Cover image for Essays in Quasi-Realism.
Essays in Quasi-Realism.
Title:
Essays in Quasi-Realism.
Author:
Blackburn, Simon.
ISBN:
9780195359800
Personal Author:
Physical Description:
1 online resource (271 pages)
Contents:
Contents -- Introduction -- I. Metaphysics -- 1. Truth, Realism, and the Regulation of Theory -- 2. Knowledge, Truth, and Reliability -- 3. Morals and Modals -- 4. Opinions and Chances -- 5. Hume and Thick Connexions -- II. Ethics -- 6. Moral Realism -- 7. Supervenience Revisited -- 8. Errors and the Phenomenology of Value -- 9. How to Be an Ethical Anti-Realist -- 10. Attitudes and Contents -- 11. Just Causes -- III. Mind and Matter -- 12. The Individual Strikes Back -- 13. Losing Your Mind: Physics, Identity, and Folk Burglar Prevention -- 14. Filling in Space -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W.
Abstract:
This volume collects some influential essays in which Simon Blackburn, one of our leading philosophers, explores one of the most profound and fertile of philosophical problems: the way in which our judgments relate to the world. This debate has centered on realism, or the view that what we say is validated by the way things stand in the world, and a variety of oppositions to it. Prominent among the latter are expressive and projective theories, but also a relaxed pluralism that discourages the view that there are substantial issues at stake. The figure of the "quasi-realist" dramatizes the difficulty of conducting these debates. Typically philosophers thinking of themselves as realists will believe that they alone can give a proper or literal account of some of our attachments--to truth, to facts, to the independent world, to knowledge and certainty. The quasi-realist challenge, developed by Blackburn in this volume, is that we can have those attachments without any metaphysic that deserves to be called realism, so that the metaphysical picture that goes with our practices is quite idle. The cases treated here include the theories of value and knowledge, modality, probability, causation, intentionality and rule-following, and explanation. A substantial new introduction has been added, drawing together some of the central themes. The essays articulate a fresh alternative to a primitive realist/anti-realist opposition, and their cumulative effect is to yield a new appreciation of the delicacy of the debate in these central areas.
Local Note:
Electronic reproduction. Ann Arbor, Michigan : ProQuest Ebook Central, 2017. Available via World Wide Web. Access may be limited to ProQuest Ebook Central affiliated libraries.
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