This volume consists of the first of the John Dewey Lectures delivered under the auspices of Columbia University's Philosophy Department as well as other essays by the author. Intended to clarify the meaning of the philosophical doctrines propounded by Professor Quine in 'Word and Objects', the essays included herein both support and expand those doctrines.

Philosophy long sought to set knowledge on a firm foundation, through derivation of indubitable truths by infallible rules. For want of such truths and rules, the enterprise foundered. Nevertheless, foundationalism's heirs continue their forbears' quest, seeking security against epistemic misfortune, while their detractors typically espouse unbridled coherentism or facile relativism. Maintaining that neither stance is tenable, Catherine Elgin devises a via media between the absolute and the arbitrary, reconceiving the nature, goals, and methods of epistemology. In Considered Judgment, she argues (...) for a reconception that takes reflective equilibrium as the standard of rational acceptability. A system of thought is in reflective equilibrium when its components are reasonable in light of one another, and the account they comprise is reasonable in light of our antecedent convictions about the subject it concerns. Many epistemologists now concede that certainty is a chimerical goal. But they continue to accept the traditional conception of epistemology's problematic. Elgin suggests that in abandoning the quest for certainty we gain opportunities for a broader epistemological purview--one that comprehends the arts and does justice to the sciences. She contends that metaphor, fiction, emotion, and exemplification often advance understanding in science as well as in art. The range of epistemology is broader and more variegated than is usually recognized. Tenable systems of thought are neither absolute nor arbitrary. Although they afford no guarantees, they are good in the way of belief. (shrink)

This article reviews the transition between post-Fregean anti-naturalistic epistemology and contemporary naturalistic epistemologies. It traces the revival of naturalism to Quine’s critique of the "a priori", and Kuhn’s defense of historicism, and use the arguments of Quine and Kuhn to identify a position, "traditional naturalism", that combines naturalistic themes with the claim that epistemology is a normative enterprise. Pleas for more radical versions of naturalism are articulated, and briefly confronted.

The first Ukrainian translation of the classic work of ancient skepticism, Sextus Empiricus’ Outlines of Pyrrhonism, made by D. of Sc. Philology Lesia Zvonska under the scientific editorship of Dr. of Sc. in Philosophy. Oleg Khoma.

A new, social epistemology of science that addresses practical as well as theoretical concerns.

In Burge 2005, Tyler Burge reads disjunctivism as the denial that there are explanatorily relevant states in common between veridical perceptions and corresponding illusions. He rejects the position as plainly inconsistent with what is known about perception. I describe a disjunctive approach to perceptual experience that is immune to Burge's attack. The main positive moral concerns how to think about fallibility.

In this paper, I introduce the emerging theory of judgment aggregation as a framework for studying institutional design in social epistemology. When a group or collective organization is given an epistemic task, its performance may depend on its ‘aggregation procedure’, i.e. its mechanism for aggregating the group members’ individual beliefs or judgments into corresponding collective beliefs or judgments endorsed by the group as a whole. I argue that a group’s aggregation procedure plays an important role in determining whether the group (...) can meet two challenges: the ‘rationality challenge’ and the ‘knowledge challenge’. The rationality challenge arises when a group is required to endorse consistent beliefs or judgments; the knowledge challenge arises when the group’s beliefs or judgments are required to track certain truths. My discussion seeks to identify those properties of an aggregation procedure that affect a group’s success at meeting each of the two challenges. (shrink)

In Burge [Disjunctivism and perceptual psychology. Philosophical Topics 33: 1–78, 2005], I criticized several versions of disjunctivism. McDowell defends his version against my criticisms in McDowell [Tyler Burge on disjunctivism. Philosophical Explorations 13: 243–55, 2010]. He claims that my general characterization fails to apply to his view. I show that this claim fails because it overlooks two elements in my characterization. I elaborate and extend my criticisms of his disjunctivism. I criticize his positions on infallibility and indefeasibility, and reinforce my (...) earlier charges that his views on perception and epistemology are hyper-intellectualized. The central point in my rejection of his disjunctivism concerns his claim that the science of perceptual psychology is irrelevant to his disjunctivist classification of perceptual states. I hold that this claim shows lack of familiarity with the science and serious misunderstanding of it. The basic deficiency in McDowell's disjunctivism is that it, like other versions, is incompatible with well-established scientific knowledge. (shrink)

