検索キーワード： 認識論

A fast-paced dialogue in which key philosophical terms are defined and the corresponding concepts are briefly explained.

A system can describe what we see (the solar system), operate a computer (Windows 10), or be made on a page (the 14 engineered lines of a sonnet). In this book, Clifford Siskin shows that system is best understood as a genre - a form that works physically in the world to mediate our efforts to understand it. Indeed, many Enlightenment authors published works they called "system" to compete with the essay and the treatise.

Although Bertrand Russell did most of his early work (along with his mentor and colleague Alfred North Whitehead) in mathematics, he had an enormously wide range of interests - from politics to sex education for the young. The following two essays - "Mysticism and Logic" and "Mathematics and the Metaphysicians" - provide listeners with a glimpse into Russell's thinking and, in turn, illuminates us about these deep subjects.

In this book, we have included excerpts from the Socratic dialogues (as penned by his most famous student, Plato) and Professor Andrea Diem-Lane's brilliant treatise on the "Cerebral Mirage" which brings Plato and Socrates up to date by showing how the latest findings in quantum theory and neuroscience substantiate much of early Greek skepticism, particularly concerning how easily we can be deceived by our various forms of certainty.

This little book explores the projective nature of consciousness by using various rides at Disneyland to explain how awareness works as a virtual simulator.

According to David Hume (1743), for an event series to be a causal series is simply for that series to instantiate a regularity. According to Carl Hempel (1945), to explain an event is simply to identify a regularity of which that event is the final component. Both analyses are wrong but philosophers have failed in their attempts to identify the flaws in those arguments and, more importantly, in their attempts to produce viable alternative analyses. Here, the flaws in those arguments are identified and viable analyses of causation and explanation are put forth.

What is economic growth? And why, historically, has it occurred in only a few places? Previous efforts to answer these questions have focused on institutions, geography, finances, and psychology. But according to MIT's anti-disciplinarian César Hidalgo, understanding the nature of economic growth demands transcending the social sciences and including the natural sciences of information, networks, and complexity. To understand the growth of economies, Hidalgo argues, we first need to understand the growth of order.

Scholars and laymen generally assume that emotions are not judgments - that whereas judgments are expressions of rationality, emotions are expressions of irrationality. In this concise volume, it is shown that emotions are in fact judgments, with the qualification that emotions are hewed to egocentric frame of reference, whereas garden-variety judgments are hewed to a non-egocentric frame of reference.

This book provides clear, concise answers to such questions as: What is it for one event to cause another? What are the different kinds of causation? Does knowledge of physical law presuppose knowledge of instances of causation, or is it the other way around?

It is made clear what discursive knowledge is and how we acquire it, and some age-old skeptical views are shown to be incoherent. It is shown that all knowledge is to some degree inferential. At the same time, it is shown that there are three quite distinct senses in which empirical knowledge can be inferential. It is proved that we have a priori knowledge, and also that knowledge of non-empirical truths is needed to acquire empirical knowledge.

This work gives clear rigorous answers to the fundamental questions of epistemology, these being: What is knowledge? How does declarative knowledge differ from procedural knowledge? How does intuitive knowledge differ from discursive knowledge? How does scientific knowledge differ from non-scientific knowledge? What is the difference between discovery and justification? And much more.

This volume contains a clear and concise analysis of the concept of natural law and of its role in the acquisition of knowledge.

In this work, Descartes' metaphysics and epistemology are clearly stated and assiduously analyzed. It is shown that Descartes' epistemic foundationalism is tenable, and that his mind-body dualism is correct if taken to concern the relationship of mentalistic (mind-related) data to physicalistic data, even though it is incorrect if taken to concern the relationship of mind per se to body per se. Descartes' analysis of causation is shown to be correct, notwithstanding the copious criticism to which centuries have subjected it.

It is made clear what is involved in knowing will happen, what has happened, and what might have happened (but didn't). It is also made clear why the standard skeptical objections to the presumption that we have such knowledge are misconceived.

Chomsky's arguments for the existence of pre-experiential knowledge, and for the existence of sub-personal cognition, are clearly stated and shown to be cogent.

According to W.V.O. Quine, no observational datum supports any given hypothesis more than it supports any other given hypothesis, our belief to the contrary being nothing more than a prejudice born of our irrational preferences for certain rules of inference over others. In this very short work, it is shown that Quine's thesis is false and that his argument for it is broken. A corollary is that Kuhn's relativism ("truth is paradigm-internal") is false.

This lively yet profound exchange vividly illustrates a number of important facts about an oft-misunderstood and deeply significant form of psychopathology. The world's leading analytic philosopher and logician, Dr. Kuczynski has also established himself as a leading psychoanalytic clinician and theoretician. This work draws heavily from Kuczynski's groundbreaking treatise Empiricism and the Foundations of Psychology.

We live in a culture of casual certitude. This has always been the case, no matter how often that certainty has failed. Though no generation believes there's nothing left to learn, every generation unconsciously assumes that what has already been defined and accepted is (probably) pretty close to how reality will be viewed in perpetuity. And then, of course, time passes. Ideas shift. Opinions invert. What once seemed reasonable eventually becomes absurd, replaced by modern perspectives that feel even more irrefutable and secure - until, of course, they don't.

What is matter anyways? - From organisms to cells to proteins to molecules to atoms to electrons to light? The most famous equation in modern physics is Einstein's E=MC2, which, if we pause for a second, is as mysterious as anything written in our ancient religious scriptures and measurably more radical. My point is that the resistance we have to reductionists who say we are "just matter" is because we tend to think of matter as flat. It is, of course, anything but.

Our beliefs constitute a large part of our knowledge of the world. We have beliefs about objects, about culture, about the past, and about the future. We have beliefs about other people, and we believe that they have beliefs as well. We use beliefs to predict, to explain, to create, to console, to entertain. Some of our beliefs we call theories, and we are extraordinarily creative at constructing them. Theories of quantum mechanics, evolution, and relativity are examples.