Common Sense, Science and Scepticism: A Historical Introduction to the Theory of Knowledge

ISBN-13: 9780521436250 / Angielski / Miękka / 1993 / 328 str.

Alan Musgrave

Opis

Can we know anything for certain? There are those who think we can (traditionally labeled the "dogmatists") and those who think we cannot (traditionally labeled the "skeptics"). The theory of knowledge, or epistemology, is the great debate between the two. This book is an introductory and historically-based survey of the debate. It sides for the most part with the skeptics. It also develops out of skepticism a third view, fallibilism or critical rationalism, which incorporates an uncompromising realism about perception, science, and the nature of truth.

Recenzje

"The treatment of basic issues in epistemology is quite nicely done, and although the book is intended as an introduction, it is not confined to the coverage of elementary topics. Musgrave does devote a good deal of space to the discussion of such standard epistemological material as skepticism, but he also includes interesting, elegant, and informative summaries of problems and theories in logic, semantics, and the philosophy of mathematics. The book can be read profitably by anyone with an interest in epistemology and its history." Douglas M. Jesseph, Isis

Spis treści

1. The problem of knowledge; 2. Scepticism under attack; 3. Scepticism regarding the senses; 4. Empiricist psychology; 5. Idea-ism, appearance and reality; 6. Primary and secondary qualities; 7. Berkeley: idea-ism becomes idealism; 8. Hume: idea-ism becomes irrationalism; 9. Countering Hume on induction; 10. The Rationalist alternative; 11. Rationalism defended: Descartes; 12. Kant and the synthetic a priori; 13. Alternative geometries; 14. Truth and truth-theories; 15. Fallibilist realism.