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Scepticism Comes Alive
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Book Synopsis Scepticism Comes Alive by : Bryan Frances
Download or read book Scepticism Comes Alive written by Bryan Frances and published by Oxford University Press on Demand. This book was released on 2005-06-16 with total page 222 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In epistemology the nagging voice of the sceptic has always been present. Over the last thirty years or so philosophers have thought of several promising ways to counter the radical sceptic: for instance, facts about the reliability of our cognitive processes, principles determining which possibilities must be ruled out in order to have knowledge, and principles regarding the context-sensitivity of knowledge attributions. In this entertaining and provocative book, Bryan Frances presents a new argument template for generating new kinds of radical scepticism, ones that hold even if all the clever anti-sceptical fixes defeat the traditional sceptic. Not only is the argument schema novel, but the sceptical consequences are entirely unexpected. Although the new sceptic concludes that we don't know that fire engines are red, that we sometimes have pains in our knees, or even that we believe that fire engines are red or that knees sometimes throb, he admits that we know millions of exotic truths such as the fact that black holes exist. You can know about the existence of black holes, but not about the colour of your shirt or even about what you believe regarding the colour of your shirt. The new sceptical arguments proceed in the usual way (here's a sceptical hypothesis; you can't neutralize it, you have to be able to neutralize it to know P; so you don't know P), but the sceptical hypotheses plugged into it are 'real live' scientific-philosophical hypotheses often thought to be actually true, such as error theories about belief, colour, pain location, and character traits. Frances investigates the questions, 'Under what conditions do we need to rule out these error theories in order to know things inconsistent with them?' and 'Can we rule them out?' Particular attention is paid to recent methods used to counter the traditional sceptic. Sharp, witty, and fun to read, Scepticism Comes Alive will be highly provocative for anyone interested in knowledge and its limits.
Book Synopsis Scepticism and Animal Faith by : George Santayana
Download or read book Scepticism and Animal Faith written by George Santayana and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2013-02-20 with total page 333 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Detailed presentation of American philosopher's pragmatic concept of epistemology, isolation of realms of existents and subsistents. Chapters include "There is No First Principle of Criticism," "Dogma and Doubt," and "The Discovery of Essence."
Download or read book Disagreement written by Bryan Frances and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2014-08-25 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Regardless of who you are or how you live your life, you disagree with millions of people on an enormous number of topics from politics, religion and morality to sport, culture and art. Unless you are delusional, you are aware that a great many of the people who disagree with you are just as smart and thoughtful as you are - in fact, you know that often they are smarter and more informed. But believing someone to be cleverer or more knowledgeable about a particular topic usually won’t change your mind. Should it? This book is devoted to exploring this quandary - what should we do when we encounter disagreement, particularly when we believe someone is more of an authority on a subject than we are? The question is of enormous importance, both in the public arena and in our personal lives. Disagreement over marriages, beliefs, friendships and more causes immense personal strife. People with political power disagree about how to spend enormous amounts of money, about what laws to pass, or about wars to fight. If only we were better able to resolve our disagreements, we would probably save millions of lives and prevent millions of others from living in poverty. The first full-length text-book on this philosophical topic, Disagreement provides students with the tools they need to understand the burgeoning academic literature and its (often conflicting) perspectives. Including case studies, sample questions and chapter summaries, this engaging and accessible book is the perfect starting point for students and anyone interested in thinking about the possibilities and problems of this fundamental philosophical debate.
Book Synopsis The Mystery of Skepticism by : Kevin McCain
Download or read book The Mystery of Skepticism written by Kevin McCain and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-12-24 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The thirteen newly commissioned essays in The Mystery of Skepticism: New Explorations represent the cutting-edge of research on underexplored skeptical challenges, dimensions of the skeptical problematic, and responses to various kinds of skepticism.
Download or read book Scepticism written by Duncan Pritchard and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2019-09-26 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Throughout history scepticism and the urge to question accepted truths has been a powerful force for change and growth. Today, as we are bombarded by adverts, scientific studies praising the latest superfoods, and political rhetoric, a healthy amount of scepticism is widely encouraged. But when is such scepticism legitimate - for example, as a driver of new ideas - and when is it problematic? And what role might adopting a sceptical outlook play in leading an intellectually virtuous life? In this Very Short Introduction Duncan Pritchard explores both the advantages of scepticism, in challenging outdated notions, and also how it can have unhelpful social consequences, in generating distrust. He considers the role of scepticism at the source of contemporary social and political movements such as climate change denial, post-truth politics, and fake news. Pritchard also examines the philosophical arguments for a radical form of scepticism which maintains that knowledge is impossible, and explores some of the main responses to these arguments. Finally, he considers the part scepticism might play in applying better thinking and learning to achieve a more meaningful life. ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Book Synopsis Find Your F*ckyeah by : Alexis Rockley
Download or read book Find Your F*ckyeah written by Alexis Rockley and published by Chronicle Books. This book was released on 2019-09-17 with total page 309 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Grounded in cutting-edge science but translated for people who speak emoji, Find Your F*ckyeah disrupts the warm and fuzzy "personal growth" fads made fashionable by mock gurus and self-proclaimed #selfcare experts. This bold guide combines humor, pop culture, and psychology to show us why the one-size-fits-all success formulas and trendy morning routines keep us caught in a cycle of boredom and stress, never fully sustaining our happiness. With hard science, guided experiments, and modern wisdom—from Beyoncé to Carl Jung—Alexis Rockley takes us step-by-step through the biological, cultural, and social factors that create our self-limiting beliefs. Debunking self-sabotaging ideals like "You Are a Living Brand" and "You Have One Calling," Rockley encourages us to discover our real, uncensored selves and find a sense of purpose, even when we don't have all the answers. For those of us tired of feeling the pressure to be better, do more, and work faster—to self-optimize and fall in line—Find Your F*ckyeah teaches us how to find joy where we are right now and to let our genuine self-expression guide us.
