Includes bibliographical references (pages 339-375) and indexes.
Contents:
Lecture One: The epistemic ideal -- Lecture Two: Evident certainties -- Lecture Three: The sensory domain -- Lecture Four: Ideas and illusions -- Lecture Five: The privileged now -- Lecture Six: Deception and hope.
Summary:
No part of philosophy is as disconnected from its history as is epistemology. After Certainty offers a reconstruction of that hisory, understood as a series of changing expectations about the cognitive ideal that beings such as we are might hope to achieve in a world such as this one. The story begins with Aristotle and then looks at how his epistemic program was developed through later antiquity and into the Middle Ages, before being dramatically reformulated in the seventeenth century. In watching these debates unfold over the centuries, one sees why epistemology has traditionally been embedded within a much larger sphere of concerns about human nature and the reality of the world we live in. It ultimately becomes clear why epistemology today is a much narrower and specialized field, concerned with the conditions under which it is true to say that someone knows something. Based on a series of lectures given at Oxford University, Robert Pasnau's book ranges widely over the history of philosophy and examines in some detial the rise of science as an autonomous discipline. Ultimately Pasnau argues that we may have no good reasons to suppose ourselves capable of achieving even the most minimal standards for knowledge, and the final chapter concludes with a discussion of faith and hope. -- from dust jacket.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.