Philosophy long sought to set knowledge on a firm foundation, through derivation of indubitable truths by infallible rules. For want of such truths and rules, the enterprise foundered. Nevertheless, foundationalism's heirs continue their forbears' quest, seeking security against epistemic misfortune, while their detractors typically espouse unbridled coherentism or facile relativism. Maintaining that neither stance is tenable, Catherine Elgin devises a via media between the absolute and the arbitrary, reconceiving the nature, goals, and methods of epistemology. In Considered Judgment, she argues (...) for a reconception that takes reflective equilibrium as the standard of rational acceptability. A system of thought is in reflective equilibrium when its components are reasonable in light of one another, and the account they comprise is reasonable in light of our antecedent convictions about the subject it concerns.Many epistemologists now concede that certainty is a chimerical goal. But they continue to accept the traditional conception of epistemology's problematic. Elgin suggests that in abandoning the quest for certainty we gain opportunities for a broader epistemological purview--one that comprehends the arts and does justice to the sciences. She contends that metaphor, fiction, emotion, and exemplification often advance understanding in science as well as in art. The range of epistemology is broader and more variegated than is usually recognized. Tenable systems of thought are neither absolute nor arbitrary. Although they afford no guarantees, they are good in the way of belief. (shrink)

Warrant is “that, whatever precisely it is, which makes the difference between knowledge and mere true belief.” S knows that p, therefore, if and only if S’s belief that p is warranted and p is true. This is a purely formal characterization of warrant. Warrant may, no doubt, be a messy item: a substantive analysis might be full of disjuncts and conjuncts and conditionals and caveats. But if there are true beliefs that are not knowledge, then there is something that (...) all beliefs that are knowledge share, and all merely true beliefs lack. This is warrant. I want to argue that warrant, whatever it is that makes the difference between mere true belief and knowledge, entails truth. (shrink)

Let ‘warrant’ denote whatever precisely it is that makes the difference between knowledge and mere true belief. A current debate in epistemology asks whether warrant entails truth, i.e., whether (Infallibilism) S’s belief that p is warranted only if p is true. The arguments for infallibilism have come under considerable and, as of yet, unanswered objections. In this paper, I will defend infallibilism. In Part I, I advance a new argument for infallibilism; the basic outline is as follows. Suppose fallibilism is (...) true. An implication of fallibilism is that the property that makes the difference between knowledge and mere belief (which I dub ‘warrant*’) is the conjunctive property being warranted and true . I show that this implication of fallibilism conflicts with an uncontroversial thesis we have learned from reflection on Gettier cases: that nonaccidental truth is a constituent of warrant*. It follows that infallibilism is true. In the second part of the paper, I present and criticize a new argument against infallibilism. The argument states that there are plausible cases where, intuitively, the only thing that is keeping a belief from counting as knowledge is the falsity of that belief. Furthermore, it is plausible that such a belief is warranted and false. So, the argument goes, infallibilism is false. I show that this argument fails. (shrink)

This article examines how Quine and Sellars develop informatively contrasting responses to a fundamental tension in Carnap’s semantics ca. 1950. Quine’s philosophy could well be styled ‘Essays in Radical Empiricism’; his assay of radical empiricism is invaluable for what it reveals about the inherent limits of empiricism. Careful examination shows that Quine’s criticism of Carnap’s semantics in ‘Two Dogmas of Empiricism’ fails, that at its core Quine’s semantics is for two key reasons incoherent and that his hallmark Thesis of Extensionalism (...) is untenable. The tension in Carnap’s semantics together with Quine’s exposure of the severe limits of radical empiricism illuminate central features of Sellars’s philosophy: the fully general form of the myth of givenness, together with Sellars’s alternative Kantian characterisation of understanding; the full significance of Carnap’s distinction between conceptual analysis and conceptual explication, and its important methodological implications; the specifically pragmatic character of Sellars’s realism; and Sellars’s methodological reasons for holding that philosophy must be systematic and that systematic philosophy must be deeply historically and textually informed. This paper thus re-examines this recent episode of philosophical history for its philosophical benefits and systematic insights. (shrink)

Peter Baumann and Nicholas Shackel defend me against a serious criticism by Christoph Jäger. They argue that my account of information is consistent with my denial of closure for knowledge. Information isn’t closed under known entailment either. I think that, technically speaking, they are right. But the way they are right doesn’t help me much in my effort to answer the skeptic. I describe a way in which information, like knowledge, fails to be closed in a way that makes an (...) information-based account of knowledge an effective tool in answering the skeptic. (shrink)

