I assess Churchland's views on folk psychology and conceptual thinking, with particular emphasis on the connection between these topics.

David Annis is professor of philosophy at Ball State University. In this essay, Annis offers an alternative to the foundationalist-coherent controversy: "contextualism." This theory rejects both the idea of intrinsically basic beliefs in the foundational sense and the thesis that coherence is sufficient for justification. he argues that justification is relative to the varying norms of social practices.

This paper uses a schema for infinite regress arguments to provide a solution to the problem of the infinite regress of justification. The solution turns on the falsity of two claims: that a belief is justified only if some belief is a reason for it, and that the reason relation is transitive.

In Unnatural Doubts, Michael Williams constructs a masterly polemic against the very idea of epistemology, as traditionally conceived.

John F. Post argues that physicalistic materialism is compatible with a number of views often deemed incompatible with it, such as the objectivity of values, the irreducibility of subjective experience, the power of the metaphor, the normativity of meaning, and even theism.

1 Knowledge and Justification This book is an investigation of one central problem which arises in the attempt to give a philosophical account of empirical ...

David Lewis (1941-2001) was Class of 1943 University Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University. His contributions spanned philosophical logic, philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, philosophy of science, metaphysics, and epistemology. In On the Plurality of Worlds, he defended his challenging metaphysical position, "modal realism." He was also the author of the books Convention, Counterfactuals, Parts of Classes, and several volumes of collected papers.

One way to solve the epistemic regress problem would be to show that we can acquire justification by means of an infinite regress. This is infinitism. This view has not been popular, but Peter Klein has developed a sophisticated version of infinitism according to which all justified beliefs depend upon an infinite regress of reasons. Klein's argument for infinitism is unpersuasive, but he successfully responds to the most compelling extant objections to the view. A key component of his position is (...) his claim that an infinite regress is necessary, but not sufficient, for justified belief. This enables infinitism to avoid a number of otherwise compelling objections. However, it commits infinitism to the existence of an additional feature of reasons that is necessary and, together with the regress condition, sufficient for justified belief. The trouble with infinitism is that any such condition could account for the connection between justification and truth only by undermining the rationale for the regress condition itself. (shrink)

This book presents an attempt to develop a theory of knowledge and a philosophy of mind using ideas derived from the mathematical theory of communication developed by Claude Shannon. Information is seen as an objective commodity defined by the dependency relations between distinct events. Knowledge is then analyzed as information caused belief. Perception is the delivery of information in analog form for conceptual utilization by cognitive mechanisms. The final chapters attempt to develop a theory of meaning by viewing meaning as (...) a certain kind of information-carrying role. (shrink)

A study in the philosophy of science, proposing a strong form of the doctrine of scientific realism' and developing its implications for issues in the philosophy of mind.

This dissertation explores the nature, defensibility, and value-theoretic origins, threats, and implications of a form of skepticism which is predominately Cartesian epistemologically speaking, and yet predominately Pyrrhonian in certain other respects. ;In Chapters 1 and 2 I aim to offer a convincing argument for external world skepticism. This argument is broken down into several distinct stages, and I offer a defense of each stage. I propose that, given the apparent unanswerability of this argument, we ought to accept external world skepticism (...) as the correct view regarding the possibility of empirical knowledge. In addition, I aim to show, both during the course of my skeptical argument and in a separate chapter following that argument , that the elements of the skeptic's argument are claims to which we are all committed, despite our tendency to think otherwise and despite our apparent inability to believe the conclusion of the skeptic's argument . Indeed, I think that this very inability to accept the conclusion of a convincing skeptical argument demonstrates our lacking a particular form of self-control, which I call rational self-control . In my final chapter I attempt to trace the skeptical challenge to knowledge and rational self-control back to its origin in certain fundamental human values. It is these values, I argue, which drive the skeptical challenge, are problematized by that challenge, and yet strangely are found to sustain the challenge. I conclude by considering our alternatives, and I argue that we must find some way of maintaining a good faith relationship with these fundamental human values. I conclude by offering a sketch of a skeptical position rooted in these fundamental values by drawing on the role of aspiration in our value theory. (shrink)

An argument whose conclusion C is essential evidence for one of its premises can provide its target audience with justification for believing C. This is possible because we can enhance our justification for believing a proposition C by integrating it into an explanatory network of beliefs for which C itself provides essential evidence. I argue for this in light of relevant features of doxastic circularity, epistemic circularity, and explanatory inferences. Finally, I confirm my argument with an example and respond to (...) objections. (shrink)

Abstract Meeting the eliminativist challenge to folk psychology requires showing that beliefs have explanatory virtues unlikely to be duplicated by non?cognitive accounts of behavior. The explanatory power of beliefs is rooted in their intentionality. That beliefs have a distinctive kind of intentionality is shown by the distinctive intensionality of the sentences which report them. Contrary to Fodor, the fundamental explanatory virtues of beliefs are not to be found in their capacity to make causally inactive properties relevant to the explanation of (...) behavior. Rather, the distinctive intentionality of beliefs provides the best explanation of the fact that fully intelligent behavior displays a selectivity of response to properties of the perceptual environment. (shrink)

Many philosophic arguments concerned with infinite series depend on the mutual inconsistency of statements of the following five forms: (1) something exists which has R to something; (2) R is asymmetric; (3) R is transitive; (4) for any x which has R to something, there is something which has R to x; (5) only finitely many things are related by R. Such arguments are suspect if the two-place relation R in question involves any conceptual vagueness or inexactness. Traditional sorites arguments (...) show that a statement of form (4) can fail to be true even though it has no clear counter-example. Conceptual vagueness allows a finite series not to have any definite first member. I consider the speculative possibilities that there have been only finitely many non-overlapping hours although there has been no first hour and that space and time are only finitely divisible even though there are no smallest spatial or temporal intervals. (shrink)