Book Synopsis Scepticism, a Critical Reappraisal by : Nicholas Rescher
Download or read book Scepticism, a Critical Reappraisal written by Nicholas Rescher and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 1980 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In endeavoring to secure our knowledge against the skeptic's critique, we can acquire a great deal of useful insight into its nature. For it emerges that our knowledge of matters of objective fact is potentially defeasible and that what we claim as "our knowledge of the world" is and is bound to remain presumably incomplete, potentially incorrect, and possibly inconsistent as well. The explanation and analysis of these circumstances is the object of the present critique of skepticism. The book will accordingly endeavor to sift the wheat from the chaff in the skeptic's argument.
Book Synopsis Knowledge: A Very Short Introduction by : Jennifer Nagel
Download or read book Knowledge: A Very Short Introduction written by Jennifer Nagel and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2014-09-25 with total page 153 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is knowledge? How does it differ from mere belief? Do you need to be able to justify a claim in order to count as knowing it? How can we know that the outer world is real and not a dream? Questions like these are ancient ones, and the branch of philosophy dedicated to answering them - epistemology - has been active for thousands of years. In this thought-provoking Very Short Introduction, Jennifer Nagel considers these classic questions alongside new puzzles arising from recent discoveries about humanity, language, and the mind. Nagel explains the formation of major historical theories of knowledge, and shows how contemporary philosophers have developed new ways of understanding knowledge, using ideas from logic, linguistics, and psychology. Covering topics ranging from relativism and the problem of scepticism to the trustworthiness of internet sources, Nagel examines how progress has been made in understanding knowledge, using everyday examples to explain the key issues and debates ABOUT THE SERIES: The Very Short Introductions series from Oxford University Press contains hundreds of titles in almost every subject area. These pocket-sized books are the perfect way to get ahead in a new subject quickly. Our expert authors combine facts, analysis, perspective, new ideas, and enthusiasm to make interesting and challenging topics highly readable.
Book Synopsis Universal Skepticism by : Kevin Henley
Download or read book Universal Skepticism written by Kevin Henley and published by . This book was released on 2004-02-01 with total page 152 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a second book for unrepentant skeptics, written as a sequel to Taking the Lying out of Living: the Skeptic's Manifesto, published back in 2001. Although that earlier work was an excellent introduction to the principles of universal skepticism, I feel that if left out a number of important observations. Without repeating any of the points made in my previous effort, in this book I want to broaden and to deepen my investigation into what keeps most human beings from leading more satisfactory lives. To that end, I have included a lot of new information about the toxicity of leadership in all the different walks of life, as well as new examples of how the different belief systems have been used to deprive almost everyone from realizing life's most important ambitions. Once again, I have used history, current events and my own experience to find appropriate but often ironic, even humorous, illustrations of organized frailty and egoism. Universal skepticism is the best method available for us to reject all the different kinds of parochialism religion, political ideologies including patriotism, and social discrimination of all kinds that prevent us from becoming genuinely free for the first time. Even though I realize how difficult it is to bring about, I would like this book to help readers work their way past the partial allegiances that afflict us all. Our goal should be to let nothing intermediate get in between our own individuality and our participation in the universal human experience, such as it is today.
Book Synopsis Scepticism and Perceptual Justification by : Dylan Dodd
Download or read book Scepticism and Perceptual Justification written by Dylan Dodd and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014 with total page 385 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: New essays on scepticism about the senses explore the problem of whether and how experience can provide knowledge or justification for belief about the objective world outside the experiencer's mind.