This essay considers the nature of conceptual frameworks in science, and suggests a reconsideration of the role played by philosophy in radical conceptual change. On Kuhn's view of conceptual conflict, the scientist's appeal to philosophical principles is an obvious symptom of incommensurability; philosophical preferences are merely “subjective factors” that play a part in the “necessarily circular” arguments that scientists offer for their own conceptual commitments. Recent work by Friedman has persuasively challenged this view, revealing the roles that philosophical concerns have (...) played in preparing the way for conceptual change, creating an enlarged conceptual space in which alternatives to the prevailing framework become intelligible and can be rationally discussed. If we shift our focus from philosophical themes or preferences to the process of philosophical analysis, however, we can see philosophy in a different and much more significant historic role: not merely as an external source of general heuristic principles and new conceptual possibilities, but, at least in the most important revolutionary developments, as an objective tool of scientific inquiry. I suggest that this approach offers some insight into the philosophical significance of Newton's and Einstein's revolutionary work in physics, and of the interpretation of their work by (respectively) Kant and the logical positivists. It also offers insight into the connections between modern philosophy of science and some traditional philosophical concerns about the nature of a priori knowledge. (shrink)

I argue that Hegel is aware of a crucial problem in Kant’s transcendental account of the conditions of human knowledge. Unless the matter of sensation is sufficiently ordered (and sufficiently varied) we could not make any cognitive judgments. In that case we could not distinguish ourselves from objects we know, and so could not be self-conscious. This is a necessary, formal and transcendental condition of possible human experience. However, it is also (as Kant acknowledged) a material – not a conceptual (...) or an intutive – condition. Consequently, Kant’s idealism cannot account for it. This provides one key to Hegel’s internal critique of Kant’s idealism. (shrink)

Although it has been largely neglected in contemporary philosophy , the problem of the criterion raises questions which must be addressed by any complete account of knowledge . But the problem of the criterion suffers not onl.

Explicates and defends closely parallel, genuinely transcendental proofs of mental content externalism developed by Kant and by Wittgenstein. Both their proofs have been widely neglected, to our loss.

This chapter contains sections titled: General Characteristics of the Concept of Natural Life The Path to the Individualization of Matter Chemistry and Individuality: The Appearance and Disappearance of Life Contradiction in Chemicals The Necessary Limits of the Inorganic The Path to the Free Individuality of Life Conclusion References Abbreviations Works Cited.

This chapter contains sections titled: The Dialectic of Reason Observing Nature Observing the Nature of the Self References Further Reading.

Rejection of the philosophical relevance of history of philosophy remains pronounced within contemporary analytic philosophy. The two main reasons for this rejection presuppose that strict deduction is both necessary and sufficient for rational justification. However, this justificatory ideal of scientia holds only within strictly formal domains. This is confirmed by a neglected non-sequitur in van Fraassen’s original defence of ‘Constructive Empiricism’. Conversely, strict deduction is insufficient for rational justification in non-formal, substantive domains of inquiry. In non-formal, substantive domains, rational justification (...) is also, in part, ineliminably social and historical, for sound reasons Hegel was the first to articulate. Demonstrating this involves considering closely two key reasons many analytic philosophers (still) reject the philosophical relevance of historical philosophy (§2). As specific example of presumed, though fallacious, deductivism about justification in the non-formal domain of empirical knowledge is found in van Fraassen’s (1980) defence of ‘Constructive Empiricism’ (§3). These first two sections contend that philosophical consideration of historical philosophy is required to properly formulate key issues in non-formal domains. I next consider the further issues involved rational justification in non-formal domains, issues quintessentially posed by the Pyrrhonian Dilemma of the Criterion (§4). Finally I consider what kind of history of philosophy is required for cogent philosophy in non-formal domains (§5). (shrink)

Kant’s and Hegel’s transcendental argument for mental-content externalism breaks the deadlock between ‘internal’ and genuine realists. This argument shows that human beings can only be self-conscious in a world that provides a humanly recognizable regularity and variety among the things (or events) we sense. This feature of the world cannot result from human thought or language. Hence semantic arguments against realism can only be developed if realism about the world is true. Some of Putnam’s arguments for internal realism are taken (...) as cases in point, and criticized accordingly. Pragmatic realists can use this transcendental argument, because its strong modal claims are consistent with falliblist accounts of justification. (shrink)

