This is a comprehensive treatment of an increasingly important topic in metaphysics and the philosophy of logic and language. Students in these areas, and researchers in artifical intelligence and linguistics, will encounter a decidedly non-technical approach. For the technically-minded, an appendix shows how vagueness can be formalized within the framework of epistemic logic.

The second volume in the Blackwell Brown Lectures in Philosophy, this volume offers an original and provocative take on the nature and methodology of philosophy.

• Based on public lectures at Brown University, given by the pre-eminent philosopher, Timothy Williamson
• Rejects the ideology of the 'linguistic turn', the most distinctive trend of 20th century philosophy
• Explains the method of philosophy as a development from non-philosophical ways of thinking
• Suggests new ways of understanding what contemporary and past philosophers are doing
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Four people with radically different outlooks on the world meet on a train and start talking about what they believe. Their conversation varies from cool logical reasoning to heated personal confrontation. Each starts off convinced that he or she is right, but then doubts creep in.
In a tradition going back to Plato, Timothy Williamson uses a fictional conversation to explore questions about truth and falsity, and knowledge and belief. Is truth always relative to a point of view? Is every opinion fallible? Such ideas have been used to combat dogmatism and intolerance, but are they...

Is philosophy a unique discipline, or are its methods more like those of other sciences than many philosophers think? Timothy Williamson explains clearly and concisely how contemporary philosophers think and work, and reflects on their powers and limitations.