Working without a Net : A Study of Egocentric Epistemology.
Title:
Working without a Net : A Study of Egocentric Epistemology.
Author:
Foley, Richard.
ISBN:
9780195360295
Personal Author:
Physical Description:
1 online resource (225 pages)
Contents:
Contents -- 1. Rational Belief -- 1. Rationality as a Goal-oriented Notion -- 2. Reasons and Perspectives -- 3. Reasons, Beliefs, and Goals -- 4. Evidence, Belief, and Commitment -- 5. Evidence and Reasons for Belief -- 6. An Evaluation Procedure for Epistemology -- 7. Further Illustrations of the Procedure -- 2. Skepticism -- 1. Rationality and Skeptical Hypotheses -- 2. The Lack of Guarantees -- 3. Is Skepticism Self-referentially Incoherent? -- 4. Can Metaphysics Solve the Problem of Skepticism? -- 5. The Epistemological Circle -- 6. Rationality and Knowledge -- 3. Egocentric Rationality -- 1. The Subject Matter of Egocentric Epistemology -- 2. Responsible Belief -- 3. What Am I to Believe? -- 4. Why Be Egocentrically Rational? -- 4. The Epistemology of Beliefs and the Epistemology of Degrees of Belief -- 1. The Lockean Thesis -- 2. Two Paradoxes for the Lockean Thesis -- 3. Degrees of Belief -- 4. Inconsistency, Incoherency, and Dutch Books -- 5. Being Knowingly Inconsistent -- 6. Being Knowingly Incoherent -- 7. Pessimistic Scenarios -- 8. Evidence -- 9. Belief as Epistemic Commitment -- Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- V -- W.
Abstract:
In this new book, Foley defends an epistemology that takes seriously the perspectives of individual thinkers. He argues that having rational opinions is a matter of meeting our own internal standards rather than standards that are somehow imposed upon us from the outside. It is a matter of making ourselves invulnerable to intellectual self-criticism. Foley also shows how the theory of rational belief is part of a general theory of rationality. He thus avoids treating the rationality of belief as a fundamentally different kind of phenomenon from the rationality of decision or action. His approach generates promising suggestions about a wide range of issues--e.g., the distinction between epistemic and non-epistemic reasons for belief; the question of what aspects of the Cartesian project are still worth doing; the significance of simplicity and other theoretical virtues; the relevance of skeptical hypotheses; the difference between a theory of rational belief and a theory of knowledge; the difference between a theory of rational belief and a theory of rational degrees of belief; and the limits of idealization in epistemology.
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.
Genre:
Electronic Access:
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