Chapter 1. Attempting to Exit the Human Perspective: A Priori Experimentation in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason
Rachel Zuckert
Chapter 2. Nietzsche’s Epistemic Perspectivism
Steven D. Hales
Chapter 3. Pluralism and Perspectivism in the American Pragmatist Tradition
Matthew J. Brown
Chapter 4. Hilary Putnam on Perspectivism and Naturalism
Mario De Caro
Chapter 5. Scientific Perspectives, Feminist Standpoints, and Non-Silly Relativism
Natalie Alana Ashton
Chapter 6. Perspectives, Questions, and Epistemic Value
Kareem Khalifa and Jared Millson
Chapter 7. Perspectivalism about Knowledge and Error
Nick Treanor
Chapter 8. Virtue Perspectivism, Externalism, and Epistemic Circularity
J. Adam Carter
Chapter 9. Knowledge from a Human Vantage Point
Barry Stroud
Michela Massimi is Professor of Philosophy of Science at the University of Edinburgh. She has extensively written in the area of history and philosophy of science. She was Co-Editor in Chief of The British Journal for Philosophy of Science (2011-2016), and she is currently the Vice President of the European Philosophy of Science Association. Michela is the PI on a ERC-funded project on Perspectival Realism. Science, Knowledge and Truth from a Human Vantage Point (2016-2020).
This open access book – as the title suggests – explores some of the historical roots and epistemological ramifications of perspectivism. Perspectivism has recently emerged in philosophy of science as an interesting new position in the debate between scientific realism and anti-realism. But there is a lot more to perspectivism than discussions in philosophy of science so far have suggested. Perspectivism is a much broader view that emphasizes how our knowledge (in particular our scientific knowledge of nature) is situated; it is always from a human vantage point (as opposed to some Nagelian "view from nowhere"). This edited collection brings together a diverse team of established and early career scholars across a variety of fields (from the history of philosophy to epistemology and philosophy of science). The resulting nine essays trace some of the seminal ideas of perspectivism back to Kant, Nietzsche, the American Pragmatists, and Putnam, while the second part of the book tackles issues concerning the relation between perspectivism, relativism, and standpoint theories, and the implications of perspectivism for epistemological debates about veritism, epistemic normativity and the foundations of human knowledge.