Hume sought to analyse our propositionally-structured thought in terms of our ultimate awareness of nothing but objects, sensory impressions or their imagistic copies, The ideas of space and time are often regarded as exceptions to his Copy Theory of impressions and ideas. On grounds strictly internal to Humes account of the generality of thought. This ultimately reveals the limits of the Copy Theory and of Concept Empiricism. The key is to recognise how very capacious is our (Humean) imaginative capacity to (...) associate particular perceptions by various fine-grained determinable resemblances. (shrink)

This paper argues that moral particularism, defined as the view that moral judgment does not require moral principles, depends upon a constricted and untenable view of rational judgment as simple syllogistic ratiocination. This I demonstrate by re-examining Nussbaum’s (1986/2002) case for particularism based on Sophocles’ Antigone. The central role of principles in moral judgment and in educational theory is supported by explicating ‘mature judgment’, which highlights key features of Thomas Green’s account of norm acquisition and of Kant’s account of the (...) autonomy of rational judgment. (shrink)

Few if any of Kant’s critics were more trenchant than Hegel. Here I reconstruct some objections Hegel makes to Kant in a text that has received insufficient attention, the chapter titled ‘the Moral World View’ in the Phenomenology of Spirit. I show that Kant holds virtually all the tenets Hegel ascribes to ‘the moral world view’. I concentrate on five of Hegel’s main objections to Kant’s practical metaphysics. First, Kant’s problem of coordinating happiness with virtue (as worthiness to be happy) (...) is contrived. Kant denies that there is any inherent connection between acting rightly and being happy, but his denial depends on his defining happiness in terms of satisfying inclinations, rather than in terms of achieving ends in general. Second, Kant’s view of moral motivation is contrived; he ultimately admits that we cannot resolve to act without taking inclinations into account. (We cannot resolve to act apart from the matter of our maxim.) Third, Kant’s idea about perfecting our virtue in an infinite progress is incoherent. Kant defines virtue, and evidence of virtue, in terms of overcoming inclinations. Inclinations die with the body. Therefore there can be neither virtue nor evidence of virtue after death. Fourth, Kant’s view of the autonomy of moral agency is inconsistent with viewing the moral law as a divine command. Fifth, Kant’s moral principles cannot be put into practice in concrete circumstances because he supplies inadequate guidance for classifying acts. I conclude that Hegel’s objections to Kant’s practical metaphysics are sound, and I show that the problems Hegel raised against Kant’s account of autonomy and moral motivation are still current, since they have not been resolved, e.g., by Onora O’Neill’s Constructions of Reason. (shrink)

The regress of reasons threatens an epistemic agent’s right to claim that any beliefs are justified. In response, Peter Klein’s infinitism argues that an infinite series of supporting reasons of the right type not only is not vicious but can make for epistemic justification. In order to resist the sceptic, infinitism needs to provide reason to think that there is at least one justified belief in the world. Under an infinitist conception this involves showing that at least one belief is (...) supported by an infinite series of supporting reasons. This paper argues that showing this makes problems for the infinitist. The finite minds problem that prevents completion of an infinite series is well documented. This paper examines alternative attempts to provide evidence of infinity that the infinitist might take, whether by using a notion of justification without infinite reasons or by altering the notion of evidence. It concludes that both of these fail and consequently infinitism is unable to offer a solution to Agrippa’s trilemma. (shrink)

My aim in this essay is to lead the reader through the complexity of Hegel’s philosophical understanding of organic nature by highlighting its distinctive theoretical features and by examining these historically, both against the background of the approaches, achievements and trends of the empirical sciences of his time and in light of their scholarly reception.1 First, I focuss on Hegel’s definition of the ‘universal form’ of life, pointing to what the connection is, in his philosophy of nature, between the structure (...) of conceptual and living processes in the path to the individualization of matter. Second, since Hegel calls animal life “the truth of organics,” 2 I shall try to explain how in the philosophy of nature the Idea of life comes to differentiate itself into certain essential characteristics of immediate, finite and individual animals, passing through the stages of geological nature and vegetable organisms. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Hegel's Semantics of Singular Cognitive Reference Hegel's Justification of His Semantics of Singular Cognitive Reference in “Consciousness” “Self‐Consciousness,” Thought, and the Semantics of Singular Cognitive Reference Hegel's Interim Critique of the Ego‐Centric Predicament Conclusion References.