicts of interest, whether we ought to create some people rather than others, what we ought to want in an infinite world, when we ought to make sacrifices for the sake of needy strangers, and why we cannot, on pain of irrationality, attribute great importance to the boundaries between people.