Book Synopsis Scepticism and Animal Faith by : George Santayana
Download or read book Scepticism and Animal Faith written by George Santayana and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 1955-01-01 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this work, Santayana analyzes the nature of the knowing process and demonstrates by means of clear, powerful arguments how we know and what validates our knowledge. The central concept of his philosophy is found in a careful discrimination between the awareness of objects independent of our perception and the awareness of essences attributed to objects by our mind, or between what Santayana calls the realm of existents and the realm of subsistents. Since we can never be certain that these attributes actually inhere in a substratum of existents, skepticism is established as a form of belief, but animal faith is shown to be a necessary quality of the human mind. Without this faith there could be no rational approach to the necessary problem of understanding and surviving in this world. Santayana derives this practical philosophy from a wide and fascinating variety of sources. He considers critically the positions of such philosophers as Descartes, Euclid, Hume, Kant, Parmenides, Plato, Pythagoras, Schopenhauer, and the Buddhist school as well as the assumptions made by the ordinary man in everyday situations. Such matters as the nature of belief, the rejection of classical idealism, the nature of intuition and memory, symbols and myth, mathematical reality, literary psychology, the discovery of essence, sublimation of animal faith, the implied being of truth, and many others are given detailed analyses in individual chapters.
Download or read book The Philosopher's Index written by and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 1160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Vols. for 1969- include a section of abstracts.
Download or read book How We Believe written by Michael Shermer and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 2000-11 with total page 370 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent polls report that 96% of Americans believe in God. Why is this? Why, despite the rise of science, technology, and secular education, are people turning to religion in greater numbers than ever before? Why do people believe in God at all?
Book Synopsis Common Sense, Science and Scepticism by : Alan Musgrave
Download or read book Common Sense, Science and Scepticism written by Alan Musgrave and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1993-02-11 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Can we know anything for certain? Dogmatists think we can, sceptics think we cannot, and epistemology is the great debate between them. Some dogmatists seek certainty in the deliverances of the senses. Sceptics object that the senses are not an adequate basis for certain knowledge. Other dogmatists seek certainty in the deliverances of pure reason. Sceptics object that rational self-evidence is no guarantee of truth. This book is an introductory and historically-based survey of the debate, siding for the most part with scepticism to show that the desire to vanquish it has often led to doctrines of idealism or anti-realism. Scepticism, science and common sense produce another view, fallibilism or critical rationalism: although we can have little or no certain knowledge, as the sceptics maintain, we can and do have plenty of conjectural knowledge. Fallibilism incorporates an uncompromising realism about perception, science, and the nature of truth.
Download or read book Scepticism written by Neil Gascoigne and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-12-18 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The history of scepticism is assumed by many to be the history of failed responses to a problem first raised by Descartes. While the thought of the ancient sceptics is acknowledged, their principle concern with how to live a good life is regarded as bearing little, if any, relation to the work of contemporary epistemologists. In "Scepticism" Neil Gascoigne engages with the work of canonical philosophers from Descartes, Hume and Kant through to Moore, Austin, and Wittgenstein to show how themes that first emerged in the Hellenistic period are inextricably bound up with the historical development of scepticism. Foremost amongst these is the view that scepticism relates not to the possibility of empirical knowledge but to the possibility of epistemological theory. This challenge to epistemology itself is explored and two contemporary trends are considered: the turn against foundationalist epistemology and towards more naturalistic conceptions of inquiry, and the resistance to this on the part of non-naturalistically inclined philosophers. In contextualizing the debate in this way Gascoigne equips students with a better appreciation of the methodological importance of sceptical reasoning, an analytic understanding of the structure of sceptical arguments, and an awareness of the significance of scepticism to the nature of philosophical inquiry.
Download or read book The New Skepticism written by Paul Kurtz and published by . This book was released on 1992 with total page 380 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Kurtz argues that there are objective standards for judging truth claims in science, ethics, and philosophy. Of special interest is the application of the new skepticism to paranormal claims such as reincarnation and faith healing, and to religious beliefs, ethics and politics.
Book Synopsis The Case Against Miracles by : John W. Loftus
Download or read book The Case Against Miracles written by John W. Loftus and published by . This book was released on 2019-11-22 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For as long as the idea of "miracles" has been in the public sphere, the conversation about them has been shaped exclusively by religious apologists and Christian leaders. The definitions for what a miracles are have been forged by the same men who fought hard to promote their own beliefs as fitting under that umbrella. It's time for a change. Enter John W. Loftus, an atheist author who has earned three master's degrees from Lincoln Christian Seminary and Trinity Evangelical Divinity School. Loftus, a former student of noted Christian apologist William Lane Craig, got some of the biggest names in the field to contribute to this book, which represents a critical analysis of the very idea of miracles. Incorporating his own thoughts along with those of noted academics, philosophers, and theologians, Loftus is able to properly define "miracle" and then show why there's no reason to believe such a thing even exists. Addressing every single issue that touches on miracles in a thorough and academic manner, this compilation represents the most extensive look at the phenomenon ever displayed through the lens of an ardent nonbeliever. If you've ever wondered exactly what a miracle is, or doubted whether they exist, then this book is for you.
